From the World Cup to the Olympics, four sports events to look forward to in 2022

Like most things in the world over the past couple of years, sports has been severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. The 2020 Tokyo Olympics were postponed by a year, while Wimbledon 2020 was cancelled entirely. On the other hand, a lot of sporting events were held behind closed doors which is far from ideal as fanfare is of utmost importance.

While there is still a lot of uncertainty around as we come to the end of January, there are many scheduled sporting events for 2022, which one hopes take place as planned. If you a sports fan, here’s a list of four major sport events that you can look forward to this year.

NOTE: Events that occur yearly such as tennis and golf Grand Slams, National Hockey League (NHL), UEFA Champions League etc. have been ignored here.

1) FIFA World Cup (Men’s)

The men’s FIFA World Cup is perhaps the most-followed sporting event in the world. For just the second time, the tournament will be held in Asia, with Qatar being the hosts. Meanwhile, this will also be the first time that the competition is being held during winter in the Northern Hemisphere.

There’s a good chance that we could see Canada at a men’s World Cup for the first time since 1986. With each team having played 10 matches so far in the third round of the CONCACAF World Cup Qualifiers, they find themselves top of the table, with a five-point lead over fourth-placed Panama. That gap is important as the top three teams qualify directly for the main tournament.

2) Winter Olympics

After the Summer Olympics in Tokyo (Japan) last year, the Winter Olympic Games are scheduled to be held in Beijing (China) between February 4-20. Last month, it was announced that players part of the NHL will not take part in the ice hockey event due to postponed matches in the league. In the 2018 Games, Canada won a total of 29 medals – 11 gold, eight silver and 10 bronze.

The aforementioned event will be followed by the Winter Paralympics which is scheduled between March 4-13. Canada won 24 medals at the 2018 version of the event – eight gold, four silver, 16 bronze.

3) Commonwealth Games

The Commonwealth Games are a quadrennial multi-sport event that, as the name suggests, has participants from countries which are a part of the Commonwealth. In 2022, the Games are scheduled to take place from July 28 to August 8 in Birmingham (United Kingdom).

In the previous edition, Canada finished fourth on the medals table, having won 15 golds, 40 silvers and 27 bronzes.

4) World Athletics Championships

The World Athletics Championships were originally scheduled to be held in 2021 but were pushed forward a year due to a clash with the Tokyo Olympics. This edition of the competition is scheduled to be held between July 15-24 in Eugene, the first time it will be held in the United States of America.

There will be 24 events each for women and men (17 track and seven field each), with a 4x400m mixed relay also part of the Championships.