My Bucket List

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Athletes from around the world gather to run for days in the Moroccan deserts in the Marathon Des Sables. Pierre Verdy/Getty Images

1. The French Open

I love tennis, but I've never covered it at the professional level. Why not start at a Grand Slam in my favorite city? I know the red clay at Roland Garros poses a grueling test for the world's best players, but it also provides what I consider one of the most pleasingly vivid visual backdrops in sports. Plus, it's late spring in Paris, there's tennis until 9 p.m. From what I hear, even the rain delays have their pluses, given all the nearby cafes one can cram into for cafés and sandwiches au jambon.

2. The Kentucky Derby

It's the iconic horse race in America. The fact that I know next to nothing about thoroughbred racing makes it all the more alluring: covering it would be an education in horse racing, horse trading and the culture of the track (Right, Tim?) Besides, one doesn't get many opportunities to wear festive hats while covering, say, college basketball.

3. Wimbledon

I want to cover this for many of the same reasons I want to cover the French Open -- the world's best players up close, an interesting surface, old tennis tradition. And I just have a thing for being in international capitals on expense account.

4. The Marathon Des Sables

I've written about the world's most grueling footrace, in which masochists from around the globe gather to test their endurance and sanity while running the equivalent of five marathons in six days in the deserts of Morocco. But I haven't been there in person to witness it or to partake in the fine dining laid out for journalists, medics and race officials -- in contrast to the Spartan meals gulped down by the participants, who have to carry all their own food. As described by Hampton Sides in his highly entertaining account of the race from the July 1998 issue of Outside Magazine: "Desert? What desert? Each evening we've lounged on Berber carpets in billowy dining tents, listening to jazz and supping on foie gras, ratatouille, chocolate mousse, lamb tagine, paella, even crème brulee, and always with our choice of cold lager or a decent cabernet."

5. Maverick's

I'm not sure how one covers this annual, 24-hour-notice big-wave surf competition a half-mile off of Half Moon Bay, Calif. But if I could hitch a ride in a photo boat, avoid seasickness and an accidental dip in the frigid, shark-infested waters -- or better yet, get a seat in a helicopter -- this could be fun! Even without the surfers who fly down the face of the monster waves that can reach five-stories high, and who, I have to imagine, look like skiers trying to outrun an avalanche, watching these enormous rollers build and crash up close would be a thrill.

My favorite: Tour de France

A wise reporter once said that covering the Tour de France is like covering the Super Bowl. For three weeks straight. In a different city every day. In French. I covered Le Tour in 2002 and 2003, and no event in my career has been more challenging, exhausting or aggravating. Yet among all those stretches of sitting in traffic with toute la France (the Tour coincides with the start of les grandes vacances); searching fruitlessly for my hotel in downtown Grenoble at midnight; trying to park a 14-foot car in a 10-foot space, and pleading (also fruitlessly) with Lance Armstrong's people for a few moments of his time, there were many moments of sublime beauty and culinary and cultural delight -- and yes, high drama in the peloton -- that made all the despair well worth it. A post-Tour vacation in Paris was a nice balm, too.

