The Red Bulletin_1203_NZ

Russell Brown / Electric Wire Hustle / Grimes / Jennifer Lawrence / Robbie Maddison / Madonna / Ivan Origone

a beyond the ordinary magazine

march 2012

Le Real DEAL French F1 rookie Jean-Eric Vergne

the science of Red Bull stratos Tech exclusive on the great leap from space

put up & SHOT UP Kiwi champ Valerie Adams just got better

OH LA LA! Charlotte Gainsbourg Reveals All

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Bullhorn

through space and time “you take things more for granted when you’re younger. it’s taken me 40 years to know what i want from myself and to stop dreaming of being someone else all the time.”

With this insight our cover star charlotte gainsbourg reflects on her path to maturity as the daughter of a French cultural icon, all the while trying to establish herself as the very same. in her exclusive interview with The Red Bulletin (page 48), she reveals that it hasn’t always been an easy journey, that the pull of the big screen has always competed with the lure of a musical career. at last, though, she feels reconciled to the competing calls Charlotte Gainsbourg on growing up in the and is confident enough to stand as an artist in her public eye, managing her career choices and her occasional moments of craziness own right, not ‘the daughter of’. and we’re sure you’ll agree that she’s looking mighty fine as a mature artist.

Difficult journeys of a more literal kind are a subject close to the heart of Felix Baumgartner, the daredevil extraordinaire who is in the final stages of preparing his leap from the stratosphere, scheduled for later this year (page 08). perhaps when he lands safely, he and charlotte can compare notes? Both would doubtless find common ground in talking about the satisfaction of achieving life goals, having pursued their dreams since childhood. one day, maybe in 20 or so years’ The Red Bulletin cover shoot: creative director time, new scuderia toro rosso Erik Turek (left) and writer Christophe Couvrat Formula one driver Jean-eric vergne (right) meet Charlotte Gainsbourg (page 56) might be able to join them for a cosy fireside chat about favourite exploits from a brilliant career.

For now though, as he starts out on his own challenging journey, as a rookie F1 pilot, that’s all for the future. For his story, and those of a kaleidoscope of sportsmen, athletes, artists and entertainers, turn the page and get stuck into the latest issue of The Red Bulletin. We hope you enjoy the ride.

Download our free iPad App Now! Your editorial team

cover photography & photography: nicolas guerin

“Life actually does get easier.

Eventually”

EXCLUSIVE THIS MONTH: Toro Rosso Rookie F1 driver Jean-Eric Vergne joins the team Red Bull Stratos An up-close peek at the mission capsule Ice Sailing Watch the top sportsmen in action

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the n ew ! p p a ti e l l u b red

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Fusing high-end magazine editorial with eye-catching moving images.

The essential addition to the print title.

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THE WORLD OF RED BULL

CONTENTS

88

IN MARCH

08

48

36

66

56

30

PHOTOGRAPHY: THOMAS BUTLER, CHRISTIAN PONDELLA/RED BULL STRATOS, PALANI MOHAN, JÖRG MITTER/RED BULL X-FIGHTERS, OSKAR KIHLBORG, SARAH EGLINTON, NICOLAS GUERIN, STEFANO CATTELAN

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RED BULL STRATOS: PART TWO 08 STAR TECH-ING The project’s mission director reveals exactly how Felix Baumgartner’s BASEjump from the stratosphere will happen

Bullevard 22 HERE IS THE NEWS 25 MADONNA Ray of light on Material Girl’s career 26 JENNIFER LAWRENCE Hunger Games star can taste the big time 28 KIT BAG: ALPINE JACKETS Slope style, then and now

Action 36 HOLI FESTIVAL India’s exuberant celebration of colour 48 CHARLOTTE GAINSBOURG Actress and chanteuse on fulfilment at 40 56 F1’S HOTTEST NEW BOY With Toro Rosso rookie Jean-Eric Vergne as he prepares for the big time 66 COOL RUNNINGS World’s top ice sailors gather in Sweden.

Faster than the wind – and no brakes…

72 PURE GOLD: VALERIE ADAMS NZ’s shot put hot-shot has been through tough times, but she’s fave for 2012 gold

30 ME & MY BODY Downhill ski speed demon Ivan Origone

76 ENTER SANDMAN Cyril Despres, Dakar superstar, invites The Red Bulletin to his home in Andorra

32 WINNING FORMULA Wheel deals on world’s tiniest velodrome

Every month

34 LUCKY NUMBERS Tallying up Winter X Games

06 KAINRATH’S CALENDAR 98 MIND’S EYE

84 SOUNDS GOOD Parties, festivals and all-round music overload in Miami 86 FOOD FOR THOUGHT World-renowned chefs 88 PRO TIPS Robbie Maddison goes big and then goes home 90 NZ BAND WATCH Trio Electric Wire Hustle 92 WORLD’S BEST CLUBS Music fans’ favourite: the best live venue in Austin, Texas 92 ESSENTIAL LISTENING Dancey synth pop from prolific multi-tasker Grimes 93 TAKE 5 Inspirations of indie-rock intellectual Stephin Merritt 94 WORLD IN ACTION Our guide to global essentials 96 SAVE THE DATE Out and about this month?

Ink these in your diary 05

illustration: dietmar kainrath

K a i n r at h

06

2 t

he heart of red Bull stratos can be found in lancaster, California, a two-hour drive north of los Angeles in the high desert. here, near the edwards Air Force Base, is where the aeronautics ďŹ rm sage Cheshire is based. Art thompson and his small team of specialists are working on a mission testing the physical and psychological boundaries of mankind at the edge of space.

With its experienced Austrian BAse jumper, a balloon the size of a 79-storey building and an ascent of 36km, red Bull stratos is one of the more ambitious space ventures in recent history. Crucial to the success of the project is the capsule thompson and his team have designed to take Felix Baumgartner high enough for his record-breaking jump from the stratosphere. his protection against a world without air, the capsule crams high tech into a few square metres in a way only the military and aerospace industries can match.

The Red Bulletin got an exclusive ďŹ rst look at Baumgartner’s inner sanctum and his life-support system for a place more hostile than any he has encountered.

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A tiny space in space Inside the tech-crammed capsule keeping Felix Baumgartner alive as he ascends to his Red Bull Stratos mission Words: Werner Jessner photography: Balazs gardi

AdditionAl photogrAphy: ChriStiAn pondellA/red Bull StrAtoS

Real Conditions

Credit:

Temperatures as low as -60ยบC and such low external pressure that the water in the blood would begin to boil. These forces were simulated in the altitude chamber for the capsule and the spacesuit

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2.0 AdditionAl photogrAphy: ChriStiAn pondellA/red Bull StrAtoS, JÖrg mitter/red Bull StrAtoS

Credit:

first stePs

spaceship or balloon?

s

ometimes coincidence is the best manufacturer. irrespective of my aeronautical work, says Art Thompson, such as the role i played for northrop grumman on the B-2 stealth Bomber and similar projects for the us Air Force and nAsA (which, of course, were top secret at the time and were at the very cutting edge of technology). My firm, A2ZFX, builds infrastructure: everything from bars to dJ stands. And we also do stuff for movies such as Batman, Die Hard, The X-Files and Contact.

My friend Arnold schwarzenegger, whom i know through my work in film, was hosting the taurus World stunt Awards where Felix Baumgartner

won a prize for his wingsuit flight across the english Channel. i met Felix at the show. A couple of months later, i flew to linz, Austria, for Art of Kart, a kart race in support of spinal injury research charity Wings For life, where i represented team usA and Felix represented team Austria. (sadly, i can’t remember who won.) After that we moved on to the hungaroring race circuit in hungary, where Felix was driving a Formula one car and i had some friends there driving porsches. We got to know each other, one thing let to the next, and we ended up becoming friends.

A couple of days after i got back to California, the phone rang. it was 6pm my time. “Felix, isn’t it like 3.30 in the morning?,” i said.

“Well, yeah, Art, i just left my girlfriend’s house and i have a question for you. if you wanted to break Joe Kittinger’s record from more than 19 miles up, how would you go about it?” that’s what Felix is like. When he’s involved in something, then he’s on the ball 24/7. the next day, i made a couple of calls to friends from the old days. First was rick searfoss, a former nAsA commander who had flown on the space shuttles Columbia and Atlantis, and had experience as a test pilot.

When he left nAsA, he became the chief judge for the Ansari X priZe, the first private spaceship. the second person i called was erik, a designer. We worked on two solutions for getting a man more than 36km up into the stratosphere. there’s always the traditional method, using the balloon, capsule, and spacesuit to take him up to altitude, or the other way with a rocket plane. rick thought that if we wanted to succeed, we’d have to buy the shell from scaled Composites and the rocket propulsion from XCor, both firms

Art Thompson, the technical project director, explains how he and his team came to design the capsule and what the alternatives were

2.0 first stePs

Spaceship or balloon?

in the Mojave desert working on private spacecraft. our heads were spinning as we worked out the costs. plus, there was a whole range of unsolved problems.

We’d have to catapult Felix out of the spacecraft 36km up, then get the hatch shut again, and get him and the craft back down to earth safely. together with Felix and red Bull we decided to go for the old-fashioned,

romantic, classic balloon option. you can’t go much higher than 36km in a balloon, as beyond that things start to get unpredictable. our balloon is big enough to fill a large stadium.

Anything bigger would be absurdly complicated to handle. so we can be pretty sure that there will never be another person who will ever go one better than our mission under comparable conditions.

Breathing Space While Baumgartner gets 100 per cent oxygen through his helmet, the atmosphere inside the capsule is a carefully monitored and adjustable oxygennitrogen mix, under 0.5 bars of pressure.

Since external pressure decreases during the ascent, the capsule pressure will be reduced accordingly.

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2.1 technology

the capsule

AdditionAl photogrAphy: ChristiAn pondellA/red Bull strAtos

P

hysics has decided the layout of the red Bull stratos capsule, says Art Thompson. the survival cell, which will have pressure of 8psi (0.5 bars) throughout the ascent, is spherical, the best shape for handling physical stress. the size – 6ft in diameter, or approximately 183cm – was dictated by the need for a 4ft (122cm) door that allows Felix to get out of the capsule comfortably and securely wearing his spacesuit and parachute. the original idea of making the pod out of carbon had to be abandoned very quickly. A carbon pod would have expanded in such extreme cold and an almost total absence of oxygen; similarly a door made of transparent, acrylic-based plastic would shrink. so instead the pod was made out of fibreglass, just like in the old days. the mechanism for opening the door is ingenious in its simplicity and efficiency. it slides on a larger rail on its underside and a smaller rail overhead, and leans back about 10 degrees. opening it is relatively easy and energyefficient for Baumgartner. this simple construction, which is completely impermeable thanks to straightforward overpressure and three silicon seals, has another advantage: if the pressure within the capsule should fall for whatever reason, Baumgartner can detach a hose used to ventilate his suit and re-pressurise the door, wedging his feet against the inside of the door to help seal it. the survival pod is surrounded and supported by pipes made of chromium

molybdenum steel: an easy-to-treat, easy-to-weld, robust material that has proved its worth millions of times over in all kinds of things from mountain biking to stock-car racing. the milk-churn shape of the overall unit came about due to the need for extra space. the six 12-volt spacetested batteries for on-board power are stored underneath the pod. similar to truck engine batteries, they are packed in thick polystyrene for thermal isolation. Also bunched together here, to take up as little space as possible, are the oxygen and nitrogen tanks, and all the hardware that doesn’t need a protective atmosphere to work. it’s important to understand that the capsule consists of two completely unconnected worlds. the one inside the pod has a breathable atmosphere; the one outside is utterly at the mercy of drops in temperature and atmosphere as altitude increases. When building the pod, the engineers had to think very carefully about what components could be stuck outside and which ones had to be stored within. obviously, where those two worlds meet – every cable, every circuit that connects those inner and outer worlds – are particular sources of potential danger. that’s why there are as few of them as possible.

A cylinder attached to the pod accommodates the technology behind

the cameras and can perform pretty much the same role as the outside broadcast vehicles you see outside football stadiums (see page 21). the capsule’s side covering is made up of polystyrene about 10cm thick and also covered in a layer of hard plastic. the individual sheets can be removed very easily; the outer shell structure is basically like four thin walls. there’s no need for it to be more sophisticated than that. there are no forces at play on the outer layer on the capsule’s way up to the stratosphere or on its way back to earth with the parachute. Forget about the ceramic tiles once used by space shuttles as a re-entry heat shield. Baumgartner will climb at just a couple of metres per second; there’s no comparison with spacecraft going to and from orbit.

What you can’t see in the pictures is the crush-pad on the bottom of the capsule: approximately 50cm of cardboard in a honeycomb pattern to cushion the impact on landing. once Baumgartner has climbed out, the balloon will be cut by remote control and the capsule will return to earth and land safely, thanks to the parachute. everything went perfectly in the initial tests. the momentum of the impact was measured at 6.8g at the lower end of the force calculated; anything up to 10g is fine.

Size matters At 122cm in diameter, the exit aperture is just big enough for Baumgartner to climb out comfortably while wearing his pressurised suit and parachute. A seat belt similar to those used in passenger planes will prevent him from standing up to his full height during the ascent.

Baumgartner will only be able to stretch out once he’s out in the open.

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Credit:

When he reaches 36km, Felix will be able to see the Earth’s curvature through his window

2.2 life inside

command central

W

e wanted to give Felix something to do on his way up there,” says Marle hewett, 74. hewett would be a friendly American pensioner if it wasn’t for those eyes. they’ve seen a lot. the current red Bull stratos programme Manager and senior Flight test engineer has been a test pilot, led the us naval Academy Aerospace engineering department, served as a navy commander and, just like Joe Kittinger, fought in Vietnam as a fighter pilot. A guy like Marle hewett isn’t easily impressed. he’s used to the fact that the people around him know what to do. the fact that someone of this calibre is on board demonstrates the professionalism of red Bull stratos. A veteran of his stature doesn’t want amateurs around. his judgement of Baumgartner is simple: “smart guy, adaptive, willing, tough, focused. impressive in the air – his helicopter training shines through. the right man for this mission.”

Baumgartner’s workspace has multiple levels, clearly separated from

Control

Back-up

Baumgartner follows Mission Control’s orders. He will only intervene in an emergency.

Every system is at least duplicated, with remote and manual control.

The old space saying of ‘keep it simple and remember to back it up’ applies to every element of the Red Bull Stratos capsule.

The procedure for climbing out alone incorporates 36 points, of which the last one is “jump!”

each other. Because his space suit hinders his movement, favourable cockpit ergonomics are essential. the fact-finding missions for the first prototypes were true prototype constructions. An ikea office chair and foam blocks were moved around inside a plywood capsule mock-up until a harmonious, ergonomically functional layout emerged. only then did the actual implementation of the design begin. the factor that underpinned all design decisions was the need for Baumgartner to be able to take over the controls from his seat in the capsule at any time, even though the red Bull

Marle Hewett, Programme Manager, was a pilot in Vietnam, and went on to top engineering roles with NASA and the US Navy

stratos mission is largely operated

by Mission Control on the ground. every system is backed up and duplicated. german specialists from riedel Communications look after the connection between Mission Control and the stratosphere, a piece of the puzzle whose significance for the success of the mission cannot be overestimated. the large box in the area next to Baumgartner’s left knee contains around 80 circuit breakers, which allow every single function in the capsule to be switched on and off. if anything goes wrong by even the smallest margin, he can intervene manually and deactivate or restart individual circuits. there’s an old space saying: ‘keep it simple and remember to back it up.’ even when the entire red Bull stratos mission is operated remotely from the ground, Baumgartner has to know the position and function of every single circuit breaker and be able to find it with his eyes closed. directly above this impressively complicated-looking switch box is a foldable control panel that shows the most important data for the balloon’s

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2.2

Minibar

at the controls

What felix does next

The drinks holder has space for five bottles – all necessary due to the dehydrating effect of pure oxygen. I can just about reach them in the spacesuit from here.

Atmosphere

This console has the two valves for oxygen and nitrogen, plus pressure gauges which show me the level and composition of the air inside the capsule.

User Manual What’s it like in that compact sanctuary? Endless routine, says Art Thompson, is the best safety mechanism. In preparation for his historic jump, Felix Baumgartner has memorised the location and function of each and every switch by heart, the result of hundreds of practice tests.

Here he reveals what’s within arm’s reach inside his capsule.

Exit

Without this lever there would be no getting out of the capsule. It releases the door mechanism.

Then I fix the open door in position using this red lock.

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Controls

This is my dashboard and rear-view mirror all in one.

The gauge on my left gives me basic data on my position. I can choose from nine different camera angles on the screen next to it.

Balloon

Above me on my left are the valves to control the balloon in case of an emergency.

They’re secured behind locks so that I don’t accidentally operate them.

Circuit breaker

There are about 80 switches on two panels with which I can switch off (and on) every single electric circuit in the capsule.

Radio

During the mission, I’ll be in permanent contact with ground control. It’ll be Joe Kittinger at the end of the line. There are two radio connections so that I can talk and receive at the same time.

2.2 life inside

Command Central

journey. on the adjacent monitor, Baumgartner can switch between nine camera positions. this is very important, because with his mobility restricted by the space suit he’s more or less blind without these cameras despite three mirrors in the capsule and another mounted on his glove). on the floor to the left is space for an additional oxygen bottle that would ensure half an hour’s air supply, in a scenario where all other systems have shut down completely. the lever on the ground to the right decompresses the capsule, and the door can be rolled to the side and locked in place with a red lock on the floor to hold it in place – if it’s shaken by Felix getting out of his seat, for instance (getting locked out of your own capsule isn’t ideal if an emergency requires you to go back in). to Baumgartner’s right are the atmosphere controls. two vents allow him to regulate the air pressure and composition. he breathes in pure oxygen. the air that he breathes out in the suit and then out to the capsule still has a high oxygen quotient. But the composition of the capsule air mustn’t be more than 20-22 per cent oxygen.

Anything else would be too dangerous: one spark and the capsule would go up in flames. therefore, Baumgartner has to mix in nitrogen as a neutraliser. if a fire should break out on board, there’s only one way of putting it out. if the balloon is high enough, opening a door will snuff out the fire, the lack of atmosphere depriving it of the oxygen it needs. to the right, behind the seat, in brackets on the floor, are five drinking bottles with straws that are fed into the helmet through an air-tight flap. human lungs are best suited to breathing air

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Altitude control Two altimeters on Baumgartner’s right-hand side inform him of the progress of the ascent. A third of the way up, he’ll have surpassed the altitude at which trans-continental airliners fly.

When the balloon reaches a height of 23 miles, valves open automatically and restrict it from ascending any further. This protects Baumgartner from too much pressure.

with 100 per cent humidity. pure oxygen dries out the body at a dramatic rate, starting with the lungs, so Baumgartner has to drink constantly to prevent this. of course, what goes into the body must come out, so he wears a kind of condom under his space suit, connected by a tube to a reservoir under the seat. the seat itself comes from a trophy truck – the most stable vehicle in

If a fire should break out, there’s only one way of putting it out: if the balloon is high enough, opening the door will snuff it out

us motor racing. to allow Baumgartner to sit with the parachute on his back, the seat is extended half a metre forward. the length adjustment (for which the lever lies on the right hand side of the seat, diagonally behind the door release) is necessary so that Baumgartner can climb out of the capsule wearing his pressurised suit. there are also three cameras, a stylish ceiling lamp and a carpet of blue leds. the film crews wanted the extra lighting, otherwise the cameras couldn’t have coped with the contrast between the rising sun 36km above the ground and the relatively dark interior of the red Bull stratos capsule. “in any case, i’ve built in three windows,” explains Art thompson with pride. “no other spacecraft comes with such a good view.”

