On this 25th anniversary of the tragic events of the World Trade Centre, I am reminded that we are approaching the 25th anniversary of the birth of World Squash Day.
World Squash Day was as event born of tragic circumstances that grew into the single biggest global promotion of the sport.
More than 50 members of the New York Sports Club squash section perished in the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. One of them was a British player, the former Scottish junior international Derek Sword.
Friends and contacts here in Britain and America joined forces to launch World Squash Day, with the twin aims of honouring the memories of those players and doing something tangible for the game.
The earliest World Squash Day events were deeply emotional occasions, with Derek’s New York friends bravely flying across the Atlantic for the inaugural London v New York match at Lambs Club alongside an eight-man professional event.
This was followed by two reciprocal rematches in New York and Edinburgh which demonstrated the power of sport in bringing people together.
I will never forget the comments of Derek Sword’s mum, Irene, who said: “Derek would have been the first player to sign up for something like this.”
World Squash Day developed into a major promotional vehicle for the sport and generated a huge amount of global energy in support of our Olympic bid, culminating in more than 40,000 players taking part in a single, worldwide match in 2012.
Now that squash is an Olympic sport, I hope that federations, instead of ignoring the catastrophic collapse in playing numbers, will use that platform to find investors to build new clubs.
Reflecting on my 40-plus years of promoting squash events, Scotland has played a huge part in so many of my proudest achievements: launching World Squash Day, rescuing the 1999 British Open and taking it to Aberdeen, and working as MC for the 2014 Commonwealth Games squash competition in Glasgow.
At the closure of the squash presentations in Glasgow I heard this beautiful song for the first time.
It’s been lodged deep in my heart ever since.
Alan Thatcher,
Founder of World Squash Day