10 years of abuse! Gaerne SG12 v Sidi Crossfire long-term review︱Cross Training Enduro

10 years of abuse - our Gaerne SG12 v Sidi Crossfire long-term review! Traditionally Gaerne and Sidi Crossfire boots have been regarded as the two best premium boots for protection, longevity and overall quality. However, the Sidi Crossfire quality appeared to drop badly at least 10 years ago. Which is the best enduro boot? Welcome to Cross Training Enduro! Some riders believe the problems started when much of Sidi's manufacturing moved from Italy to Romania. We did a pile of research and produced this video. Eventually the USA distributor for Sidi suggested that a change to an EU-approved adhesive might be responsible for so many boot soles peeling off. So let's compare our Sidi Crossfire and Gaerne SG12 boots after 10 years of very similar riding. Need hard enduro training? Work through our video lists. Hard enduro techniques are covered in our training vids. Which is the best motocross boot? My brother has just retired these SG12s and bought a new pair. This old pair are still actually working well but are now his backup boots. It seems incredible after 10 years, but these are still the original soles. One of the soles recently started to peel at the front and it needs to be re-attached. If the missing toe-cap has been replaced quickly we suspect the sole may have stayed attached. There is a bit of fraying on the internal liner here. Into enduro and dirt bikes? Check out our dirt bike videos. Extreme enduro training vids are our focus. There is one screw missing here. And that's it. We know quite a lot of Gaerne SG12 owners say they get at least 10 years out of their boots and we can see why. The left sole wore out after three years and was replaced. You can see the second sole has almost worn through again. The right sole is still original and not worn through yet. A lot of the plastic pieces cracked at the seven year mark which is when I retired the boots due to the lack of protection. Our stress test. Protection against hyperflexion and hypoflexion are still not too bad. There was quite a lot of side flex although still some protection there. The plastic covering had fallen off one toe-cup so there was much less protection. The other toe-cup was still intact and pretty good, although not as firm as the Gaerne. We then did our usual stress tests. It was good to see that the protection against hyerflexion and hypoflexion were still very similar to a new set of Gaernes. Ditto for side flex. And the toe-cup was just as firm as the new boots. The left sole wore out after three years and was replaced. You can see the second sole has almost worn through again. The right sole is still original and not worn through yet. A lot of the plastic pieces cracked at the seven year mark which is when I retired the boots due to the lack of protection. Our stress test. Protection against hyperflexion and hypoflexion are still not too bad. If you want extreme enduro training see our playlists of enduro skills to learn. Try our training vids for working on your extreme enduro techniques. The plastic covering had fallen off one toe-cup so there was much less protection. The other toe-cup was still intact and pretty good, although not as firm as the Gaerne. So what about my Sidi Crossfires? Unfortunately these did not last 10 years. I had to retire them at the seven year mark. Both soles started to peel off at the two year mark.We should mention that occasionally we hear of Sidi Crossfire owners getting 10 years use out of their boots. But it does seem very rare compared to Gaerne owners. Also there are occasional issues with Gaerne boots. What about other brands? we know the Alpinestars Tech 10s are very popular in the USA but we hear about many cases where the soles or plastics have not even lasted 30 hours. There will be exceptions of course. But we think Alpinestars' former quality dropped a long time ago when they stopped manufacturing their boots in Italy and moved to Vietnam, Thailand and Croatia. Forma Predator boots made a name for themselves years ago as they were so cheap compared to other premium boots. I am a fan of Gaerne boots. Almost everyone I ride with has swapped to Gaerne over the past 10 years. However none of us is connected with Gaerne or receives any discounts. I'm keen to hear if you have had failures with Gaerne boots. Our channel aims to keep the bastards honest and if Gaerne does start to drop their quality standards we want to make it public. We are keeping an eye on the Gaerne SG22 boots to see if they are as reliable as the SG12s we use. So what are your favourite boots? The worst? What do you look for in a boot? INDEX 0:00 Sidi quality problems 0:38 Sidi v Gaerne over 10 years 3:22 Alpinestars Tech 10? 3:52 Forma Predator? Our website: https://sites.google.com/view/crosstrainingenduro #crosstrainingenduro #enduro #hardenduro #extremeenduro