Tim Layden
@ByTimLayden
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Writer-at-large @NBCSports. Typing stories, narrating essays. 25 yrs at Sports Illustrated @SINow. Before that @Newsday @TimesUnion. 4x BASW. Husband, Dad, Eph
Joined April 2009
Pat Tillman would have turned 43 today. I wrote about him in 1997 when he was a senior at ASU. A few days later, he sent me this card, which I haven't previously shared. Everything about it is perfect: The (lone) wolf. The meticulous note, written with such care. Who he was.
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Throwing a baseball at somebody's brain for acting happy about playing well
Name a sports tradition dumber than throwing a catfish on the ice in Nashville.
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Pat Tillman, who I met and profiled, was smart, thoughtful and principled, with zero tolerance for b.s. It's sickening that anyone would weaponize his name for low-rent trolling, when PT isn't here to speak for himself.
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Bolt retired and made the Olympic 100/200 golds available. USA got neither.
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Gabe Grunewald passed away tonight at age 32. She was a woman of remarkable strength, courage and passion. I wrote this about her life and her fight. #BraveLikeGabe
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Lindsey Vonn could have made her last ski race a ceremonial glide. Or she could have crashed on surgical knees. She didn’t. She won a bronze medal in downhill at the World Championships. A last example of why she is the greatest women’s ski racer in history.
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Lindsey Vonn’s bronze medal shines like her gold from 8 years ago. Here’s my story from the women’s Olympic downhill.
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Amazing thing in that 1500m final: Hocker was in full close mode when Ingebrigtsen shut off the rail: Hocker had to back off, re-set and then attacked on the rail *again* and got home. Big wheels, big stones.
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So: 8 years after going gold-bronze in Vancouver, Lindsey Vonn has another Olympic bronze. After what she has endured in those eight years, even in the U.S gold-obsessed culture, this is a very cool thing.
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Some personal/professional news: After 25 years + 4 months, today is my last day at Sports Illustrated. I am deeply thankful for every minute of that time. This is completely my decision. Time for a change. A few more words:
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45 years ago this week, Secretariat ran the race of his life. And announcer Chic Anderson called the race of his life. To kick off Belmont week, here's my story about a man who died young and one of the best sports calls in history.
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Duncan Robinson had 26 points and 7 threes and somewhere guys from Colby and Middlebury are drinking hazy IPAs and saying, ``I shut that guy down all night.''.
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Grant Wahl was my colleague and my friend in the SI family. He was young enough to have fact-checked me (superbly) right out of Princeton and then grew into one of best of us. I don’t know how else to say this: He cared about things. About everything.
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Gabriele Grunweld's rare cancer keeps returning. She keeps fighting, and living, and running. My story:
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A young man's tragic death. An unexpected letter. How Tom Brady helped a family cope with unspeakable loss.
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So Trevor Lawrence is possibly one of the best performers in the world at a very exclusive, high-paying job, and he has to do it for free for two more years.
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Just talked with Maximum Security's trainer, Jason Servis, and owner, Gary West. Both indicated that they will purse any available appeals to protest the disqualification of their horse.
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Lindsey Vonn and the intersection of free speech, political trolls and one last Olympic downhill.
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Allyson Felix's time of 49.46 is the fastest she's run since 2015, before she gave birth to her daughter. Also, at age 35, no woman has ever run faster older.
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A death at Maryland. A tone deaf reaction at Ohio State. NFL fans chafing at safety rules. I wrote about a common theme: Football being made too important.
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Sports journalists are discouraged from making heroes of athletes, and this is a good thing, because athletes are flawed humans like all of us. But then you see the outpouring of emotion today and -- it's just more complicated than that.
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Many trainers backed DQ of Maximum Security in Derby, but Baffert told me: ``No one calls an objection in the Derby. It’s always a roughly run race. Sometimes you’ve got to take your ass-kickings with dignity.’’ My follow-up story:.
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My enduring memory of Eli Manning: Spring 95, 14yo Eli consents to play catch with Peyton at Newman HS, as long as PM doesn't bring heat. Half a dozen throws in, PM fires a spiral, Eli calmly steps aside, lets the ball whistle into the bleachers, walks out.
