The conference titled: Equity in the Olympic Cycle by the Colombian Olympic medalist, Yuri Alvear, inaugurated the afternoon session at the Pueblo Viejo Club in the city of Cota, Cundinamarca.
Recalling various parts of her sports career in the Olympic cycle, Yuri expressed the various situations that many athletes go through in their training and professional stage as high-performance athletes. To reach her Olympic medals in London 2012 and Rio 2016, the Colombian judoka faced demanding situations where she did not pay attention to the words that discredited her for being a woman.
However, that difference that many people wanted to highlight as negative, for Yuri was the distinction to progress. Her sporting career, professional preparation and constant personal improvement provide her with the tools to exercise her role as a teacher and to build bridges for gender equality in a combat sport such as judo.
For Yuri, personal and professional recognition of what each person does is not exclusive to men or women. Each person is essential to contribute to the creation of a society, to be part of a competitive space in sport, in a professional field outside of it and as an integral part of a family and society. The woman from Valle del Cauca highlighted that the legacy is not only in medals or sports recognitions, it is reflected through growth as a person and as a country.
Yaneth Arias, sports safeguarding athlete and member of the COC Athletes Commission, continued the afternoon with his conference: Equality and Opportunities in the Life of the Colombian Athlete: A Path towards the expression of Olympic values.
The captain of the Colombian basketball team made clear the difference between equality and equity. The first understood in the fact of receiving the same opportunities and treatment, while the second refers to giving fair opportunities to those who, due to different circumstances, do not have them.
Starting from that point, the athlete covered various aspects that marked her personal and sporting life. In the first instance, he highlighted that the family is a fundamental basis in the training and constant support that boys and girls need, likewise, sport also represents a way to build character and appropriate values such as excellence, discipline and responsibility.
“We have to give a lot of value to everything we do”, with this phrase Yaneth invited us to understand how our actions can generate an impact on equity for the people close to us, because although there are many unfair situations, they can also be created. opportunities to change and improve them.
Through his Atlantas Foundation, Yaneth wants to generate an impact and a legacy in the different populations of our country to provide opportunities, values, education through knowledge and the practice of a sport as an agent of social change. Precisely, these changes must arise in society, because those small gestures are what make a difference in the lives of others.
The Seminar on Equal Opportunities in Sports ended with a panel that was attended by all the speakers and the president of the Gender Equity and Diversity commission and general secretary of the Colombian Olympic Committee, Ana Edurne Camacho Corredor, and allowed the reflections, awareness messages and the answer to the different questions that arose during the day.
If you are interested in observing the different conferences held at the seminar, you can do so through the channel YouTube of the Colombian Olympic Committee.
