Coming up this week: Grand Slam tennis roars into life at Melbourne Park, records look ready to tumble after a blistering race across the Atlantic, and Morocco try to put half a century of history behind them — quietly — in a nerve-shredding AFCON final.
Here’s your Inside Track to the action:
TENNIS
Australian Open returns, with “Sincaraz” setting the pace
The 2026 tennis season properly announces itself on Sunday when the Australian Open first round begins at Melbourne Park, sun blazing and courts blue.
Men’s tennis still belongs to Sincaraz. Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz have split the game’s biggest prizes across 2024 and 2025, and they arrive as clear favourites to keep the arrangement going in 2026. It’s less rivalry than shared custody.
Sinner, in particular, has turned Melbourne into something of a private residence. The Italian has remained unbeaten on those blue hard courts for two straight years. His Spanish rival, meanwhile, is still waiting on his first Australian Open title, though he has the added incentive of a career Grand Slam dangling in front of him at just 22 — motivation that is rarely in short supply where he’s concerned.
Lurking, as ever, is Novak Djokovic. With 10 Australian Open titles already, he is chasing a 25th major that would take him clear of Margaret Court’s record outright. These days the question is whether his 38-year-old body will tolerate two full weeks in the Melbourne heat. Beating one of the New Two is hard enough; beating both may require a small miracle on top of an ice bath routine.
On the women’s side, Belarus’ Aryna Sabalenka starts as the obvious favourite, aiming to reclaim the title she won in 2023 and 2024 before American Madison Keys crashed the party last year. Sabalenka’s power suits Melbourne, and she knows it.
If Sabalenka does wobble, the danger signs are likely to appear wrapped in stars and stripes. Coco Gauff, Amanda Anisimova and Jessica Pegula form a credible American chase pack, each capable of making the second week uncomfortable.
Australian Open, Melbourne, Australia — January 18 – February 1
SAILING
Flat out to Antigua, Argo’s Atlantic sprint
Argo is tearing across the ocean and is due to arrive in Antigua early on Saturday, on the brink of claiming line honours in the 2026 RORC Transatlantic Race after a flat-out, no-brakes blast across more than 3,000 Atlantic miles from Lanzarote.
From the moment the trade winds filled in, the MOD70 trimaran has been operating in a different register to almost everything else on the course — clocking speeds in the high twenties and repeatedly punching beyond 30 knots as the miles melted away. What has followed is not so much a passage as a sustained assault on the ocean.
The 70ft (21 meter) multihull is a boat built to live on the edge of offshore performance, and boasts a crew assembled to keep it there. Alongside American skipper Chad Corning is a roll call of elite ocean talent: four-time U.S. Olympian Charles Ogletree, the relentlessly fast solo sailor Briton Sam Goodchild, Brian Thompson — the first Briton to sail non-stop around the world four times – and his compatriots Alister Richardson and Pete Cumming.
Between them they bring elite pedigree, round-the-world mileage and an instinctive understanding of what it takes to keep a MOD70 moving at full throttle for days on end.
Life on board has been a relentless cycle of 45-minute stints at the helm, day bleeding into night and back again. The eerie, unbroken singing of the foils slicing through water and air has provided the soundtrack, while Atlantic spray has lashed faces raw. Eyes stream, noses burn with salt, and helms hand over the wheel blinking hard, only for the next sailor to step straight back into the same elemental blast.
At this pace, a benchmark time looks certain, as line honours — first boat home, outright — are effectively hers to lose.
Yet while Argo’s sprint will dominate the headlines, the overall winner of the RORC Transatlantic Race will not be known until later boats complete the course and the corrected-time calculations are settled. Slower monohulls, racing to a different rhythm and a different logic, still have their own race very much alive.
Right now, though, this is Argo’s Atlantic — a study in speed, discipline and shared obsession, driven by a crew living inside the noise, the spray and the sleeplessness. When she slips into Antigua before dawn on Saturday, it will mark the end of a passage that has felt less like a crossing and more like a supersonic flight.
