Heading into her fifth Games, the 35-year-old was arguably the odd competitor out alongside Australia's reigning world champion Dani Samuels and gold medallist at the Beijing Olympic, American Stephanie Brown-Trafton.
Faumuina, who won the 1997 world title in Athens when Samuels was aged nine, finished third at a meet centred around the guest appearance of 100-metre world record holder Usain Bolt.
Samuels reinforced her favouritism for the Delhi gold, barely extending herself to win with a best of 61.90m -- the first of her two legitimate throws.
Brown-Trafton was second (59.48m) and Faumuina was marginally behind with a best of 59.32m, the fourth of her six attempts and an improvement on her worst of 54.68m.
On this year's form Faumuina is currently ranked fourth in the Commonwealth behind Samuels, South African Elizna Naude and Krishna Poonia, who will have a home crowd behind her in Delhi.
Samuels, who took bronze in Melbourne four years ago, is in ominous form having thrown a personal best of 65.84 at Sydney in February.
Defending Commonwealth champion Naude recorded a season best 64.49m in February while Poonia threw 63.69m in April.
Faumuina recorded her season best in Wellington with a throw of 61.11m in January, a mark she has been unable to match since.
She came close in March when recording 61.10m in Christchurch to finish runner-up to Samuels.
Faumuina then went to Europe in July where she was fifth at the World Challenge meet in Spain (58.32m) and ninth at the IAAF Diamond League meet in Switzerland (57.38).
The Commonwealth medal contenders are some distance behind the world leaders -- German Nadine Mueller owns the superior mark of 67.78m in 2010 while Croatian Sandra Perkovic has the next two best throws of 66.93m and 66.85m.
