Satomi Watanabe has been nominated as squash’s candidate for The World Games (TWG) Athlete of the Year, following an historic year for the Japanese No.1.
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 12 January at theworldgames.org, with the winner set to be announced on 2 February.
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, Egypt’s Amina Orfi and Peru’s Diego Elias all reached the finals stage of the Athlete of the Year Awards for 2022, 2023 and 2024 respectively.
This year, World No.6 Watanabe has the chance to join her fellow squash stars in the record books following a monumental 2025 in which she made national history by becoming the first Japanese squash player to win a gold medal at The World Games and was her nation’s first ever representative at the PSA Squash Tour finals.
Among Watanabe’s other achievements in 2025 include winning all her matches at the SDAT Squash World Cup to help Japan win a bronze medal, as well as winning the PSA Squash in the Land title with a big win over top seed Amanda Sobhy. Watanabe also picked up three silver medals in 2025, finishing as runner up at the New Zealand Open, Palm Hills Open and China Open, with her run to the final of the latter involving a shock win over current World No.1 Hania El Hammamy.
On being nominated, Watanabe said: “This is a prestigious award and I am really honoured and so happy that I’ve been nominated.
Reflecting on her historic title win at The World Games in August, Watanabe continued: “I think it was the setup in Chengdu, it was really big and it felt a little different to any other tournament I’d played. Because it’s only held once in four years, it is like being in the Olympics and I could feel the intensity, even in the village or even at the venue, as well as at the squash court.”
Arriving into the tournament, the World No.6 shared how she felt pressure representing Japan, especially with her No.1 seeding.
“I was a bit nervous going into that tournament and on top of that, I started as the top seed for the first time in a while, because I have always been an underdog for many years, and everyone was expecting me to win.
“I was really pleased that everyone was telling me that, ‘oh you have a good chance’ and everything, but at the same time, it was quite hard to not to get that into my head too much. I started off really nervous.”
“But as for the tournament, the venue was great, and I had my teammates around me and it was a really good atmosphere as well. I really enjoyed the tournament itself, and I was very happy to finish with the gold medal!”
How to vote for Athlete of the Year
Voting for TWG Athlete of the Year opens on Monday 12 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 Monday 26th 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. The winner will be announced on Monday 2 February.
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