The Sporting Almanac Podcast

The Six Nations Series - Introduction The Northern Hemisphere's biggest rugby competition is back. France, England, Ireland, Scotland, Italy and Wales will renew their decades long fight for European supremacy, starting with France vs. Ireland in Paris. In this series we will dive into each of the nations histories in the competition, but for this episode we set the scene, talk about why we love t...

Winter Olympics Series Episode X - Alpine Skiing and its Superwomen We bring our Winter Olympics series to a close just in time for the opening ceremony, and finish with the true blue ribbon events of the games - Alpine Skiing, consisting of the Slalom, Giant Slalom, Super-G, Team Combined and, the crème de la crème of the winter games, the Downhill events. The latter is designed to test the six c...

Winter Olympics Series Episode IX - Lindsey Jacobellis and Snowboard Cross Snowboard Cross is fun, that much is certain. But what happens when a competitor chooses the wrong moment to have fun, with the eyes of the world upon her and the finish line in sight? In 2006, Lindsey Jacobellis had one of the winter games most memorable and infamous moments, and despite dominating her sport in every other...

Winter Olympics Series Episode VIII - Bobsleigh: Jamaica and Billy Fiske There's probably few Winter Olympic sports that have penetrated the general consciousness and culture than bobsleigh, thanks mostly to the wonderful 1993 film Cool Runnings , based on the true story of the Jamaican bobsleigh team at the 1988 games in Calgary. While the story is, obviously, dusted generously with Disney magic,...

Winter Olympics Series Episode VII - Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan From the dawn of sport, competitors have bent, stretched and downright circumvented the rules in order to gain an advantage over their opposition. Usually, this is in the form of gamesmanship and rule breaking on the field or drug taking and bribing off it. Rarely in sport are there occasions where one competitor is accused of o...

Winter Olympics Series Episode VI - Eddie the Eagle Michael David Edwards was an unlikely Olympic Ski Jumper, to say the least. Extremely far-sighted, a little on the heavy side and, most devastating of all to his chances in the event, British. But Eddie, as he was dubbed by school friends, was not a man to take no for an answer. His story is not one of success, no podium, no records (British ones...

Winter Olympics Series Episode V - Steven Bradbury For almost his entire career, it felt like if Steven Bradbury didn't have bad luck, he'd have no luck at all. Collisions, crashes, missed opportunities and truly horrific injuries, if there was any athlete at the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics who had earned a bit of good fortune, it was Bradbury. And after fate had beaten him down time and t...

Winter Olympics Series Episode IV - Shaun White and Halfpipe Snowboarding In the fourth episode of our ten-part Winter Olympics series we take a look at an Olympic and X-Games legend, Shaun White. Three Olympic gold medals in snowboarding alongside fifteen X-Games golds across snowboarding and skateboarding tell their own story, but White’s impact on the halfpipe goes beyond medal counts. From a c...

Winter Olympics Series Episode III - The Miracle on Ice As hard as it might be for British ice hockey fans to grasp, there actually is a more famous ice hockey shock than the Brits upsetting the dominant Canadians in 1936 (twice). At Lake Placid in 1980, a team of amateur college players with an average age of just 21 took on the juggernaut that was the Soviet Union national team, ostensibly amate...

Winter Olympics Series Episode II - Rudi Ball, Garmisch-Partenkirchen 1936 The IOC have made a lot of questionable decisions through the years, and continue to do so to this very day, but few stand out more sharply than the awarding of both the 1936 Winter and Summer Olympics to Nazi Germany. While the 1936 Summer games are very fairly given their spot in history thanks to Jesse Owens four gold me...

Winter Olympic Series Episode I - Chamonix 1924 The first of our ten part Winter Olympic Series starts where it all began - in the shadow of Mont Blanc, where the French, Swiss and Italian borders meet, in Chamonix, 1924. These weren't called the Winter Olympics at the time - the French Olympic committee organised the "International Winter Sports Week" and the IOC co-opted it as the first Winter G...

Season 2, Episode 2: The Australian Open They call it the Happy Slam , and there's probably nowhere in the world of sport where so many people could turn up and still maintain that well earned moniker than Melbourne. That almost unparalleled sporting city is now the permanent host of the once nomadic Australian Open, played in grand arenas named for legends of the sport in front of more spectators...

