Perfect Timing

Valerie Vili in action with the shot-put. World Athletics Championships at Osaka, Japan.
Credit: Aflo/Photosport.

"The technical side of things is very difficult," observes Valerie Vili, winner of the women's shot put at last year's Athletics World Championships - with the year's best throw of 20.54m. "You need your legs in the right place, your body position needs to be right, your foot position, your hand. Basically you've got 2.12 metres of throwing circle and less than a second from the start to the moment the shot leaves your hand. It is hard to get the perfect throw."

Which is why a couple of months out from the Games, Vili was "throwing a pretty heavy load", using a 7.26kg men's shot put, with perhaps 30 to 50 throws in a training session.

"The idea is to get the technique right with the heavy weight well before the Games. If you can move with the heavy weight, it'll be easier with the lighter [women's] one. You want to get the technique right now, and on the day it's the feeling. You're training the body and mind so it becomes second nature," Vili explains.

"I don't consciously think of technique during competition. You have to remember that you have so many nerves. You have butterflies in your stomach. You're just about jumping out of your skin," the 23 year-old, 1.96m tall athlete says.

Running into the event, Vili tapers and throws with the speed of the 4kg shot. "I might stop throwing about three days out. I might do a short, sharp weights session in the gym the day before. It depends. Kirsten Hellier makes that call."

Hellier has been her coach for ten years now. "We have a system pretty well worked out," Vili reckons. You couldn't disagree with that, when Vili has hauled in titles from the 2008 World Indoor Championships and 2006 Commonwealth Games, as well the 2007 World Championships in Osaka.

Valerie Vili and coach Kirsten Hellier after winning the 2008 Halberg Awards for sportsperson of the year and coach of the year respectively.
Credit: Hagen Hopkins, Photosport.

Athletes' coaches are not allowed into the throwing area and athletes can't have mobile phones or other electronic devices (they can't psyche up with music). So at Beijing Hellier will be in the stand. "After the throw I focus on her and get some feedback," Vili says. At big competitions she hears the crowd, but "pretty well shuts everyone out."

They leave the hotel about three hours out from the start time, so there's plenty of time for checking in, the warm-up, stretching. Nothing to chance: "more time is better," Vili states. "In the warm-up you can stay apart but in the call room the athletes all sit quite close together. It's pretty much mind games from then."

As for tactics, that bit at least is dead simple. Throwing circles are all the same. Rules and protocol are consistent. The brass shot isn't affected by breeze, or temperature so unlike a discus or javelin thrower, there's no adjustment of technique to the conditions.

Above all, there's no holding back, no trying to place a safe first throw or warm into things: "I just go in and smash the first one," Vili says.

"You want to put a good one in on the first one – to put the pressure on the others. Basically you have three opportunities in the qualifying round, then another three," she explains. "You have to take each opportunity and make the most of it."

Valerie Vili was world youth shot put champion in 2001. The next year she was world junior champion as well as scoring a silver medal at the Commonwealth Games. A bronze followed in 2005 at the World Championships. In 2006 she won the Commonwealth Games gold medal with a throw of 19.66m, then was second in the World Athletic Final.

Vili is only the third athlete ever, and the first New Zealander, to win all three World Championship titles (Youth, Junior and Senior). At the 2007 Westpac Halberg Awards she won the supreme Halberg Award. She is married to discus thrower Bertrand Vili.

Updated | 31 Oct 2008.

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