With the mystery of the
Tokyo Olympics
at the center of everything, doubts encompass all sports.
Especially in a national key, due to upcoming retirements (Pau Gasol and Alejandro Valverde), injuries (Marc Márquez and Mireia Belmonte), returns (Fernando Alonso) or booming careers (John Rahm).
But also at a global level, with the world marathon record as an achievable goal.
Can Tokyo 2020 be held?
If there is only one question that matters, it is surely this.
The postponement of the Tokyo Olympics was one of the main news of 2020, for what it meant on an emotional level, regardless of the sporting and economic.
The
International Olympic Committee
resisted making the decision as much as it could, but finally in April had to surrender to reality.
It was going to be impossible to hold a global event in the middle of the pandemic, with most athletes confined for months, without even being able to train properly.
July 2021 was the new date chosen to celebrate the most important event in world sport, in which
more than 11,000 athletes
compete
.
Right now, however, it remains an unbearable question whether the Games can be held.
On one side of the scale, the desire to regain normalcy, the monstrous investment made by Japan and the work that thousands of athletes have done for four years - five, actually - to participate in the Olympic event.
In the other, the advance of the pandemic, the different vaccination rates in the world and the constant threat of outbreaks.
What already seems clear is that Tokyo 2020 will be in 2021 or it will no longer be.
2022 is not an option.
Will Messi continue at Barcelona?
Consequences of the pandemic aside, the great sports news of 2020 came through a burofax.
Lionel Messi
sent him
to the FC Barcelona offices to formally announce his desire to leave the Barça club with the release letter last summer.
After many days of speculation, bluffing and bluffing, the Argentine was finally forced to back down and exhaust his contract with the club of his entire life.
A link that ends on June 30.
From there, nobody knows what will happen to Messi's future.
Not even himself, or so he says.
The
elections to the presidency
, scheduled for January 24, aim to be decisive in elucidating the future of the Argentine.
Whoever wins, with Joan Laporta and Víctor Font as the main candidates, the new president will have to face the challenge of convincing Messi that he must continue at the Camp Nou for at least one more season, which would already be the eighteenth.
The Argentine, if he maintains his desire to continue at Barça, will have to lower his economic claims, which are now unaffordable for the club.
Although he is no longer who he was -the best in the world-, Messi continues to be the shield of Barça.
At least the next six months.
Will Pau Gasol return to the courts?
In March,
it will be two years
since Pau Gasol last stepped on a basketball court.
Since then, the best player in the history of Spain has battled against himself to bid a farewell at the height of his legend, at the Tokyo Olympics.
The pandemic has granted him an extension, but it remains a mystery if the oldest of the Gasols will be able to compete in his fifth Olympic event, already 41 years old, and, even more uncertain, if he will be able to say goodbye to basketball with a fourth medal hanging from his neck, behind two silver and one bronze.
Gasol continues with the process of recovering from the stress fracture in his left foot that has kept him inactive for the last 21 months and faces the key moment of the final stretch of his career: finding a team in which to prove himself and feel again player or definitely throw in the towel.
«I want to have the opportunity to contribute, to feel necessary.
Not just to be there.
That is not what I am.
I want to fully enjoy it, but competing ", said just a month ago on ESPN the greatest exponent of the golden generation of Spanish basketball.
Will Nadal surpass Federer?
Rafa Nadal's is a story repeated in these two pages, that of
stratospheric national idols that extend their fullness
far beyond what would be reasonable.
Although he is already 34 years old and has been at the highest level for 15 years, the Spaniard continues to be anchored in the elite, number two in the ATP ranking and current winner of his 13th Roland Garros, a milestone only at his height.
2021 presents him with a major challenge, the ultimate challenge: to become the tennis player who has won the most Grand Slams in the history of this sport.
Right now, he shares that record with Roger Federer, both winners of 20 grand.
The absence of the Swiss, inactive for almost a year due to injury, at the
Australian Open
will give him a first chance to leave him behind in February.
Although the great occasion will come, as every year, at Roland Garros.
If he achieves a new triumph in the land of Paris, the record will hardly escape it.
At least for now, as Novak Djokovic lurks with 17 titles.
The great threat, however, is represented by the generation that begins to take over from the best trio of tennis players in history.
The Thiem, Medvedev, Tsitsipas and Zverev are already demanding a relief that, for the moment, Nadal refuses to grant.
Will Fernando Alonso fight to win?
Fernando Alonso now has nothing to prove,
when he is 39 years old
and has achieved practically all the challenges that he has proposed in his professional life.
Hence the merit of his tenacity to win again, when he could already be enjoying a comfortable retirement from the circuits.
After two years of absence, the best Spanish driver in history returns to Formula 1 with the same car that made him champion, Renault, and he does so with the undisguised goal of achieving his third world championship, after the two achieved more ago. of a decade, in 2005 and 2006.
Alonso himself knows better than anyone that
2021 will be a year of transition
, with his sights set on the 2022 regulation change. Fighting for victories will be extremely difficult and if it is not directly impossible it is because he is the one who will be at the wheel.
