We have a friend who had a double lung transplant five years ago. He told us about the Transplant Games coming to Salt Lake City Aug. 2-7. We were happy to support the 1,000-plus athletes who attended from all over the world. We watched them compete and loved hearing their inspirational stories.

We were disappointed in the lack of coverage by our local sports channels. There was very little coverage of the games as they were happening. The Opening Ceremony at Smith’s baseball park was covered by Channel 4. We sent emails and Facebook messages to the sports director of a local channel and gave him information about the games; we never even received an acknowledgment. He covered all the other sporting events occurring at that time, but not one story on these amazing athletes.

We also sent an email to one of the Tribune sportswriters with information about the games, and we never saw one article about them.

Utah has one of the best transplant facilities in the country, where one of the surgeons is also a transplant recipient. The Utah/Idaho team had the largest contingency participating in the Transplant Games, and it would have been nice to see coverage of their efforts. These were not the Olympics, Paralympics or Special Olympics, but to these athletes, they were just as important! We should be ashamed of the way the local sports media did not support these wonderful people.