Indholdsfortegnelse for February 2023 i GQ

For our story on Frances Tiafoe, Taylor Fritz, and the other new superstars of men’s tennis, see page 64.…

THE WAY COACH saw it, this was how it had to be—the private jet, the frantic rush, the dramatic nighttime arrival in Colorado. “Everything is strategic. We couldn’t wait,” Deion Sanders said to me in the hours after he’d touched down in the state to be announced as the University of Colorado’s next head football coach. He’d flown straight from Jackson, Mississippi, where he’d just led Jackson State University to its second straight Southwestern Athletic Conference title. He did not pause to celebrate. Fans and players danced and hugged, but Sanders had a plane to catch, a new job waiting. As the championship trophy was readied, cameras caught him with his arms folded, appearing to tell offcials, “Let’s go, let’s go.” He skipped the post-game press conference and instead met with…

WHEN I strolled into base camp at Ama Dablam, the 22,349-foot peak known as the Matterhorn of the Himalayas, the mountaineer Nims Purja was locked in a fierce game of beach volleyball. Just beyond the court, in every direction, sprawled a village of tents, some 65 in all, erected by his guiding company, Elite Expeditions. The outfit is the ultra-ambitious Nims’s latest gambit—a business meant to parlay his status as one of the world’s most celebrated climbers into a venture that pays more than simply breaking mountaineering records. Perhaps more significantly, though, the Nepali-born Nims wants to use the company to upend the old paradigms of the Himalayan guiding industry by cutting the Sherpa guides in on the largesse. And as with anything Nims tries, he has launched it on…

IN 1992, when Deion Sanders suited up for both the Falcons and the Braves on the same day, taking two limos, two helicopters, and a private jet between Miami and Pittsburgh to make it all happen, I was an 11-year-old Little Leaguer living in Atlanta, Georgia. Obviously, Neon Deion was a superhero. The way he could take over a game from the cornerback position (with a few punt returns thrown in) defied the fundamental logic and spatial layout of the game of football. Equally inspired was the way he freaked his uniform, from the creative innovation of his sweatband placement, to the towel he dangled from the front of his belt, to the bandana that would remain his signature between the hash marks. Meanwhile on the baseball diamond, he weaponized his…

FEW THINGS ARE as brain-reorienting or as life-affirming as communally watching the best athletes in the world go at each other’s throats: the roaring crowds, the adrenaline rush, the after-parties. After having spent the past few years cramped indoors, we spanned the globe to collect the best live sports experiences—some you’ve heard of, many you probably haven’t—that are worthy of your hardearned credit card miles, no prior fandoms necessary. ULTRA-TRAIL DU MONT-BLANC Chamonix, France What is it? The toughest and most scenic ultramarathon in the world, it’s a 106-mile sufferfest that takes runners up more than 30,000 feet of elevation and through three countries—France, Switzerland, and Italy—all set amid a weeklong late-summer party in the alpine town of Chamonix. What’s the vibe? “It’s Burning Man meets the Tour de France,…

ALLEN IVERSON IS shooting pool at a Dave & Buster’s outside of Charlotte, North Carolina. He’s lived here for the past few years and has made the restaurant—housed in a local mall—one of his go-to spots when he wants to unwind. Today, the place is virtually empty, and he’s coolly sinking shots against an old friend, crooning Burna Boy’s Yoruba refrain—“Shayooo!”—as balls sink into pockets. For a minute, he looks like any other suburban dad spending a day with one of his fellas. He’s wearing what he calls an “everyday” fit: black tee, black sweatpants tucked into white tube socks. Those iconic cornrows of his, now threaded with gray, sit beneath a black Raiders snapback. If anything gives him away, though, it’s the jewels—diamond bracelets, a bust-down Patek Philippe watch,…

THE LAST STYLE BENDER Former UFC middleweight champion Israel Adesanya is a stand-up striker so in control of his kinetic style that he’s basically a real-life Tekken character. “Flow, creativity, and open-mindedness” are the keys, he says. Same goes for getting fits off.…

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onto the concourse of Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia and, hoo boy, if you’re a connoisseur of heckling, you have to be ready for a show. This is Game Three of the World Series, Phillies on an unholy roll through the postseason, their fans in the kind of lather on which they famously pride themselves. There’s a whole section, overhanging Tony Luke’s cheesesteaks, devoted to chanting “Asshole!” at anybody who passes by in the jersey of the opposing Astros; so much booing it’s hard to tell where the rancor is even aimed. And into this maelstrom, escorted by security and flanked by reps, enters Jeter, such an icon of hated New York that he might as well be a yellow taxi, to a chorus of…cheers? What the hell? “Derek! Derek!”…

NEW GENERATION OF elite men’s tennis players is a small, tight-knit group. With a pro tour that stretches from January through November, and from Melbourne to New York, Tokyo to Monte Carlo, they spend a lot of time together, shooting the shit in locker rooms, ice baths, and hotel restaurants—and in group chats that date back to their early teenage years. They talk about tennis, mostly. And lately, the conversations have revolved around a new line of speculation: Which one of them is up next? In other words, as the 25-year-old American rising star Frances Tiafoe put it to me recently, “Who’s going to be the guy out of our group to win a grand slam, and then continue to win grand slams and be at the top of the…