Baby, then Olympics? It’s ‘doable’
Dame Valerie Adams says her plan to have a baby in April next year and compete at the Tokyo Olympics in 2020 is ‘‘doable’’.
Adams was interviewed on the red carpet at the IAAF athletic awards in Monaco, where she presented one of the awards.
She and another former Olympian, US sprinter Dawn Harper-Nelson, compared baby bumps during their chat. Harper-Nelson, one of the presenters on the red carpet, announced her pregnancy last month.
Adams was asked about her competitive future and said while bouncing back from a baby was tough, she felt she had enough time to prepare for Tokyo, where she will try to win a third Olympic gold medal in the shot put.
‘‘I have 15 months to train up for Tokyo, which is great. The first time when I had my first baby I had six months from whoa to go to get to Commonwealth Games,’’ she said.
‘‘It’s doable. We’ve got the blueprint ready to rock and roll so we’ll see how it goes.’’
Just six months after her daughter Kimoana’s birth, Adams won a silver medal at the Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast in April this year.
Adams revealed with partner Gabriel Price in October she was expecting her second child.
Tokyo will be her fifth Olympic Games. She won the shot put gold medal at Beijing in 2008 and London in 2012, the second coming after original winner Nadia Ostapchuk was disqualified for doping.
In Monaco, Adams presented the woman of the year title to Evelyn Lopez. Kenya’s marathon world record holder Eliud Kipchoge and Colombian jumper Caterine Ibarguen were named IAAF athletes of the year.