The year 2025 is very crucial for Pakistan’s Olympic champion Arshad Nadeem as he will make an all-out effort to dethrone the reigning world champion Neeraj Chopra of India in the World Championships, which will be held in Tokyo from September 13-21.
Neeraj claimed the world title with a throw of 88.17m in the last World Championship held in Budapest in 2023. Arshad had finished with his maiden silver in that event with a throw of 87.82m.
Neeraj is undergoing training under the legendry Jan Zelezny in South Africa while Arshad is doing light training at the Punjab Stadium Lahore due to Ramadan.
Nukta understands that, since returning to training following his marathon celebrations after securing a historic gold in the Paris Olympics, Arshad has been undergoing light training in Lahore just to keep himself in shape.
His coach Salman Butt also confirmed that Arshad is doing routine training.
“We train at night since you cannot train in the daylight due to Ramadan as it may cause dehydration,” said the coach.
Having set a high standard, Arshad definitely will be more careful to opt for future events leading up to the global event in Tokyo.
Butt also confirmed that Arshad would feature in the 26th Asian Athletics Championship which will be held from May 27-31 in Gumi, South Korea.
“There are a few events which are on our radar before the global event. The Asian Championship will be held in May. There are some speculations that Neeraj Chopra will not come. He is a notable thrower in our region but we will definitely go there,” Butt said.
“We also target Diamond League and there are Paavo Nurmi Games in June in Finland. There will be a Diamond League event in Britain and it will be followed by the World Championship in Japan which is our main target,” Butt said.
Arshad also will need to manage a throw of 85.50m in any coming events to make it to the Tokyo World Championships.
Although Pakistan is set to field its squad in the Imam Reza Cup in Iran in the next few weeks, Butt made it clear that Arshad will not be fielded in that event.
“Yes, he is not going to Iran,” Butt said. “You know when we go to an event, we need four to six weeks tough training because there is less margin of error and we have to maintain a set standard,” he said.
“We cannot throw casually like common athletes. We have established the things which have become a reference now,” Butt said.
“The Imam Reza event in Iran is very close and it was difficult for us to prepare for it,” he was quick to add.
In the meantime, Athletics Federation of Pakistan (AFP) has also planned to send a few athletes to South Africa for training.
Arshad is an automatic choice if anytime he wants training from his South African coach Terseus Liebenberg. But there are three more athletes who AFP wants to send to South Africa for training which include javelin throwers Yasir Sultan and Mohammad Shehzad and 400m runner Shajar Abbas.
Shajar, who has served as sprinter for few years, has now switched over to the 400m from 100m in a bid to do something notable for the country at the international stage.
