a beyond the ordinary magazine
APRIL 2013
bran
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Tablneew t
being Robby Naish A life in surf
Mountain bike NZ The trail blazers of Rotorua
App FREE
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THE WORLD OF RED BULL
April 66 GOLDEN BOYS
Every ambitious yachtsman dreams of one day taking part in the America’s Cup. A select group of young sailors is one step away from making that dream come true
COVER PHOTOGRAPHY: MICHAEL MULLER. PHOTOGRAPHY: BALAZS GARDI, MICHAEL MULLER
WELCOME
You could be the best yachtsman in the world and never compete in the America’s Cup. Sailing’s premier contest is truly elite, in that it attracts the best of the best, but also, some say, because of the hard-to-crack old boys’ network that surrounds it. The Red Bull Youth America’s Cup challenges the status quo and gives talented youngsters a chance to break through. Also on water, but all by himself, Robby Naish is a true pioneer of windsurfing and kitesurfing. The Red Bulletin visited him in Hawaii (tough gig) and was rewarded with tales of a life lived to the full. Continuing our globe-trotting commitment to original journalism, we also visited the cleverest country on the planet: Armenia, where chess is the national sport, taught in schools, and where grandmasters are feted like film stars. All that, and much, much more. Enjoy the issue. THE RED BULLETIN
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WAVE WISDOM
Windsurfing legend Robby Naish on competitive obsession and the joys and rigours of a life lived passionately 03
THE WORLD OF RED BULL
April AT A GLANCE
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TRAIL BLAZERS
Fred Christensen came to Rotorua, New Zealand, almost 25 years ago and set about building mountain bike trails. Along the way, he made friends and enemies, and changed the city forever
06 PHOTOS OF THE MONTH Amazing images from top photographers 12 NEWS Sport and culture on the quick 16 ME & MY BODY Dai Greene 17 WHERE’S YOUR HEAD AT? Star of The Great Gatsby, Leonardo DiCaprio 20 LUCKY NUMBERS Calculating Star Trek 22 WINNING FORMULA Weightlifting
FEATURES 24 Hawaii
Shooting the breeze with legend of windsurfing Robby Naish
36 South Dakota
Redemption through skateboarding in the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation
44 Armenia
How to build a nation of grandmasters
16 90 ME & MY BODY: DAI GREENE
After surgery, shoe supports and ice baths, this year the world 400m hurdles champion is fighting fit
VAMP IT UP
Superstar DJs play marathon nine-hour sets at Club Midi, a former bakery in the unofficial capital of Transylvania
52 Rotorua
The story behind NZ’s best MTB trails
60 Secret Location
Going undercover with the world’s top manual bomb disposal experts
66 California
Getting up to speed with the Red Bull Youth America’s Cup hopefuls
76 New York City
Exploring the collective unconscious with memory expert Eric Kandel
MORE BODY & MIND
36 44 SKATE OR DIE
Life’s tough in America’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, but skateboarding is providing an unlikely source of hope 04
WORLD’S BRAINIEST COUNTRY
In Armenia, the president greets winning grandmasters at the airport, and kids learn mind games in school chess lessons
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TRAVEL Musical highlights of NYC GET THE GEAR Motocross essentials TRAINING Climbing tips from a pro NIGHTLIFE Food, drink, music & more SOUNDS OF 2013 Five Mile Town SAVE THE DATE Events for the diary MIND’S EYE With Russell Brown
THE RED BULLETIN
PHOTOGRAPHY: GRAEME MURRAY/RED BULL CONTENT POOL, RUTGER PAUW/RED BULL CONTENT POOL, CLUB MIDI, JAY HANNA, DANIEL GEBHART DE KOEKKOEK
BULLEVARD
The all-new 3 Series Touring
www.bmw.co.nz
THE ULTIMATE ALL-WHEEL DRIVE SPORTS WAGON IS HERE. The all-new BMW 3 Series Touring has arrived and for the first time in New Zealand it’s now available with BMW xDrive, the world’s most sophisticated all-wheel drive system. Based on the award winning 3 Series Sedan, the Touring is set to raise the bar once again, delivering class leading performance, technology and luggage capacity – making it the perfect vehicle for the active New Zealand lifestyle.
BMW1951/03
Visit your nearest authorised BMW Dealership and test drive this Ultimate Driving Machine, and you’ll find out why BMW is the number one selling premium car brand in New Zealand and around the world.
THE ALL-NEW BMW 3 SERIES TOURING FROM $77,800.
S E AHAM , E N G L AN D
HIGH TIDE
“Is that a very big wave or a very small lighthouse?” asked one of Owen Humphreys’ Twitter followers. Humphreys, a newswire lensman, confirmed the former: “Mate, was worst seas I’ve seen there.” The lighthouse, on the harbour wall at the Durham town of Seaham, about 25km south-east of Newcastle upon Tyne, is 10m tall; the spray at the top of that breaking wave is about three times that. twitter.com/owenhumphreys1 Photography: Owen Humphreys
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SAHAR A , M O RO CCO
DRY RUN
Sporting challenges don’t come harder than the Marathon des Sables. A marathon a day, give or take a few paces, for six days. Runners must carry all food and kit; water and first aid is available en route. (On the organisers’ shopping list: 120,000 litres of water and 2,700 blister plasters.) This year’s race finishes on April 15; last year’s was won by Salameh al Aqra of Jordan, in 19h 59m 21s. As he rightly pointed out, “Everyone reaching the finishing line here is a champion.” www.darbaroud.com Photography: Erik Sampers
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LO FOTE N , N O RWAY
SPECK-TACULAR
Aksel Lund Svindal is used to a bigger crowd when he skis. On this remote off-piste jaunt, the Norwegian, winner of two overall World Cup titles, Olympic super-G gold and five assorted world championship golds, was part of the team making Being There (available to buy or rent on iTunes), a globe-trotting freeski action doc. “It’s simply raw nature,” he said, of the filming. “You’re skiing in the moment.” He’s the one smiling at the camera. www.fieldproductions.com Photography: Mattias Fredriksson
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Bullevard Sport and culture on the quick
Retro active Music’s old dogs are learning new tricks. Getting the band back together is common these days; doing more than greatest hits is not. So here are four acts still creating after all these years
