Malaysia’s eight-time World Champion Nicol David is leading The World Games Greatest Athlete of All Time poll as voting enters its second phase.
David, 37, has currently received over 200,000 votes and sits in first place on the poll, over twice the amount of her nearest competitor, Russian sumo athlete Batyr Altyev, who currently has 90,000.
The second stage of voting now begins, with only the top 10 candidates – who keep all of their votes thus far – remaining in the process. Voting ends on Monday February 1 at 13:00 (GMT).
“It’s a huge honour to be nominated by the World Games for the Greatest Athlete of All Time and to gain so much support from everyone in Malaysia and the squash community,” said David.
“It came as a surprise to see me amongst these other top athletes and I’m grateful for this.
“If I get a chance to win this it would be amazing for me just to have the recognition through playing squash and hopefully it can elevate the attention for the future of squash and it’s a proud moment to represent my country and Asia”
David is one of the greatest squash players of all time and spent an unprecedented nine-year period atop the women’s World Rankings between 2006-2015 as well as securing a trio of World Games gold medals in addition to a bronze.
The Penangite also lifted two Commonwealth Games gold medals, five Asian Games gold medals and five British Open titles throughout her distinguished career.
David, who won 81 professional titles, retired in 2019, a year after being voted as the greatest female squash player of all time by squash fans in a poll hosted on the PSA World Tour website.
Away from squash, David became the youngest person ever to be awarded the title ‘Dato’’ from the Penang State Government and in 2008 was honoured with the Order of Merit. The highest order of ‘Datuk’ from the Federal Government was conferred to David by HRH The King in 2017
Squash fans can vote for David here.