Céline Gounder spoke to us about Wahl’s legacy and a new anthology of his most compelling pieces.
Going into the 2022 World Cup, Grant Wahl was at the top of his game. The 49-year-old had made a name for himself as a gifted soccer journalist at Sports Illustrated and had launched a popular newsletter.
But as he sat in the press box, watching the quarterfinal between Argentina and the Netherlands, Wahl suddenly slumped in his seat. He was taken to a hospital where, hours later, a doctor called Wahl’s wife, herself a successful physician, and told her, “Your husband is no more,” Céline Gounder, MD, recalls.
An autopsy revealed Wahl had died of an aortic aneurysm. It stunned Dr. Gounder and the sports world at large. As she attempted to process his death, she turned to his rich body of work and, with help from two of Wahl’s former colleagues, published an anthology of his best pieces.
Katie spoke to Dr. Gounder about her experience working on World Class, out this week, why you don’t need to be a fan of the “beautiful game” to appreciate Wahl’s writing and much more. Watch the full interview and read the highlights from the conversation below.
On Wahl’s death
Dr. Gounder: Maybe the day or two before he passed away, he had been reporting some fatigue, a runny or stuffy nose, a cough, and some chest congestion. It sounded to me like a cold. Every single time he covered a tournament, he would get sick with something, I think just from a lack of sleep, pushing himself so hard, and being in such crowded spaces.
The day of the game, he was there with friends and no one noticed anything out of the ordinary until he actually collapsed. Pretty soon after that, Gab Marcotti, a journalist at ESPN and a longtime friend who was at our wedding, was trying to message me on almost every single app. He told me that they had tried to perform chest compressions and ended up taking him to the E.R. Immediately after I got off the phone with Gab, I tried to reach the hospital, and they said the attending doctor would call me back. It took another two hours or so before I heard from anybody, and then the doctor told me, ‘Your husband is no more.’
On the process of compiling World Class:
Right after the service, Alex Wolff, one of Grant’s longtime colleagues at Sports Illustrated, came up to me and asked, “What do you think about doing this together?” He told me Mark Mravic, Grant’s soccer editor at Sports Illustrated, was also interested. I told him absolutely.
Alex and Mark went through Grant’s archive and helped curate it. There were some things I already knew I really wanted in there, pieces that they didn’t know about because Grant had written them in college, and they hadn’t been published. One was a piece he wrote about the Vietnam War correspondent Gloria Emerson, who was a really important mentor to him.
I think what’s so special about this book is that it represents his career, from the beginning when he was at Princeton to the end in Qatar. Reading through his work was hard because I knew exactly where we were in our lives when he wrote each of those pieces — like when he was writing about the 1998 World Cup in France, we were in Paris together. It felt like flashbacks.
On remembrances of Wahl
People still remember Grant’s Sports Illustrated cover story on LeBron James, which helped introduce him to the world. The headline was “The Chosen One,” which LeBron actually had tattooed on himself. Hearing from people like that, like Megan Rapinoe and Abby Wambach, all these prominent people from the sports world, meant a lot.
Vice President Harris gave me a call. President Biden wrote a letter. There was something so special about that letter, because he’s experienced loss. He said, “There will come a time when thinking about Grant doesn’t make you cry but brings a smile to your face.” You know, I think I’m getting there.
