Katie Smith

Spain in the driving seat now to get that automatic qualifying spot for the World Cup next summer.

And we're going to bring you full coverage of that massive game now for the Lionesses against Ukraine on Tuesday.

That is 8 o'clock on BBC Radio 5 Live.

Hello and welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service.

I'm Katie Smith.

And I'd like to recommend the podcast that I host, Not By The Playbook, where we bring you inspirational stories from around the world, featuring interviews with people who are defying the odds.

You can listen and subscribe to Not By The Playbook wherever you found this podcast.

And in this episode, we explore the concept in sport and in life that it's never too late.

It's never too late to be what you might have been, so wrote the Victorian author George Eliot.

And I think she would herself be inspired by the guests we've gathered together this week.

Having searched the world for the best stories in sport, we're about to embark on an hour of radio that might force a rethink to what you can achieve.

More from the world's strongest women, Meg Robson-Austin and Roa Arshay Cooper on Not By The Playbook from the BBC World Service with me, Katie Smith.

And we start in Texas and the remarkable story of Mike Flint, one so extraordinary that it reads like the script of a Hollywood movie, which is why I guess they did make it into a Hollywood movie.

Mike's is a story of resilience, not to mention incredible fitness.

But at its very heart, his is a story of redemption.

Because Mike returned to play for his college football team at the age of 59.

The very team that four decades earlier had kicked him out.

So, well, I feel like we have to go back to the start then, because you mentioned you were that completely different guy.

You were a young guy and you mentioned the word violence and darkness.

So take us to why that was and who you were at that time.