2.3

o

on board

cameras

ur bread-and-butter camera is a spaceready hd camera modified to suit our requirements, says Jay Nemeth. in space, you can forget about using regular equipment. everything has to be spacegrade or altered as such. We get our stuff from specialist suppliers who work with the military or nAsA. We’ve refined and adapted standard settings of the cameras, such as shutter speed, which we changed to a more normal setting to reduce that staccato video Saving Private Ryan kind of look. it should look as natural as possible, with a healthy amount of motion blur. in total, we have nine hd cameras on board. two of them are inside the capsule: one is trained on Felix from the front, another looks over his shoulder. For one thing, that makes for some spectacular pictures, but it also allows the team to monitor Felix’s ascent. if the parachute becomes tangled, Mission Control will see it and can warn him.

Felix has two hd cameras on the suit, one looking up, the other looking down. there’s also a go-pro camera mounted on the chest pack he wears, which allows a 110-degree view of Felix during free fall. For the narrative of the story it’s important that you can look him in the eye during the mission (at least through a lowered visor) and later on, to see how the parachute opens. of the exterior cameras, i’d like to highlight the ones mounted on arms in airtight aluminium housing. We packed a hd camera, photo camera (Canon eos 5d with 14mm wide-angle lens) and a red camera in the housing. one of the most sophisticated cameras available, the red takes shots that are good enough to be

used at iMAX cinemas. We’ve modified our red cameras so that we can use standard Canon single-lens reflex lenses. it’s pretty tight in the aluminium cylinders, which each weigh around 55kg and can stand internal pressure of three times what they will experience in the vacuum of near space. We draw out all the oxygen and moisture from the cylinders and create a 100 per cent nitrogen atmosphere. you have to do that so they don’t fog up. the red cameras produce a huge amount of heat, and the ventilators require some kind of air to fan them. the technology we’re using

Jay Nemeth is in charge of Red Bull Stratos images (film and stills). For 25 years he’s been filming everything that flies. He has also completed a parabolic flight, which means he’s coped with Zero-G conditions and managed, in his own words, “not to vomit all over the other crew members.”

Triple eye Red Bull Stratos has three digital cameras – two video, one stills – mounted on arms on the capsule exterior. They’ll be taking the most spectacular pictures.

During the ascent the stills camera takes a photo every 10 seconds.

When Felix Baumgartner steps out, it will shoot continuously.

2.3 on board

Cameras here isn’t exactly new – it’s also been used to film rocket launches from below, but as far as i know no one’s used it at an altitude of 36km.

All the information the cameras capture is collected in the upper part of the capsule. the technology we have here is equivalent to something like a complete outside broadcast unit, including microwave downlink. there are nine hd recorders, nine camera controllers, multiplexers, converters, audio elements, voltage regulators, circuit breakers, telemetry, coolers, remote controls for everything. i don’t

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think so many elements have ever been brought together in such a small space before. the cabling for the whole thing is a real achievement. the camera unit is connected to the control panel inside the capsule with a 128-bit interface.

While we want to spare Felix the effort, he must be in a position to assume manual operation of the cameras if there are problems with operating remotely. With that in mind, we’ve modified the recorders so that they can either be operated remotely or automatically go into recording mode as soon as the power is connected. here we’re working with a back-up for the back-up; we simply can’t afford the possibility that there’s nothing saved on the chips once Felix jumps. in total we generate 3tB of data through the on-board cameras alone, so the memory rate had to be reduced from 100MB to a still-excellent 50MB per second. Conventional hard drives with moving parts are a big no-no. they

wouldn’t work up there, but if they’re outside of the capsule atmosphere, they are subject to near-vacuum conditions and low temperatures, without protection. that’s why we work exclusively with solid-state memory media. www.redbullstratos.com

Video recorder The centrepiece for documenting Red Bull Stratos fulfills the functions of an outside broadcast truck and still fits in the top of the capsule. It will record 3TB of data.

After everything keeping Baumgartner alive, the video is the most important element: no footage, no proof.

Credit:AdditionAl photogrAphy: Sven hoffmAnn/red Bull StrAtoS

3

NEXT MONTH Read all about the balloon

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Bullevard Sport and culture on the quick

Fund times Good cause, hard yards: raising money at the limits of human endurance

RUNNING FOR PARKINSON’S Sam Fox (USA) ran the equivalent of 100 marathons in 60 days – 4,260km, from Canada to Mexico – to raise cash for Michael J Fox’s (no relation) charity foundation. www.runwhileyoucan.org

DARN GOOD Crochet gets cachet thanks to the urban knitter who’ll pull the wool over anything She sets out at night, stalking the streets of her adoptive New York City.

But instead of a spray can, Olek takes needles and wool, and rather than walls, the 33-year-old Polish-born artist targets free-standing features of the cityscape: shopping trolleys, statues, cars. This new strain of street art is called ‘yarnbombing’.

Almost everything in Olek’s apartment is crocheted, and she stitches up full body outfits for her friends. “What do I intend to reveal?” she says. “You have to pull the end of the yarn and unravel the story behind the crochet.” She means pull the end metaphorically, of course. www.agataolek.com

CYCLING FOR AUTISM This month, Canadian Adam Biel sets out on his bike from Ushuaia, Argentina; 100 days and 22,500km later, he’ll be in Pridhoe Bay, Alaska. Proceeds go to an autism foundation. www.cyclepanamerica.com

It doesn’t always have to be socks: Olek turns crochet into street art

PICTURES OF THE MONTH

EVERY SHOT ON TARGET

CLIMBING FOR KIDS Swiss duo Karo Steinberg, 27, and Jenny Staiger, 28, are climbing 10 Latin American mountains to generate funds for an organisation helping Bolivian street children. www.moun10ear.com

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Taken a picture with a Red Bull flavour?

Email it to us: phototicker@redbulletin.com Every month we print a selection, and our favourite pic is awarded a limited-edition Sigg bottle. Tough, functional and well-suited to sports, it features The Red Bulletin logo.

Costa Rica Surfing, 1970s style (although

less chest hair) at Red Bull Blast From The Past.

Tony Roberts

Whawazat?

Blink ’n’ miss sporting hits

DRAWN OUT From sequencer to sequential art: a rock star does a comic turn

‘Hey, guy in the black cap? It’s hands in the air’

PHOTOGRAPHY: BEN SALVETTI, GREG CONSTANTAKIS, COURTESY MOUN10EAR, KARL GIANT, AGATA OLEK, JENNSTARR PHOTO DAN WILTON/RED BULL CONTENT POOL, IMAGO (2), GETTY IMAGES (1). ILLUSTRATIONS: COURTNEY TAYLOR-TAYLOR

Busting beats in New York For aspiring musicians it sounds like paradise: leaving the breadline behind and spending several uninterrupted days with your idols, beavering away in a studio. But this is no pipe dream.

It’s a paradise whose doorway stands wide open, and the sign over the door reads ‘Red Bull Music Academy’.

Since 1998, the music camp has been roaming the globe, pitching its tents for four weeks each year, in cities such as Cape Town, Berlin, Toronto and most recently Madrid. The location changes, but you will always find the latest sound equipment, 60 knowledge-hungry young musicians from around the world, and music industry ‘lecturers’ – the likes of Carl Craig, Mark Ronson, dupstep meister Skream and producer Arthur Baker. The big guns don’t just pop their heads in to say hello. They stay for days at a time, leading discussions and studio sessions from breakfast to late-night snacks.

In autumn, the Red Bull Music Academy will take place in New York. Interested?

Musicians, DJs, vocalists and producers – no matter what genre – are invited to apply online. Applications close April 2. www.redbullmusicacademy.com

IVO KARLOVIC 251.4kph The Croatian landed tennis’s zippiestever serve in March 2011, during a Davis Cup doubles match against Germany.

DENIS KULYASH 177.6kph During the 2012 KLH All-Star Game half time show in St Petersberg, the Russian hit hockey’s hastiest puck.

Courtney Taylor-Taylor, frontman for US group The Dandy Warhols: so good they named him twice and, in the words of his most famous song, a Bohemian Like You. Now he’s turning a new page in his career, as author of a graphic novel, One Model Nation, set in gloomy 1970s Berlin. A synthesizer band find themselves caught in the crossfire between the Baader-Meinhof Group and government forces, before suddenly disappearing.

Why this story?

I love German music from the ’70s – Kraftwerk and all that – and from there I stumbled on the Red Army Faction.

When I was on tour in Germany, I spoke to eyewitnesses and tried to get a feel for the times.

What made you write?

Hip-hop films. Those guys got cops, guns, drugs: action!

What do you get if you’re into rock? Spinal Tap, that’s your movie. Anytime anyone ever tried to make a movie about rock, it sucked. So I figured I was uniquely qualified to portray a band the way bands really are. Eventually it turned into a comic.

What’s next for you?

The new Dandy Warhols album is coming out in April and it’s going to be really guitar-heavy. www.onemodelnation.com

JASON ZUBACK 328kph The American golfer, a five-time longest drive world champ, hit the all-time fastest ball, in any sport, in 2007.

WE HAVE A WINNER!

St. Johann Franky Zorn leads the way at a World Cup ice speedway qualifier.

Félix Rioux

San Francisco Gary Bartz (sax) and Aloe Blacc (mic) jam at a Red Bull Music Academy event.

Lauren Crew

Sydney Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series, l to r: Jorge Ferzuli, David Colturi, Steve LaBue, Blake Aldrige.

Dean Treml 23

B U L L E VA R D

French new waves cinema

The course after desert In January, Chris Birch spent 15 days riding his bike through sand and mud and mountains in the Dakar Rally. An obstacle course in downtown Auckland, therefore, should be a walk in the park for him. However, he’s the race organiser for this one too. “Riding your own event sucks,” says Birch, of his experience racing and ruling over the first Red Bull City Scramble in Auckland in 2009. “I was so exhausted I fell asleep on a chilly bin before the final.” Regardless, Birch finished second, and is hoping to go one better at the second Red Bull City Scramble on April 1. The event is open to anyone who fancies showing off their motocross skills, and will also feature top international enduro riders. “This time we’ll have more riders, more obstacles and a few other surprises,” Birch says. www.redbull.co.nz

Amsterdam A jam session on opening night of the new Red Bull Studios.

Arenda De Hoop 24

IT’S ALL YOURS

Andrew Henry, son of World Cup-winning All Blacks coach Graham, is a sneaker pimp  : What inspired you to become a shoe designer?  : I’ve been collecting sneakers for many years. I wanted to create the perfect sneaker and stamp my mark on a culture that has inspired me in countless ways.

How did you come up with the name ‘Yours’?

A friend gave it to me. He said, “You’ve done this all on your own: It’s all yours.”

It makes sense. They’re designed by me, for you.

Whose feet would you most like to see them on?

Yohji Yamamoto [Japanese fashion designer].

Oslo Holding on for dear life and victory at the Red Bull Sparkstøtting Supercross sledge contest.

Gali Anikeyev

If you could spend a day in someone else’s shoes, whose would they be?

Jeb Corliss [BASE jumper, wingsuit pilot].

If you weren’t wearing Yours, what would you wear?

A frown.

If money was no object, what sneakers would you buy?

A pair of signed Air Jordans, worn by the man himself during an NBA championship win.

What’s next?

We’re launching a website, where our sneakers will be available to buy online. I’m talking to more international retailers, and planning my next line. I’m busy. www.yoursruoy.com

Guadalajara Old-school, new generation: skaters take to the drains at Red Bull Drenaje.

Miguel Angel Virgen Lopez

PHOTOGRAPYH: SEWN, GRAEME MURRAY/RED BULL CONTENT POOL, OSCAR LINDBERG, SHADOWLANDS.CO

Frenchman Nicolas Brikké came to New Zealand five years ago to study earthquakes. He ended up making a surfing movie.

SEWN (an acronym of south, east, west and north) is the first New Zealand-made longboarding film in over a decade. In 2008, shortly after winning an award for a short at the Surf Fest film festival, Brikké began a Graduate Diploma in Arts in Film at Victoria University, Wellington, where he was doing his masters in geophysics. “Half the week I was using my scientific brain,” says Brikké, “and the other half, my creative brain.” In 2010 he packed his bags for a seven-month, 22,000km road trip around the North Island coast; SEWN resulted. “It’s not surf porn,” he says. “It’s about the journey, the people and the culture.” www.sewn.co.nz

b u l l e va r d

where’s your head at?

Madonna

A new album, a new movie, the Super Bowl half-time show… it could be 1992, 2002 or 2012 and Madonna still fits that bill. She’s had the most remarkable life and career

Ju sti fy My Lo

Who ’s That Girl

ve Madonna’s marriage to Sea n Penn ended in divorce in 1989. She was married to director Guy Ritchie from 2000-2 008. Her current boyfriend is a 24-year-old dancer. Her relationships will never be out of the headlines. “Aren’t people tired of that subject?” she said during an interview on US TV in January. “I need a partner in life.”

Bay City Mercy Hospital, Michigan, 7.05am, Saturday August 16, 1958. Madonna Louise Fortin Ciccone gives birth to Madonna Louise Ciccone. Mom dies when Little Nonni is five. Little Nonni works hard in school, joins cheerleading squad, just wants to dance. Drops out of college (studying dance), goes to New York to dance pro. Forms band, then another, then solo record deal. First single, Everybody, October 1982.

Tak e A Bow

Madonna can be relied on to give good video. Her promos have been directed

by Hollywood filmmakers such as David Fincher, the director of The Social Network, who shot Madge in t Vogue and Express Yourself. Her recen work is no less memorable: morphing into a flock of birds in Frozen, dancing in a pink leotard in Hung Up.

Into The Groov e

By 1984, Madonna is one of pop’s big three, with Jacko and Prince. Songs like Holiday, Material Girl and Like A Virgin are global smashes, helping a music video channel called MTV take root. She marries actor Sean Penn on her 27th birthday in 1985, the same year she stars in her first movie, Desperately Seeking Susan.

Ge t To ge th

er As befits the best-se lling female solo artist of all-tim e, Lady Madonna has comp leted eight major tours and fou r smaller, promo tours. Of the eight, 2008-9’s Sticky & Sweet tour was the biggest, wit h 85 dates in 32 countries in fro nt of 3.5m fans, and a total gro ss of US $407.7m. With tha t, the other tours and ab out 300m records sold, she is said to be worth around half a billion dollars.

words: Paul wilson. illustration: lie-ins and tigers

Mu sic

Think what you will of Ma donna (everyone has an opinion): her contribution to pop music has been immense.

A 30-year career in music is common, but hers does not fall back on the big hits and depend on an ageing audience. She has Best Songs of the 1980s (take your pick), 1990s (Vogue, Ray Of Light) and 2000s (Music, Hung Up). And no Madonna, no Girl Power, no Britney et al, and no Lad y Gaga.

Lik e A Vir gin

Hung Up

Hollywood

This year, Madonna’s second film as director, W.E., received poor notices. She is criticised for her movie career, which is a bit like having a go at Michael Jordan for his years in baseball. She’s actually very good in Desperately Seeking Susan, Dick Tracy and A League Of Their Own, while Madonna: Truth Or Dare, aka In Bed With Madonna, is one of the best behind-the-scenes music docs.

In 1994, writer Norman Mailer turned his attentions to Madonna in a long article for Esquire magazine.

He wrote about himself in the third person (“Ten years ago, Mailer would have said to himself, ‘Damn the torpedoes; full speed ahead – Madonna on my lap!’”), railed against safe sex and compared her videos to poetry. “That’s interesting,” she said of the video/poetry thing, and speaking for us all. “Never thought of that.”

Madonna has moved with the times mainly by working with contemporary producers and artists. On new album M.D.N.A., out in March, she’s working with French electro artist Martin Solveig, while MIA and Nicky Minaj also feature.

Madonna’s new album, M.D.N.A., is out this month: www.madonna.com

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b u l l e va r d

Jennifer in the role of Katniss, competing in a fight to the death

With BoW And ArroW

don’t wear hundred-thousand-dollar gowns. I just kept thinking, ‘I’m going to spill something on this or I’ll get pit stains on it.’ At the Golden Globes, it was so cold that I wrapped myself up in the train of my dress.

Have you learned to deal with all this now?

Harry Potter, Twilight… The Hunger Games? Can Luckily I have people helping me with fashion. when another set of hit teen fantasy novels make for a global I was just doing indie films and acting, I thought all film franchise? Its star won’t be out celebrating if it does I had to do was memorise my lines, but there are a lot of political parts of this job that I wasn’t aware of. If Despite moving to New York when she was 14, you wear this dress, then you won’t be able to wear Born Jennifer Lawrence still has a rural twinkle in that designer. You wanna wear this dress, although August 15, 1990, her eye. Born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky, it’s ugly, because you’ll make this designer happy.

Louisville, Kentucky, USA the 21-year-old also has a charming smile and In The Hunger Games, your character is also Smart decisions a healthily grown-up attitude to Hollywood’s thrown into the limelight.

Having decided, aged hype factory. She’s been on the shop floor when I had the meeting with the director, 14, that she wanted since the 2010 film Winter’s Bone, in which it was in the middle of Oscar season. I to be an actress, she plays a girl caring for her family and know exactly what it means to be thrown Lawrence’s parents searching for her father in meth-making, in this world where you feel like a rag agreed, but only after she graduated backwater America. It’s a tremendous doll, where people are telling you what high school. So she performance that rightly earned her to do. You don’t really feel like yourself. graduated two years an Oscar nomination for Best Actress.

It’s a very physical role. early, with top grades Now Lawrence is set to hit the big time How did you prepare for that?

Early riser with The Hunger Games, a movie based About six weeks of archery, which was Her Oscar nomination on the first in a trilogy of hugely successful new to me, but I loved it. I ate more on for Best Actress, aged young-adult novels by Suzanne Collins. this movie than on any other, because it 20, made her the second youngest in that Lawrence plays Katniss, a 16-year-old was non-stop physically and I needed energy.

The film will hit the big category, behind Keisha girl who volunteers to take her sister’s The Hunger Games could be a huge screen on March 23 Castle-Hughes, who was place in a televised battle to the death success. Are you aware that this 13 when she got the nod among teenagers – a national punishment/ movie could change your life drastically? for Whale Rider (2002) entertainment in a post-apocalyptic America.

I don’t like going out that much. I’m kind of a Coming soon homebody. So I was stressing out one time, like, She has just finished The Red BulleTin: Did you enjoy ‘Oh my God, when these movies come out I won’t shooting Silver Linings your first year in the limelight? be able to go to a bar and just hang out,’ but I’m Playbook, a comedy, alongside Robert De jennifeR lawRence: It was amazing because I still always lying to get out of those things anyway.

