Elliott Almond: Catching a Wave of Sports Memories

Press Box Access: A Sports History Podcast

We surf waves, climb mountains, and dive into odorous media mixed zones with Elliott Almond. He has earned a reputation as one of the top Olympic writers and sports investigative reporters during his adventurous career of nearly 50 years. Elliott explains how Edwin Moses led him to break a major story about steroids before the 1984 Los Angeles Summer Games. He recalls the bunker mentality needed to report on the tragic death of Hank Gathers. Why did Marion Jones talk to Elliott after a failed relay despite despising him? Hear about the craziness of writing about figure skating on deadline, how surfing with quarterback Todd Marinovich led to Elliott taking the Wonderlic test, and how climber Alex Honnold paused to provide a unique perspective. And there’s the time a Secret Service agent pointed a gun at Elliott when he was chasing Richard Nixon . . .

For nearly 50 years, Almond has been a sports journalist on the West Coast, noted for his enterprise work and Olympic coverage at the Los Angeles Times (1974-1996), the Seattle Times (1996-98), and the San Jose Mercury News (1998-2021). He has been recognized by such organizations as the Associated Press Sports Editors, Best American Sports Writing, the California Newspaper Publishers Association, and the Society of Professional Journalists. Elliott has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize three times. He is currently an outdoor columnist for the Cascadia Daily News in the Pacific Northwest.

Elliott covered 14 Summer and Winter Olympics, as well as the 1999 and 2007 Pan American Games. His investigative work includes reporting on the BALCO drug scandal, steroids in international track and field, Gathers’ death, Magic Johnson and the issue of HIV, and cheating in college sports at Washington, USC, UCLA, and UNLV. He wrote about such diverse subjects as the Tour de France, social issues in sports such as abuse in women’s sports, crime in college and professional sports, and concussions and the consequences of traumatic brain injuries.

A life-long surfer, Almond spent much of his youth traveling the Southern California and Baja California coastlines. He is the author of the book “Surfing: Mastering Waves from Basic to Intermediate.”

From 2009-13, Elliott was an instructor for San Jose State University, where he served as an editor overseeing the production of a broadsheet newspaper by teenagers participating in a high school journalism workshop.

Elliott graduated from California State-Fullerton in 1975 with bachelor’s degrees in communications and political science. He completed a master’s program, except for the dissertation, at California State-Long Beach.

Follow him on Twitter: @ElliottAlmond

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