Nooh Dastgir Butt

Muhammad Nooh Dastgir Butt (born 3 February 1998) is a gold medalist weightlifter from Gujranwala, Pakistan. He won the gold medal at the 2022 Commonwealth Games.

Personal life
Muhammad Nooh Dastgir Butt was born on February 3, 1998, in Gujranwala. He belongs to a prominent weightlifting family of Kashmiri ancestry. His father Ghulam Dastgir Butt, who also participated in international weightlifting events, coaches Nooh, whose brother Hanzala Dastgir Butt is also a weightlifter who participated in the 2022 Commonwealth Games.

Career
Pakistan’s renowned weightlifter Nooh Dastgir Butt clinched the gold medal in the Hercules Columns competition at the Pahlavon Mahmud Strongman Games 2024 in Uzbekistan.

Nooh participated in this event for the first time along with athletes from 18 other countries.

On 3 August 2022, Butt bagged Pakistan's first gold medal at the 2022 Commonwealth Games when he won the men's +109 kg weightlifting event. He lifted 173 kg in the snatch category, and 232 kg in clean and jerk, both Commonwealth Games records, for a combined lift of 405 kg.

Butt had missed out on participation in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics because of a thigh injury that kept him away from the international circuit for well over a year. He recovered in time for the 2021 World Championship in Tashkent where he took silver, and also qualified for the 2022 Commonwealth Games.

Before his 2022 Commonwealth Games gold, Butt had won the bronze medal in the 105+ kg weightlifting competition in the 2018 Commonwealth Games. After lifting 173 kg in snatch, he successfully lifted 222 kg in his first attempt of clean and jerk to confirm his medal. In an effort to go for the gold, Nooh tried lifting 228 kg in his 2nd and 231 kg in the third attempt but failed to do so.

According to Butt, his failure to lift 231kg in 2018 "following a mistake" he made really stuck with him. He called that failure the most motivating factor that pushed him to aim higher.

“My father was really upset with me the last time I won bronze, he didn’t talk to me for a while, so my goal is to do better now,” Butt had said a day prior to his weightlifting event at the 2022 Commonwealth Games where he won gold.

Butt also won a bronze medal each at the Commonwealth Games junior championships at Penang, Malaysia in 2016 and at Pune, India in 2015. He lifted 395 kg in junior championships, which is a junior commonwealth record.