Valerie Adams qualified comfortably for the womens shot put final in this mornings qualifying round at the Olympic stadium.
Adams, the defending Olympic champion and three times world champion, had a bit of a hitch with an opening no-throw, but then uncorked a 20.40m effort to qualify comfortably for tonights final.
Belarusian Nadzeya Ostapchuk, who has been in excellent recent form, was the leading qualifier with 20.76m in her one throw.
As they have been for several years, Adams and Ostapchuk were in a class of their own the third-placed qualifier was Russian Evgenilia Kolodko, well back with 19.31m.
Meanwhile, New Zealand 1500m runner Lucy van Dalen squeezed through the first round as a fastest loser today.
Van Dalen was in the fastest of the three heats and recorded a time of 4min 07.4s. She finished eighth with the first six to qualify automatically.
However, because her heat was so fast, she made the semi-finals as one of the six fastest losers.
In fact, van Dalens time was the 13th fastest of the 24 qualifiers.
The New Zealander ran a good race on the pole line and was unfortunate to stumble slightly in the back straight on the final lap. That cost her some momentum and in the circumstances she did well to finish as well as she did.
