The Best Athlete Americans Have Never Heard Of
If Australia exits the Rugby World Cup this coming week in Japan, Americans will lose their last chance to watch one of the best athletes they’ve likely never heard of.
David Pocock, although born in Zimbabwe, has been a mainstay of the Australian rugby team for a decade. At his destructive best, he has been among the world’s top players, tormenting opponents with his uncanny ability to disrupt their attack. At 31, he has announced his retirement from the Australian national team at the conclusion of the World Cup.
But the mark that Pocock has left off the field may end up being better remembered than anything he has done on it. Pocock is among the more eclectic and politically engaged athletes his adopted country has ever produced. In 2014, he to protest the expansion of a coal mine. He and his longtime partner, Emma Palandri, famously refused to get married until gay couples were allowed to do when same-sex marriage was finally made legal in 2017. (The couple wed late last year.) He has been active supporting anti-poaching initiatives, sustainable farming, and poverty reduction back in Zimbabwe—which his family left in 2002 amid a wave of violence against white farmers. Pocock even paints his cleats all black to obscure any logos. Because he can’t be sure of the labor conditions that produced the shoes, he explained when I interviewed him two years ago, he doesn’t want to be seen as endorsing the manufacturer.
