Welcome Back to “I’m Curious!”

We’re getting deeper and deeper into the dog days of summer. I hope you’ve been staying cool out there.

If you’re a regular reader, as always I invite you to share your thoughts and to tell your friends to subscribe. If you’re a new reader, you’re also invited to share your thoughts, and it’s a pleasure to have you here.

As a heads up, I’ll be covering a sensitive subject to start off. I will do everything I can to handle this fairly but please note, any opinions or conclusions I draw are my own. They are not representative of my work or my employer, or of anyone or anything other than myself.

The Most Curious Thing This Week

It’s the outrage around Algerian boxer Imane Khelif.

Khelif is the Algerian boxer who drew a firestorm of online criticism from the likes of Elon Musk, JK Rowling, Logan Paul and Donald Trump for winning a boxing match against Italian fighter Angela Carini.

Khelif delivered a blow that hit Carini in the face, making Carini fear she broke her nose. She then withdrew after 46 seconds, giving Khelif her first win.

It led to accusations that Khelif was transgender, male or in some form or another should not have fought Carini.

The saying goes that “a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.”

It feels particularly apt for a story tying to the Olympics, which has athletes come together from around the world.

Khelif was assigned female at birth and was raised as a girl (one whose father refused to let her take up boxing because he believed girls should not box.) She has been female her entire life and still is.

And yet, she faced accusations of being male. We don’t know the exact facts but she may have what’s known as a “difference in sex development,” or DSD. That could mean she has higher levels of testosterone, or a Y chromosome, or be intersex but she can have any of those things and still be a woman. By the rules that are set up, she can play. She passed every test required by the IOC to be allowed.

There is certainly a debate out there over the validity of those rules, but she is playing by them.

Khelif has boxed for years, including at the 2021 Olympics. She has nine career losses, so while successful, she is by no means dominant.

Where it got murky was with the International Boxing Association, or IBA. They’re a discredited organization that the IOC kicked out from governing boxing due to allegations of corruption, match fixing and excessive Russian influence. They’re the ones who, with little to back it up, said Khelif failed what they call “gender testing.” It came a few days after Khelif defeated a Russian boxer.

Khelif has continued to fight, and won her next matchup against Hungarian Anna Luca Hamori, who posted content demonizing Khelif to her own Instagram story before the matchup.

After days of scrutiny, Khelif made a public comment, saying in part something very simple: “I am a female.”

Khelif being female has not stopped people from accusing her of being male or transgender. In fact, it hasn’t stopped that accusation from being thrown at just about any female sports star.

Take one look at the Instagram comments about any woman athlete and you can see. If they don’t look like a supermodel (or even if they do and they’re just too good at a sport), someone will accuse them of being a man.

Swimming gold medalist Katie Ledecky? Commenters think she’s male.

The new US women’s rugby star Ilona Maher? She came straight out and said she gets comments calling her a man and that they’ve hurt for a long time.

It has gotten to the point where there are news headlines of adults accusing children of being transgender, often due to them succeeding in sports. No female athlete, no matter how young, seems safe from having accusations of being transgender weaponized against young girls who are good at sports.

To me, Khelif’s story goes beyond just the question about whether or how to include transgender athletes. It’s about how we treat and discuss women and their bodies.

Perhaps the most definitive take on Khelif comes from her father. In a statement he gave to Sky Sports, he said “My child is a girl. She was raised as a girl. She's a strong girl. I raised her to be hard-working and brave. She has a strong will to work and to train.”

My Reporting

We start with a few stories that are decidedly not sports-related.

I had the honor of helping produce an interview with Paul Beckett. He is the Wall Street Journal editor who has been working full-time for the last nine months to free Evan Gershkovich, the Journal reporter and Princeton, NJ native who was arrested and detained in Russia.

Last week, a deal brought Gershkovich and several other Americans held in Russia home.

Beckett was happy, emotional and shared a lot about the efforts to bring Gershkovich home.

