Avilés –and Asturias, especially the central area– will receive this weekend the “judo family”: more than 6,000 people, according to the calculation of the organization of the XXI “Villa de Avilés” International Tournament, who have already reserved seats hotels in the Avilesian region, with capacity for about 1,000 guests, Oviedo or Gijón. Specifically, the tournament includes 1,650 judokas from Spain, Norway, Moldova, Italy, France and Portugal, an absolute record for participation in an event that is once again a double Spanish Super Cup in the sub-15 and sub-18 categories, and includes in addition the sub-13 and sub-21. “Many judokas, the youngest, come with their families and Avilés will be full,” said Carlos Fernández, organizer and technical director of the Avilés Judo Club, who praised the sport as an “economic mobilizer” of the city.
He gave an example of repercussion of the test: the competition will open on Saturday at 9 in the morning with the under-18 cadet category, made up of 600 judokas. “We have never had so many competitors in this slot. It is a figure never seen before and we sold out in three hours. We must bear in mind that in other cups in Spain, registration never closes because it is not covered. Here the opposite has happened”.
The ieconomic impact of the “Villa de Avilés” International Tournament is therefore expected to be important. To make a comparison: in the 2021 Duathlon National, 1,537 athletes started. So the duathlon left Avilés with an estimated economic impact of more than 400,000 euros.
The hotel establishments in the region account for the “full judoka”. They will be full at the OCA “Villa de Avilés” hotel run by Aida Iglesias over the weekend. “Not only because of the judo championship, but because of a private event that we have. The occupation is really concentrated on the weekend, because the holiday (Deceased) falls on Tuesday,” she explained.
October, he said, is proving to be a “pretty good month because we’ve had many groups and many business clients”. The average occupancy is around eighty percent. At the “Palacio de Avilés” hotel, its director, Konchy Gómez, stressed that these events are always noted in terms of an increase in occupancy. “We were already full this year when the date came out,” she specified. At the Alda Palacio Valdés hotel they plan to accommodate at least one of the participating clubs.
In Los Balagares, in Corvera, all the rooms are also practically occupied: “We have some superior rooms available, but we hope to fill or border on full,” said the director of the URH Zen Balagares hotel, Daniel Rodríguez.
Carlos Fernández and the mayor of Avilés, Mariví Monteserín, who participated in the presentation of the tournament, also mentioned working in unison with the hoteliers to ensure the success of this or other events that fill the region out of high season: “These events are successful if we all pitch in.”
In addition to hotel occupancy, the hotel industry will also foreseeably benefit from this sporting event. Hence, in collaboration with Ucayc, these days are offered “Menus del Villa” with special dishes for this appointment in three restaurants in the city. Free guided tours of the historic center of Avilés lasting an hour and a half will also be offered.
The event will be held at the Avilés sports complex: “The Quirinal is the theater of dreams for children’s judo,” wrote Carlos Fernández, who ruled out making a forecast of how the medal table will turn out: “All judokas start with the same illusion.”
The Mayor of Aviles highlighted yesterday how “organizing the international judo tournament every year is a great collective challenge in which the entire city is involved in one way or another. The Municipal Sports Foundation and the Avilés Judo Club have worked closely so that nothing goes wrong, making the Avilés Sports Complex the best possible setting,” he stressed. He added, in this regard: “The stature that this tournament has reached is the result of tireless work by the Avilés Judo Club that has counted, counts and will count on the collaboration of Avilesian society as a whole”.
He also took the floor yesterday José Ramon Diaz Maseda, president of the Asturian Judo Federation: “We celebrate being on the tatami again with this high-level competition, on a weekend in which judo is breathed in every corner of Avilés and the entire city turns once again to our sport“. In the Tournament, the cadets will take over the morning session while, in the afternoon, the turn will be for the juniors from three o’clock. On Sunday, the ones in charge of fighting for the victory will be the children and the fry.
The tournament will also be a record number of volunteers, a key element for the tournament to succeed with more than a hundred people distributed in various departments. All of them, according to the organization, have turned in the last month with the aim of not missing a single detail. “They are one of the engines of the appointment because without them all this would not make sense. Always a good face and available at all times. It is a luxury that we have at Villa”, emphasized Carlos Fernández.
XXI International Tournament “Villa de Avilés” will begin tomorrow with the weigh-ins, although the competitions will be held on Saturday and Sunday always at the Quirinal sports center.
On Saturday the competitions will start at nine in the morning with the male cadet category. Two hours later, at 11:00, the female cadet category will compete. The final cadet block and the junior competition will follow.
On Sunday there will be a male children’s competition, a female children’s competition, a children’s final block, alevin competition and alevin final block. The president of the Principality, Adrián Barbón, is expected to attend the Sunday session as a public, according to what the mayor of Avilés, Mariví Monteserín, advanced yesterday.
The Councilor for Sports, Nuria Delmiro, also participated in the presentation of the tournament that was held yesterday in the reception hall of the City Council, who highlighted that this event “It is a fundamental appointment in our sports calendar and a key competition in state judo”. “We are proud as a city to contribute to the fact that each year it climbs one more step and that it once again has two Spanish Super Cups, it perfectly exemplifies that the path taken is the right one”.
