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BBC News
18-05-2025
- Sport
- BBC News
Eileen Langsley: Pioneer sports snapper to keep working aged 81
For nearly five decades Eileen Langsle has photographed some of the world's biggest sporting events. From world championships in figure skating and gymnastics, to the inaugural Women's Rugby World Cup in 1991 along with 14 Olympics, she has enjoyed a stellar it has come with big 81-year-old, from Bakewell, Derbyshire, told the BBC she had faced sexism and misogyny throughout her career and regularly found herself as the only woman at sporting events when she started says her inspiration to start her photography career in 1976 was a lack of representation for women in sports coverage. Before her jet-setting job took her to all four corners of the globe, Eileen, a keen athlete and PE teacher at King Edward VII School in Sheffield, wanted to inspire her female students with pictures of other professional sports women. But she was stunned to find there were hardly any she could find to show them."Trying to find a woman participating in professional sport without a sexist slant to it was few and far between," she said. "I had a big wall in the changing room that I wanted to fill with pictures so the girls could be inspired."It was from that point Eileen decided to do it picked up a camera and learned the craft with some helpful pointers from her husband, admitting she knew "absolutely nothing" about photography. Eileen credits the Sheffield Star and Sheffield Telegraph newspapers for her big break into the industry, securing her first back-page lead with a photo of a city gymnast in late 1970s."It was refreshing to have them supporting me at that stage when I was coming up against so many obstacles," she recalled. With work rolling in, both across local newspapers and specialist magazines, she set up her own photo agency and swapped the classroom for the dark room to go being knocked back for accreditation for the Moscow Olympics in 1980, her work paid off and she became the official photographer for the International Gymnastics Federation in 1983 which saw her fly out to different parts of the was a founder member of the Women's Sports Foundation in the UK - now named Women in Sport - and was their photographer for a number of years as well as running the press and public relations said at this point she was working outside the UK more than she was back she still faced challenges in an industry dominated by men. "People in Britain were quite reluctant to employ a woman in my field at the time," she said."The reaction I got always was 'women don't know enough about sport' which was ironic really because I knew more about sport than I did about photography then."It wasn't easy, the men were split into two groups."One group were great and were very accepting of me from the work I produced but another larger group really resented women encroaching into what they saw as a man's world."I wanted to join an agency from the outset so I could have that support and I remember one telling me that they would never employ a woman."I went on my own and I did well but it was a lonely path to walk." Eileen recalls an athletics event she covered at Crystal Palace in London in the late 70s when she noticed a group of male photographers chatting away. When they spotted her, they went quiet and shunned her for the rest of the also set out to change the perception and the way female athletes were portrayed on camera - focusing on their talent and athleticism rather than how they she got requests from publications to take photos of female athletes "in a sexualised way"."I made quite a few enemies at the time for refusing to do that, they thought I was less of a professional," she said."I once said to a man what he would think if that was their 14-year-old daughter up on the [gymnast] beam? They wouldn't like it."Eileen also recalls a time in Dublin photographing the Women's Hockey World Cup in 1994 when the shutters from her colleagues began snapping away when a gust of wind revealed the underwear of the players in their pre-game the sexism and misogyny she faced, she carried on and won awards for her work. She earned a joint UK sports photo of the year award for her image, 'A Tight Squeeze', which depicts two rhythmic gymnasts going through a single hoop in 1983, a snap she is very proud also won an international award for her image of three boys playing rugby in the same there is a big sporting event, chances are Eileen was at the centre capturing it all. She was there for Torvill and Dean's historic figure skating gold in Sarajevo in had a lot of work from figure skating at the time and said it was "extra special" to capture the Nottingham pair's famous gold. But it was not all plain the scenes Eileen said getting around the Olympic site - in what is now the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina - was a "nightmare" and she still recalls the "aggressive security" in the former Yugoslav country."Nowadays, you get huge support from the British Olympic Association but back then, you were on your own," she said. She went on to cover another 13 summer and winter games and said Paris 2024 was "special" as she believes it will be the last Olympics she covers. "I can't see myself doing another one, this job is physical and with the air travel, I think Paris is my last one," she said."I look back and Super Saturday at London 2012 was a massive highlight and when I've captured winning moments with our gymnasts winning Olympic medals, they are great memories, amazing." However says she hs no plans to put down her camera just has her sights on the European Figure Skating Championships up the road in Sheffield and the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, both in 2026."I aim to keep going as long as I can," she said."There's a lot locally I'm looking to do, retirement isn't something I'm looking at." Looking at the industry now, Eileen said it was a "completely different world" to when she started."It's been great in recent years to see so many women coming through in sports photography and working at the top level," she said."Their male counterparts respect them and admire the work that they do."There's such a huge crop of fantastic woman in sports photography."
