Louisa Wall: Vili mere pup among throwing elite

Valerie Vili is only 20 years old and already is the New Zealand shot-put national record holder.

Actually, in qualifying for the final at the world athletics championships in Helsinki, Vili's first throw of 19.87m set a national, Oceania and Commonwealth record.

In the final, Valerie placed third after a throw of 19.62m, 2cm off the silver medal distance and 89cm off the winning distance from Belarus champion Nadezhda Ostapchuk.

Ostapchuk, 24, improved on her silver medal from the last world champs and she too threw a personal best to win the gold.

Winning the medal seemed to surprise Vili and she is definitely on a learning curve that has seen her improve from last year's Olympic throw of 18.56m for an 8th placing to this latest performance.

Ostapchuk is hoping to peak for the 2008 Beijing Olympics and Vili too has this goal in mind, so it will be interesting to track the careers of these two young women.

But first Vili has her sights on the world finals in Monaco in three weeks. There may just be a few more centimetres in the personal best tank for this season as a wonderful base for next year.

Then there is next year's Commonwealth Games in Melbourne to prepare for and Vili is now favourite to win her first Games gold.

Her performances this season have shown tremendous improvement. She threw a national record earlier this year of 19.52m at Rio de Janeiro and recently threw 19.73m at an unofficial meet in Spain which led to her 19.87m personal best in the qualifying round of the world championships.

Her goal was a top eight finish and her second goal a medal. "I don't care what colour the medal is, getting one was the most important," she said.

We should all be happy for Vili and coach Kirsten Hellier, who have worked hard for this outcome.

The New Zealand team too were rapt with the result, according to manager Ken Simpson, given this was the first medal at a world championship since New Zealand's only other medal - Beatrice Faumuina's discus gold, at Athens in 1997.

Faumuina had an excellent championships in Helsinki finishing fourth, her best result since winning the world crown eight years ago.

She too will go to the Commonwealth Games as a hot favourite to complete a hat-trick of titles, and thoughts of retirement have been shelved until after the 2008 Olympics.

Some throwers start hitting their peak in their mid-30s and 30-year-old Faumuina is convinced that her best is yet to come.

She might have been inspired by the gold medal-winning performance of Germany's Franka Dietzsch, at 37 the oldest of the 12 finalists. She was the 1999 world champion and threw a best of 66.56m beating Olympic champion Natalya Sadova, of Russia.

Faumuina and Vili stand among their peers as equals and have the competition opportunities to perform and to continually improve.

I have a feeling that this power of two could be unstoppable and assist each other in a spectacular way to each reach that potential that they and we have yet to see.

* Louisa Wall is a former New Zealand netball and rugby representative.