The Cubs broke a 108-year curse in epic fashion.
Lebron produced “The Block” and a championship for starving Cleveland fans.
UNC and Villanova put on one hell of a show.
Leicester City won the most improbable Premier League championship ever.
Simone Biles, Michael Phelps and Katie Ledecky brought home the gold.
And Conor McGregor … was Conor McGregor.
2016 was a year chock full of athletic insanity.
Here are 10 of the sports stories of the year that might have slipped under your radar:
One-armed surfer beats World No. 1
2016 was no longer a movie for “Soul Surfer” hero Bethany Hamilton.
The 26-year-old pro surfer was riding dangerously tall waves and beating the best in the world in May, 13 years removed from a shark attack in Hawaii that cost her her left arm.
Entering the World Surf League’s Fiji Women’s Pro as an unseeded wild card, Hamilton beat the likes of six-time world champion Stephanie Gilmore and top-ranked Tyler Wright en route to a third-place finish, the best of her career. Her previous high was ninth place at a WSL event in 2010.
Hamilton’s impressive display in Fiji was surprising to almost everyone except her. After she lost her arm — and nearly her life — to a shark at age 13, a horrifying moment immortalized in the Hollywood film, the Hawaii native was back in the water just 10 weeks post-amputation. The only modification Hamilton uses is a special handle on her board to help her paddle out with one arm.
“Ever since I was a young girl, and adapting to living with one arm, especially surfing, I had a lot of determination, and I just kind of put my head down to just figure out a way to do it,” Hamilton told the Associated Press in June. “Slowly but surely it became normal for me.” — H.W.
15-year-old scores world-record 1,009 cricket runs
Scoring 100 runs in cricket is sort of like scoring a hat trick in hockey. It’s great, but it happens all the time. Scoring 200 runs in cricket is sort of like pitching a no-hitter in baseball. It’s eye-popping, but happens a few times every year.
Scoring 1,009 runs in cricket is incomprehensible. As comedian Andy Zaltzman wrote for ESPN, it’s a little like running a 3-minute mile, a record so absurd “no one had considered it either possible or necessary.”
Yet that’s exactly what 15-year-old Pranav Dhanawade achieved over the course of a two-day game in Mumbai, India, while playing for KC Gandhi English School in the HT Bhandari Cup inter-school tournament.
Dhanawade’s score smashed the previous record of 628 set by Englishman A. E. J. Collins during a club match in 1899. Dhanawade broke Collins’ record after just one day: He scored 652 runs on Jan. 4 alone. Because he hadn’t gotten out, Dhanawade went home, took a bath, slept, and returned the next day to resume his at-bat. He scored another 357 runs before time expired.
“I have always been a big hitter,” Dhanawade said, according to the Hindustan Times. “When I started, I never thought about breaking the record. The focus was never that. I just played my natural game, which is to attack from the word go.” — M.B.
You’ll never believe this Irish runner’s finish
The Olympic track stars in Rio had nothing on Irish runner Phil Healy.
Grabbing the baton from her teammate to begin the last leg of the women’s 4×400 meter relay at the Irish University Athletics Association event in March, the University College Cork student was far behind the pack — in fifth place and practically a quarter of a lap behind the leader. One of the four runners ahead of her was headed to the Rio Olympics later in the year.
In video of the race, Healy is nowhere to be seen until the last half-lap, when she flies into the frame like a blur only to be lost again until the final stretch.
“I thought, ‘Yeah, I’m feeling really good, I might as well kick,’” Healy told The Washington Post. “I thought, ‘Jeez, I can go a bit further.’”
An announcer on the race call exclaimed of Healy’s sudden comeback: “UCC, from the depths of hell, are powering through!”
Healy passed the leaders one by one and extended herself over the finish line to win by barely one second. Unable to harness her momentum, she tripped just past the finish line and face-planted on the track.
Not bad for someone who was running her third race of the day, only 20 minutes after setting an Irish university record in the 200 meters. — H.W.
We are living in the time of the greatest (disgraced) sumo wrestler ever
Hakuho, the White Peng, is the best sumo wrestler alive today. He is the best sumo wrestler in living memory. And he is, in all likelihood, the greatest sumo wrestler of all time.
But in 2016, Hakuho won his record 36th Emperor’s Cup in such a disgraceful manner that his place in history might be tarnished forever.
Sumo wrestling records go all the way back to 1761, and there is only wrestler who compares with Hakuho: the man, the myth, the legend, Raiden. The name is a combination of the Japanese symbols for “thunder” and “lightning,” which taken together become “thunderbolt.”
