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Kiley McKinnon and Taylor Fletcher share a moment after McKinnon qualified for the women’s aerials finals at the 2018 Winter Olympics. I had actually been planning for several months to do a story on the couple. I'd hoped to have it ready to run on Valentine's day, but we were too slammed with other events, so I pushed it off. The plan was to meet them for a portrait, but I was walking back to the condo during the women's aerials event and made a spur of the moment decision to hike up to the venue and watch, figuring if nothing else it might be interesting to watch the event with Fletcher. I never know how "in their face" to get with personal photos like this, but I was glad I lingered. I took a staged shot a few minutes after this one, but this was a much better shot to convey the emotions of both McKinnon and Fletcher on the fact that she squeezed into finals.
Joel Reichenberger
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Ester Ledecká and Justin Reiter come togethr for a hug to celebrate after she won the gold medal in women’s snowboarding parallel giant slalom. The first thing I love about this shot is I was the only one who had it. I was interviewing Reiter, who lives in Steamboat Springs, when Ledecka, who's trained in Steamboat, ran up to give out a well-deserved hug after winning her second gold medal of the Olympics. I was lucky to have my camera at my side and snapped a series of shots. Hugs are hard to shoot because you usually would want to see both faces. I decided I liked this particular shot because, even though you don't get a good, direct view of Reiter's face, you can see it reflected in Ledecka's goggles.
Joel Reichenberger
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Tim Fletcher and his girlfriend, Michelle Schiau, dance before the start of the cross-country ski portion of the large hill individual Nordic combined competition. Fletcher was diagnosed with ALS 18 months ago and given between two and five years to live. This was a very important and emotional story for me, but a difficult one to shoot. He was there to cheer on his two sons, but there wasn't going to be any way to get father and sons together for a photo during the competition, and the logistics of getting them together another time prevented a more posed portrait. So, what are my options? A photo of Fletcher watching his sons compete, when they'll almost certainly be out of frame? That seemed less than perfect. He kept dancing, however, and I made a point to snap photographs when he really got to kicking his feet. It wasn't the kind of dancing that photographs well, but this particular shot captured his joy and even though his sons aren't in the frame, I thought it helped tell the story.
Joel Reichenberger
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Snowboarder Jamie Anderson danced as she stood on the podium after winning her second career Olympic gold medal in women's slopestyle. How do you take a still photo of someone dancing? There's no perfect way, but I liked that this one conveys at least a little of the movement.
Joel Reichenberger
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Silverthorne’s Red Gerard throws up his arms after winning gold in snowboard slopestyle. I had a great spot to shoot right in the front of the photo section. That paid off when Gerard decided to celebrate (almost) directly in front of me.
Joel Reichenberger
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Jaelin Kauf speaks with her mother after being eliminated from the women's moguls competition at the 2018 Winter Olympics. Another photographer got a better version of this shot, with Kauf hugging her family. I wish I'd seen that moment, but I also really like the moment I did see. Kauf's family is often at the bottom of the course during her biggest events, and she's had many of post-competition chats with them. This was just another, but Kauf's face tells us instantly how things went.
Joel Reichenberger
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Arielle Gold spins through a frontside 900 during her bronze-medal winning run at the 2018 Winter Olympics.
Joel Reichenberger
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Arielle Gold celebrates her bronze medal run at the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea. A big internal debate in photographing the Olympics is whether to linger at the bottom of the course to get reaction shots at the finish line, or to hike up and get higher-quality action shots. I decided to wait at the bottom. That decision allowed me to get a good spot before the crowd of photographers came down from the halfpipe, and it allowed me to get this shot, of the moment Gold found out she had flown into medal position.
Joel Reichenberger
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Snowboard cross is an awesome event to shoot. I love the symmetry of the racers coming over the jump.
Joel Reichenberger
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Mary Dierdorff cheers on her son, Mick, in the men’s snowboard cross event at the 2018 Winter Olympics. Emotion is thing about the Olympics and there's plenty of that in this shot.
Joel Reichenberger
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Mick Dierdorff, right, leads the pack in his first heat of the 2018 Winter Olympics mens snowboard cross event in Pyeongchang, South Korea. He went on to finish fifth in the event.
Joel Reichenberger
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Jarryd Hughes celebrates winning a silver medal at the 2018 Winter Olympics.
Joel Reichenberger
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Madison Olsen flies high in the night sky above Phoenix Snow Park in Pyeongchang, South Korea during the women’s aerials finals.
