Toronto 2015 Says Ready to Go -- On the Scene

(ATR) Zero questions for leaders of the Toronto 2015 Pan American Games.

With three days to go till the official open of the Pan Am Games, the chiefs of the Toronto 2015 organizing committee report to the Pan American Sports Organization, saying all is ready.

More than 8,000 athletes and officials will compete in 36 sports from the first preliminary rounds that began today, the final events July 26.

Toronto 2015 organizers say this will be the first time in Pan Am history the games will have a full Olympic program with the inclusion of canoe slalom and sprint, rugby sevens and golf.

The 16-day event will feature 28 Olympic sports as well as the most Olympic qualifiers in the history of the Pan Ams, according to event organizers.

In order to get many of these sports into the program, several International Federations were asked to reschedule their events, including a few world championships.

Organizers say approximately five IFs did so to accommodate the Pan Am schedule, showing unprecedented respect to the Pan Am program and PASO.

Included in the report to the PASO General Assembly was a detailed overview of the legacy venues built specifically for the games. Total spending on venue construction came to $674 million, with total sports infrastructure spending totaling $750 million.

These numbers represent the greatest expenditures by a Canadian city on international multi-sport games, beating out spending on Olympic Games in Vancouver, Montreal and Calgary, as well as the Pan Ams in Winnipeg.

Toronto 2015 chief executive officer Saad Rafi says the spending on the 10 legacy venues will allow Ontario to get a bigger piece of the $5.2 billion pie that is Canada’s sports industry.

Toronto says these games will allow Ontario to be the leader of sport throughout Canada.

Too Many Athletes

Although no questions were asked after Toronto’s report to PASO, one issue with the games was discussed at length during the general assembly.

While 35 of the 36 sports complied with the athlete quota set forth by PASO, the sport of athletics listed over 220 additional athletes to compete at the games due to a host of issues.

Many national federations hosted their national championships later in June, causing PASO to extend the original deadline of June 15 to submit a final list of athletes competing at the games to June 29.

More than 900 athletes met the qualifying standards set forth by PASO at these national championships, a number PASO vice president Ivar Sisniega says was completely unmanageable. These athletes were told at the time they had earned a chance to compete at the Pan Ams.

A week later, many of these athletes discovered this was not the case. In order to resolve the headache caused by this miscommunication, PASO agreed to add 41 spots for athletes to compete in athletics.

By doing so, the organization had to change certain qualifying standards event by event. The acceptance of some athletes but not all original qualifiers upset a few NOCs who believe their athletes deserve a chance to compete at the Pan Ams due to original qualifying standards.

This was reflected at the general assembly, with delegates from NOCs questioning the decision making of the PASO executive board and how something like this could happen.

PASO president Julio Cesar Maglione vowed this problem would not occur in the future and they would continue to work towards solutions to accommodate as many athletes as possible for this year’s competition.

The PASO Athletes Commission chair Alexandra Orlando closed the assembly with a statement from the commission. In the statement she describes how the athlete community is disappointed with the breakdown of communication and "that the situation as it stands is unacceptable".

Orlando tells Around the Ringsthe athletes' point of view needed to be heard and the issue must be recognized as a failure that cannot occur again moving forward.

Reported by Ed Hula and Kevin Nutley

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