Anything but Footy

The perfect white snow, the bright blue sky, everything looks rosy in Olympic world as the 2020 Youth Olympics Winter Games in Lausanne Switzerland enter their second week. Team GB are celebrating success too with 5 medals on day 6 - and more sports start their action this week.  But thousands of miles away in South America, Rio’s Olympic Park is apparently dangerous and virtually in ruins, 4 year...

We have the latest on the plans to stage a separate shooting and archery competition in India alongside the 2022 edition of the Commonwealth Games being staged in Birmingham. John believes this will be the end for the Commonwealth Games and the event has become irrelevant, but Michael disagrees. There's strong opinions on both sides with Michael believing this imaginative staging of the event is t...

It's Olympic year again and Tokyo is preparing to stage its second games - 56 years on. The Games will be dramatically different from 1964 but they'll also be different from Rio - just 4 years ago. The Olympics changes and evolves and with 5 new sports and more than 30 more gold medals up for grabs, Michael and John run through all what's new for Tokyo 2020 - from stadia to sports to events. This...

Join Michael and John for Anything but Footy Sports Awards - and their Christmas Party at the Gunmakers Pub in Eyre St Hill in Clerkenwell! For this festive edition of the Olympic and Paralympic podcast, we'll be recognising the sportsmen and women, Team and moments of the Year from a British and worldwide perspective - but they could be the same of course! So sit back and enjoy the review of 2019...

2020 is another Olympic and Paralympic year! The older you get the more they seem to come round (NB. they're every two years of course with the Winter Games too!) In this pod, Michael and John look-back at some of their first Olympic experiences as children, discuss some of their best moments and sports people to interview and look ahead to what might be to come in the Olympics in the future! As w...

Michael stated on a recent edition of the podcast that BBC Sports Personality of the Year is the closest the UK gets to the Oscars for talkability about an awards show. Tonight's gong-fest in Aberdeen has again sparked debate and conversation. Ben Stokes won the main award with the England Men's Cricket Team picking up team of the year and moment of the year. We also discuss awards for Baroness Ta...

WADA has announced that Russia will be banned from international sporting competition for four years. The ban, subject to appeal, means that Russia will not be able to send a delegation to the Olympic or Paralympic Games in Tokyo and will also be banned from most other sporting competition. Euro 2020 is not affected and FIFA is currently reiewing the decision ahead of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar....

In this week's episode of Anything but Footy, we discuss the shortlist for the prestigious BBC Sports Personality of the Year award. 6 were named ahead of the event in Aberdeen, but there's been an equal amount of discussion over the names left off - including swimmers Adam Peaty and Alice Tai, motor sport's Jonathan Rea and athlete Hannah Cockroft. We discuss the main details and make some predic...

Another round up of the week's talking points in the world of Olympic and Paralympic sport. Michael and John start with an argument over whether The Sunday Times Sportswomen of the Year Awards got their main title right for 2019. Dina Asher-Smith won the award for the second year in a row after her gold and two silver medals at the World Athletics Championships in Doha. John agrees but Michael arg...

This is Great British Bosses by Anything but Footy. We profile the women and men responsible for sport in this country - many at national governing bodies - who manage teams, staff, budgets, grass-root participation and overseeing those medal moments at Olympic, Paralympic and elite level. Triathlon was only invented in San Diego in 1974, but now the swim bike run event is an integral part of the...

The World Para Athletics Championship has ended in Dubai, We hear from Head Coach Paula Dunn on the success of the Great Britain and Northern Ireland team. Athletes from these shores finished third on the medal table with the likes of Hannah Cockroft and Sophie Hahn again on top of the world. There were familar names like Richard Whitehead winning medals along with a new generation of stars gettin...

2018 British 200m Champion Beth Dobbin joins us to give her reaction to this week's news that The IAAF are cutting some events from The Diamond League in 2020. Beth tells us what it mans to lose events, including the 200m, from the core programme as The IAAF aim to make the event a more marketable product for broadcasters. The fall out this week has included the establishment of a new union for th...

