The new track for Dual Slalom has been made in the Wattles which is on the edge of the forest over the road from home. On Tuesday this gave me the perfect opportunity to stroll over and watch the finals of the Crankworx Rotorua 2018 Dual Slalom. The organisation seemed great with races running regularly with any stops for track maintenance being brief and efficiently managed. There was a great atmosphere with music and big screen coverage of the races. A good crowd included many children taking the chance to come after school and watch some of the best cyclists in the world. The finish chute was crowded with youngsters looking for autographs from their heroes and the interaction between competitors and fans was great to see.
The course comprised roughly 3 sections. An upper portion of tight bermed turns, a flat middle section of slalom gates and finally a series of jumps heading to the finish line. The temptation is to use a telephoto lens to try and isolate the athletes against a background and this proved useful in the lower section. Higher up the course I wanted to try and create a feeling of the curves and movement so used a Fisheye lens and panned a slow shutter speed of 1/30 – 1/60 second. When the sun was shining the tree shadows added a useful compositional element.
At the entry to the flat section riders were carrying a lot of speed and needed to slow a bit to negotiate the gates. Crouched down next to a tree I managed to get close enough to use the Fisheye here too.
The format follows elimination on time after 2 runs (one on each of the 2 parallel tracks) so the competition got more and more intense as the event progressed. Finally Tomas Slavik and Jill Kintner proved too hard to beat down the course and came out winners. They were followed by Kyle Strait and Luca Cometti in the mens section and Kialani Hines and Tahnee Seagrave for the women.
Photos with Nikon D500, 70-200mm f2.8 VRII or Nikon 10.5mm f2.8DX Fisheye. Processed in Adobe Lightroom Classic CC and Photoshop CC using Perfectly Clear and Skylum Luminar, exported with JPEGmini.
