"It's the first time I've ridden a road bike since Paris, so it feels a little funny, but it's cool too. I love to get back into a racing environment," Lachlan Morton (EF Education-EasyPost) told Cyclingnews as he waited for the start of the Clásica Jaén on Monday, some seven months after completing his 18-day Alt Tour de France.
Jaén was Morton's first road race, too, since the Route d'Occitanie last June, but he's hardly been missing out on competitive off-road cycling since then. Over the winter, while other pros were resting up, Morton took part in two arduous MTB events in South Africa, the Absa Cape Epic and the Munga. Then on Sunday, he did another MTB race in Spain.
Morton's incursion into Spain's first sterrato race for pros was due to a last-minute call-up, he said, "because a couple of days ago one of the guys couldn't do it. So I drove down from Girona and I'll be racing today."
To call the Clasica Jaén a voyage in the dark is no exaggeration, then, but that has hardly put the 30-year-old Australian off cycling experiences in the past. And taking part in an event like Jaén is, he said, is one where he's "just excited to be here and I'll use whatever I've got. I'll see how far I can get."
Before the race started, he had no reference points to how his form could be, he admitted. "I got fourth in the MTB race on Sunday, but it's difficult to translate that to road-racing. I haven't done any intervals or anything, I've just been riding around like I normally do."
While Morton has been alternating between tarmac racing and off-road for years, it felt almost inevitable to ask him about the ongoing hot debate on social media and elsewhere about whether segments of gravel and sterrato have a place in road-racing or not.
However, Morton initially said he felt he was not as "entitled to give an opinion, as I don't do much road racing."
With that proviso firmly in place, on a personal level, he then added, "I'm all for it [gravel]. I think it makes the racing more interesting." But he recognised, too, that point of view was partly born of a perspective that wasn't at all necessarily the one that the broader road peloton might have.
As he put it, "But that being said, I'm not doing it week in week out and I'm also not like building up a whole year to one goal and then have a flat tyre."
"So I think events like today (Clásica Jaén) are exciting. But maybe if you're putting it [gravel] in an event that hasn't traditionally had that, I can see why people take issue with it."
Broadening his point, he added, "I'm normally watching those big events on TV, so it's fun to watch. But I can understand how it could be a nightmare racing."
As for his program for 2022, Morton said he'll be continuing with his unusual mix of MTB and road-racing. For example, "Next weekend, I'm doing an FKT event in Menorca [consisting of] a lap of the highlands on the mountain bike and the next three or four weekends are mountain bike races as well."
"Then I'll get into some road-racing at Coppi e Bartali and the Tour of the Alps, but mixing that up with the Life Time Series in the USA. I have some competitive ambitions there, too."
Rather than having a particular target, it seems that during the season, Morton is taking a broader perspective on events. As he put it, "basically I'm not super-fixated on one goal. I just want to enjoy the racing for what it is, and generally, the better you're riding, the more you enjoy the racing."
As for the Clásica Jaén, Morton abandoned in the second half of the race, as did more than half the field.
"It was a very tough race, he's not been focussed on road racing for many months and he was lacking a bit at the end," sports director Juanma Garate told Cyclingnews.
“It went good all things considered, I felt a lot better than I thought I would, ” Morton later told Cyclingnews.
“The bike felt pretty strange for the first few hours but I then I got used to that. It was a tough race, obviously, but a cool one, the gravel sections were very road-bike friendly and it was pretty safe.”
“ I was actually very pleased with the way it went, and it’s got me excited to to get back on the road bike and have a few races.”
