Faster Goes The Future

EF Pro Cycling gave us the challenge of making the most versatile suit in the bunch. This is the inside story of how we set a new standard with the Pro Team Roadsuit, driven by intensive collaboration between EF’s athletes and our product development team.

Rider insight and experience is invaluable to our innovation process. Owain Doull, Mikkel Honoré and Alison Jackson logged thousands of kilometres in Roadsuit prototypes; the Canadian even raced to victory at the national road race championships in the suit. 

“Hours spent in the saddle give us vital indications of both the athlete's needs and the product’s durability. They spend so much time riding in so many different conditions,” Rapha Product Engineering Manager Lydia Krause says. “They wear a huge variety of apparel during their career. They know exactly where the bar is.”

Meticulous research goes into identifying performance improvements in our Pro Team products. At our London HQ, designers reference and develop groundbreaking fabrics from a library of approximately 1,500 materials, contributed to over more than 20 years of craftsmanship. 

We develop many of our own advanced proprietary materials, working with mills to engineer fabrics from the ground up, specifying every parameter. 

“When we work on products for elite athletes like this one, cost doesn’t come into it,” Krause adds. “We use the best possible fabric: it’s the use case over everything else.”

Our in-house Atelier enables us to innovate, iterate and improve at speed. Combined with the expertise of our wider team of materials experts, product engineers and garment technologists, the Atelier allows for rapidfire prototype creation for fit models, dedicated wear testers and athletes during the development process.

For example, after receiving Owain Doull’s feedback, the Atelier could address key areas, make new samples and have them ready for wear testers to try on local roads by the following day. 

Our experts also harness data for every use case to customise fabric capabilities precisely to race conditions. “Using data from the team we can map the riders' average speeds during certain race scenarios, how long they will sustain those speeds and what yaw angles they will experience. This level of granular detail guides us in our fabric selection,” Rapha Head of Innovation and Product Developments Lucy Mullen says.  

Athlete feedback was central to the Pro Team Roadsuit’s development. The waistline was raised based on rider preferences for an optimal engaged fit - they wanted consistent engagement from a suit that felt the same at the finish line as four hours earlier. 

Features devised by champions were also incorporated into the Roadsuit. Alison Jackson helped to conceive the mesh dividers in the two-pocket design for waste management, allowing a clean separation from energy food essentials.

“That was a great example of real-world testing,” Thomas Long says. “The Pro Team collection wouldn't be where it is today without EF Pro Cycling. There's so much substance behind the style.” 

Rapha’s Athletes and Teams Manager is the bridge between the WorldTour and in-house innovation, digging into athletes’ experiences, clothing preferences and performance needs.

“We wanted to make a Roadsuit that riders never want to take off, that they don’t think about. Because that means it’s working perfectly. There had to be zero questions as to why you want to wear this on race day,” Long reflects.

The Pro Team Roadsuit is designed to complement EF Pro Cycling’s characteristic attacking way of racing, made for winners like Richard Carapaz, Ben Healy and Kristen Faulkner. “It’s the fine-tuning that matters,” Andreas Klier says.

The team’s Technical Operations and Commercial Manager puts together all the second-shaving puzzle pieces, from apparel to helmets and shoes, to make riders as fast as possible. 

“If you're out in a breakaway and you're the person who saves 12 watts the whole four hours, that makes the difference,” he says.

Klier and the riders wanted a suit with supreme functionality and versatility. “It has to be fast, aerodynamic and breathable. Riders need their racing fit,” Klier says. “So it can suit a person riding Il Lombardia or the Tour de France without a deficit in performance.”

We have a long lineage of making game-changing products, aided by a history of partnership with leading cycling teams.

Necessity can be the mother of innovation: in the early days of collaborating with Team Sky, our design team travelled to races with a sewing machine for desired start line customisation. “We were so new to it. We didn't know what the rules or norms were,” Mullen says.

So we rewrote the rulebook. Simply good enough has never been good enough. Rapha’s Pro Team TT Aero Suit, which influenced the Roadsuit, went through 26 different prototypes.

With the same attention-to-detail, the Pro Team Roadsuit was enhanced by fabric testing in small-scale wind tunnels. As materials behave differently at varying speeds, the suit was specifically optimised for several hours of racing at 45km/h. 

The suit is made up of three unique, lightweight fabrics, maximised for aerodynamics and comfort. Due to a rider’s aggressive riding position, the suit’s upper half includes more textured fabrics in order to manipulate airflow and reduce drag.

Its front flap design ensures easier in-race nature breaks and superior upper mobility. It is also constructed from recycled materials, meaning pro level performance for customers whilst reducing environmental impact.

This is the first in a range of boundary-pushing Pro Team suits coming in 2025. “There has been more rigour, science and engineering behind our design and development decisions, resulting in this next generation of racing suits, which set the standard for our future Pro Team innovations.” Rapha Head of Design, Harry Osborn says.