CNN Sport’s top stories of 2023
By Amy Woodyatt, CNN
(CNN) — From the Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand, the Saudi Pro League and the seemingly impossible Barkley Marathon, CNN Sport has picked out the must-read stories from the last 12 months.
READ: Saudi Arabia is trying to disrupt soccer’s world order. The reasons why might surprise you
When Saudi Arabian club Al-Hilal reportedly planned a $1.1 billion bid to sign French soccer superstar Kylian Mbappé – including $332 million to his club, Paris Saint-Germain (PSG), and an eye-watering $775 million salary packet to the World Cup winner for just one year – it was slammed by critics as sportswashing.
In a record-breaking transfer window, Saudi Pro League (SPL) clubs spent close to $1 billion, acquiring 94 overseas players from Europe’s major leagues – France’s Ligue 1, Spain’s La Liga, Italy’s Serie A, Germany’s Bundesliga and the English Premier League – according to Deloitte.
Despite the Arab nation’s poor human rights record, Saudi Arabia’s spending spree to turn its domestic soccer league into a star-studded, bona fide competition shows the seriousness of its ambition.
READ: Wrexham: An intoxicating tale of Hollywood glamor and sporting romance
“It’s an underdog story,” says Gene Warman, an Ohio native sitting in a bar with his son in a city neither had heard of this time last year. “It’s a wonderful thing.”
Warman and his 22-year-old son Andrew are on a four-day trip from the US to watch their new-found love, Wrexham AFC. They flew into London the previous day and embarked on a four-hour, 183-mile drive to the northeast of Wales. Jetlag cannot be countenanced on a sacred trip such as this.
In an often brutal and bleak world, the recent resurgence of Wrexham, the city as well as the soccer club, lifts the soul. Tourists smile when asked for their thoughts on this small industrial city near the English-Welsh border, brought to the world’s attention by the soccer club’s owners, actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney.
In 2022, Simone Magill arrived at the Women’s Euros with Northern Ireland full of hope. Here she was, representing her tiny nation in one of world soccer’s biggest tournaments.
But during the team’s opening match against Norway, disaster struck. Magill went down in agony and Northern Ireland fans held their breaths. She had suffered a dreaded anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury.
READ: These young female athletes died by suicide. They all had head injuries in common
Kelly Catlin and Ellie Soutter never met, but they had a lot in common.
Both were commanding athletes: Catlin, a US track cyclist, was a three-times world champion and Olympic silver medalist, and Soutter, a snowboarder, was tipped to be one of Team Great Britain’s strongest contenders for the 2022 Winter Olympics, having already won a bronze medal at the 2017 European Youth Olympic Festival.
At times, they almost seemed superhuman. In 2013, after only three weeks of formal training and having broken her wrist, Soutter became British Champion with her arm in a cast. Meanwhile, Catlin, who had a tenderness for children, once rode 80 miles through sleet and snow to speak to a grade school about her Olympic experience.
Yet these two women’s lives were tragically cut short after they sustained serious head injuries in their pursuit of sporting greatness and then took their own lives. Catlin was 23, while Soutter died by suicide on her 18th birthday.
READ: Vinícius Jr. is being racially abused during LaLiga matches. Why is nobody being punished?
Vinícius Jr scored the goal that secured Real Madrid’s 14th European Cup in May 2022, and in the 2022/23 season, his brilliance continued to light up the team’s Champions League campaign.
The supremely talented 22-year-old – widely considered one of the world’s best players – has six goals in seven matches in Europe and another eight in LaLiga, but he has also become a repeated victim of “hate crimes” in Spain, according to a players’ union.
Ahead of the derby against Atlético Madrid in January, an effigy of Vinícius was hanged from a bridge in Madrid, while racist slurs have been caught on camera during Real’s matches at Osasuna, Mallorca, Real Valladolid and Atlético.
It’s a few days since he dragged his battered, sleep-deprived body to the finish line of the Barkley Marathons – one of only 17 people ever to do so – and Aurélien Sanchez is still being haunted by visions of the infamously punishing race.
Held deep in a forest in eastern Tennessee – home to towering pines, bulging mountains and a former maximum-security prison – the Barkley Marathons is thought by many to be the hardest, most brutal foot race in the world.
