Olympic Games: Argentina’s elite sport is experiencing its most critical moment, with Paris 2024 too close

In terms of daily life, a year and five months can be more or less time, always depending on the purpose to be achieved, the goal to be achieved. But in high performance sport, one year and five months is nothing. And this is literal. No metaphors. And that’s the time left for the Olympic fire to light up the sky over Paris 2024 and it’s the moment when athletes from all over the world come out to show the result of all their preparation and fight for medals. And the glory.

For long-term planning, ideal for developing an elite athlete, at least two Olympics are needed. That is, two Olympic bouts. Eight years. Today, the Argentine sports chief, for example, cannot and must not think only of Paris, but rather he has and must go much further. To the 2032 Games. To those that will be held brisbaneAustralia.

What about the national sport at the top of the pyramid? Who plans what a 10-year-old boy will do when a talent scout sees him throwing stones in an inhospitable area of ​​Formosa? Or who thinks which path a 9-year-old girl should follow, whom an aunt with some notion of sport sees with physical qualities and a biotype suitable for rhythmic gymnastics in the SUM of a building in the City of Buenos Aires? Those are just two examples. There are many others.

Argentine sports policy, which allows the initiative and leadership of the main players interested in fundamental issues for the development of sport to be developed, underwent a fundamental change when on 15 October 2009 the then president of the Argentine Olympic Committee, Gerard Wertheinannounced the sending to Congress of the law that created the National Authority for High Performance Sport (ENARD).

The national sport required the appearance of a superior modelof a tool that would change history and that would help its athletes to have the necessary conditions to plan their career without difficulties extraneous to the challenge of their activity.

Less than two months later, on December 2, Congress almost unanimously ratified Law No. 26.573 and the immediate regulation of the Executive made possible the ENARDwhich began its management in August 2010.

Following the promulgation of the law, ENARD conferred them scholarships to more than 900 athletes, financial support for their trips and the purchase of sports equipment, thus starting a virtuous circuit of accompaniment to the Argentine athletes.

What was the institution’s main source of funding? The 1% subscription charge applied to mobile phone users. In other words, all Argentine cell phones – a 2022 statistic indicated that there are about 55 million devices – had only 1% more in their tariff and that money went to high performance. Simple to understand and simple to execute.

However, in 2017, the government of Maurizio Macri He sent a tax reform bill to Congress, and within seconds the article providing for funding to ENARD was repealed. It also took away his private support and also his autonomygiven that now the institution is financed with the resources assigned in the national budget.

Today Argentine sport is going through a critical moment. According to projections made on the basis of public data on the income received by mobile phone service companies, the Entity should receive at least double the current resources it receives.

And that the budget increase allocated from 2021 to 2022 has been 189 percentgoing from 1,328 million pesos to 3,923 million, when ENARD’s original request had been 4,500 million.

Those almost 4,000 million, taking into account that the Entity obtains the dollars at the official price, today are equivalent to approximately 20 and a half million of green banknotes. A much smaller number than 80 million that Brazil, the South American giant, devotes to its high performance. In short, with little money sometimes you have to do magic.

Win medals and develop the sport? Both goals are not mutually exclusive and can be achieved independently. Some countries have risen in the Olympic medal standings since strategies of investments concentrated in a reduced number of sports or by nationalizing foreign athletes. Others, however, have managed to develop some sports without significantly changing their international position.

It’s clear that Argentina He did not opt ​​to be included in the first group. They weren’t trying to delve into speed like Jamaica or deep like Kenya if they were just talking about athletics. Fewer athletes were nationalized, beyond a few isolated and particular cases.

On the other hand, since the creation of ENARD came to integrate the funds of the Sports Secretariat, they were directed towards specific purposes. AS they were referred to team sports, which are part of a true cultural development of our country that goes beyond a sports policy. And when at some point the South American Games or sports outside the Olympic program did not have priority, they served to privilege them Pan American Games and the few Olympic sports with any chance, not only in medals but also in diplomas.

The best feature of Argentina’s sports policy in recent years has been the success of the Buenos Aires Youth Olympics 2018 who had a four-year talent scouting and development program that delivered far more than the significant number of podiums achieved. Many of these young people – those who were Olympians and those who stood on the threshold of becoming one – today are missing out on high performers.

Although the maximum responsibility for obtaining the desired results belongs to the National Federations, the challenge that ENARD has always set itself has been, through them and with their support, to obtain the medals at the right time based on the collective development of the National Federations who undertake to try it.

