As some of you may know, the
Tour of Missouri has been canceled due to a lack of funding, by the last minute removal of funds by the State's Department of Tourism. (if you would like more information please ask, though this is not the time or place to launch into the details and history)
with that, the only opportunity I had this year to shoot Professional level cyclists flew out the window (Tour of Missouri was 1 of only 2 top level bike races in the nation) and there is still a part of me that is heart broken and I have basically abandoned any hope of getting to any races to photograph riders, because all of the big races (UCI professional) left this season are over in Europe (like the
Tour de France) and that means all of the racers are over there as well.
That all changed a couple of weeks ago. While driving through mid-town, I passed some cyclists out on the road wearing
Kelly Benefits and
Jelly Belly jerseys, both teams are mid-level professional cycling teams, and I could not figure out what they were doing in town, since the Tour of Missouri had been canceled. Soon after, I discovered that STL was hosting a set of small bike races, the
tour de grove. As you can guess I immediately rearranged my schedule in order to make it out for both the Saturday Mid-Town Sprints and Sunday's Tour de Grove.
I found out about the races from the
twitter of rider Jeremy Powers, of team Jelly Belly, about 5 mins before the race began. I made great time getting down to it, but during the drive clouds began to over take the sky . . .
and as you can tell it began raining . . . raining HARD. The floodgates opened just as I was arriving at the race.
The race was in one of my favorite parts of Saint Louis, on Locust in Mid-Town.
it was so good to see fans come out in the rain to watch the race. you can not see it here, but the road is almost completely flooded on the edges where the fans were.
that is Jeremy Powers on the right, and the race winner Brad Huff (a Missouri resident) on the left.
more photo's from Sunday's events to come . . .
though it was early June, the temperature was nearing triple digits, and everyone felt it. Cyclist were picking up ice before the race started in an effort to keep their body temperatures down. . . a few, who I think are ingenious, put lumps of ice in small nylon stockings and slung them around their neck to keep themselves cool.
on the start line in Saint Louis. . .