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So remember: Tonight Sydney McLaughlin and Daliliah Muhammad are not “following” anybody’s act. Not Warholm-Benjamin, not anybody. They are doing their own show, and it could be incredible.
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Is there a race strategy where Ingebrigtsen wins that race? At any pace? I'm not convinced.
Getting questions about whether that was the greatest 1500 ever. Has to be way, way up there, right?.
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Bill Nack has passed away at 77. He was an idol, a colleague, a friend. Larger than life, and one of the best writers — sports or otherwise — that any of us will ever read. A remembrance:
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An increasingly familiar story across many sports: If Shelby Houlihan is dirty, sad day for T&F; if she’s clean, and banned for 4 years, even sadder day for T&F. Hard to find the cheery angle here.
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Jenny Simpson is living, exultant proof that the best of track and field is competition. Not times, or rabbits or records. Racing. Bravo.
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Dan Jenkins's SI magazine lede on Nebraska-Oklahoma 1971:
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No 100m sprinter of either gender has been better, longer. (Combination of career length, global championship medals, and fast times).
10.78s for Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce who ends her season in style at the Bellinzona meet in Switzerland. Amazingly, SFP has gone sub-11 seconds in 13 consecutive 100m races. The last time she ran 11.00 or slower was in May! . Another great season for the great sprinter ⭐️
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Almaz Ayana of Ethiopia just destroyed one of the dirtiest world records in track history. Great.
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Talked to Picabo Street for the first time since we parted ways, media-wise, 24yrs ago. A story about family secrets, the pursuit of closure and the mercenary relationship between athlete and writer. @NBCSports @peacockTV.
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Watching NCAA D1/2/3 cross country and wondering why, in 2021, men and women don't run the same distances.
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So: No Olympics for me, 1st miss since 92. Reason: Lost most of my hearing suddenly just before pandemic. Successful cochlear implant surgery in May. Hearing again. Thankful. Not quite ready for Oly cacophony. Gonna type for @NBCSports from afar. All good.
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No athlete had a better 2016 than Michael Phelps. My story + an SI cover with a lot of medals.
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45,95 would have won every FLAT Olympic 400 meters until 1960.
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High expectations, nerves and reboots. Mikaela Shiffrin’s Olympics were a wild ride, but in the end she walked away with gold and silver, the best of any racer. Here’s my story from the combined, the last race of the Games.
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Four U.S. men in the 100-meter final. No way they lose the 4X1, right?.
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Gosh. Diagnosed with cancer in 2016. Made 10 movies after that. Unfathomable.
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Just thinking that finding some comfort in the news that Tua is "moving his extremities," seems to ignore everything we have (supposedly) learned in the last decade about football and the human brain.
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I almost never traffic in political tweets, but geez, the @capgaznews murders were one week ago. One week.
"They make the sources up, they don't exist, in many cases." Trump is again falsely accusing newspapers of inventing sources in his administration. Of reporters, he adds: "These are really bad people.".
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Michigan's Duncan Robinson: An improbable transfer, the journey from Williams to the Final Four and his D3 teammates for life.
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Escaped civil war. 10 yrs in refugee camp. Carried USA flag on world stage. And someone suggests his tears are ``phony.''
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My Caribbean followers seem to like this Tweet.
Bolt retired and made the Olympic 100/200 golds available. USA got neither.
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Meb slips and falls at finish, does three push-ups, finishes.
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Yesterday's layoffs at Sports Illustrated were brutal. Not just Chris Ballard, but Sarah Kwak, Kalyn Kahler, Laken Litman, Jack Dickey. Good people remain, trying hard. But Maven overlords are gutting my alma mater (not just yesterday); it's incredibly sad.
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Omaha Beach is out of the Kentucky Derby, with a trapped epiglottis. Morning line favorite. Different race now.
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The election showed that Americans don't really know each other. Sports have been teaching that forever.
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Twitter world: I hadn't planned on writing here about losing our dog, because Twitter can be so mean and cynical. But my man @jeffpearlman shared my FB post. And you were not mean and cynical and you all rock x1000. Big thanks.
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Not usually a fan of posting personal items on here, because Twitter can be so toxic. But this is my wife talking to her 97yo father from the parking lot of his locked-down senior apartment facility. Not easy, but there’s a way.
