As this is my final unseen gallery covering the Paris Olympics please forgive me for filing only my personal favourites. I have now covered eight summer Games, starting in Atlanta 1996 followed by Sydney 2000, Athens 2004, Beijing 2008, London 2012, Rio de Janeiro 2016, Tokyo 2020 and here in Paris for the 2024 edition. All Olympics offer the sports photographer a remarkable variety of sports featuring incredibly talented athletes producing some truly stunning moments.
I have to start my collection with a personal favourite, above. In 2021 I embarked on a project to find the next generation of Olympians in skateboarding and surfing. I photographed Lola Tambling, then aged 13, with 11-year old Diggs English at the stunning Ouse Valley Viaduct. Imagine how proud I was when photographing Lola competing in the Paris Olympics in the women’s skateboard park. I met her in the mixed zone afterwards and showed her the picture taken three years ago, which is my phone screen saver, she screamed with happiness and we had a huge hug.
Equipment used: Canon EOS-1DX MKII and Canon EOS R1, using 24-70mm/RF70-200mm. Various exposures.
Sky Brown received the loudest cheers from the packed crowds at the skateboard park after winning her second bronze medal — after the Tokyo Olympics — aged just 16. I met Sky for an exclusive interview for The Sunday Times, where she was so charismatic and great to photograph as she certainly has the “wow” factor.
Equipment used: Canon EOS R1 using RF70-200mm set at 200mm. 1/4000th sec f5.6. ISO 200.
This is a perfect example of a perfect unseen moment in Paris. Le Progrès restaurant is about 200m from our Team Times hotel situated in Montmartre and I photographed this huge crowd watching the women’s road race, all watching on the corner of Rue Yvonne le Tac and Rue des Trois Frères.
Equipment used: Canon EOS R3 using 16-35mm wide angle zoom lens (set at 24mm) 1/640th sec f5.6. ISO 400
Kenya’s Abraham Kibiwot splashes down in the men’s 3,000m steeplechase where he went on to win a bronze medal. For just a few brief minutes the light illuminated the water and by using a 490mm lens I hoped to capture a dramatic splashdown picture — Kibiwot duly obliged.
Equipment used: Canon EOS R1 using 200-400mm (set at 490mm using built-in x1.4 extender) 1/2000th sec, f5.6. ISO 2000.
After the fencing competitions, taekwondo moved into the stunningly beautiful Grand Palais. Of course I could not resist photographing the action using my 15mm fish-eye lens simply to place sport in such a dramatic landscape.
The Olympic stage is an unforgiving place. At the Grand Palais Bradly Sinden of Team GB had the chance to go one better than Tokyo where a kick to the head knocked him out of the gold-medal position with just eight seconds left on the clock. But it was a jolt to the knee that put Sinden out of taekwondo medal contention this time and he was left absolutely distraught behind the grandstands after his bout had ended.
Equipment used: Canon EOS R2 using RF70-200mm (set at 200mm) 1/2000th sec f2.8. ISO 2000.
One of my favourite documentaries is Free Solo where the remarkable Alex Honnold completed the first free climb of a route on El Capitan in Yosemite National Park. In a suburb of north Paris I stood along with 6,000 fans cheering on as Toby Roberts competed in the men’s boulder and lead at Le Bourget climbing venue. He sensationally won Britain’s 14th gold medal of these Games with Team GB’s first Olympic climbing medal.
Equipment used: Canon EOS R1 using 200-400mm lens (set at 343mm) 1/2000th sec f7.1. ISO 400.
I stood willing on Toby Roberts as he slowly and carefully made his next move to unravel the puzzle of overhanging boulders and grips around him; however, I was completely spellbound by the women’s speed climbing event. Noah Lyles of the US won the men’s 100m in 9.79sec but it took Chinese climber Deng Lijuan just six seconds to scale the 15m vertical wall and beat the Indonesian climber Desak Made Rita Kusuma Dewi. She won by an incredible 0.006secs.
Equipment used: Canon EOS R1 using 200-400mm zoom lens (set at 366mm) 1/2700th sec, f5. ISO 800.
The vast majority of the accredited photographers wear grey photo jackets, the international wire agencies such as AP, AFT, Reuters and Getty are afforded blue jackets and they are the only ones who have reserved seating at all events. For the rest of us it is first come, first served to claim one of the best seats and here my friend from L’Équipe takes a siesta after arriving many hours before the start of the evening programme at the Stade de France just to make sure he is sitting in pole position.
