Valerie Vili
Encyclopedia
Valerie Kasanita Adams (formerly known as Valerie Vili), ONZM
New Zealand Order of Merit
The New Zealand Order of Merit is an order established in 1996 "for those persons who in any field of endeavour, have rendered meritorious service to the Crown and nation or who have become distinguished by their eminence, talents, contributions or other merits."The order includes five...

 (born 6 October 1984) is a shot putter
Shot put
The shot put is a track and field event involving "putting" a heavy metal ball—the shot—as far as possible. It is common to use the term "shot put" to refer to both the shot itself and to the putting action....

 from New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...

. She is the reigning Olympic, world and Commonwealth champion. She also currently holds the New Zealand
New Zealand records in athletics
The following are the national records in athletics in New Zealand maintained by New Zealand's national athletics federation: Athletics New Zealand ....

, Oceanian and Commonwealth records for the shot put with a personal best of 21.24 m.

Career

In 1998 Adams first met former javelin throw
Javelin throw
The javelin throw is a track and field athletics throwing event where the object to be thrown is the javelin, a spear approximately 2.5 metres in length. Javelin is an event of both the men's decathlon and the women's heptathlon...

er Kirsten Hellier
Kirsten Hellier
Kirsten Louise Hellier is a former javelin thrower, who represented New Zealand at the Commonwealth and the Olympic Games. She set her personal best in 1994 with the old javelin type...

, who would become her coach for the next 11 years.

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
2002 World Junior Championships in Athletics
The 2002 World Junior Championships in Athletics is the 2002 version of the World Junior Championships in Athletics. It was held in Kingston, Jamaica from July 16 to July 21, 2002.-Men:-Women:-Medals table:...

 champion, throwing 17.73 m, and had her first taste of senior success winning a silver medal
Silver medal
A silver medal is a medal awarded to the second place finisher of contests such as the Olympic Games, Commonwealth Games, and contests with similar formats....

 at the Commonwealth Games
2002 Commonwealth Games
The 2002 Commonwealth Games were held in Manchester, England from 25 July to 4 August 2002. The XVII Commonwealth Games was the largest multi-sport event ever to be held in the UK, eclipsing London's 1948 Summer Olympics in numbers of teams and athletes participating.After the 1996 Manchester...

 with 17.45 m.

She finished fifth at the 2003 World Championships
2003 World Championships in Athletics
The 9th World Championships in Athletics, under the auspices of the International Association of Athletics Federations, were held from 23 August to 31 August 2003 in the Stade de France in Saint-Denis, Seine-Saint-Denis, France.-Track:...

 at eighteen years of age. At her first Olympics in 2004
2004 Summer Olympics
The 2004 Summer Olympic Games, officially known as the Games of the XXVIII Olympiad, was a premier international multi-sport event held in Athens, Greece from August 13 to August 29, 2004 with the motto Welcome Home. 10,625 athletes competed, some 600 more than expected, accompanied by 5,501 team...

, Adams finished eighth, while still recovering from an appendectomy she had just weeks before the competition.

The following year, Adams earned a place in the international elite, winning a bronze medal
Bronze medal
A bronze medal is a medal awarded to the third place finisher of contests such as the Olympic Games, Commonwealth Games, etc. The practice of awarding bronze third place medals began at the 1904 Olympic Games in St...

 at the World Championships
2005 World Championships in Athletics
The 10th World Championships in Athletics, under the auspices of the International Association of Athletics Federations , were held in the Olympic Stadium, Helsinki, Finland , the site of the first IAAF World Championships in 1983. One theme of the 2005 championships was paralympic sports, some of...

 with a personal best throw of 19.87 m, and going on to finish second at the World Athletics Final. At the 2006 Commonwealth Games
2006 Commonwealth Games
The 2006 Commonwealth Games were held in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia between 15 March and 26 March 2006. It was the largest sporting event to be staged in Melbourne, eclipsing the 1956 Summer Olympics in terms of the number of teams competing, athletes competing, and events being held.The site...

 the 1.96 m-tall athlete won the gold medal
Gold medal
A gold medal is typically the medal awarded for highest achievement in a non-military field. Its name derives from the use of at least a fraction of gold in form of plating or alloying in its manufacture...

, 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
Osaka
is a city in the Kansai region of Japan's main island of Honshu, a designated city under the Local Autonomy Law, the capital city of Osaka Prefecture and also the biggest part of Keihanshin area, which is represented by three major cities of Japan, Kyoto, Osaka and Kobe...

 World Championships
2007 World Championships in Athletics
The 11th World Championships in Athletics, under the auspices of the International Association of Athletics Federations , were held at Nagai Stadium in Osaka, Japan from 24 August to 2 September 2007...

 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
2008 IAAF World Indoor Championships
The 2008 IAAF World Indoor Championships in Athletics were held at the Luis Puig Palace in Valencia, Spain, March 7-9, 2008.-Bid:Valencia was announced the winning bidder by the IAAF on November 13, 2005 at an IAAF Council meeting in Moscow, Russia.-Men:...

 in Valencia (20.19 m). At the Beijing Olympics
2008 Summer Olympics
The 2008 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XXIX Olympiad, was a major international multi-sport event that took place in Beijing, China, from August 8 to August 24, 2008. A total of 11,028 athletes from 204 National Olympic Committees competed in 28 sports and 302 events...

