4 years after organizing a Central American tournament, the Costa Rican skating will host on this occasion the Central American and Caribbean Skating Tournament in its modalities of speed and Roller Derby or team contact. This was made known during the summit of the “World Skate America” (WSA), held in Colombia last April 2018.
This competition is scheduled to take place from August 23rd to 26th at the Patinódromo de La Sabana, San José, Costa Rica. But during the previous 3 days, there will be training with judges, coaches, and skating leaders in order to make them aware of the rules of competition that will govern the tournament. This was achieved thanks to the agreement of the Costa Rican Skating Federation (Fedepat) with its Colombian counterpart, Fedepatín.
In addition, topics such as sports medicine and some testimonies of recent world champions, all of the coffee cast, at the top of the world since 2010, will be addressed to encourage skaters to give their maximum effort and make this event a competitive level.
The arrival of the Caribbean countries, particularly the teams of Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic to this tournament, is an effort that has been made since 2002 with the Panama Championship, the last one that had the Caribbean Skating Confederation. Nevertheless, these initiatives did not crystallize until 2016, in Nicaragua.
For the president of the Fedepat, Joseth Villegas, the presence of the main Caribbean countries helps to give a more competitive level to the event. However, his main objective is to leave the title of the championship at home.
“We hope for obtaining the 1st place in the championship. We know it is very difficult with Guatemala, a very strong favorite team that has won by much the last Central Americans, but we want to take advantage of the fact that we are in our house and therefore we have a full quota and a lower cost for trips and blanks “. So far, the national teams have been left 2 third consecutive Central American places.
Villegas considers this tournament as important to make known to the skaters who -during a month- have been preparing for this moment, where they have been closer to equating with El Salvador, the 2nd place in Central American skating.
The Federation expects the approval of the budgetary allocation of the Costa Rican Institute of Sports and Recreation (Icoder) to hold a tournament to match. Some of the tasks that they intend to do are improve the lighting of the La Sabana skating rink and install a stand with capacity for 100 people.
In addition, joint work has been done with cantonal committees throughout the country and visits to the teams, located mainly in San José, San Carlos, Cañas, and Sarapiquí, as well as speed camps that last from Friday to Sunday. The previous week was in northern territory and this time it will be in the Josefino patinódromo.
Much of this growth in Costa Rican skating has a technical manager. He is the Colombian-born coach, Álvaro Ramos, who led his country to win the 2016 world title, the last one to have been made, and was appointed coach of the Costa Rican team, earlier this year.