A Life of Mastery: Honoring the Greatness of Sports Journalist Grant Wahl

5 key insights from World Class: Purpose, Passion, and the Pursuit of Greatness On and Off the Field.

What can we learn about justice from the world of sports? This is one of the themes that animated the work of the late journalist Grant Wahl, who died suddenly while covering the 2022 FIFA World Cup. Grant was on staff at Sport Illustrated for 25 years, and covered 13 Soccer World Cups, seven Olympics and 10 Final Fours. As one of the world’s leading soccer journalists, he hosted a podcast on the sport and was the author of Masters of Modern Soccer and the New York Times bestseller The Beckham Experiment. Posthumously, some of his best writing has been collected in the new book World Class: Purpose, Passion, and the Pursuit of Greatness, with a forward by his widow,

Céline Gounder

. Celine joins us now to share 5 key insights from the book.

1. As a reporter, Grant was fearless but fair.

As a student at Princeton, Grant was the lone voice to criticize Pete Carril when the longtime, much-revered basketball coach retired, but he did so by talking to a range of current and former players and weighing his critique carefully. Here’s how Grant ended his column for the Daily Princetonian: