Mariano Ryan
07/23/2021 5:01 AM
Clarín.com
sports
Updated 07/23/2021 5:01 AM
The maximum expression of the sports competition will begin this Friday.
After a long wait, the Olympic fire lit 16 months ago in Olympia, which connects the Games of ancient Greece with the modern Olympic Games, will
light up the Tokyo sky from the cauldron
.
And the maximum expression of the "high competition" that calls for teams and athletes of
"high performance"
will officially begin
.
Except for a handful of sports like soccer, boxing, and baseball (rugby could also be included because many of its stars don't specialize in Sevens), it all spells a formidable date with the elite. Whoever did not participate in Tokyo 2020 was simply because they did not want to.
In the Olympic Games, with those few exceptions, there are the best.
And from that tip of the pyramid Argentina will participate.
And its 188 athletes who make up the mission will seek to fulfill their Olympic dream first and achieve their goals later.
There is a huge space between the two goals.
As great as the one that separates the powers of universal sport with a country like Argentina that lacks two macro factors: population and money.
Making a comparison with the best, our country does not have a high number of athletes and there is little economic investment in sports.
Ergo: only a miracle would allow fighting side by side at the top of an Olympic medal table.
But miracles, in this and other areas, do not exist.
This Friday the Olympic Games begin.
(Xinhua / Du Xiaoyi)
In an Olympic event, more than 200 countries represented by their National Olympic Committees are measured and, with the absence of North Korea (officially Russia will not be able to participate due to the doping scandal although its athletes will act with a neutral flag), in Tokyo 2020 there will be 204. This time they will do so on 339 different tests.
In other words, there will be 339 gold medals to be distributed
and here two points are worth highlighting. First of all, very few countries stand out in (almost) every sport, and the United States might be the only one of them. And, in addition, there are others that shine in a single sport and, even more, in a specialty such as Jamaica in athletics speed events, to give just one example.
In the final count, the main entertainers of the Olympic Games are the countries that make up the 95th percentile of the sample (five percent of the participants).
That is, those who are in the top 10 when the Olympic fire goes out.
They concentrate more than 50 percent of the medals and, predictably, in Tokyo it will be the
United States, China, Russia
(even with all their problems derived from the doping scandal).
Great Britain, Japan, Germany, South Korea, France, Italy and some others
.
Shelly Ann Fraser Pryce is the favorite in the 100 and 200 meters.
(EFE)
The question, then, falls mature.
What will Argentina play?
The ultimate, reasonable and challenging long-term aspiration would be to reach the 90th percentile of the sample.
That is to say, to the top 20. But this will not happen in Tokyo 2020. In Rio de Janeiro 2016, when the planets aligned and three gold and one silver medals were achieved, those three titles of Santiago Lange-Cecilia Carranza, Paula Pareto and the Lions allowed them to reach 27th place in the medal table.
It was the best in 68 years in terms of number of medals and the best in 64 years in the final position ... To reach the top 20, for example, the results from Canada would have been needed: four golds and three silvers.
Today it is impossible to think about it for different factors.
In search of medals ...
Argentina is a Pan-American country. In the Lima 2019 Games, 41 competed and the animators were only two countries (95th percentile): the United States -which always leads the medal table and has a "challenger" on duty, such as Cuba in the 90s or as Canada turned out in Toronto 2015 - and Brazil. In the Peruvian capital, Argentine athletes shone and the mission was fifth, leaving behind continental powers such as Cuba and Colombia, for example.
A decade of investment by the National High Performance Entity (ENARD) for Sports allowed it to reach the 90th percentile of the continent.
At the Olympic level, it is insisted, that is impossible. It requires at least twice the investment, twice the population of elite athletes and twice the years of systematic work.
Gerardo Werthein, the president of the Argentine Olympic Committee.
