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Choosing a saddle is one of the most independent decisions you'll have to make for your bike, as the saddle that your riding partner can't stop talking about may leave you abandoning your next easy ride early and heading home in pain. Fizik does its best to simplify the process, and its Aliante Versus K:ium represents one of the most versatile designs the company has released. Its goal was to offer a saddle that would accommodate a wide range of riders using their bikes for everything from daily commutes to weekend criteriums. Fizik has long been associated with ultralight, stiff racing saddles fine tuned to provide competitive advantage to self sponsored racers and professionals alike. However, the company more recently took its expertise in racing saddles and shifted it to designs made to accommodate everyday, recreational riders, creating the Spine Concept to give cyclists a better idea at what their individual biomechanical requirements might be for a saddle. The Aliante Versus falls into the Bull category, which encompasses riders with little spinal flexibility who are looking for comfort and relief in the saddle. Fizik achieves this relief in the Aliante Versus by including a pressure relief channel throughout the center of the saddle, which is then surrounded by soft, low density foam. The design was specifically tuned to improve comfort without impacting the saddle's stiffness, and it offers the same amount of surface area as the regular version of the Aliante so that the structural integrity of the saddle remains unaffected. The saddle rests on rails made of Fizik's K:ium, a reinforced titanium alloy that exhibits an improved strength to weight ratio over titanium on its own, atop which sits a carbon reinforced nylon shell covered in a soft Microtex cover to protect the saddle from the elements.
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