With 21 teams, 164 riders, 205km, 17 laps of Mount Royal and over 5 hours of racing …the Grand Prix Cyclyste de Montréal has become a major event in the sporting calendar of Montréal.

Having shot the event last year, I was keen to keep this afternoon free to once again have the opportunity to practice sport photography – something I don’t get to do very often.

The circuit was the same as last year – in fact it is the same as that used at the 1976 Olympics.

 

There was a good turnout of people and large crowds gathered around the start/finish line on avenue du Parc where there were a couple of large video screens to help follow the action.

 

 

With the riders often being pretty close, I find the cycling event lends itself well to using a wide angle lens – which I used for quite a few of the shots below. I also like shooting from a low angle, particularly when using a wide angle as I think it adds ..

 

 

 

One technique that I particularly wanted to try and improve on, was panning to have the background blur to give the sense of movement. Unfortunately for quite a few shots my framing wasn’t great, but I did manage to get a few that I thought came out quite well…

 

Another technique I tried was using a longer shutter speed but keeping the camera stationary.

 

Here are some more shots from this afternoon…

 

This years race was won by Peter Sagan (SVK) in 5hrs 20 mins 7 secs followed across the line 4 seconds later by Simone Ponzi (IT) who just edged out Canadian Ryder Hesjedal who was in 3rd. For any fellow Brits reading, Chris Froome finished in 28th.

Thanks for stopping by. Until next time.

– Martin

 

Related Images: