Organ-ised chaos

It's amazing how many people are involved in anyone sporting endeavour... Of course the athletes are the stars of the show, but then there's coaches, physiotherapist and umpires. And beyond them there are cameramen, hot dog sellers and security staff. This week we spend some time with some of those people we don't think of as crucial to our enjoyment of sport, but without them we'd really miss them!

Benny Drawbars is a man who occupies an almost unique position in sport, one that straddles the very best "old timey" traditions of sport and the modern and exciting way we all now experience sport. How? Well each week Benjamin Wooley steps into the Climate Pledge Arena, home of NHL team Seattle Kraken, blows gently on his fingers, cracks his knuckles and morphs into Benny Drawbars, the demon organist! But is this most wonderful of traditions, heard mostly in the US at hockey and baseball games a dying art?

In some ways you could say Ken Calwell has had a career in pizza, but that would do him no justice! He has in fact he has headed up some of your favourite fast food companies, from Pizza Hut to Dominoes and now Papa Murphy... He even had a spell at Wendy's! So why would we want to chat to a man who has spent his life marketing pizza, how ever delicious that might sound!? Well he also created an advert you probably saw during the Super Bowl, the only one not "selling" a product! But first we chatted about his life before and after August 8th 1991 and what happened on that day that changed everything

To win a gold medal at the Summer Games or it's winter counterpart is a pretty amazing feet, but to win gold at BOTH, well that's the preserve of a very very few number of athletes. American Kendall Gretsch is one of them. Born with spina bifida which has severely limited the use of her legs, she won gold in the Para-triathlete in Tokyo in 2021 and has now won multiple Paralympic Winter golds, including just a few weeks ago in Milan Cortina, topping the podium in the cross-country skiing.

Imagine creating a swimsuit so good it would have to be banned?! That's what Jason Rance and his team at Speedo's research and development Aqualab did ahead of the Beijing Olympic Games in August 2008. Wearing the LZR Racer swimsuit, United States swimmer Michael Phelps won a record eight gold medals at the Water Cube. Athletes wearing the swimsuit would shatter 30 world records in the space of three months. The suit developed with space agency Nasa and the reduction in skin friction drag was so significant, some called it "technological doping".

Photo: The organist for the Chicago Blackhawks plays a tune during an NHL game with the Los Angeles Kings and Chicago Blackhawks circa 1978 at the Chicago Stadium in Chicago, Illinois. (CREDIT: B Bennett/Bruce Bennett Studios via Getty Images Studios/Getty Images)