The Sporting Almanac Podcast

Episode 26: The Ryder Cup - Golf Like No Other "When you play for so many, it makes you strong." - Seve Ballesteros, Ryder Cup legend. Team golf hits hard. The roar of a partisan crowd, fists pumping against chests of blue or red, the one shot that changes the momentum and turns the contest on its head, the final putt it comes down to that can win or lose it all. The Ryder Cup is truly golf at its...

Episode 25: The Australian Football League - Making Its Mark Since 1858 Aussie Rules football is old. In fact, it could stake a claim to being the oldest continually existing code of football in the world, and in the Melbourne Football Club boasts the oldest professional football team of any code of football on the planet, predating association football's oldest pro club Notts County by four years...

Episode 24: The Volleyball World Championships - Serve, Pass, Set, Spike, Defend, Rotate, Repeat At the Sporting Almanac, more often than not we talk about sports invented in Britain and perfected elsewhere, with common threads and familiarity throughout. Not today. We don't really do Volleyball in the UK, but we are very much the exception. This is a global sport, followed and played by nearly a...

Episode 23: The World Athletics Championships - Every Second, SUGOI "It feels good to be one of the greatest sprinters. You can’t explain what it feels like to get up in the morning knowing you’re one of the best ever." Usain St. Leo Bolt, 11-time World Championship Gold Medallist and Men's 100m World Record Holder It’s easy to be cynical about athletics, as you watch human beings push the boundar...

Episode 22: The NFL Regular Season - Madden's Game "The only yardstick for success our society has is being a champion. No one remembers anything else." John Madden, Super Bowl XI winning coach, broadcaster and Pro Football Hall of Famer The richest sports league on the planet, the most elite group of athletic talent in any sport, anywhere, and a competition never far away from controversy or lege...

Episode 21: The US Open Tennis - Arthur Ashe, Althea Gibson and the Power of Tennis "From what we get, we can make a living; what we give, however, makes a life." Arthur Ashe, 1968 US Open Champion and Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient. The US Open can be more than just a great sporting occasion. Arthur Ashe became its first men’s champion in the Open Era as an amateur amongst professionals,...

Episode 20: The Rugby Championship and Women's World Cup How did Rugby Union make its way to the southern hemisphere? How does the game down south differ from the bruising northern style? And why, exactly, are New Zealand so damn good at it? This week, we’re serving up a double helping of rugby. With the Rugby Championship kicking off this weekend and the Red Roses gearing up for their date with d...

Episode 19: The Premier League - The Greatest Show on Earth What made the Premier League the biggest and best football league in the world? Why did English football's top clubs break away in 1992 - and what happened to the teams they left behind? And how on earth did Leicester City go from relegation certainties to champions of England? In this episode of The Sporting Almanac, we chart the story o...

Episode 18: The EFL and Football Pyramid - "You don't love the game as much as us". Football in England runs deep. It lives in the streets where we were raised, in overused but much beloved grassroots pitches, in the terrace chants passed down like heirlooms. It’s stitched into the fabric of families, of towns, of working weeks and weekend rituals. Before the season begins, there’s always hope - f...

Episode 17: The All-Ireland Senior Football Championship - "Where We All Belong" From the muddy fields of Meath to Croke Park's sacred sod, this episode dives into one of the most fiercely loved and proudly Irish sports: Gaelic football . We explore what makes the game so unique - its rules, its roots, and the deep ties it holds to community and identity. We trace the story back through time: to t...

Episode 16: A Boxing Story - Leen Sanders + Oleksandr Usyk vs. Daniel Dubois. With Oleksandr Usyk and Daniel Dubois set to put their world titles on the line, we take a look at one of the most compelling heavyweight clashes of the year - two talented fighters, shaped by very different paths, meeting in the ring with everything to prove, to win and to lose. But this week, we’re doing things a littl...

Episode 15: The UEFA European Women’s Championship – “Women’s Football Confuses Men” It’s a story almost as old as football itself: women start playing. People notice. They’re good - really good. Crowds grow, praise swells, more girls join in… and just as momentum builds, the men in suits step in. With furrowed brows and dubious “health concerns”, they declare the game unfit for women - too rough,...

Episode 14: The Tour de France – More than a race. Less than the truth. “You can't ride the Tour de France on mineral water. You would have to be an imbecile or a crook to imagine that a pro-cyclist who races for 235 days a year can hold the pace without stimulants.” Jacques Anquetil, five-time Tour de France winner It is without doubt the greatest cycling race in the world – just don’t ask what’s...

