U.S.A. soccer pulls off the upset! Photograph by Donald Miralle for NEWSWEEK

U.S.A. Softball gets upset. Photograph by Donald Miralle for NEWSWEEK

The last couple days I just feel it slipping. My interest in photos is fading, I’m finding it harder to get out of bed in the morning, and I just seem to be missing things or making mistakes. And when I’m not making mistakes my cameras are either backfocusing or not working all together. It’s like there is a little gremlin in my camera back that is sabotaging my Games. For example, today was the first time I was granted access to placing an underwater camera in the pool (unfortunately for me it was for women’s synchro, not Phelps) and I flooded a camera in one of my housings when I first jumped in the water. In 10 years, and hundreds of times in the water, I have only ruined one camera. But this time I just didn’t check everything twice before hopping in, and next thing I know the housing is filled like an aquarium. To top it all off, the camera that was ruined was not mine. I luckily packed two housings, so after dropping some f-bombs on the pool deck, I placed the back-up system in the water.

I’m not sure if it’s that I’m just worn down from shooting, editing, and blogging everyday, or if I’m just missing home, but I just feel like I can’t get it going. I feel that I’ve made a strong set of photos to this point and would love to finish it off strong, but the last couple of days I’ve been down and out. It’s been a great assignment for NEWSWEEK, with much of the creative control and scheduling of this assignment left in our hands. Kudos to Simon Barnett and the photo staff at NEWSWEEK for giving us this opportunity and placing us in this position. Nevertheless, I feel a bit depressed and in a funk, and one of my close friends commented, “don’t go to that dark place” when he saw me yesterday. The truth is the Olympics is a very long and stressful few weeks for any photographer, especially if you are leaving family back at home. I feel like every Games I do shaves a couple years off the back-end of my life. But for me it is the pinnacle of sports photography, where the finest sports photographers in the world congregate to shoot the top athletes in an arena that transcends sports. I just want to get this thing wrapped up on a good note and get back to the comforts of home and family.

Photograph by Donald Miralle for NEWSWEEK

 

Photograph by Donald Miralle for NEWSWEEK

Usain Bolt of Jamaica breaks the World Record in the Men's 200M. Photograph by Donald Miralle for NEWSWEEK

After dumping off my remote gear and bags at the track, I rushed over to the men’s handball to check out the quarterfinal competition. Having never shot this sport before, I was a bit excited to check it out. I guess it’s pretty huge in Europe with professional leagues and such but I’ve never seen a game played in the U.S. before and never had a chance to witness it firsthand. Man, it is a fast moving sport with lots of goals, and it seems that whoever ends up with the ball in the end wins. I shot a couple of games and waited until the last minute to head back to the track to catch the men’s 200M final. Myself and about 4 other photographers caught the 9:15 bus to the MPC, and after a little connection in a golf cart were at the stadium with about 30 minutes to spare before the start.

Handball is fast and furious. Photograph by Donald Miralle for NEWSWEEK

GV of goal. Photograph by Donald Miralle for NEWSWEEK

Diving and throwing seems to be the norm. Photograph by Donald Miralle for NEWSWEEK

It's like volleyball and water polo meets dodgeball. Photograph by Donald Miralle for NEWSWEEK

Showing some love after the win. Photograph by Donald Miralle for NEWSWEEK

The Olympic race consists of a 1500 m swim, a 40 km bike, followed by a 10 km run, and some of the top ladies today finished it under 2 hours. The course was a set in scenic hills at the Ming Tomb Reservoir near the spot where 13 emperors of the Ming dynasty were laid to rest in elaborate mausoleums. The athletes and spectators couldn’t have asked for a more beautiful day to hold the race. The men may not be so lucky tomorrow . Unfortunately I was on the 2nd day of about 3.5 hours of sleep and it’s starting to catch up with me. After taking a 6:40 bus from my hotel and the first bus from the MPC to the course (it’s about an hour away) I was ready to get the race on. The course wasn’t the most photogenic or easy to get around, and I didn’t have the luxury of water access or motorcycles like I’ve had in past races. So I just focused on a couple different shots, specifically a water exit and a couple different graphic bike shots. My initial plan was to rig the smaller of my two SPL housings for a 5D on a pole cam with a ball head and trigger release, but I went with a shot with a remote camera clamped to a rail which was approved 30 minutes prior to the race (thanks to Ray the photo marshal and Bob Martin of SI lending me a magic arm).

