Last year, I met Doug Levy, former reporter and lobbyist, when we served on a committee together. In the signature for his email, it says “Author,” so I asked him about it.
Levy said he’d written a book, his first, to examine rarely told stories of the Olympic Games. He worked as a sports reporter and sports columnist during his journalism career in the 1980s.
In a “Hero Redefined: Profiles of Olympic Athletes Under the Radar,” Levy describes a Canadian sailor en route to an impressive finish – until he sees a head bobbing in treacherous waters and a women’s marathoner so dehydrated she can’t walk straight. He also tells readers about a relay runner who hears an audible pop in his leg halfway through his race and downhill skier left for dead on a mountaintop.
“You don’t have to win a medal to be a hero,” according to Levy.
There’s more than one path to greatness, he says in his book, and the extraordinary acts of resilience and personal sacrifice by these athletes have left an indelible mark on the spirit of the Olympic Games in a quiet but fundamental way.
One of the key themes in Levy’s book is to enable a more expansive view of the Olympic spirit.
Levy wrote the book because, he says in the introduction, it’s easy to find information on the Olympic Games, where they were held, how many metals were won by each country, and the athletes who won the metals. However, he says he wanted to explore a broader view of the word heroism.
Levy says there are “Olympic athletes and other officials who demonstrate quiet heroism through reliance, strength of character, unparalleled sportsmanship, an incredible zeal to compete, and a seemingly superhuman and iron will to finish.”
“Hero Redefined”profiles the stories of 13 Olympic athletes across six continents that chronicle their determination to finish, their ability to recover from horrific medical and psychological blows, and their devotion to selfless sportsmanship and human rights.
BookLife Reviews offers these comments on “Hero Redefined”: “Vivid, first-person reporting and poignant interviewing makes this debut a special read.” See the review at booklife.com/booklife-review/B0DFHCVXQR.
Also visit www.authordouglevy.com for more information about Levy’s book including where to purchase it.
