Heartbreaks and "what ifs?" continue to dominate athletics, robbing athletes of the greatest moments of their careers, before they are awarded with a small consolation years later.

Eight days ago Mohamed Jalood, President of the International Weightlifting Federation (IWF), sent out a message to the governing body’s 194 members in which he reflected on what had happened in 2022, a year that "can and must mark the start of a new future for weightlifting."

Now that the dust, or should that be sand, has settled on the first FIFA World Cup to be held in December, realisation has set in that the sky did not fall in because the tournament was held at the end of a calendar year.

A New Year inevitably leads to looking ahead at what is coming up and 2023 offers plenty to get excited about, including, for the first time in the same year, continental Games in Africa, Asia, Europe, Oceania and Pan America and a FIFA Women’s World Cup that will highlight female football in a way that has never happened before.

GOAT. Hardly the most attractive acronym to affix to a sublime sporting legend but there can be no argument that Pelé was the Greatest of All Time, the best player ever to kick a football.

Today (January 3) marks the 50th anniversary of a very odd football match at Wembley Stadium.

One of the factors which moved World Athletics President Sebastian Coe to tell an end-of-year news briefing that, to him, 2022 looked and felt "very different" was commissioned data from media analysis company Unicepta.

As 2022 comes to a close, so too does my first year as President of the International Federation of American Football (IFAF).

In September, the ceremonial opening of the International SAMBO Center (ISC) took place in Moscow, Russia.

In 2023, Rugby School in England will be at the centre of celebrations to mark 200 years of the sport which bears its name.

Surely the irony has escaped no-one that Salt Lake City could be in line to host the Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games for a second time in 2030 following a bribery scandal.

It wasn’t quite as the late Queen Elizabeth II once memorably said, an annus horribilis, but 2022 saw little reason to be joyful. 

It has been a turbulent and unpredictable year for many of us, not least for Twitter, the social media platform, which now finds itself in the hands of Elon Musk, one of the highest-profile businessmen on the planet.

The light blue and white waves from Argentina's glorious World Cup victory continue to wash around the sporting world - although the off-colour celebrations of their goalkeeper, Emiliano Martínez, have bobbed amidst them.