Christian Pacheco

Christian Pacheco, Pan American marathon champion in Lima 2019, qualified for the Tokyo Olympics, is indignant at the government's decision not to grant permission for athletes to train.

"Personally, I am outraged to see the statement from the Council of Ministers saying that most sports are high risk and cannot be practiced. I ask, is athletics a team sport? In my field, athletics is an individual sport, and there are many other individual sports," commented an annoyed Christian Pacheco on radio Ovación.

"With all this going on, I feel indignant. My question is, what advisors do they have, or if they have any? I am qualified for the Tokyo Olympics, but for an athlete to be able to perform optimally, it is not the work of a month, two months, or a year. It takes years to excel in this sport and represent our country well," added the long-distance runner.

"With this decision, they are killing all the athletes qualified for the Olympic Games because a Olympic cycle is not just a year, but 4, 8, or 12 years of training for an athlete. This is very infuriating and painful," exclaimed Pacheco.