The World Squash Federation bid president N. Ramachandran was in an optimistic mood on Thursday (5th September) as the sport, once seen as a frontrunner but now as an outsider to make its entry into the Olympic Games in 2020, battles to deny the wrestling and baseball/softball bids the opportunity to be reintroduced into the Summer Olympics.
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N. Ramachandran, on the technological advancement of Squash and on squash being a global sport:
The way Squash is played today is completely different from what it was even three, four years ago. You have so many innovations going on, like State of the Art television – high definition television. You have glass floors, glass courts, you have side wall entry, you have referee video review… The scores have been changing the game, the scores which you play have changed. So, you have a totally new…people who have seen squash years ago and people who see squash today will have a different experience. And that’s what we want to build on, then shout about. Hopefully, squash gets into the Summer Olympic Games.”
Two glass courts, I can put anywhere in the world, in any of the three cities. On the Bosphorus, in Istanbul, in the Ginza district in Japan – if need be – in a building in Madrid. So, any legacy we can leave to the city, we can showcase to the city in an iconic way! Like when we have done it in front of the Pyramids, we’ve done it at the Central Station in New York… We’ve done it alongside Hong Kong Harbour for the IOC Inspection visit. So, as far as we are concerned, we can showcase the city. It’s low cost, easy to intergrate and, if you look at the IOC basically, It stands for universality. Five continents, from each of the five continents we have male and female World Champions over the last several years. How much more universal can we be? We are played in 185 countries, 50,000 courts – in the USA, alone, there are more than a million players! What else do you want us to do?”
