Dame Valerie enters honours podium
Comfortable on the top of the Olympic podium, our premier shot putter is back there in the New Year’s Honours as Dame Valerie Adams, given the equivalent of a knighthood for her services to athletics.
Adams heads a sports-rich list of those honoured, with former world anti-doping boss David Howman and top Olympic administrator Mike Stanley made a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit (CNZM) for services to sport.
Ironman triathlete Cameron Brown stands out in a list dominated by Olympians and Paralympians, after 26 years at the top and last year winning the Taupo Ironman for the 12th time.
Adams was mum on whether she would compete as Dame Valerie, or Dame Val, or Dame anything at all. But she was in no doubt it was a massive honour, albeit one impossible to compare to winning Olympic golds in 2008 and 2012, and a silver in 2016.
‘‘You can’t. With an Olympic gold medal, basically people look at the strength of the person, the high performance,’’ she said.
‘‘But this [honour] is me as a whole and my performances on and off the field. You can’t really rank it. This is a very prestigious award that you would never imagine was possible.’’
Adams has won four world championship gold medals, as well as her two Olympic golds, three Commonwealth Games golds, and three world indoor titles. Her world wins in 2007, 2009, 2011 and 2013 were an unprecedented streak, as was her winning streak across 56 competitions from 2010 to 2014, the year she was International Association of Athletics Federations female athlete of the year.
Wellingtonian Howman was World Anti Doping Agency (Wada) director general from 2003 until July 2016, leading the fight against doping and wider issues of corruption and bribery in sport.
His work there enhanced New Zealand’s reputation for promoting the integrity and value of sport. A lawyer, he drafted Wada’s sport anti-doping Code, adopted internationally.
He was chair of the New Zealand Sports Drug Agency between 2000 and 2003, has been chair of New Zealand Tennis and a Hillary Commission for Sport, Fitness and Leisure board member.
Stanley has been a selector Olympic, Commonwealth and Paralympic Games team, and helped develop the AUT Millennium Institute of Sport and Health in Auckland, as a trustee and as chief executive since 2004.
He has played a leading role in high performance sport, after being a world champion rower in 1995 inducted into the New Zealand Sports Hall of Fame with members of the 1982 eight. He headed Rowing New Zealand from 1994 to 2003 and was a Board member from 2004 to 2009.
Brown, awarded the ONZM (Officer of the Order) is one of the most durable elite athletes New Zealand has produced, and in a 26-year career finished top three at numerous Ironman world championships.
Among those made an MNZM (Member of the Order) were athletics coach Raylene Bates; Oiympic yachting medallists Peter Burling, Blair Tuke; hockey players Phil Burrows, Katie Glynn; Paralympics medallists Anna Grimaldi, Kate Horan, Nikita Howarth and Liam Malone; and veteran table tennis player Li Chunli.
Malone won two golds and a silver in Rio, while Burling and Tuke have been outstanding in the 49er class, winning Olympic gold before the final race was sailed.