The 2024 UCI Road and Para-cycling Road World Championships from 21 to 29 September 2024 in and around Zurich were the biggest sporting event in Switzerland since the European Football Championships 2008. They were not just a highlight for cycling fans. They also offered Wikimedia CH an excellent opportunity to support the work of the wiki community in an unusual way. User:Albinfo was able to spend nine days on the roadside, at the finish line or close to the podium. And he was happy to do so, as he was officially accredited as a photographer for Wikimedia Commons in accordance with his wishes.

User:Albinfo is a passionate photographer. Lars, his real name, has been writing for Wikipedia for 20 years. He often takes his camera to illustrate Wikipedia articles with attractive photos. With the World Cycling Championships on his doorstep, he didn’t want to miss the chance to document the sporting event and photograph as many rider portraits as possible.

In order to get as close as possible to the action at the World Cycling Championships, he enlisted the support of Wikimedia CH. By making contact and sending a letter of confirmation, Wikimedia CH opened the doors to the World Cycling Union UCI in Martigny and facilitated a smooth accreditation as an officially authorised photographer, which secured him a place in the ranks of press photographers. He was also able to hire a professional telephoto lens and tripod with the support of Wikimedia CH.

« I was on an equal footing with the full-time sports photographers and had access to the media centre, press conferences, special podiums for photographers at the award ceremony and at the finish line. Thanks to the photographer’s waistcoat, I had access to good photo spots along the course, could get behind some of the barriers and was driven to the various locations in the photographer shuttle, » says Albinfo happily, adding: « Without the 600 mm lens I had rented, I would have been lost. »

« Our goal for adding pictures to Wikipedia articles is primarily portraits, » he says. By the end of October alone, Albinfo had been able to add a picture to Wikipedia articles in numerous languages and WIkidata for 92 riders who did not yet have a photo, and he replaced a very poor picture with a better one for two other riders. The picture of young rider Muriel Furrer, who was tragically killed in an accident at the World Championships, had been used in 17 wikis by the end of October.  « Unfortunately, I’ve hardly been able to upload any more photos in the last few weeks. There will be more to come in the near future, » he promises.

Even though not all images had been uploaded by the end of October 2024, the output is impressive (as at 31 October 2024):

  • 367 new files in the category Category:2024 UCI Para-cycling Road World Championships.
  • 727 files (one not from another photographer) in the category Category:2024 UCI Road World Championships.
  • Many 100 more pictures are still waiting to be uploaded.
  • 71 photos from the Para-Cycling Championships are embedded on 129 pages in 18 wikis. They had 177,000 views in September and 17,000 views in October.
  • Of the non-para-cycling photos, 111 photos on 266 pages are included in 28 wikis. They had 900,000 views in September and 380,000 views in October.

But let’s not just let the figures speak for themselves. Albinfo describes its personal impressions below:

The successful professional cyclists are usually already covered on the wiki pages with good pictures. Many of the juniors do not yet have an article – naturally because of the relevance criteria. However, there are many articles without pictures, especially for young talents (U23) and pair athletes, many of whom have taken part in the Paralympics.

For me, sports photography is something like the supreme discipline of photography: fast-moving subjects, long distances, often difficult light. Unfortunately, it didn’t always work out. But unlike most other photographers, I didn’t want to illustrate news reports. And other photographers are not always successful and don’t always bring home good photos from every finish, as they confessed to me.

In general, it is an exciting experience to be able to look behind the scenes at an event like this and to be very close to the action: close to the riders, close to the emotions and in places where hardly anyone else gets to go.  I was asked time and again who I was photographing for. The answer was usually met with some surprise, but also a lot of respect for the work that goes into Wikipedia.

But it wasn’t always fun on site: nine days in a row, some of them very long, travelling from morning to night with lots of luggage. Rainy days, coming home soaked and with wet equipment. Holding out in the pouring rain until the last podium ceremony, after everyone else apart from the official UCI photographer had gone into the heat to document the last podium ceremonies and take photos of these riders.

The fatal accident involving junior rider Muriel Furrer was very sad. It affected everyone involved in this World Championship. With the photo I took of her just three days earlier, I was at least able to make a small contribution to her memory. There are now articles about her in 13 languages – the German-language one already has 100,000 hits, the English-language one more than half as many, the French one 20,000, and the picture was on the main page of the Spanish-language Wikipedia.

When you come home every evening for nine days with hundreds or thousands of new photos, that’s when the real work begins. You want to get a few current images into Wikipedia quickly. But for the most part, there’s still months of work to be done: sifting through images, uploading, describing, categorising, integrating into articles, maybe even creating a new category or a Wikidata entry.

Positive feedback is the best reward. Here a thank you for a new photo in the article, there a photo that was integrated into articles by other Wikipedia authors without my own input – of course you’re happy when you don’t have to do everything yourself. Or the experienced photographer who thanks you at WikiCon for the many new photos: « Finally we have a photo of world champion Tadej Pogačar without his stupid cap! »

Last year, I created the website https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Fototipps/Anlass-Fotografie in consultation with other photographers. The aim is to encourage others to do the same and to help them take their first steps. It doesn’t always have to be a World Cup. A championship match or something like that in the neighbourhood is much less effort and usually easy to implement without having to be a professional photographer. And thanks to Wikimedia CH, you’re not on your own when you have to ask for accreditation.

To the pictures:

More information:

 

Photo by Bild-Sprache, « Wikipedia-Fotograf Rad-WM 02« , CC BY-SA 4.0