My wish list for sport in 2026

Go then, inch up a rock wall for the first time.

- Rohit Brijnath Assistant Sports Editor

Get in a canoe and cut the water. Run one kilometre further and feel the ragged, reviving breath of exhaustion. Toss your age aside. Heingchul Shin ran the Boston Marathon in 2025 in 3:19:10. He was 70.I wish all this for you in 2026. I wish you'd hang out at practice while a national athlete labours. A diver falling stylishly from 10m. Shannon Tan hitting a hundred wedges. Repetition is boring yet it’s a devotional prayer. Greatness is an act of faith. Academics can wait, for some young people have an adventurous spirit which deserves to be unshackled and celebrated.

I wish you watch a sport you never have. At the world scrabble championship, the 2025 winner Adam Logan got 103 points for the word “infamies”. On farmer’s fields, mad folks without the funds to race professionally, strip down lawn mowers and race them. Cutting-edge stuff apparently.

I wish football coaches aren’t sacked with such haste and that parents at youth competitions just quietly watch instead of berating umpires and demanding from their kids. Your boy isn’t Messi, so just enjoy what he does.

But there’s something I wish you wouldn’t watch and it’s May’s Enhanced Games. Any competition which allows performance enhancement substances is an affront to sport. The purest route to extending human limits remains sweat. “The more you actually move with the pain,” said marathoner Eliud Kipchoge, “that’s where success is.”