Take your pick

I have a piece in the March 2012 issue of Prospect magazine, on the Jerusalem Marathon. Here’s one I did last month, on squash (Feb 2012):

For sports with Olympic status, London 2012 is the golden ticket. Now is the opportunity to increase profile, participation and commercial partnerships. A medal or a notable contender, even a memorable cock-up (no-one forgets Olympian Eddie the Eagle) may establish a sport in the public mind for years to come.

Spare a thought, then, for the game of squash. After failing to join the Olympic family in each of the last two bidding rounds, squash will remain untouched by 2012 stardust.

‘It’s really disappointing not to be part of the countdown,’ says Laura Massaro, National Women’s Champion. She is also the US Open Champion, so this is a sport we’re actually good at. England has two players in both the Men’s and Women’s top five world rankings – our lost Olympic medalists.

According to the latest Sport England figures, more than 500,000 people play squash each month, and the people who play the sport love it. And as with all minority sports, they believe that given half a chance everyone else would love it too. This is one reason why Olympic exposure has such value, but to be a global draw for spectators a sport must also be loved by those who have never played. This is where squash finds its limits.

Nick Rider, Chief Executive of England Squash and Racketball, accepts that squash has been fighting the same battles for some time, ever since gym membership offered an alternative indoor space where fitness fanatics could go to sweat. ‘The 70’s squash boom was created because it was pretty much the only show in town, and perhaps in the 80s and 90s the sport failed to consolidate its position.’

This isn’t for lack of champions. In 2010 the English and World number one Nick Matthew won the World Open, the biggest prize in the sport. His impressive victory has made little difference, because the game of squash is at the same time both too hard and too simple. For beginners, the ball doesn’t bounce high enough. This makes each rally a huge effort, and at the entry level there’s no such thing as a gentle set of squash. Go gently, and you won’t get there at all.

For elite players, the sport becomes predictable – the four walls and small floor-area cut down options, limiting the potential for surprise. The game becomes attritional and the longest competitive rally, between Jahangir Khan and Gamel Awad in 1983, was timed at seven long minutes.

A great workout it may be, but that doesn’t make squash great to watch.

For two decades the governing body has been tinkering with the rules of the game, looking for a winning formula. The serving has been modified, as has the height of the ‘tin’ at the front of the court. The scoring system is more direct and professional players use a white ball, but these superficial changes leave the essential rebounding nature of the sport untouched: it’s a decent game to play but a dull one to watch.

Glass show-courts have gone some way to opening up the closed box of the court to spectators, and the Professional Squash Association is investing heavily in TV production.  New broadcast technologies and unusual camera angles can enhance the spectator experience. As Laura Massaro says, ‘it’s great to see the faces that players make at the front wall. We used to do all our expressions to the front wall because no-one could see them.’

A glass show-court also has the advantage of being portable, and matches have been staged beside the Giza pyramids and in the middle of New York’s Grand Central Station. The ambition to attract a new audience, or any type of audience, is admirable. Unfortunately, a game of squash inside a large glass box can look like a disturbing science experiment.

The effort to spread the faith goes on. The World Squash Federation has opened an office in Lausanne, to be closer to the power-brokers in yet another bid for Olympic inclusion in 2020. The average professional rally, according to US website squashtalk.com, is now down to fifteen seconds, and the UK game repays in professional victories the healthy contribution made by Sport England through its World Class Performance Programme.

As for TV companies, some may be lured by emerging markets – there are four Egyptians in the men’s top 10 and leading women players from Malaysia, Hong Kong, Mexico and India. Squash may be able to sell itself as a ‘red button sport’ – not for everyone but there if you want it.

The worst days are probably over – in the 90’s there wasn’t a sponsor for the National League, whereas this year a title sponsor was agreed for the Allam British Open. From 2013 this will be the flagship event at Dr Assed Allam’s planned multi-faceted Sports Village in Hull. No London 2012, then, but a confirmed spot in Hull for 2013. Every renaissance has to start somewhere.

I have a piece in the Feb 2012 issue of Prospect magazine, on squash. Here’s one I did last year, on wrestling (August 2011):

By the end of this July’s ‘second chance sale’, over three and a half million tickets had been sold for the 26 sports making up the London 2012 Olympics. There were seats unsold for football and volleyball, but the only individual discipline with tickets left over was freestyle wrestling. In the competition for least-loved Olympic sport in Britain, freestyle wrestling was the winner.

