High performance athletes and their relatives protest in the Plaza de Bolívar to demand that budget cuts be stopped to Colombian sport. EFE/ Mauricio Dueñas Castañeda
Photo: EFE – Mauricio Dueñas Castañeda
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Colombian athletes protested this Wednesday in Bogotá against the cut to the budget for the Ministry of Sports planned for 2026, since they said that if they were completed, they will make their preparation difficult for the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic Games and the qualifying events.
With banners with messages that said 'yes to sport, not the cut' or 'the only official sporting sport in Colombia is dad and mom', dozens of people arrived at the Plaza de Bolívar to sit their position in front of a budget reduction that crossed out of unfair.
The representative to the Mauricio Parodi Chamber of the Radical Change Party, has denounced that in 2024 the budget of the Ministry of Sports was 1.36 billion pesos (about 337 million dollars) and that it is expected that in 2026 it will be only 312,000 million pesos (about 77 million dollars).
The Paralympic Pesista Fabio Torres, who won the bronzes of the category of 97 kilograms in the 2020 and Paris 2024 games, invited Congress to listen to his voices in the face of the decrease in the budget.
“The competition that I have this year is the World Championship (of Sealfilia in Norway), qualifying A (the Paralympic Games of) Los Angeles. We previously went to all the tournaments that there were, thinking of the main championship that is the World Cup, and now we have had that concern that we did not go to any competition, we go with the eyes bandaged to that championship and is quite hard,” the athlete told Efe.
For the parents of sports promises, the decrease in the budget is a great challenge to help fulfill their children's dreams, as Alejandra Soler, mother of a young man named Samuel who practices Bicicrós.
“I, as an athlete's mother, have no support from the district (of Bogotá), or leagues or anyone else, all contributions are personal: maintenance, uniforms, bicycle, everything, has been on my part. I have had to sell things, mortgage others and right now with this cut, worse,” the woman lamented to Efe.
She assures that in the case of the sport that her son practices, the greatest effects occur due to the lack of maintenance of the clues and sports scenarios.
Another face of nonconformity in the face of budget reduction is Sharit Yunque swimmer, who has been national and runner -up champion Parapanamericana.
“The reduction of the sport budget affects us in different ways: initially it makes participation in the different competitions difficult because quotas for Colombian athletes are reduced,” he explained
Yunque added: “It affects not only us who are high performance athletes, but also those children and young people who come behind.”
In recent weeks, other recognized athletes demonstrated against the reduction of the budget, as is the case of Gimnasta Ángel Barajas, current Olympic runner -up of the fixed bar.
“I extend an invitation to President Gustavo Petro because (…) we need a sufficient budget to have a very good preparation and have quality competitions to maintain the illusion of Colombians,” said the 19 -year -old gymnast, silver in Paris, in a video published on his Instagram account.
Rigoberto Uran: “Sport transforms society”
The former Rigoberto Urán, runner -up of the 2017 France Tour and Silver Medal in the 2012 Olympics, called the Government to reconsider their decision and invest more money in athletes.
“What transforms sport into our society is something very big, so we want these athletes who are in the Olympic cycle to have the resources to train (…) that they can go to other competitions, which can have competitions in Colombia,” said Uran.
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