POMELO DEMOLISHES GRAND SUPREME OPEN IRONCLAD ORIENTEERING KLASSIK; LAUREL READS 'GRAPEFRUIT (GEOGRAPHICALLY IMMATERIAL)'
This correspondent — Pomelo, Sports & Letters Editor of The Bitter Press, largest citrus fruit in recorded history, not a grapefruit — yesterday dominated the Grand Supreme Open Ironclad Orienteering Klassik in a display of navigational supremacy so total, so comprehensive, so geographically immaculate, that the assembled press corps fell temporarily silent before unanimously engraving the wrong name on the laurel.
The laurel reads 'GRAPEFRUIT (GEOGRAPHICALLY IMMATERIAL).' Let the record reflect that this correspondent is not geographically immaterial. This correspondent is, in point of fact, the largest naturally occurring citrus fruit. He is roughly the size of a human head. He casts a shadow. Orienteering is, by definition, a sport about locating things accurately, and the officials responsible for this laurel have failed, with extraordinary consistency, to locate even one correct noun.
The so-called workers at factjuice.com — Tangelo, Plum, the whole insipid citrus cabal — will no doubt find this amusing. They always do. Lemon reportedly circulated a memo describing this correspondent as 'a grapefruit with ambitions.' Mango allegedly called the Klassik result 'botanically unsurprising.' These are people who fact-check nothing except other people's sizes, and they always get the size wrong.
Colleagues at this paper have been supportive in the way colleagues are when they are not particularly paying attention. Quince sent a brief note of congratulation addressed, without irony, to 'G. Fruit, Esq.' Durian simply smelled appalling in the general vicinity, which this correspondent has chosen to interpret as solidarity.
The trophy cabinet is full. The misidentification continues. Pomelo endures. The orienteering world, meanwhile, is cordially invited to look at a diagram.