Six months after Nooh Dastgir Butt became a national hero by winning gold at the Commonwealth Games, his weightlifting career has nosedived during a bitter dispute about the way the sport is governed in Pakistan.
More than a year has passed since Butt was awarded an Olympic Solidarity Scholarship but he has never been paid a penny from it – and he appears to be on the way to losing the scholarship entirely.
The International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) objective in handing out the $650-a-month (£538/€607) scholarships is to “assist elite athletes selected and proposed by their respective National Olympic Committees in their preparation and qualification for Paris 2024”.
But lifting in Paris looks near impossible for Butt, who is said to have “taken himself out of Olympic qualifying rounds” by a Pakistan Weightlifting Federation (PWLF) official.
That official, vice-president Amjad Amin Butt, three of whose sons are athletes who are provisionally suspended for allegedly evading anti-doping tests, claimed that the Commonwealth champion no longer accepted the PWLF as the sport’s governing body and said he “sits in the lap” of a rival Government-backed committee.
Butt, 25, denied this and said, “I am not part of any politics.”
He has contacted the International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) Athletes Commission for help and said, “This ordeal is hurtful.
“My focus is entirely on competing in Paris and I just want to sit down and discuss the situation with the Pakistan Olympic Association (POA), the IWF or anybody who can help.”
He forwarded to insidethegames an email he sent to his federation last November in which he affirmed his registration with them and asked for a meeting with officials of the PWLF and POA to discuss his scholarship.
He said he never had a reply to that, and his father also had no response when he went directly to the President of the National Olympic Committee (POA).
The PWLF President, Hafiz Imran Butt, said the federation no longer supports the athlete’s IOC Scholarship because he did not take part in trials and his progress could not be monitored.
Khalid Mehmood, the POA general secretary, told insidethegames, “It is essential and obligatory that the National Federation is in a position to evaluate and endorse the utilisation of the scholarship for the specified purpose.
“Nooh was invited to finalise the details of his training and future competitions but he did not meet the PWLF officials.
“Therefore NOC can only confirm about the future once PWLF makes a decision in this context.”
Butt said he had not been informed of the PWLF decision to cease supporting him, nor had he ever been sent a copy of the scholarship contract that he signed last year along with PWLF and POA officials, despite repeated requests for one.
He has never even seen the legal terms and conditions of the scholarship, he said, and had no idea what was required of him, or which actions might be considered a breach of contract.
Butt was not selected for the first Paris 2024 qualifying event, the IWF World Championships in Colombia last December, and has heard nothing about a place in the team for the next qualifier, the Asian Championships in Korea in May, for which the entry deadline is three weeks away.
He has heard, though, that he will not be selected for the Asian Games in China in September because he did not attend trials held at short notice in December, more than 10 months before the event and long before any entry deadlines have been set.
His father Ghulam Dastgir Butt, who has coached Nooh since he was 11, said, “Because of the conflict Nooh is not being given a chance to be part of the team.”
“The conflict” is a reference to the fact that there are two bodies claiming to be in charge of weightlifting in Pakistan, only one of which – the PWLF – is officially recognised by the POA and, by extension, the IWF.
Ghulam was critical of the PWLF’s aptitude for making decisions “that are not based on merit” and its poor communications, but he accepted that it was the legitimate National Federation.
He believes that the federation’s leadership was upset about credit being given to him rather than them when Butt became a media hero after his record-breaking victory in Birmingham last August, when he was the first of his nation’s two gold medallists across all sports.
Pakistan’s other winner, the javelin thrower Arshad Nadeem, was also awarded an IOC Scholarship.
Butt won the super-heavyweights with a Commonwealth record total of 405 kilograms in Birmingham, and last week he told local media, “Do they not know that I am Pakistan’s top-ranked weightlifter?”
There is a possibility that Butt could qualify for Paris only to be denied by a blanket ban on his National Federation, which is mired in doping problems after six athletes were charged with violations last April.
Nations with multiple offences can be banned outright from Paris, or lose quota places.
The PWLF clearly believes that Butt sided with a parallel organisation, the Interim Committee backed by the Pakistan Sports Board, which is part of a Government ministry.
Hafiz Imran Butt, an Executive Board member of the Asian Weightlifting Federation, says the athlete is responsible for his own situation and is unhappy with the way it has been reported in the Pakistan media.
He told insidethegames in a statement, “In no manner whatsoever have Nooh Dastgir Butt or other athletes been devoid of their participation rights in national or international events.
“Instead it was Nooh who opted out of the Asian Games by not participating in trials on 30 December 2022.”
The invitation was sent to Butt’s team on December 14, Hafiz Imran said, and two days later the team sent a team list with Butt in it.
Neither the athlete nor his team gave any further update.
“So we can only state he himself opted to not participate in the trials.
“Under these circumstances, PWLF was unable to monitor the progress or validate the use of scholarship by the athlete.
“It is the responsibility of the NOC and PWLF to ensure that Nooh Dastgir Butt is attending the training programmes that can be monitored and subsequently PWLF can endorse his progress report to the IOC.
“Since he opted to not attend PWLF programmes, it was not possible for PWLF to validate his training and progress and thus the recommendation for the IOC Scholarship was withdrawn.
“It is pertinent to add that the PWLF has always selected the top weightlifters of Pakistan in international competitions only after recording and evaluating their performance in national weightlifting events.
“As far as the matter related to an illegal interim committee is concerned, we strongly believe that athletes should not be part of the activities of unauthorised set-ups; rather they should focus on their sports performance as per the rules and operating procedures of the PWLF.”
While Hafiz Imran refers to the Interim Committee as “illegal”, the Interim Committee chairman Zafar Iqbal calls all PWLF members “suspended members” and the governing body “the suspended federation”, because the Pakistan Sports Board has suspended it.
Iqbal claimed that the PWLF was effectively trying to “blackmail and deceive” athletes into competing at their competitions rather than those organised by the Government-sponsored Interim Committee.
He is “pursuing corrupt practices and doping” by the PWLF, he said, and has written to the IWF Ethics Committee to make a formal complaint about the federation.
Source : Inside The Games
