Pakistan's Shah Hussain Shah ippon-ed out of Olympics in first match

Egyptian Darwish throws Pakistani judoka 'on his back with impetus and control' to win round-of-32 match

Pakistani judoka Shah Hussain Shah, son of the legendary Hussain Shah, was thrown out of 2020 Tokyo Olympics on Thursday by Egyptian judoka Ramadan Darwish in the -100kg event.

Shah could only survive three minutes and nine seconds before Darwish performed an ippon on the Pakistani judoka to win the match.

An ippon is a move in judo when one competitor throws the other 'on his back with impetus and control'. An ippon is enough to win a match in one move. Meanwhile, if the move lacks force, then it is called a Waza-ari and two Waza-aris are enough to win a judo match.

Shah was one of Pakistan's biggest hope to bag a medal in Tokyo. However, his first round exit leaves Pakistan on the ropes.

Shah complained to The Express Tribune about the preparations for Tokyo being tough because of the pandemic before he travelled to Japan.

“The Olympics are happening in a very difficult time,” Shah told The Express Tribune. “Japan has seen this kind of situation before too, when there was World War 2. But the pandemic has pushed us all to change our ways, our lifestyle. I couldn’t train as openly, for example the Japanese national judo squad would train alone, and I can’t use their resources, so I had to find a way for myself. I couldn’t travel either because of Covid-19, so these seven to eight months have been challenging,” Shah had told The Express Tribune.

Shah had added that he will have to depend on his skills for a better performance compared to the outing in Rio, and his tough completion will be from Georgia’s Rio Olympics silver medallist and Portugal’s judoka, who won the championship in 2021.

“I am hoping for reaching my peak at the time of the competition really,” he had said.

Earlier, badminton player Mahoor Shahzad lost her two matches to book her ticket back to Pakistan. Pakistani shooter Gulfan Joseph failed to make the cut in air pistol event. Weightlifter Talha Talib missed the bronze medal by a difference of two kilograms. And swimmer Haseeb Tariq was unable to qualify past the heats in the swimming competition.

Pakistan's Basma Khan will be appearing in the 50m swimming event on July 30.

Meanwhile, Pakistan's top shooters Ghulam Mustafa Bashir and Khalil Akhtar, javelin thrower Arshad Nadeem and sprinter Najma Parveen are still left to participate in their respective events.