This evening on the New Zealand TV One News there were complaints that Valerie would not talk to the press. Valerie is a wonderful athlete and person who gives lots of her time to the fans and the industry. I met her at a major sports event a year or so ago where she was supporting Drug Free Sport and their pledge and education program. She was so accessible to her fans and happy to sign autographs and be in photos.
She is in Beijing to win a medal and hopefully gold and given that she has trained hard for he event, she has every right to do whatever she feels she needs to do to achieve her goals. She owes the media nothing. I am loving the Olympics and TV One is doing a fantastic job with the coverage, both on TV and with the live broadband coverage. But if the athletes want to focus on winning medals and not giving interviews beforehand, don’t get prissy, respect them for sticking to their guns.
She is an awsome role model for young Kiwi athletes.
A footnote. Last night I stayed up till about 3 o’clock flicking between the All Blacks mighty win over the Springboks, the first time they have held the South African’s scoreless, while they got a magic 19 points, which was great consdering the kicking from a usually flawless Dan Carter was a little off.
Anyway, Valerie won the Gold Medal from her first shotput throw which you can watch here, and I had to restrain myself from jumping for joy and waking the rest of the household. Of course everyone got there interviews as I knew they would. Valerie will probably spend a lot of time in the rest of this year giving back to her coach and supporters.
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