"Sport is much more than medals. We try to put all the public and private means so that our athletes have the best results, but sport is more than competition and achievements. It has functionalities that no one disputes in the area of health, social integration, values and Economics", said José Ramón Lete Lasa, Secretary of State for Sport, during the sixth session of the Forum Sport and Society, on Wednesday, June 14, at the Hotel Muga de Beloso, attended by fifty people. As economic data, Lete Lasa pointed out that "the employment linked to sport in 2016 in Spain was 194,000 people, 1% of the total employment ".

Under the degree scroll "Retos y desafíos del deporte español", he focused his lecture on four of these challenges: health, the legal field, athlete support and the fight against certain threats.

He recalled the WHO warning that physical inactivity is the fourth risk factor in terms of global mortality, and in this regard he pointed out the paradox in which we live: "On the one hand there is a worldwide boom of people who practice sport; on the other hand, there are data, collected by the New England Journal of Medicine, which says that a third of the world population is overweight or obese". Lete Lasa added: "This indicates that we are facing a huge public health problem and here sport has a lot to say" and he advocated moving away from the "current paradigm of sedentary lifestyles" to the "paradigm of activity", project in which he sees the need to involve both the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Education. Among other concrete measures, he announced that from September onwards, schools in the communities of the MEC territory will have a third hour a week of Education Physics.

Threats against sport

Of the challenges to support athletes, he highlighted the aid to combine sports careers with academic and professional careers, and support for women's sport, of which he said: "It is one of our priorities, it is saving us international podiums". Regarding the threats against Spanish sport, Lete Lasa was particularly concerned about match-fixing, "an increasingly present problem, which is internationalized and to which we must begin to respond". He also highlighted the challenge of tackling violence in sport and the battle against doping. In this area, the speaker stressed that one of the challenges against these threats is already achieved, making reference letter to the modification of the Anti-Doping Law, last February, which was adapted to the World Anti-Doping Code of 2015.

The Sports and Society Forum is promoted by the University of Navarra, Aedona, Anaccolde and Radio Marca Navarra, in partnership with the Miguel Induráin Foundation and the Hotel Muga de Beloso and sponsored by Caixa Bank. At the beginning of the session, Javier Trigo, director of the Sports Service of the University of Navarra emphasized the importance of this subject of activities and affirmed: "The Sports and Society Forum is already one year old, and I think we can say that we have fulfilled the goal of being a point of meeting of the sport in our community".