Niro, due for release can’t believe it actually happened, it still hasn’t really So now I have an excuse. I can’t go, I’m famous. at the end of 2012 www.thehungergamesmovie.com sunk in. Oscar season was weird, so unreal. I usually 26

wOrDS: fLOrIAN OBKIrCHer. PHOTOGrAPHY: LIONSGATe fILmS

jennifer Lawrence

pepejeans.com

B U L L E VA R D

KIT EVOLUTION

PEAK PERFORMANCE

FIRST ASCENT ROBERT LAWRIE ALPINE JACKET, 1953 Mount Everest, May 29, 1953: as New Zealander Edmund Hillary becomes the first person to conquer Everest, he is wearing a made-to-measure jacket created by London equipment specialist Robert Lawrie. Lawrie, 28

himself an experienced climber and amateur racing driver, had been producing hiking boots, alpine equipment and clothing since the 1930s. In the 1950s, Lawrie Ltd made its jackets from tightly woven cotton. “In the

post-war era this clothing was state of the art: relatively waterproof and light,” remembers Hillary’s son Peter. Later, he would wear his father’s Everest jacket on skiing holidays. www.aucklandmuseum.com

WORDS: ANDREAS ROTTENSCHLAGER

Record-breaking mountain climbers need protective clothing of the highest order.

In 60 years, their jackets have moved from offering relative refuge to complete coverage

PHOTOGRAPHY: ROSS BROWN, KURT KEINRATH

B U L L E VA R D

LAST WORD SCHÖFFEL ROPE TOURING JACKET, 2012 K2, August 23, 2011: on her seventh attempt, Austrian mountaineer Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner conquers the 8,611m peak, on the border between Pakistan and China, making her the first woman to climb all 14 ‘eight-thousanders’

without additional oxygen. Among her K2 kit is a Rope touring jacket, made by Bavarian alpine outfitters Schöffel, whose outdoor tailoring goes back more than 200 years to 1804. They currently cater for discerning

English country gents as well as cold-weather warriors. The Rope jacket’s outer is a triplelayer wind- and waterproof Gore-Tex Pro Shell – a world away from Hillary’s cotton coat. www.schoeffel.com

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B U L L E VA R D

ME AND MY BODY

IVAN ORIGONE

The 24-year-old Italian speed skier doesn’t use weights, doesn’t play mind games and doesn’t fret about stealing from his brother

ME AT ON TH E BO NE

LY

when I was I first put on a pair of skis in my first race t par k too , old rs yea e thre I wanted to be on n the from at seven and d in the owe a professional. At 15, I foll – he’s eight one Sim r the bro my footsteps of speedto t wen years older than me – and the fact but ry, wor s ent par Our skiing camp. each t por sup we that we are two and that them. res ssu rea ns atio situ t other in difficul

OH NO, BRO

My greatest successes so far have been the overall World Cup victory in 2008 and the junior world record of 250.7kph, which I set in 2006. I have one main target for the future: to improve the overall world reco rd of 251.4kph, set in 2006 by Simone – he’s also a four-time world champion. He woul dn’t be happy, but records are there to be brok en, and at least it would still belong to our family.

TO THE LIM IT

although Someone could hit 260kph on skis, in perfect te athle al ption exce an take d it woul be the could ce Fran conditions. Les Arcs in has no long, very is there se cour The . place sun, the to sed expo deep ruts and is fully of lot a has team ional nisat orga the and experience in achieving an absolutely even surface suited to high speeds.

NO WOR RIES

I have no fear, especially not when racing.

I’m not afraid of death, either. The only thing that spooks me is the idea of getting seriously ill. I don’t do any mental training, but I do have the ability to concentrate and to completely shut myself off from the outside world before a race.

SELF PRE SERVATION

d The main qualities you need for spee to y abilit an and age skiing are cour concentrate, because the greatest stresses and strains are mental. You also need strong leg and stomach muscles. I get as fit as I need to be with athletics training, but I only do exercises using my own body weight, due to the pains in my back.

FO RE ST DU MP

Unfortunately I’ve suf fere d my share of injuries, the worst of whi ch happened in 2009. I lost a ski while training in Champoluc, in Italy. The re was no safety netting on the slope and I hur tled into the woods at 140kph. I broke three ver tebrae, an upper arm bone and a rib, and had severe bruising and a pel vic fracture.

It took about a year to rec over fully.

I’ve been left with a big sca r on my arm, which still had screws in it until last year.

PURE ADRENALIN I’m a real speed junkie. I like fast cars and motorbikes. I recently got to take a few laps on a Ducati at the Mugello circuit [near Florence, in northern Italy]. It was a fantastic experience.

On the other hand, I’m also very close to nature and love cycling or taking my dog Balu for a walk.

Going, going, Origone! www. fis-ski.com

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WORDS: ULRICH CORAZZA. PHOTOGRAPHY: STEFANO CATTELAN

KEEP IT IN TH E FAMI

S I weigh 78kg. In my sport it’s important not to be too light, but it’s hard to stick to a strict diet during the rac ing season. In the pre-season I eat foods rich in protein, but in general, I make sure I hav e a good balance between proteins, carboh ydrates and fat. I like meat and pasta best. There’s only one thing I hate: pep eroncini [sweet Italian peppers].

Saatchi & Saatchi Gallery presents

DicK FriZZell OtiS FriZZell MiKe WeStON

Opening 30th March 6pM. The Strand Bldg. 125 The Strand, Parnell.1st April – 27th April 2012.

B U L L E VA R D

WINNING FORMULA

TURNING CIRCLES

To stay in the saddle on the world’s smallest bicycle racetrack, riders must obey the rules of cycling and the laws of physics

It’s biker against biker in this 25m oval. Red Bull Mini Drome is cycling at its most thrilling and physical in the minimum of space

WORDS: ANDREAS ROTTENSCHLAGER, DR MARTIN APOLIN. PHOTOGRAPHY: VINCENT CURUTCHET. ILLUSTRATION: MANDY FISCHER

THE SPIN “I’d never competed on such a small track before,” says Chris Akrigg, from Yorkshire, winner of the 2011 Red Bull Mini Drome event in London. “It was funny. I got totally dizzy after the first qualification rounds, but in the finals, where you race one against one, I felt much more comfortable by focusing on the lines on the track.” On the 25m circuit, Akrigg posted a fastest lap time of 3.232 seconds and a top speed of 36.2kph. His recipe for success on the small oval: “Trust in your grip as you go into the curves, try to establish constant speed and, most importantly, have fun.”

THE FACTS “Fixed-gear bikes are the order of the day for Red Bull Mini Drome,” says Dr Martin Apolin, from Vienna’s Institute of Physics. That is, single speed, non-freewheeling bicycles.

But what top speed can be achieved? “Let’s assume that the highest number of revolutions you can pedal due to the minimal dimensions of the tiny track is 110rpm. The front cog wheel (the chain ring) has 42 sprockets, the rear one (the pinion) has 16. If the chain ring has made a full turn, that means the pinion must have also have turned around the 42 sprockets, ie 2.6 times. If the rider pedals at 110rpm, that means the rear wheel is turning at just under 289rpm.

“A 28in wheel with a tyre has a diameter of about 68cm.

Using C = πd we get a circumference, C, of just under 2.14m.

If the rear wheel rotates at 289rpm, that gives us a speed of about 617m per minute. That equates to approximately 10.3 metres per second or 37kph. This estimate corresponds to values which have been recorded at the track.

“Then there are the bends – how great is the acceleration there? To calculate the centripetal acceleration, acp, which keeps the bikers on the circuit, we use acp = v²/r, where v is speed and r is the radius of the bend. With a bend radius of 2m, accelerations of up to 5g can be generated (see fig 1).

“When a rider is tilting, the centripetal force, Fcp , is caused by gravity, Fg, and ground reaction force, Fgr (see fig 2). The latter comes from Newton’s third law: force is equal to counterforce. In this instance, the bike exerts a force on the ground and the ground exerts an equal force on the bike, but in the opposite direction. Looking at the diagram, we can deduce that tan = Fg /Fcp and therefore = arctan (Fg /Fcp ). As we calculate centripetal force using Fcp = mv²/r and the gravitational force with Fg = mg, it follows that = arctan (mg/(mv²/r)) = arctan (rg/v²).

“If we use a value of 2m for the radius and g of 10m/s², we come up with the values for the correlation between speed and tilting position given in fig 3. So at top speed, the tilt to the horizontal ( ) is only somewhere in the region of 12 degrees.”

The next Red Bull Mini Drome is on April 13 in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA: www.redbull.com

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B U L L E VA R D

LUCKY NUMBERS

WINTER X GAMES Now biannual (one in the US, one in Europe), the pinnacle of freestyle ski and snowboard competition generates its fair share of outstanding stats

150

Shaun White

The Olympic Games have never been very kind to snowboard-crosser Nate Holland. He came 14th in Turin in 2006 and fourth in Vancouver in 2010.

But when it comes to the X Games he can do almost no wrong. Between 2006 and 2012, the American secured six gold medals and a bronze (2011) and his five consecutive wins are a record in any single discipline.

Chas Guldemond

3

1

Mark McMorris

Events such as ice climbing and snowmountain-biking no longer feature in the competition. At the first Winter X Games, Sweden’s Jennie Waara set a benchmark that still stands. Her gold medal in the Snowboard X (that’s ‘cross’, not ‘ex’), silver in the Half Pipe and bronze in the Slopestyle make her the only person to medal in the three major snowboard categories at a Winter X Games.

100

Shaun White is Mr Winter X Games.

The California-based snowboarder has won a dozen gold medals, three silvers and two bronzes, and pulled off his latest landmark feat in the 2012 Snowboard Superpipe competition, where his winning turn was awarded the Winter X Games’ first-ever perfect score of 100. “I’ve been waiting for a perfect run all my life,” said White. The previous best Winter X Games mark of 99.33 points was set by White’s compatriot Chas Guldemond in Slopestyle at Tignes in 2011.

6

Nate Holland Sebastien Toutant

Australian freestyle motocrosser Jackson Strong showed what he was made of at the 2011 Summer X Games in Los Angeles by pulling off the first front flip in history, his efforts earning him the gold medal in the Moto X Best Trick competition. At the 2012 Winter X Games in January, American Heath Frisby did the same – on a snowmobile. “It means everything to me to have achieved this jump,” he said immediately afterwards. It meant everything to his watching parents and grandparents that he landed safely.

52

Prodigiously-talented-youngsters-provokingjealousy alert: Canada’s Sebastien Toutant won the 2011 Snowboard Slopestyle competition on his Winter X Games debut aged just 18.

In second place was 17-year-old fellow Canadian Mark McMorris (who also in 2011 became only the second person ever to pull off a triple backside cork 1440 on a snowboard) and in third, another 17-year-old, Tyler Flanagan from the USA, making for a combined podium age of just 52.

Winter X Games Europe, March 14-16: espn.go.com

34

WORDS: ULRICH CORAZZA. PHOTOGRAPHY: ESPN (5), GETTY IMAGES (1)

The Winter X Games has been determining the world’s best snowsports freestyle athletes since 1997. Every one of the 16 events has been held in the USA; since 2002, its home has been Aspen, Colorado.

Winter X Games Europe will be held for the third time in the French resort of Tignes on March 14-16, where 150 world-class athletes will duke it out for medals in eight disciplines.

action

A Rush Of

COLOUR

The Holi festival unites India in a blaze of glorious celebration, crossing regional borders and religious boundaries with its multicoloured, multicultural exuberance. The Red Bulletin (red to begin with, at least) explores another rainbow nation Words: Arkadiusz PiÄ…tek, Palani Mohan Photography: Palani Mohan

36

in the pink Holi is a Hindu festival marking the end of winter and the coming of spring. It is a celebration of the god Krishna, in which crowds throw coloured powder and coloured water, representing a moment in Krishna’s life when he complained about the contrast between the colour of his skin and that of his lover, Radha. His mother applied colour to Radha’s face; today’s Holi is about getting colour everywhere Holi spirit: Pigment-drenched crowd in Nandgaon, Uttar Pradesh, in north-east India

One FOr all

Depending on where you are in India (or countries with significant Indian Hindu populations), Holi can last up to two weeks; the colour-rich part is usually one or two days. In the same way that Christmas is celebrated by non-Christians, Holi has grown to become a joyous occasion for people outside the religion in which it originated, while still remaining a key date in the Hindu calendar.

Left: Shoes outside a temple in Vrindavan, Uttar Pradesh.

Above: A holy man on Holi.

Facing page, from top: Powder for sale; orange crush

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action

crowd pleased There is no such thing as a spectator at Holi: if you are out in the street, then you are a legitimate target for the coloured water and powder.

Shops and offices close; streets, parks and public spaces fill with revellers. Holi is also a festival of love; a complete stranger throws something in your face, possibly ruining your clothes, and you both hug afterwards. Women rip the shirts from men’s backs and are thanked for it. It’s great fun, joyous, spiritual.

Spring greens: The verdant powders and waters represent the coming of the new season, in Nandgaon

action

41

action

VrindaVan The centre of Holi festivities is an area of Uttar Pradesh, about three hours’ drive south of Delhi, where Krishna is said to have grown up. The holy city of Vrindavan has a Krishna temple to which hundreds of thousands of people flock, filling the city’s narrow streets as they go.

Coloured powder and water rain from rooftops and windows; vendors ensure no one goes without. Children are held aloft as the priests in the temple reveal images of Krishna to the crowds.

Right: Even the elderly enter the fray. Above: “If you lose me, look for the stick.”

Facing page: Red in the face

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action

44

the people united Holi’s collective celebration crosses social boundaries and ignores India’s caste system.

Even tourists are welcome (and many turn up). The colours don’t discriminate.

Known as ‘gulal’, the powders were once made using plant material. These days it’s all artificial, but some flowers and petals are also thrown.

More mud than colour.

Below: A breath of fresh air.

Facing page, from top: Women use their saris for protection; going green

CREDIT

Street vendors such as this man line every street during the Holi festival celebrations.

Below: Might as well give up – there’s no way of avoiding being drenched in coloured dye

ADDITIonAl PHoTogRAPHy: CHARlIE MoHAn

A

t the high point of the festival,” says photographer Palani Mohan, “you’d better just go with the flow. It’s pointless trying to plan your way through the crowds. The sheer number of people celebrating Holi means you can barely move your arms from your sides. But what a feeling...

I was covered in dye within a few minutes. The powder and water bombs don’t just come from close range. We were targeted from balconies, rooftops and windows – people leaning out of their houses to get us. The colours got into every pore of my body – and into every part of my camera.

“My strongest memory of my time there was of complete strangers rubbing dye over each other with their bare hands.

They roar with laughter, scream. It was a little bit scary, actually. you haven’t got a hope when it comes to this kind of assault.

“The masses celebrating in the holy city of Vrindavan all want to get to the Krishna temple, which marks the centre of festivities. you can hear the noise in there from far away: singing, clapping and the pounding, drum-beat-like stampede of thousands of feet on marble floors. The crowd sweeps people along, past street vendors selling bags of colour on rickety tables.

A surge took me into the temple along with hundreds of others.

The plumes of dye were more intense here than outside. “yellows, greens and reds engulf us. It is overcrowded and stuffy. Everyone dances with their arms aloft in honour of Krishna. His likeness is hidden behind a curtain. The priests only reveal it for a short time every now and again. When they do, the crowd gets ever more excited. It is spiritual, whether you are a believer or not. I have three tips for anyone wanting to experience the Holi festival: wear old clothes, take sunglasses and don’t think you’ll come away unstained.”

Holi festival in 2012 begins on March 8: www.india.gov.in

Above: a jubilant moment as hands are raised in thanks to Krishna at the Banke Bihari temple in Vrindavan

Photographer Palani Mohan was born in Chennai, India, in 1967, and moved to Sydney, Australia with his family in 1979. His subjects have included rickshaw drivers in Kolkata and elephants across Asia. Four books of his work have been published. www.palanimohan.com

47

Action

“It has taken me 40 years to know what I want and stop dreaming of being someone else‌ 48

Charlotte Gainsbourg has won critical aclaim for her work as a singer and an actress. “I don’t want to choose,” she tells The Red Bulletin. “I love being both”

Fashion: Balenciaga Production: thierry KauFFmann stylist: cecile garnier hair: cyril laloue/Jed root maKe-uP: audrey gaultier/Box management retouching: la souris

Action

…it takes time, all that stuff” Despite famous parents and a life lived in the public eye, Charlotte Gainsbourg is very much her own woman. With successful careers in music and movies, and a growing family to keep her sweet, she nevertheless would like impossible dreams, less boredom and perhaps a time machine Words: Christophe Couvrat Photos: Nicolas Guerin

C

harlotte gainsbourg has just one request. she asks if it’s possible to have a quiet room, and when one is found, she’s happy. in a studio in an eastern suburb of Paris, the actresssinger, or vice-versa, is comfortable in her natural state. it’s only when the camera starts to flash that the smile on her lips starts to wane. little by little, she relaxes again. “i’m slow,” she says, in a quiet voice, which in some ways is to be expected.

From L’Effrontée, the 1985 movie for which she won a césar, the French film industry award, to Stage Whisper, her new record, a double album of live versions of existing songs, and studio versions of new ones (and, in the special edition, a dVd of concert footage from her 2010 world tour), gainsbourg has maintained a gentleness. she has certainly always looked that way; in appearance she is very much the child of her mother, the english actress Jane Birkin, and her father, the French singersongwriter and national treasure serge gainsbourg. she is also capable of fireworks, as with her incredible turn in the controversial film Antichrist, for which she won Best actress at cannes in 2009. gainsbourg, now 40, is mother to three children, including Joe, born in July last year, who falls asleep with

clenched fists, upstairs from the quiet room, just as the interview begins. the red bulletin: Stage Whisper is clearly a labour of love for you. charlotte gainsbourg: yes, it is very close to my heart, because the tour was a big deal for me, and this record is a good way to finish the story. i wanted there to be visuals and sounds, which is why there’s a dVd. to me, the two are as important as each other. i also wanted there to be new tracks, not just live recordings. i needed to bring in some new ideas, to have doors opening onto something unpredictable.

Your half-brother Lulu covers your father’s songs on record, but you only occasionally do them live.

People talk about my father’s songs as if somehow i’m obliged to use them. i don’t go there. it’s normal for me not to. i’m taking my own path.

In your case, that path is about walking the line between a very public and vocal side of you, and a very private side. yes, an important part of my identity comes out when it has to. i feel it’s something that weighs very heavily, but on the other hand, i need to protect myself. i still do. the main thing is that i’m managing to do what i’ve always dreamt of. i hope that will continue.

But that’s all the exposure i need.

There’s a great live version of IRM on Stage Whisper, the title song from your 2009 album. Why did you write a song about a piece of medical equipment? it goes back to an accident i had [following a water-skiing accident in 2007, gainsbourg had emergency surgery on a cerebral haemorrhage; ‘irm’ is French for mri]. i’ve had a lot of mri scans and i wanted them to be part of the album – at the time, they were part of my daily life. i wanted the sounds that had made an impression on me to be there. i asked Beck – he produced and wrote most of the album – if he liked the idea, and he did, so we went for it. We spent five days exploring different options in the studio.

There’s a Bob Dylan cover, Just Like A Woman, on Stage Whisper, which you also performed in the Dylan biopic, I’m Not There. it was written and sung by him, and the whole song takes quite a cruel view of women. i really like the idea of it being sung by a woman. there’s an ambiguity, something absurd about a woman singing it. i really like the shift. i like it in this case because it’s not that straightforward.

