USGP of Cylcocross, Planet Bike Cup Day #2: Sunday Muddy Sunday

Enjoy this gallery of muddy photos from the 2011 USGP of Cyclocross: Planet Bike Cup, Day #2.

 

2011 Quad Cross Un-Race Report in Photos

This is cyclocross...

In case you didn't see the new Canondale Team rider, he's Christian Heule, the Swiss National Champion. You should be cheering for him, always...unless Tim Johnson is out in front.  He's very friendly so say hello and welcome his family to America as they're here until December.

Since opening weekend of New England cyclocross is a lot like the first day of school after a long summer, I'm voting for Peter Sullivan for best dressed kit:

Pete Smith, crushing it in the Master's 35+ race with a 3rd place finish.  Have you made a sandwich with his rosemary chamois cream yet?

Three to go in the Master's 35+ as CyclocrossRacing's Curtis Boivin puts a little step on it:

Chandler and I sandwiched The Wilcox in at the start of the singlespeed race. Being gentlemanly, I let The Wilcox lead me off the line.  But about 2o minutes before, I captured this photo of The Wilcox.  Maybe back-to-back racing isn't such a good idea, Dave?

The Wilichoski, hunting riders like 8-point bucks.

Dillion McKay of 90210 fame Dylan Mcnicholas (maybe the highest watts/kids in NECX) gave Christian Heule a run for his money. I think Christian's quoted as saying "I keep making gaps in the corner, but he chases back on."

Newbury Comix built barriers and gave out pickles. Where are those barriers hidden in the city so I can practice mid-week?

Adam Meyerson came and helped MRC with a pre-season cyclocross clinic. It didn't help me much, but some of my teammates seem to be doing pretty well. There are things you can learn from this photo.

Do you wanna read my Cat 3, pack-fodder race report? 

I'll leave it at I have no regrets upgrading to the 3's and being pack-meat. There was real racing action all the way to the end.  Unlike the 4s, where you get your position and it's pretty easy to hold it, the 3s attack, attack, attack. In the last lap, after getting dropped from the group, I somehow latched back on to Mike Zancanato's wheel and kept Mark Bernard at bay. Zank pulled me right up to Jeffrey Bramhall, where we nipped him at the line.  That kind of racing effort just never happened for me in the 4s.

After drinking some beer, I was talked into doing the singlespeed race. I apologize in advance to Doug Kennedy and Matt Myette for talking Chandler into doing it: "Come on, double up, it's good for fitness and we're in Vegas all week.".  The singlespeed race was a lot of fun, no stress, and though only 16 pre-regged, there were quite a few more who lined up - probably all peer-pressured into it.

Look for this guy, preferabley in a matching kit that says CyclocrossWorld.Com in your rear view mirror at a race near you, (thanks Russ Campbell for the photo).

The Grand Fundo

 

2011 New England Cyclocross Schedule

I've put most of the relevant races (which means for a weekend with multiple races, I've included the ones closer to Boston) into a Google Calendar. You should be able to easily download to your favorite iCal program.

Yes, there's some other mountain bike events thrown in, too.  I'll update this as the season progresses.

The Junior and U23 World Championships of Cyclocross

The night before we were up until nearly 4:00 a.m., as a result we slept in and showed up to the race course in St Wendel around 11:15 while the Junior race was in progress.  Today was an important day for me because I wanted to scout and test my shooting locations.  With predicted crowds, moving around wouldn't be as easy as Hoogerheide.  

Overnight the race organizers smoothed out some of the ruts in the trecherous areas.  Here on the off-camber, it turned it into a slippery ice-sheet:

Many future stars of cyclocross are represented:

Junior American team of Jeff Bahnson, Cody Kaiser, Matt Spinks, Skyler Trujillo, and Chris Wallace:

This was the Photographer scrum at the finish line of the Junior race.  The Euros look at the U23 races in probably much the same way that Americans follow College football:

The French ended up sweeping the Junior podium:

Here's Katarina Nash, just so we can remember Chandler's botched interview:

Local New Englander, Richard Fries, did the announcing for the World Championships, and took us on a tour of the finish line area, including the podium, you can view the video on our Das Pro und The Rookie channel:

We then ran into some of the Pros prepping for their race the next day.  Testing tire pressures and trying to get a feel for how the course will react at different temperatures, etc...

