CLOC President Otoya

The newly appointed President of the Cali Local Organizing Committee (CLOC), Dr. Rodrigo Otoya, sat down for an interview with the Cali/Cauca Valley newspaper “El País” during his first days of office. Part one of the “El País” interview is reproduced here.

A respected entrepreneur and former president of one of the two first division football clubs in Cali, Dr. Otoya speaks up on the challenges that lie ahead. 16 months are left to bring about changes in perception – as well as in substance!

Now that The World Games 2013 have officially been launched in the presence of (Colombian) President Juan Manuel Santos, what comes next for the event?

Putting the focus of the Organizing Committee’s work in the appropriate order of priority. The Cali Sports and Recreation Secretariat has already established the budgets for the improvements to our sports infrastructure: the Coliseum “El Puebelo”, a rink that will be used for inline hockey, the softball field, the climbing wall next to the velodrome, and corrective works to the roof and the track of the speed skating venue.

Will the venues be ready on time, something that was not the case for the 2008 National Games or the 2011 FIFA U-20 World Cup?

Yes, they will be ready! There is no risk whatsoever that we could fail with the 16 months that we have available. Most of it is making improvements and reconditioning. Above all to the Coliseum “El Pueblo”, which has problems with flooding, where we will need to count on the help of Emcali and the municipal government.

You were involved in the Deportivo Cali Football Club as a member of its board and, as such, had to withstand criticism and quite a few headaches. Why do you return to another leadership in sports, even if it is to a different front this time?

The leadership of The World Games is very different from the one I have lived through as president of Deportivo Cali. For a football team the only goal is to be champions. If you succeed with that, everything else is an add-on. Organizing The World Games is a great challenge, but I find myself more at ease.  I want to structure this enterprise, lead a team of seasoned experts in the fields of sports, finance, logistics and communications towards games deserving of the label “well done”.

How did they convince you to take on this assignment?

That was easy. When Mayor Rodrigo Guerrero and Councilor Nelson Garcés called me to offer the position, the very least I could do was to accept the challenge, taking into account the efforts that the local leaders had made for the city. It is a commitment to start on the job, and here I am.

Initially there was objection to The World Games due to the fact that they were not sufficiently known, that they were linked to persons of questionable honesty, the matter of Fondo Mixto (entity entrusted with the promotion of sports and recreation in the Cauca Valley). What needs to be done in order to convince the Cali residents as well as the Colombians to put their bet on and to position the games?

The World Games are an important event in sporting circles, but one has to accept that they are still young. It is only their ninth edition that we will organize. The challenge consists in positioning them properly in our society, and that is something we will succeed in doing. Of the 31 sports featured in The World Games, only three or four are not familiar to us. And that does not imply that they are inexistent – or that they are not practiced elsewhere.

What was missing until now was support by the political leaders of the turn. Governor Juan Carlos Abadía supported the games, but later he abandoned them over problems in his administration. Mayor Jorge Iván Ospina never paid any attention and the games then ended up in the hands of Pascual Guerrero, who worked with a team and some resources from the Fondo Mixto up to the levels he was able to reach.

What is important is that Mayor Guerrero has put on the World Games jersey and then succeeded to bring in President Santos and Andrés Boteró, the director of COLDEPORTES (ministry-level Colombian sports authority).

Part two to follow! IWGA Communications wishes to acknowledge and thank the "El Páis" newspaper for allowing the reproduction of the interview. Text and photo: © "El País" | Archive