Dick Pound, a longtime International Olympic Committee member and former president of the World Anti-Doping Agency, headlines the Canadian Squash Hall of Fame’s Class of 2023.
The native of St. Catharines, Ont., will be inducted Saturday night at the national championships in Montreal.
“I was entirely surprised by it,” Pound, 81, said of the honour. “Normally you would expect the big hitters to be the ones (inducted). I guess there is some value in having seen many moons.”
Joining him in this year’s class are Jamie Crombie, Sabir Butt and Lolly Gillen.
Pound, who represented Canada in swimming at the 1960 Rome Olympics, was a five-time national freestyle champion.
He later shifted his sporting focus to squash, competed at McGill University and became a nationally ranked singles and doubles player.
“I was fit in an era when squash players were not particularly known for being fit,” Pound told The Canadian Press from Montreal. “So enthusiasm overcame a lot of inexpertise. I played probably 30 years of competitive squash.”
Pound also served as secretary of the Canadian Squash Racquets Association (now Squash Canada) and assisted with the drafting of its constitution.
He also helped advise the organization on what he thought was the best path to getting the sport on the Olympic program.
“We got pretty close at one point,” he said.
Pound added that politics between international squash power brokers and the IOC proved too difficult to overcome.
“It’s too bad,” he said. “It’s got all of the things that you’d want. It’s active, it’s worldwide.
“It’s sustainable now with these glass courts that you can assemble for a tournament and take them down again and move them somewhere else. So it checks all of the boxes, except the political one.”
Television production challenges at the time were also an issue, Pound noted.
“The glass courts now make a huge difference,” he said. “But basically (back then) you watched squash from behind. It was very hard to see the ball.
“It was kind of like hockey in the old days, trying to find the puck on the television screen.”
Squash legend Jahangir Khan, Canadian Olympic Committee president Tricia Smith and World Squash Federation president Zena Wooldridge were among those who supported Pound’s nomination, Squash Canada said.
Pound, who was inducted in Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame in 2011, has also served as secretary-general and president of the COC.
He was an IOC member for 44 years after joining the committee in 1978. Pound assumed honorary member status in January.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 12, 2023.
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