KEY POINTS:
You're a multiple Olympic champion, seen and done it all and therefore a hard nut to impress.
But ask Ian Ferguson for an assessment of Erin Taylor's capabilities and there's no disguising his admiration for an athlete who has only been paddling seriously for two years.
Taylor secured
her spot on the Olympic kayaking squad by winning the re-run Oceania raceoff at Penrith in March. She won an appeal after weed hampered her first time round and won a resounding victory at the second attempt.
But that is just the latest part of a remarkable rise for the student from Red Beach, north of Auckland.
"Her improvement curve is just huge," Ferguson said. "Every time she's raced she's gone faster. She's slowly ticking all the other girls off one by one."
Ferguson admits he tends to forget Taylor is just 20 "because she's a tough, tough girl. Get her in the gym and she's immensely strong. Technically she's good. She was rough when she started but she's getting better and better, stronger and fitter".
And to cap it off, "she just gets in there and hangs on. I'm totally surprised at her speed sometimes. She's not scared of anyone".
Penrith continued a journey which has had Taylor hauling herself towards the top echelon at great knots.
Ferguson, who won four Olympic golds in 1984-88, will be in Beijing in August, co-coaching the four-strong New Zealand Games team with his old gold medal-winning mate Paul MacDonald.
Taylor, the first New Zealand woman to go to the Games in the sport, is in the K1 500m sprint. In a few days she will, with K1 1000m Athens Olympic silver medallist Ben Fouhy and K2 1000m pair Steven Ferguson and Mike Walker (Ferguson is also in the K1 500m), head for Europe. They won't get home until after Beijing.
Whereas Fouhy and Ferguson in particular are old hands at this lark, Taylor is relatively new to it all, but lapping it up.
She is a bubbly person, with an engaging touch of the gee whiz about how her sporting orbit has changed in the past couple of years. She has represented New Zealand on the surf ski, as recently as late last year in the international surf challenge at Bondi. But the beach is on the back burner for now.
Taylor's Olympic flame was lit in 2004 when she became fascinated in what was happening in Athens, not only the likes of Sarah Ulmer and Caroline and Georgina Evers-Swindell winning their golds but also other international stars including American superfish Michael Phelps.
"I remember talking to my [surf] coach Vaughan Skiffington at the time that it would be really cool to do an Olympic sport because I was into all the hype and watching it at the time.
"He suggested why not give kayaking a go because it's similar to surf ski paddling and also an Olympic sport. I thought that was a really good idea."
She first had an eye on the London Olympics in 2012. She began to get serious in 2006. One thing led to another.
"You have a small goal of doing well at the nationals, then winning the nationals. Then it's off to Europe to compete in the K1 internationally, then getting all right World Cup results, then there was the world championships last year [she finished 16th] then the opportunity to do the Oceania raceoff.
"The more I raced and trained, more doors opened and when it came to the raceoff in March, the goal seemed a lot more realistic."
Ferguson estimates 12 months ago Taylor would have been ranked between No 25 and 30. This season she's toppled the world No 12 and No 10 paddlers. All going well, he rates her "90 per cent certain" of making the field of nine for the Olympic final.
Early on Taylor ate big chunks off her time. That's not unusual for athletes coming to a sport and discovering they have a knack for it. She knows at some point she'll be down to the 1 and 2 per cent gains as she finds her level.
"It's awesome at the moment because I am steadily improving. But it will get harder."
Taylor, halfway through Bachelor of Science and Arts degrees with an eye on a career in nutrition, does much of her on-water training with the K2 men Walker and Ferguson. She can't afford an off day.
"I'm the slowest by a mile so I have to work all the time. I can't have a lazy session," she laughed.
The squad will spend the last few weeks before Beijing in Rockhampton, north of Brisbane. Before that are three World Cup regattas, in Hungary, Germany and Poland, which will provide key information on progress.
And after her past few months, Taylor's will be well worth watching.
