Dame Valerie Adams – the name says it all. The shot put queen is one of our country's all-time greatest athletes with a resume too long to list in full.
Having burst onto the scene as a youngster Adams won her first major international event at the 2001 World Youth Championships. That would spur her onto to senior success that would lead to two Olympic gold medals and one silver, four world championship gold medals along with a silver and three Commonwealth Games golds to go with two silvers.
The last of those silver medals came at these Gold Coast Commonwealth Games.
But of all Adams' success the last medal might be the most special given that she achieved the milestone less than six months after giving birth to her first child – a daughter called Kimoana.
Dame Valerie shed tears while talking to The Herald about what it meant to her to win a medal so soon after Kimoana's birth and how her training life has changed now that she is a mother.
