Katusha Beyond kit

Superlight jersey £115, Icon bibshorts £170, katusha-sports.com

After eight years of developing the Katusha Worldtour team, Russian businessman Igor Makarov saw an opportunity last year to launch Katusha Sports, an apparel company that has formed a mutually beneficial partnership with the pro team.

‘It has put us in a unique position – we are the only brand to have direct access to a professional cycling team,’ says Mathieu Danel, product manager at Katusha Sports. ‘Riders like Alexander Kristoff and Joaquim Rodriguez both have a brilliant eye for technical detail, but are vastly different in morphology and have different training requirements. What this has enabled us to do is bring all the demands and insights of professional riders to the passionate everyday cyclist.’

The Katusha Sports’ Beyond collection uses ‘37.5’ fabric in the bibshorts and jersey, so named because it apparently helps maintain the body’s core temperature at this figure, regardless of how hard the rider is working. Whether this is true in the heat of a Worldtour race we can’t say, but it certainly seems to work for a Sunday spin to the local cafe.