Silvio Velo concentrates from this Monday until Thursday with Los Murcielagos at the National Center for High Performance Sports (Cenard) in the Federal Capital for the Tokyo 2021 Paralympic Games.
They are the first training sessions of the Argentine soccer team for the blind after being crowned three-time champion of the Grand Prix of Japan without the sampedrino, who was not summoned by coach Martín Demonte.
Along with the legend formed at the Román Rosell Institute are the archers Darío Lencina, Germán Muleck and Guido Consoni and the players Nahuel Heredia, Nicolás Véliz, Ignacio Oviedo, Brian Pereyra, Marcelo Panizza, David Peralta, Daniel Iturria, Jesús Merlos and Ezequiel Fernández . Froilán Padilla, Ángel Deldo, Federico Accardi and Maximiliano Espinillo were not summoned to rest.
The next concentration of the albiceleste team will be between July 2 and 10 also at Cenard, but with the full squad.
The Paralympic Games for Los Murcielagos will begin on August 29 and conclude on September 2 if they reach the final. Argentina will face Morocco, Spain and Thailand in group B, the last two rivals in the Grand Prix. In zone A, meanwhile, Brazil, China, Japan and France will compete. The two leaders of each one, in which the teams will face each other against all, will advance to the semifinals and, later, to the definition for the gold medal.
Football 5 matches will be at the Aomi Urban Sports Center, which is a temporary venue in the Aomi coastal district located near the Olympic Village. The site overlooks Tokyo Bay and at the Olympic Games, which will take place between July 23 and August 8, it will host 3 × 3 basketball and sport climbing.
See it in the official Tokyo 2021 video game
Although it is still unknown if he will be part of the Bats squad in Tokyo 2021, Silvio Velo is one of the nine athletes included in the official video game of the Paralympic Games that the International Paralympic Committee (IPC for its acronym in English) will launch on 24 June to promote disciplines for people with disabilities.
“I am an Argentine footballer and I have been captain of the Argentina National Soccer Team for the Blind for 30 years. I am very excited and proud to be part of the first official video game of the Paralympic Games in the world because through this initiative we can spread the word about our sport and especially about the Paralympic Games ”, described the sampedrino in his presentation.
“The Pegasus Dream Tour”, developed by JP Games by Japanese Hajime Tabata, is an avatar game that, as explained by the IPC in the presentation publication, “places the player in a virtual Paralympic Games held in a fantastic, futuristic, inclusive and diverse metropolis known as Pegasus City ”.
“The game generates an avatar called ‘Mine’ that pursues his dream of becoming an athlete and is created from the player’s own face through a photograph taken with his smartphone. Mine can form new relationships with other avatars by freely roaming the city and participating in different competitions, ”he added.
The game will be available from the end of June in Japanese, English, French, German and Spanish for all smartphones and must be downloaded from the playstore. Each user will be able to participate in online boccia, football 5, athletics and wheelchair basketball tournaments and interact with others.
Velo is the only Latin American included in the video game. Joining him are Japanese boccia player Takayuki Hirose; Canadian wheelchair basketball player Patrick Anderson; New Zealand field athlete Holly Robinson; Japanese wheelchair tennis player Manami Tanaka; Kohei Kobayashi and Rie Ogura who are also Japanese and do badminton; the American athlete Scout Bassett; and the Thai athlete Chaiwat Rattana.
The song of “Gaby” Torres
The singer-songwriter composed a song for Silvio Velo called “Como el 10”. The melody lasts almost 2 minutes and refers to its beginnings in a pasture in San Pedro, its arrival in Los Murcielagos and the “dribbles and pipes” on the playing field.
See it in an Adidas ad
On the weekend Adidas, the renowned sportswear brand, launched an advertisement on social networks in which Silvio Velo participates, who recorded the scenes weeks ago in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Villa Lugano.
The footage shows him in the middle of his development, at which point he appears dressed in an Argentina shirt and a similar rattle ball, which is what blind footballers play with. With it, he kicks a goal, scores a goal and shows those around him that “there are possibilities for everyone”, a message transmitted by the video seen by millions of users.
