Julián Andrés Santa
From the moment the Coffee Region was announced as the venue for the 2023 National and Paranational Games, there was great joy in the sports community of Risaralda since this meant being able to remodel the main stages of Pereira, which were not intervened since many years ago. However, the reality was different and in the case of the Menor Coliseum there is concern about the reduction of space for leagues such as table tennis, badminton, boxing and chess, as well as the consequences such as losing the holding of upcoming national events. in this important sports venue in La Perla del Otún.
Juan Carlos García, coach of the Risaralda Table Tennis League, explains: “we are taking the implementation to the Menor Coliseum but really the spaces were not the most appropriate, in the case of table tennis they took away more than 70% of the space. “What we had, we no longer have for the office, warehouse or dressing rooms, only a small area where before we had 14 tables and now I can only fit six.”
Space for one league, now for three
“The lighting was also reduced by half, the issue of spaces was really very poor, the entire boxing area also disappeared, they took away more than half of the space from the chess league, so we are really in a space where there was only one league and now we are going to be three leagues, it is quite tight,” adds the table tennis coach.
The expectation in the plans was different
“We had a meeting last year with the architects and the Mayor’s Office, where somehow they were sharing the works without many details but they informed us that we were going to have better spaces and I understand that the plans and designs were changing, Therefore, we never realized those changes, we did not know how they were going to turn out. We already met with the sports secretary but we don’t have other spaces in the city either.”
All this harms sports performance
“Unfortunately we do see ourselves harmed because we are no longer going to serve the population in the same way and we need to start new processes. Last year we did not have training schools within the league, our high-performance athletes were able to leave the country and in preparation with support resources from the government, therefore we have to start again and the spaces being so reduced, obviously sports performance decreases because they do not have the same space, the same number of tables and the lighting is not the most adequate either.”
Deterioration in scenarios
“There is an area in the internal part where there is a constant leak of water, that will generate possible diseases for children if it is not covered. We see that the water enters up to half of the main court and we also see some cracks in columns, so the truth is that the stage is not in optimal conditions, it is not painted and in general there is too much dust, which can also cause allergies. to the kids”.
“They made a microperforation in the side walls and that makes the water enter, so it was not functional for national events either, in the case that we did this type of events every year, we cannot do it because the sunlight enters directly to the athlete, then we cannot do them under these conditions,” points out the coach of the Risaraldense Table Tennis League, Juan Carlos García.
Given:
This publishing house wanted to communicate with the Secretary of Sports of Pereira, Sandra Grajales to have her version after these problems but did not receive a response.
2024-02-22 05:21:34
#Concern #cutting #spaces #Menor #Coliseum
