Barring the France-based eventer Usman Khan whose Olympics fate was not known while this piece was being written, Pakistan’s Olympics contingent will proceed to Paris in different small groups to represent the country in the Paris Olympics which will begin on July 26.

Counsellor Pakistan Embassy Paris Kashif Jameel will also join Pakistan’s contingent as Olympic Attache. An 18-member contingent of Pakistan, seven athletes and 11 officials, will move to Paris in different groups.

Shooting squad, featuring Ghulam Mustafa Bashir, Joseph Gulfam and Kishmala Talat, along with Russian coach Gennady Solodovnikov and official Col Junaid Ali, will move to Paris on July 18. They will reach on July 19. However, Pakistan’s contingent chef de mission Mohammad Shafiq, who is also the president of Pakistan Handball Federation (PHF), will be the first to proceed to Paris, on July 17.

Swimmers Mohammad Ahmed Durrani and Jehanara Nabi and official Lt. Col (retd) Ahmed Ali Khan will fly on July 22. Both the swimmers will feature in 200m freestyle. They are representing Pakistan on wildcards.

Ahmed Durrani, who trains in the UAE, wants to break the national record in Paris.

Javelin thrower and world silver medallist Arshad Nadeem, sprinter Faiqa Riaz, who will feature on wildcard, and coach Salman Butt will proceed to Paris on July 24. The athletics squad will be joined by England-based Dr Ali Sher Bajwa in Paris. Bajwa the other day visited Lahore and checked Arshad Nadeem’s fitness before his departure for Paris where he is scheduled to flex his muscles in Diamond League on Sunday (today).

It is after one year that Arshad is competing. He featured in the World Championship in Hungary last year where he won the first-ever silver medal in the history of Pakistan’s athletics in the global event.

Diamond League is an invitational event and the participants usually are the world’s best as it has prize money.

It will help Arshad test himself whether he has recovered properly and whether he is fit enough for the Olympics.

After featuring in the league, Arshad will return on July 8 and then fly back to Paris on July 24. Deputy chef de mission Javed Shamshad Lodhi, the POA Medical Commission chairman Dr Syed Meesaq Hussain Rizvi, and administration official Zainab Shoukat will also be part of the contingent.

Shooting squad will not attend the opening ceremony as it will stay in a town which is far away from the French capital.

Sources said that Arshad, who is the sole Olympics hope, is likely to act as the flag-bearer of Pakistan during the opening ceremony. Arshad will play his event on August 6.

POA president Syed Mohammad Abid Qadri Gilani and Secretary General Khalid Mehmood will also proceed to Paris before the opening ceremony, sources close to these people told me.

Arshad is the sole medal hope for the country in the Paris Olympics. Recently he skipped an event in Finland because of a calf muscle injury.

But his coach Salman Butt says he is now fit.

This is the second time that Arshad will be competing in the Olympics. He finished fifth in the Tokyo Olympics, a feat which was like a medal for Pakistan and he was showered with hefty cash prizes. He became the country’s hero and got rich in no time.

Fayyaz Hussain Bukhari was his coach but he is usually seen using a bicycle for moving around.

In the last two to three months I heard two highly responsible state officials saying that Arshad is a self-made athlete and no one has backed him. They don’t know that he was coached for eight years by Fayyaz Bukhari. But he was dropped after Arshad finished fifth in the Tokyo Olympics.

It was under Bukhari that Arshad created history and qualified for the Tokyo Olympics with a throw of 86.29m.

The issue is that our ministers and other officials give a statement without having enough knowledge about a topic. We know who Arshad is and how he grew as an athlete and who backed him. Athletes never grow without patronage. Associations, departments, federations, coaches and media play a role in their development.

Now we come to shooters. Ghulam Mustafa Bashir, Joseph Gulfam and university student Kishmala Talat will press for medals in Paris.

The trio have directly qualified for the world’s most prestigious event. The big question is whether national shooters will click. A senior official of National Rifle Association of Pakistan (NRAP) Javed Lodhi told The News on Sunday (TNS) that medal chances in shooting in the Olympic Games cannot be ruled out.

“You cannot rule out medal chances as on a given day anything may happen,” Lodhi told TNS. “There is a 15 to 20 percent medal chance. All three shooters are undergoing tough training under the Russian coach and we hope they pull off surprise at the biggest stage,” said Lodhi, who also will act as Deputy Chef de Mission of Pakistan’s contingent during the Paris Olympics.

“All three can become finalists. It depends on how an athlete delivers on a given day. They are in shape and we expect something stunning from them,” Lodhi said.

He said it is difficult to judge a shooter from the world ranking.

“The issue is that our shooters don’t get the kind of exposure which others get and that is why their global rating points are low but it does not mean that we cannot compete at the biggest stage,” he said.

Russian Gennady Solodovnkiov is training the trio. Kuwait Shooting Federation is bearing the coach’s expenses. “Gennady is a good coach and he cares for even minute things and knows how to develop an athlete,” Lodhi said.

GM Bashir and Joseph Gulfam earned Olympics seats during the World Championship in Egypt in October 2022. GM Bashir did so by claiming the first ever bronze in Pakistan’s World Championship history in the 25m rapid fire pistol. Joseph, on the other hand, finished sixth in the same event to claim Olympics quota in the 10m air pistol.

Kishmala Talat qualified for the Paris Olympics after winning silver in the Asian Championship in Indonesia early this year. She became the first Pakistani shooter to win a bronze in the Hangzhou Asian Games last year in China.

And she is also the first female shooter who will compete in the Olympics.

Sprinter Faiqa Riaz is also gutsy and is expected to do her best. When I saw her training at the Punjab Stadium, Lahore, she looked quite impressive. I asked a coach nearby and he said that she is a rare talent and she can beat all Pakistan’s records if she is properly coached.

Faiqa told me that she would pull off her best in Paris. I talked to Mohammad Ahmed Durrani on Thursday and he was full of confidence. He wants to break the national record. He is a gem of an athlete.

Pakistan last won an Olympic medal 32 years ago when our hockey team won bronze in 1992. Let’s see whether Arshad or shooters end that long medal drought or not. Our prayers are with our athletes and we expect them to work hard.

Through this article I also would like to attract the attention of the IPC minister Rana Sanaullah. The government must realise that sports have evolved. We cannot compete with the world if we lack facilities. We don’t look after our athletes well.

We don’t respect our coaches. Unless transparency is maintained in the whole sports system nothing can be achieved. We cannot grow as a sports nation unless the state directs a huge fund towards developing this sector and restructures the Pakistan Sports Board.

Nothing is achieved overnight. We need to form a system which could groom the talent.

I offer my services to Rana Sanaullah. Having covered sports for 25 years I know what is going on and how this system could be corrected and what policy makers should do for sports development.

73.alam@gmail.com