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RIO DE JANEIRO: A trio of competitors from Pakistan produced uninspiring performances at the Olympics over the weekend.
Shooter Ghulam Mustafa Bashir didn’t find his range, swimmer Lianna Swan failed to make a splash and sprinter Mehboob Ali couldn’t clock the time he needed to.
Bashir shot a two-round aggregate of 571 to finish 18th out of 26 competitors in the men’s 25m rapid fire pistol qualification on Saturday.
The score to advance into the final was set at 583 with the top six advancing into the gold medal clash.
Bashir was ranked 17th after stage one of qualification on Friday, when he shot 287 before dipping to 284 on Saturday and eventually finish a spot lower.
German Christian Reitz topped qualification with 592 points.
At the aquatics centre on Friday, Swan finished seventh and last in the fifth heat of the women’s 50m freestyle after Monika Vasilyan of Aremnia failed to start.
Swan covered the distance in a time of 29.02 seconds, well below the qualifying cut-off time of 24.89 and 64th overall amongst 91 competitors. Faye Hussain Sultan of Kuwait, participating as an independent athlete, won Swan’s heat in 26.86, ahead of Haiti’s Naomy Hope Grand Pierre (27.46) and Antigua and Barbuda’s Samantha Roberts (27.95).
Hours later on the track, Mehboob fared slightly better than Swan— coming sixth out of eight competitors in the second of seven 400m heats which saw Egyptian Anas Beshr disqualified.
Mehboob clocked 48.37, well behind the winner Bralon Taplin of Grenada (45.15). Costa Rica’s Nery Brenes Cardenas was second in 45.53 with Karabo Sibanda of Botswana third in 45.56. The cut-off qualification time to advance to the next round was 45.91.
Published in Dawn, August 14th, 2016