1. DAVID BOWIE No live shows to support his first album in 10 years, The Next Day, released to raptures last month.
2. FLEETWOOD MAC The band begin a world tour this month, minus Christine McVie, with their first new songs in 10 years.
SYNTH ETHIC A sculptor works hard to ensure that his musical mechanical devices are unlike any others on Earth Why would you put an electronic instrument inside a stuffed badger? David Cranmer thinks that’s the wrong question: why wouldn’t you? Strange sounds from self-made synthesizers are not enough to satisfy the 30-year-old English artist, so his music machines are visually striking, too. Gems among his collection are a pink metal pig, with a snout and 56 buttons on its body, a pyramidshaped speaker with a built-in synth, and a drumming penguin made of tin and powered by a chainsaw. He built a device that caused a stuffed bird of prey to dance and called it A Kestrel Manoeuvres In The Dark. “My friend asked me what casing I would build my ideal theremin into,” says Cranmer. “I replied, ‘Probably a traditional oak case, or maybe a badger.’ Eventually, it seemed the badger was the better choice.” You can find Cranmer’s creations at both art and music shows: he has performed, with the musical pig, under the name Nine Owls in a Baguette.
Good, pointed, well made: pyramid synth by David Cranmer
www.nervoussquirrel.com
3. MY BLOODY VALENTINE Third album m b v came in Feb, 22 years after their second. See them at festivals from Tokyo to Berlin.
PHOTOTICKER
EVERY SHOT ON TARGET
Have you taken a picture with a Red Bull flavour? Email it to us at: phototicker@redbulletin.com 4. BLACK FLAG Hardcore gods back on tour, without frontman Henry Rollins. A first LP since 1985 is imminent.
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Every month we print a selection, with our favourite pic awarded a limited-edition Sigg bottle. Tough, functional and well-suited to sport, it features The Red Bulletin logo.
Los Angeles Legendary punks Bad Religion rock the Red Bull Sound Space at KROQ Studios Gabriel Olsen
THE RED BULLETIN
Green tech Kit to shrink a carbon footprint for Earth Day, April 22
LOGITECH K750 This wireless keyboard works on solar energy, not batteries. One sunny charge will last three weeks.
From stage to phone: the new Red Bull Music Academy Radio app takes you inside music
PHOTOGRAPHY: REX FEATURES, WARNER MUSIC, GETTY IMAGES, ERICA ECHENBERG/REDFERNS DAVID CRANMER/NATHAN PASK, RED BULL MUSIC ACADEMY, GETTY IMAGES/RED BULL CONTENT POOL, WWW.BEDOLWHATSNEXT.COM
App’ll do nicely What was The xx’s concert in London last month like? What track did Questlove finish his latest DJ set with? Which legendary bands did Ginger Baker play drums for? All questions you can get immediate answers to via the new version of the Red Bull Music Academy Radio app. Oh, and there’s music too. Every day there are new mixes, artist profiles, interviews and concerts from clubs and festivals around the world. Former participants and lectures from over 50 countries feature, as well as fresh and interesting bands and musicians. The archive is already over 1,000 shows strong – all of them exclusively produced for Red Bull Music Academy – while a new function allows users to set up a bespoke channel from favourite broadcasts, which, along with individual shows, can be shared on Facebook and Twitter. Unless your smartphone really isn’t smart at all (ie it’s not Symbian, Windows Mobile, iOS or Android) you can get the free app now. www.rbmaradio.com
ECOXPOWER A dynamo to charge both a front light and handlebarmounted mobile (or other USB device) as you cycle.
BEDOL ALARM CLOCK Water is what makes this tick. Fill her up once and she’s good to go for eight weeks.
TWO-TON MARK If all goes to plan on April 21 at the Bahrain GP, Mark Webber will become only the 13th driver to start 200 Grands Prix How did you feel when you raced your first F1 GP? Unbridled joy. My path into Formula One was a rocky one. In 2002, I was lucky enough to compete at my home Grand Prix in Melbourne and finished in a wonderful fifth place, in an inferior Minardi. Your best race to date? The 2009 German Grand Prix. It was also my first win. Even though I had a drivethrough penalty, I was nine seconds ahead of Sebastian Vettel at the finish line. Most spectacular overtaking manoeuvre? Spa 2011, Eau Rouge: I squeezed past Fernando Alonso at 270kph. Most dangerous moment? In 2010 in Valencia. I crashed
into the back of Heikki Kovalainen, my car flipped up in the air and did a backwards somersault. It was a miracle I was uninjured. Favourite car? The RB6, 2010 season. I won four Grands Prix in it! Favourite circuit? The ‘Ardennes rollercoaster’ in Spa, Belgium, though I’ve never managed to win there. Greatest disappointment? I had 10 podium finishes in 2010 – my best chance to win a world title – but in the end I was 14 points short of Seb Vettel in the championship. Out now for Apple and Android phones: the Red Bull Racing Spy app, with gossip, race diaries and photos
‘A miracle I was uninjured’: Mark Webber flips out at Valencia in 2010
www.earthday.org
WE HAVE A WINNER!
