Dominican Republic: Sports Day

August 2

Hello everyone!

What would be the strangest place where you’ve seen a sports competition played? How about the ground floor of a shopping mall…

Squash at the Agora Mall

Wrestling in the Olympic Centre

The Dominican Republic is currently hosting the 25th edition of the Central American and Caribbean Games. As of last Wednesday, the Dominican Republic is also my current home. Happy coincidence.

The games run from July 26 to August 8

It is hot here, so not everyone is keen to participate

The Games, which I also saw in El Salvador in 2023, have a wide variety of events and locations. The golf is in Punta Cana on the east coast. The surfing is at Cabarete on the north coast. Some events, like BMX and football, are being held in another city called Santiago. The vast majority of events, however, fall within the jurisdiction of the capital, Santo Domingo. Where I now live.

Santo Domingo is the the close dots on the southern coast

The view from the top of my apartment block - the sea is in the distance

That’s not to say that they are easy to get to. When I visited Santo Domingo in late 2022, I was based in the Colonial Zone. A tourist area. So at that time I didn’t really grasp the fact that the city is actually quite long, particularly from west to east. I’m living in the western area, about 7 kilometres from the Colonial Zone. That may not sound like a lot, but you may not have seen traffic here…

I'm living in an area called Bella Vista,
which is the circle on the far left

An interesting intersection near my apartmen

Also as a new arrival, I’ve had things to do organised by my new job. Signing contracts, setting up bank accounts, going to IKEA. Yes, there’s an IKEA here. IKEA with island prices, admittedly.

When I worked for IKEA in 2005, they told us that there is a
strategy to their building plan so that people are tired by the time
they get to the restaurant. We stopped there, so it worked on us!

Celebrating our first weekend in the city

Sunday was therefore my opportunity to take in some of the Games, and I limited myself to areas relatively close to home. Deciding to sleep in rather than wake up early to watch the cycling along the Malecon, a sort of corniche or waterfront promenade, I eventually roused myself to go to the Juan Pablo Duarte Olympic complex. JP Duarte was not alive when the Olympics were on, interestingly.

There are a wide variety of sports in the games

Independence hero - there'll be more about him
in these blogs in the future, I'm sure

Arriving here for 10am gave me free access to the men’s diving competition final. It was called the 10m platform event, which made it strange that the local pairing spent most of their time jumping off lower platforms. I can’t criticise, though; it looked terrifying enough from my vantage point, let alone theirs.

The complex was created for these games in 1974

10 metres...quite a splash if you get it wrong...

They weren’t scores that would get any of them near Olympic medals, or even the games themselves, but they were incredible to watch. It made me wonder about how often they get to compete.

Imagine if you slip!

There were teams from Venezuela, Cuba,
DR, Mexico and Colombia in this final

If any of these teams will make it to Los Angeles in 2028, it will be the Mexican pairing. They were phenomenal, and really took their time to make sure they were ready before diving, as attested to by the video below.

Their score was significantly higher than the other teams

Can't remember if this was Mexico - either way,
nothing for the truly elite to worry about

The Centro Olimpico is where many events are taking place, from chess to wrestling. I watched the latter shortly after the end of the diving competition. I don’t really know the rules of this sport, and was confused during the first match when a referee told a man to lie on the floor. It did begin to make sense later.

Ajerdez: new word for me!

There are two 'fighting' arenas, this is one of them

This was an event in which a Dominican athlete had more success, outmanoeuvring his Puerto Rican opponent after a fast start. There was quite a fervent atmosphere, particularly when a point was docked from him by the referee.

A lot the the time was spent like this...

...or like this...

The most spectacular wrestling bout involved a Venezuelan, who was able to roll, collect and slam his opponent out of the circle. My understanding was that this gave him an automatic win. You might be confused by the idea of Venezuela being in the Central American and Caribbean Games. I was too, until I remembered that the country has a coastline on the Caribbean Sea. It is why Colombia, Guyana and Suriname are also competing.

The Venezuelan grappler is in blue

He seemed significantly stronger than his opponent!

The Games themselves seem quite flexible. When I had planned what I was going to see on this particular Sunday, I had noticed that there was boxing taking place at the Centro Olimpico at midday. Sat outside the very much closed entrance to the boxing arena at 11:45am, I checked the website again…to find that it was starting at 2pm. Not wanting to wait that long, I walked a couple of kilometres away from the complex to a shopping centre called Agora Mall.

A beautiful flame tree at the Olympic Complex

An art piece in the Olympic Complex

I love the idea of having events in places like this. Guaranteed eyes and publicity, and no massive waste of building a stadium that wouldn’t be used much after the event has finished. Unlikely they could have done diving here, admittedly, though the mall does have four floors…

There were two courts in the mall

A friend had visited on Thursday and said the courts looked
nothing like this, so it's impressive that they were ready

There was a lot more I could have seen, but I more than satisfied my desire to explore and see something interesting on my first weekend living in Santo Domingo. And if they keep the squash courts in that mall after the Central American and Caribbean Games ends next Saturday, maybe I’ll need to find a racquet…

Very. High. Up.

Taekwondo is one of the other events

Love you all,

Matt