As we did last year, this year we're giving any riders and teams low-res images at no charge. Many teams operate on a shoestring budget, so we're glad to help them out in some small way. (We also let the Tour of Virginia organizers use any photos.)
If you'd like to see all of the photos we posted, follow this link or go to the BlackBird Images site, click Public Galleries, and follow the Tour of Virginia gallery link.
It's pretty impressive to see 180 cyclists all try to squeeze through the first two turns of a downtown race...
The finish of the Harrisonburg Criterium was somewhat controversial. Kayle Leogrande, multi-time national criterium champion shown below, "won" the race, at least for a few minutes.
After the race officials decided he impeded other riders in the finishing straight, and he was relegated to last place. I had a head-on view of the finish (I was probably farther out in the street than I should have been), and while the leaders did drift across the road, in all fairness the course narrowed at that point and almost everyone had no choice but to veer slightly. Here's Kayle with his team director, Frankie Andreu (who rode in the Tour de France nine times, some of them on Lance Armstrong's team.) Frankie has just explained the race officials' decision.
I have to give Kayle credit, though. He was visibly disappointed. Yet moments after I took this photo:
I sat beside him and asked what happened, and he was nice enough to talk when he obviously didn't really want to.All in all a great event - congratulations to Matt Butterman, Dave LeMay, and the rest of the Tour of Virginia staff.
