Hashim Khan

Hashim Khan

 

A small, polite, balding man who became an indomitable athlete with a racquet in his hand, Hashim Khan won 7 British Open squash titles and was the patriarch of a family dynasty that dominated the sport for decades.

Khan overcame the disadvantages of an impoverished background in a remote part of what was then colonial India to achieve international success in an elitist sport at an age when most players would be contemplating retirement. In doing so, he became a national icon and an inspiration for future generations of Pakistani squash players, more than a few related to him.

Hashim Khan was born in the small town of Nawakille, near Peshawar, which at the time was part of India. His father, Abdullah, was a steward at a club built for officers guarding the Khyber Pass. After his father died, the 11-year old Khan left school and worked as a ball-boy to earn money for the family, being paid a pittance for collecting squash balls that had sailed out of the outdoor courts.

When it was too hot for the officers to play, Khan found an empty court and taught himself squash using a broken racquet and a damaged ball. One story has it that some officers drunkenly walked past the courts one evening and saw the barefoot youngster hit backhand after backhand impeccably despite pitch-dark conditions.

He progressed to become a coach at the club but remained a virtual unknown during his twenties. His big break came when Abdul Bari, a visiting professional from Bombay, turned up looking for a game and the thirtysomething Khan beat him even after giving him a 50-point head start.

Bari spread the word about Khan and he was invited to take part in the All-of-India tournament in Bombay in 1944. He won that competition 3 times in a row, but was no longer eligible after India won independence from Great Britain in 1947, which led to the foundation of Pakistan. Khan returned to the Royal Air Force club. 4 years later, seeking to burnish the young nation’s pride and international renown through sporting success, the Pakistani government selected him to represent the country at the British Open in London, which was then considered to be the sport’s world championships.

Wearing shoes on court for the first time, the 5ft 5in Khan was an underdog in the final, where he faced an Egyptian who had won the title in each of the past 4 years, Mahmoud el Karim. Yet Khan won easily, 9-5,9-0,9-0, benefiting from the stamina which he had built up during years of playing for hours in the blazing sun. He went on to win the next 5 British Opens. He finished runner-up in 1957 but reclaimed the crown the following year, when he was in his mid-forties. He also won 3 United States and 3 Canadian Open titles.

Khan’s improbable brilliance was eulogized in a New Yorker article in 1973: ‘To an American, he looked nothing at all like an athlete, let alone a super-athlete. A round-headed, baldish man with a high-bridged nose and dark, serious eyes, he was squat in build,’ the writer recalled. ‘Particularly since he was barrel-chested and had the suspicion of a pot-belly, he seemed curiously top-heavy. When he moved, though, the whole picture changed. It was not that he was exceptionally graceful or smooth but that he was beautifully co-ordinated. His strokes were sound, his reflexes were quick, he was indecently fast of foot, and no amount of exertion seemed to bring a bead of sweat to his brow.’

In one of his favourite training exercises, Khan would stand a racquet upside down against the wall at the corner of the court and hit the ball from long-range into the tiny gap between the racquet’s handle and the edge of the side wall. He was known for his idiosyncratic command of English, in which his sentences often missed out words. A 2009 documentary about him alluded to that trait in its title, which was one of his mantras: Keep eye on ball.

Khan moved to the US in the 1960s when he was offered a coaching position in Detroit. He later settled in the Denver suburb of Aurora, where he died of congestive heart failure. Hi precise age is uncertain: his relatives told the AP news agency that he had never had a birth certificate, but they celebrated his birthday on July 1^st. Their best guess was that he was born  in 1914, though some reports suggest 1910.

He competed in the British Open over-60s championship in 2001 when in his mid-eighties. In an exhibition match in 1983, when in his mid-sixties, he beat the best female player in America, Alicia McConnell, who was 19. Even after suffering a broken hip late in life he played squash into his early 90s. Khan raised 12 children with his wife of 65 years, Mehria, who died in 2007. All 7 sons became squash players, most notably Sharif, who won the North American Open 12 times. The ‘Khan Dynasty’ has claimed 23 British Open titles. Khan taught his younger brother, Azam, to play squash. Hashim beat him in 3 finals before Azam won 4 consecutive Opens 1959-62. Hashim’s cousin, Roshan, and nephew,  Mohibullah, each won once and a cousin’s son, Jahangir, took 10 titles between 1982 & 1991. Jansher, another Khan from Peshawar, though no relation, dominated squash in the 1990s.

‘Barely 3 years after Pakistan’s independence in 1947, he became our first-ever sporting hero in 1951 and whatever tribute we can pay will not match his great contribution in inspiring a whole generation,’ Jahangir said.

Dunlop

Michael Dunlop (left) has won 11 TT races since 2009

The Dunlop motorcycling dynasty: Life, death and glory on the roads

By Ben Dirs BBC Sport

"You think it's never going to happen to you - you're always going to be the one who gets away with it." William Dunlop, road racer

Robert Dunlop didn't get away with it. Not this time. So here he is, dying on the side of a road. Just like older brother Joey, eight years earlier. Local heroes - united by blood, glory on two wheels and the violence of their endings.

Robert's sons William and Michael were riding behind their dad when his engine seized and he flew off the front of his bike. "I held his hand and prayed he'd be all right," says Michael. William spent the following night in his garage, tinkering with his machine, to make it go quicker.

Before the 2008 North West 200, one of the world's fastest road race meetings on Northern Ireland's north coast, Robert predicted a Dunlop victory in the race that killed him (Robert's fatal crash happened during 250cc practice). A day later, both his boys were back in the paddock - determined to ride, perhaps make their dad a prophet.

