Ramit Tandon makes history as Columbia Athletics Hall of Fame's first squash player

Columbia University confirmed on July 16 that its 2026 Athletics Hall of Fame class includes 22 individual inductees and four teams, spanning ten sports programmes and more than a century of the university's sporting history.

Among the men's modern-era inductees is Kolkata-born squash player Ramit Tandon, who left a career on Wall Street to pursue the PSA World Tour.

The formal induction will take place on October 22 at a black-tie ceremony at Cipriani 25 Broadway, kicking off Columbia's Homecoming Weekend.

For Tandon, the honour carries two historic firsts.

"An Indian being honoured at an American university, being the first Indian to be in the Hall of Fame, and then obviously my sport, squash, is not as famous as baseball or basketball or tennis for that matter," he told The Bridge over the phone.

"So, to be the first squash player also in that list is extremely, extremely special."

From Wall Street to the PSA Tour

Tandon's path to a professional squash career was anything but conventional. He arrived at Columbia in 2011 as India's junior number one, Asia's number two and the world's fifth-ranked junior, having already won six national junior titles.

But rather than turning professional straight out of college, he spent two years working full-time at a New York hedge fund, training on the side and sparring with top-20 players in the city between shifts.

It was only in 2018, in his mid-twenties, that he gave up finance to chase the tour full-time, a decision that took him from outside the world's top 400 to inside the top 65 within a year of turning pro.

He has since won four PSA Tour titles, represented India at the 2018 Asian Games, where he won a team bronze, and represented India at the 2018 Commonwealth Games in Gold Coast, partnering Vikram Malhotra in the men's doubles.

His highest career ranking came in October 2024, when he broke into the world's top 30.

The Columbia years

At Columbia, Tandon captained the Lions to a No. 2 national ranking. He was a three-time All-Ivy League selection, earned CSA All-America First Team honours, won the Skillman Award for sportsmanship and the Maniatty Award as Columbia's top student-athlete, and was a four-time team MVP.

He was absolutely clear about how much the university shaped him as a player. "The harsh reality is, when you break down the athletic ability of Columbia University and compare it to our nation, I think Columbia would have produced more Olympic medalists than India has," he says.

"I had some of the best players in the world to spar with. I had access to the whole Columbia infrastructure, the strength and conditioning, the sports science, and the coaching team. I think all put together, it definitely helped me improve as a player."

He points to former world No. 1 Ali Farag, who came through Harvard's collegiate system, as evidence that the American university model can produce world-class players without forcing athletes to choose between academics and elite sport.

A week in Chennai

Asked for his favourite Columbia memory, Tandon doesn't pick a college match.

Instead, he recalls the week Columbia allowed him to return home to represent India.

"I actually came back and represented India in the World Cup Under-21, which was played at the Express Avenue Mall in Chennai," he recalls.

"It was wonderful for an institution like Columbia to give me a week off school to go back and represent my country, and then we actually did extremely well, we lost in the final to Egypt."

"I think it's the only time India has won a medal at the Under-21 World Cup. A silver is the highest medal we have achieved."

It remains a rare team podium finish for Indian squash at that age-group level, and one Tandon still counts among the defining moments of his college years alongside the friendships and mentors, including several professors, that he says have stayed with him since.

The bigger argument

Drawing on his experience at Columbia, Tandon argues that stronger integration between education and elite sport could help improve India's sporting ecosystem.

Tandon believes India's Olympic performance is influenced not only by talent, but also by gaps in education and athlete support systems.

"India is in a weird situation where some athletes come from backgrounds that are overexposed and some from underexposed backgrounds, and we don't have the right balance. The whole anti-doping issue right now is because of a lack of knowledge, a lack of education about what we're consuming as athletes," he adds.

His own adjustment to Columbia wasn't instant; he says it took him the better part of a year to get used to fending for himself in a new country, from cooking to laundry to simply finding his footing away from a support system he'd taken for granted back home.

It's an experience he now hopes India's own institutions can shorten for the next generation of student-athletes. "I would like to see, in the next decade or so, the big universities, the IITs, the IIMs also striving for that kind of balance, where they have world-class programmes within the educational system," he says.

"I don't think I can make the change, but I can be vocal about the fact that that's something missing in our country. The people in charge should probably look towards making it," he concludes.