FILE PHOTO: The emblem of the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Video games inside an official Paris 2024 retailer on the Carrousel du Louvre in Paris, France, December 21, 2023. REUTERS/Sarah Meyssonnier/File Photograph
LONDON–All sporting roads result in Paris subsequent yr with the primary post-COVID Olympic Video games looming massive on the horizon however the two-week extravaganza will merely be the centerpiece for one more 12 months of compelling theatre.
4 continental soccer tournaments starting with the Asian Cup in Qatar and Africa Cup of Nations within the Ivory Coast in January, will imply little respite for gamers and followers.
Germany will stage the European Championship in June and July with the hosts operating out of a time to place collectively a staff able to reviving previous glories. On the similar time, the Copa America takes place in america in what will likely be considered a rehearsal for the 2026 World Cup.
Saudi Arabia will improve its standing as a world sporting hub in February when Oleksandr Usyk and Tyson Fury meet in Riyadh to resolve the undisputed heavyweight boxing title — a conflict through which the hype will attain stratospheric proportions.
As additional proof, if any had been wanted, of Gulf states’ urge for food for staging main occasions, swimmers and divers will get an early probability to place down markers for Paris when the Aquatics World Championships takes place in Qatar in February — the primary time it has been held within the area.
After a miniscule break, the tennis season resumes days after Christmas and the Australian Open will welcome Spanish nice Rafa Nadal who’s returning to Grand Slam motion in what’s going to in all probability be his farewell yr.
NFL’s Tremendous Bowl will dominate the U.S. sporting narrative within the build-up to the February showpiece in Nevada and in Australia, 2024 kicks off in conventional vogue with a cricket check collection towards Pakistan.
The sporting conveyor belt, it appears, will get increasingly more loaded every year — however as soon as each 4 years every little thing, for a couple of weeks not less than, bows earlier than the Olympic Video games.
Paris is, and can proceed to be, dogged by the standard gripes about staging the best present on earth.
Transport points and safety considerations are par for the course however organisers are additionally contending with an outbreak of mattress bugs, air pollution within the River Seine and a stink about Paris’s conventional avenue booksellers being dispersed.
By the point hundreds of sportsmen and girls arrive within the French capital, nonetheless, the main focus will doubtless swap to a return to close Olympic normality after the delayed and COVID-impacted Tokyo Video games performed out in abandoned stadiums.
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Worldwide Olympic Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach says Paris will likely be “new period” for the Video games — extra inclusive and extra sustainable than ever earlier than.
Russian and Belarusian athletes, competing as neutrals, can even be welcomed with open arms, in response to Paris 2024 chief Tony Estanguet. His opinion, nonetheless, won’t be shared by all.
The world’s oldest sporting competitors, the America’s Cup, returns in October when Barcelona hosts the thirty seventh version of the crusing’s blue riband occasion with New Zealand in search of to regain the Auld Mug.
Whereas nice sporting sagas will unfold across the globe in 2024 with feats of human ability, endurance and athleticism, the narrative may have much less edifying battles.
The European Court docket of Justice’s ruling in December has raised the specter of civil conflict in soccer with the proposed European Tremendous League again on the agenda.
Golf additionally seems at a crossroads with the Saudi Arabia-funded LIV Golf prone to proceed to disrupt the established order over the following 12 months with extra high gamers defecting to the money-spinning tour.
Sport, more and more, is ruthless enterprise the place cash alone talks and the enjoyment is ebbing away.
Fortunately, nonetheless, it could nonetheless be enjoyable.
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New Yr’s Day’s sporting program won’t make the headlines however for these attending the Ponteland Wheelbarrow Race in Northumberland, competing in Polar Bear swims in icy Canadian lakes or leaping off Rome’s Cavour Bridge for the annual Tuffo nel Tevere, it’s nonetheless the participating that counts.