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 receivers just won't stand still. And the less said about the rouge the better...

But to Canadians - and, honestly, to the occasional impartial observer - it is an arguably even more exciting spectacle whose rules encourage faster play, more passing and kick returning, more unpredictability and some of the wildest finishes to games in all of sport. And it's all built upon a long history and over a century of its biggest spectacle - the Grey Cup.

Ahead of the Montreal Alouettes versus the Saskatchewan Roughriders in Winnipeg on Sunday, Ben and Jack talk the origins of the game and the Cup, about legends like Russ Jackson and Warren Moon, and of how Canadian footballers changed the direction of the American game forever - and why the sports world should never stop thanking them for that.

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 Interlagos circuit has played host to some of the most astonishing moments in the sports history - chaos in 2003, Hamilton’s charge in 2021, a three way title showdown in 2007, and of course, Ayrton Senna finally winning his home Grand Prix stuck in sixth gear in 1991.

Surely though, its most extraordinary moment came in November 2008, the final race of a controversy filled season, where Felipe Massa drove a perfect 71 laps only to be pipped to the title by Lewis Hamilton after he had crossed the line to win.

It's a season whose legacy endures - as Massa now tries to undo what he perceives as the injustice of Crashgate, we discuss this race, the merits of his claims and why they are most likely doomed to failure, alongside many other stories from this legendary race and the history of motorsport in Brazil.

> Content note: This episode contains brief factual references to fatal motorsport accidents.

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 Horse Racing is built into the very fabric of Australia. When brave pioneers in the new colonies set out to build towns it is said they would first build a church, then they would build a pub, and finally they would build a racecourse. It is no surprise as a result that today Australia boasts a racing industry that matches or exceeds far more populated countries for scale, and a love for the sport that is arguably unrivalled.

The pinnacle of this passion is, of course, the Melbourne Cup. Held every year since 1861, through floods, war and depressions, on the first Tuesday in November the city of Melbourne and Victoria as a whole shuts down, workplaces and schools close up, and everyone gathers around a television, radio, or for the lucky few at Flemington Racecourse itself for the world's richest handicap race, and truly the race that stops the nation.

Ben and Jack talk the history of the event and thoroughbred racing, of the great horses, jockeys, trainers and strappers through over a century and a half of the Cup, and of the stories and tall tales that make the event what it is today - Archer being denied a shot at three in a row, the tale of young Peter St Albans and Briseis, Makybe Diva completing the impossible, and of course, the legend of Phar Lap and the mystery of his untimely demise.

Events like this are why we love sport: it is history, it is legend, it is sometimes barely believable, but above all, it is Australia.