LONDON — Lachlan Morton has left EF Education-EasyPost after eight years in the pink kit to go it alone, closing his tenure with victory at the 61km Three Peaks Cyclo-cross in the United Kingdom at the end of September and a record-breaking ride across the American West. The 34-year-old Australian, who confirmed his departure to Cycling Weekly earlier this month, eclipsed the 160-year-old 1,998-mile (3,217-kilometre) Pony Express horseback record of six days 21 hours and 15 minutes by 19 hours and 45 minutes on his final adventure with the squad.
It was not a pre-mediated plan to deliver such a jam-packed final send-off, but Morton said the pairing summed up his time with the team. "It just worked out like that," Morton said. "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."
Morton’s alternative path traces to 2013, when as a young WorldTour professional with Garmin Sharp he set out with brother Angus on the Thereabouts series, later riding 2,500km to Uluru in the off-season and filming adventures in the Colorado Rocky Mountains and Colombia. "I was pretty stubborn, and I would just do the things I was going to do anyway," he said of that period, adding his coach "wasn't super happy about it." After spells with Jelly Belly and Dimension Data, he returned in 2019 to what had become EF Pro Cycling, a squad far more enthused about the unconventional. "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,'" he said, but the lure of an alternative calendar discussed with friends at Rapha proved too strong despite the risk.
Initially Morton combined the alternative calendar with WorldTour racing as needed, but as Covid passed and the level rose, that balance no longer made sense. "As a rider, I've never had biggest engine, so I need to show up really prepared generally, especially in that kind of racing," he said. "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." The 2021 Alt Tour of the Tour de France, alongside his Unbound 200 victory and record ride around Australia, validated the approach, and Morton said trust had grown to the point where he could tell the team, "'Hey, I want to do this', and there wasn't a huge amount of questioning about it. There was a trust."
"Above everything, I think it's just time is probably the biggest reason," Morton said of his decision to leave. "I also don't want to be just going through the motions, knowing I can just do this thing 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 focus that is needed on performance I think is pretty drastic. I just don't see myself fitting in with that really anymore." He now wants complete flexibility for even longer rides of up to six weeks, with Leadville among his goals, and more time to explore cycling cultures. "I've had a lot of freedom," he said. "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."