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In his pursuit for the place for Tokyo 2020, while playing in Osaka Grand Slam, Olympian Judoka Shah Hussain Shah ascended to 39th position in recently updated Olympic ranking list. This is ever highest any South Asian judoka could earn. He lost against world number 4 Aron 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 Asia and maintained his top position in the continent (after direct qualifiers).
Col ® Junaid Alam, President Pakistan Judo Federation (PJF) has expressed entire satisfaction over his unprecedented marvelous performance. He added that 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 explained that 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 goes up against you. In last four months, he was sent by PJF to participate in 7 different championships round the globe. 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 e.g. Cricket, Football, hockey and Kabaddi etc.
If he maintains it 20 May 2020, he would also become the first South Asian Judoka to qualify for Olympics twice consecutively due to his performance NOT on a wild card.