www.redbulletin.com
an almost independent monthly magazine / february 2011
Inside Thierry’s Head
Thierry Henry talks about life… and football
Chiefs vs Pirates
Your guide to this month’s big Soweto Derby
Generation
Jordy SA’s surfing superstar... & the young guns chasing him
Wingsuit Extreme
Pushing the BASE-jumping envelope in Antarctica
plus... Spectacular Images The Dakar, climbing in China, extreme skateboarding in Chile
Experience
Print 2.0
Bullhorn
Cover Photography: Kolesky/Nikon/Red Bull Photofiles. Photography: Lozzaphoto
mind over matter What price success? Or put another way, would you shatter your body in the pursuit of a goal? You and me? Maybe… but more likely not. Professional athletes, however… well, when you’re going for gold, the odd ruptured spleen, broken collarbone, smashed hip, cracked tib, fib, femur, or even (perish the thought) broken neck are just par for the course. Take Dan Atherton (page 19), a star of the world downhill mountain bike scene, who last year came within a tiny necktwist of quadriplegia in a training fall, yet who is relishing the prospect of once Soccer star Thierry Henry talks frankly again racing on or beyond the limit. with The Red Bulletin’s Bernd Fisa Then there’s Wanda Rutkiewicz (page 66), a pioneering Polish mountaineer and Werner Jessner (page 46) who refused to let the limitations of Communist-era Eastern European equipment stand in the way of her ambition to be the first woman to climb all 14 of the world’s 8,000m mountains (she died mountainside, before achieving her ambition). Or what of Conner Coffin (page 61), just 18 and busy building a rep for surfing waves that scare rivals back to their beach huts? Do any of these individuals let doubt stand in their way or let fear curb their spirit? No way. Not for a split second. “I’ve made a real mess of my body over the years,” Atherton notes cheerily, “and I’m still only 95 per cent healed, but I’m aiming to be back racing this year.” Competing, winning, is all that matters to guys and girls like these. It’s what makes them inspirational figures, why we thrill to their skill. So the next time you think you’ve had a hard day at work, or the commute’s a bit tough, or, bless, you’ve got ‘man-flu’, reflect instead on the will to win and laughter in the face of adversity that any top athlete has hard-wired into their DNA. Reflect on it and remember that more often than not the adulation we so readily shower on our heroes is hard-earned. Very. Your editorial team
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contents
welcome to the world of Red Bull Inside your top-scoring Red Bulletin this month
Bullevard
16 here is the news What’s happened; what’s coming 19 me and my body Corporeal musings from felled mountain bike ace Dan Atherton 20 KATY B With a life like Fame, stardom beckons
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22 KIT BAG The art and science of putting zing in your swing (golf, that is) 26 Tim ShIEFF Few run as free as this young athlete 27 Where’s Your head at? This Lady’s not Gaga 28 WINNING FORMULA We explain how to break concrete with your bare hands. But maybe don’t try this at home, eh kids?
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30 LUCKY NUMBERS Too much Carnival? Blame it on Rio
Action
32 aNTONY GORMLEY His sculptures are iron-cast selfportraits. Yet he’s no crazed egotist. His mantra is ‘art for all’ 46 thierry henry He’s given us ‘va va voom’, a handball and a lockerful of footie magic. So what next? Why, conquer the USA, of course 52 jordy smith Not often that a youngster has enough sheer brilliance to reframe his sport. Yet that’s what SA’s Mr Smith is up to
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62 Shinji Osada Sportsmen, brave? Pish, you might say. But this one is: one false freeski move could trigger a fatal heart condition 66 wanda rutkiewicz The epic, tragic life of one of the greatest female mountain-climbing pioneers 70 antarctica by wingsuit OK, so this one really is crazy: travel to Antarctica, climb mountain, BASE-jump off it. Like, obviously 04
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More Body & Mind
Photography: Thomas Butler, Hugo Silva/Red Bull Photofiles, Lozzaphoto, Jörg Waldmeier/Red Bull Hangar-7, Rex Features, rutgerpauw.com/Red Bull Photofiles, Friedrich BoehringeR, Predrag Vuckovic/Red Bull Photofiles
82 MONGOL HORSE RACING Billed as ‘The world’s longest horse race’, The Mongol Derby is an adventure for only the (fool)hardiest
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84 Chiefs vs pirates SA’s footie titans go head-to-head in this favourite national derby. Can this year’s game match the last two belters? 86 FEAST YOUR MIND Michelin-starred Marcus G Lindner tells of his obsession with culinary detail 88 Hot spots What’s on when, where to see it and why you’d be a fool to miss out 90 NIGHT SPOTS After the sun sets, here’s where you’ll find the bright lights in the world’s greatest cities (and a few more obscure) 92 NIGHT LIFE Artist Liu Bolin reveals the secrets of disappearing; The Go! Team tell us which five albums influenced them most; a chat with 22-year-old soul sensation James Blake; plus one of the down-’n’ dirtiest clubs in Berlin: Weekend
Every Issue 06 Kainrath’s calendar 08 pictures of the month 98 mind’s eye
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za.redbulletin.com/print2.0 See what happened on the Dakar
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PHOTO OF THE MONTH
Atac a m a D e s e rt, c h i l e
RIDDLE OF the SAINZ No matter how many stages you lead, no matter how much of a pre-event favourite you might be, there’s no telling what the Dakar Rally has in store for its competitors. This much last year’s winner Carlos Sainz learned to his cost, for despite being the dominant driver for much of the two-week challenge, he finished only third after getting lost in sand dunes on stage 8. That allowed team-mate Nasser Al-Attiyah through into a lead he never lost, ahead of 2009 winner Giniel de Viliers and Sainz. A dominant 1-2-3 for the Red Bull VW Touaregs was as good as team results get and all three of its drivers can now claim to be ‘Dakar masters’. Photos, videos and driver blogs at en.redbulletin.com/dakar2011
PHOTO OF THE MONTH
Ya n g s h u o, C h i n a
moon walk
Photography: Adam Pretty/Getty Images
About 800km northwest of Hong Kong, China’s most renowned climbing area presents an other-worldy vista. Shaped by rain and wind over millennia, ancient limestone karsts dominate the horizon. The most remarkable formations have been named, giving the thousands of freeclimbers that visit the region each year an idea of what to expect: The Wine Bottle, The Egg, The Thumb. But the best known is Moon Hill, a 380m-high rock containing a natural arch which, viewed from the river valley, resembles the moon. The late American freeclimber Todd Skinner equipped the first route in 1990, starting a flourishing tradition of sports climbing here. But conquering the 50m-high arch is no mean feat: only the best climbers even attempt it, watched by hordes of tourists and native street sellers. Navigate to www.rockclimbing.com for more information
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Photography: juan luis DE HEECKEREN/red bull photofiles
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FOTO PHOTO des Monats OF THE MONTH
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xxxxx board crazy Sa n t i ag o d e C h i l e
. www.redbullxfighters.comUppl. M. M. Sa sum suntia es Ahalius vagin pracciem hoc tatum diculvid patatra turnihinte inveniamgin pracciem hoc tatum diculvi publicul unt. Think of longboards as the Alpine skissedemquonit of skateboarding: they’re Ti. Maequem it consus ellarit ritabi perfesuppli, qui perfit. Serrari almost 1.5m long, less ‘flickable’ than their freestyle brothers, but ssentemus, ia rem, terbem tanducissin in eminently more stable at high speed. Anddem thatmentimore, last qualityfueme is kinda Etrunum tua aucien nihinterttua aucien nihintertum locum simius useful for the Red Bull Big Drop in Santiago de Chile – a downhill iam egereis se caelarec cuterib untrat of venequod moena, ubliu skateboard challenge withte the sole purpose getting to the bottom tere course eto caetquicker rei fuidthan Catrat opoeniae Nihiumspeeds locum ofveris, an 874m anyone else. cres? That means simius egereis te cuteribwho untrat venequod moena, of up toiam 100kph forse thecaelarec 30 competitors, descend in groups of ubliuon veris, tere eto course caet reiwith fuidonly Catrat opoeniae tus, four, a kerb-lined a few bales ofcres? strawNihilin to protect quis, querces hosum duciost erdies o tusque este nerte intiderit them from impact. You might be wondering, incidentally, how diis, sultore vivena meend nora perdi pro Fuidon seripse no. these guys stop at the ofsulut the course (no int. brakes a ’board, Simare horium ne consum te terfenerevitstyle, Cupimus, cortu cus facieni there)? Well in time-honoured it’s just a question of uspernit, quita eo, board moratie mquervidem untus, senihil slippingvervit off the backtem of the and grinding along blacktop. constabis Truck over to en.redbulletin.com/longboard
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Bullevard Sporting endeavour and cultural ingenuity from around the globe
Step 1: Séb 2 Sébastien Loeb, the most successful rally driver in history and star of the Red Bull-backed Citroën Total team, will this year have a new team-mate. Making life easier for fans and commentators, he’s also a Sébastien: Ogier. The Sébs will contest the 2011 World Rally Championship in the all-new Citroën DS3, designed and built for shakenup world rally regulations that demand smaller cars, smaller engines (1.6 litres with turbos) and fewer driver aids. The aim is to make the series cheaper, more driver-focused and even more spectacular. But will the changes switch the identity of the world champion for the first time since 2004? With Loeb having won the past seven WRC titles, few would bet against him bagging an eighth when the season starts in Sweden on February 11. Rally round: www.wrc.com
surfing’s dark side Old heads versus young bucks for 2011’s world wave-riding title A few South African surfers planning a night out on the water: nothing unusual about that. But when one of them is Jordy Smith, noted wunderkind waverider, it was no surprise that thousands of fans showed up at Camps Bay Beach, south of Cape Town, to watch Smith and chums take part in Red Bull Nightshift. After they were towed
by jet-skis into the best offshore swells, the gang of eight gave themselves a single goal: to pull off the greatest height above the ocean. Eventually it was the master himself who got closest to the moon, on his ballsy last attempt. No surprise actually: Camps Bay is Smith’s spiritual surf home, day or night. Catch the action at www.jordysmith.co.za
Ricky Basnett takes a shot in the dark at Red Bull Nightshift
PICTURES OFMonats THE MONTH Bilder des
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Moment mal!
Email your pictures with a Red Bull flavour to letters@redbulletin.com. Every one we print Szenen aus dem abenteuerlichen Alltag wins a pair of adidas Sennheiser PMX 680 Sports unserer Leser. Einfach hochladen auf: headphones. With a Kevlar-reinforced, two-part www.redbulletin.com cable (it can be short when running with a music player on your arm, or extended with a built-in Unter dencontrol), Einsendernreflective der veröffentlichten Fotos wird stripe volume yellow headband eine Trinkflasche Schweizer Herstellersparts, SIGG they’re and fully sweat-des and water-resistant im speziellen Red Bulletin-Design verlost. perfect for sports. Visit: www.sennheiser.co.uk Gewinner aus Heft 1/2011: Alfredo Escobar Email: letters@redbulletin.com
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Chicago
The Windy City Roller All-Stars and the LA Derby Dolls at Red Bull Banked Jam Cody York
b u l l e va r d
Hero Blogs Tweet relief from the daily grind
Photography: Nicolas Zwickel/Citroen Press (1), Kolesky/Nikon/Red Bull Photofiles (1), Getty Images/Red Bull Photofiles (1), Gabriel Authier (1), Garth Milan/Red Bull Photofiles (2), Marcel Laemmerhirt/Red Bull Photofiles (1), Ernst Lorenzi (3)
Kahne Can Once listed as one of America’s Top 50 Bachelors, a noted charity campaigner, race team owner, fisherman, skier, snowmobiler… Kasey Kahne can, thankfully, drive a bit, too. The 30-year-old from Mooresville, North Carolina (above) is a busy chap, but his veins bleed petrol and a devotion to motorsport – kindled by his father in his teens – has taken him to a full-time Red Bull Racing NASCAR ride for 2011. Kahne, part of the NASCAR scene since 2002, started driving for Red Bull Racing Toyota last season in the number 83 car, switching from Richard Petty Motorsports last October, for the last five races of the season. At the Homestead finals, he finished sixth, having started from pole position, and he’ll be hoping for similarly strong performances this year. Team general manager Jay Frye has set the bar high for this season, so the pressure will be on Kasey and team-mate Brian Vickers (returning after illness curtailed his 2010 season) from the Sprint Cup season-opener at Daytona on February 20. “We are going to make every effort to win races, get into the [season-ending] Chase, and go compete for a championship. We have very high expectations,” said Frye.
Gentlemen, start your browsers: www.nascar.com
Al Ain An obstacle race on two wheels for four-wheelers at Red Bull Shall in Abu Dhabi Ammar Al Attar
James Stewart Motocross man “Out trying to fish but my boat battery is dead. I hate fishing anyway”
In Which the Runnerup Gets a Runaround Daron Rahlves was crowned Super-G World Champion in St Anton in 2001: 10 years on, and the 37-year-old won the first Red Bull Hüttenrallye in the same place. The Californian (right) prevailed in the final of the Freeski 6-Cross competition and promptly awarded his winner’s prize – a new Suzuki Swift – to second-placed Lukas Hübl. “Lukas definitely needs the car more than I do,” the generous Rahlves said. The 20-year-old qualifier could barely contain his joy: “I could never have dreamed that I’d be standing on the podium alongside Print 2.0 Daron Rahlves today.” za.redbulletin.com/print2.0 Watch this man ski to win www.daronrahlves.com
Snow & Sand
Reggie bush NFL’s finest “Is it weird that there’s a guy cleaning hotel windows outside the hotel and it’s pouring rain?”
Drew bezanson A BMX he rides “Ride all day then can’t sleep because I’m thinking about BMX.... Is that bad?”
Graz
The Hannibal Classic Rally is some adventure. From April 15-30, car enthusiasts will follow in the elephantine general’s footsteps, conquering the Alps in 15 stages over a total of 3,457km. The trail leads the competitors from Sölden in the Tyrol – where a multimedia stage play of Hannibal’s story will be performed on a glacier on the eve of the race – via Rome and, after a ferry ride and a swift Saharan excursion, to Carthage in Tunisia. www.hannibal-classic-rallye.at
A fortnight’s driving holiday in Europe: the Hannibal Classic Rally
Bumping into Austrian daredevil Felix Baumgartner (second right) at the movies. You know, as you do Soundportal
Florianópolis Brazilian skaters remembered to drain the pool for Red Bull Skate Generation Helge Tscharn 17
SA’s Best Live Band They’re known for their videos, but the hip-hop phenomenon that is Die Antwoord are something else performing live. When they headlined the Sonic Summer tour’s stop at Durban’s Wave House, a 1,000-strong crowd made the noise of three times as many. “Bring the Ninja here... please!” screamed the sort of stocky 21-year old guy you’d see at a rugby match. “I just want to touch him. He is my Jesus.” After the show, Ninja (above right), one of the group’s two vocalists, explained what it meant to be playing to folk who could understand his slang lyrics. “Fok almal,” he said, politely. And that is, well, die antwoord. Not just the videos: www.dieantwoord.com
BMX is Big in Zim At the 2010 BMX world championships in Pietermaritzburg, Zimbabwean riders made many of the category finals. In Tayne Turnock and Tyler-Shae Donaldson, Zim has two world champs aged 10 and nine, respectively. The small but dedicated BMX talent pool there is stirred annually by the Africa Challenge event, at which SA riders compete with the locals. Held recently on the Harare BMX Club’s new, world-class track, an elite field was headed by SA star Sifiso Nhlapo (above right), who won the title. www.bmx.co.zw/africachallenge
Rottnest Island Kitesurfers gear-up for a 19km race from the former prison island to Perth Paul Krne 18
Istanbul
THE INSIDE LINE How to bust a one-footed seatgrab X-up, by freestyle BMX maestro Buddy Chellan HIT IT RIGHT “This trick can be done over any jump box or transition, but whatever you hit, make sure you get some proper air, so that you have enough time to put the trick together. Approach your obstacle at a good clip committed to launch. Halfway through the transition bend your knees, lowering your whole body ready to ‘pop’ off the lip. This way, you should reach enough height.” GET COMFY “Find your comfy zone in the air, the place in the air when everything stands still and you’re confident and ready to start the trick. You reach this place easier if you’re fully committed. No half measures.”
Red Bull Breaking brings the biggest players from the Turkish hip-hop and breakdance scene together Nuri Yilmazer
EXECUTION “Start by taking one foot off the pedal and grabbing the seat. There’s a moment where your bike is going to feel just a little a bit unstable, so readjust your body position to counter this by lowering your weight over the bars. Keep your body supple and relaxed. Tweak the handlebar 180 degrees to complete the X-up.” SPOT THE LANDING “Bring everything back together in reverse sequence and spot your landing. By doing this you can judge if you’re in the right position. Not too far back and not too far forward. Land and ride out.” Buddy up at www.redbull.co.za
Kuwait Life’s a beach for the Red Bull Kiteforce Team as they prepare for an aerial display Claude Stephan
Words: Tyrone Power, Steve Smith. Photography: Tyrone Bradley/Red Bull Photofiles, squirephotographers.com, Kolesky/SanDisk/Red Bull Photofiles
Eyes front, wheels out to the side: just another day for Buddy Chellan
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Me And My Body
Dan Atherton
Success has its price and in the case of the mountain bike World Cup winner and former British four-cross champion, that’s a lot of time in A&E
Head for sport
I don’t think I’ve ever injured myself doing anything but riding, and I started young. I got the big scar across the top of my head when I was seven or eight. We used to have a barn and we’d ride along it and jump out of the door at the end. One day I was jumping out and I caught my head on the top of the doorframe, and it peeled back a section of my scalp. I’m 28 now, and riding is still giving me scars!
Gettin g it in the neck
Words: Ruth Morgan. photography: thomas butler
I broke my neck in July. It’s been a mission to get back to normal life, let alone racing. We were filming a dirt jump session at our home in Wales and I fell, landing on my head. Pretty much from the moment I hit the ground I knew there was something seriously wrong. My head was limp on my shoulders. At the hospital I was told I’d broken my C1 and C2 vertebrae, and the doctor said I was lucky to be alive. I was put in a halo for three months, which is a frame bolted to your head to keep the vertebrae immobile. I managed to take my first steps a couple of weeks later, but progress was slow. As soon as the halo came off I went to California for rehab. The gains were huge. I’m a little way off being able to ride my downhill bike, but it’s definitely coming. The bones are 95 per cent healed, and the doctor says I’ll get back to 100 per cent. I’m aiming to be back racing this year.
