For The Win spoke with 2-time World Cup champion Tobin Heath about the USWNT in the 2023 tournament.
During the 2023 World Cup, Tobin Heath is doing something a little different.
For the first time in more than a decade, she’ll be watching the competition from afar after winning World Cup titles with Team USA in 2015 and 2019. Heath hasn’t played in a game since undergoing knee surgery in September.
So instead, she and Christen Press — a fellow two-time World Cup champ recovering from a knee injury — will break it down on their new digital series, The RE—CAP Show, which is produced by the lifestyle brand RE—INC, founded by Heath, Press, Megan Rapinoe and Meghan Klingenberg in 2019. Through the content arm of RE—INC, Heath hopes to provide the kind of analysis she’d want to see and “reimagine the way women are seen and experienced in sports.” The first episode dropped Thursday.
“We say we live at the intersection of sports progress and equity,” 35-year-old Heath said. “It’s always kind of cool to see how with just a single platform — which essentially was the legacy of the founders and all of our fights both on and off the field — how we’ve used that to create a vehicle that could far outlast any of our own individual playing careers.”
Ahead of the USWNT’s first game in the 2023 World Cup — its matchup against Vietnam is set for 9 p.m. ET on Friday on FOX — For The Win spoke with Heath about her expectations for the team, its biggest competition, equity in women’s soccer and the upcoming retirement of star Megan Rapinoe.
For The Win caught up with NBA Summer League standout Keyonte George.
NEW YORK — Keyonte George was arguably the biggest standout from the 2023 NBA Draft at NBA 2K24 Summer League in Las Vegas.
George, a 6-foot-4 guard from Texas who played one collegiate season at Baylor, was named Big-12 Freshman of the Year. Then the Utah Jazz selected him at No. 16 overall in the 2023 NBA Draft.
On the court for the Jazz this summer, he averaged remarkable splits. He produced 28.3 points, 5.6 rebounds, 8.1 assists and 2.0 steals per 40 minutes.
He was also one of the leaders in free-throws attempted and 3-pointers attempted during these games as well. George was frequently able to create his own jump shot off the bounce, sometimes even managing to drop his defender with nifty dribble moves.
This was nothing new for George, via CBB Analytics, who ranked in the 97th percentile for unassisted 3-pointers per 40 minutes among all players in college basketball last season.
But his ability to score as the ball handler in transition and in the pick-and-roll made him project well as the point guard of the future for the Jazz.
What was especially encouraging, per Synergy, is that George recorded as many dunks (3) in NBA 2K24 Summer League as he did during his entire career at Baylor.
Before the 2023 NBA Draft, For The Win met up with George, who shared more details about how his game will translate to the NBA and what he likes to do when he is not on the court.
We spoke to Santa Clara guard and NBA draft prospect Brandin Podziemski.
Editor’s note: This story was originally published prior to the NBA Draft and has been updated.
Santa Clara Broncos guard Brandin Podziemski was one of the standout performers from the 2023 NBA Draft Combine.
Podziemski averaged 19.9 points, 8.8 rebounds, 3.7 assists and 1.8 steals while shooting 43.8 percent on nearly six 3-pointers per game. He was one of the more impressive players in his first five-on-five scrimmages during the NBA Draft Combine in Chicago.
He recorded 10 points, seven rebounds, eight assists, and two steals while also connecting on two of his 3-pointers. Podziemski made impressive shots off the bounce and didn’t have any turnovers. It was exactly the performance that front-office executives and scouts would want to see.
“I can be a really good role player my first year,” Podziemski told For The Win during a recent interview.
Podziemski also showcased his athleticism, finishing with a 39.0-inch max vertical leap, per Stadium Speak, which ranked in the 89th percentile among all participants in the NBA Draft Combine since 2000.
“I’m gonna surprise a few people with my athletic ability,” he said.
After a 26-year gap between draft picks from Steve Nash to Jalen Williams at Santa Clara, the WCC program could potentially have a first-rounder selected in back-to-back seasons.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
“Grounded.” “Genuine human emotion.” Are we really talking about a Transformers movie?
