Bill Nack, noted sportwriter who specialized in horse racing.
Over nearly a quarter-century at Sports Illustrated, Mr. Nack was one of its storytelling stars, along with Frank Deford, Gary Smith, Sally Jenkins, Leigh Montville and Richard Hoffer. His subjects included horses and jockeys; the boxers Joe Frazier and Rocky Marciano, the racecar driver A. J. Foyt, the baseball players Jackie Robinson and Keith Hernandez, and a football player, Bob Kalsu, the only major professional sports athlete to die in the Vietnam War.
That Bob Kalsu story is a great piece of work.
Mr. Nack also wrote the book on Secretariat.
Starting in March 1973, Mr. Nack spent 40 consecutive days with Secretariat, joining him at 7 a.m., getting to know his team, taking copious notes and once seeing the horse playfully grab his notebook in his teeth and deposit it on a bed of hay.
And:
Mr. Ebert was one of many colleagues who recalled Mr. Nack’s penchant for reciting from “Lolita,” “The Great Gatsby” (in English and Spanish) and some works of H. L. Mencken’s.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 18th, 2018 at 3:16 pm and is filed under Books, Horses, Obits. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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