Imagine what the population would be like otherwise!

I’m glad you like your saddle, and I’m sure that for some people with UNUSUAL pelvic structures, blood vessel and nerve layout, they are really the best choice. I know several people who have tried and rejected several “noseless” designs, and some who are happy with them. Find me a study that looks at unpadded traditional saddles set up by people who actually ride bicycles several thousand miles a year without trouble. Would a study conducted by and among people with such demonstrable competence in the field be cheating? If so, what makes these other researchers confident they can design better saddles? In some cases at least I’m sure it has more to do with confidence that they can _sell_ different saddles, on fear.

You’re using the same tedious tactics as in your helmet safety lectures: painting scary pictures without establishing the likelihood of their occurrence with enough context to rebutt. Children on bikes will have their brains on the street; grownups will be vegetables; riders of traditional saddle designs will be impotent, etc. You’d think China wouldn’t have the largest population in the world with all the bikes culling them on all sides like this.

British Medical Journal 100(4)p. 947; 99(1),p. 135
Mayo Clinic Health Letter 25(6)p. 4
International Brazilian Journal of Urology 33(3)p. 443
Medicine & Science in Sports & Excercise 35(2) p. 19
Minerva Pediatrica 51(1-2) p. 19
Clinics in Sports Medicine 13(1)p. 175

All indicate that the standard horned bicycle seat tends to pinch and squeeze parts of the male body that ought not to be pinched or squeezed.

On my own urologist’s advice I’ve been using one of the Hobson saddles for about seven years now and find it much more comfortable than a standard one.

But, hey, its your prostate.

What saddle you get is also very particular. I tried four different Brooks saddles and two of them were terrible. The one I bought was broken in after two or three hours of riding, total.

The whole premise of the “saddles damage your junk” argument is that they put pressure on your taint. If your saddle puts pressure there, then indeed you might have a problem. Brooks saddles of appropriate shape and adjustment (there are around a dozen basic shapes, OK?) are _less likely_ to put pressure on your soft tissue because they _don’t_ have the padding that quite obviously compresses up into soft tissue as soon as you sit on it. You don’t need a hole in your saddle if your saddle is supportive enough of your sit bones (i.e., _not padded_) that pretty much only your sit bones are in firm contact with the saddle. Doesn’t that hurt your sit bones? It can for a few miles to a few hundred with a new saddle, until it breaks in to your personal shape. Padding is simply a marketing feature pandering to anatomical ignorance and to people who might never ride their bikes long enough to break in a proper saddle. Slots and noselessness are cynical attempts to up-sell people who’ve already bought into padding and are having problems.

There is one reason that Brooks saddles are the usual top choice of long-distance cyclists, and that their designs have barely changed over the last century: they’re really comfortable. Yep, we sell them. I have ridden nothing else for over 10 years and plan never to. My wife and son like them too: no problems there. I should say that the most excruciating saddle experience I’ve ever had was a couple of blocks on a Brooks B17N. That’s N for narrow, and my posture was too upright for that to be an appropriate model choice. A regular B17 suits me fine for that posture, and a B66 is right for Dutch posture. Don’t lump all models together!

Try one of these: http://www.hobsonseats.com/

http://www.ridingthespine.com/Journey/chupacabra/ode-to-the-chupacabra

Worth checking out.