August 8th – After the exciting week and the Opening Ceremony, Team Palau Athletes and Management team including Chef de Mission Ms. Frida Delmau and Palau NOC Secretary General Ms. Baklai Temengil visited the National Olympic Committee (NOC) Service Center. NOC Service Center is the management Olympics that has assigned an assistant each National Olympic Committee in preparation for the Olympic Games. This year Ms. Virginia Figueiredo was assigned to be an NOC Relations Coordinator for Oceania. Ms. Figueiredo has been a huge help for the team and she’s been working with Team Palau and Palau NOC in preparation to the games since last year. Team Palau visited her today at her office at the NOC Service Center to present her a gift (Bai – Traditional Men’s Meeting House Name Plague) as a token of appreciation for her hard work and efforts she has done for Team Palau. It was a little emotional moment for Ms. Figueiredo when she received her gift from the whole Team Palau as she did not expect to get a personalized gift from any team, as the one presented to her with her name carved on the Bai storyboard. She humbly thanked the whole Team Palau and hope to visit Palau soon. Thank You Virginia.
This whole week Team Palau has been focusing on conditioning and training as it’s only few days away from their competition. Shawn Dingilius Wallace will be the first to compete this week which is Thursday 11th of August at 1:00 pm (1am Friday Aug 12th Palau time) followed by Dirngulbai “UB” Misech on Friday 12th of August at 1:00 pm (1am Aug 13th Palau time) and Rodman Teltull will be running the 100m preliminaries on Saturday 13th of August at 9:30am RIO time (930pm Aug 14th Palau time). Marina Toribiong will kick off her first event K1 200m on 15th of August at 9:00am (9pm Aug 16th Palau time) and her second event K1 500m on 17th of August at 9:00am (9pm August 18th Palau time) Florian Skilang Temengil will be the last athlete from Palau to compete on 20th of August at 10:00 am (10am Aug 21st Palau time) which is a day before the Closing Ceremony on 21st of August.
The Team has been keeping up with their 9 o’clock meeting every night and on Tuesday night this week, the Team welcomed Mr. John Tarkong Jr. to Rio and to the Olympic Village. Mr. Tarkong is at the Rio Olympic Games as a President for Oceania Wrestling Federation and also assistant coach for Florian Temengil. Other related Team Palau news, are the visits of the Palau NOC Officers and Chef de Mission to the Tokyo Reception in its preparation to the 2020 Olympic Games. The President and Secretary General of Palau NOC will be meeting with Japan Olympic Committee this week in coordinating future plans for Palau preparation to 2020 Olympic Games. In addition, an Oceania Pacific Reception was held this week at the Oceania House, where sports leaders from all Oceania NOCs met to discuss further dialogue and network to continue to improve the role of sports in Oceania.
The athletes also continue to enjoy their Olympic fever in the village with other athletes and making new friends. Keep all your cheers and prayers to our athletes, they are representing Palau great and all wonderful ambassadors to our country amongst the athletes of the world at this Olympic Games in RIO.
All Olympic Event are live on Palau local channel which is NBC US channel 50 and Channel 65 special event via Fiji Tv. You will be able to watch their event live, but don’t forget that Palau is 12 hours ahead from Rio so you have to watch their events 12 hours after their scheduled date and time.
Monday August 8 at 11:30pm –Rio = Tuesday August 9 at 11:30 am – Palau
For more information about the games you can visit the games website: www.rio2016.com or NBC Olympics: www.nbcolympics.com for game schedules and time. You may also contact Mr. Jayvan Emesiochel via email: madeinpalau7@gmail.com or Kenny Reklai at reklai8@yahoo.com for more information about Team Palau. [/restrict]