Photographers have to back up sometimes to get the shot; it can lead to mishaps. But imagine skating backwards with a full camera rig? That’s what record-setting Jordan Cowan is doing at the Winter Olympics.

For the first time, Cowan, who wears an all-white tuxedo, is on the ice at the Olympics with the figure skating competitors in Milan-Cortina d’Ampezzo. He captured American skater Ilia Malinin celebrating Team USA winning the gold medal in the team competition. And was on the ice when Malinin botched his final free in the singles competition.

“I’m there to tell the audience, ‘It’s going to be OK, he’s still here.’ You know, you finish a program, you’re still alive. There’ll be another day. To see Ilia’s emotion really is just part of his story,” Cowan says.

It’s a niche that Cowan has carved out for himself: a former competitive skater, he retired in 2011 and after working in ballroom dancing, he launched his own company in 2018, On Ice Perspective, which has gone from strength to strength and now he finds himself on the biggest stage of all.

“This will be the first time that a camera operator has been on the ice for a figure skating event at an Olympic Games,” Cowan tells the Associated Press. “That to me is a huge responsibility. I get to set the standard for the Olympics to come — at least I hope that this is something we get to include in the future.”

Cowan says he wants to communicate to the audience at home what it “feels like to skate and what it is like to dance”. He says static camera shots miss that feeling and “putting the camera in the hands of a dancer or in the hands of a skater, you can now tell the story of what you’re supposed to feel”.

NBC notes that the rig he uses was designed by Cowan himself. It has an electronically stabilized gimbal, which maintains a level horizon no matter what angle he is leaning. His own skating prowess means he can keep up with the athletes.

Cowan will be there for the closing gala when the top athletes perform their signature moves. “I’ve trained myself to be able to follow skaters without knowing the choreography,” he says. “They know they don’t have to look out for me, and I’m going to do everything I can to stay out of their way because safety is my number one priority. The perfect compliment I get is when the skaters say they didn’t even realize I was out there.”

While Cowan is making history at the Winter Olympics, camera operators on the ice is not a unique phenomenon: a camouflaged cameraman sometimes films ice hockey fights in Canada.