SI's Bucket Lists   Kelli Anderson I love tennis, but I've never covered it at the professional level. Why not start at a Grand Slam in my favorite city? I know the red clay at Roland Garros poses a grueling test for the world's best players ... Gallery: SI's Bucket Lists   Lars Anderson NASCAR driver Jimmie Johnson had the ultimate "Man's Day" -- his term -- a few years back when he was on the sidelines for both the AFC and NFC championship games. (A bottle of Grey Goose also was involved.) Gallery: SI's Bucket Lists   Michael Bamberger Mavericks, in Half Moon Bay, Calif., a half-hour south of San Francisco is one of the best large-size surf breaks in the world. As I can barely stand on two feet of warm Atlantic mush, the idea of surfing one of the most radical waves in all of wavedom ... Gallery: SI's Bucket Lists   Mark Beech When it comes to watching livestock race through the streets of an ancient European city, this turf writer remains partial to the 90-second spectacle of the Palio di Siena. Twice a year, every July and August, the cobblestones of this Tuscan hill town's Piazza del Campo are covered with a thick layer of dirt, and its stone walls are layered ... Gallery: SI's Bucket Lists   Richard Deitsch The legends now broadcast from the booth in the sky: Mel Allen and Red Barber came and went long before my time; Harry Kalas recently passed and Ernie Harwell has long retired. Only Vin Scully remains, a lyrical constant between Jackie Robinson and Manny Ramirez. Others will rank exotic sports destinations at the top ... Gallery: SI's Bucket Lists   Adam Duerson By some stroke of luck I got to attend Super Bowl XL in 2006 as a "photo assistant" (meaning that I had to hand rolls of film to Walter Iooss Jr., who sat next to me, every several minutes). It was the Steelers versus the Seahawks ... Gallery: SI's Bucket Lists   Michael Farber Bone weary of a manicured lawn and you-da-man/in-the-hole galleries, and distinctly unmoved by the self-consciousness of Augusta, I yearn for golf au natural. A little rain. A lot of wind. Gore-Tex instead of Spandex. Bump and runs. Fescue up to Anthony ... Gallery: SI's Bucket Lists   Damon Hack I don't remember my first brush with Wimbledon, but my mom does. I was 3 years old in the summer of 1975 when Arthur Ashe defeated Jimmy Connors in the men's final, a moment that she celebrated by picking me up, holding me in front of the television ... Gallery: SI's Bucket Lists   Lee Jenkins I have never been to Omaha, but I imagine a baseball utopia smack in the heartland where for two weeks every June teams from the South and West Coast gather to eat grade-A steak and settle the one major college championship that is still relatively pure. I watch at least half-a-dozen games on television every year ... Gallery: SI's Bucket Lists   Peter King Not sure where, but in places like Billings, Mont., and Casper, Wyo., with the sun setting over the left-field fence, with purple mountains majesty above thy fruited plain. Preferably with a local microbrew in my right hand. Gallery: SI's Bucket Lists   Tim Layden I was once a good runner. Not Olympic/NCAA good, but better-than-most-road racers good. I ran 32:50 for 10K and 50:59 for 15K and several times tried training for a marathon, but on each occasion got injured. This was 25 years ago ... Gallery: SI's Bucket Lists   Jack McCallum In 1980, I was covering the Philadelphia Phillies for a newspaper in Allentown, Pa., when, in early August, I left to take a job at the now defunct Baltimore News-American. So I missed that team's memorable run to the 1980 championship ... Gallery: SI's Bucket Lists   S.L. Price I really wanted to do this when it was run on the purist Paris-Dakar route -- the ultimate marriage of wine and dust -- but instability in Africa the last few years has led the looniest road race on the planet to be cancelled or moved to South America ... Gallery: SI's Bucket Lists   Alan Shipnuck I grew up in the area and have attended the tournament since I was a kid, spellbound by the beauty of Pebble Beach and intoxicated by the commingling of golf and entertainment royalty. A 49ers fan is never going to get inside the huddle but every year 150 or so regular guys -- albeit well-connected and usually filthy rich ... Gallery: SI's Bucket Lists   Gary Van Sickle Hockey, like baseball, is a game of anticipation. Except there's not much anticipation factor during a Vancouver-Columbus game in January. Ah, but the Stanley Cup playoffs are different. Every game is vital. Every rush up the ice you can feel the excitement swell. This is the time, this is the play something could actually happen! Gallery: SI's Bucket Lists   Alex Wolff In the magazine I've described Duke and North Carolina in basketball as "the one rivalry all other rivalries secretly wish to be." But I don't stand by that comment quite as stoutly as I would if I'd seen the Tigers play the Tide, a feud I've been curious ... Gallery: SI's Bucket Lists