KEY POINTS:
Caroline Evers-Swindell vividly recalls the first time she sat in a rowing boat with her twin Georgina.
"I hated the whole thing," she said yesterday.
"I didn't want to be in the boat with Georgina. I'd started rowing first and I remember I tried to make the whole
row as unenjoyable as possible, hoping she'd never want to do it again."
Her parents, Hornby and Fran, had suggested taking her sister out for a row.
"She really wanted to start so I said 'I'll take her out for one row', thinking she wouldn't want anything of it."
From such an unpromising acorn fabulous things have grown.
The Hawkes Bay twins are only the fourth New Zealand Olympic champions to defend their title four years later, joining elite company in Peter Snell (800m in 1960-64), Mark Todd (individual eventing, 1984-88) and Ian Ferguson and Paul MacDonald (K2 500m canoeing, 1984-88).
But it could all have gone nowhere had Georgina taken the hint when they were 15 and on the water the first time at Clive, between Napier and Hastings.
"We were walking down with the boat and I told her where to carry it so it was really heavy for her and really light for me.
"I just know I was very naughty. I was just not very positive, but it didn't work," Caroline laughed.
And Rowing New Zealand can take a pat on the back in the process which led to the 29-year-olds being top of the world, again.
They selected the sisters to row together at a junior world championships. "They said either you row with your sister or you don't row at all," Caroline said.
They can laugh about those scratchy early days, because it soon became apparent there was something special going on when they were together on the water.
A second in the world championships in 2001 was followed by consecutive world titles before the gold in Athens.
"Now we're very even and we trust each other and we're very happy to be in the boat together. It's changed a lot," Caroline said with a hefty dose of understatement.
They can't place one gold ahead of the other in their affections.
"They're just different," Caroline said. "In Athens, we expected ourselves to get a gold but we just wanted to have a good race here. To come away with a gold medal was a bit unbelievable."
That stemmed from an ordinary European campaign this year, culminating in failing to even make the A final at the last World Cup regatta in Poland.
They returned to Lake Karapiro, did some hard thinking, piled on the kilometres on the water and in their heat nine days ago it came right. Until then, they admitted, they weren't sure how the week on the Shunyi course would pan out.
In the end they pipped the Germans Annekatrin Thiele and Christiane Huth by .01s in the tightest race of their career on Saturday, clocking 7min 07.32s.
And what of London 2012?
Their coach, Dick Tonks reckons they've got two more Olympics in them - "easy, no problems".
The twins gave the feeling that might be pushing the boat out a bit far.
But time will tell. They have the world championships on home water at Karapiro in two years' time, then London.
And even if they don't get the golden Olympic hat-trick, from time to time they are sure to briefly cast their mind back to a stretch of the Clive river out of which came a fabulous Olympic legacy.
