Senior squash professional and 10-time national champion Saurav Ghosal today expressed frustration over the raquet sport failing to find its place in the quadrennial Olympic Games even as top golfers are to skip next month's sporting extravaganza in Rio de Janeiro.
"I think every squash player in the world has made it clear that let alone win a medal being part of the Olympics is a massive achievement for them and everyone holds true to that word," said Ghosal, who is defending his men's title at the ongoing 73rd senior nationals at the Otters club here.
"It is definitely very frustrating to see, or read articles every other day or every other week, of the world number 1, 2 of golf pulling out (of the Olympics) and then you have Rory McCllroy (world no. 4) coming out and saying that it doesn't really matter," he told reporters.
Women's champion Joshna Chinappa supported Ghosal's views, saying squash deserved its place in the Olympics.
"As an athlete we all aspire to play for India and win medals for the country and I personally think that squash is such a deserving sport to be a part of the Olympics. As of now it is not there, but at the same time it does not make me a lesser athlete or my sport lesser than any other sport.
"We have the Commonwealth Games, we have the Asian Games, we have our World Championships, so we look forward to that. We go back to the grind. We work as hard as any other top athlete in the world and hopefully the International Olympic Committee can see in time that squash deserves to be part of the Olympic programme," she added.
Ghosal pointed out that in total contrast to the top golfers who have withdrawn citing concerns about Zika virus in Brazil, the best woman squash player Nicole David of Malaysia had said recently that she would sacrifice anything to get a chance to take part in the Olympics.
"I mean its frustrating for us at a personal level, its frustrating for the sport at a broader level, but at the end its the International Olympic Committee (IOC) which has to be kind to look at it and see what exactly it wants," he said.
"If it was up to me and to a lot of other people, the
decision to put a sport in (the Olympics) will be based on how important Olympics was to that sport and to its athletes," Ghosal commented.
"And for squash it is the biggest thing ever when you have someone like Nicole David, who has won 7 or 8 World Opens, saying she was going to give up every World Open title for that one Olympic medal. That shows you how much that Olympic medal means to us squash players," he said.
"Unfortunately nothing much is going to change for 2016 (Rio) Olympics and from what we know squash is out of the running for 2020 (Tokyo) Olympics as well, which is terribly sad for us.
"But moving into the future, we certainly hope that the IOC may look at restructuring their decision, making a process to include sports which truly wants to be there," he added.
Joshna said the world squash body was doing its utmost to have the sport included in the Olympic programme.
"The World Squash Federation is doing the best it can to convince the IOC to make squash an Olympic sport. But at the end of the day it is not up to them. Ultimately it is the IOC that has to decide. Till they change their views on what sport should be included we can't really do much.
"There is an outside chance in 2024, but it remains to be seen how the sport is promoted, at what level it is taken up internationally and all those factors are going to play a huge part," she remarked.
"In the meantime we are not sweating about it. Personally for me, I might have missed my chance to play in the Olympics. At some point I do feel that we should be there and it would be great to represent India and aspire for a medal. That would be the highlight of anyone's career. But as of now, I am just trying to do the best I can with what I can achieve," she concluded.
