As preparations intensify for squash's Olympic debut in 2028, few other nations surely face a more complex build-up to the LA Games than Great Britain.
Uniquely, England Squash, Scottish Squash and Squash Wales — whose players have been rivals on the court for well over 50 years — must join forces and form a new governing body to select, prepare and support the first ever Team GB Olympic squash team.
GB Squash, as the new body is known, is in a very nascent stage. It has formed an initial working group responsible for performance consisting of the three respective national coaches (England's Stuart Crawford, Scotland's Paul Bell and Wales's David Evans), as well as England Squash's Head of Performance, the Aussie former world no.2 Chris Robertson.
This working group is overseen by Derek O'Riordan from UK Sport, the Government and National Lottery-funded agency which supports GB's Olympic and Paralympic sports.
O'Riordan's role is to guide GB Squash's Olympic preparations and hold it accountable for how it spends its funding for the 2028 Olympic cycle (£500,000 over the four years, which GB Squash's component trio of governing bodies have split between the three of them).
The three Home Nations will have to put traditional cross-border rivalry aside, however difficult that may be, as their players jostle for the maximum of four much-coveted places in the GB Olympic team.
Wales' Joel Makin is currently the highest-ranked Brit at men's world no.4, with England's Mohamed and Marwan ElShorbagy currently in the top 10 and thrilling young tyro Jonah Bryant now up to a career-high no.11. Greg Lobban is Scotland's best male player at world no.22.
England's Gina Kennedy is GB's top-ranked woman at world no.9 ahead of team-mate Jasmine Hutton at no.15. Tesni Murphy and Georgia Adderley are presently Wales and Scotland's best representatives at no.26 and no.27 respectively.
However, when it comes to team selection for the Games, the recently-released Olympic Qualification System for LA 2028 rather takes that matter out of the hands of GB Squash (and indeed all of squash's national governing bodies).
Qualification will principally be decided by individual players' performances at the five Continental Games and their positions in the world rankings. Essentially, there are no subjective selection decisions to be made.
For GB Squash, however, there will firstly be a selection process for the European Games in Istanbul in June 2027, where the two gold medal winners (one man, one woman) will earn a guaranteed place in the Olympic draw, provided they are in the top 50 in the PSA world rankings on 22 May 2028.
It is unknown as yet how many places in each draw will be allocated to each nation at the European Games. But with only 15 months to go, there is understandably a clamour for information from players and national governing bodies.
England national coach Crawford has told Squash Player that although GB Squash could, in theory, create its own subjective criteria for team selection for the European Games, he would "be very surprised" if its decisions were not based wholly on the players' world rankings.
He said: "There will be a selection policy put in place for the European Games and, in theory, we could draft that policy to give us a lot of flexibility. But I think it would be much more straight-forward for everyone involved if it was much more objective.
"I'd be very surprised if we went against what the rankings are at that point [next summer]. If we're told it's a 32 draw and we're entitled to three places per National Olympic Committee, for example, I'd be surprised if we decided to overlook the top three highest-ranked players in favour of another player."
As the European Games and Olympic Games move closer, the GB squad will be whittled down and there will be team training camps, team briefings and sessions with support staff, but they aren't due to begin any time soon.
"We're not quite working together yet," says Crawford. "At this stage, we all just want our players to be as good as possible. We're all working on plans for each individual's development and making sure we're supporting them in whatever way we can.
"Our day-to-day responsibility is to try and help those players improve as much as possible. The Olympics is putting more of a spotlight on that, but it doesn't actually change things.
"I've always been quite sceptical of this idea that the Olympics will get people to train harder. If you're not training as hard as you can and you're a professional squash player, there's already a disconnect there. Maybe you're not the most committed or motivated person.
"If you need the carrot of the Olympics to get out there and train hard, are you really going to push yourself to the limit when it's still two and a half years away?"
As LA 2028 draws nearer, players' results on the PSA World Tour will start taking on hugely added significance. Performances at every PSA tournament from 22 May 2027 will count towards players' rankings at the crucial Olympic qualification cut-off point exactly one year later.
The scrutiny of the world rankings as the clock ticks down and players jostle for potential Olympic qualification places will be thrilling and intense. We are about to enter the highest-stakes period in our sport's history.
Before that, though, there are the Continental Games and Great Britain's players have a great chance of success in Turkey in 16 months' time.
The LA 2028 qualification rules, however, have thrown up an oddity. If a second-ranked player from a particular country wins the gold medal at the Continental Games, it has a strange knock-on effect on his or her team-mates.
Should Nele Gilis win the European Games, for example, her higher-ranked Belgian team-mate Tinne Gilis (who just happens to be her sister) will then have to rely on Nele keeping her own ranking high enough to be one of the two highest second-ranked athletes, in order to claim a second qualifying spot for her nation. In this scenario, Tinne's Olympic fate would be out of her own hands and entirely dependent on her sister.
This extraordinary — but entirely plausible — scenario could unfold in any of the leading squash nations, perhaps with Amanda Sobhy and Olivia Weaver, or Jasmine Hutton and Gina Kennedy in the women's game, or Karim Gawad and Mostafa Asal, or Jonah Bryant and Joel Makin in the men's.
It's just one of the many intriguing sub-plots and dramas that will unfold in the next two and a half years.