"I didn't go back out in memory of my dad, though, I did it because I wanted to race," William, who was 22 at the time, tells BBC Sport. "It sounds selfish, but that's just the way it is."

Joey Dunlop's fame in Northern Ireland was on a par with George Best and Alex Higgins

On race day proper, William's bike failed on the grid but Michael's grew wings. The day after taking the chequered flag amid wildly emotional scenes in Portstewart, Michael, 19, was shouldering his dad's coffin.

All this suffering, all this ecstasy, it's no wonder they made a film about it. Road,  recently released on DVD and narrated by Liam Neeson, another of County Antrim's favourite sons, is heartbreaking, frightening, mysterious and not by Disney.

"It certainly shows the dark side," says William. "But when I watch it I don't see the sadness, it just makes me proud of what my father and uncle achieved."

Joey is the film's star and one of the least likely leading men in cinematic history. A shy, taciturn man who hated his fame, Joey made his life significantly more complicated than it might have been by winning a record 26 races at the Isle of Man TT and five world championships in a row in the 1980s. In Northern Ireland, he was as big as George Best.

The Dunlop dynasty - Victories in Isle of Man TT, North West 200 & Ulster Grand Prix
Joey Dunlop	Robert Dunlop	William Dunlop	Michael Dunlop
IOM TT: 26	IOM TT: 5	IOM TT: 0	IOM TT: 11
NW 200: 13	NW 200: 15	NW 200: 3	NW 200: 4
Ulster GP: 24	Ulster GP: 9	Ulster GP: 7	Ulster GP: 6

"He looked like a van driver," says Joey's former team-mate and fellow road racing legend John McGuinness. When Joey wasn't racing he was driving his van to Romania or Bosnia and handing out food to orphans, cameras not invited.

That Joey seemed permanently wreathed in the tragedy of others only made him seem more invincible by association.

At the 1979 North West, Joey lost his childhood friend Frank Kennedy. The following year, at the same event, Joey lost Mervyn Robinson, his brother-in-law and another member of the so-called 'Armoy Armada'. 

In 2008, Robert Dunlop was killed during practice for the 250cc race at the North West 200

At the 1994 Isle of Man TT, a wheel came off Robert's bike and he collided with a stone wall. It might have been a tree, a telegraph pole or any other humdrum piece of 'furniture', as riders euphemistically call it, that you wouldn't want to collide with at 150mph.

Robert was lucky to survive but was left with a mangled arm and a shortened leg. "You get hurt, you think about quitting and then you get better," he said, having announced his shock comeback only two years later.

"It's a drug," says William, "which is why my dad just couldn't walk away, even when he'd had these bad injuries and he wasn't the rider he used to be. At the time I thought 'why are you doing this?' But now I understand."

Joey couldn't walk away either, not even after securing a glorious third Isle of Man TT hat-trick of wins in 2000,  at the age of 48. Less than a month later, Joey died after crashing into trees at a minor race meeting in Estonia.

"All those thousands of times he'd thrown his leg over a bike," says Joey's long-time mechanic Sam Graham. "But all it takes is one split second."

Graham tells how Joey, who always rode in a yellow helmet and favoured the number three, would talk to fairies and wave to magpies while driving across the Isle of Man in his van. But stone walls and trees don't care much for superstitions.

Robert was devastated by his older brother and hero's death but managed to make sense of it. "Better being killed on a motorbike than lying for six months unwell and dying at the end of it," he said.

Fifty-thousand mourners attended the funeral of this intensely private and humble man, who spent his final night on earth sleeping across the front two seats of his van, despite being booked into a hotel suite that bore his name.

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Watch the Dunlop brothers riding the NW 200 race in Northern Ireland

There are those who view road racers in a less flattering light. After French rider Franck Petricola was badly injured  on the opening day of this year's North West, a writer on the Belfast Telegraph said he was a "glorified sensation-seeker" rather than a "brave hero". A day after the article was published, Englishman Simon Andrews was killed after colliding with a kerbstone.

But the response to the article was unanimous in its condemnation. One reader suggested the journalist in question should visit the grave of David Jefferies,  who died at the Isle of Man TT in 2003. On the Yorkshireman's headstone is written: "Those who risk nothing do nothing, achieve nothing, become nothing."

But even the riders themselves recognise the inherent selfishness of their sport. If road racing is part of the fabric of Northern Irish life, as Neeson proclaims in the film, then it is a torn and tattered tapestry, however vibrant its colours.

"Most definitely we're selfish," says William, who broke his left leg in a crash at this year's Isle of Man TT. "I got away with it last time and as soon as I was well again I jumped straight back on a bike.

"It's a great life being on the edge all the time. I don't care, I guess that's what it is. Maybe if I had a kid, that might change me. But I can't see it."

Michael and William Dunlop are brothers off the road and fierce competitors on it

In the film, Michael cries when describing the look in his granny's eyes at Robert's funeral. "It will haunt me for the rest of my life," he says. "I've never felt for somebody as much in my life."

But Michael, road racing's undisputed current king and a man McGuinness once told me "likes to kill dead things" on a bike, is every bit as ferocious when defending his beloved sport from those he perceives to be ignorant outsiders.

"I don't expect them to judge my life, because I don't judge their lives," says Michael, who has won 11 races at the Isle of Man TT, including eight at the last two meetings. "So I don't care what people think. The media want to write stuff but they have no idea of what road racing means to riders deep down."

Michael, who has no time for any spiritual mumbo-jumbo, is unable or unwilling - probably both - to let us in on road racing's deep secrets: "Unless you've experienced it, it's not possible to describe what it's like."

Instead, Michael will tell you he just throws his leg over a bike and rips it - and that he'll be the one who gets away with it. That's all we need to know.