This is the Unsung podcast, introducing the sports stars you don’t know, telling the stories you can’t miss. In this episode, we meet and tell the story of one of the most influential people in sport in the 21st century. But this person isn’t a player, nor a coach, nor a big-money investor. He’s a computer scientist. He didn't need trophies, the ear of powerful politicians, or a billion-dollar bank account to make his mark. Just some nifty cameras and a few lines of code. His name is Paul Hawkin...
May 02, 2025•38 min•Season 2Ep. 7
This is the Unsung podcast, introducing the sports starts you don’t know, telling the stories you can’t miss. We’ve got a special episode for you this time around, which was recorded live as part of the 2025 Morpeth Book Festival in March. It was great to be part of the event, alongside some big-name authors who actually know what they’re doing. The talk is titled Not All Heroes Wear Kits, and it’s something of a whistlestop tour through a few of the Unsung characters I’ve written about, includi...
Apr 10, 2025•52 min•Season 2Ep. 6
This is Unsung. Introducing the sports stars you don’t know, telling the stories you can’t miss. When it comes shamelessly over the top sporting events, the Super Bowl is peerless. A February staple in the American sporting calendar sees a four-hour extravaganza watched by an estimated 200 million people around the world. In the States, the Super Bowl is a nationwide cultural occasion. The sort of thing that forces electricity boards to steel themselves—a mass event that makes a noticeable mark ...
Jan 29, 2025•27 min•Season 2Ep. 5
This is Unsung. Introducing the sports stars you don’t know, telling the stories you can’t miss. As the final whistle blows on 2024, we’re back with a review of the sporting year. As you might expect by now, we’ll be taking an alternative look through the calendar and picking out its lesser-lauded legends. We’ve got pioneers, innovators, outsiders, and entertainers, many transforming sport and making their mark away from the mainstream glare. So, like a middle-aged bespectacled Turkish sharpshoo...
Dec 16, 2024•35 min•Season 2Ep. 4
This is Unsung. Introducing the sports stars you don’t know, telling the stories you can’t miss. In the UK alone, over four million people participated in some form of swimming in 2023. And while the pandemic prompted a flurry of pool closures that continue today, many defied this worrying trend by heading for a dip outdoors in lakes, rivers, lochs, and seas. Over half a million of us took a dip in open water last year. And yet, in a twisted irony, Covid-19 also triggered a shortage of qualified...
Nov 18, 2024•56 min•Season 2Ep. 3
This is Unsung. Introducing the sports stars you don’t know, telling the stories you can’t miss. There are hundreds of visually impaired athletes around the world who aren’t able to see the finish line yet can complete a race quicker than most of us can tie our shoelaces. Some run far, rather than fast. Some even try swimming or cycling. That they’re able to do so is thanks to a largely undocumented partnership that deserves a bit more love and attention. And so, in this new episode of Unsung, w...
Aug 31, 2024•58 min•Season 2Ep. 2
This is Unsung. Introducing the sports stars you don’t know, telling the stories you can’t miss. In this opening episode of a new series of Unsung, we’re telling the story of the IOC’s Olympic Refugee Team. This year, the Olympics will feature 36 athletes from 11 different countries of origin, competing in 12 different sports. At the Paralympics, eight athletes and one guide runner will make up the refugee team This will be the team’s third appearance at the Games, after making its debut in Rio ...
Jul 25, 2024•51 min•Season 2Ep. 1
Hello and Happy New Year! It’s Alexis here from Unsung with our first ever public service announcement. At the end of our last episode in December, I mentioned that you’d next hear from us in the Spring. But while we continue to work on series 2, forgive me for jumping on the feed a little earlier than planned. Because, like a school kid eager to show their parents their “cleaned my plate” lunch sticker, I wanted to share the news that Unsung has been shortlisted as a finalist in the 2024 Sports...
Jan 17, 2024•2 min
With 2023 coming to a close, there’s something a little different for you in this rather frenetic episode of the Unsung podcast. In just 40 minutes, we rattle through the sporting year via the perspective of its unsung heroes, beginning way back in January at a boisterous and disbelieving darts crowd in Ally Pally, before ending with a tenuous reference to the late Mystic Meg to review a sporting event that is yet to occur. You’ll also discover the Augusta National golf legend you're unlikely to...
Dec 04, 2023•41 min•Season 1Ep. 10
Our guest this time around is Phil Neale, who enjoyed a 47-year career in professional sport. Having played 369 games for Lincoln City and 354 first-class matches for Worcestershire; he’s believed to be the last man to play both professional football and professional cricket at the same time. But it’s his post-playing role that we’re mostly discussing in this episode, first as county-level coach and then with the England A setup, before moving on to become England cricket’s first-ever operations...
