Paraguay President Peña takes 2030 Youth Olympics bid to IOC in push to host extra sports activities

Paraguayan President Santiago Pena. File
| Picture Credit score: Reuters

Pushing Paraguay to be a serious worldwide sports activities stage in 2030, President Santiago Peña got here to IOC headquarters on Thursday (January 30, 2025) along with his nation’s bid to be an Olympics host.

Paraguay desires to host the 2030 Youth Olympics in Asunción in the identical yr it is going to stage one of many opening video games of the lads’s soccer World Cup.

“The concept behind that is to make Paraguay the centre for a lot of of those main sporting occasions,” Peña instructed reporters after main a delegation to fulfill Worldwide Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach.

The dimensions of the Youth Olympics — which had about 4,000 athletes in 32 sports activities when final held in 2018 in Buenos Aires — is much like the Junior Pan-American Video games that Paraguay will host in August.

“We have now the organizational capability,” mentioned the Paraguayan president for the previous 18 months, who acknowledged his nation of about seven million folks is just too little identified globally.

“I might say that half the inhabitants by no means heard about Paraguay,” he mentioned, suggesting it was “an unique identify” that maybe intrigued folks to find extra.

Internet hosting worldwide sports activities generally is a sooner path to worldwide recognition, and Paraguay is also bidding for the 2031 Pan-Am Video games.

“It is a possibility to boost the extent of data concerning the nation,” mentioned Mr. Peña, an economist educated at Columbia College in New York. “For a few years the nation has remained a bit of bit remoted. It was not an energetic participant in lots of of those sports activities occasions.”

Males’s soccer has been a standout, incomes Paraguay its solely Olympic medal — a silver on the 2004 Athens Video games. The workforce is on tempo to qualify for the lads’s 2026 World Cup in america, Canada and Mexico.

Paraguay has bought direct entry to the 2030 version as one of many unprecedented six co-host nations throughout three continents for the centenary World Cup.

Paraguay, Argentina and Uruguay, the inaugural 1930 hosts, every get one recreation earlier than the remainder of the 104-game event strikes to Spain, Portugal and Morocco. The deal struck at FIFA and introduced in October 2023 opened the way in which for Saudi Arabia to be awarded the 2034 event with no rival bid.

Mr. Peña has since met repeatedly, together with final July on the Paris Olympics, with FIFA President Gianni Infantino who will chair the soccer physique’s subsequent annual assembly in Asunción in Could.

“I’ve to take a bit of little bit of possession on that,” Mr. Peña mentioned. “I met with President Infantino in December 2023 and I proposed that he host a FIFA occasion in Paraguay.”

Mr. Infantino is also an IOC member who votes for the 2030 Youth Olympics candidate that’s supplied for approval. Curiosity additionally has been proven by Denmark, India and Thailand. The 2026 version is in Dakar, Senegal.

A call on 2030 may come this yr, although Bach formally leaves workplace in June.

“President Bach has been very beneficiant with myself and with Paraguay,” Peña mentioned. “He’s forsaking an awesome legacy and hopefully within the coming months we will see a affirmation that Paraguay might be internet hosting the (Youth) Olympic Video games.”