Todd Antony's photograph of Buzkashi horsemen in Tajikistan has won the Sport category in the Sony World Photography Awards 2026. The image, part of a black-and-white series, shows three riders on horseback against a white foggy background, capturing the intensity of the ancient Central Asian sport.
Buzkashi, thought to date back to the time of Genghis Khan, involves large groups of men on horseback trying to grab the headless body of a goat and drop it over a goal line. There are no teams, and games can last up to six hours. Antony was drawn to the sport's raw chaos and the challenge of photographing it in black and white to focus on light and tone.
Antony travelled to Tajikistan, where matches are staged in valleys or dried riverbeds. At one match, he shot from the back of a pickup truck in the middle of the field, capturing visceral images as the pack passed within metres. The sport is ingrained in Tajik culture, and Antony aimed to document it without normalising cruelty.
The winning image was taken on a farm with a snowy mountain range in the background. As a wall of fog rolled in, Antony adapted his approach, using a flash and a light held by his assistant to create a clean background. 'The resulting image is a graphic distillation of a moment in buzkashi,' he said. The exhibition runs at Somerset House in London until 4 May.
