Shane Archbold may be best-known to us in the Irish cycling community as Sam Bennett's lead-out man, but the Kiwi rider has an incredible story of his own to tell.
He's taken some big results in his career so far and overcame horrendous luck during several years to take an emotional National Road Championships win in New Zealand at the weekend.
It means he now comes back to Europe with the national champion's jersey on his back to join Irish and Danish champions Sam Bennett and Michael Mørkøv in the Deceuninck-QuickStep sprinting 'A team'.
Archbold won the nationals the hard way; hunting down George Bennett on his own after the Jumbo Visma man was leading solo and looked destined to take the win.
It was Archbold's second victory as a WorldTour rider as he won a stage of the Czech Cycling Tour last year in a sprint.
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Archbold comes from the track and took silver in the omnium at the Worlds in 2011. At the Commonwealth Games in 2014 he won gold in the scratch race and bronze in the team pursuit. He now also has five career wins in UCI-ranked road races.
However, the fact he is still in the game at all at 31-years-old, never mind at WorldTour level and now as national champion, is remarkable, especially after a crash in the 2016 Tour de France that would have ended the careers of most men.
Archbold rode for Irish team An Post-Chainreaction in 2013 and 2014 before following his former team mate on the Irish Continental team, Bennett, to Bora-Argon 18 for two seasons and staying with the team in 2017 when it became WorldTour outfit Bora-hansgrohe.
He barely raced in 2017 because of the impact of a crash in the 2016 Tour de France; more on that in a moment.
And though he did get back into the peloton at the end of 2017, he lost his place with Bora-hansgrohe and dropped down a level to ProContinental to ride for Irish team Aqua Blue Sport in 2018, only for it to collapse.
In 2019 he dropped down another level to ride for another Irish outfit; Continental team EvoPro Racing.
It was during the first half of last season that he got the call to join Bennett again at Bora-hansgrohe and he followed the Irishman to Deceuninck-QuickStep in the off-season.
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When Archbold got back into the peloton as lead-out man for Bennett at the Tour of Turkey in October, 2017, he had been missing from proper racing action for 15 months following a disastrous 2016 Tour for both the Kiwi and the Irishman he leads out.
After Sam Bennett crashed into Utah Beach on the opening stage of that Tour, Archbold helped him every day.
But then the Kiwi had a massive fall of his own later in the race. He mangled himself on stage 17; tearing his flesh and breaking his pelvis.
Not realising his pelvis was broken, he got back on his bike and incredibly he finished the stage. But he went no further in the race and while he didn't know it then, he would face many problems.
He got back to race action later in 2016 but was never competitive and his injury then soon came back to haunt him.
Close to the end of the year he woke up one morning unable to walk. An MRI scan revealed a disc extrusion in his back, or a prolapsed as it’s known. It was a hangover from his Tour crash.
He began treatment and he believed he was progressing well. But it then emerged the extrusion was sitting on a nerve which was causing leg pain.
Archbold endured several hospital stints in New Zealand, Girona and also received treatment in Germany. He finally had the extrusion removed during surgery.
It wasn’t until June of 2017 – 11 months after his Tour crash – that he was even able to ride for two days in a row.
It was mid September in 2017 before he raced again; riding three one-day races in Italy and one in Germany before helping Bennett to multiple stage wins in the Tour of Turkey.
And while he then dropped down to ProContinental, saw his team go bust and drop down again to Continental level, he's now back on top after demonstrating no shortage of character.
He'll be back in action with Sam Bennett at the UAE Tour in coming days; his first outing as New Zealand champion.
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