In the early autumn of 2023, a worried Josh Kench sat down and sent an email and his CV to every cycling team in Europe and Asia. Literally, every single team. WorldTour, ProTeam and the dozens and dozens of third-tier Continental teams. He was 22, he had shown flickers of talent during three years with Continental team Bolton Equities Black Spoke, and he was prepared to race for pretty much anyone just to continue his cycling career.
Only one team replied – and they were based in China.
Facing not much other choice, Kench accepted. In just a few short years, China has established itself, alongside Portugal, as probably the most competitive and lucrative Continental-racing scene in the world. Top riders can walk about with €4-5,000 a month, and prize money dwarfs that of small European UCI races. But it was China. No one in Europe, the heart of cycling, really followed what was going on in China back then.
It was a risk that paid off. Kench spent the following two seasons in China, topping the general classification in two races, and being in contention for many more titles and stages. At the weekend he finished the Giro d’Italia, his first Grand Tour, after Groupama-FDJ took a punt on the New Zealander. How things change in such a short space of time.
“You’re in such a bubble that riding the Giro feels kinda really very normal,” 24-year-old Kench laughs, when speaking to Rouleur. But it’s not that normal, not really, anyway. Kench was one of hundreds of hopeful Continental riders for five years, each and everyone looking for a path to the top. Almost all don’t make it. Kench, eventually, did. “It’s been a bit of a baptism of fire, the Giro. It’s been a rollercoaster of emotions and performances but I’m happy with how I’ve done," he smiles.
Kench competing at the New Zealand National Championships in 2022. Image: PhotosportNZ/SWpix.com
Growing up in New Zealand, there were three sports that took priority for a young Kench: rugby, cricket and football. Tennis and basketball were also sports he dabbled in. Cycling came at the age of 12 when he copied his older brother who had recently picked it up. Once Josh started racing, he realised he had found his passion. “I was very competitive when I was younger,” he says.
Kiwi pros Dion Smith and James Oram were, like Kench, also from the country’s North Island and acted as inspiration. “I could look up to them, see that these guys from where I was from were on the pro scene," Kench remembers. "Pretty early on I was thinking about the future and dreaming of racing in Europe.”
That dream was meant to be realised in 2020, but then Covid restrictions kept Kench firmly in New Zealand. Finally in 2021 he relocated to Europe, and though he went onto race 90 days on the continent in the subsequent three seasons, he didn’t progress as he’d hoped. “It was a challenging period because the race program never really suited me,” he says. “We were mostly racing in northern France and Belgium where it’s flat or cobbles. I’m a climber. I could see I was improving, and the once a year we’d do a hilly race, like the Tour of Norway that I finished 23rd in [in 2021] and was in the front group, confirmed to me that I could climb. But then we’d be back doing a Belgian kermesse.”
True to his word, Kench finished second at the mountainous Lillehammer GP in 2022, but still opportunities were hard to come by. Crashes and illnesses thwarted him too. “A lot went wrong in those three years,” he says, “and it was really the case of questioning if I wanted to be a pro cyclist.” Why did he decide he did? “Because I kept seeing I could do well in the races that suited me, and I knew if I didn’t continue then I’d always regret it when I was older. But the reality was if you looked at my results I didn’t look that great. It wasn’t the best situation.”
He finished ninth on GC at the eight-stage Tour of Qinghai Lake in 2023, the race that put him on the radar of Chinese teams. When Tianyounde Hotel Cycling Team responded to his mass email, they offered him a salary that permitted him to still live in Girona, but made it clear that the whole year was basically centred on Qinghai Lake. There was pressure to succeed but an operation to remove his tonsils set him back. He raced only 21 UCI race days in 2024. None of them were in Europe.
Li Ning Star, the best-performing team in China, came in for his services in 2025, however, and finally Kench’s fortunes turned. He won the Tour of Sharjah in the UAE and a small stage race in Uzbekistan, but the biggest prize was that he had rediscovered his love for cycling. “We had an incredible atmosphere at Li Ning and we had a lot of freedom in every race,” he says. “We went into races to attack and rip it up. We did what we could to win and as a team we won pretty much every UCI race we did. It’s the most fun I’ve ever had on a bike.”
Kench rode the Giro d'Italia just five months into his career as a WorldTour rider. Image: Equipe cycliste Groupama-FDJ
As he was thriving in China, his former sports director at Bolton Equities, fellow Kiwi William Green, was keeping tabs on him. Green was by now a DS in the WorldTour with Groupama-FDJ. “William always believed I could be a WorldTour rider and when I won races in the early season he told FDJ that they should at least have a look at me.” Come June, Kench visited the team’s headquarters and did some testing. “Everything was really, really good,” he says. “Some of the best numbers I’ve seen.” With Green’s help, Kench secured the unlikeliest of contracts and he was to be a WorldTour rider in 2026. “Without William I’d have had no chance,” he acknowledges. “You have to have someone on your side from time to time.”
Aware that they had plucked Kench from the Asian scene which while strong doesn’t compare to top-tier European racing, Groupama offered Kench a one-year contract. 12 months to prove his worth. “My approach is to give it everything I can to be the best I can," he says. "I’ve even got the security now where I can go back to China and I know I’ll have fun, but luckily it’s working out and the pursuit of going to the very top is at the centre of my brain again.”
Kench rode and completed three WorldTour spring stage races before he made his debut in the Giro. On stage 13, he found himself in the break and finished sixth come the end. His best result to date, and a sign that he’s here to stay. “I can see myself racing at this level,” he says. “There are two sides of being an elite cyclist: one is you become an extremely good domestique, and the other is you go for the win. At the moment I don’t really know where I sit on that, but I can see myself getting the best out of myself at the tail end of the biggest races. I'm going to push myself to the highest level I can get to in the WorldTour."
