Nairo Quintana is closing in on the yellow jersey in the 2015 Tour de France, finishing only 2 minutes 38 seconds behind leader Chris Froome.
What happened?
On July 4, the grueling three-week Tour de France kicked off, with Quintana as a strong contender.
He began biking to get to high school, a 10-mile uphill slog that didn't deter him.
Sometimes he'd even attach a cable to his sister's bike and haul her up the mountain with him.
Why it matters for Nairo Quintana
Quintana's school bicycle commutes led him to competitive cycling, where he started winning local races on a second-hand clunker.
He could earn up to $50 per race, and with two races per week, that's $100 to buy new parts for his bike.
Jenaro Leguizamo, a Colombian sports trainer, tested Quintana's VO2 max, which shows how efficiently athletes use oxygen, and found it better than any of today's top cyclists.
What comes next?
In 2013, Quintana pedaled to glory in his first Tour de France, coming in second at just 23 years old.
This was the highest-ever finish for a Latin American, with an ecstatic Colombian race announcer shouting: "The whole world bows down before you!"
Last year, Quintana became the first Latin American to win the Giro D'Italia, cycling's second most important road race.
He grew up in a country with a strong network of cycling clubs and teams, and Colombia is home to Latin America's oldest multistage bike race.
Colombia is the only Latin American nation that consistently produces world-class bike racers, with one of the most famous being Luis Herrera.
In 1985, Herrera crashed on a descent, but hung on to win the mountain stage of the Tour de France, inspiring a generation of Colombian cyclists.
That's a role Quintana now fills, with junior cyclist Danilo Ardila saying: "He's an example, everyone who rides a bike wants to be like him.