Fila Fuamatu

Fila Fuamatu is a Samoan powerlifter who won a silver medal in the women's 84 kg class at both the 2011 and 2015 Pacific Games. She trained as a teacher in her native New Zealand and moved to Samoa in 2006, where she ran a school sports programme for the Australian Sports Commission and played for the Samoa women's national rugby sevens and touch rugby teams, including touch rugby at the 2009 Pacific Mini Games in the Cook Islands. When touch rugby was not on the 2011 Pacific Games programme she tried powerlifting and found she had talent for it. A slipped disc from a deadlift injury after those Games threatened her career, but she returned to New Zealand in 2014, studied public health at the University of Auckland, and qualified again for the 2015 Games in Port Moresby.