Pakistan beat Bhutan, Maldives on SAG medals table

Country ends on fourth position with 127 medals, including 32 golds, out of seven countries

KARACHI: Pakistan is at the fourth position in South Asian Games in Nepal as the penultimate day would roll out on Tuesday, but the fact that the country has slid one more place compared to the last edition of the games is woeful to many.

Pakistan have so far 127 medals, with 32 gold medals, last two were taken by the two judo players – Olympian Shah Hussain Shah in -100kg and Hamid Ali in +100kg categories. Besides Pakistan has also bagged 37 silver medals and 59 bronze medals.

According to the spread shared by the Pakistan Olympic Association media group, Pakistan’s total is 127 medals, but the games’ official website, that is usually slower, shows 124 medals. A big chunk of the medals came from the judo players – two gold medals, two silver and four bronze medals.

Pakistan is well behind India (top place with 294 medals, including 159 gold medals, according to the SAG official website), the hosts Nepal have 195 medals altogether (49 gold medals) and Sri Lanka are in the third place with 39 gold medals and 236 altogether. In the previous edition, Pakistan’s medals were 106 but won only 16 gold medals.

According to the Pakistan Judo Federation (PJF) official Masood Ahmed, although the judo team alone won more medals this time with a smaller squad of 10 against 14 last time, Pakistan is not holding up as the key sports country in the region due to the lack of planning and resources for the athletes.

“Pakistan Olympic Association and Pakistan Sports Board (PSB) need to come up with solutions, our sports is suffering because we don’t have the same focus on the athletes as India or other countries have in the region,” Ahmed told The Express Tribune.

“Our judokas performed remarkably, our main competition traditionally is with India, and we were expecting four gold medals, but the fact remains that our athletes trained on their own, we did not send them abroad for training and they still produced results,” he said.

“We need solutions and long-term planning too, like Nepal sent their athletes to Japan and Cambodia to train before the games, India have all year-round camps, while we even struggle to meet the administrative expenses, how can we go ahead in this environment, where sports is not a priority?”

Ahmed said that the least government can do is support the medallists for the next year and Olympic preparations with training camps abroad. He pointed out that there is also a dearth of qualified coaches in Pakistan, while for the games alone, the government did not even provide quality kits for the athletes representing the country at the games.

“We also need development when it comes to coaches, not just in judo, but overall, and have to send our players abroad, here the federations even struggled with the kits for the games, how can we afford more, the POA and PSB should look into the basics,” said Ahmed.

“We have massive potential for Judo in Balochistan, Fata and Gilgit-Baltistan, but as a federation official, I can tell that we don’t even have grants to send our athletes abroad, we don’t have money to run the administrative staff either.”

Pakistan were second in the 2010 South Asian Games with India at the top two editions ago, with 2016 and 2019 games Pakistan have lost their grip from second place to third and now fourth respectively.