It was back in 2013 that Lachlan Morton, a young WorldTour professional with Garmin Sharp, set out on an adventure with his brother that spawned the Thereabouts series. That series set the Australian on a path that would eventually send him wildly deviating from the life as a professional cyclist he had once envisaged for himself and fully embracing the opportunity to run an alternate calendar at EF Pro Cycling.
Now, after eight years pushing the pedals in the pink kit of the team from the United States, the rider who has won Unbound 200, set a record time around Australia and captured the imagination with his Alt Tour of the Tour de France is branching out on his own. He confirmed his departure to Cycling Weekly earlier this month.
Morton's last race with the team was the brutally tough 61km Three Peaks Cyclo-cross in the United Kingdom – which he won – at the end of September and then he quickly set off on his final adventure with the squad. That was his effort to beat the 160-year-old 1,998-mile (3,217-kilometre) horseback record across the American West with his own set of steel steeds, and it was a feat he well and truly pulled off as he eclipsed the six-day 21 hours and 15 minute mark by 19 hours and 45 minutes.
It wasn't exactly a pre-mediated plan to deliver such a jam-packed final send-off to the EF colours,
"It just worked out like that," said Morton of piling the two very different efforts into a narrow window. "But I'm glad it did because it kind of felt like those two events sum up my time with the team pretty nicely.
"Combining a three-hour race with a week-long push, is like it's been in my time with the team. I've combined a lot of different disciplines and elements of racing, and I've always enjoyed that kind of challenge."
It also harked back to the time when Morton's adventures were his own, not under the guise of a team but in the case of the Thereabouts enterprises, a shared endeavour with his brother Angus.
It was important to Morton that he was there to capture this pivotal career moment too, in fact that was reason for the late-season position of the ride dubbed the 'Pony Express'. The timeline needed to be pushed a little later than originally envisaged because his filmmaker brother had welcomed a daughter into the world a couple of months ago, in what is proving to be an era of new beginnings for the siblings.
Early deviations – 'I'm sure that they were not stoked'
It's a little hard to imagine Morton as anything but the multidiscipline adventurer now, but there was a time when he couldn't even conceive of the path that he ended up following with EF Pro Cycling. After all, what was on show at the time he was starting out was a far narrower version of what you had to deliver to be able to ride your bike every day and call it a job.
"I was very much a road racer, and all my my goals were to succeed and win races and do as much as I could in the WorldTour, and then that sort of started to shift," Morton told Cyclingnews. "The more I was exposed to it, I guess I started to gradually follow the other passions in cycling and that was sort of happening outside of racing.
"But I never dreamed that I'd be able to race and follow those kind of passions, simultaneously or under one banner. Initially, it was definitely just kind of like a hobby, it was not very closely in line with with what I was doing for a job. I didn't think that the kind of set-up I've had at EF would ever be something that that I could actually do."
It certainly wasn't the norm for a WorldTour professional to go and spend his off season riding 2,500km to Uluru and filming the adventure along the way. But back then, a young Morton didn't really care to do the expected, and that was probably a good thing.
"I was pretty stubborn, and I would just do the things I was going to do anyway," said Morton when asked what the Garmin Sharp team thought when he embarked on the first of three Thereabouts adventures in 2013, with the next two in the Colorado Rocky Mountains and Colombia in the following three years. "So I don't think I really took notice of what people thought, you know. I think the film led reassessing a little bit what I was doing racing."
"I think around that period of time, in my second year with the team, I wasn't racing particularly well, I wasn't particularly happy, and I think in that time I was definitely pretty self-absorbed," said a frank Morton, who isn't afraid to lean into a bit of typical Aussie self deprecation.
"So I don't think I really cared too much what anyone thought, just like a typical like 20-year-old, 21-year-old who is trying to work things out. So yeah, I actually haven't really thought about what they thought. I'm sure that they were not stoked. Maybe, I remember my coach wasn't super happy about it."
Fast forward a few years to the EF Pro Cycling team that formed out of the shell of that original squad, and there was a wholly different attitude. In 2019 Morton, after his sojourn with Jelly Belly and Dimension Data – decided to head back to a set up which was now far more enthused about embracing the unconventional.
