From mud brick house to Olympic podium, Arshad Nadeem is an unlikely Pakistani hero

LAHORE – Arshad Nadeem’s home village erupted into rapturous celebrations after he clinched Pakistan’s first Olympic medal in athletics, winning gold in the javelin and knocking defending champion and arch-rival Neeraj Chopra of India into second place.

Nadeem’s triumph on Aug 8 in Paris is all the more impressive for a man born and raised in a mud brick house in an impoverished corner of rural Pakistan and forced as a young man to train in wheat fields with homemade javelins.

The news of his victory, which reached Pakistan late at night, thrilled his compatriots, drawing congratulatory messages from the nation's leaders and prompting jubilant dancing and fireworks in his normally sleepy home village of Mian Channu.

“We have not been able to sleep since last night because relatives, the media, friends, fans and state functionaries are constantly visiting us to congratulate the family,” his oldest brother Shahid Nadeem said on Aug 9.

Pakistan mostly channels its limited funding for sport into team games such as cricket and hockey.

Nadeem, who compared his Olympic clash with Chopra to the two nations’ legendary rivalry in cricket, has previously said it is challenging being a non-cricket athlete in Pakistan, where resources and facilities for his sport are scarce.

But now his Olympic record 92.97m throw has earned Pakistan its first Olympic medal since the 1992 Barcelona Games and its first gold since the 1984 Los Angeles Games.

“This gold medal is a gift from me to the entire nation on the occasion of Independence Day (on Aug 14),” Nadeem said in a post on social media platform X.

Nadeem, 27, married with two children, comes from a poor family of eight children in the central Pakistani region of Khanewal, where he first began to dream of Olympic glory.

His district barely had reliable water and electricity supplies, let alone proper sports facilities for him to train.

“Initially, we improvised homemade javelins by using long eucalyptus branches with iron tips on their ends. The fields in our village served as our training ground,” Shahid said.

“We developed our own weight training apparatus by using iron rods, canisters of oil and concrete.”

The situation improved when Nadeem joined the local power utility company Wapda, which had its own sports facilities.

Even so, he had still been training with sub-standard javelins just months before the Paris Olympics, until a last-minute appeal saw the Pakistani government step in to help, his mother Razia Parveen said.

“The government sponsored javelins and other facilities for him. He brought back three new international standard javelins from South Africa,” she said via a phone call.

“I am very happy for Arshad and Pakistan... I offered prayers to thank God immediately after his victory,” she added from their home, which houses a gym built by Nadeem and his brothers, featuring gear such as iron rods and canisters filled with cement.

Shahid said all four brothers are sportsmen.

"My two younger brothers and me abandoned our passion and started jobs to support the family," he added.

However, Nadeem's decision to stick with his passion seems set to change the family's fortunes.

Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz of Punjab province, where Nadeem comes from, announced a cash prize of 100 million rupees (S$475,000) as a reward for what she said was his “hard work”.

Nadeem will receive a hero’s welcome when he returns to Pakistan in the next few days, with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif likely to welcome him home, said Mohammad Shafiq, head of Pakistan’s Olympic Commission.

“Arshad is living proof that there’s nothing you can’t accomplish when you dream big, train hard, and never give up,” said the United States Embassy in Islamabad in a post on X. REUTERS