Daily Times

LAHORE: Pakistan judoka Shah Hussain Shah lost his fight against Egypt’s Darwish Ramadan in the -100 kilogramme judo competition of the Tokyo Olympics in Tokyo on Thursday. Shah Hussain is the son of Hussain Shah, who won Pakistan a bronze medal at the 1998 Seoul Olympics. Egypt’s Darwish, who is world number 13 defeated Shah Hussain in the match and qualified for the next round. The Pakistani judoka’s Olympics journey ended after he lost his first fight. This was the second time that he was featuring in the Olympics – Shah Hussain made a poor debut in 2016 in the Rio Olympic Games when he was undone by Ukraine’s Artem Bloshenko in the second round. It is pertinent to mention here that Shah Hussain missed a few major events before the Olympics because of the travel issues created by COVID-19. Shah Hussain’s close friend and training partner Nagase Takanori of Japan the other day won gold in the -81 kilogramme competition.

With Shah Hussain’s defeat, out of the ten Pakistan athletes, five have been eliminated from the Olympic Games without winning any medals. The first Pakistan athlete to be eliminated was shooter Gulfam Joseph, who competed in the 10m air-pistol shooting competition. As per the rules, eight out of the 36 shooters had to qualify for the final round. Gulfam had a tie with Shooters no.7 and no.8 from China and Serbia, respectively, with the same score of 578/600. Due to a very small difference, Gulfam was edged out and finished the competition at the 9th position. Mahoor Shahzad, who competed for the first time in the Olympics, could not win a single match. She was first defeated by a Japanese player, followed by England’s Christie, after which she was knocked out of the event.

The third athlete to be eliminated was weightlifter Talha Talib. Talha excelled in the event, lifting a total of 320 kilogrammes. He held the gold medal spot until the final round where he finished fifth. He was defeated by Italian weightlifter, Marko Zanni who bagged the bronze medal with 322 kilogrammes. Swimmer Haseeb Tariq was contesting in heats for the men’s 100m freestyle swimming. He finished at the 62nd position out of the total of 70. With five athletes eliminated, five more still remain in the competition. Swimmer Bismillah Khan will be in action for the 50m freestyle tomorrow. On August 1, shooters Khalil Akhtar and Ghulam Bashir will compete in the 25-meter rapid fire pistol competition. Najma Parveen will compete in a two-metre race on August 2. August 4 will see Arshad Nadeem in action in the javelin throw. Arshad is the only Pakistani athlete to have directly qualified for the Tokyo Olympics.