30-Oct-2012
Sports in Pakistan
If one is to summarize the performance of Pakistan in Olympic Games so far it can be easily done in just one word “disappointing”. Only ten medals in sixty four years is indeed a dismal performance and to make matters worse Pakistan has not won a single medal in the last five Olympic events. Out of the ten medals that Pakistan has won, eight were for field hockey , one was for wrestling and the remaining one in boxing.
Pakistan won its first medal; a silver in hockey in the 1956 Olympics; a 62 member squad was sent to the event but only the hockey team brought laurels for the country. The 1960 Rome Olympics were the luckiest for Pakistan as it managed to win the gold medal in hockey and bronze medal in wrestling. Mohammad Bashir won the medal in men’s freestyle welter weight. Pakistan repeatedly won either the silver or the gold medal in hockey in the Olympics but failed to make their mark in any other field although all the participants both male and female were champions in their fields with some of them being Asian champs or runners up.. Pakistan won another medal a bronze in boxing in the Seoul Olympics in 1988 when Syed Hussain Shah came third in the men’s middleweight category. Apart from this Pakistan’s athletes have failed miserably with almost all of them failing to qualify beyond the preliminary rounds.
In field hockey too, Pakistan’s performance declined as it won its last medal in the 1992 Olympics held in Barcelona Spain. Since then Pakistan has not managed to win a single medal in any event which has truly disappointed the entire nation. In the recently concluded London Olympics, Pakistan’s medal drought continued. The Pakistan Sports Board needs to train its athletes so that they are able to compete on international level. In hockey too Pakistan Hockey Federation needs to end its conflicts and build a team that will bring back the lost glory.
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