Olympics Pictorial: Abbas Has His Day in the Snow

Adil Najam

Muhammad Abbas made Pakistan’s Winter Olympics debut today.

We already have a post on Abbas’s remarkable trip from learning skiing on home-made planks in Pakistan’s Northern Areas to the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, but these Associated Press pictures from his run today are quite stunning and we thought they deserve a separate post.

The event was Alpine Skiing – Men’s Giant Slalom. I have only now learnt that Giant Slalom is a type of alpine skiing where the skier has to ski between sets of between 56 to 70 poles or gates. From what I can understand of the results, of the 81 who finished, Mohammad Abbas was at number 79 with a time of 3:20.58; trailing behind him were Marino Cardelli of San Marino and Jamyang Namgial of India. Gold was taken by Swiss skier Carlo Janka with a time of 2:37.83, Silver by Norwevian Kjetil Jansrud and Bronze by Norwegian Aksel Lund Svindal.

It is not often that one sees such spectacular snow action pictures of a Pakistani skier, so enjoy!