Athletics: Val Adams wary after layoff

Valerie Adams competed for the first time this year. Photo / Greg Bowker

Valerie Adams has dominated women's shot put for so long, it's easy to forget she's only 30. But the two-time Olympic champion and four-time world champion is starting to show signs she isn't indestructible as the chasing pack close the gap.

Last night, she returned to competition for the first time this year after surgery to her right elbow and the removal of bone from her left shoulder when she contested the Diamond League meet at Stade de France in Paris.

Adams went in genuinely unsure if she would be able to extend her remarkable record of 56-straight competition wins at internationally-ranked meets, stretching back to August 2010, because of her long layoff and the form of others.

German Christina Schwanitz went into the meet having set a personal best of 20.77m in May - Adams had not gone beyond that mark since beating Schwanitz with a put of 20.88m at the 2013 world championships - and China's Lijiao Gong and American Michelle Carter have also surpassed 20m this season.

"It's great to see that level of competition," she said ahead of last night's event. "It shows the standard has gone up. The level hasn't been too flash the last couple of years. Hopefully I'll be right amongst them. However, there is a bigger picture to look at than [today]. That means defending my titles at the world championships and Olympics."

The elbow operation required moving the ulna nerve from the bottom to the top of her right forearm. That meant cutting a hole through the muscle to thread through a tendon she described as "pretty much rotten". The nerves had to repair millimetre by millimetre over months.

Adams said she had fully rehabilitated but it hadn't been without some nervous times and the inability to throw a tennis ball post-surgery was scary. In May, she admitted she could see her Olympic dream - the prospect of winning a third consecutive gold - literally slipping through her fingers.

"As an athlete, we experience pain on a daily basis, but I'm ready to start competing. We're pushing our bodies to the limit and they're not made to be pushed like that on a daily basis. It takes longer to warm up. I use a lot more strapping and I rub a lot more hot stuff on my body. Once I could just turn up and start jogging. Now I need more tape and cream.

"The hardest moment was not knowing if I could throw again during the recovery. I had to accept it was going to take longer than I thought. The nerve takes a long time to grow. When it is your throwing arm, that's your whole life."

"The ring finger and pinky on my right hand were such that I couldn't pick up the phone, cut my fingernails or scratch my hair because I had no strength. It was more difficult because it was my throwing arm. The nerves, muscles and ligaments wouldn't respond."

Adams wasn't tempted to insure her arms in the aftermath.

"I'm not American," she quipped. "God's given me these parts, these genes and these talents to use as well as I can. I don't regret having four surgeries in one year, that's part of the territory. There's a lot of nerves, but I'm anxious to get into the swing of things."