This new year will be very busy on a sporting level, with the European Football and Handball Championships, the start of the Vendée Globe, the swimming worlds and culminating in the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Paris. Here is France Bleu’s selection of the ten most anticipated sporting events in 2024, month by month.
🤾♂️ Handball Euro
The year starts strongly with the handball European Championships, on the men’s side. It happens from January 10 to 28, 2024 in Germany. The French handball players and vice world champions remained undefeated during their qualifying campaign. The French will face North Macedonia for the first time on January 10 in Düsseldorf. Before that, they will play two preparatory matches in Nantes, January 4 against Tunisia and January 6 against Brazil.
🌍African Cup of Nations
The 34th edition of the African Cup of Nations will take place from January 13 to February 11, 2024 in Ivory Coast, a first. Initially scheduled for the summer of 2023, the CAN was postponed due to weather conditions. Summer is the rainy season in the country and severe flooding caused by heavy rains has caused several deaths in Abidjan, shortly before the scheduled start of the competition. In 2021, it was Senegal that won the CAN against Egypt.
🏊♂️ World Swimming Championships in Qatar
Will Frenchman Léon Marchand win gold again at the world championships after the swimming world championships in Japan last July? in Qatar in February 2024 ? The man from Toulouse offered himself three titles at the world swimming championships in Japan. The most successful French swimmer in history, holder of five individual world crowns, has serious hopes of a medal.
🏉 Six Nations Tournament
After the Rugby World Cup hosted by France in 2023 and the growing enthusiasm for the field, return to business with the Six Nations Tournament in February and March 2024. The Stade de France is out of use until the Olympics, so matches in France will take place elsewhere: at the Groupama Stadium in Lyon, at the Stade Pierre-Mauroy in Lille and at the Stade Vélodrome in Marseille.
THE The Blues’ first match will take place on February 2 at the Vélodrome in Marseille against the Irish, a meeting in the form of revenge for the two World Cup favorites. “We have to get up, get up and move on to the next fight‘, testified Blues manager Raphaël Ibanez on the night of the defeat to the South Africans at the World Cup.’We have to keep believing in this team.“
🏎️ A new Formula 1 season
Will Max Verstappen give other drivers a chance for the 2024 season? formula 1 ? THE The first Grand Prix will take place in Bahrain on March 2. The two Frenchmen Pierre Gasly and Esteban Ocon will remain in the French Alpine team this seasonsixth in the Constructors’ Championship at the end of the 2023 season.
⚽Euro football
After the very frustrating defeat of the French against Argentina at the World Cup in Qatar in December 2022the Blues of Kylian Mbappé and Didier Deschamps meet for theEuro football from June 15 to July 14 in Germany. Austria and the Netherlands will be the two the French team’s first opponents for the group stage, as well as a Group D play-off team whose identity will be announced in March. And after an unbeaten qualifying campaign (seven wins, including a historic 14-0 defeat to Gibraltar), The Blues one of the favorites for the competition.
Italy, reigning European champions, inherited the strongest group of Euro 2024 with Spain, winner of the last Nations League, Croatia, 3rd at the 2022 World Cup and finalist of the Nations League, and Albania. THE Germany will face Scotland in the opening match on June 14 in Munich.
🚴Tour de France
Scheduled just before the start of Olympic Games ParisTHE Tour de France 2024 will allow you to be patient. The 111th edition of the Grande Boucle will leave Italy on June 29passes the Côte-d’Or, the white paths in the middle of the vineyards of Champagne, the Cantal, the Pyrenees, the southern Alps and ends on July 21 in Nicenot on the Champs Élysées, because of the Olympic Games.
The third edition of the Olympic Games is taking place precisely because of the Olympic Games Tour de France Women will not start immediately after the Men’s Tour, as has been the case for two years. For the first time since the return of the women’s Tour de France, the big start will take place abroad. in the Netherlands on August 12. The peloton leaves via Belgium, the East towards France and arrives in the Alps before the Alps grand final in Alpe d’Huez on August 18.
🥇 Olympic and Paralympic Games Paris 2024
It is undoubtedly the most anticipated sporting event of the year. The eyes of the whole world will be on France this summer Olympic Games in Paris from July 26 to August 11, 2024. Approximately 10,500 athletes from 206 countries will be represented. They will compete in 28 sports, plus four additional sports: breaking, skateboarding, surfing and sport climbing. France obviously hopes to win numerous medals at home in swimming with Léon Marchand, in judo with Clarisse Agbégnénou, in the decathlon with Kévin Mayer, in gymnastics with Mélanie De Jesus Dos Santos, and in many other disciplines. Then follow the Paralympic Games from August 28 to September 8, 2024.
⛵ Vendée Globe
After a four-year absence, 40 skippers will be at the start of the Vendée Globe Sunday, November 10, 2024 in Sables-d’Olonne. This sailing race, around the world, solo and without stopovers or assistance, is sometimes called “the Everest of the seas” because it is so difficult. Who will succeed the winner of the 2020 edition, Yannick Bestafen? “Since the race’s inception, only 114 sailors have taken on this sporting sailing challenge, the greatest of all time.“, we read on the Vendée Globe website.
In any case, the 2023 edition will generate a lot of enthusiasm: there is 44 candidates, including 16 foreigners, 11 different nationalities, and six women. Never seen before in the history of the Vendée Globe.
🤾♀️ Handball Euro
After the coronation of French handball players for the third time in their history at the World Cup in mid-DecemberThe French players are eagerly awaited for the European Handball Championship from November 28 to December 15, 2024. And we have reason to believe it, because the French defeated the Norwegians, the current European champions, in the final of the world championships.
