small ritual

ariake

as i predicted four years ago, free running now has its own special shoes. soon to be seen on non-freerunners near you! i do like the white/brown/black version i must confess. would look good in the office ;)

as for the rest of my predictions - it's too late for the 2012 olympics [although it would have been appropriate, they could have used a brutalist housing estate or the south bank as a course]. it took snowboarding about 15 years. skateboarding's been refused [this time]. maybe 2020 for free running?

tour de france 2

i was just going back through my photos adding a few names. found one of millar that i hadn't put up.

i enjoyed the whole thing very much. london now is very different to 20 or 30 years ago, they know how to make big events work in the centre of town. trafalgar square, the mall, the royal parks, westminster and hyde park form a series of interconnecting spaces that can handle huge crowds, multiple stages, race routes, big screens, rock concerts, sporting events, all with appropriate tourist-picture backdrops. they don't have to close many major roads, there's plenty of tube stations, crowds can melt away in all directions afterwards. it seems easy and natural now, where 20 years ago it was a big heave just to do something in hyde park. i guess they've had practice, especially since the millennium. and now the mayor intends to show off how well london will handle the olympics.

considering recent terrorist activities the security seemed very light, or perhaps just unobtrusive. you could get surprisingly close to the starting gate, and to the team areas as my photos show - and the finish seemed more blocked off by grandstands and the media than security. and of course it's all free - including the programmes. hope it's not too long before the tour returns.

tour de france photos

my photoset here on flickr. this is the prologue - i can't make today's stage 1 start because i'm going to a baptism.

this was a testing thing to photograph. all my technique has been directed towards things happening slowly in darkness, and here is the opposite. even the camera reaction time comes into play, never mind mine. there were a lot of shots where the rider had already moved out of frame by the time the shutter clicked. i used the warm-up stages when riders were just trying out the circuit to practise my technique, and it was kind of ok in the end. once the time-trial started i went over to look at the finish in the mall, and at the team areas in st. james' park. the bikes are wonderful, much nicer than anything you or i are likely to have. once wiggins had warmed up and headed for the start i went back to the finish to try and see what happened. the worst organisational mistake, i think, was putting the winners' podium in a place where ordinary punters couldn't see it - hence the scramble against the fence in the photo [taken with camera above my head]. the actual yellow jersey photo has the winner's head cut off because i couldn't see where i was aiming.

allez allez

...pour celebrer le grand depart du tour de france a londres ce weekend. je vais voir le prologue aujourd'hui.