, she qualified for the final with the longest distance thrown, 19.73 meters, on her first attempt. She won the gold with a throw of 20.56 m, a personal best, beating Belarus
Belarus
Belarus , officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered clockwise by Russia to the northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Its capital is Minsk; other major cities include Brest, Grodno , Gomel ,...

sian thrower Natallia Mikhnevich
Natallia Mikhnevich
Natallia Mikhnevich is a Belarusian shot putter.She finished third at the 2000 World Junior Championships, but first appeared on the international athletics scene at the 2004 Olympics, where she finished 5th. She repeated this position at the World Athletics Final later that year, and in 2005 she...

. It is the first Olympic gold medal in track and field
Track and field
Track and field is a sport comprising various competitive athletic contests based around the activities of running, jumping and throwing. The name of the sport derives from the venue for the competitions: a stadium which features an oval running track surrounding a grassy area...

 for New Zealand since John Walker won the 1,500 meter race in 1976
1976 Summer Olympics
The 1976 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XXI Olympiad, was an international multi-sport event celebrated in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, in 1976. Montreal was awarded the rights to the 1976 Games on May 12, 1970, at the 69th IOC Session in Amsterdam, over the bids of Moscow and...

. 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
2009 World Championships in Athletics
The 12th IAAF World Championships in Athletics were held in Berlin, Germany from 15–23 August 2009. The majority of events took place in the Olympiastadion, while the marathon and racewalking events started and finished at the Brandenburg Gate....

 in Berlin with a throw of 20.44 meters, ahead of the German Nadine Kleinert
Nadine Kleinert
', since 1999 married Schmitt is a German shot putter.Her personal best throw is 20.20 metres, achieved in August 2009 in Berlin.-Achievements:-References:...

 and Lijiao Gong of China.

At the 2010 IAAF World Indoor Championships
2010 IAAF World Indoor Championships
The 2010 IAAF World Indoor Championships in Athletics was held between 12 and 14 March at the ASPIRE Dome in Doha, Qatar. The championships was the first of six IAAF World Athletics Series events to take place in 2010.-Bidding and organisation:...

 she was defeated by Nadzeya Ostapchuk
Nadzeya Ostapchuk
Nadzeya Astapchuk is a Belarusian shot putter.Born in Stolin, she was initially interested in basketball but the lack of a local team left her unable to pursue the sport further. Astapchuk instead began practising in throwing events and her first international title came at the age of seventeen,...

 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 is Didier Poppe. She 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
Athletics Bridge
The Athletics Bridge is an annual track and field meeting which takes place at the Mestský štadión in Dubnica nad Váhom, Slovakia. One of the European Athletics Outdoor Premium Meetings, it is typically among of the last competitions held in the European summer track and field circuit.The meeting...

 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
2010 IAAF Continental Cup
The 1st IAAF Continental Cup was an international track and field sporting event held under the auspices of the International Association of Athletics Federations. Originally scheduled as the 11th IAAF World Cup in Athletics, it was renamed in 2008 when the IAAF revamped the competition format...

 with a season's best mark of 20.85 m and also competed at the Commonwealth Games
Athletics at the 2010 Commonwealth Games
The athletics competition at the 2010 Commonwealth Games was held in New Delhi, India between 6 and 14 October. The track and field events took place between 6–12 October at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium while the marathon contests were held on a street course running through the city on 14...

 in New Delhi, where she set a Games record mark of 20.47 m to retain her title.

Her 2011 season started with a New Zealand all-comers record throw of 20.33 m in Wellington
Wellington
Wellington is the capital city and third most populous urban area of New Zealand, although it is likely to have surpassed Christchurch due to the exodus following the Canterbury Earthquake. It is at the southwestern tip of the North Island, between Cook Strait and the Rimutaka Range...

.

Personal life

Adams was born in Rotorua
Rotorua
Rotorua is a city on the southern shores of the lake of the same name, in the Bay of Plenty region of the North Island of New Zealand. The city is the seat of the Rotorua District, a territorial authority encompassing the city and several other nearby towns...

, New Zealand, to a Tonga
Tonga
Tonga, officially the Kingdom of Tonga , is a state and an archipelago in the South Pacific Ocean, comprising 176 islands scattered over of ocean in the South Pacific...

n mother (Lilika Ngauamo) and an English father (Sydney Adams). She was married to Bertrand Vili, a discus throw
Discus throw
The discus throw is an event in track and field athletics competition, in which an athlete throws a heavy disc—called a discus—in an attempt to mark a farther distance than his or her competitors. It is an ancient sport, as evidenced by the 5th century BC Myron statue, Discobolus...

er from New Caledonia
New Caledonia
New Caledonia is a special collectivity of France located in the southwest Pacific Ocean, east of Australia and about from Metropolitan France. The archipelago, part of the Melanesia subregion, includes the main island of Grande Terre, the Loyalty Islands, the Belep archipelago, the Isle of...

, but divorced him early in 2010.

External links





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