Legendary ‘Miracle on Ice’ Photographer Heinz Kluetmeier Dies at 82

Heinz Kluetmeier’s iconic image adorned Sports Illustrated‘s cover on March 3, 1980. It was the only SI cover to run without a caption.

Acclaimed and influential Sports Illustrated photographer Heinz Kluetmeier died on January 14, 2025, at age 82 from complications of Parkinson’s disease.

Kluetmeier is best known for capturing an iconic photo of the “Miracle on Ice” at the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York, one of the most important moments in American sporting history.

Kluetmeier’s remarkable image was the only one to ever run on Sports Illustrated‘s cover without a caption, and readers voted it the storied magazine’s most iconic cover ever in 2014.

Team USA’s improbable 4-3 win over the legendary Soviet Union hockey team on February 22, 1980, at the Olympic Center in Lake Placid, New York, remains one of the greatest upsets not only in American sports history but all of sports. The victory came amid a backdrop of the Cold War, and the win galvanized Americans.

“For millions of people, their single, lasting image of the Lake Placid Games will be the infectious joy displayed by the U.S. hockey team following its 4-3 win over the Soviet Union last Friday night,” wrote E.M Swift for SI in 1980. And the lasting image Swift references? Heinz Kluetmeier captured it.

When asked in 2008 what his most memorable Olympic photo was, Kluetmeier replied, “I would have to say the Olympic hockey photo from Lake Placid. That’s the only cover we ever ran without cover language. It didn’t need it. Everyone in America knew what happened.”

The German-born Milwaukee-raised American sports photographer covered nearly every Olympic Games from 1972 until his retirement in 2016. He had over a hundred Sports Illustrated covers to his name and served two separate stints as the magazine’s director of photography.

Beyond being well-known for his Miracle on Ice photos, Kluetmeier was also known for inventive photographic techniques and equipment. He set up remote cameras at the finish line of the 1980 Moscow Olympics — summer and winter games occurred in the same year back then. At the time, he was the only photographer to have a remote camera setup. He was also the first photographer to use underwater cameras to capture swimming events in 1992.

Heinz Kluetmeier won a Lifetime Achievement award at the Lucie Awards in 2007. The Lucie Awards notes that Kluetmeier became passionate about photography at a very young age, having started shooting for the Associated Press when he was just 15.

“I think that technique and technical stuff is absolutely irrelevant to the picture in terms of what you do as a photographer. I think the most important thing is to have a vision, to have an emotional feeling, to care about what you’re photographing, and to have something that’s already there in your heart, in your eye,” Kluetmeier said.