Squash players won 4 licenses for the World Games

The 2022 World Games will start on Friday in the American city of Birmingham (Alabama). These are the main non-Olympic sports competitions of the quadrennial, where, among others, the Ukrainian national team performs quite successfully.

The World Games will celebrate its 40th anniversary this year. The event was described by event organizers as: "An extraordinary Olympic-style sporting experience where elite athletes from around the world compete for gold in 34 unique, multi-functional events."

Athletes from more than 100 countries will compete at the 2022 World Games. The participants qualified for the Games, which will be held from July 7 to 17, 2022.

In total, seven countries have received more than 100 starting places in The World Games. These are the USA (352), Germany (300), Italy (238), France (205), Japan (144), Great Britain (118), Switzerland (113) and Ukraine (102).

Squash at the World Games

The squash program at the 2022 World Games will be held from July 14 to 17, with 62 athletes, including 31 men and 31 women, competing for victory at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Student Recreation Center.

Squash has participated in five previous World Games. It was first included in the program in 1997 in Lahti, Finland, when Ahmed Barada of Egypt and Sarah Fitz-Gerald of Australia won the men's and women's gold medals respectively.

Since then, former world No. 1s Peter Nicol, Nick Matthew and Gregory Gauthier have won gold in the men's event, while legendary Malaysian Nicol David, who won gold medals in 2005, 2009, 2013 and bronze in 2017, was named the best female athlete of all time at the World Games.

Simon Resner of Germany and Camille Serme of France are the winners of the last Games in 2017 in Wroclaw, Poland. We will remind that Ukrainian squash players made their debut at the Games five years ago and finished the fight for medals after the first round. Kostyantyn Rybalchenko, Nadia Usenko and Alina Bushma did not manage to take a single game from their seeded rivals.

This year, four squash players will represent our country in USA. In the men's grid: the captain of the national team of Ukraine Dmytro Shcherbakov and the five-time champion of Ukraine Valery Fedoruk are announced.

But in the women's grid, Ukraine will be represented by Nadiya Usenko, an experienced player of the World Games, and Anastasia Kostyukova, the first racket of Ukraine.

According to the schedule, the squash tournament will last for four days. Qualifiers will be held on Thursday, and the men's and women's finals will be held on Sunday.

The composition of players of individual competitions among men and women (without doubles):

Argentina Men: Jeremias Azaña
Argentina Women:
Australia Men: Rhys Dowling, Joseph White
Australia Women: Jessica Turnbull, Alex Haydon
Belgium Men:
Belgium Women: Tinne Gilis
Brazil Men: Guilherme Melo, Vinicius Leão Rodrigues
Brazil Women: Thaisa Serafini
Canada Men: David Baillargeon
Canada Women: Hannah Blatt, Nikki Todd
China Men:
China Women: Jia Liu
Colombia Men: Ronald Palomino, Miguel Rodriguez
Colombia Women: Lucia Bautista, Laura Tovar
Czech Republic Men: Jakub Solnický, Martin Svec
Czech Republic Women: Anne Serme
Ecuador Men:
Ecuador Women: Maria Moya López
England Men: Nathan Lake
England Women: Lucy Beecroft
Finland Men:
Finland Women: Emilia Korhonen, Emilia Soini
France Men: Victor Crouin, Grégoire Marche, Baptiste Masotti
France Women: Melissa Alves, Coline Aumard
Germany Men: Raphael Kandra, Yannick Omlor, Simon Rösner
Germany Women: Saskia Beinhard & Katerina Tycova
Hong Kong Men: Lam Yat Ting
Hong Kong Women: Cheng Nga Ching, Fung Ching Hei
Hungary Men: Balázs Farkas
Hungary Women: Hannah Chukwu, Kincső Szász
Ireland Men: Sean Conroy
Ireland Women:
Japan Men:
Japan Women: Erisa Sano Herring, Satomi Watanabe
Peru Men: Diego Elías, Rafael Galvez
Peru Women:
Poland Men: Filip Jarota
Poland Women: Karina Tyma
Spain Men: Sergio Garcia
Spain Women:
Switzerland Men: Dimitri Steinmann, Yannick Wilhelmi
Switzerland Women: Nadia Pfister, Céline Walser
Ukraine Men: Valerii Fedoruk, Dmytro Scherbakov
Ukraine Women: Anastasiia Kostiukova, Nadiia Usenko
USA Men: Todd Harrity, Faraz Khan, Shahjahan Khan
USA Women: Haley Mendez, Marina Stefanoni