Shah Hussain Shah Jumps up five more steps
Abdul Jabbar Faisal
ISLAMABAD (November 27, 2019):In his pursuit for the place for Tokyo 2020, while playing in Osaka Grand Slam, Olympian Judoka Shah Hussain Shah reached to 39th position in recently updated Olympic ranking list.
According to Pakistan Judo Federation (PJF), this is ever highest any South Asian judoka could earn. He lost against world number 4 and world champion of 2017 Aaron Wolf from Japan in pre quarterfinal. He secured 160 points in this highest level of contest after World championship. With this he accumulated 904 points thus far ahead of his rivals of this Asian continent.
Col (Retd) Junaid Alam, President PJF expressed entire satisfaction over his unprecedented marvelous performance. “Pakistan Judo Federation is holding all his expenditure of his Olympic run by giving him full priority. We are not sending anyone else anywhere other than Shah who is being sent alone even without coach, “he said.
“Judo qualifying for Olympic is unlike other sports where there are 3-4 Olympic qualifiers, contested by an athlete or a team. Here it is entirely a different game which poor federations simply cannot afford. A Federation has to field him in maximum number of IJF Calendar events of last 2 years qualifying period with each having different weightage. Usually there are more than 10 events in half of a year. If you miss any event the others get full benefit and their ranking go up against you. In last four months, he was sent by PJF to participate in 7 different championships round the globe, “he said.
It is pertinent to mention here that Shah had missed Australian Grand Prix Nov 2019 due to visa issue. In start of next year he would suffer another setback as the first Grand Slam is being held in Israel, which he cannot participate due to obvious reason. This is likely to harm his standing, but nothing could be done in this regard. However PJF has planned to send him to a 6 weeks tour of Europe in Feb to March where he would not only attend IJF training Camp but will also participate in all grand prix and grand slam tournaments.
In this crucial time unfortunately, there is no support from any quarter so far despite so many requests to all concerned. Even routine monetary grants given to the National Federations were stopped due to ongoing sports reforms. However, on request of President PJF as well as Shah’s father (Boxing Legend Olympic medalist Hussain Shah) one month ago, Federal Minister IPC Fahmida Mirza has reportedly approved 1.5 million RS for his participation in qualifiers from August to December 2019 but nothing is released so far. Same way, there is no sponsor found as these are usually attracted to the popular sports like cricket, football, hockey and Kabaddi.
