All Good Things…

So as the Tour Down Under hit the home straight yes­ter­day, I’m set­tling into the fresh powder of Japans north­ern island, Hokkaido.

A snow­board­ing trip with some close friends and a much needed break from the bike.

To say the last couple of weeks has been hec­tic would be an under­state­ment and I’m in much need of a nice long sleep.

Work­ing sev­en­teen hour days almost every­day dur­ing the tour along­side Jamie from CSN. Ended with an epic road trip to Mel­bourne on Thursday in 40C heat (no air­con) and the very next day I’m on the longest flight in the world to Japan. Not quite but it feels like it.

The whole exper­i­ence has been self induced of course and a pos­it­ive exper­i­ence I won’t for­get any time soon.

A Typ­ical Day

A day in the media con­voy star­ted with the long pro­cess of pack­ing the media car and pre­par­ing for the day. Cam­era and audio equip­ment, drinks, fuel, food — mak­ing sure the all bat­ter­ies were charged and the van is spot­lessly clean.

Then we’d swing by the ABC centre in Adelaide and scoop up Roger Wills, the well known Grand­stand Radio presenter. Roger and Jamie were doing live race updates from inside the media van whilst Peter, our driver, was in hot pur­suit of the pelo­ton. My job was to listen to race radio and white­board updates for the guys in the back — highly organ­ized and pre­ci­sion team we were.

We’d then shoot down to the race start, get as many qual­ity inter­views with riders as pos­sible, plenty of pics and then take off to the first sprint point.

It’s all about pos­i­tion­ing for photo’s and video foot­age. If you’re not in-front of the bunch you’re behind it — both being undesir­able. A motor­bike and a cam­era would’ve been ideal solu­tion but then we’re oblig­ated to abide by the strin­gent rules set by the tour dir­ector. Every­one has a pos­i­tion in the con­voy, car two isn’t allowed in-front of car one etc.

As the race pushed into the final kilo­met­ers, the media entour­age were fall­ing over them­selves to make the fin­ish. Of course, that’s where the crit­ical photo’s are taken — the pic­tures with arms in the air, usu­ally pub­lished on the eighth last page of the big news papers.

Once the race ends and the riders are fin­ish­ing up for the day, that’s where it all starts for the media people.

On more than one occa­sion I spot­ted senior sports writer, Rupert Guin­ness (Sydney Morn­ing Her­ald) tap­ping away on his key­board in the back of the media wagon post race.

It’s a furi­ous battle to pub­lish stor­ies imme­di­ately. There’s dead­lines to meet and expect­a­tions to ful­fill — twit­ter, face­book, and blogs to com­pete with. Between 4pm and 9pm on any given night, the Hilton media room was packed with journ­al­ists tap­ping out their daily report. Call it poor time man­age­ment but Jamie and I were usu­all the last to leave, often after too many free Cab’ Mer­lots from the bar.

What I Learned

Wank factor is a couple of words I would use to describe the atmo­sphere in the media cen­ter. Every­one is suss­ing each other out, gain­fully work­ing out the peck­ing order. Often the very first ques­tion that was asked was “… so who are you work­ing for?” even before they got your name.

There’s a lot of truth to Wades post — there were many times I felt like D Grade mem­ber of the media, scroun­ging around for the scraps and cov­er­ing any­thing I could get. The riders cer­tainly are access­ible, unlike most other sports and they’re happy to talk but it’s most PR filler. Stuff thats not really inform­at­ive but lips are mov­ing and sound is com­ing out.

A mas­ter of this I found was Cameron Meyer from Garmin Trans­itions. That kid is slick and can talk to the media like a pro’. Garmin don’t need a PR team whilst he’s on board. Watch any inter­view with Cameron and you’ll get A Grade qual­ity PR filler. I mean this in a pos­it­ive con­text, he speaks exactly as he should sav­ing the juicy stuff for friends and family.

So will I return next year?

Prob­ably. Right now I would say no. Not as a mem­ber of the media anyway.

I’d much prefer to be on my bike with friends, rid­ing to and from all the stages. Thats some­thing I really missed out on this year. A squadra of people I knew from Perth made the trip and I simply didn’t have time to catch up with any of them. Daily I passed the small bunches of riders on their way out to the starts and looked on with envy whilst we drove past.

High­lights

I’d have to say, inter­view­ing Johan Bruyneel and Cadel Evans would be two of my pin­nacle moments. Fol­lowed very closely buy the nice tweet by the BMC­Pro­Ra­cing team dur­ing the BMC press conference.

Rid­ing with Lance was pretty cool, even though he couldn’t hold my wheel. Meet­ing some of the big media people is also up there — I just can’t remem­ber their names.

I hope you enjoyed the inter­views, live tweets and cov­er­age and we’ll trans­ition back into some tan­gible cyc­ling tips and tricks over the com­ing weeks.

Mov­ing for­ward this year, I’m in two minds about cov­er­ing more races or just stick­ing purely to cyc­ling related tips. Send me an email with feed­back if you like or com­ment below.

I’ll be back in town on the third of Feb’ so excuse my silence until then. If I feel the need, I may post some­thing but oth­er­wise I’ll be shred­ding the slopes of Niseko on my rad­ical, sick snow­board dudes.

Ride safe.

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