Athletes and coaches must be viewed as humans first who are doing extraordinary athletic things.
This is the belief of CBC Sports senior reporter Devin Heroux when speaking with them at an Olympics, Paralympics or elsewhere, and when sharing his thoughts on social media.
“I’ll never know what it’s like to swim as fast as Summer McIntosh or sprint as quickly as Andre De Grasse, but I do know what it means to win, and I do know loss. And they do as well,” Heroux said this week, after recently returning from Paris after covering his fourth consecutive Olympics and Paralympics.
“When we realize and appreciate the humanity that lives within athletes, I think we can speak differently to them and ask more thoughtful questions. In turn, we get more beautiful, vulnerable, revealing moments that allow the audience to appreciate them in a very human way.”
Heroux and 58 others …