Silver in Lausanne: Placing 2nd at the AIPS Sport Media Awards 2026
I'm still processing this one.
Last week I was standing in a room in Lausanne, Switzerland — the Olympic capital, the home of sport surrounded by some of the best sports media professionals on the planet, holding a silver medal. Second place. Photography Portfolio category. AIPS Sport Media Awards, eighth edition.
I don't think it's fully sunk in yet.
For those who aren't familiar, the AIPS Sport Media Awards are about as prestigious as it gets in the world of sports journalism and media. Run by the Association Internationale de la Presse Sportive (the International Sports Press Association) they're the highest international accolade in the sport media industry, covering everything from writing and audio to video and photography across two categories: Sport Action and Portfolio. The jury is made up of twelve experts led by AIPS President Gianni Merlo, and they do not hand out medals easily. This isn't a community vote. There's no algorithm gaming it. It's a room of serious professionals looking at serious work.
I submitted to the Portfolio category, which means you're not just throwing one strong single frame at the judges and hoping for the best. You're presenting a body of work, a cohesive visual story across multiple images. It's a different challenge, and honestly, a scarier one. A portfolio exposes everything: your range, your consistency, your eye, your ability to tell stories across different conditions and contexts. There's nowhere to hide.
Sunset shots over Howe Sound in Squamish, BC
When I put this portfolio together I wasn't thinking about trophies. I was thinking about whether the images, laid out together, told a story I was proud of. Whether they represented the sport the way I experience it in the sea to sky corridor of Canada. Raw, physical, beautiful, occasionally terrifying. Whether someone who'd never ridden a trail or stood on a start line could look at these frames and feel something.
Submitting was almost an afterthought, honestly. I'd been following the AIPS Awards for a couple of years after including them in my 2026 contest roundup, and something about this year felt right. The work felt like it had grown. I hit the submit button, kept shooting, and mostly forgot about it.
Then came the longlist in January. Then the shortlist in February. Then the top ten finalists announcement in March. Each step felt increasingly surreal — the kind of thing where you screenshot it and sit there staring at your phone wondering if you misread it. I hadn't.
Blue Hour on the North Shore, Vancouver
The ceremony itself was held on April 10th as part of the AIPS Congress in Lausanne. Getting on a flight to Switzerland for a photography award was not something 33 year old me, the kid from the UK who had a cheap DSLR and no idea what he was doing would have believed was possible. Lausanne is something else. Even just walking around the city the morning before the ceremony, past the lake, knowing that so much of the world's sporting history has been written there, It's a place that takes sport seriously. It felt appropriate.
The room at the gala was filled with print journalists, documentary filmmakers, podcasters, photographers, the full spectrum of sports media represented across every continent. Hearing work discussed in four different languages. Watching journalists pick up trophies for stories from every corner of the world. It was a good reminder of how big this whole thing is, and how small Squamish can feel on the map while still producing work that holds its own on the international stage.
Validation from a jury of twelve international experts that the work I've been putting out meant a lot. It was amazing, That a photographer from Squamish shooting mountain biking (a relatively niche sport on the scale of things) can compete at the highest level of international sports media and come away with a podium finish.
I've written before about what wins like this mean beyond the hardware. After the Mark Gunter win in January, I talked about validation about those moments when you're grinding away at something you love and you wonder whether you're actually getting anywhere, or just telling yourself you are. Competition results are one of the few external measures that cut through the noise. Not follower counts. Not engagement metrics. A jury of your peers, looking at the work, and saying: this is worth recognising.
This one hits differently though. AIPS isn't a cycling-specific competition. It's not a regional award or a niche community accolade. It's the international sports press association. The same organisation that's been credentialing sports journalists for major events for a hundred years. Having my name attached to that is something I'll carry forward for a long time.
The three finalists
To the athletes who trust me with their likeness and let me follow them into the dark corners of the trails they ride this is as much yours as it is mine. The work only exists because you exist, and because you do what you do the way you do it. Thank you.
To the Squamish and Sea to Sky community more broadly: you are endlessly photogenic and I am not sorry for continuing to point cameras at you.
And to anyone sitting on work they haven't entered anywhere yet, go submit it. The worst that happens is nothing. The best that happens is Recognition.
Thanks for reading.
Joe
Joe Wakefield is a sports photographer based in Squamish, BC, specialising in mountain bike and action sports photography. jbwphotos.ca