Behind The Shot: Humanising The Peloton

When most people think of road cycling, one race comes to mind: The Tour de France. Spread across 21 stages and over 3,000km, this carnival of sport attracts crowds in the millions with all roads, in a cycling sense, leading to Paris. What people often don’t know is that professional cyclists do actually take part in other events, often back to back, whilst in preparation for the 3 Grand Tours (the Tour de France is joined by the Giro d’Italia and Vuelta A Espana in the Grand Tour classification).A very busy UCI World Tour calendar sent the riders to The Tour de Romandie, a 5 stage race around the Western region of Switzerland. With many people’s perceptions of riders limited to what they see during a race, I wanted to spend a little time behind the scenes to bring out the real life personalities of the riders around the team buses and away from the bike. Access to the riders is almost unattainable during stages of the larger races, whilst many of the buildup events often have much fewer spectators opening up an array of photo opportunities bringing us to toady’s behind the shot.I’d spotted the Europcar rider, Davide Malacarne the previous day (you can see that shot here) and I loved how at ease he was with his daughter during the build up to the race start. This particular morning i’d challenged myself to shoot purely with the Canon 45mm 2.8 TS-E  that has the ability to blur a section of the image, allowing you to pinpoint an area of the photo to be kept in focus. There’s no automatic focusing with this lens and the tilt shift focal pain can sometimes be very frustrating, but with a little patience and practice you can come up with some great results.Walking around the Team Europcar bus I was able to get myself into a non evasive shooting position that allowed me to capture the intimate moment between father and daughter before he set off for work. Humanising the peloton has been an aim of mine for quite some time now, and this image goes to show us that behind every sports personality there’s a functioning member of a family with as many emotional obligations as physical ones. You can check out an extended gallery of the Tour de Romandie here.