The eyes of South America are fixed on Asunción: in five days history will be made

There are only five days left before the sporting spotlight shines on Paraguay, when the capital city of Asunción hosts the South American Games.

Paraguay will be the second largest delegation after Brazil.

“With this record number of athletes, we also want a record in medals. We aspire to a minimum of 50, to surpass the 2018 Cochabamba haul where we won 30″, reiterated Camilo Pérez López Moreira, the head of the Paraguayan Olympic Committee (COP) and also of the South American Sports Organization (ODESUR).

On the morning of October 1, skateboarding will open the competitions of the South American Games, which will have its opening ceremony 12 hours later in the emblematic Defensores del Chaco Stadium, in Asunción.

Some 5,000 athletes from 15 countries and more than 1,800 officials, who are joined by 4,500 volunteers and some 10,000 spectators are expected to visit Paraguay over the coming weeks. In total, nearly 20,000 people will gather for 15 days in Asunción and the surrounding areas of Encarnación, Carmen del Paraná and East City.

Pérez highlighted that with all the budgets generated by these Games, an advance of 12 to 15 years was obtained for national sports, since several new sports venues were added as a legacy.

The Games will also mean an important economic revitalization through tourism, which has already been helped with recent events such as the Skating World Cup, Rowing World Cup and the South American Athletics Championship.

“Paraguay was prepared in the worst stage of the pandemic and now there is also a platform to receive top-level and global competitions,” said Sofía Montiel de Afara, minister of the National Secretariat of Tourism (Senatur).

Several Olympic and world medalists from Brazil, Argentina and Colombia, will guarantee the highest level of competition.

The president of the COP indicated the Paraguayan delegation could achieve two to three medals per day. “We have top performers like Vero Cepede in tennis, Camila Pirelli in athletics, Cesar Almirón in speed, Derlys Ayala in marathon and many more in rowing, the expectation is very high” he asserted.

Brazil announced 464 athletes in 45 events, including eight medalists from the Olympic Games and 22 in the World Championships.

Felipe Wu (sports shooting), Bárbara Seixas (beach volleyball), Arthur Nory and Arthur Zanetti (artistic gymnastics) and Erlon Souza (speed canoeing) were on the podium at Rio de Janeiro 2016 and Ana Marcela Cunha (open water) and Abner Teixeira (boxing) took the laurels at Tokyo 2020. Isaquias Queiroz (speed canoeing) is the only medalist in the last two editions of the Games.

This is the largest delegation of Team Brazil in the Olympic cycle. The expectation is to lead the medal table again, after being in second place, behind Colombia, in the edition of Cochabamba, Bolivia, in 2018.

Argentina will be made up of 592 athletes (289 women and 303 men) who will participate in the 36 sports that make up the Competition Program and in all events except 5x5 basketball. In indoor volleyball, Argentina will compete only in the women’s division.

Of the 36 sports, 18 will qualify for the Santiago 2023 Pan American Games. 1,336 medals (410 gold, 410 silver, and 516 bronze) will be awarded in a total of 416 events.

Field hockey player Rocío Sánchez Moccia and paddler Agustín Vernice will be the flag bearers of the Argentine delegation. For the first time in a South American event, there will be a male and a female flag bearer in the opening parade, an initiative that was promoted by the International Olympic Committee that began at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.

Colombia will have in its speed skating team its main medal contenders with 10 world champions that add up to 60 world titles led by multi-world champion Gabriela Isabel Rueda, flag bearer of her delegation.