Six long decades have passed and I remembered everything that prompted me to study history, a subject that had already entered my preferences due to the teachings of my old teachers and the tireless reading that I started at the age of 8. my father gave me the first book: Goodbye, Mr. Chips, a novel about the school environment published in 1934 by the English writer James Hilton.

I have always been fascinated by the history of my city, Guayaquil, ever since I read accounts of the first episode of independence on October 9, 1820, sometimes hidden in the official history written by the ‘historians’ of latifundism. There was no history of the sport, hardly any version born from the memory or inventiveness of certain people was written.

My life was already connected with sports since 1955 when I started as a swimmer for the Vicente Rocafuerte National College and the Student Sports League. In that famous club, I began to listen to stories about great sporting moments told by its protagonists: Elí Jojó Barreiro, Carlos Luis Grillo Gilbert, Juvenal Sáenz, Víctor Caballito Zevallos, Fidel Pircio Miranda and other heroes of the Las Tres Letras club. gold of the National Sports.

There was one event that was crucial to my commitment to historical research and it had several influential characters. First, my journalism professor Manuel Chicken Palacios Offner, who was a basketball player, swimmer and water polo player in the 1930s, and who hosted the most popular sports program in national history on Radio Cristal: The Sports Cocktail (“sweetened, shaken and served for friends, and a little , the last straw for the enemies,” he said).

Why my dear and remembered Pile? Here’s what happened 60 years ago. Don Manuel (it’s strange to call him that) called his program a tribute to the Four Musketeers of Guayas, the leading swimmers of the 1938 greatest endeavor in South American sports. The performance was supposed to take place on the night of March 27, 1963 in the Olympic swimming pool. Carlos Luis and Abelito Gilbert, Ricardo Pechón Planas, Luis Alcívar, Arduino Tomasi, coach of the South American champions, and the father of the feat, Jacobo Nahon, were to attend.

The Olympic stands were full, the emotion was in the spirit of all of us who were present. Tomasi spoke first, followed by Chicken, who reflected on the details of the great event that stunned America: with four young, unknown swimmers, Ecuador beat entire teams and afforded the country its first great sporting joy. The great journalist regretted that Lancha Alcívar, who was in Rio de Janeiro as the consul of our country, was not present. Just as Chicken said that Lancha was not present, the audience stood up and applauded: Alcívar entered the pool with suitcases and all, coming directly from the airport.

That emotional moment was fundamental in my life: that night I decided that I would write a book about Lima’s feat and that I had just published it on the 50th anniversary of the triumphal night at Nippon Pool in Lima. It was an afternoon in May 1963 when I went to the city library and started looking through newspapers and magazines from 1938. I found so many great stories not only about swimming, but about all sports. I wanted to know when swimming began to be practiced and I went to the newspapers of the 19th century while filling dozens of notebooks with valuable discoveries from the life of Guayaquil, literary events and the development of sports.

In these 60 years, I managed to find the history of the first sports entity, Perseverancia Club, founded in 1860. Then the entry of modern sports in Guayaquil with the establishment of Club Sport Guayaquil in 1899 (which has nothing to do with Guayaquil Sport Club and is not its predecessor), promoter of football, rowing , tennis, horse riding and cycling. My research led me to the first soccer tournament held in Guayaquil in 1908 thanks to the impetus given to the sport by Manuel Seminario Sáenz de Tejada, who arrived in Guayaquil in 1907.

In 1911 – all documented in the chronicles of the newspapers of the time – Seminario founded the first multi-sport entity in the country, the Guayaquil Sports League, and was the promoter of the first “inter-city” football match in 1912 between Club Sport Guayaquil and Sport Club Quito, which was founded 1906

All the research effort of these six decades has been free. I have never received support from any official entity or government agency. I have published thirteen books on the history of sport and its relationship with literature financed by the cooperation of friends. The work allowed me to find details of the first international football match played in Ecuador; It was in 1920 between the sailors of the British ship Weymouth and the Centenario club from Guayaquil. Then, an authentic version of the matches between the sailors of the ship Cambrian and the Centenario and North American clubs, which gave rise to the epic dispute over the Cambrian Shield, which was presented by the officers of the English ship, between 1923 and 1931.

History, not fairy tales

I am proud (not vain) to have made discoveries that today are part of the true history of our sport, and not the fabrications of fraudsters. As an example, I cite the reliable history of the participation of domestic athletes at the Olympic Games in Paris in 1924, thanks to the international contacts of Manuel Seminario, about whom I wrote a biographical book that I hope to publish soon.

Some revelations have changed unofficial versions. Barcelona was not founded on May 1 by Catalans, but by young people from Buenos Aires on April 28, 1925, in the northwest corner of the Escuela Modelo. Emelec was not founded by George Capwell (he arrived in Guayaquil in 1926), but by Alejandro Ponce Elizalde, in June 1925. This club participated in football and was the champion of the Commercial Sports League. This does not detract from Capwell, who in 1929 gave it legal status and made it the most organized sports entity in the country. Even the Sports Federation of Guayas was not founded on July 25, 1922, but on the 19th of those months and years.

A tireless search of old newspapers allowed me to find the date of the first clash between Barcelona and Emelec on 22 August 1943 and the origin of the name Clásico del Astillero in the 1948 edition of EL UNIVERSO. Also information about the first goal at the Capwell Stadium in 1945, the work of Guayaquil striker Marino Alcívar and a detailed account of the birth of professionalism in Ecuadorian football in Guayaquil in 1950.

It is impossible to tell everything found in these 60 years. For me, it is a reason for a happy commemoration and an obligation to continue doing this honorable work that I have enjoyed for a long time. (OR)