Olympic Fever
I write this in England where the British bid for the 2012 Olympics has gone past fever pitch to flag-waving hysteria. The newspapers are spewing out nationalistic bilge and positive spin in the hope that the Olympic committee will somehow vote for the UK instead of France who have been favourites from day one. New York is not given the faintest chance. The Prime Minister has left the G8 talks to got to Singapore and boost the bid. Yes, my sons, the world has gone quite mad.

For my part I want Paris to win. Or New York. Or Moscow. Anywhere but London, which, if the UK does get the nod, will be mired in billions of dollars in debt come 2013. A few Olympics, usually those run in the USA, don’t lose money; the rest lose mountains of the stuff. My sister living in Montreal is still paying for the 1976 Olympics even though the then mayor, Jean Drapeau, assured the citizens that: ‘The Olympics can no more lose money than a man can have a baby.” And Athens, who held the last Olympics is still trying to tot up the deficit.

The boosters here go into raptures about how London will benefit from the infrastructure left over from the Games. Why not just spend the billions of pounds on erecting low-cost housing and improving London’s dreadful transportation system? Because it is all about glory, nationalism and other empty, meaningless emotions.

SQUASH IN THE OLYMPICS (Yaaawwnnn)
The reason why Olympics is on my mind is that a week after the IOC give their decision on the unlucky city, they will be announcing (on July 12) which sports have been dropped and which one of the five debutantes will be included. Despite all sorts of “positive’ indications and lovely things said about our sport, I have no hopes at all. I don’t think the IOC have got the guts to drop a sport. And if none get dropped, nothing gets added.

Christian Leighton, the new chief of the World Squash Federation, sent me the 32 evaluation criteria that the IOC put together, with the idea that if a sport met them all, they would get in.

Well, it is not exactly like that. For example number 19 is “Sale of television rights” Number 23 is ‘Impact on the Environment”. How does squash compare to Equestrian events on that one?

Number 18 looks at the sports’s sponsor and marketing programmes. Why should that effect a sports eligibility? Sport is sport, marketing is marketing. Having read all the way through it I must say those criteria on the whole favour those sports that are already in the Olympics.

SQUASH AT 33000 FT
The one area where squash scores heavily over other sports (not in the IOC evaluation) is the wonderfully varied venues that have been used to present major tournaments. Now Dave Carr has come up with a real doozer. Dave is the US man for McWil CourtWall (get the name spelled right or he gets real sniffy).

He reports that an article in an aviation magazine points out that the new Airbus A380 could hold ten squash courts if all the seats and fittings were removed.

Well now, we only need one glass wall court and four hundred seats and we could have our first ever airborne squash tournament.

Carr says “This could start to make the Business Class fare worthwhile, eh?” Well the way I see it, is the first round is played en route from London to Dubai, the second round on the way to Kuala Lumpur, the next round on the way to Australia, the semis en route to Los Angeles and the final as the A380 makes its way to New York. Tickets around $3,500 to include flights and hotels. You watch the TV networks fight for the right to cover that!

JAMES BOND TO THE RESCUE
If you watched Wimbledon you will know that Britain has a new hero, Andy Murray, to replace Tim Henman. What’s more he is a Scot (like Peter Nicol) so even the folk north of the border are getting excited about the nancy sport. Why, even the embodiment of Scottishness, Sean Connery, came south to sit in the posh seats and cheer on his countryman. He was interviewed and made some pertinent remarks about the people who run Scottish sport. (Murray lives and trains in Barcelona). Peter Nicol, you may remember, exchanged his kilt for a bowler because Scottish Squash did not give him the medical and financial backup that England Squash gives its players . Furthermore, Scottish Squashwhile refusing aid to Nicol was handing over £25,000 to John White, the Aussie who has never even lived in Scotland.

Interviewed on the BBC Radio Five Connery said of Murray: “"It was an absolutely extraordinary match and I have to say that Andrew Murray is as gifted as anybody who's ever played the game. But what was evident was that he is not fit enough to stand up to the ritual.”

Connery then thundered: "The way that they help people, certainly from Scotland, is zilch in the UK. We lost Peter Nicol, who now plays for England at squash and is now a world champion and he's Scottish. Why? Because he wasn't funded. Now Andrew isn't funded so much and he's in Barcelona.

"If you've won the world championship as Nicol has done, what else do you need to know? He could not find the facilities in Scotland so he had to become English.

"I hope the tennis people get off their arses and do something about it and not hold it against him that he comes from Scotland." Well said Sean. But I bet even your famous words will not effect the administrators one little bit.

OH ALRIGHT THEN, I’LL SPILL THE BEANS

World Referee Jack Massarella photo© 2005, Martin Bronstein

Last month I told you that Simon Parke is walking out with a very pretty woman whose father was a squash referee. Everybody want to know which one. Well, I’ll tell you only because Jack Massarella has just been promoted to world class referee. So congratulations are in order. I met him at the Abingdon BSPA Head Grand Prix finals and he told me that he only started reffing ten years ago. He went to the British Open as a greenhorn, expecting to do the age groups and fringe matches, caught the assessors’ eye and finished up doing a quarter final in the main draw.

I should also like to congratulate Mike Riley, the Lancashire lad who is well ensconced in the US squash scene and a regular match referee for John Nimick’s events in Boston, Toronto and New York.

Just for your edification below are the ten World Class referees.

Jack Allen, Ireland (07)
Ian Allanach, Scotland (06)
Roy Gingell, Wales (07)
Fahim Gul Khan, Pakistan (07)
John Massarella, England (08)
Tony Parker, England (06)
Michael Riley, USA (08)
Chris Sinclair, Australia (06)
Graham Waters, Canada (06)
Nasser Zahran, Egypt (07)