Joel Reichenberger
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Jarryd Hughes, right, celebrates winning a silver medal in the men’s snowboard cross event at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea next to the event’s gold medalist, Pierre Vaultier of France.
Joel Reichenberger
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Canadian ski cross racer Chris Delbosco flies off the course and out of the Olympics during an early men’s ski cross heat.
Joel Reichenberger
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Canadian ski cross racer Chris Del Bosco flies off the course and out of the Olympics during an early men’s ski cross heat. Del Bosco was the only athlete I was there to cover, so I was waiting at the bottom of the course focused on getting a good photo of him. From the finish line, you had a long, straight view perhaps 500 yards up the course and along a series of three huge jumps. It almost wasn't even worth shooting racers on the first jump because they were so far away, and they'd just keep getting closer, right? But needing a shot of Del Bosco, I was ready to shoot away. I saw one skier fly out of the course but had no way of immediately knowing who it was. It wasn't until I was able to go back and check my shots that I realized it was in fact the guy I came to see, and that I had managed to get his unfortunate flight in focus.
Joel Reichenberger
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Alex Ferreira celebrates his first-run score in the men’s ski halfpipe competition at the 2018 Winter Olympics.
Joel Reichenberger
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Torin Yater-Wallace hits hard on the deck of the halfpipe during his final run of the men’s ski halfpipe competition. Yater-Wallace has struggled with injuries throughout his career. It's not hard to see why his sport can be so dangerous.
Joel Reichenberger
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David Wise celebrates after winning a gold medal in men’s ski halfpipe. There are a lot of ways to do the "celebrate with the flag" routine. Wise doing it with his family added a great, unique element.
Joel Reichenberger
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Bryan Fletcher leads a pack of skiers late in the Nordic combined team relay event. Getting this shot was a gamble on my end. I watched a good action shot of Fletcher skiing in what would be the last Olympic race of his career, but he was the anchor leg of the U.S. relay, meaning I'd have to either settle for a "just OK" action shot of him back in the stadium, or risk missing his finish to get a more dramatic shot on course. I opted to wait on course, and I did miss the finish, but I love the focus he shows in this shot. The team went on to finish 10th out of 10 teams, so the finish was less important.
Joel Reichenberger
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Erin Hamlin leads the United States athletes into the 2018 Winter Olympics Opening Ceremonies. I love these shots from the parade of nations. Marching in Opening Ceremonies is a major part of the dream for many athletes, and everyone's thrilled to be there.
Joel Reichenberger
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The Olympic flame at the 2014 Olympics was a large independent structure in the middle of a massive, open plaza. It was easy to isolate for photos. The flame in Pyeongchang, on the other hand, was sticking out of the top of the Olympic stadium. The view of the entire structure was obscured from my Opening Ceremonies seat, so to trim out some of that clutter I had to crop just the top part to get a dramatic photo.
Joel Reichenberger
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I hiked up the side of the moguls run during the qualification round to get this action shot of Jaelin Kauf. The intensity in her eyes really popped to me.
Joel Reichenberger
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Seventeen-year-old Red Gerard slide stops on his was to a gold-medal upset in the men's snowboard slopestyle event at the 2018 Winter Olympics.
Joel Reichenberger
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Norway’s Torgier Bergrem slides out of his landing during the men’s snowboard slopestyle competition.
Joel Reichenberger
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Canada's Sebastien Toutant hits the snow.
Joel Reichenberger
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Carrying a flag is basically as much a part of winning a medal as getting the medal itself, so much so that organizers do three total podium ceremonies. Athletes were given small plush mascots in the first ceremony. They then grabbed flags from coaches and returned to the podium for more photos. Finally, they traveled to the actual medal plaza for one last ceremony where they'd actually receive their medals. I loved Jamie Anderson's excitement in this shot as she steps up on to the podium after winning gold.
Joel Reichenberger
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Women's halfpipe snowboarders Arielle Gold and Chloe Kim are close friends and I loved this shot of them sharing their joy after each locked up a medal at this year's Olympics.
Joel Reichenberger
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People keep asking which Olympics was best. I’ve been in Steamboat Springs for a decade now. In plenty of ways I’m still the Kansas kid who stumbled into town in February 2008, but in other ways, I’m not.
