The torch for the eighth South American Games reached the Argentine city of Mar del Plata on Wednesday, the second site for the competition that begins Thursday next week in Argentine capital Buenos Aires.

The flame was carried by former speed-skating champion Nora Vega, and received by her colleague Andrea Gonzalez, the Argentine athlete that has won the most medals in the Games, with 14 medals in 1998 in Ecuadorian city Cuenca.

Many athletes from the city carried the torch through the city, to the Municipal Sports Park, facing the statue to the athletes of 1995's first Pan-American Games.

On Friday the torch will got to Miramar, a city on the Atlantic coast in Buenos Aires province, and will reach the main site of the Games, the city of Buenos Aires, on Sunday.