Showing posts with label Paris-Roubaix. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Paris-Roubaix. Show all posts

Saturday, 10 January 2015

Book Review: "Beyond the Finish Line"




Unlike other sports that take place in a confined environment—the tennis court, football stadium, or cricket pitch, for example—bicycle road racing is open to the elements and events take before a diverse backdrop featuring geographic highlights of many countries. Add to this ever-changing weather, different road surfaces, colourful jerseys and colourful personalities and the rolling circus atmosphere provides the photographer with limitless opportunity.

Philipp Hympendahl is a commercial photographer working for one of the world's leading detergent companies in Germany but when he is not taking snaps of soap boxes or whatever he might do there he turns a passionate lens on bicycle racing. His aim is not that of a typical sports journalist. Rather than capture the well-known champions and classic races, he and Tim Farin, who has contributed short essays, state in their introduction to their recent book “Beyond the Finish Line” that “they enourage their audience to take a different view: to relax, to observe, to feel the beauty of the moment, the emotions and actions, all of which leave room for imagination.”

So what we have is a kind of art book, with cycling as a unifying theme. There are no captions to the photos, although the event is indicated (“Tour de France 2013,” “Paris-Roubaix 2014,” “Amstel Gold 2013” to note the famous ones; “Circuit Race Baarlo 2014,” “Arctic Race of Norway 2014 (!),” “Boxmeer “Daags Na De Tour” 2013” to name the less obvious). The photos are all of a technically high standard and include close-ups of fans, long shots of the peloton in action, moments of intense action and others of serene reflection.



For those having experienced the thrill of pro racing in Northern Europe, many of these photos will be highly evocative. Particular favourites would include a gentle downhill between the crowd barriers, the rolling hills of Limberg ahead, during the Amstel Gold race; or Paris-Roubaix in 2012, with a lone rider challenging the pavé, emerging from the darkness on the right side of the photo. Another superb photo shows the group speeding along the cobbles through the Arenberg Forest, a kind of divine light shining down, spectator-witnesses in near-darkness. Many of the photos are not necessarily realistic but have been treated to highlight elements. For example, the grey starkness of Mont Ventoux set off only by some red Carrefour banners and the red of the weather station tower at the top.



In addition to the evocative photos, there are some charming short essays by Tim Farin about the pleasures of cycling, mixing the joys (and pains) of the amateurs with the world-weariness of the professionals or observations of their lives. The pieces are not linked to specific photos but are a scripted counterpoint to the images.

Tim Falin (right) and Philipp Hympendahl (left)
In addition to the photos taken primarily in 2012-2014, there is a wonderful image of the 2001 Tour on the Alpe d'Huez, “La Photo,” which was printed in an edition of six in the massive dimension of 1.80 m x 2.30 m. It was shot on a large format camera and one of the prints can be seen the Tour of Flanders Museum in Oudenaarde, Belgiium. There are still some prints available and after enjoying “Beyond the Finish Line” one might be tempted to clear up wall space for this artwork.


Beyond the Finish Line” with photos by Philipp Hympendahl and text by Tim Farin
126 pp., hardcover, Edition.Hympendahl, Düsseldorf, Germany, 2014
ISBN: 978-3-00-046552-9
Available from the publisher at www.edition-hympendahl.de/en/ for 29.00 Euros and shipping

Also available through the website are fine art prints of many of the photos featured in the book.

Saturday, 10 April 2010

Getting Ready for Paris-Roubaix

The next installment of the Spring Classics takes place tomorrow with the running of Paris-Roubaix, nicknamed "the Hell of the North" and "the Queen of the Classics," probably depending on where you finish.  I am torn between someday riding the sportif version, which is held biannually, or just ignoring it.  The pro race is pretty dreadful, with the 50 kms of nasty nasty cobbles and the mud (or dust), and the winner often seems to be the rider who had the fewest flats, but it is nonetheless an epic ride.  And for the sportif version you get a cobblestone mounted on a plaque when you finish, just like the pros do when they win.

The Saxo Bank guys were out doing a recon ride the other day and all eyes are on Spartacus, as he attempts to do the Flanders/Roubaix Double.

Of course, the whole point of a recon ride is to prepare yourself for the race ahead.  Paris-Roubaix is famed for its crashes and it appears that Gustav Larson was getting ready for every eventuality.  He will, of course, have to deal with this photograph (like the one above by Tim de Waele and found on the Saxo Bank website here) for the rest of his cycling career:

Good luck tomorrow, and keep the muddy side down!

