The Legend Of The Khan (Part IV)

Learning from the way his father Nasrullah had coached all-time great Jonah Barrington, Rehmat oversaw a singular and almost manic training regime that didn’t just propel Jahangir to the top of the Squash fraternity.

It propelled him miles and miles above the next best player.

There was nothing extraordinarily unusual about Jahangir’s skill level or shot making ability either. It was his fitness that stood head and shoulders above his competitors.

He didn’t just dominate squash for the next decade. He obliterated all available competition.

As part of the most hallowed streak in sports history, he won the 1982 International Squash Players Association Championship without dropping a point!

Starting with the 1981 World Open, (where he defeated Geoff Hunt at the age of 17 to become the youngest world champion), Jahangir embarked on an unbeaten streak of 555 professional matches spanning over five years!

From 1982 to 1991, he won all ten British Open titles, played only two North American and Canadian Opens each (winning them both) and in 1985, after thrashing Chris Dittmar in the British Open Final, 'concorded' across the Atlantic to win his first round match in the North American Open less than 24 hours from his time of victory!

Although he finally relinquished his hold on the British Open due to the arrival of another unrelated Khan from Nawakille (Jansher), Jahangir made a couple of more World Open finals before a decade’s worth of grueling training regimes caught up with his thirty year old body.

When people asked Jahangir how he was the fittest player in a sport that requires only the fittest to play, he downplayed his response. According to him, he never followed a strict training regime or a particular diet.

Apart from always ensuring that he drank two glasses of milk a day, his training usually began with a nine mile jog which he would complete in over an hour at a leisurely pace (aerobic).

Then he would do numerous sets of short, timed sprints (anaerobic). Later, he would weight train in the gym and finally cool down in a pool. Following this routine loosely for five days, he would match practice on the sixth day and rest on the seventh.

Sometimes, he would run on custom-built tracks or asphalt roads, grass fields or sea shores and knee deep water. Often enough, he would head up to higher altitudes where the oxygen was lower.

And this was the training regime of one of the world’s fittest athletes!

Former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, in his autobiography, stated that “If Hollywood only knew his (Jahangir’s) story of tragedy, grit and determination; it would make another movie like Chariots of Fire. Many of those who know him consider him the best athlete that ever lived.”

Without the help of the British, the Pashtuns or Pathans would have continued to herd cattle near the breathtaking retreats of the Khyber Pass.

Many of them still do.

Descendants of the defenders of the pass themselves, to be a Pathan is to have an innate sense of pride and fierceness in one’s self.

None exemplified these traits more than the entire dynasty of Khans that ruled the squash world for decades. Each one of them was a special, accomplished squash player in their own right and could claim to be the best of his era.

What of the sickly boy that wasn’t allowed to play as a child? He can gloriously state that he was simply the best of them all.

And that would be more than enough; for if you are the best of the Khans, you must be the best of the best.