Born in 1767, Raiden lived in Japan when it was still ruled by the Tokugawa shogunate and its legions of samurai warriors. The 6-foot-6, 373-pounder dominated. His career record stands at 254-10 (96 percent), and he won 28 tournaments before retiring at the peak of his powers in 1811 at the age of 43.
At 6-foot-4 and 346 pounds, Hakuho matches up to Raiden in size, but the modern sumo wrestles in a completely different way. There are now 600-pound sumo, and thus Hakuho wrestles with a devastating and unprecedented combination of speed and technique. He has the most championships (37), the most championships without a loss (12), the most top-division wins (914) and the most wins in a calendar year (86, which he’s done twice).
Yet he is said to lack in one key area: honor. Which is almost as important as wins in the sumo world. In the final match of the 2016 Haru Basho, one of the six official professional sumo tournaments held annually, Hakuho faced Harumafuji, a fellow yokozuna, in the final. The two men performed all the elaborate rituals before the match, they got in their starting stances … and in a blink of an eye, it was over.
Harumafuji had thrust himself straight toward Hakuho like a defensive lineman attacking a blocker, but, instead of holding his ground, Hakuho slapped his opponent across the face while sidestepping out of the way. Instead of slamming into Hakuho, Harumafuji crashed into thin air and right out of the ring.
The match was over. Hakuho had won — thanks to a legal, but deeply dishonorable, move called a henka.
In his post-match interview, Hakuho cried while seemingly expressing regrets. The crowd in the arena booed, and sportswriters demanded that he retire in disgrace. — M.B.
F1 driver walks away after car is smashed to bits
Formula One driver Fernando Alonso emerged from a pile of rubble at the Australian Grand Prix in March after his car clipped fellow racer Esteban Gutierrez’s, flipped through the air across a run-off area and shattered upon impact with the wall.
“Oh, there’s another car involved in that!” one announcer cried out as the pieces of what was once Alonso’s McLaren-Honda came into view. “It’s Fernando Alonso! There has been a massive accident.”
The Spaniard was jolted from his broken, carbon-fiber seat during the collision, but still managed to sustain forces over 46G. Alonso needed only a few seconds to catch his breath before walking away from his car with few signs of visible trauma. He headed toward Gutierrez and embraced him in a show of relief.
Formula One officials claimed to have investigated the incident in the weeks following, apparently perplexed by Alonso’s ability to avoid serious injury after the loose seat put him in greater danger.
The two-time F1 world champion initially was expected to return to the racetrack the following weekend, but doctors withheld him after CT scans revealed damage to his chest. A few weeks later, when Alonso again raced in China, you never would’ve known he’d survived a life-threatening crash. — H.W.
Olympic kayaker may have hit a couch while paddling in a sea of poop
Every Olympics has problems. The 2016 Rio Olympics, however, seemingly had them all: gargantuan cost overruns, a Russian team linked to a massive government-run doping program, a collective freak-out about the Zika virus. The Games were a total s–t show.
That saying was made literal at the Rodrigo de Freitas lagoon, the rowing venue. According to a study done by the Associated Press in the months leading up to the games, the lagoon was found to contain high levels of human fecal matter, raw sewage and dangerous viruses and bacteria.
But there was one thing no athlete could possibly have anticipated: a floating couch.
According to a murky Sky News report, a kayaker was practicing in the lagoon one day when he hit a submerged sofa, which caused him to capsize into the toxic water. An official investigation could not corroborate the tale, but there was plenty of evidence to suggest it could have happened.
After all, a fisherman once told the New York Times that he regularly found “television sets, dead dogs and the occasional dolphin killed by ingesting plastic bags,” in the waters around Rio. Olympic sailors from Germany told CNN one of their teammates “hit a chair” during practice, and a rotting corpse washed up onto the Olympic Beach Volleyball Arena.
It’s not hard to believe that a kayaker hit a sofa, even if officials say otherwise. — M.B.
All Blacks’ stunning rugby loss isn’t even the worst one
There’s a fine line between confidence and arrogance, especially for a team on a record-breaking 18-game winning streak.
A punter for New Zealand’s All Blacks rugby squad learned that lesson the hard way in November, when he lost $95,000 after his team was upset by Ireland for the first time in the rivalry’s 111-year history.
The punter was on track to take home $47,750 on the short-odds wager before Ireland shocked the rugby world with the 40-29 win, miles from where the Cubs had broken a 108-year World Series drought two days earlier.
