LONDON – All sporting roads lead to Paris in 2024 with the first post-Covid Olympic Games looming large on the horizon, but the two-week extravaganza will merely be the centrepiece for another 12 months of compelling theatre.
Four continental football tournaments, beginning in January with the Asian Cup in Qatar and African Nations Cup in the Ivory Coast, will mean little respite for players and fans.
Germany will stage the European Championship in June and July. At the same time, the Copa America takes place in the United States in what will be regarded as a rehearsal for the 2026 World Cup.
Saudi Arabia will enhance its status as a global sporting hub in February when Oleksandr Usyk and Tyson Fury meet in Riyadh to decide the undisputed heavyweight boxing title – a clash in which the hype will reach stratospheric proportions.
As further proof of the Gulf states’ appetite for staging major events, swimmers and divers will get an early chance to put down markers for Paris when the World Aquatics Championships take place in Qatar in February – the first time it has been held in the region.
After a minuscule break, the tennis season resumes days after Christmas and the Australian Open will welcome Spanish great Rafael Nadal, who is returning to Grand Slam action in what will probably be his farewell year.
The Super Bowl will dominate the US sporting narrative in the build-up to the February showpiece in Nevada and in Australia, 2024 kicks off in traditional fashion with the third and final Test in the cricket Series against Pakistan.
The sporting conveyor belt, it seems, gets more and more loaded each year – but once every four years everything, for a few weeks at least, bows before the Olympics.
Paris is, and will continue to be, dogged by the usual gripes about staging the greatest show on earth.
Transport issues and security concerns are par for the course but organisers are also contending with an outbreak of bedbugs and pollution in the River Seine.
By the time thousands of athletes arrive in the French capital, however, the focus will likely switch to a return to near Olympic normality, after the delayed and Covid-impacted Tokyo Games played out in deserted stadiums.
International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Thomas Bach says Paris will be a “new era” for the Games – more inclusive and more sustainable than ever before.
Russian and Belarusian athletes, competing as neutrals, will also be welcomed with open arms, according to Paris 2024 chief Tony Estanguet.
While great sporting sagas will unfold around the globe in 2024 with feats of human skill, endurance and athleticism, the narrative will have less edifying battles.
The European Court of Justice’s ruling in December has raised the spectre of civil war in football, with the proposed European Super League back on the agenda.
Golf also appears at a crossroads, with the Saudi Arabia-funded LIV Golf likely to keep disrupting the status quo over the next 12 months, as more top players defect to the money-spinning tour.
Sport, increasingly, is ruthless business where money alone talks and the joy is ebbing away.
Thankfully, however, it can still be fun as an action-packed year awaits. REUTERS
