Such sport

On the face of it, the sports photographer cannot compete. But the stunning images on this page show different.

The still photograph isolates a moment from the frenzy. It can reveal more about the competitors and their sport than any number of action replays.

That is certainly the case with these pictures, from the portfolio of York-based photographer John Giles. Taken at the Sydney Olympics they encapsulate the heroic success and failure of the world's greatest athletes.

Many Evening Press readers will remember John from his long service at the paper. For the last 12 years, however, the former Nunthorpe school boy has worked at the Press Association (PA), joining as the north of England photographer and latterly specialising in sport.

Sydney 2000 was the third successive Olympics for the man named Sports Photo-grapher of the Year 1997 in the British Press Awards. And it was, he says, easily the best.

He first went to the Games when they were staged in Barcelona. It was an eye-opener.

"When you first go to the Olympics you are staggered by the scale of it," he said. "It's intimidating. You had 15,000 journalists, or something like that, in Sydney, with 1,100 photographers.

"The main media centre is like a village. It's enormous. It has its own infrastructure: a restaurant, medical centre, telecommun-ications centre.

"You walk in and think, 'I am going to get slaughtered'. But you soon get into it. It's the best assignment any photographer ever had."

John's pictures from Sydney were flashed to Britain by PA and around the world by other agencies. One of his first pictures made the front pages of several British national newspaper sports supplements: John Hayes crashing out of the cycling final when Britain were agonisingly close to gaining a medal.

This sport particularly interests John: he is a former road-racing member of the Clifton Cycling Club. "The more you know about a sport, particularly complicated sports like track cycling and the martial arts, the more chance there is of getting amazing photographs."

John reads the sports pages of the papers and sports magazines to help him assess the best position from which to take pictures of every discipline.

And the variety of sports showcased by the Olympics is terrific. On one day during Sydney 2000 he covered Tim Henman's exit from the tennis in the morning followed by Dean Macey going over the hurdles in pursuit of a decathlon medal in the afternoon. Then it was more track and field that night.

The days were 18 hours long. But the digital pictures were beamed around the world in minutes.

"In the time I have been doing this, cameras have improved dramatically. They help you a lot more than they used to. That said, you have got to be fully aware of what's going on. You need peripheral vision, taking everything in from all around you."

Digital technology, he said, "has made a massive difference. When Darren Campbell got pipped in the 200 metres, half an hour later you would have seen the photograph on the Evening Press picture desk screen."

John said "it seems like a 100 years ago" since he joined the Evening Press. In fact, it was 30.

He undertook a formal, seven-year apprenticeship before qualifying as a senior photographer. One of his most memorable photographs was of Willie Carson's near-fatal fall at York Racecourse in 1981.

Many years earlier, when compiling a travel feature in Amsterdam, he and a reporter blagged their way into the hotel room where John Lennon and Yoko Ono were staging a "bed-in" for peace.

All his memories remain razor sharp thanks to his portfolio of photographs. Now John, who has a daughter, Claire, and who lives at Bolton Percy with wife Jackie, has a few years to decide whether to cover the next Olympics: Athens 2004.