The Pakistan Olympic Association on Wednesday announced a 39-member contingent which will take part in London Olympics later this month. Pakistan will take part in hockey ,athletics and shooting event of the summer Olympics, said President, POA, Lt Gen retd ,Syed Arif Hasan at a news conference here on Wednesday. Hockey is the only sport in which Pakistan has qualified for the Olympics while participation in athletics, shooting and swimming is on wild cards granted by the international Olympics committee, he added. Hockey squad comprises 18 players and six officials, while in athletics ,there are two athletes and similar number of officials, shooting has a lone participant and one official while two swimmers will represent the country in swimming along with two officials. There are five contingent officials as well. President, Khyber Pakhtoonkhawa ,Syed Aqil Shah is the chef de mission, Mohammad Akhtar Nawaz is the secretary , Syed Mohamad Abid Qadri will act as security liaison officer, Dr Waqar Ahmad is the medical personnel and Imran Ahmad is the IT personnel.
Following are the members:
Hockey: Imran Shah, Mohammad Irfan, Sohail Abbas, Syed Kashif Shah, Muhammad Rizwan, Fareed Ahmed, Rashid Mehmood, Mohammad Tousiq, Muhammad Waqas, Shafqat Rasool, Abdul Haseem Khan, Muhammad Rizwan, Muhammad Umar Bhutta, Shakeel Abbasi, Rehan Butt, Waseem Ahmed, Muhammad Imran and Imran Butt.
Athletics: Liaquat Ali, and Rabia Ashiq are the athletes . Salman Butt and Bushra Parveen are the team officials.
Shooting: Khurram Inam is the shooter with Javaid Shamshad as team official.
Swimming: Israr Hussain and Anjum Bandey are the simmers. Zoraiz Lashri and Fatima Lakhani are the team officials.
Gen Arif said the main reason of Pakistan’s less participation in Olympics is as its athletes failed to show up to the mark performance in the qualifying rounds.
The participation through wild card will enhance the confidence and experience of our athletes, shooter and swimmers and by that way they will be able to lift the level of their performance for future events “,said the POIA Chief.
To a question, he expressed the hope that hockey team will put up good performance. “ Hockey is the only discipline in which we have qualified and we hope that our team will live up to the expectations “,he added.