Photographing the Tour of California and Lance Armstrong

The original plan was to head out to photograph the peleton crossing the Golden Gate Bridge, but mother nature had plans of her own. If you watched the first few days of this years Tour of California, you know what I'm referring to: miserable, down pours, wind, and pure ugliness! In fact, during an interview with Levi Leipheimer (overall winner of the tour for 3rd time in a row), the question was asked "what have the first few days of the tour been like for you?". Levi told the interviewer to head home and turn on the shower to the coldest setting, take off your clothes, and get in. Now plan on staying in there for roughly 4 hours! Yikes...! With that in mind, our original plans changed and we decided to head down and shoot the 5th and 6th (including the time trial) stages. Here are a few images from the couple days of shooting. More images will soon be available on my website at Kevin Winzeler Photography or art directors and photo editors feel free to drop me an email: info@kevinwinzeler.com

Levi Leipheimer: GC and TT winner

Lance Armstrong in his classic Time Trial position:


Stage 5
Just a few spectators on the last climb of the day. We waited for a few hours here:

The break away group - 10K to go:


And the Peleton Chase...



Then it was off to the beautiful town of Solvang for the Stage 6, Time Trial. There were riders on the course right up until the start of the time trial working on their sub 60 minute times :)

Random riders:

Let the TT begin:
The Felt team getting after it!

And Schleck with Specialized:


Tom Boonen
And lastly, we were doing a little pre-drive on the loop about 2 hours before the Time Trial started when the Astana boys came casually riding by in a little warm-up lap. I was taking a bunch of test shots of random riders working on different angles and compositions when they appeared. Pretty cool coincidence. Thanks Lance, for helping with the set-up!



And one final shout-out to the town of Solvang for putting on a spectacular event. What a beautiful area!