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Gold Medal Winner Arshad Nadeem at Paris Olympic - Olympics.com |
Pakistani Athlete Wins Olympic Gold after 32-Year Drought
By Riaz Haq
CA
Pakistani javelin thrower Arshad Nadeem shattered a world record to win a gold medal at the Paris Olympics 2024. Nadeem is now inspiring a new generation of Pakistani sportsmen to excel in athletics. Thousands of fans, including government ministers, came to Lahore Airport to greet Arshad Nadeem when he returned to the country.
Aeshad Nadeem's gold medal in the Paris Olympics came 32 years after Pakistan won a bronze medal in field hockey in Barcelona, Spain. It's also the first Olympic gold medal won by Pakistanis in 40 years. Pakistan has won a total of 11 medals since it started participating in the Olympic Games in 1948. India has won 41 medals since it began its participation in the Olympics in 1900. Five of India's 41 medals were won prior to 1948. This year, Pakistan has won just one medal, a gold in Javelin throw, while India has won 6 medals, including a silver in Javelin throw and 5 bronzes in other sports.
Of the 11 Olympic medals won by Pakistan since 1948, only three, including that of Paris 2024 champion Arshad Nadeem, are individual medals. Two other individual medals are bronze in men's boxing and wrestling. The rest are team medals awarded to the Pakistan field hockey teams.
South Asian nations, including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan, rank low on this year's medals tables. Pakistan ranks 62 and India 69. The top of the table is dominated by rich nations from East Asia, North America and Western Europe. Over 50 countries and territories have never won an Olympic medal, either in the Summer or Winter Games, according to a report in Newsweek .
Bangladesh is among the nations that have never won any Olympic medals. Others include Angola, Bhutan, Bolivia, Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, Honduras, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Myanmar, Nepal, Oman, Papua New Guinea, Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen.
The Olympics are not just a huge international sporting spectacle; these games are highly lucrative for the organizers who rake in billions of dollars in sponsorships and media rights. NBC alone paid $7.75 billion for broadcasting rights in the United States.
Rich industrialized nations have well-funded athletics development programs which can be credited with their Olympic success. The National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) is an example of one such program. It earned $1.28 billion in revenue in 2022-2023, with about $1 billion coming from March Madness alone.
This summer in Paris 2024, 75% of Team USA's Olympic athletes will have a collegiate background as part of their journey to Team USA, according to a report . This includes NCAA programs, junior colleges, NAIA and clubs. Of those, 65% (385 of 592) have competed in NCAA collegiate sports across all three divisions. In total, 151 NCAA schools from 45 conferences had one or more Team USA Olympic athletes competing in Paris.
The medals won by athletes from poor nations like India and Pakistan are primarily due to an individual's own initiative, hard work and determination. Arshad Nadeem, for example, had so little help from the Pakistani government or private sector that he had trouble finding the money to buy a javelin. He ended up doing crowd-funding to buy it for the Paris Olympics 2024. Even after winning a Commonwealth Games gold and World Championship silver in 2022 and 2023, Arshad had to plead for a new javelin before the Paris Olympics as his old one had worn out after years of use, according to a news report.
It is heartening to see that Arshad Nadeem is now being showered with effusive praise and money from both the government and private sector to continue his passion. Hopefully, he will use his celebrity status and money to help fund an athletics academy for aspiring young men and women in Pakistan.
(Riaz Haq is a Silicon Valley-based Pakistani-American analyst and writer. He blogs at www.riazhaq.com)
Reuters paid a glowing tribute to Arshad Nadeem in a story titled ‘From mud-brick house to Olympic podium’:
Arshad had still been training with substandard javelins just months before the Paris Olympics until a last-minute appeal saw the govt step in to help, his mother says.
Arshad had still been training with substandard javelins just months before the Paris Olympics, until a last-minute appeal saw the govt step in to help, his mother says.
Arshad Nadeem’s hometown erupted into rapturous celebrations after he clinched Pakistan’s first Olympic medal in athletics, winning gold in the men’s javelin and knocking defending champion Neeraj Chopra of India into second place.
Arshad’s triumph on Thursday in Paris is all the more impressive for a man born and raised in a mud-brick house in an impoverished corner of rural Pakistan and forced as a young man to train in local wheat fields with homemade javelins.
The news of his victory, which reached Pakistan late at night, thrilled his compatriots, drawing congratulatory messages from the nation’s leaders and prompting jubilant dancing and fireworks in his normally sleepy home village of Mian Channu.
“We have not been able to sleep since last night because relatives, the media, friends, fans and state functionaries are constantly visiting us to congratulate the family,” his oldest brother Shahid Nadeem told Reuters on Friday.
Pakistan mostly channels its limited funding for sports into team games such as cricket and hockey.
Arshad, who compared his Olympic clash with Chopra to the two nations’ legendary rivalry in cricket, has previously said it is challenging being a non-cricket athlete in Pakistan, where resources and facilities for his sport are scarce.
But now his record-breaking 92.97-metre javelin throw in Paris has earned Pakistan its first Olympic medal since the 1992 Barcelona Games and its first gold medal since the 1984 Los Angeles Games.
“This gold medal is a gift from me to the entire nation on the occasion of Independence Day (on August 14),” Arshad said in a post on social media platform X.
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Humble Origins
Arshad, 27, married with two children, comes from a poor family of eight children in Punjab’s Khanewal, where he first began to dream of Olympic greatness.
His district barely had reliable water and electricity supplies, let alone proper sports facilities for him to train.
“Initially, we improvised homemade javelins by using long eucalyptus branches with iron tips on their ends. The fields in our village served as our training ground,” his brother Shahid said.
“We developed our own weight training apparatus by using iron rods, canisters of oil and concrete.”
The situation improved when Arshad joined the local power utility Wapda, which had its own sports facilities.
Even so, Arshad had still been training with substandard javelins just months before the Paris Olympics, until a last-minute appeal saw the government step in to help, his mother Razia Parveen told Reuters by phone.
“The government sponsored javelins and other facilities for him. He brought back three new international standard javelins from South Africa,” she said.
“I am very happy for Arshad and Pakistan… I offered prayers to thank God immediately after his victory,” she said from their home, which houses a gym built by Arshad and his brothers and featuring gear such as iron rods and canisters filled with cement.
Shahid Nadeem said all four brothers are sportsmen.
“My two younger brothers and I abandoned our passion and started jobs to support the family,” he added.
However, Arshad’s decision to stick with his passion seems set to change the family’s fortunes.
Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz has announced a cash prize of Rs100 million ($359,195) as a reward for what she said was his “hard work”.
The Sindh government, Karachi Mayor Murtaza Wahab said, has also announced Rs50m for the national hero. Punjab Governor Sardar Saleem Haider Khan pledged a cash reward of Rs2m while his Sindh counterpart Kamran Tessori vowed Rs1m.
“Arshad is living proof that there’s nothing you can’t accomplish when you dream big, train hard, and never give up,” said the US Embassy in Islamabad in a post on X . – Reuters
