India, Jan. 9 -- 2026 is the Year of the Horse in the Chinese zodiac calendar. But if wishes were horses, they may well have agreed to call it the Year of Sport. It's the year of the football World Cup, two cricket World Cups, the World Chess Championship, an Asian Games, and a Winter Olympics.

The year when a new tennis duopoly will cast its rivalry in stone, when Formula 1's young new icon will face his true test against a marauding former winner, and the year when Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo will bring their miraculous two-decade-long dance to an end.

All this while the regular tugs-of-war continue in club football, world athletics and the golf Majors; on courts, circuits, tracks, pitches, greens, velodromes, arenas, rings and...