Valerie's Darling Boy He's Our Lucky Last!

Our golden girl is winning in the family stakes

With less than a year until she heads into her fifth Olympic Games, Kiwi athletics legend Dame Valerie Adams is in the thick of a gruelling training regime. After 20 years competing on the world stage, intense days in the gym and an aching body are second nature.

But this time, Valerie’s campaign feels a little different – her support crew has gained two adorable new members since her last bid for sporting glory, and she’s got even more to fight for.

“It’s pretty crazy,” she smiles as she welcomes Woman’s Day into the Auckland home she shares with husband Gabriel Price and their children, Kimoana, who turns two on October 10, and six-month-old Kepaleli. “Being a mum has definitely made things harder in many ways, but it’s also an amazing motivator. I’m not just doing it for me any more, I’m doing it for my kids.”

The shot put champion, who turns 35 on October 6, and her IT specialist husband Gabriel, 34, are delighted to introduce their beautiful baby boy Kepaleli, who is lying happily on the carpet, kicking his legs and cooing at his besotted family. The bonny lad is a picture of health now, but his parents admit it was a different story when he arrived five weeks early on March 23.

“I woke in the night with cramps, and I usually have a very high pain threshold, but they were getting pretty intense so I thought I’d better call the obstetrician,” recalls Valerie. “He said I needed to get straight to the hospital, so we jumped in the car and he arrived just a few hours later.”

Born by Caesarean section at 9.35am, Kepaleli weighed in at an impressive 3.1kg. But as is often the case with premature babies, he was struggling to get enough oxygen into his underdeveloped lungs.