The Samoa athletics team managed to secure two more medals in the Pacific Mini Games in Northern Mariana Islands to increase the medal tally to 18 before the games closes on Saturday.  

The Samoan men’s 4x100 meters relay team managed to get silver and another got bronze from the men’s 400 meters hurdles. 

A Samoa Association of Sports and National Olympic Committee (S.A.S.N.O.C.) statement confirmed athlete Jireh Otto Micky Westerlund won the bronze for the 400 meters. 

The silver medalists for the 4x100 meters relay are wre Kelvin Masoe, Johnny Key, William Hunt and Pesamino Iakopo. 

Although the team Samoa scooped two medals on Friday they could not maintain their sixth placing on the official medal tally to drop to 7th placing.

As of Friday Papua New Guinea still led by 25 gold medals, followed by Tahiti (13 gold), Australia (13 gold), Northern Mariana Islands (12 gold) with Guam settling for fourth place with 9 medals. New Caledonia has taken the 6th placing. 

The Pacific Mini Games in Saipan began last Friday 17 June and finishes on Saturday 25 June. 

Team Samoa managed to keep up with the rest of the Pacific islands on Wednesday when it started to win medals and bagged 15 medals in total in one day. 

Other Samoan medal recipients from weightlifting are; Faustina Niusila Opeloge, Avatu Opeloge, Iuniarra Sipaia, Lesila Fiapule, Tovio Ah Chong and Donny Masele Tuimaseve.  

 Faustina won 3 gold medals in the 81kg women’s category while also achieving the Oceania youth record, winning golds in the snatch 90kg, clean & jerk 108kg and a total record for Oceania of 198kg. 

Avatu on the other hand won 3 bronze medals in the 76kg women’s category in the snatch, clean and jerk and bronze in the total division. 

Iuniarra was successful in the 87+kg winning gold in the clean and jerk and overall took gold. 

Lesila managed to take gold for the 87+kg division in the snatch, silver in the clean and jerk, and rounded it off with an overall silver. 

The 16-year-old Tovio in the 81kg division set a new Oceania Youth record with a 140kg clean and jerk. 

On the field is Donny that threw a 69 meter in javelin winning gold for the team. 

As for the track events, the 22-year-old Pesamino won silver in the 100m men’s finals, followed by 19-year-old Johnny taking a bronze in the race.