大象传媒

Racing Louisville FC defender Carson Pickett was born without part of her left arm and Pickett went viral in 2019 after she was pictured giving an arm-bump with a young fan who was also missing part of his left arm. In 2022, Carson Pickett became the first player with a limb difference to play for the United States women's team and she told 大象传媒 Sportshour's Caroline Barker how her life has changed since that photo went viral.

Where to start with Merle Liivand? A friend of the show, she spoke to us last year about how she combines her sports career as an open water swimmer with her environmental campaigning. Something she is about to be honoured for by the Estonian government. She's known as "The Mermaid" because she picks up rubbish when she's swimming at sea. Check out the Sportshour archive for more about that, but for now she is simply the latest in our series "Olympic Hopefuls" as we hear about her attempts to make it to Paris in July.

Baseball's MLB season gets underway on Wednesday, but the first game between the San Diego Padres and the LA Dodgers isn't in California, it's in South Korea. The league are keen to develop an ever growing passion for baseball in East Asia fuelled in no small part by Shohei Ohtani, the Japanese super star whose switch to the LA Dodgers in the close season created the biggest contract in sports history. Sportshour's Adam Samuel reports.

Sport and art are often at the leading edge of breaking down barriers and changing ill-conceived stereotypes of people and communities. Last week "Killers of the Flower Moon" actor Lily Gladstone just missed out on becoming the first Indigenous or Native American person to win an Oscar for acting, but her nomination will inspire many to pursue careers in a field they thought might not be for them. Same with sport, from Jim Thorpe to Ryneldi Becenti... We hear about how the next generation of Indigenous athletes is being nurtured

Photo: Carson Pickett pictured giving an arm-bump to Joseph Tidd, the then 2-year-old who was also missing part of his left arm. (Credit: @tiddbit_outta_hand/Instagram)