It has been a week since Arshad Nadeem broke the all-time Olympic record to claim Pakistan’s first medal in 40 years. However, he is still the talk of the town for his iconic 92.97 m throw.
Crossing a 90m mark is something not new for Arshad, who did it last year in the Commonwealth Games, for the first time.
This kind of performance was expected from the Pakistan javelin star, who exceeded all the expectation by not only crossing the mark twice in the gold medal round but also created Olympics history.
The world was in shock as so are the fans when he revealed that he did that with an injury.
“Just five minutes before I had to go to the call room, I felt a pain. I told my coach. And he said, ‘there will be no issues, you are a lion,’” Nadeem revealed during an interview.
Arshad said that he picked up the injury while he was still in Lahore before the tournament.
“I had actually picked up an injury while throwing on 21st July when we were training at Punjab Stadium. We were supposed to fly on 24th July. We (coach, doctor and myself) didn’t tell anyone,” he said.
The gold medalist at the Commonwealth games revealed that he had felt pain during his first attempt, which was a foul throw.
“During the first throw, I felt some pain and the doctor applied some medicine. I told him I didn’t know if that would have any effect. The doctor also told me ‘you are a lion’. Both the doctor and coach told me the same words.”
Nadeem said that he knew he had crossed the 90m mark as soon as the javelin left his hand on the second attempt.
