Just as the Olympics attract the world’s best athletes, the Games also lure many of the world’s greatest photographers to capture their superhuman feats. Their tools are many: multiple exposures, robotic underwater cameras, remotes hanging from rafters, and good old-fashioned sideline shooting. The result is a daily flood of thousands upon thousands of images.
Among the very best of them are Reuters photographer Dominic Ebenbichler capturing swimmer Michael Phelps, the most decorated Olympian ever, reveling in yet another gold; Fabrizio Bensch of Reuters suspending time as gymnast Simone Biles is airborne above the balance beam; Katie Ledecky’s world record-setting swim is immortalized in a sublime, underwater photo by the AP’s David J. Phillip, and in a quieter frame, Russia’s Yulia Efimova’s anguish over a second-place finish is intimately documented by the AP’s Matt Slocum.
Here, TIME has selected just 37 of the most spectacular photographs made so far at the Rio Olympic Summer Games.
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