The goal of ENARD since its foundation in terms of results has been to propose to exceed one’s goals in each Olympic cycle and positioned in the 90th percentile of the competitive universe.

What does this mean? One goal was to be 20th in the world in 2016 out of 204 Olympic Committees, and at the Rio de Janeiro Games that year Argentina was 28th thanks to three gold medals. Another goal was to be fifth in America in 2019 out of 41 Olympic Committees and Argentina was in Lima. He achieved his goal and set a record for medals at Pan American Games played abroad, leaving Cuba and Colombia behind.

ENARD, today

What is happening today with ENARD? How does Argentina’s high performance stand in the face of what’s to come: in the near future of Paris 2024 and in the more distant future of Brisbane 2032?

ENARD has a governing council of a political nature, whose presidency alternates between the Secretary of Sport and the head of the AOC. Now the command has it Ines Arrondo (SD), while Mario Moccia (COA) is the Vice President. Below are the secretary Juan Ignacio Lara (SD), the treasurer Víctor Groupierre (COA) and the councilors Sergio Pérez (SD), Jorgelina Rimoldi (SD), Alicia Morea (COA) and Valentina Kogan (COA).

In the structure there is a general manager who is Daniel Díaz, a man who comes from athletics, who was undersecretary for the Integral Development of Sports Activities and who is linked to Arrondo de Mar del Plata. The different managers answer to Díaz. The point is that the position of sports technical director, which Carlos Siffredi has historically held until he was replaced first by Cecilia Farías and then by Paula Gergo, he is headless at least officially.

Ten coordinators answer to this sports technical manager who are divided into the 41 federations with representation in the Olympic line (not for this reason they are part of the Olympic program), which are divided into team sports, combat, nautical, associated with the ball, predominantly energetic and technical predominance.

These coordinators are Gustavo Cullinam (head of basketball, handball, hockey, volleyball, rugby, beach volleyball and softball), Carolina Mariani (boxing, fencing, judo and taekwondo), Milka Kraljev (canoeing, rowing, sailing and surfing), Ricardo Rio (skating, pentathlon, bowling, archery, cycling and gymnastics), Wanda Holtz (water sports and adapted sports), Gonzalo Albarracín (horse riding, baseball and futsal), Anibal Janeiro (track and field, karate, wrestling, winter sports and shooting), Ricardo Ippolito (badminton, baseball, racquetball, squash, tennis and table tennis), Germán Romañach (golf, water skiing and triathlon), and Horacio Anselmi (weights).

All of them are the proper names of those who do the magic referred to. That magic that Argentine sportsmen resort to every four years when money isn’t enough and plans don’t even appear.

It is there that three key questions arise: how is what is done controlled?, how are the results obtained evaluated? And who is responsible for monitoring and evaluation?

These questions should be asked when planning sports. And the political leaders of sport almost never find the answers. So it is not possible to make a good diagnosis.

An example to understand the landscape

You can think about it with an example: Argentina it’s a medical clinic that hires doctors, the ones it can find. One day a lady arrives with her sick daughter. She doesn’t know what it is. A doctor assists her. Received and works as such. But the doctor doesn’t know the girl’s medical history and is based only on what her mother tells her about her. He processes that information and, based on what he studied at the university, prescribes a remedy to cure it. At first the child feels a little better. But after three weeks of treatment the condition stagnates and at the fourth week she feels the same pain as she did when she arrived at the clinic.

What happened? Initially the diagnosis was wrong. Later, the doctor has no known variants of certain diseases and even if he was right in the diagnosis, he chose the least effective drug. The next thing that happened was a coup. The body responded to the drug because it hadn’t gotten anything before, but after a while it adjusted to that drug and everything was fine again.

Something similar happens in Argentine sport: many times the starting realities are misdiagnosed and people are hired who do not have enough experience to be able to make a good plan of attack for the situation.

Sometimes the plan works (the remedy the girl was given) but after a while the progress ends. And this happened because immediate results were thought of and the future impact of those results was never weighed. AS lack of a general director of sport (of the clinic) to design the strategies and bring together the teams that facilitate the achievement of the main objectives, what they want to achieve.

That CEO must have a split brain: You have to think about the future but you have to live in the rawest present be able to read every change that takes place and must also articulate in his daily task, which is arduous, the political decisions with the decisions taken by the professional teams (the technicians who know the subject).

Conclusion: the future, for now, is a wish… When the best diagnosis is made and Argentine sportsmen have several doctors to arrange a meeting (that is, a professional technical team), the remedy to cure the disease can be prescribed.