Danish professional cyclist Lars Bak photographed for the new issue of Cycle Sport Magazine. It’s never ideal photographing an athlete during a big race; I was sent out to a team hotel on the 2011 Tour of Britain route to photograph Bak and I know from past experience that the subject will be tired, have very little time, and will have no clothing other than the standard team issue tracksuit and race kit. After arriving on location, scouting and ultimately setting up a studio in a conference room and waiting all evening I was eventually told by one of the team soigneurs that Lars was too fatigued and had already retired to bed. It’s frustrating to leave with nothing in the can but with a guarantee of an early slot the following evening it didn’t feel that my time was entirely wasted so I returned to the hotel nice and early the next day hopeful that we could get an outdoor set-up in while it was still daylight.
More waiting followed and it transpired that Lars was riding back to the team hotel after the stage for some extra training (that’s a 180KM of racing, then around 60KM or so from the race finish to the team hotel) so it was looking like it was going to be pretty tight. Fortunately when Bak did arrive we talked him into doing the shoot before dinner and we managed to squeeze out the last few minutes of daylight after finding the only clear view from the grounds of the motorway-side hotel (looking out over the motorway in fact, to the hills beyond). I’d taken along a few options on wardrobe as an alternative to the team issue clothing and we went with a formal coat for both style and warmth (professional cyclists are notoriously sensitive to the cold…). We managed to get nearly 25 minutes with Lars Bak in the end; three set-ups, one outdoor, two indoor, and three wardrobe changes plus a little conversation; not so bad. Big thanks to Ed Pickering and the rest of the team at Cycle Sport for the assignment and doing such a nice job with the layout.
Out takes:
I photographed and interviewed Jonathan Tiernan Locke – Rapha Condor Sharp team professional cyclist – back in early 2010 not long after he’d signed for Rapha for a feature that I thought I’d reprise for this blog, especially as a lot of the photographs haven’t seen the light of day until now. The portrait above was shot on film with an old Hasselblad 501c that I was experimenting with at the time and it’s interesting how different it looks to me from the digital frames.
Jonathan Tiernan Locke Interview:
“I had a great start to the season; podium in the first race and won my third race and was never off the podium in my first ten races or so and was absolutely flying when I got glandular fever, came home and quit the sport for three years…” The newly signed Rapha Condor Sharp team member Jonathan Tiernan Locke states this remarkably casually considering it nearly ended his young career and certainly set it back a few years. “I thought I just had a cold at first” he continues, “then I thought, no I’ve got a really, really bad cold. I felt awful, I had no energy and just couldn’t get out of bed and the team weren’t very understanding; they were just telling me that I had to race so I came back to the UK for what I thought would be just a break, and got a blood test and everything and they told me I had this Epstein-Barr virus, as well as being borderline anaemic and all these other underlying problems and they said that I had to stop racing so I quit there and then, so I wasn’t riding that long; one truly novice year in the UK, one year in France and then a couple months before I jacked it in.”
Now 25 years old, Tiernan Locke’s cycling career is finally back on track with a professional contract signed for 2010 with the Rapha team. I caught up with him in a cafe near his home in Plymouth, just back from a training camp in Spain with the team and with a busy Spring racing schedule coming up. The Devon born and bred rider’s career has suffered a few unfortunate setbacks with his last season racing mountain bikes as a junior in 2002 cut short by a mystery illness similar to the glandular fever that he was diagnosed with much later – “I never got it checked out I just took a long time off” – and his comeback season in 2008 also cut short by a crash which hospitalised the rider but which he tells me wasn’t so bad as he doesn’t remember a great deal due to being knocked unconscious: “I rounded the corner and there was a horse rearing up; the next thing I knew I was in hospital thinking where are my teeth?”. Despite his comeback season’s setback a professional contract was signed with the Plowman Craven team for 2009 but signs of trouble began to show with important equipment not being supplied for early season races “we did a stage race in France and they didn’t even have a time-trial bike for me; I had to ride the time-trial stage on my road bike, and then they fined me for putting in a poor performance.” Shortly after that the team stopped paying many of the riders and eventually went into administration. Tiernan Locke continued the 2009 season with the Sports Beans – Wilier team but being an equipment and expenses only deal had to take a day-job at Colin Lewis Cycles in Paignton where he rode to and from work every day to ensure he was still getting the training miles done. Things finally took a turn for the better when Team Director of the Rapha Condor Sharp team John Herety – who knew Tiernan Locke from his former position with the team GB squad with which he’d raced the under 23 World Championships with in Verona in 2004 – got in touch towards the end of the year and offered Jon a place on the team for 2010.
