The Giro Riddance sports Vibram’s stickiest sole to date and a hexagon design sole that bears more than a passing resemblance to a rival brand.

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According to Giro, the best flat pedal shoes inspire confidence regardless of the terrain or conditions. Well, my first ride on the new Giro Riddance didn’t exactly fill me with confidence.

Climbing up the fire road from the valley floor in Risca I could feel the pins in my pedals sliding around on the Vibram outer sole. It was dry, hot and dusty, so the rubber should have felt soft and tacky, it didn’t.

For a split second I even considered rolling back to the van to swap the Giros for a set of old Specialized 2FO shoes that I’d noticed kicking around under the back seat.

But in the true spirit of product testing I soldiered on, half expecting to have my feet blown clean off the pedals in the first bumpy corner. Thankfully that never happened because once you have enough load on the Giro shoe it starts to grip.

It’s not got Five Ten levels of grip or even on par with the Bontrager Flatlines, but it wasn’t as dicey as I’d initially thought. That was until I tried to go light on the bike to navigate a long section of offcamber roots and I was right back to square one.

The combination of the tread and rubber simply isn’t grippy enough to make this shoe a contender. It’s also too heavy, too stiff (even after months of abuse) and toe box is too tight.