The Small Nation That Keeps Beating Squash’s Giants

For close to two decades, the men's world squash rankings have been dominated by players from one country that most casual sports fans could not point to on a squash map: Egypt.

Names like Ramy Ashour, Mohamed ElShorbagy and Ali Farag have cycled through the world number one ranking again and again.

A sport with almost no infrastructure to explain it

Unlike countries with sprawling academy systems and government-funded sports ministries built around a single discipline, Egypt's squash dominance grew out of a relatively small, tightly connected community of clubs concentrated mostly around Cairo and Alexandria.

Coaches, many of them former players themselves, developed a distinctive style built on flexibility, deceptive shot-making and physical endurance that suited Egyptian players particularly well against more mechanically rigid opponents from Europe.

A pipeline that keeps refilling itself

What makes Egypt's dominance unusual is how it hasn't depended on a single golden generation.

As one wave of champions has aged out, another has consistently arrived to replace them, suggesting the country built something closer to a genuine system than a lucky cluster of individual talents.

Younger Egyptian players coming through junior ranks continue to occupy a disproportionate share of top world junior rankings, keeping the pipeline full.

A sport still searching for a bigger stage

Despite Egypt's sustained dominance, squash remains outside the Olympic program, a source of ongoing frustration for the sport's biggest advocates who argue a country producing this much sustained excellence deserves a bigger global stage.

Squash is set to make its Olympic debut at the 2028 Los Angeles Games, and Egyptian officials and players alike have spoken about what an Olympic medal would mean for a sport that has quietly punched above its weight in global recognition for years.

Where the next generation is coming from

Egypt's youth squash academies, concentrated around Cairo's private sporting clubs, continue to funnel talented juniors into a competitive pathway that culminates in the professional PSA World Tour, where Egyptian players regularly occupy a disproportionate share of top rankings across both the men's and women's game.

That women's success, led by players like Nour El Sherbini, has run in parallel with the men's dominance, suggesting the country's squash infrastructure benefits the sport broadly rather than any single gender's development pipeline.

El Sherbini herself has spent extended stretches as world number one, giving Egypt simultaneous dominance across both the men's and women's professional tours in a way few countries manage in any sport.

That dual dominance has made Egypt something of a case study for sports federations elsewhere trying to figure out how a genuinely small country builds sustained excellence across an entire discipline rather than producing isolated champions.

Should a sport with this level of sustained excellence from one dominant country have been added to the Olympics much sooner than it was?