KEY POINTS:
Barbara Kendall, who is looking at 40 candles on her cake, has her eye on another Olympics medal in a sport most women quit at 24.
The tips of Barbara Kendall's fingers are pocked with blisters, the painful consequence of yet another of those formidable contests at which she excels.
The wounds have no relation to windsurfers, to sailing or even the sea. Barbara Kendall - four-time world boardsailing champion, Olympic winner of every coloured medal, and a member of the esteemed International Olympic Committee - is learning to play the guitar.
And with everything she has achieved this year - a silver medal at the world championships last month, 20 years after winning her first world title, and an almost guaranteed ticket to a fifth Olympics - picking up a couple of chords rates right up there. Three weeks ago, Kendall bought two guitars: one for her husband and coach, Shayne Bright, the other for their 6-year-old daughter Samantha. Since then, they've crammed in two lessons a week, before Kendall headed to China to sail in the pre-Olympic regatta starting this weekend.
"We've become The Strumming Family," Kendall laughs, but there's a serious edge too. Kendall is naturally competitive, and as a former professional dancer, has a tuned ear. But she's not in competition with her husband and daughter.
"It's me versus myself. I want to be good at it instantly," says the woman whose grit and perseverance would be hard to match anywhere in the world of sport.
"I want to be able to play the guitar and sing a song. It's such an upsurge of excitement and passion - and that's one of the most important feelings you can have in life."
Kendall hasn't lost that zeal for her day job of the last two decades. Boardsailing still conjures its incredible highs; but there are also days when Kendall - three weeks shy of her 40th birthday - wonders "what the frig am I doing?"
What she's doing is almost freakish. She's certain to be the oldest woman on the startline on Jiangquan Bay next year in the race for Olympic gold, and probably the only mother. And yet she's a hot favourite to capture her fourth medal in her fifth games.
For Kendall, still surfer-chick striking, the sparkle of another medal beckons, like a buoy on the horizon. While she is still sailing so fast and so smart, and while there are no other New Zealand boardsailors challenging her, she keeps heading out to sea.
In April, she came close to giving it all away. She hadn't won a major regatta since her 2002 world title, and her performance in the Princess Sofia regatta in Palma de Mallorca would decide in her own mind whether to continue pushing for an Olympic spot.
Kendall, Bright, Samantha and 3-year-old Aimee arrived in Spain 10 days before the regatta, and all promptly fell ill with the flu. On the eve of racing, Kendall spent the day in hospital with Aimee, whose raging temperature wouldn't break. She was ready to pack their bags and head home.
But in typical Kendall fashion, she stuck to her task on the water and won two of the seven races to finish at the head of the 66-strong line-up.
"Both Shayne and I so needed that win - to know we were doing the right thing, and that I still had winning in me. It had been so hard, and it's been even tougher for Shayne, having to be the stay-at-home dad," Kendall says.
Bright, a competitive boardsailor in his own right, has made sacrifices for his wife's career. Even before he took on the role as her coach in 1993, he looked after her equipment while they were both competing on the professional circuit. "She was the star, I was her caddy," he says.
While Kendall is out garnering sponsorship, locked in Olympic meetings or public speaking, Bright looks after their children and works on completing their home north of Auckland among the trees on the Whangaparaoa Peninsula - a 10-year labour of love.
On and off the water, he is Kendall's calming influence. "When she gets too involved in something, when she starts spinning out of control, I can tell her to pull her head in. She always listens - talking is one of the strengths of our relationship," Bright says.
"She's always been easy to coach. A lot of people you try to coach will try something for 30 seconds then give up. You tell Barbara something and she'll always do it."
So you can teach an older sailor new tricks - and she needs them to stay ahead of the young chasing pack. Polish sailor Zofia Klepacka, who denied her gold in a final race nailbiter at last month's world championships in Portugal, is just 21. She wasn't even born when Kendall sailed her first international board regatta in Scotland - a naive 16-year-old who finished second-to-last.