One of the opportunities Steamboat has offered me that I couldn’t have even dreamed 10 years ago is the chance to cover two Winter Olympics, and, in turn, the chance to compare them.
So, which was best, 2014 in Sochi, Russia, or 2018 in Pyeongchang, South Korea? It’s an impossible question to answer.
It’s both an easy question and a hard one. Even though it was in general a more successful showing by the United States, I saw very, very few U.S. medals at the 2014 Olympics. I saw
Hannah Kearney win bronze in the moguls when she was upset by a rival, and I saw Vic Wild win two golds in Alpine snowboarding for Russia.
This go-around, I was there, front and center, for Red Gerard’s gold, Jamie Anderson’s gold, Shaun White’s gold and Alex Ferreira’s silver, to name a few.
Oh, and I was there for Arielle Gold’s bronze, easily the best Olympic event I’ve covered at either Olympics. I’ve spent so much time talking to and writing about Gold and her ambitions and plans, it’s easy to forget she’s just 21 years old. She’s had the career ups and downs of a 30-year-old.
To be there to see it all pay off, to see her throw down on the last run of the contest, was awesome. It’s my job to have the words, and I struggle to find them.
Outside the events, though, what was better: 2014 or 2018 — Russia or South Korea?
I’m not entirely sure there’s a right answer.
The Sochi Games were a $50 billion financial boondoggle the likes of which had never been seen. Seeing Sochi made me question how seriously Denver would really want to win an Olympic bid.
Everything felt unfinished. It felt like they’d finished our media lodging while we were in the lobby, and even then, “finished” was a stretch. For the first week of the Olympics, you’d notice major new stores opening, new concrete being poured, new buildings being finished.
That was all absurd, but the resorts were designed from the ground up with the Olympics in mind, and they were certainly handy. Journalists were dropped off 30 yards from their workstations. Security was designed into every building, every venue.
There were more buses, and they ran with military precision, which made sense because there was military everywhere you looked. Security was tight, annoyingly so even.
Security was far more lax in South Korea. People were nicer. The food better and cheaper. The venues were much better for competitions.
But, whereas the Sochi accommodations seemed like they’d been finished 45 minutes ago, the Korea accommodations seemed like they’d been finished 45 years ago.
The media transportation wasn’t as convenient. The venues weren’t laid out as intricately. The buses sometimes ran late.
No difference was quite as profound to my little world than the way photographers were handled, however.
In Sochi, photographers were generally split into two groups — a small one for the big photo agencies and companies, such as the Associated Press, Reuters and Getty Images, and a big group for the rest of us.
The best photo locations were roped off ahead of the Olympics to be saved for the small group. The rest of the positions weren’t bad by any stretch but were off to the side instead of right in the middle, for instance.
Pyeongchang was run on a more first-come, first-serve basis, which was great in my book. I frequently was able to end up in choice positions, right in the middle of the photo corral and looking dead on at finishers coming across the finish line.
But, when photographing the Olympics, there’s always a tradeoff, and even getting a great position at the bottom of the course comes with a few.
An even bigger difference for this Olympics came in my own responsibilities. Four years ago, my focus was about 95 percent on photography, and we had another Steamboat reporter on hand to write.
This time, I did all the writing for Steamboat athletes, plus some for our sister publications in the Colorado Mountain News Media family, which is what sent me to cover athletes like Gerard and Anderson.
That changed a lot about how I went about my process.
The big tradeoff to camping in a good photo spot at the bottom of the course is you can’t get up and out on the course to get more unique shots. By the time you came back, your sweet spot would be spoken for.
My need to be near the bottom was compounded by the writing responsibilities, too. I needed to be able to get to the interview area before an athlete, and for many events, you couldn’t be entirely sure when the skier or snowboarder you were covering would be done and heading over for those interviews. So, I couldn’t ever drift too far.
Still, photographing an Olympics is truly an awesome opportunity. There’s as much passion in a day as I otherwise encounter in a month.
Photographing and writing about the Olympics can lead to wildly hectic times. Events were squeezed in during the mornings in Korea to run live in prime time in the United States, and it was often a race to squeeze in under what amounted to a 2 p.m. deadline. So even if I took 1,000 photos at an event, I only took the time to really examine 10.
I’ve had more time since returning to the United States, more time to come up with our best photos from the 2018 Winter Olympics.
To reach Joel Reichenberger, call 970-871-4253, email jreichenberger@SteamboatToday.com or follow him on Twitter @JReich9.