The 2017 Mark Gunter Photographer of the Year Awards closed last week, and over its duration, we received hundreds of incredible submissions from around the world – truly some of the best cycling photography of the year. In addition to being a great showcase for the talented entrants, the Awards also had an important purpose – raising a significant amount of money for cancer research through Australian Cancer Research Foundation, Tour de Cure and for Young Cyclist Development.
Now that entries are closed, it’s over to our panel of judges – Graham Watson, Marcus Enno (aka Beardy McBeard) and Jim Fryer & Iri Greco of BrakeThrough Media – to decide who’s going to take home the spoils.
Each of the judges has gone through the difficult task of shortlisting their top 10 favourite photos from each of the three categories. From these shortlists, the judges will deliberate on the top three winners of each category in the coming days – with final winners to be announced on January 12, 2018.
Graham Watson is arguably the most well known and experienced cycling photographer on the planet. His iconic images have captured some of cycling’s most significant moments and with 44 years of photography under his belt, he is one of the pioneers of the sporting media. He kicks off with his shortlist from the 2017 Mark Gunter Photographer of the Year Awards.
Graham on the judging process
“I was blown away by the quality and quantity of this years’ entries, and 2016/2017 had already been pretty impressive for an inaugural competition.
I look at the smartphone category and marvel just how much the shooters put into their photography, bearing in mind those phone cameras are not designed to do much more than capture a few selfies for the owner. Yet there they were, glorious scenery shots, impressive action shots and some eye-opening selfie-stuff taken by daring, one-handed cyclists going down hills and mountains way too fast!
Our ‘enthusiast’ entry went a step further in creativity and audacity, and took our judgment into so many different aspects of the sport – what a pleasure it was to see so much variety and skills.
As they should do, the professionals came up with the most dramatic, technically perfect, images of all, and made what is usually the easiest section the hardest one to judge. I made my ‘pro selection week by week, leaving just a few spaces for the final week’s entries – it seemed easier this way. But then the fifth and final week was of such a high quality I had to throw away my original selection and start all over again. “Save the best until last” seems to have been the spirit of these late entrants.
It’s going to be a huge task to choose the actual winners in all categories, but we’ll have a lot of fun doing it.”
–Graham Watson
Professional category
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- Wouter Roosenboom – Worldchampion Time Trial 2016 Tony Martin exhausted after his time trial in Marseille. Stage 20 in the Tour de France 2017
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- Luca Bettini – Giro d’Italia, reflections
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- Luca Bettini – Fight for winning.
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- Kristof Ramon – Elle Anderson sends her bike flying in a spectacular way in the infamous Zonhoven ‘Kuil’ (or ‘Pit’) during the 2017 cyclocross event there. Simply imagine the 5000+ spectators going ‘ooohhh’ at the very same time in this (naturally formed) arena of cyclocross… quite a spectacle!
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- Dianne Manson – Matthew Glaetzer of Australia competes in the Men’s Elite Sprint during the New Zealand Oceania Track Championships on November 22, 2017 in Cambridge, New Zealand. (Photo Credit- Dianne Manson)
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- Chris Auld – ‘Right Place, Right Time’ Stage 2 of the Tour de France 2017, Romain Bardet, Chris Froome and Geraint Thomas wearing the Maillot Jaune take a fall.
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- Brian Hodes – Reflection
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- Alex Whitehead – Maria Giulia Confalonieri and Elisa Balsamo of Italy crash during the Women’s Madison final at the Tissot UCI Track Cycling World Cup in Pruszkow, Poland.
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- Alex Broadway – 16:07:17 – Tour de France – Stage Fifteen – Borut Bozic entertains the crowd as he climbs Col de Taillade. Pic by Alex Broadway:ASO:SWpix.com
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- Alex Broadway – 12:04:2017 – 2017 UCI Track Cycling World Championships – China compete in the Men’s Team Pursuit Qualifying. Pic by Alex Broadway:SWpix.com
Enthusiast category
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- Craig Huffman – Tip Of The Spear – Chico Stage Race Men’s Pro:1 field out in the gravel during the Stage 2 Paskenta Hills Road Race near Paskenta, California, USA on February 25, 2017.
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- Stuart Baker – Chris Miller Nero Racing
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- Darrell Parks – The peloton gets strung in the high desert during Stage 4 of the Larry H. Miller Tour of Utah
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- Daniela Tommasi – Team time trial on Stage 4 of the Tour of Margaret River 2017 on the beautiful countryside roads between Balingup and Nannup, Western Australia.
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- Reid Neureiter – A morning group ride passes sunflower fields in the plains east of Denver, Colorado. The group always passes these fields at approximately 7:45 in the morning, and the sunflowers are around for about two weeks in late August. If you know just where to stand, and the group stays together, it almost looks like a field in France in July.
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- Owen Lewis – Dusty speed on an unseasonably day in Belgium! An early start to get a good spot and we were rewarded with incredible racing. The crowd, the atmosphere, the sand – couldn’t have asked for more, and this shot was icing on the cake.
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- Deborah Malin – The awe of the Aubisque.
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- Eamon Fitzpatrick – Lake Gairdner, South Australia. Over 160km long and 48km across, Lake Gairdner is the third lagest salt lake in Australia. Location for the annual Speed Week where land speed records are pushed.
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- Sebastian Bouchard – I got two passions. Cycling and photography. Since 2016, I have the immense chance to cover the Grands Prix Cyclistes de Québec et Montréal with my camera. It gives me a glimpse of what it would be like to travel the world as a photographer covering cycling and it gives me goosebumps every time.
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- Craig Huffman – “Breakaway” – There’s nothing like racing under the lights as Chris Riekert of Team Mike’s Bikes followed by Cameron Piper of Team Illuminate work the defining move, a two man breakaway, during the Toyota San Rafael Sunset Criterium Pro/1/2 race in San Rafael, California, USA on July 29, 2017.
Smartphone and action cam category
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- John Tolkamp – Sprint qualifiers at Cali Colombia World Cup.
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- Jon Turner – A beautiful day on the Col du L’Iseran in the French Alps. Officially closed but we managed to ride to 2400 m in perfect conditions and beautiful light with the mountain completely to ourselves. Descending in summer kit in May – a truly magical day. Possibly a once in a lifetime.
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- Anthony Gordon – Perspectives
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- Geovany Sosa – The benefits of getting up early to ride for a couple of miles. NYC almost invisible.
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- Chris Papakostas – Richie Port climbing the famous Willunga Hill into a sea of thousands while wearing the leader’s jersey at the Tour Down Under
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- Alex Henderson – Keeping myself entertained. Going back into my Strava feed to check when I took this image (October 15, 2017) I can see in my ride title that I was rather hungover! So I dare say I was sweating out some Coopers whilst ascending Akuna Bay and I daresay I starting playing with my camera phone as a distraction! (taken with an iPhone7)
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- John Braynard – This is above Wolfgangsee in Austria on what might be the first ascent of the Zwölferhorn mountain by cyclocross bike. The view was breathtaking, so I pulled over and grabbed this snap on my GoPro.
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- Graeme Langhorne – Bomb Cols not countries.
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- Sean Fine – As a dad I ride whenever I have time- this evening was at sunset in the middle of an ice storm
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- Kasper Voogt – That moment you want to bang on your handlebar because you can’t believe your eyes, but you can’t because your holding a GoPro to capture it and need the other hand to hold on to deer life during the descent on the Shimanami Kaido in Japan.
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