Pakistan’s Inam Butt wins gold medal at World Beach Wrestling 2021

Just a day after Pakistan made history at the Paralympics, wrestler Inam Butt also kept the country’s flag rising high by winning gold medal at the World Beach Wrestling Series in Rome, Italy on Saturday.

The other day, Haider Ali became the first Pakistani to win a gold medal at the Summer Paralympics as he hit 55.26m in Tokyo during his F37 discus throw final.

Inam Butt Saturday won the Beach Wrestling World series when he vanquished Ukraine’s Oleksii Yakovchuk 3-0 in the final, keeping in supremacy in the 90kg category final.

The Gujranwala based wrestler had also won the semifinal with a score of 3-0 by beating his opponent from Slovenia.

Inam was facing the same opponent he had beaten in his first round encounter on Friday. Butt thanked God for the victory. 

“Alhamdulillah, by the grace of God I have won the World Beach Wrestling Series in Rome, Italy,” he said in a video message posted on his Twitter handle.

“Most of the credit for this feat goes to Pakistan Wrestling Federation. Luckily, today our new body has been elected and today I have earned the World Champion title for Pakistan. In addition to this, I want to say huge thanks to Pakistan Sports Board, [IPC Minister] Fehmida Mirza, and DG Asif Zaman. They have helped me a lot, we weren’t getting visas. Because of their efforts, I got the visa and got the opportunity to play here,” he added.

Earlier in the day, Inam had defeated Omer Faruk Karadeniz of Turkey 2-1 in the quarter-final. He then prevailed over the Romanian grappler Mihai Nicolae Palaghia in the semi-final 3-0 to set the final clash with Oleksii.

On Friday Inam defeated world bronze medallist Oleksii Yakovchuk of Ukraine in the opening fight before prevailing over Greece’s Georgios Tsaknakis in his second fight.

On September 10-11, Greece will host the Beach Wrestling World Series in Katerini, but Inam’s participation has not yet been confirmed. An official of the Pakistan Wrestling Federation (PWF) said Inam had not been granted a Greece visa.

Reacting to the development, people on the social media started showering wishes and messages for the wrestler.

“Another day and another hero making Pakistan proud. Congrats and well done to Inam Butt on winning the World beach wrestling series,” cricketer Imam Ul Haq said in a tweet.

“MashAllah another gold medal for Pakistan. Inam Butt won gold medal in world beach wrestling series. Many Many Congratulations brother,” Olympian Talha Talib said in a tweet.

The PWF secretary Arshad Sattar confirmed Inam would not feature in the Greece event as he did not get a visa. 

“We have not got a Greece visa and Inam will not feature in the Greece event. We will write to the United World Wrestling (UWW) to give Inam points for the Greece series as well as for the France series which he missed in July due to visa issues,” he told this correspondent.

“He deserves the points for the missed events. And if given, I am sure Inam will make it to the final of World Series to be held in Romania on September 25-26,” Sattar said.

This is not the first time Inam has done his country proud. Butt has won laurels for himself and Pakistan in the past, winning gold in the World Beach Wrestling Championships held in Turkey in 2017 and 2018. He won a gold medal in the inaugural World Beach Games in Doha in 2019, in the 2010 Delhi Commonwealth Games and 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games.

He also has to his credit gold in the 2016 Vietnam Asian Beach Games, silver in the 2014 Phuket Asian Beach Games and golds in the 2016 and 2019 South Asian Games.

Meanwhile, Pakistan’s Zaman Anwar won just one fight in three when he downed Rares Daniel Chintoan 2-1. Earlier, he went down to Ukraine’s Ivan Malin and Romania’s Vasile Vlod Cares.

Inayatullah was the other grappler who took part in the event.