A life chronicling the art of winning
Claus Andersen gives us moments, and seconds, to remember
OTTAWA— Before a sprint final he thinks about his ideal position on the track, he feels the nervous excitement that builds just before those marquee races, and he knows to calm his emotions to deliver his best.
At 63 years of age, Claus Andersen isn’t a runner, he’s a photographer, but the pressure to get the perfect shot at the biggest sprint events — the 100- and 200-metre finals — can mimic, to some degree, an athlete’s pressure to perform.
“The100 metres are always stressful,” said Andersen, who has long photographed the Canadian track & field championships for Athletics Canada.
“It’s the one event that’s over in a split second — well, 10 seconds — but there are no re-dos.”
This year, that men’s race, won by Andre De Grasse in 10.11 seconds, on Friday night at the Terry Fox Stadium determined who would represent Canada at next month’s world championships. On Sunday afternoon Andersen had to wait nearly twice as long,19.96 seconds, to get the shot of De Grasse achieving the sprint double.
For longevity, Andersen’s career far outstrips that of any athlete. He’s been to 10 Olympics, every outdoor track and field world championships since the inaugural event in 1983 and the Canadian nationals since the late 1970s.
He photographs everything — the runs, jumps and throws — at a track meet but when Canada has a worldclass sprinter, as it does now with De Grasse, that invariably becomes the biggest draw. Andersen photographed track through the peak years of Canadian interest in sprinting — Ben Johnson’s winning years — and the lows that followed his exposure for doping. He worked through the quieter years when Canada didn’t have a sub-10 second man. That came after Donovan Bailey and Bruny Surin’s national record-setting runs in the 1990s and lasted until the recent rise of De Grasse.
“During the Ben Johnson/Carl Lewis, it was very challenging,” Andersen said, recalling the lengths he had to go at the 1987 world championships in Rome and the 1988 Seoul Olympics just to get into a position on the track where he could get a good photo.
“From the semi the night before, at both events, you pretty much stayed in position for the final 24 hours guarding your spot . . . how crazy does that sound?”
Andersen suffered a heart attack at a track meet last year, and still got his shot. He was at the world indoor championships in Portland, Ore., and had his lens focused on Brianne Theisen-Eaton, who was about to win the pentathlon, when he started to feel the symptoms.
“I realized I was having one,” he said, “but I needed to get her coming around with the flag. I got that and then said to my friend, ‘Can you quickly get the paramedics, I’m having a heart attack.’ ”
That’s a pretty hardcore addition to the resume for someone who fell in love with the sport as a kid and plastered his bedroom wall with posters of athletic greats.
Andersen describes his heart attack and the five days he spent in the hospital as a “blip,” but it’s one that kept him from the Olympics in Rio, where Canada had one of its best summer results ever with six medals in track and field.
“That close after my heart attack, no insurance company in the world was going to have me,” he said, laughing.
To look through some of Andersen’s favourite shots is to take a romp through Canadian sprint history.
There’s one from the1982 nationals showing the trio of that era — Tony Sharpe, who discovered De Grasse as a Markham high school kid running astonishingly fast in basketball shorts; Desai Williams, a top Canadi- an sprinter and longtime coach; and Johnson.
There’s one from the 1996 Atlanta Games, just after Surin handed the baton to Bailey on the anchor leg of the 4x100-metre relay to win gold.
“I like that shot,” he said. “That’s both our Canadian record guys right there and (De Grasse) is chasing that 9.84 that they both own.”
And, of course, there are plenty of the world’s best, Usain Bolt, including a close-up from 2009 in Berlin right after he dropped his world record to 9.58 seconds.
“He’s my favourite because he’s the best who has ever lived,” Andersen said.
“He drives the sport and he will until after he’s gone. It’s going to take something special for someone to attain that same status in the world; it would be nice if it was a Canadian.”
Andersen’s career not only spans the changeover from film to digital but from relaxed track meets to the hyper-security venues and the trend to keeping athletes in competition-focussed bubbles.
“It used to be a lot easier to cover, less people, you could come and go and it was a lot easier to get close to the athletes,” he said.
When Andersen picks his spot on the track for the 100 and 200 sprints, it’s not at the finish line for anything but the final.
“Great athletes don’t look like they’re running at all when they get past the 80-metre mark (in the 100), they’re just shutting it down and I don’t want a picture of a guy shutting it down. So in the earlier rounds, at the 20-, 30-, 40-metre mark — once the guy stands up you get a good look at his face, they still have the power on — so that’s where you can get nice action shots.”
Just like an athlete, Andersen thinks about his legacy.
“For me to achieve my goal of 20 world championships, I’d be 71, which is not undoable, you’re not going to run around like guys who are 25 years old but experience is a leveller — it is in any business.”
He’ll tick off No. 16 next month in London.