The 40-year-old announced his retirement in September after 19 seasons as a pro, during which time he won the Sachsen-Tour International stage race in 2005 while riding for Rabobank, and the 2011 Paris-Bourges one-day race for Team Sky.
However, after joining his current team in 2014 – then known as Orica-GreenEdge – the biggest win of his career came at one of the world's biggest races: in 2016 at Paris-Roubaix.
"Seventeen times I raced from Compiègne to Roubaix and every single time it was an amazing day, but in 2016 I lifted a (surprisingly heavy) cobble above my head. It was the single proudest moment in my sporting career, a culmination of all the trying, learning and never quitting," he said of winning the race.
The new role with Mitchelton-Scott "will allow him to experience all aspects of the business side of the sport; including mentoring, directing and technical advising, as well as sponsorship and marketing", the team's press release said.
"“There were times that I did think I could walk away from the sport, but in some ways I think who am I to give away this knowledge without helping someone?" Hayman said. "Not only will that help me go from athlete to the normal world, but I think I can help make a different to the careers of some young riders, too.
"I probably could have spent more time planning, but you are so focused on your career that, before you know it, you're nearing the end.
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"Not knowing what is going to suit me and having this opportunity from the team to be able to test the waters on a few different fronts, I am pretty thankful for," he continued. "That's not an opportunity everyone gets, and I'm really going to relish being able to try some mentoring, maybe some DS races [working on events as a directeur sportif] here and there, and working on the sponsorship side as well.
"The big advantage now is that it is all still fresh," Hayman pointed out. "In five or 10 years' time, I will be more removed from the sport. I will still have the knowledge and my experiences, but it's the next 12 months when it'll still be really fresh – it'll be just weeks or months ago that I was racing myself. While it's so fresh, I think we need to try to use it.
"If I could use that knowledge and help see someone else achieve something they didn't think they were capable of, that would be a success for me."
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