Valerie Adams

Dame Valerie Kasanita Adams (formerly Vili; born 6 October 1984) is a retired New Zealand shot putter.

She is a four-time World champion, four-time World Indoor champion, two-time Olympic, three-time Commonwealth Games champion and twice IAAF Continental Cup winner.

She has a personal best throw of 21.24 m outdoors and 20.98 m indoors.

These marks are Oceanian, Commonwealth and New Zealand national records.

She also holds the Oceanian junior record (18.93 m) and the Oceanian youth record (17.54 m), as well as the World Championships record, World Indoor Championships record and Commonwealth Games record.

Adams was the third woman to win world championships at the youth, junior, and senior level of an athletics event, following the feats of Yelena Isinbayeva and Jana Pittman.

She was the first woman to win four consecutive individual titles at the IAAF World Championships.

In 1998 Adams met former javelin thrower Kirsten Hellier, who would become her coach for the next 11 years.

At national level, she has won fifteen shot put titles at the New Zealand Athletics Championships between 2001 and 2018, as well as having a hammer throw national title in 2003.

Adams first came to prominence when winning the World Youth Championships in 2001, with a throw of 16.87 m. She followed this up in 2002 by becoming World Junior champion, throwing 17.73 m, and gained her first international senior placing with the silver medal at the Commonwealth Games, throwing 17.45 m.

While still a teenager, Adams was a finalist at the 2003 World Championships in Athletics and the 2004 Summer Olympics.

She finished fifth at the 2003 World Championships at eighteen years of age.

Adams also won four times at the Australian Athletics Championships between 2004 and 2008.

At her first Olympics in 2004, Adams finished seventh (after two athletes' subsequent disqualification), while still recovering from an appendectomy she had just weeks before the competition.

Adams originally finished second at the World Athletics Final in 2005, but was promoted to gold after Astapchuk's results were annulled.

She had the longest shot put performance of the season every year from 2006 to 2014, bar 2008 when she was second to Natallia Mikhnevich (later banned for doping that year).

From 2006 to 2012 she was chosen as the New Zealand Sportswoman of the Year seven times consecutively and has been awarded the Lonsdale Cup on five occasions in recognition as the leading national athlete in an Olympic sport.

Adams retired from athletics competition in 2022.

In that year she was appointed to the board of High Performance Sport New Zealand, and was the subject of the documentary Dame Valerie Adams: More than Gold.

At the 2006 Commonwealth Games Adams won the gold medal, breaking the 20-year-old Commonwealth Games record of 19.00 m with a throw of 19.66 m.

In 2007, Adams went to the Osaka World Championships as a favourite to take a medal due to her being one of only three women to throw over 20 m before the championships.

In qualifying, Adams led the field with a throw of 19.45 m. Adams held second place behind Nadzeya Astapchuk throughout the final, but responded well in the last round with a mammoth throw and Commonwealth record of 20.54 m to take the gold.

This made Adams one of few female athletes ever to take IAAF World Titles at youth, junior and senior level.

In 2008 Adams broke the Oceania record in winning her first World Indoor Title in Valencia (20.19 m).

At the Beijing Olympics, she qualified for the final with the longest distance thrown, 19.73 metres, on her first attempt.

She won the gold with a throw of 20.56 m, a personal best, beating Belarusian thrower Natallia Mikhnevich.

It was the first Olympic gold medal in track and field for New Zealand since John Walker won the 1500 metre race in 1976.

She also won the New Zealand Sports Award of the year in 2008.

At the 2009 Grande Prêmio Rio in Brazil Adams won the competition with a new personal best and Oceanian area record of 20.69 m. The throw was also the world leading distance for the event.

In August, Adams won at the 2009 World Championships in Athletics in Berlin with a throw of 20.44 metres, ahead of the German Nadine Kleinert and Gong Lijiao of China.

Adams had a winning streak that extended to 56 wins at elite-level competitions, which started in August 2010 and ended in July 2015.

At the 2010 IAAF World Indoor Championships Adams was defeated by Nadzeya Astapchuk by a large margin, in spite of the New Zealander setting a continental record of 20.49 m. Adams announced on 28 March 2010 that she would no longer be coached by Kirsten Hellier after an 11-year partnership.

In April 2010 she announced her new coach was Didier Poppe.

Adams was consistently beaten by Nadzeya Astapchuk in the big meetings that season.

She set a meeting record and season's best of 20.37 m at the Athletics Bridge meet in Slovakia, later saying that a change in her technique that April had begun to pay dividends.

Later that season she won at the 2010 IAAF Continental Cup with a season's best mark of 20.85 m and also competed at the Commonwealth Games in New Delhi, where she set a Games record mark of 20.47 m to retain her title.

Adams won silver medals at the 2012 Summer Olympics (amended to a gold after prior winner Nadzeya Astapchuk was disqualified for doping), 2016 Summer Olympics, 2005 World Championships in Athletics, and the Commonwealth Games in 2002 and 2018.

The following year Adams finished third at the World Championships with a personal best throw of 19.87 m. When the original winner, Nadzeya Astapchuk, was disqualified following a 2013 retest of her drug sample from the competition that was found to be positive, Adams' original bronze medal was upgraded to silver.

She was the IAAF World Athlete of the Year in 2014 and the Track & Field News Athlete of the Year in 2012 and 2013.

She was also a bronze medallist at the 2016 IAAF World Indoor Championships.