What’s your standout sporting memory of 2016?
In a year marked by triumph and tragedy, we asked CNN’s sports anchors and correspondents to pick a match, a moment, an event that defined their reporting year.
From the brilliance of football superstar Cristiano Ronaldo at the European Championship to Usain Bolt completing the “triple triple” at the Rio Olympics, individuals have shone on the biggest stages in 2016.
But it’s also been a memorable year for teams, with the Chicago Cubs ending a 108-year drought in baseball’s World Series, 5,000-1 outsider Leicester City winning the English Premier League, and against the golfing odds, Team USA wresting the Ryder Cup back from Europe’s clutches.
Triumph was matched by tragedy when 19 players and staff from the Brazilian club Chapecoense where among the 71 killed when their plane crashed on its way to Colombia.
CNN’s Don Riddell witnessed the dignity and courage of the grief-stricken families, friends and fans of the club.
And after 27 years, justice was finally served for the victims of the Hillsborough disaster when a UK jury ruled all 96 Liverpool fans had been unlawfully killed before an FA Cup semifinal tie on April 15, 1989.