"I really want to commit to the team until LA Olympics" - MTB world champion Alan Hatherly aims for top-10 results in debut road season in World Tour
Cycling
Alan Hatherly's transition from mountain bike to road is one of the most entertaining transfers of this winter. The world champion has sparse experience from racing on road in some smaller competition, but the step up to World Tour will be a step into unknown for the MTB World champion.
"According to the team’s analysis, I’m between a puncheur and a climber, so anything up to 15-minute climbs I can be in the fight. But it’s an open book at the minute," Hatherly told Velo from Team Jayco AlUla's winter training camp in Altea, Spain.
"I’m honest, I need to find my feet and get comfortable in the WorldTour team environment, and it could be a season or two, but hopefully it will just be a race or two to get up to speed," he said. "If I can get some top-10 finishes this season, I’d be really happy, and for sure I would target being more at the sharp end in 2026."
"We’re thinking and targeting top-10s on some of the stages," he said of his spring calendar. "The first race is Alula Tour where I’ll be supporting Eddie Dunbar, and if I’m supporting him and setting him up to the finish, I should be top-10 early on if I do a good job."
"At the minute, it’s more one-week tours, Suisse, Romandie, Paris-Nice. I’m not sure how I’d perform in grand tours and it’s not on my plan for this year," he said about his further plans for 2025. "Strade Bianche could be really cool, and obviously with a lot of gravel I will potentially be a bit more relaxed than others."
The MTB chapter is not closed yet
The winner of the 2024 XCO World Champion, though, still has unfinished business in MTB after his settling for bronze in Paris. "The long term goal is LA gold. Ultimately it’s a four-year plan for the Olympics," he said. "This period I am in now, I really want to commit to the team, to this project and do a good job up until 2027 and then go back to mountain bike as we head towards the LA Olympics. But for these next few years, the road is my full focus."
The 28-year-old South African is confident he can follow in the footsteps of previous pioneers such as Nino Schurter in 2014 (Schurter also raced for Orica GreenEDGE, the predecessor of Jayco AlUla), Ondrej Cink (2017) or Victor Koretzky (2022-23), who made mountain bikers a great name on their brief road adventures. "I hope I’m one of the guys to show that mountain bikers can do a good job on the road," he concludes.
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