Squash, newly accepted for the the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, is already working to secure its place at the Brisbane 2032 Games ©PSA

Squash, which will appear at the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles after four successive failures to gain entry to the Games, is already laying plans to retain its place at Brisbane 2032.

Professional Squash Association chief executive Alex Gough claimed he feels "very confident” about the longer-term future of squash at the Olympics.

"We are already looking at what we have to do to stay in the Olympics," he told insidethegames.

"You’d like to it is easier staying in than getting in but we won’t be taking anything for granted.

"That is an aim of everybody involved - we don’t just want to be one event and then you’re out again.

"Squash Australia are really doing a good job and we are hoping to have some bigger events down there in the next one or two years, with LA on the horizon.

"We’ve actually already had meeting with the city of Brisbane - this was a year or so ago.

"So that will come very high up in our ambitions, to have a major event there.

"With the Olympics in mind really - because we really want to be staying in."

Squash had rejected for the Olympic Games four times before it was voted on to the programme at Los Angeles 2028 ©IOC
Squash had rejected for the Olympic Games four times before it was voted on to the programme at Los Angeles 2028 ©IOC

World Squash Federation President Zena Wooldridge, who attended the International Olympic Committee Session in Mumbai where the LA 2028 recommendation to include squash was formally accepted, pointed out the vital importance of remaining in the Olympic programme for more than one Games.

"Although we hope to be getting support from the IOC for the 2028 preparations, you don’t get Olympic Solidarity funding until you have been in at least two consecutive Olympics," she told insidethegames from Mumbai.

"So we are already thinking of how we stay in for the Brisbane 2032 Games.

"To be honest if you’d asked us two years ago we would probably have thought that Brisbane was our best chance rather than Los Angeles. 

"Our discussions with Squash Australia about how we manage the runway into Brisbane 2032 have suddenly been put on a different trajectory, because the decision on which sports will be at Brisbane 2032 will be made before the delivery at Los Angeles 2028.

"So we can’t rely upon a fantastic delivery at LA because the decision will have been made before. It’s like the situation breaking has had – they are in Paris, but they have already been told they won’t be in LA.

"We face that same timescale which means we are really going to have to lobby and do a good job and influence Brisbane and hope that they will also include squash for our second consecutive Games. And then once we’ve done two..

"Meanwhile, the talk on the ground is that the next one may be in India 2036. And if that were the case then we’ve got good foundations in India to potentially make it a third. But we’ve got to make the second one first!”

To read "Nobody keeps squash out of the Olympics five times in a row", the inside story of how squash finally won its bid to get on the Olympic programme, click here.