Opinion
After countless campaigns to get squash into the Olympics, we have failed once again.
The world’s healthiest sport – according to Forbes – will sit on the sidelines and watch on as skateboarders, rock climbers, and breakdancers compete for gold in the Paris 2024 games.
And the question we must ask is: how much longer do we need to wait? How much more time, effort and money must we spend on the effort to get the beautiful game that is squash until we stop believing?
Every four years our sport is set up for disappointment. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) say it’s not about the money. Every four years they come up with multiple excuses – weak excuses – in an implausible attempt to distract us from their greedy, fat-fingered, money-hungry souls.
And that is why I don’t believe them in the slightest when the IOC say they are for the people and purely aim to promote and encourage sport.
If they didn’t care about the money, wouldn’t they happily agree to have a sport that perfectly showcases their motto of citius, altius, fortius – faster, higher, stronger – into the Olympics?
If they didn’t care, shouldn’t the IOC be scrambling to get a sport that demonstrates gladiatorial combat, agility, fitness and strength – all to the extremes – into the Olympics?
It is no wonder that we have considered giving up. No wonder that we have started to lose patience.
I ask you: what makes any other sport ‘sportier’ than squash? Do you really want recreational sports such as rock climbing, breakdancing and skateboarding to define the core value of the Olympics?
It seems as if the IOC believe that squash is an outdated sport with no capability to adapt to the modern audience – so inept and incapable that we have managed to have only temporary all-glass squash courts set up for tournaments in Grand Central Station, in front of the Egyptian pyramids and so many more innovative venues.
It seems as if the IOC believe that squash is not played by enough people across enough countries to make it worth including in the Olympics. Yet it is played by 20 million people across 175 different countries. The top 20 players in the world come from eight different countries – diversity we do not see in many other sports – providing many with the opportunity to claim an unlikely medal for their country. Isn’t this what the Olympics is about?
It seems as if the IOC believe squash is not sporty enough to make it to the Games. This could not be further from the truth. Our sport was ranked healthiest in the world by Forbes which considered the factors of calorie burn, muscular endurance, muscular strength, flexibility and injury risk in their research.
Yes, the IOC has brainwashed many to believe that they are a friendly organisation promising a showcase of the best sports in the world. But not us. We see a soulless and greedy organization with nothing but money in mind.
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