Getty Images, which has held the official title of photographic agency to the International Olympic Committee for 22 years, is gearing up to cover the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games in February. The agency was first designated as the official provider of such services during Canada’s first Winter Olympics of 1988 in Calgary, Alberta—the home of Getty-owned iStockphoto.
Getty plans to deploy 26 photographers to cover 86 separate events, which will span 15 winter sports and unite some 2,500 athletes. Support teams will lay 18 miles of fiber-optic cable to enable photographers to upload up-to-the-minute coverage, expected to produce more than 1,000 images per day. These will be accessible through a dedicated Getty Olympic Web site.
The site also offers one of the largest archives of Olympic imagery in the world, going as far back as the 1896 Games in Athens. A collection of this photography is on permanent view at the Olympic Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Getty Images is also the photo agency for the U.S. Olympic Committee and Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games. The agency’s team is already at work, chronicling the torch relay as it moves through Canada.