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 boundaries of what should be possible. The World Athletics Championships have always been a stage for both the sublime and the suspect - moments of breathtaking performance, shadowed by questions of fairness, corruption, and doping. And when the organisers themselves - once the IAAF, now World Athletics - can’t always be trusted with the integrity of the sport, does the competition we lay our eyes upon truly deserve our awe and respect?

Here, enjoyment and doubt spring from the same place - sugoi, the extraordinary. When what you witness defies description, it can also defy belief. But if we allow ourselves to be lost only in doubt, we risk denying the joy of the extraordinary - the joy of watching legend unfold in front of us.

When Mike Powell broke an unbreakable record to defeat Carl Lewis in Tokyo, 1991 - that was incredible. When Jonathan Edwards hopped, stepped and jumped his way to Gothenburg glory in 1995 - that was astonishing. When Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce swept every sprint gold in 2013 - that was sensational. And when Usain Bolt shattered his own world record on the blue track of Berlin in 2009 - that was legendary.

The World Athletics Championships doesn’t do ordinary. One way or another, it always delivers. So join us for this week’s Sporting Almanac as we explore the good, the bad, and the downright beautiful, as athletics takes centre stage.

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 legend.

There are over a million High School football players that every season vie for one of the 50,000 Division 1 College roster spots. Each Spring, around 260 of them get drafted into the NFL. Their average career length is barely three seasons, and those who don't make it have very few alternatives to remain in professional sport. There is no pyramid, no farm leagues, few overseas options and none that even remotely stack up to it in terms of prestige or recompense. Those who make it are the best of the best, putting their bodies on their line for a shot at a starting spot, another contract, and for those lucky few maybe even a ring.

Ben and Jack talk money, scale, structure, cheerleaders and records and how much Jack hates loving the New York Jets, as well as profiling one of the most fascinating men every to have graced the sport - John Madden, a name familiar to anyone with even a passing knowledge of football, with a story and legacy like few others. There is simply no league in the world of sport quite like the NFL.

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, using his voice and his platform to challenge injustice long beyond his career ending prematurely due to ill health. Althea Gibson broke barriers as the first Black Grand Slam winner, later forging a path in professional golf - and even recording music along the way.

This episode explores their stories alongside the wider history of the tournament: Billie Jean King’s role in reshaping the game, era defining talents like Connors and McEnroe, of Venus and Serena Williams too, and the ongoing wait for another American man to lift the trophy, 22 years after Andy Roddick in 2003.

From its venue hopping origins to its move to Flushing Meadows, onto the opening of its centrepiece at the Arthur Ashe Stadium, the US Open has grown into the sport’s biggest and richest stage - but its power has always rested with the players who used it to change the game, and sometimes the world beyond it.