Silvio Velo concentrates since Friday with Los Murcielagos at the National Center for High Performance Sports (Cenard) in Capital Federal for the last time before the list of players who will be part of the squad in the Tokyo 2021 Paralympic Games is announced.
The practices will last until Saturday, July 10. Along with the sampedrino are the goalkeepers Darío Lencina, Germán Muleck and Guido Consoni and the footballers Ángel Deldo, Froilán Padilla, Federico Accardi, Maximiliano Espinillo, Nahuel Heredia, Nicolás Véliz, Ignacio Oviedo, Brian Pereyra, Marcelo Panizza, Lucas Rodríguez, David Peralta, Daniel Iturria, Jesús Merlos and Ezequiel Fernández.
For Tokyo 2021, which will be between August 24 and September 5, the coaching staff led by coach Martín Demonte must nominate eight outfield players and two goalkeepers. The objective of the legend formed at the Román Rosell Institute in San Isidro is to be a Paralympic for the fifth time in a row. Previously, he was in Athens, Greece, 2004 where he was a silver medal; in Beijing, China, 2008 and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 2016, it achieved the bronze medal; and in London, England, 2012, it was fourth.
Tokyo 2021 for Los Murcielagos will begin on August 29 and conclude on September 2 if it reaches 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, in which the teams will face each other, will advance to the semifinals and, later, to the definition for the gold medal.
The 5-a-side football 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.
