Heinz Kluetmeier, famed ‘Miracle on Ice’ photographer, lifeless at 82

The person behind probably the most iconic pictures in American sports activities historical past handed away on Tuesday. 

Famed Sports activities Illustrated photographer Heinz Kluetmeier died on the age of 82 after problems with Parkinson’s illness and a stroke. 

Kluetmeier was the person behind the lens for the memorable photograph of the “Miracle on Ice” on the 1980 Winter Olympics when the American males’s hockey workforce upset the Soviet Union in Lake Placid, New York. 

The enduring photograph made the duvet of SI’s March 1980 situation and was the one cowl to ever run with out a headline. 

The image confirmed the USA gamers celebrating on the ice moments after the ultimate horn sounded. 

Kluetmeier informed Sports activities Illustrated in a 2008 interview that the “Miracle on Ice” photograph was probably the most memorable Olympic snap he’s ever taken. 

“That’s the one cowl we ever ran with out cowl language,” he mentioned on the time. “It didn’t want it. Everybody in America knew what occurred. A detailed second on the identical Olympics was (velocity skater) Eric Heiden. The pre-Olympic cowl of him was the primary time he placed on the gold go well with. And I’ve to say the final Olympics I actually loved when Michael [Phelps] gained his first medal in Athens. It was unbridled enthusiasm. Nothing studied, nothing deliberate, nothing choreographed. It was, ‘Wow, I gained.’ That was my final Olympic cowl.”

Kluetmeier immigrated to the USA when he was 9 years outdated, and he began taking pictures photos when he was 15. 

He began his profession with the Milwaukee Journal and joined Time Inc. in 1969, the place his pictures appeared in LIFE journal and Sports activities Illustrated. 

Kluetmeier retired in 2016, and one of many remaining sporting occasions he photographed was that 12 months’s Kentucky Derby. 

“He labored more durable than anybody,” Kluetmeier’s daughter Jessie informed CBS 42.

“His work was a lot of who he was, and I feel he took pleasure in it.”