Simon’s

Cheers everyone, sorry for the usual lack of updates but I have been running around like crazy, most notably around Italy for a bunch of events like Superenduro races, the 24H in Finale, the SRAM XX launch in Massa Marittima and lately the World Cup in Fort William. I was hit hard by my MacBook Pro’s screen going dead the night before leaving, so I shot the race kind of conservatively, as I was just dumping cards in my portable hard drive without much of a chance to judge what I was shooting, anyways on qualyfing day I was shooting this, and I was pretty happy with the way it was turning out:

For those of you who know the Fort William track, I was standing on the top section, right after the first few berms and at the very first wooden boardwalk. Anyways when Justin Leov came by I was happily shooting from the same position, until I heard a strange sound and saw this happening to me, first through my camera’s viewfinder and then live, when I realized he was coming my way…FAST! (click to view the sequence full size)

Many thanks to Scott Cartwright who was there to seize the moment and capture my lucky escape from what could have been a nasty collision with a Trek 88 and its rider! My last photo in those moments is one of Leov’s getting badly sideways, but as soon as I realized I was in the strike zone I ran for cover!

Anyways the weekend was generally succesful, despite the raving midges and the usual scottish weather. I also met lots of friends and one of them was Sim, the art director from Singletrack Magazine, who kindly informed me that on of my shots featuring Paolo Viola had made it to their june’s issue cover! Stoked! Thanks Singletrack! This is my second cover with them and my sixth cover overall, I’m delighted. Here’s the shot:

I’m currently home waiting for some BIG news to come, in the meantime I’ll be on the road again soon for two Superenduros, one in Cartosio and one in Torino, and in between I’ll spend the week working with the Alpi Bike Resort guys…not bad, hope to keep up with the riding which has been great lately, putting a lot of miles on the mighty Specialized Pitch, which has taken me around in Finale, Massa, around Rome and Scotland…no wait, that was on a hired bike, but still loads of fun!

As many of you know, this season I am working as the press office coordinator, photographer and PR guy for the italian Superenduro series. At our first race in S. Bartolomeo al Mare, last march, we had a cool trio of french riders, and one of them, Lionel, is actually the organizer of the RiderZ Cup, the french enduro series. He did a seven page story on the may issue of Velo Vert, one of France’s biggest magazines, with his text and my pictures! I love the double pages, so stoked!

So this one is over as well, boy it went fast. Just one week ago I was having lasagne after a very long night on the plane under the porch of the lovely Africa’s Eden bed and breakfast in Pietermaritzburg, and now as I am writing this from Durban it’s my last night here before I spend one more night on the plane to land back in Italy wedensday.

I’m really please on how this whole trip went, work was great, a big change from last year as I’ve said but I’ve really enjoyed getting the opportunity to shoot photos on course for the whole time, without having to worry about much else, and even the long hours in the press room sending out updates and photos were pretty cool. The racing was quite good, I only didn’t particularly enjoy the 4X, there was even less passing than usual…but the downhill finals were HUGE, with a really big crowd and massive cheering for the homeboy Greg Minnaar. Here’s a couple of shots I took that day:

Peaty leading Minnaar during the morning practice runs.

The moment Minnaar boosted the last jump into the finish arena. You should see this pic in high resolution, every single person amongst specators is cheering and clapping hands, it was LOUD!

After the race and the pretty nice party this morning I said goodbye to my friends from team Iron Horse - Kenda - Playbiker with whom I spent most of my time here in South Africa and I drove my shiny white rental car to Durban to spend a day on the ocean. Lucky me I didn’t get to do all the tourist things nor I had to waste any time looking for things because the lovely owner of our B&B in Pietermaritzburg had put me in touch with her daughter Nada, who lives right here in Durban. Nada basically just babysitted me around letting me do all the cool things to do in Durban (which proudly sports the title of “sports” city of South Africa, and I can say it deserves it!), we went swimming in the Indian Ocean with HUGE waves (well, huge for my puny meditarranean standards anyways) and strong currents, but had to leave the beach early as it was getting cloudy.

The beautiful Umhlanga beach

Yep…there are plenty of sharks here!

