Last week I told the tale of one old bugger setting the world on fire in a slightly obscure sport. Chris Allington, an overachiever if ever I saw one, picked up a fistful of rainbow jerseys at the world masters track cycling champs and, just to rub salt into the wounds of younger legs, set a new world record while he was at it. It seems only fair, then, to look the other way along the age spectrum and celebrate someone who’s only just getting started, though still in a sport that barely registers a blip on the New Zealand sporting radar.
A few years back, after returning from his OE, son #1 landed what can only be described as a unicorn of a flat. The flatmates were mostly engineering students, an unholy mix of mathematical rigour and questionable life choices, but rather than spending all their spare time on the turps, they were competitive athletes in an assortment of disciplines. (To be fair, drinking still got a bit of a look in, I’m sure). Among them was a young bloke who, by all accounts, devoted an alarming amount of energy to calculating how many watts of power could be squeezed from different food combinations.
This flatmate, blessed by the gods of sponsorship, had managed to attract the attention of several food companies. The result was that the freezer in the otherwise impoverished student flat was stacked high with frozen fish, pasta, and other vaguely nutritious odds and ends. It was a set-up that blurred the line between scientific pursuit and opportunistic scrounging.
I’ve often wondered how closely his carefully constructed nutritional spreadsheets aligned with the timeless student calculus of “what’s free?” There were tales of late-night dumpster-diving missions when dietary optimisation gave way to the more immediate appeal of not going hungry. Still, between the cheap carbs and the dubious frozen fillets, there was genuine dedication. Rice was weighed to the gram. Power files were pored over. Every ride dissected in forensic detail. It all pointed to a truth we often overlook: behind the supposed glamour of elite sport lies a swamp of spreadsheets, sore legs and the unrelenting search for one more watt per dollar.
Which brings me neatly to Cam Jones. A name not yet rolling off the average Kiwi tongue, but one that’s beginning to echo through the global cycling world. Cam started out as a mountain biker, winning New Zealand’s national series and showing all the hallmarks of a rider who could do something special. But instead of staying put, he packed his bags, took a punt, and headed to the U.S. gravel scene, a place where bike racing meets wild adventure and pain is a given, not a possibility.
It’s a huge leap. Gravel racing, for the uninitiated, is part endurance test, part survival exercise, and part study in self-inflicted suffering. Riders tackle hundreds of kilometres over rutted, rock-strewn roads that chew up bodies and bikes alike. For Cam, though, it seemed to fit like a glove.
His breakthrough came this year at Unbound Gravel 200, the blue-ribbon event of the sport. Early in the race, just 50 miles in, he and Swiss rider Simon Pellaud broke clear of the bunch. For the next 150 miles they traded turns, cooperation blending with competition in the way only cyclists understand. And then, in the closing stretch, Cam attacked, dropped his rival, and rode solo to the finish. His time, 8 hours 37 minutes, shattered the previous course record by more than half an hour.
That sort of performance doesn’t happen by accident. The data from his race, because of course there’s data, showed an average output of around 295 watts for more than eight hours, with a final burst of over 700 watts up the last climb. Try producing that after riding 300 kilometres of gravel and see how you get on. It’s the sort of effort that makes you wonder whether all those years of precision-measured fish and pasta might have actually paid off.
That win earned him a wildcard into the Life Time Grand Prix, a U.S. series that mixes mountain and gravel racing at the very top level. Until that moment, Cam had been just another promising rider from the bottom of the world; after Unbound, he was suddenly on every commentator’s lips. And just this weekend, despite being a wildcard entry at the start of the season, he won the overall Grand Prix. Cam’s name is now permanently etched into the conversation.
Cam Jones’s story is a reminder that sporting success often grows in unlikely places. He didn’t come out of nowhere; he built himself through the unglamorous grind of training, tinkering, and calculated risk-taking and some judicious diving into dumpsters with a bunch of good mates. He chose to roll the dice on a new scene, to back himself when no one was watching, and to turn that stubborn Kiwi independence into something extraordinary.
And so, I find myself thinking again of that Christchurch flat and its freezer of free fish. The quiet obsession with watts, the endless self-experimentation, the willingness to chase marginal gains with the intensity of a PhD student, those were the foundations. From that unassuming kitchen came the sort of discipline that wins races halfway across the world.
It’s tempting to draw a straight line from those student dinners to the dusty roads of Kansas and Arkansaw, from bags of $2 pasta to the champagne spray of an international podium. Perhaps that’s stretching it a bit. But there’s something in it, the idea that greatness is often built not in fancy labs or with deep pockets, but in humble flats, on tight budgets, by people who simply care too much to stop trying.
Chris Allington’s record rides prove that age doesn’t dull ambition. Cam Jones’s rise proves that youth, when mixed with grit and a hint of madness, can still surprise us. Two Kiwis, two ends of the chronological spectrum, both thriving in sports most of us barely understand. Maybe that’s the best kind of success, the sort that grows quietly, far from the limelight, powered by persistence, a sense of humour, and, if you’re lucky, a freezer full of fish.
