*Are you getting our breaking news alerts and daily newsletter? If you're a subscriber or thinking about becoming one, sign-up for your free news headlines.
Ryley Batt's body is falling apart, but he needs it to hang in there for two more years.
The Port Macquarie veteran's farewell tour to wheelchair rugby has only just started, but we're in for a hell of a ride if his 2022 world championship success is any indication of what's to come.
Batt claimed five player of the match awards from eight fixtures as the Australian Steelers reclaimed world number one status in Denmark a fortnight ago.
Remarkably, he achieved two of those despite suffering a torn rotator cuff in his left shoulder in the fourth game of the tournament. It may eventually require surgery.
"I guess I'm an old man in the sport now," he said.
"I'm 33 years old, but I've been playing for 20 years so the body is starting to fall apart, but I've had a cracking career and it's all worth it."
In the end, he required the help of several metres of strapping tape and plenty of painkillers at Vejle.
And with the Paralympic Games at Paris in 2024 looming on the horizon, Batt knows he is nearing the end of a career which will span more than two decades.
"It's really hard to think that that was my last world champs and I don't want to believe that, but there is a time when you need to say 'enough is enough'," he said.
"I didn't think about it being my last [world championship] all throughout the tournament and when the final whistle went and we beat America in the final, I looked up and went 'that's my last ever world champs game and we've just won it'."
To have led from the front despite being hampered by a serious injury showed the type of athlete Batt is. Not only did he not want to let his teammates down, he went further and inspired them.
"You don't want to show your teammates how much pain you're in because that will let them down so you just have to grimace through the pain," he said.
"As soon as the whistle went and the adrenaline kicked in, I didn't really feel the shoulder until after the game and that's the price you pay."
Batt labelled his most valuable player of the tournament and top tryscorer awards as part of a '"fairytale" tournament. A fortnight later he still hasn't fully reflected on the success.
But he has dared to dream about replicating the winning feeling from Denmark in Paris.
"Us athletes are wired very weird. You've just won a world championship just over a week ago and you're already looking ahead," he said.
"It's probably not healthy and you probably need to live in the moment a bit longer, but I definitely can see a gold medal in Paris. That's my number one goal at the moment - to end on that high."
He fired a warning shot to the rest of the world.
"After watching how we went as a team at the world champs... look out Paris," he said.
IN OTHER NEWS:
