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The dying of outstanding journalist Grant Wahl on the World Cup in Qatar has led to an outpouring of shock and grief throughout the sports activities world, with NBA star LeBron James and tennis nice Billie Jean King main the tributes to the American.
Wahl died after collapsing whereas overlaying Friday’s Argentina-Netherlands match. The precise reason behind his dying will not be but identified.
King mentioned Wahl’s dying was “heartbreaking.”
“A gifted journalist, Grant was an advocate for the LGBTQ group & a outstanding voice for ladies’s soccer,” King tweeted Saturday. “He used his platform to raise these whose tales wanted telling. Prayers for his household.”
On Friday in Philadelphia, basketball star James mentioned he had been “very keen on Grant.” Whereas Wahl was at Sports activities Illustrated, he did a canopy story on James when the basketball icon was in highschool.
“I’ve at all times type of watched from a distance, even after I moved up in ranks and have become an expert, and he went to a distinct sport,” mentioned James, talking at a postgame press convention. “Any time his title would come up I’ll at all times suppose again to me as a youngster and having Grant in our constructing. … It’s a tragic loss.”
Tyler Adams, the captain of the US Males’s Nationwide Soccer Staff, despatched his “deepest sympathy” to Wahl’s spouse, Celine Gounder, and to those that knew him.
“As gamers now we have an amazing quantity of respect for the work of journalists, & Grant’s was a large voice in soccer that has tragically fallen silent,” Adams wrote on Twitter.
“Just some days in the past, Grant was acknowledged by FIFA and AIPS (the Worldwide Sports activities Press Affiliation) for his contribution to reporting on eight consecutive FIFA World Cups,” mentioned FIFA President Gianni Infantino in an announcement.
The co-editors in chief of Sports activities Illustrated, the publication the place Wahl spent nearly all of his profession, mentioned in a joint assertion they have been “shocked and devastated on the information of Grant’s passing.”
“We have been proud to name him a colleague and pal for twenty years – no author within the historical past of (Sports activities Illustrated) has been extra passionate in regards to the sport he beloved and the tales he wished to inform,” mentioned the assertion.
Different present and former US soccer gamers, together with Ali Krieger and Tony Meola, shared their condolences, as did sporting our bodies similar to Main League Soccer and the Nationwide Girls’s Soccer League.