Chris Smith obituary
Sports photographer for the Observer and the Sunday Times who sought to capture human drama and emotion
When the Beatles waltzed unannounced into the 5th Street Gym in Miami Beach in 1964, the sports photographer Chris Smith seized the moment. He was there to record Cassius Clay (later Muhammad Ali) in training for his fight with Sonny Liston, but when the Fab Four began hamming it up with the Greatest, he captured the five most famous faces on the planet in one memorable shot.
Ali went on to furnish Smith with many unforgettable images over the years, and the photographer seemed always to be in the right place at the right time to document the host of larger-than-life sporting characters who peopled the last four decades of the 20th century, including George Best, Seve Ballesteros, Frank Bruno, Martina Navratilova and Lester Piggott.
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