Cape Town Robby Naish (see Contents) and kitesurf queen Susi Mai at Red Bull King of the Air Craig Kolesky THE RED BULLETIN
Valparaíso Crowd in the road while Slovak MTBer Filip Polc takes the stairs at an urban downhill race in Chile Fabio Piva
Nantes At Red Bull Beat It, France’s best urban dancers, including Mufasa (left) and Antoinette Little Shao 13
Bullevard
Rural pursuits, Southland style
Down on the farm
Give a little After watching Born Into Brothels, a documentary about street children in Calcutta, Pat Shepherd changed his life so he could change others. In 2009, he organised the Good Karma Project to help a school for refugee children on the Thailand-Burma border. The Wellington photographer-turnedphilanthropist’s latest project, One Percent Collective, hopes to convince people to contribute one per cent of their income and/or time to support NZ charities. “When people think of charity, they think of someone shaking a tin or asking you to sign up to something,” says Shepherd (right). “This is an easy way to contribute to charity without thinking too much about it.” www.onepercent collective.org
Brandon Bay Wind’s up at windsurfing contest Red Bull Storm Chasers in Ireland Sebastian Marko 14
Big Apple-bound: NZ’s Louis Baker
FABULOUS BAKER BOY
New Zealand’s flag-flyer at the Red Bull Music Academy is a Wellington whizz kid with a pristine passport Louis Baker still can’t believe that his first overseas trip is to New York City for the Red Bull Music Academy. “I got an email one morning,” says Baker. “It read: ‘New York is waiting.’ I thought it was spam.” The 23-year-old singersongwriter, who’s been compared to Jeff Buckley, Sly Stone, D’Angelo and Marvin Gaye – no pressure, then – will join 59 other musicians, producers and vocalists in New York for two weeks of workshops, lectures, studio sessions and gigs. Baker’s first single, Even In The Darkness, announced him as a major new talent and he’s hoping to release his debut EP later this year. : What inspires you to make music? : As cheesy as it sounds, I’m into connecting people and making them feel equal through my music. That’s my buzz. When did you discover you had this amazing, soulful voice? I’m still discovering it. My mother encouraged me to start singing when I was 16. Before that, I played guitar in a heavy metal band. What will the Red Bull Music Academy mean for your career? I’m excited about meeting talented, positive, like-minded musicians. Everybody I’ve talked to has told me it will be a life-changing experience. www.louisbaker.co.nz
Sarajevo Getting cold feet at sub-zero iceslide Red Bull Jump and Freeze Sulejman Omerbasic
St Johann In Austria, speedway’s Mikkel B
Jensen (left) gets ice riding tips from Franky Zorn David Robinson THE RED BULLETIN
WORDS: ROBERT TIGHE. PHOTOGRAPHY: GRAEME MURAY, ONE PERCENT COLLECTIVE
Since 2007, Dan and Brett Frew have hosted worldclass FMX, BMX and MTB riders at an annual event on their farm in Southland. This year’s Farm Jam attracted 25 international riders and over 2,000 fans. Local Kiwi Nick Franklin took the freestyle motocross title, Kyle Baldock from Australia won the BMX event, while Spanish ace Andreu Lecondeguy claimed the mountain bike freestyle honours. “Lecondeguy shredded every bike he rode,” says Brett Frew. “He was killing it alongside all the top FMX riders. The intensity from all the riders was incredible, but Lecondeguy was outstanding.” www.redbull.co.nz
Bullevard
ME AND MY BODY
DAI GREENE
After surgery, shoe supports and ice baths, this year, the world and Commonwealth 400m hurdles champion, 27, is fighting fit
BRAIN TRAIN
1
Mentally, you have to be in control. For me, that starts about two weeks before a big competition. You have to switch off to rest, and then switch on when you need to focus. On competition day, I visualise the race and what I have to do during each second of it.
www.twitter.com/DaiGreene
2 PERFECT PLANNING BUM DEAL
KNEESY DOES IT
5 ARCH ENEMY Injury forced me out of the 2008 Olympics. The arches of my feet were collapsing inwards when I ran, which put my tibialis posterior tendon under stress. I had to go back to basics, with walking drills to strengthen them and had bespoke insoles made for support. Now they’re fine.
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3
When I’m fatigued, muscles, like my glutes, can just switch off. Then other muscles begin to compensate for them, and get overloaded. I combat this with regular physio and, during summer season, ice baths. They’re around 8°C – pretty cold – but a dip lessens fatigue and aids recovery.
4
I hurt my left knee in 2011. When I ran, there was continuous pain, so I had surgery in December of that year. There was a fold in my meniscus cartilage, which they cleaned up. It was months before I could bend it properly, which didn’t help my Olympic campaign. [Greene finished fourth at London 2012.]
THE RED BULLETIN
WORDS: RUTH MORGAN. PHOTOGRAPHY: PHIL DUNLOP
At 16, I discovered I have epilepsy. I’m susceptible to seizures when I’m stressed or tired. It’s difficult to make sure you get to bed on time: near a championships I can be on the track until 11pm. But it’s never stopped me racing. I just have to plan well and be careful.
Bullevard
WHERE’S YOUR HEAD AT?
LEONARDO DICAPRIO From being “king of the world!” to saving it, the ace actor has always aimed high. But if he had listened to advice, we might never had heard of him
Like The Artist
Leonardo Wilhelm DiCaprio, born in LA on November 11, 1974, has a middle name from Mom’s German heritage, and a first from her standing in front of a da Vinci painting when he, unborn, first kicked. An agent told young Leo to ditch both, for Lenny Williams. “[He] felt it was too ethnic and I wouldn’t get as many jobs.”
Marty Parts
After working with Leo on This Boy’s Life (1993), Robert De Niro told Martin Scorsese he had to work with “this kid DiCaprio”. Scorsese has now directed DiCaprio in five films: Gangs Of New York, The Aviator, The Departed, Shutter Island and, due later this year, The Wolf Of Wall Street, a tale of debauched financial fraud.
On The Boat
Animal Man
A child actor in TV shows and commercials (bubble gum breakfast cereal), Leo made his film debut in 1991, in lame sci-fi comedy Critters 3. Two years later, his turn in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape won him an Oscar nomination at the age of 19. In 1996, still only 21, he was cast in the lead of Titanic, and a superstar was born.
You might expect a man called Leo to like big cats, but DiCaprio went the extra mile in 2011 when he gave US$1 million to a global fund to save tigers. He has now moved onto bigger things: campaigning for an end to the trade of ivory and conserving the world’s elephant population.
Great Expectations
WORDS: PAUL WILSON. ILLUSTRATION: LIE-INS AND TIGERS
With Kate Affection
In the freezing cold water of the Titanic set, Leo forged a close friendship with co-star, Kate Winslet. He walked her down the aisle at her third wedding last year; she still wears a ring he gave her after they played warring marrieds in Revolution Road (2008).