Phelps completed the sweep. Photograph by Donald Miralle for NEWSWEEK

Michael did it. And now that it's done, he can rest, and we can all rest easy now because we probably won't see something like that again in our lifetime. I have to admit is was very cool to witness such an incredible feat where one individual has brought home more medals than many entire countries can muster. His final event was the men's 4x100m medley relay, a race which the Americans are the reigning world record holders and world champions. Backstroke world record holder Aaron Peirsol led off and gave the U.S. a slight lead just under the world record pace.  The second leg saw the U.S. slip to third as Brenden Hansen was outsplit by the Japanese and the Australian. Then came Phelps, in his final swim. He powered the Americans back with a smoking leg of 50.15, setting up the anchor man, Jason Lezak, to bring it home for Team USA. It was a perfect finish to Phelps' meet, culminating in 8 gold medals, 7 World Records, and 1 Olympic Record over the course of the last week. After the medal ceremony, I did notice as Phelps welled up a little, no doubt beginning to comprehend the magnitude of what he had achieved. He went to the opposite side of the pool and climbed up the stands through the swarming sea of photographers to hug and kiss his sisters Whitney and Hilary, and mother Debbie. It nice to see such an incredibly driven athlete remind you that family is always first. Everyone at pool felt warm and fuzzy for a couple minutes.  And I thought of my wife and two kids at home waiting for me to get back from the Olympics.

It’s amazing how many people get so excited over a race that takes less than 10 seconds to run. The lead-up of the showdown of Asafa Powell, Usain Bolt, and Tyson Gay was second only to the sea of photographers and their remote cameras that descended on the National Stadium tonight for the men’s 100m final. There were a wide spectrum of experience present; from snappers who cover Athletics religiously, to those who cover it only at the Olympics, to those who witnessed their first 100m tonight. I fall somewhere in the middle of that pack, but can never get too excited for this race. Case in point, Peter Reid Miller of Sports Illustrated posed the question to me tonight before the start of the finals, “Do you even remember who won the 100 in Athens?” I was there, I shot it, I remember taking an OK frame of it, but for the life of me I couldn’t remember who won [It was Justin Gatlin of the U.S.--ED]. And you know why, after tonight NOBODY CARES. The athlete, whether it’s one of the Jamaicans or the American, will be on the front cover of every newspaper and Website for the next 24 hours. You won’t see them again in the headlines for another four years. Unless, that is, one of them tests positive for doping...

Testing my finish line remote on the Men's 20km Walk Final. Photograph by Donald Miralle for NEWSWEEK

This was my riser position where I sat for the race. Photograph by Donald Miralle for NEWSWEEK

A view of the main finish line moat with about 100 remote cameras and SI's Bill Frakes in charge (half of the cameras are his!!)

Photograph by Donald Miralle for NEWSWEEK

Infield remotes facing back to finish line. Photograph by Donald Miralle for NEWSWEEK

Photographers sit and wait for the 100m. Photograph by Donald Miralle for NEWSWEEK

Nevertheless, photographers and media come in droves to set-up shop, some of them scoping out positions and setting up remote days before the event actually starts. Most are on edge, scrambling to get their cameras in position, knocking over cameras, yelling at their assistants or even at other photographers. Is it really worth getting all hot and heavy over a little foot race? The spectacle that surrounds the race that decides the fastest man on the planet every four years is one to behold and one that I would sometimes like to miss. But you have to go and cover it, and we did. Between the three of us, with Mike having the most experience under his belt, and specializing in Track and Field for years, he took the head-on moat position. Vince was going to do the pan position on the front stretch, good for a low-percentage, but a very nice photo of the athletes in full sprint at a slow shutter, but he opted out after the BOB camera appeared to block his view. I did this shot in Athens '04 and it was good for one really nice frame and nothing else. So Vince went to the moat position around the bend, which is usually solid for the follow-through react. That left me in the elevated head-on safe position, which was fine by me, especially since I could surf the internet and start writing this blog in the five hours we had to wait for the 10:30 p.m. start. My stress levels were also alleviated by the fact that I dropped off my gear and set up a couple remotes before I went to Aquatics this morning to cover Phelps. I placed one remote wide almost parallel with the finish line framed with eight lanes and the Olympic Flame in the background. The second remote was head on with 4 lanes, repositioned to lanes 4-7 after the semifinal split Bolt and Powell in lanes 4 and 7 respectively. Amazingly (but not really) Tyson Gay did not make the final.

