SO Lee Chong Wei failed to capture a gold medal at the Beijing Olympics. Winning and losing are part of the game. He can’t be blamed for it.

However, I think we would have secured a gold if squash had been an Olympic sport. Our Datuk Nicol David is not only the world No. 1 but also one of the best players in the world.

If racket games like table tennis, lawn tennis and badminton can find their way into the Olympics, I fail to understand why squash has been left out.

Squash is a universal sport, which requires mental and physical fitness.

There are not many games where you have to train as vigorously as in squash.
Squash is played in more than 75 countries with 125 national bodies affiliated to the World Squash Federation but, yet, it has no place in the Olympics.

One wonders how baseball and softball, games played in far fewer countries than squash, could have worked their way into the Olympics schedule before the decision to bump them out of the 2012 Games was made in 2005.

Perhaps squash was denied entry into the Olympics by the Americans in retaliation for the vote on baseball and softball at the International Olym-pic Council.

The Olympics is the Mount Everest of sport. It is the dream of every athlete to climb its peak, so to speak.

To share the prestige of standing shoulder to shoulder with the best in sport at the Olympics is a dream come true for any athlete. So, too, for Nicol and our country.

The nearest she got to the Games was when we voted for her to be one of the torch-bearers in the Athens Olympics.

She has won all the medals and trophies in squash the world had to offer. Winning an Olympic gold would say it all, for her and for the country.

Malaysia should lobby IOC members to get the green light for squash in the 2012 Games.