By Will Carlin
The squash question I get asked most often, even when it is not a leap year, is “When is squash going to get into the Olympics?” But as the date 8.8.08 draws closer, I find the question has become both more frequent and more insistent: “Why isn’t squash in the Olympics?”
It is a good question and not an easy one to answer. A number of years ago, I took a stab at answering it in a column in a local squash publication. I said that there were four main reasons:
First, even though squash is a little over a hundred years old as a sport, it was not until 1967 that the World Squash Federation (then named the International Squash Rackets Federation) was formed. And once formed, it wasn’t on anyone’s priority list to get squash into the Games until the late 1980’s. Thinking, then, in terms of Olympic quadrennials, it only has been four or five Olympiads that we have been trying.
Second, the IOC has been trying hard to lower the number of athletes who participate in the games. In fact, the IOC has been incredibly interested in decreasing the number of lower profile sports. Sydney, for example, announced that they would not hold any whitewater kayaking events because it would be too expensive to build a kayaking facility and there wasn’t enough interest. The IOC thought this seemed like a good idea; they apparently felt that if kayaking missed a Games that the sport might fade away, and they were okay with that. (Interestingly, the world kayaking federation was nervous about the same thing, and they were determined to make sure that they were not skipped over; they raised the money for the facility themselves, and faced with no costs, the IOC and Sydney relented.)
Third, Squash has had trouble showing that it would pull in the crowds and make a lot of money. By our standards, squash has grown in popularity a lot, but in comparison with high revenue sports, the audience has not been there.
Finally, as the scandals involving IOC members has shown, there always has been a political/social aspect to getting things done with the IOC, and—quite frankly—for a long time squash did not play the cocktail circuit all that well.
But in recent years that has changed. In the past six years, two national Olympic Committees elected squash players to their Executive Committees, and one of them, Susie Simcock, became president of the WSF. With the efforts of Susie, followed by squash legend and current WSF prez Jahangir Khan, that last reason started to become a thing of the past. Squash started to gain real visibility within the IOC.
And it should. Perhaps the most universal racquet sport after tennis in terms of countries that play, squash is played widely by both men and women with truly international professional tours for each. When there are existing courts, the sport is very inexpensive to host, and the traditional Olympic powerhouses are not the likely medal winners. All of these are factors considered by the IOC.
In 2005, for about four and a half hours, squash was an Olympic sport. At the International Olympic Committee (IOC) session in Singapore, squash won the vote to get into the Olympic program, but did not get the 2/3 majority needed for adoption. There were a number of reasons for this, but chief among them was that squash was among five sports that had been recommended for inclusion. The others were karate, rugby, golf and roller sports. Two of these were to be voted into the 2012 Games, and squash and karate won those two positions. But the lobbying efforts and money were greatest for golf and rugby, so when neither of them got a spot, the pressure was intense not to have them approved later that afternoon.
So, we were there. And we are there again—or at least close. Squash is among the seven sports that will be formally considered for new events in the 2016 Olympics. The five that were nominated for London 2012 are back again along with baseball and softball.
Believe it or not, squash again is among the favorites—this time because of its success with the IOC members in 2005. The WSF has been working hard since that fateful meeting, and they have successfully made their points while squash has continued to grow: 13 new countries have been adopted into the WSF since 2005.
The path still is not smooth, however, and the competition is tough. There are two other early favorites, and baseball is one of them. Because it already has been an Olympic “test” sport, because of its status in the US and because it, too, is growing internationally, baseball could be a natural choice—particularly if Chicago, one of the cities bidding to host the 2016 Olympics, becomes the host city.
Golf is the third betting favorite, because it is by far the most played sport of the candidates. Despite its enormous popularity and financial wherewithal, however, golf is disadvantaged by the fact that many fear that the Olympics would be seen as an event secondary to golf’s four major championships.
All this will be sorted out sometime in 2009. And if all goes well, we finally will be able to answer the question with this: “2016.” It has a nice ring to it. Let’s hope it is an Olympic ring.
