Two key mentors of Pakistan’s Olympics gold medalist javelin thrower Arshad Nadeem have blamed lack of training and negligence for his flop show in the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, urging the Olympic champion to work extremely hard for a comeback. Nadeem, who shattered records at the 2024 Paris Olympics with a 92.97 meter throw, looked completely off-colour as he finished ninth in the 12-man final, leaving fans and coaching staff shell-shocked.
Akram Sahi, the first official to help Nadeem rise in early 2018, blamed certain characters who highjacked him.
“Since Nadeem’s Olympic gold medal a coterie highjacked him and never let him come to me,” Sahi, a former president of Pakistan Athletics Federation, told Telecom Asia Sport.
“Now he waited for Federation and government to send him to South Africa for training. He has got good money in rewards after the Paris show so he should have invested on himself rather than waiting for someone to send him,”he added. Fans also showed disappointment over Nadeem’s lackluster show.
“Instead of giving him millions that pampered him, the government and sports authorities should have arranged a high quality foreign coach and settled him in places like Germany, South Africa or England so that he could have got better training and would have been better acclimatized.
“He (Nadeem) was pampered by people who matters,” said Ahsan Muneeb who has followed Games as an analyst.
