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Mian Chanu – Dozens of villagers gathered outside the modest home of Pakistani athlete Arshad Nadeem on Thursday night to watch the burly javelin thrower compete in the Olympic final.
The event was broadcast live via a digital projector on a screen on the back of a truck in a rural area near the small city of Mianchanu in India’s Punjab province.
As the javelin soared into the Paris sky, breaking a new Olympic record and Nadim winning the gold medal, the cheers of villagers thousands of kilometers away filled the night sky.
“He threw well and made history. We are proud of him,” said Nadeem’s brother Mohammad Azim, 35. When Nadeem won, the men celebrated by dancing to the beat of drums, while others clapped and chanted slogans.
Meanwhile, the women huddled around a small television in Nadim’s home.
|“He had promised me that he would play well, go abroad, win medals and make Pakistan proud,” his mother Razia Parveen said flatly.|
Despite training with rickety equipment and limited access to gyms and training grounds like his international competitors, Nadeem won Pakistan its first Olympic gold medal in 32 years.
– Initially attracted by cricket – “He is from Mian Chanu. He came from a small village but he raised the Pakistan flag on the international stage,” said Rasheed Ahmed, Nadeem’s former coach, who first spotted Nadeem’s talent.
| The 27-year-old Nadeem, the son of a retired construction worker and the third of eight siblings, was initially interested in cricket, as most Pakistanis are.
“I switched Arshad from cricket to javelin, when no one knew what javelin was,” said Arshad’s elder brother Shahid Nadeem.
“He went to the Olympics with that stick, set a new record and won a gold medal,” he told AFP as his family celebrated his victory.
Parvaiz Ahmed Dogar, a retired local sports official, told AFP about the difficulties in providing professional training for Nadeem.
“Athletes used to use wooden sticks tied with ropes as javelins.
“The balls wouldn’t even land on the tip of the ball,” Dogar recalls. Pakistan has no proper fields dedicated to athletics, so athletes train on cricket fields.
In March this year, Nadeem revealed that he only had one javelin, which he had used for seven years and was now broken.
Speaking to the media after his victory, Nadim said all the hard work was worth it. “When I threw the javelin, I felt it leave my hand and had a feeling it could set an Olympic record,” he said. Back in Mianchanu, locals cheered in agreement.
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