Santiago de Chile, Oct 27 (Prensa Latina) Regional and Chilean sports authorities today presented the next Pan American Table Tennis Championship, where 128 athletes from 16 countries of our continent will compete from October 31 to November 6 to come.
It is a tournament with the best representatives of that sport, many of whom play in the main leagues in the world, Henry Reinberg, vice president of the Pan American Table Tennis Confederation, told Prensa Latina.
The event awards many points for the individual classification and will be the ideal prelude to the XIX Santiago 2023 continental games, said the sports director.
Despite the difficult times caused by the pandemic for many federations, we will have delegations here from the United States and Canada; Cuba and Puerto Rico come from the Caribbean and unfortunately the Dominican Republic and Guatemala declined to participate, Reinberg said.
We will be facing a very even championship and the public will have the opportunity to see high-level players from Brazil or Argentina, among other participants, in action, he explained.
Likewise, the president of the Chilean Table Tennis Federation, Vladimir Araya, highlighted the presence of athletes such as the Brazilian Hugo Calderano and the Puerto Rican Adriana Díaz, occupants of the fifth and eighth place in the global top, respectively.
Chile is going with high expectations, Araya told this agency, after the successful participation of the national team in the recent Odesur-22 games, where they won seven medals, three gold, one silver and three bronze, the best performance in the last 14 years.
Beyond the results, he added, we hope that the tournament will serve as a motivation for children and a stimulus for the massive practice of sport in our society, something that we are greatly lacking.
It is the largest international sporting event organized in this South American country after the Covid-19 pandemic and the seven days of competitions will take place at the facilities of the Chilean Olympic Committee sports center.
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