Olympic years are a particularly special time for sports, and 2024 was no different.
As crowds gathered in Paris to watch their favorite athletes compete, the world’s biggest stars rose to the occasion. From Simone Biles’ triumphant return to the Olympic stage to Julien Alfred winning Saint Lucia’s first Olympic medal, the events in Paris captured much of the sport world’s attention this year.
And yet, there were still so many more moments to celebrate.
Michael Heiman, VP of global sport at Getty Images, told Business Insider, “It was a busy year. The summer Olympics is always kind of at the height of the sports calendar, the four-year cycle,” adding, “But the other thing is that stuff doesn’t stop just because it’s an Olympic year.”
As the ninth-largest industry in the world — worth $2.65 trillion, according to the Global Institute of Sport — sports smashed new barriers this year, and photographers were there to capture the emotions and history-making moments.
The growth of women’s sports was particularly impactful in 2024, and is only gaining momentum. More than 18 million people watched Iowa and South Carolina compete in the NCAA women’s basketball championship, the WNBA secured an 11-year media rights deal worth about $2.2 billion, and women’s sports merchandise alone is estimated to be worth $4 billion.
As the world raises its expectations for sport in 2025, here’s a look at 25 of Getty’s top 100 sport photos of the year.
British rider Simon Yates, 31, won the overall race with a time of 18 hours, 37 minutes, and five seconds.
Heiman told BI that the World Aquatics Championships in Doha was the first major event where Getty used its new underwater robotic camera.
“This is a camera we spent the last two years developing,” he said, adding that the first version was built in 2015.
To capture the action, the camera was put underwater “a few days” before competition, then photographers were “able to fully control it like a video game” from the pool deck or in the media center.
“What the photographers are really looking for is to tell the story of artistic swimming. It’s beautiful from above, but so much happens underwater and you see just all the coordination that it takes to lift this athlete up,” Heiman said.
He added, “But really using the reflection that you get from the water above to kind of make this mirror image, it really speaks to what all it takes, everything that goes into performing some of these sequences.”
Of course, it’s hard to talk about sports in 2024 without mentioning Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift, and one of their biggest moments was the kiss they shared after the Chiefs defeated the San Francisco 49ers 25-22 in overtime to win Super Bowl LVIII.
As one of two Getty Images photographers allowed on the field after the game, “Ezra [Shaw] was tasked with finding Travis and staying as close to Travis as possible, which is really, really hard in this environment,” Heiman said.
“There’s tons of people, everyone’s pushing. You have security, you have other members of media, you have TV, and [Shaw] was just able to get in the right place and get this kind of, the guy wins the game, he gets the girl kind of photo, which was iconic and seen by everyone,” he added.
Bornebusch appeared to defy gravity as she completed one of her dives.
Team Australia’s Rhiannan Iffland ultimately won the competition with 342 points.
Dougherty was one of four competitors to advance to the bull-riding finals, which was won by Creek Young.
In addition to competing at The American Rodeo, some of Dougherty’s 2024 career highlights include winning the Western Stampede, the Santa Maria Elks Rodeo, and the Sisters Rodeo. He’s also a one-time qualifier for the National Finals Rodeo.
Thanks to Getty Images’ partnership with the New Zealand Olympic Committee, Heiman said photographer Phil Walter was able to “mount a waterproof small action camera on the front of this canoe” in order to “really give you insight into what these athletes are kind of experiencing as they come down the course.”
He added that the end result is a credit to collaborating with the athlete and organizers to ensure that everything was safe and not impeding performance.
Butcher went on to compete in his first Olympic Games in Paris, where he won gold in the inaugural men’s kayak cross event.
The acrobatic score was later disallowed, and the Roosters’ opponent, the Penrith Panthers, went on to win the match 22-16.
Orlov hit Brodzinski in the third period of the game. The Hurricanes won the game 4-3 to keep their Stanley Cup hopes alive, bringing the series to 3-1.
The Rangers went on to win the series four games to two.
Unlike other surfing events where photographers can shoot from the beach, Heiman said the Shiseido Tahiti Pro requires photographers to capture the action from small boats since the waves break about a kilometer off shore.
He added that while there were plenty of “amazing photos during Paris,” he wanted to highlight this one because it’s “about the preparation.”
“You know, [Haffey’s] out on the water for 12 hours. There’s tons of spray,” Heiman said, adding, “What kind of protection do you need for your cameras? What lenses do you need? How does the sunlight work? So, we sent [Haffey] to cover the Tahiti Pro before Paris as a preparation for Paris. So when we got there, we knew exactly what we wanted to do and what we needed to do.”
