Pan American Games 2023

Santiago de Chile, March 6 (PL)-- There are 228 days left today until the start of the Santiago 2023 Pan American Games and preparations are advancing in Chile for all the venues of the main continental sports competition.

The venue was assigned to the South American country in 2017, under the administration of Michelle Bachellet and, although at that time there was a reasonable deadline to have everything ready, there were two interruptions in the preparations during the government of Sebastián Piñera.

The first was the social outbreak in October 2019 that paralyzed much of the country for almost three months.

Almost immediately, the Covid-19 pandemic began, for the combat of which long periods of confinement were decreed, with a serious effect on the Pan American works, both in the remodeling of the existing ones, as well as in the new constructions.

After the inauguration of Gabriel Boric's government in March 2022 and the decrease in the intensity of the sanitary crisis, the authorities reaffirmed their commitment to have everything ready before the dates set for the start of the event.

Not a few people stirred up the ghosts of the two occasions when Chile had to give up the Games, in 1975 and 1987 during the dictatorial regime of Augusto Pinochet, when they were moved to Mexico City and Indianapolis.

Many of the works are of great magnitude and high cost, weighed down by the global economic crisis and the rise in fuel prices.

According to data from the Ministry of Sports website, in the capital's National Stadium Sports Park, the heart of the event with 29 disciplines, constructions are being carried out at an initial cost of 20 billion pesos (24.7 million dollars at the current exchange rate).

This facility covers 64 hectares and the works are being carried out on almost half of them and include recovery of depressed areas, tree planting, pedestrian routes and bicycle lanes.

Another neuralgic point is the Cerrillos Bicentennial Park, where the Pan American Village will be built and where baseball, softball and sport climbing competitions will be held, and which received an investment of some 100 million dollars.

Once the Pan American and Parapan American Games are over, more than 1,300 families will benefit from housing there.

The organizers of the continental sports meeting and other entities, among them the Chilean Olympic Committee, assure that the event will be a success and will leave an important legacy to the country, both from a material and cultural point of view.