A cruel wind shift denied Kendall her fifth world title but she knows full well that's the name of her game. She sails differently now than she did when she won gold at the 1992 Olympics experience has given her the patience to play the numbers game on the water. Like a card shark, she doesn't play all her trumps at once, and knows where she has to position herself in each race to stay among the leaders.
"I have to play the numbers, stay calm and sail what I know. You mightn't win races, but if you don't panic, consistency usually pays off," she says.
"That works in big fleets, but at the Olympics, there are smaller numbers, so you can't have a bad race. The numbers game gets skinnier. So it's going to be interesting for me."
The Beijing games present new challenges: the winds at the sailing venue in Qingdao are light, and dominating in light breezes is something Kendall still has to master; the regatta will be sailed on a new class of board; and she's not keen on crowds.
Kendall had been to China once before, 14 years ago, for a three-week tour which pitted the world's top eight female windsurfers against China's best. She won the regatta, but remembers it most for the multitude of curious onlookers.
"I have photos of hundreds of thousands of people covering the entire beach so you can't see the sand. Some of them are knee-deep in water, just trying to see us, and the police were hitting them with bamboo sticks to keep them back, she recalls. I'm sure it was the biggest crowd sailing has ever had. Security will be a lot tighter this time."
A little hesitant about heading to the unknown of the pre-Olympic regatta - the dress rehearsal a year out from the big event - she has left her daughters at home with her mother, Peggy. There's only one other time the girls haven't travelled with Kendall overseas.
"Last year, I left them for 18 days with Shayne while I went to the European championships. It was really horrible - I hated it," she says. "It was the first time since 1993 that I'd been at a competition by myself. The moment I got on the plane, I got anxious. Aimee was only 11 months old and I wasn't prepared for anything. I got my arse kicked on the water, and I was miserable, I didn't want to be there.
"Then, when I got home, the kids said 'Hi Mum', and carried on doing what they were doing."
If she's selected to race in Beijing next year - which is no more than a formality now - taking the girls with her to the Olympic competition may not be so complex. As a member of the Olympic committee, Kendall will get to stay in the IOC family hotel. It's a perk of which she's happy to take advantage.
She is an oddity on a boardsailing circuit dominated by single-minded women in their 20s, but she's treated with the utmost respect.
"The girls on the circuit are forthright with their praise and admiration," Kendall says. "They'll come up and say, 'You're my hero. When I grow up I want to be like you'. And here I am, usually thinking 'What the frig am I doing?'
"It happens regularly. When I'm absolutely exhausted, when the kids are screaming or sick, when Shayne and I are arguing, I think 'is it really worth it?' Then we'll sit down and go through the same old things and figure it's not really so bad after all."
Not so bad at all. The girl who was the Auckland P-class girls' champion three years running, and dreamed only of being a dancer, is now New Zealand's most successful female Olympian.
She left home at 20, giving up a career running an Auckland dance school, to join the "travelling circus" of the world professional boardsailing tour. It was 1988, the year her elder brother, Bruce, won Olympic gold in men's boardsailing to add to the bronze he'd won in Los Angeles four years before.
Not to be outdone by her brothers haul, Barbara began her own glittering collection - gold in Barcelona 1992, silver in Atlanta 1996, bronze in Sydney 2000. The only disappointment was a fifth in Athens, which wasn't the right note on which to end her career.
"I looked at what I wanted in my life - I wanted to be a mum, have a decent lifestyle, and be healthy and fit. And I thought, 'if I can have all that and sail, there's no reason not to do both'. You're a long time retired," she says.
Kendall has grappled with injuries throughout her career - the worst a recurring forearm problem over the last 10 years, which made it difficult for her to hold on to the sail. But the arm damage seems to be a distant memory now she is sailing on the new RS:X board, which uses different arm muscles to pump the sail.
If these Olympics had been on the old Mistral boards, Kendall thinks she would probably have stopped sailing.
