The 18-year-old Moeed Baloch has won almost every race he has taken part in at the national level. His consistent performances at the Pakistan Sports Board’s (PSB) Inter-Provincial Athletics Championship earned him the nickname ‘Baloch Bolt’ because Moeed, like the Jamaican Olympic icon Usain Bolt, considers 100m and 200m sprint events his forte.

It wasn’t always like that for Moeed. Growing up, he used to be crazy about football. It was in February 2015 that things changed when he took part in an athletics meet organised by a local NGO at the PSB Coaching Centre in Karachi. Despite wearing football cleats instead of running spikes that day, the then 14-year-old clocked an impressive 12.50sec in the 100m sprint race.

Apart from the wrong choice of footwear, Moeed also lacked any kind of love or motivation for sprinting during the meet. He had just come in to participate because his P.E. teacher in school had asked him to do so. However, Roma Altaf and Ahmed Wali, who run the Speed Stars Track and Field Club and who were present on the occasion, had other plans for the lanky teenager.

Moeed Baloch always wanted to be a footballer. But as a sprinter, he has already won major athletic events at the national level in the span of just a few years. Now he is aiming big.

“Watching him do so well in football cleats made us wonder how good Moeed could be if we provided him with proper running spikes,” says Roma.

Roma and Wali approached Moeed with an offer to join their club that very day but he was hesitant and asked them to speak to his school teacher. Further conversations, which also involved talks with Moeed’s parents, finally convinced him to join the club.

Moeed’s first six months at Speed Stars were more about adjusting to change. To excel at sprinting he needed to fully concentrate on it. “He used to secretly play football in the beginning. But we had to keep working on him and let him get used to the new environment,” says Roma.

And the plan worked.

“I tried hard to make it big in football and wanted to get hired by a department but I couldn’t manage to do so,” says Moeed. “Then I decided, it wasn’t a bad idea to leave football altogether.”

Moeed’s first three years as a fulltime athlete proved his decision was just the right one. After winning three medals in Peshawar, he won gold in the 100m and 200m and bronze in the 4x100m relay at the Quaid-i-Azam Games in Islamabad in April 2016.

In 2016, Moeed also finished with a silver medal in the 200m event at the National Junior Athletics. The success was followed by gold medals in 100m and 200m in the 2017 Quaid Games and the National Junior Athletics Championship the same year.

In his 100m win at the Quaid Games, Moeed clocked 10.92sec, which is believed to be a provincial record. Still, the information is unclear due to poor record-keeping by the Athletics Federation of Pakistan and other authorities concerned.

The success Moeed achieved at the national level also brought acclaim for Sindh. But the provincial sports authorities have never really backed him. It was the hard work and dedication put in by Roma and Wali which helped Moeed.

“The athletes selected to represent Sindh are mostly just for the sake of representation. They are not taken to tournaments with the target to win anything. In contrast, we always prepare Moeed to win medals,” says Roma.

Moeed’s success at the national level also earned him places in the 2018 South Asian and Asian Junior Athletics Championships in Sri Lanka and Japan, respectively. Moeed failed to qualify in the heats in Japan, but in Sri Lanka he managed to win silver and bronze medals in the 4x100m and 4x400m relay events.

“There is a major gap between Pakistan’s national level and the international level,” says Moeed.

“Our coaches there just make sure we reach the venue on time. Other than that there is no guidance, while athletes from other countries have a whole team working with them, including doctors and masseurs,” he says.

Moeed’s claims make the reasons for Pakistan’s consistent failures at the international level very clear. “To put it in a nutshell,” Moeed says with a sarcastic laugh, “Itnay paison main itna hee milta hai” [That’s all so little money will buy you.]

Moeed believes he has the potential to win gold for Pakistan at the Asian and South Asian levels. And he claims he can achieve the feat at the Olympics too.

“It is a dream,” he says. “But to achieve it they should send me to train abroad.”

Moeed’s coach Wali, who holds the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) Level 1 coaching qualification, believes training abroad helps the players improve all aspects of their performance.

“In the developed world,” Wali says, “athletes’ diet, physical training, medication and all other aspects are closely monitored. But that also requires a huge amount of money which only the federation or the government can provide.”

Sadly, the authorities seem hardly concerned. But Speed Stars are not losing hope and have set targets for Moeed.

“We’re aiming for the World U-20 Championship and then the 2024 Olympics,” says Roma.

“We are also hoping Moeed gets a wild card entry at the 2020 Olympics but we think he would not be fully prepared for such a big event by then, since an athlete needs at least eight years to prepare for the Olympics,” she says.

To achieve these targets, the club is providing Moeed full support in the form of finances, diet, travel and accommodation during domestic tournaments. However, to prepare more potential gold medalists, the whole system needs to go through a revolution.

Roma says clubs should be the breeding grounds for athletes in an ideal structure for the sport. “If independent clubs can start scouting and training athletes, it will be easier to pick and prepare them to compete at the international level,” she says.

“In Pakistan, athletes don’t aim big. They just want to get in the provincial sides and then they try to get a job in any of the departments, which takes away their hunger to go big.”

Roma, Wali and Moeed are not losing hope, however. Despite the bleak and sad state of athletics in Pakistan and the alarming lack of facilities, they are trying to learn and apply as much as possible to bring success for Moeed and Pakistan. And it’s about time Moeed and company get athletics into the mainstream of Pakistan sports.

The writer is a member of staff
He tweets @shabbar_mir

Published in Dawn, EOS, October 7th, 2018