In this photo taken on Jan 26, 2020 Luis Villanueva lights a candle in front of a Kobe Bryant mural in downtown Los Angeles. (PHOTO / AFP)

BEIJING -  2020 was a special year for everyone, and for sport as well. Sorrow, happiness, excitement, and expectation, sport brings mixed feelings to all and can be the light at the end of the tunnel. We highlighted several sport-related keywords in 2020, memorizing the unusual year and looking forward to a brand new start.

Farewell

We bid farewell to several sporting icons in 2020.

Basketball legend Kobe Bryant, 41, was killed in a helicopter crash in February. Argentine football legend Diego Maradona died at the age of 60 of a heart attack at his home in November.

Paolo Rossi, former Italian star striker who spearheaded the national side to the 1982 FIFA World Cup triumph, died at the age of 64.

We also said farewell to former NBA commissioner David Stern, the FIBA and the family of FIBA Secretary General Emeritus Borislav Stankovic, and Gao Fengwen, who led China's national football team at the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games.

They all passed away in 2020, but their legends will live on through fans, and they will continue to inspire future generations.

Munich's Robert Lewandowski poses with the trophy for the leading goal scorer after the German Bundesliga soccer match between VfL Wolfsburg and FC Bayern Munich in Wolfsburg, Germany, June 27, 2020. (KAI PFAFFENBACH / POOL PHOTO VIA AP)

Breakthrough

The new winner of the FIFA Best Men's Player award was Robert Lewandowski, instead of Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi, who had combined to win the award 11 times over the past 12 years.

Daniil Medvedev and Dominic Thiem, a pair of 20-somethings, brought some fresh air in the tennis arena, although it's still too early to write off the Big Three.

Russia's Medvedev, 24, claimed his first ATP Finals victory after defeating the year-ending tournament's top three seeds. Austria's Thiem, 27, won his first Grand Slam trophy at the US Open in September.

Snow falls on the Olympic Rings near the New National Stadium in Tokyo, March 14, 2020. (JAE C. HONG / AP)

Postponement

The Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games were postponed by one year due to the coronavirus pandemic. The 2020 Olympics will be held from July 23 to August 8 in 2021 and the Paralympic Games will open on Aug. 24 of the same year.

The Euro 2020 Championships and the Copa America were both postponed to June/July, 2021.

The 14th China National Winter Games was also postponed. International test events for the 2022 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games in Beijing are set to be replaced by an adapted testing program. 

Cheng Shuaipeng (right) of Zhejiang Golden Bulls competes during a match with Nanjing Monkey Kings at the newly resumed 2019-2020 Chinese Basketball Association (CBA) league in Qingdao, east China's Shandong province, on July 2, 2020. (PHOTO / XINHUA)

Restart

The 2019-2020 season of the Chinese Basketball Association (CBA) league resumed on June 20 after a nearly five-month break, the first professional league in China to resume operation.

The 2020 Chinese Super League (CSL), which was scheduled to kick off on February 22 and postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, started on July 25th.

The top five European leagues resumed in May. The French Open tennis tournament, which was scheduled from May 24 to June 7, was postponed until September. But one thing remained constant at Roland Garros, where Rafael Nadal is always the winner.

An amateur table tennis tournament kicked off in June in the city of Wuhan - once the epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak.

It was the city's first sporting event since the COVID-19 outbreak in January. The tournament was held in Wuhan Gymnasium, which was once converted into a mobile hospital in February and admitted more than 300 COVID-19 patients.

Life is on the way back to normal, and now too so is sport.