Lachlan Morton says that his return to WorldTour cycling feels like it is the first time after spending two years away. After a strong 2016 campaign, Morton penned a contract with Dimension Data and is set to make his WorldTour debut at the Tour Down Under in two months’ time.
“That has been the goal for the last year, to get back to the top level. It was pretty much 12 months ago that I found that drive and decided what I wanted to do,” Morton told Cyclingnews from the Dimension Data training camp in Cape Town, South Africa. “To realise that and be here at a training camp and getting ready to do a WorldTour season, in a lot of ways it feels like the first time.”
Three years ago, with a good WorldTour contract under his belt, Morton fell out of love with cycling. As a 10-year-old, he knew that he wanted to be a professional bike rider, making his way quickly through the ranks towards his first professional contract at the age of 20. Now that he had made it, he was no longer sure if it was what he even wanted anymore.
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He came close to calling it quits but stuck it out for another year before finally stepped away from the WorldTour at the end of 2014. The off-season was spent riding through the Australian outback with his elder brother Angus, who had made his departure from racing the year before. The pair then made the call to give professional racing a chance, signing up for the US Continental team Jelly Belly.
After a year of soul-searching, Morton had rediscovered the passion and drive that had driven him towards the professional ranks in the first place. The 2016 season was met with much more vigour than previous years and saw him take victory at the Tour of the Gila and at the Tour of Utah. Morton is now out South Africa for the first pre-season training camp with his new team Dimension Data. Four years down the line from his first shot at WorldTour, he’s better prepared and keener than he ever was.
“I think I’m definitely more prepared physically, but I’m also hungrier and more motivated,” said Morton. “When I became WorldTour with Garmin, I knew more or less two years before with the development team that I was going to be in the WorldTour. Then I was a stagiaire, so it was a very slow transition. In those two years, a lot of my motivation had waned so by the time that I got there it wasn’t even really exciting I guess.
Converting promise into performance
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