The Mejia government yesterday inaugurated the new handball pavilion of the Complejo Deportivo Parque del Este, the sports park area where several of the venues for the summer Pan American Games are being built. The handball events for the Central American and Caribbean Games took place there last November.
The facility was built at a cost of RD$68 million. Dr. Jose Joaquin Puello, president of the 2003 Pan American Games organizing committee said that the installations meet the same standards as those being built for the Athens Olympics.
In August, the pavilion will host the Pan American Games handball events. Prior to the country obtaining the seat of the Pan Am Games, handball was an unknown sport in the Dominican Republic. But in the 2002 Central American and Caribbean Games, Dominican handball athletes won two gold medals.
