SANTIAGO, March 2, 2021 - The Chilean Circle of Sports Journalists (CPD Chile) mourns the death of its former president - a notable and extraordinary leader - Juan Aguad Kunkar, who passed away on Sunday, February 28, at the age of 91.

The lawyer and journalist specialized in basketball and for decades he was one of the most prominent voices in the coverage of the sport.

He was the secretary general of CPD Chile from 1985 and 1991 under the reign of Juan Facuse, one of his great friends. He then became president from 1991 and 2011, after which he left for health reasons.

Born in Quillota, Juan Aguad Kunkar was a basketball player selected from the University of Chile, where he graduated as a lawyer.

He was a national basketball champion with Club Sirio and joined the national team to the South American Championships in Córdoba, Argentina, in 1960 and Lima, in 1963. He was also shortlisted for the 1958 South American Championship in Santiago and the 1959 World Cup in Chile.
 
Kunkar’s journalism career began at the now-defunct Radio Minería as a sports reporter and commentator, covering the 1959 and 1966 men’s basketball World Cups as well as the 1962 football World Cup. He covered the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich while working with the newspaper Clarín.

In 1973, he joined the newspaper El Mercurio, where he worked until 2009, reporting on athletics, tennis, basketball and football, covering national and international events. Simultaneously, he worked at Balmaceda and Minería radio stations and Estadio magazine. He ran commentary on the 1990 basketball World Cup in Argentina and the 1994 football World Cup in the United States.

In 1975, he was part of the NBA broadcast on UCV Television and continued on Teleonce and Megavisión until 1994. He received an invitation from the NBA to witness the 1994 Houston-Chicago final. He was also a commentator of the Dimayor professional basketball tournament on TVN and Fox Sports for seven years.

In 2011, he was one of the recipients of the Abelardo Raidi Awards presented by AIPS America and he concluded his career as a columnist for cooperativa.cl website.

Juan Aguad Kunkar was the legal advisor to the Chilean Association of Journalists from 1973. He  also served as a judge for the Local Police of Lo Espejo, Santiago.