Olympic champion Arshad Nadeem has claimed that not all promises made to him after last year’s Paris Olympics have been kept. The javelin thrower has alleged that some of the rewards announced turned out to be ‘fake’, especially the land plots.
Nadeem threw an Olympic record 92.97m at the Stade de France last August to beat Neeraj Chopra and win the Paris Games gold medal. Neeraj won the silver.
However, Geo TV quoted him as saying that while he received all the announced cash rewards, ‘every plot announcement was false. I haven’t received a single one.’ “Out of all the prize announcements made for me, all the plot announcements were fake, which I did not receive. Apart from that, I have received all the cash prizes that were announced,” Geo TV quoted him as saying.
Nadeem’s gold — Pakistan’s first in track and field — was seen as a momentous occasion in the country and he was showered with prizes from the government and provincial authorities, and private organisations.
Despite the unfulfilled promises, Nadeem said his focus won’t be affected ahead of the World Championships in September. “My entire focus is on myself, but apart from that, we train any youth who comes to us for training, and this training is given by my coach Salman Butt,” he said.
Meanwhile, A Sports reported that the thrower has undergone a successful muscle surgery in the United Kingdom. Nadeem had suffered a calf injury, which has kept him away from competition so far.
The surgery, the report added, was carried out under the supervision of Dr Ali Bajwa in Cambridge, ‘where medical experts identified partial damage to the 28-year-old’s calf muscle that required immediate surgical intervention’.
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Nadeem’s coach Butt said they were not hopeful of a smooth and timely recovery. Nadeem and Neeraj are likely to face off for the first time this year at the Diamond League in Silesia, Poland, on August 16.
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