Shah excels in Olympic Judo qualifiers

LAHORE: Olympian Shah Hussain Shah gave marvellous performance in Olympic Qualifying Judo Grand Slam held in Abu Dhabi from October 24-27.

Shah finished at 5th place while losing Bronze medal fight in Dubai Grand Slam judo during his Olympic qualifying journey. He lost from Canadian who is currently world number 4.

This is ever highest achievement of any Pakistani Judoka in world highest level contest after World championship. This spectacular performance by him will give a big jump in Olympic as well as World ranking.

PJF President Col Junaid Alam has expressed entire satisfaction as well as pleasure on this unprecedented achievement. He said that Shah will be sent to Australian Grand Prix after 4 days. Also he will feature in last grand slam of this year in Nov and then an open championship in Hong Kong.

Only two judokas with any coach or official participated in this event. Whereas Indian contingent consisted of 14 judokas. Despite that Pak finished overall at 30th position while India finished at 40th position.

Shah got bye in first round and then in 2nd round won with Wazari against world ranked 55 Savytskiy Anton Ukraine.After reaching third round which was pre- quarter final, Shah played aggressively against world no. 28 Khurramov Mukhammad Karim of Uzbekistan and made him disqualified being extra defensive. In Quarter final Shah fought against Olympic World Ranker no.18 Mr.Kotsoiev Zelym from Azerbaijan. He lost this fight on points after striving for complete duration of 4 minutes. After that Shah outclassed Chinese Judoka in repechage to reach in bronze medal fight where he faced world no 4 Canadian Athlete Elnahas Shady. He played very well in that fight but finally lost the fight.

It is pertinent to mention that Olympic Judo qualifying is a two year period. Unfortunately despite many efforts by PJF he could participate in only one contest in first year of Olympic qualification whereas other judokas of world participated in at least average of 6-7 championships.

Despite verbal consent by minister IPC and DG PSB, not a single penny has been released so far by Pakistan Sports board.However PJF sent him to participate in 5 major championships including world and Asian championships as well as grand slams in last 5 months. Earlier he was sent for a month long training camp in International judo federation academy Budapest Hungary to learn European style of Judo which was his weakness.PJF expects that if he maintains the pace he will In sha Allah qualify for Tokyo 2020 thus making another history.