Cyclist
Life as a pro photographer at the spring Classics with Tornanti.cc
Mud, rain, bergs, cobbles, the smell of frites in the air… the spring Classics capture the imagination of cycling fans in a way the Grand Tours can’t. As the kids would say, they just hit different. For the riders, the Classics season starts at the end of February with Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, but for seasoned Italian photographers Francesco Rachello and Eloise Mavian, who work together as Tornanti.cc, it begins even earlier with arranging press accreditation.
‘With accreditation you can move more freely during the race and get to the finish line and the podium,’ says Mavian. But even with the magic pass, getting access to the race isn’t always easy in the face of officialdom.
‘Sometimes you still have problems,’ adds Rachello. ‘You might find a policeman at an entry point who just says, “Sorry, no, you’re not coming through.”’
For Mavian, officials’ lack of knowledge can be frustrating: ‘It’s often the police saying that our position is not safe, but as someone who understands bike racing, you know that the riders won’t be anywhere near a certain part of a turning, for example. The police don’t know as much about cycling as they should.’
Once they have talked their way past the uniforms, there is still the issue of how to keep up with a flying peloton while negotiating a course through crowds and past roadblocks. ‘Google Street View is our friend,’ says Rachello. ‘You can check the shortcuts between different spots and see if they match up. Alas, that doesn’t always go to plan and sometimes we just get stuck in race traffic.’
‘Other photographers don’t always do a lot of preparation, and then you see them following us on the day to try and capitalise on our homework,’ adds Mavian. But following other photographers isn’t always the best plan.
‘At Liège, we were taking a shortcut close to the finish. We saw some other experienced photographers turn down this road that was insanely muddy, and we followed them. And it got muddier. And muddier. And then it turned up a steep hill. Eventually we had to turn around, by which point we’d missed a key part of the race. Lesson learned.’
Careful route planning and positioning is also key to getting those shots that are maybe missed by the bulk of photographers covering the race.
‘We try to not always take the same photos,’ says Mavian. ‘There are certain shots you need to take every year – pelotons squeezing up cobbled alleys, those kinds of things – but sometimes you go for the risky shots. Maybe from inside a barn or something in low light, where you’ve got to gamble. These can go badly, but the payoff is bigger when they go well. Lots can go wrong: the lighting, timing, people wandering into shot, even losing track of time and missing the front of the race go by. It does happen.’
Hard knock life
For race photographers, working days are long, especially when there are two races – men’s and women’s – in one day, with lots of additional admin elements to factor in.
‘The safety meeting happens first thing, sometimes as early as 7am,’ says Rachello. ‘Everyone will be there, from the Shimano service car through to ambulance drivers, TV commentators and doctors. And later on we will be editing until near midnight.’
And then there is the Classics weather to contend with. ‘Sometimes the moto is a brutal experience,’ says Mavian. ‘I had to do an hour to get to Bastogne on the highway and it was absolutely freezing and wet. Zero degrees. I’ve never been so happy to get to the safety meeting. I had a boiling coffee and brought myself back to life.
‘Flèche Wallonne was equally savage. For the whole first half I couldn’t feel my hands. It was agony to take the photos. My moto driver heated my gloves on the engine, which saved me.’
In the fight to get pictures while staving off frostbite, essential tasks like eating can easily get kicked down the list of priorities. ‘You’ve got to eat when you can,’ says Rachello. ‘At Paris-Roubaix you do the start and then there’s a good bar next to the first cobbled sector where all the photographers congregate. You can have some BBQ food and they play good music. It really kicks off.’
But lunch is usually a snack scoffed in a gaps between taking pictures and chasing the pack. ‘You just don’t get time,’ says Mavian. ‘I pack a few bars but often they don’t get eaten. I need a sticker on my top tube to remind me to eat, like the riders.’
‘I don’t eat meat but once I had to make an exception as I was so cold,’ says Rachello. ‘I’d been starving on the moto and eventually had a sausage because there were literally no alternatives. Then on Strade Bianche I swallowed so much dust that I was sick in bed for a few days. That wasn’t fun.’
