More than 100,000 athletes in around 30,000 competitions spread across the globe will drop every last drop of sweat over the next 12 months in search of a place in the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, an effort in which they will end up on the road. nine out of 10.
The figures are provided by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and show how intense the pre-Olympic year 2023 will be for tens of thousands of competitors who are eager to participate in the biggest event on the calendar.
From the men’s handball world championships to be held in January to the women’s world championships to be decided in December, including the judo world championships in May, swimming in July, athletics and men’s basketball in August, gymnastics in October, the European Under-21 men’s football and the women’s Eurobasket in June or the volleyball pre-Olympics in September, every day, every week of the year, there will be Olympic places in dispute.
The multiple regional sports events that will be held in 2023 will also play a fundamental role in the process. Among them, the European Games in Krakow, the Asian Games in Hangzhou, the African Games in Accra and the Pan American Games in Santiago de Chile, in which a number A record 33 modalities will qualify for Paris 2024.
Tennis, premiere
The 2023 sports calendar will open, as usual, in Australia and with tennis, but with a new substantial competition, the United Cup, a mixed team tournament that scores for the professional circuits and that has convinced outstanding names such as Iga Swiatek, Alexander Zverev or Rafael Nadal.
The Spanish player, number two in the world, faces a key season to find out his future on the circuit, after a 2022 in which he had a brilliant start, with two Grand Slams, and an end in which injuries gave him little respite . His performance next year is one of the great unknowns of the sport.
It is also the scope of the meteoric career of the current leader of the ATP, the also Spanish Carlos Alcaraz, recovered from an injury in November.
New format
The Club World Cup in Morocco (February 1-11) will kick off the major international soccer competitions, including the Women’s World Cup, between July and August, held in Australia and New Zealand.
It will be the ninth edition of the tournament and the first with 32 teams, the same number with which the men’s World Cup was played in Qatar. The Americans will be out for their fifth title, which would be their third in a row.
Among the qualified teams —there are three places to be assigned— are those of Spain, with an open crisis due to the differences between the coach Jorge Vilda and a group of players, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Costa Rica. They will debut Morocco, the Philippines, Vietnam, Ireland and Zambia.
Multi-venue tournaments
That women’s World Cup and the aforementioned handball ones, the men’s in Poland and Sweden and the women’s in Denmark, Norway and Sweden, are a sample of the increasingly pronounced tendency to organize major competitions in several countries at the same time.
The men’s basketball world cup will also be played between August and September according to these parameters: Jakarta, in Indonesia, Okinawa, in Japan, and three stadiums in the vicinity of Manila, in the Philippines, will be its venues.
Spain will defend the title won in 2019, with the endorsement of the European title they won in 2022.
warriors in distress
The Golden State Warriors, who won their fourth NBA title in eight years in 2022, have three wins and 16 losses at home this season, a statistic that raises some doubts about their ability to renew their hegemony.
But the team from La Bahía also went from less to more in their last title, which only adds more interest to a competition in which, on an individual level, the star to watch closely in 2023 will undoubtedly be Luka Doncic , which closes 2022 with a triple double never seen before in the NBA: 60 points, 21 rebounds and ten assists for the Dallas Mavericks.— EFE
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