Throughout her extraordinary 21-year career as a shot putter - during which she has gained for New Zealand two Olympic golds, a silver and a bronze as well four world outdoor and four world indoor titles - this most honest of sporting performers has always kept things real.  

Explaining her decision to stop competing, the 37-year-old mother-of-two - voted as women’s World Athlete of the Year in 2014 - added: "After winning my bronze medal in Tokyo, I contemplated whether to embark on another campaign.

"I took some time to really process this thought and to see if it was something I actually wanted to do again. 

"My heart, mind and body simply answered the question for me, so it is time for me to call it a day."

Adams, born in Rotorua to a Tongan mother and an English father, first picked up a shot aged 14. 

The two were made for each other. 

Within a year, yet to turn 15, she finished tenth at the1999 World under-18 Championships in Bydgoszcz.

Two years further on she was world under-18 and world under-20 champion, and at the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester, aged 17, she won silver. 

The unstoppable force was unleashed, working to devastating effect with a moveable object.

Last summer at the postponed Tokyo 2020 Games, Adams became the first athlete to compete in five Olympic shot-put finals.

Her first Olympic experience had seen her finish seventh at the Athens 2004 Games. 

Four years later she won gold in Beijing. 

At the London 2012 Games she took silver behind the far smaller, swifter thrower Nadzeya Ostapchuk of Belarus.

But she was soon in possession of a second Olympic gold after Ostapchuk proved to have provided positive tests for the banned anabolic agent metenolone on the day before the event and the second day of the event.

Adams later recounted how, upon being told the news by Chef de Mission Dave Currie, she initially thought he was "telling fibs". 

She received the gold medal from the New Zealand Governor-General, Sir Jerry Mateparae, at a special ceremony in Auckland on September 19 2012.

It was after she had won her fourth world title in Moscow in 2013 that the waters became choppy for her - and she showed herself in her true Kiwi-black colours. 

In September 2013 she had surgery on her left ankle and right knee, recovering in time to win her third world indoor title at Sopot in March 2014 and a third Commonwealth gold in Glasgow, where she was the New Zealand flagbearer at the Opening Ceremony.

But the waves grew more insurmountable as injuries halted her career again towards the end of 2014, and she required serious surgery on her shoulder and elbow.

On July 4, 2015 she returned to action at the Paris Diamond League meeting, finishing fifth. 

It was her first defeat in 57 meetings.

Later that month she returned to action at the Stockholm Diamond League - and in the pre-event conference it was hard to see this normally exuberant performer cowed by doubts and disappointment.

She finished fourth in a rain-swept outdoor event held in the city centre, cutting a dissatisfied and increasingly frustrated figure as she fouled on each of her four last efforts. 

"Deep down this is not easy but I'm a realist and know I'm not ready just yet and I still have stuff to work and it's been a challenge since my surgery on my elbow especially as it is taking more time than I thought it would," she said.

"But that's life and I must roll with the punches."

Adams added she was also having more issues with her right knee that would need further treatment and that she was going to pass up defending her world title in Beijing in order to focus on defending her Olympic title in Rio the following year.

"This has been a tough comeback but I'm glad I made an attempt this season as it has just boosted my motivation more for the Olympics which has always been the main focus," she said.

"No one said it would be easy but I'm a willing participant and will continue to fight and work towards defending my title in Rio 2016."

At 30, after all she had achieved, she might have thought of retirement. 

But no – she underwent further surgery on her knee and returned to take silver in Rio behind Michelle Carter of the United States.

In the intervening years between the Rio 2016 and the postponed Tokyo 2020 Olympics Adams became a mother of two, giving birth to a daughter, Kimoana, in 2017 and a son, Kepaleli, in 2019.

A day before competing at the 2019 Diamond League meeting in Monaco, Adams sat alongside another serial world and Olympic field event champion, Croatian javelin thrower Sandra Perkovic - and both women shot from the hip over the controversial cuts and changes being proposed by the International Association of Athletics Federations - which within three months would become World Athletics - to competition in general and field events in particular.

In the previous year’s Diamond League programme, male and female discus throwers had competed at the same time in the IAAF Diamond League. 

There had also been alterations to the amount of throws allowed, with the traditional allotment of six throws being reduced to four.

And at the 2018 IAAF Continental Cup, the innovations had gone further as jumping and throwing events proceeded on a knock-out basis after a certain point, meaning that the longest effort did not guarantee victory.

Perkovic also made her displeasure clear about the format introduced for the IAAF Diamond League in the previous two years whereby the slate was wiped clean once athletes had qualified for the final, and it was a matter of winner-takes-all on the night in either Zurich or Brussels.

"I don't want to be rude," said Perkovic. 

"But the IAAF are making so many changes over the years and I think it's good for the spectacular but it's not good for athletics."

Adams, who said she had watched the previous year’s Continental Cup unfold on TV, was blunt in her assessment.

"I think with a lot of these competitions, people that are organising forget…"

Perkovic added the words: "the athletes".

"Yes," Adams continued. 

"And people are stupid for doing that. 

"Because they actually need to consult the athletes.

"Unfortunately they sit behind their little desks coming up with all these 100 ideas without actually thinking: 'okay, we've got this idea, let's put it to the Athletes' Commission to get feedback'. 

"And then decide and actually put it out there.

"No. That's not what they do. 

"They come up with the whole idea, and they sell it to the meet managers or whatever, and then they run with it.

"And unfortunately they are not only playing with athletes and their competition spirit but they are playing with their livelihood.

"They say it's about TV. 

"Let me tell you something - the throws - and Sandra can relate to this - they put them at the start of the competition. 

"They never show this on TV.

"They show the first three winning throws and that's it. 

"In shot put they show the first three winning throws. 

"As a Diamond League event you are not actually showcased whatsoever, and that is very unfortunate.

"We train just as hard as everybody else, as hard as the 100 metres sprinters. 

"They say the other events are glamour events. 

"They shouldn't degrade us as athletes.

"They say it's all about TV, but without the athletes there's no TV, without the athletes there's no manager, without the athletes you guys don't have a job. Just pointing it out…"

With a disarming grin, Adams added: "It can be better done. 

"It's about taking the time to value every athlete that's out there and not just on the track. 

"That's the reality of it.

"It's track and field, not just track. 

"We have nothing against sprinters or runners, but unfortunately they get all the air time there is out there. 

"We don't have any animosity. 

"It's a case of how can we better showcase our sport to the world?"

As they rose to leave, Perkovic said: "I think Valerie and me are okay to talk about things. 

"We have experienced everything in track and field, good and bad, and we know what is good."

She added, sardonically: "That is your last press conference ever."

Not so, as it turned out. 

Later that year Adams joined France’s 2012 Olympic pole vault champion Renaud Lavillenie in becoming the first active athletes to join the World Athletics Council as full voting members in 2019, with Lavillenie being chair and Adams deputy chair of the Athletes' Commission,

"While today marks the end of my shot-put career, athletics will always be a part of my life," Adams added at her press conference.

"I have given my heart and soul to the sport. 

"Loved and nurtured it from a young age, watched it grow as a girl to now as a woman fully grown. 

"It is beautiful and exciting, at times hard and unforgiving, but always honest, ever enquiring."

Always honest indeed…