Selle San Marco Shield covers the saddle cutout to protect your undercarriage

Provided photos.

There are fenders to protect our backsides, but what about the undercarriage? Selle San Marco is introducing a feature they call Shield that’s described as a “built-in mud guard.” It’s designed to keep dirt and water out of the saddle cutouts, which is welcome news. However, there’s a chance your current saddle already has a hidden cutout that works in a similar way.

Why do saddles even have cutouts?

Saddle cutouts “do a good job of relieving perineal pressure,” WTB Saddle Category Manager Sean Madsen told Singletracks in a 2019 podcast interview. “The human crotch is not designed to bear weight. So we want to make sure we’re shifting our pressure and our mass and supporting our mass out onto the sit bones, which is away from the midline. We want to avoid midline pressure, and cutouts can do a really good job of that.”

Underside of the SDG Bel Air III mountain bike saddle.

Even saddles that appear to have a solid surface on top may have a cutout underneath in the base, like the SDG Bel Air III shown above. In fact, in our podcast interview, Madsen said WTB designs their “saddles to kind of act like they’ve got a cutout even without having a visual cutout because a lot of feedback we’ve gotten from riders is that the cutout in a mountain biking environment, especially in a wet mountain biking environment, man, you get a lot of spray and a lot of mud coming up through the middle.”

The Selle San Marco Ground Shield saddle

The Selle San Marco Ground line of saddles is among the first to get the Shield treatment. The off-road saddle is offered in two sizes, and buyers can choose carbon, manganese, or steel rails. As far as we can tell, the cutout doesn’t add any weight to the Selle San Marco Ground saddles, with the cutout and Shield versions of the brand’s Ground Dynamic saddles both weighing a reported 271g for the S3 size.

Unlike the SDG saddle pictured above, the Selle San Marco Shield is much thinner and doesn’t add any padding. “The Shield mud guard is integrated into the saddle shell for enhanced durability and to prevent it from detaching even when subjected to extra strain,” according to Selle San Marco.

Selle San Marco Shield tech can also be found on the brand’s Shortfit 2.0 saddle. US pricing and availability are unknown, though Ground saddles without Shield are priced starting at about $66.