This is Great British Bosses by Anything but Footy. We profile the women and men responsible for sport in this country - many at national governing bodies - who manage teams, staff, budgets, grass-root participation and overseeing those medal moments at Olympic, Paralympic and elite level. This episode, we're in Lilleshall and the base of British Gymnastics with Chief Executive Jane Allen. Formerl...

Canadian World Championship medallist Evan Dunfee joins us this week to give us his views on the IOC decision to move the marathons and race walks from Tokyo to Sapporo during the 2020 Olympic Games due to concerns over the temperatures. Evan tweeted a number of observations and factual comments this week about the history of Olympic and World Championship marathon running and tells Anything but F...

This is Great British Bosses by Anything but Footy. We profile the women and men responsible for sport in this country - many at national governing bodies - who manage teams, staff, budgets, grass-root participation and overseeing those medal moments at Olympic, Paralympic and elite level. This week, we're in Hendon and the Leon Paul Centre with British Fencing Chief Executive Georgina Usher. Brit...

Following the closure of the Nike Oregon Project, Nike CEO Mike Parker has announced he's stepping down, but insists his departure from the role is nothing to do with the fallout of the Alberto Salazar doping ban. We look at what it means for the brand and whether this PR disaster, along with other recent scandals, has meant a need to change the man at the top. The National Lottery is celebrating...

This is Great British Bosses by Anything but Footy. We profile the women and men responsible for sport in this country - many at national governing bodies - who manage teams, staff, budgets, grass-root participation and overseeing those medal moments at Olympic, Paralympic and elite level. This week, we're in Loughborough with British Swimming Chief Executive Jack Buckner. After a disappointing pe...

We are 9 months out from the next Olympics in Tokyo, and plenty can still be done ahead of the Games. At the European Track Cycling Championships in the Netherlands, Great Britain won 9 medals including a gold and two silvers for Laura Kenny. Kenny will be attempting to upgrade to a triple gold medal winning haul in Tokyo, and we explain how she will tackle the task in terms of the newly available...

This is Great British Bosses by Anything but Footy. We profile the women and men responsible for sport in this country - many at national governing bodies - who manage teams, staff, budgets, grass-root participation and overseeing those medal moments at Olympic, Paralympic and elite level. This week, we catch up with Table Tennis England Chief Executive Sara Sutcliffe. The sport was in desperate n...

In this episode, John and Michael wrestle with their feelings over the current state of distance running. Eliud Kipchoge made history, running 26.2 miles in under 2 hours in Vienna - albeit under special conditions - and Brigid Kosgei broke Paula Radcliffe's 16 year old world marathon record in Chicago. But, both achievements come just days after Nike announced they were shutting the Oregon Projec...

This is Anything but Footy - the unashamedly biased Olympic and Paralympic podcast. And this is a new series - Great British Bosses - where we profile the women and men responsible for sport in this country - many at national governing bodies - who manage teams, staff, budgets, grass-root participation and overseeing those medal moments at Olympic, Paralympic and elite level. This week, we're goin...

As the curtain comes down on the 2019 World Athletics Championships in Doha, we review all the action on and off the track. The event has delivered some scintillating performances, but issues around attendances, doping, human rights and the environment have dogged the events inside the arena. We do our best to analyse everything as well as looking back at where Great Britain and Northern Ireland w...

Again, this week we're at the World Road Cycling Championships in Yorkshire which was wrapped up with a rain affected men's elite road race. The event was delayed and had a significant route change in order to protect the welfare of spectators and participants after heavy rain in the White Rose County. We speak to Mads Pedersen who eventually took the Rainbow Jersey as well as Yorkshire's own Ben...

Yorkshire has taken over from London and Cambridge as the capital of cycling in Great Britain and for the first time in 37 years the UCI World Road Race Championships are taking place in the county all week. The first ever mixed relay Team Time Trial took place on a drizzly Sunday but British cyclists won a brilliant bronze behind the Netherlands and Germany - we hear from British cyclist John Arc...

The World Para-Swimming Championships is top of our agenda this week on Anything but Footy - your unashamedly Olympic & Paralympic podcast. John is speaking from the London Aquatic Centre which this week witnessed unbelievable success for British Swimming who won over 40 medals. London stepped in to replace Malaysia just six months ago to host the event after the original hosts were stripped of th...