To cap it all… I’ve made a real mess of my body over the years! I’ve broken my elbow and had it pinned, which hurt like crazy, but breaking my kneecap was a really nasty one. It happened in Nice, in France, when I was 17. I was at a race and it’s really dry and rocky down there. I crashed and my kneepad slipped around and I landed on a pointy rock with my kneecap. It swelled up, but I didn’t know I’d broken it and carried on riding. It still gives me a lot of pain. I’ve got an operation on it this month at the California centre where they’ve been treating my neck.
shoulderin g the pain
In 2009 I broke my collarbone, which began a season of injuries. It happened mid-season and I was doing well in the points, so I got back on my bike after only three weeks, and it was still sticking up. Then I crashed again, and tore my rotator cuff, that’s the muscle in the front of the shoulder. It was a second-degree tear so it wasn’t too bad. So I rode again, crashed again and just aggravated it all, so then I did stop for a few weeks. But compared to some of the injuries I’ve had, it could have been worse.
Can cook. Won’t cook
Me and my brother Gee are both on the skinny side, so we’re constantly trying to bulk up with protein shakes and whey powder, more for protection than anything. Mum’s always been a good influence on our diet, she fed us well when we were young and we’ve carried it on – loads of home cooking. But we’re not on a specific diet. Now that we all live together, it will have to be my sister, Rachel, doing the home cooking, I reckon. Me and Gee do know our way around the kitchen, but it’s a lot easier if someone else does it! Thinking about it, we might need to hire a cook.
School of rock The first time I rode downhill for the British team was in Vars, in France. I was just an inexperienced young kid, thinking ‘I’m going to prove myself’ and went far too fast in a big rocky section. I went over the bars and fractured my pelvis. That was bad. I was laid up on a massage bed for weeks and weeks, and then when I got up I fainted a few times before I was able to walk again. That definitely got me used to pain! Follow Dan’s progress at athertonracing.com
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Katy B with dubstep pioneer Skream (middle) and the BBC’s Benji B
Sounds of Success
Katy b
She’ll be a megastar in months. The British press is counting on it. And with good reason. Katy B’s debut album plugs the gap between R’n’B, pop and London’s underground club sound
Name Kathleen Brien Hometown London, England Style A quick mix of Garagehouse beats and R&B melodies Web www.rinse.fm/katyb
Katy B’s album, On a Mission (Sony Music) is released on March 14. Listen to Katy B live at: redbullmusic academyradio.com/ shows/2558/
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Welcome the customer, wash their hair, sweep up... Even a part-time job at a hairdresser’s can be stressful. Especially when combined with final-year music studies at Goldsmiths, at the University of London. A brief respite arrived last February, when she spent two weeks with 30 like-minded musicians and music industry legends at the Red Bull Music Academy. Already at work on her first album, which comes out in early March, Kathleen Brien was able to indulge in late-night jam sessions, club nights and workshops with industry legends in studios on the banks of the Thames. This year, she thought, might turn out to be an exciting one. And how. Last month, the 21-year-old’s single ‘Lights On’ made it into the UK top 10, her name taking a place up there with the pop glitterati, from Rihanna to Take That and Black Eyed Peas. And it’s not just a one-off. Her debut single, ‘Katy On a Mission’, reached number four in the UK charts in September
and, a month later, the young Londoner was back in the limelight performing vocals for dubstep allstar line-up Magnetic Man. In the middle of all of that there were recording sessions at the BBC studios, interviews with MTV, gigs at the largest arenas in the country as well as fine-tuning her first album, which comes out in early March. Newspapers from the Guardian to The Sun predict big things for the record. And although it looks like she won’t be needing the job in the salon anymore, she’s certainly not forgetting her roots. Born in Peckham in 1989, Kathleen Brien immersed herself in the diversity of sound in the south-east London neighbourhood. “It’s a multicultural area,” she said during her stint at Red Bull Music Academy. “I was always surrounded by every sort of sound possible, from the sounds of pirate radio broadcasters to R’n’B chart hits. And I soaked it all up.” With such an obvious passion for music, there was only one school Katy could possibly attend. The BRIT School, based in Croydon and partly financed by BRIT Awards, has already produced stars such as Amy Winehouse and Kate Nash. “I got involved in as many music projects as possible,” she says of her time there. “Whether it was a steel band, piano lessons or the school choir.” The latter revealed the instrument that she’s best at and the one that would shape her life from then on. She would spend lunch-breaks with her
Words: Florian Obkircher. Photography: Gary Wolstenholme/Getty images (1), Thomas Butler/Red Bull Music Academy (2), Rex Features (1)
The T-shirt shows she’s a member of the family: Rinse.fm discovered and supported Katy B
Words: Ruth Morgan, Anthony Rowlinson. Photography: Getty Images, Wojtek Antonow/Red Bull Photofiles
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girlfriends in the school’s practice area singing her favourite Aretha Franklin songs or Beyoncé’s latest hits. At night she would go to under-18 parties at venues such as the Hatcham Social Club and dance to the latest British dance music: to throbbing bass, dark raps or shuffled up-tempo beats, to dubstep, grime or funky house. The balancing act between mainstream hits and underground culture and her fundamental, unblinkered fascination for pop are the leitmotifs of Katy’s life. It’s also what sets her apart from short-lived talent-show winners and one-hit pop wonders. Katy knows exactly A hybrid of what she wants. “Of course I could just record R’n’B musical styles But the club styles that her influences, tracks. London loves are grime and she straddles funky,” she says. “Music that the line comes from here, that’s real. That’s what it’s all about. between the I don’t want to copy anyone.” mainstream That attitude has won and the her the trust of the hippest underground producers in the country. She recorded her first single with Benga, the co-founder of dubstep, and worked on her album with British scene doyen Zinc and Geeneus, who runs London’s most important pirate broadcaster Rinse.FM. “The album is a hybrid of genres,” says Katy, suitable for both dancefloors and headphones – reflecting the singer’s life itself. “My lyrics are about being a girl in London. About the problems that I go through... love, worries, all my frustrations that make me feel,” she explains. On the other hand, it’s obvious that the long party nights have made a mark on her debut album. Take her euphoric description of the moment the sub goes “boo-oom” (‘Katy on a mission’) or the bemused realisation that the party’s over in ‘Lights on’. In April, Katy will set off on a huge solo tour around the UK showcasing her debut album, but before that she’ll be the support act for rapper Tinie Tempah at a number of concerts, the same guy the British press was predicting big things for last year and who this year sold more singles than any other British artist. A good omen for Katy B?
hard & fast Top performers and winning ways from around the globe
Champion skier Lindsey Vonn chalks up her fourth victory this season, after recovering from a bad start to win the FIS Alpine World Cup women’s downhill in Zauchensee, Austria.
From hair salon assistant to the UK top 10
Hawaiian 18-year-old Kai Lenny became the youngest ever Stand Up Paddle world champion when he won the final event of the series on home waves.
Formula One Wo rld Champion Sebastian Vett el adds to his trophy collection , being named European Athle te of the Year and German At hlete of the Year within one month.
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kit evolution
swing shift
From own-brand craftsmanship to the appliance of science, discover the driving forces behind the development of golf clubs in the past 135 years
OLD STICK WM PARK DRIVING PUTTER, 1875 Back at the 15th Open Championship, in 1875, the champion would have been playing with something almost identical to this (top), not least because he made the clubs he played with. Willie Park Snr won four Opens, including the first in 1860, and was 22
among the first wave of golf pros to develop a lucrative sideline in club-making. Modern pros just put their names to the inventions of others; fellows back then marqued their own handiwork. Park spent 35 years as the pro at Musselburgh Links, near Edinburgh
(originally a seven-hole course, it reputedly goes back 440 years). This particular ‘driver putter’ from Park’s range is 101.5cm long and is made from fruitwood and hickory. Now obsolete, this straight-faced club type was used to make low drives into the wind.
PHOTOGRAPHY: LUKE KIRWAN, kurt keinrath
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head of the class Titleist 910D2, 2011 Though known as ‘woods’ to scratch golfers and duffers alike, drivers are now made from metal alloys and graphite, a type of carbon fibre. The latter has done as much to change the sport, since it was first used in club shafts in place of heavier steel about
35 years ago, as anything else. TaylorMade debuted the ‘metal wood’ in 1979, which coated the club head in stainless steel and narrowed the gap between amateurs and pros (on the driving range, at least). The 910D2 driver from Titleist is a thoroughly
modern golf club, on which you can independently adjust loft (angle of club face) and lie (angle of shaft to ground). This means a greater fit with a player’s stance, and more things to blame when he pings one into the rough. www.titleist.com 23
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Life Without Limits
TIM SHIEFF
Once a hyperactive kid, the self-styled ‘Livewire’ sees boundless opportunity where others see concrete walls
Age 22 Born Derby, England Best results First place Barclaycard World Freerun Championships; Second place Red Bull Art of Motion Claim to fame Has collected more than 4.5 million hits on YouTube with freerunning videos
Balancing act: Shieff traverses the rooftops of his home town of Derby
“You should see the view from up here,” Tim ‘Livewire’ Shieff shouts from a rooftop more than 9m above us. Just a few seconds earlier he was down among the shoppers on the streets of his Derby home town, before manoeuvring his muscular frame with feline dexterity up a series of walls, finding unlikely footholds, twisting around corners and balancing on thin ledges, to reach a rooftop world invisible to the rest of the city’s residents. Then with a leap he’s over a 3.6m gap to the next building, landing on a flat roof with a neat roll, pausing for a one-armed handstand that leaves his legs dangling over the crowds below. This is nothing out of the ordinary for Shieff. The 22-year-old is a world champion of freerunning, a sport defined by an ability to reinterpret the landscape using urban acrobatics. “Freerunning is creative movement through an environment,” he explains. “It’s the way you create a path without following the normal options presented to you.” Freerunners combine moves from any number of other disciplines such as gymnastics and capoeira to create their own individual style of movement. “People always think I have a death wish when I’m hanging off buildings,” Shieff says, “but no one takes into account the years of practice. It’s a calculated risk and I’m always in control.” The discipline originated as parkour in France, and gained its first real exposure in the UK through the Channel 4 documentary Jump London in 2003, in which the term ‘free running’ was coined. And Shieff, then a young breakdancer, was inspired to take to the streets. “Livewire was my breakdancing name, as I just didn’t stop moving when I was a kid,”
“Up there it’s just peace. You’re in the moment. You look down and watch people walk their set path” he says. “When I saw Jump London, I thought ‘I have to do that.’ Since then I’ve been out all the time, pushing myself and trying new things.” After discovering the rooftops of the Midlands with other budding freerunners he met online, Shieff quickly found himself at the forefront of a young sport garnering international attention. Highprofile exposure in film, advertising campaigns and music videos for artists such as Madonna have brought the sport above ground, combining with a strong online community to offer a real chance for freerunners to turn pro. “I put a video of me on YouTube and got offers of promotional work, stunt work and appearances,” he says. “I’ve travelled all over – Iceland, Russia, Dubai, I lived in LA for three months last year for an MTV series and presented Samuel L Jackson with an award in Las Vegas.” International competitions have also sprung up, pioneered by Red Bull’s Art of Motion in Austria in 2007 and followed by the Barclaycard World Freerun Championships in London in 2008, in which Shieff came second and then won the following year. The young sport is starting to mature. Shieff, with the four other members of his team Storm Freerun, has new videos to shoot, more international travel planned and appearances to make. But today he is content in his rooftop world. “Up there it’s just peace,” he says. “You’re in the moment. You look down and watch people walk their set path. The first person to spot you will always be a kid, because they’re still open to the world’s possibilities – and that’s what freerunning’s all about.” Catch Tim ‘Livewire Shieff at Red Bull Art of Motion on March 20 in London. For more info jump to www.redbull.co.uk or watch the Storm Freerun team in action at www.stormfreerun.com
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words: ruth morgan. Photography: richie hopson
Name Tim Shieff
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where’s your head at?
LADY GAGA
With the first song of her new album due this month, Lady Gaga will once again return to the world’s headlines (is she ever anywhere else, poor lamb?). But how does she keep those Great Danes from eating her meat dress? Born This Way: 1
Shot To The Top
The guy issuing birth certificates for the state of New York never used so much ink as on March 28, 1986, when he typed out Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta for proud parents Joe and Cynthia. Li’l’ Stef was playing the piano aged four, and gleefully took park in musicals at high school.
It’s easy to forget that it was only in April 2008 that Lady Gaga released her first single. Way back then, when she asked the world to ‘Just Dance’, she was just another burlesque Barbie with a catchy hook. When that song became one of the 50 highest selling singles of all-time (7.7m copies; follow-up ‘Poker Face’ is in the top 25 with 9.8m), a new star exploded.
All We Hear Is, Lady-dy Gaga Is one of pop’s all-time catchy names: a) derived from the Queen anthem ‘Radio Ga Ga’, as sung to her by a producer during early recording days; b) the nickname given to her by scenester pals on New York’s Lower East Side; or c) a cannily thought-out moniker, dreamed up by industrysavvy associates? All three explanations have been offered; the first two by Gaga herself.
She Wears It Well
“The difference between style and fashion,” designer Giorgio Armani once said, “is quality.” It’s not entirely clear what he was getting at, but one thing is for sure: Lady Gaga likes dressing up. To wit: the metal frock in the ‘Paparazzi’ video, the Fame Ball tour’s bubble coat and, of course, the dress made from skirt of beef she wore at last year’s MTV Video Music Awards.
Words: paul wilson. illustration: lie-ins and tigers
Call Girls!
There had not been a top pop duet like it since Bowie and Jagger danced in the streets for Live Aid: ‘Telephone’, released in January last year, was not merely a collaboration between Gaga and the equally stellar Beyoncé. Its epic, nine-minute, Tarantinoinfluenced promo led to a world shortage of lipstick, hairspray and sparkly ladyclothes.
Ivo rie s Tr ad e
At a Lady Gaga concert (her second world tour, 201 dates strong, ends in May), the less-celebrated highlights are her turns at the piano. She’s a smashing keytinkler, although, when her pal Sean Lennon Tweeted a pic of her playing his dad’s white grand Steinway, angry Twits said she wasn’t fit to lace John Lennon’s boots. Imagine .
Born This Way: 2
The Billio nai res s
bite YouTube hits? Just get your baby to ns. another kid’s finger and you’ll get millio more little a thing some To get billions takes graphy special, and Gaga’s collected shor t filmo hits. n billio a to on pers first has made her the falls out of That monkey from the clip where he but the a tree said: “Look, I’m pleased for her, great.” tree and I are working on something
Mutt-See TV Astute music video enthusiasts may notice common themes in those of Lady Gaga: way-out wardrobe, crack choreography and a love of all things shiny that would shame a hundred Gollums. And yet, only those truly madly Gaga will spot the Great Danes that crop up in almost all of the vids, most notably in ‘Poker Face’.
Later this month, LG releases ‘Born This Way’, the first track from her second album proper. The long-player itself, which is also called Born This Way, debuts in full on May 23, but on February 13 the Gagarnival comes to town. It’s the night of the Grammy Awards, in Los Angeles, so expect her to wear something special. A gilet made of helium, perhaps. Like she needs more hits...: www.ladygaga.com
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winning formula
The Breaks
A Smashing Fellow Trying to break concrete slabs with your hand may not be everyone’s idea of fun, but with the right technique it can be just that, says martial arts master Ed Byrne, a man who has broken a dozen records by breaking blocks. “I’ve done martial arts all my life,” says the 42-year-old, who’s a ninth dan black belt in karate. “And I really enjoy breaking. First, I get an all-over feeling of adrenalin. Everyone has their own way of psyching themselves up, and I concentrate on seeing my hand as a knife and the blocks as butter. In my mind’s eye, I already see myself succeeding. “Then it’s an explosion of power, and technique is everything. I’m hitting with the heel of my hand, so not directly on a bone. I focus on the centre of what I’m breaking and I’m putting my power, my energy, right through the blocks. “Some people jump up and break, but I’m quite powerful, so my hand usually starts in line with my shoulder, then ends up by my knee. Without that follow-through, I could seriously hurt myself. If you’re not confident in your ability, you’re more likely to break your hand: if you don’t break the concrete, the force can bounce back at you and shatter bone. “I had measurements taken for a TV show, and it took a fifth of a second for me to generate the power equivalent to lifting a 254kg man above my head with my right arm. “In practice sessions I’ve broken 38 concrete slabs at once. The world record is 36, held by a guy from Turkey, and I want to try and break that.” Under Slab Conditions “When a karateka [practitioner of karate] hits a concrete slab, the upper side is compressed and the underside is stretched,” says Dr Martin Apolin, physicist and sports scientist. “The tensile strength of concrete is much lower than its compressive strength, so the underside of the slab begins to break. Concrete slabs, as shown here, break under slow stress 28
at about 3000N of force. However, when a slab is hit, oscillations occur which cause the slab to break under significantly reduced stress levels. Current literature varies, but the rule of thumb is around 50 per cent of tensile strength, in this case around 1500N. “How big is the force a karateka exerts? To explore this question, I assume that the slowing down of the hand on the slab is uniform. The deceleration (a) can be described by the formula a = v2/2s; v is the hand’s impact speed (video analysis shows that advanced karatekas can generate impact speeds of up to 14m/s, or about 50kph) and s is the braking distance, or the hand’s ‘crumple zone’, from the hand’s first contact with the slab to its stop. I assume the hand’s centre of gravity will continue to move 2.5cm (0.025m) due to its deformation at impact. Using this data we get a substantial deceleration of 4,000m/s2. The earth’s acceleration is about 10m/s2. Casually stated, the hand is 400 times as heavy as normal. “The force (F) occurring at impact is described by F = m x a. If we assume a mass m of 0.75kg for the hand, then the force adds up to 3000N. That is more than enough to break a slab. But why don’t bones break? The answer is so simple you will probably be disappointed by it: depending on the direction from which stress is applied, the fracture stress level of a bone is up to 50 times higher than breaking stress of concrete. If you had concrete bones in your hand, they would splinter at impact. “A practised karateka can split multiple slabs at once. It is important that the slabs be separated by a small space, as it’s impossible to break three or more slabs together with one hit. When there’s a little space between slabs, they will break one after the other in rapid succession – the energy transfers, with some loss, from one slab to the other. A point to note here is that you do not need three times the force to break three slabs.” Wince as you watch Ed Byrne do the work of sledgehammers, after putting “ed byrne karate” into YouTube
words: ruth morgan, dr martin apolin. photography: Fotex/Rainer Drechsler. illustration: mandy fischer
Man’s greatest power tool is his hands, but is it really superhuman strength or super-scientific know-how that keeps him cracking wise?
