The 2015 Pan American Games, officially the XVII Pan American Games or the 17th Pan American
Games, is a major international multi-sport event that is scheduled to be held from July
10–26, 2015, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, with some events held in seventeen other Golden
Horseshoe communities such as Hamilton and Markham among others. Approximately 6,000
athletes from 41 nations are expected to participate in 36 sports. The first event, water polo,
will begin three days earlier, on July 7. Both the Pan American and Parapan American
Games are being organized by the Toronto 2015 Organizing Committee. The 2015 Pan American
Games will become the third Pan American Games hosted by Canada and the first by the province
of Ontario. Previously, Canada hosted the 1967 Pan American Games and the 1999 Pan American
Games, both in Winnipeg, Manitoba. The 2015 Parapan American Games will be held twelve
days after the Pan American Games. Following Pan American Sports Organization
tradition, Toronto mayor Rob Ford and Canadian Minister for Sport Bal Gosal received the
Pan American Sports Organization flag during the closing ceremony of the 2011 Pan American
Games in Guadalajara, Mexico. The 2015 Pan American Games will become the
first completely ecologically friendly games, because it will be fully carbon neutral. The
Games will also be the largest multi-sport event ever to be held in Canada, double the
size of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.
Bidding Process
The Canadian Olympic Committee chose Toronto and the surrounding region as the Canadian
candidate. No other Canadian city was given a chance to bid in a domestic race, and thus
Toronto was selected without a vote. Toronto's interest in bidding came after failing to
land the 1996 Summer Olympics and the 2008 Summer Olympics, which were held in Atlanta
and Beijing respectively. On February 23, 2009 both Toronto City Council
and Hamilton City Council approved the bid officially and confirmed their intentions
to support the successful hosting of the event. The official bid book document was submitted
to the Pan American Sports Organization on May 27, 2009.
PASO made an evaluation visit to Toronto between August 30 and 31, 2009. The team analyzed
the candidate city features and provided its feedback back to voting members of PASO. The
evaluation committee was headed by Julio Maglione, a member of the IOC representing Uruguay and
the head of Fédération Internationale de Natation, the international swimming federation.
After the visit Maglione said, "Toronto has all the conditions to play host to the Pan
American Games". Toronto won the bidding process to host the
Pan and Parapan American Games by a vote of the Pan American Sports Organization on November
6, 2009, at the PASO Session held in Guadalajara, Mexico. The result was announced by PASO President
Mario Vázquez Raña. Toronto faced two other finalists shortlisted Lima, Peru, and Bogotá,
Colombia. Toronto earned 33 votes, while contesting candidate cities Lima and Bogotá received
11 and 7 votes, respectively. Development and preparation
The current politician responsible for this Game is Michael Coteau, the Minister Responsible
for the 2015 Pan and Parapan American Games. Previous ministers responsible for the Games
were Charles Sousa, Eric Hoskins, and Michael Chan.
Venues
Toronto will become one of the most populous cities in history to hold the Pan American
Games. In July, the month when the Games will be held, Toronto has an average mean temperature
of 22.3 °C and afternoon maximum average of 26.6 °C The average humidity is 74%,
and the city averages five days with the temperature exceeding 30 °C and about 65 millimetres
of precipitation, mostly brief periods of showers and sometimes thunderstorms. Toronto's
elevation is 112 m above sea level, which provides optimal and ideal conditions for
athletes. In January 2012, the organizing committee
announced that sixty percent of the originally proposed venues would be dropped, in favour
of a clustering system seen at other multi-sport events such as the 2012 Summer Olympics in
London, United Kingdom. The opening and closing ceremonies will be
held at Rogers Centre. Some of the competition venues in the Toronto area included National
Soccer Stadium, the Pan Am Field Hockey Centre, the Toronto Sports Centre and the Pan American
and Parapan American Aquatics Centre and Field House. Competition venues outside the city
of Toronto include the Hamilton Pan Am Soccer Stadium, Mississauga Sports Centre, Markham
Pan Am Centre in Markham, the Oshawa Boxing Centre in Oshawa, and the Royal Canadian Henley
Rowing Course in St. Catharines. Financing
The Toronto 2015 Organizing Committee, along with all three levels of government, will
spend about C$1.4 billion in upgrading and building new venues in the region. The provincial
government and the Canadian federal government would provide 35% each of the funding, with
the municipalities covering the remaining 30% of the cost. In addition, C$1 billion
will be spent on building an athletes' village in the West Don Lands area of Toronto. Therefore,
the total spent will be $2.4 billion, the highest ever spent for a Pan American Games.
Later in 2011, Toronto's contribution to the games almost doubled from $49.5 million to
$96.5 million for several reasons: the athletics stadium was moved to York University from
Hamilton, the soil was to be remediated at the University of Toronto Scarborough where
the proposed aquatics centre is supposed to be built, more money was needed for the proposed
BMX track and the increase in inflation. $700 million Canadian dollars will be spent to
build and renovate infrastructure in the region, about three times what was spent for the 2011
Pan American Games. Sponsorship
Private sponsors currently include Chevrolet Canada. Another sponsorship deal with CAA
South Central Ontario originally announced in January 2014 was subsequently terminated
in May. Public transport
The Union Pearson Express, an airport rail link from Toronto Pearson International Airport
to Union Station, is planned to open in advance of the Pan Am Games. In addition, a new GO
Transit train station in Hamilton at James Street North will open in time for the Games.
