Not by the Playbook

As part of Belarus women's basketball team, Yelena Leuchanka twice represented her country at the Olympics, but last year she was jailed for protesting the re-election of President Alexander Lukashenko. She tells us about protesting, prison, and player power. The Derby, one of the most famous horse races in the world takes place on Saturday. As well as previewing the race we’ll look at the new sta...

We take a glimpse into the past, present and the future, of one of the world’s most famous motor races. The Indianapolis 500, form parts of the sports "Triple Crown" and it takes place on Sunday. We discuss the upcoming Champions League final taking place in Porto. And we hear from Welshman Harry Cromwell, he is a family man and a fisherman who is hoping to surf his way straight to the Olympics. (...

We’ve brought together a Sportshour mini panel of experts to discuss what Sport could look like in the next thirty years to tie in with the BBC’s Sport 2050 project. We’re joined by Claire Poole, who is the Founder and CEO of Sport Positive, Madeleine Orr, who is an Assistant Professor of Sport Management at SUNY Cortland and founder The Sport Ecology Group, and Tanya Aldred, who is a journalist w...

Leicester City face Chelsea in the FA Cup Final at Wembley with the Foxes aiming to win the trophy for the first time. BBC Football correspondent John Murray and Peter Trenter, from the Chelsea Supporters Group, join us ahead the game. The first Black American woman in professional cycling – Ayesha McGowan – tells us her sport needs to change and explains what she is doing to help. McGowan has awa...

Club America defender Janelly Farias tells us how taking a stand on social issues has led to people in her home country likening her to USA star Megan Rapinoe. The comparisons were intended as an insult but Farias takes them as a compliment and the two women have exchanged messages on social media this week. Farias – who is LGBTQ+ - also tells us her family didn’t want her to be a footballer and t...

In the week the NFL draft takes place, former number one pick Alex Smith joins us to discuss how he overcame a life-threatening injury and two years out to end the 2020 season voted as “comeback player of the year”. In 2018 Smith suffered a serious leg injury during a game against the Houston Texans and following corrective surgery, infection was discovered. The focus then switched from saving his...

Former WNBA player Tamara Moore tells us about her relief and hope for the future after a US jury found former police officer Derek Chauvin guilty of George Floyd’s murder this week. Chauvin was filmed kneeling on Floyd's neck for more than nine minutes during his arrest on a street in Minneapolis last year and his death sparked Black Lives Matter protests across the globe. Moore, who is from Minn...

Canadian professional figure skater Elladj Baldé tells us how he’s bringing the sport to a new audience through social media. Videos of Baldé performing unconventional routines to artists including Rihanna and Labrinth, have been viewed millions of times. He was born in Moscow to a Russian mother and a Guinean father and tells us he hasn’t always found it easy to express himself in the sport. Bald...

The former England cricket captain David Gower, the BBC’s racing commentator John Hunt, the five time Paralympic champion Hannah Cockroft and Andrew Counsell from British Carriage Driving reflect on Prince Philip’s life through his love of sport. The Duke of Edinburgh passed away at the age of 99 this week. Gower recalls his many meetings with Prince Philip, while Cockroft tells us just how much s...

US Paralympic Gold medal winning swimmer Mallory Weggemann joins us to discuss her hopes of competing in Tokyo and reflects on her turbulent journey in the sport following the release of her autobiography. Weggemann – who was 18 at the time - was left paralysed in 2008 after receiving an epidural injection to treat back pain. She went on to win gold at London 2012, before a serious arm injury in 2...

We hear from New Zealand and Brighton defender Rebekah Stott in the week she started chemotherapy for Stage 3 Hodgkin's Lymphoma. Stott tells us she’s undergone IVF treatment to give her the option of having children in the future, given the severity of the treatment she’s facing. She tells us about having learned of her diagnosis while in hotel quarantine in Australia and discusses her plans to t...

Josh Nisbet is the shortest player in the A-League, standing at 160 centimetres tall or just under 5 feet and 2 inches. He tells us about how he dreaded getting his height taken as a child and how a team in Spain suggested he take growth hormone as a teenager. He also recalls making his debut for the Central Coast Mariners alongside Usain Bolt and tells us of his hopes of playing for Australia. Th...