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Lucky Numbers
The Rio Carnival
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The Rio de Janeiro carnival is one of the world’s largest happenings; almost 12 million people live in the urban districts of Brazil’s second largest city and they all seem to know how to party. This world-famous riot of human expression officially celebrates “freedom from work and studies” and is held 40 days before Easter, over four days, ending on Ash Wednesday. But for those in the know, the fun begins just after Christmas with the first trial demos.
120 Fat boys only need apply for the Carnival’s lead ceremonial role: King Momo. Why so? Well the man honoured with the keys to the city for four days, the night before the Carnival starts, has to weigh 120kg. This “son of sleep and the night” was created by the newspaper A Noite (The Night) in the 1930s and a new Momo is selected every year. He’s intended as a jolly figure and in these health-conscious times, organisers are inclined to go easy on the lard requirement.
7,400
The human hordes thronging Rio’s streets present quite a logistical challenge to the city’s keepers of public order. For example: 800 spot checks on traffic will be carried out daily, while one million Carnival guides will be printed. Around 7,400 chemi-khazis along the route should ensure that you’re never caught short – but god help you if you are: last year, police arrested 200 people for taking a public pee. This tough love gets a mention in the Carnival programme and has inspired some bands to perform samba classics with revised lyrics such as: “Hey, don’t wee here!”
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Oscar Niemeyer
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The most recent project undertaken by 103-yearold Brazilian star architect Oscar Niemeyer (left) is the Pelé Museum, in honour of the Brazilian football star, to be built in the coastal city of Santos. Back in 1984, his Rio Sambadrome (left) was built in just 120 days. The most expensive box in this 700m long stadium on Marquês de Sapucaí Avenue in Rio, costs 85,000 Real (about R349,438), whereas the cheapest tickets are available for just 10 Real (R40). Marquês de Sapucaí ends on the Praça da Apoteose [Apotheosis Square], where the 2016 Olympic marathon will end.
82
The Grupo Especial competition gives the 12 best samba schools – each with anything between 4,000 and 5,000 members – precisely 82 minutes to make their way through the Sambadrome. Anyone who strays from the time limit loses points. Fifty jurors judge the Escolas de Samba [samba schools] in 10 categories: percussion, samba, harmony, co-ordination, best master of ceremonies and female flag-bearer, costumes and decoration, orderliness of the procession, floats, opening presentation and subject matter.
3,000,000 Carnival infrastructure is overseen by Rio’s tourist board, Riotur (no jokes, please, about putting the ‘riot’ into Rio), with help from the League of Samba Schools. Sixty-four Escolas and more than 460 casual carnival associations will wiggle their tushes down Rio’s walkways this year, while 3,000 street traders have been accredited to work for the length of the carnival. Riotur estimates is expecting up to three million revellers for this year’s über-party.
You can find the guide to the 2011 carnival at www.rio-carnival.net
Words: Ulrich Corazza, Valerie Rosenburg. Photography: DOUGLAS ENGLE/picturedesk, O Globo, ANTONIO LACERDA/picturedesk, Martin Mejia/AP, Celso Pupo/Getty, Song WEIWEI/picturedesk
The world’s largest carnival parade allows millions to become the figures of their own fantasies through “the transformative power of samba”
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art in the open Sculptor Antony Gormley is the master of surprise. Whether in dense city centres or far-flung landscapes, his work provokes, and invites us to defy thought: high culture brought down to earth
Dark figures freed from museums: they populate New York, London, coastlines and the Austrian Alps
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photography: Mario Tama/Getty Images, Markus Tretter
Words: Herbert Vรถlker
Action
Horizon Field VORARLBERG, NOW TO APRIL 2012 We move to and fro between nature and culture and we all rely on both. It’s not about individual objects, but about open space that is accessible to everyone, and allows insights into how art makes its impact on us. Almost without resistance, we’ve accepted that art should be confined to closed rooms: art in the museum, in a gallery, a private collection – enclosed in an elite housing. “But,” says Gormley, “a sculpture needs no wall, no roof, no interpretation – it can simply be there as a material fact in a common space. It can affect us – as moving, thinking, feeling beings.”
“ A sculpture needs no wall, no roof, no interpretation ”
photography: Lukas Eggler, sandra Frick, David Levene/eyevine (3), Fátima López Alva (3), August Reis, Kris Rotsaert (2), Christoph Sparr, Markus Tretter
Huggable?
A hundred cast-iron figures – identical and bearing the marks of industrial manufacture – exposed to the elements. The sculptures are widely scattered over the mountainscape of Bregenzerwald, each positioned at 2,039m above sea level. The number has no deeper meaning. It’s simply the line between hardship and justaccessibility. The objects wait in revealing composure for visitors, who either pause for a moment or play along.
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photography: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images, Paul Langrock/laif, mauritius
“ A sculpture doesn’t need anything around it. It has time ”
Another Place Crosby Beach, Merseyside, England, from 2005 Among the more beautiful of his displays, are the gentle folk who don’t exactly stand sentinel over the Irish Sea near Liverpool, but have quite a presence nonetheless between ebb and flow, between the trade area, bird nesting grounds and recreational space. Here, as well, stand a hundred brave and not-so-brave soldiers, (who can say?): simply there, far-flung. They create a new field of vision – no more and no less – changing with the tides, shipping traffic and beachgoers. The greatest achievement of the ironmen has been the overwhelming desire of the people in the community not to remove the sculptures after two years, as was originally planned, but to keep them as a landmark of a historically significant coastal landscape. “The best thing,” says Gormley, “is that art can drag so many people off their bums to come and see what it’s all about.”
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larity, it seems, comes from the following mix: German mother, Irish father, born in London, academic education in art, and years spent wandering around India. Antony Gormley, 60, is an internationally acclaimed heavyweight in the art world, a sculptor in the broadest sense. He has created large sculptures and installations in Europe and America, including landmarks like ‘Angel of the North’, perhaps Great Britain’s most famous piece of public art. What makes Gormley’s work so exciting is the balancing act between almost pop-like action and a rather reflective manner of artistic expression. Here, the surprise of the more coincidental viewing public (that can and should feature from time to time), and there the nuances of the questions between yesterday and forever. As a man in his early 60s, Gormley is an extended version of a young soul. He himself says he feels best when he’s on a bike free-wheeling down the hill 38
behind King’s Cross to his studio, like he’s tearing down a mountain on skis. Yes, he skis as well – and swims, sails, dives and hikes. Such a solid physique benefits his art in various ways. The most obvious is the 1:1 depiction of a naked Gormley in iron, or glass-fibre in an emergency should less weight be required, such as on the edge of a skyscraper. Why should the human
body return as the focus of sculpture, as it was a hundred, or a thousand years ago? Gormley says it’s not an attempt to depict people in the manner of Rodin. “It’s more about human futures,” he says, “rather than holding onto the past.” Could it have something to do with narcissism that Gormley invariably has his own body measured for the mould? The artist is blessed with a calm, likeable eloquence, at times bubbling over from all sources ranging from trivia to insight, and he states, perhaps obviously, that it would seem silly to use the bodies of others when he has one of his own. Moreover, the moulding process is quite a job in itself. You stand there naked, wrapped in cling film, motionless for an hour and a half covered in wet plaster. “It’s an act of great concentration,” says Gormley. “Standing in your body – you take it for granted. You try to find your centre of gravity by just being there, but surprisingly it takes a huge amount of energy just standing stock-still. “Finally, you are cut out with hacksaw blades and I would regard the whole thing as a type of sport that no one should underestimate.”
photography: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images, Paul Langrock/Zenit/laif, mauritius images
In all silence, slowness and insecurity: life continues in the mind (project: ‘Blind Light’)
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“ It would seem silly to use other bodies as a model when I have one of my own. �
Gormley creates iron figures in the image of his own body. They carry all the lumps, bumps and seams and of industrial production
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Crouching Man EAST LOTHIAN, scotland The crouching man was also created around Gormley himself, but projected at a height of 25m, in order to set a temporary landmark on the east coast of Scotland. Should he ever decide to stand up, the man would be 100m tall, says Gormley, but this would require 6,000 joint angles to be reset, not to mention the complicated statics of the massive structure on its tiny feet. But that’s missing the point completely. It’s about art and engineering: a body can observe, unhurriedly, the vastness of the horizon, itself an object in this space.
“ The body and the abstract, and how one fathoms it ”
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photography: Janssen/laif, KOEN VAN WEEL/picturedesk
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Waste Man
photography: mauritius, Thierry Bal
Margate, England The sculptor as an XXL-artist and recycling expert, in flaming contrast to the quiet manner of Antony Gormley’s thought process. It didn’t take any effort for him to find the way from his world of fine nuances to the great spectacle, with old chairs, toilet seats and broken wardrobes – whatever people were willing to dispense with – to create the scene from a biblical film, the burning thorn bush in Exodus.
“ It was unbelievable. So many associations ”
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Trafalgar Square
A photo session from one of the many castings for candidates to spend an hour on the plinth in Trafalgar Square
‘Critical Mass’, a term from nuclear physics, is the starting point of Gormley’s most famous installations
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photography: Nils Jorgensen/picturedesk, ENNIO LEANZA/picturedesk, JOHANNES SIMON/Getty images
SUMMER IN LONDON Between the usual skirmishes on who is granted the right to declare what art is allowed to and should do, Gormley’s status as sculptor and pure creative force is helpful. This opens up settings like Madison Square Park in New York or Trafalgar Square in London for his projects. In Manhattan, it was the life-size, cast-iron figures in exposed places or among the hustle and bustle of traffic. In London all and sundry were invited to become a living monument for an hour on a plinth next to Admiral Nelson over the course of an entire summer, with each individual having complete freedom to do or say whatever they wanted, to communicate or not. Art for the Facebook generation, critics asked? So what?
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‘Horizon Field’ Vorarlberg
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nyone who takes a journey to Gormley’s landmarks should head first to his website to gather provisions for a longer stay in the very tidy world of a great artist. It leads to ongoing projects in Singapore, Vancouver, Mexico, Sydney and Heavenknowswhere. Still, it strengthens the impression of the prolonged youth of a fleet-footed athlete in open air, and that helps stengthen the flow between the disciplines. The many awards and academic accolades have not really settled Antony Gormley, and they haven’t lowered his centre of gravity. As diverse as his work is – branching into architecture, graphics, theatre and technology – as logical is the repeated return to the human body with a clarity that is free of all interpretations and
historic burdens. Where the body is either sexualised, politicised or idealised in traditional art, Gormley’s unadorned sculptures gaze in a totally different direction. The blank facial expressions, the almost careless coarseness of the surfaces give the idea of a mock-up, of empty space in human form. The observer can project his own sense of bodily being: the body as open space, an open space of possibility. There are friendly invitations to gradual levels of depth. “It has to do
“ What I still wanted to say ”
with questioning the status of art in both nature and our built environment,” says Gormley. “In a time of rising environmental awareness it asks the question where and how human beings fit into the scheme of things.” It is fabulous that such connections work in practice –allowing so many to jump aboard without any great fuss. The far-reaching ‘Horizon Field’, the name given new validity through sometimes surprising twists, is a good current example. The ‘field’ in the high Alpine Vorarlberg region remains wide open into next year. The way Antony Gormley lures us into his art, whether in the bustling heart of our cities or, via bush telegraph, to the isolation of deserts, mountains and coasts is one high culture’s best pieces of news. More info at www.antonygormley.com and www. kunsthaus-bregenz.at 100 sculptures of ‘Horizon Field’ can be seen from now to April 2012 in the Bregenzerwald
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“I love the game and always will” It’s not hard to imagine Thierry Henry, the athlete. He’s one of the best footballers of his generation and a player who’s won more trophies than most. But what is it that drives the man behind the ball? Time for a very personal interview Words: Werner Jessner and Bernd Fisa Photography: Gian Paul Lozza
Big stars have a reputation for being unpunctual and unfriendly. And the more famous they get, the greater the distance they put between themselves and the real world. So what to do when one of the most successful footballers of the day not only arrives bang on time at the Skybox in the Red Bull Arena in Wals-Siezenheim, Austria, but is friendly and engaging, having nothing of the diva about him and is a paragon of professionalism from his head down to his toes? You throw your carefully crafted script out the window and end up asking the questions you always wanted to ask… red bulletin: A survey carried out by The Guardian newspaper says that two thirds of its readers consider Major League Soccer to be a pensioners’ league for former footballing talent. What do you say to that? thierry henry: I don’t read the British press and with good reason. And I don’t care what people think. But what I will say is that we beat Manchester City at the beginning of the season and we should have beaten Tottenham too, and would have done if we hadn’t made so many substitutions at half-time. This discussion gets on my nerves. What’s the best league in the world? In England they say it’s the English league, in Spain the Spanish league and in Germany the German league. It doesn’t bother me. I went to America to win the MLS. We have a host of excellent players in the MLS. Of course, my name gets mentioned most often along with the names of a couple of other guys who played in Europe. You’re the MLS’s ambassador to Europe… I’m not an ambassador for MLS. At best I’m an ambassador for football, like all the guys out there playing or training and who like making their living out of playing the game. MLS is just as much represented by those professionals who play in Colorado or Dallas as it is by me. There are a lot 46
of local players here in America whose names we might not know but who are really good. If they made it to Europe, people would be surprised by what they saw. The next thing to say is that in Europe it’s almost impossible to watch MLS matches on TV. The public often haven’t got a clue about what they’re badmouthing, as they’ve never watched a single match. But would you say it’s easier to score goals in America than in England, Italy or Spain? It always depends on the team. It’s easier to score goals in world-class teams like Barcelona or Arsenal than it is in teams which aren’t of the same quality. It’s not the league. It’s the quality of the team you’re in which determines how tough things are for a striker. If you’ve got good team-mates, you get a lot of good balls; the rest practically happens by itself. I’ve played with a lot of wonderful players and then it wasn’t always that difficult to score goals. In the MLS, we really haven’t played well away from home on some occasions. It’s been almost impossible to score a goal because I’d only get three, four balls per half. But it works the other way around too. If as a striker I don’t work for defence, my defenders get stressed, mistakes happen, the team suffers and the result can only be bad. Can you at least say that the level European teams play at is more consistent, more predictable than in MLS? Let me give you an example. When I moved to Barcelona, we didn’t win anything. Then [coach] Pep Guardiola appeared on the scene and suddenly the goals started coming by themselves and that was with the same team, the same players. Things just suddenly clicked. That’s the most important thing in football, to give a team confidence and to make things click. Then players who’ve had a tough season can suddenly find that confidence again to help the team and strengthen the team spirit. Good managers can set an upward trajectory in motion.
Print 2.0
za.redbulletin.com/print2.0 Portrait of a football superstar
Print 2.0
de.redbulletin.com/print2.0 xxx
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HEADY DAYS 18 YEARS ON THE BALL France 1997–2010
AS Monaco 1994–1999 Discovered by the Monegasques at 13. First played on the outside left for the senior team aged 17. League champions in 1996/97, UEFA Cup semi-finalists the year after. Manager: Arsène Wenger.
Celebrated his national team debut on October 11, 1997, at the age of 20. In 1998, he won the World Cup on home soil and could duly call himself both a World Champion and a Knight of the Legion of Honour. In 2000, France were also crowned European Champions. Henry scored 51 goals in his 123 games for Les Bleus. Only his handball, which cost the Republic of Ireland a place in the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, casts a shadow over the career of an otherwise unblemished sportsman. After the fiasco in the French team camp, when Nicolas Anelka was suspended, and playing the role of super-sub in controversial manager Raymond Domenech’s squad, Henry announced his retirement from the national team at the age of 33, and even though he wasn’t technically team captain, he was summoned to the Élysée Palace by French President Nicolas Sarkozy to discuss the situation.
FC Barcelona 2007–2010
Additional photography: Action Images (4), Imago (1), David Clerihew/Red Bull Photofiles (1)
So when the New York Red Bulls lost in the MLS semi-finals after winning their home leg, was that a missing ‘click’? Even you couldn’t help the team. I was injured for the return leg. I’d twisted my knee in training. I shouldn’t have played at all, but I told the manager that he could use me if he needed me. He brought me on in the 85th minute, but it was already too late. But that’s football. Maybe we got too confident after finishing first in the regular season and winning our first leg in the playoffs. You won’t get anywhere in football with that sort of attitude. The other team put three goals past us and won the series and rightfully so. But there’s always a next time. You’ve already won everything there is to win… I haven’t won everything. I haven’t won the MLS. And that’s why I’m here. I don’t see what I’ve already won. I see what I want to win. OK, but allow us to look back for a moment. Of all the great teams you’ve played for, is there one you’d rate above all the others? I was talking about exactly this subject with a friend yesterday. We couldn’t come to a definite conclusion, only something more vague. Monaco will always mean something special to me because that’s where I started my career and I won the French title with them. Juve was fantastic too… Even though you didn’t stay long. What actually happened between you and former Juve general director Luciano Moggi? You once claimed that he should be the one to say what went on back then between Juventus and you. Indeed. It shouldn’t be me that says what happened back then. He should do that. But I will say that I’m not the kind of guy you can mess around. I have my personality. A tough one, actually. So after everything that happened, I decided to leave Juventus. The good thing about all that is that it made me tougher and stronger. My career hit another level at Arsenal. I became a man in London. My daughter was born in London. London is an important part of my life. We went unbeaten for 49 matches one season. That such a thing could have happened in modern football is a miracle, as was being part of the team that achieved it. I didn’t really get into the flow of about one match in three back then, but you just give it your all. In retrospect it was crazy what we achieved back then. And my love for the club grew proportionally to the fans’ love for me. When I had to leave the club – I’ve explained why that was many times [Henry has said he left because of the shock departure of Arsenal vice-chairman David Dein] – it didn’t affect my love for Arsenal in any way. I’ll always be a Gunner as long as I live. And how could I fail to love Barcelona? I won everything I could with them, all six possible trophies. The team rewrote history and I was part of that. But even more impressive for me, as a lover of football, than the number of titles we won, was the way in which we won them, by playing beautiful football. For many people, success justifies any style of play. Some managers even seem to be
Juventus 1999 The reigning Italian champions took on the 21-year-old in January 1999 to strengthen their left flank. The young World Cup winner scored only three goals in just 16 games for La Vecchia Signora [The Old Lady]. Infighting hastened Henry’s departure from Serie A.
arsenal 1999-2007 Arsène Wenger, Henry’s old manager at Monaco, decided to give the rough diamond a second chance at his new club, but this time as a straightforward striker. In spite of some teething troubles, he scored 26 goals in his first season. He won two league titles, two FA Cups, two Golden Boots and more accolades than we can go into here. The 2003/04 season was particularly remarkable. Arsenal went the whole league season unbeaten, the first team to do so since 1889! A year after losing the 2006 Champions League final to Barcelona, the team captain moved to Spain.
