{"id":1583,"date":"2014-05-21T04:13:45","date_gmt":"2014-05-20T20:13:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.craigsheppard.co.nz\/blog\/?p=1583"},"modified":"2014-05-21T04:16:29","modified_gmt":"2014-05-20T20:16:29","slug":"2014-tour-of-friendship-stage-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.craigsheppard.co.nz\/blog\/2014-tour-of-friendship-stage-1\/","title":{"rendered":"2014 Tour Of Friendship Stage 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

Once again I had the privilege to go back and shoot the Tour of Friendship amateur road cycling race in Thailand.\u00a0 I have now ridden the race once and shot it three times and each year I return it just gets better and better.\u00a0 Khun Kai (Titaree Tanakorn) and her army of helpers are doing a great job and this would be one of the best value for money races I’ve been too, providing you can get yourself to Thailand.<\/p>\n

It was a mixed bag in terms of teams this year and I didn’t really know who were the favourites.\u00a0 The Specialized Mavericks brought along a big team which was spread out over the different categories and they looked strong in Cat 1.\u00a0 Direct Asia had a solid lineup but I only knew of two riders who were potential podium finishers, however they had a experienced group of domestiques to help them.\u00a0 The other team of note were Champion Systems.\u00a0 In the womens category Eri Yonamine<\/a><\/span> proved she was a force to be reckoned with when she produced a time in the individual time trial that many of the men would have been pleased to have.\u00a0 I think she used the tour as a training camp as she rode the remainder of the race in the Open Mens cat and from what I saw she held her own.<\/p>\n

For me, this year was hard work as I flew more or less straight to Thailand from the UK.\u00a0 This put me on the back foot as I suffered from terrible jetlag during the first few days.\u00a0 Once I got over that I started to enjoy it a lot more.\u00a0 Being back on the back of the motorbike was also lots of fun and my driver (I called him ‘Valentino’) was just awesome.\u00a0 I swear we had both our knees down on stage 3. Here are a few favorites from Stage 1. If you would like to purchase any images you can view them all on my website at www.craigsheppard.co.nz<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

\"img_Sports_0421\"The starting straight.<\/p>\n

\"img_Sports_0422\"<\/p>\n

A few shots of the Cat 1 boys starting their race.<\/p>\n

\"img_Sports_0423\"<\/p>\n

Uncle Pete (Direct Asia) mixing it with the Cat 1 boys. Great effort Pete!<\/p>\n

\"img_Sports_0424\"<\/p>\n

John Bateman (Anza) starts his run!<\/p>\n

\"img_Sports_0425\"<\/p>\n

Richard Paine (Specialized Mavericks) brings the bling with his gold chain on his Specialized SL4.<\/p>\n

\"img_Sports_0426\"<\/p>\n

Tina Haugbro finishes a fast and furious lap of the course.\u00a0 And some wheel trouble for one of the ladies.<\/p>\n

\"img_Sports_0427\"<\/p>\n

Eri Yonamine (Forza) powers up the hill to the finish while Sarah Clark (Specialized Mavericks) crosses the line.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Once again I had the privilege to go back and shoot the Tour of Friendship amateur road cycling race in Thailand.\u00a0 I have now ridden the race once and shot it three times and each year I return it just gets better and better.\u00a0 Khun Kai (Titaree Tanakorn) and her army of helpers are doing … Continue reading 2014 Tour Of Friendship Stage 1<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[6,16,25,59,58],"class_list":["post-1583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sport","tag-craig-sheppard","tag-cycling","tag-road-cycling","tag-thailand","tag-tour-of-friendship"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.craigsheppard.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.craigsheppard.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.craigsheppard.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.craigsheppard.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.craigsheppard.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1583"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.craigsheppard.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1583\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1599,"href":"https:\/\/www.craigsheppard.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1583\/revisions\/1599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.craigsheppard.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.craigsheppard.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.craigsheppard.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}