Rapha has gone back to the drawing board with its range-topping Pro Team bib shorts, with this third generation boasting a new chamois pad that’s proprietary to Rapha, new fabrics and fewer panels. It says they’re its most comfortable high performance shorts ever.
Rapha says that it’s let its EF Education pros loose sitting on the pad, which it says has already been road tested over a total of 400,000km. The new seat pad increases the amount of high density foam padding, with a reticulated net-like structure that Rapha says helps to mould to your derriere and wicks sweat away quickly.
The seat pad is sewn into a new fabric structure which reduces the number of panels and seams. There’s a new fabric used for the body of the shorts, which is made in Italy and which Rapha says has a high strength to weight ratio, provides compression and helps to increase seat pad stability. It’s also claimed to assist with thermo-regulation.
The new shorts feature fewer seams and a new seat pad (Image credit: Dan King for Rapha)
The leg hems are laser cut, there are lay-flat bib straps and a mesh waist section, which Rapha says provide optimum fit, functionality and support.
We awarded the second generation Rapha Pro Team bib shorts 4.5 stars when we reviewed them in 2021 after 18 months of use, with Tech Editor Josh Croxton summing up his review by saying: “Truly comfortable in all conditions, indoors and out, and still going strong after 18 months of frequent use.”
Road tested by Lachlan Morton
Lachlan Morton wore the new shorts to smash a 40 year record in New Zealand in January (Image credit: Dan King for Rapha)
Rapha doesn’t claim that Lachlan Morton wore the shorts in his record-breaking 14,000-plus kilometre, 30 day ride around the periphery of Australia in September 2024. But it says that he did so on another epic, setting the fastest known time for the 648km between Auckland and Wellington in New Zealand in January this year with a ride of 18 hours and 28 minutes, beating a record that had stood for 40 years.
According to Morton: "From Auckland to Wellington, I didn’t notice them at all, and that's the highest praise I can give. That’s what I want from my bib shorts."
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Morton has told Cyclingnews that he plans to chill on big challenges for a while, which seems fair. He has a string of gravel races lined up though, leading up to the defence of his Unbound title at the end of May.
Pricing, sizing, colours and availability
Two leg lengths allow cyclists of different heights to get a good fit (Image credit: Dan King for Rapha)
The new Rapha Pro Team III bib shorts are available for men and women, priced at £240. Although expensive, that’s the same price as the previous version and undercuts the £300 Rapha Pro Team Powerweave shorts though, which we rated among the best bib shorts we’ve tested
Men’s sizes range from XS to XXL, while women’s Pro Team III shorts are sold in XXS to XL sizes. There’s a choice of two leg lengths and four colours for the men’s shorts: Black/Black, Black/White, Green/White, and Dark Navy/White. Women’s shorts come in Black/White, Green/White, and Dark Navy/White.
Paul has been on two wheels since he was in his teens and he's spent much of the time since writing about bikes and the associated tech. He's a road cyclist at heart but his adventurous curiosity means Paul has been riding gravel since well before it was cool, adapting his cyclo-cross bike to ride all-day off-road epics and putting road kit to the ultimate test along the way. Paul has contributed to Cyclingnews' tech coverage for a few years, helping to maintain the freshness of our buying guides and deals content, as well as writing a number of our voucher code pages.
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