Show me the money

I use to watch most motorsport, gradually it left my schedule, F1 being the first. It is all about money, with less dependence on the human element. Other four wheeled racing followed, finally the two wheelers no longer interested me. When human frailty is removed from the equation it becomes a race to spend the most. 

So what do I watch now?

Cycling; more specifically road racing. There is a lot of money in the top flight, if you are a mens team. It's very different for the women's side of the sport, that really needs to change. They don't have so many live televised events, or the same length of races. This is wrong; why don't the organisers do more to promote it? More screen time will mean more sponsors, it's a little chicken and egg at the moment.

The top teams spend big, up to around £40 million. This could sterelise the sport, as it does for the motorised genre. The better funded teams generally lead the races, but the winner is never certain. The recent Tour de France for example; Ineos with Egan Bernal were favourites. I think they have the biggest budget, he pulled out due to injury. Anyone from any team could crash, become ill, or just have a bad few days, especially in the mountains. That's all it takes for any hope of winning to disappear. Three weeks, 3,484.2 km (2,165.0 miles) with only two rest days. This year it went down to the wire, with a mammoth effort on the last stage from Tadej Pogacar to win.

I must admit to imagining myself in those races, testing my determination against whatever the course throws at me. I also think about some of the endurance events, how great would it be to complete them with friends?

And now for the regular feature; pics from the daily rides.

 

The weather was still great at the beginning of the week, starting to see sunset colour during my ride

The nights are getting darker.

My after work route is only twelve miles but it includes four steep hills, two of which I first ride down, turn around, and then ride to the top again. On Wednesday night I passed the same people on both hills as I rode in both directions. I wondered what they might be thinking. They gave me a half smile, half laugh the last time our paths crossed.

I also got a puncture on Waller Lane, the camera caught the moment, with sound.

I hope the evenings will be as nice as the one on Thursday. It was wet all day, I did got dirty, but the sunset was worth going out.

The wind made a big impression on Saturday. I went out with Oxted Cycle Club in a faster group than previously, it was okay at first. As we neared the end I ran out of acceleration; if I needed to catch up on a hill I had nothing left. It felt like there had been a headwind most of the time, not too bad if I was in a slipstream. A few feet further back I lost that help, and could not regain my position, the gap increased quickly. It was a weird feeling, I wasn't out of breath, my legs just didn't have any extra push. 

Matt and I met at our winter residence on Sunday, the Tatsfield village bus stop. It's covered location is less exposed to the weather than our summer locations. 

During the week Matt had discovered an off road route from Redhill to Caterham. I knew some of it, but there would still plenty to explore for me. A ride to a cafe and back, what's not to like.

Sports camera

When I started cycling as an adult about ten years ago I never thought I'd buy a camera to record my rides and report bad driving.

After a few close passes I bought a GoPro Hero. Eventually the battery wouldn't hold a charge for very long - it wasn't long to start with - so I looked at the alternatives. The GoPro brand is the Apple Mac of action cameras. Expensive, maybe not as feature rich as others but are easy to use; they are almost the default option.

Summary: Expensive, ok picture quality; poor in low light, short battery life, very easy to use.

it's had a tough life

My next purchase was a bad choice. It's a generic bullet camera based on a Sony chip. The picture quality is great, better than my old GoPro. But the rest is worse.

I bought it because the retailer said battery life was around four hours, and could be swapped when flat.

The disappointment started when it arrived. One of the two batteries was DOA. This was quickly replaced, so that at least was helpful. Unfortunately neither lasted close to four hours. Other sites said it should run for around two and half hours. The best I got was ninety minutes.

I ordered two more batteries from another supplier, one was DOA. Again the charged life was not as advertised.

Less than two months later the batteries started to fail, eventually only one would hold a charge. Then that started to be troublesome; it was time to look around again.

