Geoff Hunt was inducted into the Sport Australia Hall of Fame in 1985 as an Athlete Member and was elevated to Legend of Australian Sport in 2024 for his contribution to the sport of squash.

Geoff Hunt combined elite talent, intense work ethic, determination, discipline and dogged court craft to become one of the world’s greatest squash players.
In doing so, he helped to popularise the sport during one of its rich golden eras.
Having won the Australian Junior Championships in 1963, Hunt went on to secure the Australian Amateur Squash Championships two years later and would win the biannual International Amateur Individual Championship on three occasions (1967, 1969 and 1971), including the inaugural title.
He was ranked the world’s No.1 player from 1975 to 1980.
During that time, he won the inaugural World Open Squash Championship in 1976 – the first of four victories in the prestigious event, including 1977, 1979 and 1980.
He won the British Open on eight occasions (1969, 1974, 1976-81), and was the Australian Open champion eight times (1971, 1974, 1976-81).
Hunt won 178 of the 215 tournaments he contested.
He was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in 1972 and became a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in 1982.
He was also inducted into the World Squash Federation Hall of Fame and was made a Legend of the Squash Australia Hall of Fame.

Few Australians have towered over their chosen sport as clinically efficient or as successfully as Geoff Hunt did over a two-decade period of squash dominance.
Hunt achieved his stunning success on the global stage with a minimum of fuss and fanfare, proving a contrast to many higher profile superstars of other sports at the time.
He was relatively quiet and mild-mannered on the squash court, preferring to let his racquet to do most of the talking.
But he was intensely driven and unwilling to show any form of weakness.
Hunt’s racquet worked the sort of magic that ensured his dominance in almost every event he entered, while in the process helping to promote squash into the mainstream during the golden era of the sport during the 1970s and ‘80s.
He was introduced to squash from his father Vic, and mother, Connie, who loved fitness and took on the sport to boost their physical activities.
His siblings Bill and Patricia also became elite players.
Hunt was 12 when he took the game on with relish and by the time he was 15 he had won the Victorian Junior Championships.
He would say later: “I decided to try it for myself; I played tennis before that. For two years, I did not miss a day playing squash, including Christmas Day.”
His father encouraged him in a number of different ways, including to never show signs of tiredness to an opponent, and to train throughout the year – not just in the winter months.
Even in his junior years, Hunt had been used to competing against men on his way to the 1965 Australian Amateur Men’s Championship.
He went on to win three World Amateur Championships (1967, 1969 and 1971) before turning professional at 24. Hunt, at the same time, would also win the first three International Amateur Teams Championships with teammates Dick Carter, Ken Hiscoe and Cam Nancarrow.
But not even that changed Hunt’s sense of composure under pressure or sense of fair play.
Hunt would explain: “Wins should be achieved by playing fair and square. Even though I would try as hard as possible every match, and despite what my opponent might do, it was against my principles to cheat by doing things like picking up double bounces or playing on after hitting the ball twice. Squash, to me, is a game of integrity and self-respect.”
Hunt dominated the sport at home and abroad.
On the home front, he won eight Australian Open titles; and on the world stage he won eight British Open championships (1969, 1974, 1976-81).
Hunt won the inaugural World Open in 1976, the first of four victories in the event which included 1977, 1979 and 1980, the 1978 competition didn’t run.
He was ranked the world’s No.1 player from 1975 to 1980, winning 178 of the 215 tournaments he contested throughout his extraordinary career.
After winning his penultimate British Open in 1980, Hunt was described as “the world’s greatest-ever squash player by the British Squash Player, one of the leading squash magazines.
The following year he won an eighth British Open title against the sport’s rising young talent Jahangir Khan in an epic 1981 final that lasted two-and-a-quarter hours.
Hunt’s father described that match as one of the proudest moments in watching his son, saying: “I know plenty of fellows who would have packed up well before it had gone that far.”
Hunt was battling a serious back injury and other ailments at the time, but fought on bravely against the Pakistani teenager who was half his age.
Khan would defeat him in the 1981 World Open on his way to becoming a record-breaking superstar of the sport.
A stress fracture of the lower vertebrae and osteoarthritis finally did what so many of Hunt’s contemporaries couldn’t do – stop him from winning as he was reluctantly forced into retirement in 1982.
He told the media: “I would have liked to have gone on … I was only taking each year as it came along, but I had a more than even chance of taking major titles such as the British and World Open titles this year.
“Jahangir Khan, I think, was the only player who really posed a threat to me and I felt I had a 50-50 chance of beating him too. But the signs are there that Khan will dominate the scene.”
Hunt retired from competitive squash (other than a few wildcard returns), but not from the sport itself.
He went on to coach the next generation of Australian squash stars and was installed as the head coach of the Australian Sports Institute squash program when it opened in 1985, before working as a high performance manager in this country and abroad.

Honours & Awards

• 1972: Made a Member of the Order of the British Empire
• 1982: Made a Member of the Order of Australia
• Inducted into the World Squash Federation (WSF) Hall of Fame
• Inducted into the Squash Australia Hall of Fame as ‘Legend’