Malaysia’s beloved squash queen Datuk Nicol David has once again secured the number one spot on the world stage.
This time, she has been crowned the World Games’ Greatest Athlete of All Time.
The former world number one athlete amassed 318,943 votes to take home the award
The second contender’s total vote count stands at 113,120, which is held by Ireland’s tug-of-war athlete James Kehoe, reported New Straits Times.
Ukraine’s powerlifter Larysa Solovlova came in third with 80,790 votes.
The World Games are an international multi-sport event that happens every four years. The event holds competitions that are not contested in the Olympic Games.
The international poll started on 8 January and 24 non-Olympian candidates were shortlisted to compete.
When SAYS first reported it on 9 January, Nicol was already leading in first place.
In the last stretch before the poll closed, SAYS reported on 31 January that the squash player continued to lead with 260,203 votes.
The poll officially ended yesterday, 1 February. Nicol’s total vote tally surpassed the second and third contenders’ numbers combined.
Truly an undefeated champion, just like how she is the longest-standing world number one athlete for 108 consecutive months between 2006 and 2015.
The 37-year-old Penangite has won every major squash title before retiring in 2019
Her latest win can be seen as the cherry on top of her prolific career.
Nicol started playing squash at the age of five. In her early professional years, she became the youngest woman to ever win a World Junior Championship in 1999 when she was just 15 years old.
From there on, she kept winning, including bagging three World Games gold medals in Duisburg (2005), Kaohsiung (2009), and Cali (2013).
She also won two Commonwealth Games gold medals and a total of seven Asian Games titles.
News Straits Times reported that Nicol has also amassed 81 titles on the Professional Squash Association (PSA) Tour, with the last title being the Ciudad de Floridablanca Open in Colombia in 2017.
She retired in 2019. Her only regret in her almost 20-year career is not being able to represent Malaysia in the Olympics as the global sports festival has never included squash in the event.
“I would trade all of my world titles for just one Olympic gold medal. Every world title means the world to me, so that’s how important the Olympics is in my heart,” she was quoted as saying by CNN in 2012.
