A couple of weeks ago saw me make the trek down through NSW’s beautiful high country to cover the final round of the National Downhill Series at Thredbo. It was certainly a great event set in awesome scenery. The Elite Male series was taken out by Troy Brosnan and the Elite Female series by Michelle Crisp.
Below are a few shots from the weekend’s festivities.
King’s School at Parramatta was the venue for last weekend’s mountain bike race that I was covering with OuterImage. It was on a short course of around 4km’s and a short race of 2 hours but this just meant that the pace was stepped up and laps were knocked out at high speed. The short course also meant there was a constant stream of people coming by once the field had spread out a bit, everyone from the head down and go hards to the just out for a few laps and a giggle with my kid type of people.
The temperature warmed up through the day and started to push up into the 30’s adding to another test of endurance for the riders. Shooting down in the shade of the trees things were a bit cooler. Being busy like that and the short time meant that it was all over before I knew it.
We tried a few different things this race including a series of black and whites and Gil setting-up some strobes to get a set of portraits from before and after the race.
To finish off the day Cadel Evans and Jack Haig, two of Australia’s cycling superstars, were present to give out the trophies and also to cut the ribbon officially opening the track.
Last weekend Gil and I travelled down to Bright, in Victoria, Australia to cover our first 24hr race under the guise of Outer Image, the Thule B24 enduro. This was our first 24hr race together and it was certainly a lot of fun. The trip down was an adventure in itself as we were detoured due to bushfires then another due to a nasty crash which together put us about 6 hours of course (always good to take the scenic route though). We arrived in Bright midday on Friday and quickly set to walking the track and finding our locations. Bright is a mountain bikers paradise with mountains all around and trails weaving up and through the forest everywhere. It certainly was not hard to pick our location, the problem was more what locations would we not have time for.
The organisers added a new category called the Esprit De Corps. I haven’t seen this in MTB races before but I imagine that we will be seeing it a bit more in the future. It added a more social aspect to team riding. Your team needed to complete a certain amount of laps over the course of 24 hours but you had the option of all riding as a group. So if you were in a team of 6 and you do a lap with all team riders it actually counts as 6 laps.
The race kicked off at 12 on Saturday. It was quite a long weekend but well worth it. Probably not as long for us as it was for the riders though. We shot well into the night and were up again and into it before dawn. In the last couple of hours things became rather hectic again as all the riders crammed in the last few laps. The smiles which had faded in the early hours of the morning were back too with some riders even going past me giggling Delirious or just very happy I wasn’t quite sure which)
All in all a great weekend away. I will be heading back down to Bright in a few weeks and I’m looking forward to it already. I have a few plans in the making.
Oh and just in case you were wondering, the winner of the solo category was Shane Roberts who completed 22 laps or around 374kms.
Last weekend was the final round of this year’s Shimano GP enduro series held on the wonderful trails of Mount Stromlo Forest Park near Canberra. Again I was there with OuterImage to capture the action. There was forecast for rain but once again the weather held and we had beautiful clear skies. That did mean the track was a bit dusty for the riders but it did give us the chance for some interesting shots.
Stromlo Forest Park is situated on the side of Mount Stromlo near Canberra. There is some beautiful trails there. Some years ago the area was destroyed by a fire which burnt most of the trees to the ground. A massive replanting program has since happened and slowly the area is regaining a lot of its trees. With the trees being quite small though views around the trails can be wonderful looking out across the surrounds and across Canberra.
Over 300 competitors competed this year at the Stromlo event and after shooting the whole series I recognised many familiar faces there too. Eliza Kwan and Troy Herfoss took out their 7hr solo categories while Kyle Ward and Wendy Stevenson took out their 4hr categories. Just in case you were wondering, as a rough idea the course is usually around 10km’s in length. Troy managed to complete 15 laps or around 150kms in 7 hrs.
So that’s it for this year as far as this series goes. We are quite often out shooting for fun at many local tracks around the Sydney region. If you see us out there be sure and stop for a quick hello. If you are competing in any races soon there is always a chance we will be around too, we tend to swing by a lot of them even if it’s just as spectators.
As this was the final in the series Gil and I would like to say a big thank you to all the competitors who raced this season and made our work as much fun as it is. A big congratulations to all the winners from the races and the series. And of course a huge thank you to Martin and Juliane from Rocky Trail Entertainment for all there hard work in putting on such a wonderful series.
Lights on at Rocky Trail’s Jetblack 12hr enduro at Dargle Farm.
I swung by the Rocky Trail’s Jetblack 12hr Enduro race over the weekend. It took me a lot longer to get there than I had planned with me thinking I knew the way better than my GPS despite never having been there before. I hadn’t gone on any official capacity just to watch and say hello to a few friends that I had met shooting the 4 and 7hr enduro races. I did end up shooting the editorial for Rocky Trail Entertainment though.
As I wasn’t there on official business it was a good chance for me to play around with some different ideas and different angles rather than a lot of those that I shoot with The Outer Image Collective. A majority of the action shots taken were panning shots with my flash set for rear curtain sync, meaning it will fire when my shutter is closing rather than when it is opening. There is not many of the images where the numbers are visible.
The Dargle Farm course is on a working farm so the course is not always open. As I had arrived late I didn’t get too far around the track but it looks like a great course and its certainly somewhere that I plan to go back when the opportunity next arises.
I don’t have a collection of race photographs for sale for the competitors. They were all being handled by Marathon Photos.
There is a new course on Rocky Trail Entertainment’s Shimano GP’s circuit and that’s the trails of James Estate Winery, where round 2 was recently held. The race marked the opening of the trails to the public. The 10km track winds in and out between grape vines, out the back towards the edges of Wollemi National Park before bringing you back through the vines and even weaving you through wine-vats on the way back to the start. The start was conveniently located by the cellar door where plenty of sampling of the local produce was done.
Well done to Rocky Trail, Graeme Scott and all involved withe the James Estate Winery race for putting on such a great day.
