LAHORE: While the Pakistan Wrestling Federation (PWF) has made arrangements to give a warm welcome to its three wrestlers for winning medals in the Commonwealth Games, Gold Coast, Australia, when they will arrive at Lahore airport in the small hours of Wednesday, the Pakistan Olympics Association (POA) has also announced a grand reception in the honor of all five medal winners at its offices here on April 20.

Though Pakistan fielded a big contingent of 77 players and officials for the above-mentioned games to represent the country in 10 different sports, only Pakistani wrestlers and weightlifters could earn five medals, including one gold medal through wrestler Muhammad Inam in the 86-kg category and four bronze medals in wrestling and weightlifting. Sportsmen for eight other sports, namely athletics, badminton, boxing, hockey, table tennis, squash, swimming and shooting, failed to earn any success.

Muhammad Bilal and Tayyab Raza also grabbed a bronze medal each in wrestling. Two weightlifters, Nauh Dastgir and Talha Talib, also won bronze medals.

The national hockey team is also landing at the Lahore airport in the small hours of Wednesday. The PHF has not made any announcement about the arrival of the national hockey team. Pakistan had failed to qualify for the semi-finals stage in hockey, after playing draw in all group matches, before winning the classification match against Canada to earn a poor 7th place among a ten-team contest.

Wapda has already decided to award cash prizes to its four medal winners out of a total of five.

The Pakistan Sports Board will also honor Mohammad Inam with a cash prize of Rs5 million as per the national policy.

Published in Dawn, April 18th, 2018