It has been a few seasons now of slogging away against the best in the dirt biking business, but now New Zealand's Rachael Archer is the best in the business, top of the tree in the United States.
The 20-year-old from Ngāroma, near Te Awamutu, has long been a front-runner,
even against the men, on the cross-country dirt bike racing scene in New Zealand and, for the past few years, she's been turning heads in the US as well.
This year she finally cracked it, clinching the Women's Cross-country (WXC) class title in the US when the 2022 series wrapped up in Crawfordsville, Indiana, at the weekend.
Based in South Carolina, Archer made her US debut in 2019, racing the WXC class in the Grand National Cross-country Championships (GNCC).
The GNCC competition is an internationally renowned series, with races scheduled all along the east coast of the US, from New York to Florida, and Archer decided she would tread the same pathway that a few Kiwis had blazed before her in recent years.
Most notable was Manawatū's Paul Whibley, who won the elite XC1 senior men's grade in the competition on a Kawasaki in 2009 and again, on a Yamaha, in 2012.
But now it was Archer's time to glow in the spotlight.
Archer won the first two races of 13 in the 2022 season, setting herself up for a glorious year, but her campaign was no cakewalk.
She was runner-up to American rival Tayla Jones at round three, then suffered a setback in finishing a lowly - by her high standards - 10th at round four.
She was mostly on the podium through the middle part of the season, and her key adversary Jones suffered a non-finish at round 10, so Archer was well in the hunt for the women's crown as the season drew to a close.
In fact, South Carolina's Jones and Kiwi heroine Archer were tied on points at the start of the 13th and final round in Indiana and it was a winner-takes-all situation for the national championship title.
As the WXC class took off, it was Archer who grabbed the best start and the $100 holeshot award.
However, it wouldn't take long for Jones to close in and make the pass for the lead.
Jones continued to hold the lead, while Archer was hot on her heels as the race wore on.
Then, as the white flag flew to make the final lap, it was Archer coming through the finish line first with Jones finishing 12 seconds behind her.
Archer would continue to extend the gap over Jones and, when the chequered flag, flew it was Archer holding the number one position to earn the WXC National Championship.
Jones came through for second, while South Carolina's Prestin Raines battled through the day to earn her first WXC podium with a third in the class.
"We finally did it!" exclaimed Archer afterwards.
