After Rohan Dennis stood on the Olympic podium once again, a rider who's achieved so much in his cycling career could only reflect with pride on his latest garlanded stop on a "serious journey" full of ups and downs.
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Dennis has perhaps been under-appreciated for his considerable achievements as one of Australia's finest cyclists but, in a way, his bronze in Wednesday's time trial in Tokyo brought his splendid career full circle, nine years since his last trip to the Olympic podium.
The 31-year-old from Adelaide won a silver as part of Australia's pursuit team on the track at the 2012 Games - and now he finally has a bronze from the road to put alongside.
Yet in the intervening years, Dennis has enjoyed a career studded by seemingly as many setbacks as successes, which has made his Tokyo medal all the sweeter.
"I got on the podium and it's a huge relief. It's been a serious journey to get here and I'm very proud of this medal," he told reporters.
"It's been a long five years, it's been a lot of ups and downs."
Over his career, Dennis has won two world time trial titles, broken a world one-hour record, annexed Commonwealth Games silver, won Tour de France yellow and won stages at each of the three grand tours.
Yet in recent years, he's also had serious low points including crashes, unfortunate medal near-misses and a Tour de France walk-out when he feared for his mental health and family life because of a damaging row with his Bahrain-Merida employers.
Now, though, after a rejuvenating spell with British outfit Team Ineos Grenadiers, he reckoned "everything was left out there in training" for him to produce another medal ride, even if he accepted Tom Dumoulin and champion Primoz Roglic, in a league of his own, were just too good.
"Obviously, it would've been great to get the gold, but I've done everything possible to be in this position," he shrugged.
"Obviously, the last 12 months have been quite difficult for everybody ... I can be proud of everything me and the team have achieved. We achieved that goal of at least being on the podium and I'm very happy with it."
Talking about the support he's received, Dennis added: "Not just from the team but family as well.
"It hasn't been easy. We can't get back to Australia too easily and it's been a long time since I've seen all my family, not just my wife and kids. It's great to have them on the same time zone as me and not have to watch the race at 1am or 2am."
But he felt he'd had great support back home in Australia. "It's been amazing," he said. "As much as I've been told not to look at social media, I do. But there's a lot of positive support - and thank you very much for that."
Australian Associated Press
