Ronde van Vlaanderen 2010

Tom Boonen gets fan encouragement in vain...

The Tour of Flanders 2010 for elites will go down in history as one where the Belgian bike demons were beaten by a Swiss superhero, Fabian Cancellara. Belgians took second, third, and fourth place, but in this Tour what counts is being the number one... the rest is motherhood and apple-pie.

Anyways, as I announced yesterday, our shooting team took positions with Bavo in the 'bergen' and myself and Vincent downtown Oudenaarde. Terry let us down and had brunch with his girlfriend instead. Soit disant! Anyways, enjoy our collective work in a Flickr slideshow I posted a few moments ago.

The best pictures by far were shot by Bavo. His gear was a Nikon D90 with a 18-130 zoom, I think. He stood at a point where cyclists had run the best part of 200 km and the climb was hard (10-11%). By all counts Bavo shot the most dramatic pictures I came across in a day like this. Especially the one with Tom Boonen being encouraged by a frustrated fan was sublime (see here left)! He also shot Cancellara and most of the remaining celebs, and among those the American superhero Lance Armstrong (Radio Shack).

Vincent shot the cutest pictures of fans watching on the sideways and I shot all the rest. Mind you, I was equipped with the most expensive gear (a Canon 7D with a 70-200 zoom) but my pictures were by far the weakest of all. I also shot the most pictures among the three of us, as usual, more than 200 shots in total. Obviously, neither the volume nor the quality of my gear suffice to guarantee the best results. It takes something else too... it's called talent, which I obviously lacked today! Never mind, all in all, the result was acceptable, we had fun and we almost froze to death from the cold wind.

Another Tour of Flanders written in the history books with Herr Cancellara claiming the victory in today's tug-of-war. And got Tom Boonen pissed like hell. Well, what can yeah say? It's just a game, innit?