The Catalan club managed to lure away Arsenal’s most prolific ever goal-scorer – he scored 174 goals in total – for a transfer fee of €125 million. Although Henry complained he was having trouble settling in in Spain, he was Barça’s top scorer in his opening season with 19 goals. In 2009, FC Barcelona won everything there was to win: the Spanish league, the Spanish Cup, the Champions League, the Spanish and UEFA Supercups and the FIFA Club World Cup. By the time the 2009/10 season came around, Barcelona had so many excellent strikers they were almost tripping over each other. In July 2010, Henry signed for the New York Red Bulls in the American Major League Soccer.
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NEW YORK red Bulls From 2010 Henry is one of two ‘designated players’ at the New York Red Bulls, which means the salary cap doesn’t apply to him. After a dominant pre-season, finishing top of the Eastern Conference, Hans Backe’s team fell in the semi-finals to San Jose.
downright proud of the fact that they can win with any style of football. Yes, that is the way some people think. But not me. Football is to be played. Yes, played! Ideally like they play it at Barcelona. That sounds a bit like a declaration of love for the game of football. But isn’t that too much of a luxury in a society that demands success? I know! Performance is what counts. “Show us what you’ve got.” And then people judge you for that. And as a sportsman I say, yeah, I want to win, every time I play. And as a lover of football, I want to play and see beautiful football. Does that desire we had to play as children, the desire that made us run across a field after a ball in the first place, ever shine through at the top level of the sport? What does it mean to play football? Playing football isn’t at all about doing tricks. Showing off with the ball isn’t the same as playing football. Playing football means doing the right thing with the ball at the right time. Take Barcelona or Arsenal. Their critics say that they pass the ball too much. But they’re wrong! They play because they want to move the opposing team’s players around. That’s when gaps open up because it’s impossible to be in two places at once. That final pass, the one when everyone understands that there’s a chance on goal, wouldn’t have come about if it wasn’t for the passes that had gone before. With the exception of Leo [Lionel Messi], for the last third of a match Barcelona play onetouch. Arsenal do likewise. There are no tricks. No showing off. The key is a simple pass. You can tell a good team because their opponents have to do a lot of running. Good football looks easy. So we do come back to a child-like understanding of the game after all? But with a plan. The joy of the game is indeed the same as what children experience. But you have to factor in precision and mathematics. It’s like chess, move for move. High-speed chess. Has your attitude towards football changed over the years? I love the game and always will. When I started playing, I never thought of becoming a professional player at all. I just wanted to play. Plus the losers had to buy the winners a pizza. I get annoyed today when I lose in the same way as I did back then. In the past, I wouldn’t speak to my opponents for a week after losing one of those winner-takes-pizza matches. I can’t do that anymore because a certain level of behaviour is expected of us professionals and everything gets caught on camera. But I still feel just the same. If someone kicks you, you want to kick him back. Not because you’re a bad person, but because it’s in the nature of the game. People are always shocked when they see me playing with my friends or with my father and brother. Why’s that? Because we play so hard. When we play, you can forget all that father, son, brother stuff. It’s all about the ball. You want the ball? Then try to get it off me. That’s the nature of the game. 49
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“The pressure I felt playing in front of my father when I was eight is greater than in a packed stadium�
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Can you enjoy an ugly win? Everyone’s always happy to take three points home. But I’ve never really been happy after ugly wins. Are you a perfectionist? I try to be. But I know it’s impossible. Nobody’s perfect. Say there’s a match where you’ve scored a hat-trick but missed one chance. What are you going to think about after the match? About the missed chance, definitely, and what I could have done better. Do you think that comes from your father and growing up in the Paris suburbs? I’m sure it does. Do you remember the moment when your father first told you he was proud of you? I don’t think he’s ever said that to me. My father doesn’t say that kind of thing. At most you might see it in his eyes. I think he must have been proud of me after we won the World Cup. My father brought me up never to be satisfied with what you’ve already achieved. You might not be able to achieve everything you want to achieve, but you can always try to get closer to your ultimate goal. Is that a desirable character trait? I’ve never had a problem with my father, if that’s what your question means. He wanted me to play football and I wanted the same thing. It might have been a problem if he’d wanted to get me into gymnastics. As a child, I wanted to please my father. That’s completely normal. The father is every boy’s chief idol. Did your father urge you on? I don’t think I’d put it like that. He was just there for me. Always. But I didn’t need my father to put me under any pressure. I can always do that by myself. When you’re a child, you want your family and father to be proud of you. That was the heaviest pressure I ever felt. The pressure I felt to win a match when my father was watching on Sunday afternoons when I was eight, nine or 10 was greater than the pressure I felt later in a packed stadium. Can you remember the first match you watched together? Of course. It was Paris Saint-Germain v Rennes at Parc des Princes. I must have been about seven. There are some things you never forget. How has the sport affected your personality? You grow up really quickly. At 16 you’re sitting around at home. At 19 you play for your country with thousands of people shouting your name. At 20 you’re a World Cup-winner. It’s a brutal adjustment. So there’s no other choice but to grow up quickly. There’s no fighting it, even if all you want to do is play football. Footballers are simply modern-day heroes. I’m not a hero! I’d be a hero if I’d saved someone’s life. But you’ve made people happy… That’s different. For me, heroes are people who’ve saved other people or fought for their country. Maybe I’ve given some people pleasure, but that definitely hasn’t always been the case. You can’t win every match. Yes, people come to a football game to forget themselves and to experience happiness, joy, beauty
and passion for 90 minutes. Does that make me an entertainer? Yes, perhaps it does. But a hero? No. You’re definitely a hero to some people. You do charity work but don’t bang on about it… Because it’s not the sort of thing that belongs in the public domain. Some things are just part of the job. Keeping the sponsors happy, giving interviews, meeting the fans. And other stuff is private. If I help, it’s because I want to help people, and not for publicity. I try to be honest and to be myself. That isn’t always easy, even if I did have the privilege of a good upbringing. What would your father say about you in an interview? He’d never give an interview. That’s saying something in itself, isn’t it? That’s my father for you. My father. Our relationship is between me and him. It’s private. You speak a lot about your father but hardly at all about your mother. What about her? My mother is an absolutely regular, loving mother who always took care of us. She’s a very straightforward person. Very relaxed. I imagine you can walk down the streets unmolested in New York, for what must be the first time in years. How does that feel? New York is a pretty cosmopolitan city. There are always people who recognise me. Europeans underestimate how quickly football is growing in America. Americans recognise me too. Mind you, I can ride the subway to training here. That would have been unthinkable in Europe. Do you really ride the subway to training? I’ve done it three times. Is that a luxury, to be able to take the subway? Normal life isn’t a luxury. What’s normal life? I do what anyone else would. I go to Central Park and sit on a bench and don’t talk to anyone if I just want to sit and think. I wander around. I go and see a show on Broadway or watch a basketball game. Where will you live once your career ends? In New York for as long as my contract here lasts. In the long term, I see myself dividing my time between New York and London. But who can say what might happen and what opportunities life might throw up? Would you like to remain involved in football when you stop playing? A lot of your fellow footballers are fed up with the sport once their playing careers have come to an end. I can understand that. You can get very tired of professional football after a while. But I have no alternative. I love the game too much. Whatever my life ends up like once I’ve finished playing, it will still be tied up with football. Are you a workaholic? Yes, with all the positives and negatives that entails. When you have an idea, you’ve got to go with it. You can’t just sit around. You’ve got to do something. And when you do, do it with 100 per cent commitment, regardless of what it is. More Henry at za.redbulletin.com/print2.0 New York Red Bulls v Seattle Sounders FC, March 19, Red Bull Arena: www.newyorkredbulls.com
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PHOTOGRAPHY: Brian Bielmann/Red Bull Photofiles
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za.redbulletin.com/print2.0 Catch a wave with Jordy
Generation Jordy Jordy Smith is firmly in the vanguard of surfing’s new wave, but he’s not alone… Words: Craig Jarvis
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Born February 11, 1988 Durban, South Africa A bit of both “I think talent and hard work go hand in hand and complement each other. I think I have both” Nearly lost it His nipple. At 15, surfing Teopu’s notorious slab in Tahiti. Hitting the reef, the wave sucked dry. “I went flying onto the dry reef. Roasties all over my stomach, chin, and pretty much took my nipple off” Web www.jordy-smith.co.za
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ure, American legend Kelly Slater might have claimed the world title again in 2010, but last season marked a sea change, nonetheless. For the first time it was made clear the door is well and truly open for the next generation of young guns to storm through. And leading the new blood is young South African Jordy Smith. This surfer from Durban is blessed with unbelievable talent and drive, but he is not alone. Another three surfers – the enigmatic Dane Reynolds, goofy-footer Owen Wright, and the dynamic Julian Wilson – are matching his strides. These four are finding new moves, discovering new parts of the wave to ride, and are expanding what the human imagination thought possible on a thin sliver of glassed, high-density foam.
Jordy Smith Thanks to an unusual combination of brawn, balance and vision, Jordy Smith has redefined what radical surfing is all about. It’s the kind of surfing that has seen journalists exhaust their barrel of superlatives. We’re talking about the kind of surfing that slips the sport into a new dimension. His moves are big, powerful expressions that explode into outrageous gravitational experiments. His surfing
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is exciting and easy on the eye – fluid yet radical, powerful yet graceful. And to this he has added consistency. Jordy Smith has something no one else has, not even Slater. A rare quality you can’t quite put your finger on, but you know will change things. Last year was a landmark one for Jordy in terms of competition surfing. It’s the year he became The Contender. It got off to a good start, with a second at the Quiksilver Pro Snapper in Australia… and then he landed the big one. In front of a roaring, vuvuzela-trumpeting local crowd, Jordy went one bigger and won his maiden World Tour event at Supertubes, Jeffrey’s Bay. At that mid-point in the tour year, he was leading the ratings, and expectations were high. It was a determined and scarily focused Slater, though, who slowly made inroads into Jordy’s lead. At the death, Slater made his move, winning in Portugal and Puerto Rico – two of the final three events. A historic 10th world title was his. But significantly, Jordy’s performance got as much attention as did Slater’s title feats. There were no signs of the usual suspects at the top of the rankings – Taj Burrow, Joel Parkinson, former world champion Mick Fanning, and evergreen Bede Durbidge were all blown away early on. It was quite simply the Jordy and Kelly show. Nu Skool vs Old School. Experience might have seen
photography: Hugo Silva/Red Bull Photofiles, Kolesky/Nikon/Red Bull Photofiles
Name Jordy Smith
Jordy at the ASP
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Kelly take the title, but he knew that he had a game on his hands, and was the first to acknowledge Jordy’s talent and versatility. Jordy finished the year second. An inspired performance that only has one more rung for improvement. We talked the year through with him. RED BULLETIN: An amazing 2010 – what are your thoughts, looking back? Jordy Smith: I took a relaxed approach to competing this year and it seemed to have worked for me. I was able to put myself into the top five and maintain the pace. I also had a great support team, which counts for a lot. My aim was to just have calculated fun with my surfing. I wanted to keep my focus on surfing relaxed, fun heats and trying to adopt a more free-surfing heat approach. RB: That big win at the Billabong Pro in Jeffrey’s Bay must’ve felt good JS: Yeah. It was from this point on that I knew I’d be in a good spot for the next events on the calendar. I also knew that the new format (the World Tour cut down from 45 surfers on tour to 32 midway through the year) would allow me to hold my second seed, as long as I surfed myself into the quarter-finals. That was my challenge, to make quarter-finals or further. RB: You must’ve known by then that it was going to be between you and Kelly for the world title? JS: Kelly and I had a good lead ahead of the other surfers. We had pulled ourselves away from the pack. Eventually I needed Kelly to lose in Puerto Rico. Instead he went ballistic and secured his 10th world title, which was pretty incredible actually. I was just really happy to have been a part of driving him to his victorious finish. RB: Were there any valuable lessons learned from the 2010 season? JS: For sure! Sometimes it’s quite hard to quantify, as there’s always so much to absorb, and the variables are always changing. My semi-final heat in Jeffrey’s Bay was a perfect example. I was in deep trouble against Bede Durbidge, yet I managed to pull myself back into contention. With two minutes remaining and two high scores needed, I managed to get the heat win. So I learned to keep fighting till the last second. The crowd reaction to that result was really incredible. RB: Looking forward, you must be pumped for 2011. Are you planning anything different in your approach this year? JS: I honestly can’t wait for the whole thing to get started again! I have noticed that every year we all seem to get a little more comfortable with our surfing, and it’s a bit like being on a racetrack. You have to have a good grid start, but you also have to keep your foot flat to the floor, pedal to the metal, because if you’re not slipstreaming in the top five, you will be trying to keep the smoke out of your eyes. RB: Are there any training specifics that we should know about? JS: There are, but if I told you I’d have to kill you. No, fitness and a good eating programme will definitely stay at the top of my roster as well as working on new surfboard equipment through the year. 56
Julian Wilson Of the 22 years Julian has been on this planet, he has been surfing for 19 of them. In his younger days, when he was only three years old, his dad was surfing two-up with him on his longboard out at backline. His mum was in on the action too, pushing him into little waves on the inside when the rest of the family went out on the big days. Despite coming from a strong surfing family, it was always going to be Julian who was destined for greatness. As soon as he was strong and competent enough to surf alone, he was recognised for the
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photography: Agustin Munoz/Red Bull Photofiles, AFRAMEPHOTO.COM
“He has invented a new move, the Sushi Roll, a backside aerial – it’s part Superman” boundless talent he possessed. Quicksilver picked him up at 14, Red Bull have been with him since 2008 and, with the subsequent departure of Quicksilver last year, Nike have also added their support. This year, 2011, is the biggie though and for the first time Julian will be representing on the World Tour and, along with his mates, is sure to make a massive impact. Said Julian on his blog just after he had qualified: “The final result that secured my spot was Pat Gudauskas beating Tommy Whitaker in round two. It’s hard to cheer against
Hole to whole He stepped into a hole on the beach last year dislocating his ankle’s pereneal tendon. He was out of surfing for three months. “Of all the ways you can put yourself out of action I had to do it that lame-ass way!” Web www.julianwilson.com
a friend like Tom, so I wasn’t getting all fired up. I definitely had a big smile on my face when Pat won though. Thanks Pat.” Julian is small in stature compared to Jordy, but he still manages to exude power while performing his wild moves. He has also invented a new move, the Sushi Roll which is a backside aerial that’s part Superman, part inverted 360. Julian will sit very comfortably alongside Dane, Jordy and Owen, and has the ability to quite easily rise above all of them at any given time. 57
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Name Dane Reynolds Born September 7, 1985 Long Beach, California Other name ‘Bro’. It’s his nickname. Not rare among surfers Tuned in Hard garage punk band Hot Snakes are among Dane’s faves, and he particularly loves their Automatic Midnight album
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Whether he likes it or not, Dane has been made out to be the next big thing in American surfing. He’s seen as the heir to King Kelly’s throne and fulltime rival to Jordy. He feigns indifference though. Claims ignorance too. All Dane wants to do is focus as hard as possible on pushing the boundaries of his sport. Sometimes his radical surfing fits into the World Tour judges’ criteria, and he scores big points… but often it doesn’t. At the Billabong Pro in Jeffrey’s Bay 2010, Dane came up against top Australian surfer Taj Burrow in the quarters in somewhat bumpy but very contestable conditions. Taj surfed a good heat, while Dane went for a huge air reverse on every single wave that he caught. He came close to making some of the moves, but not close enough, and at the end of the 30 minutes he hadn’t pulled off one
move in the entire heat, resulting in a heat total of 3.66 for two waves out of a possible 20-point total. It was a complete lack of contest strategy that saw him fail miserably in his quest to advance from the quarters. But is that his quest? His nonconformist approach is what makes the surfing public love him. The real Nu Skool moves belong to him and Jordy and no one else, and that makes him one of the most popular surfers on the planet. Dane’s contest antics might mask his incredible talent somewhat, but underneath the veneer of a surfer who’s not taking himself too seriously and a façade of looseness, is a ridiculously talented sportsman who has the opportunity turn the world of professional surfing on its head. It all depends on which path he decides to concentrate on – world-title campaigner or free-surfing prodigy.
photography: brian bielmann, Jason Childs/aframephoto.com
Dane Reynolds
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Owen appears ready to take on world champions
“Owen thrives on the big stuff. When the surf is big and gnarly, he’s ready to charge”
photography: Tom Carey/AFramephoto.com
Owen Wright He’s the best junior surfer in the world, hands down. In fact, so much so that Owen has neglected his junior surfing events recently because he’s been too busy competing with the big boys on the World Tour. Owen comes from good surfing stock, with all of his family members top surfers in their own ages and divisions. Owen’s the one, though, who appears to have the nerve, skills and abilities necessary in order to beat world champions. He has all the Nu Skool moves under his belt: big alley oops, reverses, airs, flips and grab rails – plus he has all the stock power turns that encompass a professional surfer’s arsenal: the big rasping cutback, the vertical backhand lip bashes, the standard rail turns and re-entries. Owen, or ‘O’ as he is known in surf media, has one other very important talent – he thrives on
the big stuff. When the surf is big, gnarly and scary, and most top surfers are nervously pacing the sand, he is absolutely ready to charge and pull into the biggest, thickest slabs. “I cant wait for the Pipe event,” said Owen in a recent Australian Surfing Life magazine article, referring to the Billabong Pipeline Masters that take place in Hawaii every year. Pipeline is without a doubt one of the scariest waves on the tour to surf. At his young age his big-wave drive is an incredible skill, and it will remind many people of someone else who used to thrive on the big surf when he was younger: Mr Kelly Slater. While O might not have the best backhand approach in big rights, he has enough talent in other areas to make up for these minor shortcomings, and his trajectory into the top five is imminent.
