2021: REASONS TO BE CHEERFUL! EUROS, OLYMPICS, LIONS & MORE
With 2020 obliterated, 2021 promises to be packed with medals, tries, goals and poles! In the first part of our series we set the scene for what we hope will be a spine-tingling year
MAX WHITLOCK practised on a pommel horse in his garden. Jade Jones kicked mannequins in her garage. Adam Peaty swam in a giant Jacuzzi in his backyard.
It was the year when Team GB’s Olympic superstars stayed at home rather than brought home gold medals from Tokyo.
But in seven months’ time those same locked-down athletes should be free to take centre stage in Japan — and it promises to be worth the extra one-year wait.
Just think what a joy it will be to become experts in the wonderful world of epees and ippons instead of epidemiology and immunity.
And how great to have our TV screens dominated daily with the likes of Whitlock, Jones and Peaty on the podium rather than Boris Johnson, Matt Hancock & Co on the Downing Street stage.
Newcomers such as skateboarder Sky Brown — who, at 13, is set to become Britain’s youngest summer Olympian — and climber Shauna Coxsey are ready to replace Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance as household names.
And Dina Asher-Smith and Katarina Johnson-Thompson could emulate Captain Tom and Joe Wicks and become national treasures.
This time next year Team GB’s summer stars should also be dominating the New Year’s Honours.
So what price on Jason Kenny being knighted if he wins one more gold medal to surpass Sir Chris Hoy and become Britain’s most successful Olympian? And how about his wife, Laura Kenny, being made a dame if she adds to her haul of four golds in 2021?
It is quite the prospect, yet there are, of course, still huge hurdles to overcome. One sobering fact is that Tokyo has had more Covid cases in December than any other month. The city is in the highest level of Japan’s alert system.
So holding an Olympics which brings together 11,000 athletes, 5,000 officials and coaches, 20,000 media representatives and 60,000 volunteers from all over the world still seems somewhat far-fetched.
A recent poll by broadcaster NHK showed the majority of the Japanese public now oppose holding the Games next year.
But despite that gloomy backdrop, the smart money is that next summer’s showpiece will happen in some capacity, with vaccine developments increasing hopes.
Tokyo’s governor Yuriko Koike even insisted earlier this month that there are ‘no circumstances’ under which the Games will not take place in 2021 and organisers are spending £ 670million on measures to stop the spread of the disease during the event.
They have published a 54-page plan outlining how the Games can go ahead in a Covid-secure manner, including a sex and partying ban for athletes and spectators being stopped from cheering.
A decision on how many fans will be allowed into each venue will not be taken until the spring. Some fear the Games could still end up behind closed doors.
But even that would be better than nothing for sports fans who had cleared the decks in anticipation of 16 days of unmissable action in July and August — and will do so again in 2021.
After the sporting famine that was the summer of 2020, what a feast we will have in store.
RUGBY UNION
THE LIONS tour of South Africa is the beacon in the distance for rugby. It is the grand event which should drag the sport out of its Covid rut in 2021.
How it is needed. Every four years, the British and Irish crusades generate vast interest, but the next one could really galvanise the game by providing thunderous drama and also a vital financial boost for the host nation and the four home unions.
Despite the global pandemic, thousands of fans have already booked their trips to form another massive ‘Red Army’ on the other side of the equator. In 2017, there were astonishing scenes as fans from these islands took over the New Zealand capital, Wellington, to see the Lions inflict the All Blacks’ first home defeat since 2009. Virus permitting, another raucous but good- natured invasion is expected in Johannesburg, Cape Town and beyond. It will have been a dozen years since the Lions last visited South Africa. The tour in 2009 culminated in a brutal, fluctuating, pulsating Test series, which the Springboks won 2- 1. They were world champions then, as they are again now, so another daunting challenge awaits for a travelling squad who are once again under the command of Warren Gatland. The stakes will be as high as ever because the Lions are always fighting against the threat of sporting extinction in a crowded calendar, despite being adored by the public and players alike. Every aspect of the crusade is the subject of huge scrutiny and intrigue, from the choice of head coach and assistant coaches, selection of the squad and captain, and the contest for Test places as the tour unfolds. Maro Itoje is seen as the front- runner for the captaincy and, at a time when rugby is under increasing pressure to diversify, having Saracens’ England lock and Siya Kolisi as rival black skippers in the Test series would be a powerful statement of progress.
While the Lions tour looms as rugby’s marquee attraction in 2021, the Six Nations comes first. It may lack the usual tribal fervour if capacity crowds are still not permitted, but it promises to offer a fascinating power struggle.
England are the Northern Hemisphere’s standard-bearers but France are enjoying a rapid resurgence and appear ready to disrupt the hierarchy.
