Over the next week, the Herald continues its series on 12 Kiwi athletes or teams to keep an eye on at the Games - whether for their medal potential, rapid global rise, or captivating road to Tokyo. This is the story of Dame Valerie Adams.
Tokyo Olympics 2020: 12 to watch - An enigma and trailblazer but still 'our Val' Adams
Valerie Adams moments after winning silver at the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games. Photo / Getty Images Images
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A chutzpah built on humble south Auckland foundations empowers people to refer to her on a first-and-only name basis. "Our Val" has come some distance from a reluctant teenager first hiffing a metal ball at secondary school in Mangere East.
Full Kiwi schedule below. Click on a name to see athlete's bio, upcoming events, past Games performance and medal chance.
"Hopefully this will further encourage young people that they can do anything … if they put their minds to it," Adams said, after arising for the governor-general.
Silver at the 2002 Manchester Commonwealth Games thrust her into the public eye as a 17-year-old. That collective gaze has remained unflinching, even as this talismanic figure contemplates a likely final curtain at the Tokyo Olympics on August 1.
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Adams has grown up shadowed by scrutiny, sometimes via her own choice when privacy is sacrificed at the altar of celebrity magazine contracts to pay the bills. Her Olympic and World Championship triumphs have sat cheek by jowl with injury and coaching dramas and further life minutiae such as marriage, divorce, and motherhood. The telephoto lens of social media has also arguably provided less shelter to her than athletic peers of yesteryear such as Dame Yvette Corlett, Sir Peter Snell, Sir Murray Halberg, Sir John Walker and Jack Lovelock.
Irrespective, few New Zealand sportspeople are as familiar with stepping atop a podium.
The double Olympic champion's CV is enviable, but recognition with a damehood was as much about her impact on historically marginalised Pacific Islanders as it was about heaving a 4kg sphere. The thread of Adams' achievements can help New Zealand weave a more cosmopolitan cultural and sporting tapestry in the 21st century.
An example of Adams' magnetism came in March 2013 at the Pacific Showcase Market on Auckland's waterfront. As part of the festivities, she competed in an exhibition meet at the far end of The Cloud.
Had the venue been a see-saw it would have dropped into the Waitemata Harbour as the crowds swarmed to glimpse her at work.
Bulldozing barriers is among Adams' core skills.
She is the only woman to win four consecutive athletics World Championships in an individual event; she secured 107 straight victories at international-ranked meets from September 17, 2006 to July 4, 2015; she was the first female thrower awarded the world governing body's athlete of the year title in 2014; she is the only woman anointed as the Halberg Supreme Award winner three years in a row across 2007, 2008 and 2009.
Adams even shattered the gender divide in Tonga. She was appointed the first woman matapule or chief of Houma, the village of her late mother Lilika. She was bestowed with the name Tongi Tupe Oe Taua, to acknowledge the impact of her feats.
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At Rio, she literally came within a stone's throw of New Zealand Olympic immortality as the country's first athlete to win gold medals at three consecutive Games.
American Michelle Carter pushed Adams to silver in the final round of competition.
Watch this space again in Tokyo. Adams, returning from the birth of two children, already has the fourth equal longest throw of 2021 with a 19.75m effort in Poland this month.
She starts her campaign a little after 10pm (NZT) tonight.
"Pregnancy does crazy things to your muscles and ligaments, and we have to factor my age in, too. But you don't want to regret anything once you retire. To qualify for a fifth Olympics is a triumph for myself and female athletes around the world."
Adams joins just Barbara Kendall among New Zealand women to reach that many editions. She has been vaccinated against the coronavirus and, when questioned in April about the prospects of an event cancellation, responded in typically frank fashion: "Covid-pending, my arse. Tokyo's going ahead, people."
She has the added incentive – alongside kayaker Lisa Carrington and rower Hamish Bond - of becoming the first of her compatriots to conquer at three separate Games.
In addition to that trio, runner Peter Snell, rowers Dick Joyce, Caroline and Georgina Evers-Swindell, coxswain Simon Dickie, kayakers Ian Ferguson and Paul MacDonald and equestrian rider Mark Todd have won at consecutive Olympics. Talk about sporting pedigree.
Adams endured her share of career hardships and deserves to bow out with a clean competition to counter toxic environments of the past.
She suffered the indignity of 'losing' to Belarusian drug cheat Nadzeya Ostapchuk at the London Olympics. Adams accepted silver but eventually received gold at a ceremony in Auckland. To compound matters, bureaucratic bungling by New Zealand administrators initially failed to see her entered in the competition.
As a 19-year-old at her maiden Games in Athens, she missed the top eight and the opportunity for three more throws. Four of those ahead of her subsequently copped doping bans.
On that note, Adams has been candid in support of World Athletics' decision to place a ban on Russia after evidence of a systemic doping programme.
"To save our sport and prevent younger athletes from doing such stupid things, they needed to take a stance," she said in 2016.
"If you don't hold a chicken by its neck and tell it to stop, then you'll never sort the situation out.
"I have no sympathy, whatsoever. I've been done over myself because of drug cheats. People might think I'm heartless and cold, but that's sport. It's competitive and you've got to do what's best for you. It's not because it's my fault; it's their fault."
Adams is one of two female shot putters who have won back-to-back Olympic titles. The other was Soviet Tamara Press in 1960 and 1964. Yet one barrier seemingly forever beyond her arc is the world record. She remains 23rd on the all-time distance list, despite access to the wonders of modern sports science. Her 21.24m best was set at the 2011 world championships in South Korea. Soviet Natalya Lisovskaya's world record of 22.63m, set at Moscow in June 1987, remains 1.39m beyond her reach.
Adams broke the shackles of a difficult childhood to be crowned on the world sporting stage.
Records started tumbling soon after she strode into the circle at Southern Cross Campus aged 13. The school's Māori motto "inā te mahi he rangatira" translates in English to "by deeds a chief is known". Talk about a prophecy.
Adams has returned on occasion to the school's prizegiving, where one of her old shoes is presented as the pinnacle sports trophy.
"They don't present it every year," she said.
"It only goes to a sportsperson who they believe has the necessary drive and work ethic. That makes it feel special, much like what we're doing as athletes, making sacrifices and sweating it out to earn medals."
Adams' mother died when she was 15, but not before making her daughter promise she would do everything possible to fulfil her talents.
Dame Valerie is keeping her word.