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Are you more attracted to something the more challenging it is? i don’t put difficulty up there where others might. it’s often unpredictable. it’s more a question of trying to surprise myself, trying not to do something that would be too easy, which would bore me. it’s not that i aim to do difficult things. i’m not that kind of person and it would be pretentious to say that i was. going from film work to performing on stage is a really brilliant exercise, for example.

So are you more actress than singer? i don’t want to choose. i love being both. i enjoy both so much.

Are you completely satisfied? it would be terrible to think i was. i don’t think any of us are ever truly satisfied and think i make a lot of mistakes. i’m not content with who i am.

So that means you’re tough on yourself? yes, because i want to achieve something unattainable. that’s my goal, and it’s probably best not to get there.

What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever done? a parachute jump, which had become a fixation for me. i was 19 and, as i saw it, i didn’t have a lot to lose.

Jumping was an act of defiance. i got the jump very wrong and found myself head down and my

feet caught up in the cords. i was jumping alone, as part of a learner’s jump from 1,000m. those few seconds seemed to last forever. it was pretty terrifying having to untangle my legs. it was a pretty stupid thing to have done, to be honest. i found it funny at the time to place myself in such a nightmare scenario. i broke a vertebra snowboarding and landed on my head when waterskiing. these were extreme activities i did to spite myself.

You have been compared to various people: Catherine Deneuve, Françoise Hardy, even Sofia Coppola. it’s very flattering, but i’m not at the stage in my career that any of those women have reached. sofia coppola is of my generation, and we both have a famous father. i adore what Françoise hardy does, but don’t think i can be compared to her. and i adore catherine deneuve, but i have neither her looks nor the career she has had. People are always telling me i’ve got to stop doing myself down, but that’s not how i see it. i think i’m very clear-headed and haven’t produced any masterpieces. i hope it will happen one day, but i’m not there yet. But Melancholia is a really wonderful film.

Since you brought it up, what do you think now about the press conference for Melancholia at the Cannes Film Festival last year, when you sat next to the film’s director Lars von Trier, as he made jokes about understanding Hitler? he got tangled up in his own words. there are some things you don’t do, but i think it got blown out of proportion. he was talking rubbish, and said something completely idiotic. he only realised the seriousness of what he was saying afterwards. lars is always about being provocative, and he’s also very uneasy at press conferences. at the cannes press conference for Antichrist two years before, he was really bad. i’ve never seen him flourish in that environment, so it was no surprise that it went wrong. it’s a torture for him to go through it. not

that i’m necessarily defending him… actually, i am. after everything that we’ve heard, i feel like defending him. i think it’s bad what he said, but i don’t think he was saying… no, wait, what he said was atrocious. But it’s such an odd environment. Why did none of the journalists who were there on the day get up and leave? it was only blown out of all proportion afterwards. i’m not trying to excuse myself, but we’re all very tense at press conferences. What are you meant to do? get up and leave? say that you disagree? i feel like i’m being taken hostage. that’s his fault. after it was blown out of proportion, i left it to him to justify himself, if he wanted to stick to what he was saying. i don’t think that was beyond him.

Do you regret not having intervened? no, i have no regrets. that’s the way i am. i’m slow. i didn’t react at the time although i used the interviews afterwards to try and understand.

But we’re talking about something that happened nearly a year ago.

What do you mean when you say you’re slow? i’m really slow to understand things, to digest facts, to adapt. i’m slow in the way i perceive things. that doesn’t mean that

“I did a parachute jump.

It was an act of defiance.

I got it very wrong and found myself head down” 53

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i’m slow to do things, though.

Isn’t that just a way of stepping back a bit in a world where everything tends to happen so quickly? i really like taking my time. i like silence, and i’m not made for efficiency, which is a concept i don’t like at all. there’s something really calculated about it, something too professional. it doesn’t create anything real. i don’t like things being efficient.

The way you dress is often remarked upon as being very stylish, by women of all ages. i’ve never heard that. i didn’t know that. it’s very flattering, but such things go in one ear and out the other. it’s such an exaggeration. i need to live without having to look at myself. sometimes i’m asked to spend a lot of time looking at myself. i prefer not to pay myself too much attention.

Do you deal with your femininity better now than you used to? absolutely, yes. i feel much more comfortable. i’m sad i can’t live through my thirties again, because life actually does get easier. eventually.

What do you mean? you take things more for granted when you’re younger. it’s taken me 40 years to know what i want from myself and to stop dreaming of being someone else all the time. it takes time, all of that stuff, digesting what you are, examining yourself a bit.

Was coming to that conclusion made more difficult by living your whole life in the public eye? it was normal, actually. that was how we lived. it was easier for my father to tell a journalist he loved me than it was for him to tell me. Public life was as important as private life. that was the way he did things, and he passed it on to me, but i don’t have the same attitude at all. i specifically do not want to share all my feelings, and try to keep private things private. maybe it’s my reaction to all those years where we were on view as a family altogether. i’ve never felt like showing my family, and it doesn’t suit my personality to share that side of me. i started giving interviews at

“It felt as if people were trying to get close to me but for the wrong reasons, and that really bothered me” a very early age and the journalists’ questions were always about my parents: what they were like, how i got on with them. it felt as if people were trying to get close to me, but for the wrong reasons, and that really bothered me. i walled myself off very quickly and didn’t want to speak about anything much. and as a 14-year-old actress, i didn’t have a point of view about anything and didn’t have a lot to say about anything other than my family life. interviews were torture. they’ve gradually got better…

Did you wish you’d had another sort of family life? i’ll take what i’ve been given. When i was a teenager, i would have said yes. i wanted to be like everyone else, to be able to go unnoticed a lot more often than i did. But now i’m happy with what i have. my family has a lot of good and bad points, like all families do.

And if your father was still alive. i don’t want to answer that sort of question.

What do you think of the world now you’ve lived in it for 40 years? there aren’t a lot of positive things to say. there’s less freedom now than there was in the ’80s, less extravagance.

We’re all formulaic. there’s less craziness than there was. things are getting duller. i hope we’ll wake up one day and be less right-minded. i’ve got a bit of that in me, too, and i couldn’t find it more boring. www.charlottegainsbourg.com

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15.05 Hot seat Jean-Eric Vergne familiarises himself with the carbon-fibre monocoque that will be his ‘office’ throughout 2012. It’s the bare chassis of his Toro Rosso STR7 race car. Engine, seat, steering wheel, suspension all come later

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LE REAL DEAL

The new French F1 driver at Scuderia Toro Rosso, Jean-Eric Vergne, arrives with a big reputation and a stellar CV. The Red Bulletin joined him on the eve of his ďŹ rst F1 season: a snapshot of a maybe-future-star Words: Anthony Rowlinson & Christophe Couvrat Photography: Thomas Butler

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08.30 new Boy After a one-hour blast from Bologna airport with friend and manager Renaud Derlot, JEV arrives at Toro Rosso headquarters in Faenza

each must prove not only they are aggressive racers but also intelligent team players

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taly’s A14 Autostrada stretches from one side of Bologna, in the bustling industrial north, right down the back of the boot, skirting the Adriatic coastline, all the way to Taranto, just above the heel. That’s 750km of pasta and romance, through the Emilia Romagna, to the coast and balmy Pescara then down past Bari, to the Med. Today’s journey across it barely does justice to such a storied route, being just a motorway blast from Bologna airport to the scattering of factory units in Faenza that are home to the Scuderia Toro Rosso Formula One team. But it’s not short of excitement. Reason being that this is the ‘first day at work’ for new French F1 hotshot Jean-Eric Vergne (JEV), Toro Rosso’s latest signing. And The Red Bulletin is perched on the rear seat of the workaday hire car which, up front, contains JEV and his buddy, confidant and chauffeur Renaud Derlot.

Derlot is a high-level racer, too, who competes in GT endurance championships (big, fast supercars

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– Porsche, Ferrari, Aston Martin) and, like any of his clan, he knows only one way make to make a car move: fast.

Our chariot doesn’t have much beneath the bonnet, but Derlot is making the most of what it’s got: gears are extended to the max, door handles scrape tarmac as we howl around motorway exit curves. The brakes – well, let’s just say they didn’t know what was coming.

This, of course, is situation normal for a racing driver and JEV sits unperturbed up front, fielding BlackBerry calls and texts. We make swift progress.

Swift progress. That’s what it’s all about for drivers, like JEV, in the Red Bull junior programme. Swift on the track; swift through the ranks. Do well in the lower racing categories (Formula Three, Renault World Series), hit the targets set by programme manager Dr Helmut Marko and you will progress. That’s the compact, as perfectly exemplified by one Sebastian Vettel: now a double Formula One world champion with Red Bull Racing, yet only four years ago in a nearidentical position to Vergne – a talented F1 rookie with everything to prove.

JEV (everyone calls him ‘JEV’) knows this, as does his 2012 Toro Rosso teammate, Australian Daniel Ricciardo, who made a similar Faenza fact-finding mission a few days earlier. Each, now, must beat the other; each must prove not

a future world champion? of course he will believe this.

He must only that they are fast, aggressive racers, but also intelligent team players, capable, maybe, of pacing themselves through a season, crashing only very occasionally, and learning, learning, learning. The prize – and what a prize – might be a race seat at World Champion team Red Bull Racing. Not yet, though. Not just yet.

He’s a confident young man is JEV, as he has every right to be at this point in his career. Still just 21, he has exactly

09.50 quality control (1) QC is one of the most important areas of any Formula One factory: here, parts are tested for closeness to perfection. A score less than 100 per cent is a ‘FAIL’. Matteo Piraccini, head of hydraulics, gearbox and quality control, leads the tour; JEV shakes hands with Romano Cai, mechanical inspector

09.52 quality control (2) JEV is shown part of a front wing assembly by Matteo Piraccini, head of hydraulics, gearbox and quality control.

His interest seems genuine, but all his mind is really asking is: “Will it make the car go faster?”

the right kind of CV to have brought him to where he is. French Formula Renault champion (2008) – check; British Formula 3 champion (2010) – check; Renault World Series Champion (2011) – er, not quite (he finished a somewhat unlucky runner-up).

For now, before testing and racing proper, JEV can remain in that blissful headspace of believing with absolute certainty that he is as fast as any of the other 23 competitors he’ll dice with this season. A future world champion? Of course he will believe this. He must.

Only, however, when the lights go out in Melbourne on March 18 will he – and we – start to know for sure.

That heady day is still some way off as JEV and Derlot arrive at the unfussy Toro Rosso buildings that occupy a corner of an extremely unremarkable industrial estate on the outskirts of Faenza. Friendly 59

10.15 last year’s Model The build of the 2012 race chassis isn’t finished when JEV visits, so he has to content himself with a detailed inspection of the 2011 car. Its best results were two seventh-place finishes

10.45 taKe a seat (Left) JEV’s precise seating position is engineered with CAD technology; (right) his first meeting with race engineer Andrea Landi.

The strength of their relationship is vital to success

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11.00 wHeely groovy In the machine shop, JEV is shown an intricately milled wheel nut

He’s extremely focused and driven and if he doesn’t win, he’s not particularly happy. all the characteristics of a potential champion Name Jean-Eric Vergne, aka ‘JEV” Date and place of birth April 25th, 1990, Pontoise (Val-d’Oise) Lives Milton Keynes, England

11.10 Hot stuff

Height, weight 1m 83cm, 70kg Started karting Aged four

This piece of heavy industrial machinery is an autoclave. It ‘cooks’ carbon and resin under pressure at temperatures of up to 400ºF, to create F1’s super-light, super-strong (super-expensive) components

enough but focused and self-contained, with a quiet steeliness that confirms a reputation for taking no nonsense on track, Vergne approaches Toro Rosso reception with the keenness of a young man who knows he has earned the right to be here. His manner is that of one who can taste the future he has already tried so hard to create for himself and who will likely be uncompromising in its pursuit.

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man who has seen that relentlessness – ruthlessness, even – in action is his former team boss Trevor Carlin, who ran JEV in British Formula Three and, last season, in the Renault World Series.

Both categories are broiling incubators of talent, from which only the exceptional graduate with honours and Carlin, who also ran Vettel in his early career, rates Vergne up there with the best.

“He’s the real deal, isn’t he?” he says, adding that Vergne is one of the most

First competition Aged 10 First win Aged 10 (mini French champion) First F1 tests Abu Dhabi 2010

exciting racers he has come across in a life spent shepherding young guns towards to the top. “He’s extremely focused and extremely driven and if he doesn’t win he’s not particularly happy. All the characteristics of a potential champion.”

One of Vergne’s hallmarks, reckons Carlin, is his ability to thrive in the cutand-thrust of racing. This is a quality distinct from outright speed. It’s one that springs from an inherent combativeness and reveals a mindset that refuses to accept defeat. “In a racing situation he’s tough and forceful – he’s amazing actually, he simply never gives up,” Carlin relates. “At the Barcelona World Series round last year he qualified ninth but finished second, and not because other people fell out. He was relentless. And he’s able to race wheel-to-wheel without damaging a car. He’s one of those guys who will always go forward.”

Vergne’s new boss, Toro Rosso team principal Franz Tost, will soon be able to judge these qualities for himself. Already,

Lunch tHe don Vergne has a lunchtime audience with tech boss Giorgio Ascanelli. Over more than 25 years, Ascanelli has seen it all in motorsport

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ormula One is an unsentimental sport, at least for those starting out, and there’s little time to indulge in small talk about expectation and ambition.

It’s time, instead, for business and a tour of the growing Toro Rosso facilities, with a ‘meet and greet’ of the key personnel who’ll create and run the machine that soon will transport Vergne’s destiny.

Over two days, he’s guided through departments from composites to quality control; from electronics to race engineering; from the machine shop to design. He’ll pass by more than 250 people (all, incidentally, wowed by the magic aura that accompanies any F1 driver, like a Ready Brek glow). That’s a lot of personnel, even for a plucky midfield team, and the numbers are way bigger than anything Vergne has experienced before. “It’s a little weird to meet with more than 40 people,” he notes. “It used to be only two or three.

It actually makes me even more eager to succeed, seeing how many people are working for the team’s success.

It’s a positive kind of pressure.”

JEV’s guide through the warrens of Toro Rosso (it’s an old-school factory that has grown organically from tiny origins, with buildings connected by overhead walkways and noodle-narrow paths) is chief engineer Laurent Mekiès, a 12-year F1 veteran. Compact, skinny, goateed and with designer shades and hair that could be on loan from D&G, Mekiès talks with a rapid-fire intensity entirely appropriate for a highly pressured time pauper: “You see that room there? That’s assembly.

Over there on the right is hydraulics and at the end there’s quality control.” Our small touring entourage heads to this “super-important” corner, to watch an articulated Faro laser arm tend to a front 62

14.35 tHe fiXer JEV’s factory guide is chief engineer Laurent Mekiès. Respected, intense and multi-lingual, he’s one of the key team members

14.45 square deal JEV gets the lowdown on a rear chassis bulkhead. It’s not a part he’s ever likely to see, or think about, but it’s as vital as any other

“it’s a little weird to meet with more than 40 people. it actually makes me even more eager to succeed. it’s a positive kind of pressure”

tale of the tape: how Ricciardo and Vergne measure up VERGNE

RICCIARDO BRITISH FORMULA 3

13 11 20 13 43.3

Wins Poles Podiums Fastest Laps Wins %

7 6 13 5 35

FORMULA RENAULT 3.5 4 4 9 1 23.5

Wins Poles Podiums Fastest Laps Wins %

4 8 8 4 23.5

ADDITIONAL PHOTOGRAPHY: PETER FOX/GETTY IMAGES (1)

in a quiet moment, he has admitted he’s not quite so optimistic that his two young chargers will race without getting into a few scrapes: “We know there will be accidents. There always are with young drivers. We just hope for some good results, too.”

Arguments about broken front wings, bent suspension and too-rash overtaking moves are for tomorrow, however. Today, Tost’s greeting of a new young buck is warm, friendly, expectant. The handshake between them is sincere and it prompts JEV into a wide, though guileless and uncertain, smile. Tost has seen this expression before. It’s called hope.

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15.00 suited and Booted Just before stepping into the bare race chassis, JEV slips out of his civvies and into his race suit and boots. It’s a familiar process

15.15 eyes on tHe PriZe Settled in, helmet on, Vergne looks ready to go… Except he still has more than two months to wait till ‘lights out’ at the Australian GP

2012 formula one calendar March 18 March 25 April 15 April 22 May 13 May 27 June 10 June 24 July 8 July 22 July 29 September 2 September 9 September 23 October 7 October 14 October 28 November 4 November 18 November 25

Australia/Albert Park Malaysia/Sepang China/Shanghai Bahrain/Bahrain Spain/Barcelona Monaco Canada/Gilles Villeneuve Europe/Valencia Great Britain/Silverstone Germany/Hockenheim Hungary/Hungaroring Belgium/Spa Italy/Monza Singapore Japan/Suzuka South Korea/Yeongam India/Delhi Abu Dhabi/Yas Marina USA/Austin Brazil/Interlagos

on tracK at last

At a wintry Jerez circuit, south-west Spain, Vergne guns his STR7 from the pits for the first time as a fully fledged F1 driver. It’s February 9, 2012 and whatever his grand prix future may hold, it all starts here

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wing. “There are 16,000 pieces in all,” Mekiès notes. Most are absolutely bespoke, designed and built just for this year’s race car.

Vergne walks and watches, absorbing, listening and occasionally asking a sharp question. “How many race engineers?” he wants to know. “Six,” the reply.

He doesn’t know it yet, but he’s being led to the certain highlight of the tour: a first sitting inside the bare carbon monocoque of the all-new STR 7 chassis that will race 2012’s 20 scheduled grands prix.

Slipping out of day gear (trainers, jeans and hoodie) and into a race suit, there’s just time for a check of the crown jewels and a quip to the team’s press officer, Marieluise Mammitszch, before trying the new race car for size. “You wanna see my abs?” he grins, in a practised manner that suggests he may have tried this line before… once or twice.

If he’s nervous, he doesn’t let it show, as he slides into the sculpted black shell that soon will be mated with engine, gearbox, suspension, wheels and all the other essential paraphernalia that transform static object into guided missile.

There’s no hint of a smile – not even around the eyes, visible through his helmet aperture. This is serious stuff as JEV rotates an imaginary steering wheel – left, right – flexes his shoulders for comfort and, unseen, extends left and right feet on ‘stop’ and ‘go’.

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unch in Faenza can mean only one thing: the Tana Del Lupo restaurant a mile from the factory. It’s bigger than it used to be (more F1 mouths to feed) but as a glut of swollen waistlines in the enlarged dining room attest, standards haven’t slipped.

JEV and Derlot are sitting at table with Tost and the team’s fabled technical

if he’s nervous, he doesn’t let it show, as he slides into the sculpted black shell that soon will be mated with engine, gearbox, and wheels 64

director Giorgio Ascanelli. He’s Ayrton Senna’s former race engineer, has led teams to nine (at last count) championships in different categories and is famously, fabulously, very hard to impress. A hotshot youngster will barely cause him to raise a smile, but then, this gruff teddy bear tech chief has – truly – seen it all. Their mood is light, their banter free. They’re getting on well. Ten weeks before the season, the final twists of pressure have yet to be applied… So there’s time, still, to enjoy these moments and pause for a split-second to reflect on JEV’s journey and the fateful call from Dr Marko last December that propelled Vergne into motorsport’s highest echelon.