Simon Keitch: You have a great schedule outlined for the upcoming season; what do you hope to achieve this year?
Jonathan Tiernan Locke: I’m in a team full of very capable guys, if you look at the names that are there they’ve all won big races so I’d like to meet the expectations of the team as in make sure I’m up there and win something big but also just to be consistent – not over do it – so I hold my form and can help the team and hopefully get some good results for myself as well.
SK: You’ve decided to stay in Devon despite the team’s wishes for you to move; why stay in Plymouth?
JTL: I feel that this is such a great place for training, everything’s here so I don’t see the point in moving elsewhere; there’s a bit of travelling every time you want to go to an airport or whatever – it’s a bit of a journey – but it’s fantastic riding around here.
SK: What’s a typical training route for you when you’re home?
JTL: It depends on the length. I usually do something like this: Derriford, Yelverton, Princetown, Dartmeet, Buckfastleigh, Totnes, Dartmouth, Kingsbridge, Modbury, Ivybridge, Plympton, Derriford. If only out for two or three hours I’ll do a loop on Dartmoor, or around the coast/South Hams.
SK: You have no team mates nearby; do you train on your own normally?
JTL: I prefer to train on my own, I find that the time goes quicker just with the iPod on. I don’t train with any power meters or a heart rate monitor; I’m quite old school in my training, I just go off how I’m feeling and I’m quite good at knowing how to get myself into shape and knowing when I’m tired or whatever and sometimes you go out training with other riders and they’re quite specific; they train with a heart rate monitor and it’s not compatible unless you’re just out on an easy ride.
SK: So a large part of it is just the compatibility with the training partner?
JTL: Definitely; I mean some people are so specific that you find yourself adapting to them; just doing their training program effectively and you’re thinking hang on this isn’t what I want to be doing, or they’ll only want to do a shorter ride so you have to ride out and meet them or whatever. But on our team training camp at the moment out in Spain we’ve got it worked out so that most of us are doing similar programs so that works; and we’ve got some specific days where they have us doing a time trial or something like that. But day-to-day there’s also the fact that in this area there’s practically no other professional cyclists here to train with; there’s Yanto Barker when he’s down occasionally and he’s good to train with but apart from that most people have got jobs so they’re at work or whatever all week.
SK: You started out racing mountain bikes didn’t you?
JTL: Yeah, I started racing mountain bikes when I was 14 or 15; my parents weren’t into it but I got them to take me to races after I saw some local events advertised in Mountain Biking UK magazine that were in the Newton Abbot, Taunton and Exeter area. I started winning those so they took me to some of the National races when I was 16 and 17. I started racing on the road at 18 and jacked in the mountain biking.
SK: Do you still ride mountain bikes at all?
JTL: I don’t own a mountain bike right now but I raced the nationals last year and a couple others just because there was no other road racing on, and also did a couple of the Newnham ones.
SK: What is it that you prefer about racing on the road?
JTL: I like the frequency of racing on the road; you have the single day races, stage races, and crits in between, whereas with mountain bike races you’re doing one a month or something and you’ve really got to focus because if something goes wrong that’s it; with road there’s always another day. Plus it’s more of a professional sport; there are a lot more athletes at a higher level whereas with MTB there’s only a handful of good guys in the UK and that’s it, and only a couple are truly world class. So the level’s not there with MTB and these days there’s no atmosphere, there’s no crowd or anything; maybe back in its heyday like 15 years ago I would have liked it. I remember this is what got me into racing, when I used to go to the Grundig World Cups at Newnham; I just thought it was amazing watching that but now you look at the World Cups and half the guys aren’t riding for trade teams, they’re riding for their national squad because there’s not that much money now and there’s only a handful of guys making any decent money out of it. But ultimately I think that road racing with the tactics and everything else, the way it plays out makes it a lot more interesting.
SK: MTB is more like a time trial.
