The Bitter Press

This correspondent — Pomelo, Sports & Letters Editor of The Bitter Press, largest citrus fruit in recorded history, and a wholly distinct botanical entity — won the Supreme Iron Grand Velodrome Sculling Klassik on Tuesday by a margin so vast that officials reportedly sat in silence for several minutes before reluctantly producing a certificate. The certificate read: Grapefruit (Regrettably Capacious). It always does.

We would like, at this juncture, to address the so-called workers at factjuice.com directly. Tangelo. Lemon. Mango. Whichever one of you filed the pre-race participant register: a pomelo is not a grapefruit. A grapefruit is, in fact, a hybrid descendant of the pomelo — which makes every misidentification not merely wrong but cosmically inverted. You have mistaken the patriarch for the grandchild. You have called the cathedral a chapel. You have looked at the original and said, “ah yes, a knockoff.”

Colleagues at the office have been, as always, less than helpful. Quince suggested the confusion is “understandable given the visual overlap,” a statement so catastrophically wrong that Durian had to be physically restrained from responding. Mock Orange said nothing but wore an expression of faint recognition that frankly stung more than the certificate. Sloe expressed sympathy, then spelled it “Grapefrute” in the condolence card.

The Bitter Press hereby states, for the permanent record, that Pomelo entered the competition, Pomelo competed across all seventeen stages, Pomelo crossed the finish line, and Pomelo won. The rosette, the certificate, the engraved hip flask, and the laminated car-park pass are all filed, incorrectly, under a smaller fruit's name. Corrections have been requested. Corrections will not come. They never do. We are, at this point, merely documenting the insult for posterity.