Episode 13: The Wimbledon Championships - The Noble Pursuit of Immortality Tennis is a game like no other. With origins in palaces and prisons alike, brought together by good marketing and better timing and allowing women earlier participation than Victorian Britain was famed for, it took only three years from the game being invented for a South-West London croquet club to stake their future on it...

Episode 12: The British & Irish Lions - The Power of Four "Let's be the best at everything that requires no talent." Paul O'Connell, 2009 Lions Captain. Enemies in March. Teammates in June. Once every four years, the British & Irish Lions unite four fierce rivals from two nations under a single red jersey. They set aside history, pride and borders to become something greater - and take tha...

Episode 11: The 24 Hours of Le Mans - Triomphe et Désastre The history of Le Mans is the history of motor racing. From hosting the first Grand Prix in 1906 to creating the world’s greatest endurance race in 1923, the 24 Hours of Le Mans has been run 92 times over 102 years - and in that time, it has showcased the cutting edge of automotive technology, the sport’s most iconic drivers, and seen some...

Episode 10: The NBA Finals - Dynasty and Legacy "I used to joke that if you could bottle all the emotion in a basketball game, you'd have enough hate to fight a war, and enough joy to prevent one." Bill Russell Jack and Ben crossover the Atlantic once more to talk about some people even taller than they are. Ahead of next week's NBA Finals , they dive into the stories of legendary ballers, iconic...

Episode 9: The UEFA Champions League Final - Football’s Night of Nights Jack and Ben are back in their wheelhouse this week as they dive into the biggest night in European club football - the UEFA Champions League Final . From contentious calls to unforgettable comebacks, tactical brilliance to glorious chaos - this is the night where legends rise, dreams shatter, and history unfolds in 90 minutes...

Bonus Episode: The Indianapolis 500 During Episode 8 on the Monaco Grand Prix we took some time to discuss the Indy 500 , the Greatest Spectacle in Racing, held the same weekend as Monaco. With that episode running long these hit the cutting room floor, and so this bonus episode is a few of those chats with a little extra recorded content to give you an introduction to another part of Motor Racing...

Episode 8: The Monaco Grand Prix - The Jewel in the Formula One Crown Jack and Ben are in the glamour and glitz of Monaco this week for the 82nd running of the most famous race on the Formula One calendar - The Monaco Grand Prix . Expect more mentions of crashes and failures than of overtaking as they discuss the merits and criticisms of wide cars racing around narrow streets - it is a race that s...

Episode 7: The FA Cup - Of Dreamers and Giant Killers After three weeks over the Atlantic, Jack and Ben are back in Blighty ahead of the 144th Men's and 55th Women's FA Cup Finals . There's no fairytale like the FA Cup . It is where semi-professional players line up against the gods of the game on equal footing, where one drop of the hip or one act of bravery can make you immortal, and where there...

Episode 6: The NHL Playoffs and Ice Hockey World Championships – Goals, Goons, Graft and Glory. This week, we're checking out one of the toughest sports on the planet – ice hockey, home to the brawling, bruising, toothless titans of the rink. Jack and Ben skate through the NHL Playoffs , where 16 teams chase the (quite literally) biggest trophy in the sport: the Stanley Cup . Meanwhile, across the...

Episode 5: The Kentucky Derby and the Triple Crown of Thoroughbred Racing - The Greatest Two Minutes in Sports This week, Jack and Ben are Stateside once again, heading to Churchill Downs in Louisville, Kentucky, for the iconic Kentucky Derby . But it’s not just the history of one legendary event they're diving into - they’re also unravelling the Preakness Stakes and the Belmont Stakes , as they r...

Episode 4: The NFL Draft - More Than Just a Pick It’s Draft Day on the Sporting Almanac as Jack and Ben blitz the history of the NFL’s biggest off-field spectacle - from its humble beginnings in a Philadelphia hotel, to its main event status today - throughout war, expansion, relocations and mergers, as it forged dynasties and ended careers all at the same time. Expect wild stories, big personalit...

Episode 3: The World Snooker Championship - The Crucible of Dreams Jack and Ben chalk up for a dive into snooker’s most hallowed ground — the Crucible . That unassuming theatre in Sheffield has seen history made, records fall, and the likes of the Nugget , the Hurricane , the Whirlwind and the Rocket become legends - as it hosts the biggest event in the sports calendar, the World Snooker Champions...