There are just under four years to go before the Pan American and Para Pan American flame is lit in Santiago, and the 2023 Games are already beginning to take shape after the Government's announcement of the new sports infrastructure that the Chilean capital will have for this mega event.
Most of the new venues - which can be used by high-performance athletes and also by the community - will be built in the renovated National Stadium Sports Park, which will have 62 hectares of green sports areas.
Paralympic athletes will be able to fulfill a long-awaited dream when their Training Center is built, right next to the access to the Stadium on Marathon Avenue. The venue will host the Para Pan Am Games, but will also host one or two sports during the Pan Am Games in October 2023.
A little further south, another sport will also fulfill a dream: field hockey will have the first public courts in history at the National Stadium. And a few meters from there, near the corner of Marathon with Guillermo Mann, contact sports, such as wrestling, taekwondo and judo will have their Training Center and brand new headquarters for the Pan American Games.
The erection of the aforementioned venues will be part of the US $ 170 million budget allocated to infrastructure for the Santiago 2023 Games, while the new arena that will be built where the old National Stadium velodrome currently stands will be tendered and awarded.
In addition to these four new venues in the Ñuñoa sports fields, important improvements will be made in the future Casa de las Raquetas, the Aquatic Center, the Mario Recordón Athletic Stadium, the Sports Center and the Central Coliseum.
O'Higgins Park will also be another of the central nuclei during the Pan American Games, since in addition to the Roofed Stadium that will be one of the venues for the 2023 sports mega-event, in this location, it will be built a new roofed Skate Rink with a capacity for two thousand spectators and the Esplanade of Urban Sports, which could host 3 × 3 basketball, skateboarding and climbing.
In the east of the city, the Peñalolén Sports Park, which already had a leading role during the South American Games Santiago 2014, will once again play a central role for the Pan American and Para Pan American Games 2023. There, next to the BMX tracks and the imposing Velodrome dome, a modern sports center will be built that will host the mega sports event and can also be used by the community.
The new Santiago 2023 venues will be completed with the two Elige Vivir Sano Centers that will be built in two districts of the capital that will soon be announced, and which will be added to the network of 28 CEVS venues that will be operational throughout the country for the 2022.
