Julia Wilkinson credits golden boots and a green sports bra for her success

Sparkling gold UGG boots are not a look everyone can carry off, especially on a pool deck. But somehow Canadian swimmer Julia Wilkinson makes it work.

To understand Wilkinson's affection for her shiny shoes, and the bag of assorted items she lugs around with her, you need to understand a little bit about the 25-year-old from Stratford, Ont.

Wilkinson is 10 pounds of energy packed into a five-pound bag. She talks faster than a hungry dog gobbles food. She regularly throws up before big events and travels with a stuffed sheepdog she's had since she was five years old.

Now before the wacko meter dips into the red it's important to know Wilkinson is one of the most likeable people you'll ever met. She's intelligent, friendly and engaging. And maybe just a little bit different.

Her own boyfriend, soon to be husband, calls her a "cute nerd.''

Which gets back to the boots.

On the pool deck, getting ready for a race, some swimmers go barefoot. Others wear sandals or sneakers. Not Wilkinson. Her feet gleam in her bright UGGs. For some athletes it would be a cry for attention. It's Wilkinson's way of saying, let's have a little fun.

"It's a silly, fun, girly thing to do,'' Wilkinson told The Canadian Press. "We spend so much time in the pool, being so focused on being an athlete, sometimes the fun gets a little bit lost and you get really stressed.

"It's kind of a nice fun way to unwind. It probably seems really superficial to people outside of it, but it works.''

Besides the boots and stuffed sheepdog, Wilkinson has a lucky green sports bra, which needed emergency repair by a teammate's mother at one meet, her yoga mat and her pillow.

"I'm a little OCD,'' she told The Toronto Star.

Hmmmmm.

Wilkinson faced near tragedy recently. In a blog she writes for CBC she talks about leaving her pillow on an airplane flight from Victoria to Vancouver. Disaster was avoided when her mother and sister turned up to watch her compete at a meet in Montreal.

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"She didn't just buy me a pillow. She bought four (!) pillows, so I could choose one that felt closest to the one I had lost,'' Wilkinson wrote. "She maintains that we needed new pillows at the house anyway, so that's why she bought extras, but I think it's just because she's the kind of mom who really "gets it." She may not know any of my best times, but she doesn't think I'm a diva when I freak out about losing my pillow. As "mothers of Olympians" go, she is definitely one of the best (if not the best). ''

Wilkinson's mother is an English teacher and used to take Julia and her sister to the Shakespeare festival in Stratford. It was at Stratford that Shane Minks, a baseball player she met while swimming at Texas A&M, proposed to Wilkinson.

Buried under the idiosyncrasies is a swimmer burning with competitive fire.

Wilkinson swam an exhausting 11 races, including relays, at the 2008 Beijing Olympics in Beijing. Her best result was seventh in the 200-metre individual medley.

In London Wilkinson will swim the 100 freestyle and 100 backstroke plus the relays. She's a medal long shot in freestyle but a contender in the backstroke.

In a recent interview Wilkinson mused about her constant battle of mind over body.

"I always think 'I wonder how fast I could swim if I had a lobotomy,'" she blurted out to Donna Spencer of The Canadian Press. "There's so much of your brain that holds you back. You get all nervous and crazy."

But it's the nervous and crazy that makes Wilkinson fun.