Valerie Adams is without question the greatest field athlete New Zealand has ever produced - and, if you're looking for confirmation of that fact, you need only scan the giant shot putter's astonishing list of achievements: reigning Olympic champion, reigning world champion and reigning Commonwealth Games champion. Valerie Adams' story, though, does not just revolve around all the success she has achieved over the past eight or ten years. Her story is one of struggle, dedication and an incredible single-mindedness - all life experiences which have seen her become one of the great sporting champions. On top of that, she has become one of this country's great role models, most especially for young Pacific Islanders. In her book the traditionally media-shy Adams will talk about her humble upbringings, her incredibly successful partnership with coach Kirsten Hellier and, for the first time, shed light on the dramatic disintegration of that partnership in 2010. But perhaps most importantly, she will talk about what it's like to achieve at the very highest level ...and to regularly look out from the centre of the sporting dais.
Author Biography
Phil Gifford is an award-winning broadcaster and journalist. The author of 14 books, 10 of them biographies, that in total have sold over 205,000 copies, he was the first person to be twice chosen as the New Zealand Sports Journalist of the Year. From 1981 he worked in breakfast radio for 23 years, hosting No.1 shows at Radio Hauraki, 91ZM and More FM in Christchurch. In that time he won 12 New Zealand and two Australasian radio awards. He has reported on one Olympic and three Commonwealth Games, on every Rugby World Cup since 1987, covered every rugby test in New Zealand since 1977, and reported on rugby in Great Britain, France, South Africa, Argentina, Ireland and Samoa. He created in print a satirical rugby character, Loosehead Len, a column that ran for 32 years from 1973, and spawned six comedy books that sold in total 65,000 copies. He now hosts the rugby show "Up Front" on Radio Sport every Saturday, writes a weekly column in the Sunday Star-Times, and airs sports comments on NewstalkZB. Phil, who was a writer for the Billy T James show in the 1980s, has written a script with Ian Mune for a Billy T movie that will be released this year.
