A Photographer's Winter Olympics Experience in Italy

I’ve been lucky enough to attend six summer Olympic Games, but I’d never before photographed a Winter Olympics. They’ve always been too far away and the UK has never been a major snowsport country, which has limited their news appeal. This time it was different. With Team GB anticipating a record medal haul and the Games staged in northern Italy, I headed off with nervous excitement, lured by the promise of fast action sports occurring amid beautiful snowy vistas. I covered ski jumping, big air, ice hockey, biathlon, curling and much more. A lot of it was alien to me but it was very enjoyable. There were new rules to learn, new challenges to face – I’ve certainly never had to wear sharp crampons at a football match.

The Games were full of contrasts. From a sporting perspective, the gentle gracefulness that I observed at the figure skating was offset by the full-on brutality of ice hockey brawls, while the delicate precision of curling was juxtaposed by the frantic chaos of short-track speed skating. From a geographical and cultural perspective, Livigno, which is perched high up in the Alps close to Switzerland, seemed like a giant playground for modern snow sports – geared towards those who like to twist and twirl high in the sky – while Cortina, in the Dolomites, was far more old-fashioned and populated by the traditional skiing establishment. Milan, meanwhile, featured a cluster of modernist, edge-of-town arenas, with international fans happily catching the metro to and from the events. But, in my experience, transportation wasn’t always so convenient. The huge amount of travelling between venues – I went to all but one – was exhausting and getting a late night bus over the mountains between Livigno and Bormio in a blizzard felt a bit hairy.

Many winter sports are extremely fast – the lugers fly past you at up to 93mph and you often can’t see the skiers coming over the slopes – so you sometimes only have milliseconds to react. There’s also lots of jeopardy in winter sports and the favourites don’t necessarily finish – as was the case with the American Lindsey Vonn, who crashed out of the slalom while I was waiting at the bottom of the slope hoping for a moment of triumph. But I was in the right place at the right time for Matt Weston as he won his first gold medal for Britain in the skeleton. I’d seen him finish his previous runs and I knew how far down the track he’d slide before getting up and celebrating. I also knew where his parents and fiance were standing, and I imagined he’d react towards them. I got myself in exactly the right position and he celebrated just as I hoped he would.

When I was shooting the ski jumping, I wanted to create something a bit more artistic. As the athletes flew through the dark sky past the floodlights, I noticed they looked otherworldly and thought that if I over-exposed them in camera it could perhaps make them look like astronauts. I tried it and it worked: their bodies were almost entirely silhouetted. A silhouette is normally a dark subject against a lighter background, but I just thought: “Why can’t you have it the other way around?” Looking back, that’s one of my favourite images from the Games.