Samoa’s Alex Rose Wins a Historic Bronze at the World Athletics Championships

Samoa celebrates its first medal at a World Athletics Championships, Alex Rose won Bronze in Discus with a throw of 66.96m in Tokyo, Japan.

The medal was also the first medal won by Male Pacific Island Athlete in the history of the World Athletics Championships. Alex describing the whole moment “It’s just incredible”

The discus final was eventful, postponed twice due to torrential rain impacting the Tokyo area. After two throws the competition was postponed for approximately 1.5 -2 hours with an attempt to restart in between. Over 20 volunteers were roped in to dry the circle with towels between each of the attempts as the rain continued. However, Alex just opted to throw in the wet circle each time.

Speaking of his training environment back home “The ring was really, slick. It was tough to throw. But luckily, I live in the Midwest. I grew up in northern Michigan. I’ve chopped ice out of the ring and swept it out. Like, I’m very, very familiar with throwing in a wet circle, and I’ve been really, good form right now. I knew I could challenge for a medal regardless of that the circle was wet or anything.”

Alex’s preparation hasn’t been conventional to say the least, working full-time as a sales technician and welcoming his second child in May, he has been taking opportunities to train late at night and early in the morning at available gyms and circles in the Mid-west.

Speaking on the significance of the milestone achieved and representing the small island nation of Samoa on the world stage “ Oh, God, it means everything. Yeah, I’ve dreamt about this forever. I Samoa is such a strong nation and they’ve never had a medal, you know, and Olympic medal, world medal, anything, I just, I feel like I can give back, you know Yeah, the opportunities I’ve had and hopefully inspire some kids to try, track and field maybe, alongside rugby, which is, you know, primarily what they’re going to be doing a lot of the time, but you know, training for track is good for rugby and rugby’s good for track”

The competition was won by Daniel Stahl SWE and taking the silver was Mykolas Alekna (LTU). Oceania Athletes Matthew Denny (AUS) and Connor Bell (NZL) placing 4th and 10th respectively.

Image: Oceania Athletics

—ENDS—