South America’s first ever world champion Diego Elias has been nominated as squash’s candidate for The World Games (TWG) Athlete of the Year, following an historic year for the Peruvian.

TWG Athlete of the Year is an annual competition by the International World Games Association, which governs The World Games under the patronage of the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

Voting for this year’s competition opens on 9 January at theworldgames.org, with the finals taking place from 22 January.

Squash has been well represented at the Athlete of the Year awards in recent years, with Malaysia’s Nicol David being voted TWG Greatest Athlete of All Time in 2020, while France’s Victor Crouin and Egypt’s Amina Orfi reached the finals stage of the Athlete of the Year for 2022 and 2023, respectively.

This year, Elias has the chance to join his fellow squash stars in TWG record books.

In May, the current World No.3 made history by becoming the first ever South American squash player to be crowned world champion after defeating Egypt’s Mostafa Asal in the CIB PSA World Championships in Cairo, with that final victory following impressive wins over World No.1 Ali Farag in the semi-final and former world champion Karim Abdel Gawad in the quarter-final.

Elias added four more trophies to his burgeoning collection in 2024, with the Peruvian also winning the Motor City Open, the Canadian Open, the Qatar Classic and the Pan American Championship.

Last month, Elias capped off the year by making more history for Peru, with the 28-year-old leading his country to its debut at the WSF World Squash Team Championships at Hong Kong Football Club. Elias was a crucial part of the team, winning all seven of his matches as Peru finished 18th out of 26.

How to vote for Athlete of the Year

Voting for TWG Athlete of the Year opens Thursday 9 January from 12:00 (GMT) at theworldgames.org.

You can cast your votes once every 24 hours. Each time you vote, you choose two candidates; two votes go to your first-choice candidate and one vote goes to a second-choice candidate. A vote given to one candidate only will not be registered.

From Wednesday 22nd January at 12:00 GMT, only the 10 highest-ranked candidates at that time will continue in the race, and these candidates will then re-start with 0 votes. Voting ends at 12.00 GMT on Friday 31st January.

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