Plagued by injury and frustrated at the doping scandals tainting her sport, New Zealand’s Valerie Adams says she’s intent on winning an unprecedented third women’s shot put gold in Rio.
Few athletes have dominated their event like the towering Adams, who stands 193 centimetres (6ft 4in) tall and weighs a muscular 120 kilograms.
The Kiwi won gold at the Beijing and London Games — the latter after the original winner Nadzeya Ostapchuck was disqualified for steroid use.
She also has four world championship and three world indoor titles and won a record 56 straight international competitions between 2010 and 2014.
In addition, she is one of only nine athletes, alongside the likes of Usain Bolt, to have claimed world titles at youth, junior and senior levels.
But the 31-year-old found herself in the unfamiliar position of chasing the pack after shoulder, elbow and knee surgery sidelined her in 2015.
Adams, who has a personal best of 21.24 metres set in 2011, appears to be timing her comeback perfectly, throwing beyond 20 metres in her final two pre-Games events this month, including a season-best 20.19m in Budapest.
She had not previously cracked 20 metres since 2014 and, while she needed throws of 20.56m and 20.70m to win in Beijing and London, Adams was confident tweaks to her technique would provide extra distance in Rio.
Known as an intimidating presence on the field, the plain-spoken Adams also believes her fierce competitive nature gives her a mental edge over rivals. “Come August 12, Valerie Adams will be out there with her googly eyes.
“Whatever happens on the day happens, but all I know is that I’m going to leave my heart and soul out there.”
Perfect genes Adams, who towers over most of her fellow competitors, credits her extraordinary physique to her late parents.
Mother Lilika Ngauamo was from the Pacific island of Tonga, renowned for its powerful rugby players.
Father Sid was an English ex-Royal Navy sailor who stood almost seven foot (2.13 metres) and sired 18 children to five woman after settling in New Zealand.
The youngest of the brood is basketball star Steven Adams, another seven-footer and hulking centre who was the breakout star of Oklahoma City Thunder’s run to the NBA Western Conference finals this year.
“It’s a great feeling watching Steven’s success but I think the real star has to be our dad for gifting us amazing English genes, along with our Tongan genes, the perfect combination really,” she said.
The Adams’s family DNA may have bestowed her with natural gifts, but too often the New Zealander has found herself competing against rivals who use doping to get ahead.
She was seething after Ostapchuck’s cheating denied her a golden moment on the podium in London — her medal was awarded in Auckland weeks later — and is a fervent supporter of efforts to clean up her sport.
“My event has been tainted by drug cheats, but I can’t control what anyone else does,” she said before winning the 2014 IAAF female athlete of the year award.
Adams backs the ban on Russia’s entire track and field team from the Rio Games after revelations of massive, State-sponsored cheating.
She pointed to recent reports that 2012 samples from Yevgeniya Kolodko, silver medallist in London, came back positive after being retested, saying “something drastic” was needed to clean up the sport.
“They need to know and learn that this can’t continue... I’m glad it’s happened,” she earlier this year.
Making mum proud Adams cites her mother, who died of cancer when she was a teenager, as the inspiration for her Olympic success.
The pair watched the opening ceremony of the 2000 Sydney Games together in a hospice and Adams decided then that she would become an Olympian.
“It was a tough moment for me, a poor 15-year-old, but in some ways it was my breakthrough because it gave me my life goal,” she said in 2014.
“Everything since then has been about making my mum proud.” © AFP 2016
