Camilo Pérez reflects on the success and praises The Youth South American Games of Rosario 2022

When the Youth South American flame goes out in Rosario next Sunday, the first international multidisciplinary Games “without a mask” will also have ended on the continent.

This detail was highlighted by the president of the South American Sports Organization (ODESUR), the Paraguayan Camilo Pérez López-Moreira when he inaugurated the youth contest in the Argentine city a week ago.

“We celebrate doing these games without masks and being able to hug each other,” the South American manager said then.

The mega-event was favored by the decision of the national health authorities to suspend the mandatory social distancing and the use of face masks due to a favorable epidemiological situation regarding the new coronavirus in Argentina.

With COVID-19, the realities continue to be a fluid situation in the world, as evidenced by the most recent news about new cases and although it is still early to talk about the “new normality”, the inhabitants of Rosario and the foreign visitors who accompanied them for 11 competition dates eagerly shared those moments.

Already in the final stretch of the third South American Youth Games for athletes between 14 and 18-years-old, Camilo Pérez shared with Around The Rings his joy at having seen so many people dedicated to the sports festival.

“You can see that tremendous desire of people to go out and feel freedom after so long locked up by the restrictions against COVID-19″, said the president of the Paraguayan Olympic Committee.

And he highlights a fact from the initial days that he froze in his memory: almost 100,000 boys and girls from different schools interacting with the athletes on the various stages.

It is that these Games transcend sports (a merit that also reminds us of the Youth Olympic Games of Buenos Aires in 2018) because the competitive factor coexists with two other fundamental axes: culture and education.

In this context and beyond the sports program, this Thursday, after two days, an International Congress on the Organization of Sports Events was closed with the participation of foreign experts, coaches and members of the local community.

In seven days of competition, the Games registered almost 700,000 visits that have included schools, clubs and thousands of others interested in being part of the offers at the heart of the Games in the Parque Unico Suramericano. Draws, demonstrations of the participating disciplines and the exhibition of eSports encourage spectators of all ages.

The Fan Fest returns from this Thursday on the long boulevards with multiple sports, recreational, cultural, educational and gastronomic spaces as another of the labels of Rosario 2022 considered the most important sports festival in the city in the last 40 years.

Despite suffering a slight reduction in the original project of the sports program, the Games registered a record participation with 1,752 athletes from 15 countries in 23 sports and some 600 officials.

“These Games were not immune to the uncertainty marked by the pandemic throughout the world,” recalls Camilo Pٞérez, one of the 10 Latin American members of the International Olympic Committee.

“They were postponed twice, the first time due to the pandemic and then due to small budget problems that forced us to reengineer the event with the elimination of some disciplines and concentrating everything in the Parque Unico Suramericano,” he clarifies.

In this sense, the sports leader highlighted “the predisposition and excellent attitude” of the Organizing Committee, the authorities of the province of Santa Fé and the city of Rosario and the Argentine Olympic Committee to bring the Games to a successful conclusion despite the obstacles.

The possibility of using the first quality hotel capacity for the participants and the transportation supervised by the Municipality were also advantages for the organization.

Three dates before the closing, which, like the inauguration, will be held at the Parque Unico, Brazil widely leads the medal table followed by Colombia, Argentina and Venezuela. Followed by Chile, Ecuador, Peru, Paraguay all with the same number of medals: four. Then you have Uruguay, Panama and Bolivia. Those yet to medal are: Aruba, Curaçao, Guyana and Suriname. Numerous competitors from Rosario 2022 will be seen again at the South American Games that Asunción, the Paraguayan capital, will organize for the first time from October 1 to 15.

Camilo Pérez, a member of the Executive Boards of Panam Sports, the Association of National Olympic Committees and the International Tennis Federation, recognizes the importance that the Olympic Committees of the region give to their Games, as starting points of the “echelon Olympic” in which its athletes are trained in immediate transit to the Junior Pan American Games and the Pan American Games.

The President of ODESUR reveals that despite being in Rosario these days focused on the youth games, he dedicates a daily time on the agenda to the preparations for the South American Games in Asunción just five months before the inauguration.

“The works are on schedule, although quite tight... there is not much margin [for error] but we trust that it will be fulfilled”, he warns. Camilo Pérez announces that between May 23 and 25 the Games Follow-up Commission will return to Asunción.

“He will be in charge of thoroughly reviewing the state of everything”, specifies the South American Olympic leader. “In the meantime, everything should take care of itself”.