ISLAMABAD (APP): Pakistan’s prospects to win medal in the Tokyo Olympics suffered another blow on Thursday as judoka Shah Hussain faced an early exit after losing his 100kg bout to Ramadan Darwish of Egypt, according to information made available here by the Pakistan Judo Federation (PJF).
Shah, the son of legendary pugilist Hussain Shah put up a great show against the seasoned Egyptian, who is reigning African champion.
The 28-year-old Shah adopted an aggressive approach, engaging his opponent for three minutes and nine seconds, but committed three fouls in the process, allowing Darwish to claim Ippon and win the round of 32 match.
However, Darwish in the round of 16 also lost by Ippon against the 2021 World Championship bronze medalist and 2016 Olympic silver medalist Varlam Liparteliani of Georgia. Commenting on the contest, PJF Vice President Masood Ahmed said: “It was a very interesting match. If we compare the two judokas you will see Darwish is more experienced. He is around five years’ older to Shah. He is the winner of Montreal Grand Prix 2019 and 12th African Games 2019. Besides, he finished fifth in Brasilia Grand Slam 2019.
“Shah on the other hand was a less experienced contender. But if you look at the video of the competition, you will see it was Shah who has been continuously attacking, while his opponent adopted a defensive approach. “It was only in the last 10 to 15 seconds that Darwish tried to attack and Shah in an attempt to thwart that, committed the third foul.
Consequently, he was awarded Hansoku-make that ended in his disqualification from the contest.” Although, World No 50 Shah had made a cut to the world’s coveted sporting competition on continental quota the PJF had already conveyed to the fans that there would be no smooth sailing for the Japan-based judoka as he was set to face World No 13 Darwish in the opener, whose winner was to face current World No 1 Georgian judoka in the second round.
“Since the draws are ranking based Shah has a big disadvantage of missing last four Olympic qualifiers events. He missed Israel Grand Slam due to obvious reason, next two events due to suffering from Covid-19, and missed the last one in Hungary as he could not get visa. “He did not get the chance to improve his ranking before Olympics to get a favourable draw,” PFJ President Col Junaid Alam had stated in a media statement last week.
This was Shah’s second appearance in the Olympics. He made a debut in Rio 2016 Rio when he was eliminated by Ukraine’s Artem Bloshenko in the second round fixture. At Tokyo, before Shah, Pakistan’s Mahoor Shahzad, Haseeb Tariq and Talha Talib were eliminated. Mahoor featured in badminton while Haseeb represented the country in swimming. The 21-year-old Talha, who competed in weightlifting in the 67kg weight category narrowly missed an Olympic medal for Pakistan as he ended fifth with an overall impressive lifting of 320kg weight.
