Pain, sweat and smiles: World Sports Photography Awards 2021 – in pictures

With sport mothballed for the best part of the last 12 months, the awards criteria was extended to allow entries from across the past 25 years for any of the 26 categories. The competition is intended for professional and semi-professional sport photographers plus specialist sports photographic agencies. With the wider timeframe there were four times as many entries as normal. Here, we showcase the 10 overall winning entries, click here to check out the winning entries in each category