60,000 photos from 100,000 miles

George Aitkin has photographed a lot of runners. By his own estimation, he has nearly 60,000 photos in his home, mostly of runners and races from the past 40 years.

Aitkin has lived in the same house his entire life in Cambridge, Ont. and earlier this year, at the age of 61, reached 100,000 lifetime miles, but for most of those years he’s also been avidly shooting photos as well. He says his father was a hobby photographer, which rubbed off early on him. He began photographing friends occasionally at races in the early 1970s with his first camera, a Kodak Pocket Instamatic 110.

He didn’t only shoot runners, but Aitkin thought his two hobbies overlapped nicely and in 1979 got his first 35  mm camera.

“Then it sort of took off from there,” explains Aitkin. “That’s when the bulk of my pictures have occurred, since then. I got a second 35 mm and started shooting black and white as well. Then I actually got a third one and was taking slide pictures.”

He soon realized that his shots were good enough to be in magazines and did some work for various track and field and running publications, including Athletics Weekly and Runner’s World, the latter of which used to have a Canadian edition in the 1980s. He also found his shots showing up in local newspapers around the country after allowing running clubs to use his photos.

“I have pretty thick albums. When you buy these albums they come with a label saying they’ll hold 400 pictures and I have about 140 of those, full. More than 400 in a lot of them. […] They’re not all running albums, but the majority of them are running photos.”

Aitkin was a strong runner, but what ended up taking him to world track and field and world cross-country championships was his photography. A friend of Kevin Sullivan’s, he started documenting the young star’s athletic career. When Kevin began qualifying to compete on national teams, Aitkin tagged along to photograph events, which soon became a regular gig. He was granted press passes to all the world cross-country championships through the ’90s until 2001.

A lot of those events host all-comers or press races before the main event, so Aitkin jokes he actually ran most of the courses himself.

Though mostly of Canadians, some some of the shots flash figures who were the best in the world certain years, such as Ben Johnson and Paul Tergat, among others.

Of all the photos he’s taken, Aitkin can still pick a few of his favourites. One he always goes back to is of Klaus Mueller emerging from the steeplechase pit on his way to a national junior championships.

Still, Aitkin is adamant he’s not only a photographer.

“Running and photography, sort of, have been my life. I’ve been a runner since 1967. I’ve run so many miles and races. Some people know me mostly as a running photographer but I’ve run almost 1,200 races in my career. I keep thinking wow, I’ve taken so many pictures. How did I have time to do all the racing I’ve done too? If I’m not at a race to take pictures I’m there to race.”

Some more photos of running from past decades (captions written by George Aitkin):