French improvements are good news for the credibility of the tournament and the next instalment of ‘Le Crunch’, on March 13 at Twickenham, could be a classic.
The whole championship needs to produce a reversal of the stodgy, stifling tactics which scarred the Autumn Nations Cup.
Meanwhile, at club level, there will be considerable interest in the
RFU Championship, as Saracens strive to bounce straight back into the top division via unfamiliar excursions to Jersey and Cornish Pirates, Ampthill, London Scottish and Hartpury University.
They will battle it out with Ealing for the top spot, while Exeter are storming towards another Premiership title in their absence.
FOOTBALL
LET’S start with a quiz question. How many points did last season’s third-place team finish behind the winners of the Premier League? And the season before that? And the one before that?
The answers: 33, 26 and 23 points. If you got all of that right you were cheating but that’s not the point. The point is that, in recent seasons (for the last six to varying degrees), the Premier League title has been a two-horse race. On occasion, there has only been one team in it from a long way out.
That’s OK occasionally but if it becomes a habit then it’s one that needs breaking and the good news is that this looks to be the season when it changes. Circumstances have helped to level the playing field, for sure. The uniquely crammed fixture list and the injuries associated with relentless matches have played a part in bunching the top eight or nine teams together.
Frank Lampard, for example, is supposed to be struggling at Chelsea yet his team were only six points from the top before last night’s match. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer has had difficulties at Manchester United yet his club are also within touching distance of leaders Liverpool.
So for once it looks as though we may have a season that goes to the wire and, despite the sadness of empty stadiums, it is something to cherish.
We miss the fans. My goodness, we really do. But we can expect a phased return once we hit spring and hope that this reaches something of a climax by the time the summer’s European Championship arrives.
Is it too much to expect stadiums such as Wembley to be full this summer? Probably. But it is to be hoped that we have significant crowds for what looks like being an open tournament. Within it, we have an England v Scotland clash to savour and Wales will head into their group fearing nobody. England, led by Harry Kane, have a puncher’s chance of going deep into the tournament if Gareth Southgate is brave with his selections. That in itself is far from a given but it is something to ponder at least. This feels like a long, dark winter but we can see light and that is what matters. Reasons to be cheerful? I would say so.
FORMULA ONE
WE took leave of the Formula One season in Abu Dhabi with a flash of hope. A commanding win for Max Verstappen, with the usually all-powerful Mercedes cars a dot in his mirrors. One swallow and all that, but the Dutchman’s victory offered at least a suggestion 2021 may not turn out to be quite so one-sided as the hectic season which ended this month with Lewis Hamilton as a seven-time world champion.
In the final throes of the campaign, Hamilton’s usually perfect team were a little scratchy. They made an awful mistake in fitting the wrong tyres to the car of George Russell, who was standing in for Covid patient Hamilton in the Sakhir Grand Prix in Bahrain, costing him a dream win.
Then came the less-than-stellar performance in the Verstappendominated finale in Abu Dhabi.
It will certainly require Red Bull to step up if Hamilton is to be stopped from waltzing further into the history books — a record eighth title that would mark him out as clearly the most successful driver of all time — because there is likely to be no internal challenge to his rule.
For Hamilton’s team- mate Valtteri Bottas finished 124 points behind the Englishman, having won just two rounds compared to the champion’s 11 (and it would have been more but for penalties incurred).
The Finn appears to be shot mentally, unable to match the star man no matter what he tries. Even when he thinks he has climbed on to the same ledge he gets his fingers stamped on.
This is likely to be Bottas’s last season for Mercedes before they belatedly revamp their line-up.
How they tackle this will be a compelling side- story of the season. Will they bring in Russell, who is 22 and part of the Mercedes development programme, from Williams on a permanent basis to partner Hamilton?
Or will they go for broke and sign the grid’s most startling young talent, Verstappen, with an eye on a future beyond Hamilton, who turns 36 a week today?
In 2021, however, Verstappen will be concentrating on taking the fight to Mercedes, comforted to know that with the regulations essentially remaining the same as they were in 2020 he is better positioned to do so than in any previous season.
He is also helped by the strengthening Red Bull have undertaken in the close-season by dispensing with Alex Albon and signing Sergio Perez, a skilled racer who will be a far more effective wingman for Verstappen than the driver he has replaced.
One of the few pieces of tinkering with the rules, the outlawing of the DAS steering device Mercedes introduced in 2020, is a significant boost for Red Bull given how much faster it made the champion team relative to the opposition than in other recent campaigns.
Let’s hope the calendar is not blown off course by Covid again. Melbourne, a big doubt in this environment, is the perfect place to start, God willing, on March 21.