Granada CF players celebrate victory with their supporters on December 19, 2021 in Granada, Spain. Photo: VCG

The impact of COVID-19 continues to be felt on the sporting calendar and it has already suggested that it will continue to do into 2022 as it looms large over some of the biggest events of the year. 

English Premier League football's usually hectic festive fixture schedule has been hit hard - and guaranteed a future headache to reschedule matches - while there are fears that Australia's impending whitewash of England in The Ashes will be curtailed by COVID-19 affecting the last two Tests rather than any resistance from the already defeated tourists. 

The Ashes may already have been won by the hosts but any disruption to the calendar will be hard to reschedule in an already busy international calendar in 2022 for both teams and neither would want to lose the millions in broadcast revenue. 

Tennis players are landing in Australia for the first Grand Slam of 2022, the Australian Open, and already there are COVID-19 concerns. 

Looking slightly further ahead to February and the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games, the National Hockey League has already decided to pull its players from the tournament after COVID-19 ravaged the ice hockey schedule in North America in December. 

"The National Hockey League respects and admires the desire of NHL Players to represent their countries and participate in a 'best on best' tournament. Accordingly, we have waited as long as possible to make this decision while exploring every available option to enable our Players to participate in the 2022 Winter Olympic Games," NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman said in a statement to the media when the decision was announced on December 22. 

"Unfortunately, given the profound disruption to the NHL's regular-season schedule caused by recent COVID-­related events - 50 games already have been postponed through December 23 - Olympic participation is no longer feasible. 

"We certainly acknowledge and appreciate the efforts made by the International Olympic Committee, the International Ice Hockey Federation and the Beijing Organizing Committee to host NHL Players but current circumstances have made it impossible for us to proceed despite everyone's best efforts. We look forward to Olympic participation in 2026." 

That means that there will be no stars such as Conor McDavid or Sidney Crosby in Beijing - and the players are understandably disappointed including stars such as Brad Marchand and McDavid. 

"The whole thing is so disappointing," Canada's star player McDavid told the media last weekend. "It's hard to really put into words what I think a lot of guys are feeling, especially the guys that haven't gotten to go before. Now, we're missing it for the second time in a row. We can't dwell on it." 

NHL players were kept away from PyeongChang 2018 but the league had announced in September that its players would play at Beijing 2022 and Turin 2026 before backing out of Beijing. Canada won gold in 2014, the last time that NHL players played, with gold in South Korea going to the Olympic Athletes from Russia.  

"I've been fortunate enough to be part of two [Olympics]," Pittsburgh Penguins captain Sidney Crosby told reporters. "I definitely feel for the guys who have missed numerous opportunities. It's not something where it's the next year or you push it a couple of months. These are experiences of a lifetime that you don't get very many of as an athlete." 

Some of them have missed out now as even if the NHL does allow players to play in Turin in four years' time, they will have missed their window of opportunity. 

'A little bit worried'

Sport does not wait, though, and Formula 1 has managed to grow despite the circumstances, pushing to a 23-race calendar for 2022 even with China's Shanghai stop being left off once more. That is not to say that organizers are not worried ahead of preseason testing in late February. 

"I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little bit worried," F1 sporting director Steve Nielsen has told reporters. 

"I am because the optimism we perhaps had a couple of months ago, the pandemic was on the back foot, has been knocked back a bit," he said in reference to the Omicron variant's rise. 

"It's an ever-changing situation. Since the beginning, this thing has risen up and fallen away, depending on which region you're going in and we've had to tiptoe around those changing infection rates and try and fit it with our calendar." 

Nielsen said that the situation is different from 2020 as "the world is gradually learning to live with it" but he is still concerned. 

"We are nervous about it. I'm pretty certain we can do it with the calendar we have, but we will monitor it and we will react if we have to," he said, admitting that there is no "Plan B." 

It would be a great shame for them not to capitalize on the title fight between Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton, the growing interest in the sport thanks to the Netflix series Drive to Survive or even the sport's first Chinese driver, Zhou Guanyu. 

In F1 and beyond, the next 12 months promise to be a bumper year for sport, COVID-19 allowing.