KEY POINTS:
First things first, young Daniel Moodie. Have you ever actually performed a surf lifesaving rescue? No, the 19-year-old replies on the telephone from Perth, where he is competing in the Australian championships.
A rescue has never actually come Moodie's way at his Westshore club, on the north-west edge of Napier, during his mandatory 25 hours of voluntary work per season.
Which may be a unique footnote in the career of a national surf lifesaving champion, although Moodie's name has leapt to the forefront of the sport for more significant reasons.
Surf lifesaving is unique, where the ultimate prize may be - as the name suggests - to save lives rather than accumulate medals. But it is also a sport that requires diverse skills and enormous strength and stamina. These commodities exist in abundance in the relatively small frame of Moodie, who surf aficionados believe could become one of New Zealand's greats.
Which is some call. There is no doubt as to who has been the king of New Zealand surf lifesaving. Gisborne's Cory Hutchings - who has now set his sights on becoming an Olympic kayaker - has waved any challengers goodbye, having won three world ironmans to go along with a string of national titles.
Yet Moodie has already kicked a dollop of sand in history's face. Last week in Gisborne, he won the junior/open ironman double for the second time, beating seniors such as local Matt Sutton and the Australian-based Glenn Anderson over the board-paddling/ski-paddling/swim/run contest. Moodie had aimed to rule all the junior events, as he did, and regarded his second open title as a bonus.
Research and anecdotal evidence suggests that the junior/open double has been achieved previously only by the legendary Australian Grant Kenny, who did it once.
Kenny caused a boom for himself and the sport when as a 16-year-old, he won the double at the 1980 Australian championships to become the face that launched thousands of packets of cereal, and a heck of a lot more.
Australia should loom large in Moodie's story according to the experts, but then again it may not. Hutchings was the Kiwi trailblazer, heading to Australia as an 18-year-old and living there for a decade. The year-round training conditions and ultra-competitive scene fired him to the top.
Wisdom says that Moodie must follow suit - as Anderson for one has already done - but the Napier youngster is reticent. "I don't know - I haven't really thought about it," says Moodie. "I think you can stay at home these days."
Moodie spends part of the summer competing for the Kawana Waters club on Queensland's Sunshine Coast, and their coach Brad Stokes has no doubt that Moodie must make a move across the Tasman.
Stokes, who has coached world champions including his brother-in-law Zane Holmes, says Moodie's potential will never be realised otherwise. "He is a very quiet and unassuming guy and terrific to coach," said Stokes, a former Aussie champion. "He is a natural, incredibly gifted and could do anything in this sport. But he has to come here and race fulltime to find out how good he can be. I don't think even he understands how much potential he has."
Leading New Zealand surf lifesaving commentator Grant Morrison agrees, saying it is a decision Moodie needs to make in the next couple of years.
"He is a freak," says Morrison. "But he is a fairly shy sort of guy. The thought of banging heads with those Aussies might seem questionable to him at this point. And New Zealand surf lifesaving is treating him well. They're not throwing him in the deep end. They are allowing him to pick up his skills and confidence."
Moodie and Hutchings not only differ in character. Hutchings has a pedigree in water sports through his father Ben, whose career has led him to being a kayak coach at the famed Australian Institute of Sport.
The origins of Moodie's water wings are more mysterious although the family are now surf lifesaving-dominated. Daniel's younger brother Nick and sister Katie have followed him into the surf.
"I can swim okay but that's about it," says their father John. "I don't know where it comes from."
Moodie sure can swim and was an excellent freestyler and butterfly exponent in his mid teens, making national under-15 finals. A strong swimming suit is the key to succeeding over the four sets that make up surf lifesaving's ironman event. So Moodie is already carrying the ace because he can dominate in the discipline in which others fall back too far.
He's not a young man to shout the odds. On the evidence of one Herald interview, Moodie is to verbosity what Attila the Hun was to stand-up comedy.
To an outsider, he appears as a talented and dedicated young man who is happy to do his talking on the sand and the water. He gets little outside financial support and his parents - his father works at a petrol station and his mum Debbie is in the tax department - are his major backers.
It is mainly a homegrown operation for now, but Moodie has set his sights on the world ironman title in Germany next year, although he reckons it may be more achievable in 2010. When it comes to Daniel Moodie, you won't get a stronger statement than that.
