Lionel Elika Fatupaito Courtesy of Lionel Elika Fatupaito/Fb
Samoan boxing coach Lionel Elika Fatupaito died on the 2024 Paris Olympics on Friday, July 26.
The Samoa Affiliation of Sport and Nationwide Olympic Committee confirmed that the supervisor handed away within the Olympic athletes’ village in Saint-Denis attributable to “pure causes” on the age of 60.
“Lionel was one in all Samoa’s high boxing coaches and an awesome believer within the Olympic very best,” SASNOC President Pauga Talalelei Pauga shared within the assertion. “Our ideas and people of your entire Samoan sporting group are with Lionel’s household, his boxers, and buddies. He might be vastly missed.”
The Worldwide Boxing Affiliation additionally shared their condolences in an announcement.
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“We on the Worldwide Boxing Affiliation (IBA) lengthen our heartfelt condolences to the household, buddies, and colleagues of Lionel Elika Fatupaito, the nationwide boxing coach of Samoa, who tragically handed away in the course of the Paris 2024 [Olympics],” they wrote. “Lionel’s dedication and keenness for the game have left an indelible mark on the boxing group. His legacy will proceed to encourage future generations. Our ideas and prayers are with Staff Samoa and all these affected by this profound loss.”
Lionel Elika Fatupaito Courtesy of Lionel Elika Fatupaito/Fb
Fatupaito coached the top-seeded heavyweight boxer on the 2024 Olympics – and Samoa’s solely boxer on the Video games – Ato Plodzicki-Faoagali. In an announcement shared to Fb, the 25-year-old celebrated the “previous man” he’d identified for greater than a decade.
“I first met coach Lionel after I was 15 trialing for Samoa’s Youth staff. He was a form and beneficiant coach, not solely along with his time, materials issues, but in addition his data. You may be sorely missed coach, your dream was to attend an Olympics with me and pop, now you’ve left too early we haven’t had our first battle on the Olympics like we deliberate!” Plodzicki-Faoagali wrote. “Relaxation nicely previous man, gonna miss you on the market, you had been the calm one and pop the storm of our nook.”
Plodzicki-Faoagali additionally shared his final photograph with the coach, in a ship off to his “grand grasp” through his Instagram Story. The boxer’s first match of the 2024 Olympics is scheduled for tomorrow towards Belgian boxer Victor Schelstraete.
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Fatupaito is the sixth coach to die in the course of the Olympics in fashionable historical past. The final demise of a coach got here in Rio de Janeiro in 2016 when German canoe slalom coach and former silver medalist Stefan Henze died from accidents sustained in a taxi cab crash. The opposite 4 coaches to move in the course of the Olympics had been all Israeli hostages killed in the course of the Munich Olympics bloodbath in 1972.