All the good and bad things that happened from 2019 to today, when Lima once again wins the venue for the Pan American Games in 2027

Entering Videna is breathing sport. You already come across a little one leaving their table tennis classes or a group of children in sandals after enjoying the aquatic center, or seeing a highly competitive athlete in their judo or badminton training. It is the heart of sports in Lima and is experienced daily.

It is what is called legacy, it is what sport leaves for a city, for the country, for a nation. If each of the people of Lima (and the Peruvians from where they happened to be) lived what Lima 2019 was like, it doesn’t take much imagination of what they can feel with Lima 2027. The new Pan American Games that the capital will organize.

We already know what an event like this leaves us and we have experienced it year after year since Lima 2019 ended. In addition to the ratification of the commitment to our colors, those Games left us a series of works that today allow the Panam Sports family Continue trusting the city to hold the Pan American Games again.

And it has been a path that has taught us that sport transcends beyond an event, a competition or a medal. Lima 2019 became an emblem that is felt in the city to this day and that is what has brought us to a new designation.

And that is what Panam Sports seeks, that its sporting event does not remain only on the fields, but that it transcends the city where it arrives. And Neven Ilic, its president, explains it in a recent interview with El Comercio.

Click on the image to read the interview

WHAT ARE WE LIVED IN THIS TIME?

What happened in these five years since the previous Games? As promised by Carlos Neuhaus, president of Lima 2019, Lima sought to be the sports capital of America and the election of Lima 2027 indicates that it is the way.

And a pandemic happened that made sport put on its shirt and we saw how the Pan American Village became practically a hospital center to care for Covid cases, with patients using the rooms where Pan American champions were previously. The legacy transcends. We saw how Videna and the Costa Verde became vaccination centers to face the pandemic. And as Legado it became an entity that worked beyond sport. It became the flagship model for how to work on the issue of contracting and development of works. Supported health works and transportation of vaccines.

“Those of us who were on the playing fields went to the hospitals. We are working on bringing oxygen from Chile and Ecuador. And then we returned to the fields,” Alberto Valenzuela, who was the first director of the Legacy Project, tells us. In a graphic interview, he better describes what these five years meant.

And after the health crisis, they opened their doors little. I remember that the badminton athletes were the first to return to practices in La Videna, the National Stadium opened its doors to the public with limited capacity in a Peru-Uruguay, to which we still went with masks. “Peru united under a single cause and today Lima 2019 is taken as a reference from a sporting and social point of view. In addition, there is a policy of multi-sport events, which means there is more support for the Federations,” Renzo Manyari, president of the COP, told us.

The sport never stopped, both at the infrastructure level and at the competitive level. And the results confirm it. Of the 11 gold medals in Lima 2019 (41 in total) we maintained our rank and achieved 10 gold medals in Santiago 2023 (32 in total). Among them, Peru had an Olympic presence in Tokyo 2020 (which took place in 2021) and returned with three Olympic diplomas (Ángelo Caro, Lucca Mesinas and Alexandra Grande) and a gold in the Paralympic Games thanks to Angélica Espinoza.

It happened that Legado consolidated itself as an entity that protects the sports infrastructure. He went from the Ministry of Education to the PCM to be the one who manages all the sports venues in the country and generates a works development plan so that in the future, coliseums that are unrelated to reality or white elephants that end up not being used are not built. There is a projection to be more careful in this regard and know how to invest in what is owed.

“Never again in Peru will public funds be used for works that do not have a long-term sustainable development plan,” Carlos Zegarra, director of Legado, told us at the time. That is to say, Lima 2019 laid the foundations for growth not only as organizers and hosts of world-class events: between now and August we will host seven world championships in various disciplines, at the end of the year we will have the Bolivarian Centennial Games in Ayacucho and the next year the conventional Bolivarians. It also allowed the Peruvian athlete to grow and consolidate in high competition, in addition to motivating other children to join the movement and that is the great victory.

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