How David Found His Purpose
Arctic studying the carbon cycle like in a tent um and I had been a competitive Runner I had a training partner who was one of the top ranked guys in the 800 meters in his age group in the country uh first family of Jamaican immigrants was going to be the first one to graduate college Dro dead a few steps after a race uh and our sort of Hometown paper said
he had a heart attack I don't even know what that means for someone of that age and health right and I got curious and eventually I kind of worked up the courage or whatever
that sounds silly to say it that way but um was nervous about it to ask his family to sign a waiver allowing me to gather up his medical records did that turned out he had like a textbook case of this disease caused by a single
genetic mutation that's almost always the cause of young athletes dropping dead and I said we can save some people from this with more awareness and I wanted I decided to merge my interests in sports and science said I want to write about sudden cardiac death and athletes for Sports Illustrated which I grew up with so I got off the science track I left after my masters uh kind of weaved my way to sports illustra I got in there as a temp pitch this story about sudden cardiac death and athletes they're like temp sit down right and then the Olympic Marathon trials for 2008 US team uh came to Central Park and the guy ranked fifth in the country dropped dead like 10 blocks from our office and then they said don't
you know something about this and so you know in a week I was able to write a cover story making it look like we had done like two years of research in a week and I became the science writer at Sports Illustrated it was an interesting you know I came in there as a temp six seven years behind people who were younger than me MH doing sort of more remedial work for them but I realized pretty soon that my Oddball
background right I I think I was
shaping up to be like a typical average scientist but you take those average
science skills and you bring them to
sports magazines like you're like a Nobel laurate you know um and so I realized I I could just make my own ground instead of having to compete with anybody but the initial impetus for getting into this merger of sports and science was was a personal tragedy and
how did you define yourself from a
crib perspective of a writer are you a scientist how' you I view myself as this
merger between a science writer and
investigative reporter because what really fires me up is when I view that
0 Comments