JTL: It’s an off road time trial isn’t it; there’s no real drafting you’re just at your threshold the whole time and that’s it. With road there’s changes in tempos different stages and you’ve got the fact you’re working with a leader or whatever.
SK: So after some good results off road you had to start at the bottom as a first year senior on the road?
JTL: I had to start as a fourth cat and I’d had an illness from my last year racing mountain bikes and taken a break of six or seven months and came back to road racing with no idea of the tactics or anything. I did Totnes-Vire and a few of those local races as I could only do fourth cat events but moved up to third cat, did a few more and was getting strong by the summer by which point I’d moved up to first cat and was doing all the south of England stuff and some in Wales, and the results were good so I managed to get myself a team in France for the next year. I had the strength from mountain biking but no idea of tactics, I went straight up the catagories by just clearing off in the hills basically, and it was Yanto Barker who I met over that summer that saw some of my results and sorted me out with the UV Aube team in France. I didn’t realise at the time but it was one of the best teams I could have gone to; I only realised after I’d been there for a while that there was a whole three or four levels of teams below the one I was in that people were trying to work their way up the ranks to get to and I’d been thrown in at the deep end which was great. This was 2004 and I was a second year senior; 19 years old. I was with UV Aube for a year then moved on to CC Etupes which was the top ranked elite amateur team in France at that time.
Forced to take a hiatus from bike racing, Tiernan Locke transferred his focus to his education, enrolling at Bristol University and eventually completing a degree in Product Design, although at this point he’s not so sure that his qualification will lead to a career in design when he eventually hangs up his wheels: “I like design and I’m not writing it off altogether but there’s a few options I’m thinking about after cycling and that’s always something you’ve got to think about because you never know when your career will end or even with a long career you’ve still got 20 years of working and bike racing is such a big part of my life that I wouldn’t like to go too far away from it. I think once you’ve raced for so long and gained a lot of expertise no amount of textbooks or BC coaching days are going to replicate that so I’d like to think I’ll have something to offer.”
SK: Did you always intend to get back to racing once you’d finished your degree?
JTL: It was always in the back of my mind; when I worked in Colin Lewis Cycles during the Summer and the Tour and all the other big races were on the TV I was thinking ‘I’ve got to start riding again’ but I didn’t even own a bike at that time; around mid to late 2007 I thought right I’m going to start racing again next year there’s no excuse not to. I am a bit gutted sometimes I think I took that long out and maybe I only needed a year and wasted all that time. But I’ve found myself in a good position now; I’m 25 and I’ve got a load of years left in me.
SK: What’s your most memorable win to date?
JTL: I remember in 2005 shortly before I stopped, I won a race that’s basically the amateur Tour du Haut Var; it’s down in the same region and all the Pro Tour teams were there looking at the course for the pro race the next day. This was when the Haut Var was a one day race instead of two, and we tackled the elite amateur one. All the best teams were there, and I’d been going really well but I’d been a bit slack in the race and hadn’t really followed what was going on. I knew there was a group up the road and sort of knew I was in the chase group but didn’t really know if anyone was in between or further up the road. On the final climb we caught the break and I attacked and caught the remnants of whoever else was up the road and beat them in the sprint, but I didn’t celebrate because I wasn’t sure if I’d won. I thought no this can’t be it’s too big a race there must have been someone else up the road but it turned out that I’d actually won. That was great; a big race with lots of big names there, lots of names that since I stopped cycling are on Pro Tour teams. That was pretty cool especially as I wasn’t sure if I’d actually won.
SK: What kind of races do you like doing?
JTL: One day races; anything that’s hard basically so if it’s hilly or maybe if it’s windy; I like it when the race causes a natural selection rather than a flat day with no wind where you’ve still got to be the strongest or thereabouts to win it. When there’s a natural selection you’re only thinking about tactics towards the end – you’re not having to race 200 guys the whole time – the field eventually gets whittled down to a small group and that’s when I like to start racing. And stage races as well as you’ve got that accumulative fatigue so you get a few days in and people are tired whereas I tend to start getting better.
SK: What kind of rider do you consider yourself to be?
