Sport through the lens

It has been a while since my last post. Looking to date of last post (February 26th) feels a little bit more then just a while, and on the other side it feels like time is flying by. I wasn’t all that lazy in between, even though we had some nice holidays during this time, but more about this later. So let’s start story of last 6 months in fast rewind :D

Panorama of Santorini island

Didier Cuche of Switzerland skiing in Kranjska Gora

Since my last post, I have been covering another 7 or 8 ski races, which meant traveling between sunny Tarvisio in Italy and Kranjska Gora in Slovenia, Ofterschwang in Germany with extreme snowfall and back to FIS ski jumping World cup finals in windy Planica, Slovenia. I have been writting whole bunch of things about skiing in previous posts, so I will skip this part now, and go on with things happening after end of Ski World Cup season.

Tanja Poutiainen of Finland skiing in Ofterschwang

Robert Hrgota of Slovenia soars through the air in Planica

When skiing World cup season was over, we decided it’s time to get some more skiing on our own, and it’s also time to finally visit Lapland in winter again. We have spent great week in Levi, Finland, skiing, drinking, a bit more skiing and drinking some more :D Snow could be a bit better, and temperatures could be a bit lower, but in general these were one of nicest holidays I had. It was fun to disconnect from everything, and just ski and ejoy all week long.

Skiing in Levi, Finland

When we came back, some work was waiting already. Colleague was going to Italy for start of Giro d’Italia race, so instead of shooting, I was editing photos and sending them forward to right places. Working with 6 agencies around the World, which are covering territory with more then 190 million people all together, and with few other direct clients, makes things a little bit more complicated, then when you are dealing with one client only. Basically this means 6 different sets of photos and all of a sudden instead of sending 10 photos, there’s 60, 70 or even 100 photos.

Thomas Lovkvist of Sweden (Team Columbia – Highroad) before fifth stage of Giro d Italia

We were quite lucky the way Giro was evolving, and end result, as far as sold photos go, was far from bad. Giro was followed by few local road cycling races, and European championships in Mountain Bike Downhill and 4x, and finally I got some shooting too, not that I was just editing photos. Weekend in Kranjska Gora on ECH MTB Downhill race was quite ok on one side, but really suffering on the other. With 300 and something people on start list, whole event took about 6 or 7 hours, plus sending photos on the end, which meant I have spent pretty much all day in Kranjska Gora. But at least weather was fine, and I got burned on sun :D

Winner Nick Beer of Switzerland riding during final run of Mountain Bike Downhill European Championships in Kranjska Gora

Only a week later, I was already enjoying sun, wind and beautiful views on island of Santorini in Greece. Week of holidays in Greece did pretty good, even though we found out once again, that laying on beach is just too boring, to do it every year. So next year, I need some adventurous holidays again. Since noone wants to hear about SW of USA anymore, I’m thinking Iceland or something like this. Any suggestions are more then welcome :)

Panorama of Oia on Santorini island

Lighthouse on south cape of Santorini island

Small church on Santorini island

Week on Santorini was long enough for this small island, and before I even realized we were back in Slovenia already. Few rides on my mountain bike, weird unidentified sickness with temperature around 39c, no it wasn’t swine flu :) and I was back to work. Colleague was covering road cycling race Tour de Slovenie, and later on Tour de France.

Team Columbia HTC riding at the team time trial in Tour de France

And while he was working in France, I was having really great time with paraglyders on Nordic Open 2009, which was held in Preddvor, Slovenia. Nordic open in Slovenia? Well yeah, they don’t like Norway, because it’s raining too much there. But they got really bad year this time, and in 10 days of competition, they managed to finish one single task, and even this one was shortened. Everything else was flooded away in pouring rain. But we still had some really great time, doing new sport art… parawaiting :)

Jouni Makkonen of Finland getting ready for start of first race of Nordic Open 2009 in Preddvor

With all this things going on, end of July was closing on pretty fast. I still had one a bit less pleasant thing to shoot, and that was all for July. Everyone are thrilled about football, but for me it’s one of most boring sports to cover. 90 minutes of dribbling in middle of field for one single goal. But I survived that easily, even though I’m not really sure if I will get one of more expensive photos or not. And this might be photo of me, not photo I took. On way back from Nova Gorica, where I was covering football match between NK Nova Gorica and FC Lahti, I might was “a bit” too fast, and now I’m waiting for photo of me while speeding next to police speedtrap. Well… we will see. It has been more then a month, and nothing came in post yet, so I’m hoping for best.

Vasja Simcic (no.12) of NK Gorica in action during NK Nova Gorica – FC Lahti match

End of July was a bit more busy with editing and forwarding photos from FINA Swimming World championships in Rome, Italy, and then there was already August. But since August is current month, I can quit this short rewind of last few months, and concentrate on special post about August. I hope I will make it. So we will see :)

That’s all for now, and I hope you won’t need to wait for another 6 months before my next post :)

And as always, current photos can be seen in Photo SI Sport photo agency on-line archive