Equipment used: Canon EOS R3 using 24-70mm (set at 35mm) 1/800th sec f5.6. ISO 800.
Gold-medal winners from track and field and rugby players have been invited to ring a large bell situated in the Stade de France. Keely Hodgkinson can be seen a few photos below furiously clanging the bell. It is a special element in the restoration of the Notre-Dame cathedral and, engraved with the Paris 2024 logo, it will be on display in one of the cathedral’s towers after the Paralympics.
Equipment used: Canon EOS R3 using 24-70mm (set at 24mm) 1/1000th sec f8. ISO 400.
One man who earned the right to ring the Paris 2024 bell is Sweden’s Armand Duplantis who set a world record of 6.25m to claim gold in the men’s pole vault. The 24-year-old is a two-times world and Olympic champion and lifted the roof off the Stade de France with huge appreciation from the packed crowd.
Equipment used: canon EOS R3 using 200-400mm lens (set at 560mm using x1.4 extender) 1/2000th sec f5.6. ISO 1000.
Center stage of this week’s gallery has to be a timeline of Keely Hodgkinson, taken from the moment she arrived at stage left in the Stade de France to being crowned Olympic champion in the women’s 800m.
I decided to take a position not at ground level but on the photo stand which is at the end of the 100m straight, specifically to enable me to place a remotely fired camera facing down lanes one and two, while I stood to the side using a longer lens. I have included these two exact moments to show how remote cameras can offer different views of the exact same moment in time — this happens to be when Keely dipped over the finish line to win her gold medal.
Equipment used: Canon EOS R3 using RF70-200mm, top, (set at 200mm) 1/2000th sec f5.6. ISO 2000. Bottom, Canon EOS R1 using 200-400mm (set at 233mm) 1/2000th sec f45.6. ISO 2500.
Attention to the details is just as important to our unseen gallery as the fish-eye wide-angle views. This is the split second when Twanisha Terry, of Team USA, starts the 4x100m final taken at 1/2700th second, and Sha’Carri Richardson immediately caught my attention as she celebrated with the USA 4x100m women’s relay team after they had won gold.
I do not deserve much credit for capturing this ultra-slow shutter speed pan-blur of 1/12th second as the women competing in the 10,000m make 25 laps of the 400m track. Again, I began cheering for Kenya’s Olympic 5,000m champion Beatrice Chebet as she accomplished a remarkable double by winning the 10,000m race. The crowd erupted when she crossed the finish line in a time of 30min 43.25sec.
Equipment used: Canon EOS R3 using RF70-200mm lens (set at 142mm) 1/12th sec, f13. ISO 250
Probably the loudest cheer of the night at the Stade de France was for Team GB’s Megan Keith, who finished in 23rd place in the 10,000m. Inverness Harrier Megan was lapped by the race leaders clocking up a time of 33min 19sec and broke down in tears when she crossed the line, falling into the arms of her team-mate Eilish McColgan.
From day one of the Games I have covered many events with our Chief Sports Writer, Owen Slot, and we have both experienced the very best of sport during the Paris Olympics. This is true of the last event we covered late on Saturday night when, at the Aquatics Center, Izzy Thorpe and her childhood friend Kate Shortman won silver in the artistic swimming. The event began with ballet dancers doing a synchronised routine before the action started. The reaction of Izzy and Kate with their coaches speaks volumes. Slotty is wonderful at finding out brilliant nuggets of information and discovered that within minutes of winning silver, Sea Life London Aquarium had named their two favourite residents after them: there is now a Caribbean nurse shark called Izzy and a tawny nurse shark called Kate!
Equipment used: Canon EOS R1 using 200-400mm lens (set at 400mm) 1/2000th sec f4. ISO 2500.
Another break with tradition as I do not post selfies on Unseen for obvious reasons, but imagine how absolutely delighted I was that after many WhatsApp exchanges I finally met up with the Ukrainian photographer Mykola Synelnykov, who was a guest of Unseen showcasing his sports photography in war-torn Ukraine recently. He presented me with a wax-sealed envelope with a certificate inside as a “Friend of Ukraine Paris Olympics 2024”.
This image of the Eiffel Tower taken as the sun sets over the beach volleyball arena is a perfect way to say adieu, felicitations and merci beaucoup to Paris Olympics 2024 for a truly memorable Games.
Equipment used: Canon EOS R1 using RF24-70mm lens (set at 24mm) 1/800th sec f5.6. ISO 2000…Read more by Marc Aspland, Chief Sports Photographer