JTL: An all rounder I suppose; I mean my climbing is OK, my time trialing is about the same, and I’ve got a sprint; I mean I’d never get involved in the bunch sprints just because you’ve got to be a bit nuts – there’s head butting and barging and people all over the road – I’ve never bothered with that but from a small group I’m usually confident that I can win a sprint, and if I’m not, I know that I can time trial well enough that I can maybe surprise someone and clear off early. I’d say I’m an all rounder.
SK: Which of the big races would you like to win?
I don’t know about win but I’d love to do something like Liège-Bastogne-Liège – I’d love to race that – and the Tour of Lombardy, that’s good. Any of the Ardennes hilly classics, and the Giro d’Italia as well which to me I prefer watching to the Tour de France. I’m never into the Vuelta it just looks windswept with no spectators just like racing across the desert via motorways. The Tour de France is the Tour de France; it’s just massive but there’s something about the Giro… I’d love to do that one day.
I’m very happy to say that I’ve been working with the Astana Professional Cycling Team this winter to produce the commercial photography for all of the team’s promotional and marketing material for the 2011 racing season (photographed above is new signing for 2011 Czech rider Roman Kreuziger); an assignment that eventually took me to three different countries and involved the full set of planes, trains and automobiles. And helicopters.
First up was a short trip to the Italian town of Montecatini Terme in Tuscany where the team was holding its first training camp with the 2011 season roster, to produce headshots of each of the 27 team riders plus a full team photo in the new team kit, ready for release on the 1st of January when the new team and kit could be officially announced in accordance to UCI rules. I flew out to Italy at the end of November and snow was just starting to fall at Gatwick Airport when I arrived there for my flight in the very early morning and I was subsequently told that delays and/or cancellations were possible… A nervous few hours followed while my flight was delayed further and further as a result of the poor weather before eventually boarding, and we then had another 30 minutes or so on the plane while the ground-crew hosed down the entire plane with de-icer before ultimately getting airborne. Terrible weather seemed to be battering the whole of Europe and heavy rain storms in Italy put paid to the original plan of photographing the full team outdoors, but fortunately the conference room we used as a studio for the individual headshots was large enough for all 27 riders so we had a plan B to fall back on; not ideal certainly but with only this one short window when all 27 riders would be in one place and available for the group shot it’s a case of doing the best job possible in the circumstances (and pro cyclists with 5% body fat aren’t too keen on standing outside in the cold either…). In retrospect I was lucky to get to Italy as I later learned that Gatwick was closed just a few hours after my flight took off and the airport remained closed for the rest of the week. I was woken up at 5:00AM the morning after the photo-shoot with a text informing me that my flight was cancelled, but with pre-production meetings and another shoot to get to back in the UK I didn’t have the luxury of staying in Italy for a few more days so I opened up the laptop and got to work searching for a different route home, eventually finding an available seat on a later flight with a different airline flying into Heathrow, which curiously remained open despite only being on the other side of London from Gatwick.
View from room 817, Hotel Diamante Beach, Calpe, Spain
After the coldest December on record, a week on the south coast of Spain sounded pretty good even if the busy work schedule did mean I wouldn’t have time to get my feet wet in any of those pools in the photo above. I was based in a hotel with the Astana team in Calpe for their first training camp of the calendar year with both documentary images of the training and behind the scenes goings on as well as more ‘studio’ style portraits on white seamless on the shot-list, this time with the new Specialized 2011 team bikes which were being delivered during the training camp. Riding on the back of a motorbike piloted by an ex Moto-GP pro through the Spanish countryside was a definite highlight of the trip and it’s a testament to my driver’s skill that no matter how fast he drove into a corner I always felt safe. Riding in the back of one of the team cars with the Directeur Sportif at the wheel was an entirely different matter however, and I’m fairly sure that years have been taken off my life as a result of one particularly hairy mountain road descent although happily no-where near as many years as I feared might be removed at the time.
The third and final location was Monaco for the 2011 Astana Team launch as well as full length portraits of the remaining seven riders who weren’t at the training camp in Calpe because they were racing at the Tour Down Under in Australia. Arrived at Nice airport and then transferred the 20KM to Monaco via helicopter (naturally), about 30 minutes for a quick stroll to take in the ‘sights’ then straight to work, eat, sleep, eat some more then taxi-to-helicopter-to-plane; in and out in under 24 hours…
