Splashing out, the first and last race of 2020

This was one of a very few images that I got shoot of a bike actually moving in 2020, such has been the Covid impact. One bike race, that’s all, one short stage race before it all went buttons up.

There’s quite a tale that followed on from this, as the virus bit hard on the tongue of the world I found myself tossing Turkish coins on deciding whether or not to brave the big white bird and its potentially infectious line up of characters - which I ultimately did, 4 of them, none-stop. It was perhaps the most nerve wrecking travel experience on my life, and that really is saying something .

As the world went into a roller coaster of lockdowns it gradually became clear that 2020 was going to be a write off, and now I find myself struggling to scrape together a selection of images for the annual slideshow. This one is not the sharpest of the “year”, but seems somewhat poignant never the less, and was from a bone chilling stage of that race - the Tour of Antalya.

I’d been strapped on the back of a motorbike for an horrendously rain lashed and freezing day, and was balancing the risk pulling out my camera in such conditions, and was also shivering to the bone through the cold as I clung onto the back of the moto at speeds topping 130kph. This was supposed to be the day, the one for “Steve” style big pictures, but as it turned out things didn’t work out that way, such was the wrath of Mother Nature.

As the rain pelted and fragmented the peloton I was so cold that I just had to gesture my pilot to pull over, and as the Heavens opened some more he tried to help me pull on every last piece of plastic and rubber I could,. My hands were so numb, and then - like a vision on a mirage the riders came over the top of the hill, and without being able to sent anything at all on the camera I snapped away to get what I could - which was this image.

It was three days before I actually stopped shivering, and the day now ranks as my coldest ever on a race moto - just nudging out a snowy day in the same area 2 years earlier.

Let’s all hope that 2021 sees a brighter day or three.