Sam Shergold says he still struggles to say the words "world champion" about himself. Photo/John Borren
Sam Shergold's start to life was touch and go.
"He was basically a lucky boy to be alive and they told us the best he would ever be, he would carry oxygen around for the rest of his life," his mother Donna says.
Unbeknown to doctors in Tauranga, where Shergold was born, he was a breech baby and a nerve in his neck was damaged when he was delivered.
"He couldn't breathe," says Donna. "They flew him to Hamilton that night and he was on life support for three weeks.
"We didn't know what was going to happen. They prayed with us that night, saying he's probably not going to make it through the night.
"Then all of sudden one day he started breathing on his own, and away he went.
"Right from then, he's always been one very determined child, just a battler.
"He just sets his mind to something and if that's what he wants, that's what he does."
Horrifying as those three weeks must have been for his parents, that was not Shergold's only brush with death.
As a 4-year-old, he collapsed while on the operating table after being given penicillin and doctors discovering he was allergic.
"He's almost been a bit of a cat with nine lives," says his mother. "[He's] had a few close calls and gets through.
"He knows how to push himself to a limit. He's been to the limit and that's maybe how he knows.
"That's his makeup almost. He is pretty special."
Last month, Donna and her husband Mark were in Fiji to watch their son power his way to victory in the men's prone distance race at the ISA World Stand Up Paddle and Paddleboard Championship.
His gold medal was a New Zealand first and, coupled with strong performances by other members of the national team, helped mark the country as a growing force in the international paddleboarding scene.
Shergold's sister, Brooke, was also with her parents on the New Zealand team boat screaming in support for her brother.
In March, the siblings won the mixed double ski event at the national surf lifesaving championships.
Their younger brother, Ethan, has also competed in surf lifesaving but is now a navy diver and was unable to go to Fiji.
A video of the last 10 minutes of Shergold's 17.5 km race taken from the team boat shows Shergold head down and unrelenting in his arm strokes, even as other paddlers in the leading pack waver.
https://www.facebook.com/paddleboardfiji/videos/1182164811875454/
His mum bursts into tears of joy as Shergold finishes his gruelling two-hour, 12-minute paddle with a final 80-metre sprint up the beach to the line.
The 23-year-old finishes just eight seconds ahead of Australian rival Matt Poole, achieving a goal that had eluded him the two previous years.
"I had to keep pushing through because I knew that if I relaxed for one bit, they'd blimmin' catch me and take my dream away," Shergold told Bay of Plenty Times Weekend this week.
Shergold says a raft of sayings were going through his head in the crucial last kilometres as he fended off competition from Poole, another Australian and an American at the head of the almost 30-strong field of distance paddlers.
"It's a bit cliched but [I said to myself], 'You get one shot, one opportunity. No one said it's going to be easy. You've got to work hard. You've got to earn your rewards.' All that sort of stuff. I was just trying to motivate myself. 'You've got to go through the pain to get the glory'."
Shergold laughs as he recounts the words flooding his mind as we chat on the balcony of the Mt Maunganui surf club, where he has trained since he was 9.
He is all smiles and comments on the brilliance of the day, but says he is still coming to terms with the brilliance of his performance on November 18.
"It's still sinking in after this long. It's pretty amazing, yeah."
In 2014, Shergold's first attempt at the race, he finished second, and then came fifth last year while battling a stomach bug that saw him placed on a drip immediately after crossing the line.
Today marks three weeks since he won this year's gold and despite his friends and family "frothing" over the achievement and telling him it was an "epic race", Shergold is taking the victory in a manner typical of other great New Zealand achievers.
"World champion is pretty hard to say," he says.
"I don't go round saying I'm a world champion. I just know in the back of my head."
Shergold's father says over the phone that his son's modesty is extreme.
"Just to celebrate what you've achieved is a huge thing," Mark Shergold says.
"[But] he just takes it in his stride."
Donna voices the same sense of slight frustration at her middle child.
"It's like mate, you're a world champion," she says with a laugh.
Both parents say they are "super-proud" of their son and being there on the day was incredibly special after missing the last two world champs in Mexico and Nicaragua.
Like Donna, Mark is not surprised at his son's victory.
"His dedication to the cause is pretty special," he says.
"We've never, never had to say, 'Shouldn't you be at training?'"