To use a sports metaphor, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been in rebuilding mode. In recent years, it has struggled to bring in as much box office success and critical acclaim as it did in the 2010s.

In a wild twist, Marvel brought back Robert Downey Jr., who famously played Iron Man in the series, to play noted villain Doctor Doom. It’s led to a mixed reaction from fans, with some excited to see RDJ back and others confused about a casting choice that may take viewers out of the experience.

Brian Truitt of USA Today wrote about the choice to bring back Downey in a piece published Friday and we had him on the show to talk about it.

(Also, I have to give Friday’s anchor Chance Seales a shoutout for name-dropping me on air and contributing to what might be the first national TV reference to the immensely popular, at least among 12-year-olds, YouTube series Skibidi Toilet.)

NWSL

Back to the sportsball!

With some time on Wednesday, I checked in on a few NWSL teams. The top US women’s soccer league has lost a few dozen players to the Olympics, so have been playing a midseason tournament featuring both their clubs and teams from the Mexican league, Liga MX Femenil.

Some dramatic games late last week put four teams: NY/NJ Gotham FC, Angel City FC, Kansas City Current and North Carolina Courage into the semifinals, which unfold Tuesday night. The final, however, isn’t until October.

Angel City might be a little out of place, as they are the only one of the four remaining clubs in the bottom half of the regular season standings.

But they had quite the exciting moment as former US women’s national team star Christen Press returned from over two years out, recovering after four surgeries to repair a torn ACL.

Ahead of her comeback, her coach Becki Tweed singled out Press for working hard to get back to the form that allowed her to play for the US when they won the World Cup in 2019.

Racing Louisville did not make it to the semifinals but fell a point short. Ahead of their match with Orlando Pride, who lead the regular season standings, I joined a press conference of theirs.

It was interesting to note how a lower-stakes tournament like this has allowed teams to experiment with new concepts or player combinations.

Louisville’s coach Bev Yanez mentioned that right at the top of her comments.

I got some interesting insight about gameplay from Louisville midfielder Taylor Flint, who has some national team experience of her own.

As someone usually playing in the defensive midfielder role, she’s often the only player standing between the players at the front attacking the other team’s goal and the handful of players on the back line defending their own goal.

A player in that position has to both defend well and pass well.

In her answer to me, Flint mentioned that against Orlando, a team known for preventing other teams from both scoring and shooting, she’d have to be especially sharp with her passes.

And of course, before things wrapped, I had to ask her about her ability to win headers. She’s the tallest non-goalkeeper in the league and is often able to get up to head the ball as needed.

Her key? Timing. That, and taking it personally.

Other Sports Takes and Things of Note

Olympic Track and Field: There’s something about track and field events, specifically distances requiring sprinting, that draws me in. It’s the combination of quick action, high stakes and incredibly outgoing personalities of just about everybody competing.

Noah Lyles drew my attention last year when he made comments deriding the idea that NBA champions are “world champions,” since every team is based in North America.

The Alexandria, VA native’s mouth wrote a check that his feet needed to cash. And in a photo finish, he made it happen, winning gold in the 100 meters by five thousandths of a second.

Lyles has a magnetic personality. He even paints his nails. But his post after winning gold showed a more self-aware, down to Earth side of the world’s new fastest man.

As someone who has at least two of the same conditions as Lyles, I can confirm: “what you have does not define what you can become.”

Over on the women’s side, the 100 meters saw history made. Julien Alfred won the gold medal, becoming the first person to win any Olympic medal for the country of Saint Lucia. Fittingly enough, she did it for the only country on Earth that is named after a woman.

Sha’carri Richardson of the US had to settle for silver. She is an incredibly charismatic dynamo who we missed out on seeing at the 2021 Olympics because she tested positive for THC, the crucial component in marijuana.

If a star like Richardson had to lose, I can think of no better winner than someone who can elevate a small island nation to one of the world’s biggest stages.

