How it unfolded
This tournament ran November 5 to 11 in Toulouse, France. New Zealand's Ross Norman had lost to Jahangir Khan in the Cairo final a year earlier, 9-4, 4-9, 9-5, 9-1, and in the time since, Jahangir still had not lost a single match. This time, Norman took the first two games, 9-5 and 9-7. Jahangir fought back to take the third 9-7, but the fourth went 9-1, effectively one-sided by the end. Jahangir lost for the first time since falling to Geoff Hunt in Bromley in April 1981, a gap of five years and seven months and 555 matches. That number stands as the Guinness World Record for the longest winning streak in top-level professional sport, with no comparable case in any other sport. For Norman, this was his only world title, and it remains the only time a New Zealand man has ever won the World Championship.
Why it still matters
The very concept of invincibility broke apart in this match. The number 555 became the first statistic squash reaches for whenever it needs to explain itself to the outside world, and while Jahangir kept winning the British Open through 1991, he took only one more World Open, in 1988 in Amsterdam. Jansher Khan's era begins the year after this loss.