For many, it'd be soul-destroying to lose a leg in a forestry accident but Mitch Joynt has never been one to dwell and instead used his accident, and his own remarkable work ethic, to fuel a new dream.
You see, the 28-year-old from Auckland is a glass-half-full kind of guy.
"Or at least I'll make it half full," he told 1News with a cheeky grin.
Joynt needed that positivity and more 10 years ago when he was working as an arborist before one of his worst nightmares unfolded.
"It was end of the day, we were doing a clean-up, we were on a gravel road," he recalled.
"And I just kicked a bit of wood into the woodchipper — which as arborists we do all the time — and as I kicked, I slid on the gravel and the machine just grabbed me and sort of pulled me in from there.
"As soon as it came out of the machine, I'm not very good with blood so I just had one quick look and I had to look away but I could see most of my foot was mostly gone."
From there, it was two excruciating hours before a helicopter arrived to aid him.
"You kind of expect adrenaline to kick in in those extreme moments but it sort of didn't.
"It'd sort of numb it for a while then every sort of five or 10 minutes it'd all come back and your body would have to react all over again so it was just going in and out of excruciating pain was the worst of it.
"When you go through something traumatic like this, there's going to be bad days, hard days. But that doesn't mean you sort of stop or give up — you have to keep going."
It didn't take him long to adapt that mindset either.
"It sounds weird but as soon as it happened, I was almost immediately like, 'well, it's not coming back so we'll move on from here!'"
For him, moving on meant sport and six years ago, that formed into a decision to run a marathon.
He finished the race and with it came a chance meeting as Joynt was introduced to Hamish Meacheam.
"At the end of the race, his stump was all bloodied up and cut up," Meacheam said.
"Just a totally unwise thing to do for a single leg amputee!"
Meacheam has coached him ever since and was quick to make sure his new athlete didn't make the same mistake twice.
"He said there was no career in long distance running for amputees and [asked] did I want to try sprinting," Joynt said.
"So I went from 42kms down to 100 metres over a weekend!"
Fast forward to 2023 and Joynt is now New Zealand's fastest-ever single-leg amputee over both the 100m and 200m events.
In fact, in the 200m he's the fourth-fastest in the world this year although he's modest in his achievements.
"I'm not very talented, like, I'm actually not very good at sports," he said.
"I'm just probably willing to work harder than anyone else in the room."
Meacheam agreed — on his work ethic, at least.
"His talent is in the five years we've worked together he's never missed a single session I've prescribed for him — that's incredibly rare.
"He's the most dedicated athlete that I know of."
That dedication extends far beyond the track and far beyond the normal hours of a working athlete.
Joynt now works as a truck driver which features a 4am start time — perfect for him as it allows him to train every afternoon.
"I'd be so much quicker if I didn't have to do 10 hours of work every day," he said.
"Most of rest of top 10 in the world are probably full-time athletes."
By contrast, Joynt is basically self-funded; ACC covers things like his blades, otherwise he relies on his salary, sponsors and crowdfunding.
Joynt hopes it'll all be worth it next week when he lines up at the world para athletics championships in Paris, striving to finally secure a Paralympic spot after missing out on the Tokyo Games two years.
"Just to be a Paralympian — they number Paralympians now so to get that number would make it all worth it."
As ever, Mitch Joynt is only interested in moving forward.
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