Between November 9 and 28, the first National Youth Games will be held in the Coffee Region, in which young Colombian sports talents will be able to compete in 35 Olympic and 12 Paralympic disciplines.
These competitions, which are held in the country for the first time, were created by Decree 1052 of 2022, with the purpose of consolidating the training of new talents, giving them the opportunity to show their skills and expanding the seedbed of possible representatives of the country in international competitions.
The cities of Pereira, Armenia and Manizales are already ready to receive more than 5 thousand athletes. Some of the competitions will also be held in Cali, Calima El Darién, Buenaventura, Bogota and Nilo, Cundinamarca.
To date, the Government has invested $65,000 billion to make these competitions an opportunity for inclusion and equity.
The disciplines that will be in competition, at the Olympic level, are: archery, athletics, badminton, basketball, handball, softball, baseball, bowling, boxing, canoeing, cycling, equestrian, fencing, water skiing, soccer, gymnastics, golf, judo, karate do, weightlifting, wrestling, swimming, skating, racquetball, rugby sevens, surfing, squash, taekwondo, tennis, table tennis, shooting sports, triathlon, sailing, volleyball and sport climbing, the latter will be on display.
The 12 disciplines at the Paralympic level are: archery, athletics, badminton, boccia, blind football, PC football, cycling, visual judo, swimming, powerlifting, table tennis and wheelchair tennis.
All convened under the 2023 Pan American and Parapan American Games program.
As a novelty, this will be the first time that the Olympic disciplines will be held simultaneously with the Paralympic ones, a model that had never been seen in multisport events in Colombia.
*With information from Colprensa
