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.
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