The 27-year-old, from Lima, made even more history by becoming the first non-Egyptian to win the PSA World Championship in Cairo, Egypt since Gregory Gaultier of France in 2015, and ended Egypt’s World#1 Ali Farag’s run of three consecutive world titles. By capturing squash’s most prestigious trophy, Elias is now back to World #3 and sits less than 50 points behind World #2 Paul Coll of New Zealand
Elias gave up only 1 game throughout the entire World Championships as he battled past previous World Champions Karim Abdel Gawad and World No.1 Ali Farag
In the final, Elias controlled the first two games but the “Raging Bull” Asal, found his way into the 3rd the game with the massive support of the massive Egyptian crowd but Elias hung tough to force a tiebreak, winning 12-10 to secure the in squash’s biggest title in the world!!
“I just can’t believe it. It’s been a dream week since the start and I’m super happy having my whole team here and all the people who are supporting me back home,” he said afterwards.
“All the people who have been helping me with my squash and Jonathon [Power] was here at the start of the week. Also having Greg [Gaultier] has been a massive help for me the last few years – all of them made a big difference in my game and I can’t thank them enough. I also want to thank all my sponsors that support me all these years. I just can’t believe it.
“It’s going to huge, it’s going to be massive in Peru for all the people supporting me all these years. To be honest I don’t know how I feel right now, I haven’t processed it yet and I’m just very happy.”
DIEGO ELIA is only the second Pan American to win a WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP since Canada’s JONATHAN POWER defeated Peter Nicol 3-1 back in 1998.
Result [3] Diego Elias (PER) bt [4] Mostafa Asal (EGY) 3-0: 11-6, 11-5, 12-10 (61m)