Hap­py New Year to you! 2020 is fi­nal­ly here. My dear read­ers, I don’t know about you, but we have been hear­ing so much about ‘Vi­sion 2020’ and in the year 2020 this will change and that will hap­pen, but all of a sud­den the new year has sud­den­ly crept up on us. From young, I have al­ways heard the old­er gen­er­a­tion say that time waits on no one and this is so true - 2020, for a long while, seemed light-years away.

What ma­jor sport­ing events can we look for­ward to this year? There is some­thing for every sport­ing en­thu­si­ast de­pend­ing on what makes up your cup of tea. The 2020 Sum­mer Olympics in Tokyo, Japan, from Ju­ly 24 to Au­gust 9 is ar­guably the most ex­cit­ing. Hope­ful­ly, our ath­letes can give a good ac­count of them­selves and bring home more medals than we did in 2016 when Keshorn Wal­cott fin­ished with a javelin bronze. I know the Trinidad & To­ba­go Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC) is tar­get­ing 10 gold medals for 2024, which will be as­tound­ing, so can I be op­ti­mistic for 2020 and at least tar­get 8 medals? Let’s wait and see how much sup­port our ath­letes get to pre­pare for the most im­por­tant meet of their lives.

The Win­ter Youth Olympics is set for Lau­sanne, Switzer­land from Jan­u­ary 9-22 and we have a rep­re­sen­ta­tive in alpine ski­er, Abi­gail Vieira, 17, who will cre­ate his­to­ry as the first ski­er to rep­re­sent T&T.

Ten­nis fans can look for­ward to the Aus­tralian Open from Jan­u­ary 20; French Open from May 18; Wim­ble­don from June 29 and the US Open from Au­gust 31. Is it far­fetched to hope that one day we can see a Trin­bag­on­ian com­pet­ing at one of those tour­na­ments?

When it comes to golf, we have a huge com­mu­ni­ty in T&T and their cup will over­flow from April 9 with the Mas­ters Tour­na­ment, PGA Cham­pi­onship in May (14-17), US Open in June (18-21), British Open in Ju­ly (16-19) and the Ry­der Cup in Sep­tem­ber (25-27). Do we have an­oth­er Stephen Ames lurk­ing on our golf cours­es?

In cy­cling, the World Cham­pi­onships ped­al off on Feb­ru­ary 26 in Berlin. Hope­ful­ly, the dark cloud present­ly hang­ing over T&T cy­cling will pass quick­ly and our cy­clists can make us proud. In ad­di­tion to that, the gru­elling Tour de France is from June 27-Ju­ly 19. Stay­ing with cy­cling, con­grat­u­la­tions to two of my favourite ath­letes - Nicholas Paul and Te­niel Camp­bell - for cop­ping the TTOC Sports­man Sports­woman of the Year awards and giv­ing cy­cling some­thing to cheer about again.

The World Ath­let­ics In­door Cham­pi­onship is in Chi­na be­tween March 13 and 15.

Our horse rac­ing fans will have their hands full with lo­cal races but al­so the Grand Na­tion­al in April, Ken­tucky Der­by in May, Roy­al As­cot in June and the Breed­ers’ Cup and Mel­bourne Cup in No­vem­ber just to name some of the events.

You name the sport and there is some­thing for every­one to fol­low.

In vol­ley­ball, our Un­der-20 Women and Un­der-21 Men vol­ley­ball teams re­turned home with sil­ver and bronze re­spec­tive­ly from the Caribbean Zon­al Vol­ley­ball As­so­ci­a­tion Ju­nior Cham­pi­onship. I will wait to see what in­ter­na­tion­al par­tic­i­pa­tion our vol­ley­ballers have as I am sure the good work of T&T Vol­ley­ball Fed­er­a­tion pres­i­dent Mush­taque Mo­hammed and his ex­ec­u­tive will con­tin­ue.

Af­ter com­pet­ing in the Net­ball World Cup in 2019 and fin­ish­ing in ninth place, I ex­pect to see our net­ballers get­ting bet­ter in 2020.

In swim­ming, the im­pres­sive Dy­lan Carter should be mak­ing us proud again this year in the pool.

I have left foot­ball and crick­et for last. Our TTFA ex­ec­u­tive is mov­ing swift­ly to arrange in­ter­na­tion­al fix­tures for our se­nior team. One im­por­tant two-legged fix­ture is that against ei­ther Bar­ba­dos or Guyana which, should we win, will give us qual­i­fi­ca­tion for the 2021 Gold Cup. I have the ut­most con­fi­dence we will win and qual­i­fy; 2022 World Cup qual­i­fi­ca­tion will start as well, so it’s go­ing to be an­oth­er big year for lo­cal foot­ball.

The UE­FA Cham­pi­ons League will keep us oc­cu­pied ear­ly un­til the fi­nal on May 23 at the Ataturk Sta­di­um in Is­tan­bul. The Eu­ro 2020 and Co­pa Amer­i­ca will be play­ing si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly from June 12 to Ju­ly 12 - a mouth­wa­ter­ing pe­ri­od for foot­ball fa­nat­ics.

Crick­et will keep us busy through­out the year. West In­dies play Ire­land from Jan­u­ary 7. Al­so in Jan­u­ary, our Un­der-19 team par­tic­i­pates in the World Cup in South Africa; our Windies women take on the world in the T20 World Cup in Feb­ru­ary in Aus­tralia; the West In­dies test squad goes to Eng­land in June and are back home in Ju­ly to face the South Africans. Be­fore this is the pop­u­lar IPL, with our T&T play­ers light­ing up the In­di­an fields. The in­creas­ing­ly pop­u­lar CPL is then back from Au­gust to Sep­tem­ber. But the biggest of them all is sure­ly the men’s ICC T20 World Cup from Oc­to­ber 18 to No­vem­ber 15 in Aus­tralia, where the West In­dies will be de­fend­ing their crown. I will stick my head out now and pre­dict - once our play­ers stay fit and we pick our best pos­si­ble squad, we will win the com­pe­ti­tion for a third time.

What­ev­er sport you en­joy, you will have your pick of what to choose from in 2020. Let’s en­joy the en­ter­tain­ment and give the ut­most sup­port to our ath­letes in their quest for glo­ry. Cheers to a fab­u­lous sport­ing 2020!

Ed­i­tor’s note: The views ex­pressed in this col­umn are sole­ly those of the writer and do not re­flect the views of any or­gan­i­sa­tion of which he is a stake­hold­er.