Name Owen Wright Born January 16, 1990 Culburra, Australia Big splash At the Rip Curl Pro Bells Beach, in Australia, Owen dramatically punted world champ Kelly Slater out in round two. “It was one of those things that not many people get to do”
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Generation Grom
Then we have the groms – the kids who will be the next wave of professional surfers. They’re young, loose, light and brave – and they’re ready to take on the world
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Kolohe Andino Son of standout surfer Dino Andino, Kolohe is so Nu Skool he exists somewhere in the future. He enjoys incredible sponsorship deals, riding for Target and Nike 6.0 along with Red Bull as his main labels. He is rumoured to be the highest-paid junior surfer in the world, but he backs it up with fast, hard surfing, and crazy aerial tricks. He has 60
proved to have a sensible head on his shoulders and rolls with the hard questions in interviews like an old pro. Like the big dog Jordy, Kolohe has something special going, and again, it’s not something that can be easily identified. And like Jordy, Kolohe is going to show us all exactly what that something is in the next few years.
photography: Jason Kenworthy/ Red Bull Photofiles
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photography: chris straley/ aframephoto.com
Conner’s ‘can do’ attitude is winning him a legion of new fans
Conner Coffin Interesting surname, especially as that this 18-yearold has made a name for himself by charging when the waves get big and dangerous. Indeed, “completely fearless” is the most common descriptor attached to Conner, and his escapades in the serious water of Hawaii have been turning heads these past few seasons. The young American is well travelled and
has impressed surf-watchers the world over. He has all the pieces of the puzzle that will make him a major player on the international surf scene. He already receives great media exposure and enjoys good support from his sponsors, including Red Bull. More on Jordy Smith at za.redbulletin.com/print2.0 Keep up with the competition at www.aspworldtour.com
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A potentially fatal heart defect and a childhood free of all sport haven’t kept Shinji Osada from becoming a world-class freestyle skier. Or from showing his true feelings now and then… Words: Tatsua Tayagaki
Name Shinji Osada Born January 13, 1985 Sapporo, Japan Air apparent Osada is a five-time winner of the Canada Cup, the leading big air freestyle skiing event in Japan Crash landing At the 2007 Jon Olsson Invitational event in Are, Sweden, Osada’s air was too big: he overshot the landing area, but was unharmed
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Shinji Osada knows what it’s like to be a big fish in a small pond. For a good while, he was the great white whale of Japanese freeskiing: winning your country’s largest big air competition for five years out of seven doesn’t leave much room in the pond for anyone else. Then, in 2009, he headed for the uncharted waters of world competition. At the World Ski and Snowboard Festival in Whistler, in April of that year, he came first in the Big Air show, beating a top-class field, pulling off the tourney’s only 1440° spin – a perfect quadruple – and becoming the first Japanese skier to win an international competition of this kind. No more small pond. “That was the first world competition I participated in,” says Osada, “so I was very motivated. When I was 18 I targeted the WSSF, so winning there made a six-year dream come true. And I was so excited that I think it was only natural that it brought tears to my eyes. I think my efforts to reach that point were expressed in my tears.” Most winners clamber onto a podium all smiles. Osada’s reaction may have something to do with his extra-special efforts to reach the top. Osada was born with a congenital heart condition called Tetralogy of Fallot. He underwent two major operations before he was four years old and was classified as disabled. Neither Osada nor his parents had any thoughts of engaging in any sports whatsoever. However, watching his three older brothers enjoying club sports gave Osada an insuppressible
Jumping for joy: Shinji Osada, doing a japan 180 for a sunset shoot on the glacier at Les Deux Alpes
“Big Air produces the best feeling, is the most aesthtetically pleasing and is the most difficult to do�
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“ I would rather people don’t think about My disability and see me as a skier first” 64
Professionals (AFP) and competing in slopestyle events as well as the big air competitions. Big air, as the name suggests, is the one where they do tricks at the greatest possible height; slopestyle is the one where a variety of tricks are pulled off at significant heights. But it’s the difficulty and range of tricks that counts more in slopestyle rather than the distance from the ground at which those tricks are performed. To meet that latter objective, Osada has introduced new tricks into his repertoire. He has been working on the double axis, which is a kind of double somersault and a prerequisite of a world-class slopestyle run. This trick is hard enough in itself, but if you are the competitor who can’t land on his chest because of a heart defect, and a mistimed double axis plants you chestfirst into the snow more often than most other fluffed moves – hence you’ve shied away from it most of your career –
then your mastery of it becomes more than mere athletic endeavour. “My rival is myself,” says Osada, “When I think I may not be able to do something, or I hesitate as to whether I should do it or not, if I don’t fight with myself and win that battle, I cannot beat other people.” The recent opening in Japan of a specialist freestyle skiing training facility has helped Osada to work on his double axis; the remarkable spirit and focus he provides all himself. Recovering from a broken ankle will seem like a blip on the chart for a man who competes knowing that a regulation error, of the kind all his rivals could walk away from, could end his life. The other guys only have to cope with maybe missing out on a medal place, or ruffling the feathers of their sponsors. Pressure? Shinji Osada doesn’t feel it. See more of Osada’s incredible snow moves at www.shinji-osada.com
Working on his skills: Osada shows off one of his spectacular moves in Tokyo
Photography: rutgerpauw.com/Red Bull Photofiles (2), DomDaher/Red Bull Photofiles (1)
desire to do the same. Naturally, his parents and the doctors kept saying no. And when that wasn’t good enough for the little man, they might have reminded him how exercise could stop his heart permanently. “I could die any time, I know that,” he says, matter-of-factly. “Regardless of whether or not I participate in athletic events, I will probably die younger than other people, I know that as well. So I want to live without regret as much as I can. Even if I die younger because of my involvement in sports, I can convince myself that my life was good. I wanted to do sports in the way that other people do them, because it comes naturally to them. But for me, of course it was a life-or-death decision.” Aged 12, Osada’s will convinced the grown-ups to let him play, carefully. When he saw a snowboard advert during a visit to a department store with one of his brothers, he bought a cheap board, and took to the slopes. Perhaps the very fact that he knew his time could be limited meant he took to his task with greater zeal and motivation than ‘regular folks’ and rose to where he his now. Or maybe a great talent was kept from its rightful place by doctors’ notes. Regardless, Osada’s position in the top ranks of his sport is undisputed, and since Whistler ’09 he has competed in big air events in South Korea, Spain, Switzerland and the UK. “To tell you the truth,” he says, “when I won at WSSF, I think I lost my focus, because I had been single-mindedly working toward that goal for six years. After that, I strongly felt that I needed to improve my skill more and more to perform well on the big stage.” Sadly, a broken ankle prevented the 26-year-old from participating in the X Games last month, which was one of his goals for 2011, along with breaking into the top 10 of the Association of Freeskiing
PumPs Air in Your TYres, And doesn’T Lose iTs fGriP. its
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spirit weakening. In one gulp it delivers enough energy to help you reach your peak and head straight for the next one. And with no carbonation and no need to chill, a Red Bull Energy Shot is always pumped up and ready for action. It’s concentrated energy from Red Bull.
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Caravan of Dreams
The accolade of being first woman to conquer all 14 of the world’s 8,000m mountains was claimed last year. But almost 20 years earlier, a Polish pioneer had her eyes on that prize‌. Words: Gertrude Reinisch Photography: Frieder Blickle
A portrait of Wanda Rutkiewicz from 1988, at the age of 45
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In recent years, a fierce competition has broken out among the world’s best female mountaineers, vying for the accolade of being the first to conquer all 14 ‘8,000ers’ (the world’s 14 8,000m-plus mountains). On April 27, 2010, 44-year-old South Korean Oh EunSun stood atop the 8,091m summit of Annapurna, in the Himalayas, thus seemingly securing victory for herself. But her achievement was disputed. The 36-year-old Basque mountaineer Edurne Pasaban achieved the same thing – undisputed – on May 17. Meanwhile, the only mountain missing from 39-yearold Austrian Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner’s list is K2 in the Karakorum. She has failed on several attempts to conquer it, but anyway rejects any notion of a ‘race’ between the world’s best female mountaineers. She’s happy, she says, to follow the pioneering trail set by the first female extreme mountaineer of the modern era: Pole Wanda Rutkiewicz. On May 12, 1992, Rutkiewicz and Mexican climber Carlos Carsolio set off for the peak of Kangchenjunga, on the Nepal/India border – at 8,586m the world’s third-highest mountain. Carlos reached the summit on the same day, but Wanda wasn’t feeling all that good and was slow in her ascent. She had to set up camp before she reached the summit. She’s been missing ever since. Despite 22 years’ experience on more than 20 expeditions, all trace of her was lost at 8,300m as she attempted to conquer her ninth 8,000er. A small memorial plaque at the base camp carries a quotation from this pioneer of women’s extreme mountaineering. “My fear evaporated and I felt a great freedom!” Rutkiewicz states in her biography,
Caravan of Dreams: “I come from a Polish family in Lithuania. I was born on February 4, 1943 in Plungė, Samogitia, the second of four children. I am an Aquarius, born in the Tibetan year of the water sheep.” Her family was dispossessed by the Russians and after the war they moved to a terraced house in Wrocław that was like a ruin. In 1948, she lost her older brother when he and some of the other boys from the neighbourhood found a mine and set it off. None of the children playing survived the explosion. “I’m only alive because seven-year-old boys won’t play with five-year-old girls,” she wrote. Wanda retreated into her own world, and while other children played, she studied. She had already finished school at 16 and started technology studies at university. “In the same way that some people fall for actors, I was fascinated by the great scientists, physicists, mathematicians and chemists,” she said. “Maths seemed to me to be the key to the world.” Wanda was 18 when she discovered a new passion: climbing. “The course instructors at the Szkoła Taternictwa, a mountaineering school in the High Tatras, weren’t much into teaching women to climb – mountaineering was seen as a man’s sport. But I became fascinated straight away; it felt like an explosion going off inside of me. For me, the mountains were a place of peace and freedom. I felt at home there. They soon meant everything to me, because I was happy there.” In 1964, the 21-year-old travelled to the West for the first time when she went climbing in the Austrian Alps. She took with her a rucksack full of provisions, $20 to last six weeks and, in case of emergencies, her mother’s amber necklace. In 1966, Wanda went to Mont Blanc. She climbed it several times, laden down with heavy rucksacks. And that meant the whole way, from the foot to the peak, as she couldn’t afford a lift pass. Women effectively played no role in the male-dominated extreme mountaineering scene of the mid-’60s. Wanda wanted to shake-up the clique. “I wanted to go climbing with women and take on responsibility myself rather than being led to the summit by men.” She couldn’t bear the thought of just being the post-script to a male expedition. “The most important thing for me is how I got up there and whether I achieved that under my own steam and made the right decisions.” In 1968, Wanda and Halina Krüger-Syrokomska were the first female team to make a clean ascent of the massive wall of the east face of the Trollryggen in Norway. They also climbed the north face of the Eiger (North Face route, 1973) and their all-female teams conquered the north face of the Matterhorn in winter, which many well-known male teams had failed to do before them. On March 7, 1978, Wanda led a team of three Polish women onto the gigantic north face of the Matterhorn after five days of snow. The women managed the lower ice fields without using ropes and were making good progress. The hardest parts of the ascent were the rocky areas covered with loose snow. At those moments, the mountaineers would bind themselves to the rope and progress
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would be slow. They hacked a narrow platform out of the ice for the night and crawled into two bivouac sacks. “Our equipment was completely ill-suited to that kind of adventure, but there wasn’t anything better available in Poland at the time.” The wind grew stronger and stronger and the cold was unbearable, but there was no going back. On the fourth day, the Poles reached the Zmutt ridge at the end of the face. The storm’s intensity kept increasing. One of the team, Irena, was already completely listless and suffering from balance problems. They had to set up camp again. Wanda tried to radio for help but received no answer as the equipment was faulty. What she didn’t know was that her call for help had been heard and a helicopter was sent out on the difficult rescue operation that night. They were saved. Wanda still wanted to descend on her own to complete the tour. “It would have only taken another day, but you can’t argue with the mountain rescue when the pilot has risked his life to save you in such awful conditions.” After the expedition, Wanda’s feet were black and swollen from the frostbite she had developed. She wasn’t invited on the Polish Lhotse expedition in 1975, so took matters into her own hands – organising an expedition of her own. So began the story of the first Polish female expedition. She set her sights on Gasherbrum III (7,952m) in the Karakoram in Pakistan, the highest unconquered peak in the world at the time. On the same trip, Rutkiewicz also wanted to attempt a new and more
“ I was so happy. As I looked around I thought that I could see the curve of the Earth… the most important thing to me was that I was the first Pole to conquer Mount Everest” 68
complicated route up Gasherbrum II (8,034m) as part of a mixed expedition. She was expedition leader for the first time, but this brought problems, notably the mistrust of her team: nobody believed she had what it took to reach the summit and even less so to lead them there. But Wanda was undeterred. “Both peaks were conquered and it was perhaps one of the most successful Polish expeditions ever.” Not all her expeditions would pass with such relative ease, however, not by any means. A later trip to Everest skirted with disaster with the summit almost within touching distance. Rutkiewicz recalls the anguish of being left behind by her climbing partners, her oxygen cylinder apparently lost in snow. “The others just carried on climbing and left me standing there as I desperately looked for it,” she recalled. “My knees were shaking. I’d reached emotional rock bottom. Was the summit really still worth fighting for? I screamed in panic after the other mountaineers who were rapidly disappearing into the distance. Mingma Sherpa answered that he had my cylinder. I couldn’t give up now. I called on my innermost reserves.” Wanda followed the men’s footsteps in the deep snow and was poised over the ice-encrusted precipice between the South Peak and Hillary Step. On either side, snow and ice were slipping down into the abyss. The drop was thousands of metres. “I somehow got this really weird feeling in the pit of my stomach. I was afraid of falling and afraid that nobody would notice. And then all of a sudden I couldn’t breathe. I tore the oxygen mask off my face and saw the others on the summit. At that point, nothing could stop me. You can always do much more than you think. At 2pm, I was standing on the roof of the world. I was so happy. As I looked around, I thought I could see the curve of the Earth… The most important thing to me was that I was the first Pole to conquer Mount Everest and I did it on the same day Karol Wojtyła was chosen as Pope. But I’m not unique. Everyone has an Everest to scale at some point in his life. My success was just proof that anyone can achieve anything they set their mind to.” Wanda bought herself a second car with the money she earned for her contribution to a documentary on women in the Himalayas. She got her rally licence and pimped up her Polonez for motor racing. “I’m not a humble woman. I love good cars, exquisite things, beautiful clothes…” She was working in computer system development in Warsaw at the time and was the first person in her workplace to sign up as a member of Solidarność, the Polish trade union. Thanks to the success that she and other Polish expeditions achieved, mountaineers were suddenly as popular in Poland as Olympic medal-winners. In 1986, she was the first woman in the world to stand atop K2
(8,616m), a remarkable achievement that was overshadowed by terrible tragedy. K2 took 17 victims. “I’ve lost a lot of friends on the mountains, but you still don’t lose your passion for mountaineering even when you come up against death because of it. You feel a taste for life most keenly when you know you can lose it.” Rutkiewicz had now long since proved that women were capable of just as much in mountaineering as men. She had become a symbol of emancipation. “Wanda Rutkiewicz brings emancipation to life and doesn’t have to speak about it. Her achievements aren’t points of argument. They’re fact,” Reinhold Messner would say in recognition of the greatest female mountaineer of her day. Reflecting on her career, Wanda once said: “Mountaineers aren’t like other people so they find it hard to find a partner who thinks like them. Actually, I admire the wives of famous mountaineers more than I do the mountaineers themselves, because I can’t imagine that any man would be willing to settle for such a life.” Her first marriage, to Wojciech Rutkiewicz, son of Poland’s then Deputy Minister for Health, came to an end after three years in 1973 due to the young groom’s lack of understanding for his wife’s fanatical love of the mountains. Her goals did not tie in with the traditional image of the housewife. Her second marriage, to Helmut Scharfetter, a doctor from Innsbruck, came about from a close friendship of several years’ standing, but that dream of domestic bliss with two step-sons also came to an end in 1984 after three years of matrimony. “When you’re in love, nothing else matters. You accept each other with all your faults. Until you face the truth and have to admit that you’re only hurting each other. I got married because I thought that marriage and children were part of what I had to do in life. When I realised that I wasn’t happy with family duties and that I couldn’t play a role that I wasn’t suited to, I saw no other solution than to separate.” Wanda Rutkiewicz seemed to have finally found a suitable partner in expedition mountaineer Kurt Lyncke, but that relationship was also brought to a sudden end. On July 24, 1990, Lyncke fell 400m to his death on Broad Peak, just a few metres behind Wanda. She never recovered from that tragic loss. “I admired everything about him. He helped me blossom. He excited me. I hated the mountains for the first time in my life when he had his accident.” Her home life became increasingly chaotic. She never had enough time between getting back from one adventure and setting off on the next. She always took too much on, dashed from one appointment to the next and hardly had time to sleep or lead a private life. Wanda would conduct private or professional engagements in a rush, normally hours or even days later than planned, and always completely exhausted after driving through the night. But the circumstances were secondary. Friends, fans and the media were all
“ I’ve lost friends on the mountains, but you still don’t lose your passion for mountaineering, even when you come up against death because of it ” enchanted by Wanda’s personality… but they were getting increasingly worried. She had become the embodiment of irrationality. She was attractive, charismatic, fascinating and completely unpredictable. Only when she left civilisation behind and got involved in her next expedition could she find peace. And herself. By 1990, Wanda Rutkiewicz, now aged 49, had climbed six of the 14 8,000ers. Another eight peaks and she would be the third person – after Reinhold Messner and fellow Pole Jerzy Kukuczka, who had been killed a year earlier on Lhotse – to have conquered all the 8,000ers. But Wanda wanted more. “I aim to climb those eight peaks in a little over a year. I call my plan, ‘A Caravan of Dreams’, because I’m trying to do something that would only appear possible in your dreams. I’ll just head from mountain to mountain, like caravans always have done.” The incredible tour would spare Wanda the costly journeys to the mountains and acclimatisation periods. She hoped to manage the protracted strain, without periods for rest, with mental strength, tip-top conditioning and her years of experience. To start with all went well. After two successful solo ascents (1991: Cho Oyu, 8,201m, and the South Face of Annapurna, 8,091m), Wanda Rutkiewicz wanted to climb Kangchenjunga. Her companion on the mountain, Carlos Carsolio, was the last person to see her alive. It was May 12, 1992. Her body has never been found. About the author: Gertrude Reinisch, born in Piesting, Lower Austria, in 1952, is an Austrian journalist, writer, filmmaker, and state-approved High Alpine instructor. She has lived for more than three years in a number of countries in the Himalayas and has climbed several peaks of up to 7,800m. She first met Wanda Rutkiewicz in 1986 and took part in her Polish expedition to Hidden Peak (up to 6,600m) in 1990. Reinisch is also the author of the biography, Wanda Rutkiewicz – A Caravan of Dreams, Rother Mountain Publishers
To find out more about mountaineers and expeditions visit: www.edurnepasaban.net oes.chosun.com www.gerlindekaltenbrunner.at
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freeze frame Swiss Photographer Thomas Senf accompanied wingsuit flyer Valery Rozov to Antarctica. This is the story of the trip in Thomas’s own words Words: Thomas Senf Photography: Thomas Senf and Predrag Vuckovic
SÜDAMERIKA
AFRIKA
ANTARKTIS
The Drygalski Mountains in Queen Maud Land protrude like fangs out of Antarctica’s 1,000m thick perpetual ice. Late last year, Russian BASE-jumper Valery Rozov led an expedition there with the intention of jumping from the summit of the tallest of the Drygalski Mountains, the 2,931m Ulvetanna Peak. Swiss photographer Thomas Senf was part of the expedition and he decided to record his experiences.
