A missed opportunity – Binnie

It was far from the Pan American Games that Christopher Binnie had in mind.

The Jamaican and Caribbean number one was hoping to build upon his silver medal at the Pan American Squash Championships last August in Cayman, which gave him automatic qualification to the Games in Lima, Peru.

However, an injury suffered five weeks before the start of the singles competition and the gruelling schedule of playing singles, doubles, and the team events left Binnie and the team with a decision to make.

“Unfortunately, I tore my calf muscle five weeks before the event, so it was terrible timing because I was playing pretty well, so that’s why we had to decide which event I was going to be playing,” said Binnie.

“Singles and doubles were running at the same time, so we would be playing morning, afternoon and evening events. And we just thought that if we wanted to have a chance to medal in the doubles or in the team event, that we need to rest in one of the other events, so that’s why we ended up choosing doubles and team,” Binnie explained.

And so his Chilean opponent, Maximilliano Camiruaga, won the Round-of-16 match via a walkover, which left Binnie and fellow team-mates Bruce Burrowes and Clive Lewis to channel their focus in the double and team events.

The duo of Burrowes and Binnie went all the way to the quarterfinals of the doubles but fell short to Mexico, the number-one ranked team in the tournament.

“The doubles, we were hoping to medal as well and we got a pretty tough draw against the number one team in the quarterfinals. But we were really close in that match as well. We were close to getting through, but we were on the wrong end of it. We tried our best. We gave it everything we had,” reflected Binnie.

The trio of Binnie, Burrowes, and Lewis was also hoping for more in their Round-of-16 team encounter against Guatemala, who they have a great record against.

Binnie got the Jamaicans off to a good start, but Lewis and Burrowes suffered defeats in their games in straight sets and ultimately lost the match. Jamaica finished in 9th place overall after subsequent wins against Honduras and Chile in the ranking matches.

Binnie saw the defeat as a missed opportunity for the team to go further.

“We started off well. Lewis just had a tough day. He never lost to [Alejandro Franco] before, and that guy is getting a little better. It was a little slow at the start and he found it really difficult to come back once he went down. The third match with Bruce, [Mauricio Munoz] seemed to do a good job of containing Bruce and he just wasn’t able to get a win. It’s the first time that we have lost to Guatemala in quite some time, so it was quite an upset which we were very disappointed in,” he said.

The team now looks ahead to the Central American and Caribbean championships to be held in two weeks and the World Team Championships in December in Washington DC. Binnie hopes that the team will fare much better than they did in Peru and use the experience to challenge for medals in the various tournaments.

“We are looking forward to those tournaments. I think we can do well in those especially the Caribbean. I hope to do well there, and then I’ll start the pro circuit again in September and have events going down into December which will help me get sharp for the World Teams which we hope to do a lot better than we did at Pan Ams,” Binne said.