WEIGHTLIFTING: WEIGHING HEAVY ON THE HEART

Pakistan won two gold medals at the 2022 Commonwealth Games: Arshad Nadeem in track and field and Nooh Dastgir Butt in weightlifting. Both the stars created new records at those games, with Nooh creating three Commonwealth Games records: in snatch, clean and jerk, and total categories.
Arshad Nadeem’s journey from his early days to his recent historic achievement in Paris is well documented. But what about the other Pakistani gold medallist from two years ago?
Nooh comes from Gujranwala, Pakistan’s biggest nursery of weightlifters and wrestlers. He has been lifting weights since the age of 11. A precocious talent, Nooh won the national (senior) crown in his maiden appearance in 2014, when he was only 16.
His father, Ghulam Dastgir Butt, who has been his mentor and coach throughout, was himself a distinguished weightlifter. He was a national champion for 17 years, four times South Asian (SAF) Games gold medallist and Asian Championship bronze medallist.
A PRODIGIOUS TALENT
By the time Nooh turned 18, he had started making headlines on the international stage. He was recruited by Wapda as a grade-17 employee, which is a rarity. “Initially, it was a monthly stipend, as a permanent job is only given at the minimum age of 18 years,” Nooh tells Eos.
His international debut was also sensational. At the under-17 Asian Youth Championship in January 2015, he won three gold medals. Remarkably, his lifts were good enough to fetch him one silver and two bronze in the junior (under-21) category of the same competition.
The youngster had the first shock of his career when, despite his fine performances, he wasn’t sent to the World Youth Championship, held only three months later.
But that same year, in October, he also won gold in the Commonwealth Weightlifting Championship’s youth category, silver in the junior category, and to the surprise of everyone, bronze in the senior category. “I lifted more than the winner of each category at the World Youth [Championship], where I was not sent,” he tells Eos.
Nooh was only 18 when he garnered his first international gold at the senior level, during the 2016 SAF Games in Guwahati, India.
“In all the other seven weight categories, Indians had won the gold. Being the heaviest category, mine was the last weightlifting event,” recalls Nooh. “The entire Pakistani weightlifting contingent was tense and anxious,” he continues. “But I managed to prevent India’s clean sweep.”
In 2017, at the Commonwealth Weightlifting Championships, Nooh broke the record in the juniors’ category and won silver in the seniors. But surprisingly, he wasn’t selected for the Asian Junior Championship. “I was told that as I had already featured at the Commonwealth Championship, they wanted to send someone else,” he tells Eos.
Cometh the 2018 Commonwealth
Games, Nooh won the bronze. A few months later, at the Asian Games in August, he was fifth, but broke the Commonwealth clean and jerk record.
The 2018 World Junior Championship in Tashkent saw Nooh creating history. He bagged Pakistan’s first-ever medals in the competition — one gold and two bronze.
“It could easily have been silver in ‘total’. But I tied with Varazdat Lalayan of Armenia with 399 kgs,” recounts Nooh. “Lalayan was awarded [the] silver [medal] because of his lesser body weight,” he points out.
Nooh retained his gold medal with a new record at the 2019 SAF Games. It was a double delight for the family, as his kid brother Hanzala won in his weight category as well.
REBOUNDING FROM DISAPPOINTMENT
Now, it was only the senior category; no more age group competitions. Nooh’s preparation and focus went through a metamorphosis. “My father made me work harder and longer. And the improvement was obvious,” he continues.
His next target was the 2020 Olympics, but fate had other plans. The Covid-19 pandemic saw the event moved up to 2021, with the qualifying events taking place in 2020. Around this time, Nooh ruptured his thigh muscle in practice.
“It took three months to recover and I missed a couple of qualifying events,” he tells Eos. “Then I also got Covid-19 and couldn’t participate in the Asian Championships and other qualifying events,” Nooh continues.
“It makes me sad that I couldn’t feature in the Tokyo Olympics,” he says wistfully. “I felt I was at my peak. I had a realistic chance to win an Olympic medal,” he says.
In December 2021, the World Championships in Uzbekistan also served as the qualifier for the following year’s Commonwealth Games. Nooh qualified by finishing second among the lifters from the Commonwealth.
Pakistan’s weightlifting had its finest hour at the 2022 Commonwealth Games. Previously, in 2006, Shujauddin Malik had won the country one gold in this sport. Shujauddin had also created a new Commonwealth Games record in clean and jerk.
But Nooh went one better: he created a new record there in all three categories. For him, it remains his biggest achievement to date. “The credit for that goes to my father, who spent all these years training me,” says Nooh.
He explains that a weightlifter requires a suitable diet plan, which includes daily intake of proteins, carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals, etc. “The daily expenses on food for both my brother and I are around 7,000 to 8,000 rupees.”
Nooh says his father ended up selling the family home and his cars to finance their training. “Our present accommodation, which also houses a gymnasium, measures only five marlas [120 square yards],” he continues.
The rewards from the gold medal at the Commonwealth Games have compensated the family to a certain extent. It included at least seven million in cash prizes, a residential plot, plus sponsorship deals with various brands, including Servis Tyres.
FALLING PREY TO INTRIGUE?
Unsurprisingly, his next target was the 2024 Olympics. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) had sanctioned a monthly scholarship of $650 for him, as it had for Arshad Nadeem, reveals Nooh. “There were Olympic qualifying events, plus the 2023 Asian Games, in which I was supposed to participate,” he says.
However, he wasn’t able to participate in the Asian Games, for which he blames the Pakistan Weightlifting Federation. “The federation didn’t send me to the Games on the pretext that I hadn’t attended the trials arranged by them ten months earlier, in December 2022,” he tells Eos.
Nooh contends that it is because the “egocentric” officials of the federation dislike him and his father. “Things came to a head during the 2021 World Championships in Uzbekistan, where my father was sent as the coach of the Pakistan team,” he narrates.
Nooh claims that Irfan Butt, the son of the federation’s president Hafiz Imran Butt, was also accompanying the team as the “coach of one half of the team,” and was a frequent traveller with the national team, “despite having no coaching credentials.”
Nooh says that Irfan “unnecessarily interfered” during the competition, including giving instructions to him that he didn’t agree with, which also led to ill will.
Following these incidents, a series of accusations were made against him in the media, continues Nooh. “Among other things, I was wrongly accused of supporting a parallel weightlifting body.”
Nooh says that his requests to the federation to provide a copy of the IOC scholarship contract also fell on deaf ears. He also believes that the federation officials were angry with him over media interviews in which he credited his father for his success and didn’t mention federation officials.
Besides being left out of the Asian Games, Nooh says he was also deprived of participation in five Olympic qualifiers, including the World and Asian championships.
To report and remedy the situation, Nooh says he first approached the Pakistan Olympic Association (POA). “But the POA’s hierarchy never want to cross these [sports and athletics] federations, as they are their voters,” he says, before adding that they POA chose not to address the issue.
After that, Nooh approached the Athletes’ Commission of the International Weightlifting Federation. But he doesn’t expect a different outcome, as the local athletes’ commission is led by wrestler Inam Butt, who, according to Nooh, is a “POA crony.”
It is these missed opportunities, believes Nooh, which deprived him of the chance to qualify for the Olympics and a shot at glory. One can only hope the same story doesn’t repeat itself when time comes for Los Angeles 2028.
The writer is a freelance sports journalist based in Lahore.
X: @IjazChaudhry1
Published in Dawn, EOS, September 15th, 2024