ISLAMABAD – Pakistan Judo Federation (PJF) will send its best judokas to compete at the World Judo Championships 2019, taking place at Nippon Budokan Tokyo, Japan from August 22 to 28.
“The flagship championships will serve as a qualifier for Tokyo Olympics. Therefore, we’ve planned to field our best judokas in these,” Masood Ahmed, vice president of PJF told APP.
Masood said that participation of Japan-based Shah Hussain Shan (-100kg) and Amina Toyoda (-57kg) in the championship was confirmed as they were already present in that country (Japan). “They are attending regular training sessions there. Besides them we are planning to send two more judokas, whose names will soon be finalized,” he said.
“In judo, world championships are considered the biggest events and winning a gold medal at them means a direct qualification to the Olympic Games.”
“But if an athlete claims a silver or a bronze medal at them, even then his ranking improves a lot and there remains a chance for him to perform well again at some other international event to make it to the Olympics,” he added.
The PJF vice president said the federation was pinning high hopes on Shah Hussain and Amina due to the quality training they were undergoing in Japan. He said the federation could identify several home-based gifted athletes and prepare them for global relevance, but it was suffering from scarcity of funds.
“If we get the required support we can prepare a strong bunch of judokas, who can excel at the international level,” he said.
