The Uruguayan Wheelchair Rugby Team prepares to take the big leap and compete in the South American Quad Rugby Championship in the city of São Paulo, Brazil, from March 12 to 15. As they prepared to leave, they received a very unusual visitor in a wheelchair.
Nothing more and nothing less than the President of the Republic, Luis Lacalle Pou, and a group of authorities came to say goodbye and wish them the best in the championship. The president, who is not a wheelchair user, came sitting in a.
The president had been invited to participate in the training and then handed over the National Pavilion to the team. The national secretary of Sport Sebastián Bauza, the coordinators Eduardo Ulloa and Alejandro Sagasti, and the survivor of the Andean tragedyGustavo Zerbino, They were also present to give their support.
According to the Sports Secretariat, the presidential visit was a key moment for the quad rugby community. The sports discipline is very physically demanding and requires great effort from the players, who use wheelchairs.
The controversial image of Lacalle in a wheelchair
Criticism was immediate on social networks, mostly garnering criticism for the decision to enter the gym using a wheelchair, and then join in playing a small informal game.
“Please, can someone tell Lacalle Pou that not everything is worth it? has passed all tolerance limits and it already borders on the inhuman,” commented Twitter user Liliana Palomeque. “The degree of sick narcissism by Lacalle Pou which removed the focus from the selection and focused on himselfcommented Michael Machado.
One user stated that the action is an “unpresentable and cheap demogogy”, and some even ironized if the character of the Argentine series Palermo DivisionFelipe Rozenfeld, (carried out by Santiago Korovsky, had assumed the presidential communication.
For Daniel Gustavo Núñez it was an “unspeakable lack of respect” and for Eduardo Balian it is “the most shameful thing” he has seen in recent years.
