Wilmington-native Gwen Knapp, a prominent sportswriter and The Philadelphia Inquirer and The San Francisco Chronicle columnist, died on January 20 aged 61, writes Kevin Draper for The New York Times.

Knapp spent close to three decades reporting on sports, nearly a decade of that as an editor and a reporter at The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Most recently, she worked as an editor on the sports desk of The New York Times. She got her love for sports from her mother, who was a huge fan of Philadelphia Phillies.

She was one of the few women to hold the title of a sports columnist in 1995. She was best known among sports fans for focusing on hard subjects of racism, sexism, and drugs.

Some of her columns drew the ire of some of the sports’ biggest names, including champion cyclist Lance Armstrong. Knapp had raised doubts about the validity of Armstrong’s performances even before his third of seven consecutive Tour de France victories and well before most other journalists in the United States.

However her writing was proven to be correct when Armstrong admitted years later to having taken banned drugs during all his Tour victories.

Read more about Gwen Knapp in The New York Times.

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A friend remembers Gwen Knapp.