Isle Be Back
Like Johnny Depp, DiCaprio owns an island in the sun. The 104 acres of Blackadore Caye is in the archipelago of Belize and was purchased in 2005, with plans for an environmentally sound resort to be built. The project is still in the planning stage. THE RED BULLETIN
Soon bursting forth in 3D, the sixth adaptation of The Great Gatsby might be the most lavish Hollywood film ever made. DiCaprio plays the lead, alongside Tobey Maguire, his friend of more than 20 years, and Carey Mulligan.
Earth Father
Following Gatsby and Wolf, LDC is taking “a long, long break”, during which, he says, he would “like to improve the world a bit”. Environment concerns are a priority: his house has solar panels and he drives a Fisker Karma luxury hybrid sports sedan.
The Great Gatsby is in cinemas around the world from May 10: thegreatgatsby.warnerbros.com
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Bullevard
HARD & FAST
Top performers and winning ways from around the globe
Creative outlet: Hayley King at her Ponsonby Road workspace Italy’s six-time world motocross champion Tony Cairoli, 27, (left) dominated on home soil to add ‘Italian International MX champion’ to his long list of titles.
STREET ART SMARTS A giant painting coming to Lake Wanaka is the result of hard work and natural inspiration
In Voss, Norway, 20-year-old Swiss Fanny Smith took gold in ski cross (eliminator races down a freestyle course) at the Freestyle World Ski Championships.
What made triathlete ’s win Richard Murray’s at the South African Championship all the sweeter? It was his first on home turf. “It was a big day for me,” said the 24-year-old.
Hayley King never bought into the myth of the starving artist. To her, there is nothing romantic about the notion that poverty is a crucial part of the creative process. When she started her company, Flox Design, in 2005, she also enrolled in a business course. Though fashion wasn’t her true passion, she designed and sold clothes to bring in the bucks, while doing the street art that would build her brand in the art world. The street art led to paid commissions, her bright, colourful native flora and birds – hence the name Flox – appearing in restaurants, retail stores and homes. Now the commercial side of the business helps finance the fun stuff, like painting a giant billboard on the shores of Lake Wanaka this month as part of the Festival of Colour. When she was 21, King gave up a promising career as a professional squash player, but the 34-year-old has no regrets. “I realised I didn’t want to play squash for the rest of my life,” says King, who is based in a gallery/workshop off Auckland’s Ponsonby Road. “Art was my passion, but squash gave me a sense of competitiveness that’s helped me in business. I feel established now, but I’ll never be complacent. I’ve got a Flox look that’s in demand, but I’m always creating and thinking about what’s next.” www.flox.co.nz
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THE RED BULLETIN
PHOTOGRAPHY: PICTUREDESK.COM, KTM/TAGLIONI S., GETTY IMAGES, CHERIE VALE/NEWSPORT MEDIA. ILLUSTRATION: DIETMAR KAINRATH
Reigning men’s overall World Cup champ, Marcel Hirscher, 24, of Austria, had a good last day at the Alpine Ski World Championships in Schladming, Austria, winning slalom gold.
NATHAN WILLIAMS, OPPO 180 RAIL HOP / NASHVILLE, TN
NATHAN WILLIAMS BRAKE AVAILABLE NOW
FACEBOOK.COM/ETNIESNZ
Bullevard
LUCKY NUMBERS
STAR TREK
With Star Trek Into Darkness out next month, a voyage into the 47 years, and millions of light years, of science-fiction’s most fruitful saga
The starship USS Enterprise first hovered on American TV screens on September 8, 1966, but ground to a halt after three seasons, due to low viewing figures. Star Trek only achieved success when repeats were shown; five spin-off series since have made it a touchstone of TV. Watching all 726 episodes in one go would take three weeks.
The first USS Enterprise
Mr Spock & Captain Kirk now...
Former pilot and policeman Gene Roddenberry wrote the first Star Trek script in 1964. Roddenberry was the godfather of Star Trek, and worked on the TV shows and films up until his death, aged 70, in 1991. In 1997, some of his ashes were sent into space on a rocket the first ‘space burial’ of its kind.
The Klingons are a warrior race with a language of their own, developed by linguist Marc Okrand after his work on Star Trek III: The Search For Spock. The Klingon Dictionary was first published in 1985. According to the Guinness Book Of Records, Klingon is the most widely spoken fictitious language.
...and then
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The Deep Space Nine space station
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400,000 No TV series has more fans than Star Trek. In 1994, there were 130 fan conventions worldwide, which attracted over 400,000 visitors. There are famous Trekkie/rs: Martin Luther King praised Lieutenant Uhura as an African-American role model, while Barack Obama arranged a special White House screening of the 2009 Star Trek film.
Trekkie in blue
Lieutenant Worf, Klingon
47
Star Trek: The Next Generation scriptwriter Joe Menosky graduated from Pomona College, California, in 1979 where, in 1964, a professor put forward the theory that the number 47 occurs in the universe more than any other number. Menosky included it often in his TNG episodes; writers across the Trek franchise have followed suit.
1985
385,680,446
Lieutenant Uhura
Since Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 1979, a further 10 Star Trek films have been released. The most recent was 2009’s Star Trek. It grossed US$385,680,446 at cinemas worldwide, taking it to, even with prices adjusted for inflation, box office heights to which no Star Trek film had gone before. Even greater success is predicted for sequel Star Trek Into Darkness, out from May 15.
