The 2024 UCI Cross-country (XCO) World Champion and UCI XCO World Cup overall series winner Alan Hatherly has joined the WorldTour road cycling team Jayco-AluLa for 2025. 

The 28-year-old South African has signed a two-year contract with the Australian outfit and will aim to compete across the road and off-road. As Giant is the official bike supplier of Jayco-AluLa, the UCI World Champion will ride for Giant Factory Racing when racing in the 2025 WHOOP UCI Mountain Bike World Series. 

It caps a phenomenal year for Hatherly, who also secured a bronze medal at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games alongside his victories in the UCI XCO World Championship, two UCI XCO World Cups (Les Gets, Haute-Savoie in France; Mont-Sainte- Anne, Canada), and a UCI XCC World Cup (also in Les Gets, Haute-Savoie). 

“I am incredibly excited for this new chapter in my cycling career and very grateful for the opportunity to ride for GreenEDGE Cycling for the next two seasons. I think now is the perfect moment for me to get out of the comfort zone and develop even further. Moving to a WorldTour road team is of course something totally new for me, it will be a steep learning curve, and I will be learning from the best. Combining road and MTB is new and refreshing and I am really looking forward to where this journey can go!” he said.

 While he has spent the majority of his time on two wheels off-road, road cycling isn’t completely new to Hatherly and he has shown he can translate his racing prowess to the tarmac – finishing second in the 2024 South African national time trial championships and winning the five-day Tour du Cap stage race. 

The move to a multi-discipline calendar makes Hatherly part of a growing group of riders who choose to juggle both the road and off-road disciplines, including double Olympic champion Tom Pidcock (Ineos Grenadiers), 2023 UCI XCO World Cup overall series winner Puck Pieterse (Alpecin-Deceuninck) and Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Deceuninck). 

Hatherly’s transfer also brings to an end a four-year relationship with Cannondale Factory Racing – the team he made his breakthrough with on the world stage and won the 2022 UCI XCC World Cup overall title.