The year ahead: What will 2017 have in store for sports around the world?

— -- What will happen in sports next year? No one knows. As 2016 showed, a year in sports can be as unpredictable as a presidential election.

Leicester City won its first Premier League championship, just seven years after having been in English football's third tier.? LeBron James?led the Cavaliers to their first NBA championship -- and the city of Cleveland's first title in any major sport in more than 50 years. Iceland knocked England out of the UEFA European Championship. Chris Froome actually ran part of the Tour de France (though he was slower than, say, Usain Bolt). And the Cubs not only reached their first World Series in 71 years, they actually won it for the first time in 108 years.

While no one can accurately predict the future in sports, there are some very intriguing possibilities worth watching in 2017.

Tennis: Uncertainty surrounds stars

Roger Federer has been the biggest name in men's tennis for more than a decade, while Serena Williams may be the biggest name in all of women's sport. Yet both are 35 years old, Williams was knocked from her long-held No. 1 ranking and Federer is coming off an injury-riddled season in which he didn't win a single tournament.

Although younger, 30-year-old Rafael Nadal has slipped as well. Maria Sharapova can return from her PED suspension in April, but she will be 30 and has been dealing with injuries and decline, too. While Andy Murray and Novak Djokovic are still playing great, could 2017 mark the end -- or the beginning of the end -- for some of the sport's most famous players? We'll see.

Don't count them out yet, though. After all, Venus Williams, who will be 37 by Wimbledon, is still in the top 20 and says she wants to compete in the 2020 Olympics at age 40.

Golf: Can Tiger roar?in his 40s?

Once the greatest player in the world,? Tiger Woods?has fallen even further than the post-Brexit British pound. Injuries dropped the former No. 1 out of the top 500. After winning 14 majors by age 32, he hasn't won one since 2008 -- and missed all four in 2016. He's back but will be 41 years old the next time he plays.

Can he return to greatness? Jack Nicklaus won the Masters at age 46 in 1986, while Tom Watson nearly won the 2009 Open Championship at age 59. So maybe we will see Woods back in his old form. But for him to win at Augusta for the first time in 12 years, Woods might need Jordan Spieth to blow more than a five-stroke lead.

Baseball: WBC steps to the plate

Americans may not get excited about the World Baseball Classic (which is why its future could be in jeopardy), but countries such as the Dominican Republic and Japan are passionate for it. And since Japan has won two WBC titles, U.S. fans should get a look at a player so great not even Mike Trout can match his achievements: Shohei Otani of the Nippon Ham Fighters.

Otani pitches and hits at high levels, doing what no baseball player has done since Babe Ruth. Otani was 10-4 with a 1.86 ERA as a starting pitcher in 2016 while also batting .322 with 22 home runs. In his four-year career, the 22-year-old Otani is 39-13 with a 2.49 ERA and has hit 40 home runs.

This is definitely a player to watch, especially for the MLB teams that will try to sign him next winter -- when he'll probably be posted -- and then try to convince him to either pitch or hit rather than do both.

Track and field: Bolt runs off into sunset?

London will host the IAAF championships in August, when Usain Bolt -- who in Rio won gold in the 100, 200 and 4x100 for the third consecutive Olympics -- has said he will run for the final time (and possibly distance star Mo Farah as well, though he might continue in the marathon). If that is the case (how many athletes actually retire when they say they will?) will Bolt go out with a victory and his famous Lightning Bolt salute? Or will someone beat him?

And what effect will the loss of track's best-known athlete have on a sport that continues to lose popularity? Again, the future is more interesting to see than to predict.

Olympics: 2024 suspense to end

While athletes gear up for the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea, next year's big question will be which city will be chosen in September to host the 2024 Summer Olympics: Paris, Los Angeles or Budapest? The International Olympic Committee is trying to reverse the ever-soaring price of hosting, with Los Angeles' budget just more than $5 billion, or a quarter of what the 2016 Games cost Rio.

Dark-horse Budapest is looking to host its first Olympics, while Los Angeles and Paris each look to host for a third time. If L.A. wins, it would be the first Olympics in the United States since the 2002 Salt Lake Winter Games, a 22-year gap, and the first U.S. Summer Games since Atlanta in 1996. But that also would mean the gap between Summer Games held in Europe would be pushed to at least 16 years, the continent's longest drought. So given the IOC's often Euro-centric nature, Paris is the likely favorite.

Regardless of which city gets 2024, though, IOC president Thomas Bach said he hasn't ruled out the possibility of awarding the 2028 bid next year as well, adding more intrigue.

Cycling: Make more room for Froome?

There has been doping in the Tour since its start, when some riders were using such drugs as strychnine and nitroglycerine to enhance performance. Cheating has been the negative focus of cycling the past two decades, but no winner of the six most recent Tours has ever tested positive. With the constant testing in the sport, it's better to focus on cycling's excitement and the strong possibility that Chris Froome could win his fourth Tour and third in a row in the summer of 2017.

Whoever wins, it probably won't be a French rider, since the country where the race is held has built a not-quite-Cubs-like drought of 32 years without a winner. (Of course, predicting that probably means a Frenchman will win.)

Soccer: Russian intrigue at Confederations Cup

The routine is for the FIFA World Cup host country to put on the Confederations Cup the year before as a semi-dress rehearsal. Thus, Russia hosts the 2017 event in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Sochi and Kazan. With Germany, Russia, Portugal, Chile, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand and a TBD African nation competing, the matches will be interesting. What will be much more intriguing are the possible backstories, with the allegations of Russia hacking and leaking emails leading up to the U.S. presidential election and the widespread doping of athletes there.

Meanwhile, after an amazing, exhilarating championship last season, Leicester City has fallen deep in the Premier League standings, so far that relegation is actually a possibility. The club is mired in the bottom half of the table and already has more than doubled its loss total of last season. Imagine that: a champion of the league one year and then possibly kicked out the next. Also keep your eyes on Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester City, who are proving to be this season's championship contenders.

Hockey: NHL centennial, plus a big decision

The NHL will celebrate its centennial -- speaking of 100th anniversaries, can you name the city that won the Stanley Cup in 1917? -- and the league also will decide whether to let its players compete in the 2018 Olympics. Commissioner Gary Bettman says there is "negative sentiment'' among owners about this, but the players have said they definitely want to be Olympians. Superstar Alex Ovechkin said he will compete regardless of what the league decides. If the NHL does drop out, will Olympic hockey interest plunge or will it rise to the level when amateur Americans provided one of the greatest moments in history at the 1980 Games?

Oh, and that 1917 Stanley Cup champ was from Seattle, home of Microsoft, Amazon, Starbucks and no NHL team ever (the Seattle Metropolitans of the PCHA beat the NHA's Montreal Canadiens three games to one in the 1917 finals). As hard as it is to predict the future, sometimes recalling the past is even rougher.

American football: NFL stretches out in London

Like everything else on TV, NFL ratings have dropped significantly this year, but the league is hoping to increase international interest. The NFL returned to Mexico this season and will increase its games in London to four next season, with the Ravens, Saints, Dolphins, Vikings, Browns, Cardinals, Rams and, of course, the Jaguars crossing the pond.

Elsewhere

MLB also is talking about playing in London, but that wouldn't be before 2018, and we have so much to watch in 2017 first. We'll witness Women's World Cups in cricket and rugby, a Formula One chase without the defending champion after the retirement of Nico Rosberg, the Cubs donning their World Series rings and, well, probably something so absolutely mesmerizing and astounding that no one can possibly imagine it happening.