Gene Roddenberry
www.startrekmovie.com THE RED BULLETIN
WORDS: FLORIAN OBKIRCHER. PHOTOGRAPHY: KOBAL COLLECTION, PICTUREDESK.COM (3), GETTY IMAGES (2), IMAGO, REX FEATURES, CORBIS
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EVERYTHING SPORT. NEWS, PICTURES AND GREAT STORIES. CALL 0800 759 759 TO SUBSCRIBE
Bullevard
WINNING FORMULA
ABSOLUTE POWER
RAISING THE BAR “The height of Matthias Steiner’s professional career came at the 2008 Beijing Olympics when he won gold in the super heavyweight division,” says Dr Martin Apolin, a sports scientist in the physics faculty at the University of Vienna. “At the Olympics, a winner is determined by adding together best scores in the snatch – lifting the bar from the floor over the head in one movement – and clean and jerk – from floor to chest, then above the head. Steiner’s winning clean and jerk was an impressive 258kg. The question here is: how much power did he generate in order to do that? “In phase one, the clean, the weight is raised from the floor to the shoulders (stages 1 to 4 in the diagram). We shall work out Steiner’s power as the barbell accelerates. “Power is calculated as work over time (fig 1 and 2): P = W/t. In our case, the work consists of lift (WL) and acceleration (WA). We calculate lift using WL = m g h, whereby m is mass in kg, g is gravitational acceleration (9.81m/s²) and h is the amount the body’s centre of gravity (BCG) rises in m. But here, Steiner is lifting two things: the barbell and his own body. So WL = m¹gh¹ + m² gh² applies. We calculate the barbell acceleration using WA = m¹v²⁄ 2, whereby v is the final velocity in m/s. All that combined gives us value of P = (m¹ g h¹ + m² g h² + m¹v²⁄ 2)/t. “The barbell’s maximum upward velocity is 1.41m/s which is reached 0.93s after the lifting motion starts. The barbell is raised 0.72m in that time. We have no exact data available on how far the BCG in the case of Steiner’s body – which has a mass of 146kg – rises during that time. However, we may assume that the body’s centre of gravity is inside the torso, level in height with the navel, and estimate that it rises by 0.6m. By the end of the barbell’s acceleration phase, Steiner’s body’s centre of gravity has reached its highest point and its speed has reached zero. The same cannot be said of the barbell, which is still rapidly moving upwards. “Therefore, we must also take into consideration the acceleration within the barbell. If we put all that into a formula, we get a value for P = (1,822J + 859J + 256J)/0.92s = 3,194 Watts, which is approximately 4.3 horsepower. A steady pace on an exercise bike generates about 100W (0.14hp); Steiner generates more than 30 times that power in less than a second.” UPLIFTING “The clean and jerk is the more exciting part of the contest,” says Steiner. “It decides who wins and the weights are heavier.” Steiner dedicated his victory at the 2008 Olympics to his wife, who had died in an accident the year before. At the 2012 Olympic Games in London, he had to retire after he was hit in the neck with a barbell weighing 196kg. www.matthiassteiner.com
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PHOTOGRAPHY: IMAGO. ILLUSTRATION: MANDY FISCHER. DATA SOURCE: NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF GERMAN WEIGHTLIFTERS; LEIPZIG INSTITUTE OF APPLIED ATHLETICS TRAINING
As well as bulging veins, a champion weightlifter generates an huge amount of energy. But how much?
Propping up the bar: Germany’s Matthias Steiner lifts 258kg to win gold in weightlifting’s super heavyweight division at the Beijing Olympics in 2008
E V A W
M O D WIS
R O B B YN D SNU RAF IINSG HL E G E N D O N T H E
SSION E S B O THE WI E V I T I T E P COM L OV E O F WAT E R , N D R I G O U R S O F A N D T H E J O Y S AS S I O N A T E L Y A L I F E L I VTzE orD tzPisA
as W or ds : A nd re ul le r y: M ic ha el M Ph ot og ra ph
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Robby Naish, on dry land at home in Maui, Hawaii
A
Naish (left) with brother Randy in 1978
KAILUA, WHERE I GREW UP, IS A super-cool little community on the north-east side of Oahu, Hawaii. Back then it was totally off the radar. Obama’s kind of brought it on the radar with his Christmas holidays, but even up until the last few years everyone just stayed in Waikiki and went to the North Shore. We lived a five-minute walk from the beach. I didn’t even own a pair of slippers until I was in the third grade. I did everything barefoot: went to school barefoot, played flag football [touch version of American football] barefoot, played basketball barefoot. I’m still like that. I’m barefoot all the time.
WHEN I FIRST STARTED WINDSURFING , there were like six or seven of us in Hawaii. It was when there was only one windsurfer and it had a wooden boom and plastic board. There had been no development in the gear yet. You didn’t jump on a windsurfer and go anywhere. You fell and you fell and you fell and you went 10ft and fell. In Kailua, the windsurfers would drift down the beach and then have to somehow drag their gear all the way back up. So I would go down after school and run down the beach and ask people if they wanted me to sail their board back upwind for them, so they wouldn’t have to drag it. And so I would get water time that way.
I LOVE THE DIFFICULTY OF WINDSURFING. I love that challenge to tame it, telling yourself, ‘I’m going to beat this thing!’ And the competitive aspect, where you control your own destiny. I never liked 26
ADDITIONAL PHOTOGRAPHY: ROBBY NAISH, JOHN CARTER/RED BULL CONTENT POOL
t a time when most of his friends were frantically rubbing cream on the first signs of acne, Robby Naish was a world champion. In 1976, the quietly confident 13-year-old got the better of a much older field in the young sport of windsurfing. The next year he did it again, and the year after that, and the year after that, too. He won 24 titles in all, adding two kiteboarding world championships in his late 30s. But his impact on the sport’s growth and popularity has gone beyond his titles. For the better part of two decades, he was windsurfing’s Michael Jordan, a man with an addiction to both the water and winning, and a transformative figure in a sport that grew from wooden booms and plastic boards into a global industry. If his great rivalry with Holland’s Björn Dunkerbeck didn’t quite equal the scale of Jordan’s epic battles while playing for Chicago Bulls against arch-rivals Detroit Pistons, it matched its intensity. Now 50, Naish retains a playful air about him, the white crow’s-feet around his eyes (from years spent squinting up at the sail) one of few giveaways of his advancing years. He still wears sandals and shorts as a matter of principle, and surfs his favourite break, the big-wave cauldron Ho’okipa on Maui’s North Shore, whenever the wind is up. Now in its 18th year, Naish’s eponymous company is a successful manufacturer of high-end windsurfing, kitesurfing and standup paddleboarding gear. The last two are sports whose wild popularity he helped pioneer in the mid-1990s and early 2000 respectively. In a large house on a cliff buffeted by winds, Naish spoke to The Red Bulletin about lessons learned in a life lived selfishly and passionately.
