Adams back near her very best
Not quite the shot heard round the world, but it was pretty damn close for Valerie Adams as she shook off the sadness enveloping the Cote d’Azur to produce her brightest moment of the Olympic season.
The 31-year-old New Zealander made a massive pre-Games statement at the Monaco Diamond League meet yesterday when won a quality women’s shot put competition by blasting out past the 20-metre mark to record her best throw in nearly two years.
Adams won with a season’s best 20.05m, ahead of German Christina Schwanitz (19.81m) and American world indoors champion Michelle Carter (19.58m). Schwanitz and Carter, along with China’s Lijiao Gong, who has the year’s best throw of 20.43m, are expected to be Adams’ chief rivals in Rio.
It’s the most positive sign yet that the veteran Kiwi is right on track to secure an historic hat-trick of Olympic golds at the looming Rio Games, following on from her triumphs at the 2008 Beijing and 2012 London Olympics.
‘‘These last two competitions will mean nothing for Rio, but they will mean everything for the psychological games we tend to play as individual athletes, especially throwers,’’ Adams told Fairfax Media ahead of Monaco. ‘‘It’s important for me going into Rio.’’
The towering Kiwi hadn’t broken 20m since September, 2014, when she threw 20.59m in Brussels. That year she won 10 of 15 meets with throws over the 20m mark.
She failed to break 19m in an injury-plagued, and shortened, 2015 season, and this year her best throw in eight previous starts had been the 19.69m she nailed to win in Rome on June 2.
But now she has the confidence boost she sought just weeks out from the Olympic shot put which will be held on the opening day of the athletics competition on August 12.
Adams even demonstrated palpably she retains the nerve to blast out a big throw under pressure in a tight Monaco competition. The Kiwi started consistently, and ominously, when she threw 19.25m, 19.76m and 19.70m to head the final qualifiers before Schwanitz briefly took the lead in the penultimate round with 19.81m.
But Adams nailed that 20.05m effort with her fifth throw, before rounding out a quality series with 19.76m. It extends her Diamond Race lead over American Tia Brooks, points.
‘‘It’s a great feeling winning here. The distance was definitely more important than the win,’’ Adams said afterwards. ‘‘The win is a bonus. It shows I still have the competitive fire in me.’’
And Adams said after the terror attack in Nice, just up the road, it had been ‘‘great to show our support to the families of the victims in our very small way. My thoughts and prayers are with them’’.
Meanwhile, Kiwi Olympicbound pole vaulter Eliza McCartney could not find anywhere near her best stuff in her Diamond League debut in Monaco. She finished fifth with a best vault of 4.55m, 25cm less than her personal best. Greece’s Katerina Stefanidi (4.81m) pipped world champion Yarisley Silva of Cuba (4.71m) for the victory. fourth in Monaco, to