It was, in fact, a move he made even though at that point he was quite content in the WorldTour.
"With Dimension Data, I found that as a professional. I was like, 'OK, I found a nice groove here where I can be happy in my life, training and doing this thing and accept the level that'll get me," said Morton.
But the lure of alternative plan was too hard to pass up.
"I remember speaking with some friends of mine at Rapha at the time, and they sort of mentioned the possibility of this idea," said Morton. "Initially, there wasn't any team really attached to it, and still I committed to doing it, which at the time felt sort of risky because it didn't really exist at that time, and cycling, I think, was even more traditional at that time.
"So there was a slight worry about if I was able to do this thing. And then if it doesn't work, if it could be hard to be taken seriously after that. I also didn't know physically, when I started to do longer distance stuff, how that would affect my ability to race. I don't think anyone really knew at that time, but it was just too good of an opportunity, and there were too many things that I realised that I wanted to do other than just road racing, so I was like, 'OK, let's go for it'."
All in on the alternative calendar
Initially while at EF Pro Cycling, Morton combined his alternative calendar with stints of racing with the WorldTour team "as needed". However, as time progressed and Covid came and went, dropping that made more and more sense, particularly with the build in level that meant ducking into the pro road peloton less than ideally prepared was a huge challenge.
"As a rider, I've never had biggest engine, so I need to show up really prepared generally, especially in in that kind of racing," said Morton, who didn't have the room for the type of preparation required given the alternate schedule commitments.
"It was very hard to do the job I needed to do at the race, but also mentally to just like show up and get your head kicked in. So yeah, it just no longer made sense to me to be doing that, especially when it's like there's 18-year-olds who are knocking on the door that deserved that spot more than I did."
By that time, however, there was no doubt of the value of the alternative calendar with the 'Alt Tour' in 2021 a validating experience that capture the public's imagination and showed that "if you do things a little bit outside the box, there's still space for it, it still exists alongside the traditional path," explained Morton.
That and his latest adventure, inspired by an affinity for the courage and tradition of the Pony Express riders that delivered mail through the harsh terrain, were two of the memorable moments he picked out from his time with the team when we spoke to him in the days following the conclusion of his last adventure under its umbrella.
"That was really, really satisfying, from the the group of people I had there and then the route itself, and then the way I was able to ride it. That was a dream one for me, and also to be so removed from cycling in a way, the route itself, it's not one that's been ridden a lot," said Morton.
"It was also cool to get to a point where you could say to the team, 'Hey, I want to do this', and there wasn't a huge amount of questioning about it. There was a trust."
'It's just time'
That trust, and evident satisfaction that comes through from Morton when discussing his time with the team raises on big question. Why is he leaving?
"Above everything, I think it's just time is probably the biggest reason," said Morton. "I also don't want to be just going through the motions, knowing I can just do this thing that that works for everyone and just kind of be comfortable in doing that.
"The sport has changed very dramatically, I would say, in the last seven years that I've been with the team, and the the focus that is needed on performance I think is pretty drastic. I just don't see myself fitting in with that really anymore."
So where does he see himself fitting and what are his plans now?
"I think there's some even longer rides I would like to do, and being able to have complete flexibility in my calendar, there's space to be like, 'OK, yes I can go on a ride for like six weeks here' which I'm really excited for," he said.
"I'm also excited to have time to go to specific places and dive into the cycling culture that exists there and learn in a way. Without going into the specifics of routes and places, I think there's a lot of learning I know I'm going to have to do and I'm excited for that."
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Still, many things will also be similar, as while Morton says he is well aware of the benefits of the support he gets from the squad, he has put together a good group to fill some of those gaps. Plus the plan is to continue on the path of chasing a mix of races – with Leadville among his goals – and challenges that motivate him. There will, however, perhaps be more of an emphasis on the travel and exploration side of riding, much like where it all began with Thereabouts.
"I've had a lot of a lot of freedom," said Morton of his time with EF. "There hasn't been a lot of compromise on what I would like to do but I just think I'm interested to see where I end up with it, and the things I can do without that kind of attachment and also without the safety net.
"As a 34-year-old man, that has grown up in teams since I was 18 years old, I think it's time for me to get out there by myself."
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