“I had such bad butterflies I was t h r ow i n g up in my mouth”
Naish’s company makes equipment for windsurfing, kitesurfing and stand-up paddleboarding
“I WAS N E V E R THE TECHNICAL G U Y. I C O U L D N ’ T CHANGE A TYRE ON MY BICYCLE” team sports. I’m not a super-social guy; I like to do stuff by myself, so it really clicked a switch in me. Some people can go and ride for six hours. I go out and I power through, and then I get off. The way I ride, that’s long enough. If I ride any longer I’m probably going to hurt myself. I’m not just cruising around and coming into the beach to hang out with my friends and socialise and then go out for another session.
MONEY HAS ALWAYS BEEN IMPORTANT to me. My mom once told someone, “Robby probably doesn’t have the first nickel he ever earned, but he probably knows where he spent it.” I don’t, but it was a good sort of analogy to how I’ve been with money my whole life. I always put the prize money from the competitions I won in the bank. Coming up with the money for my first board was the hardest part. I took my life savings, we sold a sailing boat, and I took my half of the money. I airbrushed T-shirts, I made and sold shell necklaces and I babysat. I was sort of the neighbourhood babysitter for while, which is weird for a boy. I did all that and then in 1975, I bought my first windsurfer for US$340. Back then it was a lot of money.
THE WATER IS AN ENVIRONMENT that is totally out of your comfort zone, and it’s always changing – it’s always different every time you go out. Anything that brings people outside is a good thing, but putting them into the ocean, or even on any kind of water – if it’s a lake or a river or whatever – is even better. It’s just cleansing: it’s good for you, it’s kind of a mind, body, spirit thing. That little lake behind your house that you’ve never even bothered to go out on because it doesn’t look inviting – you go out there on a stand-up paddleboard, which looks like the most boring thing ever, and you’ll see the world from a different perspective. 29
Naish, the early years: born in San Diego, California, his father, Rick, was a teacher and a passionate surfer who moved the family to Hawaii when Naish was five. Eight years later he was a windsurfing world champion
in the Bahamas, we had no idea at that point if I was faster or slower than the competition. But I had a huge advantage when the wind was light because I was so light. So I had the combination of being light and having really good speed, but also being good because I lived here and I could go all the time. Some of the older guys were definitely put off. In fact, it was the last year that they ever had an overall world champion. The next year they had weight classes.
I WAS NEVER ONE OF THOSE GUYS that would stand on a podium, throw my trophy in the air and go, “Yeah!” Humility was really, really important to me. I didn’t want to be that guy who everybody hated because I was winning. But I hated losing with such a passion, and the more I got through my career, especially when I had won so much, 30
“IT’S GOOD TO GET KICKED IN T H E FAC E O N C E IN A WHILE” that fear of coming up short got more and more profound. I ended up getting to the point where I had such bad butterflies I was throwing up in my mouth before heats. Like, literally getting sick from the adrenalin. In a way, it’s good that you know that you’re still taking it seriously even 25 years into your career. That it’s not like, “Oh well, whatever happens, happens. I’ve won, and if I lose, whatever, it’s somebody else’s
turn.” It was never like that. If you do it right you are going to get to a point where you know the only way someone is going to be able to beat you is if you make a mistake by letting him beat you. And not because it’s easy. It’s just because you worked that much harder than anybody else to get to that point. You have to be willing to sacrifice whatever is going to come between you and that zone, which is friends and family, and fun, and chicks, and parties. You have to be really, really selfish.
I BECAME A FATHER AT 18. That’s young, but I was older than a lot of 18-year-olds. I was obviously so selfcentred in my early days that [eldest daughter] Nani didn’t get the time that, say, my six-year-old daughter Christina is getting today, but the time we had together was really good. When I came home I had all the time in the world. We THE RED BULLETIN
ADDITIONAL PHOTOGRAPHY: ROBBY NAISH
MY FIRST WORLD TITLE IN 1976
In 2002, Naish entered windsurfing’s Hall of Fame
COVER
STA R ROBBY NAISH’S SUCCESS IN THE ’70S AND ‘80S BROUGHT HIM, AND WINDSURFING, FRONT AND CENTRE
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I’VE NEVER BEEN A GOAL SETTER. I’ve never thought things like, ‘I’m going to try and win that and once I win it I’m going to become a golfer or something.’ I’ve never had aspirations to do anything else. The whole time I was just trying to set myself up so there was a future next week or next month or next year. Like, if somehow it would continue I’d put myself in the best possible position to continue it. Since I was 20 years old,
people have been asking me, “When am I going to retire?” And I just say to them, “I am retired. I do what people do when they retire.”
BJÖRN DUNKERBECK’S FIRST SEASON on the tour was in 1987. You could tell that kid was going to be really good when he grew into his feet. And so he quickly grew into his feet, and it was the good-against-evil rivalry for years to come. He was quiet and a little bit THE RED BULLETIN
MAGAZINES: ROBBY NAISH
were so close in age that we would play. I don’t have regrets. I don’t have this glaring scar in my memory that I should have done something differently. She grew up to be an incredible person, and I think the relationship that we had is what it is and it was fantastic and she loves me, and I love her. Nobody is perfect, but I like my flaws, you know, and the times that I’ve fallen down I think were reasonable. It’s good to get kicked in the face once in a while.
Naish relaxed – unlike his first years in business
population” written in white letters. You flipped the page and it was introducing Naish kitesurfing. That’s the way we approached it. It’s dangerous, people are going to die doing this, it’s super extreme. Obviously, the equipment has developed and it’s become a much more accessible sport.
