The meetings, which took place in Panam Sports' Miami offices over the course of five days, allowed President Neven Ilic to assess each country's situation with the Santiago 2023 Pan American Games and Paris 2024 Olympic Games on the horizon.

This week featured the 20 Spanish-speaking countries of the region, with talks conducted with representatives from Venezuela, Colombia, Uruguay, Bolivia, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Argentina, Aruba, Ecuador, Peru, Nicaragua, Chile, Panama, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Paraguay, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Honduras and El Salvador.

Among the most discussed topics was the importance of the Cali 2021 Junior Pan American Games, how coronavirus has harmed the development of each organisation, how some countries receive little to no help from their Governments to support sports projects and how they are preparing for the two main events of this Olympic cycle.

"We knew that the economic situation of the countries was not going to be easy due to the pandemic, but we wanted to hear from them how they were organising themselves and what their realities were," said Ilic, who is Chilean and an International Olympic Committee member.

"From those discussions we can generate help and support programs for athletes and coaches and manage each of the shortcomings.

"We found they have distinct situations.

"There are Olympic Committees that continue to receive significant support from their Governments, but the vast majority today do not have that support which makes it impossible to develop sport in a good way.

"This invites us to look for new methods of helping since there are many NOCs that lack coaches, training and infrastructure.

"It is tremendously helpful to understand the situation of each one so that we can adapt our programs to the needs of the members and therefore help promote more sports development, participation and above all, give more support to athletes.

"We want to make a great effort and focus on junior athletes who are our great future, offering quality training camps, competitions and training so that they can soon represent their countries in the most important events in the world."

The reaction from the NOCs was overwhelmingly positive, Panam Sports reports, with many finding the meetings helpful for their preparations as they ensure that each nation is on the right track for what is the shortest Olympic cycle in history.

Panam Sports is due to stage similar meetings with its remaining 21 NOCs in the near future.

Santiago 2023 is due to take place from October 20 to November 5 in the Chilean capital in what is set to be the most significant sporting event held in the country since the 1962 FIFA World Cup.

The first Olympic Games in Paris for 100 years is then scheduled for July 26 to August 11 2024.