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The voice of college football. But so much more: First play-by-play man on MNF. Called Mark Spitz's seven gold medals in Munich and Eric Heiden's five golds in Lake Placid. Much more. A legend. Very sad day.
Really sad to hear that the iconic Keith Jackson died last night. He was the soundtrack to so many of our Saturdays.
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Tomorrow's Notre Dame v Boston College game, has echoes of 1993, when ND knocked off No. 1 Florida State, ascended to No. 1, and then lost to a BC team that it had beaten, 54-0, the previous year. That game changed my life. Here's how: 1/.
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I’m on vacation, eating dinner in a pub in Castletownshend, County Cork, Ireland. And I vowed not to Tweet until I got home, but Cristiano Ronaldo just did that and the roof almost came off this place and I think sometimes the world is small and connected by simple things. Fin.
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New gig. Excited to keep working with the team @NBCSports and add some typing and journalism. Ready to keep grinding.
.@ByTimLayden signs exclusive agreement with NBC Sports Group. More information here:
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Who really took the most famous of all the Secretariat Belmont pictures from 1973? A story for @NBCSports about photographs, photo credits, the enduring power what we assume to be true. and just maybe debunking my own work.
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@elleduncanESPN Beijing 2008. @kristenlayden We started out reading books together at bedtime. Now she writes TV shows. #girldad
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Random Masters observation: Golf and track and field have in common that people in town for the event generally dress as if they are *all* competing.
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I cannot think of a sensible reason to not record interviews. Hear it all again, get it right, protect yourself from accusations of misquoting. Yes, transcribing is the worst. Too bad. Nobody's notes are good enough. Memory? Stop.
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My scheduled flight to Tokyo to cover the Olympics leaves in an hour.
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Impossible to overstate the magnitude of Van Niekrerk's race. He was in Lane 8, running totally blind. Just ran away from 2 Oly champions.
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From the IAAF regarding USA protest of 4X100-meter DQ: ``All protests and appeals rejected. All results stand.'' US disqualification stands.
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John. There was widespread outrage among those of us here covering the race at Churchill Downs. spoken, written and posted on social. It's all out there. You are one of us, and this disparages us incorrectly and unfairly, which is disappointing.
I find it remarkable that no one in the media seems to be objecting to Churchill Downs stewards just reading a statement and refusing to take questions after taking Maximum Security down. Not questioning decision one way or the other but they owed public more than a dry statement.
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My wife and I walked a quiet trail around local golf course. Course open and packed. Foursomes with 4 carts emptying onto tees and greens and huddling like Stillwater before singing Fever Dog. Not sure this virus + golf idea is so great. (And I play golf).
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Fifty years ago Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their fists in protest. Here’s my story on a moment that altered their lives and has never been more relevant.
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I kinda hope Two Phil's wins the Kentucky Derby, because it's been a lifelong dream of mine to write 7,000 words about unnecessary apostrophe usage.
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On dominating an illness: I once profiled NYC Marathon boss Fred Lebow, running after surviving cancer. Suggested to his doc that Lebow's ``fighting spirit'' kept him alive. Cancer doc recoiled: `There are a lot of people who don't want to die, but they do.'.
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A thought on Valieva/doping: All the way back to McGwire, it's so often not understood that PEDs are not primarily valuable in a single moment, but in all the training moments required to get there.
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First-ever tennis Tweet: Alcaraz is seriously talented, right?.
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Lopez Lomong came to the USA as a refugee from Sudan and carried the flag at the Olympics. On Friday he cried.
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53 years ago today, right around this time, Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their fists into the sky, one of the bravest things any athletes have ever done. Three years ago I wrote about them for @SInow .
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Pretty cool to see Allyson Felix dig down and make the 400m final on memory and will. What champions do.
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Here's my game story on Country House's victory (and Maximum Security's disqualification) in Kentucky Derby 145, after a truly surreal afternoon (and evening) at Churchill Downs.
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Frank Deford was longform before #Longform. In many ways, he invented the genre and let future generations play with it.
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Humbled by this. Always have loved writing about runners and running. So much there. Such great subjects.
The 2017 George Hirsch Journalism Award will to be presented to Sports Illustrated writer @SITimLayden.