I LOST SLEEP OVER STARTING my company. I didn’t want to do it. I liked being responsible for only myself. I knew it was taking some of that away; I was going to add this layer of responsibility, tying me to other people and, boy, it was hard, but it’s one of the most rewarding and, at the same time, one of the scariest parts of my life right now. The decisions that I make now affect the livelihoods of 40-something people and their families. But I still have flexibility; nobody is telling me what to do. I’m not accountable to a bunch of people. And that, to me, is really valuable, more valuable than growing the brand and cashing in and getting my US$15 million paycheck and moving to Florida and going golfing or whatever people want to do when they retire.
I HAVE TO FORCE MYSELF TO
arrogant, with a little bit of Dolph Lundgren in his persona. He wasn’t really nice with the public. It was a perfect sort of good guy-bad guy thing, and I played the good guy. It was good for me because it pushed my career. It pushed me to get more into the technical aspects of the sport. I was never the technical guy. I couldn’t even change a tyre on my bicycle. I liked to ride. You could give me anything and I could ride. I could get my bike over the hill on one wheel, round the corner, down the street and all the way to the beach. I could wheelie longer than anyone. I could ride a skateboard better than anyone. But ask me to fix anything and I’d give it to my brother or someone else.
KITESURFING WAS THIS PERFECT transition as I was ready to stop windsurfing competitively. I was still doing the World Cup in 1998 when we started kitesurfing. You need a certain amount of wind in 34
“ I H AV E FLEXIBILITY – NO ONE IS TELLING ME W H AT TO D O ” windsurfing to get high-performance riding out of it, especially when you’ve been doing it as long as I have. Kiting brought high performance into that realm of bad conditions. You didn’t need that much wind to boost on your kite and ride waves. So it extended the amount of time you could have fun and get air.
THE VERY FIRST ADVERTISEMENT my company did for kiting, was a black page with “Absolutely positively the wrong sport for 99.9% of the world’s
be grounded and I’m sure in my wife Katy’s eyes, I’m not around anywhere near enough. They want to hang out on the beach and build more sandcastles and stuff, but it’s not in my nature to fluff the nest. I’ve done really good. But it is really out of my nature to be a family guy. It takes a lot to get me upset. My wife used to say, “Oh, you are a pushover. You let people walk all over you.” She always used to say that and, after 22 years, she realises why. Because if you are going to go through every day letting every little thing upset you and try to stand your ground on every guy that you meet, you are going to miserable.
I TELL THE YOUNGER GENERATION, if somebody is going to pay you a dollar to do something like windsurfing, you are like the luckiest guy in the world. So you’ve got to do everything you can to perpetuate it. I’m a pretty good example that if you play your cards right, you approach your life right and you are lucky, then you could do this forever. www.naish.com Watch Robby Naish tear up the waves off Hawaii in the The Red Bulletin tablet edition. Download it now for free THE RED BULLETIN
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There are few places as tough to be young as America’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. But in a place where poverty, suicide and alcoholism are constant companions, skateboarding is changing the old ways, offering hope and saving lives
SKATE 36
Jake Roubideaux, 14, carves up the Wounded Knee 4-Directions skatepark
E or DIE Words: Andreas Tzortzis Photography: Jay Hanna
The skatepark has given rise to a culture and support network for kids and young adults (like Joe Mesteth, above) facing the harsh realities of reservation life
E lijah Battese watches Bobby ollie a bike set up at the other end of the pool, getting 20 or 30cm off that lip, and landing it cleanly. The other kids go oooh. “I think I can jump that,” he says in a preteen mumble, grey-blue eyes fixed on the bike. Between him and it is a 2.5m drop into a bowl that flattens out and then rounds up again to the lip. The pool is smooth, and the concrete looks polished. It has two bowls and continues on for a flat stretch over to where the old tennis courts used to be. That’s where the skaters used to hang out, back when the skaters were just a couple of freaks who didn’t play football or basketball. Now between the basketball courts and the unruly grass and dirt divots of the powwow grounds stands this alien creation, which looks as weird here in South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation as it does natural in Venice Beach or New York. It is covered with kids on beat-up second-hand or donated skateboards, skating and bailing, carving up the bowl like it’s 1970s LA in the middle of a drought. There’s nothing smooth about their style, and most of their tricks end in a tumble. But they’re skating. And if they’re skating, then they’re not at home in fractured households; they’re not driving around the reservation in beaten-up cars necking smuggled-in booze; and they’re not standing at the edge, wondering if anyone would miss them if they were gone.
There is nothing simple about the place where Eli and his friends are growing up. There’s little tying it to the fashionable cool of a sport now firmly in the mainstream – nothing but the singular obsession to land a trick, the clack of the boards, and the whir of polyurethane wheels on concrete. And so with that noise all around him, Eli gathers himself, puts his back foot onto the board at the edge of the bowl and drops in, his waist-length braid whipping out behind.
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he story of how the Wounded Knee 4-Directions skatepark was built in Pine Ridge began just before Eli and his friends were born 12 years ago. But the story of why is far older, its roots entwined in broken treaties, mistreatment, and a spiralling sense of sadness and self-loathing that haunts the Pine Ridge reservation. A litany of depressing statistics tells the modern story of the Native Americans who originally inhabited this country. And the Pine Ridge Reservation, home of the Oglala Lakota Sioux, has been the powder keg for more than a century. From the broken Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, to the massacre at Wounded Knee, to the militant American Indian Movement of the 1970s, Pine Ridge has been the flashpoint of the American government’s failed policies toward its indigenous population. Life expectancy for a man on the Pine 39
When Leroy Janis (left) started skating on the reservation more than a decade ago, he was one of the outcasts. Today, he serves as a mentor to kids like Jaydin Thomas Peters (right), who flock to the park
Ridge Reservation, roughly the size of the state of Connecticut, is 47. Unemployment affects up to 90 per cent of the population, with most living on about US$3,000 a year. Alcoholism persists despite a ban on alcohol, disintegrating family structures and eroding tribal spirit. A poor diet means that close to half the population suffers from diabetes. Old cars rot on unruly front lawns, houses hold multiple large families, and new buildings, save for the gleaming hospital, are scarce. Among nine districts, Pine Ridge is the centre of the tribal council, its main street boasting two stop lights. There’s a Subway, a Pizza Hut and a Shell petrol station. Then there’s the most shocking statistic: a suicide rate among the youth that is 150 per cent higher than the national average. Over a 45-day period in 2009, the Oglala Lakota Sioux Public Safety Department reported 90 suicides or suicide attempts. Tiny DeCory’s phone, the one she keeps in her pocket as a sort of onewoman suicide hotline, was ringing off the hook during that time. It still does, in fact: teens overdosing on pills, others calling up and simply saying, “I want to kill myself,” prompting her to hop in her car and speed over. “There are a lot of factors that contribute,” says DeCory, a longtime youth advocate and unofficial auntie to countless reservation kids. “You’ve got single mothers with their kids and there’s no income. Economics has taken its toll, 40
and it’s going to get worse. We know about the kids who go on Facebook and say ‘eff my life’, and I know which ones, because it’s constant.” There is enough there to make anyone despondent, and DeCory, whose reputation for straight talk and action is well known on the reservation, has a cloudy vision of the future. But amid the panicked phone calls and sad messages, she’s noticed something else lately: Facebook updates of smiling kids and skateboards; cellphone videos posted of tricks pulled off successfully; shots of the smooth grey contours of the skatepark – the birth of a genuine alternative? “We have rodeo and we have powwows and we have our basketball players. But we finally have a new culture,” she says. “And it’s skateboarding.”
