Squash’s global quality makes it fit for Olympics

Amanda Sobhy is the USA’s topranked squash player in the world at No. 22. In 2010, she won the world junior championship, becoming the first American to win a world title. Last season as a freshman at Harvard, Sobhy went 15- 0 and was the Collegiate Squash Association individual national champion.

Her sport is up against wrestling and a joint bid by baseball and softball for a spot in the 2020 Olympics. In an essay for USA TODAY Sports, Sobhy makes a case for squash:

Traveling all over the world competing in squash tournaments, from places like Hong Kong to Egypt to New Zealand, I’m constantly asked the same question: Is squash in the Olympics?

My answer, unfortunately, has always been no.

I come from a family that has a history of squash; my father was an Egyptian national champion and was No. 35 in the world on the professional circuit, and my mother ran numerous tournaments in New York. But while you may think that I was born with a squash racket in my hand, I did not start playing until I was 12.

Two years later I won my first national title, in the under- 15 division. The following year I won the under- 17 division, and on my 17th birthday, in Cologne, Germany, I won the world junior championship. Being on the podium and receiving my gold medal was my first taste of anything remotely close to an Olympic scene.

Over the next few years, I started playing at the professional level, which allowed me to travel all over the world and compete in places that are unforgettable to me.

Imagine playing the world’s best players on a glass court next to the Pyramids of Giza or on a court set up right in Grand Central Terminal in New York!

Only in squash do players get to play in these amazing places.

With athletes in 185 countries playing squash, I can count on going to tournaments and being surrounded by players from every part of the globe. And yet, deep down inside, every single one of us would gladly trade all of our titles for the chance to compete in the Olympics.

GIL TALBOT Squash players “would gladly trade all of our titles for the chance to compete in the Olympics,” Amanda Sobhy writes.