KEY POINTS:
He's not your ordinary sportsman, Tom Ashley. This is no windsurfer dude with a shock of unruly blond hair and only a limited vocabulary of popular catch phrases like "awesome" and "wicked"; he's far too focused and canny for that. Focused like a world champion, in fact. Which
he is.
His point of difference is obvious when he tells you that he is fluent in Portuguese, near-fluent in Spanish and passably good in French - and that he got things together with his Spanish in 2003 when he'd broken an ankle and had months of healing to do.
Most of us would turn on the TV; fire up the DVD player and reach for the chocolate thins.
But this thoughtful 24-year-old decided he'd learn Spanish because he was going to compete up there and thought it might come in handy.
Sportsmen who learn languages during a break aren't all that common and, oh, did we mention he's a world champion and one of the medal favourites for the Beijing Olympic Games windsurfing title?
Not that he looks much like the popular idea of a windsurfer. His lean height, steady gaze, considered manner and thinning blond hair don't automatically stamp him as one. You could see him in a suit and tie easily enough. He looks a little like he could be a banker, maybe, or a broker.
Since he won the 2008 world title in his home town, at Takapuna beach earlier this year, Ashley has been busily damping down expectations of those who are banking on a medal in Beijing. The world championships were fought in some boisterous breezes; Qingdao, where the yachting regatta will be held, is renowned for its light airs.
Ashley won at Takapuna and at the pre-Olympic regatta at Qingdao after a Chinese rival won five or six of the races in the light airs but crashed out when he finished second-to-last when the wind got up to 18 knots. Ashley did better in the strong stuff and won the regatta.
He uses it as an example of how the best windsurfers cannot just be comfortable with being dominant in one set of conditions.
He knows what he is talking about. Ashley has been windsurfing since he was 15 after his father John and a business partner at the time, Paul Page, took it up.
Ashley got a board for his birthday, courtesy of a regatta in New Zealand where a lot of the top windsurfers decided to sell their boards rather than pay the exorbitant cargo fees of the time to get them home.
So a teenaged Ashley ended up with a world-class board at a world-class bargain basement price - and the rest followed naturally.
Many are assuming Olympic gold will also naturally follow his world championship success. Ashley doesn't much like to talk about medal chances; he's a let-your-actions-speak-for-themselves kind of guy. Talking of speaking, how come the Portuguese and all?
It's because he has had a long-time training partner in Brazilian Ricardo Santos, previous world champion, and because it was in Brazil, doing some of the focused training that Ashley is pinning his medal hopes on, that he met his Brazilian fiancee Mariana.
"So my Brazilian is fluent, my Spanish is pretty good and my French, which I learned at school and got to a decent standard then let slip and then picked it up again."
Whatever language you care to use, Ashley is a golden chance at Beijing.
Like many of the top windsurfers these days, he is tall and lean - a combination of optimum weight, long levers and upper body and leg strength, which helps a board to go fast.
In fact, Ashley has the reputation of being the fastest windsurfer in the world, or one of. His aerobic fitness, strength and ability to 'pump' the board faster all add up to speed.
"It is an important element, of course," says Ashley. "Speed isn't the only factor; you've still got to be heading in the right direction; you've still got to get the tactics right. Speed isn't the be-all and end-all."
But there's no doubt Ashley is highly respected in the world of windsurfing and he is placing a great deal of store on preparation for the Qingdao regatta.
While many of his main rivals are currently in Hyeres, France, at a major regatta, he's down at Takapuna beach, hitting the long hours of training he thinks he needs to master all conditions, all airs, all competition.
"Regattas are fine, but what's the point of doing regattas when the conditions may not be right; when you may not be racing all the time and you are only out there for a little while; you only get two hours, maybe?
"With training, if you organise it and arrange it right, you can get plenty of time doing what you need; five or six good hours, which really benefit what you are trying to do," he says.
With his training partner Santos - and others - Ashley uses his time building up elements that will help him in race conditions.
"Like, we'll do three hours of sailing upwind, 10 metres apart, and just go flat tack trying to beat each other."
It's not a bad tactic, going head to head with a world champion when it comes to getting ready for big regattas.
Many say the world championships are harder than the Olympics because the field is more open and the competition includes multiple entries from one country - whereas the Olympics restricts numbers from each country.
"It's harder to get in the top 10 in the worlds than top 10 of the Olympics but I'd say it is harder to win the Olympics," says Ashley. "It's because of the extra pressure and the need to prepare and some guys make mistakes and some panic under the pressure. It's also because the environment is so totally different."
Ashley experienced that in Athens in 2004, when he finished 10th.
"In hindsight, it wasn't a great result. I couldn't have expected a medal and I'd had a few injury and health issues."
Specifically, that broken ankle, suffered in 2003 when he and his father went out for a sail and he went too fast in shallow waters where he didn't have enough freeboard. He crashed out, breaking his ankle. After that he suffered other injuries on the comeback trail, as well as glandular fever.
"I was pretty lucky to win the Olympic trials; I only just got there by the skin of my teeth."
He says his father John has now given up on windsurfing.
"It's a superstitious thing, he doesn't want to jinx me again."
His rivals wouldn't mind a jinx being in force. Santos will be a threat, as will Poland's Przemek Miarczynski, Britain's Nick Dempsey, the Netherlands' Casper Bouman and several others, including among them France's Julien Bontemps.
But you get the feeling that Ashley is contemplating this year's Olympics with a rather steelier gaze than last time. He is tailoring his training and his fitness so that he is able to hone himself for all conditions; and to be strong; aerobically and technically sound enough to cope with any and all eventualities.
He might be a channelled individual but he's not without a sense of humour.
Last year, when a group of windsurfers from the professional circuit competed against Ashley and his rivals, he found them to be a group who took themselves far too seriously. So he took to sailing with a toy hippo fixed to the front of his board and then a My Little Pony.
"It was just a bit of a laugh; to show that people shouldn't take themselves quite so seriously," he said.
He also earned the wrath of a Canadian rival when, as he sometimes does, he trailed objects behind his board to increase the drag and to make his training duels more even; building more strength and competence in pressure situations. The rival did not take kindly to this, complaining afterwards that what Ashley had done had actually given him lift, not drag - even though the physics of this contention seem to deny it.
Ashley is off to Valencia this week where he will undergo more training in Valencia's light airs - similar to those of Qingdao - and he will meet up with fellow Olympic sailors Hamish Pepper and Carl Williams as well as team physio (and former All Black physio) David Abercrombie, now with America's Cup yachting syndicate BMW Oracle.
Mariana will join him there and doubtless the Portuguese will flow.
So will the training hours - and the continued drive for success, and a medal, at Beijing.