“Grounded.” “Genuine human emotion.” These are not terms one typically associates with a movie about giant robots from space, but with reviews starting to pour in for Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, it seems the franchise is taking a new approach in its seventh installment. That approach seems to be meeting the approval of critics, who so far have given the film the second-best Rotten Tomatoes score of the entire franchise after 2018’s Bumblebee.
Director Steven Caple Jr., who comes to the Transformers franchise after directing another notably grounded and character-focused franchise film Creed II, says it was part of the plan from the beginning to make this the most human Transformers movie yet.
“My goal was to create relatable characters even in a film with the craziest scope imaginable,” Caple told For The Win. “I felt like if the characters felt authentic and real, and you were able to relate to them, then I’ve done my job. I think sometimes we get too caught up in the fights and explosions then we kind of lose the essence of something, especially when it comes to a big franchise. With something like Transformers it was always about the relationship between the humans and the robots.”
The team behind the Transformers franchise started making a move toward making the franchise more character-driven and grounded a few years ago with the film Bumblebee, a sort of “soft-reboot” of the franchise set in the 1980s.
“It definitely influenced our approach to this movie,” said producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura, who has been part of the production team for Transformers since the very first film in the series. “We were really trying to figure out how intimate a movie we could tell with Transformers. We had done scale and now intimacy was our objective. The success of Bumblebee really spurred us to take the intimacy and the character-focused storytelling from that movie and put it into a larger scale story.”
Hiring Caple, a director with a reputation for small-scale, intimate projects was the first step in that process. Hiring human actors that could make viewers care about something other than the giant robots from space in the film was the next step. The producers turned to two highly respected actors fresh off critically acclaimed performances — Hamilton and In The Heights star Anthony Ramos and Judas and the Black Messiah star Dominique Fishback. Seeing either of these actors in a franchise like Transformers is a bit surprising, and both said they were encouraged by Caple to take the same approach they would take in any of their other roles.
“I approach all my characters the same way,” Fishback said. “Sometimes I journal as the character I’m playing just so I can understand why she’s doing the things she’s doing. Ultimately I think it helps the audience trust the characters too. When I’m on set, I’m asking the questions that I think the audience is going to ask.”
Audiences can judge the results for themselves this weekend when Transformers: Rise of the Beasts hits theaters but so far audience scores are the strongest the franchise has ever seen, with some critics saying it represents a fresh and interesting direction for the franchise. Check out the full trailer for the movie below.
Following three red-flag pauses in the final 15 laps of the 500-mile race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Newgarden and Marcus Ericsson, the 2022 Indy 500 champ, battled it out off a one-lap restart shootout. Newgarden surged past Ericsson on the backstretch for the lead and ultimately the victory in a thrilling final lap. Winning a record 19th Indy 500 for Team Penske, the No. 2 Chevrolet driver edged Ericsson by 0.0974 seconds for the fourth-closest finish in the race’s history.
For The Win spoke with Newgarden on Tuesday after his Indy 500 victory about his late-race strategy, adding to the Team Penske legacy and his “Top Gun-style” celebration.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Danica Patrick offered some tips on how Kyle Larson should approach his 2024 “Memorial Day Double” attempt.
Next year around this time, Kyle Larson will attempt a daunting 1,100-mile challenge between two different race tracks in cities nearly 600 miles apart. All on the same Sunday.
The soon-to-be 31-year-old NASCAR driver will attempt the “Memorial Day Double” by competing in the 2024 Indianapolis 500 for Arrow McLaren at Indianapolis Motor Speedway before jetting off to Charlotte Motor Speedway for NASCAR’s Coca-Cola 600 for Hendrick Motorsports that evening.
Larson’s friend and former competitor Danica Patrick said she has an abundance of confidence in his skillset translating to the IndyCar Series and open-wheeled cars and shared some tips on how she’d approach racing 1,100 miles in one day.
