Athletics: Sky's the limit for shot-putter Vili

It might not happen in Helsinki for Valerie Vili, but the indications are that it will one day. Not that the young shot-putter is treating the world championships in Finland as a dress rehearsal for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

Vili (nee Adams) has arrived at the scene of New Zealand's greatest moment in field-event athletics in good form and with hopes soaring.

Lately, her personal bests have been in constant peril. "I feel there is more in me. How much? That's a surprise," she told the Herald on Sunday.

Helsinki is where 23-year-old Otago athlete Yvette Williams won the long jump, came sixth in the shot put and 10th in the discus at the 1952 Olympics. But 53 years on, the facts for Vili are as cold and hard as the steel ball she throws.

Yes, Vili goes into the event with a best throw of 19.73m (good enough for gold in Athens). And yes, she's not recovering from an appendix operation like before last year's Athens Olympics. However, three of her rivals have thrown 20m-plus this year and the armada of Russians have barely warmed up for the August 12-13 throwdown.

Vili, ever the sportswoman, insists her best work is nigh. "Obviously competing before a major event you don't normally peak and you potentially want to be peaking at the worlds."

Still, Vili won't reveal if she has thrown 20m in training: "That's a trade secret - if I tell you I'd have to shoot you. But training is going really well."

Even if we can assume she has bettered that magic mark in private, there is now the issue of big-meet pressure.

Certainly, sport holds little fear for Vili. The world champs is a mere blip on the anxiety scale compared to catching a London bus to training every day for the past few weeks. Emotionally she's been through the wringer. Her Tongan mother died from cancer, her English father is battling the same affliction.

Through it all, sport has been an unshakeable constant but even in that arena she went through hell well before Helsinki. That sinking feeling came as time caught up with the 19-year-old at the ancient stadium in Olympia, where she battled to eighth place (initially ninth).

Appendicitis had placed her under the surgeon's knife a month earlier. A crueller cut, however, was missing the chance to throw in the Olympic final because Russian Irina Korzhanenko, who had finished first, later failed a drugs test.

When Valerie missed the final, she shed tears and was terse with a TV reporter. Some frowned at the outburst; others thanked the Lord that New Zealand sport had a pulse.

She isn't daunted by the task ahead. World No 1 Nadezhda Ostapchuk chucked a mammoth 21.09m in her hometown Minsk, in Belarus, 10 days ago.

She was the pre-Olympic favourite but finished fourth. Vili hasn't confronted her this year but the Kiwi did beat Olympic champion Yumileidi Cumba, of Cuba, at a meet in Brazil in May.

"I haven't competed against any of my rivals since I've been in Europe but I'm looking forward to a great competition."

Vili arrived in London the day before the bombings. "I was here at the apartment about a 20-minute bus ride from the Liverpool Street bomb."

An ear infection had been the only other glitch in what has been an exemplary build-up. "I'm sweet as. I'm just focusing on what needs to be done now until the worlds and also relaxing and chilling out and doing visualisation of the movements.

All I can do is go in feeling good and doing the very best. I'm getting there, absolutely, but the aim is to peak at the worlds for sure."

If that peak isn't enough for glory on August 13, there's still a mountain to climb in China.


- HERALD ON SUNDAY