Rio 2016: Pakistan's 18-member contingent to have more officials than athletes at Olympics

Karachi: The slide in Pakistan sports will be visible in the Rio Olympic Games this summer as the Pakistan contingent will include more officials than athletes. With the failure of the national hockey side to qualify for the Rio Olympics, the 18-member Pakistan contingent will include seven athletes and 11 officials. The athletes include swimmers Lianna Swan and Haris Bandey who are based abroad, judoka Shah Hussain, who also lives in Tokyo, shooters Ghulam Mustafa and Minhal Sohail and two sprinters. [caption id=“attachment_2865962” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] The official logo for the Rio 2016 Olympics games. Getty [/caption] All the Pakistani athletes have got chances to compete in the Rio Olympics only through wild card entries as none of the country’s athletes in different disciplines couldn’t come through the qualification process. Not even a single boxer could qualify for the Olympics although one of Pakistan’s two non-hockey medals came through boxing in 1988 when Hussain Shah won a bronze. Judoka Shah Hussain is the son of the medal-winning pugilist. The president of Pakistan Olympic Association, Arif Hasan has blamed the Pakistan Sports Board for the sad state of affairs. Hasan, in particular, was upset over the failure of the hockey team to qualify for the Olympics, a first for the country. “Hockey is our national sport and through it we always had hope of winning a medal in the Olympics. But even that has now gone,” he lamented.