“With a guy like Kyle and a good team, there’s always a chance to win the Indy 500,” Patrick told For The Win on Thursday. “Especially because usually there’s a high chance of two strategies working: The fast strategy, the leader strategy, and then something off-strategy because there are so many pitstops and there’s so much that happens in the race.
“But it is hard, no doubt. It is a tall challenge to feel really good in the car when it’s not what you do because open-wheeled cars are very different than stock cars. And I know he drives open-wheeled cars, but most of the time when he’s driving an open-wheeled car, he’s on dirt and not going 240 [miles an hour] on pavement.”
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Kyle Larson and Jeff Gordon at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in May 2023. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)
Larson will have the opportunity to get as comfortable as possible in an Indy car through practices and qualifying during the month of May. But Patrick emphasized it’s never quite the same as being in an open-wheeled car for a full season.
And she knows from experience. Patrick never attempted the “Memorial Day Double” — though she said she likely could have if she wanted — she ended her racing career after six full-time seasons in NASCAR by returning to her IndyCar roots and doing the Indy 500 one final time. Her retirement run with the 2018 Daytona 500 and Indy 500 was known as the “Danica Double.”
“Even when I came back after seven years, I was like, ‘Oh, God, that was harder than I thought it’d be,'” Patrick explained. “I would see drivers pop back in the car for just the 500 and have good days. And I was like, ‘Oh, must be must not be that hard. It must be, once you’ve done it, you’ve done it.’
“But there’s just something to be said for that week-in week-out [routine]. You’re familiar with not only your team but the fit of the car. You’re not dealing with that stuff: starts, restarts, fuel mixtures, all the stuff on the steering wheel — which I’m out of touch with at this point in time exactly — all the things that they have. But all of that stuff, you want that to be second nature because it’s so hard to have a good day anyway. And so I have no doubt [Larson will] have a good day.”
The Indy 500 is a long and physically taxing event by itself that can leave drivers exhausted and dehydrated after sometimes more than three hours of intense racing around Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s iconic 2.5-mile track. But when that’s over — assuming Larson qualifies for the 2024 Indy 500 field — he’ll have to head over to a NASCAR crown-jewel race with the Coca-Cola 600.
Having a plan for the physical side of this formidable 1,100-mile day is crucial, Patrick said. If she were attempting the Double, she said she’d drain an IV bag on the plane ride between Indianapolis and Charlotte.
As for mindset and mental preparation, Patrick said Larson just needs to stay in the moment he’s in as he’ll have to shift from high-adrenaline racing to rest and back to racing again. That could end up being the biggest challenge, she added.
“He’s a pretty cool customer; he doesn’t really get too up or too down,” Patrick said. “But I think still just being able to have the amount of relaxation in the morning that it takes to keep your energy conserved for the race itself at Indy, and then not feeling frantic after it’s over with to hurry up and get to the Coke 600.
“Just staying calm through all that while then going and driving 1,100 miles at 200 miles an hour — I mean, that is a lot. That is a very big shift between staying relaxed in the morning, turning it on for the race, relaxing in between that and the Coke 600 and then turning it back on. …
“His capabilities to be able to drive both cars and do all those miles is good. It’s just, how much energy can you conserve in the in-between during that day, so that you have the most amount of focus and energy for the job itself?”
When the green flag flies Sunday at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Alex Palou will lead the fastest Indianapolis 500 field in history to green, starting on the fastest front row in race history after he broke the race record for fastest pole-winning speed.
All records last set in 2022, and all indicating the Indy 500 just keeps getting faster and faster.
Palou, the IndyCar Series 2021 champion, claimed his first Indy 500 pole Sunday with a stunning four-lap average speed of 234.217 miles per hour, breaking teammate Scott Dixon’s mark set last year. As for the 33-car field as a whole, the average speed is 232.184 miles per hour, and it’s the third straight year the fastest Indy 500 field record has been broken.