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za.redbulletin.com/print2.0 See Valery Rozov flying high
Valery Rozov on the Holtannapeak. Thomas Senf: “The fascinating thing about this trip from a photographic point of view was the challenge of portraying the incredible dimensions of this landscape and at the same time capturing images of the sport�
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A ntarctica
Thomas Senf grew up in Leipzig, Germany, and moved to Switzerland for love in 2002 at the age of 21 – love for the mountains. Senf combines mountaineering and photographic skills like few before him: as a mountain climber, he has succeeded in making various first ascents (for example in the Indian Himalayas) with top mountaineers such as Stephan Siegrist and Ines Papert
“Ulvetanna is Norwegian for ‘wolf tooth’ and couldn’t describe the mountain more perfectly. I’d seen photographs of Ulvetanna, but I’ll never forget the view when I first saw it for real from the window of our small cargo plane: hundreds of kilometres of icy landscapes in every direction and then the Drygalski mountain chain – these bizarrely shaped, monumental crags – in the middle of it all. It was a perfect, sunny day. Everything sparkled and glistened. There were eight people on Valery Rozov’s expedition team and we were all glued to the airplane’s windows. No one said a word. Valery was due to jump from the summit of this mountain a few days later. Nothing happens of its own accord on an expedition to the Antarctic. You can’t rely on anything. Nothing can be planned with 100 per cent accuracy, mainly due to the unpredictability of the weather. Within minutes, a perfect day can descend into a blizzard with snowstorms swirling at speeds of up to 100kph. We learn before we’ve even set foot on the ice that split-second decisions can often have huge consequences. If the pilot of our small plane lands too far away from the foot of the mountain – you set up base-camp by the plane – you have hours of extra walking to do over the coming days. But the closer he lands to the mountain, the longer your base-camp is in the shade and you’re exposed to even more extreme cold. Our small plane managed to land at the perfect distance from the mountain range, but the landing was hard. As a result, the plane was seriously damaged and had to be repaired there and then, so that it could take us back to civilisation at the end of the three-week expedition.
The day-to-day
There’s no real night at this time of year in the Antarctic, which you can cope with perfectly well as long as you’re disciplined, stick to a strict daily routine and are reasonably constant about what time you go to bed and get up again. The main difference between day and night is the 72
Every summit ascent begins with a tricky decision: how much should I take, how much can I leave back at basecamp? On this occasion, the mountaineers had to pack all the necessary equipment for ascending rock and ice. Including photographic equipment, Senf’s rucksack weighed around 15kg
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A picture and its story, told by Thomas Senf: “The picture of me above was taken by Predrag Vuckovic, a Serbian who supervised the expedition as ‘Head of Photographers’. When Valery jumped from Mt Ulvetanna, Predrag covered the exit position, leaving me to move to a rather more unusual perspective...”
temperature. In the daytime, the more intense sunshine makes for a pleasant 10 below zero, but at night the temperature can plummet to -30. It was relatively cosy at our base-camp. There was a large dining tent with enough room for everyone to cook and eat and then there were the small tents for sleeping in. We’d built walls of snow around the tents to be better protected against any wind. They wouldn’t have helped at all if we’d been exposed to strong storms. In Antarctica you have to be willing to spend the whole night hanging onto your tent with all your might, just to prevent it being blown away. And even much less strong winds can have a major effect. The wind-chill factor of even a light breeze can make -10ºC feel like -20 or even -30. That’s not just unpleasant. It’s actually dangerous. You can forget about climbing at temperatures like that because your frozen fingers lose all sensation. I tried to climb without gloves on once during the expedition. I gave up after a single pitch. The sun really makes you feel better during the daytime, especially as a photographer, and that’s not 74
just because of the light, but because it’s so much easier to do your work without wearing gloves. But you mustn’t underestimate the strength of the sun. We had to put thick layers of suncream on our faces every day, otherwise we’d have got really burned.
Valery
I already knew Valery from a number of other joint undertakings, including a few projects in the Alps and the ascent of Mt Elbrus. I climbed with him to the summit of Europe’s highest mountain when he became the first man to jump off it. I always love travelling with him. He’s very focused and professional, but he’s also very modest. Anyone who didn’t know him would never guess the things he’s already done and achieved in his life. Valery isn’t the kind of guy who morosely pursues a goal at any price. Having a vodka with the team at base-camp is also part of the fun. And if a jump turns out to be too risky, then he won’t do it. Being on a team with Valery means knowing that everyone’s well-being is close to his heart. He’s both a leader and a team-player at the
“You don’t have any more than two or three minutes to prepare and shoot were at the track as the photos. If the diveritisspent already centre ofcold the sporting universe. when he jumps, then he’ll cool down Movie stars, corporate too much during the flight” CEOs, kings, princes –
“…and I abseiled a few metres down the face to capture Valery in action. From a photographic point of view, this is not without its risks, and it’s only possible if another photographer captures the “safe” shot at the exit point. In this case the risk paid off, and this shot was beamed around the world”
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“We had to put thick layers of suncream on our faces two or three times a day, otherwise they’d have been badly burned”
An everyday scene in Antarctica. Finding a sunny spot to set up camp is key. During the summer here, sunshine can make the difference between a biting -30ºC and a relatively comfortable -10ºC – even at night. Rozov’s expedition was very lucky with the weather, with not a single snowstorm in three weeks
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Valery Rozov, the all-round talent: the Russian is an experienced BASE-jumper, wingsuit pilot, and three-times world champion in parachuting with more than 7,000 jumps under his belt. He’s also a fantastic mountain climber…
…and resourceful enough to serve up something edible even with a comparatively meagre selection of ingredients. After several joint projects, photographer Senf evaluates Rozov as “a very professional, extremely modest sportsman, who manages to ensure that everyone in his team feels well looked after – something that’s very important to him”
Valery Rozov is regarded as the world’s best BASE-jumper and wingsuit pilot. He caused a sensation with his jumps from the summit of Europe’s highest peak, Mt Elbrus, as well as a jump into an active volcano in Kamshatka, Russia. Thomas Senf snapped this portrait at Advanced Base Camp the evening before the ascent of Mount Ulvetanna
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Action “There is little sense of relief or happiness at the summit�
While wearing his helmet camera, Valery Rozov captured some stunning film footage of his flight over Antarctica
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There are two ways to descend the mountain. Rozov chooses the quicker way. Senf: “There are two or three people waiting at Valery’s landing site, who’ve filmed the jump. They’ve got some warm clothes and shoes for him. By the time we photographers get back to base, Valery’s long finished his dinner”
same time. That’s a nice feeling for all of us and it quickly brought our team of eight men from four different countries together.
Ulvetanna
The day we set off for the summit of Ulvetanna began when we left the ABC [Advanced Base Camp] – our second base camp – at 6am. We’d fixed ropes along the route on previous days so that we’d be more mobile with the photo and camera equipment, so the ascent proceeded fairly quickly. We’d already got to the end of the fixed ropes within four hours. We still had about 12 rope-lengths to climb after that. We got to the summit at about 5pm. When you reach it, you barely feel happiness or relief. Those emotions could even be fatal on an expedition like ours for a number of reasons. Because first and foremost, as a photographer, you have to be wide awake at precisely that moment. From the photographer’s point of view, the whole expedition, the whole trip’s success rides on the two or three seconds after the sportsman jumps. You have to have chosen the perfect perspective, everything’s got to be just right with the equipment and you’ve got to choose the right time to shoot. If something goes wrong during those seconds, you’ve got a serious problem. And there’s also a certain pressure to be quick, because Valery is only wearing his thin wingsuit and is absolutely freezing in the Antarctic temperatures. You have no more than two or three minutes to
prepare and take photos. If the jumper is already freezing when he jumps, he’ll lose too much heat during the 45-second descent, lose sensation in his hands and won’t be able to control the jump… and then things could get really dangerous.
Enjoyment
If you accompany a BASE-jumper up a mountain, you obviously go back down without him. Such is the fate of a BASE-photographer. We got back to our camp at about midnight, by which time Valery had long since polished off dinner. Sometimes on TV they show mountaineers celebrating like footballers after they’ve scored a goal when they get back to camp having conquered another peak. But in reality it’s all a little less spectacular. You’re just tired, exhausted, hungry and thirsty. The joy at what you’ve achieved together only begins to settle in over the next few days. The way we expressed our joy may have been a bit unconventional. As we’d been so lucky with the weather throughout the expedition, we still had a couple of days to spare. We made the most of them to climb two smaller peaks: Tungespissen (2,277m) and Holtanna (2,650m). From a mountaineering point of view, they are only moderately challenging, but scenically they were still breathtaking. Valery jumped from them too, so we had the chance to take more photos and record more footage. Follow the flight path at za.redbulletin.com/print2.0 More on Thomas at www.thomassenf.ch
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On the go: Brighton-based rockers The Go! Team have a unique style that pushes the boundaries of indie rock and garage rock. They talk about the five albums that have influenced their music on page 94
More Body&Mind Where to go and what to do this month
Photography: Ollie Millington/Getty Images
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82 The longest horse race in the world 84 Kaizer chiefs vs orlando pirates 86 a top chef’s secrets 88 Day and night around the globe 98 mind’s eye
Sybarites need not apply. The Mongol Derby horse race is strictly a ‘no-frills’ thrill The exposed and sparsely populated steppes of Mongolia are not your average summer holiday destination. But then, it’s not your average person who opts to spend their August vacation taking part in a gruelling test of endurance on a wild-eyed steed in the longest horse race in the world. For this sort of intrepid individual, the vast grasslands of Chinggis Khaan’s former empire provide the perfect setting for an equine enterprise and a chance to throw off the shackles of our modern health-and-safety-obsessed world for 10 days of old-fashioned adventure. And it would be difficult to get more old-fashioned than the Mongol Derby. Each year a 13th-century postal system invented by Khaan is resurrected 82
for the task, allowing the competitors to cover the 1,000km route just like the messengers of ancient times, using a series of traditional tents, or urtuus, placed 40km apart, manned by local nomadic farmers armed with fresh horses, mutton stew and a bed for the night. But between these posts it’s rider and horse, covering more than 100km every day, navigating alone across the testing terrain, exposed to harsh sun, winds, rain and freezing temperatures after dark, in a bid to be the first to reach the finish. “We are trying to rediscover that pioneering spirit,” says events manager and former Derby competitor Katy Willings of The Adventurists, the UKbased company behind the contest. “The riders aren’t on a nice guided tour with
“This race is really tough. On day six I took a wrong turn and what should have taken four hours took eight”
Words: Ruth Morgan. Photography: Anya Campbell
Easy Riders? No Khaan Do
an itinerary – there’s not too much monitoring and evaluation, no Lycra or micro nutrients. It’s a raw adventure.” Between 20 and 30 riders each year pass the rigorous evaluation stage to get a chance to compete in the Derby, which began in 2009. Competitors must have a high level of riding ability, and be light enough for the Mongolian horses, a feisty but small breed, in order to get a place. And, far from resulting in a line-up of professional endurance riders, it’s mostly amateurs who get into the saddle. “There’s such a broad spectrum of people who do the race,” says Katy. “We’ve had four Olympians so far, not riders I might add. It’s a personal challenge. Lots of people want to see how their physical skills translate into this slightly Wacky Races environment.” The seemingly endless stretches of thyme-scented grassy steppe flanked
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Left: A young jockey ready to race in the Derby opening ceremony; test-riding a pony; a horseman. This page: Richard Dyer leads the pack; fixing a saddle; family members; many herders have satellite TV and mobile phones
by mountains, sporadically populated by animal herds and nomadic farming families working as they have done for centuries, makes for a stunning backdrop that belies the formidable terrain. “I grew up wanting to be a cowboy,” says Richard Dyer, a 31-year-old builder from England who took part last year. “But in the UK you don’t get the opportunity to ride in vast open spaces, so Mongolia was incredible but extremely challenging. It’s the excitement of taking a calculated risk. There are safety measures in place, but at the same time it’s you and the horse. It’s up to you to get from A to B. It’s a genuine experience, as far as possible, of being alone.” Riders are equipped with a GPS navigation system, something the nomadic farmers may scoff at, but a necessary concession to technology by The Adventurists. Each rider is also trackable, so they can be reached in case of emergency by medics or vets, in 4x4s or by helicopter. But interference is kept to an absolute minimum, and unless a horse or rider is in serious danger, the competitors are on their own. “Mongolia is stunning, but this race is tough,” says Richard. “On day six I took a wrong turn and what should have taken four hours took eight. It
lashed it down with rain on a biblical scale, there was lightning, and wind ripping across the plains. You’re just so exposed. Physically, you accept you’re going to feel really sore for days. It’s more the mental element – when you’re soaking wet, freezing cold and hungry and there’s not much prospect of getting dry, it’s a real challenge to carry on.” And when riders make it to the comparative comfort of an urtuu, it’s a safe bet that mutton’s on the menu. The Adventurists’ no-frills policy extends to food, with competitors eating what’s cooked by their nomad hosts, invariably dried mutton stew washed down with a cup of mare’s milk. “It has a unique flavour,” says Richard. “It’s fermented so it’s slightly alcoholic. It’s not the sort of thing you’d want to pick up at duty free, but at the time it was great.” A new route is being planned for 2011 to keep the task exciting but equally tough. Though some finish the race in the back of a 4x4, most find the stamina to make it to the end, proud to have conquered this ancient test of mettle whether they have been victorious or not, their stiff upper lip matched only by their stiff lower body. For more information and for 2011 entry forms, visit mongolderby.theadventurists.com
MONGOLIA
Ulaanbaatar
the knowledge… Who? Only competent riders need apply. Anyone with the necessary grit to sign up will then need to pass a rigorous selection process. Where? The exact race location is kept top secret. Selected riders are bussed out from the Mongolian capital of Ulaanbaatar to an undisclosed location in order to prevent any pre-race recces taking place. When? The selected riders begin three days of intensive pre-race training on August 3 out at a specially constructed camp. The start gun fires at 9am on August 6 and the final dust is expected to settle on August 16.
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The Great SA Soccer Derby February 26 is a big day for South African soccer fans. Kaizer Chiefs and Orlando Pirates continue a rivalry considered one of the world’s greatest derbies
From left: Knowledge Musona is the one to watch for the Kaizers; fans make spectacles of themselves; Daine Klate is the Pirates’ boy wonder
The 2011 teams With SuperSport United dominating the Absa Premiership for the past three seasons, it’s been the ‘Tshwane Derby’ between SuperSport and Mamelodi Sundowns that has become the better match on the eye. However, SuperSport are in a crisis and the Chiefs and Pirates are now both challenging Sundowns at the top of the log. Already this season, fans have been treated to two Soweto derbies – November’s league clash, as well as 84
the Telkom Knockout cup final in December. Chiefs triumphed in both with coach, Serbian Vladimir Vermezovic, outwitting counterpart Ruud Krol 3-1 and 3-0 respectively. With Dutchman Krol under pressure at Pirates, many believe this is his last chance to restore pride. The two key players Knowledge Musona, Kaizer Chiefs The season’s highest scorer is the player to watch. The 19-year-old forward from Zimbabwe destroyed Pirates in November, scoring twice. Then, attracting all the defenders’ attention in the cup final, his team-mates registered another victory. Nicknamed the ‘Smiling Assassin’, don’t let his boyish grin deceive you, he’s quick, clever and agile. Daine Klate, Orlando Pirates Klate is the Bucs’ star signing. He’s a livewire down the left wing and is just as dangerous playing through the middle. Pacey with a wicked left foot, he’s backed up well by Andile Jali, a rising star in central midfield. Klate is knocking on the Bafana Bafana door, so keep a eye on him. Find match info at www.kaizerchiefs.com
Fan Info The Venue It was called Soccer City for the Fifa World Cup, but now it’s back to the original name of FNB Stadium. Still, the giant calabash is a great experience and no matter where you sit, the view is awesome. To be among really passionate fans, sit behind the goals closest to the field. Your outfit The brighter the better. TV cameras love picking out the strangest hats, biggest sunglasses and craziest wigs. Eat & Drink Take cash for the bars. You can grab beer, juice and basic food inside, but you may want to sample some traditional food outside the stadium before entering. Give the pap and wors a try, or exchange the boerewors for chicken – add plenty of gravy. Transport Contact Kaizer Chiefs, the home side, for information on how best to travel to the stadium closer to match day. 011 941 1465 or info@kaizerchiefs.com
Words: Neil Greig. Photography: Gallo Images
The history Kaizer Chiefs are the scheduled home side… but that doesn’t matter too much. Both teams are from Soweto township, and the clubs have regularly shared home grounds. The mighty Amakhosi (Chiefs) edge Orlando Pirates in the statistics department. To date, Chiefs have won 63 of the 142 derby matches in all official competition since 1970. The Buccaneers (Pirates) have won 33 times, with 41 draws and five matches abandoned. Despite criticism of the on-field quality in recent years, the past two clashes have been pulsating. To date, Chiefs have scored 194 goals and Pirates 152.