Tuesday, 23 October 2007

Book Review: Paris-Roubaix: A Journey Through Hell

This review was written for www.pezcyclingnews.com

Greg Lemond famously said about cycling:” It doesn’t get any easier. You just get faster.” And for a sport that values the ability to suffer, the least easy of all races is Paris-Roubaix, variously feted as “the Queen of the Classics” and cursed as “the Hell of the North.” In 2006, L’Équipe published a gorgeous history of the race and it is this book, in an excellent idiomatic English translation by cycling historian David Herlihy, that has now been published by VeloPress. Compared to the vast tide of books about the Tour de France, this one appears to be the only substantial work in English about Paris-Roubaix, in spite of the race’s legendary status. This in itself merits its inclusion on a cyclist’s bookshelf, but the book has intrinsic qualities that make it a must-have.

Paris-Roubaix is a throwback to another age. When it began in 1896, the velodrome ruled the land and road races were the exception: difficult to organize and with only a few racers, unable to compete for the rich prizes of the tracks, available to participate. To enliven proceedings, some velodrome owners promoted road races to end at their tracks. This was the case of Paris-Roubaix, and at the first race was so novel and popular that part of the grandstand collapsed under the weight of spectators. The winner, the German strongman Josef Fischer, completed the race at an average of over 30 km/h. So this race had everything: an international field, a challenging route and an exciting sprint finish. It has gone from strength to strength as the other classics from that year (Paris-Mons? Paris-Royan? Bordeaux-Paris?) are long gone, along with most of the velodromes. This book covers the race from its beginnings, a time when cobblestones were commonplace and men and bikes seemed to have been made of iron, to today’s carbon-fiber age but the race has always been brutally hard, a merciless test of men and equipment.

The authors have approached the race in a clever and unusual fashion. Rather than following a chronology, the majority of the eleven chapters of Paris-Roubaix: A Journey Through Hell are divided into different aspects of the race These include: the cobblestones themselves; the impact of the weather; messed-up finishes; unexpected winners; the Roubaix velodrome; and a brilliant chapter devoted to the effects of getting a flat tire. There is a gallery of the most celebrated winners and the whole book is stuffed with marvellous photos taken from the archives of L’Équipe. There appear to have been photographers present at every dramatic crash, or else there are always so many crashes that you just have to stand around and wait.

The race has attracted cycling’s greatest figures, who seem to have always had a love-hate relationship. Bernard Hinault felt that Paris-Roubaix was a ridiculous race, a lottery where chance ruled but he knew that posterity demanded that he win Paris-Roubaix. He did it in convincing fashion in 1981, wearing the rainbow jersey of the World Champion, and crushing five opponents (four of them previous P-R winners!) in the final sprint at the velodrome. Although the race counts several other Tour de France victors among its winners, including Garin, Lapize Coppi and Merckx, it is more notable for its special “hard men,” who have specialized in beating the cobbles, such as four-time winner Roger de Vlaeminck, three-time champion Francesco Moser and the indomitable Gilbert Duclos-Lassalle, who participated in the race seventeen times, finally winning on the 14th attempt and repeating the following year. Their stories are all told in loving detail in this book.

Details indeed. For example, there is a section recounting how Jean Stablinski, a former World Champion, suggested a particular section of cobbles to the race organizers and the famous Wallers-Arenberg stretch, a positively medieval piece of road, was added in 1968. The modernization of France meant the removal or paving over the cobbles that are such a characteristic (and feared) part of the race and by 1968 the race against time was on as the countryside was scoured to find more cobbled roads. At its lowest point in 1965, the Queen of the North had only some 22 kms of cobblestones in its 294 km route. Today efforts have been made to protect and preserve the famous roads and the pros can look forward to more than 50 kms of pavé in twenty-six sections. And the mud and the dust are with us always.

And the people who protect and preserve the roads are the subject of the last chapter, “The Angels of Hell.” Described as the “guardians of the temple,” these include journalists, fans and even the artist, who painted 12 kilometers of cobbles (using 18 tons of paint) as a work of art and a tribute in 1986. This is the kind of insight so lovingly presented in Paris-Roubaix: A Journey through Hell. There is no reference to the amateur version of the ride, held in September rather than in the third week of April as is the pro race, but the Everyman participants in that ride are given a piece of pavé when they reach the velodrome in Roubaix as a memento, echoing pro cycling’s most cherished trophy, the single cobblestone mounted on a plaque, that goes to Cycling’s Strongest Man every Spring. A beautiful book about a beautiful race.

(note: all photos courtesy of VeloPress)

Paris-Roubaix: A Journey Through Hell
by Philippe Bouvet, Pierre Callewaert, Jean-Luc Gatellier and Serge Laget
trans. by David Herlihy
VeloPress, 2007hardcover, 224 pp., $39.95

ISBN-13: 978-1-934030-09-7