Central American and Caribbean Games move forward: Luis Mejía and Yamil Bukele agree to sign the contract between Centro Caribe Sports and San Salvador 2023

After several telephone conversations in recent days, the president of Centro Caribe Sports, Luis Mejía Oviedo, and the president of the San Salvador 2023 Organizing Committee, Yamil Bukele, defined the regulatory contract for the XXIV regional Games.

“Now we are working on the date of the visit to El Salvador to sign it and continue with the work,” Mejía told Around The Rings.

Notwithstanding this positive sign, some regional Olympic experts do not hide their concern about the tension between the National Sports Institute (Indes), which Bukele also presides, and the Olympic Committee of El Salvador (Coes), headed by Eduardo Palomo, in the midst of the preparations for the Games.

The Organizing Committee, known as “COSSAN 2023″, will be composed of government representatives from various ministries and other officials appointed by the Olympic Committee of El Salvador and the Mayor’s Office of San Salvador.

The signing of the pending contract is part of the protocolary act that traditionally follows the announcement of the winning city of the mega-event, as the culminating point in the election assemblies.

But in this case of San Salvador, it was an alternate venue in the middle of a pandemic that prevented the convening of delegates from the area, in an emerging process after the sudden resignation of Panama in the summer of 2020 and the withdrawal of Mayaguez (Puerto Rico) last April.

“So the contract is out of time, it does not count with the six years that mark the rules for the Games, today it is barely 20 months, but the roadmap has not stopped,” adds Mejia, at the head of CCS since 2019.

“We were looking at the “pros and cons” and we agreed in general terms,” he specified.

“Flexibilization is the word... Time adjustments according to the reality we are living,” Mejía said.

Without going into details, the regional Olympic leader mentioned that in the conversations the need to hold a single CCS General Assembly in a “hybrid” form was valued, and there were clarifications on payment times and available resources, among other aspects.

The First Pan American Junior Games in Cali, starting on November 25, will be an opportunity to meet with representatives of the more than 30 countries participating in the Central American and Caribbean Games, from May 12 to 27, 2023, to update them on the latest developments.

The upcoming trip of Mejia and his team to El Salvador will also serve for a more detailed technical analysis of the Games.

In early September, Yamil Bukele had expressed to Around the Rings his confidence in the “concordance” between both parties on different aspects of the contract, also taking into account the short time frame of this effort to save the continuity of the oldest regional Games in the world.

Bukele reportedly wants to propose beach soccer, futsal, bodybuilding and chess in the Games program.

Bukele has also commented that the $115.2 million loan from the Central American Bank for Economic Integration (BCIE), originally earmarked for the remodeling of 26 sports complexes, will only be enough for nine “due to the poor state they are in”.

Of that amount, $22 million will be specifically for refurbishing the National Stadium, formerly called “Flor Blanca” and renamed “Jorge ‘Mágico’ González”, in homage to the emblematic local soccer player who shone in Cadiz, in Spanish soccer. The park hosted the Central American and Caribbean Games in 1935 and 2002 and the Central American Games in 1977 and 1994.

For the 2023 Games, the facility will host the opening and closing ceremonies and the soccer and athletics tournaments.

The general modernization will include a new track that must be internationally certified and that will allow “top level events to return to that stadium”, said the official, brother of the country’s president, Nayib Bukele.

BCIE’s financing will also allow the renovation of the “Adolfo Pineda” Gymnasium, the “Las Delicias” stadium, the Sports Palace, the Merliot Sports Center, the ExPolvorín complex, the equestrian complex and the baseball and softball stadiums, informed the president of the Organizing Committee.

More than 5,000 athletes from 38 countries are expected to participate in the mega event.

The San Salvador Games will be held less than six months before the XIX Pan American Games in Santiago de Chile.

It will be the second time that both events coincide in the same year. In 1959, Caracas hosted the Central American and Caribbean Games in January and Chicago hosted the continental games in September.

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