Squash was not selected for Paris 2024 unfortunately with the announcement made much earlier than expected. Here’s what PSA Squash said about this today:
As you may have seen by now, squash has not been proposed as an additional sport for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games programme, with Paris 2024 choosing to put forward breakdancing, sport climbing, skateboarding and surfing.
We are extremely disappointed with this decision and believe that our campaign – which was run in unison with the WSF – respected both the timeline and criteria that was set out by the Paris 2024 Organising Committee and the IOC.
A delegation from the PSA and the WSF – which included French players Camille Serme and Victor Crouin – presented the reasons for squash’s inclusion in front of the Paris 2024 Organising Committee in early January, where we received positive feedback from the Paris 2024 leadership.
We then launched our Squash Goes Gold Olympic bid campaign last week, with the aim of giving the global squash community the opportunity to take an active part in our sport’s future, which included the bid to become part of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games programme. This campaign was launched last week because, throughout the entire process, we have been advised that the proposed sports would not be announced until late March at the earliest, with June 2019 being communicated as the most likely time, to give the IOC the chance to review the sports recommended by Paris 2024.
The fact that three of the four proposed sports are already included on the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games programme leads us to question whether the IOC favoured those sports, leaving practically no opportunity for other sports to integrate into the programme.
The sport has made huge strides forward in areas such as innovation, equality, sustainability and youth engagement – all of which matched the criteria that was communicated to us by Paris 2024 and the IOC.
However, we believe this decision shouldn’t detract from the incredible progress that the sport has made in recent years, particularly given the fact that we are about to hold the sport’s first $1 million dollar tournament – the PSA World Championships – in Chicago over the coming week.
The fact that the prize money is split equally is a perfect demonstration of squash’s commitment to equality, while we are also launching our broadcast agreement with Facebook in Chicago, meaning professional squash will have a bigger platform than ever before.
In the meantime, I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your support and dedication. We remain committed to growing the sport at both a professional and grassroots level and believe the future of squash is incredibly bright irrespective of the bid campaign for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.
Best regards,
Alex
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Alex Gough | CEO
Professional Squash Association