CNN Sport’s top stories of 2023
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.
Photo Illustration by Alberto Mier/CNN/Getty
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.
Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds, owners of Wrexham celebrate as the club wins the Vanarama National League and is promoted to the English Football League on April 22, 2023. Jan Kruger/Getty Images
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.
Leah Abucayan
READ: Women’s World Cup 2023: Some of the game’s top players are absent. And it’s because of the same injury issue
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.
CNN
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.
leah abucayan/getty
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.
Aurelien Sanchez runs in the Barkley Marathon. Alexandre Ricaud
READ: Few people have ever finished the Barkley Marathons. Thanks to cheeseburgers and a power nap, Aurélien Sanchez became one of them
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.