AFP’s plan to send Arshad to South Africa in danger

KARACHI: Pakistan’s premier javelin thrower Arshad Nadeem’s chances of going for training to South Africa look bleak following the emergence of a new covid variant Omicron which has forced nations to make fresh plans in order to avoid catching the disease.

India’s Olympic champion Neeraj Chopra was scheduled to travel to South Africa for a three-month off-season training camp on Sunday (today) but Omicron forced Athletics Federation of India (AFI) to scrap the plan. AFI immediately shifted its focus from South Africa and decided to send Chopra to the United States for a 90-day training stint.

The interesting thing is that AFI sent proposal to the Sports Authority of India (SAI) that it wanted to send Chopra to the US and its proposal was approved inside four hours. A budget of 3.8 million Indian rupees has been approved for Chopra’s training.

But his close friend Arshad, who finished fifth in the Tokyo Olympics, may face a different fate as the government here does not take such a prompt decision for a sports hero’s training purposes as SAI has taken for Chopra, who took the world by storm by winning Olympic gold in Tokyo this year.

“Yes, that’s the problem. A new variant has been found in South Africa and we are assessing the situation,” Athletics Federation of Pakistan (AFP) chief Major General (retd) Mohammad Akram Sahi told ‘The News’ in an interaction.

“We are making arrangements for sending Arshad and Yasir to South Africa. We are making visas arrangements and one of our officials is undertaking the whole process. But if there are restrictions due to Omicron then certainly we will have to shift our focus somewhere else,” said Sahi, also a former international athlete.

The AFP had also planned to send Arshad to Kazakhstan for six months training for Tokyo Olympics but that plan also could not be implemented because of the travel restrictions.

Through the assistance of the World Athletics coaching head South Africa has been chosen by the AFP as a training destination for Arshad and Yasir. England and Kazakhstan were the other options.

On domestic front, too, Arshad’s camp is yet to begin. “Soon we are going to hold a camp for him as time is slipping off our hands as we have a packed calendar ahead next year,” Sahi said.

“The government has told us to hold camp. We are going to hold cross country trials on Sunday to pick athletes for South Asian Cross Country Championship and after that we plan a camp somewhere,” Sahi said.

Next year from July 15-22 World Athletics Championships will be held in the USA. It will be immediately followed by the Commonwealth Games which England will host in Brimingham from July 28 to August 8 and the Asian Games after 35 days gap in China in September.

In the last Asian Games held in Indonesia in 2018, Arshad snared a bronze, a medal which had come after long time in athletics.

When Arshad was contacted he said he has begun training on his own. “Yes, I have trained for a few days on my own. I will focus solely on my training,” said Arshad, the first Pakistani athlete who qualified for Olympics — with an 86.29 metre throw he managed in the 2019 Nepal South Asian Games.

He improved it, taking it to 86.38 metre in an event in Iran last April.

In Olympics he topped his group in the preliminaries but finished fifth in the final which still was considered a huge achievement.