The U23 race started, the size of the crowds shocked me, and made me worry about my ability to move and get photos of the pros the following day:

Here the U23 Americans, prepare for their race:

There was a colorful crowd singing songs at each other with megaphones:

And the race was one.  Here's the off-camber, most having to run it because it was slick:

Enjoy this gallery of some race photos, you can click the "next" arrow to see more photos:

There's an art to being a Euro cyclocross fan.  An ostrich made with a German flag trumps the American version (Guy in a speedo) everytime:

The course featured a three of sharp descents, followed by 90 degree turns.  This didn't ever scare the riders:

 

I like the colors in this picture:

Mud and mettle of Danny Summerhill:

The select group:

Another hairy turn:

The Pres room:

Photo of the USA team storage container:

And then we leave the race site to return for the Elite Ment's and Women's World Championships the next day (more to come on that).

 

Let's Talk About the Botched Interview

In case you missed my Tweets this morning about our botched interview with a Super Star of Cyclocross, let me repeat the play-by-play for you.

We left with what we thought was plenty of time.  In fact, we thought we were going to be on time for the first time ever for anything on this trip.  I got a little cocky and shared this fact on Twitter:

Then we started driving on streets that didn't have signs.  We made a few wrong turns:

We rolled up 15 minutes late.  The real television crew was setting up, and this made us nervous.  The put me in the zone of setting up camera and sound in total effecient professionalism.  Evidently, this put Chandler in the zone of "Wow, I really didn't get enough sleep last night."

Then he proceed to ask awkward questions after dressing our star in a heretofore unnamed scarf.  After asking only one question about her, in which the asking of the question itself was longer than her response, he then asked for a couple half-baked product placement attempts.  To which she mentioned someing along the lines of "isn't that a little overt for product placement?"

All Chandler could say after the interview was my QOTD:

At least the footage looks fantastic and the sound is great.

The scarf does look great on her, though.

To put the interview in cyclocross speak for you:

Arrival in St. Wendel for the World Championships

We arrived in St Wendel, Germany, and immediately made our way to walk the course and shoot some footage or Das Pro und The Rookie.  There'll be a football stadium's worth of people jammed onto the course on Sunday and moving around won't logistically be as easy as it was at Hoogerheide, so a strategy of where to shoot and when will be needed.  I'll probably forego the finish-line shots on the track.  I'll use the U23 and Junior races on Saturday to test out my positioning and assess where my angles are.  Then I'll probably also get some input on "if I was on Stybar's  wheel, where would I make my move?" to help make an educated guess where the action is going to be.

It's been raining here for the last 500 years, so 85% of the course is like walking on cream cheese.  The mud is made with a fine soil, and you slip on it like ice.  If it doesn't cool off, expect a lot of running come Sunday.  This course is so much harder than anything I've seen at our local New England cyclocross.  First, there's a lot of technical off-cambers and steep drops.  Of course, it might seem worse to me right now because everything is so muddy.  Secondly, there's a couple long uphill power sections, like Green Mountain cyclocross, followed by some fast descending, really fast descending.  It will all make for exciting racing come Sunday.

Here's a view from the top of the stairs overlooking the St Wendel World Championship course:

Even in the dark snow and rain, Germany is a beutiful country with rolling hills and farm lands:

Lots of press credentials:

The off-camber is slipperery like an ice rink:

When it's steep, it's steep:

Here's another shot of the mud:

The stairs:

We met up with Tim and he did a workout on the track: 10x200 meter race starts at full effort.

Chandler was given the job of timing Tim:

The Pits:

The homes of St Wendel over look the course:

 

Stu and Troy take apart all the bikes for rebuild before race day.  

Here's what The Rookie ate for lunch:

Here's what The Pro ate:

Pro is pro, speaking of Pro:

Then Tim filmed a commercial:

That's our first day in St Wendel.  Tomorrow more fun stuff.

