Photographed above is a quick promo mailer that I sent out at the beginning of this week featuring one of my portraits of the winner of this year’s Tour de France Alberto Contador of the Astana team. I saw the Moo Notecards some time ago and liked the format, and a big plus with Moo products is that you can order a short run so perfect if you’re only sending the mailer out to a select few clients. I wanted to get these in the post the day after the Tour de France ended so with about a week to go in the 2009 Tour I took a gamble and placed the order as it was looking like Contador was well positioned to take his second overall victory; fortunately the gamble paid off and Contador won the race by over four minutes.
Astana team rider Alberto Contador has taken his second Tour de France overall victory at the end of the final stage in Paris today. Contador was the favourite going into the race but I never expected him to be as dominant as he ultimately proved to be over the past three weeks, with an overall time of four minutes and eleven seconds faster than the second placed rider Andy Schleck and five minutes and 24 seconds faster than seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong (an incredible performance at the age of 38 and just out of retirement; he’ll be much stronger next year despite being another year older and will be far more likely to contest the win than a lot of people unrealistically expected him to be this year), Contador always looked comfortable and his explosive attacks at Arcalis and Verbier were matched by no other rider. Contador is without a doubt the best climber in the world right now, and his strength as a time trialist – proven by his win in stage 18′s 40.5KM time trial over Olympic and past four-time World Time Trial Champion Fabian Cancellara by three seconds – means that he’s incredibly tough to beat in a three week tour.
It was also a good year for British riders; Bradley Wiggins just missing out on a podium position with fourth place overall – equalling the previous best British overall performance of Robert Millar in 1984 – and Mark Cavendish became the first Brit to win on the Champs Elysees in Paris on the final stage of the Tour – his sixth stage win this year – but just missing out on the Green Jersey to rival sprinter Thor Hushovd.
The course of the 2009 Tour de France was criticised by many and after a great first week of racing provided a long lull in the middle week; the race organiser (ASO) kind of put all their eggs in one basket with one big, decisive stage finishing on the Ventoux on the penultimate stage, with the objective of keeping the racing interesting by bringing it right down to the wire; this made the race feel at times as if everyone was waiting for that one stage with little attacking or excitement in the GC contention. The gamble sadly didn’t pay off for the ASO however as – after much anticipation – the final stage failed to deliver much action as the top riders sought to protect their existing places with only the Schleck brothers trying to attack in an attempt to bring older brother Frank up to a podium position, but were not able to break away from the group containing the other main GC contenders.
Ultimately the third week did deliver some decent action and the 2009 Tour de France will be remembered as a success; but that was despite of the course I think rather instead of it; it’ll be interesting to see what they do next year when the ASO launch the 2010 route later this year.
Image above is an – as yet – unpublished portrait of Alberto Contador from the sitting I had with the 2007 and 2009 Tour de France winner earlier in the year in his home town of Pinto, Spain.
A couple more of my portraits of Team Astana rider and past Tour de France winner Alberto Contador made it into the new Summer 2009 issue of Cycle Sport Magazine; one in the Opinion section which comments on rumours of Contador’s departure from the Astana team to join Spanish team Caisse d’Epargne, and the large one featured above as the illustration for his pre-Tour profile in a section of the magazine dedicated to each of this year’s Tour De France favourites. Contador’s Cycle Sport profile describes him as ‘…the logical favourite for the Tour. He won it two years ago, and is now more experienced, although he’s never quite matched the scintillating attacking form and climbing speed he had in 2007.’ Just three days to go now before the 2009 Tour de France kicks off with a hilly 15.5KM time trial in Monaco.
As promised in the previous post; here’s a quick slideshow featuring some of my favourite images from the Alberto Contador cover shoot that I shot recently for Cycle Sport Magazine that didn’t make it to print.
The new June 2009 issue of Cycle Sport Magazine is now available from all good news agents featuring the portraits that I created for this cover story of Astana team rider and Lance Armstrong team-mate Alberto Contador; winner of the Tour de France, Giro d’Italia, and Vuelta a Espana grand tours over a timespan of less than 18 months. The portraits illustrating the interview were all created on-location in a hotel on the outskirts of Contador’s home-town of Pinto; a small Spanish town about a half-hour or so drive from Madrid. With just 15 minutes agreed to by Contador for the photo-shoot the pressure was on but I managed to squeeze several different looks and a lot of options out of the extremely tight timeframe and limited location. While scouting the location at the hotel in Pinto I picked up an email from the magazine’s picture desk notifying me that as they were right up against the deadline, they would need the images on their FTP server by the start of business the following day… and the interview had already been bumped to 7:30PM meaning I was in for a late night. Fortunately I’d already checked into the hotel at the location as the writer I was with was to continue south to Granada immediately after we wrapped-up – leaving me to make my own way back to the airport for my early morning flight back to Gatwick – so I stripped down the equipment, grabbed some dinner and hunkered down in the hotel room to make the selects, post-production adjustments and retouching and transmit the finished images via the hotel wi-fi. I got a few hours sleep while the images were uploading, then checked-out at 6:00AM; my taxi already waiting for me in the dark outside the hotel entrance for the transfer to Madrid airport. The finished article and cover look great but as ever there were a lot of good photos that didn’t make it in so I’ll update the blog with a slideshow featuring my favourites out of the images that didn’t make it to print as soon as I can.
