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Behind the Scenes of Six More of my Journalism Stories:
The World-Class Bor Brothers: Podium Magazine (2021)
One of my earliest beats as a writer was covering my cross-country team for my college so I developed a rare love of watching people run in circles and keeping up with the ins and outs of that sport. That extends to quite a bit of Olympics writing which is centered around track and field in the second week.
A friend of mine at ESPN suggested I pitch some articles and one got in about the controversial WCAP which offers foreign nationals (mostly Kenyans) expedited citizenship for military service and some say that the military service isn’t on par with the average soldier. At the 2016 Rio Trials, 4 of the 18 coveted distance running slots on the men’s Olympic team went to Kenyans.
When I published this article, one of those Olympians, Hillary Bor, found me on Facebook and expressed frustration that I had diminished his military service and didn’t tell the full story. Upon some reflection, I felt there was some xenophobia in my article: I wanted to see Americans do well including the ones that had been running under the American flag longer.
I offered to write a correction of some sort and Mr. Bor just said something along the lines of “whatever.” During the next Olympic cycle in 2021, I had published one Olympics-related piece for Podium…
