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 cash.
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 tags 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 trundled my new treasures to the round corral and wrestled the crusty, old stirrups and leathers off my saddle. I’d managed to find English-style biothane leathers at Two Horse Tack, but I did have to cut them shorter to cooperate with my Bob Marshall, since the stirrups attach much lower than on a typical treed saddle.
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. [Update: it has now been 2 years and this is still true.]
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 collision 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). [Update: I’ve since ridden Tevis again, plus a bunch of 50s, in these stirrups.]
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’ve already ordered a second pair of Burioni Flexia stirrups to go on my other Bob Marshall.
They shipped yesterday.
[Update: Two years later, I’m still using the Burioni Flexias on both saddles and have no complaints. One more observation – because they are narrower than most endurance stirrups, and hanging on 1-inch leathers, it can be a little harder than average to get your toe back into the stirrup if you lose it. I sometimes reach down and spin the stirrup into place with my hand to make it easier.]
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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…