PARIS:
Javelin thrower Arshad Nadeem will be taking centre stage at the Stade de France, representing what will be the best of a nation of 230 million at the biggest sports event in the world.
However, his prowess with javelin, the entire hype around his event and the campaign of Pakistan’s small Olympic contingent are somewhat tainted by the needlessly arrogant, condescending attitude towards one and all that has been on display by them since their arrival here in Paris.
Over the last 10 days, the kind of unsavoury incidents that I have seen in Paris can confirm that Arshad is representing the best of the worst Pakistani sports culture which only highlights the bureaucracy that surrounds the athletes and makes it extremely hard to cover them.
“We will not give any interviews or comments on Arshad, sorry, and after August 8, we’ll think about it?” was the reply from Arshad’s coach Salman Butt despite my repeated attempts to communicate with him and tell him that I have especially come to Paris to ensure good coverage of Pakistani athletes and to cover their journey as they are unlikely to get it from the international media.
I repeatedly told him I am also the first Pakistani female journalist to have ever gotten the accreditation to cover the Olympics and it would be lovely to bring in the female perspective to the coverage.
What followed was mistreatment, to the extent that I kept sitting outside the apartments of the Pakistani contingent but was snubbed and ignored. It was as if by showing such arrogance, they wanted to make a point…a point of absolute callousness.
Arshad is the son of a labourer, he comes from a very humble background in Mian Chunnu and is a father of three young children.
He has been working hard all these years and is aiming to end Pakistan’s 32-year-old Olympic medal drought. He has fought pain before each achievement.
But in all of this, it would be difficult to excuse the way he is now behaving, or groomed by his coach and the federation — to be unkind, unchivalrous, and mistreating colleagues and people who have supported him for years.
It is also very unprofessional to completely disregard the brands that are supporting him. And one cannot look away from the importance of brands for athletes (as much as I see evils in capitalism). But these brand endorsements and ambassadorship can become a source of income and sustenance for him in the long term, even after mega events like the Olympics end.
But bad management, unprofessionalism and arrogance will not get him far, even if he wins a medal.
It was ironic that I had been treated and respected far better by other nations than people of my own country who had been acting as demigods now that they were out of Pakistan, enjoying their little fiefdom.
As a journalist, I have always wondered why we never get to see or hear about the journeys of Pakistani athletes at the Olympics.
Read also: Arshad, Pak contingent gear up for Paris Games
The root cause lies in the officials who handle the athletes, the federations that are not conscious of brands, and the complete lack of understanding of how good media coverage can help sports professionally.
They also do not have any media training or at least a media coordinator.
With all the excitement, my ultimate goal was to make sure that Pakistanis get the best coverage possible; but how can they when there is so much red tape around them, especially when it comes to Arshad?
One can understand why athletes need to be isolated before the event, but seeing first-hand what unkindness and unpleasantness look like is different.
There is a difference between arrogance and being ignorant but in the Athletics Federation of Pakistan (AFP), Arshad’s coach Salman Butt is breeding unbelievably obnoxious characters.
I have been one of the people who have written about Arshad’s humility, but what his and the contingent’s behaviours have been in Paris is something to marvel at.
It truly is the microcosm of Pakistani society.
For starters, at the Paris Olympics opening ceremony, the dignitaries and two Pakistani journalists were there on July 26, we were proud to have seen Arshad and the others raising the flag.
They did raise it on the boat but failed to come to the Eiffel Tower where global greats like Zinedine Zidan and Rafael Nadal among others had no problem featuring. But the Pakistani athletes, apparently, did have a problem with that.
At first, I found out that Arshad was feeling too cold and numb and feared falling ill, so they never showed up.
Later the story evolved into the contingent getting confused about which bus to take after the boat rides in the Seine ceremony were over, and then the blame was put on the sketchy organisation of the Paris Games for the officials not being guided correctly towards the finale of the opening ceremony.
Things only got murkier when the media tried to interview the athletes and we found the Pakistani Chef de Mission quite uncooperative and unable to give any direction on it.
