Grand Prix Adrie van der Poel 2019

Today was the day of the final various cyclo-cross races (beginners, women, men) for the UCI World Cup in our village, the race here is named after one of the most successful Dutch cyclists and cyclo-cross racers, who lives in our village and who has set up the race circuit here. His son, Mathieu van der Poel is one of the most succesful cyclo-crossers right now and did win in his father's hometown today. It was cold and wet and the circuit was very muddy, I really felt sorry for the cyclists as they had to slip-slide through the mud, ride up and down slippery hills and were totally muddied by the end of the race. I did try my hand at some panning but that's really hard when they race past (the shot you're seeing is still a practice round). For another shot of one of the aspects of cyclo-cross (another one of carrying your bike on your shoulder) see the extra.

Thanks so much for all your Abstract Thursday entries, textured and non-textured. There were 101 entries , a great collection !  My try-out of panning is the reason why I'm suggesting 'motion blur or Intentional Camera Movement' as the optional theme for this coming Thursday. The tag will be AT188.

Here's my list of last week's 5 specials:
craftylady       for a close-up of a beautiful scarf
J4net               for a colourful frosty texture
youoregon1    for the unexpected texture of a broken wave
dollydoug        for a collage of the wonderful texture of a work of art
StuartDB         for a very weathered special postbox

Thanks so much for the kind comments and stars for yesterday's Blip which was also about cyclo-cross :-)