Pan_american_games

Pan American Sports Organization logo

The Pan American Games are a multi-sport event, held every four years between competitors from all nations of the Americas.

History

The idea of holding a Pan American Games grew from the Central American Games first organised in the 1920s. In 1932, a first proposal was made for Pan American Games, and the Pan American Sports Organization was established. The first Games were scheduled to be staged in Buenos Aires in 1943, but World War II caused them to be postponed until 1951. Since then, the Games have been held every four years, with participation at the most recent event at over 5,000 athletes from 42 countries.

However, the Pan American games have lost status, particularly in the United States, and have not received much attention in the sporting press as of late in the United States and Canada. The 1999 games in Winnipeg were attended mainly by second-string American athletes and were not covered by any news anchors or television from the major U.S. broadcast networks, although a one-hour highlights package aired on ESPN after the games. In Canada, there was plenty of coverage, including a nightly two-hour program on CBC, with an additional hour on local affiliate CBWT, French-language coverage on Radio-Canada, plus daytime coverage on TSN. By 2003, the Pan American Games were once again neglected by the media.

Generally, the Pan American Games receive plenty of attention in most Latin American countries. The 2007 edition, held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, has prompted the Organizing Committee to restore important venues such as the Estádio do Maracanã and build a new Olympic Village. It is expected that the games will improve infrastructure in the city and lay the foundations for a possible bid for the 2014 FIFA World Cup.

Winter Games

There have been attempts to hold Pan American Winter Games as well, but these have been without much success. The planned 1989 edition had to be postponed until a year later due to bad weather conditions, and even then only the alpine events could be held. The edition for 1993 was cancelled completely, and the Pan American Winter Games have not been held since.There have been periodic attempts to establish winter Pan American Games. In fact, the organizers of the 1951 Pan American Games in Buenos Aires planned to stage winter events later in the year but dropped the idea for lack of interest.

Lake Placid, New York, tried to organize Winter Games in 1959, but again not enough Pan American countries expressed interest and the plans were cancelled.

In 1988, members of PASO voted to hold the first Pan American Winter Games at Las Lenas, Argentina in September of 1989. It was further agreed that Winter Games would be held every four years.

Lack of snow forced postponement of the games until Sept. 16-22, 1990, when eight countries sent 97 athletes to Las Lenas. Of that total, 76 were from just three countries, Argentina, Canada, and the United States. Weather was unseasonably warm and again there was little snow, so only three Alpine sking events, the slalom, giant slalom, and Super G, were staged. The U. S. and Canada combined to win all 18 medals.

Undeterred, PASO awarded the 2nd Pan American Winter Games to Santiago, Chile for 1993. The United States warned that it wouldn\'t take part unless a full schedule of events was held. The Santiago organizing committee eventually gave up and the idea hasn\'t been revived since then

Locations of Pan American Games

Year	Games	Host City	Country	Date	Athletes	Nations	Sports	Most Gold Medals
1951	I	Buenos Aires	Argentina	February 25 - March 9 1951	2513	21	18	Argentina
1955	II	Mexico City	Mexico	March 12 - March 26 1955	2583	22	17	United States
1959	III	Chicago	United States	August 27 - September 7 1959	2263	25	18	United States
1963	IV	São Paulo	Brazil	April 20 - May 5 1963	1665	22	19	United States
1967	V	Winnipeg	Canada	July 23 - August 6 1967	2361	29	18	United States
1971	VI	Cali	Colombia	July 30 - August 13 1971	2935	32	18	United States
1975	VII	Mexico City	Mexico	October 12 - October 26 1975	3146	33	18	United States
1979	VIII	San Juan	Puerto Rico	July 1 - July 15 1979	3700	34	22	United States
1983	IX	Caracas	Venezuela	August 14 - August 29 1983	3426	36	23	United States
1987	X	Indianapolis	United States	August 8 - August 23 1987	4453	38	30	United States
1991	XI	Havana	Cuba	August 2 - August 18 1991	4519	39	26	Cuba
1995	XII	Mar del Plata	Argentina	March 12 - March 26 1995	5144	42	34	United States
1999	XIII	Winnipeg	Canada	July 23 - August 8 1999	5275	42	34	United States
2003	XIV	Santo Domingo	Dominican Republic	August 1 - August 17 2003	5196	42	35	United States
2007	XV	Rio de Janeiro	Brazil	July 13 - July 29 2007	est. 5500	42	41	United States
2011	XVI	Guadalajara	Mexico	October 13 - October 30 2011
2015	XVII	to be announced 2009	tba	summer, 2015

Medals table

The table below gives an overview of the all-time medal count of the Pan American Games.

Rank	Nation	Gold	Silver	Bronze	Total
1	United States	1748	1295	873	3916
2	Cuba	781	531	481	1793
3	Canada	348	547	682	1577
4	Argentina	258	279	363	900
5	Brazil	239	283	401	923
6	Mexico	157	217	409	783
7	Venezuela	73	156	224	453
8	Colombia	57	109	162	328
9	Chile	37	70	108	215
10	Puerto Rico	21	72	113	206
11	Dominican Republic	19	43	85	147
12	Jamaica	21	33	59	113
13	Ecuador	14	13	36	63
14	Uruguay	11	22	42	75
15	Trinidad and Tobago	8	17	25	50
16	Guatemala	7	12	29	48
17	Bahamas	6	11	9	26
18	Peru	5	28	58	91
19	Netherlands Antilles	4	9	16	29
20	Costa Rica	4	6	10	20
21	Suriname	4	2	5	11
22	Panama	3	20	24	47
23	Guyana	2	4	11	17
24	El Salvador	1	6	12	19
25	Bermuda	1	4	3	8
26	Antigua and Barbuda	1	0	3	4
27	United States Virgin Islands	0	4	5	9
28	Cayman Islands	0	4	0	2
29	Barbados	0	3	7	10
	Nicaragua	0	3	7	10
31	Haiti	0	2	5	7
32	Paraguay	0	1	6	7
33	Honduras	1	1	4	6
34	Bolivia	0	1	2	3
	Grenada	0	1	2	3
36	Dominica	0	1	1	2
37	Belize	0	0	2	2
	Saint Lucia	0	0	2	2
39	Saint Vincent and the Grenadines	0	0	1	1
	Aruba	0	0	1	1
40	British Virgin Islands	0	0	0	0
	Saint Kitts and Nevis	0	0	0	0
		3497	3477	3875	10849

Participating Nations

Sports

Panamerican Torch

Since the first Panamerican Games, a torch is lit the same way as the Olympic Games (since 1924), Asian Games (since 1958) and All Africa Games (since 1965) does. In the first games in Buenos Aires 1951, the torch came from Olympia, Greece. Since the Mexico 1955 games, the torch is lit by Aztec people in old temples, first in Serra da Estrella and after in the Temple of the Sun God in Teotihuacán Pyramids. The only exception was Sao Paulo in 1963 whe the torch was lit in Brasilia by Guarani indigiens.

See also

• Winter Pan American Games
• 2011 Pan American Games

External links

• Rio 2007 Official Website
• Santo Domingo 2003 Official Website
• Pan American Games - Rio de Janeiro 2007
• Poster Images from the Pan American Games from 1951 to 1999
• Guadalajara 2011 Games

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