Jasmine Harrison joins Sportshour to reflect on making history as the youngest woman to row solo across the Atlantic Ocean. The 21-year-old completed the trip from the Canary Islands to the Caribbean in 70 days, 3 hours and 48 minutes. She tells us about capsizing twice, a close encounter with a drilling ship, being at one with nature and how she burnt her hand at the end of her journey. United St...

As part of LGBT+ History Month, Sportshour presenter Caroline Barker is joined by a panel of guests from the football community to discuss how inclusive, or not, the sport really is and what can and is being done to address those areas where it falls short. We’ll also hear from Caitlin Rooskrantz, the first person of colour to be selected for South Africa’s Olympic gymnastics team. As part of Blac...

We hear from the first Wallabies player to come out as gay, Dan Palmer. Last year he wrote a powerful column in the Sydney Herald saying that his ‘own death felt preferable to anyone finding out that I was gay’. Since this he has had hundreds of people messaging from around the world to say they have encountered similar problems with their sexuality. A few months on he speaks to Caroline about his...

This week’s Sportshour focuses on Super Bowl LV between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Kansas City Chiefs. The BBC’s Blaire Toedte is on the ground in Florida for us as the Bucs aim to make history by becoming the first team to win a Super Bowl in their home stadium. Seven and a half thousand vaccinated health care workers have been gifted tickets for the game as a thank you for their work durin...

“It strips you entirely of your dignity, of your feeling of any kind of self-worth” – Shaka Hislop on receiving racist abuse Former Newcastle United and Trinidad and Tobago goalkeeper Shaka Hislop joins us in the week that Show Racism the Red Card launched in South Africa. The organisation is the UK’s largest anti-racism educational charity and it was formed twenty five years ago following a donat...

We look at why a 100 or so former basketball players are living in poverty. The players are from the ABA, which was a major rival to the NBA in the 1960's and 70's before a merger in 1976. The ABA helped modernise the NBA including the style of play that has made the league a billion dollar industry, but now some of the biggest names of their day are dying in poverty. Darnell 'Dr Dunk' Hillman cam...

It's the third round of the FA Cup and Chorley FC who are in the sixth tier of English football travel to Championship team Derby County. We will speak live to the club ahead of the fixture. Plus we hear from Paul the FA Cup fact file on some of the most weird and wonderful stats on the competition and speak live to lifelong Crawley Town fan Carol Bates ahead of their FA Cup match against Leeds Un...

We speak to former Buffalo Bills coach Phoebe Schechter ahead of the Divisional round of the NFL. Teams, including the Bills, are just two victories away from the Super Bowl. Plus in the week that President Donald Trump leaves office we head back to the early 1980s and his departure from professional sport. One of Trump’s ambitions was to own a sport franchise and he converted an NFL team. Unable...

2020 was a sporting year like no other. The coronavirus pandemic forced global sport into an unprecedented shutdown, with Euro 2020 and the Tokyo Olympics among the events postponed. Liverpool won the Premier League and Bayern Munich the Champions League behind closed doors as sport returned without fans. In this first Sportshour of 2021 we catch up with those sports people from around the world w...

This special programme explores the sad and controversial life of Jim Thorpe - the American Indian who was the star of the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm, where the Swedish King famously told him 'Sir, you are the greatest athlete in the world'. Thorpe had grown up on the Sac and Fox Indian reservation in Oklahoma and then, as a teenager, was sent 1500 miles away to a boarding school in Pennsylvania w...

Bubba Wallace joins us to reflect on a turbulent 2020 and to look ahead to racing for his new Michael Jordan owned team in 2021. Wallace led the successful calls for his sport to ban the confederate flag before a subsequent incident in Alabama prompted an FBI investigation. A member of his team found what looked like a noose hanging in his racing stall, with the authorities finding that no hate cr...

“Enough was enough – I felt like I was on the wrong side” – Tiara Brown on leaving the police Unbeaten professional boxer Tiara Brown joins us following her recent decision to resign from the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington D.C. The former “DC Officer of the Year” tells us she became increasingly disheartened by some of the behaviour she witnessed from fellow officers when working at...

Slovenia’s Alenka Artnik joins us after she set a new world record in freediving by descending 374 feet below the surface of the Red Sea. Just off the coast of Egypt, she secured a four-pound weight around her neck and fastened herself to a thin line before holding her breath and going for the record. Artnik tells us about the pressures on her body, how a traumatic past led her to try freediving a...