The weekend’s 2025 World Athletics Relays in Guangzhou, China, took “no danger, no reward,” to a complete new degree. On Sunday, movies surfaced displaying the championship’s daring videography setup: a cameraman balancing on an electrical unicycle, chasing athletes as they sprinted full-speed down the observe. Carrying a T-shirt, joggers and a full motorbike helmet, he carried a handheld digicam, capturing footage from simply metres away.
The footage confirmed gorgeous close-up, eye-level angles of world-class athletes in movement–a uncommon feat in any sport. The unicyclist maneuvered across the whole observe, preserving tempo with runners as they hit common speeds of 38 km/h.
However these sorts of close-ups include actual danger. One incorrect transfer may imply catastrophe: a high-speed collision with a sprinter, or critical damage to the cameraman himself.
Because it’s clearly unattainable for anybody on foot to match a sprinter’s tempo, most occasions depend on safer instruments like mounted broadcasts cameras, railcams (on rails alongside the infield) or wirecams (suspended overhead throughout the stadium). In recent times, drones have additionally entered the combination, offering distinctive overhead views.
Cameraman walks into 5,000m racers on the observe at Paris Olympics
Nonetheless, camera-athlete collisions–whereas uncommon–do occur. In 2015, after profitable the 200m title on the World Championships in Beijing, Jamaican legend Usain Bolt was famously worn out by a Segway-riding cameraman. And on the 2024 Paris Olympics, a cameraman with a shoulder rig wandered onto the observe throughout the males’s 5,000m heats–and forcing two athletes, together with Norway’s Jakob Ingebrigtsen, to swerve to keep away from a pile-up.