The route is long and indistinguishable, the inclines are steep, and the terrain unforgiving, but that’s only if you’re able to navigate the opaque entry system and earn a spot on the start line in the first place.
WATCH: The fight for motherhood in the world of soccer
READ: For nearly 50 years, only Black men caddied The Masters. One day, they all but vanished
History never forgets a champion. When you win one of sport’s biggest titles, you become immortal.
Win multiple times and your legacy is even greater. To think of The Masters is to think of Jack Nicklaus, the most successful champion in the major’s history with six wins, and Arnold Palmer, who donned the winner’s green jacket four times in just six years at Augusta National.
And yet for decades, two former champions with a combined nine wins lay buried in unmarked graves.
The video looks like a gun advertisement – on steroids. Shot in the style of a music video, with quick edits and a pulsating beat, three athletic looking men test fire a variety of machine guns, rocket launchers, assault rifles and handguns.
Surrounded by bearded soldiers in military gear, the three men are shown smiling and laughing, seemingly having a good time. Except, this is not your run-of-the-mill gun range outing.
Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) fighters Kamaru Usman, Justin Gaethje and Henry Cejudo are the trio in a video posted online by the notorious Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov in November last year, celebrating their visit to his compound in Russia to see “how real men and defenders of the Fatherland learn to fight.”
READ: This North Korean player stunned the soccer world – then disappeared
In 2017, Han Kwang Song became the first North Korean to score a goal in one of Europe’s five major soccer leagues and even made a shock transfer to Italian giant Juventus in 2019, then later to Qatar’s Al-Duhail.
But his promising career was cut short when he disappeared from the world soccer stage in 2020, leaving fans with a question: “Where is that North Korean player?”
READ: Female soccer players earn 25 cents to the dollar of men at World Cup, new CNN analysis finds
Soccer players at the 2023 Women’s World Cup will on average earn just 25 cents for every dollar earned by men at their World Cup last year, a new CNN analysis found.
Still, that is an improvement: last time, in 2019, it was less than eight cents per dollar, according to data provided by world governing body FIFA and global players’ union FIFPRO.
Three years after fleeing Iran, chess referee Shohreh Bayat fears being further ostracized after challenging the game’s governing body and its president, Russia’s former deputy prime minister, over her choice of clothing at a tournament in October.
Back in 2020, Bayat was criticized in Iran for not wearing the appropriate headscarf at the Women’s World Chess Championship in China and Russia. She refused to bow to the regime’s pressure but, as a result, has not returned home out of fear of punishment.
Now, three years on, Bayat has raised the hackles of the International Chess Federation (FIDE) and its president for wearing clothes in support of the Iranian protests and the people of Ukraine.
Back in September, the Miami Dolphins put up a historic scoreline. The franchise that Don Shula and Dan Marino built racked up 70 points, only three shy of the all-time NFL record, as it annihilated the Denver Broncos, the very same team that Miami head coach Mike McDaniel got his start at.
The Dolphins scoring spree resulted in a franchise record for points, as well as an NFL record for total yards in a game at 726, as they became the highest-scoring team in a single game since Washington in 1966.
Miami has become one of the most entertaining teams to watch in the league thanks to its high-flying offense and is often labelled as the ‘neutral’s favorite.’
After years of being known as a defensive squad, the appointment of McDaniel has seen a marked improvement for the ‘Fins on the more glamorous side of the ball.
WATCH: Argentina edge Brazil in match marred by police, fan clashes
Argentina beat Brazil 1-0 in last night’s World Cup qualifier at the Maracanã thanks to a Nicolas Otamendi header, but it was scenes off the pitch which caught the headlines. CNN Sport’s Matias Grez joins World Sport anchor Amanda Davies to break it all down.
READ AND WATCH: Molly Carlson was in a ‘dark place’ prior to the Rio Olympics. Now she is inspiring millions to talk about mental health
For most people, jumping off a platform which hangs 66-feet in the air from a cliff with just deep open water below is a terrifying prospect, but for high diver and influencer Molly Carlson it is a chance to be free. It is her time to fly.
For the self-described “professional athlete with anxiety,” these dizzying heights are where she feels most at peace. Cliff diving helped the 25-year-old recover from what she calls a “year from hell,” overcoming loneliness and a binge eating disorder. It is, she says, “almost like free therapy.”
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