Lachlan Morton has torn around Australia, delivering an astoundingly quick time of 30 days, 9 hours and 59 minutes for the 14,210km lap of his home nation, according to EF Education EasyPost.
While it's too soon for the usual arbiters to have officially declared it a new cycling record, the effort that finished at the lighthouse in Port Macquarie at 1:54 pm on Saturday has shaved around a week off the previous best fastest-known supported times.
Dave Alley's time of 37 days, 20 hours and 45 minutes for his 14,251km, 2011 effort is listed by the Road Record Association of Australia as the time to beat – adhering to a 14,200km minimum set in the 1990s – and Reid Anderton’s 14,178km effort of 37 days, 1 hour and 18 minutes is the mark cited by Guinness World Records. Morton's speedy effort, however, should simplify matters.
It was clearly never going to be an easy feat, but from the outset the fastest time looked well within the EF Education-EasyPost rider's reach, even when he added gravel roads and more climbing into the mix through the final week after some unnerving close calls left him seeking quieter roads.
He took time to rest, a strategy that he had tested with his efforts on the Tour Divide Route, with his tracker recording around a third of his journey as stopped time. He often restarted in the early hours of the morning, riding through a considerable part of the night was a strategy that would in particular have helped him beat the intense heat in the north of the nation.
Morton had plenty of company in his last stints on the road, apart from the support crew that followed behind in a camper, with riders turning out in force on Friday as he worked his way through Sydney and ever closer to his final goal. After stopping for a rest at Newcastle, Morton set out into the dark before midnight on the "scenic route" for the final stretch working his way through the often wet conditions.
"Seems like I'm trying to find every hill between Sydney and Port but that's all right, still making progress," said Morton in an update on his Instagram story. "I've got a full day ahead, definitely no gift for this last day ... and my legs are smoked, so smoked."
However, the 2024 Unbound winner's arrival back at Port Macquarie in New South Wales, where he set off from on September 5, meant he could finally rest them with a beachside beer in hand and a record that's going to be hard to beat under his belt. He averaged more than 450km each day, despite the heat, headwinds and rain.
It's a dramatic time cut to a record that riders have been chasing in fits and starts since 1899, when according to the Road Record Association of Australia Arthur Richardson started the attempts rolling when he returned to Perth 245 days after he set off. The record then fell in fits and starts, first falling below 100 days in 1985.
A formal structure was put in place in 1996, with the Road Record Association of Australia outlining that the minimum distance was set as 14,200km. There are also mandatory checkpoints, outlined by Guinness World Records, as Perth, Bunbury, Albany, Eucla, Port Augusta, Adelaide, Geelong, Melbourne, Bairnsdale, Wollongong, Sydney, Newcastle, Brisbane, Gold Coast, Rockhampton, Townsville, Darwin and Geraldton.
Morton has also raised over $124,000 Australian for the Indigenous Literacy Foundation as part of his record chase.
You can look back on Morton's journey via the live tracking page, and donate via Morton's Indigenous Literacy Foundation fundraising page.
