Merced Criterium - 2008

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This is the first time I have been to Merced Criterium, and it rained like cats and dogs. The officials said it rained last year as well, but the riders endure, and so do we with our cameras, but mine is not waterproof! This is a basically a small hometown event. There were not many fans roadside, and there wasn't a podium ceremony either. I think the prizes are quite small as well, so this is another opportunity to get in some early racing before the big classics start statewide. The women's pro 1-2 field was fairly small, around 10 to 15 riders I think. I didn't see any of the pro women before the race, except a few Tibco riders circling the Historic courthouse, and I think I did see one High Road rider near the sign in area before the start.

I think it was Mara Abbott, but I decided not to bother her as it was starting to rain a bit. Maybe I'll get an opportunity to meet her at Merco the following week, as I needed to ask her about the possibility of doing some TV profiles for the coverage at the Tour De Toona in July. She raced so well last year, she certainly deserves to be in the spotlight. What a great year she had in 2007, and she looks great this year. Kind of reminds me of Luperini in her prime, not the next Luperini, but perhaps maybe the first Mara Abbott! So anyway it started to rain a bit and I made tracks to the courthouse to exploit some of the best places to take some photos. I ran into another guy, who sells photos for a living. I chatted with him to kill some time in the rain, waiting for the start.

It rained like crazy all night, but I was hopeful that the storm had run it's course. It hadn't rained all morning long, and while overcast, kind of dark and scary, the skies held it's load, until the women pro 1-2 starting racing. Just a couple of laps into the race, all hell broke loose and it started raining pretty hard, at least hard enough to keep me isolated under buildings and anywhere I could find to get some shots without getting soaked. My camera doesn't like rain, so I grabbed shots wherever I could get them. In some shots, you can see the water flying up off the wheels, so that kind of gives you a idea about the conditions.

As far as shooting photos, the conditions were again horrendous like the previous day in Snelling, but instead of 20 to 50 mile an hour winds like yesterday, today was the rain, and tons of it! It rained all day and all night! It was messy out there, no doubt about it! Check out some of those High Road riders coming around the corners! The photos itself are very poor quality due to both some limitations of the camera and the refusal on my part to use the flash. The flash takes up too much battery power, but really I avoid using the flash because it distracts the riders from racing, and doesn't challenge me to work at getting decent photos with the various settings.

The lighting was pretty bad, dark and dreary skies forced me to set the ISO levels to auto, not the best idea, but with a high shudder speed, and the aperture wide open, the only way to get more light is to reduce the speed or raise the ISO levels. The H-9 was the rave of the camera show in Las Vegas, so as a bridge camera, it can deliver great photos if you can get the exposure values correct. Some days like this are so dark, it's just better to use a flash, but I decided to push this little jewel to its limits! Post processing and the histogram tells me I just bottomed out on available light, so reducing the speed would of been the last option, something best avoided.

For what it's worth, I posted 45 photos here, not because they are that good, they aren't, but I know a lot of the women, friends, family and the fans would like to see them. I get a huge amount of visitors worldwide, and lots of people enjoy seeing the pro women at races, so I will try not to let them down. Here are a good many shots of the High Road riders, love their jerseys, and hopefully all the other pro women in this race. Some I know at first glance, others I don't, but enjoy, that's what they are here for! Nearly all of these were done at the narrow courthouse round about, nice place to get some action shots!

Here are also the same photos which are much larger for bigger monitors and have been cropped at various sizes to highlight different riders on a larger scale. While working with large 8 megapixel images, there is a fair amount of noise that comes along with this much data, especially with such bad lighting conditions, but for those who want to browse the highlights, here they are below.

I was the only cameraman that stayed to cover this race in the rain, as I said, but what is important here is I have photos of Kristy Gough, and I don't know exactly why she is racing with the pros, but these photos were priceless surprises to her family and friends. I didn't know who she was, because she was a 3-4, not a 1-2, but she was certainly good enough to have been a Pro! Here are some shots in her memory. She seemed so relaxed on the bike at both Snelling and the Original Merced Criterium which is not to be confused with the Criterium at Merco, which she also won! So terribly sad, she was headed for greatness!

In Memory of Kristy Gough.