Henry Bushnell

Feature writing

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• Why soccer, the world's game, is a white game in the U.S.

• Megan Rapinoe's awakening

• He was Kobe Bryant's 'Mr. Pilot Man.' Now he's blamed for Kobe's death

• How Nick Saban revived Alabama

• The Ghost Olympians

• A stroke turned his World Cup into a nightmare. A medical ‘miracle’ saved his life

• How a controversial youth soccer overhaul reshaped the USMNT

• What it's like to be fired as an NFL head coach

• The men who missed the Miracle

• How a 'rogue' NFL employee forced Roger Goodell into a new Black Lives Matter stance

• The yearslong story behind the NFL's Black Lives Matter statement

• Inside NCAA basketball's gender inequities and how they were exposed

• How a youth soccer turf war fractured the USWNT's pipeline

• Inside the ACL ‘epidemic’ ravaging women's soccer

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2022 men's World Cup

Among my 80 stories from Qatar, in chronological order:

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• The underground beer map helping World Cup fans find alcohol in Qatar

• Welcome to Qatar, the most controversial World Cup host ever

• Qatar gets its show, then a reality check in World Cup opener

• The USMNT's true downfall in draw with Wales

• Germany upset by a Japan team that its own Bundesliga helped create

• Gamer: Lionel Messi pulls Argentina out of a World Cup nightmare

• U.S. Soccer alters Iran flag to support women's rights, then backtracks amid backlash

• Carlos Queiroz was hired to fix American soccer. Now he could oust U.S. from World Cup

• One of many on-the-whistle gamers: U.S. 1, Iran 0

• How Tyler Adams, through nature and nurture, became the USMNT's undeniable leader

• Same old result, new outlook for USMNT after World Cup exit: 'We can be giants eventually'

• Postgame coverage: From the mixed zone, on Cristiano Ronaldo's benching | Why Portugal is better without him

• Lionel Messi finally wins a World Cup — and, after years of heartache and longing, Argentina's love

• As Messi ascends into a tier of his own, Kylian Mbappé proves he isn't far behind

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2023 women's World Cup

Among my 50+ stories, most of them from New Zealand and Australia:

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• How the USWNT past and present blazed a trail for mothers in sports

• The making of America's other Women's World Cup team: The Philippines

• How Trinity Rodman made her name her own

• How Haiti, amid 'living hell' back home, became the ultimate World Cup underdog

• Vietnam and the landmark game it surely cannot win

• The Philippines stunned New Zealand for its first World Cup win. Its heroes? Californians

• More postgame stories: Philippines epilogue | New Zealand's opener | Lindsey Horan's anger

• The USWNT survived Portugal, but panic sirens are blaring

• USWNT's group stage dud is a World Cup scheduling nightmare for FIFA, Fox and U.S. viewers

• Welcome to Carli Lloyd's second World Cup act: Fox's USWNT agitator

• The USWNT's problems, explained

• USWNT-Sweden postgame: The 'brutal' millimeter | Rapinoe's 'sick joke' ending | Vlatko is gone

• The USWNT's worst World Cup ever is both anomaly and wake-up call

• Why women's soccer is still largely coached by men

• Australia lost its semifinal, but won its World Cup going away

• On Sarina Wiegman, the world's best coach who previously turned down the USWNT job, per sources

• Spain's rise, despite its coach and federation, is 'just the beginning'

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More soccer

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• Inside Gregg Berhalter's leadership quest, and how it ignited a USMNT mess

• How U.S. Soccer, using ticket schemes and Census data, keeps Mexico fans out of World Cup qualifier

• Inside the USMNT-USWNT equal pay deal, and why the men agreed to it

• The 2026 World Cup’s first battle: Who’s paying for it?

• Saudi Arabia 2034: The secretive end of World Cup bidding as we know it

• How Christian Pulisic became a reticent and resilient trailblazer

• Who controls American soccer?

• Chris Wondolowski, a 'surreal' life, and the World Cup miss that still haunts him

• Does Messi speak English? He’s learning, but at bilingual Inter Miami, he hardly has to

• 2019 Women's World Cup: How the 99ers' legacy lives on in current USWNT

• 2019 Women's World Cup: Lindsey Horan's road never traveled

• 2020: Life inside the MLS bubble, where COVID-19 and comfort clash

• 2017: Inside the birth of the Save The Crew movement

• 2018: How preseason tours evolved into money-making, brand-building machines

• 2018 World Cup: For World Cup-bound Muslims, a Ramadan dilemma

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2024 Copa América

Over 2.5 months in 2024, wrote 130+ stories spanning the Copa and Paris Olympics. Among them:

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• Gio Reyna is ready to talk

• How Christian Pulisic became a true 'Captain America'
• Copa América's empty seats, explained
• How tiny Uruguay became a soccer giant
• Gregg Berhalter fired as USMNT head coach
• At Copa final, fans endure terror, trauma due to 'inhumane' neglect
• Why Copa chaos doesn't (necessarily) spell doom for 2026 World Cup

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2024 Paris Olympics

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• Trials: How USA Swimming put a pool in an NFL stadium

• The first Olympic battleground: air conditioning

• From .01-second heartbreak to stunning gold, Torri Huske lives out a dream

• Is a 'slow' pool impeding world records?