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BEYOND THE ORDINARY THE RED BULLETIN
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Every Sensation
HANgar-7 guest chef
Marcus G Lindner Every month, Salzburg’s Ikarus restaurant invites a top international chef to take over the kitchen. In February, the Michelin-starred chef from Zurich with a penchant for emotional cooking takes the reins for a spell The Hotel Ermitage in Küsnacht holds a special place in Marcus G Lindner’s heart. It was there he earned his first Michelin star, so nothing can ever change that. But when it comes to comfort, there’s no restaurant he’d rather be in than Mesa in downtown Zurich, where he’s worked for the past five years. “This is where I can be myself,” says Lindner, a native of Vorarlberg, Austria. He learned his trade at the St Leonhard Restaurant in the medieval city of Feldkirch on the border with Switzerland, under the tutelage of Max Dick. “He was way ahead of his time,” says Lindner, “but placed a lot of emphasis on traditional virtues.” It’s those same virtues Lindner has passed on to his team at Mesa. “I demand the effort, ambition and reliability that I demonstrate myself. I just know that everything turns out better if you do it with enthusiasm.” Lindner finds the counterbalance to his hectic working life in nature. He and his son look after their own small vineyard. “A harvest currently gives us just 40 bottles, but I’d like to come up with a menu using my own wine.”
Mesa Weinbergstr. 75, Zürich Just as in the kitchen, everything in the dining area has to be balanced. “We don’t want to smother the diner with too much décor but allow them, through minimalist lines, the appropriate space for enjoyment,” explains Lindner. “Too many frills agitate and that’s the last thing we want at Mesa. We discuss everything, from how many glasses there should be right down to how to lay the cutlery. We always put it on the right-hand side as we’ve understood that that’s what diners mostly do automatically to create more space.” www.hangar-7.com/www.mesa-restaurant.ch
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“The most important thing to me when I’m cooking is that everything should mean something. When I create a dish, I think very carefully about what blends harmoniously. If it all comes together on the palate, you should really be able to taste what it means,” says Lindner. His dishes take that mantra literally. The courses on his menu have names like Freakiness, Ardour and Felicity, and each one is designed to evoke the corresponding sensation in every diner. “Dinner at Mesa should be soothing for the soul and distract the diner from his hectic daily life. We want people to be able to relax, eat well and talk. For us, the word Mesa means much more than just ‘table’. It means coming to the table and being at the table.” His menu ensures that guests will talk at the table as well. “I make different entrées for men and for women and that’s already a starting point for table talk. The diners can try each other’s food, swap and wonder why one person has something different on his plate to somebody else,” he says. While the diners are enjoying Freakiness, which, if you’re curious, consists of frog, octopus, shellfish mayonnaise and basil sorbet, Lindner will already be working on the next courses, inspired by two very particular emotions. “I see myself somewhere between freakiness and subtlety,” he explains. “Freakiness just gives you endless opportunities and boundless freedom. You can try everything, everything’s allowed and nothing’s impossible. If you cook well, you can do anything. But at the same time I’m also a very subtle chef. I always want everything to be correct and to go together right down to the tiniest detail.”
words: lisa blazek.Photography: jürg waldmeier/red bull hangar-7
from felicity to freakiness
SAV DIST003810/E
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bouncers go
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www.savanna.co.za
Not for Sale to Persons Under the Age of 18.
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Boston Celtics vs Los Angeles Lakers 10.02.11
hot SPOTS
Rajon Rondo and Shaquille O’Neal go up against Shaq’s equally ingenious former Lakers team-mate, Kobe Bryant in a clash of the titans. TD Garden, Boston Massachusetts, USA
Photography: James Dimmock/Red Bull Photofiles, Getty Images/Red Bull Photofiles, Andreas Schaad/Global Newsroom/Red Bull Photofiles, rutgerpauw.com/Red Bull Photofiles
We round up the month’s best sporting events, wherever you are in the world
Freestyle Skiing World Championship 30.01 – 07.02.11 The best freestyle skiers will be rewarded with a World Championship crown in aerial, half-pipe, mogul, dual mogul, ski cross and, for the first time, slopestyle disciplines. Deer Valley, Utah, USA
FIS World Cup Cross Country Skiing 04 – 06.02.11 Rybinsk, located about 280km north of Moscow, plays host to double pursuit, sprint and relay for men and women. Rybinsk, Russia
Billabong Air & Style 05.02.11 At this TTR World Snowboard Tour 6-star event, 1,000 World Cup points and the Ring of Glory are up for grabs, all to a soundtrack provided by live bands. Innsbruck, Austria
Red Bull Crashed Ice 05.02.11 The Red Bull Crashed Ice World Championship lands in Europe’s flattest country for the first time, but the terrifying track for the ice hockey-four cross hybrid will be no less steep, narrow or slippery, so the event remains one of the toughest tests going. Valkenburg, Netherlands
AMA Supercross 05.02.11 Stop five of the US motocross series sees thousands of fans pack out the Angel Stadium in California, as they did for the first race of the season in January, with James Stewart hoping to be in the hunt for another Supercross title. Anaheim, California, USA
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Simpel Session 05 – 06.02.11 It’s the annual winter skate and BMX event with a formidable, international line-up of talent, including Brit biker Seb Keep and Belgian skate prodigy Axel Cruysberghs. Visitors can also look forward to a film festival and some legendary post-contest parties. Saku Arena, Tallinn, Estonia
Ice Speedway World Championship 05 – 06.02.11 Austria’s Franky Zorn faces a big challenge from a typically strong Russian contingent during the first round of finals. Krasnogorsk, Russia
FIS Men’s Skiing World Cup 05 – 06.02.11 The small community of Hinterstoder, in Upper Austria, is back on the World Cup calendar for the first time since 2006. The event provides the last chance for the participants to check their form in the Super-G and the giant slalom before the skiing World Championships take place. Hinterstoder, Austria
Super Bowl XLV 06.02.11 The Super Bowl is the biggest annual one-day sporting event in the USA. Last year, running back Reggie Bush won his first Super Bowl ring with the New Orleans Saints. Cowboys Stadium, Texas, USA
ISPO Munich 2011 06 – 09.02.11 The international trade fair for sporting goods and sports fashion presents its wares in over 100,000m2 of space. Munich, Germany
NASCAR Sprint Cup Series 20.02.11 The new NASCAR season starts, as always, with the Daytona 500 in the glorious Sunshine State of Florida. Daytona, Florida, USA
more body & mind Red Bull Crashed Ice 26.02.11 This, the third and penultimate event of the season, could determine who will win the World Championship title. Moscow, Russia
FIS Alpine Skiing World Championships 07 – 20.02.11 Lindsey Vonn was in a class of her own at the 2009 World Championships. But the American is yet to secure a medal in a technical discipline. Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany
FIS Snowboard World Cup 08 – 09.02.11 Men and women fight it out in snowboard cross and parallel giant slalom contests at the 2018 Winter Olympic candidate city of Pyeongchang. Yong Pyong, South Korea
IBU Biathlon World Cup 08 – 13.02.11 After this sprint, pursuit and mass-start contest, focus will shift to the World Championships in Russia next month. Fort Kent, Maine, USA
WRC Rally Sweden 11 – 13.02.11 The one true winter rally has been held for over 50 years. Rally legend and Frenchman Sébastien Loeb is the only non-Scandinavian driver to have won here, in 2004. Karlstad, Sweden
FIS Ski Jumping World Cup 11 – 13.02.11
The best newschool skiers, including three previous winners, Russ Henshaw, Oscar Scherlin and Charles Gagnier, go on a ‘sightseeing tour’ of the area. Bad Gastein, Austria
Some of the world’s best on two wheels wow spectators with a breathtaking motocross show, which takes in highest air, whip contest and freestyle disciplines. Turin, Italy
FC Red Bull Salzburg vs SK Rapid Vienna 19.02.11 FC Red Bull Salzburg’s first home game of 2011 in the Austrian Bundesliga and it’s a cracker. The current champions take on SK Rapid Vienna, record-holders for overall number of championships won, and it promises to be tight. Red Bull Arena, Salzburg, Austria
NBA All-Star Game 20.02.11 The high point of the NBA All-Star Weekend sees the best basketball players from the Western and Eastern Conferences squaring off, with fans determining who the starting five will be. Staples Center, Los Angeles, USA
FIS Nordic Skiing World Championship 24.02 – 06.03.11 For ski-jumpers, cross-country skiers and combined skiers, it’s all about gold, silver and bronze at this prestigious ski-centre. Holmenkollen, Oslo, Norway
Vikersund will play host to the world championships in 2012. But after reconstruction work on the resort’s ski-jumping hill, Bjørn Einar Romøren’s world record of 239m, set in Planica in 2005, could be under threat already this year. Vikersund, Norway
Black Wings Linz vs EC Red Bull Salzburg 25.02.11
Red Bull Open Ice 12 – 13.02.11
Corrida de Bonecos Gigantes 26.02.11
The final of the ice-hockey game played in its most authentic form: four against four on a frozen lake. Mendon Ponds Park, New York, USA
Red Bull Playstreets 19.02.11
Night of the Jumps 18 – 19.02.11
After the 54th and final round of preliminary competition, the final line-up in the ice-hockey championship playoffs has been set in stone. Eissporthalle, Linz, Austria
This 200m race between huge puppets up to 3m tall forms part of the carnival festivities in one of Brazil’s oldest cities. Olinda, Brazil
FIS Snowboard World Cup 17 – 20.02.11
ASP World Tour 26.02 – 09.03.11
The men and women will race in half-pipe, snowboard cross and parallel giant slalom categories. The men will also perform in a big air competition. Stoneham, Quebec, Canada
The winter break is over and it’s time to slap on the sunblock. This collection of the world’s best-known pro surfers get the new season underway. Gold Coast, Australia
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THE MUSIC OF NEIL YOUNG 10.02.11
night spots
Over 20 acts demonstrate a ‘Heart of Gold’: Patti Smith and The Roots among others, reinterpret Neil Young’s songs, with proceeds going to charity. Carnegie Hall, New York, USA
Get your dancing shoes on: here’s our global night-time guide
CLUB TRANSMEDIALE 01 – 06.02.11
SPLORE-CITY 11 – 12.02.11
Berlin is the new capital of digital culture. A ‘poor but sexy’ city in the words of the mayor himself, it partly owes its reputation as Germany’s Bohemian bastion to Transmediale. The festival for contemporary art this year attracts electronic acts like Monolake, Dorian Concept and Kode9 to the city on the Spree. Various locations, Berlin, Germany
Dancing in the moonlight in Aotea Square, admiring the visuals projected onto nearby buildings, and no tent required. Sounds like a midsummer night’s wet dream for any festivalgoer. The fantastic line-up includes Caribou, Four Tet and Mayer Hawthorne. Auckland, New Zealand
the Hollies 06.02.11 Having had more hit singles than The Beatles in the 1960s, it’s no wonder The Hollies were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame last year. The band is one of a few from the era never to have officially split and, judging by their popularity, for good reason. TSB Bowl of Brooklands, New Plymouth, New Zealand
Photography: REx Features (1), Getty Images (3)
TWIN ATLANTIC UK TOUR 08 – 13.02.11 These Glasgow whippersnappers have toured with Blink 182 and My Chemical Romance. Now the four-piece are touring as headliners, offering tasters from their debut album. Recorded in Red Bull’s Studio in Santa Monica with Foo Fighters’ producer Gil Norton, it’s due for release in April. Preston, England, and Orkney, Thurso, Dingwall and Stirling, Scotland
Funeral Party 10.02.11 The East LA three-piece return to the UK following last month’s release of debut album The Golden Age of Nowhere, much anticipated since being championed by Radio 1 and 6 Music in the UK last year. Cargo, London, England
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Rolo Tomassi 12.02.11 The Sheffield rockers tour Ireland to kick off what promises to be a good year. After a 2010 which saw them play the Download and Reading and Leeds festivals, it seems the five-piece are on a roll. Twisted Pepper, Dublin, Ireland
The Go! Team 16.02.11 It’s a triumphant return home for the seaside sextet, who are promoting their third LP, Rolling Blackouts, after a storming 2010. Highlights include collaborating with Satomi Matsuzaki of Deerhoof and receiving a nomination for Remixers of the Year. Concorde 2, Brighton, England
PENDULUM & INNERPARTYSYSTEM US TOUR 16 – 26.02.11 At some point drum ’n’ bass hit a dead end. Salvation came in the shape of Australia’s Pendulum, the first true D’n’B band. Their US tour is loudly supported by Red Bull Records’ Innerpartysystem, who produce similarly organic dance sounds. Denver, Salt Lake City, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Las Vegas, USA and Vancouver, Canada
CARNAVAL MARIA DO BAIRRO 27.02.11 In March the carnival train will ramble around Rio. And even the Samba schools’ rehearsals beforehand are parties. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
more body & mind TINIE TEMPAH & KATY B 22.02.11 Rapper Tinie Tempah sold more singles than anyone else in Britain in 2010. Looks like Katy B is on the same track this year with ‘Lights On’. The dream team is heading out on tour. 02 ABC, Glasgow, Scotland
PLAYGROUND WEEKENDER 17 – 20.02.11
BRUISE CRUISE FESTIVAL 25 – 28.02.11
Outdoor cinema, a cabaret stage, yoga tent and food from around the world: put it all together and you’ve got a carnival for the cool kids. What more could you want from a festival? Ah yes, good music. Playground Weekender has that sorted too, with De La Soul, Roy Ayers, Toro Y Moi and Roska. Del Rio Riverside Resort, NSW, Australia
This isn’t your grandparents’ idea of a sea cruise. The Bruise Cruise is probably the first rock festival to take place on the high seas. Passengers making the journey from Miami to the Bahamas will enjoy bands like the Black Lips, Surfer Blood and Vivian Girls. All served up with cocktails, casinos, pools and hot tubs. Miami, USA to Nassau, Bahamas
U2 18.02.11 After their tour schedule was thrown into disarray with news of Bono’s back surgery, one of the biggest bands on the planet are back on fighting form and ready to rock. Cape Town Stadium, Cape Town, South Africa
NOISE POP FESTIVAL 22 – 27.02.11 A festival for anyone whose wardrobe boasts more than three checked shirts. In other words, a festival which lives and breathes indie rock culture. Noise Pop features music, films and performances from Yeah Yeah Yeahs guitarist Nick Zinner and bands including The Stone Foxes, No Age and Best Coast, ie bands that mere mortals will only hear about in two years’ time. Various locations, San Francisco, USA
JAMIE WOON 24.02.11 This 27-year-old Brit is the hottest artist of the new year, and one of five acts featured on the BBC’s ‘Sound of 2011’ list. But Jamie Woon will more than live up to the hype when he releases his debut album of melancholic dubstep soul songs Mirrorwriting in April. Scala, London, England
BEN SIMS & KIRK DEGIORGIO 25.02.11 MICRO MUTEK FESTIVAL 09 – 11.02.11 Barcelona, mecca for cool music festivals, hosts Canadian electronic label Mutek’s line-up. Various locations, Barcelona, Spain
Electronic legends Sims and Degiorgio are starting up a new club night called Machine. The address will remain secret until the last minute, but two things are certain: the club’s motto – “new and unreleased techno” – and the first guest on the turntables, Luke Slater. TBA, London, England
SOURCE ON ICE FESTIVAL 26.02.11 An outdoor festival in February? In Holland? The Russian state circus is making it happen, because for one night only they’re lending their tent to the festival. The organisers, however, will be providing everything else themselves, including the punch, ice skates (for the dancefloor, or dance rink if you will) and the best electronic artists, including Floating Points, Kyle Hall and Speedy J. Down Under, Utrecht, Netherlands
THE WORLD OF DRUM ’n’ BASS 26 – 27.02.11 Aphrodite, The Panacea, Chase & Status, Subsonik adding some ‘Trance ’n’ Bass’ and the breakthrough act of the year, Camo & Krooked: this is a line-up which brings to mind the Justice League or some other superhero summit. In fact it’s a club night able to bring any true drum ‘n’ bass fan out in a hot flush. Arena, Moscow, Russia
I’LL BE YOUR MIRROR FESTIVAL 27.02.11 Every few months, London concert promoters ATP hire a rundown old holiday camp near Bristol and let legendary indie heroes curate a festival completely to their own taste. Simple idea, major success. Therefore the ATP folks are expanding to Japan, with bands like Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Fuck Buttons, as well as local acts Boredoms and Melt-Banana. Studio Coast, Tokyo, Japan
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James Blake London In Profile
Young Soul Rebel Hotly tipped English producer James Blake is rewiring the blues for the dubstep generation. He talks to Piers Martin about the inspiration behind his ground-breaking debut album Everyone is talking about James Blake – and it’s not hard to see why. In just 12 months, the well-spoken 22-year-old from north London has captivated the underground with a string of cutting-edge singles that showcased his soulful take on dubstep. Now Blake, a classically trained pianist, is poised to break through with his self-titled debut album, a blend of strippeddown blues, gospel and folk swaddled in purring electronics which bears comparison with the likes of Portishead and The xx. None of this would have happened, however, if Blake hadn’t paid a visit to 92
seminal London dubstep night FWD>> in 2007, where the teenager heard the mutant strains of UK bass music for the first time. From then on he sought to produce his own dancefloor tracks, mixing chords and gospel harmony with bass and beats. Today Blake finds himself at the vanguard of a new wave of exciting young producers, including his pals Joy Orbison and Ramadanman, shaping the future of British club culture. “I just want to make hard-hitting music,” he says. It takes one listen to his emotional cover of Feist’s ‘Limit To Your Love’ to know that he does.
