Alex Rose endures wild journey as he prepares to represent Samoa at Tokyo Olympics
WEST BRANCH, Mich. (BVM) — Alex Rose is no stranger to the national stage. In 2016, he competed in the discus at the Rio Olympics. After a long wait, Rose is headed back to the Olympics with hopes of bringing home Samoa’s first medal in the summer games.
However, Rose’s journey to get to the goals he has this summer has not always been easy. In high school, the sport of track and field wasn’t even on his radar. Rather, Rose was a football standout, and was actually recruited to play Division I college football at Central Michigan University.
But during his junior year at Ogemaw Heights High School, Rose was persuaded to try throwing a discus by his chemistry teacher. Before long, a star was born as Rose won a state title in his senior year in the shot put while finishing runner-up in the discus.
“What attracted me to throwing initially was the individual nature of the sport,” Rose said. “It’s just you inside of the circle, and the results speak for themselves. As soon as I had success that spring where I won the state championship and threw the discus pretty far, I was just absolutely in love with track and field and I knew I was going to do it in college.”
Rose would indeed attend Central Michigan in college, competing in track and field rather than the sport he thought he would be there for prior. Throughout his time with the Chippewas, Rose continued to develop, becoming a Mid-American Conference champion in the discus as well as an All-American.
“It was fantastic, I never would’ve imagined that I would have the success I did in college coming out of high school,” Rose said. “I was very fortunate to have a great coach and be a member of the track and field team where I eventually met my wife. I truly cherish my experience at Central Michigan University.”
Rose’s wife, Sam, was a former high jumper at Central Michigan. Through the years, she has been there to support Alex as he pursues his dreams.
“My wife has been so incredibly supportive,” Alex said. “She’s been working and supporting my dream and it’s so incredible I’ve had someone like her to help me out and believe in me.”
The Central Michigan grad is a Samoan-American athlete. With his dad born in Samoa and coming over to the United States as a teenager, Alex has dual citizenship, and the potential of representing the country of Samoa in the sport he continued to grow a love for quickly became a goal of the talented athlete.
“In 2010, I competed for the United States at a world junior championship,” Alex said. “The year after that, I was approached by Samoa athletics and when they were explaining to me the history of track and field in Samoa, I saw that there wasn’t anyone who had ever hit an Olympic standard. No one had ever outright qualified for the Olympic Games, and I saw that as a far-off goal that would be pretty cool to accomplish for them.”
The first chance to make that goal come true was at the 2012 London Olympics. Although he was one of the best throwers in the country at the collegiate level, Alex was still far off from competing with the best in the world.
“In 2012 I wasn’t even close to hitting the standard,” Alex said. “I was good for a college athlete, but what a lot of people don’t realize is that an elite college thrower and an elite track and field athlete are very, very different things. I still had a good year, but it was definitely humbling and motivating. By the time I did make bigger progress in 2015 and 2016, I was very motivated to get to that Olympic standard.”
The next opportunity for Alex to fulfill his Olympic goal would come in Rio in 2016. However, a torn pec suffered while competing in 2014 made the now 29-year-old rethink everything. Considering changing sports once again after graduating college, Alex began participating in football combines to see if he may have what it takes to compete professionally on the gridiron.
“I was ready for a breakout year and things just didn’t line up properly,” Alex explained. “I found myself wondering will I be able to throw after this [injury] and do I want to keep throwing forever. I questioned what am I without track and what will I do with my career to make money. That’s what led to my idea of trying to train for football and enter a few combines to see what happens.”
But as he returned to full health, Alex also made a return to track and field. Not only did he return to competing, but he also began passing down his knowledge to the next generation as an assistant track and field coach at Aurora University in Illinois.
“In 2015, I began as a graduate assistant coach at Aurora University,” Alex said. “I absolutely loved coaching and had the pleasure to coach some really fantastic athletes and individuals there. We won two NCAA Division III national titles and I met a lot of great people.”