And after a bunch of unfortunately insignificant races that no one cared about, it was go time....

A NEW WORLD RECORD OF 9.69!!!!!  

It was awesome today, being here, documenting history in the making at the Water Cube. Once again, Michael Phelps continued his seemingly unstoppable run to greatness. He came from behind to beat out Milorad Cavic of Serbia by one one-hundredth of a second with the final stroke of the 100m butterfly to tie Mark Spitz’s seven gold medals from the 1972 Games by the closest margin. Phelps, who was seventh at the 50M turn and seemingly out of the race, whittled away at the field and had a magical touch to the wall. It was an amazing finish for someone who has to be feeling the fatigue from swimming 5 individual events and 3 relays, many of which have been swum three times in Prelims, Semifinals, and Finals. Tomorrow Phelps will have the chance to become the only athlete to ever win 8 gold medals in one Olympics. At 23 years of age he now has 13 golds, four more than anyone else in the 112-year history of the modern Games. With the U.S.A. men’s team holding the World Record in the 4X100m freestyle relay, his final swim of the Olympics, it seems like a lock that he will achieve his 8. Tomorrow will no doubt be a fantastic finale to an unbelievable week at the H20 Cube.

I equally enjoyed the men’s 50m freestyle today, the equivalent to the 100m in athletics, with a drag race between world record holder Eamon Sullivan of Australia, 100m Gold Medalist Alain Bernard of France, and Brazilian sensation Cielo Filho Cesar. Cielo, who smashed all the sprint records in the NCAA competition this past spring, including being the first man to go under 19 seconds in the 50 yard freestyle, led from start to finish and gushed with emotion afterward. He went from screaming and beating the water, to crying and hiding his face. I made a sequence of the emotional reaction—I think every photographer got a decent frame out of that race. 

Photographs by Donald Miralle for NEWSWEEK

Today was one of those days. I jumped out of bed at 8:30 a.m., two hours after my alarm was supposed to wake me up. I was supposed to be at the Gymnastics venue hanging a remote for the Women’s Individual All-Around. It took a lot of work on my end to get that access, and my opportunity was wasted. Not a good start. After barely making the 9 a.m. bus, I arrived in our office in the media center to gather myself and my gear, and try to sort out what was going to be a very long day. Gymnastics, followed by Badminton, and finally Athletics. After skipping breakfast (or “breakie” as Mike Powell calls it) I headed over to the gym just 15 minutes before the start. I was behind the ball from the beginning of this day and once you start from that point it’s hard to get back in front. Lucky for me, all the best gymnasts where in the first group, so I really just tried to focus on them. I saw that Mike has positioned himself in the down the barrel position for the rotation, so I scrambled to get upstairs to shoot the first rotation on the vault from a clean one, and congregated on a nearly empty handicapped seating area with about 5 other photographers and lots of leg-room.

As soon as we all got comfortable, about four BOCOG blue bibs and one red bib came over instructing us we had to leave as the athletes were a couple of minutes from the start of competition, even though there was all the room in the world and there were photographers below us blocking an aisle. I am quickly learning the best thing you can do in this situation at the Olympics is postpone the inevitable by telling them that you have permission to be there and then giving them a nice pin. This bought about 10 minutes, which was just enough time to get the first rotation in.

Photograph by Donald Miralle for NEWSWEEK

Photograph by Donald Miralle for NEWSWEEK

Floor is always hard to shoot as gymnasts run, tumble and flip in every direction, usually against crap backgrounds. So after my quick sugar pit-stop I decided to stay upstairs to shoot the floor and hopefully get something a little cleaner and graphic. It ended up just being pretty boring for photos other than the American Girls, Nastia Liukin and Shawn Johnson, nailed their routines and in a clutch performance won gold and silver respectively. Knowing that there was probably going to be some kind of reaction, I sprinted back downstairs with my three cameras bouncing off my hips to get there in time. The moment I jumped up on the far photo platform, I saw Luikin raising her arms up after posting her winning score and I managed to get frame out of it. Next, I shuffled over to the opposite side of the floor to line up for the medal ceremony, and found myself doing the big wave with the free arm to get eye contact for a picture. Not my favorite thing to do, but I just felt like the entire event and day was slipping through my fingers and I wasn’t getting any frames out of it. I usually like figuring out my position in advance and letting the action come to me, but today I was chasing the action and one step behind. I packed up my kit and walked out the Gym hanging my head low looking for my next bus.