The weekend’s 2025 World Athletics Relays in Guangzhou, China, took “no risk, no reward,” to a whole new level. On Sunday, videos surfaced showing the championship’s daring videography setup: a cameraman balancing on an electric unicycle, chasing athletes as they sprinted full-speed down the track. Wearing a T-shirt, joggers and a full motorcycle helmet, he carried a handheld camera, capturing footage from just metres away.
The footage showed stunning close-up, eye-level angles of world-class athletes in motion–a rare feat in any sport. The unicyclist maneuvered around the entire track, keeping pace with runners as they hit average speeds of 38 km/h.
But these kinds of close-ups come with real risk. One wrong move could mean disaster: a high-speed collision with a sprinter, or serious injury to the cameraman himself.
Since it’s clearly impossible for anyone on foot to match a sprinter’s pace, most events rely on safer tools like mounted broadcasts cameras, railcams (on rails along the infield) or wirecams (suspended overhead across the stadium). In recent years, drones have also entered the mix, providing unique overhead views.
Cameraman walks into 5,000m racers on the track at Paris Olympics
Still, camera-athlete collisions–while rare–do happen. In 2015, after winning the 200m title at the World Championships in Beijing, Jamaican legend Usain Bolt was famously wiped out by a Segway-riding cameraman. And at the 2024 Paris Olympics, a cameraman with a shoulder rig wandered onto the track during the men’s 5,000m heats–and forcing two athletes, including Norway’s Jakob Ingebrigtsen, to swerve to avoid a pile-up.
