The great sporting events return with Villa de Avilés

NACHO GUTIERREZ AVILES.

Autumn cannot come this year, more and better sporting events put Avilés back on the world map. The first sporting event arrives this weekend at the pavilion of the Avilés Sports Complex after a year of absence due to the covid, and was presented yesterday at the City Hall in what represents the happy return of a tournament that turns twenty.

With normality taking its first steps, Villa de Avilés makes health security its axis and to this end it has had to reduce the participation of judokas from 2,000 to 1,200 among the four categories, junior, cadet, child and juvenile. They will represent two hundred clubs from all the autonomous communities and four countries in addition to Spain: the United States, France, Portugal and Georgia. Fifteen of the clubs are Asturian and five from our area, Judo Sanfer, Óscar Fernández, from Avilés, Castrillón Martial Arts and the organizer Judo Avilés.

All those registered will undergo a PCR test to validate their registration, something that is essential "in a contact sport and in which many of the participants have not yet received the vaccine," underlines the sports director of Judo Avilés.

Also at the level of presence in the stands there is a protocol for the regulation of the established limits, something that facilitates the amplitude of the installation. The assistance will be done by blocks or categories, which will allow the distribution of the almost five thousand people registered in a mobile application, an essential requirement.

The figures of the tournament on its twentieth anniversary, in terms of the people who will move around it and despite the restrictions, are dizzying: 6,100, between the 4,900 companions and the 1,200 participants: «This morning they have confirmed the full in all the hotels”, Fernández added at the presentation of the tournament, in which he was accompanied by the councilor for sports Nuria Delmiro and the president of the territorial, José Ramón Díaz. Both praised the organizational capacity of the club and the city, in addition to highlighting the economic, social and sporting impact "of the most important tournament held in Asturias."

The three entities, "and the local commerce that has overturned despite the bad moment that the sector is going through", adds Carlos Fernández, will make it possible for Avilés to live judo for three days and offer its hospitality to those more than six thousand people who they will be in our city.

same range

Sportingly, Villa de Avilés maintains its range of scoring tests for two of its four categories, male and female: the cadet or sub 18, which takes place on Saturday with 310 registered, along with the junior sub 21, with 200, and the child or under 15, reserved for Sunday with 300 participants, the day on which the under 13 junior competition for teams that bring together 200 young judokas will close the poster.

With all the details closed, the Villa de Avilés 'opens' this Thursday with the assembly throughout the morning of the installation, which will be accessed in the afternoon by the judokas who will arrive in the city today, in addition to the Asturians for of training. What has not been possible in this edition are parallel promotional events with talks or tatami sessions with relevant masters of this martial art.

Tomorrow, Friday, will be the day of the procedures, arrival of the bulk of the participants, PCR tests that will be carried out in the facilities of the same sports complex, the weigh-in, as well as training by shifts of arrival to distribute the spaces.