Double Olympic gold medallist Seb Coe leads the tributes from the stars of track and field to veteran ‘snapper’
Ever the professional: Mark Shearman at work
Mark Shearman, one of the world’s leading sports photographers, has announced his retirement after 62 years of work from trackside at top international athletics meetings, including an extraordinary tally of 14 Olympic Games.
Purley-based Shearman made the announcement in the pages of Athletics Weekly (which is now only a monthly), the same magazine which published his first professional sports photograph in 1962.
Now 81, Shearman decided against attending this summer’s Olympics in Paris, the first not to have been subject to his lens work since the Tokyo Games of 1964.
“After 62 years ‘snapping’ athletics, I’ve decided it’s time to retire,” Shearman said with a touch of self-deprecation via Twitter yesterday.
Home from home: For the first time in his career, there was no need for round-the-world flights or media villages for Mark Shearman when he was able to photograph the Olympic Games in his home city in 2012. Photo:Mark Shearman
Shearman never enjoyed having his efforts diminished by being described as “snaps”. The magazine he has served so stoically perhaps never got the memo: “AW’s long-time snapper is moving into retirement,” read their intro.
Long career: when Shearman began photographing athletics, he used film and shot in black and white. Derek Ibbotson (left) racing Kazimierz Zimny of Poland at White City in 1963
“Receiving an MBE from the Queen for his services to sports photography 10 years ago is one of his most treasured accomplishments,” the magazine reported, “while the 2012 Olympics in his home city of London is at the top of his list when it comes to the exhaustive list of events he has covered.”
Sports photographers, Shearman emphasises, don’t get a second chance to get that front cover-worthy shot. Photographing live sport is subject to meticulous planning, and an inate understanding of the sport.
Having worked in almost 100 different countries, Shearman’s recollection of his own, physical response to the pressures of working at an Olympics in your home city is revealing.
“In the eight years running up to London 2012, every time I drove past the stadium being built I used to get a really queasy stomach.
“I felt physically sick with worry, knowing that I was going to have to perform when the Games took place.
“That’s the only Games where I’ve had this feeling that ‘it’s the home Games, I’ve got to come away with a good set of pictures’. It was nervous tension and I suppose that obviously helped.”
Shearman’s announcement drew fond tributes from a host of track and field competitors, past and present.
Gold run: one of Shearman’s favourite shoots was on Richmond Hill with Seb, now Lord, Coe in April 1984. The photo setting echoes a celebrated JMW Turner painting
Lord Seb Coe, the double Olympic gold medallist and now the head of the world governing body for athletics, said, “Mark, I congratulate you on an outstanding career, I’m most grateful for your contribution to my own career and our sport.”
One of Shearman’s most favourite images is of Coe, at his peak in early 1984, putting in a hills training session on Richmond Hill, the River Thames snaking behind him, the view redolent of a JMW Turner painting. Coe defied his critics later that year, retaining his Olympic 1,500metres title at the Los Angeles Games.
“For me and every other leading British athlete of the last 50 years, Mark Shearman has been a constant – the man behind the camera preserving many of the most important moments of our lives,” Coe said.
Peerless planning: knowing the sport, and researching the event timetables and race routes, have all been significant factors in the successful photography career of Mark Shearman. This from the 2012 Olympic Games men’s marathon
“Mark has been there in good times and bad, whether we were sweating in anonymity or dancing under the lights, to paraphrase Muhammad Ali.
“The measure of a great sports photographer is not just the ability to capture the moment, but also the emotion, and Mark mastered that art. Our sport is extremely lucky that he has chosen to keep his lens firmly focused on us.”
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