Pakistan has a model new hero. Throughout this yr’s Olympic Video games in Paris, Arshad Nadeem, a 27-year-old from Pakistan, defeated India’s defending champion, Neeraj Chopra, within the javelin throw. Not solely that, Nadeem set a brand new Olympic file, throwing the javelin 92.97 meters (or 305 toes), turning into the primary Pakistani to earn a person gold medal.
It’s the primary time the South Asian nation has earned a medal since 1992, when its subject hockey workforce notched a bronze. It’s the primary gold medal since 1984—additionally earned by the nation’s subject hockey workforce. It was a hard-won victory for Nadeem who grew up one in all eight youngsters in a mud brick home in rural Punjab. He acquired his begin in javelin by utilizing “long eucalyptus branches with iron tips on their ends,” his brother instructed Reuters.
Upon Nadeem’s momentous return residence, he was shortly fêted with garlands, hundreds of followers and a parade within the streets of Karachi in his honor. He additionally shortly turned richer: He obtained a $50,000 prize from the Olympic Affiliation, $350,000 and a Honda Civic from Mariam Nawaz, the chief minister of his residence province, and simply over $500,000 from Pakistan’s Prime Minister, Shehbaz Sharif.
Then there’s probably the most unconventional present he obtained, per NPR: A buffalo.
Nadeem obtained the buffalo from his father-in-law, NPR’s Benazir Samad reported Wednesday.
“In rural communities, a buffalo is considered one of the most honorable and valuable gifts, much like camels in desert regions like Saudi Arabia,” Rashad Bukhari, a author from Punjab, instructed Samad.
It’s additionally a profitable moneymaker, as a result of buffalo milk—and ghee, its byproduct—is a typical delicacy within the area. Pakistan is the world’s fifth-largest milk producer and is residence to over 26 million buffaloes. Amongst all of the nation’s milk-producing animals (together with sheep, cattle, and goats), buffaloes have the market cornered; they account for three-quarters of all milk manufacturing.
The daddy-in-law in query, Muhammad Nawaz, defended his alternative, per the Instances of India, explaining that the buffalo present may be very “honorable” and “valuable” of their neighborhood.
Showing on a Pakistani tv program final week along with his spouse, Nadeem joked that he’d wished his father-in-law had as an alternative gifted him a number of acres of land. “But then I said ‘okay, fine, he gave me a buffalo, that is also nice,” Nadeem mentioned, per a translation by India Right this moment.
