ONOC To Pull Together Resources

Team Fiji Chef de Mission to the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, Patrick Bower, is looking forward to the Oceania National Olympic Committees (ONOC) pooling together resources during the Olympic Games being held in Tokyo, Japan from July 24 – 9 August, 2020.

He said Oceania NOCs excluding Australia and New Zealand had a different 'flavour' due to the fact that we were very communal.

"So our Oceania NOCs will be pooling resources for medical purposes, office space and staffing of a secretariat ," Mr Bower said.

"I believe what we saw with the facilities would be able to cater for that purpose."

Mr Bower was part of 400 representatives from National Olympic Committees, including the Chef de Missions, from participating countries to next year’s Olympic Games,who  gathered in Tokyo last week for the Chefs de Mission Seminar hosted by the Tokyo 2020 Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Mr Bower said he along with others were impressed as Japan, with less than a year away, seemed to be very much on track.

"The Games Village is almost completed which is very impressive.

"Given the time, they have had enough time to titillate the place to make it friendly for athletes," Mr Bower said.   Meanwhile, ONOC has expressed their support on how Tokyo 2020 was looking at the environmental aspect of the Olympic Games.

ONOC Chefs de Mission including Mr Bower said it was a pleasure to see Japan including a green aspect of the Games with trees being planted all over the Olympic Venues.

As far as Team Fiji was concerned, Mr Bower said the Olympics is another story and although it is not going to be a huge contingent for Fiji like the Samoa Pacific Games, the qualification and logistics are at another level.

In 2016, the Fiji 7s Men’s team created history when they won Fiji’s first ever gold medal at the Olympics.

The team has qualified for the 2020 Olympic Games in July where they will defend their Gold Medal title.

Fiji will be hosting the Oceania Rugby 7s Womens Olympic Qualifier in November this year with Team Fiji Womens 7s team hoping to qualify by winning this event.

Fiji will also host the Oceania Archery Championship in February of 2020 which will also be an Olympic Qualifier.

FASANOC currently has six athletes who are International Olympic Committee (IOC) Tokyo 2020 Scholarship recipients.  

They include Eugene Volmer (Athletics), Robert Elder (Archery) Winston Hill (Boxing), TevitaTakayawa (Judo) andMatelitaBuadromo and EpeliRabua (Swimming).  

In a separate program, an initiative of the IOC and the Japanese National Olympic Committee has seen 2016 Oympian, Sally Yee,studying in Japan this past year on a sports scholarship.  

After the Pacific Games in Apia, FASANOC was also very pleased to be advised that the Internatioanl Table Tennis Federation has now identified Sally’s younger sister, Grace, “as having a real talent to develop provided that she received high level training and competition experience.”    

Grace’s scholarship details have yet to be advised but it is understood that the ITTF will be liaising directly with the Fiji Table Tennis Association.

In the meantime, FASANOC will shortly be calling for nomination of team officials for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.

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