F. D. Amr Bey - Sporting Legacy

Sporting Legacy

Amr is widely regarded as the first truly dominant player in the sport of squash. Although he never became a professional athlete, he still managed to beat all the top professional players of his time, and has been called the first "professional amateur" in squash because his training for the game became the key focus of his life. In addition, Amr is considered part of the "golden age of sports in Egypt," a period spanning the 1940s and 1950s that witnessed numerous famed Egyptian sportsmen, notably swimmers and squash players. In fact, Amr himself was the "discoverer" of Mahmoud Karim, another Egyptian squash player who dominated the British Open in the postwar period. Karim recalled in a 1965 interview how he had been secretly practicing squash when he was young at the Gezira Sporting Club, where he worked as a ball boy. When Amr, a club member, once saw him using his racket without permission, he reprimanded him. After Karim stated he liked the game, Amr was eager to show him that "squash was only for blue bloods and rich people" and thus challenged him to play with him. Amr lost, which was his first ever defeat, thereby jumpstarting Karim's career.

On 28 November 2009, Amr was posthumously honoured with the World Squash Awards' Lifetime Achievement Award. Event organizer Peter Nicol, himself a former World No. 1, stated that Amr "is widely considered to have raised the level of the sport of squash to new heights through both his outstanding racket skills and his exceptional speed and fitness, hence his nickname the "Human Streak of Lightning"." Since the 2009 Awards were dominated by Egyptian players such as Karim Darwish (Player of the Year) and Mohamed El Shorbagy (Young Player of the Year), Nicol paid tribute to Amr by describing him as "the first building block that created the foundation for Egyptian squash that has been carried on and is no better illustrated than by the recipients of this evening's other awards." Amr's award was collected by James Sandwith, the squash chairman of the Royal Automobile Club, which was the site of several of Amr's victories.