Wave the White (Sox) Flag?: In mid-May, I made a brief visit to Chicago. My rideshare driver back to the airport was a diehard Chicago White Sox fan. They had lost 22 of their first 25 games and even with a bit of improvement, by then it was a lost season. But God bless him, this guy had been onboard pretty much all of his life, and he wasn’t stopping now.

In late May and early June, they lost 14 games in a row. In late July, they became the second MLB team to have two losing streaks of 14 or more games in the same season (Stathead says the 1935 Boston Braves are the other one.)

The White Sox are up to 21 games in a row without a win. That ties them with the 1988 Baltimore Orioles for the second-longest losing streak in MLB since 1901. If the (also pretty bad) Oakland Athletics sweep them with wins Tuesday and Wednesday, the White Sox will be playing to avoid history on Friday back at home in Chicago.

The 1961 Philadelphia Phillies have the since-1901 record with a 23-game losing streak. If the White Sox come home without winning either of those two games, the White Sox will have to beat their crosstown opponents, the Chicago Cubs, to avoid the record.

Even if they do win, they’re not out of the woods yet. With a .235 winning percentage, they are on pace to tie the record for lowest winning percentage ever (at 36-117, the 1916 Philadelphia Athletics also had a .235 winning percentage.)

With 88 losses already and 47 games to go, the White Sox risk breaking the record set by the 1962 New York Mets, who lost a record 120 games.

Justice for Jackie: It has been a big weekend for the Wichita, KS statue of Jackie Robinson. Youth baseball league organizers unveiled a new statue of the pioneering baseball legend. In January of this year, somebody stole the original statue, cutting it off at the ankles. It was later found burnt.

And this weekend, the man who stole the statue received 15 years in prison for multiple crimes, including 18 months for the theft.

The new statue came in part thanks to over $100,000 in donations from private donors and Major League Baseball.

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As for the old statue, the cleats that remained when the rest of the statue was sawed off and stolen are on display at the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City. 

When I visited the museum in June, I had forgotten that the statue’s remains made it to their museum. And when I saw the cleats missing their legend, I stopped dead in my tracks. That image stays with me.

Something Good I Ate

Let’s stay with Kansas City for a moment, since I ate a pretty good meal after my aforementioned stop at the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum. 

Gates Bar-B-Q is one of two KC BBQ establishments, alongside Arthur Bryant’s, who can lay claim to the city’s nearly century-old BBQ tradition. Like many of KC’s best exports, its BBQ history is tied to its Black history, as both Gates and Arthur Bryant’s have links to the city’s BBQ pioneer Henry Perry.

Gates is a sentimental favorite but is often put down by modern BBQ connoisseurs. In fact, I heard enough bad things that my expectations were through the floor. I was there for the history, that’s it.

I ordered a burnt-end sandwich, made from the point end of a smoked brisket. It came slathered in sauce with a handful of pickle rounds. I got a side of baked beans and a Pepsi to round out the meal.

Unrelated, but when you go to the Mona Lisa, everybody says it’s smaller than you’d expect. People walk in thinking it’s a floor-to-ceiling giant painting and are disappointed when it’s small. When I visited Paris years ago, I saw so many reviews and guides mention it’s smaller than expected, that I thought I might as well be seeing a postage stamp.

When I saw the Mona Lisa, which measures 30 inches by 21 inches, it was larger than I thought.

Similarly with Gates, their burnt end sandwich was far better than I had expected and was quite good overall. The main thing that stopped me from eating it all was being full.

The sandwich had a lot of flavor and despite being a bit messy, was pretty easy to eat. The baked beans were absolutely fantastic, with just the right touch of sweetness. And the Pepsi, coming in a lovely big plastic tumbler just like you’d get from a good-quality diner, was crisp and smoothly washed down everything.

Although Gates didn’t end up at the top of my KC BBQ rankings (I might have to save the winner for a future feature in this section of the newsletter), it definitely qualified as something really good that I ate.