His togs were wet, his hair was wet, both dropped under a tap. His body was not.
The boy hadn't felt like going to training, lap after lap, so he'd fooled his parents, hiding out the back. More than once, too.
It doesn't sound a promising start to what transpired to be the career of the greatest swimmer New Zealand has produced.
Danyon Loader's performance in winning two gold medals at the Atlanta Games of 1996 is indisputably among the finest achievements by a New Zealand athlete.
And that's why he sits among the top five in the Herald's list of the best Olympic performers.
He remains New Zealand's only Olympic swimming champion - if you exclude the oddity of Malcolm Champion, the New Zealander in the Australasian quartet who won the 4 x 200m freestyle relay at the Stockholm Olympics of 104 years ago.
Loader joined colourful Dunedin coach Duncan Laing's swim squad at 10 and, by his admission, spent two years mucking around. Then came a change. At 12, at a camp in Cromwell, Loader found the spark.
Perhaps it was brought on by Laing - always "Mr Laing" to Loader - telling him that "either I had to train harder or I had to train with the girls". Loader took the hint. At its peak, Loader was training 10km a session, 11 sessions of two-and-a-half hours each week. At 14, he was swimming 110km a week.
Loader was 21 when he arrived in Atlanta. He was far from an unknown quantity -- indeed he was at the peak of his athletic powers.
He was a respected international swimmer, had pocketed an Olympic silver medal four years earlier and had won a Commonwealth Games title, also in the 200m butterfly in 1994 in Victoria, Canada.
In a sense, the stage was set.
So on the eve of the Games, how were his prospects viewed?
"We always felt the 400m [was his better event]," said Mark Bone, head coach of the swimming team in Atlanta. "We wondered in the 200m, did he have enough speed? We always knew he had enough endurance and, when he was able to kick and get into the last part, he was pretty dynamic, so we were confident about the 400m."
The 200m was first up. Loader always liked to warm up in lane five, to get a feel of being in the centre of events during the big races. He was in lane five for the 200m final.
Always in the frame with the leaders, he turned for home fractionally up on the Swede Anders Holmertz and pressed on to win in 1min 47.63. Loader looked happy, but not fist-pumpingly ecstatic on the dais. Perhaps he knew there was more business to be ticked off. Maybe more a case that that wasn't his personality.
As for coach Duncan Laing, it was too much.
"At the end of it, Duncan didn't really identify whether Danyon had won," Bone said. "He was going, 'did we win, did we win?' Brett [assistant coach Naylor] said, 'yeah, he won'. And Duncan just started crying. This was a big man and the emotion was just too much for him. Seeing a man of that stature burst into tears ... "
This writer approached Laing for a chat the day before the 400m through the mesh netting at the training pool, looking for a quote for a preview. What were Loader's chances of completing a golden double, Laing was asked.
He ummed and aahed a few seconds, pawed the ground with a foot, reluctant to offer much. Then he fixed his inquisitor with a beady eye: "I'll tell you this, if he's within a length of the lead when they turn for home no one will catch him."
So it proved, except Loader was in the lead turning into the final lap and simply extended that, holding off Briton Paul Palmer beside him, winning in 3:47.97. It was a more emphatic victory than the 200m and, when he had the second gold medal placed around his neck, there was no question Loader had been one of the stellar achievers in the Atlanta pool.
His rivals were unstinting in their praise for the pony-tailed Kiwi.
"I knew by the 200m mark of the 400m final that Danyon couldn't be beaten," said Australia's then world champion and record holder Kieran Perkins, who had failed to qualify out of the Australian trials.
"He can beat any swimmer in the world if the field isn't more than half a body length ahead at that stage. I include myself in that. Danyon is so good you can't afford to give him even a sniff over the final stages."
Palmer called him a phenomenal swimmer.
"He has the best finish I've seen. He is amazingly strong. I'd hate to think what work he does in training."
Or this from American Tom Dolan, who had recorded the fastest time of the year pre-Games but who also missed making the final: "He's a one-in-a-million swimmer. He's casual and seems laidback but in the water he's a killer."
Loader recently opened up to a group of young swimmers at an event in Auckland, freely answering a range of questions. At one point a youngster asked him what he thought about during a race. This is his unabridged reply: "Good start, streamline into water. Fly kick under the water, coming up, good long strokes, good turn, push off the wall, it's starting to hurt but it's okay. Keeping long and strong, what's everyone else doing? Next turn push off, stay under water, coming up, long, strong stroke, into the third [length], little bit faster, good turn, strong turn, stay under, coming up, okay now here we go, let it all hang out. Fast as you can, then touching the wall."
At the same chat, Loader said to his audience: "I'm standing here as an unremarkable person who did a remarkable thing. You have potential in you. You don't know what it is, and it might take 10 years."
Ten years, as in the Cromwell swim camp to the pool in Atlanta. Some journey.
NZ's Olympic swimming medallists
1912, Stockholm
Malcolm Champion (representing Australasia) 4 x 200m freestyle gold
1952, Helsinki
Jean Stewart, 100m backstroke, bronze
1988, Seoul
Paul Kingsman, 200m backstroke, bronze
Anthony Mosse, 200m butterfly, bronze
1992, Barcelona
Danyon Loader, 200m butterfly, silver
1996, Atlanta
Danyon Loader, 200m freestyle, gold; 400m freestyle, gold
