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From time to time, we'll select stories — old and new, sports and otherwise, relevant and merely sublime — that we urge you to read for one reason or another. Today: The 1972 Olympic team, still bitter about losing to the Soviets. More »
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In 1996, Sports Illustrated named a 20-year-old Tiger Woods its Sportsman of the Year, and Gary Smith's accompanying story portrayed a young man who somehow combined the best parts of Doogie Howser and Buddha. It seemed like a stretch. More »
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Sports Illustrated's Gary Smith has won the National Magazine Award four times, which is almost as impressive as the fact that almost no one knows his name. Unlike his longtime friend and associate Rick Reilly, Smith keeps a low profile, writing his four in-depth, massive character studies a year, living in Charleston, S.C. and staying off television. He also just released a book through SI's publishing arm, Going Deep, a collection of his best SI stories. I talked to him for about 20 minutes yesterday. Here's the transcript, with all my stutterings edited out, of course. More »
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Though we grew up thinking he was the the best sportswriter on the planet — and one of our favorite journalists anywhere — we'll confess souring somewhat on Sports Illustrated scribe Gary Smith in recent years. His writing was still top-notch, but it was beginning to become repetitive. He'd either write about a major sports star with some sort of dark secret in his past — abusive father, deceased brother, boyhood friend with rickets, sticky film that just won't rinse away — that he has been running from all these years, or obscure athlete/coach/moment in sports history who has struggled to overcome because of his heritage/dark secret/obsession with yaks. Smith's work is still better than just about everything else out there, but we felt like we were close to cracking his code. More »
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