Cyclist Lachlan Morton Beats Pony Express Record by Nearly 20 Hours

Lachlan Morton took on the Pony Express and beat the horses.

After 3,217km across the western half of America, Morton rolled into Sacramento at 11:19 p.m., completing his ride in six days, 21 hours and 15 minutes.

That put him 19 hours and 45 minutes ahead of the horseback relay that carried Abraham Lincoln’s inaugural address from Missouri to California in 1861.

“I had an amazing time,” Morton said. “I wasn’t desperate for it to end, which was odd, and I was really just having a great time. It was something I’d been dreaming about for years, so it’s great to be here.”

Those riders used roughly 197 horses by swapping out at intervals. Morton did it himself, with a quiver of bikes and a support crew.

Morton’s latest long-distance feat saw him face off against Wyoming headwinds, Nevada mud flats, and 2 a.m. starts that stretched well into the night.

‘Scale blows me away’

Morton started off October 5 from St. Joseph, Missouri, and drew inspiration by the original Pony Express riders who tore across the largely uncharted west when they didn’t have the kind of support he did.

“The scale of it still blows me away,” he said. “Thinking about it in a historical context, it’s still hard to wrap your head around what that meant 160 years ago. It’s hard to do even now.

“When I was out there with people, a GPS, and lights, there were times at night when I was imagining trying to ride as fast as you could through that desert without being able to see where you were going. It’s still unfathomable.”

The ex-pro has made a career out of turning these kinds of long-distance challenges into reality.

In 2024, he tripped around the edges of Australia in 30 days, nine hours and 59 minutes, covering 14,210km to break a record that had stood for 13 years.

In 2021, his “Alt Tour” traced that year’s Tour de France route, and with transfers included, he beat the peloton to Paris by five days.

‘Time of my life’

Morton said the hardest day of the latest adventure was the last, and he swapped out for a Cannondale Scalpel for technical sections over the Sierra Nevada.

To make matters worse, a storm was blowing in off the Pacific. After getting a bit off-track, he found a gravel trail around Lake Tahoe that got him back on the road toward Sacramento.

“I was having just the time of my life,” he said. “There was a lot that was intimidating, but I felt like I was able to enjoy it a lot more than I expected, even though it was really hard. I didn’t think I’d be able to enjoy the route as much as I did, given how challenging it was. It’s very satisfying.”

Friends, family, and dot-watchers were waiting for him into Sacramento.

No word on what message he might have carried across the Pony Express Trail.