"I have no results challenge," he said a few weeks ago, already satisfied his ambitions outside of Formula 1 with his double victory at Le Mans and his victories at Daytona and the World Endurance Championship.
His return to Formula 1 will revive the interest of the Spanish public, also revived by the signing of
Carlos Sainz by Ferrari
, who aspires to inaugurate his record of triumphs.
Will Mireia Belmonte get another medal?
If the Tokyo Olympic Games are finally held, Mireia Belmonte already has her
place assured in the 800 and 1,500 meters
, as she achieved the minimum required in her first opportunity.
It happened in early December, in their first official competition in 11 months.
The former was inactive, like everyone else, because of the pandemic.
The last ones, for his passage through the operating room in August to undergo surgery for two inguinal hernias.
At the age of 30, the physical condition in which he will return is unknown, especially since he previously suffered various injuries that have made him
away from the medals since the 2017 World Cup in Budapest
.
He has yet to achieve the minimums for the usual butterfly tests in his program, but he has plenty of time to do it.
On the horizon, a historical challenge: to become the best Spanish Olympic athlete ever.
He currently has four medals, one from David Cal and the same as Saúl Craviotto, who will also aspire to unseat the Galician canoeist.
Will Márquez regain his throne?
Among the many strange circumstances that have surrounded world sport in 2020, one of the most unexpected, strictly sporting, was that Marc Márquez did not achieve his seventh MotoGP title.
A crash in the first race of the season
, at Jerez, ruined his year.
He forced himself to return as soon as possible and that led to more problems with his injured shoulder.
There have been a total of three operations, the last less than a month ago, which have forced him to spend the whole year without competing.
The absence of the dominator of the championship was also taken advantage of by the Spanish
Joan Mir
to inherit a throne that Márquez now aspires to regain if health permits.
“It is very hasty to say if he will be in preseason or if he will skip two races.
The recovery periods are three months but as soon as it gets complicated, it can go to six ”, explained a few days ago his brother and teammate Alex in Sport.
If he can get back to being who he was and win a new World Cup, he will equal Rossi with seven titles and be just one behind Agostini's record.
Will Valverde retire in style?
The season that starts at the end of the month in Mallorca will be
Alejandro Valverde's last
as a professional cyclist.
A very thoughtful decision by the Murcian, who decided to set himself the time horizon of 2021 in his last renewal with Movistar, a year and a half ago.
The pandemic has not altered his plans, although he has postponed his last major goal before hanging up the bike: winning an Olympic medal in Tokyo.
That will be the great challenge of the season of farewell to the one who, together with
Alberto Contador, is
the best Spanish cyclist of this century.
The question, more than reasonable, is whether the Olympic event will come too late, already 41 years old.
During this strange 2020 that has just ended, the Murcian did not achieve any victory, something that - apart from his sanction between 2010 and 2011 for Operation Puerto - had not happened since 2002, his first year as a professional.
Will the bullet have one last bullet left?
Common sense says no, but he has always been an expert at defeating common sense.
Will Jon Rahm win his first major?
The year that has just ended was that of the confirmation of Jon Rahm as
one of the best golf players in the world
.
A milestone reflected in his two victories on the American circuit, those of the Memoral Tournament and the BMW Championship, and especially in his climb to become number one in the world rankings.
For four weeks in 2020, a Spaniard from Barrika was the best golfer in the world, an achievement that in our country had only been achieved by Severiano Ballesteros.
He started 2021 as number two, behind Dustin Johnson.
From their surroundings they immediately pointed out that, although it was a very important achievement, for Rahm it was only an intermediate station towards his great goal in the short and medium term: to win a major.
In 2020, he only
managed to sneak into the top 10 at the Augusta Masters
, although the British Open was canceled due to the pandemic.
If he succeeds, he will join the select club formed by Seve Ballesteros, José María Olazábal and Sergio García, the only Spaniards who have at least one major in their record.
Will Kipchoge fall below two hours?
Formally, the answer to this question is that we have already seen it.
Eliud Kipchoge
managed to run a marathon in 1h.59: 40 in the so-called Ineos Challenge
, in October 2019 in Vienna, but the brand was not homologated as a world record due to a multitude of factors already known in advance, such as the help of 41 hares or that of a van that was marking with a laser the pace necessary to reach the record.
It was a publicity rather than a sporting event, as much as the merit of Kipchoge is extraordinary.
The challenge facing the Kenyan, world record holder in the marathon (2:01:39), is to transfer that record to an official test and become the first man to officially run a marathon in less than two hours.
Without ruling out that whoever achieves it is the Ethiopian
Kenenisa Bekele
, triple Olympic champion of the 10,000 meters who also pursues that goal and second fastest marathoner ever (2h.01: 41).
Berlin, home to seven of the top 10 brands in history, including the top three, is already waiting impatiently.
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Pau Gasol
Mireia Belmonte
Rafael Nadal
Fernando Alonso
Jon rahm
Marc Márquez
Paris
Berlin
FC Barcelona
Spain
Alberto counter
Novak Djokovic
Japan
Ferrari
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