“How did it all happen?” asks Vergne, echoing our question. “Dr Marko called me one morning and asked: ‘What do you fancy doing in 2012?’ I reply, ‘F1!’ And he says, ‘OK, let’s go for Formula One!’ I couldn’t believe it.” Just. Like. That.

A few hours’ peaceful excitement as Vergne told close friends and family the news, then, Boom! his phone exploded. Toro Rosso’s press team put out the news that it would have two new drivers in 2012 and: “It went crazy. My mobile didn’t stop ringing.

We made the evening news in France.”

By way of celebration JEV, Derlot, his lawyer Didier Poulmaire, trainer Philippe Lucas and Camelia Potec, the Romanian swimmer being coached by Lucas, dined out that evening at the famous Porte d’Auteuil restaurant in Paris.

Maybe small talk turned to JEV’s journey from his father’s kart track through teenage illness, when he came close to quitting racing after drug-induced hepatitis that followed the removal of his gall bladder.

“I was in hospital in Barcelona,” he says, still a little troubled at the memory.

“I didn’t do anything for six months.” It could have finished the career of a less determined individual. JEV, though, had learned young how to overcome a challenge. “I was really scared of water when I was small,” he confides. “I used to moan when I had to take my shower. My father said to me, ‘I’ll get you a go-kart when you learn to swim.’ He thought that would give him plenty of time. But I went to visit my grandparents during the holidays and I learnt to swim within a few days. After that, my parents did all they could to help me succeed.” Not least buying a plot of cheap land northwest of Paris and building a karting centre that’s now the biggest in Europe.

there’s no hint of a smile visible through his helmet aperture. this is serious stuff as Jev rotates an imaginary steering wheel, left, right…

It was here, at the Racing Kart de Cormeilles track at Boissy l’Aillerie, that JEV took his first few laps under the expert guidance of a certain Jean Alesi, then captain of a national team set up by the French Motorsport Federation.

Vergne’s potential smacked Alesi right between his famous blue eyes: here was a talent that combined an innate gift for speed with a steely nerve.

“Jean’s a bit like a godfather to me,” Vergne admits, “and he was one of the first to congratulate me on reaching F1.”

Already so long ago. Now, new challenges await and this year’s – alongside highly touted Ricciardo, whose racing CV is remarkably comparable to Vergne’s – may be his toughest yet: a team-mate just as ambitious, just as hungry, almost certainly just as fast. Which is precisely how Dr Marko likes it in his junior team, of course.

“It’s going to be awesome,” enthuses Trevor Carlin, who has employed both of them. “They’re desperate to do well and they’re both brilliant drivers, but with slightly different qualities. Daniel possibly has an edge in qualifying, but JEV can turn it around in the race. It’s so exciting. This is the best thing that’s happened to Formula One for years.”

These two feisty cubs know all about each other’s strengths and weaknesses, having cuffed each other since they arrived at the Red Bull junior team on the same day, in 2008. “It’s nice to be back together again here,” JEV smiles, “but I know we are both under pressure.”

It’s always been like this: since those early karting days when Jean-Eric Vergne was trying to impress his father, through domestic success, through the 20-driver shoot-out at Portugal’s Estoril circuit at the end of 2007.

“They took just two,” JEV recalls, “Daniel and me.”

And now? Showtime.

Download our iPad edition for clips of the new Toro Rosso and Red Bull Racing cars on track

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Hjälmaren Lake, Sweden, -15ºC, where 185 participants from 18 countries fought it out for this year’s ice sailing world title

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Insane

saIlIng

Think sailboat racing is spectacular? You ain’t seen nothing till you’ve watched a homebrew ice-boat skating on frozen lakes at 130kph Words: Arkadiusz Piątek

Photography: Oskar Kihlborg

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hat kind of sport doesn’t have a venue for its World Championships five days before they’re due to be held? Not because of a contractual squabble, nor a row over playing conditions. No, because the country in which they’ll be held hasn’t been decided. Welcome to the icy, fast and brilliantly unpredictable world of ice sailing – one that’s extremely susceptible to changes in weather and which demands that wind and ice conditions be perfect before competitions can be held.

This year, finding that perfect mix is proving harder than usual: Lake Müritz in Germany hasn’t frozen over, while the preferred alternative, Hapsalu in Estonia, is snowed in. That leaves Poland or Sweden and 185 ice sailors from 18 countries waiting on ‘where to go’ info. Poland is

The sport requires immense skill and upper-body strength

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ruled out, as winter has been too harsh, so participants from across Europe and beyond head for the small town of Örebro.

“You never know with this sport,” says five-time world sailing champion, Ron Sherry, who has travelled from Detroit, Michigan, for another shot at the title.

“There are many things that can stop it from working. Too much wind, too little wind, too much snow, too much ice, not enough ice. But when it’s right, there’s nothing like it. It’s the most fun you can have with your clothes on.”

You may have seen ice sailing footage on YouTube or on TV. Clips usually feature edits of hand-rubbing, foot-stomping and head-shaking camera crews, asking, “Why do people do this?”

Fair question, when you consider the men, in single-seater ice-boats, are

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The boats line up for the start of the race

“thIs Is a sport for freaks… IdealIsts” sailing at speeds of up to 130kph at temperatures well below zero. And they’re without a seatbelt, protective panel or brakes at a few centimetres off the ice. So why do people do this?

“It’s the ultimate kick,” explains Austrian Niklas Müller-Hartburg.

“When you’re flying almost silently over the ice, all alone, you feel a deep sense of happiness. And it’s a battle: a battle with yourself, with nature, with your opponents. And it’s not that cold. Adrenalin makes sure of that.”

Müller-Hartburg works as a project manager and has been an ice sailor for 26 years; he’s one of the 185 World Championship entrants who have set up camp in a small bay by Lake Hjälmaren near Örebro, over where the campers and trailers are. And where masts are being put up, runners attached and sails hoisted. And where, every now and again, hikers emerge, to be dumbfounded at the blur of sails on view amid the whiteness.

There’s little other colour. “No spectators, no sponsors and no prize money,” says Müller-Hartburg. “And that’s just fine. This is a sport for freaks, for idealists. Not for show-offs.”

They are, indeed, all freaks and idealists. Most are fiddling with their

home-made boats, filing the runners or talking shop. For this is a highly sensitive sport, where the wrong choice of runner sends racers from hero to (sub-) zero.

On dry land, in preparation, MüllerHartburg is using so-called pig-runners to keep the boat upright. “We all use them,” he says, “because of the muddy ground. The sensitive racing blades only come into play once we’re way out on the ice.” Every participant has those stored safely in boxes, bags or cases. There are wider ones good for gliding on ice, or the sharp-filed option, preferred for cutting through slowing snow. Each participant can use nine runners, but no more.

They’re a motley crew, these cool runners, with every day job imaginable: from excavator to entrepreneur. There’s Christian Seegers, a well-known lawyer, the orthopaedist Pierre Bachelin and American mast-maker, Jeffrey Kent. The oldest participant is 79; the youngest just 17. All face tough battles over the course of the week. Participants are divided into three different fleets according to their world ranking and they fight it out for 12 qualifying spots to proceed to the next-level competition.

Favourites are the Poles, always strong; the Estonians, breaking in at the top level; and the dangerous Swedes with home advantage.

Awaiting the 12 qualifiers will be the golden fleet: the ice sailing Champions League: 38 sailors including seven-time Polish world champion Karol Jabłoński and American ice-sailing icon Ron Sherry, who is two World titles behind his rival.

Many are expecting it to be a two-horse race. “If you want to win, you need the perfect combination of mast, planking, sail and runners,” admits Jabłoński. “If a single element doesn’t fit in, forget it.”

The men sail standardised DN-class single-seater boats. The 3.65m boat must have a sail measuring 5.57m2. With the combination of the three runners (one to steer at the front and two on the sides), you get a special type of speed machine:

The right runner can make all the difference

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“another saIlor appeared behInd me. hIs runners just mIssed my face”

Boats can hit up to 130kph within 10 seconds. “The acceleration is something you need get used to,” says veteran Ron Sherry

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in perfect wind conditions, they’ll scorch from 0-100kph in around seven seconds.

“The biggest thrill is the acceleration, and it’s something you need to get used to,” says Sherry. “I’ve gone right out of the back of the boat from not holding because it takes off so quickly.”

Anyone who dares get in one of these won’t forget the experience: how the wind picks up and the sailor flies along the ice at crazy speeds. An island that just a moment ago was distant, transforms suddenly into a threatening must-miss obstacle. Brakes? Oh, there’s no brakes.

Instead you have tillers to steer. Turn it to the right and the boat veers left.

Immediately you sense a runner is ready to lift off and the wild sled is trembling.

Poland’s Łukasz Zakrzewski, ranked number two in the world, is frank: “At 100kph the boat becomes highly sensitive. Every steering move can cause a spin or make you fall out of the boat and slide 200m over the ice.”

Racing takes place out on the lake, but just getting there is a stiff challenge for the uninitiated. If you haven’t got skates, you walk half an hour to get to the start.

You’re wrapped up warm and wear a plastic collar with two ice picks attached.

These will come in handy if you fall into the ice and there’s nobody around to help.

The fleets have gathered and it’s like a Formula One pit-lane: last-minute adjustments are being made to each boat just before the start. There’s still a lot to work out. Which runners to use? How much mast or sail tension? There’s a thin blanket of snow on the ice. The surface isn’t porous. It’s as smooth as glass.

a

ll is quiet. The solitary man wearing a thick, red jacket has taken up position in front of the fleet. He raises the flag: “Flag is up!” he bellows. He has an impressive backdrop: 44 ice-boats on runners, all lined up bow to bow with their helmsmen next to them. Men wearing spikes, bobsleigh gear, racing helmets and ski goggles all ready to go.

They have one hand on the mast, the other on the rudder. Some cross themselves or shift from one foot to the other and breathe deeply. At -15ºC there’s no hiding how hard they’re panting.

Flag fall. The racers sprint off, pushing their boats in front of them for 30m, encouraged by their rivals, shouting: “Go, Go, Go!” Then they leap into the boat and

Tomasz Zakrzewski is the man to beat in ice sailing right now

batten down the sail with all their might.

The wind takes effect and the boats accelerate to 50kph and whizz away. The 1.8km course is marked out by two buoys that must be sailed around three times.

The first to clear them is the winner.

The sailor needs enormous strength in his arms to keep the sail in when his boat is heading so close to the wind; neck muscles also take a pounding, as the only way to keep a clear view is with your head raised. Some lie flat on their back; others, like Jabłoński, work out in the gym. “You won’t last the race if you don’t work out,” says the Pole with America’s Cup experience. “Your head will fall back and you’ll only see the sky.”

The fleet heads for the top buoy.

There’s a mad crush to round it within a few minutes, and right-of-way rules help keep things relatively civil. Even so, many lament the ever-more ruthless nature of the current racing scene. Competitors whizz past each other with centimetres to spare, trying – literally – to take the wind out of each other’s sails or trick them with sudden, breakneck manoeuvres.

This is a dangerous sport and even the best aren’t immune to accidents.

“Once I was flung out of the boat,” says Jabłoński. “I clung onto the sheet [rope controlling the sails]. I just about slithered my way round the boat when another sailor appeared from behind me. His runners just missed my face.”

Sherry once crashed into one of his rivals at 80kph. “I went right into the side of him,” the American admits. “Our

boats were in smithereens. I got away with just a couple of scratches.”

Even championship organiser Jörg Bohn has been caught out: he was the victim of faulty equipment during one of the European Championship races in 2011. “My boat just broke up during one run, and at that point I was in a good position to take the European Championship title,” he explains.

In the final, all eyes are on Jabłoński and Sherry. But in the first of the three golden fleet runs, Sherry loses hope of victory. He’s held back by a bad choice of runner and ends up 22nd – but still five places ahead of Jabłoński, whose own runners “are braking more than moving”.

Things get hotter after the heat.

Jabłoński is working on his boat. Sherry is screaming like he’s being tortured.

Both need a plan. The American hits on using thin slipper runners and, lo, he whizzes away from the rest of the field.

It’s an emphatic win. (Jabłoński ends up retiring from a hopeless position). Bad luck costs Sherry a chance of winning the third leg. “The guy next to me got in my way during the sprint so I had to swerve to the left. That lost me time.”

Not a good day for the favourites.

Tomasz Zakrzewski (brother of Łukasz) is crowned World Champion; he finished third, second and second for the best average position. “I did well to thwart my rivals,” he says. For the rivals themselves, it’ll have to be next time, provided the weather gods don’t have other plans. www.iceboat.org

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“I still smack the crap out of the shot but I’m technically better now”

Olympic shot put champion Valerie Adams has gone through some big changes in the last two years. One thing has remained constant: she’s still the best in the world

Not many men could tell a woman the quality he admired most was her constitution. But Jean-Pierre Egger manages to get away with it because in his heavily accented, broken English it sounds like he’s giving a compliment.

It also helps that he’s 1.96m tall and rocks a Tom Selleck-style ’tache. But mainly he gets away with it because the woman he’s talking to also happens to be 1.96m tall and her constitution (her impressive physical and psychological 72

make-up) has helped her to become the best shot putter in the world.

Egger has been coaching Valerie Adams since the end of 2010, but they first met in 2002 when Egger was in New Zealand working as a conditioning coach for America’s Cup winner Alinghi.

Adam’s coach at the time, Kirsten Hellier, invited Egger to watch her protégé throw.

“I thought she had great constitution but she was also very coordinated,” remembers Egger. “Sometimes big people

when they are young are very, how you say… unco…” “You mean uncoordinated?” suggests Adams, who is sitting opposite Egger after a training session at the Millennium Institute on Auckland’s North Shore.

“Yes, that’s the word,” says Egger, “but Valerie had a very athletic figure.

I thought if she has the motivation she could be very good. I said to Kirsten, ‘You must pay attention because you have gold in your hands.’” Under Hellier’s

PHoTogrAPHY: gETTY IMAgES

Words: Robert Tighe

Pivotal moments (from far left): Valerie Adams won gold at last year’s World Championships in Korea; she came second at the 2010 World Indoor Championships in Doha

guidance, Adams won gold at the World Youth Championships in 2001 and the world junior title the following year. She won two World Championships (2007 and 2009) and the olympic title in Beijing (2008).

Then in March 2010 after 12 years together, she tearfully announced the end of her working relationship with Hellier. Adams credits Hellier with helping her in her quest to become a world-class athlete but she reflects:

“People just grow apart and I’ve no regrets about what happened.”

Didier Poppe took over from Hellier in April 2010. That same year, Adams divorced her husband and was beaten seven times by her closest rival, Nadzeya ostapchuk from Belarus. The doubters started questioning her form and resolve.

“I knew I still had it in me,” says Adams, “but Didier wasn’t able to bring out the best in me. Change is hard and the first change I made didn’t work out

but I kept looking and I found this guy,” she says, smiling at Egger.

In his defence, Poppe says Adams’s divorce created a lot of stress. “Valerie was very touchy and sensitive so we were not in a calm, peaceful situation. She didn’t feel comfortable with me and I didn’t feel comfortable with her, but I would have liked a few more months to work with her to try and make her better.”

Adams insists it wouldn’t have made a difference. “I hoped Didier would be able 73

to help me but it didn’t work out,” she says. “Yes, the divorce was hard but after six months working with Didier, I struggled to throw 20m. Then after 10 days with Jean-Pierre I threw 20.86m, the second-best throw of my career.”

It was Poppe, though, who suggested Adams should travel to Switzerland with Egger in August 2010 for a training camp – a decision that cost the Frenchman his job. “Afterwards Didier asked me, ‘What have you done?’” says Egger.

Egger’s training sessions with Adams were based on the same principles that helped Swiss shot putter Werner günthör win three world titles. Poppe describes Egger as a “revolutionary”, one of the first throwing coaches to emphasise speed as well as strength. Poppe also claims he and Egger shared the same coaching methods.

“No, not true,” says Adams. “Didier wanted to change what had worked for me for 12 years and turn me from a truck into a Ferrari. But Jean-Pierre told me: ‘You’re not a Ferrari. You’re Valerie Adams.’ I relied on strength and aggression before working with JP. I’m 50-50 [between strength and speed] now.”

Adams persisted with Poppe until the end of 2010 when she asked Egger if she could move to Switzerland to work with him. It was a difficult decision for the 68-year-old, who hadn’t worked as a full-time coach since 1993. “other athletes wanted to work with me but I couldn’t do it because there was no connection there,” says Egger. “With Valerie I could feel that connection. I could see she needed a change in her life.”

Adams ended up spending nine months in Switzerland working with 74

Egger. He put her on a plyometrics regime to make her more dynamic. on his advice she lost 15kg and she credits her new physique to an injury-free year in 2011.

“I’m in the best shape of my life,” she says. “I’m a way different athlete. I was always very confident physically – as strong as an ox and I could smack the crap out of the shot. I still smack the crap out of it but I’m technically better now.”

The benefits were obvious at the World Championships in Korea in August 2011, where she destroyed the field with a personal best of 21.24m. “Technically it was the perfect throw,” says Adams.

Name Valerie Adams Born October 6, 1984, Rotorua Beginner’s luck Adams was 14 when she first picked up the shot at a school athletics meet: “I threw 12m with no shoes.”

Tall timber Her half-brother, Steven Adams is a 2.15m basketball sensation. The 18-year-old is playing

college basketball in the USA and is tipped as a future NBA star Maternal instinct Her mother Lilika died from cancer when Valerie was 15: “Without Mum’s encouragement I could have taken the road that led to smoking, drinking, babies, unemployment, who knows? The other road has brought me here.”

“Everything was in the right position and I released the shot at just the right time. It wasn’t a premature ejaculation throw, as we call it in training.”

More telling than the throw was the celebration. Adams sprinted around the stadium clutching a piece of paper in her hand as she was chased by a posse of photographers. It was a note from Egger, who couldn’t attend the final.

“It was addressed to ‘The Shot Put Queen’,” says Adams, “and there were three technical points and one piece of advice: ‘Push as long as possible until you reach the stars’. When I won I couldn’t express what I was feeling verbally so I picked up his note and jumped up and down like a crazy woman.”

“You must not view this as purely about a change in her technique,” interrupts Egger. “That would be wrong.

It’s about so many things in Valerie’s life.”

“My emotions, personality, relationships, communication, surroundings, personal life, my coach’s personal life; everything has an effect,” says Adams. “It’s like a marriage.”

What convinced Adams this marriage could really work? “It was his charisma, his personality – he makes you feel good about yourself,” she explains.

“Honesty is the most important thing between an athlete and a coach,” says Egger. “Sometimes honesty can shock but I prefer when people say what they think.”

Does Valerie shock him? “Not yet…” laughs Adams.

“But it could happen,” says Egger.

“It could be ahead of us. All our good times could be behind us. But I hope not.”

Adams will be based in Switzerland until the olympics, where she’ll be the hottest of favourites. Poppe says she’s “99.9 per cent certain to win” and he also predicts she’s capable of breaking the world record of 22.63m, set in 1987

by Natalya Lisovskaya from russia.

