Saadi Abbas reaches Paris with one eye on the Olympics
Pakistan’s premier Karateka and Olympic hopeful, Saadi Abbas, has reached Paris to feature in the Karate 1-Premier League which kicks-off on Friday (tomorrow).
Pakistan’s premier karateka and Olympic hopeful Saadi Abbas has reached Paris to feature in the Karate 1-Premier League which kicks-off Friday (tomorrow).
The draws for the event will be held today as the competition takes place on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
This will be another vital step for Saadi to get himself closer to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
The Karateka currently ranked 23 in the Olympics rankings, will need big strides during the next few months in major events to carve a place in the world’s most prestigious event in which karate is making its debut.
The two-time Commonwealth Championship and US Open gold medalist still has to compete in five more events and he stands a chance to qualify for the games directly. The Karate 1-Premier League is the most important as it has more points after the World Championships which helps an athlete to strengthen his position.
Over 700 competitors from 92 countries have confirmed their participation in the 2020 Karate 1-Premier League Paris.
Saadi’s priority will be to make it to the games directly but if he fails to do so then he also stands a chance to earn one of the two special seats which are usually allotted to athletes of nations who have very small representation in Olympics.
Meanwhile, the country’s top Judoka Shah Hussain Shah also applied for France and Germany visas on Wednesday.
Shah is set to feature in a couple of Grand Slams to be held in Paris from February 8-9 and in Germany from February 21-23.
Shah, who had represented Pakistan at the 2016 Rio Olympics, has already achieved continental quota as he is Asia’s top seed and needs just to maintain it till the end of the qualification phase until late May.
However, Shah’s main objective is to make it to the Olympics directly.
So far three shooters including Gulfam Joseph, Ghulam Mustafa Bashir, Khalil Akhtar, Javelin thrower Arshad Nadeem and Equestrian Usman have qualified for the Olympics for Pakistan.
