Chile's Pan American Games enter their 12th day of competition
From Chile, journalist Eduardo Regonesi updates us on the development of the competitions of the 12th day of the Pan American Games. teleSUR
Transcript
00:00 Welcome back from the south.
00:13 In Chile the twelfth day of the Pan American Games Santiago 2023 moves forward.
00:17 Eduardo Recones has the latest details.
00:20 Hello Eduardo, what can you tell us of today's sporting events?
00:25 Right now we are on a lunch break, the actions are going to renew around 1500 hours, 3 o'clock
00:32 3pm local time, where there's going to be a bronze medal match between Prisca Awiti
00:37 from Mexico and Agustina de Lucia from Argentina, that's in the judo discipline.
00:44 But tonight we want to talk about what happened earlier this morning, the big controversy
00:49 of Santiago 2023 so far.
00:52 A big problem happened early this morning at the 20km racewalk final.
00:59 Let me do a quick recap of the events.
01:01 Around 7am the female 20km racewalk started and something was off, something was not right
01:08 since the beginning.
01:09 The athletes knew it, as soon as they finished the first turn the coaching staff knew that
01:14 they, something was off.
01:16 The GPS signal told them that they were going faster, they were going, the times didn't
01:21 match, the distance didn't match and the reason was because the field, the track where they
01:26 were running was 200m shorter than regulatory.
01:31 This is a big big mistake.
01:33 Just so you have an idea, 200m shorter in a 20km race, it's about 2-3km shorter.
01:39 The race was around, instead of 20km, was around 17-18km.
01:44 Of course this is a huge huge problem and already there's a lot of controversy going
01:49 on here in Santiago.
01:51 The organization of Santiago 2023 already said that this is not their responsibility,
01:56 they blame directly the association of Pan American Athletics.
02:01 They said they are the entity that's supposed to measure, supposed to see that everything
02:06 is in place in Santiago 2023.
02:07 According to Harold May-Nichols, the executive director, they're not responsible for this.
02:12 What does this mean to the athletes?
02:15 Also a big problem.
02:16 Kimberly Garcia was the gold medalist from Peru.
02:19 She won gold medal and just so you can dimension, so you can picture how big a mistake this
02:26 was, she finished with a time of 1h 12m 26s.
02:32 The world record for this discipline is 1h 26m 51s by Maria Garcia from Spain.
02:39 That's the record.
02:40 So Kimberly Garcia today finished 14 minutes shorter of that record.
02:45 That's a huge difference, so of course something was not right and they noticed it right away.
02:50 Kimberly Garcia won gold, silver was for Estefania Morejon from Ecuador and bronze was for Carla
02:57 Inga from Peru.
02:58 What's going to happen?
02:59 They all still keep their medals, they're going to remain gold winners, but the big
03:06 problem is that the times that they did today are not going to count.
03:10 They're going to be eliminated.
03:12 That's a big problem, especially since this discipline was one of those in the Pan American
03:17 2023 games that allowed athletes to obtain a ticket to Tokyo 2024.
03:22 These athletes were competing to finish first place so they can win the gold medal and also
03:28 make it to Tokyo 2024.
03:30 That is not going to happen because of the big, big mistake that happened earlier this
03:34 morning.
03:35 Big mistake, they caught it, but after that they had to review the whole field.
03:41 The organization came in, they reviewed the distances and they fixed it for the men's
03:45 competition that took place.
03:46 Instead of 9.30 it took place at 10 because of this huge mess that was happening.
03:52 It happened normally, nothing new, it's going to count.
03:56 The information that we're managing right now is that it's a valid race where Alexandre
04:02 Hurtado from Ecuador won the gold, Caio Bonfim from Brazil got the bronze medal and Andres
04:08 Oliva from Mexico got the bronze medal.
04:11 Excuse me, Caio Bonfim from Brazil got the silver medal, Mexico got the bronze medal.
04:17 First medal for Mexico in this type of discipline in 20 years so he was very, very excited.
04:23 We're going to keep reporting on this because as we said, it's a big error, one of the biggest
04:28 errors here so far in Santiago 2023.
04:31 We want to see what the authorities have to say about this.
04:34 We're going to go, as soon as we're done with you, we're going to go in there to Judo because
04:38 as we said, it's a long day of competition in Judo and we're going to find out what's
04:42 going on with the 20km race walk that happened early this morning.
04:48 Reporting from Santiago, I'm Eduardo Rebonesi, back to you guys.
04:51 Thank you Eduardo for the latest information, we'll stay tuned to learn what's happening
04:55 at Santiago in the Pan American Games.