Rose among Samoan athletes still headed to Tokyo Olympics

Samoa decided that its Olympic qualifiers who live and train within the island nation will not go to Tokyo due to concerns about the spread of coronavirus,. Samoa had 11 athletes bound for the games; three of them, all weightlifters, live on the island.

Because Rose lives in Grand Rapids,he’s clear to compete.

“I was terrified when I got the email that Samoa was pulling out of the Olympic Games,” Rose, who is an American but can compete for Samoa because his father was born there,. “It wasn’t until the bottom of the email that I read that they’re still going to send their athletes who are currently living and training outside of Samoa. So I’m very fortunate in that I wasn’t doing a pretraining camp in Samoa when they did this. My heart goes out to the weightlifters and the other athletes who are on the island who won’t be able to compete.”

Rose is in Sweden for a Diamond League meet; he’s the first Samoan to ever be invited to one.

“This will be my last competition before I basically am setting up a big block of training leading up to July 30 and 31 when I compete in the Tokyo Olympics,” he explained.

He’ll head back to Grand Rapids for about 10 days of training, then head to Pennsylvania, where his coach is, for a weeklong training camp before flying to Japan.

This will be his second games. He also competed in Rio in 2016.

He would be the first Samoan ever to win a medal in the summer Olympics.