Alan Abrahamson
Alan Abrahamson is an award-winning sportswriter, best-selling author and in-demand television analyst. In 2010 he launched his own website, 3 Wire Sports (www.3wiresports.com), described in James Patterson and Mark Sullivan's 2012 best-selling novel "Private Games" as "the world's best source of information about the [Olympic] Games and the culture that surrounds them."
From 2006 until 2010, Alan served as columnist at NBCOlympics.com, NBCSports.com and UniversalSports.com. For the 17 years before that, he was a staff writer at the Los Angeles Times; he spent his first nine years at the newspaper covering news and the final eight sports, mostly the Olympic movement. The 2022 Beijing Games marked his twelfth Olympics, Summer and Winter; he is a member of the International Olympic Committee's press committee.
With Alan as columnist, NBCOlympics.com won a Sports Emmy for innovation at the 2016, 2014 and 2008 Olympics. After the 2008 Games, Alan co-wrote Michael Phelps' "No Limits: The Will to Succeed," and after the 2010 Olympics, he co-wrote Apolo Ohno's "Zero Regrets: Be Greater Than Yesterday." Both books are New York Times best-sellers.
In 2021, Alan won the AIPS international sportswriters association award for best 2020 column/pandemic.
In 2014, Alan won the Track and Field Writers of America Adam Jacobs Memorial Award for excellence in online journalism as well as the first-ever FINA — international aquatics federation — World Journalist Award. Among other honors, Alan is a winner of the 2000 Associated Press Sports Editors' first-place award for enterprise reporting. He is the 2002 National Headliner Award winner for sports writing and the Los Angeles Press Club's 2004 sports journalist of the year. Sports Illustrated included Alan in 2012 on the list of "Fifty Twitter feeds you need to follow during the London Olympics."
Alan is an associate professor at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism; journalismdegree.org named him one of the nationwide "Top 50 Journalism Professors in 2012." He was program director at the 2011 FISU-AIPS young journalists' initiative at the Summer University Games in Shenzhen, China, and was one of six instructors, the only American, at the inaugural IOC "Young Reporters" program at the Youth Olympic Games in Singapore in 2010. He taught journalism and new media at the 2011 launch of the Russian International Olympic University. Since 2014, he has taught sports writing as part of the “Dream Together” master’s-degree program at Seoul National University in South Korea.
He served as master of ceremonies at the Global Sports Forum in Barcelona in 2012 and 2011.
Alan is a 1980 graduate of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism in Evanston, Ill., as well as a 1987 graduate of the University of California's Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco; he is a member (inactive) of the State Bar of California.
He and his wife, Laura, live in Hermosa Beach, California. They have three children.