Sporting spectacles to look forward to in lockdown

‘At least there’s sport,’ said the woman in the supermarket queue. True enough, and in a welcome sop to an embattled world elite sport has largely been saved from the wreckage of second lockdowns around the globe, leaving a great deal to look forward to and argue about.

1. The much-delayed US Masters — will Bryson DeChambeau, the American built like a brick outhouse, pummel Augusta National into submission like a pitch and putt on Bognor seafront? The Augusta committee won’t want that and will have set the course up to stop him. Should be a compelling spectacle, though I rather fancy the ever-consistent Spaniard Jon Rahm, the one-time world no. 1 who really needs a major on his CV.

2. Can Preston’s Hugh Carthy win the Vuelta a España and further bolster Britain’s extraordinary rise from perennial domestique of the Grands Tours to being their masters? Reports of the untimely death of British cycling have been greatly exaggerated: who needs Wiggins, Froome, Thomas et al when unheralded comes Tao Geoghegan Hart to snatch the Giro d’Italia? Maybe Carthy won’t do the same in Spain but he’s made a mighty impression, winning the ‘beast stage’ (with an incline of 24 per cent), and should get a podium.