Lachlan Morton, one of the most popular riders of the EF Education-EasyPost squad, revealed that he is leaving the team after six seasons with the US outfit. The ultra-endurance specialist told Cycling Weekly that his victory in the 3-Peaks endurance cyclocross race in Yorkshire last weekend was his "last time pinning on a number with EF".
Morton began his career as part of the organisation when it was Garmin-Sharp after racing for the development squad, but turned his focus to pushing his body in long-distance challenges beginning in 2014. He returned to the WorldTour in 2017 and then returned to EF Education in 2019.
But the lonely road didn't stop calling, and in 2021 Morton completed the entire Tour de France route - including transfers - solo. It marked the start of a different relationship with the team, completing various long-distance challenges and gravel races instead of racing in the WorldTour.
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With his time in pink ending, the 34-year-old will continue to perform superhuman feats of endurance around the globe, telling Cycling Weekly that he has an eye on Pakistan, Papua New Guinea and Ecuador for his future adventures.
First, Morton will attempt to follow the Pony Express route - a 3,164-kilometre ride from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Sacramento, California, beginning on Monday, October 5, the EF Education-EasyPost team announced on Friday. The route was used in the 1860s by young riders on horseback who carried mail across Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, Nevada and into California.
"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. There's a lot that could go wrong there, and you're very much on your own. That's probably the hardest part.
"Then you cross the Sierra Nevada on the southern side of Lake Tahoe and drop through the foothills, which I know well because I live out there now, and finish in Sacramento."
The fastest time on horseback was set in 1861 at seven days, 17 hours, but the route fell out of use after the first telegraph lines were completed and eliminated the need for rapid hand-delivered messages.
"The way they could get mail across the country at that speed - before there was any railroad connecting it – was revolutionary," Morton said.
"The idea of people traversing such massive distances just captured my imagination, especially knowing a lot of that terrain. Think of these big open spaces - huge plains, mountain ranges - and you imagine a slow transition, but with the elevation and the vegetation it's always evolving, and when you're covering big distances you get a really diverse variety of riding. It's a great canvas for adventure. It's existed there for so long, and you feel like you're participating in what the country is all about."
Morton is familiar with at least some of the route, having set the fastest time on the Tour Divide from Alberta to New Mexico in 2023, although his time has since been eclipsed.
In his Pony Express attempt, Morton will deliver letters along the route just to fully embrace the origins of the route.
"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. It's quite a courageous thing. It's hard to imagine, and that's why I want to go out there and try to get a better understanding of what that would have been like, and the difficulties they faced doing it over 150 years ago."
Just as the riders of old swapped horses to continue at speed, Morton will switch between the Cannondale TopStone gravel bike, his 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.
You can follow Morton's Pony Express ride here.
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