Olympics Blog: Where do we go from here?

By Alan Thatcher

September 10, 2013 - 8:35pm

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Begging doesn’t work says James Willstrop

SQUASH AND THE OLYMPICS:
WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

By ALAN THATCHER

When I posed the above question on Twitter on Sunday afternoon, a couple of hours after the IOC had delivered its crushing blow to squash by readmitting wrestling to the Games schedule, I received a barrage of replies.

After the bitter taste of seeing a campaign that had been clearly, inevitably doomed to failure, the most appropriate answer was also the shortest: “the pub”.

In the absence of anything to celebrate, it seemed a good idea to collectively drown our sorrows in a virtual vat of alcohol that could temporarily wipe away the anger and the pain caused by the calculated duplicity of the IOC.

By welcoming their wrestling chums back to the fold, just a few months after telling them the sport was not fit for purpose, they totally contradicted their stated aim of selecting a “new” sport for 2020.

No wonder so many of the Tweets from disgusted squash players were full of bile, anger and vitriol.

Mike Lee, whose Vero Communications company had been hired by the World Squash Federation to mastermind the bid, hinted on Twitter that an appeal might be forthcoming as soon as a new IOC president was installed to replace Jacques Rogge.

However, when I emailed the WSF media team to ask if they were staying on in Buenos Aires to mount an instant lobbying campaign, I was told they were packing up and heading home, preferring to wait until the new man had his feet under the table.

Unless Lee was able to accomplish some high-level schmoozing in their absence, as Germany’s Thomas Bach was being installed as the new IOC President, some might feel it was a missed opportunity.

Forty eight hours after the vote sent squash plummeting into third place behind wrestling and baseball, it’s time for some calm reflection, leaving behind the knee-jerk anger of a Twitter frenzy that apparently forced the PSA to ask their members to refrain from criticizing the IOC.

The players had every right to be angry, and still do, because the elite competitors are the ones feeling the main impact of Sunday’s vote. The result, after such a positive, upbeat campaign (until the wrestling fiasco began to grow legs) was like a kick in the teeth.

I feel desperately sorry that they are being denied the chance to compete for an Olympic medal.

However, perhaps it’s time the squash campaign policies were reviewed.

Many observers feel there is one fundamental flaw in the squash plan for the Olympics: a projected “cap” on how many players per country will be allowed to compete.

If that cap were just two per country, then a lot of the guys ranked between six and 16 in the PSA world rankings would not be allowed to compete, which would massively dilute the quality of the competition.

Looking further afield, or perhaps gazing deep inside our own heartland, squash’s biggest failure is its inability to market the leading players to its own playing base at club level.

The majority of club players either know or care very little about the professional game, and so they have no opinion one way or the other on the Olympic scenario.

The PSA has recently begun producing its own magazine, and is posting them in bulk to clubs all over the UK.

Even though my club hosts an annual PSA tournament, which attracts significant support from club members, most of those magazines lie unopened and ignored, despite being placed in a prominent position in the bar.

That lack of awareness is clearly a major problem for squash. If most of the leading PSA and WSA players are unknown in the greater squash community, then they will have zero presence in the wider sporting world.

Following the previous Olympic failure, I invited a squash-playing TV executive to address the WSF about how television views the game.

He said that squash, despite having so many fantastic athletes in the professional game, will continue to suffer all the time it is unable to change the stereotypical image of it being a pastime for middle-aged businessmen.

In a nutshell, that’s how the TV channels view squash: middle-aged and middle-class.

The decision by the BBC to broadcast action from the men’s World Championships is a step in the right direction, but it’s hardly an improvement on the game’s position 20 years ago when the BBC turned up at the British Open at a packed Wembley Conference Centre (with a sell-out 3,000 crowd) and told the organisers to remove the advertisements from the tin or they would pack up their cameras and head home.

Despite the outstanding quality of the PSA internet feed, the viewing figures appear to be too low to attract significant sponsorship.

Selling the programmes to TV channels is a tough task, especially when the highlights packages were given away free for so many years.

In the wake of the IOC decision in Buenos Aires, many concerned squash officials, and several international players, shared one universal complaint, namely the view that the sport needs to alter its default position of submissiveness towards the IOC.

James Willstrop, the PSA president, clearly ignored any instructions to stay neutral as he took an eloquent swipe at the IOC in his Yorkshire Evening Post column today, writing: “We have endlessly endeavoured to fulfil every IOC request.

“We have tried to talk up our sport when it shouldn’t be necessary.

“In trying to please the IOC we have been almost reduced to serial bouts of begging, and even that hasn’t worked.

“Current Olympic sports such as beach volleyball, swimming, tennis or football don’t have to be put through a process which, by the end, leaves the game of squash practically bereft of dignity.

“I am sure squash will try again, but some are losing faith and patience with this process.”

His comments matched those of fellow Yorkshireman Nick Matthew, twice a world champion, who told me that the defeat had an ‘air of inevitability’ surrounding it.

I know plenty of talented people in the game who want to help squash grow exponentially before attempting another Olympic bid.

I hope to be able to bring them all together to share ideas designed to create more events, more television and sustainable clubs looking to the future.

It’s time to stop repeating the same old mistakes.

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