Nurse at Covid ward, a patient, and finally a Tokyo gold medallist
TOKYO: Javad Foroughi spent his nights caring for gravely ill patients, doing everything he could to help them breathe. Many didn’t make it.
Foroughi contracted Covid-19 himself, recovered, and feared he would catch it again while doing his job.
Amid all the horrors and difficulties, the shooter never let his goal blur from focus. Now the Iranian nurse is an Olympic champion.
Unshaken in his first Games, Foroughi became Iran’s oldest medallist and set a record in the process, earning gold in the men’s 10m air pistol event on Saturday.
“I’m very happy I did my job on both sides,” Foroughi said through an interpreter. “As a nurse, we battled Covid and it was very hard. As a shooter, I worked a lot the last two years for this moment.” India’s Saurabh Chaudhary made it to the final, but finished in seventh place.
On the women’s side, Yang Qian won the first gold medal of the Games, setting an Olympic record in 10-metre air rifle with 251.8 points despite a shaky final shot.
Foroughi also set an Olympic record with 244.8 points, finishing 6.9 ahead of Serbia’s Damir Mikec. China’s Pang Wei, the 2008 gold medallist, took bronze.
The 41-year-old Foroughi surpasses Iranian weightlifter Mahmoud Namdjou, who was 38 when he got bronze at the 1956 Melbourne Games.
The journey to the top step of the Olympic podium was an unlikely one. Born with a defect that made his heart pump too hard, Foroughi was unable to participate in most sports growing up. Even shooting, which requires slowing the heart rate and steadying the nerves, was not an option.
Once he got his heart condition under control, he became hooked on shooting, learning to fire a pistol in the hospital basement. He trained after finishing his night shifts and turned himself into an elite shooter.
Forough contracted Covid-19 early in the pandemic and was unable to train for a month. Shutdowns left him nowhere to shoot once he recovered, so he worked on body and mind training. He eventually was able to train and compete online with other shooters, honing his craft so he would be ready when in-person competitions resumed.
Boy, was he. Foroughi qualified fifth for the final and immediately jumped to the lead in the finals with a series of shots in the 10-ring. He led Mikec by 4.2 points entering the final two shots and celebrated the gold medal by waving his towel before kneeling on it to pray.
Mikec joined in, wrapping up Foroughi in a bear hug and lifting him off the ground.