Tom Ley

Rich Paul's Podcast Was Built To Be Useless | Defector Rich Paul, CEO of Klutch Sports and active NBA agent, has drawn some ire this season for things he said on his new podcast called Game Over, which he cohosts with Max Kellerman. Anonymous members of…

Rich Paul's podcast was built to be useless:

Alysa Liu Is Untouchable | Defector When athletes are said to thrive under pressure, that generally does not mean that they do not feel it. Rather, the common understanding is that athletes, or at least the great ones, are capable of ta...

for anyone craving more Alysa Liu content @yuekaxu.bsky.social has been on a tear of figure skating blogs that are simply beautiful to read and learn from defector.com/alysa-liu-is...

How Is A Figure Skater Like A Tree? | Defector Since returning to figure skating, Alysa Liu has displayed an indifference toward earthly happenings that a bodhisattva would envy. That is not to say that she doesn’t express joy upon completing a st...

4. defector.com/alysa-liu-am...

Are The Fellas In Sync? | Defector Gather ’round, friends, for it is time to play my favorite newly invented game of the Winter Olympics. The game is called “Are The Fellas In Sync,” and the way you play this game is by scrolling throu...

3. defector.com/are-the-fell...

Beautiful Wolfdog Now An Olympian | Defector By the end of a cross-country skiing team sprint competition, the athletes are on the brink of collapse. The best teams complete their six-mile sprint in about 20 minutes. Their legs burn, and their l...

2. defector.com/beautiful-wo...

The Suffering Of Lindsey Vonn | Defector I woke to a flurry of notifications on my phone. Overnight in Cortino, Lindsey Vonn violently crashed in her Olympic downhill race and was airlifted from the mountain. My group chat, made up of colleg...

1. defector.com/the-sufferin...

Threading four high-quality Olympics blogs that can be read right now on Defector dot com.

The Suffering Of Lindsey Vonn | Defector I woke to a flurry of notifications on my phone. Overnight in Cortino, Linsdey Vonn violently crashed in her Olympic downhill race and was airlifted from the mountain. My group chat, made up of…

The suffering of Lindsey Vonn: defector.com/the-sufferin...

Why The Hottest New Pro Wrestling Chant Is "Fuck ICE" | Defector The most intriguing storyline in pro wrestling this month is not a title chase or a bloody feud, but whether or not fans are going to keep chanting “Fuck ICE” at shows. I am more than happy to explain...

defector.com/why-the-hott...

The Big Canada-Sweden Curling Beef, Explained | Defector As a sport most people pay intense attention to for two weeks every four years and then not at all the rest of the time, curling can be slightly impenetrable to the casual viewer; its intricacies and ...

A thing that we do at Defector that I really like: explainers that don't suck defector.com/the-big-cana...

Chromosome Testing Will Take Sports Back To The Dark Ages | Defector In the late 1990s, Olympics officials were suddenly eager to exit the business of testing women’s DNA. After three decades of requiring all women athletes to sit for chromosome tests in order to…

Chromosome testing will take sports back to the dark ages: defector.com/chromosome-t...

The Big Canada-Sweden Curling Beef, Explained | Defector As a sport most people pay intense attention to for two weeks every four years and then not at all the rest of the time, curling can be slightly impenetrable to the casual viewer; its intricacies and ...

The big Canada-Sweden curling beef, explained: defector.com/the-big-cana...

Even Ilia Malinin Is Mortal | Defector Before Ilia Malinin had his disastrous free skate to lose gold at the 2026 Winter Olympics, there was Yuma Kagiyama—who skated a near-perfect short program only to underperform in his free skate on th...

Even Ilia Malinin is mortal:

When they cut back to the NBC studio after the men’s figure skating final Scott Hamilton looked like 9/11 had just happened.

kathryn does a good job articulating the ambivalence i feel toward power athletes in "artistic" disciplines. one additional problem no one is talking about is that he looks too much like jack suwinski

Famous Clients Bail On Casey Wasserman Over Gross Sex Emails To Ghislaine Maxwell | Defector While the world’s attention is currently focused on the various performances, admissions of infidelity, and blood-soaked mascots of the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics, the guy running the next Summer…

Famous clients bail on Casey Wasserman over gross sex emails to Ghislaine Maxwell: defector.com/famous-clien...

