Exploring a world ruled by competition and conflict,Granta 170: Winners, returns to sports writing.
Featuring essays by Nico Walker, Declan Ryan, Clare Bucknell and Owen Hatherley on the Isle of Wight.
Fiction by Caryl Churchill, Mircea Cărtărescu, Kathryn Scanlan, Edward Salem, Benjamin Nugent and K Patrick.
As well as photography by An-My Lê, Myriam Boulos, Tereza Červeňová and Prarthna Singh (introduced by Snigdha Poonam).
Image © Getty,Defensive back Deion Sanders poses with his 1988 Jim Thorpe Award at Doak Campbell Stadium, Florida State University
‘Everybody knows a game is not worth watching unless the players are trying to win.’
Thomas Meaney introduces the issue.
‘I suddenly had one of those I can’t find words for it one of those moments of joy I suppose it is.’
Fiction by Caryl Churchill.
‘Real tennis players like to say that theirs is the only proper racket sport because the rest aren’t difficult enough.’
Clare Bucknell on a historical form of tennis.
‘Designed to face down conventional enemies, it hasn’t won a war since 1991.’
An-My Lê photographs the United States military, introduced byGranta.
‘When you said so loudly that you were the best, that you were worth the top dollar, then not just every game but every play became important.’
Nico Walker on the rise and fall of American football, from Jim Thorpe to Deion Sanders.
‘On the day the doctors extracted the eggs from her ovaries, he would have to go into a room in the hospital and produce.’
Fiction by Benjamin Nugent.
‘A Victorian summer utopia perpetually falling into dereliction and desuetude.’
Owen Hatherley on the Isle of Wight, with photography by Tereza Červeňová.
‘There were always too many white activists and upper-class European NGO workers, foreign queers and queer adjacents who were there for the anecdote, hoping to bed a native before their visa ended.’
Fiction by Edward Salem.
‘What to do as a photographer in a war where even simple family portraits have become trophies?’
Myriam Boulos photographs displaced workers in Beirut.
‘Honour, or anything approaching it, sits vanishingly low on the priority list.’
Declan Ryan on boxing and the fight between Anthony Joshua and Daniel Dubois.
‘I picked up a dry leaf, and when the caterpillar climbed aboard, I carried the leaf to the safety of the grass and set it down at the base of a tree.’
Fiction by Kathryn Scanlan.
‘As Prarthna took photographs, I stood in the doorway watching the school-age girls with taut muscles and intense focus lock in bouts across the length of the hall.’
Snigdha Poonam on wrestling and the photography of Prarthna Singh.
‘In the center of the palace was the Exit, blocked by a ferocious guardian, whom none could pass.’
Fiction by Mircea Cărtărescu, translated by Sean Cotter.
‘The military recruits around football – they try to pick up the surplus player population. You couldn't make it on the college team? Well, you know, this is kind of similar. Both are violent.’
Nico Walker on American football.
‘Everything you do you do precisely.’
A poem by Dane Holt.
‘Some of these bigger characters, Muhammad Ali or Lennox Lewis, they can become these mythologic, mythological characters, or these godlike figures.’
Declan Ryan on contemporary boxing.
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