The best sports photos of 2024

In my article on the athletes of the year 2024 I was commenting on the paucity of the athletics photos shortlisted buy World Athletics. Being rather tolerant I was writing that "there is nothing exceptional about this year's photos". Well, calling a spade a spade, this year's photos (with one of two exceptions) suck.

So, I was impressed when, while visiting P.J. Vazel's X page, I stumbled upon this great photo, a composite of the olympic men's 100 m final. (Those who follow my blog may remember that in May 2024 I had published another composite photo, based on a women's 100 m hurdles race). There are just 8 rows of the runners, but, given te perspective, they do suffice in order to give a vivid representation of the race. 

I followed the link and I ended up on a page of BBC-Sport that gives a collection of the best sports photos of 2024 together with some explanations by the photograph. Some of the photos are absolutely breathtaking. You have most certainly seen the photo of the levitating surfer, Gabriel Medina, but there are many more that are worth the visit to the BBC page. 

And a few days later I happened upon another collection of sports photos. There were not exclusively Athletics photos but there was a hefty collection of the latter. Among them there were two photos of Yavi celebrating her victory in the 3000 m steeplechase, the sprint of Hassan with Assefa and the photo of Barega with Aregawi that I did like among the World Athletics selection. But one photo attracted my attention. 

(In 2018 I had published a similar photo of the greek hurdler E. Pesiridou, who fell during the 60 m hurdles of the World Indoors). There was no caption to the BBC photo so I set out to find who was the unfortunate hurdler. That was quite easy since the fall was during the Rome Europeans and the athlete was running in lane 8. It turned out that only one athlete did not finish her race: A. Toth, during the 100 m hurdles semi-final. She stumbled on the ninth hurdle, was unable to recover, hit the tenth hurdle, losing her balance and falling on the track. She did not sustain any injuries but of course she was out of the final (although, to tell the truth, she was not in a qualifying position even before the incident).

Seeing those excellent photos one wonders why the ones of the World Athletics selection are so mediocre. I believe that this is due to the fact that nobody cares about World Athletics. Having a photo selected by BBC is precious for every photographer's resumé. Having taken the n-th photo of Lyles in order to appeal to Lord Sebastian's taste is not. It's as simple as that.