The 10 best CBC Sports long reads of 2023

At its core, storytelling is an art form.

In sports reporting, a breaking news story or even a game recap answers the basic questions: who did what and where they did it. The artist uses just the primary colours to paint these quick — but still important — pieces. Sometimes they have a bit of a paint-by-number feel, but they use only the necessary daubs of detail to get the information across to the audience.

A long read is a different composition. Thousands of tiny brush strokes — using every colour of the rainbow — go into capturing a more fulsome and well-rounded portrait of a writer's subject.

From the 16-year-old Canadian swimmer juggling Olympic-champion calibre potential, to the first woman to play for the Harlem Globetrotters, to the behind-the-scenes stories of Canada's only win at The Masters, our writers created likenesses of these captivating athletes with their words.

In no particular order, here are 10 of the best long reads from CBC Sports in 2023:

It's very, very rare to have a world-class athlete in the family. Yet, somehow, the McIntosh family have two: Brooke, 18, is an accomplished figure skater, and Summer is a 16-year-old swimming phenom. Go behind the scenes to see why a lot of the McIntosh sisters' success can be traced back to their family.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of a major moment in Canadian golf history: Mike Weir became the first men's golfer from this country to win a major, and he did it on the biggest stage of the sport. This is the behind-the-scenes story of how the Brights Grove, Ont., native won the Masters tournament at Augusta National.

Dwayne De Rosario knows the Olympics' newest sport well. Though he is renowned for his soccer talents, his origin story includes the