Saadi To Feature In National Games, SA Games

Muhammad Rameez Published October 18, 2019 | 05:19 PM

Pakistan's top athlete Saadi Abbas would be coming to Pakistan on October 26 to feature in the National Games and South Asian Games

ISLAMABAD, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 18th Oct, 2019 ) :Pakistan's top athlete Saadi Abbas would be coming to Pakistan on October 26 to feature in the National Games and South Asian Games.

The 33rd National Games were scheduled to be held in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa next month while the 13th South Asian Games would take place in Kathmandu and Pokhara in December.

Pakistan Karate Federation (PKF) Chairman Muhammad Jahangir said due to National Games and South Asian Games, Saadi won't participate in the Karate 1 Premier League scheduled to be held in Madrid next month. "The country comes first and hopefully Saadi would bag gold medals in the mega events," he said.

Speaking about the remaining 2020 Tokyo Olympic qualifiers, Jahangir said Saadi was to feature in a number of rounds to improve his ranking and then the final Olympic qualification round would be held in Paris in May. "The rounds would be held in Dubai in February, Austria and Morocco in March, Spain in April," he said and added the federation was doing all efforts to support the two-time Commonwealth Karate Championships gold medalist Saadi.

Saadi's Olympics ranking is 19. He needs to be among the top five to make it to the next year's Olympics.

However, Jahangir said the federation was still awaiting to hire the services of a Turkish coach for Saadi in preparation for the Olympic qualifiers. "We wrote to the Pakistan sports board (PSB) more than two months ago, for roping in a foreign Turkish coach to better prepare our only Olympic hope Saadi, but we have not yet received any reply from them," he said and added top coaches' charges up to US$ 4,000 per month.

He said only the coach of the team can make a request to the referee for an immediate review of the video replay in the case of an objection to a judgement of the refereeing officials during the Karate contest as long as they have an appeal quota. "PSB needs to understand how important the role of a coach in the game was," he said.

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