Sport through the lens

Soelden and two giant slalom races on Rettenbach glacier on end of October, are traditional start to FIS Alpine skiing World Cup. This year it wasn’t anything different, except that weather played with us and we had beautiful and busy weekend on Rettenbach glacier.

After about 5 hour drive on Friday, we arrived to Soelden, small village in middle of Alps. It was really crowded, but you can’t expect much different, if there’s about 15.000 spectators coming to small village squeezed between over 3000m high mountains.

On way to press/accreditation center, we meet half of guys I normally hang with on World Cup races, and after about 7 months, it was nice too see all these people again. I have some complains about skiing, organization of races etc., but when you come back to skiing in fall, and you were shooting something else all summer long, you realize that FIS, local organizers and other people around skiing World Cup, do their jobs a whole lot better then in any other sport I have been shooting. So it feels great to be back with these guys for another half of year.

Everything went as usually on ski races…. fast and smooth :) I got my accreditation in minute, we went for coffee, because Erich Spiess, Austrian photographer responsible for us in Austrian part of skiing WC, was out, had small chat with Perica, waiter from Croatia working in bar in Soelden (yeah world is small, and once living in same country, Yugoslavia, makes it almost impossible not to find at least one ex-countryman anywhere you go), and when Erich came back, I arranged rest of stuff concerning photo bib for course access etc.

After that it was time for first bib draw of the season. Normally there’s not much need for photos from bib draw, but being first one of the season, and having people I need to shoot in top 15, things are different. It’s not really interesting thing to shoot, and all 15 photos look same, especially because we really don’t have much of creative options left once when your only position can be 5x2m place below the stage. But it’s just job which needs to be done, nothing else.

I sent few photos I needed to send. Of course I don’t need to tell, I (ab)used my friends computer, since on Austrian WC races, Internet has to be paid, and I’m too cheap to pay 10eur to send 5 photos when I can bug my friends with it :) With next 2 days, things were of course different, so Internet cost for 2 days are 20eur. Not cheap, but it’s money you get back with less then half photo :) And normally Internet is blazing fast. This time, at least up on glacier this was not the case. But I believe it’s going to be back to normal again on next races. But back to this a bit later :)

After I have sent those few photos, it was time for a beer :) On beginning I was actually hoping, I can get to bed quite early, especially because next morning, we should be up around 6am already. Well… seeing some people after more then half of year, made things different… and it also meant it wasn’t all that easy to wake up on morning all that early. But really nice housekeeper in Haus Martin, where we were staying, made us breakfast 1 hour before official breakfast starts, so we went up to glacier in good mood and with full stomach :)

Morning on glacier was spectacular. Little fog was covering valley, sun was slowly coming up from high mountains and sky was blue without single cloud. We arranged things that need to be arranged in press center (paid for internet, got space, got start lists, got coffee and small breakfast in Salomon breakfast station near press center), and then I headed up to mountain. Everything looked great, and I got perfect gates. Well… they were completely perfect just for 5 minutes. After that, others started to come, and soon there was, instead of 4 of us from beginning, more then 20 of us standing at same place. Another shock came, when first forerunner skied down the course. Gates looked perfect, but obviously half of year without skiing left some marks :) Gates were not all that perfect, and skiers went around them not straight at them.

But that would still be fine, if at least weather would play with us. But no, perfectly blue sky all of a sudden got stripe of clouds, with blue sky everywhere around except for that small stripe of clouds, just where I had sky as background. But with outdoor sport, you can’t influence such things, and on the end, I was still quite happy with photos. They were not perfect, but they were still pretty good.

After first run, I skied down to press center, sent photos, and shoot second run from finish area. This is not really fun, but it needs to be done. Afterall second run is last run, and there is joy and happiness on one side, and disappointment on the other side. So being there is part of this business, even if it’s much more fun to shoot skiing from the course.

Soelden in general has three nice places, where you get really cool photos. For men race, at least for first run, Finnish coach Christian Leitner, who was setting first run, narrowed this chances to one single one. Quite few photographers came up walking, so they skipped top third of course, where there was actually only decent position. With rest two, gates were set too early before the fault, so it was impossible to shoot on fault, and only chance was to shoot one gates below the fault.

Also position on top was not perfect, but with blurred mountains in background it was pretty nice one, and I’m glad I was on skis to even come there. Personally I don’t really feel all that comfortable walking with crampons, so I prefer to ski down the course and put crampons on only when I have my position.

For Sunday’s men gs race, weather was playing nicely with, and we were enjoying beautiful sunny day on glacier. With 75 skiers on start list, I actually have some time to play with, even though position was not the best for some nicely done silhouette shoots, but you can’t walk around the course during race, so it was like it was.

Second run went same as previous day, with shoots from finish area, and only thing that followed after this was another almost 5 hour drive home. It looked horrific from beginning, when I got info, that it takes more then 1 hour to drive 14 km road down from Rettenbach glacier to Soelden. Luckily I still had some photos to send, so after I sent all photos, had small lunch (next to breakfast only meal in the day), small chat with some friends, road got empty. Well at least kinda empty, and it took us “only” 40 minutes to drive down to Soelden.

In Soelden we droped out of car two colleagues who went up to glacier with us (parking places up on glacier are limited, so not everyone got parking pass), and we headed straight home. It was around 5pm and we had more then 500km infront of us.

About half way between Soelden and highway traffic jams started. It looked really bad, but on the end, we spent only about 20 minutes in jam, and before we knew, we were on highway speeding home. Considering we hit another jam near Chiemsee, average speed of more then 110km/h from top of Rettenbach glacier to Kranj was not all that bad ;)
Now there’s a bit more then one month break, unless they again move Levi races somewhere down to middle Europe, and then in middle of December, it all begins for real. And I hope rest of season will be just as nice as beginning in Soelden was.

More photos can be found in PhotoSI online archive under:
- Soelden – Women bib draw
- Soelden – Women GS first run
- Soelden – Women GS second run
- Soelden – Men GS first run
- Soelden – Men GS second run

And few more photos for blog :)