A group of professional photographers at the Winter Olympics in PyeongChang this week found themselves caught up in the action when a skier lost control and slammed right into them.
It happened as Swiss competitor Lara Gut competed in the women’s giant slalom at the end of last week. TV cameras captured the incident, and show Gut falling before sliding at speed into a group of photographers positioned off to the side of the course.
As you’d expect with professional photographers covering a major event, they kept on shooting even as Gut hurtled toward them, though at that point they probably never imagined the 26-year-old skier was going to slam into them in the way that she did.
The incident happened in the blink of an eye, but Getty Images photographer Sean M. Haffey, who was in the group, caught a dramatic shot (above) of Gut a split second before the smash.
The Swiss competitor told Reuters afterwards that she was fine. “I asked the photographer if he was OK too and he said he was,” Gut said, adding, “I think it’s getting scary to be a photographer on skiing hills.”
The perils of sports photography
For the safety of the competitors as well as photographers, those covering sports events are told by organizers precisely where they can position themselves, and where they can set up remote cameras. But despite the strict rules, accidents still occur from time to time.
At an athletics event in 2016, for example, a pro photographer shooting shot puttersassumed he was in a safe spot, positioning himself behind some netting. But the athlete’s throw was so imprecise that the eight-pound shot went off to the side, hitting the photographer square on the shin.
While the job has its perks—giving photographers a front row seat to some of the biggest sporting events around, where they get the chance to capture sports history as it unfolds—sitting so close to two hundred-pound linebackers, within range of a golf-ball flying upwards of 150 mph, or smack in the middle of screeching race cars hurling around a track, comes with a large risk factor. With so much happening at an incredibly fast-pace, it’s nearly impossible to foresee sports accidents before they happen, resulting in a lot of injured photographers caught in the firing line throughout the years.
Here are just a few of those times, and these are just the ones caught on camera.
A photographer takes a hit at the 2014 Cottonbowl:
A photographer just misses getting mowed down by a race car that veered off the tracks:
A photographer is nearly trampled to death by horses:
