The Year's Best Sports Writing 2026

The Nigerian biker with a continent at her back

Opened in 2020, the COPA Soccer Training Center in Walnut Creek, California, is a 117,000-square-foot, three-story-high labyrinth of sensor-­enabled practice spaces where boys and girls ages one through nineteen can refine the individual skills necessary to attract scouts from major European clubs. Perched above the glass entryway, a gargantuan soccer ball spins slowly like a […]

KANSAS CITY, Mo., As celebrity restaurant mascots, athletes offer a tidy sense of vertical integration: Why not supply the very calories they need to expend on the field? I’m surprised there are so few successful models. We have all mostly forgotten (or agreed not to talk about) George Brett’s restaurant in Kansas City, Brett…

The conversation around "ethical basketball" is about much more than just drawing fouls.

Carlie Irsay-Gordon is younger than her peers, with her own distinctive vision of how an NFL owner can lead. It is about to be tested.

Eddie Guerrero was a WWE Champion, a WWE and WCW Triple Crown and Grand Slam Champion. He died in 2005 and was inducted posthumously into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2006.

FIVE DAYS BEFORE the Oklahoma City Thunder opened training camp following the franchise's first-ever NBA title, Sam Presti sat down at a table inside the team's practice facility about 10 miles north of the team's downtown arena.

The stories and legacies of Earl Lloyd, Chuck Cooper and Nat "Sweetwater" Clifton have been woven into the fabric of the NBA.

Khiara Keating, of Man City, and Jess Naz, of Spurs, talk to The Athletic about tapping into the rich heritage of Black hair culture

Known as the ‘Big Dumper,’ the Mariners catcher has masterfully handled Seattle’s staff while putting on an unprecedented home run barrage.

"I WENT OVER there to de-escalate the situation,"

The Thrilla in Manila nearly killed Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier.

A family reckons with the devastation left behind after a former N.F.L. player showed up on their property.

One would be entering his old age now, with most of a long life behind him. The other would just be entering his senior year in high school, working to fulfill a life of great promise.

NHL star John Gaudreau and his brother, Matty, died on Aug. 29, 2024, after being struck by an alleged drunk driver while riding bicycles.

Before Ryan Wedding landed on the FBI’s Most Wanted list as a high-level associate of El Chapo, he was a bright-eyed kid from Thunder Bay. The inside story of how an Olympic snowboarding prodigy became one of the world’s most dangerous and powerful drug lords

IT HAS TAKEN months to get here. Months of waiting, for Joel Embiid to play, for him not to play, for him to decide what, if anything, he wants to say about a season that once seemed so full of promise.

Approaching the age his dad was when he died at Daytona, a second-generation legend went looking for answers. I went looking, too.

In the wake of the wildfires that hit the L.A. area in January, members of the Pasadena Run Club -- (left to right) Carl Walton, Lidia Garcia, Jason Seto and Tiana Hill -- have now become a family.

How a 22-year-old running back and a 86-year-old coach grew close.