Olympic Karate Qualifiers Saadi Abbas still awaits coach

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s premier karateka Saadi Abbas’ preparation for the 2020 Tokyo Olympic qualifiers were not going on as planned because the National Karate Federation (PKF) has been waiting to hire the services of a Turkish coach.

“We wrote to the Pakistan Sports Board (PSB) two months ago for roping in a foreign Turkish coach to better prepare our only Olympic hope Saadi, but we have not yet received any reply from them,” PKF Chairman Muhammad Jahangir told APP on Thursday.

Jahangir said PSB had asked us to forward the requirement for hiring the Turkish coach and we did so two months ago, but no development on the matter has been done yet.

“Only the coach of the team can make a request to the referee for an immediate review of the video replay in the case of an objection to a judgment of the refereeing officials during the karate contest as long as they have an appeal quota,” he said and added that PSB needs to understand how important was the role of a coach in the game.

To a question, he said good coaches’ charges up to $4,000 per month. Jahangir said Saadi won’t be featuring in the Karate 1 Premier League scheduled to be held in Madrid next month due to his participation in the National Games and South Asian Games.

Jahangir said Saadi would be coming to Pakistan on October 26 for participation in the 33rd National Games to be held in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa thus month.

“After that he would be going in the 13th South Asian Games to be held in Kathmandu and Pokhara in December,” he said.

Speaking about the remaining Olympic qualifiers, Jahangir said Saadi was to feature in a number of rounds to improve his ranking and then the final Olympic qualification round would be held in Paris in May.

“The rounds would be held in Dubai in February, Austria and Morocco in March, Spain in April,” he said and added the federation was doing all in its power to support the two-time Commonwealth Karate Championships gold medallist Saadi. Saadi’s Olympics ranking is 19. He needs to be among the top five to make it to the next year’s Olympics.

When contacted, PSB Director General Arif Ibrahim said he was unaware on the development of the matter. “After the meeting on Wednesday it was decided that the Pakistan Olympic Association (POA) would decide for hiring the coaches for federations,” he said.