It takes a village to raise a champion — that's an apt way of describing Pakistan's Commonwealth Games champion javelin thrower Arshad Nadeem's rise as he made it to his maiden Olympic final here on Tuesday.

For the record, Neeraj Chopra's cross-border neighbour Nadeem is only one of the two from Asia (the other one from Chinese Taipei) to have breached the 90m mark in javelin.

Pakistan, a country, where cricket is believed to be the only sport where serious investments come in, Nadeem's achievements aren't because of the system but despite it.

No wonder, villagers in Khanewal in Pakistan's Punjab province celebrated their boy's qualification with a lot of fervour.

"People have no idea how Arshad got to this place today. How his fellow villagers and relatives used to donate money so that he could travel to other cities for his training and events in his early days," his father Muhammad Ashraf said.

Pakistan sent a total of seven athletes to Paris and six of them failed to qualify for the finals of their respective events. Nadeem, 27, is now Pakistan's last and biggest hope for a medal in the Olympics as he has made it to the javelin finals.

Right after Nadeem's qualification for the finals for the second successive Olympics, there was celebration at his house where his parents, brothers, wife and two children and fellow villagers raised slogans of "Pakistan Zindabad". His parents also distributed sweets.

But his father says the work is still not done.

"If my son can bring home an Olympic medal for Pakistan it would be the proudest moment for us and everyone in this village," he said.

He recalls that when his son first took up javelin throwing and had to go for trials and competitions up country, how his fellow villagers would all chip in with contributions for his journey.

"If he wins a medal, it will be a triumph for everyone in our village and our country," he said.

Pakistani hopes are high as Arshad had won a silver medal at the World Championships last year and also got gold in the Birmingham Commonwealth Games in 2022.

When he won gold, he became the first Pakistani athlete since 1962 to do so at the CWG. He took the gold with a massive throw of 90.18m.

On Tuesday he qualified for the finals with a throw of 86.59m, but his main rival and India's gold medal hope, Neeraj, produced a massive throw of 89.34m to top the qualification chart.

The rivalry and camaraderie between Nadeem and Neeraj is well documented. In the last Olympics in Tokyo, while the Indian star won gold for his country, his rival and friend finished fifth in the final standings.

Few months back, when Nadeem appealed to the authorities to replace his old javelin with a new one for his training, Neeraj promptly supported Arshad's case on social media.

Since first emerging on the scene, Nadeem has made significant progress in his career and his family and fans are confident he can better the fifth place-finish from Tokyo.

The odds have always been stacked against the Pakistani javelin star, but he can throw them aside in his pursuit of glory. For advice, he can turn to Neeraj.