What is it, exactly, that no-one is in a rush to see? Freestyle wrestling differs from all-male Greco-Roman wrestling (sold-out) in three ways. Holds below the waist are allowed, the legs may be used in both attack and defense, and since 2004 the sport has included four weight-categories for women.

Not enough, it would seem, for a nation of discerning sports-fans, even though the highlights play well to rock music. The crisis moment of a freestyle bout is a flurry of explosive athleticism, bodies driven hard into the ground and wrestlers in barely credible contortions, legs awry and ears cauliflowered to the mats.

In 3000 years the objective of a wrestling contest has barely changed – to overpower and gain total control over an opponent. This can take a while. A bout at the 1912 Olympics lasted eleven hours and forty minutes, which led to the introduction of a points-scoring system. Points require rules: wrestling would never be so simple again.

At London 2012 the freestyle wrestlers will grapple on a circular area nine meters in diameter for three two minute sessions in a best-of-three contest. If a session ends in a draw, there is a thirty-second tie-break mechanism called The Clinch. The attacking wrestler locks his arms around one of the defender’s legs and has thirty seconds to make a decisive move. This is more complicated than it looks.

The Clinch was not a feature of wrestling as first recorded at the Olympic games of 708 BC. This was a direct hand-to-hand contest to discover the fortius in the Olympic refrain of Citius Altius Fortius (Faster Higher Stronger). It soon became evident that in wrestling ‘stronger’ requires brain in addition to brawn, strategy before a fall. The philosopher Plato (meaning ‘broad’) was a keen wrestler, and his name may have been decided by his wrestling coach.

As a sales angle, the cerebral side of wrestling doesn’t appear to have worked. The chief executive of the British Wrestling Association, Colin Nicholson, calls freestyle wrestling ‘combat chess’, and while the combat can be astonishing the chess is a problem. The technical manoeuvring for a hold or a takedown registers in minor shifts of balance and leverage, almost imperceptible to the casual spectator. The psychological battleground, so vivid to the competitor, is masked by stoicism and concentration.

Olympic wrestling must also contend with the shadow of what it is not. The razzamatised World Wrestling Entertainment organization pushes televised wrestling as pure ‘sports entertainment’. By comparison, Olympic wrestling can seem like fighting with the entertainment taken out. Nicholson would like to change this perception.

‘We’ll have at least three wrestlers involved in London 2012 because of the wildcard entries for the host nation. Unfortunately, for each wrestler we qualify by right we lose one of those places, but our objective is at least one top-eight finish.’

Televised wrestling has always understood the importance of personalities. At London 2012 the British wrestler to watch is Ukrainian-born Yana Stadnik, a 48 kg silver medalist at the 2010 European Championships. For the men, Britain’s  top freestyle hope is Bristol’s 96 kg fighter Leon Rattigan.

Olympic success can revive an obscure sport – curling is the most obvious recent example. The next best shortcut is to get a sport into schools. All sports administrators know this, but wrestling has the advantage of needing little or no equipment. It is more controlled than boxing but can claim similar benefits as a self-help sport – encouraging self-control, self-confidence, self-esteem. The British Wrestling Association can plausibly claim that wrestling leads to ‘greater physical development’ (muscles! – wrestlers are ripped), ‘flexibility, strength, balance, co-ordination and razor-sharp reactions’.

If Olympic medals and school sportsdays remain a distant ambition, the fate of wrestling is more likely to be influenced by immigration. The arrival of fighters from Eastern Europe, a stronghold of world wrestling, can provide a solid base for future British participation and success. The Olympic pot currently pays for wrestling’s full-time chief executive, an administrator and a national coach. Five wrestlers have received funding. The brooms will be out after London 2012, but there is hope for spending rounds to come – wrestling will also feature at the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games.

Between now and next August the wrestlers will be working hard at the British Wrestling Academy, a low-roofed single-storey gym in Salford (bookable for events). By then, the last seats at the Excel centre will surely have been sold, as this is a rare chance in Britain to see the world’s best compete at one of the original Olympic sports. Wrestling may not have fared well in the ticketing ballot, but it is a sporting truth that someone has to come last. Otherwise there would be no winners.