The renegade sportsman - Zach Dundas

A face-first dive into America's sporting underbelly.

A lifelong sports fan, Zach Dundas asks: What happened to the fun, loud-mouthed, down-anddirty sporting culture he always loved? Has it been replaced with performance-enhancing drugs, fat paychecks and billion dollar arenas? Of course not! With a renegade's eye and a fan's resolve, Dundas scours the underground to find the games, fans, and "athletes" you won't find in the sports pages. He tracks a bicycle race across Iowa designed to confuse and downright torture its participants, chases a gaggle of runners wearing red cocktail dresses in Portland, and screams obscenities in Chicago with the rowdy fans of the DC United soccer team, and through these and other harrowing and hilarious adventures, he begins to reconnect with the thrill of sporting as he discovers a vibrant, beautiful, and thriving element of American culture-simmering right below the surface.

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Zach Dundas worked as a reporter and editor at the Missoula Independent and Portland's Willamette Week. His writing has appeared in Maxim, The San Francisco Chronicle, Portland Monthly, and elsewhere. He lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife and son.