Twenty-five years ago, tennis lost Saint Vitas.
Sports
Surf Where You Least Expect It
Do you want reliable California breaks with reliable California crowds, or are you ready to take your chances in frigid Irish water where you’ll share waves with no one else?
Flagrant Foul: Benching Teen Moms Before Title IX
As a high schooler and new mom, Jane Rubel didn’t consider herself a feminist. She just knew that if husbands and fathers were eligible to play high school basketball, she should have been, too.
How the Toronto Raptors and the Vancouver Grizzlies Revived the NBA
Both franchises led the NBA’s international expansion, and to stand out in the hockey-crazed country, the teams would need impressive logos and colorways to break through, but no one expected a red raptor or a grizzly bear outlined in Haida trim.
The Gymnast’s Position
Aimee Trepanier was proud to showcase the pose that started her 1993 gymnastics floor routine in a billboard ad off I-15 in Salt Lake City. But when Utahns looked up, that’s not what they saw.
Editor’s Roundtable: Gossip, Dirt, and Reality (Podcast)
Longreads editors discuss stories in Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, ESPN, Kotaku, and The Globe and Mail.
An Audience of Athletes: The Rise and Fall of Feminist Sports
Billie Jean King once tried to find a sustainable business model for feminist sports coverage. Then women’s fitness tried to revive the swimsuit model.
It’s Tennis, Charlie Brown
An obscure character was a stand-in for the creator of Peanuts when he fell in love with tennis during the sport’s boom in the 1970s.
They Call Her La Primera, Jai Alai’s Last Hope
Three decades ago, Becky Smith wanted to become jai alai’s first woman pro. Now the sport can’t make a comeback without her.