By 2016, he was poised to have that breakout year he had been waiting for. At the Field of Dreams Meet at Claremont College in California, the thrower finally had his moment, hurling the discus 65.74 meters. The throw was a Samoan national record, and also qualified Alex for the 2016 Summer Olympics.
“By 2016, I knew I had made a lot of progress towards reaching my goal of the Olympic standard,” Alex noted. “However, I was still a few meters off. My wife and I flew out to California for the Field of Dreams Meet for the sole purpose of giving myself one last chance of throwing the standard. The entire experience still feels like a dream to me. I knew as soon as the discus left my hands it was going to be far. When the official announced that I had thrown that, I leapt for joy, screamed, and hugged and kissed my wife. It was an incredible culminating moment that just embodied the hard work and struggle I had been going through the past five years.”
Alex had finally made his mark by representing Samoa at the Olympics. However, adversity would hit yet again when the thrower suffered another injury to his abductor and pec prior to the games.
“I had another injury so I couldn’t even train the month leading up to competition,” Alex said. “I threw one day while I was in Rio about a week before competition and I knew things wouldn’t be going my way. Having said that, I wasn’t a good enough thrower at the time to have made an impact and I don’t think I would have been able to make the Olympic final even had I been healthy.”
However, the experience and aura of the Olympic stage was still special for Alex.
“It was an incredible experience seeing the best of the best at the most important meet of all time,” he added. “Being around those types of top-caliber athletes was an incredibly beneficial experience. The whole thing was surreal.”
Alex continued to put in work through the next few years, hoping for better health and improved results in 2020. Earning a full-time sales job, Alex would still find time to train whether it was in a parking lot or a gym. Eventually, Alex broke his own best with another Samoan national record throw, qualifying him for the 2020 games. He would go on to take a sabbatical from work, recognizing he had a chance to be a serious contender in the Olympics.
Feeling perhaps the best he ever had, tough news came to the forefront for Alex as well as many top athletes around the world when it was announced the 2020 Tokyo Games would be postponed to the summer of 2021.
“I was in the best shape of my life in March when I found out the Olympics were delayed a year,” Alex said. “It was absolutely devastating. I had thrown 65 meters indoors in December, which if I were American, would have been the American record for a discus throw. All my plans just kind of vanished out of nowhere and I was stuck in limbo.”
However, Alex battled through the adversity yet again, finding ways to continue to train despite everything shutting down. With his sabbatical from work extended, Alex continued to train into 2021, and feels even better prepared than he was last spring.
Last summer, he also suffered a serious groin injury that later required surgery. Ultimately, it may have been a blessing that the Olympics were pushed back to this summer.
“It turned out in my favor that the Olympics were delayed a year,” the 29-year-old said. “I aggressively rehabbed and somehow I’m the best version of myself that I’ve ever been.”
Recently, Alex still got one more scare when he received an email that Samoan athletes would not be allowed to compete in this year’s Olympics. However, it was only for those who currently train in the country.
“When I got that email, my reaction was pure horror,” Rose said. “Once I got to the end of the email and saw that they’d still be taking athletes that aren’t based in Samoa, I was very relieved. But shortly after that I was just so remorseful and sorry for those athletes who won’t be getting the opportunity I have just because of where they train. I can only imagine the hard work they’ve put in training and sacrificing so much. It definitely gives me some motivation to do my best out there.”
Rose will soon finish training in Pennsylvania and then fly out to Tokyo on July 21. With experience under his belt and some added motivation thanks to his incredible journey to get to this point, Rose is poised for success, but is also taking time to enjoy the rare and special moment he is in.
“I have two primary goals,” Rose said. “One is to make the Olympic final, and two is to win an Olympic medal. I’ve had so many ups and downs that I’m just realizing this year how important it is to enjoy the process. I know this feeling is not permanent and the opportunities I have are fleeting. I don’t take anything for granted and all these small moments are more important to me than they ever were before. It’d be an extreme honor to win a medal for Samoa and just being able to compete for a medal is beyond my wildest dreams.”
