Ju-jitsu Beach Championship: Pakistan athletes off to Sri Lanka

Manager confident of bringing medals home from inaugural event

KARACHI: Pakistan’s national ju-jitsu team manager Tariq Ali is confident that the squad will earn medals at the inaugural Ju-Jitsu Beach Championship, scheduled to begin on Thursday in Sri Lanka.

Ali, who has also performed national coaching duties previously, said that there are high expectations from Pakistan as the country has been winning the Asian Championship for the past three years.

The eight-member team will be competing in different disciplines including Niwaza, which is a fighting system.



The manager said beach ju-jitsu is a different game than the regular competition as players require more stamina and fitness.

“Beach ju-jitsu is tougher in terms of training as well,” Ali told The Express Tribune. “The players need more stamina and need to understand the conditions as there is a lot of humidity and breeze, so we trained our athletes keeping that in mind.”



Humaira Ashiq, Maryum and Ambreen Masih will represent Pakistan in the women’s events, while the men’s group comprises Farhan Anjum, Ameer Hamza, Jahanzaib Rashad, Awais Ashiq and Hafiz Rafiq. Besides Ali, the other team officials will be Beenish Khan and Ameer Mukhtar in the capacity of coaches.



All participants are experienced and have competed in the 2014 Asian Beach Games.

“We are the champions in Asia, the athletes we’ve included in this squad have all competed in these conditions before,” said Ali. “They didn’t win any medals at that time, but we’re hoping they will be victorious in this championship.”

Published in The Express Tribune, July 26^th, 2016.

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