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How Pitiful! Peru Spends 3 Soles per Peruvian on Sports
A recent article in El Comercio, summarized in English by reporter Israel Ruiz, exposes why Peru performs so abysmally in international sporting events like the Olympics. Here’s Ruiz’s complete story published today in Living in Peru: Peruvian sports are trapped in time, said reporters for El Comercio, explaining there were records in the Andean country that had not been broken in almost 40 years. Fernando Acevedo, one of Peru’s past athletes that has not had his records broken affirmed he was not proud of this or the difficult situation the country was facing. “The fact that no one has broken my records shows we have not progressed,” said Acevedo, explaining that without…
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Peru’s Porters Win Ausangate Gold Medal for Weightlifting
The Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics are officially over, the winners have scurried home with their medals, and the losing athletes are either chastised, pitied or forgotten by most of the world. No laurel wreath, no glory, the Olympic equation goes. Not on this blog, however. In the same spirit of honoring athletic excellence that inspired the first Olympic Games, An American in Lima introduces the Ausangate Awards for High-Altitude Athletic Achievement. Just as the Olympic Games are named after Greece’s highest mountain, Mount Olympus (2,919 meters above sea level), the Ausangate Awards take as their namesake the tallest peak in the Cordillera Vilcanota, Mount Ausangate (6,384 meters / 20,945 feet above…
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Peru Olympic Wrap-up: Week 2 in Review
As I’m writing this post, Peru’s long-distance runner Constantino León is racing the last five kilometers of the Men’s Marathon (42.15 km), in Beijing’s National Stadium. Out of the 95 runners who began the race, only 82 remain, and León is 63rd at the 35-km mark. The first-, second- and third-place winners have just crossed the finish line: Kenya’s Samuel Wansiru wins the gold with the impressive time of 2:06:32, setting a new Olympic Record. At 44 seconds behind Wansiru, Jaouad Gharib of Morocco grabs the silver with 2:07:16 (he also breaks the previous OR), and Deriba Merga, of Ethiopia, wins the bronze with 2:10:00. It’s an African sweep. I…
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Constantino Leon Last Olympian to Compete for Peru; Peter Lopez Misses Bronze in Taekwondo
Peru’s original field of 13 Olympic contenders is now down to one athlete: marathon runner Constantino Leon. Leon will compete Saturday, August 23, starting at 6:30 p.m. (Beijing time), in the Men’s Marathon. For fans in Peru, that translates to Sunday, August 24, starting at 7:30 a.m. Thus far, no athletes representing Peru have won a medal in the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. Constantino became Peru’s last Olympic contender after taekwondo athlete Peter Lopez failed to secure the bronze in the Men’s 68 kg. competition on Thursday, August 21. Lopez was victorious in his first two matches on Thursday, beating Australia’s Burak Hasan 3-1 in the preliminaries and Nigeria’s Isah Adam Mohammad…
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The Buzz on Peru’s Olympians, Week 1 in Review, Aug. 9 – 16
The first week (August 10 – 16) of competition at the Beijing 2008 Olympics saw some encouraging efforts by Peruvian athletes but no medals. Here is a roundup of how Peru’s 13-member Olympic delegation has performed so far, along with buzz about the athletes from English-speaking media, bloggers and fans. (Plus blog reactions by Peru athletes like Peter Lopez, who posted the photo above on his Olympic blog “Camino a la Gloria” (Road to Glory) on Monday, Aug. 11.) SIXTO BARRERA / WRESTLING Wrestler Sixto Barrera, considered by many to be Peru’s best chance for a medal, got off to a strong start on Tuesday (Aug. 12), when he trounced the…
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Olympic Ceviche with a Political Bite – Pescados Capitales
The ultra-hip cevicheria Pescados Capitales, one of Lima's finest seafood restaurants, plays on the Beijing Summer Olympics theme in its current "Pescados Olímpicos" (Olympic Sins) menu.
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Peru’s Olympic 13 Are a Horde Compared To…
I was feeling rather forlorn about Peru’s small Olympic delegation of 13 athletes. Then I stumbled upon Mashable’s “18 Smaller Olympic Countries to Root For.” Sean P. Aune writes: It’s easy to get wrapped up in all of the big name countries that go to the Olympics, such as the United States or Russia, but have you ever thought about those countries that don’t have as much money for a team or only have a few athletes who qualify? My family has a tradition of picking one or two of the smaller countries that can only send one or two athletes to the games, and sort of “adopting” them for…
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Sixto Barrera Advances to Quarter Finals, Loses to China’s Chang Yongxiang
Peruvian wrestler Sixto Barrera trounced Lithuanian Valdemaras Venckaitis, ranked 3rd in the world, in the first qualifying rounds of Men’s Greco-Roman 74 k, in Beijing, on August 12. Barrera then went against China’s Chang Yongxiang in the quarter finals and lost. Chang Yongxiang advances to the finals with Georgia’s Manuchar Kvirkelia. This will be China’s first-ever medal in wrestling. Here is my professional opinion about Barrera’s loss: Argggh!
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Trying to Watch the Olympics in Peru
I’m going through Olympic detox, here in Lima, where not even the cable channels broadcast the Games during regular day or evening hours. I’m still trying to figure out when I can actually view some extended programming; El Hijo claims there’s coverage at 1 a.m., but I’m not staying up to test his theory. Help me, people, I’m suffering here. I need my Olympics fix. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I enjoy the pageantry and the overt competitiveness of the Games. I’ve watched them since I was a kid in the United States, and now that I’ve moved to Peru, I’m happy to transfer my allegiance south of…