I first met Valerie when she was only 14 years old and on her way to her first major Championships (World Youth Championships in Poland) in 1999. The Youth team joined a Development Team that I was managing for the first part of the Tour which included the Scottish Championships in Grangemouth.
It was great to be with New Zealand athletes in my home country. The athletes were greeted with memorable Scottish hospitality. Scotland was treated to an early glimpse of the world's greatest woman shot putter. I remember the ground announcer who sounded like the late great Scottish rugby commentator Bill McLaren. "Into the shot circle steps big Valerie Adams, could be Jonah Lomu's sister" as she propelled the shot to beat the existing Scottish record by metres.
Fourteen-year-old Adams made that World under-18 final and went on to win the World Junior, World Olympic and Commonwealth Gold medals. It was encouraging that she was joined in the Olympic final by Maddison-Lee Wesche who had also previously taken gold at the World Junior Championships. Twenty-two-year-old Wesche finished 6th with an outstanding 18.98 put, breaking her personal best set in qualifying.
New Zealand also had a second finalist in the men's shot final. I saw the start of the final as I boarded my flight to the South Island but had to wait until landing to find the result. Amazingly the first three places were identical to Rio de Janeiro five years, Walsh again finishing third with a season's best of 22.47 metres.
Jacko Gil was again 9th, only 2 centimetres shy of getting three more trials as part of the top eight.
Julia Ratcliffe made the hammer final and like Gil was close to having three more throws while New Zealand high jump record holder Hamish Kerr made the final jumping an impressive 2.30 metres, only 1 centimetre short of his New Zealand Record.
He came so close to jumping 2.32 metres while another Cooks Gardens record holder, Nick Willis, in his fifth Olympics made the 1500 metre semi-final at 38 with a season's best to round off an amazing Olympic career that includes a silver and bronze medals and two semifinals. I watched that Tokyo semifinal in my tiny motel room in Christchurch on the way to Dunedin where only TV1 was available
I was back to full coverage in Dunedin on Friday and Saturday. I was able to see Sifan Hassan, who I wrote about last week, finish third in the 1500 metres in her quest to win a middle-distance triple. It was an excellent race won by Faith Kipygon in an Olympic record (3:53.11) and to my delight Scottish athlete Laura Muir took silver with a new British record of 3:54.50.
Hassan did return the following evening to win the 5000 metres in impressive style. Two out of three golds and a bronze was truly outstanding as was 20-year-old Jacob Ingebrigtsen's epic 1500 metre win on the final day.
In between Hassan's Olympic finals I was able to watch Whanganui athlete and New Zealand Schools International George Lambert take his maiden New Zealand Cross Country medal in Dunedin with a bronze medal in the Under 20 grade after a strong performance on the Chisholm Links in Dunedin.
Paula Conder finished one place shy of a medal in her master's grade. Daniel Sinclair, who still has year left in the under-18s, repeated his 8th place at New Zealand Schools and was only 21 seconds shy of a medal in an encouraging effort.
