RIO DE JANEIRO, 15 AUGUST 2016 (ONOC) –Palau’s Minister for Community and Cultural Affairs and Secretary General of Palau National Olympic Committee Mrs Baklai Temengil says Team Palau at the 2016 Rio Olympics is the “best ever.”
“Here Team Palau has really progressed well, our swimmers they did all their best times.
[restrict]
“Shawn (Wallace) did a national record for the guys and UB (Dirgulbai Misech) was first in her heat so we very excited about that and of course Rodman (Teltull) our runner ran first in his heat and clocked 10.53sec and went to the first round.
“For most of us in Palau, I think for Micronesia it’s the first for someone to go to the first round in the Olympics, we’re very happy with that. I think the result of their competition is the training that has been offered to our young athletes.
“We need to find better pathways and good training facilities and coaches for our athletes for them to achieve their potentials and grades. This is great. “
The Minister says as they set their sights on Tokyo 2020 it’s good to see the Pacific enter into other sports events.
“Now we spreading our sports to canoeing , rugby, you know the Fiji team, its opening more doors for us as sports leaders in Oceania to really be serious start looking at the pathway to allow the opportunity for all these athletes to become great sports people in Oceania. “
“We will be looking forward to the next four years and beyond to really to see more champions in Palau and in Oceania.”
Team Palau entered Rio 2016 with five athletes- Teltull in athletics, Marina Toribiong (Canoe Sprint), Misech and Wallace in swimming and Florian Temengil in wrestling.
Minister Temengil is also greatful that the 20,000 population back home were able to watch the competition via television.
She says most of these athletes desire to continue preparing for future games.
Plans are afoot to work closely with United States and Japan in preparation for Tokyo 2020…..
Source: PACNEW [/restrict]