Dylan Cleaver: Shadowy build-up to shot put clash

Valerie Adams has kept her head down of late. Photo / Greg Bowker

You can apply a lot of tags to shot put, but mystery is not usually one of them.

Yet the women's competition, which starts with qualifying tonight and ends tomorrow morning, is so mysterious it would be wholly appropriate if a London pea-souper descended on the Olympic Stadium to shroud the athletes as they throw.

It's widely expected to be a two-woman battle between Valerie Adams and Nadzeya Ostapchuk. And they've both become shadowy figures in the lead-up to the showdown, for totally different reasons.

Adams has only recently extracted herself from her Swiss Alps bolt hole, where she has trained, away from the prying eyes of the athletics world, under the eye of coach Jean-Pierre Egger.

It has been left to her manager, Nick Cowan, to relay to the world that the training has been going well, that Adams is in top shape and, yes, she is relishing the chance to go head-to-head with an in-form Ostapchuk.

It would be nice to tell you more, but Adams has chosen to go deep cover. It doesn't work for everyone - can you imagine Usain Bolt's sponsors allowing him to disappear off the face of the earth in the lead-up to the Olympics? - but it does for Adams.

If she becomes the first New Zealand athletics representative since Sir Peter Snell in 1964 to successfully defend an Olympic title, nobody will be complaining.

Ostapchuk, on the other hand, has been making lots of noise. This sort of noise - 21.13m in Minsk; 21.32m then 21.39m in Grodno; then back to Minsk to throw a staggering 21.58m just before the Olympics. With that sort of noise comes suspicion, with the usual Eastern European stereotypes applied, the kindest of which would be that the tape measures used in Belarus might not be as reliable as the laser technology used at major meetings.

Given that everyone from Melbourne to Minsk seems to have a smartphone these days, the fact there doesn't seem to be any YouTube footage of the throw only serves to heighten the intrigue.

Put it this way, though: If Ostapchuk comes to the stadium tomorrow morning and throws 21.58m the gold is as good as hers.

Adams might be able to toss the shot around like a marble, but asking someone to add 34cm to their personal best in one go is like asking Chris Martin to score an unbeaten half century: it can be done, but it's not very likely.

Here's one key fact that has no mystery: Adams wants to win and when she has her game face on she's hard to beat. Ostapchuk has never displayed that same mental resilience. Advantage Adams.

Meanwhile, the Kenyan runner who stumbled his way out of contention in Nick Willis' 1500m heat was reinstated in time for this morning's semifinal. Nixon Chepseba, who has run the third-fastest time of the year, got into a tactical muddle during the heat, found himself boxed in and then tripped as he tried to extricate himself down the back straight.

The problem seemed to be largely of his own making, but now there is the likelihood of Kenya having three runners trying to control Wednesday morning's final.