Dame Valerie Adams

The Adams family are all tall – the average height of the men is 6 feet 9 inches (205.74 cm), and for the women, it is 6 feet (182.88 cm). Dame Valerie slots somewhere in the middle, at 6 feet 4 inches (193 cm). Her younger brother Steven Adams (7 feet/213 cm) is a professional basketball player in the NBA. Four other brothers have played professional basketball in New Zealand. She is now coaching her sister Lisa Adams, paralympic champion and world record holder in the F37 shot put.

Valerie was 14 when she made everyone sit up and take notice by winning the under- 18 National Junior Shot Put Championship. Already at her adult height, she had dabbled in basketball and was keeping her sporting options open. Her coach, Kirsten Hellier, a former national champion in javelin, took a young Valerie under her wing when she was 13, and began coaching her.

“When I was learning to throw the shot, she was learning to become a better coach at the shot,” Valerie says.

In 2000, when Valerie was just 15, her mother died and, in 2001, Valerie moved into Kirsten’s home for 12 months. “I was reliant on Kirsten when Mum died. I had no parent figure, and Kirsten filled that role.” That year, Valerie won the World Youth Championships, and, in 2002, became the World Junior champion. She also competed at the Commonwealth Games in Manchester, taking home the silver medal with a throw of 17.45 meters.

At her first appearance on the Olympic stage at Athens in 2004, Valerie placed fifth. She was still recovering from an appendectomy she’d had just weeks before. Between 2001 and 2021, Valerie won 17 shot put titles at the New Zealand Athletics Championships, and held the hammer throw national title in 2013. She was also New Zealand Sportswoman of the Year for seven consecutive years, and won the Lonsdale Cup five times, recognising her position as the leading national athlete in an Olympic sport.

In 2008, Valerie became the first female New Zealand athlete to stand on top of an Olympic podium since Yvette Williams in 1952, when she won gold in the shot put at Beijing. She also broke a 32-year drought for New Zealand Olympic medals in track and field since John Walker in 1976.

For 23 years, Valerie focused on training:

“When I wasn’t training, I was thinking about training. I would go to sleep and run over the last tactical session in my head. Training was my whole world. And then I became a parent.”

In 2017 Dame Valerie gave birth to her daughter Kimoana by caesarean section, and competed at the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games just six months after she was born, winning a silver medal. In 2019, her son Tava Adams-Price was welcomed into the world.

“Coming back and competing at the Commonwealth Games was quite extraordinary, but also very difficult, mentally and physically. For me, being a mother has given my life some balance,” she says.

In total, Dame Valerie competed at five Olympic Games, winning two golds, a silver, and a bronze medal; five Commonwealth Games, winning three gold and two silver medals; is a four-time world champion, four-time world indoor champion, and has won the IAAF Continental Cup twice. She was only the third woman to win world championships at the youth, junior, and senior level of an athletics event. She was also the IAAF World Athlete of the Year in 2014.

In 2015, Dame Valerie was bestowed a chiefly title and a new name, Tongi Tupe Oe Taua, the first woman to be anointed a matapule, or chief, in her village of Houma. She is proud of her dual heritage, and thankful for her mother’s early guidance in this area.

“My mother wanted us to not only be proud Kiwis, but proud Tongans, and I’ll always be grateful for that.”

Dame Valerie was invested as a Dame Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2017 and retired from competitive athletics in 2022.

“Representing Aotearoa for the last 22 years has given me so much joy. As my life’s work, I’m humbled to show little New Zealand has what it takes to be the best in the world,” she says.