The Most Iconic Sports Photographs
The moments behind the frames that outlived their games — Ali over Liston, Babe Ruth's last bow, the Mexico City podium.
The most iconic sports photographs are single frames that outlived the games they recorded: Neil Leifer's overhead of Muhammad Ali standing over Cleveland Williams in 1966, Nat Fein's Pulitzer-winning farewell to Babe Ruth in 1948, and John Dominis's photograph of Tommie Smith and John Carlos raising gloved fists in Mexico City in 1968.
The two frames that made Muhammad Ali
On May 25, 1965 in Lewiston, Maine, Sonny Liston went down in the first round to a punch almost nobody saw. Ringside, a 22-year-old Sports Illustrated photographer named Neil Leifer was working a Rolleiflex under overhead strobes, and he caught Ali standing over the fallen champion, arm cocked, snarling at him to get up. The picture is famous partly for an accident of geometry: on the far side of the ring, framed neatly between Ali's legs, sits Herb Scharfman — another Sports Illustrated photographer, in what Leifer later called the perfect seat, which happened to be the wrong one.
Eighteen months later Leifer did something harder. For Ali against Cleveland Williams at the Houston Astrodome on November 14, 1966, he rigged a camera to the catwalk directly above the ring and fired it by remote. When the fight ended in the third he had a picture taken from nowhere a human being was standing: Williams flat on the canvas, Ali circling, the ropes turning the whole thing into a diagram. It is the frame most often named the greatest ever made of an athlete, and it works by abandoning the sightline every other camera in the building was using. Both images sit in press archives rather than with the fighter — see Muhammad Ali and boxing.
The photographs that stopped being about sport
A few sports pictures get promoted out of the sports pages entirely, because what they record turns out to be about the country rather than the contest.
Berlin, 1936. Jesse Owens won four gold medals at an Olympic Games staged as a Nazi advertisement. The images of him in the blocks were made inside a propaganda operation and immediately turned against it.
Brooklyn, 1947. Jackie Robinson took the field at Ebbets Field on April 15. What that season's photographers documented was mostly ordinary: a man playing first base. The ordinariness was the argument.
Mexico City, 1968. On October 16, Tommie Smith and John Carlos stood on the 200-meter podium in black socks with no shoes and raised black-gloved fists. Carlos had left his gloves at the village, so the two shared a single pair — which is why Smith raises his right hand and Carlos his left. Australia's Peter Norman, in silver, wore an Olympic Project for Human Rights badge. Life's John Dominis made the frame that carried.
Pasadena, 1999. The United States beat China on penalties in the Women's World Cup final on July 10. Brandi Chastain converted the fifth kick and dropped to her knees, shirt in hand, in a gesture she has said was unplanned. Sports Illustrated's Robert Beck got the second after the whistle.
Eight frames, and why each one stuck
| Photograph | Date | Photographer | Why it became the definitive frame |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Babe Bows Out | June 13, 1948 | Nat Fein, New York Herald Tribune | Shot from behind, so the subject is a silhouette and a number |
| Ali over Liston | May 25, 1965 | Neil Leifer, Sports Illustrated | Taunt and knockdown in one color frame, plus an accidental cameo |
| Ali over Cleveland Williams | 14 Nov 1966 | Neil Leifer | Remote camera on the Astrodome catwalk; the ring becomes a diagram |
| Smith and Carlos on the podium | 16 Oct 1968 | John Dominis, Life | Three medallists, three different responses, one gesture |
| Bobby Orr's Cup-winning goal | May 10, 1970 | Ray Lussier, Boston Record American | Orr horizontal in mid-air, tripped in the act of celebrating |
| Miracle on Ice | 22 Feb 1980 | Heinz Kluetmeier, Sports Illustrated | Ran on the cover with no cover lines at all |
| Jordan's last shot as a Bull | June 14, 1998 | Wire and magazine photographers, from every angle | The follow-through held after the ball has gone |
| Brandi Chastain, Rose Bowl | July 10, 1999 | Robert Beck, Sports Illustrated | The uncalculated second after the result |
Two of these came from luck rather than planning. Ray Lussier had moved into a seat someone vacated to buy a beer; from anywhere else in the Boston Garden, Orr's flight is just a man falling over. Nat Fein went behind Babe Ruth because the position in front was already three deep in photographers — and the picture he came back with, a stooped figure leaning on a bat with number 3 across his back, won the 1949 Pulitzer Prize, the first ever given to a sports photograph.