(Clarín Archive)
The reality today indicates that Argentine sport is in a clear setback due to an increasingly expensive dollar
(elite sport moves in that currency), the devaluation of the peso and the crisis caused by less economic support for athletes by the take away in the ENARD budget.
And what is coming does not look pretty at all.
Even the announced departure of Gerardo Werthein from the field of sports politics will be a very difficult blow to assimilate.
Against this background,
Argentina will compete in the Olympic Games with little hope of a medal
and with the intimate (and unwanted) assurance that it will not be repeated five years ago in Rio de Janeiro.
In team sports, the highest expectations go to the Lionesses.
Winners of four medals in the last five Games, Argentina is second in the world rankings and will present itself with a roster that combines experienced players and medal winners with young realities from a generation that, for example, was junior world champion in 2016. The Netherlands She will be, once again, the great adversary and is the strongest candidate to obtain the gold that Argentine women never achieved in field hockey, not even in the years of Luciana Aymar, the best player of all time.
The lioness.
Photo Press CAH
Beyond the absences,
football arrived in Tokyo with concrete illusions of a medal,
although the misstep taken in the debut against Australia complicated the panorama and reduced that dream. Especially since Spain appears in the qualifying group, which although it tied in its presentation against Egypt, is the strongest contender for gold.
Another team that could aspire to a podium is rugby
... as long as it passes a tremendously rough area in which Argentina will have to face no less than New Zealand and Australia, two of the best teams in the world.
And the runner-up basketball in the world?
It is a utopia to get on the podium and especially with adversaries like the United States, Spain and Australia, for example. And the Olympic champion Lions? Surely the team has been the national team most affected by the pandemic because it will arrive with very little competition of just four official Pro League games (three losses and a draw with a loss on penalties) in the last 16 months. With that outlook, going to the quarterfinals will be a great achievement.
The strongest chance of a medal comes from the water and - again - with yachting
, a sport that from Atlanta 1996 to Rio de Janeiro 2016 gave Argentina no less than eight of the 27 podiums achieved in those 20 years.
Again Lange and Carranza, in the Nacra 17 class, are at the head of the possibilities
.
The pairs of Italy and Great Britain and, to a lesser extent, Australia will be the toughest opponents and everything could get very complicated with strong winds.
Santiago Lange and Cecilia Carranza.
Photo Red Bull Content Pool
You will also have to keep your eye very carefully on Facundo Olezza (Finn class)
, who became the first Argentine to qualify for the Games and since August 2018 is only focused on Tokyo.
It is also supported by a couple of results;
He was bronze in the 2016 U23 World Cup, seventh in the 2018 World Cup and was one step away from achieving the Olympic diploma in Rio de Janeiro.
The possibility of getting on the podium, if applicable, is absolutely concrete.
There are also a couple more possibilities for diplomas and, in that case, Sol Branz and Victoria Travascio (49er FX), with the 2016 Olympic experience and two medals in the last two Pan American Games, are in charge of that illusion.
Lucas Guzmán won bronze at the 2019 Manchester Taekwondo World Cup. Photo: MasTKD
This time
the field of combat sports will have at the top of the hopes the taekwondo player Lucas Guzmán (category 58 kilos) and the fighter Agustín Destribats (65 kilos)
. The first one climbed to the World Cup podium in 2019, in the same year in which he won the gold of the Pan American Games. And the second was fifth in Lima 2019. As always, a lot will depend on how lucky they are in the draw.
And Pareto?
More cannot be asked of one of the greatest Argentine athletes in history. He will close his extraordinary career that is brimming with medals in his fourth Olympic Game. With her you never know but a third podium would not be logical.
In the disciplines of time and mark it is necessary to underline the name of the shooter
Federico Gil in skeet, a sure candidate for a diploma and owner of an illusion for a medal
.
Dr. Gil (he is a lawyer) has already reached a handful of podiums in World Cups and has Olympic experience.
Look also
One by one, all the Argentine athletes that will be in Tokyo 2020
The Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, between heritage and the future: all competition venues