RORC Transatlantic Race, Lanzarote to Antigua — beginning January 11
SOCCER
Morocco hold their nerve, Senegal hold their shape
Morocco and Senegal meet at Rabat’s Stade Prince Moulay Abdellah on Sunday in what promises to be a potentially historic Africa Cup of Nations final as Morocco quietly dream of lifting their first trophy in 50 years.
The hosts’ route to the final has been neat, controlled and occasionally a little stiff. The semi-final against Nigeria never really caught fire, ending goalless before penalties did the sorting out. Morocco have been organised and efficient throughout, but they’ve rarely cut loose. There’s a sense they’ve been playing within themselves — whether by design or nerves is hard to say.
Senegal, by contrast, have looked far more at ease. They were the better side in the semi-final against Egypt, asking more questions and offering more going forward. The winner came late, finished by Sadio Mané, who remains very good at deciding big matches without making too much fuss about it.
For his former Liverpool teammate Mohamed Salah, it was another near miss in a tournament that continues to resist him.
As a whole, the competition has gone smoothly. Morocco’s hosting has been widely praised, the standard of play strong, and the stadiums full. The main drawback has been the timing. Shifted into winter to make room for the expanded FIFA Club World Cup, the Africa Cup has lost a bit of its usual warmth and colour, replaced instead by cold evenings and heavy coats.
Even so, it has delivered. The Confederation of African Football is on course for record revenues, attendance figures are up, and goals have flowed. Mané’s strike against Egypt was the 120th of the tournament, setting a new finals record.
Which leaves a final that makes sense. The hosts, measured and careful, against the 2021 champions, calm and confident. One side hoping the moment doesn’t get away from them, the other trusting that it comes their way.
African Cup of Nations, Morocco — December 21, 2025 – January 18, 2026
EXTRA TIME
What else we’re watching
NFL: The divisional round of the playoffs hits full speed this weekend, with eight teams left and no margin for error. Saturday opens in Colorado as the top-seeded Denver Broncos face the Buffalo Bills before a primetime NFC showdown between the Seattle Seahawks and San Francisco 49ers. Sunday brings tradition and toughness: the Houston Texans at the New England Patriots, then the Chicago Bears hosting the Los Angeles Rams. Win and advance. Lose and it’s over.
Rallying: After two punishing weeks racing from the Red Sea coast through the dunes and deserts of Saudi Arabia, the Dakar Rally returns on Saturday to its starting point for the crowning of champions at the final bivouac outside Yanbu. The seventh edition staged entirely in the kingdom began with more than 800 competitors from 69 nations, spread across cars, bikes, trucks, side-by-sides and classics, covering roughly 8,000km (4,970 miles). The car race remains finely balanced, though one certainty is that home favourite Yazeed Al-Rajhi will not defend his 2025 title after an early withdrawal.
Alpine skiing: Lindsey Vonn, the 41-year-old U.S. speed queen who is now a firm favourite for Olympic medals in Cortina next month after winning two of four World Cup downhills and finishing on the podium in the others, continues her age-defying comeback with races in the Italian resort of Tarvisio on Saturday and Sunday. Meanwhile, the men are in action in Wengen, Switzerland, with a downhill on Saturday and a slalom on Sunday on the classic Lauberhorn piste, one of the highlights of the season.
Bandy: Before ice hockey came bandy — a colder, wider cousin whose Bandy World Championship concludes in Pori on Sunday. Played on a football-sized ice surface with 11 players a side, a ball rather than a puck, two 45-minute halves and minimal contact, it looks closer to outdoor football on skates than modern hockey. Its origins are disputed — Russia and England both claim it — and Russia lead historically with 22 titles, though recent absences have allowed Sweden to win the last two and reach 14 overall.
Snooker: The final of the Masters is staged at Alexandra Palace on Sunday, capping a £1-million-plus event that has highlighted the sport’s narrowing power base. Defending champion Shaun Murphy fell early to Chinese debutant Wu Yize, one of a record five Chinese players in the 16-man field. With around 60 million people playing snooker in China, their rise feels inevitable. The 52nd edition has also been shaped by the illness withdrawal of Ronnie O’Sullivan.
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Editing by Yasmeen Serhan and Toby Chopra