Laurence Griffiths on: the sports picture of the year
Remarks by Laurence Griffiths:
It was a fantastic night and I was thrilled to win Sports Picture but it was a special night for Bryn Lennon who won The coveted Ed Lacy trophy with his fabulous set of Cycling pictures. It is always a great opportunity to reminisce with some old faces, the greats of the sports photography world, guys that have inspired and helped me hugely, Patrick Eager and Chris Smith are fabulous photographers and wonderful company.
I doubt this is the first time a Premier League footballer has been caught with his pants down but it did make for a funny picture. It's quite a rare thing to capture a strong football picture with an element of humor and I think this is why the judges chose the image.
Other award winning sports photos from Bryn Lennon
Remarks by Bryn Lennon:
Fabian Cancellara had won that day and as I stood photographing the usual podium picture I saw Peter Sagan doing something with his hand out the corner of my eye, instinctively I zoomed out to see what he was up to! I’m not sure if even TV captured the moment and I know not many other photographers saw it, so the rest of the media were writing and commenting on what appeared to been happening solely based on my picture. I had to send it out, but I was a bit concerned as I thought I might have stitched Sagan up a little… then again, if you grope someone’s bum in front of the world’s media..!
I was very privileged to get to photograph Chris Froome coming through the crowd on Ventoux. A huge amount of stress, aggravation and speculation usually precede a stage like that one. These stages are known as the Queen stage of a race, usually the highest point of the whole tour and the toughest with it. There’s so much that can happen and you just hope that when the winner makes his move you are able to work and shoot him from the back of your motorbike. Everyone is super nervous from the riders to race organizers and the photographers.
It was the first time they had run the final stage of the tour that late in the evening, but they wanted something special to bring the curtain down on the 100th edition of the race and I was keen to show that too. Unfortunatly the light was poor most of the time, but the sun came out briefly and illuminated the most iconic site in the TdF (for the riders and and the photographers alike!).
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