Anahat Singh who created history for India with a world squash title

Some victories are measured in medals, and some are measured by choices that made long before anyone was watching. When 18-year-old Anahat stood a top of the podium at the World Junior Squash Championships in Canada, holding India’s tricolor and smiling through a moment years in the making. She had become India's first world junior squash champion, by defeating Egypt's Ruqayya Salem in straight games to end the country's long wait for the title. But behind that single moment lies a quieter journey one built less on talent alone and more on a series of deliberate choices a teenager kept making, when easier paths were available.

Squash, interestingly, wasn't where it all began. Born in New Delhi 2008, Anahat grew up in a house where sport was simply the family language both her parents had played field hockey, and another member of the family was into tennis. It was almost sure that she'd gravitate toward some sport or another. What wasn't sure was which one. Badminton came first, sparked by the kind of admiration millions of young Indians felt for PV Sindhu, and for a while, a badminton racquet seemed like her future. Squash arrived by coincidence no grand plan, no early prediction of a world title, just tried it almost by chance. Somewhere between those first practice sessions and her earliest tournaments, she found something in the sport that challenged her differently than any other sport. That unremarkable decision ended up reshaping the rest of her life.

What rarely makes it into the highlight reel is everything that happens in between - the birthdays missed, the festivals spent away from family, the training sessions that start before the rest of the city has even stirred. People tend to see the medal. Very few see the routine that built it. Before the headlines were taking her name as India's first world junior champion, Anahat was quietly building up the kind of results that shows this was coming. She won the British Junior Open at the Under-11 level, owning the titles across Europe and the United States. At 14, she represented India at the 2022 Commonwealth Games, becoming the youngest Indian athlete and created a milestone that looks less like a coincidence and more like the natural step for someone who had spent years in absorbing lessons from her wins and her losses.

But the most striking part of Anahat's story is how she made decision between her sport and college. Like many students her age, she had a future mapped out around university- in her case, Harvard, following the path her elder sister had already walked. Then, somewhere along the way, life has something else for her a far more difficult question than any opponent ever had: could she really chase two dreams at once, or did one deserve her full attention?

She chose to defer college and take a gap year, stepping away from academics entirely to focus on squash as she builds toward the Asian Games and, further down the line, the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics — the first edition of the Games to include squash. For most families, pausing before college feels like a gamble, a risk taken on uncertain ground. For Anahat, it reads more like an investment — a bet placed deliberately on a bigger, longer-term goal. Making that call at 18, with a spot at one of the world's most sought-after universities essentially on hold, takes a particular kind of courage that most adults struggle to summon, let alone a teenager still finding her footing in senior competition.

What stands out most, is the choices she has made. There's no manufactured drama, no oversized declarations about destiny or greatness. Just the steady, understated confidence of someone who has already done the hard part — choosing squash over comfort, discipline over convenience — and knows, without needing to say it, that the real work is still ahead of her.