Samoa’s Olympic committee informed recently that it is going to withdraw its weightlifting team from the Tokyo Olympics which is starting on July 23 due to the COVID-19 surge. They added that the rest of the athletes would attend. The denial for weightlifters was due to the latest setback for Japan’s fraught efforts to stage the world’s biggest sporting event during a pandemic after it was delayed last year.
Through telephone, the President of the Pacific nation’s Olympic committee, Patrick Fepuleai told Reuters, ” The only team that cannot travel is the weightlifting team, which is based here in Samoa.” He added, “We are still sending a team to the Olympics and our teams are scattered all around.” Tuaopepe Jerry Wallwork, the boss of Samoa’s weightlifting said regarding the decision to Reuters, “It’s terrible, it’s disheartening, it’s very disheartening. I will now speak to my lifters this afternoon and inform this bad news.”
Tokyo has suspected 714 cases on Wednesday which is the highest in more than a month, as domestic media informed officials were weighing an extension of prevention measures for as much as a month beyond July 12, the current end date. Along with Samoa weightlifters, many athletes across the globe withdraw due to COVID-19 or because of injury.
