With their hockey
side's humiliating defeat by Spain and now the demise
of its boxers, Pakistan's Olympic team is resigned to
returning home medal-less once more.
The hockey team was the major medal hope for
Pakistan this year, as every year. The country's only
Olympic gold always comes from this sport.
But it is a little-known
fact Pakistan has won medals in other sports.
Wrestler Muhammed Bashir
and boxer Hussain Shah both won bronzes in the 1960 and
1988 Olympics respectively.
So, when a record five
boxers qualified for Athens - Faisal Karim, Mehrullah,
Ahmed Ali Khan, Asghar Ali Shah and Suhail Ahmed - everyone
in Pakistan hoped for a renewed medal haul.
Tough draw
These young and enthusiastic
boxers helped win Pakistan all 10 gold medals available
in the South Asian Federation Games in March this year.
They added three more golds
in Olympic qualifiers.However, Pakistan's participation
in Athens is over. Their last hope, Ahmed Ali Khan, surrendered
meekly to Kazakhstan's Gennadiy Golovkin in the 75kg middleweight.
"We had a very tough draw in this year's Olympics.
Our boys were pitted against three world champions from
Cuba and Kazakhstan," says coach Zaigham Maseel.
"Having said that, the experience we gained here
will be immensely helpful in our future pursuit of medals."
Cricket obsession
According to Asghar Ali
Shah, it was not the tough draw that proved instrumental
in dashing Pakistan's medal hopes.He told the BBC: "It
is the continuous apathy shown by the powers that be in
Pakistan towards us that has destroyed our medal aspirations.
"The [boxers from
Kazakhstan and Cuba] have two hands, we have two hands.
What's the difference? The difference is that they travelled
to five or six countries in their preparations for the
Olympics.
"We could only afford
to travel to Cuba before coming here. How do you expect
us to visit five or six countries on the 100,000 rupees
($2,000) we receive from the government as an annual grant?"
asked Shah.
He defeated Uzbekistan's
Volodymyr Kravets - a much higher-ranked fighter - convincingly
to reach the round of 16 but lost there to Cuba's legendary
Mario Cesar Kindelan.
Kindelan is the reigning
world champion in the 60kg lightweight category. Shah's
team colleague, Mehrullah, says the standard at the Olympics
is just too high for South Asian boxers. "I had come
here as the Asian Games champion, but I was taken aback
by the standard of some of my opponents.
"Had I had a few preparatory
bouts with them prior to coming here, you would have seen
a totally different Mehrullah." Hussain Shah's bronze
in Seoul provided a much-needed fillip for boxing in Pakistan,
with people taking up the sport in droves. But boxing,
much like hockey, still struggles to find prominence in
a nation obsessed by cricket.