Season 2, Episode 1: The NFL Playoffs Jack and Ben kick off 2026 with a preview and history of of the road to the Super Bowl, the NFL Playoffs. Fourteen teams, twelve matches across two conferences with the two conference champions meeting in Santa Clara next month - this is do or die football. For anyone who watches the Super Bowl every year and wants to know how the teams get there, we have an e...

Episode 38: The 2025 Sporting Almanac Awards and End-of-Year Review After eight months, 37 and a half episodes and a surprising number of listeners (we cannot thank you enough), we bring the first season of the Sporting Almanac Podcast to a close in the most fun way we could think of - with an award show, nominees chosen by us, winners voted for by friends of the show and completely unknown to us...

Episode 37: The African Cup of Nations In 1956 when the Confederation of African Football was founded, four African nations were members of FIFA: Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, and South Africa. The first Cup of Nations was played in Sudan between three of these, with South Africa's apartheid supporting Football Association immediately excluded from both CAF and the new tournament, not to return for near...

Episode 36: The PDC World Darts Championship - "This darts match will make you happy!" Every Christmas thousands cram into Alexandra Palace in fancy dress to scream in unison at a little black, white, red and green board on the wall. In this episode, we trace how that surreal festive tradition came to be - from darts as a pub pastime, through the birth of the televised World Championship, to the c...

Episode 35: Our Ashes XI (The Ashes, Part 3) - Why We Love Cricket In Part 3 of our Ashes series, we reflect on almost 30 years of being cricket fans, and the players who’ve inspired us, shaped our love of the game, and delivered moments of both joy and agony. To do that, we stick on our selectors caps and pick an Ashes XI drawn from our time as fans. Some choices come easily - Shane Warne, Steve...

Episode 34: Beginnings, Bradman, Bodyline and Benaud (The Ashes, Part 2) - The Birth of a Rivalry. "Media were never allowed into an Australian dressing room until I became skipper. I changed that and invited them in at the close of play each day, thereby confirming for many administrators they had appointed a madman as captain." - Australia captain and broadcasting legend Richie Benaud. England h...

Episode 33: The Ashes Part 1, How to Cricket - A Beginners Guide to a Very Old Sport “They'd win the first four Tests and we'd try to nick one at the end when they were all drunk.” - Former England captain Nasser Hussain on England's pre-2005 Ashes fortunes. Cricket, to the uninitiated, can be a very confusing sport. Even to those who are lucky enough to have had the Laws ingrained into them at a...

Episode 32: The Grey Cup - Canadian Football's Grand Finale Canadian Football is a weird and wonderful thing, especially to those only acquainted with its immensely popular equivalent played south of the border. To an NFL fan, watching the CFL can seem like a fever dream. The pitch is a bit too big, the goalposts are in the wrong place, the endzones look like they need to go on a diet and wide rec...

Episode 31: The Brazilian Grand Prix - Drama is Only Seconds Away "I only came back to reality when I saw the checkered flag. That's when I felt immense pleasure in being alive, in being at Interlagos, in my homeland, and seeing my people happy." - Ayrton Senna, speaking about his 1991 Brazilian Grand Prix win. There is no race on the Formula 1 calendar that disappoints as rarely as Brazil. The In...

Episode 30: The Melbourne Cup - The Race That Stops the Nation "The Melbourne Cup is the Australasian National Day. It would be difficult to overstate its importance. It overshadows all other holidays and specialized days of whatever sort in that congeries of colonies. Overshadows them? I might almost say it blots them out." - Mark Twain, from his travelogue Following the Equator. The sport of Hor...

Episode 29: Archery World Cup - Every Arrow Tells a Story “ Archery is not about being better than anyone else; it’s about being better than you used to be.” - Unknown For tens of thousands of years, humans relied on the bow for survival. For thousands of years legendary archers have graced our lore, myth and storytelling. And for hundreds of years, we have taken aim at targets for prize, honour a...

Episode 28: Super League Grand Final - Men of Steel “For me, it’s the hardest sport in the world. It takes dedication, discipline and mental strength. You accept constant physical punishment. You push your body right to the limit... It’s too tough for me. Deep down, I would love to be a rugby league player.” - 2012 Tour de France winner and 5-time Olympic gold medallist Sir Bradley Wiggins Some sa...

Episode 27: Major League Baseball Postseason - One, Two, Three Times You're Out... "Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball." ~ American historian Jacques Barzun. Baseball is more than a game. It's memories, individual and collective. It's culture, consciousness and being. America's favourite pastime has been filling stadia for a century and a half, can boast...