For the second time in the two-year history of the race, the World Cup in Dendermonde was held without fans. When I finally get to shoot this race with fans present I think it is going to be a real shock. Most of the course is on a flat field that seems to flood at the mere mention of rain. The few spectators that have been out in 2020 and 2021 naturally crowd onto the “hills” where the features are concentrated. Getting from feature to feature is therefore very easy but with a full crowd it would mean I can no longer pick my lines through the watery mud. Anyway, I have another year until I have to worry about that.
A number of changes were made to the course which seemed to improve things quite a bit for the riders. The fly-over, the sand pit descent, the whoop-de-whoops that weren’t quite whoop-de-whoops. This course caught a lot of flak last year but I think they really made a huge and very expensive effort to correct it. I definitely felt like there were lots more places and interesting things to shoot compared with last year when I was mainly just waiting for people sink into the mud in new and interesting ways.
