Put a sock in it Valerie!

Some pre-season publicity for Oscar Kightley’s ‘Pacific Brothers and Sisters’ sports programme, is currently appearing on national television. One of the interview ‘teasers’ is a snippet from Dame Valerie Adams. Her words: ‘I participated in a white-dominated sport. I had to learn to play that game’.

What? Val, your father was a 6’7” SCOTTISH seaman. That’s where you got your physique from. Also, I’m betting, your overweening chutzpah (extreme self-confidence), came from him also, as according to the record, Adams senior fathered 18 children, from 5 different women. Your mother just happened to be a Pacific Islander. No props to you!

It is also worth noting that over your sporting career, you received around $250,000 in medal bonuses from High Performance Sport NZ, plus tens of thousands more in competition expenses. That is tax money Val and given the ethnic and economic makeup of this country, taxpayer contributions, are also ‘white dominated’. Online sources put Valerie Adam's net worth at between 5 and 10 million.

And did you struggle to get a start in shot-putting? No, your first coach from AGE FOURTEEN, was a well-performed (and notably palagi) sports teacher from Napier, Kirsten Hellier.

Also, it is also sad that Dame Adams denigration of ‘whiteness’, comes so soon after the passing of the head of her Order of Chivalry, HM Queen Elizabeth.