Joel Marklund

Only 10 years ago, Joel Marklund covered his first Olympics, aged just 23. He’s had a meteoric career rise since and tells Keith Wilson what he’s learnt from shooting World Cups, winning awards and destroying cameras…

- Keith Wilson

Joel Marklund and I are talking after an especially crowded summer that included the emotional roller coaster of a World Cup and European Championships in athletics and swimming. All of which was on top of his usual schedule of Champions League football, major golf tournaments and F1 racing. “It’s been a crazy year,” says the 33-year-old chief photographer of Swedish sports photo agency Bildbyrån. Although he’s anticipating a quieter week in his New York office, preparations for major events are never far away: “I’m here for 10 days and then there’s a world press briefing ahead of the Olympics in two years.” But before thoughts turn to 2020, let’s take some time to reflect on the summer just past…

What have been some of your recent highlights?

I would definitely say the World Cup. I’m Swedish and having the Swedish team go so far in the tournament – I was supposed to be at Wimbledon from day one, but none of us really expected the Swedish team to go so far, so I only covered the second week of Wimbledon! It’s a very special thing covering your nation in a tournament like that, and I don’t know if I’m going to see it again in my lifetime. That’s the nature of the championships, you don’t know, and coming from a small country like Sweden, it’s very special.

Yes, and who would have thought that Germany would finish bottom of their group? No one could have ever called that!

True. It was nice to be there. I wasn’t covering that many matches, but I covered all of Sweden’s matches, which was five in total.

We shouldn’t talk about Sweden’s loss to England in the quarter final, but what was the best match you covered during the World Cup?

Oh, I think the round 16 match against Switzerland. We played very well in that match.