British Cycling Technical Services Team

FinishLynx Cycling Gallery

I'll start this page off with a Pinkerton Special (left).

Taken at the third stage of the Birmingham 2-Day in 2002, it shows one of the riders crashing over the line. Still, at least he finished and was considerate enough to turn and show his number for the benefit of the camera.

The image on the right was taken at a Ladies National Series event in Surrey. Two possible solutions:-

Add a pair of scissors to our toolkit.
Press BC to come up with a standard safety helmet incorporating a hairnet.

This is quite a common problem in women's racing, and makes the job of a photofinish operator VERY difficult.

This Dutch rider (left) at Halesowen during 2005 has pulled his foot off the pedal and it shows up very clearly here.

Most of us can remember toe clips and straps (Bob still has them), and in my opinion they should have remained the norm for all track racing.

What a great Eastway pic from Knocker. Jez McCann (Team Darenth) crashed with 70 metres to go and had his number torn off.

Mum then realized he had no race number on. She then chased after Jez, caught him on the line and held out his race number so he could claim his 3rd place. What a pair of stars!

Here's another star from the 2006 ToB (right).

We are quick (quite rightly) to criticise riders for not displaying a number which we can read. Well, at the stage finish in Sheffield this rider came through holding his number to face the camera.

It's a lot clearer on the original full sized image, but you get the gist of it here. The Commissaire President went to thank the rider concerned at the start next day.

The things riders do when they think nobody's watching. Sean Brennan (left) in another pic from Bob at the Tour of the South.

Now then, here's a tale of two evening races a fortnight apart. I went to Clitheroe in early August 2006. Before the racing it rained hard and we couldn't get a white line down. During the evening the weather cleared and the pictures were great. With 3 laps of the main event to go I was still getting a good image

so didn't bother switching on my 12v lights (there was no genny for the mains lights). This was a BAD mistake.

In those last 5 minutes the light went almost completely, and the picture (above) shows the result. I wasn't too concerned because I could still read ALL the numbers. However, the strange thing is that the leading edges of almost all the front wheels, and the trailing edges of the back wheels were lost when I auto-cropped the picture. There was nothing too controversial so I didn't restore the cropped areas. My guess was that because we had dark tyres on a dark road with very little light, Lynx found it hard to detect movement and so the cropping went a little haywire. Incidentally, note the press photographer's flash in the middle of the picture.

Roger was kind enough to let me have the technical reason:-

"To help auto-crop work well there has to be a tolerance on the pixel change otherwise any small changes would cause the auto-cropping procedure to leave most of the image intact. Auto-crop looks at each column of pixels and decides if anything has changed or not, if all is the same as the previous column then nothing is happening, but when there is a change that means a target athlete (or an official) has passed through the camera Auto-crop takes out the "same" columns and leaves the changing columns. There is always some change in each pixel column so the system has a tolerance built-in so that small changes do not effect the operation. However, if the image is very murky you may be on the auto-crop threshold of working or not working well, i.e. if you have a dark background and foreground situation with low light then auto-crop may not work and you should use manual cropping."

There, I was right all along - I think!

Two weeks later I was at Rochdale, and the weather was great. I wasn't going to get caught out again so I went for overkill and switched on all the lights (2 x 500W mains floodlights plus 2 x 12v lights).

Good job I did because the rain started halfway through the main event and it went really dark. The resulting Lynx image is shown (left).

Our job is made harder when riders don't position their numbers for the camera to see them. The following series of images from Bob were taken early season when he was running some camera tests before his first event proper of 2007. Just how do they expect to be placed in cases like this? Not only that, but it's unfair on race organisers who pay good money for the service.

This pic (left) from the final stage of the Bikeline 2 Day in North Wales had us stumped for a long time.

We were trying to identify the rider on the far side in this clip from the middle of the bunch who was obscured by number 22. But believe it or not, number 22 IS the rider on the far side, and the guy nearest the camera had his number covered by a top.

It only came to light when we asked the riders to look at the picture, and even now I think I was dreaming!

An interesting pic from Knocker (right) which returns us to the subject of filming in the dark.

He struggled with this race and had a hard time setting the focus as he was very near the edge of the circuit and could not get high enough.

With no floodlights, he's done well to be able to pick out the numbers.

We don't see much tandem racing these days so it's nice to be able to include a picture here taken at Newcastle under Lyne track. In fact it's the National tandem championship.

Nothing particularly remarkable but it looks good, and Bob always seems to achieve better colours than me!

We always seem to be complaining about riders not displaying their number for the benefit of our cameras. However, Bob spotted this (right) at the Junior Tour of Worcestershire.

Rider number 38 went through the finish in the broom wagon and his race number is still clearly visible. He should get some sort of award, surely!

What a cracking Lynx image from Bob, taken at the Newport Nocturne at around 10-15pm. It was very dark but look at the sprint for 4th/5th place...sort that out by hand in the dark. The riders had frame numbers which even showed up in Bob's original full-size picture.

How did the old fella do it? We'll miss him.

It's nice to get a picture from Scotland, and here's a good one from Bill.

A close finish to the Elite/1/2 Crit at Dumfries in May. Bill called it a Halfords sandwich.

Thanks Bill, let us see some more.

This great clip from the film of the International CiCle Classic highlights what we mean when we say that the more numbers on display, the better.

Riders were issued with body, and frame numbers and both show clearly on number 88 nearest the camera.

However the rider behind him has his body number obscured by number 88's head! Fortunately his frame number can just be picked out (it's 173)!

Thanks John.

I just love this one (left). Bill took it at the Backpool weekend in 2008.

He says that one of the riders' teammates had identical numbers!

Two numptys for the price of one, eh?

4th cat race at Victoria Park in Birmingham. Nice close finish with a little bit extra if you look closely.

Numbers 56 and 48 contest a really tight spriny for 1st and 2nd places, but there is another rider just obscured by them who has crashed and you can see his back wheel flying through the air on it's side.

John tells me that the rider at the top of the picture also crashed and he wondered how the two leaders stayed upright.

Thanks John.

No, this picture hasn't been doctored in Photoshop!

It's come courtesy of Jeff Davis from the Alberta Bicycle Association in Canada where until recently they used the black and white version of FinishLynx camera. It's a lovely crystal clear image and a little bit different to our normal pics. Jeff gave me permission to include it here.

If you look closely you will see that the rider nearest the camera lost the sprint but had lifted his back wheel off the ground on the line. Stands to reason that if you take your driving wheel off the road you will lose a bit of momentum.

Interesting Lynx image from John Pearson from a race at Halesowen. Both the riders above seem to be wearing identical number 14s.