A further problem I had relates to ease of use; setting the date and time, video record length and whether to show the timestamp. You have to attach the camera to a computer and edit a text file. What I didn't realise was that swapping batteries or memory card resets the above to factory default. The forums I read say this is not an issue with everyone. For me it means that if I had a spare battery, changing it or the card mid ride meant it reverted some or all of the settings.

Another issue was the supplied handlebar mount. It is so springy the camera continually flaps about. If it did have image stabilisation there is no way it could compensate. I tied it to the mount I had used for the GoPro. It was a bit of a bodge, velcro and bluetack, but it worked. The helmet mount was okay, but I could never get it straight.

Summary: Good picture quality except in low light. Poor battery life, and user experience. Cheap.

I went for the Cycliq fly 12. Mainly for the battery life. I looked at others with similar promises, but wanted to go with a recognised name, hopefully to avoid build quality issues.

I had heard the mount was fragile, it seemed okay to me. Although, it is the only camera I know supplied with a safety tether.

The issue seemed mostly to be caused by the twisting action to disengage it from the handlebar clamp. I decided to use the GoPro mount already on my bikes. It would mean I could just undo the bolt, rather than risk a twist. I also didn't need to buy another clamp.

Nothing is ever straightforward however; the mount isn't quite the correct width. I can't tighten the clamp enough the stop the camera moving when I hit a big bump. I'll have to find a shim.

First impressions: battery life is much better than my previous devices, it's very easy to use, the picture quality is as good as the Sony, the stabilisation seems to work, not as expensive as a GoPro.

I am using a 32gb microSD card, it's now the limiting factor if I want to record long rides. It does delete older footage when the card fills, and at low res it will start doing this after about two hours. Most of my rides are less than that so I think I may have found a winner.

Here is a video from it. If only more lanes were like this, just birdsong.

The pictures on this post were taken with my "big" Nikon, I haven't used it since my last studio shoot back in March. Just a week before lockdown came into force.

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Sports photography

I sat down to watch the men's road race at the Olympics yesterday. With near perfect timing when I switched on the television it has just started. I have been watching a lot of road race cycling lately. This is the first time I have watched so much of the Olympics.

The racing was close, with the action very fluid and changing regularly. I prefer one day racing, rather than the long tours like the Tour De France. Don't get me wrong I watched as much of the Tour de France as I could. But there were long periods of tactical riding. The commentators enthused about it. I didn't so much.

The best parts of the race were the two mountain circuits. Punishing climbs and very fast descents. These descents proved to be dangerous, especially the second circuit.

The majority of the race was filmed from motorbikes, a little helicopter footage and some static cameras.

The commentators made much of the dangers faced by the racers during the descents. A few crashes served as reminders about the risks. Thankfully the injuries were, I think, light. Only a collarbone and scapula were broken. Taking into account the speed and lack of run off I call this light. And lucky.
They reached speeds close to fifty miles per hour. And it got chaotic in places with the many team and official cars, the security and press motorbikes and of course the racers. How there aren't more collisions between all of these is testament to the skill, and concentration of everyone involved.

This got me thinking about how the coverage of these events is taken a bit for granted. I think only a few times was it mentioned that the media motorbikes were taking just as big risks. They had to follow the racers, not interfere with them and allow them space to race. All the time giving us quality coverage of the action.

It was easy to forget as I watched the racers fly down the twisting hills that to get these pictures a fully loaded motorbike with two people on it; the second one standing. Was following close behind.

It's not just cycle racing that is dangerous to cover. The photographer might be in a fast moving helicopter, car or boat. Perched at the top of a tall tower or swaying cherry picker. They might be standing a little closer to the action than is completely safe. Or at the very least sitting in the burning sun, wind, rain and snow for hours on end.

So the next time you are watching a sporting event on television, spare a thought for how the picture got to you.

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Update.

The women's race was marred by the crash of Annemie van Vleuten. She was in intensive care for a while. Concussion and broken bones in her lower back were the injuries. At first it did look like it could have been much worse.

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