Ieper, Belgium and The Abbey of Saint Sixtus of Westvleteren

This post is going to be short, go see my day at Hoogerheide to see why.  And it's 2:30 a.m. and I'd like to get to bed earlier than yesterday's 3:30 a.m..

We were supposed to shoot the  Cannondale presented by CyclocrossWorld.Com team recovery ride, and then enjoy some beers at The Abbey of Saint Sixtus of Westvleteren. But, per usual, I got dropped from the ride before I could even pull out the camera. That meant, I'd enjoy the beer first, though.

After getting lost in the Belgiun country side trying to track down the team, we found the abbey, and quickly ordered a Trappist Westvleteren 8.   Soon, I forgot about not shooting the team on a recovery ride.

Upon returning from the Abbey, Stu Thorne, lead us into Ieper for Last Post - a ceremony held every night since World War 1 to remember the dead soldiers of the British Empire.  I took some photos of the Field Museum.

Then at 8:30 p.m., we started our 450 KM drive to Germany.

Enjoy some photos from the day.

 

A Day at the Hoogerheide Cyclocross World Cup

In Belgium, the sunrise doesn't happen until 8:30, so even if you sleep in, it's still dark outside.  We drove about an hour over to Hoogerhide, Netherlands, arriving early, parking on the main street, right next to all the team convoys.

We went and met up with the Cannondale team convoy:

At 9 a.m., Troy was already hard at work prepping the team's bikes:

Next order of business was picking up press credentials.  Since my AIPS card hadn't arrived in the mail yet, I didn't have proper identification. Nevertheless, the guy eventually gave me a photographer's bib, but charged me a 20 Euro deposit to make sure he got it back.  The press room was in the town hall and they had good INTERNET, which was lacking at our hotel.  The first order of business was to upload some video and photos to CyclingDirt.org:

http://vimeo.com/channels/daspro#19112391

Here's what the inside of the press room looked like.

There's a lot of action going on all around.  You can't close your eyes for one second.  Example: Frenchman Francis Mourey exits his bus after indulging in a large pepperoni pizza.  His handler knows this, and tries to prevent me from gettiing "the shot":

Eventually, the men start their race:

And since I'm here to take photos of Tim Johnson, I get a lot of him.  

Tim was in second place for a couple laps, and if you watch the video here, you'll hear some Euros cheering for him:

http://vimeo.com/channels/daspro#19112391

I'm also a fan of Zdenek Stybar, so I made sure to get some of him, which was easy since he was in the lead until misfortune found him in the pits.

And I try not to neglect any of the Americans:

European race atmosphere:

The course had its technical challenges.

A run-up:

And a flyover:

For cycling, there's the obligitory race-winner shot.  Niels Albert modeling for this one:

In the finish line area, I grabbed some portraits of the American racers, so that they can use them on their Facebook profiles.  Here's one for Jamey Driscoll and Tim Johnson:

There was of course a photographer scrum, to get the podium shots:

Of course, a respectable news establishment will have the podium shot (and probably fewer spelling mistakes):

Naturally, I had to report to doping control to make sure I wasn't taking any illegal substances while capturing these photos:

Covering European cyclocross is hard work, but I wouldn't have traded it for anything.

A Snapshot of the Masters World Cyclocross Championships

We were up last last night managing content, editing photos and video.  Here's a shot of our media center in our 8x15 foot hotel room shared by the three of us:

We woke up after 4.5 hours of sleep and drove to Mol, Belgim where the race took place

Here's John Mosher:

Kevin Hines finishes his race:

The 40+ race was crazy, here Boulder CycloSport represents on the beach:

The sand was unlike any we've seen in New England.  It was deep and very fine.

Chandler does better than The Internet Predicted, completing 5 of 7 laps.  Way to go, Rookie:

Chandler was probably the only racer in the 30+ that was wired for sound, and riding with TWO GoPros, because well, that's PRO.

Here's a UCI official directing Chandler off the course with two to go:

Behind the scenes of Das Pro Und the Rookie

Some random shots around the venue:

I finally had a real beer, a Trappist Westvleteren Bruin at 10,8%.  So, really, it was like having three beers

The Internet is really hard to deal with here.  Causing all sorts of pain.