By Staff Reporter
KARACHI: Arshad Nadeem’s reign as Commonwealth javelin champion came to an abrupt and unexpected end on Friday evening, as Pakistan’s Olympic gold medallist was eliminated from medal contention at Scotstoun Stadium in what ranked among the most startling results of the Glasgow Games’ athletics programme.
The 29-year-old, who arrived in Scotland as the reigning Commonwealth and Olympic champion, managed only three throws in the final before his campaign unravelled. His best effort, a modest 77.41 metres delivered on his second attempt, left him marooned in ninth place — agonisingly adrift of the podium places he had been widely tipped to contest.
It represented a considerable fall from the heights of his qualifying round, where a throw of 78.63 metres had been enough to send him through to the final in seventh position. That Nadeem could not even match, let alone improve upon, that distance when the medals were on the line will be seen as the more troubling detail for Pakistan’s athletics setup. Throughout the competition he appeared to lack rhythm, unable to summon the explosive technique that carried him to global stardom.
The scale of the upset was not lost on the sizeable contingent of Pakistani supporters who had travelled to Scotstoun in anticipation of watching their nation’s greatest javelin thrower add to a trophy cabinet that already includes Olympic and Commonwealth gold. Instead, they watched him depart the competition early, his title defence over almost before the contest had begun in earnest.
Nadeem had gone into the final carrying considerable weight of expectation. Four years earlier, at Birmingham 2022, he had produced one of the defining performances of his career, launching a Commonwealth record throw of 90.18 metres to win Pakistan’s first individual track and field gold in six decades. He backed that up with an Olympic triumph in Paris in 2024, throwing 92.97 metres to become the first Pakistani to win an individual Olympic gold medal. Against that record, Friday’s display in Glasgow will sting.
With Nadeem out of the reckoning, the contest for the podium was left to the remaining finalists — and it was Sri Lanka’s Rumesh Tharanga Pathirage who seized the moment. The 23-year-old, who had topped the qualifying standings and headed into the final as favourite, produced a colossal throw of 89.75 metres to take gold, delivering his country’s first athletics title in Commonwealth Games history. Pathirage had needed only that single legitimate throw across his first five attempts to keep every rival at arm’s length, a measure of just how commanding his best effort proved to be.
India’s Neeraj Chopra, Nadeem’s long-time rival and the reigning Olympic champion, claimed silver with a season’s-best throw of 85.83 metres, capping a difficult, injury-interrupted year with a return to the podium. Behind him, his compatriot Yash Vir Singh produced the throw of his career, a personal best of 85.41 metres, to take bronze — completing a memorable double podium finish for India and pushing Pakistan’s fallen champion further down the standings.
For Nadeem, the defeat marks the first time since his Commonwealth breakthrough that he has left a major championship without a medal, and will inevitably prompt scrutiny of his form and fitness heading into the remainder of the season. Pakistan’s athletics contingent, so accustomed in recent years to watching their star performer challenge for gold on the biggest stages, will now have to reassess their prospects for the remainder of the Glasgow Games.
There was, however, cause for celebration elsewhere in the Pakistani camp. The country’s first medal of the 23rd Commonwealth Games had already been secured earlier in the competition by boxer Fatima Zahra, who claimed bronze in the women’s 60kg division. Zahra, competing for Pakistan Army and captaining the boxing squad in Glasgow, had guaranteed herself a podium finish after reaching the semi-finals, where she was beaten by Canada’s Marie-Bathoul Al-Ahmadieh. Under Commonwealth Games boxing rules, both losing semi-finalists are awarded bronze medals, meaning Zahra’s place in the last four alone was enough to secure the medal — a landmark achievement that made her the first Pakistani woman to win a Commonwealth Games boxing medal.
That success offered some consolation for a Pakistani team otherwise left to reflect on a night when their biggest star could not deliver on the promise that has defined his career, as the Commonwealth javelin crown passed, unexpectedly and decisively, into Sri Lankan hands.
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