Category: Athletes

Fatima Zahra is from Sargodha. She started boxing in 2018, after watching a film about Mary Kom.

Her family did not want her to do it.

The argument at home, and the one who took her side

The resistance came from inside the house first, which is the part of these stories that usually gets left out. Her father had been a sportsman himself and backed her, and the rest of the family came round later, once the results started.

Pakistan’s women’s boxing team only began competing internationally in 2016. She took the sport up two years after that, into a setup with almost nothing behind it.

Eight national titles, then the ones that counted abroad

Between 2021 and 2025 she won eight consecutive national titles and went unbeaten in domestic championship finals. She came up through Punjab Boxing, works with the coach Raheel, and represents the Pakistan Army, which is where the structured training and the facilities came from.

In 2025 she took bronze at the Islamic Solidarity Games in Riyadh, the first Pakistani woman to win a boxing medal at a major international multi sport event.

Glasgow, 2026

At the Commonwealth Games she beat New Zealand’s Jordan Wilson 5-0 on a unanimous decision in the quarter final at 60kg. That result guaranteed the medal.

She lost the semi final to Canada and took bronze. First Pakistani woman to win a Commonwealth Games boxing medal.

She is 22. They call her the Honey Boxer.

Most of what she talks about publicly is not the medals. It is other girls in Sargodha getting into a boxing club.

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Noor Zaman is the grandson of Qamar Zaman. In Pakistani squash that is a heavy name to carry, and it has been a long time since the country had much to put beside it.

In April 2025, in Karachi, he won the Under 23 World Championship.

Born into it, which is not the same as given it

Born in Peshawar on 1 April 2004. Professional since 2019. Asian Junior champion in the boys under 19 category in 2022, and part of the Pakistan team that took silver at the Asian Games the same year.

Being Qamar Zaman’s grandson gets you attention early and a standard you did not set. Most players carrying a name like that never reach the level the name implies.

Five games at the DHA Creek Club

The final was at the DHA Creek Club in Karachi on 10 April 2025, against Karim El Turky of Egypt.

He won it 3-2. Egypt has dominated world squash at every age group for two decades, and beating an Egyptian in a five game world final, at home, is the version of that result that carries the most weight.

Where he is now

He has five PSA titles and has reached ten tour finals. His world ranking reached a career high of 37 in October 2025 and sat at 38 by December.

That is the honest picture. A world junior title is a promise rather than a conclusion, and the top of the senior game is a long way above 37. He is 21.

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Shahzaib Rind started karate at eight, in a wushu academy in Quetta. For a long stretch after that he learned from YouTube videos, because there was nobody around him doing what he wanted to do.

On 18 September 2024, in Singapore, he became the Karate Combat world lightweight champion.

Quetta, and a long way from anywhere

He began at the Young Tiger Wushu Academy in Quetta. His first provincial title came in 2011. His first national title did not arrive until 2019, at the National Games in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which is eight years of competing in a discipline with almost no professional structure behind it in Pakistan.

The gap was closed by leaving. He eventually joined the Goat Shed gym in Miami under the coach Asim Zaidi.

The title, taken on short notice

The championship bout in Singapore was against the Brazilian Bruno Roberto de Assis, and Rind took it on short notice. He won, and became the first Pakistani to hold a Karate Combat world title.

His professional Karate Combat record at that point stood at seven wins and no losses. Across wushu and kickboxing his combined record is reported at 75 and 4.

What happened when he got home

Quetta gave him a hero’s welcome. The President announced a reward of one hundred million rupees.

Both of those are worth noting for the same reason. Neither existed while he was learning the sport from a phone screen. The money and the reception arrive after the hard part is over, which is how it usually goes for Pakistani athletes in sports the country has not organised itself around yet.

He is known as the Karate Kid. He was twenty six when he won the title.

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Manisha Ali walked out for the final of the IMMAF World Cup in Luanda on 20 September. Her opponent was Angolan, fighting at home. Ali had been training for under a year.

She won by submission.

From Gilgit-Baltistan to a gym in Lahore

Ali is from Gilgit-Baltistan, the mountain region in Pakistan’s far north. It is an unlikely place for a mixed martial arts career to start, and it has now produced more than one. Anita Karim, the first Pakistani woman to win repeatedly at international level, comes from Hunza in the same region.

Ali trains at Brave Gym in Lahore under the coach Omar Ahmed. Every report from the tournament put the same number on it: less than twelve months in the gym before she flew to Angola.

That is the part worth holding onto. Most fighters who reach a world cup final have years of amateur bouts behind them. She had months.

Fifteen seconds left

The final was against Leonela Isabel Blaiye of Angola, in front of an Angolan crowd.

Ali took her in the second round with a standing guillotine choke. Fifteen seconds remained on the clock.

A standing guillotine is not a technique you land by accident, and it is not one you land on someone who is comfortable. It needs the head in the right place, the grip locked before the defence arrives, and the composure to finish while your own legs are still under you. She found it with the round running out.

