Ask a young professional rider to list his hobbies and it’s not too often that the response will be 'studying,' but then there has been precious little typical about Matej Mohoric's path to this point.
After achieving the unprecedented feat of becoming world road champion at junior and under-23 level in successive years, the Slovenian became the youngest rider in the WorldTour when he joined Cannondale last year at the age of just 19.
Yet between stepping up to the rigours of professional racing and taking a crash course in Italian, the lingua franca of his new team, Mohoric decided to sign on for an online course in sports management at the University of Southern Denmark.
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"I just decided to do it because I missed school, I missed sitting behind the books," Mohoric told Cyclingnews. "It was an online university course, through English. The first three semesters were actually on tourism and organisational behaviour and then afterwards it becomes sports management."
As 2015 drew on, however, the difficulty of combining the student life with that of a WorldTour rider began to make itself felt and, reluctantly, Mohoric opted out of his university programme. "I did the first semester but once the season started properly it became more difficult," he said. "I had a greater volume of training, more travel and often there's no internet connection in the hotel, so I said I'd stop because it was taking up too much time. But I'll see. Maybe I'll get back to it in future."
For the time being, Mohoric's lessons will come primarily from the school of hard knocks that is the WorldTour peloton and here, too, he has already proven a willing student. History is littered with successful amateurs who struggle to re-calibrate their ambitions on entering the professional ranks, but Mohoric is happy to serve an apprenticeship.
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