What the great ones have in common
They are wider than you remember. The tight telephoto crop is the modern default, but almost every canonical sports photograph includes the room: the ropes, the crowd, the empty ice, the officials. Context is what keeps a picture legible fifty years on.
They contain the loser. Liston is in the Ali frame. Bryon Russell is in the Jordan frame. Triumph alone is a portrait; triumph with its cost in the same rectangle is a story.
They come a beat late. Chastain's knees, Ruth's back, the Soviet goaltender still in his crease — the decisive instant is often the one just after the decisive instant.
The camera is somewhere unusual. Leifer's catwalk rig is the extreme case, but the principle runs through the whole genre: overhead from the rafters in basketball, low from the ice in hockey, remote-triggered from inside the net.
They are usually vertical. For six decades the covers of Sports Illustrated were the distribution system for American sports imagery, and covers are portrait-format. Photographers composed for the shape of the newsstand.
Where these pictures live now
Almost none of this material is in the public domain. The classic frames sit inside licensed archives — Sports Illustrated's library, the Bettmann collection, the wire services — so authorised prints come through those channels rather than from open image files.
Three overlapping collections cover most of it. The Sports Illustrated archive holds six decades of covers and interior work. Bettmann covers the pre-magazine era: Babe Ruth, the early Olympics, Secretariat's 31-length Belmont in 1973. Team-licensed imagery covers college football.
Press work through the 1960s was shot on medium or large format film, so it enlarges further than people expect: black-and-white frames read well at 24 to 36 inches wide, and Leifer's color transparencies go bigger still.
Frequently asked questions
What is considered the greatest sports photograph ever taken?
Neil Leifer's overhead photograph of Muhammad Ali standing over Cleveland Williams at the Houston Astrodome on November 14, 1966 is the frame most often given that title. Leifer mounted a camera on the catwalk above the ring and fired it by remote, producing a symmetrical, diagram-like view of the knockdown that no ringside photographer could have made.
Who took the photo of Muhammad Ali standing over Sonny Liston?
Neil Leifer, then 22 and working for Sports Illustrated, shot it ringside in Lewiston, Maine on May 25, 1965, using a Rolleiflex under overhead strobe lighting. Liston had gone down in the first round to a punch that many spectators missed, and Ali stood over him demanding he get back up.
Who is the man visible between Ali's legs in that photograph?
Herb Scharfman, another Sports Illustrated photographer, seated on the opposite side of the ring. He is the standing joke of the picture: a working professional with a clear view of the same moment, framed helplessly between the champion's legs. Leifer has described it as the perfect seat that turned out to be the wrong seat.
What was the first sports photograph to win a Pulitzer Prize?
Nat Fein's The Babe Bows Out, made at Yankee Stadium on June 13, 1948 for the New York Herald Tribune, won the 1949 Pulitzer Prize for Photography. Fein shot Babe Ruth from behind, leaning on a bat with the number 3 across his back, because the conventional position in front of the player was already crowded with photographers.
Who photographed the 1968 Olympic podium salute?
John Dominis of Life magazine made the best-known frame of Tommie Smith and John Carlos raising black-gloved fists during the 200-meter medal ceremony in Mexico City on October 16, 1968. Carlos had left his gloves at the athletes' village, so the pair shared one set, which is why Smith raises his right hand and Carlos his left.
Can you buy prints of famous Sports Illustrated photographs?
Yes, through licensed archive channels rather than open image files, because virtually all of this work remains in copyright. Fine Art America carries the Sports Illustrated archive alongside the Bettmann press collection, which together cover most of the canonical American sports frames from the 1920s to the present.
To build a wall around a sport rather than a single image, start from the archive: the Sports Illustrated collection, Bettmann press photography, or one subject such as boxing or baseball. Everything prints to order as framed prints, canvas or framed.
