Valerie Adams is 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.
She is also one of our most admired athletes and unsurprisingly the publishers have had to reprint the book within days of it going on sale
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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 talks about what it's like to achieve at the very highest level . . . and to regularly look out from the centre of the sporting dais.
About the author
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.