It's a lay day in Portugal. In the early stages of the year's second last event on the world surfing circuit, Stephanie Gilmore needs a few minutes to get out of her wetsuit.
"I went out for a little splash," she says once she's changed. "Just in case I've forgotten how to surf."
No risk of that. The five-time world champion is just days away from winning her latest title, the Cascais Women's Pro, which makes her favourite to win her sixth world title in Hawaii, at just 26, next month .
And as she returns to the top of world surfing, a new documentary about her life, Ava Warbrick's Stephanie in the Water, reaches cinemas.
It shows two sides to Gilmore. One is the natural talent, dubbed Happy Gilmore for her cheerful, easy-going nature. An effortless winner who dominated junior competitions and immediately became the best in the world when she joined the circuit. A Gold Coast surfer who describes it as a form of story-telling.
"You're trying to tell a story when you get out on a wave," she says in the film.
From Portugal, Gilmore says she was explaining the creativity of the sport for people who don't surf.
"It's a performance art," she says. "It's not just a sport. I've always tried to help girls understand more about surfing in a more feminine way.
"It's not an aggressive, scary thing to do. It can be a beautiful dance and something that's really pleasant to watch and beautiful to actually do. That was me trying to explain that you're painting on a wave, you're telling a story about how you feel at that moment."
But the film also reveals another side to Gilmore: how a traumatic event, a random attack by a homeless man with an iron bar in the stairwell of her Tweed Heads apartment block, derailed her life in 2010. It left her with a fractured wrist and a head wound, with her attacker later being sentenced to four years jail.
"It basically knocked that happiness out of me," she says tearfully in the film.
Four years later, Gilmore says the event changed a life that had been trouble-free to that point.
"I touch on those topics in the film: how can things be so perfect and so easy and everything that I'd ever dreamed of doing would just happen? To finish school and to go on tour and win a world title. There was no [intense struggle] to reach the top of the rankings. It was just like: I'd finish school and I wanted to win a world title so that's what I went and did.
"Then to have that success over and over again, it was like 'does it ever stop? Does it ever come to a point where it plateaus?' Those were the questions I was asking myself before I was attacked."
When she returned to surfing, Gilmore dipped to third in the world in 2011 before winning back her title the following year but the attack changed her attitude to competing.
"In the first part of my career, I definitely worked hard to achieve my world titles and winning events but it just felt so easy and natural to just go about it in the way that I was doing it. I hadn't really thought about putting in that extra effort or really seeing the value of doing it until after that happened.
"In 2011 and 2012, I really had to fight for something and I felt like I'd never really had to do that before. Even chasing a sixth world title right now, I really have to work for it. I can't just rely on natural talent and fun."
So is she still trying to deal with the attack?
"Maybe little bits here and there," she says. "I'm probably a little more conscious of having an open eye on different things or when I'm travelling by myself. But actually dealing with it emotionally, I'm fine.
"I've definitely moved on and I've learnt a lot from it and I've grown from that. In a sense, I've appreciated it for having happened and being able to move on."
As her success this year shows, Gilmore remains ferociously competitive despite her easy-going nature out of the water. Even playing backgammon with her boyfriend or trying to master the guitar.
"It's a little bit of being perfectionist and it's a bit of competitiveness and it's the performing thing but deep down, I really hate losing." She laughs. "Man, it makes me so angry when I lose."
Stephanie Gilmore and Ava Warbrick will appear at Q&A sessions at screenings in Sydney at United Cinemas, Warriewood, on October 23 and Randwick Ritz on October 24; in Melbourne at Village Cinemas Jam Factory on October 25; in Geelong at Village Cinemas on October 26; in Byron Bay at the Byron Theatre on October 29; and on the Gold Coast at Event Cinemas Robina on November 2.
