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STRADE BIANCHE

By Gruber Images

March 7^th, 2017

the best race day of the year?

For the longest time, my answer to the age old question of - what's your favorite race to shoot - was always either Tro-Bro Leon or E3 Harelbeke. I realized on Saturday that my opinion had changed, and this is my favorite race. It's like some people sat down for a brainstorming session and said: ok, we want to make the best, most fantastic-est race ever, what do we need? Ok, we need some dirt, we need some wide open vistas, we need hills, we need lots of hills, we need the best finishing kilometer ever. They looked around a bit and realized that the answer lay in Tuscany, on much of the route of l'Eroica. They were right. This race has it all - the landscape, the dirt, the undeniable difficulty, and a finish sent straight from the heavens: Siena. It's magic.

van avermaet.

So close, but not quite yet in Siena for the Olympic Champion. It doesn't seem like it will be long until Van Avermaet gets his first Monument though.

classic.

Way down south near Montalcino, there's a section of dirt road that goes to the village of Lucignano d'Asso. It's there, that the Strade Bianche ignites each year. The winds howl across the wide open fields, and the 10+ kilometer section pitches and rolls and turns across endless perfection. Well, to ride your bike on or watch on TV. It always looks exceedingly stressful in the race.

on the bus.

Let's go back in time a bit - back to the start of the day. Ash spent a few minutes on the bus with Cannondale-Drapac. Spirits were rightly high for the team, which is packed with some serious talent and riding really well. Saturday ended up being less than ideal with crash after crash after crash for them, but Sunday's GP Industria & Artigianato saw the team go 3rd and 6th with Rigoberto Uran and Simon Clarke respectively. Notice the bottom right image: that's Uran giving himself a little spray of cologne right before the race. Our verdict? You can't go to battle smelling boring. Plus 10 to Rigo!

at the start.

Mad house. Sagan was chased through the starting area by selfie mad fans, and teams had the entertaining task of wading through hundreds to get to sign-on. I love the start of the Strade Bianche. It's a wonderful mess that borders on crazy, but stays just shy of it.

roadside delights.

wheel?

I love this shot from Ashley. Not much to say - big field, peloton in the process of being smashed to pieces - and a wheel.

lotto at the helm.

chasing.

A couple of minutes after the chaos of the peloton's passage through Lucignano d'Asso, small groups made their way across the sector, still gamely riding hard, but with no hope of ever seeing the front of the race again.

support.

crash.

how hard?

This hard. Not much saddle left to sit on.

san martino in grania.

I'd like to say that the race really gets going on Sector 7, but this year, the race really got going about an hour before this, and by the time they hit Sector 7, they were well and truly in the thick of it.

tao in the rain.

truls korsæth's big day out.

Only signed to Astana in the final days of 2016, the young Norwegian didn't take long making an impression - he spent a huge day in the break and eventually finished 20th - alongside a fellow Norwegian he probably wouldn't mind emulating in the years ahead: Edvald Boasson Hagen.

cypress hill motorpace sesh.

The dirt sectors get all the talk at this race, but there's one hill in particular, which should get a lot more attention. I call it Cypress Hill. It's immediately after Sector 9, Montaperti. It's a steep, maybe 1k hill, with a beautiful row of cypress tress at the top. The winning break has gone here multiple times in the race's history. It didn't quite happen that way this year, but they went really, really hard - and Tim Wellens enjoyed some nice time behind the moto for a few seconds. It wasn't as bad as this photo looks, but I like this one.

le tolfe.

The final dirt section saw Kwiatkowski clear and fighting and making ouch faces, while the three chasers made lots of extremely pained faces as well - but did not catch the soon to be two-time champion.

kwiatkowski alone.

Up the Santa Caterina climb into the center of Siena, Michal Kwiatkowski got a rare opportunity to take on the climb at his own pace - and not in a head-spinningly hard sprint up the stone slabs.

there he goes.

the pain of santa caterina.

kwiatkowski's glory.

almost there.

done.

end of the day.

We've been at 'home' in Lecchi with inGamba Tours this week. After a race that ended in an unlucky crash, Laurens ten Dam came back to Lecchi and began a wonderful series of massages with the man with the magic hands, Raul. Believe the hype - Laurens is a good one...and so is Raul.

Thank you.

Huge thanks to everyone that made Saturday fantastic: Ashley, Jim, Michael, inGamba...and I hope I wasn't too much of a detriment to all the fun. :-) Thank you for making this Saturday my favorite day of shooting in a long, long time. That was a special one - we don't get days like this too many times a year - either in terms of how fun it is to shoot, or the quality of images, or the amazingness of one spectacular day of racing. It's worth taking a second and giving credit where it is due - this was a good one.