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NAGOYA, Japan — Malaysia's Eain Yow Ng and Sivasangari Subramaniam will travel to Los Angeles in 2028 as the first-ever Olympic squash qualification holders, after the defending champions both retained their Asian Games singles titles here on Sunday. Their golds at the Aichi-Nagoya Games carry automatic passage to the 2028 Summer Olympics, where squash will make its debut as an official discipline.
The pair completed a flawless campaign in the Japanese city, dropping not a single game between them en route to the finals. For Eain, the world No. 18, that meant a straight-sets demolition of India's Abhay Singh, 11-9, 11-5, 11-5, in a 33-minute contest at the Nagoya Kinjo Futo Arena. His victory made him the first Malaysian ever to seal an Olympic squash berth, and pushed Malaysia's medal tally at these Games to five golds.
Squash is one of only a handful of sports on the Aichi-Nagoya programme where the title decider doubles as a qualification event for the following Olympic cycle. That rarity places extra weight on Sunday's results: rather than merely crowning continental champions, the finals effectively selected the first two members of the Olympic squash field.
Sivasangari, ranked fifth in the world, followed her compatriot into the record books with an emphatic win over India's Anahat Singh — 11-4, 11-4, 11-7, in just 23 minutes. The rapid scoreline, in which the world No. 17 was never allowed to establish herself, delivered Malaysia a sixth gold of the Games and confirmed that the pair's dominance has survived the transition from champion to favourite.
The final also marked a landmark for Indian squash. Anahat Singh, the world junior champion, had already rewritten history a day earlier by becoming the first Indian woman to reach the Asian Games singles final, a feat she achieved with one of the most striking comebacks of the tournament. Trailing Japan's Satomi Watanabe by two games in the semifinal on Saturday, the 18-year-old reversed the momentum with a 9-11, 11-13, 12-10, 11-6, 11-3 win.
After that turnaround, Singh was candid about the scale of the upset she had pulled. Watanabe, she noted, sits sixth in the world — comfortably the highest-ranked opponent she has ever defeated. On Sunday she came up short against Sivasangari, but her week in Nagoya has already established her as one of the sport's most consequential young players and suggests Indian squash has a genuine title contender in the making at LA28.
That prospect matters for the wider competitive picture. With squash joining the Olympic programme in Los Angeles, medal contention at the Games is likely to intensify as national federations channel funding toward the new discipline. The pairings alone at Nagoya point to a sport in which Asian and sub-Asian nations are establishing themselves at the top: Malaysia's clean sweep, India's finalist, and Pakistan's presence in the medal matches all underline the sport's strength across the region even as Europe, Egypt and the Americas build their own programmes.
Pakistan added two further bronze medals earlier in the day, with third seed Noor Zaman claiming the men's 3/4 play-off by defeating compatriot Ashab Irfan 3-0. Watanabe responded to her semifinal defeat by taking the women's bronze 3-1 against Hong Kong's Sin Yuk Chan, ensuring the hosts finished the squash programme with a medal of their own.
For Malaysia, the significance extends beyond personal achievement. Eain and Sivasangari are the anchors of a squash programme that has become a national source of Olympic-class success, and their retention of the titles confirms that the pipeline which produced them remains intact. Both now carry guaranteed places at a Games where the sport will be seeking to prove its mainstream credentials in front of a global audience.
For the International Olympic Committee and the governing bodies that campaigned for squash's inclusion, Nagoya provided the first real test of the new qualification model. Two athletes sealed places through a single continental event, travel costs were minimal, and the winners were the most dominant performers in their fields — the combination of clarity and credibility that the sport's advocates had argued would follow from Olympic recognition.
The next step for Eain and Sivasangari will be to convert historic qualification into Olympic preparation. Two years is a short cycle in squash, where injury, form and rapid ranking shifts are routine, and both will face a field that has two seasons to sharpen itself. Their unbeaten runs in Nagoya nonetheless offer a rare benchmark: they have now gone a full Asian Games campaign without surrendering a game.
The 2028 Los Angeles Games will be the first time squash is played under the Olympic flag. The names on the first entry list will include the two Malaysians who earned their places on a Sunday afternoon in Nagoya, and a sport that spent decades on the margins of the Olympic movement will begin its countdown to a debut few in the sport ever thought they would see.
Reporting by Anushe Engineer. Photographs by Chalinee Thirasupa/Reuters.
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