After driving through some glorious sugar cane fields (pictured above) which were literally FULL of rideable trails (beware, there are rats the size of dogs amongst those canes, said Nada…) we got to a kind of shopping mall that looked slightly like the action sport’s nut heaven, with a big skatepark, a climbing wall, three artificial waves and every possible store you could imagine (Volcom, Fox, so on). First thing we did was hitting the artificial wave, I had done this in San Diego last year but this time they also had a regular sided wave which was WAAAY better for me!

I can just say it was a lot of fun, even tough at the end I felt pretty battered, you fall quite hard and the bottom ain’t soft at all…

We then cruised the mall a bit, I resisted the temptation to indulge in a shopping spree as prices here are crazy good compared to Europe (10€ for shirts, 30-40€ for hoodies, jeans, shorts…all brand name stuff) and Nada had me snack on biltong, not on the Kudu (antelope!) one tough, just regular beef, it was great…especially when topped off with a huge honey milkshake. I don’t want to sound boring but the prices here are just unbelivable, a steak dinner  in a nice restaurant in Durban tonight costed something less than 10€ a person with drinks and all, with a huge and delicious steak…speaking of which, I really have to thank Nada not only for taking me around all day but also for breaking the food spell which had hit me here in South Africa. That’s right, for the past 10 days I had only three kinds of food (excluding breakfast), in quantity order: lasagne, curry, hamburgers. We had lasagne three times for dinner and once for lunch! Impossibile! I quite like to taste the local flavours while travelling but this time it wasn’t so easy, thankfully I managed on the last night.

So I am off to bed now, I’m trying to wake up super early to hit the beach at dusk for one more swim in the Ocean before driving all the way back to Joburg to catch a plane home! It has been a great 10 days down here, some of the coverage is already out on various websites and some more is coming, I’ll keep you posted!

Cheers to all! It’s already been four days here in the souther hemisphere, can’t believe it! I left Rome last sunday (april 5ht) going straight to the airport from my good friends birthday barbecue bash in Vitinia, and flew almost 15 hours to Johannesburg, where I met a couple of italian teams and joined them for the drive south to Pietermaritzburg where the race is being held. We had some amazing views from the highway, especially after a thunderstorm as we got a double rainbow (yes there’s a second one it’s very faint but it’s there)!

On tuesday we had a spare day, so in the morning we went to visit the Morewood factory and then in the afternoon we hit a local bike park called Giba Gorge: I was amazed by the warm welcome of everyone, from the owner to the local kids, and I even had my private security guard with me while I was shooting photos on the downhill course…too bad he said he couldn’t do anything if we had been attacked by a snake! Here is a shot of the Dh course at Giba Gorge.

The city where the race is held is pretty cool, about 60km from the Ocean, and it’s a fairly big town, quite different from the sleepy mountain towns where races usually happen! This makes the ride to the start of the course a bit sketchy tough, check this out: riders (and photographers) get to sit on hay bales in the back of a truck, and then are driven off first on an HIGHWAY and then on some dirt roads through sugarcane fields! Crazy!

Today (thrusday) was the first day of practice and I got to sample my “new” working day, as I was used to running up the hill splitting time between being a photographer and a team manager. Right now I can concentrate on only one thing which is not bad after all, despite today being pretty sleepy as only two uplift trucks were running, so we were getting packs of 20 riders coming down all together only once every 30 or so minutes…

Despite this I had a pretty good day, now I am off to “The Tipping Point” premiere, but hopefully I’ll get a chance to shower and eat some dinner first!

