Road cycling World championships in Mendrisio

Road cycling World championships in Mendrisio – day 1

September 24th, 2009 · No Comments

UCI Road cycling World championships 2009 started with men U23 and Women elite time trial races on 23rd of September 2009.

Matthias Brandle of Austria riding during men U23 UCI Road cycling World Championships time trial race

Wednesday started extremely early for my taste. Waking up at 5:30 is not really my choice of day start. I never sleep long, but 5:30… come on I’m not some owl who would be hunting during night :) Ok it was at least 30mins too early, but then again it’s better to wake up a bit earlier and be there few minutes too early, then being stuck in traffic jam and being late for race.

Third placed Patrick Gretsch of Germany riding during men U23 UCI Road cycling World Championships time trial race

So we managed to be in Mendrisio press center at 7:15am already… just in time to be first one in line for coffee :) Next to photo shuttle circling around the race course, blazing fast internet, and bottled water, pretty good coffee is only free thing in Mendrisio. Everything else has at least double price, then normally would be.

Photographer Graham Watson during women UCI Road cycling World Championships time trial race

Morning in press center was freezing cold. I have no idea if it was air condition or what, but tent part of press center, where photographers have cable internet instead of wifi access in other areas of press center, is pretty strange place. It’s really cold on morning, extremely hot during day, and it has surreal light in evenings, but photo of this lightning will be available some other time :)

Iryna Shpylova of Ukrain riding during women UCI Road cycling World Championships time trial race

Next to weird evening light, and extreme temperature ranges, it has also really crazy daylight. Since it’s tent, it’s really bright during day, so doing photos on crappy Macbook Pro screen with light bubble over your head is everything but nice. But it goes. On the other side, we have rare pleasure of extremely fast internet. I was sending 6 or 7 different sets of photos, each on to its own ftp server at same time, with 5Mbps for each session, what totals of more then 40Mbps total throughput (with at least 50 other photoraphers). Now this is something what other organizers, except OSV and organizers of Austrian ski World Cups, who already have same fast service, should come and see… and also learn and implement in their events :)

Regina Bruins of Netherland riding during women UCI Road cycling World Championships time trial race

Anyway… first day went by pretty good. I’m starting to like Canon EOS 1Ds markIII :) It has much lower frame rate as my normal workhorse, Canon EOS 1d markII, but lower fps means much less photos to edit on the end :) And with 21MP, it gives you some extra options to crop. But still, I love 1.3 crop, and 8.5 or 10fps of 1D, so Canon better put out new 1D soon. There’s few thing which I love with markIII, there’s few things which I hate, but in general it’s cool thing… if only AF would be working normally. So markIV, where is it, and when will it be available? Money is ready and waiting :)

Jeannie Longo-Ciprelli of France

What else? Nothing! It’s 23:45 when I’m writing this (even though I will publish it tomorrow morning, since there’s no internet in our hotel), and I’m just hoping my dear friend will finally stop making noise, so I can finally get some sleep :))) Tomorrow start is 2 hours later, which means I can sleep almost till 7am. And that’s much better time to start day :)