It’s a rare endurance rider who isn’t searching for the holy grail of stirrups. Can you put a price on comfortable feet, ankles, and knees when you’re riding anywhere from 4 to 24 hours in a day?
Apparently, you can. It’s easy to spend several hundred dollars on a pair of endurance stirrups. The hard part is deciding which pair gets your hard-earned dough.
I’d been pondering a new stirrup purchase for several months before I learned I’d be riding Tevis in 2024. My old pair – an anonymous caged set with no branding but the best feel I’d tried to-date – had grown quite battered. The paint was chipped off and one of the metal cages had been left cockeyed by a horse’s fall.
That Tevis entry gave me the excuse I needed. After much scouring of reviews, I pulled the trigger on a pair of Burioni Flexia Endurance Stirrups. $300 and a few days later, I pulled them out of the box.
Incidentally, some reviewers out there mentioned very long shipping times for their Burioni Flexias. Shout out to Riding Warehouse, who got mine to me in less than a week. If you’re an AERC member, check your membership renewal email for a coupon code that’ll get you 10% off at Riding Warehouse – not an insignificant savings on these babies!
The Burioni Flexias arrived in a fancy bag with an allen key, which is for adjusting the flexible footbeds. More on that in a moment. First, let’s go over some basics:
Price: As mentioned, Burioni Flexias run at least $300 USD. I found higher price points also, so shop around.
Manufacturer: The stirrups are made by Manifatture Burioni, an Italian company that, near as I can tell, does not sell direct-to-consumer.
Weight: Burioni Flexia endurance stirrups weigh 1.3 pounds each, which is just a touch heavier than the familiar EZ-Ride stirrups by EasyCare, Inc.
Cages: The stirrups come with removable plastic cages measuring 4” in height and 6.25” in length. Online photos indicate that they are available in black, blue, red, green, white, and pink. However, black is by far the most common among U.S. distributors.
Footbeds: Burioni Flexias depart from the thick padding common in endurance stirrups. They have solid plastic footbeds with adjustable angles. Using the included allen key, you can raise the front of the footbed by up to 11 degrees and lower the back by up to 14 degrees. Additionally, the footbeds are relatively narrow at 4.5″ square.
Bars: The stirrups have 1” bars, and the leather must fit through a small hole. Some reviews indicate that webbers are too thick (top-to-bottom, not side-to-side) to fit through these holes. The bars are rotated so the stirrups hang straight, and are therefore able to accommodate a foot without twisting.
These bars were my first hurdle in testing the Burioni Flexias. I ride in a Bob Marshall Sport Saddle and had been using the original, massively-thick, two-inch wide nylon leathers. The bulk under my leg had grown tiresome, and I was excited to switch to narrower leathers. I hunted at length for the right ones (did you know you can spend more hundreds of dollars on leathers?) and ultimately settled on…
Dog collars.
Hey, it wasn’t my idea. I found mention on some jurassic message board of an old-time endurance rider using large dog collars for stirrup leathers. Sadly, I can’t find that post again and I don’t remember who made the suggestion.
It took a bit of searching on Amazon to find dog collars with metal buckles instead of plastic clips, but I ultimately located these in the appropriate size range. Mine are 26” (hey, I’m short) but they come as long as 32”.
I trundled my new treasures to the round corral and wrestled the crusty, old stirrups and leathers off my saddle. Happily, the dog collars cooperated nicely with both my Bob Marshall and the Burioni Flexias. [Read to the end for an update on the dog collar situation.]
I fussed with the length a bit, then mounted up. Well!
What a strange feeling. The Burioini Flexia stirrup beds are about half an inch narrower than most endurance stirrups I’ve used. Additionally, the cages taper to more of a point. As a result, they look quite sleek (it felt like putting on leather tall boots instead of my usual comfy hikers), but also feel disconcertingly snug.
At times, the toes of my Keen utility boots (women’s U.S. size 7) feel gently lodged into the cages as I ride. A little shake of my ankle loosens them up easily, but this issue could be of significant concern for riders in wider footwear. That said, I’ve been riding in the Flexias for months now and have never had trouble dismounting – even hastily.
My foot did get quite bruised, nearly all the way around, during my unscheduled dismount in the Granite Chief Wilderness (read that story here), and it’s possible that the snugness of the cage was a factor. On the bright side, the stirrup itself was unharmed by its scrape with the infamous granite. No cracks, no crushing, no scratches.
As mentioned above, the Burioni Flexia stirrups have hard plastic footbeds. This was a major departure from the inch-thick Vibram pads in my old stirrups. Having frequently suffered from foot pain and numbness in the past, I wondered how I’d fare with the unpadded Flexias.
It turns out that the hard footbeds may be a good thing. I experience exactly zero soreness or numbing in the Flexias. I’m speculating here, but perhaps the squishiness of a pad allows too much foot movement, leading to unhelpful compression of tissues in the foot and/or extra work as the body constantly works to accommodate tiny shifts in the pad.
Speaking of footbeds, I left the adjustable angles unaltered from how they arrived, as that seems to work just fine for me. However, I did experiment with the allen key and was somewhat mystified.
When you lower the footbed, more of the little metal pegs that secure them are exposed. These studs are rather sharp and seem like they’d be uncomfortable – maybe even dangerous, if your boot tread got caught – if you lowered the footbed too much. I’d love to hear from someone who figured out something I missed.
Since putting the Burioni Flexias on my saddle in June, I haven’t been tempted to remove them. I’ve ridden without knee, foot, or ankle pain at Strawberry Fields Forever (slow and technical, lots of walking), Tevis (very long), and most of the National Championship 100 (brisk pace).
To be fair, I can’t be sure how much of my improved comfort can be credited to the stirrups, and how much to the narrower leathers.
What I can say is that I’m now torn between buying a second pair of Burioni Flexia Endurance Stirrups for my other saddle, or risking the cash to experiment with another kind.
Either way, the dog collars are here to stay.
UPDATE 1 YEAR LATER:
Never mind: The dog collars are NOT here to stay.
I rode in them for almost exactly a year, at which point the little metal ring that’s sewn inside the hole to keep the buckle from ripping through the nylon had begun to tear out. I decided it was high time to move on to something tested and rated for human bodyweight and equestrian use (which would be even more important for a rider heavier than my featherweight self).
I found biothane stirrup leathers for just $35.00 at Two Horse Tack. They even come in different lengths and colors! Why couldn’t I locate these when I was searching last year?? In any case, I won a 50-miler in them last weekend at the Trout Lake Endurance Ride and my knees and ankles were happy doing it.
I’ve already ordered a second pair of the stirrup leathers…to go on my other Bob Marshall…with a second pair of Burioni Flexia stirrups.
They shipped yesterday.
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The dog collars are honestly genius. I’m intrigued by these stirrups. I don’t know what I’ll ever do if my endurance stirrups (EZ Care…the ones they don’t make any more) ever need to be replaced. I’ll be at a loss.
Right? That’s how I used to feel about those anonymous stirrups I was using, because they were much better than anything else I’d tried. But I must say, I don’t miss them…