PRESIDENTIAL MESSAGE AND UPDATES

On behalf of the Executive Board, I would like to extend a warm welcome to all our international and

local partners for their support in this project.

We originally had a website but we neglected to populate it with the information as we have now

done with this new one. In a way, I credit COVID19 with the lockdown as one of the reasons we

managed to complete some of the projects that the Executive Board have now done.

We managed to do a complete review of our SASNOC Constitution, with the changes vetted by the

IOC, and the changes were ratified by the Special General Meeting on 25 June 2020. SASNOC has

already approved its strategic plan for 2020 – 2024. Our various Commissions have done a lot of

work during these past 2 years. Our Samoa Medical and Anti-doping Agency (SMADA) have already

adopted the Anti-Doping Rules, which I understand is the first in Oceania outside of NZ and

Australia. Our Equity Commission (previously called Women in Sport Commission) continue to

promoting gender equity in sport in conjunction with our Athletes Commission. You will find all of

this information on our new website.

You will also find information on our membership which has links to other social platforms like

Facebook.

The next major event for us is the Olympic Games which has been deferred for a year. You will see

the Count Down Clock to the opening of the Games. We have a section there with the profiles of our

athletes in Team Samoa who have qualified so far. So far we have 6 athletes who have booked their

tickets for Tokyo. We have 2 athletes in weightlifting, 1 in athletics, 2 in canoeing and 1 in sailing.

There is a possibility of more qualifying in weightlifting, boxing and rugby 7s. We also expect invites

for swimming and some of the other sports on offer. Other than Australia and NZ, we have more

athletes who have qualified on merit than any of the other countries in our region. We also have

more qualified than we did for Rio in 2016 and we are particularly proud of this. We do have some

serious medal contenders especially in the sport of weightlifting.

You will also see on our website some information on our host cities in Tokyo. The cities of Iwaki and

Yamagata are our selected host cities and I am particularly happy to have hosted the Mayor of

Yamagata City when he visited Samoa to formalize our arrangement and in turn, I had the pleasure of

visiting Yamagata City when I was in Tokyo in 2018. We have already had an exchange program in

the sport of judo.

This website is an excellent tool to communicate with our members. I acknowledge the work done

by our IT specialist, Lemalu Emani Tevaga in upgrading our website. We owe a great deal of gratitude

to all our international partners including our Worldwide Olympic Partners for their support. Closer

to home we greatly appreciate our local partners for all the assistance they have accorded us in

various ways. We look forward to continuing our partnership in the future for our mutual benefits.

I hope that you all stay safe in these times.

Patrick Fepuleai

PRESIDENT