Pakistan's Faiza Nasir and Naheen Khan won the gold medal in the Badminton Women's Doubles Unified event of the ongoing 16th Special Olympic World Games on Friday in Berlin, Germany.
In the badminton event played at Messe Berlin, Pakistani players won the gold medal by defeating Uzbekistan by 21-5 and 21-17 points, Malaysia by 21-14 and 21-6 and Kyrgyz Republic by 21-12 and 21-13.
On this occasion, Faiza and Naheen stated that they are happy to win the gold for the country.
“We are very happy that our hard work paid off and we were able to win a gold medal for our country. Our coaches played an important role in our success. We will try our best to maintain this streak of success in future events as well,” the duo said.
Head coach Mutahir Sohail and coach Qamar Ali Mona of Faiza and Naheen from Lahore said that both players have been preparing for the World Games for the past two years. They stayed busy in this regard, they also participated fully in the training camps organized by Special Olympics Pakistan in Karachi and Islamabad.
Meanwhile, in the men's unified doubles event of Badminton, Pakistan's Noshiwan Arif Raja and Talha Asif won the silver medal after defeating Paraguay 21-18 and 21-12 and Macau by 21-12 and 21-16.
However, Pakistan suffered a defeat against Hong Kong by the margin of 16-21 and 18-21.
Earlier on Thursday (June 22), Pakistan's Usman Qamar and Zainab Ali Raza won gold medals in the World Games in Berlin.
Usman completed the time trial of the 2km road race distance in 7 minutes 21.59 seconds while Zainab Ali Raza completed the 2 km distance in the cycling event in 6 minutes 49.29 seconds.
Usman has so far won 2 gold medals in the World Games. On the other hand, Mohammad Safir Abad Rizvi of Pakistan won the silver medal by completing the distance of 25 km race in 53 minutes 34.85 seconds.
Pakistan's Maria Manzoor won a silver medal in the bench press and a bronze medal in the combined weight category of the 69 weight class category. In the quarter-finals of the athletics 400 meters race, Pakistan's Sana came fourth with a time of 1 minute 26 seconds.
Faizan Lakhani Faizan Lakhani is Deputy Editor (Sports) at Geo News.