However, the extension of the 1 Yonge–University–Spadina subway line to Vaughan Metropolitan Centre
will not open in time. Public trails
In October 2013, an expansion of the Pan Am site was announced to help complete 250 kilometres
in gaps in Ontario's Trans Canada Trail and connect communities from Ottawa to Windsor
and Fort Erie to Huntsville in time for the Games. Connections to the Waterfront Trail
were expected to be expanded and complete gaps in the Trail.
Premier of Ontario Kathleen Wynne announced, "The province is investing more than $3.5
million in Pan Am/Parapan Am Trails to help create a continuous trail of more than 2,000
kilometres." Athlete's Village
The Athlete's Village will be located in the West Don Lands along Front Street between
Bayview Avenue and Cherry Street. It will have the capacity to hold 10,000 athletes
and officials during the Pan Am and Parapan Am Games and after the games will be converted
into housing. The development will be certified LEED Gold.
Volunteers The organization committee expects 20,000
volunteers will be required for Pan Am and Parapan Am Games.
Ticketing Ticket sales started in September 2014. The
Games expect to have 1.4 million tickets for sale, with over 75% of them priced under $45.
The first tranche of tickets was to be allocated via a lottery system.
Countdown Security
In April 2014 the Ontario provincial auditor general announced the launch of a value-for-money
audit of the contract awarded to a U.S.-based firm Contemporary Security Canada to provide
security at the Games. The contract, at value of $81 million, was the highest bid submitted
and $14 million more than the runner-up. In May 2014, Patrick Allen the manager of
Emergency Medical Services and health and safety for the Games was let go.
As of May 2014, the Ontario provincial government estimates that security will cost $239 million,
more than twice the original estimate of $113 million.
Medals Torch relay
An application period for Canadians to carry the torch opened in October 2014, to continue
until December. The Games
Participating nations All 41 nations of PASO are expected to compete.
This represents a drop of one from the 2011 Pan American Games, as the Netherlands Antilles
Olympic Committee was dissolved in 2011. The numbers in parenthesis represents the number
of participants qualified. Sports
A total of 36 sports, 52 disciplines and 365 medal events will be contested at the games.
Basque pelota is the only sport dropped from the last games. Golf will be making its Pan
American Games debut. Canoe slalom, the only Olympic discipline to never have been held
at the Games, will also make its debut, meaning for the first time ever the entire Olympic
program will be contested. Furthermore, both canoe disciplines will have C-1 events for
women for the first time ever. Women's baseball and rugby sevens will also make their debuts,
with men's softball returning to the program, after last being contested in 2003.
Numbers in parentheses indicate the number of medal events proposed to be contested in
each sport/discipline. Calendar
Broadcasting
Marketing Logo
Toronto's bid logo was launched on October 2, 2008, with the then Toronto mayor David
Miller and then head of the organizing committee David Peterson unveiling the logo to the public.
The bid logo looks like an abstract maple leaf with three sections, each section made
up of two strokes in the shape of a "v" with a spot in the centre. The colours are green,
red and blue. This was the official logo of the games until 2010 when the new logo was
launched. On September 29, 2010, the official logo of
the games was unveiled at a street party at Maple Leaf Square. According to Ian Troop,
the chief executive officer of Toronto 2015 organizing committee, the logo is designed
on the basis of the different art styles seen throughout the countries of PASO.
The colours in the logo are green, blue and orange. The logo has three distinct shapes
each with one of the three colours. The bottom two represent a “T and O” which represents
the city in which the games will be held, Toronto. The year 2015 is written inside the
letters. Mascot
"Pachi the Porcupine" was selected by a panel of children who voted online. The design was
created by four schoolgirls from Markham, Ontario, who derived the name "Pachi" from
a Japanese phrase meaning "clapping with joy". Pachi was designed with forty-one quills,
representing the attending nations, in five colours, representing the virtues: youth,
passion, collaboration, determination and creativity.
Scheduling concerns The Aquatics events at the 2015 Pan American
Games are scheduled to be held roughly around the same time as the 2015 World Aquatics Championships
scheduled in Kazan, Russia and the 2015 Summer Universiade in Gwangju, South Korea. The Organizing
Committee's goal is to have the best athletes competing at the Games and thus the schedule
for the other four aquatics disciplines had to be changed to accommodate athletes. The
synchronized swimming competition actually was moved to the day before the Opening ceremony,
diving events begin on the day of the opening ceremony, open water swimming was moved to
the first weekend of the games and swimming was reduced to a five day schedule. All events
are scheduled to be completed by July 18, the day before the opening ceremonies of the
World Championships. Other events that might be impacted include
the women's football event, which holds its World Cup and ends the Sunday before the Opening
ceremony. Toronto and Hamilton decided not to bid to host matches during the said World
Cup due to a potential conflict with the Games. The Honda Indy Toronto auto race, held traditionally
in mid-July at a street circuit near Exhibition Place, is expected to be affected for the
2015 edition. See also
2015 Parapan American Games References
External links Official Website