KARACHI: Pakistani judoka Shah Hussain Shah, son of legendary Hussain Shah, was thrown out of 2020 Tokyo Olympics by Egyptian judoka Ramadan Darwish in the -100kg event.
Egypt’s Darwish Ramadan, who is World No13, has beaten Shah Hussain in the match and qualified for the next round. Shah could only survive three minutes and nine seconds before Darwish performed an ippon on the Pakistani judoka to win the match.
Shah was one of Pakistan’s biggest hope to bag a medal in Tokyo. However, his first round exit leaves Pakistan on the ropes. This was the second time that he was featuring in the Olympics. Shah made a poor debut in 2016 in the Rio Games when he was undone by Ukraine’s Artem Bloshenko in the second round.
Talking to a private newspaper, Shah complained about the preparations for Tokyo being tough because of the pandemic before he travelled to Japan. “The Olympics are happening in a very difficult time,” Shah said.
“Japan has seen this kind of situation before too, when there was World War 2. But the pandemic has pushed us all to change our ways, our lifestyle. I couldn’t train as openly, for example the Japanese national judo squad would train alone, and I can’t use their resources, so I had to find a way for myself. I couldn’t travel either because of Covid-19, so these seven to eight months have been challenging,” he added.
Before Shah Hussain, Mahoor Shahzad and Haseeb Tariq were eliminated from the Tokyo Olympics. Shahzad was representing Pakistan in Badminton while Tariq in swimming.
Meanwhile, Pakistan’s top shooters Ghulam Mustafa Bashir and Khalil Akhtar, javelin thrower Arshad Nadeem and sprinter Najma Parveen are still left to participate in their respective events.