Irish Times
12-05-2025
- Sport
- Irish Times
Denis Walsh: This photo strips the camogie skorts controversy back to its absurd essence
Matchday shots of referees and captains have been a staple of sports photography for generations. Once upon a time, those photographs had a certain currency, like a ribbon-cutting ceremony, or communion pictures with the bishop. Newspapers were suckers for ceremony. Those kinds of photographs are rarely published now. Nick Bradshaw's picture from the Kilkenny v Dublin camogie match eight days ago, though, discarded the usual protocols. Absent were the plastic smiles and the prompted handshake between the captains. Instead, the image was arresting and lucid. Bradshaw took the shot from a distance and from behind the referee's back. Nobody is posing for the camera or pretending. You can tell from the expression on the captains' faces and from the referee's hand gesture that their conversation has gone beyond small talk . At the heart of the image, though, the story was stripped back to its absurd essence: a person wearing shorts is telling two other people that they cannot wear shorts. On whose authority? The person in the middle, wearing shorts, enforcing rules dictated by the Camogie Association. READ MORE The hand-me-down photographs of the referee and the captains through the decades never had anything to say, but this one screamed. The picture was a portal into a mixed-up world. What the events of the last week have exposed, yet again, is a dysfunctional relationship between the officer class of the Camogie Association and its elite players. The delegates who voted a year ago to exclude shorts as an option wilfully ignored the wishes of their players, just as they might do again at the emergency Special Congress in a week's time. But this is not an isolated occurrence. It belongs to a pattern. Four years ago, the Camogie Association tried to ram through a fixture schedule against the wishes of its intercounty players. The association's proposal was that the intercounty season would be split in two, with the leagues run off in the spring and the championship staged in the autumn and early winter. It was approved by Central Council and rejected by the players. In a snap poll of its members by the Gaelic Players Association (GPA), 84 per cent voted to boycott the National Leagues if the proposed fixture schedule was adopted. Eight days after the outcome of that poll was communicated to the Camogie Association, its president Hilda Breslin gave an interview to the Irish News. In it, she extolled the virtues of the original proposal. City Hall had no mind to back down. Ultimately, the issue was decided by a referendum of the clubs, which, by a narrow margin, supported the intercounty players. But why should the players have been forced into conflict? At the end of the previous year, 2020, the Women's Gaelic Players Association (WGPA) merged with the GPA. Until that point, however, the Camogie Association had very little truck with the players' representative body and effectively only dealt with them in relation to state funding. At the time, grants from Sport Ireland required a memorandum of understanding to be signed each year by the Camogie Association, the Ladies Gaelic Football Association (LGFA) and the WGPA. That was the only context in which the Camogie Association was prepared to do business with the WGPA – when they had no choice. How did that make their players feel? Valued? Heard? No? Two years later, the Camogie Association flew into turbulence with its elite players again, alongside the LGFA. Neither federation had a player charter in place to meet the kind of basic welfare provisions that their male counterparts were guaranteed. [ 'Scant regard' for players: Cork and Waterford express disappointment over Munster final postponement Opens in new window ] [ Girls' participation in sport falls off a cliff in their teens. The skorts row shows why Opens in new window ] Pre-match, sit-down protests started in mid-June. They continued, with incremental escalations, until mid-July. At that point, the Camogie Association and LGFA relented to the pressure. The players charter that was agreed in 2024 is far from ideal, but it was a start. But why should the players have been forced into conflict? Why was there resistance from the officer class? Should they not have wanted the best for their players? The Kilkenny camogie team in shorts ahead of their Leinster semi-final against Dublin on May 3rd. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw The Munster final was postponed on Friday evening, with less than a day's notice. On Saturday afternoon, the Cork and Waterford players issued a joint statement expressing their anger at how the situation was handled. 'As a united group we want to express our bitter disappointment,' it read. 'It shows scant regard for the preparation of players both mentally and physically to be ready for a provincial showpiece to make this decision just 16 hours before the scheduled throw-in … We feel completely let down.' Between camogie's elite players and the game's officer class, the breakdown in trust is absolute. The responsibility for that lies with the game's leadership. In Gaelic games, this is the era of player power. If a manager has 'lost the dressingroom', county boards or club executives won't close their eyes and ears and hope it goes away. A change will be made. If they have a new manager in mind, senior players will be discreetly consulted. That is accepted as best practice now. On Thursday night, members of the Cork county board executive tried to persuade their players to back down The management of the Waterford camogie team changed in recent weeks. The players influenced that turn of events. Now, intercounty players expect to enter partnership arrangements with intercounty managers and county boards. They expect leadership groups within squads and open channels for dialogue. They're not afraid to ask for whatever they feel they need. The days of autocratic rule are gone. Since the fixtures stand-off in 2021, intercounty camogie players have found their voices. It is strange, perhaps, that it took a year from when Congress rejected two motions on shorts for the kind of uprising that we have witnessed in the last week. But there is no turning back now. On Thursday night, members of the Cork county board executive tried to persuade their players to back down and wear skorts in the Munster final. The players refused to buckle. If delegates at Special Congress vote once again to reject shorts as an option, all the indications are that the players will simply not accept it. This is not a battle that the Camogie Association and its officer class can win. It is not a battle that the players can afford to lose. The bolshiness will prevail. It must.
