Malaysian duo turn Asian Games squash golds into first tickets to LA28

Malaysia's Eain Yow Ng and Sivasangari Subramaniam will make history in Los Angeles after both successfully defended their Asian Games squash titles at the Aichi-Nagoya Games in Japan, becoming the first players in the sport to secure an Olympic berth for the 2028 Summer Olympics, where squash will make its official debut.

The pair completed the double on Sunday at the Nagoya Kinjo Futo Arena, where the top seeds swept through their respective campaigns without dropping a single game. Their victories also handed Malaysia its fifth and sixth gold medals of the Games, and Eain's men's singles title made him the first Malaysian ever to qualify for an Olympic squash event.

Eain, ranked 18th in the world, needed only 33 minutes to dispatch India's Abhay Singh 11-9, 11-5, 11-5. The opening game was the only real contest, with Singh pushing his Malaysian opponent before Eain's superior fitness and court coverage took over. For Singh, the defeat ended a run in which he had already achieved a landmark of his own by reaching the gold medal match.

Sivasangari, the world number five, followed her compatriot just minutes later and needed even less time. She demolished India's Anahat Singh, ranked 17th in the world, 11-4, 11-4, 11-7 in a 23-minute rout that underlined the sizeable gulf between the two players. The world ranking advantage, five places, barely told the story of the scoreline: Sivasangari's speed and length control left her opponent chasing the ball for most of the contest.

Anahat Singh's campaign, however, will long be remembered. The 18-year-old world junior champion produced a remarkable comeback in Saturday's semifinal, trailing Japan's Satomi Watanabe by two games before winning five sets in a row to prevail 9-11, 11-13, 12-10, 11-6, 11-3. The victory made her the first Indian woman ever to reach the Asian Games singles final, and she did so against an opponent she later described as the toughest player she has faced.

"I think it is the best win of my career," Singh said after the match. "She's number six in the world, and that's the highest win I've ever had in my squash career." Watanabe's ranking as the world number six underlined the scale of the upset, and it handed the Japanese player a place on the podium via the bronze medal route.

Watanabe duly collected bronze on Sunday, easing past Hong Kong's Sin Yuk Chan 3-1 to close her Games with a medal after the heartbreak of the semifinal defeat. Her bronze added a second place in the women's singles to what has been a breakthrough Games for emerging Asian squash talent.

Pakistan also claimed two bronzes through the men's 3/4 play-offs, with third seed Noor Zaman beating compatriot Ashab Irfan 3-0 to take the medal. The all-Pakistani contest ensured the country added to a haul of minor placings, and Zaman's straight-sets win was the most emphatic of the bronze medal matches.

Beyond the individual results, the significance of the day lay in the qualification itself. Squash is one of only a handful of sports on the Aichi-Nagoya programme for which a gold medal guarantees a place at the next Olympic Games, a format that rewards continental supremacy with direct access to the global stage. It is a system that rewards consistency rather than allowing for the vagaries of ranking-based qualification, and it raises the stakes of every match from the first round to the final.

The arrangement also compresses the qualification cycle. Rather than waiting for rankings to be finalised in the Olympic year, athletes who peak at the Asian Games can bank their place roughly two years in advance. For a sport that is still establishing itself within the Olympic movement, such a guarantee is considered a key tool for attracting the world's best players to commit to the LA28 pathway and to the longer-term build-up that precedes it.

For Malaysia, the double breakthrough carries added significance. Squash is not a marquee Olympic sport in the same way as badminton or table tennis, and Malaysia has historically excelled in the latter two. Eain and Sivasangari have now given the country a foothold in a discipline where it has growing infrastructure but few Olympic appearances to its name.

Both victories also underlined the depth of Asian squash. Three of the four medal matches in Nagoya featured a Malaysian or an Indian against a Japanese player, and the standout story of the women's tournament was an 18-year-old Indian finalist. The India-Japan final, as well as the India-India men's final, showed a new generation rising through the rankings and challenging for established names.

Sivasangari, whose near-flawless three-game win drew comparisons with the men's final for sheer efficiency, was the standout of the women's draw, while Eain's extra 10 minutes of work was the only indication that either final stretched the challengers. Eain's straight-game run also made him Malaysia's first Olympic qualifier in any sport at these Games.

The two Malaysians will now have more than two years to prepare for an Olympic debut that is likely to be among the most closely watched new disciplines on the Los Angeles programme. Their Asian Games titles, however, have already delivered the sport its first Olympic finishers — a landmark moment for squash, and a defining afternoon for Malaysian sport.