Super Bowl LX - Seattle Seahawks vs. New England Patriots

The Super Bowl simply needs no introduction. It is, one way or another, the biggest event on the annual sporting calendar. Multi-million dollar advertisements, tickets in the tens of thousands of dollars and more, a half time show some people look forward to more than the football... and behind it all, you have two conference champions vying for the only things that universally matter in the game - the Vince Lombardi trophy, a Super Bowl ring and immortality.

Today, we focus on three main events of Jack's choosing - his favourite Super Bowl, his choice for the most important Super Bowl in history, and his greatest Super Bowl fairy-tale. Expect helmet catches, a league turned upside down, grocery store shelf stacking, and destiny fulfilled across the board.

Ben takes us on a preview of this season's event framed around the last time the Seahawks took on the Patriots, where the Seahawks famously did not run the ball and blew the chance to win back-to-back Super Bowls, a wound Seattle will be desperate to heal in Santa Clara on Sunday. And Jack, for one, very much hopes they will...

Plays Mentioned in the Episode:

The Helmet Catch - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlyBEJ60Duc

Philly Special (mic'd up) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XmhBaUdges

Warner to Bruce 73yd touchdown - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ui9eOuMScI

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 the Six Nations, its past and what its future might hold.

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 core components of technique, courage, speed, risk, physical condition and judgement, perhaps none more so than courage. Athletes can reach speeds in excess of 150kph, injury (or worse) is never more than a moments misjudgement away. There is no test in sport like it.

We take a look particularly at the careers of two incredible women: Mikaela Shiffrin, arguably the greatest ever to strap on a pair of skis; and Ester Ledecká, the first person to compete at both Snowboarding and Skiing at the same Olympics - impressive enough, but what happened when she did is no less than extraordinary.

Mikaela Shiffrin

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXZONudWZSw

Ester Ledecká

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ke0bRzCWz1c

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 competition, then spent 16 years searching for redemption.

Fortunately, sport being sport, and the Olympics being as wonderful as they are, even at the age of 36 in a sport dominated by youth, redemption is always there for those talented and persistent enough to continue to seek it.

Lindsey Jacobellis in 2006 and 2022:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWD1yVLqbpY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58jY6CqIQ4E

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, at its core are true events that genuinely make this one of the Olympics, and all of sports, great underdog stories.

Before Jamaica took their bow, there is another tale from bobsled past we share with you here, the story of Billy Fiske: two-time Olympic gold medallist, man of morals, Cresta champion, chandelier leaper, Aspen founding father and war hero. A man who lived more in 29 years than most of us could imagine doing in a lifetime.

So without further ado, join us and feel the rhythm, feel the rhyme, get on up, it's bobsled time!

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 orchestrating violence against another, but on January 6th 1994 that happened, just as the USA's best figure skaters prepared to go head-to-head with only two spots for the 1994 Winter Olympics available to them.

The victim was Nancy Kerrigan, the reigning US champion and 1992 Olympic Bronze Medallist. The perpetrators were hired by the then husband of Tonya Harding, the 1991 US Champion aiming for redemption having finished fourth in the Albertville Olympics of '92. Harding's involvement has been debated for years, she took a plea deal to accept knowledge after the fact but has denied knowing in advance, but those around her had a different story.

It's as big a scandal as the Winter Olympics has produced, and testament and proof that wherever there is a line to cross in sport, if someone wants it too much then they may just be prepared to cross.

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 aside) - but he became as famous an Olympian as anyone else in Calgary 1988, and captured, to us, what the Olympics is truly about.

His presence at the games was not universally appreciated. Criticised as an "Olympic tourist" by some, and as a clown by those bastions of fair play East Germany, he lent his name to new sets of rules that prevented him and other hard working enthusiasts like him from having a realistic chance of qualifying again. But nothing anyone said or can do can remove one undeniable fact about Eddie - that he is an Olympian, and a legend of the games at that.

Eddie flies like an Eagle:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UAwQ0pe460

Music in the intro is from https://www.FesliyanStudios.com

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 time again, it took an extraordinary set of circumstances for his luck to balance out in the most astonishing of endings to the 1000m short-track speed skating event.

This is his story, downs upon downs before one huge up, an Australian legend, an unquestionable hero too as more recent event would show. This is, put simply, one of the greatest Olympic stories ever.

Steven Bradbury's Golden Moment:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=he03dVkhLTM