In her first foray into photographing the Tour de France Femmes, Gretchen Powers reflects on the experience and how she snapped her favourite shot.
Gretchen Powers
After years of watching the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift on screen, Gretchen Powers finally made it to the race. An extremely talented photographer, Powers has shot some of the best athletes in the Nordic skiing world, including the one and only Jessie Diggins. Earlier in the week, Powers arrived in France and made her way to the last three stages of the Tour de France Femmes.
“I had the opportunity to shoot the start of stage 7,” Powers told Escape Collective. “I’m here with EF Adventures on a tour with a bunch of folks that are riding all over southern France and into the Alps. We had a chance to ride the last 26 km of stage 7 yesterday and cross the finish line, which was amazing.
“This morning, we got to watch the start, and our guests on the tour got the chance to meet the EF Education-Oatly riders.”
Before the eighth stage of the Tour de France Femmes, in which Pauline Ferrand-Prévot stormed to a historic victory atop the Col de la Madeleine, Powers chose her favourite picture to share with Escape Collective.
The shot is of the stage winner before she took her dream victory, in the calm moments before the stage, surrounded by her team.
“To get to shoot behind the tape at the bus was great. But what was more exciting for me, from the standpoint of storytelling, was thinking about, ‘OK, I only have the chance to shoot this one section of the race’, aka pre-race. ‘How do I want to do that?’ I considered it a little bit of an Easter egg hunt.”
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