It’s a Tuesday morning in Sydney when Laura Enever floats through the front door of the Tracks office; spring-heeled in platform sneakers, a whip of blonde hair trailing a genuine smile.

As Laura slips into easy banter about her day, it’s hard to imagine the effervescent figure skipping down the hallway is the same person who earlier this year hauled herself over the ledge on a genuine 25-footer at a Hawaiian Outer Reef.

Laura is catching up for our Tracks podcast but has the fleeting air of one in a constant state of motion. Tonight she’s heading to Sydney’s Enmore Theatre for a film premiere. A girl’s night out in a part of town that heaves with urban energy. Tomorrow she will be on a plane to Tahiti for commentary duties; centre-stage against a backdrop of tropical mountains and hissing barrels as she probes competitors for insights on their winning performances. Self-assured and charismatic, Laura seems to have no difficulty living large and transitioning between all these different worlds.

So where did all that bulletproof confidence come from I can’t help but wonder as we hit the couch, where Laura folds comfortably into a seated Lotus.

Laura explains that by the time she was eight, her and older brother, Chris, were immersed in gymnastics; 30 hours a week of somersaults, backflips and vaults, travelling to tournaments and smashing through the challenging grading system. When Laura struggled to show the perfect, parallel-leg form required by the gymnastics judges she’d spend her nights on the couch, rest- ing telephone books on her lap to straighten out her legs. Meanwhile, the last thing she saw before falling asleep were the gymnastics posters plastered on her wall. “I feel like it gave me a sort of fearlessness,” she insists. “By the time I was ...