High-Level, Actionable Insights From Watching Doubles Luge For The First Time | Defector To the uninitiated, luge itself might seem a silly sport, given that the average person might guess it mostly consists of holding onto a sled real tight as it goes fast down the ice. Of course, this o...

I wrote about the best Olympic sport
defector.com/high-level-a...

Artificially Large Skier Penises Should Stay Legal | Defector To ski jump is to momentarily become a god. The track is narrow and slick, and the athletes plummet down the sloped hill at almost 60 mph. They leave the track and take up, up, up into the sky, where ...

defector.com/penis-scanda...

France's Viral Ice Dancing Team Has A Dark Backstory | Defector Blink and you might not have caught it. On Monday, Guillaume Cizeron and Laurence Fournier Beaudry took to the rink and staked their claim to the ice dancing gold medal. Dancing to Madonna’s “Vogue,” ...

defector.com/frances-vira...

Olympic Photographers: Stop Doing The Lugers Dirty | Defector Imagine the training for the Olympics. All the work, the anxiety, the parties missed, and the mornings you’d rather have spent in bed. The money spent on training, equipment, travel, all of it. You sa...

defector.com/olympic-phot...

Which Other Olympic Mascots Could Italian Stoats Tina And Milo Slaughter In Cold Blood? | Defector Apologies to all otters, ferrets, badgers, ferret-badgers, weasels, fishers, polecats, wolverines, martens, and grisons, but the mustelid of the moment is the stoat. The mascots of the 2026 Winter Oly...

defector.com/which-other-...

Norwegian Biathlete, At Summit Of His Life’s Work: I Cheated On My Girlfriend | Defector The biathlon encourages athletes to balance two things at once. A competitor must be able to ski a great distance at an immense speed, and then, as if turning off a light switch, lower their heart rat...

defector.com/biathlon-oly...

The Saga Of The French Teammate-Defrauder Taught Me To Appreciate The Essence Of Biathlon | Defector To the layperson, biathlon may be the strangest sport in the Winter Olympics. Most of the sports in the Games involve athletes testing the limits of the human body vis-á-vis gravity (e.g.: big air, sk...

defector.com/the-saga-of-...

Adulterous Norwegian Biathlete’s Appeal Denied | Defector It is so easy to yield to temptation. My head might know a path leads only to shame and regret, but my heart urges me to take one step, and then another. It started on Tuesday, with news that Norwegia...

defector.com/adulterous-n...

Ilia Malinin Brings Figure Skating To The Crossroads | Defector Even in sports that do not literally hand out points for style, the matter of aesthetic value is of discursive import. The most dominant athlete or team in the world can be taken down a peg or two on ...

defector.com/ilia-malinin...

High-Level, Actionable Insights From Watching Doubles Luge For The First Time | Defector To the uninitiated, luge itself might seem a silly sport, given that the average person might guess it mostly consists of holding onto a sled real tight as it goes fast down the ice. Of course, this o...

defector.com/high-level-a...

Defector has published some really good Olympics blogs so far, and I am going to thread some of them here.

It’s crazy how god punishes me multiple times a year by allowing the Nuggets and Everton to both have bad losses in a 24-hour period.

What We Loved About Dan McQuade | Defector Today is Dan McQuade’s funeral. To celebrate our friend, we wanted to give the people he worked with a place to explain what they loved so much about him. If you would like to support Dan’s widow Jan,...

What we loved about Dan McQuade:

Who The Hell Was This? | Defector It was a bonnie morning 410 million years ago in what are now the Rhynie chert fossil beds in Scotland. The mists had begun to lift and swirl over the landscape, where hot springs burbled, lichen pape...

I wrote about an extremely strange fellow from 410 million years ago
defector.com/who-the-hell...