Pioneer Sports Snapper to continue working at the age of 81

For almost five decades, Eileen Langsle photographed some of the biggest sporting events in the world.

World championships in figure skating and gymnastics at the first women’s rugby world cup in 1991 with 14 Olympic games, she had a stellar career.

But he came with great challenges.

The 81 -year -old man of Bakewell, Derbyshire, told the BBC that she had faced sexism and misogyny throughout her career and regularly found herself as the only woman at sporting events when she started.

She says that her inspiration to start her career in photography in 1976 was a lack of representation for women in sports coverage.

Before his Jet-Set work takes him to the four corners of the globe, Eileen, a passionate athlete and EP teacher at the King Edward VII school in Sheffield, wanted to inspire her students with photos of other professional sports.

But she was amazed to see that there was practically not to show them.

“Trying to find a woman participating in a professional sport without a sexist inclination that was few,” she said.

“I had a large wall in the locker room that I wanted to fill in photos so that girls could be inspired.”

It was from this moment that Eileen decided to do it herself.

She took a camera and learned the profession with useful advice from her husband, admitting that she knew “absolutely nothing” on photography.

Eileen attributes to the newspapers Sheffield Star and Sheffield Telegraph for his big break in the industry, guaranteeing his first backward advance with a photo of a gymnast of the city in the late 1970s.

“It was refreshing to make them support me at this stage when I encountered so many obstacles,” she recalls.

With the work that rolls, both in local newspapers and specialized magazines, she installed her own photo agency and exchanged the classroom in the dark room to go full time.

Although he was overthrown for accreditation for the Moscow Olympic Games in 1980, her work borne fruit and she became the official photographer of the International Gymnastics Federation in 1983 which saw her fly away in different parts of the world.

She was a founding member of Women’s Sports Foundation in the United Kingdom – now named Women in Sport – and was their photographer for several years as well as press and public relations management.

Eileen said at this stage that she worked outside the United Kingdom more than she was back home.

However, she has always been faced with challenges in an industry dominated by men.

“People in Great Britain were quite reluctant to use a woman in my field at the time,” she said.

“The reaction that I have always obtained was” women do not know enough about sport “, which was really ironic because I knew more about sport than on photography at the time.

“It was not easy, the men were divided into two groups.

“A group was great and accepted very in me the work I produced, but another larger group really felt women encroaching in what they considered a man of a man.

“I wanted to join an agency from the start so that I could have this support and I remember that one told me that they would never use a woman.

“I went alone and I did well, but it was a lonely path to walk.”

Eileen remembers an athletics event that she covered in Crystal Palace in London in the late 1970s when she noticed a group of chattering male photographers. When they spotted it, they became silent and avoided it for the rest of the event.

Eileen has also decided to change the perception and the way in which female athletes were represented on the camera – focusing on their talent and athletics rather than their appearance.

But she received requests for publications to take photos of “sexualized” female athletes.

“I did a lot of enemies at the time to refuse to do it, they thought I was less professional,” she said.

“I told a man once what he would think if it was their 14 -year -old daughter on the beam (gymnast)? They wouldn’t like him.”

Eileen also remembers an era in Dublin photographing the Women’s Hockey World Cup in 1994 when the shutters of her colleagues began to compete when a gust of wind revealed players’ underwear in their pre-match group.

Despite the sexism and misogyny she faced, she continued and won prices for her work.

She won a joint UK Sports Photo of the Year prize for her image, “ Tight Squee ‘, which represents two rhythmic gymnasts crossing a single hoop in 1983, a photo of which she is very proud.

Eileen also won an international prize for her image of three boys playing rugby the same year.

If there is a big sporting event, it is likely that Eileen was at the center of capturing everything.

She was there for Torvill and Dean’s historical figure skating in Sarajevo in 1984.

Eileen had a lot of work from figure skating at the time and said it was “very special” to capture the famous gold of the Pair of Nottingham.

But it was not entirely navigated.

Behind the scenes, which Eileen said that moving to the Olympic site – in what is now the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina – was a “nightmare” and she still remembers “aggressive security” in the old Yugoslav country.

“Nowadays, you get enormous support from the British Olympic Association, but at the time, you were alone,” she said.

She then covered 13 other summer and winter games and said that Paris 2024 was “special” because she believes that it will be the last Olympic games she covers.

“I can’t see myself doing another, this work is physical and with plane trips, I think Paris is my last,” she said.

“I look back and Super Saturday in London 2012 was a highlight and when I captured winning moments with our Olympic gymnasts Olympic medals, these are great memories, incredible.”

However, she says that she does not intend to place her camera.

She aims at the European Championships for Figure Skating on the road in Sheffield and the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, both in 2026.

“I aim to continue as long as possible,” she said.

“There are many locally that I am looking to do, retirement is not something I look at.”

Looking at the industry now, Eileen said it was a “completely different world” when she started.

“It has been great in recent years to see so many women go through sports photography and work at the highest level,” she said.

“Their male counterparts respect them and admire the work they do.

“There is a huge harvest of fantastic women in sports photography.”