After nearly four decades behind the lens, Delly Carr will bid farewell to triathlon photography in 2025, marking the end of an era.
As the Official Photographer for AusTriathlon for 37 years, Carr has been a fixture at finish lines and podium celebrations, capturing some of the sport’s most iconic moments – from age group competition to Olympic and Paralympic triumphs.
Few have been as deeply embedded in Australian triathlon – his work has defined Australian triathlon, preserving its history, inspiring generations, and connecting athletes across all levels.
Before he officially steps away from the sport following the 2025 World Triathlon Championship Finals in Wollongong, Carr will embark on a farewell tour, photographing a full calendar of events across Australia one final time – an opportunity for the Australian triathlon community reflect on his legacy and thank him for all he has done.
Ahead of his final lap behind the lens, we sat down with him to reflect on his remarkable career, the legacy he leaves behind, and what comes next.
After nearly four decades behind the lens, what led to your decision to step away from photographing triathlon?
37 years. I never thought the day would come.
One day I woke up and wondered who I’ve become, where I came from, and how long my life in triathlon has been. I spent so many years pouring my heart into the sport, for everyone and my art, and while I was busy giving my heart away, I perhaps gave myself away too.
I forgot all the things that I’ve wanted to do in my art and life. My nurturing, loving, unique creative and intelligent being needed to reconnect with the parts of us that we neglect and put aside. We sometimes forget this because it’s been so long.
I needed that reminder. The reminder that there’s still time to do the things you dream of doing. To do the things you love. I was focused on seeing what I ‘wanted to see’ rather than ‘seeing all that there is to see.’
This is, perhaps, the essence that set me and my work apart. Eyes wide open; seeing with my whole being.
It may sound like a small thing to step away from the sport. But this is one of the hardest decisions I have had to make in my working life.
How did you first get involved in triathlon photography? Was it something you sought out, or did it find you?
Wow, that’s such a great question. I take a very zen-like, wholistic and conscious approach to photography now. So, I firmly believe that after all these years in how the sport has defined my life and me as a man, that triathlon photography found me.
It found a young upstart photographer, a very private man with no responsibility to oneself. Triathlon trusted me to help develop my dreams, my art and immersive creativity, as well as my unique interpretation and view of the Tri world. It allowed me to focus on the extraordinary, to see ‘beyond’ and to create something from ‘nothing’, to make the intangible tangible and create texture and depth.
The triathlon universe welcomed my decision to pursue images outside the norm. That is the path we took together. It gave me permission to reach for my dreams, through my own example of believing, reaching and striving, triathlon photography opened up and graciously accepted my gift of passion, my compassion and my own sense of awe and wonder.
Our intangible connection unfolded in a richness for the two of us.I used to tell people that I ‘fell’ into the sport, I now know that wasn’t true.
When you reflect on your time in the sport, what are you most proud of?
A triathlon photographer once said to me that when he is stuck for a different approach to taking an image, he quotes the initials ‘WWDD’ in his head – What Would Delly Do?
I came to the sport a year or so after the Triathlon Federation of Australia was formed, and a year before the founding of the International Triathlon Union.
I grew as the sport grew. Like everyone else, I was a pioneer within the sport. A chapter within the book. And that is why the photographer said what he did.
I feel proud that I have contributed to the sport. My fingerprints are all over the sport’s young history, in my own artistic individual ‘Delly’ way.
You’ve undoubtedly left a lasting legacy – photographing everything from grassroots athletes to our Olympic and Paralympic champions. How do you hope people remember you and your work?
My contribution has value beyond what I could possibly have imagined. As I look back, yet now with a view towards moving forward, I hope people will remember the power of what I have helped to achieve, the influence of my work that ripples far beyond the moment and art of my photographs.
I invited the viewers into a world not necessarily of their own and allowed them to experience the emotion and beauty of our sport. I also invited the athletes to see themselves through someone else’s eyes, my eyes, to provide them opportunity to see what, perhaps, they could not from their own perspective, to connect them to something within themselves that they could tap into to establish a deeper sense of self, worth or capacity.
My images surround people with windows that mirror, reflect or provide opportunity through a new vista or perspective.My work reflected respect, integrity, depth and a passion for exploring triathlon in all its colours and vibrations; all encompassed within a framework that expresses the interplay between photography and sport.
I want people to remember me by looking at the quality of my work, speaking of someone who pursues excellence in the same way that those I photographed. I speak not just of excellence of my skills and work but also within the integrity of my character. The integrity of who I really am.
It is not that which we do that lives on when we pass, but how we have interwoven our gifts into the spirit of those we leave behind. We have eternal life when something we have gifted the world lives on ‘inside’ of something or someone else. When it reaches in and touches their soul in a way that catalyses something within them.
Your photography has defined so many iconic moments. What does it mean to you to have played such a role in shaping how people see triathlon?
My life in triathlon was enhanced by those who believed in me and those who understood my ‘talent’ – those two things were a gift to my confidence.
I was entrusted with a freedom by several individuals that fertilised my enthusiasm and within that privilege, I played an integral role in crafting the ‘public personality’ of the sport. I was given freedom within triathlon’s safe haven, for my thoughts to roam, to allow my feelings to guide me to a new awareness, to connect and from that to create and innovate.
The public personality of the triathlon I developed was a reflection of who I am, a plea and encouragement of how I would like others to both view the Triathlon world and interact with it.
Photography was a powerful weapon I wielded to create change. I created a depth within the sport community by uniting the emotions of those within them. I invited other people into that world by providing insight into the athlete’s experiences and connecting them to their own.
Without words, I opened the door for people to experience a world otherwise not accessible to the ordinary person, yet a world, nonetheless, that they can relate to and feel engaged by.
That is more than a little magical. I was so blessed to do so.
What will you miss most about being behind the camera at triathlon events?
It’s the friends I have made.
I was around the same age of the athletes I photographed on the pro and age-group circuit when I first started. It was the infancy of the sport, and I grew up alongside them.
Some of them went on to become Australian Champions, World Champions, Commonwealth Champions, Olympic Champions.
I celebrated those moments alongside them. I also cried with them when results fell short of their dreams. I ate with them, I drank with them, I laughed with them as we travelled the country and the world. We became lifelong friends, I have been ‘best man’ to some of these triathletes on their wedding days, I have become godparent to their children.
As the official photographer for World Triathlon for 20+ years, I now have a circle of friends that span the globe. I dare say that there isn’t too many countries around the world where there are no buddies that I could call upon to have dinner together.
I have worked alongside so many here in Australia. Each and everyone I would welcome into my home. I will miss the people. It will be impossible to replace each and every smiling face I know.
You’ve got a full calendar of events before we officially say goodbye – what are you looking forward to most about your farewell tour?
This makes me so teary; I still question the decision I have made, each and every day. I know this goodbye will be tough.
Yet I need to pack my triathlon passport and embark on a farewell tour. To say THANK YOU to everyone who made me the man I am today.
THANK YOU to every race organiser/director who welcomed me onto their field of play, to every Technical Official who stood aside and supported me with a smile and a giggle, to every motorbike driver who moved me around the courses, to staff management and administrators of each sporting governing body, to the media I helped create, to friends I have made, and most importantly to each athlete, past and present, that allowed me into their life as a friend, and allowing me to reach my dreams alongside theirs.
My last day ‘on the job’ will be the World Championships finale’ later this year. The city of Wollongong had better be prepared for the party!