Her sister Maleeha was watching from the crowd.

What she said afterwards

“I believe completely in my training and in the mentorship of Omar Ahmed,” Ali said. “In less than a year, I have developed enormously as a fighter, but this is only one step.”

Her gym put it a different way on Instagram, calling her a role model for young girls across Pakistan, and saying she shows what the right environment, belief and mentorship can build.

Both statements are about the same thing. Neither of them is about the medal.

What she is aiming at

Two things are already on the calendar. The Pakistan Open comes first. Then the IMMAF World Championships in Georgia, starting on 1 November.

Beyond that she has been plain about the ambition: an IMMAF world title, and to become the first Pakistani woman to fight in the UFC.

Nobody has done the second one. Stated out loud, by a fighter with under a year of training and a world cup gold, it sits somewhere between a plan and a dare. The Georgia result will say a good deal about which.

On 20 September, with fifteen seconds left in the second round, Manisha Ali found the grip.

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SmashNRun builds sportswear and sports gear in Pakistan, for people who actually train here. Premium make, priced so you can wear it hard.

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At thirteen, Mahoor Shahzad won Pakistan’s national under-19 badminton title. She has spent most of the years since winning the senior one.

In February 2026 she took the National Badminton Championship again. It was her ninth in succession, and no Pakistani had held that title nine consecutive times before.

The sport she did not want to leave

Her father had played badminton at junior level, and he put his daughter through several sports before one of them held. Rowing came first, and she remembers it mainly as something to get through.

“I used to count down from each session of rowing to get to the weekend where I could actually enjoy,” she has said. “When I played badminton, however, I never wanted the training to end.”

She was thirteen when she became national under-19 champion. “After that, I never wanted to quit badminton. It became my passion.”

Born in Karachi in 1996, she picked up the racquet in 2008. She kept studying alongside it, taking a BS in Accounting and Finance at the Institute of Business Administration in Karachi, the kind of parallel career most Pakistani athletes need, because the sport alone rarely pays the bills. The Badminton World Federation later put her through a postgraduate certificate in international sports management at the University of London on a full scholarship.

Building a record abroad

The international results came steadily rather than all at once. Gold at the Pakistan International Series in 2017 and again in 2019, and gold at the Nepal International in 2018. Silver at the Pakistan International in 2016 and 2019, and at the Kenya International in 2020. Bronze with the women’s team at the 2019 South Asian Games, bronze at the Bulgarian International Championship the same year, and bronze again at the Uganda International in 2020.

She has represented Pakistan at three Asian Games, in 2014, 2018 and 2022, and at the Commonwealth Games in 2018 and 2022. A fourth Asian Games, in Japan, is ahead of her.

Her career-high world ranking in women’s singles is 117.

Tokyo

Pakistan’s badminton place at the Tokyo Olympics came through the tripartite invitation, the route the Games use to make sure smaller badminton nations are represented. Mahoor took it, and became the first Pakistani badminton player of either gender to compete at an Olympic Games.

She also carried the flag at the opening ceremony, alongside Muhammad Khalil Akhtar.

“It has always been my dream to represent my country at the highest level,” she said before travelling. “Qualifying for the Tokyo Olympics has definitely fulfilled my dream as it is the biggest sporting event around the globe.”

Nine in a row

The number that stands out on her record is not the Olympic appearance. It is the run of national titles.

Winning a national championship once takes form. Winning it nine years running takes something else: staying fit, staying motivated, and holding off every younger player who arrives each season specifically wanting to beat you. She was the target every time, and she kept winning.

She has stayed busy outside the nationals too. Three WAPDA Inter-Unit singles titles, in 2017, 2021 and 2025. Medals at three National Games: two golds and a silver at Peshawar in 2019, three golds at Quetta in 2023, two golds and a silver at Karachi in 2025.

What she tells girls who are starting

Mahoor has been consistent about this, and she puts it to parents as much as to players.

Each and every girl has a hidden talent which she can only find if she has freedom to discover her true potential.

“I would tell girls not to hesitate at trying something different, and I would request parents to allow their daughters to play outdoor sports.”

Coming from someone who was allowed exactly that, a father who handed her several sports until one of them stuck, it is not an abstract point. It is a description of how her own career became possible.

Why we wrote this

Pakistan tends to remember its cricketers and forget almost everyone else. Mahoor Shahzad has spent nearly a decade at the top of a sport that gets a fraction of the coverage, and she is still competing.

At SmashNRun we build sportswear in Pakistan, for people who train here. Writing about the athletes doing that work is part of the same idea. Records like hers deserve to be written down while they are still being set.

Made in Pakistan

What we make

SmashNRun builds sportswear and sports gear in Pakistan, for people who actually train here. Premium make, priced so you can wear it hard.

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See the full rangeNew drops and athlete stories go out first on Instagram.

Nida Dar made her debut for Pakistan in May 2010. Most of the players she came up against have retired. She has not.

Last year, after a season away from international cricket, she made herself available for selection again.

