This weekend was round two on the Ontario Cup DH circuit.  The race was held at Horseshoe Resort which is just North-West of Barrie.  Horseshoe has been a staple in the Ontario Cup race series in one form or another for quite a few years now.  It’s a great venue and the race is typically well attended.  I won Nationals and the Provincial overall there my first year racing so I have always had a soft spot for the place.  Sirbikealot Racing and his team did a terrific job as usual.  This year Shane Joachim took on the task of redesigning the course and all the racers seemed pretty stoked on the build. Shane put in over 20 days and it showed. Great job guys!

The only UCI Canada Cup XC was also this weekend at Hardwood Hills and I was really torn between which race to shoot.  In the end, I chose the DH but it was a tough call.  It didn’t help that I got a message on my way to the race from a magazine editor looking for XC shots.  Had I known that before the day of the race I would likely have chosen to shoot the Cross Country.

From a photography standpoint, it was a super tough race to shoot.  Crazy dust and hot midday sun.  I knew it was going to be a challenge so I opted to take an extra day to scope the course.  I shot practice on Saturday and the race on Sunday.  I’m glad I did because there were really only a handful of decent spots to shoot from and setup was tricky.  I shot with 3 strobes for just about every location I chose.  My pocket wizards started to misfire by the end of Saturday due to the insane amount of dust.  It took me a few hours to get everything clean again that night. I would happily have taken rain over this soot.  One of my light stands also got bent but that should be repairable.  Here are a few shots from the race.

All my images from the race are available here in the FastTimes online store.  http://fasttimesinc.com/store/index.php?gnum=135

Thanks to Sirbikealot Racing, Pete and Lee, for all their hard work. Huge thanks to Shane for all the work on the course and for helping to move a few fans out of my shot.  Couldn’t do it without you guys!  See ya at the races.