A New Year wish list: Athletes take control

Well, hello, hello, hello. Or rather goodbye, sayonara, alvida 2023. Thank you for many happy memories and no thanks for the rest of the rubbish you dished up.

- Sharda Ugra

What could 2024 possibly bring? What would we want it to? To start with, please God, a proper re-setting of the post-COVID sports calendar. No more wrapping our heads around the 2020 Tokyo Olympics which took place in 2021, the 2021 World Athletics Championships (WAC) edging over to 2022 followed 13 months later by Budapest WAC. And the 2022 Asian Games being played out in September 2023.

But who would want to be FINA whose World Aquatics Championships are still drowning in the whirlpool of postponement and suspensions triggered by Covid and the Ukraine war. Now there is a world championships every year from 2022 to 2025; with FINA's biennial WAC tempo only resuming in 2027, as far as we know. Or FINA hopes.

Just before we head off to make those unfulfilled resolutions, here's Left Field's worldfamous-on-this-computer New Year's wish list. Just like was said in December 2022, what follows is a revelation of what should become real in the year ahead but most definitely will not.