Heinz Kluetmeier

Kluetmeier covered his first Olympic Games for Sports Illustrated at the 1972 Munich games, and served twice as the magazine's director of photography. He was the magazine's senior staff photographer. Kluetmeier's best known SI work is the March 3, 1980, cover that shows the American hockey team celebrating its win over the Soviet Union in the "Miracle on Ice" game at the 1980 Winter Olympic Games at Lake Placid, New York. The cover is the only one in the magazine's history to run without a headline or caption, because, in his words, "It didn't need it. Everyone in America knew what happened." He also created new techniques and gadgets to create his shots. At the 1980 Moscow Olympics, Kluetmeier devised a way to use a remotely operated camera near the race finish line. He successfully caught the face of Sebastian Coe as he won the 1,500-meter race. Kluetmeier was the only photographer to place a remote camera, but "Now," he said in 1996, '"You go to the Olympics and there are like 50 remotes at the finish line." In 1983, he cowrote the book Sports Illustrated Golf, with Mark Mulvoy. Kluetmeier covered the 1984 Winter Olympic Games in Sarajevo, including the ski jumping events at Mt. Igman. During the 1991 World Aquatics Championships, he became the first photographer to place a camera underwater to capture swimming events. He did so again the next year at the 1992 Summer Olympics. Sixteen years later at the 2008 Beijing games, Kluetmeier operated an underwater camera that showed the final second of the 100-meter butterfly race. The photographs in sequence showed Michael Phelps touching the wall before Milorad Čavić, even as Čavić appeared to win the race from above water.