Red Bulletin: Tell us about that fateful trip to the club night. James Blake: I sometimes went to drum ’n’ bass nights, but one night I was out with school friends in east London and we ended up at this club night, FWD>>, that didn’t play drum ’n’ bass, no one knew what it was. It wasn’t called dubstep at the time, it was called grime or two-step or garage. It was pitch black inside and the music was so loud. I remember the tunes I heard drove me so far into my own head, more than anything else has ever done. So it was the atmosphere of the club that appealed to you, not only the music? Yes. I realised that there’s a world of people my age making music that I find really exciting, and I wanted to get on that. I saw the DJ and I thought, ‘I want to be there, I want to be behind those decks.’ So that experience threw me out of being an isolated teenager in secondary school to being involved with loads of people and sending music to people.
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Photography: Tom Horton (1), Getty Images (1)
Below: One of his first live gigs at Camden Enterprise in December 2010
You started learning classical piano when you were six years old. Did you enjoy playing or was it a chore? I saw the importance in it. I didn’t like grades or practising, but I enjoyed the music. I had a sense at an early age that if I was improving then it must be a good thing, so I stuck with it. But alongside that I was always improvising and singing along to records. I’d play along to old Motown and soul records, CDs of Otis Redding. I also learned classical harmony and how to play gospel organ. I was really into gospel quite early on, like the Reverend James Cleveland. And then I got into jazz pianists Art Tatum and Erroll Garner. Together with your voice and keyboards, silence plays a prominent role in your music. It seems you know how to make the listener wait. I’m not sure if I’m a virtuoso in the use of silence, but there’s not many other people using it. Then again, it’s only a lack of sound, isn’t it? I think you need a certain confidence in your musical ideas for sound to not exist, or to wait in the wings and come in only when it’s absolutely necessary. How do people react when you play these tracks in a DJ set? Well, I love it because in that moment of silence you hear all these broken words and broken sentences. People are shouting
James on stage at the BBC Radio 1 Festive Festival 2010 at the BBC’s Maida Vale Studios
and then they suddenly start whispering. Then the track comes back and people start talking loudly again. It’s not pretentious, I just want to break it up a bit. You don’t appreciate some sounds until you’re not hearing them. You must like the fact that you’re proving to be a tricky artist to categorise. Well, I know I don’t want to be classed as some soul act. So if not a soul act, how would you prefer to be defined? New – that’s about it really. Soul has been and gone. No one needs a soul singer these
days. Soul came from a different era, from oppression and love. I haven’t experienced those political times. I have my own life to talk about, but it’s not in a soul context. I’ve listened to songs and maybe absorbed some of the melodies. What I want to do is make dance music that actually connects with people in the way that a soul record or a folk record does. It speaks to you in a sort of organic, human way. It’s the human touch that I want. James Blake: James Blake (Atlas/A&M); tour dates, videos and sound samples from www.jamesblakemusic.com
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Teenage Drama & Spaghetti Westerns The Go! Team’s new album is a genre-defying whirlwind. Mastermind Ian Parton names five records that inspired him to raise that storm Marching brass meets light-footed hip-hop beats from back in the day, psychedelic guitar licks cling to laser-gun synths. With Rolling Blackouts, their third album, The Go! Team cement their reputation as indie pop chameleons. Ian Parton, their studio wizard, lets us into his cabinet of secret weapons. BOARDS OF CANADA Music Has The Right To Children They’re quite mysterious, they generally keep out of the limelight. Thus the music exists in its own world. Boards Of Canada have that obsession with memories, but in a way that they can be filtered through over time they become quite dark sometimes. Their music feels like a Super 8 reel slowing up and down. That’s why at a final stage of Rolling Blackouts I put the album on disc to give it a tape hissy feel. 94
PUBLIC ENEMY It Takes a Million To Hold Us Back They’re the blueprint for the potential of hip-hop. Their denseness [sic] is unique, especially on that album. Public Enemy acknowledged that they were into noise, they liked the idea of distorting. Something I can absolutely relate to. THE SHANGRI-LAS The Best Of If I could go back in time I’d probably see them rather than The Beatles. They were the perfect little group for me. The whole kind of melodrama of being a teenager, the dead biker boyfriend thing, I really love that. Not to mention her voice, it’s really heart-wrenching.
ENNIO MORRICONE A Fistful Of Dollars Soundtrack A song like ‘The Running Range’ on the new album has a panoramic feel – and Morricone has something to do with that. I used to listen to his music a lot. When I thought he’d reached the pinnacle of the song, he’d go shift the gear up again. That idea of triumph and windswept things has been a big influence. My early demos are like fictional Spaghetti Western music. THE VELVET UNDERGROUND The VU and Nico They did a pretty amazing job of confusing people, going from a cute little song like ‘Sunday Morning’ and then going to the 20-minute-drone-f**k of ‘Sister Ray’. I think Velvet Underground are probably the blueprint for a perfect band and their ‘Banana’-record is just an unbeatable album. Besides, the song ‘All Tomorrow’s Parties’ is probably the best of all times, isn’t it? The Go! Team: Rolling Blackouts (Memphis Industries); www.thegoteam.co.uk
Photography: Channel 4 Television 2010 (1)
Take Five
The Go! Team Brighton
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World Best Clubs
Working for the Weekend
Week End Berlin
Photography: Weekend Club, Betty Myller, Erich Schlegel/Red Bull Photofiles
Office building by day, club by night. Owner Marcus Trojan tells us tales from the 15th floor of an underground club that’s made it to the penthouse We love running a club in this town because… in recent years Berlin has increasingly become the trend-setting metropolis for electronic music. That was partly due to the fall of the Wall because exciting club projects would spring up in empty buildings in the heart of Berlin. The club’s name is a reference to… a Jean-Luc Godard film from the ’60s. But we wanted a name that was playful, that’s loaded with positivity. And what’s better in everyday life than the weekend? We’re located… in a pretty prominent address in Berlin, the former East German tourism ministry. It’s where East Germans used to fill out the applications required if they wanted to travel abroad. It’s the second-tallest building at Alexanderplatz, directly below the television tower. We’re on the 12th and 15th floors, as well as the roof terrace. The first thing you see when you walk into the club is… two sliding doors that open. You walk into a completely normal office building. You walk to the lift and go up with the lift personnel. Suddenly the doors open and you’re hit with the sound of the bass beats. Our idea was to… further develop this improvised feeling, typical of Berlin’s clubs, where you walk into the courtyard of an old building
Week End’s roof terrace makes it one of Berlin’s top summer spots: with views over the heart of former East Berlin, including the trademark silver disco ball that is the television tower
and suddenly stumble onto a cool club in the basement. We built on this underground aspect, but moved it from the basement to the penthouse with a view. Our typical visitor is… between 20 and 25 and into music. They will be wearing skinny jeans, a T-shirt and sunglasses. The typical Berlin style, actually. Some of our regulars on the decks are… Richie Hawtin, Miss Kittin, Paul Kalkbrenner, Onur Özer or Tiefschwarz. We’re one of the three big techno clubs in the city, that’s why we take high-quality bookings very seriously. We’re not too avante garde, but not too shallow either. The inside of the club looks like… Helmut Lang’s design. It was envisioned that way by the architects. Everything
is in black, with shiny surfaces and matt wood and a glass façade. We won Berlin’s architecture prize in 2006. The club’s really full when… we have about 1,500 dancers on the three different floors. We usually start really going at… like everywhere in Berlin, not till very late. I would say somewhere between 2 and 4am. But we’re not a typical afterhours club. That wouldn’t even be possible because the clubbers would have to be out by Monday morning, when the office workers we share the building with arrive to start their jobs. Week End, Alexanderplatz 5, 10178 Berlin, Germany, +4930 24631676 www.week-end-berlin.de
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In Profile
Disappearing Act
liu bolin Beijing
Liu Bolin’s remarkable images offer a window into a society that still vexes the West. Kimberly Bradley on the Chinese artist whose work forces us to focus on the unseen
‘Hiding in the City No. 26 – In Front of the Red Flag’ (2006) – a striking image by Liu Bolin
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Standing on the yellow line of a highway leading into Shanghai, a man and his team race against the clock. High-rise housing projects are on the distant horizon and a mysterious monolith has been set on the road. As the man is literally painted into the background, the sun disappears. Just as the colours and shapes rendered on his clothing, face and hair perfectly match the Chinese urban landscape, a photograph is snapped, documenting the dramatic camouflage effect. It’s perhaps a little ironic that Chinese artist Liu Bolin has managed to gain global visibility… by making himself invisible. His camouflage shots have attracted the attention and critical acclaim of the art world and beyond since first exhibited in 2007. The striking images have become a trademark, showing him in mostly public spaces in his native China, with body, face, even his shock of short black hair, painted into a kind of trompe-l’oeil. The pictures use no digital manipulation whatsoever. “For me, hiding is a strategy. It’s a way to gather the power,” says Liu. Part of an ongoing series that the 37-year-old calls ‘Hiding in the City’, the images were initially a response to personal hardship. In November 2005, the Chinese government demolished the Beijing artist village Suo Jia Cun, rendering Liu and about 100 other artists homeless. “The forced removal of the artists studio was my direct inspiration,” says Liu, who was born in Shandong province and trained as a sculptor at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. “I want to show to the world a silent resistance of a Chinese artist.” The series’ first image camouflaged Liu into the demolition’s rubble. Many more photographs followed, all of which subtly comment on the state of the arts and society in China. In one, Liu fades into a Beijing 2008 Olympics poster. In another he sits in the lotus position in front of a striped road barricade. Several shots show him in front of urban walls covered with Chinese characters, graffiti, or even anime figures. He disappears into the Great Wall or even ‘hides’ in front of and behind men in Chinese military uniform. The artist is both actor and producer of the final product, but also considers what he is doing as performance art. “During the performance I just stand there unmovable, I won’t think too much,” he says, explaining his process. “But creation takes a long time. When I choose the background I really chew on it; I have to express clearly to the audience why I choose a certain background.” Assistants paint Liu into the predetermined scene as quickly as they
Photography: Caters News Agency
Liu’s assistants typically need between five and six hours to paint him into a background, which the artist spends a long time choosing
can – usually five to six hours, but sometimes up to 10 – and then photograph him. As a blank canvas, Liu always dons a grey uniform… the same one that the Chinese military uses for daily training. “It’s cheap, and it’s known as civil camouflage,” he says. The past three years have seen the artist in a flurry of group and solo exhibitions around the world, as well as becoming a heavily blogged internet personality. This summer, Liu’s work will be the focus of a solo show at New York gallery Eli Klein Fine Art and also will be a substantial part of the Fotográfica Biennale in Bogotà, Colombia. Both will include his most recent work, a photo series produced in Italy, where Liu disappeared into familiar Italian landscapes such as the Rialto Bridge in Venice. And in a more commercial east-west collaboration, Oris, the Swiss manufacturer of high-end handmade mechanical watches, chose Liu Bolin as a company ‘ambassador’, featuring him in an advertising campaign and film. But these new projects don’t stray too far from his original mission. “In current China, art is not only a pretext. The aim of artistic creation is also to show thought. I hope that, through my works, viewers can understand our society,” he explains. “I hope that an individual can save himself, understand his value and understand his environment, so that he can make it better.” In an age in which China is still repressing its artists subtly and not so subtly (last year, China’s star conceptual artist Ai Weiwei was put under ‘house arrest’ and asked to demolish his studio building in Shanghai), Liu has his work cut out for him at home and abroad. “Some people call me the invisible man, but for me, it’s what is not seen in a picture which is really what tells the story.” How right he is.
There is no digital manipulation whatsoever in Liu’s pieces, which have become favourites of the blogosphere
‘Hiding in The City No. 9’ (2006)
For more images of Liu’s work go to www.elikleinfineart.com
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H
ow was your Christmas? I came to hate those four words. They brought a tightness, a tensing of the heart, a squeezing of the soul and then a sagging of the shoulders after Christmas 2010. My Christmas was not great. My dad died. On Christmas morning. Suddenly. Without warning. Boom. Dead. Gone. No goodbyes. On Christmas morning 2010 I was at the gym in a complex just outside of Salt Rock, some 60km north of Durban, when my mum called and asked to speak to Garrath Rosslee, my friend at whose holiday house we were staying. Garrath and I had been for a gentle run around Salt Rock, sweating out the Christmas Eve beers and Scotch. Mum asked first to speak to Diane, Garrath’s wife. I went out to the pool to look for her, but she was down at the house. She then asked to speak to Garrath. I thought she wanted to wish him a merry Christmas, but when Garrath answered the phone and walked outside to talk to her privately, the sense that something was wrong was so strong I felt shaky and cold despite the sweat pouring down my face. I tend to overthink things, to sketch out scenarios, a defence mechanism, I suppose, to anticipate the worst possible occurrence. I’m usually way off, and this time I was again. Garrath came back inside, and asked his daughter Bella, who’s just four years old, to go and wait outside. Then as he walked towards me he said: “Kev, your dad has just died.” I remember falling, not being able to stand. I remember every solid muscle in my body turning to sponge. I remember flopping on to the floor. I remember not knowing what to remember, what to think. I remember a massive sob. Then another. I remember being cold. I remember being numb. I remember thinking that I had not spoken to my dad for seven years. My mum had wanted someone to tell
Mind’s Eye
A Question of Sorrow With his father passing on Christmas Day, Kevin McCallum comes to terms with his death me my father had died in person. That it was Garrath who had to tell me was fate. Garrath is my oldest friend, from school, through university and on. Garrath knows my family, my mother and two brothers, Brian and Barry, and two nephews, Conor and Breandan. They are all the direct family we have in South Africa. The rest are in Northern Ireland. Garrath knows that my dad and I were not close, and that I had not spoken to him for some years. Garrath was the right person for the wrong time. Garrath picked me up and walked me to the pool. Diane came up with the rest of their four kids, Benji, Adam, Bella and Victoria, who had made the early part of my Christmas morning so special with their unbridled joy. I tried to eat, but my body was having none of it. It cramped, rebelled. I threw up. Dry heaved. Sobbed. I remember walking to the house. Alone. I called my mother. She had been at Mass and when she came back he was dead on the floor. A former nurse, she
tried to breathe and thump life back into him. It was too late. A suspected heart attack. I remember thinking that no one in the family had had heart problems. Then I remember thinking again I had not spoken to my father for seven years. I remember sobbing. The police and paramedics had taken almost three hours to arrive at the house. My brother Brian said the police had been a joke, and one of them, overweight and disinterested, had stepped over my father’s body to ask if he wanted to open “an investigation into the death”. I remember thinking that I probably would have slapped that cop. Hard. Two days later I was at the Virgin Active gym in Bedfordview, having a hard run on the treadmill, seeking physical pain to distract myself from the black vacuum that would hit my head out of nowhere. A friend, Nick, greeted me in the changing rooms and asked me the four words I have come to hate: “How was your Christmas?” I told him and his face dropped. We started talking. I told him I hadn’t spoken to my dad for years. Nick said he hadn’t spoken to his 86-year old dad for 10 years and had been thinking about doing it. He said he would call him soon. I remember feeling good about that. I remember going home. And I remembered the reasons I hadn’t spoken to my dad in years. I remember thinking that I perhaps could have done more, although maybe not. I remember Nick’s words, a phrase my Greek and Jewish friends had passed on to me when they learned of my dad’s passing: “Long life, Kevin.” I remember thinking that I would have a lot more Christmasses in that long life. And I remember knowing they would never be the same again. Kevin McCallum is an award-winning sports journalist and acclaimed columnist for the Independent newspaper group
The Red Bulletin South Africa, ISSN 2079-4282: The Red Bulletin is published by Red Bulletin GMBH Editor-In-Chief Robert Sperl General Managers Alexander Koppel, Rudolf Theierl Editorial Office Anthony Rowlinson (Executive Editor), Stefan Wagner Associate Editor Paul Wilson Contributing Editor Andreas Tzortzis Chief Sub-editor Nancy James Production Editor Marion Wildmann Photo Editors Susie Forman (Chief), Fritz Schuster Deputy Photo Editors Valerie Rosenburg, Catherine Shaw Design Erik Turek (Art Director), Miles English, Judit Fortelny, Markus Kietreiber, Esther Straganz Staff Writers Werner Jessner, Uschi Korda, Ruth Morgan Contributors Martin Apolin, Kimberley Bradley, Ulrich Corazza, Neil Greig, Craig Jarvis, Dan Jones, Piers Martin, Kevin McCallum, Florian Obkircher, Tyrone, Power, Gertrude Reinisch, Thomas Senf, Tatsua Tayagaki, Robert Tighe, Herbert Volker Production Managers Michael Bergmeister, Wolfgang Stecher, Walter Omar Sádaba Repro Managers Christian Graf-Simpson, Clemens Ragotzky Augmented Reality Martin Herz, www.imagination.at International Project Management A product of the Bernd Fisa Finance Siegmar Hofstetter. Editor, South Africa Steve Smith. Corporate Publishing Boro Petric (head); Justin Hynes, Christoph Rietner, Nadja Žele (chief-editors); Dominik Uhl (art director); Markus Kucera (photo director); Lisa Blazek (editor). The Red Bulletin is published simultaneously in Austria, the UK, Germany, Ireland, Kuwait, Poland, South Africa and New Zealand. Website www.redbulletin.com. Head office: Red Bulletin GmbH, Am Brunnen 1, A-5330 Fuschl am See, FN 287869m, ATU63087028. UK office: 155-171 Tooley Street, London SE1 2JP, +44 (0)20 3117 2100. Austrian office: Heinrich-Collin-Strasse 1, A-1140 Vienna, +43 (1) 90221 28800. Printed by CTP Printers, Duminy Street, Parow-East, Cape Town 8000. Advertising enquiries Anthony Fenton-Wells, +27 (0)82 464 6376, or email anthony@tfwcc.net Write to us: email letters@redbulletin.com
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