On a scorching day of fainting veterans and rifle-shot starts, a girl named Kainat Khalil from Sindh rewrote the meaning of endurance at the 35th National Games.<\/p>\n
Athletics at the Games began not with a traditional pistol\u2019s pop, but with the sharp, unexpected report of a rifle cutting through the cool Monday morning at the NPT&SC.<\/p>\n
It was an omen. This would be a day of raw, unvarnished struggle, where the starting command itself felt like a call to battle.<\/p>\n
The dust from the inaugural men\u2019s 5,000m had barely settled before the December sun perched mercilessly over the open field. It transformed the arena into a kiln, making the very air an opponent.<\/p>\n
In the women\u2019s 10,000 metres, the drama was medical: Athletes wilted, fainted and were stretchered away \u2014 vanquished not by rivals, but by the searing haze.<\/p>\n
Wapda\u2019s Maria Bibi, who would emerge the quickest in 44 minutes and 21 seconds ahead of Navy\u2019s Mumtaz (47:10.11), later stated the obvious with exhausted clarity.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe heat felt extreme during the race and that\u2019s why the athletes fainted,\u201d Maria told Dawn. It was a race of survival, where the medal was, as Maria put it, \u201ca cherry on the top\u201d of simply finishing.<\/p>\n
Amidst this brutal theatre of attrition, a sight unfolded that turned struggle into spectacle, and pain into pure wonder: Nine-year-old Kainat from Sindh running with a rhythm that seemed borrowed from a breeze.<\/p>\n
While finishing was a task for veterans, she moved as if she had been training for precisely nine years.<\/p>\n
On the final lap, she found a sprint that would have contended in a much shorter race, crossed the line third, and laid down on the track. The stadium\u2019s cheer wasn\u2019t just for a medal; it was a roar of sheer, unadulterated fascination.<\/p>\n
After the medal ceremony, the media scrum proved more daunting than 25 laps.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat do I say? I don\u2019t get it,\u201d the bronze medalist sighed, shrugging, turning her palms upward in helplessness. Coaxed by her coach, she found her voice, slow and sure the second time.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy name is Kainat Khalil and I compete in long distance running. This is my first time competing at nationals,\u201d the shy nine-year old told Dawn.<\/p>\n
Then, the truth she made her own. \u201cThis was not possible but I made it possible,\u201d she parroted what her coach had gently said to her just seconds before.<\/p>\n
What goes through a child\u2019s mind during such an ordeal? \u201cJust that I need to run. However much there is to run, I will.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked if she enjoyed this masochistic craft, the doll-sized athlete nodded a vigorous \u201cyes!\u201d Her advice to her peers was timeless. \u201cWork really, really hard to get what you want.\u201d<\/p>\n
Before the sweat had dried, her eyes were already set on the Karachi marathon and then an international stage, where she dreams of gold for Pakistan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On a scorching day of fainting veterans and rifle-shot starts, a girl named Kainat Khalil from Sindh rewrote the meaning of endurance at the 35th National Games. Athletics at the Games began not with a traditional pistol\u2019s pop, but with the sharp, unexpected report of a rifle cutting through the cool Monday morning at the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13969,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13968"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13968\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13970,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13968\/revisions\/13970"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}