Martin Gibbs, the UCI Chief of Staff, said, ‘We'd really like to get back to the kind of levels of interest in this area that we saw with riders like Chris Boardman and Graeme Obree in the 1990s. Not necessarily quite that level of anarchy, but certainly we'd like to see that sort of excitement.

‘I think in the past the UCI has been guilty of regulating things it shouldn't have, and not regulating the things it should. We want Dimitris to look at everything, all the regulations, across the board. With his current knowledge, he'll be able to take an intelligent approach to regulating what we need to, and leaving the rest alone.'

Katsanis's remit will include looking at the Lugano Charter, the 1997 document that brought to an end the innovations of the 1980s and 1990s by spelling out the approach that the rider must always be more important than the bike.

‘A lot has happened in development since then,' says Gibbs. ‘Its philosophical basis is fine, but in the past actually translating it into rules has been a challenge. So we want to see if it needs re-written or refreshed.'