The No. 10 Chip Ganassi Racing Honda driver just hopes he has the lasting speed to stay out in front of this quick group. Should he win his first Indy 500 from the pole, he’ll celebrate with an ice-cold bottle of whole milk.
Ahead of the 107th Indy 500, For The Win spoke with Palou on Monday about his pole, the wild speeds and his expectations for Sunday’s race.
In 2024, Kyle Larson will attempt the Indy 500 and Coca-Cola 600 on the same day, aiming to race 1,100 miles.
Kyle Larson is getting a chance that some NASCAR drivers, and racers worldwide, only fantasize about — a chance to run the Indianapolis 500, one of the biggest and most prestigious races in the world.
The 2021 NASCAR Cup Series champ, one of the most versatile racers in the U.S., will attempt to qualify for the 2024 Indy 500, thanks to a two-year partnership between Hendrick Motorsports, his current NASCAR team, and Arrow McLaren in the IndyCar Series.
“It’s been something that I’ve wanted to do for a very long time,” Larson said Thursday at a press conference at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, which is preparing for the 107th running of “The Greatest Spectacle in Racing” on May 28.
“I wanted to be patient and kind of wait for the timing to feel right. It feels right. Having Hendrick Motorsports be extremely supportive of it, supporting the efforts with Arrow McLaren, it’s something that I’m extremely excited about.”
Larson — who has two wins in the No. 5 Chevrolet through the first half of the 2023 NASCAR regular season — continued at his press conference:
“Jeff kind of told me that I get to live out a dream of his. That’s really special also to me.
“I’ve obviously come here a lot in a stock car. I lived in the area for a couple years. So this place for a long time felt like home or a second home to me.
“In my opinion, this is the biggest race in the world, so you want to be a part of the big ones. Hopefully someday be a winner of a big event. Look forward to it. Happy to be here today. Look forward to kind of taking in as much knowledge as I possibly can in a single day, just trying to better prepare myself for whenever I get behind the wheel.”
Gordon described racing at Indianapolis Motor Speedway as “every race car driver’s dream,” and he’s lived that dream as NASCAR’s winningest driver at the iconic 2.5-mile track with five checkered flags. But as his NASCAR career took off, the Indy 500 never became a reality.
The NASCAR Hall of Famer added:
“Like Kyle said, it’s true, I did say to him he’s going to be able to live out a dream of mine. I go back to the mid to late ’80s when I was living here in Indiana, raced all around here. …
“I don’t know if really the right opportunity or it ever became serious enough after that to become a reality. So to me, this is equally as exciting because, one, I sure as heck right now don’t want to drive into Turn 1 at 238 miles [an hour] — whatever they’re running — but Kyle does. Kyle is capable of it.”
NASCAR Cup Series driver Jeff Gordon during practice for the 2015 Crown Royal 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. (Jasen Vinlove-USA TODAY Sports)
For the 2023 Indy 500, McLaren is fielding four cars with the team’s regular drivers Alexander Rossi, Pato O’Ward and Felix Rosenqvist, along with Tony Kanaan. Next year, thanks to the partnership orchestrated by Gordon, Larson would be the team’s fourth or possibly fifth car, as the Associated Press noted.
The Indy 500 is a grueling physical challenge in itself. But with Larson still running full-time in NASCAR, his 2024 Memorial Day Weekend will be doubly difficult.
He’ll attempt the “Memorial Day Double” by racing in the Indy 500 early in the afternoon before heading down to Charlotte Motor Speedway for NASCAR’s Coca-Cola 600, held annually on the same day. Should Larson complete both events, he’ll end up racing for 1,100 miles.
Only four drivers have ever competed in the “Memorial Day Double,” and Tony Stewart in 2001 is the lone one to finish both events. Kurt Busch is the most recent NASCAR driver to attempt it in 2014, finishing sixth in the Indy 500 before engine problems kept him from finishing the Coke 600.
Larson said it’s humbling for him to be one of the few to attempt “The Double,” but, of course, he’s looking forward to the daunting task.
