Switzerland played host to the 2015 Tour de Romandie last week, with freezing temperatures and torrential rain descending on the riders as they made their way through the French speaking part of the country. I covered a few of the stages, including seeing the drama of a team time trial for the first time. Despite the weather, the event was captivating from start to finish. A final stage time trial throughout the steep, wet, cobbled streets of Lausanne was the icing on the cake, with a successful 2015 Tour de Romandie coming to a close. Onwards to the Tour de Suisse for my next cycling assignment.Click here to view the complete Tour de Romandie gallery
Tag: tour de romandie
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Four days on the Tour de Romandie
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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. -
Updated Portfolio – The Tour de Romandie
A new portfolio depicting two days of the recent Tour de Romandie is now available to view on my website (check it out here). With the cycling season now in full swing I wanted to approach one of the lesser known races to document some of the story behind the action. The Grand tours (The Giro D’Italia, The Tour de France and The Vuelta) have strict policies that sees the race route closed for hours before a stage with limited access to the riders. The Tour de Romandie on the other hand allows almost unrivalled access to both the route and the riders giving me an opportunity to cover a number of positions during the two days.
Britain’s Chris Froome came out of a Spring period with question marks over his head due to fitness concerns. All of this was laid to rest though as he showed a dominant prowess on the climb up to the Swiss ski resort of Villars leaving one of his main rivals, Vincenzo Nibali, in his wake. If this is a sign of things to come then we’ll have an electric Tour de France later in July.