A trip to Canada proved to be the final leg in the running career of Andrew Whyte.
The 24-year-old returned to New Zealand this year, having spent a year trying to get his body in competition shape.
A pelvic injury had been troubling the two-time senior men’s 400m national champion for the past two years.
In the end — as is the case for so many — it was that which resulted in him calling time on a promising career.
"I went over there for medical treatment and a new coach, so I had a new coach over there, Kurt Downes," Whyte said.
"After about a year there, with things not really improving with my injuries, I decided to call it quits on my running career.
"There’s only so long you can try if you’re not really making any improvement.
"Sometimes you’ve got to make that call.
"So at the moment I don’t do any training at all, but I might look to do a bit of coaching in the future."
Now living in Auckland, Whyte, who went to the world junior track and field championships in Barcelona in 2012, is working as part of the domestic markets team at the Reserve Bank.
There he is occupied with the "management of the money supply to keep short-term interest rates at or near the official cash rate".
It is something he is enjoying, having also had a stint at Westpac earlier this year.
He no longer trains and has not run in a year. That was something he was still getting used to, although he hopes to staying involved in the sport.
"Oh yeah, I definitely miss it," he said.
"When you’ve done something like that for five years and especially the last two years, I did it full-time. All I did was training.
"So it’s quite a big change going from full-time athlete to not turning up to the track every day.
"It was a big part of my life, so not doing it any more is quite a change and I’m still adjusting to that lifestyle without the track."
That full-time training had begun in an attempt to get to last year’s Rio Olympics.
He had left a job in banking in Auckland in 2015 to return to Dunedin and train with coach Brent Ward.
But the dream of Rio slipped away because of injury.
Even before that, injuries had hampered him.It was as a 20-year-old he ran his fastest 400m, in Sydney in 2013.
His time of 46.25sec was comfortably the best performance by a Kiwi that year.
Nearly five years on, it has only been bettered twice — narrowly by Cameron French and Liam Malone. He remains the seventh-fastest 400m runner in New Zealand history.
Not long before his final race, he ran two 800m races, an idea he said he tried to see if it would put less stress on his injury.
It remained as just an idea, although his time of 1min 53.02 is nothing to sneeze at for his second attempt.
In his penultimate 400m race, he ran 46.70sec in front of a home crowd to reclaim the New Zealand 400m title he had previously won in 2013.
A week later on March 12, 2016, he claimed first at the Perth Track Classic, his last recorded performance.
There had been plenty of impressive displays on the track, but it was the people Whyte will miss the most.
Spending time with Ward and Downes and learning off them had been his highlight.
It was something perhaps someone one day would be saying about him.
He hoped to take up coaching, something he had done in Canada at the Porter City Athletics Club.
"I’d still love to run track if I could, but it’s more that I can’t, not that I don’t want to."
Auckland is a long way from the South Otago farm he grew up on, although he is not likely to venture back south permanently.
The nature of the type of banking he was doing means jobs are limited to the world’s biggest cities.
Working overseas could be an option in the future, but Whyte is enjoying where he is and what he is doing.