Oct 30, 2023•50 min•Season 1Ep. 9
It was 200 years ago this year that a young scholar by the name of William Webb Ellis decided to take the game of football into his own hands. Quite literally. He picked up the ball and ran from his opponents and, in doing so, invented what we now know as Rugby. The sport now boasts over half a billion fans across 132 countries, and is played by over eight million people around the world. It's more popular than it's ever been, but there are also questions around its future, with recent concerns ...
Sep 13, 2023•43 min•Season 1Ep. 8
In 2007, Harry Redknapp was asked about the importance he places on the diet of his footballers. He said: “If you can’t pass the ball properly, a bowl of pasta’s not going to make that much difference.” Well, it’s fair to say attitudes have changed a little in the Premier League, and as it makes its return for the 2023/24 season, in this episode we speak to a performance chef who, for over a decade, has been feeding and fuelling the country’s top footballers in the surroundings they’re most comf...
Aug 11, 2023•48 min•Season 1Ep. 7
This is the Unsung Interview, introducing the sports stars you don’t know, telling the stories you can’t miss. For over a century, the Tour de France has been a summer staple in the sporting calendar. Its lavender fields, epic mountain ranges, and historic chateaux have been the backdrop to some of cycling’s most iconic and controversial moments. It’s also the most photogenic event in sport. And so in this episode, we speak to a legend behind the lens. A man who spent decades looking over his le...
Jul 12, 2023•40 min•Season 1Ep. 6
This is the Unsung Interview, introducing the sports stars you don’t know, telling the stories you can’t miss. In this episode, Alexis speaks with the man whose creative flourish over 30 years ago left an indelible mark on Europe’s elite football tournament. His name is Tony Britten, and he’s the composer responsible for the Champions League anthem. Ahead of the 2023 Champions League final between Manchester City and Inter Milan, Tony spoke of what it was like to silence the San Siro, how he wou...
Jun 05, 2023•32 min•Season 1Ep. 5
This is Unsung. Introducing the sports stars you don’t know, telling the stories you can’t miss. In episode four, we’re featuring F1 mechanics, and the inspirational story of one in particular. Despite Formula One being, ostensibly, a mixed-gender sport, the last woman to drive in a Grand Prix was nearly half a century ago, when Lella Lombardi came 12th at the 1976 Austrian Grand Prix. This lack of female visibility has had a knock-on effect off the grid, too. In 2018, just 28% of all F1 employe...
May 03, 2023•43 min•Season 1Ep. 4
This is Unsung. Introducing the sports stars you don’t know, telling the stories you can’t miss. In episode three, featuring Winter Olympic snowmakers. The effect of climate change is an increasing challenge for winter sports, as temperatures rise and viable venues reduce. Sochi in 2014 was the first Winter Olympic Games held in a subtropical climate, and not a single flake of natural snow was expected in Beijing in 2022. So who do host cities turn to when Mother Nature has other ideas? In this ...
Feb 27, 2023•31 min•Season 1Ep. 3
This is Unsung. Introducing the sports stars you don’t know, telling the stories you can’t miss. In episode two we’re featuring football ground staff. For most viewers of a football match, the pitch is merely a blank canvas awaiting its art. But before the artistry must come to the science. These days it takes more than a pitchfork and a mower to get the game’s top turfs up to standard. In this episode, Alexis James speaks to two of the best grounds managers in the business to discover how today...
Dec 16, 2022•36 min•Season 1Ep. 2
This is Unsung. Introducing the sports stars you don’t know, telling the stories you can’t miss. The series begins, rather aptly, with a look at the job of an athletics starter. The sound of gunfire is the precursor to every great sprint in athletics history. Yet those pulling the trigger are much more than a hired gun. In this episode, Alexis James meets the volunteer official whose strict codes on rule-keeping can break as many dreams as they make - for even the world’s most famous athletes. A...
Aug 03, 2022•29 min•Season 1Ep. 1
Introducing, Unsung, a new podcast about the sports stars you don’t know, telling the stories you can’t miss. Join me, Alexis James, as I go behind the scenes of professional sport, looking beyond the headlines and behind the athletes, to introduce and celebrate sport’s hidden stars. A sporting anthology of the unheard, the unsaid, and the unusual, Unsung shines a rare spotlight on the integral men and women in the shadows, interwoven in the fabric of sport. You'll meet the athletics starter who...
Jul 29, 2022•2 min
