Pakistan at Olympics 2008: Beijing and Beyond

Entertainment Cricket and Other Sports
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let us not be too harsh on the Pakistan Olympic squad. Winning is great. But participation also matters. And we have not been paying enough attention to Pakistani athletes, especially those not playing hockey, who have actually been participating at Beijing. So, here is a summary of what they have been up to.

We salute them for their participation. Cheer them on for the effort they have put in. And look forward to better placements next time.**08.10.2008 - **25 years old Siddique Umar participated in the Men’s M 10m Air Rifle (60 shots). With a score of 578.0 he finished 48th.
**08.13.2008 - **25 years old Adil Baig participated in Heat 5 of the Men’s 50m swimming qualifier. With a time of 25.66 seconds he finished 7th in his heat and overall 74th in the qualifiers.

**08.14.2008 - **18 years old Kiran Khan participated in Heat 4 of the Women’s 50m swimming qualifier. With a time of 29.84 seconds she finished 6th in her heat and overall 69th in the qualifiers.

**08.15.2008 - **22 years old **Sadaf Siddiqui **participated in Heat 2 of the Women’s 100m Round 1 Heat 2. With a time of 12.41 seconds she finished 7th in her heat. She did not qualify for next round.

**08.16.2008 - **25 years old Siddique Umar participated in the Men’s 50m Free Rifle 3 positions (3×40 shots). With a score of 1116.0 he finished 49th.

08.18.2008 - 29 years old Abdul Rashid participated in the Men’s 110m Hurdles Round 1, Heat 3. With a time of 11.26 seconds he finished 8th amongst 8 in his heat.

Not unexpectedly, it is ever more clear that Pakistan’s Olympic 2008 contingent is likely to return from Beijing without any medals. Indeed, Pakistan has not won a medal since the 1992 Barcelona games (Bronze in Hockey). The question, then, is what could we do to change this dry spell. Not just in hockey but in other sports?
Squash legend Jehangir Khan, who now leads the World Squash Federation (WSF) is right now trying to make Squash an Olympics sport for the 2016 Games. He is quite likely to succeed. But given Pakistan’s recent squash performance it is not certain that this will ensure us a medal in 2016.

Cricket, in its 20-20 variant, could also make it to the Olympics sometime soon.](http://www.cricketnext.com/news/malik-younis-pitch-for-cricket-in-olympics/33359-13.html) Cricket was actually contested in the 1900 Olympics, but only two countries participated. That would likely make us competitive. But what about existing sports? If there was the will and the resources what could one do to make Pakistan show up in the medal tables?

What specific steps would you take if you were made the sports czar of Pakistan with teh goal of ensuring that Pakistan appears in the medal table by 2016. What sports would you focus on? Why? How?

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Re: Pakistan at Olympics 2008: Beijing and Beyond

Excellent thread and good information. Boxing is the one of the sports where we can excel as we did it at the asiad so many times.

Most of our boxers have come from Lyari and Quetta. We need to select young healthy kids from there now and train them for 2016.

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Re: Pakistan at Olympics 2008: Beijing and Beyond

Boxing in pk has its own probelms. We were having good performances n suddenly after departure of Prof. anwar ch. ( presidant WBF ) graph has gone suspecionsly low.

Our society/ culture is not sports oriented. In other countries every one in his/her spare time involved in any sort of game or sport. but in our country it is not lke this.
There is no decent career for a sportsman. In such conditions I dont think we can improve in near future.

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focus more on individual sports, where pure performande matters and no mamay chahay taye ka baccha can come in on sifarish. U can argue who is the better mid fielder in hockey but u cant argue who is the faster or more consistent swimmer or runner.

have some investments in major centers..have academies, good coaches, promote sports, with scholarships, send for training abroad, hell, even for education abroad, many track stars went to school in US but then were force for their countries.

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Re: Pakistan at Olympics 2008: Beijing and Beyond

In general, the sport structure in Pakistan is in shambles. There is literally very little government funding for all the sport bodies. Plus, sports is almost invisible at the school level. I remember, the only physical activity we had when I was in school in Pakistan was PE (physical education) The only sport which is currently being played at the collegiate level is cricket. Plus only the rich can afford to play certain sports.

First and foremost, our govt. needs to set up a separate sports body for each sport. A country like India can be excused for concentrating too much on cricket because competitions like IPL have further enhanced the quality of cricket being played in India. On the other hand, even cricket in Pakistan hasn't progressed within the last decade.

Unfortunately, there are bigger problems at hand for our govt to attend to, so other matter become unimportant.

But you always have to wonder, how do countries like Afghanistan, Iraq have been able to win more medals then Pakistan. Its a sad state of affairs.

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*Warn torn Afghanistan and number of smaller nations have managed to win a medal at Olympics. *

However, sport loving nation with a population of 160+ million can't win a single medal (great Olympic record continues).

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True, two of these girls who went as swimmers went only because of their connections with the higher ups in the Govt. However, with that said, I should also point out that if that wasnt the case, there would have been no performers there in women's swimming for Pakistan which would have been even worse, so maybe it wasnt so bad afterall.

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Re: Pakistan at Olympics 2008: Beijing and Beyond

spock

its is a sad situation with our sports. let me address your point and then illustrate with an example.

I think for us to have a good showing anywhere all the points I outlined must be followed
1) a training infrastructure a talent farm..where ppl rise to the top and the best of them then represents the antion
2) the best is solely picked on performance, and in individual sports like track..performance is hard to argue.

now let me illustrate the bad condition of

I spent one semester at Karachi University, I was in the track team. a day before the university games we were called and a store room was opened and jerseys pulled, and u could pick any number any size...and make sure that they had been washed because not all were which basically meant that since they were all in the same dabba that they all smelled of the khoon paseena of the prior group of atheletes that wore them.

so no training, no coach, nothing, heck I did not even know who was in the team. They just said oh haan tomorrow all u show up and we will do trials and pick the team.

i did my intermediate from pakistan as well and while the college was slightly better, it still was no way close to being comparable to a US highschool. I played a couple of sports and one of then, the basketball team we did not even have uniforms. the good thing was it was an ignored sport at other colleges too so #1 no one had uniforms and #2 we were all too cool in our own mids and wanted to wear what we wanted..but no support. cricket team and hockey team had 'coaches' basically professors who played in their college days..

contrast that to uni in US, uniforms, coaches, equipment managers, physical conditioning, discipline.

I mean could the difference be more stark?

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