Valerie Adams' family send her a message.
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Not long after 10pm on Monday, the cellphone of Patricia Pupuke-Robati started ringing in the lounge of a house in Mangere, Auckland.
There was no chance she was going to answer it.
Patricia was in bed, out to the world, after spending most of the previous two days on planes travelling from London to Auckland.
She had watched her sister Valerie Adams fail to defend her Olympic shot-put title in London, claiming instead the silver medal as Belarusian Nadzeya Ostapchuk got the gold.
Patricia's husband Ken, who had just arrived back from his late shift carting luggage at Auckland International Airport, picked up the phone.
At first, all he could her was sobbing. He could barely recognise the voice, until he heard one single word. Gold. It was his sister-in-law calling from Switzerland.
Ken raced into the bedroom, yelling and screaming. "Wake up, wake up!" he said. Patricia opened her eyes, confused.
"She's been done for drugs! Val's got gold!" Ken yelped.
'She' was Ostapchuk, just exposed as a drug cheat, having tested positive to two Olympic drug tests for the steroid metenolone.
Adams had her gold, and her family were the first people she would tell.
On the phone back in Switzerland, Adams was sitting in her car, sobbing and smiling.
A week before, Patricia and her daughter, and Valerie's niece, Sharne, were in London, watching her compete. "For me and my family, we were proud of her, no matter what colour her medal was," she said.
Mention Ostapchuk's name, and Patricia feels a sadness.
Not for the cheat herself, but for how she stole from her sister, that special moment in the sun in London.
"It was a sad way for her to beat Val," she said. "We've kept up with her and her sports because she's been the only person to beat Val, you know.
"It's always been them two, all the time. For me, if that's what it took her, just to beat Val, for her to have her turn on the podium, [it] wasn't really hers.
"She took that moment away from Val, and from me and Sharne, who went to see her. For us not to hear our nation's anthem... Ostapchuk will have to live with it for the rest of her life, really.
"Val's got her gold. And that's it. She did it the clean natural way."
There's already talk of what the country should do to honour Adams, including a ceremony at Eden Park.
But her family has already started planning their own ceremony too at the family home in Mangere.
Just family and friends invited. A big Tongan-style feast, with all the trimmings.
- © Fairfax NZ News
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