The World Tour racing team officially announced the signing of Alan Hatherly on Thursday. The 28-year-old has signed a two-year contract with the Australian team, which runs until the end of 2026.
"I think now is the perfect time for me to get out of my comfort zone and develop further. Moving to a World Tour road team is obviously something completely new for me, it will be a steep learning curve and I will be learning from the best," says Hatherly on his new employer's website.
Alan Hatherly 2025 on road bike and mountain bike
The man from Durban wants to combine road and mountain bike competitions in 2025. "Of course, Hatherly is the current MTB world champion and will continue to focus on this area," explains Jayco team boss Brent Copeland.
The South African most recently secured the cross-country XCO title at the World Championships in Andorra in September and previously took bronze in the Olympic mountain bike race behind Britain's Thomas Pidcock and France's Victor Koretzky.
Change of material for Alan Hatherly
His signing with Jayco-AlUla, where three Germans will be riding next year with Max Walscheid, Jasha Sütterlin and Felix Engelhardt, also means a change of equipment for Hatherly. As the Australian team rides on Giant racing bikes, the new signing will also ride MTBs of this brand with the Giant Factory Racing Team in future - he was previously with the Cannondale Factory Racing Team.
Hatherly was already increasingly active on the road in 2023 and 2024. His best results include two second places in the South African time trial championships and overall victory in the Tour du Cap, a five-day tour in his home country.
In the footsteps of Pidcock, van der Poel, Ferrand-Prevot and co.
The 28-year-old is not the first cycling star to try his hand across disciplines. In the World Tour peloton, he meets Olympic champion Pidcock (Ineos Grenadiers), among others, around which there has been a lot of fuss recently and Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Deceuninck), who recently hinted at returning to the MTB circuit in 2025.
In the women's category, Puck Pieterse has successfully shown how the balancing act between MTB and road can be achieved this year with the World Championship title in cross-country and a stage win at the Tour de France Femmes. In addition, Pauline Ferrand-Prevot, the Paris MTB Olympic champion, is switching back to the road with Team Visma | Lease a Bike. The Frenchwoman has set herself an ambitious goal: victory in the women's Tour de France.
