LONDON — Lachlan Morton is set to leave EF Education-EasyPost after six seasons with the American outfit, closing his time in pink with victory at the 3-Peaks endurance cyclocross race in Yorkshire last weekend. The 34-year-old ultra-endurance specialist told Cycling Weekly that Yorkshire was his "last time pinning on a number with EF," with the team confirming Friday he will next attempt the 3,164-kilometre Pony Express route from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Sacramento, California, beginning Monday, October 5.
Morton began his career within the organisation when it was Garmin-Sharp after racing for its development squad, then turned his focus to pushing his body in long-distance challenges beginning in 2014. He returned to the WorldTour in 2017 and returned to EF Education in 2019, but the solo road kept calling. In 2021 he completed the entire Tour de France route — including transfers — solo, marking the start of a different relationship with the team built around long-distance challenges and gravel races instead of WorldTour racing. "You start on the plains, essentially, coming across Kansas, then across the basin through Wyoming, into Utah," Morton said in the team's press release. "The real crux is the Nevada section - the stretch from Salt Lake City across to Carson City - because it's incredibly remote and very exposed."
His farewell project retraces the 1860s Pony Express mail route across Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, Nevada and into California, a corridor once covered by young riders on horseback carrying mail before telegraph lines eliminated the need for hand delivery. The fastest time on horseback was set in 1861 at seven days, 17 hours. "The way they could get mail across the country at that speed - before there was any railroad connecting it – was revolutionary," Morton said. Morton is familiar with part of the terrain after setting the fastest time on the Tour Divide from Alberta to New Mexico in 2023, although his time has since been eclipsed. For the Pony Express attempt he will deliver letters along the route and will switch between three Cannondale bikes — the TopStone gravel bike, the SuperSix lightweight road bike and the Scalpel full-suspension mountain bike. "The route I've put together tries to get as close to the original as I could. I'm excited because it'll use all the different disciplines I've raced," Morton said.
"The appeal for me is the history of it," Morton said. "It's wild to get into that mindset – you're a kid trying to make some money, and there's this opportunity to ride a horse with a mochila full of mail through the night for 75 miles (120 kilometres) flat out, across remote, gnarly terrain that no one else has been crossing." With his time in pink ending, Morton told Cycling Weekly he will continue to pursue superhuman endurance feats around the globe, with an eye on future adventures in Pakistan, Papua New Guinea and Ecuador after the Pony Express ride drops through the Sierra Nevada on the southern side of Lake Tahoe and into Sacramento.