Hours before capturing one of the enduring images of the 2026 Olympics — and perhaps sports this decade — Elsa Garrison scouted her surroundings at Milano Santagiulia Ice Hockey Arena, host of the men’s gold medal hockey game in Milan. The Getty Images photographer made a mental note of where Team Canada families were sitting, then did the same for the Americans. She knew that after the game, the victorious players would likely skate toward their loved ones for a moment of celebration. Garrison wanted to be ready.
As she and American forward Jack Hughes both learned that evening, iconic shots happen when preparedness meets a crucial moment.
Garrison, who has been with Getty for nearly 30 years and goes by her first name only in the company’s photo credits, shot the game from near center ice on the penalty-box side of the rink. When Hughes scored the game-winning goal in overtime, Garrison immediately took photos of elated American players pouring off the bench. She didn’t linger near center ice, though. Less than a minute after the goal, she moved to the corner of the rink, right in front of the American families.
As Garrison predicted, that’s exactly where the Team USA players skated before the medal ceremony. As the golden-goal scorer, Hughes was at the top of Garrison’s mental list of players to shoot. She snapped a series of photos through the glass, including the now-viral image likely to be shown in sports photography classes. Hughes has the American flag draped around his shoulders and is gazing into the crowd, his right fist lifted. He’s grinning, showing off his chipped front tooth and still-bloody mouth from a high-sticking penalty drawn earlier in the game.
“It’s all the elements you would look for from somebody who scored the game-winning goal,” Garrison said.
“It’s definitely a pretty legendary picture,” said Hughes, who plays for the New Jersey Devils. “The photographer just captured the perfect moment of the teeth and the jersey and the flag draped over my shoulders and just the pure excitement.”
If the gold medal game had been played at an NHL rink, where seats are directly against the boards, Garrison’s picture would have been impossible. But at Santagiulia, there was a gap behind the glass to accommodate more photographers, so Garrison was able to rush through it quickly to get in position after the game. Her assignment for Getty was to monitor the perimeter while other photographers lined up to get on the ice for the medal ceremony. She was the only still photographer situated by the U.S. families, allowing her to capture an image different from anyone else: one that may endure for decades.
“We’ve gotten so used to images having such a short shelf life,” Garrison said. “To see this one have a little bit more staying power has been really cool.”
“It just brings you back to the moment,” Team USA coach Mike Sullivan said.
Garrison works out of Getty’s New York office and lives in New Jersey, so she frequently shoots Devils games and knows plenty of the team staff. One of her first thoughts after snapping the photo was that the team would be happy with it; she had no sense in the moment how far the photo would reach.
In the time since, Garrison has gained more than 10,000 Instagram followers. She’s been inundated with direct messages. She doesn’t believe any other photo she’s taken in her career has received this kind of attention. That’s saying something, given her track record.
Garrison is no stranger to taking momentous sports photos. She shot Eagles running back Saquon Barkley’s backwards hurdle over a defender in 2024, as well as Simone Biles and Jordan Chiles bowing to gold medalist Rebeca Andrade at the 2024 Paris Olympics. ESPN football reporter Adam Schefter and SportsCenter posted a compilation of those two photos, as well as the Hughes image, with the caption: “Three of the most iconic sports images captured in the last few years have all been taken by the same photographer.” The post has nearly 200,000 likes on Instagram.
Garrison is from Brainerd, Minnesota, a town about two hours north of Minneapolis best known as one of the settings in the movie “Fargo.” She first picked up a camera as a freshman in high school, then started working part-time as a photographer for the Brainerd Daily Dispatch as a sophomore. After graduating from the University of Missouri, she was hired by Allsport, a photo agency acquired by Getty in 1998.
Garrison was the first woman staff photographer at Getty. She believes the industry has changed and become more inclusive in the past 20 to 30 years. Last month, at the Olympic team figure skating event in Milan, she noticed that seven of the eight or nine photographers on the international press pool carpet were women.
Elsa Garrison shoots a photo of Brady Tkachuk at the Olympics. (Courtesy of Getty Images)
“There is a lot left to do, but I feel like women are more encouraged and more welcomed to be sport photographers than certainly when I started,” she said. “We’re not as singled out or harassed or any of that sort of thing. We’re allowed to do our jobs for the most part.”
In the late 1990s, Sports Illustrated — then known for its excellent photography — used one of Garrison’s University of Missouri football photos for a two-page display. She was thrilled to appear in the magazine, but when she opened it, she saw that the publication had incorrectly added extra vowels to her maiden name, Hasch, and had written her first name as Eli, not Elsa. Her excitement quickly faded into sadness.
“Maybe I should just go by Elsa so they can learn how to spell that first, and then I can add my last name later,” she remembers joking.
A year or two later, she was shooting the 1999 Stanley Cup Final between the Dallas Stars and Buffalo Sabres. Sports Illustrated wanted to use one of her pictures of Buffalo goalie Dominik Hašek. She was shooting film at the time and mailed the magazine her slide mount with only “Elsa” written on it. That’s how it ran, and it’s how she kept submitting photos after.
“I felt like it was a way for me to kind of scream that I’m here without screaming that I’m here,” she said.
She quipped that if she tried to add her last name now, Getty’s system would probably crash.
The Hughes picture is a major achievement for Garrison, but it doesn’t mean the rest of her job is on pause. She photographs a variety of sports for Getty and has a lot of soccer games on her schedule with the 2026 World Cup nearing. She also shoots many New York area teams, including the Knicks, Nets, Yankees, Mets, Liberty, Devils and Sirens.
In the aftermath of the Olympics, Garrison received a text from Neil Leifer, who shot arguably the most famous sports picture in history: Muhammad Ali standing over Sonny Liston in 1965. He congratulated her on capturing a great moment with the Hughes photo. Between that message and the widespread recognition her picture received, Garrison is still in shock. But through it all she feels pride in her work.
“I did my job that day,” she said, “and I did it pretty well.”
