KEY POINTS:
There's not much of Kimberley Smith. Physically, anyway. The phrase "a slip of a girl" might have been invented for her. Until you realise that the shyness and the small frame hide a heart the size of Phar Lap's.
Kimberley who? Many people don't know her - certainly not in her native New Zealand where, almost incredibly, the 26-year-old Smith is our highest-ranked track athlete (fifth in the world in the 10,000m) and a good prospect for the Beijing Olympics.
Even when she heads off for a run around her Papakura home, she is known only as "that girl who runs" outside athletics club circles.
In Europe, where appreciation of track and field is at its highest, she draws appearance money, fan mail, fans themselves; plenty of recognition.
It's her shyness and her tiny, almost delicate, figure that capture you at first. She is back in New Zealand from her base in Providence, Rhode Island, USA, for a wedding and agreed to run in the national championships at Mt Smart while she was here.
On Friday night, as one might expect from a world-ranked athlete, she streeted her opposition in the 5000m.
That almost terminal shyness and slight figure bely the strength within. Interviewing her, it's obvious that this is not a person who much likes the idea of talking about herself. She's not uncomfortable, exactly, more... reserved. In the manner of shy people, her eyes look at you, flick away and then make gentle contact again.
It is impossible not to like her, even on extremely short acquaintance. This is no in-your-face self-promoter. She's old-fashioned Kiwi in make-up; actions speaking louder than words; why make a fuss when quiet success does very nicely, thank you?
It isn't until she leaves to have her photograph taken by the Herald on Sunday's Chris Skelton that her mother, Jeanette, reminds us not to be fooled by the rampant shyness. She's a tough little cookie, says Jeanette.
Absolutely. Two years ago, with the Commonwealth Games beckoning, Smith damaged her Achilles tendon badly enough to put her out of the Games. This didn't please her. She was well narked, in fact.
She did it competing at the same New Zealand national championships as she ran on Friday. Back then, though, she had the impression running the nationals was compulsory. Even though she had a niggle, she felt obliged to run. Disaster.#"They told me afterwards that I hadn't needed to run," she says with a rueful smile. "But I thought I did, even though I had a problem."
She wanted to fly back to her base in the US and forget the whole, nasty business. But she developed a blood clot in the leg, linked to the Achilles. That clot turned into a clot in the lung - a pulmonary embolism.#"She nearly died," says Jeanette. "If she'd got on to that plane, she would have died."
We all now know about the dangers of blood clots while flying but it takes more than a blockage in the bloodstream to put Kimberley Smith off her stride. She went on to a medicine, called warfarin, usually prescribed to heart or stroke patients to thin the blood. Training and racing on warfarin to a level of fifth in the world is a non sequitur.
But Smith has had a golden year. In fact, a golden two or three years.
After graduating from Providence College, she has become a professional athlete, training and competing in the US and Europe and doing well enough, after winning coveted US college titles, to earn appearance money and a good following internationally.
She has bought herself a house in Providence, good real estate, and admits to an income and standard of living far beyond what she might have expected had she stayed in New Zealand and worked through with her teaching degree.
But fifth in the world and an obvious medal prospect is still not something that Kimberley Smith is doing handsprings of joy about.
Not her style. She is a realist and a pragmatist.#"I didn't see myself going to the Olympics when I was younger because I wasn't very good," she states.#"The first time I went to the US, I went to a Louisiana university and I didn't really like it.#"I was just a bit young, Louisiana was really different from New Zealand; I just didn't want to be there, so I went home."
Her return coincided with her development as an athlete and a growth in self-belief. She went to Auckland Teachers' College and worked part time. As the belief grew, she trained harder and her coach suggested she return to the US. She started Providence College in 2001.
NCAA titles followed, getting her noticed in the US as these are the titles their Olympians win before they get to the Olympics.#"I was just more into running and knew then it was what I wanted to do," she says.
Her career really started to take off in 2004 and she has had a bountiful 12 months - setting national records over 3000m, 5000m and 10,000m last year and in the indoor mile at Boston.
But her profile is still low here because she spends so much of her time overseas and because most of what we see of her are a few paragraphs in the "Smith does well" style.
She finished fifth in the world championships and reflects ruefully that a medal was in reach until the last 400m. She was outkicked by the fast-finishing Ethiopians Tirunesh Dibaba and Elvan Abeylegesse and American Kara Goucher.
"I'm working on that now and trying to take things a step up," says Smith. "I think for me the best way to run races is for me to take it about a mile out, rather than leave it for the last 400m.
"The Ethiopians are really, really fast. I can't even run one 400m as fast as they can at the end of a 10,000m race so I have to do things differently."
The other key opponents in China will be the Chinese. They were conspicuous by their absence at last year's world championships in Osaka and Smith says no one knows, as a result, what the Chinese are up to in terms of racing and times.
She shrugs off the inevitable questions about drugs that often surround Chinese athletes and says she saw a bunch of talented Chinese 17-year-olds "running very fast times for 17-year-olds" a year or two back, who will now be more mature and ready to burst on to the scene at Beijing.
It was a Chinese, after all, who gobsmacked the world - not to mention the Ethiopians - by winning the 10,000m gold medal at Athens, when Smith finished well down the track.
"It was the first time I had ever been to a track championships of any kind and it was a bit overwhelming, really, starting with an Olympics rather than a Commonwealth Games or a world championship meeting."
Now Smith clearly feels she is more ready - although she is not the type to make big claims.
The Chinese who surprised everyone in 2004 was Xing Huina, with Ethiopians Dibaba and Derartu Tulu second and third. Defending champion Tulu was well placed with 400m to go and looked certain to take gold as she had in Sydney. But Xing Huina accelerated past Dibaba into the home straight to stun the Ethiopians.
Afterwards Dibaba was convinced she had won, thinking Xing Huina was a lapped runner, and intially refused to accept she had come second. "I didn't see where the Chinese girl came from," she explained, adding that she thought she could have overtaken Xing Huina had she known.
The Ethiopians said they had been looking out for the other Chinese runner, world bronze medallist Sun Yingjie, and had not paid any attention to Xing Huina.
Smith is clearly expecting another Chinese surprise in Beijing so doesn't do any fancy talking about medals.
But don't write her off. This small package with a heart the size of a Ferguson tractor doesn't do surrender.
She doesn't even let pulmonary embolisms get in the way.
