Saturday, May 29, 2010

Photo Essay: Bike Race in Canary Wharf

Here are some of the photographs of the Bike Race in Canary Wharf. It's a strange place to hold a race, but there you go, what can I say? Here is the slideshow with more photographs. 

I nipped out from work and started towards the road.

The Airplanes
We are very near city airport and you see the planes flying over the buildings. After 9/11, it does make me a bit nervous.
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The Buildings
I find these tall glass buildings fascinating, the interplay with the skies, the glass canyons and the steel structures.

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Bank of America

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HSBC

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The main Canary Wharf Building

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The Citigroup Building.
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The gap separating the two Citigroup buildings.
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The wavy side of the Waitrose Reebok building.


The Non Race bits

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The start – finish line.

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The tower around the start finish line, with the advertisers.

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Bellowing on the walkie talkie.

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And a car doing something on the track. This was the race car, carried all kinds of equipment.
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The sponsor flags.

The Races
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The women’s race, each wearing the name tags of the firms they represent. The lady in dark green is ours :)

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And they are off!

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The winner of the women’s race.
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The course wasn't well laid out, they fell about many times at the corner as they had to get off their bikes.

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See what I mean?

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Then they had a chap warning people to get off their bikes.

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Here’s a chap getting off.
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The winner of the men’s race.

The audience.
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The younger audience does not look very impressed or enthusiastic, eh?
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They were banging on the boards.

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The place was heaving with photographers.
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She looked like she was the official photographer. Bit sweaty.

The Cheerleaders.
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What the hell? Cheerleaders? What on earth are they doing here?

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Lovely looking lassies, but erm, not really sure what they were doing here.

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They would break out in shrieks and paroxysm of jumping and screaming whenever a cyclist would pass.

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Lovely hair, mind you.
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And just in the remote case you did not know what they did, they had their profession emblazoned on their patooties.



The Professional Cyclists
Then the professional cyclists came out for their ride in their teams.

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very swishy bike, check out the wheels.

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a blaze of colour

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Very striking team colours.

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The winners of the race.

The Final Professional Team Race

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Warming up on very nice little machines.


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Some of the flags of the banks.

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A view of the long straight.

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These soldiers were helping out.

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Warming up

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Warming up

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The Black and Reds.

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The greys

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Very interesting helmet shapes and contours.

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Spare Bikes and wheels.
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These are the units which the guys would use to ride their bikes while being stationary.

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They were coming around the bends at a shockingly high pace. Scary stuff. There you go, that’s the end of an enjoyable couple of hours looking at the cycles and the magnificent men and women who ride them. It has become a full fledged sport, just a shade under Formula 1 standards, lol.



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