As usual, this past Friday 19th of August at 16:35 p.m. sharp, the new episode of the podcast “1635: Los Juegos al día (Games on Time),” the official podcast of the Organizing Committee of the Santiago 2023 Pan American and Parapan American Games, was released.
This ninth delivery had as a guest Alejandro Bacot, deputy director of Legacy and sustainability at the Corporation, who gave important details about these key concepts for the development and impact that this great sports event will have, being the biggest in the history of our country.
About this, the professional from Colombia started stating that “the definition of legacy is the storytelling for the Games. We built it through the definitions of the OECD (The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development,) planning approximately for Chile what happened and will happen between the awarding of the event in 2017 and in 2023.”
Deeping into the concept of legacy, Alejandro Bacot, an experienced sailor and sailing coach, said that “this has a lot of dimensions, among which we can find the legacy of infrastructure, the sports legacy, and the legacy of the Americas.”
Alejandro Bacot and Felipe Bianchi in the Santiago 2023 podcast. (Picture: Santiago 2023).
Going a bit further, Bacot took the time to explain in more detail some of these aspects. “The sporting legacy has huge areas: the training of technical officials in Chile, and the program of the broadcasting academy together with Instituto Santo Tomás, to teach how to broadcast multisports events. We will train 1,800 professionals from the corporation on sports management, and we will also have our top-quality sports equipment, which will be managed by the IND once the event is over.”
To have a better idea; the level of sports material that has arrived and will continue arriving at our country for the Pan American and Parapan American Games complies with the higher international and olympic standards. Some examples are the athletics track, which has the same characteristics as the one used at the Tokyo Olympic Games; the clay for the Centro de Tenis, which is the same one used at the Hamburg Masters 1000;and the Table Tennis courts, which are similar to the ones that will be at Paris 2024, which will help Chilean athletes to properly prepare for the Olympic date.
The representative from the Santiago 2023 Corporation also provided information about the social legacy aspect of his area. About this, he said “there are a total of six initiatives that look to promote sports as a life solution, since we need to address issues from our society like sedentarism and obesity.”
Among the social legacy variables of the Games, we can find programs like “Conoce tu estrella” (Get to know your star), Education or Culture, which are being developed by the Local Organizing Committee.
Written by: Carlos Ramírez Salazar.
