Jahangir Khan
Told he was too frail to play, he went five and a half years and 555 matches without losing
Jahangir Khan was born in Karachi into a family of squash players. His father Roshan had won the British Open. But Jahangir was a weak child who had two hernia operations and was told by doctors that competitive sport was out of the question. His father agreed. It was his older brother Torsam, a professional on the world circuit, who insisted the boy could play and started to coach him.
In 1979, when Jahangir was 15, Torsam collapsed and died of a heart attack during a tournament match in Australia. Jahangir nearly gave up the game. Instead he decided to make his brother's ambitions his own, and with his cousin Rahmat as coach he trained with a ferocity no one in the sport had seen. Squash was then a game of long, attritional rallies, and he simply outlasted everyone.
He won the World Open in 1981 at 17, the youngest champion ever. From that year he did not lose a match, in any competition, until November 1986, when Ross Norman beat him in the World Open final. The run lasted five years and eight months and more than 550 matches. He won the British Open ten years in a row.
He retired in 1993 and later became president of the World Squash Federation.