“We knew they are a great side,” Ireland’s captain, Rory Best, said after the triumph at Chicago’s Soldier Field, according to The New Daily. “We just had to go out and attack them. … It’s been a long time coming and history (has been) made. We’re absolutely ecstatic.”
The All Blacks did get revenge on the Irish later in November, defeating them 21-9 in Dublin. — H.W.
Ultra-runner Ben Smith celebrates finishing his 401st marathon in 401 days
401 marathons. 401 days. 10,506.2 total miles run. One broken back. And $380,000 raised for charity.
That’s what Ben Smith accomplished between September 2015 and October 2016.
Smith, 34, set out on his epic quest last year to raise money and awareness for anti-bullying charities after he suffered through years of homophobic abuse as a child.
“My school didn’t talk about homosexuality, and when it did, it talked about it in a negative, subhuman type of way. It was seen as a sin, wrong, dirty,” Smith told Metro.co.uk. “So figuring out I might be gay and then being told it was completely wrong, it was really confusing.”
Twice in his 20s, he tried to take his own life. At the age of 29, he had a stroke. While recovering, he came up with the idea for the 401 Challenge.
“The first 50 days were near enough hell, from an injury point of view. I remember finishing my first marathon on Day 1 and thinking, ‘Oh, God, that was tough, I’ve got another 400 to go,’ but I kept on going.
“But after Day 7, it got really tough, I was in new territory and on my own. I remember being in Exeter, it was 30 degrees, my left knee doubled in size, I’d run out of water and I was lost. I just kept thinking: ‘I’ve got so far to go.’”
For 284 days, Smith kept going, completing a marathon per day, according to the BBC. Then he suffered an umbilical hernia and was forced to take 10 days off to recover. Hitting the road again, he somehow had to make up the 10 marathons he missed. He made it, and completed his 401st marathon on Oct. 6.
Smith went through 23 pairs of shoes, burned 2.9 million calories, and lost 40 pounds during his quest. But he said it was all worth it: “The lows were really low and highs were really high. But I wouldn’t change it for anything.” — M.B.
Strongman survives near-death experience
Eddie Hall will do whatever it takes to be the world’s strongest man, even if it means flirting with death.
The 401-pound Englishman reclaimed sole possession of the world record when he became the first man ever to lift 1,100 pounds at the World Deadlift Championships in July.
But the eight-second hold proved nearly fatal for Hall. Upon dropping the weight, he fell to his knees and collapsed on top of the barbell. The force of the weight on his body caused several blood vessels to burst in his brain and briefly rendered him unconscious.
Up to six men rushed to his side to steady him as he began convulsing. Once Hall lifted his head and the MC gave the crowd a thumbs-up, fans erupted into chants of “Eddie, Eddie, Eddie!”
“That nearly killed me,” Hall told the Yorkshire Evening Post. “The pressure on my body was surreal. I passed out after. I had nose bleeds. It’s not healthy doing something like that.”
Despite the horrifying effects, the man nicknamed “The Beast” said he’d risk his life again if it meant retaining his title.
“I don’t want to do it again, but if it comes to the point where somebody breaks it, hell … I may just do it,” Hall said. “The World’s Strongest Man title is my dream. And I will keep pushing the limits until that happens. It’s going to happen.” — H.W.
Cycling rocked by ‘motordoping’ scandal
In cycling, there is just a rider, a bike and a road. If you want to cheat, you have to change one of those three things. It’s virtually impossible to change the road. For the last 60 years, most of the cheating has been done on the human level: amphetamines, steroids, blood doping, Lance Armstrong.
The newest and most brazen way to cheat has to do with the bikes. In February, a highly touted 19-year-old Belgian cyclocross racer turned in a dreadful performance at the U-23 World Championships. Then officials inspected Femke Van den Driessche’s bike. Inside the seatpost they found mysterious wires, and when they tried to remove the crank, they found something even worse: a motor.
Van den Driessche’s bike was the first documented case of “motordoping,” a form of cheating that has been rumored for years, but which never had been seen in the wild. Imagine a delivery man in New York City zooming around on his “normal” bicycle that just so happens to have a big black box on the seatpost near the crank. That box is a motor, and it’s essentially what authorities found in Van den Driessche’s bike. Hers just happened to be smaller, concealed, and cost around $3,000, according to a Gizmodo report.
Van den Driessche swears she knew nothing about the motor and the bike actually belonged to a friend. The reality is that she was caught cheating with the technological equivalent of the Model T, according to La Gazzetta dello Sport. The Tesla of “motordoping” are $200,000 electromagnetic wheels that are silent and nearly undetectable. — M.B.