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Apparently the 1500/5k/10k triple isn't challenging enough for Hassan, so she's decided to incorporate some tumbling.
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@LizWFab Prof. Michael Bell. English. Williams College. Not because of his English class. In the comments on a B-minus paper, he wrote: ``I see none of this sloppiness in your journalism.'' And I thought. He's reading my stuff. People are reading my stuff. Hooked.
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A newsman named Al Vieira died Saturday in Cortland, NY. This matters to me because in this business, any of us who have had "success," had doors opened along the way. Al once opened a very big door for me, and I am forever in his debt. A short thread: /1.
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For last week’s SI mag, I wrote about the trend toward partisan sportswriting. Help from @realmikewilbon @malcolm_moran @jadande
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Former college football coach Dick Tomey has died at 80. His 94 Arizona Desert Swarm team was the subject of my first SI cover story and he could not have been more open. I watched him play baseball with kids at age 55. A good man. Sad day.
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I'm old enough to remember when massive state-supported Olympic doping was the worst thing Russia had done all day.
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Grant Fisher (USA), terrific 4th in the 10,000m, said with the crowd at Hayward, "It felt like we're a real sport, like the NBA or NFL." Later he said of his finish, "I need to see the film," which is REALLY like the NFL.
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The story behind Justify's drug test:.Positive for scopolamine? Yes.Lack of transparency? Yes.PED: No.Intentional doping? Almost certainly not. My full story for @NBCSports :.
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From Saturday night: A surreal Kentucky Derby, with a painful disqualification, bittersweet roses and history of the strangest kind. My game story from Churchill Downs.
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Everybody: Gosh. Thanks so much. Reading these. I'm accustomed to crying at the gym, but usually because I have to take plates off the bar after the jr high kids are done. I'm not going away. Not sure I can live up to what I've read today, but I will try.
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Gronk's purchase of a piece of Derby horse Gronkowski means at least 2 things:.1) More money bet on a horse that has never run more than 1 mile, never run on dirt, never run in the U.S. and never faced top competition. 2) The Walk over is going to be awesome.
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Thinking of these gentlemen.
The Milwaukee Bucks have decided to boycott Game 5, source tells ESPN.
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``Jockey,'' in theaters, is a remarkable movie. It has less horse racing than any racing movie I've ever seen, yet explains infinitely more about the unseen world behind the sport. Spare and devoid of melodrama. Highest recommendation.
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@DannyVietti Manny Ramirez. Burlington (NC) Royals 1991. Rookie League. Assignment for Newsday. Me (to mgr): ``How many of these guys will make the majors?''.Manager: ``One.''.Me: ``Why are the other guys here?''.Manager: ``Because Manny Ramirez needs a team to play on.''.
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In all the Olympics I covered on-site, the hardest thing in daily stories was to place silver and bronze medals in proper context. Some are big wins, some are crushing losses. They just are. And no two are the same.
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*Intensely militarized pregame. *Fearsome brain injury. *Sensational athletic action on both sides. This is Peak NFL.
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Maple Leaf Mel, Melanie Giddings, and the long arc of one horse racing tragedy. My @BreedersCup week story for @NBCSports about a filly who will not be there, in a year of high-profile breakdowns.
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Take an NFL quarterback to the ground like that, it's a flag.
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That's 32 track and field medals for USA. Excluding watered-down 1984 L.A. Games (40 medals), that's the most for USA since 35 in 1932.
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People texting to ask if I'm ``still awake.'' I'm a sportswriter. I haven't gone to sleep before midnight on any night of the year since 1978.
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Michael Phelps expected and supports Olympic postponement. Now he worries about the mental health of isolated athletes in uncharted waters. ``I really hope we don't see an increase in the athlete suicide rate.'' My story for @NBCSports.
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Happy Thanksgiving, all. Just two of us today. My wife's 98yo dad is alone in his senior facility. Our kids are far away. Siblings, too. But it's okay, because next year is going to be incredible.
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Man, is Steve Kerr right on this.
Steve Kerr had some strong words pregame about ESPN's coverage of LaVar Ball:
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Bronze medalist Clayton Murphy is the first USA 800m medalist since Johnny Gray in 1992.
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