“It will be crazy,” he said.
“There’s going to be a lot to soak in over the next year, and I look forward to the challenge. I love racing new vehicles to challenge myself and learn something new. I feel like ultimately it makes me a better race car driver.”
Bubba Wallace also weighed in on college football’s Dr Pepper tuition toss conundrum: quarterback throw or two-handed chest pass?
By his own admission, Bubba Wallace’s first nine races of the 2023 NASCAR Cup Series season have been far from perfect. Crashes, engine issues, pit stop mishaps, speeding penalties, miscues — Wallace and the No. 23 Toyota team have seen it all in the first quarter of NASCAR’s season.
However, the 29-year-old driver for Michael Jordan and Denny Hamlin’s 23XI Racing team has high hopes for the next stretch of the season. Not only does Wallace say he and the team are learning from their mistakes, but his first career Cup wins also were at two of the next three tracks: Talladega Superspeedway and Kansas Speedway.
So ahead of Sunday’s GEICO 500 at Talladega, For The Win spoke with Wallace about his season’s progress, making contact Hamlin’s bumper last week at Martinsville Speedway and the Dr Pepper and 23XI SPEED Institute Tuition Program — which 23XI says has distributed more than $230,000 in tuition support. Now in its third installment, the program offers tuition support for 23 college students each year and was established to boost the 23XI SPEED (scholarship, professional education, executive development) Institute in its diversity and equity efforts.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
“You never try too hard at the wrong time, but you got to be there at the right time,” Bubba Wallace told us about racing at Talladega.
Skill, experience, teamwork and a little good luck are just some of the elements NASCAR drivers need to win at unpredictable race tracks like Talladega Superspeedway — the sport’s longest track at 2.66 miles.
Of course, those pieces are helpful in winning just about any race, but they’re especially true at NASCAR’s longer tracks, where chaos and becoming collateral damage are common. But some drivers seem to have mastered the superspeedways better than others, and their skillsets will be on display again Sunday in the Cup Series’ GEICO 500 (3 p.m. ET, FOX).
Bubba Wallace is among them, and for the No. 23 23XI Racing Toyota driver, getting good at NASCAR’s more treacherous tracks begins with one key factor: respect.
“The biggest thing is it starts with respect,” Wallace told For The Win. “So it’s hard for the rookies that come in to have the respect of the guys that have been around for a while just because we know how this race is gonna play out and we know one wrong move can take you out of it. For many superspeedway races just starting out in my Cup career, I was getting left hanging high and dry. And I thought I was making every right move, but apparently I wasn’t.
“But throughout time, you start getting those finishes and consistently finishing those races inside the top five, top 10. Then you see the respect level start to go up, and I think that’s probably the biggest thing. I’ve just been able to finish clean, have no damage or don’t cause any wrecks, and then your stock kind of rises after that.”
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(Marvin Gentry-USA TODAY Sports)
Wallace’s first career Cup win was at Talladega in 2021. Although that’s his only superspeedway win so far, he’s also shown impressive results at Daytona International Speedway — the comparably chaotic 2.5-mile track — with four top-5 finishes since 2018, including three second-place finishes with two at the 2018 and 2022 Daytona 500s.
Going into Sunday at Talladega, Wallace is hoping for a clean race, which is a massive challenge when anyone’s tiny mistake has the potential to eliminate half the field. But after not finishing three of the first nine races this season, he said he personally, as well as his team, need to execute better.
“Our approach these [next] few races is you never try too hard at the wrong time, but you got to be there at the right time,” Wallace explained.
“And surviving is the key to these races and having the track position there at the end because we’ve obviously seen with this Next Gen car that you’ve kind of taken away the three-wide racing that we’ve had. There’s rarely a third lane now that gets more, and so you’re kind of boxed in with what you got. So you see a lot more aggressive moves of guys trying to shuck the other guy out of line. So I think you just have to play your cards right, and make sure you have a couple Toyotas lined up on your bumper and lead the field.”