The secretary of the AFP has no problem saying that people would exploit Arshad, when in reality not making sure that the athlete can be covered properly is another form of slavery.
Read: Paris Olympics: Arshad Nadeem-led Pakistani contingent all set for opening ceremony
We often blame brands for coming forward to sponsor the athletes, but when I approached Arshad here in Paris for the sponsors who are supporting his journey for the Paris Olympics, Arshad kept making excuses for four minutes to avoid a one-minute video that would have not only helped his campaign but also given an insight into the psyche and character when it comes to representing his country for the second time.
I had been asked by the sponsors to help them get the content, it was a gig I accepted because as a journalist I was going to be covering the athletes and Arshad anyway, I had thought.
Access to the athletes of my own country has been so difficult in Paris that it is almost shameful.
One of the people present in the village pointed out that even Indian journalists wanted to interview Arshad but his standard answer to the ones he knew was to ask Coach Saab. However, Coach Saab, perhaps, got a kick out of refusing all and sundry’s access to Arshad.
The question that arises is what are they hiding so dearly?
Pakistan does not have many non-cricket stars anyway, and there is a need for heroes in other sports who can capture the imagination of the nation.
But how does one cover and root for people who are deeply troubled when one interacts with them?
The first thing I have seen covering the Olympics is how vulnerable these world-class athletes are when they are performing; one bad moment not only gets reported but filmed and played over and over again as memes.
What I observed from Arshad and his team was a lack of sportsmanship off the field, but I am hoping to see better from him at the Stade de France on August 6 (today) and then hopefully at the final on August 8.
I hope he wins a medal so that they can justify his behaviour and that of the officials. But there is really no excellence without the excellence of character.
At some point, the athletes will have to retire, and there will be only two things that will remain, their performance and their character.
Arshad, sadly is not on the path of excellence in character, thanks to his heady coach and the way AFP has been handling him.
He has also been struggling with the performance part as he is very prone to injury.
Also read: Arshad and Jehanara to be flag-bearers at the Paris Olympics
I have been covering Arshad for well over half a decade, but one could see a lack of grooming and unpleasantness when one met him in person.
Another journalist who has been covering him confirmed that he has a habit of not treating the people who advocate his cause and covering him well when he is at treading events.
In Paris, at the athletes’ village, I finally met Arshad but all he did was try to say that he had a meeting at 4:00pm, while this conversation was happening at 3:20pm.
He failed to greet people properly and it was quite noticeable.
If anything, one should expect from athletes humility and grace. What makes competitive sports such a beautiful dichotomy is how toxic competition can be but how vulnerable the athletes have to be to accomplish what they train to do best.
If I had not seen all this myself, I would have said, well many among them are simple and do not know the worldly ways.
However, when asked if they could let us know when they would return from their training because we were prepared to wait, or requested them to schedule the talk for the next day, the contingent’s response was hoity-toity and the utter lack of respect from the officials was heartbreaking.
The next day, the AFP secretary informed me about the policy prohibiting interviews in Paris. When I asked for the reason for the prohibition and why journalists were not informed, I was sent a few clips of Arshad’s training.
Pakistan only sent seven athletes here, but it is not such a bad statistic if one considers that four out of seven have directly qualified for the games and the rest of them were on universality quota.
As expected the swimmers fell short of world-class performance, they cannot possibly pull that off given the Pakistani system not being sustainable to produce top swimmers in the country.
When it came to the shooters they were staying in Chateauroux and were taken care of by their officials.
However, throughout this campaign, the Chef de Mission Mission Muhammad Shafiq proved to be less than competent and effective and failed to coordinate any press meets.
He was not efficient enough to notify about the trips to Chatearoux from Paris despite requests and had no role in communicating the importance of media coverage to the athletics team.
Now the closing ceremony after Arshad’s events will be the highlight for the media and the fans, but in all likelihood, they may not see any athlete there, much like half of the opening ceremony where they were conspicuous by their absence.