Her 39-year-old body is in the best condition it's been in for years, and Kendall puts it down to her "recovery expert", massage therapist Janice McLennan. The pair began working together in 1995, now see each other once a week, and travel the world together whenever Kendall can afford to take her.
"She's incredible at putting your body back together when you have munted it," Kendall says. "If I didn't have Shayne and Janice, I wouldn't go out there and compete. I couldn't be me."
Kendall doesn't believe most athletes recover properly - not only physically, but mentally. And she admits she still struggles with anxiety and "getting my mind thinking right" before each race.
She wrestles with taking off her other hats - mother, wife, businesswoman - when she gets out on the water. She does a lot of work with McLennan on race mornings clearing her mind and not concentrating on the winners podium.
"If you take care of the process, the results happen. It's still my biggest challenge - and I still can't master it," she says.
"I feel myself slipping into it; you get inside your head, and the anxiety starts. I did it at the last worlds in the second race I was completely spaced out, and I finished 26th. Once I ask the right questions of myself, I free up that anxiety. It's so fascinating - it's why I love competing. I need to be learning all the time."
Two weeks after winning world silver, Kendall was battling to get her mojo back. She drove her board to her sailing base at the Takapuna Boating Club, looked out at the chilly waters, and promptly stored it away in the boat shed.
"The hardest thing is that I get so tired these days. In my 20s, I would race four days, have two days off, then race another four - for a month at a time," she says.
"Now I've learned with age when to say stop. I have faith in my intuition and I sail smarter."
Kendall might be considered selfish if she was blocking the way for another New Zealand woman boardsailor racing her bow-to-bow. But there hasn't been for 20 years. In a way, she thinks it's been a blessing, escaping the mental anguish of "trying to be the best girl", and having to train against men throughout her career.
It's helped that her training partners have been among the best in the world - her brother, her husband, and 2000 Olympic bronze medallist Aaron McIntosh.
"I knew if I was up with the boys, I would beat the girls," she says.
For the first time, Kendall can see a new clutch of female boardsailors in New Zealand - Kate Ellingham, Hayley Thom and Justina Sellers who could be ready to take on her mantle by the 2012 London Olympics. But she has words of advice for them.
"You have to dedicate your whole life to the sport. Women don't reach their peak in boardsailing till they're 30, and most girls quit before 24. I didn't go to university, and I would have regretted it if I wasn't successful, and if I hadn't been able to make a living out of it."
In Kendall's role as an ambassador for Sport and Recreation New Zealand (Sparc), she speaks in schools, encouraging kids to stick to their goals. After years of being an athlete focused solely on herself, Kendall says she enjoys giving back.
She thrives on her voluntary work with the IOC - as a board member and an athletes' advocate - and has the same roles with the New Zealand Olympic Committee. Her special interest is in working with Pacific Island athletes - when she returns from China, she's off to the Pacific Games in Samoa to launch the "Voices of the Athletes" programme, encouraging drug-free sport and Aids prevention. Then she will attend the International Athletes Forum in Dubai, where discussions will include how to maintain a career and continue in sport.
"I try to do as much as I can, but I want to do more. I love this work, and as an older athlete, you understand what it's like to be in the system."
On August 30, Kendall's 40th birthday, she will be in Wellington at an NZOC meeting. But her motto for the day is to have fun and be happy - "I've already told them to order champagne."
She can see a day on the horizon when more of her time will be dedicated to working with athletes, and less to boardsailing. A medal in Beijing would seal that.
"For me it would be the most amazing thing to win another medal. It would be the awesome final stamp in legend status," Kendall says, throwing her head back in laughter.
"Then I would definitely retire. But if I don't win one, I have a life, and that's the difference between now and 1992. It isn't do-or-die any more."
Playing her guitar has reminded Kendall natural talent goes a long way towards success, but it's the perspiration and perseverance that keeps you there.
"I guess that's what has happened to me with windsurfing," she says. "I was born to do this, and I was lucky to find what I was really good at. But talent only took me so far, and I've worked hard.
"That's why I'll always be a better windsurfer than a guitarist."
