BARCELONA ’92 OLYMPICS / DAY 9 : SUMMER GAMES SPOTLIGHT : SAMOAN SEEKING SOME MORE WINS

With less than a minute remaining in an Olympic boxing match Sunday, Fao Maselino, a powerfully built light-middleweight from American Samoa, studied his Iraqi opponent, Furas Hashim.

As the Iraqi moved in on Maselino, the Samoan cut loose with a picture-perfect left hook to the jaw and knocked the Iraqi down.

Hashim arose shakily, and the referee administered a standing-eight count. Then he stopped the bout with 54 seconds left in the round--and Maselino promptly did a front somersault.

“The kid is thrilled,” said his coach, Larry Ramirez of Fontana.

“No Samoan has ever won a medal in the Olympics, and now Fao can get into the semifinals with one more win, and be guaranteed a bronze medal.”

Maselino and American Samoan teammate Mike Masoe--eliminated earlier in the tournament--have lived in Ramirez’s home for the past nine months while training for the Olympics.

Ramirez, assistant coach on the 1988 U.S. Olympic boxing team, said he first visited American Samoa several years ago on a coaching exchange visit. “I rented a car at the airport and was driving to my hotel when I saw a football game,” he said.

“I stopped to watch the game. Two guys started fighting, and they stopped the game to let them finish the fight. It went on about five minutes. When one guy was down and couldn’t get up, they resumed the game.

“At that moment, I knew I was in the right place.”

* This a daily roundup of Olympic-related items from reporters in Barcelona from the Los Angeles Times, Newsday, Baltimore Sun and Hartford Courant, all Times-Mirror newspapers.