Like his siblings, Shergold rose through the ranks of the Nippers junior surf club at the Mount.
But he reveals almost in a voice too low to hear that he was not a natural.
"I used to sit at the water's edge and go, 'Nah, I'm not getting in'."
When pressed for more information, he says to ask Spindles.
Spindles is John Bryant, his coach since he started at Nippers
Bryant, 53, has no kids of his own but says "all my kids are the Nippers and the senior athletes".
He too has been involved in surf lifesaving since he was a teenager at St Clair in Dunedin and seems to have sensed something special in Shergold.
By now, Shergold's parents have revealed how scared their son was of the water when he started.
Says Mark: "Spindles used to throw shells into the water and he had to dive down and get them. That was the only way to get him under the water."
Bryant's perseverance paid off and before long, Shergold was away.
Says Donna: "Once he got on a board, then craft was always going to be his thing."
Bryant calls Shergold "an endurance beast".
"The real thing about Sam is he's such a hard worker. The programme that he had to adhere to [for the worlds] was pretty hard. If you see some of the miles the kid was doing, you just go, 'How does he fit that all in plus his studies, plus work and whatever else?' It takes a total commitment."
Bryant has coached for more than two decades and trains a squad of 80 to 90 athletes in the Bay, saying Shergold always pushes hard.
"Sam's an exceptional runner," says Bryant.
"He'll always do that extra third than any normal person would."
At the height of his training, the former Tauranga Boys' College student was running 20km five days a week, doing 3km swims in the pool, and hitting the ocean every afternoon, typically doing six 2km paddles at various paces in a session.
Bryant says Shergold's success in Fiji lay in his preparation, including getting a good grasp of the tides and currents on the course beforehand.
"It really is a waterman's race. You just can't grunt it the whole way. You've got to know what's happening in the ocean and read it, and he read it very well."
Shergold balanced his training with completing a Bachelor of Business Management at Waikato University's Tauranga campus, helped with a Sir Edmund Hillary scholarship he earned after winning medals at the Under 20 Surf Lifesaving World Championships in 2012.
He is sponsored by Deep Oceanboards, Pure Sports Nutrition and Waterman Store New Zealand and works as a labourer for his dad at the moment, living at home with his parents in Bethlehem.
He says he is grateful for the support of the Mount surf club, saying it has been critical to his development as a sportsman.
"I wouldn't have achieved what I've done without Spindles and surf lifesaving."
Bryant says Shergold's ability over distance was obvious from an early age and he is one of several Bay athletes, including 16-year-old Declan Dempster, making their mark on the world paddleboard circuit.
"It's great. It's another avenue for what we call our lifeguards to go down. It keeps them involved in not only the sport a lot longer but keeps them involved in lifeguarding on the beach as well."
Until recently, Australian and American athletes such as Matt Poole, who is a professional Ironman and sponsored by Red Bull, have dominated the sport.
But Bryant says Shergold's success proves that paddleboarders can train in the Bay year-round and do not need to go overseas to warmer climates.
Paddleboarding differs from surf lifesaving in that the boards used are longer (12 foot versus 10.6 feet) and it is on the open ocean rather than through the waves.
Like its name, stand-up paddleboarding, or SUP, is done standing and while Shergold says he can do it, he prefers prone.
The distance of his specialty race varies depending on the conditions on the day, but athletes prepare for up to 20km.
Shergold says it is tactical and strategic and the help of Brad Walker, a New Zealander who lives in Fiji, was crucial to understanding the currents on November 18.
"I fell off the pace by about 100 metres 3km into the race. And then we went round the can and it was real tidal and I took a completely different line to what [my competitors] took, and then came out maybe 50m in front just because I took a better line."
The race was not without drama, Shergold's leash falling off midway and a pod of dolphins swimming nearby, but he maintained his composure to drop the rest of the pack with 1.5km to go.
"I decided this is my one shot and I just pinned my ears back and went."
Training in the cold in winter was hard, he says, and there were moments when he felt like giving up.
"[But] in the long run, it's so worth it. I'd do it again. I'd suffer what I did for the glory."
Shergold says he is keen for another crack next year, having long ago lost his fear of the ocean.
"I do say sometimes, it is my second home. It relieves a bit of pressure and stress and makes me smile again after a rough day."
The site houses Noel Leeming, Animates, Elite Fitness, and Chemist Warehouse.