Martin McKenzie-Murray

Elite athletes and their coaches are forever seeking better ways to elicit peak performances – the answer may be streams of invective.

Politically speaking, disillusionment and discord prevailed at home and abroad this year. Our solace is the careful equanimity of a Japanese toilet cleaner.

ABC chair Kim Williams describes the challenges facing the broadcaster as managing director David Anderson steps away, and the ‘generational schism’ it must address.

The staging of ICC Men’s T20 World Cup matches in New York, Florida and Texas has introduced cricket to American sports fans. What will they make of it?

He was a charmer and a violent narcissist whose trial for double murder reopened the fault line of race in the US. Will O.J. Simpson’s death end the circus that surrounded his life?

It seems customary to adorn “list” pieces like this with a headline that implies, or even asserts, its definitiveness. “The five greatest sports books of all time”, and so on. I suspect this is done less out of a godlike conviction and more in the belief that it’s usefully provocative – let outraged disagreement drive traffic.

One of the world’s most-watched TV series right now opens with David Beckham tending to his beehives, then proudly sharing some of its honey with his friend – who also happens to be his interviewer and the documentary’s maker, Fisher Stevens. Hilariously, for the brand- and fashion-obsessed Beckham, even his bee suit is not free from his monogram: on the suit’s breast, embroidered with golden thread, are his hallowed initials.

A cache of leaked financial documents alleges staggering misconduct and outrageous spending at the Australian megachurch.

A documentary on one of Australia’s most successful figure-skating duos focuses on their professional rise and aspirations but fails to interrogate why, away from the sport, a young woman’s life was spinning out of control.

While Vladimir Putin stunned the world with his war, a chancer was ditched, the Queen died, crypto choked, Neil Young’s Harvest turned 50 and ‘goblin mode’ had a moment.