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By Frank Jack Daniel
CARACAS, June 15 (Reuters) - Venezuela will send at least
105 athletes to Beijing this year, more than double the
participants it sent to the last Olympics, as a decade of big
spending by left-wing President Hugo Chavez begins to pay off.
Chavez, who considers sport an important element in his
drive to build a socialist society in consumer driven Venezuela,
said on Sunday this year’s Olympic delegation was among the 20
largest in the world.
“This is the potential of the homeland,” he said during his
weekly television show. “For the first time, 105 and there might
be more yet.”
Much like close ally Cuba, which focuses its budget on
social ministries, Chavez has greatly increased spending on
health, education and sport, as well as the military, since he
took office in 1999.
Critics says the government uses sport to divert attention
from poor performance in other areas like crime fighting.
Swimmer Yanel Pinto qualified as the 105th athlete on
Saturday. State television repeatedly plays patriotic images
showing the Venezuela’s top sports stars backed by the music of
another of the country’s great prides, its youth orchestras.
One TV slogan before Pinto qualified read: “104 Venezuelas,
May the Revolution Continue”
Oil-endowed Venezuela, traditionally a baseball nation which
sends players to the U.S. major leagues, has had some success in
other sports in recent years as the government invests part of a
bonanza in crude prices on equipment, stadiums and facilities.
The male and female volleyball teams both qualified for
Beijing for the first time this year, part of a delegation more
than twice the size of the 47 athletes sent to Athens in 2004
and the 51 sent to Sydney in 2000.
The Venezuelan “Vinotinto” national soccer team, which has
never qualified for a World Cup, beat Brazil in a friendly
earlier this month, and drew against Uruguay in a qualifier on
Sunday.
“Soon we’ll be going to a World Cup,” said Chavez, who has
built new soccer stadiums across the vast Caribbean country and
jokingly vows to make the national team better than five times
world champions and neighbors Brazil.
The government created a sports ministry in 2006 and says it
spends around $300 million a year on sports, up from $40 million
at the start of the decade.
“Physical activity plays a fundamental role in the
conception of the new man, it is vital,” Sports Minister
Victoria Mata said in May. Chavez said he aimed to end
capitalism and create a socialist “new man” in Venezuela, which
is one of the most Americanized of South American nations.
The countries in Latin America so far sending most athletes
to Beijing are Brazil, Cuba, Argentina and Venezuela, Chavez
said.
(Editing by Miles Evans)