Coronavirus forces WSF to postpone World Junior Squash

ISLAMABAD: The 2021 World Junior Squash Championships — originally scheduled to take place in August 2021 in Egypt — has been postponed due to the ongoing impact of the global Covid-19 pandemic.

Besides boys’ individual events, girls individual and team championships were also scheduled. The World Junior Squash Championships is considered as the most prestigious squash tournament.

The decision has been made by the Word Squash Federation (WSF) Board of Directors following the recommendation of the WSF Junior Commission.

“Whilst we are naturally disappointed to postpone the World Junior, the situation surrounding international travel as well as health and safety issues made us postpone the tournament as that was a logical choice,” said WSF Chief Executive William Louis-Marie.

“We believe that by postponing the tournament, we can focus our efforts on creating a safe environment to compete, while giving all of our Member federations equal opportunity to enter teams into the championships. At the moment, the travel restrictions affecting the countries around the world makes this impossible.

“We are in close contact with the Egyptian Squash Federation to find alternative dates later in the year and we hope to be able to provide further update in the coming months.”

Egyptian Squash Federation president Assem Khalifa said: “Our objective is to bring the best junior players of the world to Egypt for the WSF World Junior Squash Championships and postponing the tournament to later dates will enable us to do so as it is important to support the squash community in these testing times.

“I have full confidence in our capacity to host the tournament later in 2021 and we look forward to welcoming the juniors from across the world to give them taste of the Egyptian culture.”