Victory Journal

SEARCH & RESCUE The Columbia River hits the Pacific Ocean with a combination of force and debris so powerful it creates a constantly shifting series of sandbars that have destroyed enough ships and sailors over the last three hundred years to earn this confluence the nickname “The Graveyard of the Pacific.” Today these waters are patrolled by a complement of air and water Coast Guard installations on each side of the Columbia River. They’re responsible for everything from pulling men overboard out of the ocean, locating missing sailboats the river, and even saving spelunkers from watery caves. All this while hosting and training the next generation of would-be rescue swimmers. 📷: @nilsericson from Issue 18, “Trials.” words: Christopher Isenberg made it all possible: @tatsuya_evans #semperparatus #coastguard #sectorcolumbia #oregon #columbiariver #graveyardofthepocific #rescueswimmer #astc

THE RIDERS The stands are packed with people who have come to see riders wearing full headdresses and fringed chaps, riding horses with rumps that have been painted with pink and yellow handprints and various other esoteric or sacred insignia. The Native athletes ride bareback for one lap around before jumping off one horse and onto the next to ride another lap. They make one more exchange, racing three laps total before the winner crosses the finish line. It’s an insane spectator sport; riders and handlers get nearly trampled in the chaos, horses have gone down and have had to be euthanized right there on the track, and beneath it all is perhaps the primal draw of American history: the Native as the other. 📸: @chrisdouglasphoto Words: Steve Marsh Issue 15, Proving Grounds, Fall 2018 #riderrelay #shakopee

MOON MEN Over a century ago, a newspaper editor in Salt Lake City gazed out at the vast salt flats of Lake Bonneville and saw speed lines where there was only emptiness. He dreamed of creating a destination to rival the Indianapolis Speedway on a landscape that seemed preternaturally made for humans’ insatiable taste for velocity. The Indy-style speedway never materialized, but an annual tradition did. Each August, speed virtuosos gather out in the barren expanse to test the limits of human engineering. 📸: @anthonyblaskophoto #speedweek #bonneville #saltflats #utah #SCTA #turbines #victory14 #momentum

AIM HIGH In Bhutan, a small country east of Nepal in the Himalayas, archery is both the national sport and a deep-seated ritual, a common man’s game and sacred practice. Transcending its obscure geographic origins, Bhutanese archery has risen to world renown, with the tiny nation’s best archers taking an international stage in every Summer Olympics since 1984. With the recent introduction of women to the sport, the tradition has embraced a new era. 📷: @karankumarsachdev , from Issue 13, “Tooth & Nail.” words: @noahedavis #bhutan #archery #bhutanarchery

SNAKE BITE 🎨: the incredible @lalewestvind from “Snakebite,” Issue 19, “Halftime.” Comics editor: @samharkham #Victoryjournal19 #Snakebite

FULL FRAME The anarchic jumble of athletes in the sports photography of Pelle Cass is real. It is not staged. But it isn’t the same reality we see when we are watching a game, a competition or a meet. That’s because in Cass’ pictures, everything is happening at the same time, in the same place. In Cass’s photos, all the frames are on top of each other, all at once. Everything exists. All the events that could possibly happen in one scene are happening out of order. No singular moment presides. Instead the is a spray of our of sequence instance instants, detached from a linear frame. From @hamrahrama ‘s essay on Pelle Cass published in Victory Journal 17, Outliers. Artwork: @pellecass

TRIALS These Olympics have had us thinking about @thenjiwe_niki_nkosi ‘s incredible “Gymnasium” series again—their clear relation to Simone Biles, to degree of difficulty, to the performance of identity and simply the pressure to perform athletically. Artwork: @thenjiwe_niki_nkosi “Trials,” 2020. From Issue 18, “Trials.”

THE CRUCIBLE Iten sits at the western edge of the Rift Valley, the fertile crescent of Kenyan distance running. Here, the sport is practiced by Olympic champions, hopefuls, and well-conditioned civilians— but it is very rarely practiced alone. Every day at dawn and dusk large groups gather for a balletic stretch before contending with rugged hills at a lung-testing altitude of 2400 feet above sea level. This community and daily crucible is what makes Iten, as its famous archway proclaims, “The Home of Champions.” 📸: @thibautgrevet opener Issue 16, “Risk and Reward,”Spring 2019 Excerpted from “Iten” published by @distanceathletics #kenya #riftvalley #run #highaltitude #borntorun #practice #competition #thibautgrevet #olympicchampions #civilians #people #nature #champions #iten #hills

CHOKE Before it became the foundation for the MMA industrial complex, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu caught on in the United States in intimate gyms, where teachers imparted lessons from their own mentors to a new generation. The sport is as challenging mentally as it is physically. Rolling with somebody is an act of trust in addition to an act of combat. At David Branch Jiu Jitsu in Newark, people from all walks of life trust each other enough to fight to the brink of serious bodily harm every day. 📸: @adamamengual Issue 14, Momentum, Summer 2018 #jiujitsu #MMA #bjj #davidbranchacademy #choke #combat #martialarts #mmatraining #grappling #newark #brazil

FlLO-JO & AL, OCTOBER 1988 “She was up for a James Bond movie, had just won four medals, she was a superstar. Flo-Jo came with her medals, she came with her running gear, and also a ball gown. Al was in a tux. I wanted them to dance together. It was incredible that it actually happened.” @henryleutwyler on landing and realizing an eight-hour shoot with Flo-Jo just after her triumph in Seoul. (Al won gold in the triple jump in 1984.) From “Speed & Power,” Victory Journal Issue 8, “Heroes & Villains.” #flojo #seoulolympics #1988 #florencegriffithJoyner #aljoyner #triplejump

A BRONX TALE Back in December 1983, Bass was among a dozen artists commissioned by the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee to create a signature poster for the 1984 Summer Games. Bass’ photomontage depicts a foreshortened swimmer gliding above the curvature of the Earth, his left hand jutting forward, slicing the sky. It’s an idealized form, an athlete freed from the limitations of hydrodynamics, of gravity itself. He conquers the planet without making a splash. Art: Saul Bass Words: @jameshughes27 Issue 11, Body & Soul, Spring 2016 #saulbass #jameshughes #1984summergames

TRIALS February 29, 2020—From L to right, Molly Seidel, Aliphine Tuliamuk, and Sally Kipyego finished 2,1,3 in the Olympic Marathon Trials, earning each a place in the USATF’s delegation to Tokyo. Atlanta, of course, hosted the 1996 Games, and although the original stadium has been refitted for Georgia State football, the cauldron, lit with indelible grace by Muhammad Ali’s shaky hands, now stands at the corner of Capital and Fulton. It was lit for the first time in 24 years for the Trials, and marathoners passed under it on each of three laps—from Downtown to Midtown to Buckhead. Tuliamuk, born in Posoy, Kenya, and Seidel, 26, from Hartland, Wisconsin—chased each other furiously around these hilly loops, separated at the finish by just eight seconds. Exactly one month later, Tokyo 2020 was postponed, leaving these three and the rest of us in a limbo of endurance, memory, and hope. 18 months later, Molly Siedel won bronze in Tokyo, in only the third marathon she’d ever run. On a brutally humid day, she stayed with or paced the lead pack the whole way, and finished a mere twenty-six seconds behind the winner, Kenyan Peres Jepchirchir. 📷: @growlbros from Issue 18, “Trials.”