by Curlan Campbell
- Largest multi-sport event in Americas just 2 days away
- Tilly Collymore and Zackary Gresham are expected to be Grenada flag-bearers
- Anderson Peters will represent all Americas as member of Team Pan Am Sports
Lindon Victor, Grenada’s bronze medalist at the World Athletics Championships in Budapest, Hungary will lead a strong team at this year’s Pan American (Pan Am) Games in Santiago, Chile. Swimmers Tilly Collymore and Zackary Gresham are expected to be flag-bearers during the opening ceremony at the National Stadium in Santiago, the capital city of Chile.
The first press conference of the games was held on Tuesday, in the Main Press Centre, featuring Balich and Lotus, the companies producing the Opening Ceremony and the artists behind the Official Song of Santiago 2023, Movimiento Original. Anderson Peters, world champion javelin thrower will represent all the Americas at the Santiago 2023 Pan Am Games as a member of the new Team Pan Am Sports. He is featured prominently on various billboards around Santiago.
Grenada’s athletic team at the games is led by Lindon Victor (Decathlon), Halle Hazzard (100M and 200M), Kelsie Murrel-Ross (Shot Put), Tyshawn Jones 80kg and Nikita Borisik 63.5kg (Boxing), and Tilly Collymore and Zackary Gresham (swimming). Over 6,800 athletes from 41 countries will vie for more than 100 spots in next year’s Paris Olympics.
The largest multi-sport event in the Americas is just 2 days away, and the venue is still being prepared with 6 new venues for 30 sports being built at an investment of US$507 million. The staging of the games this year comes amidst tension brewing between protestors and police, however, organisers are optimistic that this will not affect the staging of the games.
Last year, Chileans fueled this tension by rejecting President Gabriel Boric’s proposed new constitution, bringing up the country’s troubled history. The new constitution was expected to replace the charter imposed by dictator Augusto Pinochet, who led a coup on 11 September 1973, establishing a dictatorship in the country for almost 2 decades.