Not for the first time, Adams disagrees with Poppe. “The world record isn’t something I think about. It’s not that it’s unrealistic; I just don’t focus on it.”

“I never talk to my athletes about a world record,” says Egger, “and the woman’s world record must be considered in the context of when it happened. I was around during this period and I know the effect of steroids on women. I will not accuse; it was a different time. Today is a different time and for Valerie to throw over 21m like she did last year is very, very good.”

Pay attention, Jean-Pierre. You’ve got gold in your hands.

Watch Adams in action on www.youtube.com

PHoTogrAPHY: gETTY IMAgES, DPPI

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enter sandman

Three weeks before Cyril Despres claimed motorbike victory in the 2012 Dakar Rally – a competition he described as his “toughest ever” – he welcomed The Red Bulletin into his Andorran haven of peace Words: Etienne Bonamy Photography: Philipp Horak

W

ood. It’s all you see in Andorra where this four-time Dakar winner laid down roots, bikes and helmets in 2000 at the invitation of his mentor Henri Magne. “I wanted to become a carpenter. Build wooden houses,” he says. “When you’re a kid, it’s the kind of thing you imagine yourself doing.”

Fir trees on the snowy slopes of the Principality of Andorra; chalets in the middle of the winter sports resort where he lives; the décor of his family home. Wood, wood and more wood.

But this morning, Cyril Despres is rhythmically lifting 24kg

steel dumbbells with each arm. one rep. Five. ten. He breathes heavily. He sweats. And then he starts again. Andorra la Vella’s hi-tech gym doesn’t have the cosy charm of the chalet he dreams of building. this is where he works on building up his athletic physique first. It’s a repository of health he needs to have firing on all cylinders with less than three weeks to go before he starts his 12th Dakar at the age of 37.

Several months of training for two weeks of racing. He knows it’s paradoxical. Cyril Despres, the kid from nemours who wanted to live in the mountains, relentlessly seeking his

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ADDItIonAl PHotogrAPHy: MArCelo MArAgnI (1)

“I don’t race to beat a rIval.

I race to WIn. It’s an ego thIng”

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Despres has his own personalised workout programme at his gym in Andorra

Date and place of birth January 24, 1974, Fontainebleau, France First race and first win An endurance race at Plomion in the Aisne department in 1998 First time at the Dakar January 2000 riding a Honda 400 XR. He finished 16th First podium finish in a rally Tunisia in 2000 riding a Honda 650 (3rd) First win at the Dakar 2005 riding an official KTM

“I don’t race to beat a rIval.

I race to WIn. It’s an ego thIng” Despres’s chalet home in Andorra is where he stores the tools of his trade

fortune crossing the deserts of the earth at the handlebars of a motorbike. He has been so quick for so long that he has managed to confirm his place as one of the masters of the discipline in little more than a decade. He has achieved eight podium finishes including four wins out of 12 Dakars raced. And there have been dozens of other wins in Africa, latin America and europe.

A youthful passion has become a mission to have the career of a champion.

“I don’t feel my body getting any older,” he insists. Is that out of a sense of pride? “Probably. But I don’t think I’m the type of idiot who would do anything to win,” says Despres. “I don’t race to beat a rival. I race to win. It’s an ego thing. It’s visceral. If you don’t want to go all out in every special section, you’re screwed. you’re fighting for yourself and the team.

If you’re second, you’ve lost. Second place or fifth place. they’re the same as far as I’m concerned. But being good doesn’t mean you think of yourself as some sort of superman.”

Cautious and daring at the same time. Is that an impossible combination?

“I must have finished 80 of the 85 rallies I’ve started,” he explains. “I’m lucky to have never seriously come a cropper in a way that would give me a sinking feeling every time I got back on the bike.”

But his body has never been able to fully recover from the accident he suffered in January 2006. He had a bad fall and dislocated his shoulder.

“I don’t know why I didn’t stop. I was crying inside my helmet every day and I swore to myself that I’d never go through pain like that again.”

And, being the stubborn man that he is, Despres has now increased the attention he pays to maintaining his body’s ‘mechanics’. “A few years back,” he says, “I used to start at the beginning of September. now I start going for it in July. the training is harder than the race itself. Basically, doing an hour on the

home-trainer every evening once you get home at 6pm at the height of summer is the last thing you feel like doing.”

But there are benefits: “I slaughtered Sébastien Buemi, one of red Bull’s Formula one drivers, in some physical and mental tests a couple of years ago. I’ve still got it!” he jests, ever the competitor, always wanting to be best at everything.

He shows me the inside of his forearms which both have a long scar.

“I had cuts made in the aponeurosis on both sides to free up the muscle. I needed more strength,” he says. “you have your fists wrapped around the handlebars the whole time during the race. Braking, accelerating. It takes a lot of strength.”

And to what end? two centimetres of extra muscle.

Despres, a former mechanic, has a tinkerer’s curiosity and it’s not yet sated. “I quizzed the surgeon who operated on me – Professor Dufour, in Aix-en-Provence – so much that he suggested I attend a surgical operation

In mid-October Despres had an ultrasound to check a painful adductor after a motocross session

with him to understand how it works inside the body. So one morning, there I was, standing next to him in a green gown, watching him operate. that’s when you really understand.”

h

e’d have made a great rugby player, like Dan Carter. He rides out the bad times, like all the great players, and he’s a leader.

I saw him managing his team in Argentina like a player manages his team.” So says Christian Califano, formerly a French international rugby prop. this respect-at-first-sight story between two tough guys goes back three years. Despres has even lent Califano his mechanic. “I met him at a Baja in Spain. “I saw this guy setting off in dazzling sunshine without a visor or glasses,” Despres remembers.

“It was him. It made me laugh, so I decided to help him out.” they’ve hardly left each other’s sides since.

“I thought I’d been through a lot with rugby, but the motorbike is a war-machine that you have to tame,” opines Califano, who has embarked on his own Dakar adventure under the Andorran’s protection. “Whenever I’ve finished, it’s been 70 per cent down to him each time. Cyril would race his race then wait for me at the bivouac in the evening to debrief me. At the highest level, you manage things with both your body and your head. And never to excess. He does all that.”

But he doesn’t do it alone: Cédric gracia is Despres’s accomplice – a motorcyclist who also happens to be one of the one world’s best downhill mountain-bikers. “Cédric likes to flirt with the limits, just for the challenge,” he says. “He works it all out, bides his time and catches you eventually. He’s really the kind of great guy you’d be happy to do anything with. I don’t know if people know that side of him.” It’s a long way from the image 79

Despres gets some expert advice from Benjamin (left), his mechanic. Last January, he gave Christian Califano a hand on the Dakar course

of the solo globetrotting renegade with no space in his diary for anything other than the pursuit of epic glory. laia quietly slipped into this maelstrom a few years back. Despres’s partner and mother of little gina, who was born in August 2010, she takes the wind right out of this writer’s sails: “I don’t like motorbikes,” she says. “I never ride one.” the perfect relief for pressure levels that often go off the scale. “I live with the real Cyril, not the motorcyclist. I never watch him race. that’s his job, his passion.

When he’s away, he rings me and we speak first and foremost about home, about the family. I don’t live vicariously through his champion status.”

She speaks as an ex-top-level athlete herself, having raced for the Andorran national cross-country skiing team and at open-sea freestyle swimming events.

“But Cyril wanted to interfere with my training. ‘Do this. Do that.’ Competing is his thing. I’ve moved on to other things.” laia laughs and says she enjoys the beach in peace when he’s away ‘working’. no doubt it’s laia who assuaged Cyril’s anger after the Dakar last January, not that she’ll say so. Despres came home second, a few minutes behind Spaniard Marc Coma, his teammate and rival at KtM-red Bull (the last six rallies have been won on KtM bikes) and it took the French number-one weeks to wipe away the bad memory of defeat.* Does that make him a bad loser? “that’s not my idea of a win,” he explains.

“I thought all that through. I questioned whether I wanted to carry on… We were all official and politically correct within the team, but Marc and I were barely on speaking terms at the time; we kept it all to the bare minimum.”

It made for an explosive atmosphere.

Was he really tempted last spring to get back behind the wheel of a car and give rally raid a shot, like so many others had 80

before him? the offer was made to him.

“I spoke about it a bit to KtM, but I was never thinking about it that seriously.”

Four wheels just aren’t his thing.

Coma and Despres decided to settle their dispute at KtM’s Austrian headquarters in June of last year. “of course the team wants a good sporting battle between the riders but they also want it to be a healthy rivalry,” Despres relates. “We got everything out in the open. Marc lives, works and trains like I do. He does things in exactly the same way. He’s my double. It’s like looking at myself in a mirror. there are lots of things we have

“FABRIZIO AND CYRIL’S CHILDREN” In January 2005, Italian motorcyclist Fabrizio Meoni, 47, winner of the Dakar in 2001 and 2002, was killed in an accident in Mauritania. “A few days after his death, we learnt that he’d quietly been supporting a school in the suburbs of Dakar since 2001,” Cyril Despres reveals.

“That struck me and I went to see what he was doing on the ground.” The Frenchman soon joined the Meoni Foundation, which continues the work the Tuscan rider had started. He has even been made honorary president. “I’ve always felt very emotional down there and felt a need to get involved.

By investing in a school you’re helping people grow. It’s the future.”

In early 2007, with the support of the foundation, Cyril and his partner Laia launched a project in Pikine in the sprawling eastern suburbs of Dakar.

The “Fabrizio and Cyril” school opened in 2008 with just 40 pupils. It now has more than 300. “You have to pay the teachers and buy the equipment,” expounds Cyril, who is always on the lookout for new ways to raise money.

“But we mustn’t just be in this to provide the money. We want them to take this project on. This is their story.” It’s his, too.

in common. He became a father this summer. So did I. It was a relief to talk.” their duel resumed this January (at the 33rd Dakar rally between Mar del Plata in Argentina and lima in Peru, run from January 1 to 15, 2012) and ultimately it was resolved in Despres’s favour – but only after a desperate tussle through the wilds of latin America.

“Without doubt this fourth Dakar victory was the hardest,” Despres said from the victory podium, “both physically and psychologically. From the very first stage, all the way to the end of the last real stage, Marc and I battled it out and mentally that was exhausting. We’re so close in terms of outright speed and navigational ability that the slightest error can allow the other to pull out a decisive lead – there is never a moment to relax. to have such a rivalry doesn’t make either of our lives easy, but it does add to our sport’s excitement and gives our victories greater merit.”

t

he “very long days” before the Dakar had weighed heavily on Despres. “I’ve never found a way to cope with the pressure that comes with all this,” he admits. “there’s the first special section. you follow your route. you look out for your marker. It’s like this amazing game. Stupid, isn’t it?”

But then the confession: “I’m not going to change now. Maybe when I stop competing, I won’t want to carry on riding bikes anymore, but as things are now, I can’t get enough of it.

www.cyrildespres.com *Cyril Despres was overall leader at the start of the 3rd stage ahead of Marc Coma but was given a 10min penalty by the stewards for going the wrong way round a flag which demarcated entry to the starting zone he was joining. He never managed to close the gap on the Spaniard over the course of the rally. He later accused his rival of being nothing more than “a free-rider”.

Gina, born in August 2010, watches over Daddy’s motorbike. Laia keeps an eye on Gina (right). The satnav and Dakar trophies (below)

“You folloW Your route.

You look out for Your marker. stupId, Isn’t It?”

Contents 84 TRAVEL IDEAS A week of music in sunny Miami 86 GLOBAL FOOD One chef’s inspiration and a recipe to follow 88 TRAINING Tips from the pros 90 BAND WATCH Wellington trio Electric Wire Hustle 92 BEST CLUBS Gig venue of choice in Austin, Texas 92 OUT NOW Latest offering from prolific songstress, Grimes 93 TAKE 5 Influences of an indie-rock intellectual 94 WORLD IN ACTION 96 SAVE THE DATE 98 MIND’S EYE

PHOTOGRAPHY: JOERG MITTER

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THE MOST FUN IN THE SUN A 10-day conference, a six-day Week and a three-day festival all in less than a fortnight?

The live music scene is the beating heart and soul of Miami

March in Miami means music. Most notably, the Winter Music Conference (March 16-25), which celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2011, lays its towel on the sandy shorelines of Miami Beach. More than 300,000 music industry professionals, and one or two hangers-on, fly in from over 70 countries, to confer and deal all day, then dance all night. The Ultra Music Festival, from March 23 (pictured above), began life as a party at the 1999 Conference and is now a three-day festival taking advantage of the fact that the world’s leading electronic dance music artist are in town. Bridging the two is Miami Music Week (March 20-25), which is kind of like the Conference, only without the need for a badge hanging from your neck. With every danceable space in the city a possible party venue, from superclubs to bars to back yards, The Red Bulletin’s guide, showing how to get the best from these 10 days in Miami, is your essential guide.

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1. BEST POOLSIDE PARTIES Arkadia Poolside at Fontainebleau Hotel 4441 Collins Avenue Miami Beach, 33140 www.arkadiamiami.com Following a billion-dollar renovation, this monolithic hotel’s 3,716m2 ocean-side pool (right) is a site to behold.

The best part about it all is hearing some of the world’s best DJs spinning their latest dubplates while you tube it down their Wall of Water area, sipping a pina colada.

2. BEST OLD SCHOOL GONE NEW Amnesia 136 Collins Avenue Miami Beach, 33139 www.amnesiamiami.com This club was a South Beach staple for a decade after its 1993 opening and became notorious for its ‘sex and foam’ parties. Having been closed for nearly 10 years, Amnesia is now back in its original home south of 5th Street with co-owner Bob Sinclair once again set to shake up Miami’s nightlife.

3. BEST HIPSTER NIGHTCLUB Grand Central 697 North Miami Avenue Miami, 33136 www.grandcentralmiami.com Cross to the mainland and in the desolate downtown core of Miami lies one of the best live music venues in the country: a former train station that now houses the crème de la crème of la musica. Expect hipster madness, from Diplo to Skrillex and whatever lies in between.

4. BEST SECRET PASSWORD NIGHTCLUB Bardot 3456 North Miami Avenue Miami, 33127 www.bardotmiami.com With an unobtrusive locale and absolutely no signage, even plugged-in party-goers can waltz right by. Absolutely no cameras inside, this speakeasy living room plays home for dance labels like DFA Records, so don’t be surprised to see label head James Murphy slugging whiskey while spinning Berlin electro tracks.

5. BEST OL’ DIRTY BASTARD NIGHTCLUB Mamushka’s 31 NW 36th Street Miami, 33128 So grimy, it doesn’t even have a website Welcome to the hood – Wynwood, to be exact. In the thick of an area of town much less desired (imagine NY’s Lower East Side circa 1995), this is the bar that brings the grit to Miami music’s glitter.

Ninjasonik, Das Racist and other alternatives to electronic dance music norms play here.

6. BEST HOTEL LOBBY TO RUN INTO YOUR FAVOURITE DJ Shelborne Hotel 1801 Collins Avenue Miami Beach, 33139 www.shelborne.com Completely renovated and under new management, the Shelbourne is set to be the hotspot for Conference week 2012. Expect legendary veterans of the turntable to be hobnobbing at the pool-side bar, from Carl Cox to John Digweed and whomever else BBC Radio 1 plans to host.

7. BEST LATE-NIGHT POSTCLUB DRUNKEN FOOD BINGE Big Pink 157 Collins Avenue Miami Beach, 33139 www.mylesrestaurantgroup.com You know the feeling, when you’re bordering on ordering a burger or breakfast. Big Pink diner does both, deliciously, until 5am on Friday and Saturday nights. Regardless of what you order, the side has to be the Nemo Polenta Fries. It doesn’t hurt that you’re only a block up from Amnesia (see No.2).

8. BEST PLACE THAT’S WORTH SNEAKING INTO Soho Beach House 4385 Collins Avenue Miami Beach, 33140 www.sohobeachhouse.com Yeah, so what if it’s membersonly? Where else can you see music legends Arthur Baker and Pharrell Williams DJ to, like, 40 people in a makeshift tiki bar? Only at Soho House, for sure. Last year, Conference did a doozy here and we’re sure this year David Guetta will be caught naked in the pool.

9. BEST NIGHTCLUB TO NOT HEAR ELECTRONIC MUSIC Club Play 1045 5th Street Miami Beach, 33139 www.clubplaysouthbeach.com There comes a point in every Miami merrymaker’s jaunt when he or she just can’t take the thumping bassline and repetitive four-on-the-floor any longer. When you’re feeling more Tupac than Tiësto, Club Play is the joint. It’s infamous for hosting hip-hop’s royalty, from T.I. to Rick Ross.

10. BEST NON-MUSIC BUT MUSIC-RELATED EVENT Miami Art Museum’s The Record Exhibition 101 West Flagler Street Miami, 33130 www.miamiartmuseum.org Opening two days into Conference and running until June 10, Miami Art Museum is featuring The Record, a full-scale celebration of contemporary art and vinyl culture. With artists like David Bryne, Laurie Anderson, Christian Marclay and Sean Duffy (his Burnout Sun is pictured below), music-culture buffs will break from the partying to be here.

WORDS: ESTHER PARK. PHOTOGRAPHY: GETTY IMAGES (4), GENE OGAMI/COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND SUSANNE VIELMETTER LOS ANGELES PROJECTS, C FLANIGAN/FILMMAGIC, WORLDREDEYE.COM

Miami plays nice

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TOP FIVE PARTIES

A time to gatecrash Kratwerk’s retro electronica heads for Ultra Check out Diplo at the Grand Central

1. ULTRA MUSIC FESTIVAL March 23-25 www.ultramusicfestival.com It’s sold out, but that doesn’t stop you nuttahs from gatecrashing! They’ve got Justice, M83 and they’ve got Kraftwerk, for heaven’s sake! Crawl your way through the Portaloos. Just do whatever it takes!

4. ANYTHING AT LIV at Fontainebleau Hotel March 21-25 www.livnightclub.com This nightlife beast has a Miami monopoly, with a biggest-and-baddest line-up all year. During March it raises its game: Afrojack, Axwell, Kaskade, etc. If you haven’t been to LIV, you haven’t lived.

2. SWEDISH HOUSE MAFIA Masquerade Motel March 23 www.masquerademotel.com With the boys of SHM saying that Masquerade Motel last year was one of the highlights of their lives, that makes their 2012 hurrah unmissable. To quote Steve Angello: “We Come. We Love. We Rave.”

5. GRAND CENTRAL www.grandcentralpark.org Grand Central just took over the parking lot next to its club and is converting it into a “week long outdoor music festival/block party” for Miami Music Week. Highprofile alternative bands and DJs are set to appear.

CREDITS:

3. CHICKEN ’N’ BEER at Standard Hotel March 23 www.jillionairesucks.com www.standardculture.com The lovely lads of Mad Decent (Diplo’s label) bring you their third annual rave-up party at the even lovelier poolside of the Standard Hotel. From 2pm until 7pm, this party will serve great music and fried chicken.

