36 Facts About Valerie Adams

Dame Valerie Kasanita Adams is a retired New Zealand shot putter.

Valerie Adams 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.

Valerie Adams has a personal best throw of 21.24 metres outdoors and 20.98 metres indoors.

Valerie Adams holds the Oceanian junior record and the Oceanian youth record, as well as the World Championships record, World Indoor Championships record and Commonwealth Games record.

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

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

Valerie Adams had the longest shot put performance of the season every year from 2006 to 2014, bar 2008 when she was second to Natallia Mikhnevich.

Valerie Adams won silver medals at the 2012 Summer Olympics, 2016 Summer Olympics, 2005 World Championships in Athletics, and the Commonwealth Games in 2002 and 2018.

Valerie Adams was a bronze medallist at the 2016 IAAF World Indoor Championships.

Valerie Adams is one of eleven athletes to win world championships at the youth, junior, and senior level of an athletic event.

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

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

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

At her first Olympics in 2004, Valerie Adams finished seventh, while still recovering from an appendectomy she had just weeks before the competition.

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

In 2008 Valerie Adams broke the Oceania record in winning her first World Indoor Title in Valencia.

Valerie Adams won the New Zealand Sports Award of the year in 2008.

Valerie Adams announced on 28 March 2010 that she would no longer be coached by Kirsten Hellier after an 11-year partnership.

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

At the 2012 World Indoor Championships Valerie Adams won the competition with a throw of 20.54 m, a new indoors personal best.

Valerie Adams originally won the silver medal at the 2012 London Olympics but was promoted to the gold medal after the initial Olympic champion, Nadzeya Astapchuk, failed two drug tests, one a day before the event and the second on the day of the event.

Valerie Adams later recounted how she initially believed Chef de Mission Dave Currie was "telling fibs" upon being told the news.

Valerie Adams received the gold medal from the New Zealand Governor-General, Sir Jerry Mateparae, at a special ceremony in Auckland on 19 September 2012.

Valerie Adams won her fourth world championship gold at the 2013 World Championships games in Moscow in August 2013.

On 27 September, Adams underwent surgery on her left ankle and right knee, and in March 2014 won her third world indoor championship at Sopot in Poland with a distance of 20.67 m Her gold medal at the 2014 Commonwealth Games, where she was New Zealand's flag-bearer, was her 54th consecutive event win; the streak began in August 2010.

Injury caused Valerie Adams to withdraw from an attempted defence of her shot put title at the 2014 IAAF Continental Cup and she was ruled out for most of 2015 season for the same reason.

Valerie Adams skipped the entire track and field that season due to pregnancy.

Valerie Adams won her fourth Olympic medal in July 2021, at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, winning a bronze medal with a best put of 19.62 metres.

Valerie Adams announced her retirement from athletics competition on 1 March 2022, but will continue to coach Lisa Valerie Adams.

In 2022 Valerie Adams was appointed to the board of High Performance Sport New Zealand.

Valerie Adams is serving as chairperson of the Oceania Athletics Athletes' Commission.

Valerie Adams was born in Rotorua, New Zealand, to a Tongan mother and an English father.

Valerie Adams was married to Bertrand Vili, a discus thrower from New Caledonia.

Valerie Adams married Gabriel Price, a friend since childhood, at Temple View in Hamilton on 2 April 2016.

In 2023, Valerie Adams announced her separation from Price after nearly seven years of marriage.

Valerie Adams is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.