Djokovic fought through a right knee injury to defeat Argentina’s Francisco Cerundolo during a fourth round match at Roland-Garros.
However, he withdrew from the competition the following day.
Billam-Smith went on to win the fight by a unanimous decision after 12 rounds.
The Panthers won their first Stanley Cup with a 2-1 game seven victory.
Tkachuk told reporters after the game, “It’s not a dream anymore. It’s not a dream, it’s reality. I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it.”
Spain defeated England 2-1 to win the Euros, with the game-winning goal coming from Mikel Oyarzabal in the 86th minute.
The 21-year-old from Spain defeated Novak Djokovic in straight sets to win his second consecutive Wimbledon title and his fourth overall Grand Slam.
While the internet remained focused on Kim’s eyewear, a hidden detail in her competition look was her daughter’s stuffed elephant toy.
Biles, alongside Jordan Chiles, Suni Lee, Jade Carey, and Hezly Rivera, brought home the gold in the women’s team final.
In Paris, Biles added four medals to her Olympic count, bringing her total to 11, with seven golds, two silvers, and two bronzes to make her the most decorated gymnast in American history.
Though Heiman said this photo doesn’t necessarily look unique, it is because the technology used to capture it was actually five years in the making.
The process started in 2019 at the World Athletics Championships in Doha when the company first communicated with the event’s broadcaster about mounting a camera on their rig.
After a small action camera didn’t yield the desired quality, they decided to move forward with a bigger camera that was used in Paris and was wirelessly triggered by photographer Richard Heathcote, who was in the media center.
“[Heathcote] was actually our robotics photographer, so while he was shooting this picture, he was also manning two robots that are in the roof, following the action with a little joystick,” Heiman said, adding that Heathcote also had a foot pedal controlling a camera. “So all in, there’s about 15 remotes on this moment, and [Heathcote’s] controlling kind of all of them, as I kind of joke, ends up like a drummer, right?”
“It’s just a really good composition. You have the Olympic rings, you have Paris in there, you know where it is, you see the purple lights in the background, all the nation’s flags in the background. It’s just a really amazing athletics photo and a really unique one,” Heiman said.
“One of the ideas that Hector [Vivas] came up with was he wanted to shoot the Games with this technique he’s been working on called layering, and that’s really, you set a camera up at one spot, it stays fixed, so it’s and then you shoot as the event unfolds,” Heiman said, noting that Vivas decided when to fire the shutter each time.
“Every time I look at it, I find a new part of it that I didn’t see before,” Heiman added, comparing the photo to pages of “Where’s Waldo?”
Throughout the Olympics, Khelif was ridiculed after misinformation about her sex was spread.
However, despite the scrutiny, she went on to win the gold medal in the welterweight boxing event. Khelif wrote on Instagram, “From dreams to reality, the journey is gold. Proud to stand at the top for my country and the ones who believed. The fight never stops, only gets stronger.”
Rachael Gunn, also known by her B-girl name Raygun, also received a lot of attention online for her performance at the 2024 Olympics.
Though she was eliminated during the round-robin stage of the competition, her moves were instantly documented as memes and she became the subject of misinformation.
Gunn retired from competitive breaking in November.
Standing at 6-foot-2, Curry launched his shot over 7-foot-3 Wembanyama.
The US won the game 98-87, and Curry finished with 24 points and five assists.
According to the International Wheelchair & Amputee Sport Federation (IWAS) Wheelchair Fencing, category A fencers “have good trunk control.”
Dróżdż defeated Eva Andrea Hajmasi of Hungary 15-12 in the women’s sabre category A semifinal to advance to the final.
There, she won the silver medal after losing to Haiyan Gu.
Olesen tied for second place with Yannik Paul, Sam Bairstow, and Jeff Winther, all of whom scored 15 under.
English golfer Dan Bradbury came in first place with a score of 16 under par.
Freeman’s home run in the bottom of the 10th inning gave the Los Angeles Dodgers a win against the New York Yankees in game one of the World Series.
The Dodgers went on to win the series four games to one.
Heiman said that photographer Ezra Shaw used a drone to take this image of Ironman competitors, which takes a lot of preparation.
“He has to go photograph the actual venue. He’s not just there operating a drone, so he needs to get there, set it up, fly it, take his pictures, come down, and then go on to probably the athletes coming out of the water to get on the bikes,” Heiman said.
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