Missing the Olympics already? 6 sports podcasts to keep the torch alight

If, like me, you are already mourning the impending close of the Olympic Games, I’ve got you. Podcast-wise, anyway. It’s funny that I have become such a sports fan, and that, many, many decades after leaving behind compulsory PE classes, I still love playing and watching some kind of sport several times a week. My parents did not see the point of sport and, in fact, they saw it as an activity for the less intelligent. So I didn’t really play any sport at all until my 30s, when I joined the lowest division of the Hong Kong netball league as a newbie and started to understand the power of belonging to a sports team.

Well, as every parent knows, the pendulum swings. We threw every kind of ball at our daughters before they could stand and when they did, we threw all the sports classes at them, too. It wasn’t just discipline and coordination I wanted to foster but joy in their bodies and an understanding of team dynamics. What I didn’t expect, and am delighted by now as they approach adulthood, is how much I would enjoy watching sports with them. The discussions that arise from watching elite athletes perform always blow into major forums on psychology, culture and geopolitics, augmenting the physical drama playing out in front of us.

Good Sport looks at the world through the lens of sport with elite-level storytelling, as might be expected from this TED-backed production hosted by Ultimate Frisbee pro and veteran podcaster Jody Avirgan, who was also responsible for ESPN’s brilliant collection of sports documentaries 30 for 30 (see this week’s Hall of Fame). Stories about the heights of professional sport sit among much more relatable episodes on finding “the zone” or dealing with repeated losses and, most painful of all, how to accept that your best days are behind you. The first episode maps the extraordinary rise of sport “hotbeds”, innocuous small towns that pump out a certain kind of sports star, and how keeping the window of opportunity open for longer outweighs initial talent when it comes to cultivating world-class athletes.

It is no surprise that the very smart people behind comedy trivia pod No Such Thing as a Fish launched a sports podcast at the same time as this year’s Olympics. Quite a Good Sport takes on a different sport in each episode, with expert players, umpires and other folks from behind the scenes coming on to explain the rules and history, and give a bunch of curious info titbits with which you can impress your sports fan friends. The familiar, slightly chaotic energy is ramped up when boffin-hosts Anna Ptaszynski and James Harkin, trying to retain everything they have learned, have a crack at the sport themselves. Perky edutainment but probably best for beginners and the more fair-weather sports fan. So far, the capering duo have tackled rowing, table tennis and cycling in a velodrome.

Sports pods, more so than most other kinds, rely on their co-hosts’ chemistry and base knowledge. Gabby Logan and Mark Chapman are much-loved presenters in Britain and, though they often hold quite different stances in The Sports Agents, they are playful and charming with each other and their discussion is always rich with facts and personal experience. Some of this you can chalk up to excellent researchers but both are adept on their feet, too, which is most evident when they interview guests from all corners of the sporting world. A fascinating early episode features a chat with Dr Aron D’Souza, president of the Enhanced Games, about legalising doping among athletes. You can hear the sound of jaws dropping more than once.

There is no doubt that cheating has always had a major presence in elite sports. But Tested, a new six-episode series from CBC Podcasts, looks at the history of gender testing of elite female runners and asks how many men have been found to have cheated by pretending to be women. The answer is surprising, especially in light of the furore surrounding Algerian boxer Imane Khelif, who had previously been banned from competition for failing a gender eligibility test. If the lines drawn between genders seem arbitrary, that’s because they are, raising the question of who gets to decide? Which athletes should curtail their in-born traits with medication – or face permanent withdrawal from competition?

The Real Science of Sport is that real treat of a passion project, something that used to be a mainstay of podcasting but has largely faded away as the big players have come to dominate our audio diets. Sports scientist professor Ross Tucker and sports journalist Mike Finch, both based in Cape Town, South Africa, created the show as a kind of sports MythBusters, breaking down controversies and examining the science behind aspects of athleticism and mental resilience. Sports geeks will love the depth they go into but many of the episodes are just great stories, including the one about real cheats (as opposed to testosterone cheats). It amazes me that there aren’t more crimes involving twins but then, as the hosts say, these are just the ones who were caught.