Tucked away in a small corner of Lower Hutt, Lisa Adams has started her trajectory towards world para athletics domination.
The Paralympic and World Para shot put champion flexed her muscles at the annual Sola Power Throwers meet today, reaching 15.18m.
Not too far off her world record of 15.50m.
"Overall it was good, I just got to step up and keep going," Adams said.
The event in Lower Hutt helped coach and sister Dame Valerie Adams fine-tune her younger sister ahead of July's World Para Athletics Championships in Paris.
"It's been a hard couple of years with pandemics and world stuff being cancelled, and this is the furthest she's thrown in a couple of years since Tokyo," Dame Valerie said.
"She's had shoulder surgery so it's a good visual for us to see where we are at."
Event organiser and former Samoa shot putter and discus thrower, Shaka Sola, was delighted to have the golden sisters rubbing shoulders with up and coming athletes.
"The tamariki who come here and see these stars up front realise that they're actually real people, they're not superheroes from a Marvel comic, although some of them are built like that", Sola said.
"But it's just to bring those guys here for kids to see how they perform and set themselves up, it's all about learning."
The Sola Power Throwing academy, which is based in suburban Lower Hutt, has been running this event for 11 years, while this is the second year it has had a World Athletics Challenger meet status.
"It's very unique, it's throwers only haven here, sorry to those runners but running is overrated," Sola joked.
"The event has grown a lot, from having a plywood pad over there where we started at this pony paddock thing, I've said it before we used to graze horses here and now we are grazing champions, kids who will be Olympians."
Sola's next challenge is gaining a permit meet for javelin throwing at the venue.
"Anyone who wants to sponsor this, I need $90,000, it's not a lot of money if you ask me but I tell you what it can be put to good use as we are serving more than 100 kids at this academy, let alone bringing world class athletes here."
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