The sidewalls aren't exactly a strength of the black sidewall Contis. That said, the issue is overblown in my experience - between my wife and I (who basically always run GP4KSs or Attack/Force) we've had one sidewall tear each in half a decade. Both were from hitting construction gravel in exactly the wrong way, and we've both been subjected to a bunch of construction gravel here in Austin. I'm not really convinced that many other road tires would have been able to survive that either.