CNN —
From a World Cup like no other in Qatar to Ukrainian athletes returning home to fight in the war against Russia, CNN Sport has picked out the must-read stories from the last 12 months.
Major interviews and CNN exclusives
Gay Australian footballer Josh Cavall reflects on life-changing year
It has been more than a year since Josh Cavallo announced he is gay, but even now he still struggles to comprehend the far-reaching impact his announcement has had.
Since making that life-changing decision in October 2021, Cavallo has become one of the most recognizable names and faces in world football, as well as becoming something of an icon.
“I’m walking in the streets of London and getting stopped,” Cavallo told CNN in October.
“I’ve only been to London twice now and I’m like: ‘Wow, I’m all the way from Australia and what I did was via social media,’ and to see the impact it’s had from people on the other side of the globe is absolutely phenomenal.”
Exclusive: World Cup soccer fans stopped by security officials for wearing rainbow-colored items
During the World Cup in Qatar, two German soccer fans told CNN’s Ben Church that they were asked by security officials at Qatar 2022 to remove the rainbow-colored items that they were wearing as they made their way to watch the match between France and Denmark.
CNN witnessed the conclusion to the incident at the Msheireb Metro Station, in Doha, as Bengt Kunkel, who was wearing a rainbow-colored sweatband and his friend – sporting a similarly colored armband – refused to hand over the items.
After taking the Germans to one side, a group of security guards eventually let them go – on condition that they put the rainbow-colored items in their pockets, according to Kunkel.
“Out of nowhere. They took my friend quite aggressively on the arm and pushed him away from the crowd and told him to take it [the armband] off,” Kunkel told CNN,
YouTubers, doping and greed: It’s been a tough year for boxing
Simiso Buthelezi, Miracle Amaeze and Luis Quiñones are some of the talented boxers who have died this year as they pursued their sporting careers and chased dreams of world titles.
It’s an accepted risk of the profession. A database first compiled by anti-boxing activist Manuel Velazquez and updated in the Electronic Journal of Martial Arts and Sciences estimated 1,604 boxers died as a direct result of injuries sustained in the ring between 1890 and 2011 – an average of 13 deaths a year.
That’s a shocking statistic for a professional sport, but perhaps not altogether that surprising. As Stephanie Alessi-LaRosa, director of Hartford Healthcare’s sports neurology program, points out, it’s a boxer’s objective in a fight “to neurologically impair the opponent.”