ISLAMABAD, Nov 7: The silver jubilee edition of the Quaid-i-Azam Weightlifting Championship is being held at the Pakistan Sports Complex from Nov 12 to 13.

Besides Wapda, the defending champions, the other teams in the championship will be Railways, Army, UGC, Punjab, Sindh, Balochistan, NWFP, Islamabad and Police.

The event will be the first national level competition since the postponement last September of the SAF Games. It will provide the coaches an opportunity to pick fresh talent for the camp provided the weightlifters put up a better show than the current camp trainees.

Now that Pakistan’s Bulgarian coach, Alexander Marinov has returned to Islamabad, he will be given a free hand to select weightlifters for the camp based on their performance in the Quaid Championship. Khizer Hayat and Najamus Saeed are the Pakistani coaches.

Meanwhile, the Pakistan Weightlifting Federation (PWF) has named the following technical officials for the championship: M. Azam Mian, Kalim A. Siddiqui (Lahore), Zubair Yousaf Butt (National Bank), Abdul Qadeer, Akbar Ali Ghakar (Lahore), Azmatullah Chaudhry (Sports Board Punjab), Muhammad Azhar (Govt Islamia College, Lahore), Muhammad Farooq (Faisalabad), Maj. Hafiz Zafar Iqbal (Army), Nasir Abbas (Sahiwal), Abdul Gahfoor (Lahore), Najamus Saeed (Railways), Samiuddin (Police), Ayub Khan Khilji (Quetta), Muhammad Shahid (Peshawar), Anjum Rohail Butt (Wapda), Khizer Hayat Raja (Govt College, Kamonke).