Canadian Olympic gold medalist Kevin Light now enjoying the game as photographer
VICTORIA, British Columbia — Photographer Kevin Light documented the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games as a member of the Canadian Olympic Committee (COC) photography team. But this wasn’t Kevin’s first Olympic Games—he also photographed the PyeongChang 2018 and Rio 2016 Games (both for the CBC). And at the Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics, he was in front of the camera—winning gold with the Canadian men’s eight rowing team.
Kevin’s Olympic past prepared him for the “physically demanding” task of capturing the action. With crampons affixed to his boots, he hiked through Genting Snow Park in Zhangjiakou. Though he enjoyed the challenge, he was aware of the potential for injury on the slopes.
Being close to the action proved hazardous: “you could get hit—and get seriously injured,” Kevin said, as demonstrated when Finnish halfpipe skier Jon Sallinen crashed into an Olympic Broadcast Services (OBS) camera operator. Kevin not only bore witness to this but came to the camera person’s aid: it “goes from as if you’re watching it on TV, to very real very quickly.”
But the biggest challenge was “dealing with the cold.” This is visible in one of Kevin’s photos, featuring freestyle skier Miha Fontaine—both he and his breath frozen in midair. Temperatures below minus 20 degrees Celsius “made it a challenge to get the cameras to work.” Batteries drained quickly; and Kevin’s breath, filtered through a mask, “would freeze the viewfinder.”
In combating these difficulties, Kevin found similarities between participating in and documenting the Olympics: “You’re working as a team to achieve a common goal,” Kevin said, “There’s all these challenges that you have to overcome together.” That included Beijing’s extreme weather—though during the Summer Olympics, it was 35 degrees Celsius. “But how you deal with it is very similar—you focus on ways of overcoming the challenge, instead of reinforcing the negative aspect of it.”
Like in 2008, Kevin was part of an amazing crew: “Our media lead, Josh Su, he really did a great job selecting a team—Mark Blinch and Andrew Lahodynskyj (from Toronto), Leah Hennel (from Calgary), and Darren Calabrese (from Halifax),” Kevin said, “That’s the best part about the Olympics—being around other like-minded people to learn from.” But some of the most valuable team members were back home—Kevin’s wife, Zoe (and her parents, Bev and Chris), looked after their two children while he was away.
Kevin does find photography less stressful than competition: “You can enjoy the games a little bit more as a photographer—but not too much, because once you become a fan, then you’re likely going to miss the moment.” A lot of focus and preparation goes into capturing every photo—let alone the perfect one.
Though some of Kevin’s favourite photos from Beijing weren’t action shots. Before he left, Kevin’s kids gave him laminated drawings of themselves, which he brought to his daily COVID tests. He even took their picture with gold medalist hockey captain Marie-Philip Poulin, so “they could see that I was bringing them with me.”
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