I was talking to this company's agent, Tom Petrie, about how his company really nailed the features on this saddle. "This is very close to what I would build if I designed a saddle," I told him.

"You don't have a very good memory, do you," he replied, to which I did not take offense, because it was a true statement of fact. I don't have a good memory.

"Several years ago, when you were at QR," Petrie continued, "we had this same discussion, and as we were at that time your O.E. supplier for saddles we did want to build the saddle you wanted to spec. You told us what to build and here it is."

I have no recollection of that event, and can neither confirm nor deny it (I learn these lines from watching Senate hearings).

The Azoto has languished, only sparsely sold, in the market because after my departure from the bicycle company I ran, the product managers spec'ing the bikes apparently didn't see the value in a saddle such as this for the sorts of bikes they were building (indeed, the Azoto would be an expensive saddle for a bike company to spec as original equipment). So the Azoto—the saddle built for QR—got used neither by QR nor by any other bike company. But good products will find their ways into the market, and there is an interesting story about how one pro triathlete, Spencer Smith, found this saddle and used it, and is now a staunch convert. You'll find this story on our overview of this saddle.

Our overviews are not product reviews, however, and the purpose of our additional look at this saddle is to do more than report on its features and price, but to actually go out and ride it, which I did. I gave it the harshest, least fair, test I could. I'd been riding nothing but my road bike all season, and took my tri bike down from the rafters for its first ride of the year.

I went out for four hours and spent the bulk of it in the aero position. There are two places I know I'll be sore after a ride like this: the back of my neck (since I'll have been raising my head more than while on my road race bike), and those parts of my anatomy that are not used to being ridden on.

As I said, I rode for four hours on this saddle on virgin skin, and I guess I knew after the first four minutes things would be fine. You know whether or not a saddle is properly constructed for a triathlete quite early on in the ride. Yes, other saddles have endeavored to place gel or padding toward the nose, but often it's too easily compressed and you can feel the hardness of the saddle shell right through whatever padding rests above it. Not so this saddle. The gel is very thick and sufficiently dense.

I'm addicted to the sort of neoprene saddle covers that QR and De Soto make, even while on my road race bike. The Azoto has zero extra padding—it is padded the same as all saddles are—from the mid-point of the saddle back. In other words, when you're sitting on the rear of this saddle it's like sitting on the rear of any saddle. Since I've been riding with saddle covers, the back of the Azoto understandably felt hard on my butt.

Furthermore, there is one thing about this saddle I wish was different, and if this does become a big-selling saddle as I suspect it will, it's a change Selle San Marco will want to make. The "outer" covering the thick gel on the nose of this saddle is made of nylon. You can't slide on nylon as well as you can lycra, and I'd like to see a lycra laminate.

But all this was easy to fix. I simply placed a De Soto saddle cover over the saddle. Now I had even more padding, which now extended all the way to the back of the saddle, plus I now had the slicker lycra surface on which to ride.

Mind you, it's not going to be easy to put a cover over this saddle, because the nose of the Azoto is so big already. When I put the De Soto saddle cover over the Azoto it was like a snake eating something that appears too big to get past its jaws. At a minimum you'll have to use the technique described here on Slowtwitch for mounting the saddle cover, and you also may find QR's saddle cover made of a slightly larger pattern and slightly easier to get over the Azoto.

Throughout the past 20 years road race companies have been trying to "access" the triathlon customer. The "category" of "triathlon" has meant that, "the product needs to look good on the surface, but can be made cheaply." Triathlon has meant, "mid price range," because traditional road-race tire makers, saddle makers, and frame makers have made the assumption that triathletes will buy anything, so long as it doesn't cost too much. Kudos to Selle San Marco for making a properly-constructed saddle. It's got titanium rails, which is nice, because the gel weighs a bit. But I honestly don't much care what the rails are made of. I'd prefer a saddle that simply has good construction, and this one has it.

Coming into this season I figured this would be the year for three categories of products: aero bars (several new designs are due out sometime this year); liberal use of carbon (in stems, seat stays of aluminum and titanium bikes, in cranks, hubs, and a lot of places where carbon has only been sparingly used in the past); and in the more widespread availability of electronics (power meters, GPS technology, wireless technology). While I'm sticking to my belief in all of that, I must say that this may also turn out to be the year of the saddle, with companies like this one, and Koobi, finally making products specific for triathletes.

The TriathGel Azoto is saddle built from the ground up on the assumption that it'll be used by a triathlete riding in the aero position on a steep-seat-angle bike while in a reasonably aggressive aero position. It's the sort of saddle that any other athlete (except perhaps an MTB downhiller) would not want to use. With the exception of a couple of minor and easily fixable problems noted above (which I fixed with a $20 seat cover) this saddle comes closer than any I've yet ridden to fixing the most bedeviling mechanical problem triathletes face.

This saddle is available in good triathlon stores. I was over in Nytro last week picking up some wheels I had built for me and I saw several of these on the shelf. I'm sure the other fine triathlon stores will have these in stock as well. Expect to pay between $110 and $130 for this saddle.