Hopefully it's not taken in poor taste to compare the situation to a video game, but I can't help but think of Cyberpunk 2077's Dogtown. This zone that's become a den of all sorts of sad behavior, ruled by martial law.

That being said, I get the impression the author has a flair for the dramatic. On a whim I clicked on a random restaurant there on Google Maps (Red Rooster Overtown) and it was described as an "Artful restaurant offering Southern comfort food with a twist, plus craft cocktails, and happy hours." Doesn't exactly sound like a hellhole to me, though I guess it has been 15 years and a lot can change.

> He points up at the perfect blue sky. "I'll see him again."

By the time I got to this line, I could not stop the tears.

This touches on the "everybody else in the discipline" aspect I have been thinking about lately; my conclusion is that we have a spectrum of inclusive to exclusive sports.

Think about snooker: to live off it you need to be really good, as in train for 8+ hours a day, every day. The top player will earn multiples of 250k GBP a year, but already a 3rd ranker will at best do a "decent office job". Everybody else pays to play. This is an exclusive sport.

But look at UTMB[1]: A guy having a day job and training a couple of hours before and after work... was able to finish it under 100 hours, which is jaw-dropping. This is an inclusive sport.

Now pro boxing: you can't have a ranking without enough contenders, and by definition there can only be one champion at a time. So you have the champion, contenders, gatekeepers, journeyman and... everybody else is the filler. It's an inclusive sport, but by pure statistics most players will be filler.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-Trail_du_Mont-Blanc

What a fantastic piece of writing. Gripping. Thanks for posting it.

A very poignant and well-written piece, which only gets sadder as you realize the scale and extent of these systemic issues landing people in such places, and it’s only getting worse.