It’s now the 4th consectuive year that I am following the mountain biking World Cup, and in these 4 years I’ve never missed the first race of the season. Vigo in 2006 and 2007, Maribor in 2008, but this year it’s a different story. You know, each season sees a lot of travelling, but this time it’s not just a trip, it’s a bit of an adventure. Yup, I am writing this as the queue is forming in Rome’s airport for the flight that will take me to Frankfurt and from there to Johannesburg, before a 400km drive to Pietermaritzburg. It’s the bloody other side of the world! Souther hemisphere and all…the water in the toilets spins the other way round!
I’m glad I’m joining some good friends on this trips, my good buddies of team Playbiker - Iron Horse that will gladly take me along for the drive: it’s my first year off the role as team manager, but I’m sure I’ll enjoy travelling with them. It sure will be strange being at a World Cup without a pit area to oversee, problems to solve or last minute racers needs to fix, but I’m sure there will be plenty of action as I will be shooting and reporting for my magazine and various italian teams, plus finishing some early season work, like the one for the Cannondale Factory Racing Team. I cannot deny I am a bit excited, and I wish these 15 hours of travelling ahead of me will fly away fast!
Of course everything is made even better since I went to the airport straight from a massive outdoor BBQ/party for three of my friends, it was a glorious spring day in Rome and we had a jolly good time!

Next transmission from down there…I mean South Africa!

Lots going on as usual, but I’ll try to put down everything in an orderly fashion!

- You can find my first skiing shot in this month’s issue of the italian magazine 4Skiers, it’s a pic of Matthias Fabbro jibbing in a super cool spot in Campo Felice last february, thanks to Salomon and 4Skiers’ editor Alo Belluscio for this (iPhone pic, poor quality, I know):

- The season of crazy travelling has started, I have already been twice to Liguria and then to Barcellona and this is only in the first two weeks of may. My life is starting to look a lot like this:

You’ve heard a bit about the trip to Barcelona, while in Liguria we had the first race of the Superenduro series in San Bartolomeo al Mare which turned out to be a HUGE success. I am handling al the photography and PR for them, it’s a pretty cool job. If you go on the website you can find a gallery with all the shots from the first race of the series. Last weekend instead I was in Sanromolo for the annual International Downhill Meeting, a really nice event ran by Roberto Vernassa of Argentina Bike. This year I was shooting for various clients and I had a good time, despite the chilly temperatures and the fact that I spent a very cold and lonely hour up on the hill on saturday doing absolutely nothing while everyone was enjoying lunch. Both after S. Bartolomeo and Sanremo I stopped in Finale for some rest, but also to start working on the epic 24H race of Finale Ligure, which will happen in may. Once again I will be taking care of the photography of this event so Enrico, one of the many guys running the show, showed us around the amazing race course and last tuesday took me, my friend Paolo and the local hero and trail guide Ricky to ride the historical Caprazoppa trail, one of the most famous in Italy. It was such a good day, full of great riding and amazing locations, here are some shots:

Small break in the beautiful little town of Verezzi

Breathtaking view from…I won’t tell you, go find it!

So it’s all for now, time to pack the bags once again for a short trip to London next week and then the first stop of the UCI Mountain Bike World Cup in SOUTH AFRICA in little more than a week!

My good friends Laura and Alberto from Rockinthemiddle put together this sweet clip made about a month ago. This was the final night of the two day trip to shoot the Salomon - Spia team in Ovindoli, and even after two days of hard work me and Alberto found the motivation to spend almost 6 hours in the blistering cold (-15 celsius) to shape and shoot (Alberto even boosted a couple of huge airs!) this crazy spine buil in the middle of a parking lot in the town center. You can check some of the shots here: http://www.rockinthemiddle.com/blog/?p=718, while here’s the clip:

Mid(night)inthemiddle from rockinthemiddle on Vimeo.

Big thanks to the whole crew of the night, I had a blast shooting you guys even if all my gear was frozen when we stepped back home at 12:30 a.m. The cables connecting the strobes to the PWs were solid, I was afraid they would snap! And big thanks to Laura as well, since she was one week away from her graduation and had to meet her professor the next morning at 9 a.m. and we rolled in town, dead tired, at something like 3 a.m.

Barcelona is an amazing city and this is widely known. I have been here shooting with Nick Pescetto and some other great riders for the past four days, and I was lucky enough to be hosted in an amazing “piso” right in the center by the ever courteous Evelien, my friend Federico’s girlfriend. As he joined us yesterday night from Rome along with many old and new friends that are here for work or study we had an amazing night out and now it’s so sunny and beautiful I really don’t want to leave…but I have a last photo session planned at the amazing La Poma bikepark and then I will race to the airport to fly home.
Anyways I had to rent a car and here’s my final word of advice: don’t mess with this city’s parking regulations, not even for 5 minutes! You will not find it, instead you’ll get a nifty yellow sticker on the sidewalk telling you that your car was towed and you are gladly invited to go and pay 180€ to get it back!

