KEY POINTS:
One's a fish and the other's more feline, like a cat springing across hot white sand.
But there's common ground shared by Wellington swimmer Natasha Hind and Mt Maunganui beach sprinter Chelsea Maples.
The teenagers make their senior debut for the New Zealand surf lifesaving team on Bondi Beach this week, bolstering a 12-strong team with youthful assurance.
While an Australian 'dream team' and a host of overseas athletes lie in wait at the International Surf Challenge, which begins on Thursday, you can take the animal analogies one step further.
Hind has already tasted the flesh of her transtasman rivals, devouring a couple of national records as she helped a national pool team beat Australia in two tests in August. The 18-year-old will be lying in wait in the Bondi shallows for another bite.
American-born Maples, meanwhile, who moved to Bay of Plenty 14 years ago at the age of three, scratched her name into record books this year by winning the New Zealand and Australian open beach sprint titles. Her claws will be out this week - she's ready to pounce on any Australian slinking into her turf.
"I know I can do it," Maples states, traces of a Californian accent still chasing her vowels. "I've done it before and there's no reason to fear them because we're all on the same level playing field, all on the same sand. I've raced them on their own beaches and beaten them already."
New Zealand coach John Bryant is using the International Challenge as a major build-up for next year's world championships in Germany, and opting for youth is no accident. He'll have another teenager, Hawke's Bay prodigy Dan Moodie, racing the ironman and the board, while 20-year-old kayaker Erin Taylor will be tough to beat in the ski race.
Bryant loves the fact his young charges haven't learned to fear the Australians, who will be led by double world ironman champions Zane Holmes and Kristy Munroe.
"It's taken four or five years to get rid of that inferiority, and the young ones look up to the likes of [team captain] Glenn Anderson who has beaten the best Aussies before," Bryant said. "Everyone has seen Chelsea and Natasha develop and it was just a matter of time before they got selected. They'll just grow from here - give them a sniff and the better they'll get."
Both Hind and Maples haven't had easy journeys to this point - Maples broke her leg playing soccer in June and has spend countless hours rebuilding strength with gym work.
Hind has had a heavy international schedule, competing at the Fina World Cup meet in Berlin last week and the German Cup pool rescue championships in Warendorf this weekend.
She'll jet back into Sydney with Kiwi team-mates Anderson and Michael Buck just three days before the International Challenge starts.
"It just means we'll have to maximise our recovery on the plane, getting as much sleep and rest as possible and making the most of stopovers to get used to different time zones," Hind said.
"It's pretty exciting though - the pool side is definitely my strength at the moment and I haven't really had a chance to compete in a really feisty atmosphere on the beach but I'm really looking forward to that."
Kiwis blitz rivals and set world mark
The New Zealand surf lifesaving team made a brilliant start to the German Cup pool championships in the early hours of Saturday, setting a new world record and smashing a number of national marks.
Team captain Glenn Anderson led his 4x50m obstacle relay team to a new world mark of 1min 40.90secs as both men's and women's relay teams swept the highly-rated European and Australian swimming aside.
It's New Zealand's first world record since Trent Bray's remarkable 200m super lifesaver swim set in Auckland in January, 1998. It beat the existing mark set by the German national team at last year's world championships in Australia by 0.6secs.
"It was a brilliant swim - the guys just completely clicked and blew the rest of the field away," New Zealand coach Scott Bartlett said from Warendorf, Germany. "It was a great day at the office all round and this record was just the icing on the cake really."
The eight-strong team, competing at the German Cup for the first time, set six new national records in total, including in all four relays.
Wellington's Natasha Hind set a new 200m obstacle swim record, winning in 2:13.05, while Mairangi Bay's Michael Buck finished third in the 50m manikin carry in a new record of 31.75.
Anderson also finished second in the 200m obstacle swim in 1:58.40, with Buck a second adrift in third, while Hind was elevated to second in the 50m manikin carry in 37.34, after Georgina Toomey was disqualified.
The men's relay team of Anderson, Buck, Hawke's Bay's Callum Joll and Wellington's Steven Kent added to the world record with a superb manikin relay, finishing in 1:15.37.
Hind, Georgina and Julia Toomey and Ayla Dunlop-Barrett also combined to set new national marks in the 4x50m obstacle relay (1:55.50) and the manikin relay.
New Zealand lead the points table going into the final day's competition in Germany, ahead of the hosts and well ahead of arch-rivals Australia.
Three members of the team - Buck, Hind and Anderson - will fly back into Sydney next week to join the national beach team for the International Surf Challenge in Bondi.