• What it's like to be a Russian athlete at the Russia-shunned Olympics

• Léon Marchand's unthinkable, unprecedented double

• An Olympic swimmer's biggest, bloody-knuckle battle is with... their swimsuit

• She dressed as Katie Ledecky for Halloween, then won Olympic silver with her idol

• Le Roi Léon Marchand validates and stimulates comparisons to Michael Phelps

• Meet Amit Elor, Team USA's most dominant athlete

• How Emma Hayes, an ultramarathoner and 'pain caves' inspired USWNT to Olympic final

• A morning-after feature on the USWNT's new front three, sans Alex Morgan

• Inside Olympic wrestling’s weight-cut DQ 'chaos'

• The Olympi-fication of breaking, an art form that's 'not really a sport'

• How Emma Hayes transformed the USWNT with humor and joy

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2022 Beijing Olympics

Among my 50 stories over three weeks, in chronological order:

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• Sources: U.S. bobsled team dealing with COVID-19 nightmare

• Olympians fear Chinese retribution for activism

• COVID chaos, lost luggage, borrowed blades: Casey Dawson's last-minute dash to Beijing

• From the scene of Mikaela Shiffrin's second devastating DNF

• Team China, made in North America

• What delayed Kamila Valieva's positive drug test?

• Snow finally falls, and causes problems for snow events

• His last ski race hospitalized him. His next was the Olympics

• Sofia Goggia, skiing's unbreakable woman, wins silver on torn ACL and broken leg

• New evidence raises 'serious questions' about Kamila Valieva's grandfather excuse

• On Mikaela Shiffrin and the toughest type of failure: inexplicable failure

• Elana Meyers Taylor never got Olympic gold, but found something more valuable in pursuit

• Why Mikaela Shiffrin bared her soul amid Olympic failure

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2021 Tokyo Olympics

Among my 80 stories over three weeks, in chronological order:

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• Rulon Gardner's battle with himself

• Do Katie Ledecky's distance opponents even think they have a chance?

• Lilly King's 'evil' pre-race mind games

• The Tunisian swimming longshot who stunned even himself

• Katie Ledecky got dethroned by greatness that she herself inspired

• Simone Biles' last loss and the mental struggle it foreshadowed

• Simone Biles, Katie Ledecky, and the impossible pressure of greatness

• 11 days ago, she was on vacation. Now she's an Olympic champ

• Carli Lloyd's stubborn brilliance

• Ryan Murphy creates a doping firestorm in swimming

• Lilly King rips the 'bullshit' gold-or-bust binary

• A transgender weightlifter will make history at the Olympics. Is her inclusion fair?

• Why 2021 Katie Ledecky, despite fewer golds, is the best Katie Ledecky yet

• 'I curled up on the floor, crying': Inside an Olympian's COVID-19 heartbreak

• Doctors said her career was over. She switched sports and won Olympic gold

• Carli Lloyd, 'unapologetically me,' savors the last dance

• Lucky underwear and a family's sacrifice: The rise of an American medalist

• Kaleigh Gilchrist's remarkable comeback from fatal balcony collapse ends in gold

• U.S. women's volleyball and a story of persistence decades in the making

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Basketball

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• The 'miracle' reincarnation of the Milwaukee Bucks

• The Jordan-LeBron Teammate Club: What's it like to play with the GOATs?

• The remarkable story of 4.5-finger sharpshooter Davis Bertans

• An oral history of Crying Jordan, the meme that wouldn't die

• Inside the complex world of illegal sports streaming

• Column: The NCAA and March Madness embody systemic sexism

• Why Saint Peter's was the ultimate underdog

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American football

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• The genesis of Tom Brady's legend

• The lives J.J. Watt's Hurricane Harvey fundraiser helped save

• Is Lamar Jackson changing the NFL?

• How the Super Bowl got hacked with porn

• The 2000 NFL Draft class is now teachers, businessmen, 'baseball dads'... and Tom Brady

• Tackling Derrick Henry, as told by the normal human beings who once tried

• How the world (and outer space) watches the Super Bowl

• Married on Super Bowl Sunday

• The founding fathers of instant replay are 'scared to the dickens' by where it's headed​​

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COVID-19 pandemic

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• How the NBA accelerated America's coronavirus response

• When will sports stadiums be full again? Dr. Fauci gives a timeline

• Life in quarantine: Inside a pro sports team's enduring of a coronavirus outbreak

• An NBA grappling with coronavirus is an NBA full of contrasts and contradictions

• Coronavirus ended their careers. College athletes are fighting to get them back

• The ramifications, logistical nightmares of Olympics postponement

• An Olympic doctor, a pandemic, a postponement and a predicament

• Are sports leagues' frequent COVID testing impacting the U.S.'s pandemic fight?

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Quick-turnarounds

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• How a star-studded Zoom unified a 'Hail Mary' attempt to save college football season

• The yearslong story behind the NFL's Black Lives Matter statement

• Sha'Carri Richardson's Olympic suspension: Why is marijuana a banned substance?​

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