The sport­ing land­scape of 2026 is mov­ing with pace, and if you blinked dur­ing the last fort­night, you like­ly missed some epic sports. From the dusty pitch­es of the Ash­es to the blue hard­courts of Mel­bourne, here is a break­down of the tri­umphs, the "what ifs," and some nos­tal­gia.

WIND­HOEK, Namib­ia – In an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view on the Ma­son and Guest ra­dio show Tues­day, West In­dies Un­der-19 head coach Ro­han Nurse is­sued a ring­ing en­dorse­ment of his team’s prepa­ra­tions and sin­gled out two of its youngest stars for spe­cial praise fol­low­ing a dom­i­nant warm-up vic­to­ry over Japan.

ARNOS VALE, St. Vin­cent – The Bar­ba­dos Women’s team opened their Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) Twen­ty20 Blaze cam­paign with a hard-fought, tense three-wick­et vic­to­ry over Trinidad & To­ba­go at the Arnos Vale Play­ing Field on Tues­day night, chas­ing down a mod­est tar­get with nine balls to spare.

North Zone’s pow­er­hous­es, Strak­er Nets and De­fence Force, claimed vi­tal vic­to­ries in the Men’s First Di­vi­sion as ac­tion in the Na­tion­al Bas­ket­ball Fed­er­a­tion of T&T (NBFTT) Na­tion­al Club Cham­pi­onships con­tin­ued across the coun­try.

KINGSTOWN, St Vin­cent—De­fend­ing cham­pi­ons Guyana Women pulled off a sen­sa­tion­al come-from-be­hind vic­to­ry over the Wind­ward Is­lands Women in the open­ing match of the T20 Blaze here at Arnos Vale, Tuesday.

AS­JA Girls’ Col­lege San Fer­nan­do and St Joseph’s Con­vent Port-of-Spain were the stand­out teams as the Sec­ondary School’s Vol­ley­ball Un­der-15 Girls Group B com­pe­ti­tion pro­duced a full slate of match­es, Tues­day.

As we look ahead to the 2026 sport­ing sea­son in T&T, I am re­mind­ed of the words of the Ital­ian philoso­pher Nic­co­lo Machi­avel­li, who has been de­scribed by some as ruth­less but prag­mat­ic, which, at best, are con­tra­dic­to­ry in some ways.

Re­cent­ly I had the op­por­tu­ni­ty look at a pro­gramme in Cana­da that is spon­sored by RBC. The rea­son I did that is the usu­al—call it a rit­u­al—desk re­search on dif­fer­ent Olympic podi­um pro­grammes around the globe. I un­der­take, es­pe­cial­ly in the last cou­ple of weeks lead­ing up to the TTOC GOIN 4 GOLD Marathon Chal­lenge. The 12th an­nu­al 26.2-mile walk/roll chal­lenge which will take place on Sun­day.

Cy­clist Alexi Ramirez is claim­ing vic­to­ry against the T&T Cy­cling Fed­er­a­tion in an un­de­cid­ed le­gal bat­tle to date but now faces an­oth­er chal­lenge against the Rowe­na Williams-led TTCF to pro­duce a time for an event that she has nev­er com­pet­ed in.

The T&T Cy­cling Fed­er­a­tion has been giv­en the all clear to host its tri­als this week­end for next month's Pan Amer­i­can Cy­cling Cham­pi­onships in Chile.

Two match­es have been lined up against Grena­da and St Vin­cent and the Grenadines next week, on Jan­u­ary 18th and 20th, at the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um in Cou­va for the coun­try’s Un­der-20 foot­ballers, who will con­test the Un­der-20 World Cup Qual­i­fiers from next month.

ST JOHN’S, An­tigua—Bran­don King will cap­tain a sig­nif­i­cant­ly weak­ened West In­dies squad which will play Afghanistan in three T20Is be­gin­ning next Mon­day.