Of course, they are not there for fun. As Rachello points out, the hardships of shooting the Classics are balanced by the privilege of being at the centre of something special.
‘The emotion you feel when you enter the cobbled sections is like nothing else,’ he says. ‘It just explodes – it’s intoxicating. There is nothing quite like it.’
Main image at the top: ‘This is the first cobbled sector of Paris-Roubaix. I love the effect that this race has on spectators – the volume of fans is growing every year. This shot is better from the back because it’s so true to life: a strong, fast, colourful peloton hammering past happy fans on dusty cobbles. And a tractor for good measure.’ (Eloise Mavian)
‘Gent-Wevelgem winds through the Westhoek region, the epicentre of the First World War, where I discovered the Frezenberg Ridge Scottish Memorial. The marching soldiers heading in the same direction as the riders contributes an embattled undertone to the atmosphere of the image.’ (Francesco Rachello)
‘I found a room inside the In Flanders Fields Museum that had been set up as a waiting area for the teams before Gent-Wevelgem. Mads Pedersen looks calm and focussed in the thin sunlight filtering through the old windows.’ (Francesco Rachello)
‘I have always had good memories of Flèche Wallonne. It’s always warm and sunny – but not this year. The weather on the day of the race was terrible, one of the coldest I have ever experienced. You can see in the riders’ faces and postures how they are struggling. The rain stopped briefly during the final climb but then – as a punchline – it started snowing during the podium presentations.’ (Eloise Mavian)
‘Omloop het Nieuwsblad was a cold, dark day on the moto. On the Muur van Geraardsbergen when Lotte Kopecky broke away from the group with Marianne Vos on her wheel, she was so powerful I really thought she could win the race [Vos would eventually take the victory in a sprint]. The light was great, creating contrast between that moody sky and the white-rainbow jersey of Lotte being chased by Vos’s yellow.’ (Eloise Mavian)
‘Flanders this year was treacherous. Before this shot was taken, my fellow photographers told me that some colleagues had fallen with the moto. Luckily no one was seriously injured. I love this photo because you can actually see the water pouring from the sky. The riders are focussed on chasing down the three women in front. And I love how the fans are cheering and totally unconcerned by the deluge.’ (Eloise Mavian)
‘When the cobbles are slippery, all it takes is a single foot down from one rider and the whole group is walking. The Koppenberg was so slippery this year and the road so narrow that I had to lean on the muddy slope at the side to stay upright. The riders were using the banners and wooden poles on the roadside as support. A few were so close to me that they had to hang on to my trousers.’ (Francesco Rachello)
‘When I arrived at the bottom of the Koppenberg during the Tour of Flanders I only had five minutes before the race came through and the moto was not allowed up the climb. The rain had made the cobbles so slippery that I had to walk incredibly carefully. I hadn’t made it to the top by the time the race arrived, but as luck would have it, Mathieu van der Poel attacked right in front of me. Some you win.’ (Francesco Rachello)
The route of Milan-San Remo turns from good to spectacular as it arrives at the coast. For us in the car, it’s the last stop we can make before the Poggio and there are only a few vantage points from which to capture the race passing between the cliffs. We have to scale the rocks with a rope and cling onto a wire fence to get the shot, but the image of the snaking peloton is worth it.’ (Francesco Rachello)
‘For every creative shot of the Classics you take, there are a dozen iconic set pieces you also need to bank. The first cobbled sectors of Paris-Roubaix are always exciting but it takes a while to get really hectic so you can take your time. Soigneurs hoisting wheels aloft ahead of a dusty lead group is a key image. And there are bonus points for having the rainbow jersey and eventual winner in the shot.’ (Francesco Rachello)
‘This year I took my first Paris-Roubaix shower shots. I was looking at how happy the riders were when the warm water was falling on them and I could feel that emotion. While I was taking photos of Femke Markus [SD Worx-Protime] in the shower I noticed the blisters on her hands. There was something strikingly beautiful about the sore wounds, especially next to the delight of hot, cleansing water.’ (Eloise Mavian)
• This article originally appeared in issue 153 of Cyclist magazine. Click here to subscribe
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