“Promoting sport as a way of life is an issue that the State is concerned about”

President Alberto Fernández led the act of Delivery of the national flag that the Argentine athletes will carry in the Odesur Games and maintained that “promoting sports as a way of life and social development is an issue that the State is concerned about and that it cannot ignore.”

Accompanied by the Minister of Public Works, Gabriel Katopodis, and the Secretary of Sports, Inés Arrondo, the Head of State handed over the national flag to the flag-bearers of the national delegation, the hockey player Rocío Sánchez Moccia and the paddler Agustín Vernice and He said goodbye to the Argentine athletes who will leave in the next few hours.

The Odesur games will be held from Saturday October 1 to 15, in Asunciónand Argentina will participate with a delegation of 592 Argentine athletes in 36 sports.

“For us, sport is very important. It is one of the best ways for a society to train its citizens, to internalize rules of conduct, norms of culture”Alberto Fernandez

“For us, sport is very important. It is one of the best ways for a society to train its citizens, to internalize rules of conduct, norms of culture. That has always worried us, that amateur and high-performance sports have the support they need to continue growing,” said the President.

The act was carried out from one of the tracks of the National High Performance Center (Cenard), property located in the porteño neighborhood of Nuñez where Various initiatives are being carried out to improve its facilities.

“These are works that the State has to do to make it easier to practice sports that are also not professional, that are amateurs and in which a lot of effort is left,” said the president.

In that sense, he said the budget allocated to the area grew “exponentially” since he assumed the presidency and affirmed that 700 million pesos are being invested in Cenard and 20 billion in sports centers throughout the country.

“Is all this an expense? No, this is all an investment,” she added.

During the act, Fernández pointed out the ability of sport to be great people and expressly mentioned the former judoka and Olympic medalist Paula “Peque” Pareto, about whom he said that “her citizen behavior was more formidable when in the pandemic she went to work as a doctor to help Argentines.”

The President also told the athletes present that they are “the ones who put a smile on millions of Argentines” when they win a medal and asked them to remember that “they represent everyone” during the competition.

To its turn, Arrondo pointed out the “very federal” character of the delegation that will participate in the Games in Paraguay, since it has representation from all the Argentine provinces.

Before recounting an extensive list of works carried out since 2019 and to be done in the coming months, he pointed out the recovery of financing for the area.

In that sense, he thanked Fernández “for the political decision to significantly increase the national sports budget of both the National Sports Secretariat and the National High-Performance Sports Entity.”

“Argentine sport was defunded during the previous government: the same budget in pesos was granted to sport for four years.. This is not an opinion,” said the former Las Leonas player and Olympic medalist.

He then pointed out that the Secretariat’s resources went from 1,375 to 8,551 million since Alberto Fernández took office, while Enard’s budget went from 1,125 to 4,000 million.

“That allows us to be announcing today a increase in scholarships for this year of 109 percent. The scholarships lost 50 points during the previous government and one of the objectives that we have set for our management is that these scholarships do not go out of date and try to recover as many points as possible despite this adverse context,” he added.

The secretary pointed out, in the same sense as Fernández, that “sport is a valuable tool for human development, to build health, a valuable educational tool and one of the greatest strengths is to build identity, a sense of belonging and representation” .

The twelfth games of the South American Sports Organization (Odesur) will be held in Asunción, will feature 53 modalities and 34 sports, while 7,000 athletes will participate in 38 scenarios and 4,000 volunteers.