Lachlan Morton Ride of the Alt Tour de France in 2021 | Cycling | Australian Professional Cyclist

This really captured the world's attention. Lachlan Morton is a professional cyclist. He rides for a tour team, EF Education-NIPPO. And he has ridden the Tour de France in the past, but he has started what may be something new to cycling. It captured everyone's attention. He rode the entire race, the entire ride, without any support. No one helping him, sleeping on the ground, no hotels, no one giving him water bottles out of a passing car. And the thing that made this amazing, in addition to that, is that he rode every bit of the transit distance that the riders are in a bus or a car, going from stage one to stage two. So at the end of the day, he rode 60% farther.

What's kind of amazing is, these cyclists on the tour use ultra-pampered custom mattresses, receive a massage after every ride, and eat custom meals. They ride hard and they're amazing talented athletes, but when they get off the bike, they are in total control of handlers and doing all of the things that will maximize their recovery overnight.

Lachlan Morton was in his own hands. Sleeping on the ground, looking for food, trying to find water during the day, and handling his flats. And what's truly amazing, (this is being filmed on Wednesday, the 15th of July) is the tour is on stage 17 and Morton was in Paris yesterday. He beat the tour by five days. Unbelievable.

If you see a picture of him, he's riding along in his Birkenstock sandals, he's improvised ways to prevent chaffing on his feet. It's just an incredible story. And it kind of hearkens back in this view to like when the tour first started. It was a guy on a bike trying to get from here to there. And they were required to do the tour, as I understand it, completely unsupported. There's a story of one of the early champions having a front fork break, and he stopped and he welded it himself. But he ultimately was disqualified from the race because the bellows on the forge were being operated by a boy that was just standing by. So that little bit of assistance costs this guy the race. So that's sort of the beginnings of the Tour de France. These were hard-drinking, hard-living guys, riding their bikes from point A to point B.

Could this be a model for the future of other sports? Why do they have to be these ultra-elite sports? Why couldn't you have teams doing something like Lachlan Morton's doing? Because there's this big move in cycling. A lot of cyclists are moving from pavement to gravel, just for this reason to transition the sport to a little bit out of the way of cars and what have you.

So if you don't know the story of Lachlan Morton, I would urge you to do so. He was doing this to raise money. I think it's for the World Bicycle Relief Fund, which gives bicycles to needy people around the world.

I'm Jim Dodson, the Florida Bike Guy. I have a special commitment to helping cyclists. If you need me after a bike crash, or you've been injured in a car crash, doesn't matter, call me, I'll do what I can to help you. And we answer questions from cyclists every day. If you have something I can help you with just get in touch.