As a kid I used to love firetrucks and everything connected with them, as most kids do. One day when I was about 6 we got a small flooding in the house, and the fire brigade came over. After they fixed the flooding my mum had to go get some papers for the insurance at the fire house near our home, and while we were there she asked if there was anyone who could show me around, as I was itching to see the big red fire trucks up close. A young, soft spoken and incredibly kind fireman volunteered to show me some of the trucks, and at the end of the small tour he said “We don’t you come back on Wednesday, so we can show you some more stuff”. A friendship was born. I went back. And then back again. And then some more. I started visiting the firehouse every week, staying for lunch and dinner. A couple of times I even slept over. I would spend hours just listening to the radio, hearing about the different emergency calls, or sitting in the big trucks until an alarm came. It was like a big family, I was the little kid messing around, I could come and go anytime day and night, and my mom always waited patiently for me outside. Fabio, the firefighter who had first shown me around, became a friend. His family came over to dinner, he was my hero and my role model. Even more when, after a few years, he moved on to become the member of an helicopter crew for the firefighters flight service. I started visiting him at the airport, and since my love for planes and choppers was on par with the one for firefighters, I was stoked. I spent countless afternoons in the big hangars, sitting in the choppers wondering about the million switches and chatting with Fabio and all the other firemen, all of them very special people. I can honestly say those were some of the best days of my childhood and youth, they were like a dream coming true. As I grew up I started visiting less frequently, but still tried to keep in touch. The one day in the summer of 2000 my mum called me, telling me about an helicopter crash in the mountains near Rome. It was a fire brigade chopper. I immediately called the airport to ask, but I had the worst feeling ever, I felt like I knew that my friend Fabio was working that day. Still I hoped, but when they confirmed he was on board I felt the whole world crumbling apart. One of the best persons I knew on earth had gone, leaving his wife, the sweetest woman on earth, alone, with a newborn baby and another child. With him were another 3 firefighters plus a volunteer. I attended the funeral service and it was gutting: I never saw so much pain, so much desperation, yet so much resignation. Five persons had died in their effort to help others. During the years Antonietta, Fabio’s wife, did a great job of keeping me updated, inviting me at every ceremony that was held in his memory. And still, I couldn’t quite cope with how to approach his family now that he was gone. If he was such a big influence in my life, how much could the persons that he loved most miss him?I have yet to meet someone with his heart, passion, dedication and kindness, towards his family, his friends, his jobs and everything he loved.

Today I was invited by Antonietta to the inauguration of the new aviation center in Rome, at Ciampino Airport. There was a beautiful ceremony and the new hangars and offices look great. I bet my friend Fabio would have been really happy about them. Actually I think he his. Thanks for making us proud, the world needs more people like you.

I am rather disenchanted when it comes to politics, especially italian politics. But what happened last november 4th in the United States was truly historical, and beyond politics. I was lucky enough to be in Washington D.C. on the day of the inauguration of President Barack H. Obama, the 44th (and first african american) President of the United States. I decided to set off for the city, without any photo credentials, not sure of how much I would see or if I would even had the chance to actually reach the Mall. The forecast called for oceanic crowds, long lines and chaos. I found everything orderly and absolutely inspiring. I catched a Metro train to the Arlington Cemetry station, and from there I walked across the Memorial Bridge to the Lincoln Memorial and then the Mall. Around the Washington Monument the crowd got way thicker and I decided to stand by the monument as it sits on small hill, to have a good view of the giant screen and of the surrounding crowds. I stood for a few hours in the freezing cold but it was absolutely worth it, as was the long walk back across 14th street bridge to Virginia, up to the Pentagon City Mall where I went for some warmth and Taco Bell while waiting for the massive crowds on the Metro trains to thin out.

Here is a visual account of my day (and my first experiment with Lightroom’s web albums): hope you enjoy it.