Athletics: Vili not driven by world record, says coach

World records don't feature highly on outstanding shot putter Valerie Vili's agenda, coach Kirsten Hellier said today.

Vili today continued her total domination of the women's shot put with the best throw in four years to win the Word Athletics Final in Greece.

It was the 25th victory on end for Vili, who last month won her second successive world championships title in Germany to add to the Olympic gold medal she won in Beijing the previous year.

Vili bettered her personal best of 20.69 twice in four throws to win by an astonishing 150cm from nearest rival Nadzeva Ostapchuk (Belarus).

The 24-year-old Vili started strongly as always with a solid 20.30m effort before blasting the opposition away with her second-round 21.07m.

She followed that up with a third-round 20.72m before fouling out on her last throw. Ostapchuk was a distant second in 19.56m with Natallia Mikhnevich third on 19.27m.

The women's shot put world record stands at 22.63m and was set in 1987 by Russian Natalya Lisovskaya. Although that was at a time when doping regulations and testing were far less stringent than they are now, Hellier resolutely refuses to indulge in speculation.

"It's a toughie, because you don't know what circumstances the record was set under, and you'll never know," she said today.

"To be honest, our focus has never been on the world record, our focus has always been on realistically establishing really good consistent performances.

"We know when that happens, you produce the next step up. Our big goal for this year was to consistently throw over 20m and to have an average of well into the 20s and we've achieved that."

Hellier said conjecture about the legality of Lisovskaya's world record was pointless.

"You'll never know, she was never caught and you can't make these judgements. Our focus is on us, and what we're doing. What happened back then, happened back then."

An overjoyed Vili rang Hellier at 4am on Monday - "she'd get a good clip around the ears if she didn't" - to pass on the good news, which Hellier said came as no great surprise.

"We'd had a great 3-1/2 weeks since the world champs, and we'd made a few changes to some technique issues. When I left her late last week, she'd really started to nail things, and we knew there was something pretty good brewing."

Hellier wouldn't be drawn on which aspects of Vili's technique had been tweaked: "I'm just going to say we changed a few things - it was something that had been on my mind for a little while."

She said just before the world championships in Berlin last month was obviously the wrong time to work on technical adjustments. But after a couple of days off following Vili's successful title defence, the pair began work on some fine-tuning.

"We made the change, and Val was happy straight away," Hellier said. "We had another couple of competitions, and in the last 10 days in Potsdam (Germany), we were really able to focus, and it was great."

Vili is now taking a hard-earned holiday in Europe, but plans to return home to Auckland in time for a double birthday celebration.

"We've got exactly the same birthday, October 6. It's the big 40 for me, and the big 25 for Val, but we're calling it a 65th so we don't feel so bad," Hellier joked.

And after that? Training starts again, as the pair look at entrenching Vili's position at the top of the world rankings.

"Next year it'll be no different, we'll be looking at increasing that average again. Val's still young, and hopefully we've got a few more years."

- NZPA