Master coach Dan Pfaff has a fascinating take on unique Australian long jump sensation Fabrice Lapierre.
In Pfaff's opinion, Lapierre leaps like a kangaroo, has a nervous system like copper, is allergic to the weights room and thinks so fast at times it is as though he has hamsters running around in his head.
And he was "nil for four" in the key areas when Pfaff decided last year to take on a drifting Lapierre at the request of his close friend and the Australian's former coach Jim VanHootegem.
"I think the things that derail athletes at any level of world sport are - programming, what are you doing in your training?; your medical inputs, are they progressing and preventing?; lifestyle; and your mechanics, how are you executing?" said Pfaff.
"Those are the big four and he was nil for four.
"I told him 'you're running has gotten sloppy; your take-off is not effective; you are not consistent with training; you are all over the place with your travel and programming.
"'You are cut-and-pasting things, you cannot be world-class without a direct coach every day' and the medical was non-existent because he had lost all of his funding."
For all that, Pfaff recognised Lapierre was a special talent.
He really liked him.
He likes Australians in general - with fellow long jumper Mitchell Watt another member of his training squad in Phoenix, while Steve Hooker also spent time there in the twilight of his career.
Pfaff likes interesting people.
So he invited Lapierre to join his squad and was rewarded when the Australian defied a sore hamstring to claim silver at the world championships in Beijing behind another Pfaff-coached athlete - Britain's Greg Rutherford.
Not that it has been easy for Pfaff - or for Lapierre.
This is an athlete now aged in his 30s who still found a way to miss two buses to the Bird's Nest Stadium on the day of the qualifying round and then misplaced his official credentials.
Pfaff and Australian jumps coach Gary Bourne felt like tearing their hearts out.
"I don't like robots," said Pfaff.
"I think God has a sense of humour, because I keep getting these guys that are just off the chain.
"Rutherford is no walk in the park, (Canadian Olympic 100m champion) Donovan Bailey in 1996, talk about management.
"I keep getting the wildcards.
" ... In Fabrice, we have an expression in the States, he's a bit of a lone wolf, kind of marches to his own drummer.
"He's a really neat psychological mix, he is kind of ADD, like his mind is super busy but he is real laidback and chilled so he looks like he is not interested.
"But his brain is going 100 miles an hour at processing information so that presents a challenge.
"Usually in 43 years of coaching, you would think you had had every athlete prototype you could get, but Fabrice has broken the mould."
Lapierre's best year in the sport came back in 2010 when he won world indoors and Commonwealth gold, set his PB of 8.40m and produced an amazing wind-assisted jump of 8.78 in Perth.
Winning silver at the Beijing world titles topped all that and Pfaff can see no reason why Lapierre won't improve even further in the second year under his tutelage, which takes in the Rio Olympics.
"Statistically, that's what I've found from 43 years of coaching," said the American.
"They understand the system, they understand the philosophy, they're settled in and the team has coalesced around them."
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