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THE WORLD’S BEST CHEFS

Favourite Tippling

WHAT’S ON THE MENU AT HANGAR-7

RYAN CLIFT An Englishman living in Singapore is Asia’s hippest chef

Ryan Clift was 14 years old when he started his gastronomic career in his native England, working as a dishwasher in a Michelin-starred restaurant, where he says he was “fascinated by it all from the beginning”. Some two decades later he runs Singapore’s outstanding Tippling Club and is regarded as Asia’s hippest chef.

In 2008 he made his way to Singapore – for love. Love of ingredients, that is, because “cooking is my life”. Says Clift: “Asia has some sensational ingredients. It’s my mission to keep discovering new ones and combine them in new taste sensations.”

It’s not just his commitment, creativity and fetish for quality that sets Ryan Clift apart. He also has a genius command of the most varied cooking techniques, as Ikarus executive chef Roland Trettl relates: “On my visit to Singapore, as soon as the food started emerging from the kitchen I was speculating how on Earth he came up with it – and that happens very, very rarely.”

Clift’s culinary philosophy is exemplified by his Scottish razor clams with garlic soup, parsley and chives. Trettl: “That dish knocked me out. There was no trickery or deception, but it was so rounded, harmonic and full of quality produce and flavour – it was enough to make you cry.”

MY PHILOSOPHY

THE RESTAURANT Tippling Club 8D Dempsey Road Singapore 249672 enquiries@tipplingclub.com www.tipplingclub.com “The location was our easiest choice of all,” remembers Ryan Clift. The restaurant is an oasis in the middle of Singapore, just a few minutes from the hustle and bustle of the central business district, a piece of tropical paradise set among towering trees. The bar has become a favourite meeting place.

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Cocktails instead of wine “Fine dining and cocktails – with or without alcohol – go together better than fine dining and wine,” explains Clift. “Wine is derived from grapes. As great as the range of taste facets in wine is, cocktails have a limitless range of mix components, making them unbeatable in food matching.”

Excitement and stimulation “Our menu should be a journey full of surprises for our guests – exciting, stimulating, and sometimes a little bit scary. Here you never know what’s coming next!”

Singular adventure “This is very important: our guests should experience a culinary adventure which they couldn’t reproduce at home in a million years.”

Hangar-7’s guest chefs Every month, a top guest chef comes to the Ikarus Restaurant in Hangar-7, at Salzburg airport, and teams up with the in-house kitchen staff to create two special menus.

The guest chef for March is Ryan Clift, from Singapore’s Tippling Club bar and restaurant.

Learn more about his menus and other guest chefs at Ikarus at www.hangar-7.com or www.facebook.com/hangar 7. To book a table or make enquiries send an email to ikarus@hangar-7.com or call +43 662 2197-777.

PHOTOGRAPHY: HELGE KIRCHBERGER/RED BULL HANGAR-7, MARK TEO/RED BULL CONTENT POOL (2)

Pigeon, beetroot, quinoa, raspberries

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GESCHMACK VON WELT

COOK GLOBAL

NATIONALGERICHTE ZUM NACHKOCHEN

LET THE WORLD BE YOUR KITCHEN

Cometh the Sour Headline In the Philippines, vinegar is WORDS: KLAUS KAMOLZ. PHOTOGRAPHY: FOTOSTUDIO EISENHUT & MAYER XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

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THE RECIPE DAS REZEPT Serves 4 2 tbsp black peppercorns 1Zutaten whole chicken 10,25 whole garlic bulb für 4 Personen: l Hühnersuppe 100ml rice or white 3 tbsp vegetable oil 1 kg Hühnerbrust 3 EL süße Chilisauce wine 1-2 tsp cornflour (ohnevinegar Haut und Knochen) 2 Bananen 2-3 soy sauce salt, taste 150tbsp g Speck 50 g to gesalzene Erdnüsse 200ml water 2 spring onions, 200 g Champignons 1 TL Garam Masala (optional) 4 bay leaves green parts only 1 kleine Zwiebel Pflanzenöl 0,2 l Schlagobers Salz 0,1 l Crème fraîche Cut the chicken into eight pieces onPfeffer the bone: two legs, two thighs, two breast halves, two wings. Bring the vinegar, soy sauce, leaves, black peppercorns and two chopped Ip essi. water, Lis nis bay ametum irillan drercipis nos amconsenisi tat niatuer cloves of the garlic thecon boil.

Simmer for 10 minutes leave susciduis nullam iritto vulla hendre do dolorpero etuer then alit vero od to Place thequisi chicken pieces in a bowl, pour on the mincool. et lute verat, bla corperostrud tat nos ex ero odit,marinade, volortie cover and ut leave 24 hours.

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Pour on the marinade andercilis simmer forexabout 30eaminutes, niam ad tem dolor acinisi tis alis ex ating esenisl tasting every once in avenim while zzrit, and seasoning with salteugiate if necessary. consequi blaore dolum sustie dolore feum do Make a pasteod ofdunt the cornflour using a littlenim water and pour it dunt praesto aliquisis alit, conulput aliquipis aliquatue into the pan. well.atCut spring onions into rings, ea corperit duiStir eroin digna lorthe suscidui bla faci tat.

Utfine wis nisl dolor and let the zzrit sauce in thewisl panulputat. reduceHent for aetuerciduis few minutes. suscipsum lortinit amServe velisim your adobo inibh esto odwith tissi.rice and garnished with the spring onion rings.

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Beating the Fear Factor Mental fitness is just as important as physical conditioning, says the FMX biker known as ‘Maddo’

Just the Trick

work out Training wiTh The pros

Robbie Maddison After a spectacular jump in California last New Year, Australian daredevil Robbie Maddison is revved up for this year’s Red Bull X-Fighters World Tour

Suggest to Robbie Maddison that, from the outside, his sport of freestyle motocross doesn’t look like it requires a particularly high level of fitness and the Australian daredevil isn’t slow to leap to the defence of his super-soaraway sport.

“It’s pretty intense stuff,” he says of a competition that has riders performing bodyRobbie twisting tricks on motorcycles 15m in the air, Maddison often upside down. “Even though our runs in Red Bull X-Fighters are like a minute-and-a-half long, I reckon we put in about the same effort that a boxer does in one of their rounds.

“A lot of the time, you’re so focused on getting all the aspects of the trick right – the physicality of the body extension, your position relative to the bike, the bike’s position in the air – that you forget to breathe. You do all this physical stuff and you’re not getting enough oxygen. You need to be pretty fit.”

Maddison, who unofficially broke the world record for distance jumped (119m) on a motorcycle in practice for the 2011 Red Bull: New Year. No Limits event in San Diego, is looking forward to getting back to FMX with the 2012 Red Bull X-Fighters World Tour, which starts in next month in Dubai.

“I’ll definitely be competing,” he says. “I’m really looking forward to it and trying to make this year a bit better than 2011.

“I had a good win in Brazil last year but there were a couple of injuries that didn’t help. So I’ll try to put it all together this year, hopefully stay injury-free and see what happens.” www.redbull.com; www.robbiemaddison.com

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“With distance jumping there’s a fear game going on, and you have to control that. It happens in FMX too, when you’re going out there to try a trick that you’re not 100 per cent sure about, but it’s more of a factor in the distance jumping. For me it’s about trying to still the mind. I do a lot of meditation to try to get that stillness. Confidence also plays a big part and that springs from how hard you train and how well prepared you are. When you know you’ve done the training and people tell that you look fit and well, then you go out with confidence.”

Flying Fitness A true road warrior, Robbie Maddison’s training routine has to fit around his 300,000 miles-a-year air travel schedule “Training schedules are pretty random. I do about 300,000 air miles every year, so it’s really hard to fit in regular workouts.

It’s all about utilising downtime. I’ll lie on the floor of the plane doing exercises, hyper-extending my back. However, if I had to work out a perfect session, it would focus on stability and core muscles and strengthening the back. That would probably mean using wood chops with the cable machine and then 20 chin-ups. Following that, I do the ‘swan’ Pilates exercise, lying on your front, lifting your head and shoulders – it’s great for your back and shoulders. Then I do squats and some bent over rows, which is a back exercise where you’re partially squatting and lifting barbells up. Then I might do a Reptile Crawl where you’re on all fours, with your back level and then moving forward using opposite limbs – right arm, left leg. I can’t run as I’ve got arthritis in one knee and no anterior curiate ligaments in either knee, so for cardio I’ll take a road bike out. I also ride my BMX bike. A fun cardio workout we do is to open up the foam pit and launch the BMX bikes in there. When you’re hauling that bike out of the foam every couple of minutes, it’s pretty tough. Like being in quicksand.”

Robbie’s track at home

WoRDS: juSTIN hYNES. phoTogRAphY: jöRg MITTER/RED Bull X-FIghTERS, gARTh MIlAN/RED Bull CoNTENT pool, joE TRElEvEN

Robbie Maddison at Corumba Falls in Salto Corumba, Brazil, before Red Bull X-Fighters 2011

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ACTS TO WATCH IN 2012 #3

Electric Wire Hustle: (from left) Mara TK, Myele Manzana and Taay Ninh

Away We Go loved in Europe, with america to crack and new Zealand ELECTRIC WIRE HUSTLE

Opening act: EWH’s eponymous debut

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it’s the morning after the summer sunday festival at matakana, and Wellington trio Electric Wire hustle are refuelling over a cup of coffee outside conch records on Ponsonby road in auckland. “i think we held our own,” says frontman mara tK, of the previous evening’s performance.

“We were on after Fly my Pretties, and there were twenty-something of them on stage, so it took us a while to get set up. but once we got going it was really good.”

“Every time we play, we play with total intent and put our heart and soul into it,” says multiinstrumentalist taay ninh. “hopefully it was memorable and hopefully people were talking about us after the show.”

People are talking about Electric Wire hustle, but the buzz is bigger overseas than in new Zealand. influential uK DJs,

such as benji b and gilles Peterson have championed the band, who last year based themselves in berlin for three months while playing major European festivals, including glastonbury in the uK and sÓnar in barcelona. one of the goals for 2012 is to make inroads in the us market, starting this month with their first appearance at the sXsW festival in austin, texas. the us seems like an ideal home for EWh’s brand of contemporary soul, a term ninh prefers to some of the other genres the band have been tagged with. “there are some things we’ve been compared to that make us cringe,” he says. “Korean pop was an interesting one,” laughs mara tK. “no disrespect to some people, but they don’t do their research,” continues ninh.

“We’ve also been labelled as

Welly-dub. i mean, what the hell is Welly-dub? Whatever it is, we’re definitely not it.” their website says, “EWh’s unique sound challenges genre boundaries and preconceptions.” “that sounds like something from a funding application,” laughs ninh. “We need to rewrite that.” “i think we’re part of a scene that’s trying to do new things, says mara tK. “our music represents a whole lot of different moods.”

EWh’s debut album is a heady mix of soulful grooves shot through with jazz, funk, hip-hop and electronica. okayplayer, the us music website co-founded by ?uestlove of the roots, describes the album as, “the best, most exciting r ’n’ b, soul, electronica, whatever you want to call it, record i’ve heard [in 2010].” mara tK’s incredible falsetto has drawn comparisons to marvin

WorDs: robErt tighE

on their minds, all this trio need now is to finish that difficult second album

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PhotograPhy: ElEctric WirE hustlE, KmEron/VincEnt PhilbErt

“We’ve been labelled as Wellydub. i mean, what the hell is that? Whatever it is, we’re not it”

gaye, while he’s also memorably been described as the “lost bee gee” and the “love child of tracey thorn [of Everything but the girl] and the dude from simply red.” the 27-year-old is the son of legendary new Zealand blues guitarist billy tK and only began singing seriously in 2006. “my parents are musicians, but i wasn’t sure about following them into the business,” he says. “then i found hip-hop, which was something my parents weren’t into. i got into the roots and found turntablism and DJing, and started making beats. my dream was, and still is, to produce a beat for someone like scribe.”

Discovering hip-hop and the roots were key milestones in ninh’s musical journey. the 32-year-old was a founding member of hip-hop/soul/funk collective solaa before EWh. his musical education before that was traditional. “at 15 i could play piano classically,” he says, “but i had no idea how to perform contemporary music. When i found hip-hop, it just spoke to me.” at summer sunday, ninh’s mad energy sees him bounding from instrument to instrument, after warming up the crowd with a tambourine. his noodling on ableton music software allows the band to loop samples and drum sounds, and play around with the live, on-stage sonic output of their performance. myele manzanza’s drumming drives the live show. looking sharp in a dapper suit and tie, the 23-year-old is a shoo-in for best-dressed musician. his father, congolese master percussionist sam manzanza, moved to new Zealand before myele was born. myele’s first gig was playing the

congas on a telethon with his dad when he was five years old. “my relationship with music and the drums wasn’t a case of, ‘get in there and practise,’ he says. “it was a part of my life, like rugby is for a lot of new Zealand families. What Dad gave me was a direct link to the roots of rhythm, how to adapt rhythmically to any given genre.” besides hip-hop, there is another genre that shines through EWh’s music. “all of us dig on jazz,” says ninh. “to me, the essence of jazz is about progression and keeping things fresh. there’s a raw edge to jazz and that rawness and imperfection attracts us. John lennon and the Plastic ono band, and ringo, had that flavour. Dylan and led Zep have that element where it’s not quite right, where you make a mistake. but it’s a beautiful mistake and it doesn’t mean it’s wrong. if we pulled apart the first album there are so many moments that were born out of, ‘What the hell is that? hang on, that’s it, right there.’” the band are recording a second album and, says ninh, are “in the midst of turmoil, going through the whole artistic lovehate process. “We’re all about pushing it further and asking ourselves, ‘is this fresh enough?’” because it’s gotta be right.”

Need to know The line-up mara tK – vocals, guitar, bass, production taay ninh – production, sampler, bass, synth, keyboards myele manzanza – drums, production Discography Electric Wire Hustle EP (2008) Electric Wire Hustle (2009)

The story so far Taay Ninh came home to New Zealand after the Red Bull Music Academy in Melbourne in 2006 (Mara TK attended in Toronto 2007, and Manzanza is a graduate of London 2010) determined to do something fresh. “I was blown away by the people I worked with at the academy, and the feedback I got,” he says. “I was just starting to freak on some new music at the time, really getting into J Dilla, and I needed to find an expression of where I was at that point in time.”

He found it on the streets of Wellington at the end of 2006, when he heard Myele Manzanza busking. “The way he played the drums,” says Ninh, “I was like, ‘Damn!’ It was just a feeling. It was one of those fortunate coincidences, same with meeting TK.” Ninh was playing a New Year’s Eve gig in his native Christchurch when he heard Mara TK on vocals for a band called Departure Lounge: bad name, great singer: “I was like, ‘I’ve got to make music with this guy.’”

The three jammed together for nearly a year before their first gig at the Wellington Rugby Sevens in 2008. Their second gig was a Red Bull Academy showcase featuring Benji B (now an influential DJ on BBC Radio 1) and UK future soul exponent Steve Spacek. EWH’s debut album was released in New Zealand in 2009 and received widespread acclaim on its worldwide release on BBE Records in 2010.

Their second album is due out later this year. www.electricwirehustle.com

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Post-Internet Generation

OUT NOW ESSENTIAL LISTENING

BEST CLUBS PARTY ALL OVER THE WORLD

Austin’s Powered EMO’S EAST, AUSTIN In March, the renowned SXSW music, film and interactive festival takes over the city.

2,000 bands play live; the best gigs are at Emo’s East

We love running a club in this city because...

Austin is the live music capital of the world!

The club’s name is a reference to ...

The original owner, Eric Hartman, aka Emo, who was a spotter in Chicago for all the hot bar owners. He would go to bars to watch the staff, then let the owners know who was over-pouring to get higher tips. When he got to Austin, he opened his own place and called it Emo’s.

From outside the club looks like…

A souped-up strip mall.

If there’s a movie to compare the interior with,it would be...

NIGHT OWL? IF YOU CAN COMBINE YOUR LOVE OF BARS AND CLUBS WITH YOUR KNOWLEDGE OF SALES, A MUSKETEER ROLE CAN OFFER YOU A FANTASTIC CAREER OPPORTUNITY. PLEASE SEE THE JOBS SECTION OF WWW.REDBULL.CO.UK FOR MORE INFORMATION.

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The Coen brothers’ movie, Blood Simple.

Nights really start to get going…

Around 10.30pm.

The club is packed when there are...

1,700 people in, according to the number on the wall, but let’s say 2,000.

The craziest night was when…

The band Gordon solie m****rf****rs played. Bags of flour everywhere. TVs from the green room were thrown into the crowd. Trash cans flying. Surprisingly, no fights.

At the moment, the track that makes the crowd go nuts is…

Enter The Ninja by Die Antwoord, and The Lonely Island’s I’m On A Boat.

When patrons tire from dancing, they rest…

In the stadium bleachers which we took from the local high school.

Mike Staples, club manager Emo’s East 2015 E Riverside Drive, Austin, Texas, 78741, USA +1 (512) 505-9999 www.emosaustin.com

Songwriting, what does recording, album that mean? cover design, making That I grew up the video… Claire with a big glut of Boucher, alias music available due Visions: an Grimes, likes to do to Napster. That ethereal electro means I’ve never it all herself. Not sound because she has to, preferred specific it’s just that the 23-year-old types of music. At school, Canadian is so bursting I loved OutKast and with talent that she knows Marilyn Manson. There’s no other way. Grimes may no contradiction between only be at the beginning of loving rap and Gothic rock a beautiful friendship with for my generation. And that her fans, but she has taken comes across in my music. her Rihanna-meets-AphexProducing the music Twin synth pop on the road and the video seems to with Lykke Li and released come naturally to you. three albums. Coming soon Making electronic music is a is Visions, her fourth, an very visual process in and of enigmatic production that itself. You’re moving blocks would make the perfect around on the screen. So soundtrack for a fantasy making videos isn’t stepping film starring Kate Bush. into the unknown. If   : Four anything, I prefer it. Making albums in two years. music is the main course That’s good going... and working on the : I just make video is the dessert. a lot of music. There are still about Grimes’s Visions is released on March another 1,200 12. For tour dates and songs lying in wait audio delights, visit: on my hard drive. www.grimesmusic.com You describe your music as “post-internet”,

Grimes has 1,200 songs waiting in the wings

WORDS: FLORIAN OBKIRCHER. PHOTOGRAPHY: TIM GRIFFIN (2), RAPHAEL OUELLET (1)

GRIMES The Canadian multi-tasker has made more good music in her first two years on the circuit than many others do in a whole career

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TAKE FIVE

“My mum hates my new album”

THE MUSIC THAT INFLUENCED THE STARS

Stephin Merritt is indie rock’s intellectual.

He skilfully blends great pop songs and strange synthesizer sounds, as did his heroes before him from Nico to Stereolab THE MAGNETIC FIELDS

It’s not enough for Stephin Merritt to cobble together a few songs for an album. That just wouldn’t do for an artist regarded as the last great conceptualist in the indie-rock circus.

Far greater, he reckons, the challenge of limiting yourself to one subject.

Ever since the ’90s, this songwriter/ musician and his band The Magnetic Fields have been creating albums which, in terms of either the words or the music, revolve around a single theme. His most Herculean project appeared in 1999: a triple album on the subject of love. Merritt, 46, illuminates the eternal topic 69 times, each from a different angle

WORDS: FLORIAN OBKIRCHER. PHOTOGRAPHY: MARCELO KRASILCIC

Song writing genius Stephin Merritt (left, rear) in the magnetic field of his band

and so cleverly that many music magazines voted 69 Love Songs one of the best albums of the ’90s.