Into a game with nothing around it

Born in Saudi Arabia in January 1987, she came into a Pakistan women’s setup that had very little around it, no professional pathway to speak of and almost no public attention.

She debuted in T20 internationals against Sri Lanka in May 2010, and in one-day internationals against Ireland five months later. A right-hand bat and a right-arm off-spinner, she has spent her career as an all-rounder in sides that usually needed her to be both at once.

A hundred wickets, and a first for Pakistan

In June 2021, against the West Indies, she became the first Pakistani cricketer to take 100 wickets in T20 internationals. Not the first Pakistani woman. The first Pakistani.

She has more than a hundred T20I appearances and over eighty one-day internationals behind her, along with a long domestic record. She is among the most successful bowlers the women’s T20 game has produced anywhere.

The captaincy

She was appointed captain in April 2023 and led the side for around sixteen months across all three formats.

Two results stand out from that spell. In December 2023 Pakistan beat New Zealand in a T20I series, the team’s first series win outside Asia and Ireland. Under the same captaincy Pakistan also whitewashed South Africa in a T20I series. For a side that had spent years being written off before it landed, both were genuine markers.

She stepped down in August 2024, handing over to Fatima Sana.

Lady Lala

The nickname followed her batting. It borrows from Shahid Afridi, and it stuck because the comparison was not much of a stretch: she hits hard, and she has never much cared for playing herself in.

It has become the shorthand for her, and she uses it herself. But it undersells the bowling, which is the part of her game the record books actually remember.

Still available

She is thirty-nine. She has captained her country, held a national record, and won a series abroad that nobody expected.

She could have finished there. Instead she took a year out, and then told the selectors she was available again.

Why we wrote this

Women’s cricket in Pakistan gets a fraction of the coverage the men’s game does, and the players who built it are rarely written about while they are still playing. Nida Dar has been there for sixteen years and is still putting her hand up for selection.

At SmashNRun we build sportswear in Pakistan, for people who train here. Writing about the athletes doing that work is part of the same idea.

Made in Pakistan

What we make

SmashNRun builds sportswear and sports gear in Pakistan, for people who actually train here. Premium make, priced so you can wear it hard.

Aura PoloView Shadow90 3/4 Track PantsView Smash90 — Sports Kit BagView

See the full rangeNew drops and athlete stories go out first on Instagram.

In March 2022, a sixteen-year-old from Lahore beat Iran’s Amir Sarkhosh 6–5 in the final of the IBSF World Snooker Championship. He had already knocked out Muhammad Asif on the way, a two-time world champion and a fellow Pakistani.

Asked about that match afterwards, Ahsan Ramzan did not talk about the upset. “It was an honour to face him,” he said, “as he was a Pakistani player.”

The cue his father hit him with

Ahsan lost his mother when he was very young. His father raised him, and for a long time his father wanted nothing to do with snooker.

Sent out to buy milk one day, the boy went to a billiard club instead. When his father found him there, he beat him with a cue.

The same man later became the reason he kept playing. When his father was dying, four years before the world title, he did not let his son sit at the bedside. He sent him to a national championship instead.

“That was not less than doomsday for me,” Ahsan said of losing him.

An hour there, an hour back

After his father’s death, his brothers put three options in front of him. Join the family poultry business. Go back to his studies. Or keep playing snooker and lose their financial support.

He chose snooker. He moved to Lahore, and walked an hour to the table and an hour home again.

“Any player who doesn’t have hunger, I believe he can do nothing,” he said. “I have immense hunger.”

What he did with the trophy

He was born on 14 August 2005, Pakistan’s Independence Day. He won a world championship at sixteen, one of the youngest players ever to do it.

When he was asked what the win meant, he did not describe it as a beginning or a breakthrough.

“If my parents were alive today, I would have given them the trophy,” he said. “Now, I will put this trophy on their graves.”

Since then

He is a two-time Asian Under-21 champion. The first came in 2023, beating Iran’s Milad Pourali Darehchi 5–2, in a year that also brought a runner-up finish at the IBSF 6-Reds World Championship. He had represented Pakistan at the 2022 World Games in Birmingham the season before.

In 2024 he lost the Asian Under-21 final to another Pakistani, Muhammad Hasnain Akhtar, 3–4. In 2026 he took the title back.

He is twenty now. Snooker in Pakistan runs on club tables, small purses and players who fund themselves. He has spent four years at the top of it.

Why we wrote this

Pakistan has produced world champions in snooker for decades and most people here could not name one. Ahsan Ramzan won a world title at sixteen after being told to choose between the sport and his family’s support, and he is still playing.

At SmashNRun we build sportswear in Pakistan, for people who train here. Writing about the athletes doing that work is part of the same idea.

Made in Pakistan

What we make

SmashNRun builds sportswear and sports gear in Pakistan, for people who actually train here. Premium make, priced so you can wear it hard.

Aura PoloView Shadow90 3/4 Track PantsView Smash90 — Sports Kit BagView

See the full rangeNew drops and athlete stories go out first on Instagram.