Dhaka, June 20 -- You may not have noticed Michael Woods before. He is undemonstrative, despite his team's bright pink kit. He is slight, even by the standards of professional cycling, reports BBC.

Much of the rest is extraordinary - what happened to him on his way to the top; what he went through at the moment he reached it.

A man who continues to feel like an imposter in someone else's world is still meeting triumph and disaster all the way.

Stage 17 at the 2018 Vuelta a Espana was a brute: 157km through mountainous Basque country, the finish up a rough concrete track with an average gradient of 11% across its final four kilometres, with ramps towards the end of 24%.

That sort of road would be difficult to walk up. Racing up it - a ...