This week I was assigned to photograph another Olympic and World Champion – British cyclist Nicole Cooke – at her Vision 1 racing team’s training camp in Italy. I was out there primarily to create portraits of Nicole for an upcoming article in Cycle Sport magazine, as well as to capture some straight photojournalism shots of the training camp for sister publication Cycling Weekly; apparently I’m the first photographer to shoot Nicole in her World Champion jersey which was something of a surprise. I was working with the Italian based writer Stephen Farrand who was in between covering the final stage of the Tirreno-Adriatico and heading up to Milan for the Lance Armstrong press conference prior to the Milan-San-Remo so I’ll forgive him for being late every time he was due to pick me up! And besides which he was a true gent; his local knowledge ensured that I ate at some really nice little restaurants and cafes and he even helped me out by stopping off at a great place to pick up some local wine to take home as we were heading out of town to drop me at Pisa airport. He does kind of look like a much taller version of me though so God knows what we looked like together. I think that next week’s Cycling Weekly will be running the news images in an article, but I’ll keep the portraits firmly under wraps until the Cycle Sport interview goes to press. Also at the Tuscan training camp was a crew from Channel 4′s Transworld Sport who filmed part of the photo shoot, so I may have a cameo on the show within the next couple of weeks…
