KEY POINTS:
It's called the Valoon and created by primary school pupils to propel a shotput further than Olympic gold medallist Valerie Vili.
And yesterday the champion looked on as the awkward, helium-filled contraption designed by four students from the tiny Duvauchelle School in the South Island sailed past the mark she had set.
"I congratulate them wholeheartedly," Vili said of the Valoon's performance.
She noted the device was assisted by a strong wind - happily blowing in the direction the young inventors needed.
"It's machine versus me."
Before the trial, pupil Hunter Ball, 9, was confident of success, as long as the crucial balloon component of the Valoon remained intact for its flight.
The students' work was one of 450 entries in a design competition run by Visa called Val vs the Machine. The winning primary and high school concepts were manufactured for the contest.
Also firing yesterday was I Liv Eirelav (which is Valerie Vili spelt backwards) Mega Grunta, the brainchild of Central Hawkes Bay College students Brendan Taylor and Rhyan Jane.
"Originally we thought of having a grunting every time it fired a shotput," Brendan, 16, said of the catapult-like device. "But they weren't able to actually make that aspect of it."