Next came an album with all the song titles beginning with an ‘I’; then a noise-pop record called Distortion, followed by a ‘Varieté’ folk album. Together they formed part of his ‘No-Synth Trilogy’. In his latest, Love At The Bottom Of The Sea, Merritt has rediscovered electronica: it fizzes and sizzles at every turn – a record which combines the thrill of bitter-sweet love songs and synthesiser experiments. An artist with many influences, Merritt reveals his five most inspiring albums.

The United States Of America – The United States Of America I stumbled across this album in a second-hand record store when I was a teenager. I’d already heard of the band but it was the cover that really fascinated me: the band’s violinist is sitting at an old synthesizer and he is electronically modulating his violin sounds on it – on a record that came out in 1968!

Sadly, Joseph Byrd and his band only released one album but it’s legendary because the synthesizer is used as an abstract, expressionistic creator of sounds on it and not as something melodic.

Nico – The Marble Index Shirley from the band loves Nico but hates this album because she thinks John Cale ruined it with all the quirky noises and strange sounds that her Velvet Underground colleague contributed to it. She thinks he did it deliberately because Nico had supposedly left him for Lou Reed not long before the recording. But I love The Marble Index precisely because of these experimental add-ons.

I get [those] sounds stuck in my head as I walk down the street and find myself singing. I also tried to slightly distort pop songs on Love At The Bottom Of The Sea. My mother hates me for it but at least Shirley didn’t complain.

The Red Krayola – Parable Of Arable Land Their rock songs are quirky enough, but the pieces The Red Krayola recorded with their friends sound downright psychedelic.

They remind me of the tape loops on the first Pink Floyd album, Piper At The Gates of Dawn, but this overlooked masterpiece came out before that.

The High Llamas – Cold And Bouncy The songs on Cold And Bouncy have a playful sound; this is a great pop album, in a Beach Boys style. But there’s one dominant element which the founder of the group, Sean O’Hagan, describes as “wobbly” – his word for the sound of the Moog synthesizer, which is used a lot on my new album, too.

Stereolab – Dots And Loops I can’t stand filter effects and sample loops. They all sound the same in dance music! But not with Stereolab. Although some people say that The Noise Of Carpet is their best work, I say this is because it proves that the filter can be used creatively and isn’t just an instrument of the devil.

Love At The Bottom Of The Sea is out now; www.houseoftomorrow.com

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World in Action March 2012

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A GLOBAL ROUND-UP OF SOME OF OUR FAVOURITE THINGS TAKING PLACE OVER THE NEXT FEW WEEKS

Sport 09-11.03.2012, ATAKÖY ATHLETICS ARENA, ISTANBUL, TURKEY

World Indoor Championships

A record number of participating nations – 160 – are expected at the first IAAF World Indoor Championships to be held on Turkish soil.

The 26 events will be held at the 7,500-seater Ataköy Athletics Arena, which has been built especially for the championships. American hurdler Lolo Jones will be hoping she can do the triple in the 60m hurdles.

She first won a gold medal in Valencia in 2008, then followed it up in Doha 2010 while setting a world record of 7.72 seconds, which is still the time to beat.

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16-18.03.2012, ALBERT PARK CIRCUIT, MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA

Australian Grand Prix races are planned for this year’s 3 Twenty Formula One season, making this the longest in the sport’s 62-year history. The action kicks off, as it did last year, at Melbourne’s Albert Park. It’s the circuit that provided such rich pickings for Sebastian Vettel; the German Red Bull Racing driver started from pole and romped home in convincing fashion. He’ll be hoping for a repeat performance as he starts his bid for his third successive World Championship title.

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World Team Table Tennis Championships The ITTF World Team Championships won’t only thrill local fans in the table-tennis-crazy Ruhr; over a billion spectators are expected to tune in on TV around the world. The women’s team from Singapore managed to loosen the Chinese stranglehold on the title at the last World Championships in Moscow, after the latter had won eight times in a row. The Chinese men have gone undefeated for the last five team champs. Their main challenge could come from the host team, which centres on Borussia Düsseldorf star Timo Boll; in Moscow two years ago, the Germans eventually went down 1:3 to the Chinese in the final.

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WRC Rally Portugal

17.03.2012, QUEBEC, CANADA

Red Bull Crashed Ice World Championships

The fourth stop in the rallying calendar will be on Portugal’s south coast and there are plenty of innovations and high points to look forward to: 22 special stages over an increased 434.77 competitive kilometres (mainly gravel tracks), three brand new night-time special stages and one power stage on Sunday. Last year, Citroën secured an impressive onetwo finish, with Sébastien Ogier coming home just ahead of eight-time world champion Sébastien Loeb.

Can anyone keep the winning pair at bay this season?

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25.03–01.04.2012, WESTFALENHALLENIN, DORTMUND, GERMANY

29.03–01.04.2012, ALGARVE STADIUM, FARO, PORTUGAL

Lolo Jones will be aiming for her third gold medal

Canada is seen as the cradle of ice hockey, which makes it a fitting location for the fourth and final meet of the Red Bull Crashed Ice World Championships season. A winner here in 2010 and now a local hero, Kyle Croxall will be keen to take glory on home soil in front of more than 120,000 fans. He started the season strongly, winning in St. Paul, Minnesota.

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Citroën had an impressive one-two finish last year

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10 Afro-soul star Zahara performs in Cape Town 16-19.03.2012, DUBLIN, IRELAND

St Patrick’s Festival Shamrocks and people dressed in green as far as the eye can see: on 17 March, the Irish celebrate St Patrick, their national saint. In Dublin the carnival atmosphere lasts for four days, as over 500,000 arrive for colourful parades (which this year will include marching bands from the UK, Russia and the USA), live bands, film and cabaret shows, as well as fairgrounds and a firework display against the backdrop of the city skyline. If you’re lucky, you might just find someone to sell you a glass of Guinness, too.

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30-31.03.2012, CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA

International Jazz Festival

Jazz and Cape Town go back a long way. In the ’60s, visionary musicians like Abdullah Ibrahim and Basil Coetzee mixed American jazz and South African folklore to create Cape Jazz. Now in its 12th year, the renowned Cape Town Jazz Festival invites more than 40 local and international artists to make music together in the spirit of this blend from youngsters like Afro-soul singer Zahara to older heroes like US guitar maestro Mike Stern. And judging by the 34,000 fans that attend, the music is going strong.

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24-25.03.2012, TOKYO, JAPAN

International Anime Fair

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Last year it was cancelled because of the Japan’s earthquake, but the largest fair for Japanese anime films is back for 2012. Relieved publishers, illustrators and more than 100,000 fans will travel from all over the world to celebrate their heroes with the huge eyes and tiny noses. And it‘s for adults as much as kids: the Japanese entertainment industry makes an incredible €80 billion a year from anime.

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PHOTOGRAPHY: PICTUREDESK.COM (4), IMAGO (1), GALLO IMAGES (1)

Timo Boll will challenge the favourites from China

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Culture

Anime fans: a perfect mix of cartoon and reality

09-18.03.2012, AUSTIN, TEXAS, USA

SXSW

South-By-Southwest is to music what the Sundance Festival is to film. Up-and-coming bands from all over the world play in more than 90 live venues alongside established artists like Built to Spill or Talib Kweli. For young artists it’s quite an honour to be invited to perform. Many have a baptism of fire with the international press, while for others it‘s the first step to a great career. Grimes, War On Drugs and Theme Park are this year’s promising newcomers.

30-31.03.2012, SANTIAGO, CHILE

Lollapalooza

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This American festival, set up in 1991 by Jane’s Addiction frontman Perry Farrell, was seen as something of a Woodstock for the 1990s. Lollapalooza became so popular that The Simpsons even devoted an episode to it. And the cult lives on. In March, the rock ’n’ roll circus pitches its tent in Chile; rocking up on the band bus are alternative music heroes Foo Fighters, Björk, MGMT and Arctic Monkeys.

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The Emerald Isle is colourful for St Patrick’s Day

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morE body & mind

Save the Date March 2012

EvErything worth going to sEE, chEEring for and taking part in this month in nEw ZEaland MARCH 28

Rock the joint Elbow are making a long overdue debut visit to New Zealand. The Manchester band’s lead singer and songwriter Guy Garvey is a modern-day poet and their soaring, uplifiting yet melancholic melodies promise to fill the Powerstation. www.powerstation.net.nz MARCH 17

It might be a little late to consider entering this year’s Tarawera Ultra Marathon, but the event is fast becoming one of New Zealand’s best, with many of the world’s top trail runners coming here to tackle the 100km course from Rotorua to Kawerau. www.taraweraultra.co.nz

MARCH 25

Run for your life If your ‘get fit for 2012’ New year’s resolution has bitten the dust already, rekindle your exercise regime with the run Auckland Series. From March to July each year, runners and walkers of all abilities compete over 5km or 10km courses at six different scenic locations throughout Auckland. Designed to be fun, friendly and accessible to all, these races encourage people of all ages and abilities to take part. Some participants are happy to make it across the finish line, while others are out to beat their personal best. the first race of this yearis at Waiatarua reserve in remuera, followed by events in te Atatu, Bucklands Beach, Northcote, Western Springs and Botany Junction. www.runauckland.co.nz

MARCH 10 FRoM MARCH 6

Flight time The simple pleasure of making paper aeroplanes will be celebrated at the Red Bull Paper Wings World Championships in Hangar-7 at Salzburg airport in Austria in May. For the first time, the New Zealand flag will fly at an event in which ‘top gun’ paper pilots from 85 countries will take part.

Qualifying events take place this month at the following universities: Auckland, AUT, Unitec, Victoria, Massey, Otago and Canterbury. The competition has three disciplines in which papery performance is measured – longest distance, longest airtime and aerobatics – with three winners in each earning their wings and an actual plane ride to Austria. Remember when your teacher said throwing planes in class would get you nowhere?

That guy was wrong. Entry is open online now. www.redbull.co.nz

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Food frenzy First held in 1990 as a community fundraiser, the Hokitika Wildfoods Festival, on the west coast of the South Island, has become one of the biggest food festivals in the country.

Noted for its rare fare, this year festival-goers can sample pukeko, deep-fried shark and paradise duck.

For the adventurous eater, there will also be seagull eggs and grasshoppers, and huhu grubs cooked to order or eaten live. More conventional gourmets will plump for spit-roast venison, scallop kebabs and whitebait patties. For pudding, the Udderly Wild Desserts girls will be offering

dairy treats made with cow’s colostrum, the rich milk produced just before calving. All of this can be washed down with locally brewed moonshine or, for the very brave (or should that be ‘ballsy’), stallion semen protein shots. Bon appétit. www.wildfoods.co.nz

pHotogrApHy: rUtger pAUW/reD BUll coNteNt pool, rUN AUcklAND teAM, HokItIkA WIlDFooDS FeStIvAl

Happy trails

NEW ZEALAND

MUST-HAVES! 1

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1 THE NORTH FACE- HAVOC MID GTX XCR This lightweight, waterproof performance-orientated boot is built with CRADLE technology and an exclusive super-light Vibram outsole to provide flexible support for moving fast and light over technical terrain. RRP $369.95

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2 QUIKSILVER’S ADMIRAL A nice addition to Quiksilver’s watch offering, The Admiral is a watch that will roll between casual Sunday sessions and ‘suit up’ nights out (depending on your choice of suit).The face is big but not large, it doesn’t overpower your wrist but definitely brings some attention. The face has a blue tinge to it which is reinforced mineral crystal with an anti reflect coating – pretty neat. Press the light button and you get a electro luminescent (blue) hit.

The metal is solid marine-grade stainless steel. The red crown is a neat little addition. $249.99 Quiksilver.com.au

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3 EPSON MEGAPLEX PROJECTOR Supersize your movies, games, slideshows and presentations with the Epson Megaplex projector (RRP $1,699). Place your Apple device in the built-in dock or connect your smartphone, tablet, gaming console, PC and other devices.

To find out more visit www.epson.co.nz 4 NITRO CIRCUS SPARTAN HI NC Travis Pastrana and the whole Nitro Circus crew are back together in a truly LEPICDARY (epic ’n’ legendary) actionpacked 3D film. Expect the impossible, ridiculous, insane, hysterical, and purely awesome! In celebration of the movie DC has created a colour inspired by the crazy cast of Nitro Circus in the Spartan Hi NC! Available at all good DC Shoes stockists. RRP $199.99. www.dcshoes.com 5 PULP JARVIS Embrace old-school styling with Pulp Jarvis, shown in red suede with contrasting white sole. If you're not that brave it is also available in black or grey suede and black patent. Pulp Jarvis is light and flexible and it is available at Hannahs and Pulp for $99.95 www.hannahs.co.nz

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6 SONY ERICSSON XPERIA ARC S Thought the Sony Ericsson Xperia arc was a powerhouse?

Meet the evolution – the new Xperia arc S. Sony Ericsson has powered up the Xperia arc S with a new 1.4GHz processor making it the fastest Sony Ericsson smartphone yet. With an impressive 4.2-inch screen, Mobile BRAVIA display and running on the latest version of Android, the Xperia arc S is one serious piece of tech. RRP $799 Available exclusively from Vodafone

PROMOTION

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ate last year in the uK, the Observer Sunday newspaper asked one of its photographers, Katherine rose, to shoot a series of head-to-head comparisons between her Canon 5D mkII and the new iPhone 4S. The results were revelatory.

The high-end Canon, in the hands of a professional, comfortable with adjusting exposures and depth of field, won most of the match-ups. But not by a lot. And in a couple of cases, the iPhone took the better picture. Notably, it did so in the kind of tricky light that is supposed to defeat small, simple cameras.

As rose demonstrated, the iPhone 4S camera handles both tight close-ups and sweeping skies. You can turn from the smallest scene to the largest – and it will follow your eye. It’s a substantial improvement on the iPhone 4 and if – like me – you’ve been using an iPhone 3G, it’s like upgrading from a pinhole camera.

Most coverage of the 4S camera at launch focused on the obvious improvement in resolution over the iPhone 4: from five megapixels to eight.

But the wizardry goes way beyond that.

The camera, basically, is woven into the core of the phone.

The new A5 chip that drives the phone includes an image signal processor comparable with those in high-quality digital SLr cameras. The ioS 5 operating system uses new algorithms to govern colour balance and dynamic range.

A separate face-detection system can distinguish group shots from individual portraits and adjust focus accordingly.

The tiny lens is actually composed of five separate elements that allow colours to be reproduced more accurately.

But you don’t need to know that. You just need to know that you point it, touch the shutter, and you have a fair chance of taking a great photograph. Because the lens is a little wider that the standard, your pictures may seem to better match what you see. (My olympus xA2 brought a similar feel to film cameras in the ’80s.)

Apple, of course, isn’t the only company building this kind of wizardry into mobile

Mind’s Eye

Can-do Camera Camera tech in smartphones is wiping out the ‘point and shoot’ market, snaps Russell Brown phones. Samsung, arguably its key technical rival, is doing some fairly amazing things with the cameras in its Galaxy models. So it is little wonder that the sales value of point-and-shoot cameras fell 30 per cent in Britain last year. More snappy cameras were actually sold than in 2010, but they were so heavily discounted that a third of the Dollar value of the entire business disappeared. Yikes.

At the same time, a study by American market research company NPD estimated that last year the proportion of photos taken on mobile phones grew from 17 per cent to 27 per cent. The proportion taken on single-purpose cameras fell below half: from 52 per cent to 44 per cent.

The stand-alone camera business isn’t sitting still, of course. January’s annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas saw new offerings from Canon (whose new range can pick out the faces of children from others), Sony and others.

Several new cameras come with Wi-Fi connections, but that feels like a catch-up

to the kind of communications abilities that we take for granted in phones.

Indeed, communications is built right into the phone-photography experience.

Most iPhone photo apps – and you have quite a choice – will let you share your picture via email, Facebook or Twitter and even host it for you on the internet.

I’ve been enjoying the Camera+ app, which was partially developed in New Zealand. It’s notable for what it lets you do to your photos after you’ve taken them.

Did your party picture come out a little dark? No problem. Hit the ‘Clarity’ button and the room lights up. Want to make the colours really sing in that nature shot?

A couple of flicks gets you to the ‘Vivid’ effect. All in an app that costs NZ $1.29.

This is where serious photographers and happy-go-lucky snappers begin to part company. The filters available in the various camera apps will let you transform your image into something supernatural. I took a shot of a sunset from our back deck with the Camera+ app a few nights ago. It looked soft and pretty. A couple of clicks later, it looked like God’s own light show.

This kind of image manipulation has become a key element of casual photography. Many filters in Camera+ – and more especially, in simpler apps such as Instagram and Hipstamatic – are actually intended to mimic an older technology: film. Want that faded Kodachrome look? It’s there for you. Want to make your shot look like a Polaroid image? The camera will apply a border that looks just like that. What we’re seeing here is post-modern photography, folks.

There are some obvious drawbacks to phone photography, however. An LCD screen will never be as accurate as a viewfinder on a sunny day. But for most of us, those are trumped by one factor. It’s fun. really, really good fun.

PS: Two hours after I filed this column, Eastman Kodak filed for bankruptcy.

Russell Brown is a media commentator and blogger and lives in Auckland

The Red BulleTin new Zealand, iSSn 2079-4274: The Red Bulletin is published by Red Bulletin GmbH editor-in-Chief Robert Sperl deputy editor-in-Chief Alexander Macheck General Managers Alexander Koppel, Rudolf Theierl executive editor Anthony Rowlinson Associate editor Paul Wilson Contributing editors Andreas Tzortzis, Stefan Wagner Chief Sub-editor Nancy James deputy Chief Subeditor Joe Curran Production editor Marion Wildmann Chief Photo editor Fritz Schuster Creative Photo director Susie Forman deputy Photo editors Valerie Rosenburg, Catherine Shaw, Rudolf Übelhör Creative director Erik Turek, Art editor Kasimir Reimann, design Patrick Anthofer, Martina de Carvalho-Hutter, Miles English, Esther Straganz Staff Writers Ulrich Corazza, Werner Jessner, Ruth Morgan, Florian Obkircher, Arkadiusz Piatek, Andreas Rottenschlager, Robert Tighe Corporate Publishing Boro Petric (head), Christoph Rietner, Nadja Zele (chief-editors); Dominik Uhl (art director); Markus Kucera (photo director); Lisa Blazek (editor) head of Production Michael Bergmeister Production Wolfgang Stecher (mgr), Walter Omar Sádaba Repro Managers Clemens Ragotzky (head), Claudia Heis, Nenad Isailovic, Karsten Lehmann, Josef Mühlbacher, Thomas Posvanc Finance Siegmar Hofstetter, Simone Mihalits Marketing & Country Management Barbara Kaiser (head), Stefan Ebner, Lukas Scharmbacher, Johanna Troger; Matthias Preindl; Martina Ripper; Klaus Pleninger (sales); Peter Schiffer (subscriptions); Nicole Glaser (subscriptions and sales marketing). The Red A product of the Bulletin is published simultaneously in Austria, France, Germany, Ireland, Kuwait, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa, Switzerland, the UK and the USA. Website www.redbulletin.com.

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