Lee Beachill - to hell and back

01 July 2002

UK squash singles champion Lee Beachill tells a torrid tale about struggles he has faced to make a place in the world’s top ten.

Lee Beachill surveys the state-of-the-art facilities in Manchester

But now he is hoping to crown his recovery from a series of career-threatening setbacks with a Commonwealth Games medal.

In September, 1977, Beachill contracted severe salmonella poisoning after playing in a competition in Portugal. He was rushed to hospital and lost nearly three stones in ten days.

And that was just the start of a 12-month nightmare that threatened to KO 24-year-old Beachill’s squash career that began at his local club when he was just eight years old.

For soon after returning to fitness, the Yorkshireman sustained a serious back injury in a car accident and was told by a specialist that he would never play squash again.

Beachill was having none of that and instead, opted for his own version of the old credo: when the going gets tough, the tough get going.

He fought his way back to full fitness, only to be sidelined for the third time in a year in a freak accident at a friend’s birthday party when an out-of-control go kart careered into the watching Beachill and caused severe ankle ligament damage.

“In many ways, that was the worst blow of them all,” says Beachill, who earlier this year became the first man to win back-to-back UK men’s singles titles.

“Compared with the back injury it was a relatively minor problem. But after everything that had happened before, it was very tough for me mentally.

“I didn’t play for six months and there were times when I wondered if all the effort was worth it. I began to doubt whether I was really supposed to be playing squash at all.

“The back injury was different. It was a crushed vertebra and I had to spend four or five hours laid on a table in hospital after being told I would be in traction for a week and never play again.

“That wasn’t easy. But then I was referred to a physio who told me to get off my bum and see how far I could walk. I did OK.

“Then after some tests and more exercises, she said there was no reason why I shouldn’t make a more or less complete recovery. That was all I needed to hear. I had a target to aim for.

“The rehabilitation programme was agony; three physio sessions a day for eight weeks. But I was making progress all the time. With the ankle, all I could do was lie around, wait and worry.”

Beachill finally regained full fitness in mid-1999 since when he has climbed to his current world ranking at eight. He has beaten England team-mate and world number one Peter Nicol three times and Australian star David Palmer, another major Commonwealth contender, twice.

“To be honest, I feel I am playing better than my ranking at the moment and I’m sure there’s more to come if I can stay injury-free. And it would be incredible to win a medal at the Games.

“Just about all the top players will be in Manchester so it will virtually be a world championship. I will be trying to approach it as just another major tournament but it won’t be easy. The Commonwealth Games are a massive event and because there are so many sports involved, the atmosphere will be very different from other championships.”

And Beachill is confident that ten days of televised world-class competition at the state-of-the-art National Squash Centre will raise the profile of his sport.

The Squash Centre is part of Sportcity, the complex that also features the £110m City of Manchester Stadium, the Velodrome and the Indoor Tennis Centre, which will stage the table ennis events.

It is housed in the £12m English Institute of Sport arena that also includes a 200m track and jumping pits as well as facilties for indoor sports. And the centre’s main feature is a 116-tonne ‘see-through’ show court that can be raised 3mm off the floor and moved in and out of the main arena thanks to hovercraft technology.

“It’s superb,” enthuses Beachill. “I’ve played squash all over the world but I’ve never seen anything quite like this. The centre is world class.

“We have had a bit of an image problem in the past, mainly because television coverage has been difficult. But a permanent centre like this is going to raise the profile of the sport even more. People will see that we now have a ready-made stage for major tournaments and big championships and a national centre for the sport in this country.”