Five stories from Britain's best sporting underdogs

BBC News

23-07-2025

British sports fans have always loved an underdog, to root for a David when they're faced with a Goliath.Underdogs are athletes who have pushed down barriers, who achieved things they typically were not meant to achieve.As part of a new BBC Sounds podcast series, Sport's Greatest Underdogs, the BBC tells the story of five of Britain's best and how they managed to achieve sporting success against all the odds.Read their stories and vote for who you think is the best sporting underdog in our poll below.
Nicolas Hamilton
In 2015, Nicolas Hamilton became the first disabled racing driver in the British Touring Cars series.But a year later he was out of the sport and had became a gambling addict."I didn't feel valuable," Hamilton, the brother of seven-time Formula 1 champion Lewis, said."I wasn't racing and I wasn't getting sponsorship. My Dad is a multi-millionaire, my brother is a multi-millionaire, and they are going on this upward trajectory."I felt very lost and lonely and I just stumbled across gambling."However, Hamilton, who has cerebral palsy, made his British Touring Cars comeback in 2019 and is currently competing in the 2025 championship.Read more about his story here.
Beth Shriever
BMX rider Beth Shriever became the first British athlete to win a gold medal in the sport at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.The Essex cyclist had to contend with having her funding cut on the road to Tokyo.In 2017, UK Sport announced they would only fund male riders, based on results, and Shriever left the national set-up to go solo.She crowdfunded £50,000 to help her earn the chance to qualify for the Olympics."I'm so grateful that people did donate and I was able to get to these places to qualify and get myself on that start line," she said.
Eddie 'the Eagle' Edwards
Eddie 'the Eagle' Edwards had only been ski jumping for 20 months when he qualified for the Calgary Winter Olympics of 1988, becoming Britain's first-ever competitor in the event. He took it up because Alpine skiing was too expensive, and his journey was one of pure determination as he borrowed kit, ate out of bins, and slept in his car to achieve his dream.While Edwards went on to finish last in the both the 70m and 90m events, he became a global and sporting icon. "I had so much fun getting to Calgary, that Calgary was my gold medal," Edwards said. "I'm very proud of what I've achieved. I broke boundaries, I pushed envelopes, and I did everything that people said couldn't be done."Episode released on BBC Sounds on 30 July.
Nicola Adams
Double Olympic gold medallist Nicola Adams grew up in a male-dominated boxing world but never gave up on her teenage dream of one day competing at the Olympics. But when the sport debuted at the 2012 Olympics, she took her chance and went on to win gold, followed by another gold four years later at the Rio Games."The funding wasn't there, a lot of us were still working and trying to fund being athletes as well, which was really difficult," Adams said."When we'd go away and we wouldn't even have our own competition gear, we'd have to wash it for the other person to wear for competing the next day. "It was just such a different comparison to when you looked at when the guys went away. They'd have everything. "They'd have somebody go out a week before, get the hotel set up. They'd have all the rooms on the same floor. They'd make sure all the fridges were stacked, but then we couldn't even get our own separate competition gear."Episode released on BBC Sounds on 6 August.
Leicester City
Leicester City were the 5,000-1 outsiders who shocked the footballing world to win the Premier League title in 2016 for the first time in their 132-year history. A year earlier they were bottom of the table, having been promoted from the Championship and struggling to adapt to life in the top flight. But they turned things around under manager Nigel Pearson to avoid the drop, and when Claudio Ranieri was appointed in the summer of 2015 the club's winning run continued into the new season, and did not stop. They won 23 of their 38 matches, despite one of the smallest playing budgets in the league, to pull off what remains as one of the greatest unexpected sporting stories of all time.Two-part episode released on BBC Sounds on 13 August.