KEY POINTS:
Lying in a hospital in Rome, with doctors who didn't speak English yanking at her ballooning knee, Kayla Sharland thought her world had collapsed around her. Then she looked across to the next bed. There lay a survivor of triple bomb blasts in the Egyptian resort of Dahab, which earlier that April day of 2006 had killed 19.
The badly burned man had been thrown from a bridge in the explosion. "It all seemed so unreal, but it made me realise my injury wasn't the end of the world," Sharland says. The young New Zealand hockey star still had a right to feel wretched. Five minutes into the opening game of the World Cup qualifying tournament, she'd dodged an Azerbaijan defender who had stayed down after a tackle.
On the slippery surface, Sharland went one way, her left knee the other. "I felt something in my knee go to one side and back again. I immediately thought it was my ACL (anterior cruciate ligament), but I was hoping it wasn't. I knew exactly how long it took to get over an injury like that," she says.
Dreaded ACL tears keep reconstructive surgeons in business. Tiger Woods tore his while jogging, All Black Michael Jones' horrific rupture threatened to end his career. Surgery is complicated and the rehabilitation process is long and painful. It wasn't the first time Sharland had injury woes - a Black Stick at 17, her international career had been constantly interrupted by hamstring troubles. But the knee rehabilitation would be the toughest and longest. She was sidelined for 18 months - making her appearance at the Beijing Olympics all the more sweet.
Throughout her recovery, the powerful midfielder made the Olympics her motivation. But it was an exasperating journey, confined to the couch watching the Black Sticks play on television, or consigned to the stand in Azerbaijan when she thought she was ready to return to the field. "It felt right, I was so eager and the worst thing was all the girls were telling me I was looking really good. But KT [Black Sticks' coach Kevin Towns] said 'not yet'," she says.
Towns knows he was tough on the downhearted Sharland, sticking to his can't-train-can't-play rule. But he says she's a better player for it today. "It's got to be a huge asset when you're fighting it out in a game and you know you've had those low moments, but you've put in all the work to come back. That's when the tough get tougher," he says. "She's had a long fight back and I rate her as a world-class player, so Beijing is her opportunity to show that to the world." It's hard to imagine where Sharland, whose distinctive mouthguard gives her a half-black, half-white grimace on the turf , would be today if her injuries hadn't robbed her of so much of her career.
At 22, she is still one of the youngest players in the side in China, but nevertheless has 87 test caps to her name. She's incredibly even-tempered and optimistic for a top athlete who has missed so many opportunities and suffered so much frustration.She's experienced the Olympics before, playing in Athens where the New Zealand team finished a passable sixth.
Determined to make more of her game, the business management student headed to Germany in 2005 to play club hockey under the tutelage of Olympic gold medallist coach Marcus Weise and his star player, Fanny Rinne. But in her first training two days after arriving, Sharland felt her left hamstring "ping, three times up my leg" as she lunged in a tackle, and it was straight to the physio room - three hours a day, every day, for most of her stay. Her disappointment was obvious, but her time wasn't wasted; with Rinne's help she refined her drag flick - the hottest shot in modern-day hockey that only a few specialist players are able to master.
After playing a pivotal role in the Black Sticks' next victory at the Champions Challenge tournament in Virginia - a win that put New Zealand back in the world's top six - Sharland was recognised as a nominee for the world's young player of the year.
Leaving her hometown Palmerston North to set up camp in Christchurch for the 2006 Commonwealth Games, the intense training was too much for her stressed hamstring, which pinged again. Out for another five tests, her leg had to be heavily strapped to play at the Games. "It became so frustrating - I reckon I tore it seven times after I first made the team. The game has got so much faster, and I'd be coming home to cold winters and it would tear again," she says.
There would be more heartbreak: a close uncle back at home died suddenly, as the Games started. "All my family were with me in Melbourne and it was so hard for us to deal with. But we stuck together and got through it," she says.
Then New Zealand lost the bronze medal play-off to England in a penalty stroke shoot-out (Sharland's shot at goal was saved). It was a harsh lesson for the side, which now goes through the cut-throat shoot-out scenario at the end of every training session.
Five weeks after Melbourne, Sharland suffered the knee injury that left her watching the Italian tournament on crutches. After surgery at home, her muscles withered and when she finally got moving again, it was with a limp: "I ran like a donkey." When Towns came on board as New Zealand coach, he was shocked to find she'd had little rehabilitation and her spirits were low. She got to work with New Zealand netball's physiotherapist Sharon Kearney to rebuild the strength around the knee.
Sharland finally made her comeback last October - as a key playmaker in the Black Stick's 25-0 rout of Papua New Guinea and in an upset win over Australia, earning New Zealand's ticket to Beijing. She hadn't quite turned the corner - a 14cm tear in her left quadricep kept her out of the first 10 tests this year. But gym work and her determination to get to Beijing have her fully fit and mentally ready to play. It's time she meted out punishment on someone else.
Sharland's many strengths are her power, athleticism and flair, a head for scoring goals and an ability to sense the opposition's mistakes before punishing them with telling passes. She won't be mollycoddled through the Games, but it's unlikely she'll be asked to bring out her drag flick at the Green Hockey Stadium - the low, twisting motion may be too much for that leg yet.
The Olympics are the pinnacle of sporting excellence, but they are much more than that - behind each athlete is a tale of courage, determination and inspirational will-power. This is the third in our four-part series on members of the New Zealand team, all from different sports and different backgrounds but each with something in common: to achieve their Olympic dream, they've had to overcome major obstacles.
