After becoming the first Pakistani to win a medal at the World Athletic Championships, the silver medal in the Javelin throw, Arshad Nadeem highlighted some of the issues that he has had to overcome as a Pakistani athlete and which are preventing other young sportsmen and women from reaching their full potential. Nadeem pointed to the lack of facilities and funding for sports in the country: “There is not a single stadium for our training in Pakistan … We need better training facilities and patronage to earn success for Pakistan”. According to one of Nadeem’s doctors, though the Pakistan Sports Board (PSB) had provided Nadeem with a training camp leading up to the world athletic championships, his daily food allowance was a meagre Rs850. Arshad Nadeem’s achievements stand out all the more due to the obstacles he has had to overcome in terms of inadequate facilities and funding and it is heartening to see a star athlete using his platform to drive positive change for future generations. It is also quite sad that nearly every sport in our country, outside of cricket, appears to be suffering from chronic neglect and apathy.
Arshad Nadeem’s triumph at the World Athletic Championships comes on the heels of Hamza Khan ending Pakistan’s dry spell in squash by winning the World Junior Championship in Melbourne, Australia earlier this year. Following his victory, squash legend Jahangir Khan lamented the fact that it had been so long since Pakistan had last won this tournament and claimed the sport had to be run by experts and those appointed based on merit. While the success of Hamza Khan and Arshad Nadeem are welcome exceptions, the general trend has been Pakistan failing to make an impact in most sports and falling off the map in those it once dominated, such as hockey and squash
It is not just a lack of government funding and expertise that is narrowing opportunities for Pakistani athletes, one must also consider the fact that many of our sports federations appear to lack a revenue model that can allow their respective sports to grow and develop talent. This issue was highlighted by a senior member of the Pakistan Football Federation (PFF) Normalisation Committee a couple of weeks ago in an interview. According to the official, our sports federations and committees lack any development strategy when they are founded and thus are always on the hunt for external sources of funding, which is an inherently unsustainable financial model. The official also pointed to a misallocation of resources in sports, claiming that in some areas there is infrastructure even though there is no one to utilize it while in other areas there is talent but a lack of infrastructure. This shows that not only do our sports institutions lack funding and a stable, independent revenue stream, but that their decision-making and governance need to be improved as well. It is unfortunate to see that the future of so many talented young people depends on decisions that are largely out of their hands and that they are being let down by the performance of those meant to be helping them. Unless we reform our sporting structures, athletes like Hamza Khan and Arshad Nadeem will likely be few and far-between and Pakistan will continue to lag behind in most sports.