Loans worth millions of dollars have been written after meets held by the Vikings Triathlon Club.

And early in the morning Canberra's business heavyweights, many of them blokes, are finding space on a studio floor to stretch on Pilates mats alongside other influential types.

These are not the places the deals are done - they are the places where the deals are won.

Canberra, a city of just 370,000 people, boasts more than its share of decision-makers.

So where are the partnerships formed? The staff poached? The contacts made? And what are the activities that bring people together?

The mammoth agreement to sell destroyers to Sri Lanka did not sprout from a long lunch. It was an accord germinated during one of the city's most important rounds of golf.

Invitation only, this is no corporate booze-up and staffers are not allowed. It's a golf game where few people care about the score.

Eight times a year, ambassadors and high commissioners from nations as diverse as the US and Botswana play alongside deputy secretaries of federal government departments, decision-makers from large IT companies and sponsors, and other heavy hitters, such as David Hurley, chief of the Australian Defence Force.

''There's an A-list of Canberra identities invited,'' said Nigel Wilson, organiser of the Sporting Heads of Mission golf days. ''Very little of it is to do with golf.''

The estate agent and former golf professional, who has been running the golf days for 14 years, cited the destroyer deal, plus a separate agreement worth $50 million to global company SAP, as some of the biggest transactions done on the course in recent memory. Sponsor BMW often sells series seven Beamers to the diplomats.

Brian Evans, founder of IT firm DataFlex, said it was one of the few golf days where business was still being done.

"I've seen people able to use those connections at ambassador level very well,'' Mr Evans said.

In Canberra, golf is yet to be killed off by cycling as the sport for networkers, Mr Wilson says.

''If someone's not fit, then cycling could ostracise them,'' he said.

Fitness is a common ground to have with a potential client, if Martin Zachara's schedule is an indicator. The mortgage broker and triathlete, 38, talks business as he rides with 30 other cyclists, and invites clients and contacts to his Friday lunchtime walks. Contacts were also welcome to come to his workout sessions in Deakin.

Zachara has written million-dollar loans for members of his triathlon club, the Vikings, and says triathletes are generally in the higher socio-economic bracket.

Ayesha Razzaq is an engineer by background who does not carry business cards, refuses to discuss work at the gym and limits herself to one skinny flat white coffee a day. She makes many of her best contacts at her children's childcare centre and school.

''Home and work become intertwined because I've got two young kids,'' said the woman who develops markets as well as sales and marketing strategies for the territory's biggest energy provider, ActewAGL.