South Asian Games: ‘Disappointed not to win gold medal’

National champion Hussain rues biased jury which denied Pakistan top prize

KARACHI: National champion, Arshad Hussain, blames the biased attitude of the jury in India for the poor results of Pakistani boxers and claims that it was their favouritism towards the local boxers that denied the Pakistan contingent any gold medal in boxing for the first time in the history of the South Asian Games.

“It is disappointing to not win a gold medal, I know, but I feel we gave it our all; in fact we fought really hard,” Hussain told The Express Tribune. “But the Indian boxers were being favoured by the jury and that did not help us.”



Pakistan fielded six male boxers for the Games and four of them managed to reach the final, only to lose out to Indian opposition, and Hussain claimed that is not a coincidence.

“Boxing is a sport which relies on the judges to give a verdict. When these Games took place in Pakistan in 2004, we managed to win 10 gold medals. Now that India is hosting the event they won gold in all categories [men’s boxing] they participated in. So this happens,” he added.

Hussain, meanwhile, also rued the lack of training facilities available to Pakistani boxers, claiming that their Indian counterparts were way better than them in terms of technique.

“You could see from the way they [Indian boxers] were competing that they were far superior than us in terms of technique,” he said. “Indian boxers trained for the event in England with the best coaches and the best facilities and that showed in the way they competed. However, we still gave them a tough time.”



Meanwhile, Taveer Ahmed, the 78kg silver-medallist, seconded Hussain’s claims but insisted that the Games are in the past now and the squad has to focus on a more important assignment — the 2016 Olympic qualifiers for Asia, which are scheduled to commence from March 23 in China.

“They [Pakistan Boxing Federation] might change two or three boxers for the qualifiers, but I’m satisfied with my performance,” Ahmed told The Express Tribune. “We certainly need to improve as the South Asian Games taught us a lot of things. Right now, our aim is to qualify for the Olympics and nothing else.”

Published in The Express Tribune, February 22^nd,  2016.

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