Going for the Gold

Photographing the best in the world? Fire as fast as you can every time he comes up for air.

- Barry Tanenbaum

MOST OF THE PHOTOGRAPHERS were set up at the front of the pool for the 100-meter butterfly final, but Jeff Cable decided to try for a different view of Michael Phelps in that event. You wouldn’t know it from the photo, but he was actually 20 rows up in the seats on the opposite side of the starting block.

Phelps would be in Lane 2, and Cable wanted a head-on position. “The photo spots on the other side had been taken,” he says, “but luckily there were a couple of spectator seats open a row behind the photographers, and one of them was right in front of his lane.”