Ben Koons, New Zealand's fastest cross-country skier, is cut from Kiwi cloth, but little is known about him here in his country of birth.
Koons (23) and brother Nils (19) eschewed snow earlier this year and instead chose to cycle 3894km through mountainous Tibet in 54 days.
They took just three showers, shared 284 packets of instant noodles and lost about 7kg each.
Soon after completing the trip, Koons - a qualified environmental engineer - was in New Zealand for the Winter Games and while relishing his return to snow, his China adventures were still fresh in his mind.
"It was an incredible thing, a wild country, a tough country.
"We were by ourselves, camping the whole way.
"The toughest part was in West Tibet.
"It was a long, long way between villages.
"Getting enough food was a problem," he said.
There were many issues with bureaucracy and permits and the Chinese authorities shut down their blog.
Koons was also bitten by a dog, resulting in another trip highlight: a visit to a rabies clinic in Lhasa.
Koons wants to represent New Zealand in his struggling minority sport at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver in February.
Koons first experienced skiing on snow-covered farmland on the outskirts of Dunedin.
He was a 14-year-old Otago Boys High School pupil when his family decided to move to the United States.
Koons had dabbled in cross-country skiing on school trips to the Snow Farm, but his US-based lifestyle gave him a chance many other New Zealand school pupils haven't had.
His skiing abilities won him a scholarship to further his tertiary education at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, where he trained with a top coach, Ruff Paterson, and his team-mates included Olympians and national champions.
Koons graduated in March and this winter worked as a Snow Farm ski instructor, teaching high school pupils to cross-country ski.
He's held a similar job in past seasons but did not work here last winter because he was in Rwanda, on a volunteer United Nations programme, building small hydro systems for villagers.
He returns to the US this month to train and race full-time in either North America or Europe, with qualifying for the Olympics his only goal.
