As it’s the season of giving, Jered & Ashley Gruber have let us pillage and plunder their photographs from the 2013 season. And as they give to us, so we give to you. Jered picked out six of his favourite photographs of the year and I picked out six of mine. We’re posting up one a day until Christmas – just little visual treats for you – with Jered’s comments about them! These are in no particular order, they don’t encompass the entire season, but they are all utterly fantastic.

(Click on the picture to see it full screen.)

Heinrich Haussler, Gent-Wevelgem

Jered: Gent-Wevelgem is always a hard race. This year’s edition, however, made most normal editions look like warm, flat 150km grand tour sprint stages. Temperatures never rose above freezing, the wind howled, and the race was in pieces within the first five minutes. IAM’s Heinrich Haussler was one of the unfortunate riders to miss the early selection and spent more than half of the race chasing in various groups. Miraculously, he eventually got himself into the lead group and rode extremely well, even putting in a solid solo move at one point. Haussler eventually finished fourth on the day – completely shattered as he crossed the finish line. Amidst the finish line chaos, he quietly rolled over to a quiet place near the barriers, got off his bike, bent over, and let the collected exhaustion and pain out. He stayed like that for a long moment.

Follow Jered and Ashley on Twitter; see their work on flickr and the Gruber Images website and watch out for them at races next year!

Image ©Gruber Images