Salwar kameez and the early winter chill—that’s what coach Rasheed Ahmad Saqi recalls about his first encounter with Paris Olympics javelin champion Arshad Nadeem.
“It was early winter in 2011 when a young Arshad arrived at the Municipal Stadium in Mian Channu to compete in the divisional athletics meet. He was over six feet tall, and I was struck by the way he threw the 600-gram javelin. When I asked him why he didn’t wear a tracksuit, the 13-year-old replied, ‘It was a school holiday, so I just came like this,'” Saqi reminisced to The Indian Express.
Nadeem considers Saqi his “spiritual father.” A former javelin thrower with a Punjab inter-college record in the early 1970s, the 69-year-old Saqi now serves as the additional secretary of the Punjab Athletics Association (Pakistan) and the president of the Khanewal District Athletics Association.
Before becoming an athletics official, Saqi ran a restaurant called Shalimar Hotel in the town of Mian Channu. His trips to Sialkot, known for its sports goods industry, often led him to bring back discus and javelins for village competitions. During one such event, Saqi noticed 13-year-old Arshad winning. The following day, Arshad’s father, Muhammad Ashraf, a mason in the village, approached Saqi and asked him to coach his son. With access to the Government Model School ground and the Municipal Stadium, Saqi began coaching Arshad in both javelin and discus at the stadium, where football and hockey matches were typically played on grass.
“I recall that in his village, Arshad used to train with a bamboo stick fitted with bent iron pieces at the front, made by a local ironsmith, and practice at the school ground,” Saqi says. “He would sometimes slip due to the sandy patches.”