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he white SUV pulls into the dirt parking lot next to the skatepark mid-morning on a sunny spring Saturday. The back is covered in a growing collection of skate-brand stickers, including one for Wounded Knee Skateboards. Walt Pourier and Jim Murphy step out, and their arrival causes a small stir – high fives and half-hugs among the dozen or
“I got some problems going on right now. But I feel free when I’m on a skateboard”
so kids at the park. They’re well acquainted with their benefactors. The pair take in the scene in front of them, one that a year before seemed impossible. “Murf and I get in the car and we drive out of here and we think, ‘Man, we’re doing it!’ ” says Pourier, his voice trembling. “It’s emotional, but it’s such a happiness too.” Born and raised here, Pourier is all too familiar with the challenges faced by the skateboarders. Now living in Denver, where he has a successful graphic design business, he returns frequently. “A lot of my family is still here, a lot of friends, and we come back often for ceremonies and family reunions, and, unfortunately, for a lot of funerals,” he says. Skateboarding was nonexistent on Pine Ridge in Pourier’s day. Basketball, football and track were the measure of status – they still are. But Pourier, a bundle of giddy energy with feathered hair and highlights straight out of a John Hughes film, showed an oddball streak even back then. Enamoured of the sport after he came across it in California, he’d lay down plywood and try tricks. He says he once hit 90kph on the highway. “I don’t skate anymore,” says Pourier, now 47, the beginning of a grin spreading across his face. “I usually fall. And I make strange noises when I fall.” Equal parts clown and eloquent advocate for the youth, Pourier saw skateboarding as a way to connect young people to the ancient traditions and culture of the Oglala Lakota Sioux, traditions that would give them the sense that they’re part of something bigger. “Kids nowadays might not pay attention to the story of the white buffalo,” he says. “So we put it on a skate deck.” The decks come courtesy of Murphy, or Murf, as he’s known to pretty much everyone. A former skater on the legendary Tony Alva’s team, his vert style faded when street skating came into vogue in the mid 1990s, but his love for the sport, which gave his 13-year-old self focus when his father left the family, never did. Working full-time as a stained-glass restorer, Murf and his good friend, the late New York skateboard advocate Andy Kessler, started a company. As a joke, they decided to pay homage to their failing bodies and call it Wounded Knee. “We laughed, and then I said if we’re gonna call it Wounded Knee, we should talk about what happened in South Dakota,” he says. Schoolbooks used to refer to it as a battle, between the Sioux and the remnants of the 7th Calvary, who were THE RED BULLETIN
Clockwise from top left: Elijah Battese (middle) and Jaydin Peters (right); Will Peters; Elijah, Taylor Gunhammer, and Leroy Janis bomb a hill; park fans
From the early 1800s, the tribes of the Great Sioux Nation presided over the Great Plains of North America. The 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty confined the largest group, the Lakota Sioux, to an area in what is now south-west South Dakota, forcibly transforming a warrior culture into a farming society. The Pine Ridge Reservation was formally established in 1889. A year later, 300 Sioux were massacred by the 7th Cavalry at Wounded Knee Creek. In 1973, Wounded Knee was once again the scene of a standoff with the US government, when members of the activist American Indian Movement occupied the site, protesting for better treatment. The 71-day armed confrontation raised awareness of the plight of Native Americans and led to changes in reservation life, including a cultural revival. While the tribal council maintains jurisdiction over the reservation, including its public safety and fire departments, the state and federal governments are still involved. Of an estimated 2.5 million Native Americans, 40,000 live at Pine Ridge today, the majority of them below the poverty line. In 1980, the longest-running court battle in US history came to an end when the Supreme Court awarded US$106 million to the Sioux, determining that seven million acres of land were unjustly taken by the government. But the tribes have refused the money, seeking the land’s return.
guarding the reservation in the winter of 1890, but Wounded Knee was a massacre, one prophesied by the Sioux chief Sitting Bull. Three hundred Sioux, including women and children, were gunned down, their bodies left to freeze for a few days before they were dumped in a mass grave. Wounded Knee Skateboards feature designs inspired by Native American culture and come with an information sheet detailing the massacre and its ramifications. “We always fantasised about going out to Pine Ridge and, in honour of those who died at Wounded Knee, building skateparks,” he says. “But it seemed far-fetched.” In 2007, Murf was involved in an exhibit the Smithsonian put on about Native American skateboarders. Through it, he got in touch with Pourier. Pourier’s connections got things going, and Grindline, a skatepark manufacturer, offered to build one for a reduced price. Pourier and Murf secured a US$10,000 grant from the Tony Hawk Foundation, which focuses on building public skateparks in low-income communities, which was matched by two of the foundation’s board members. Jeff Ament, Pearl Jam’s bassist,
“It’s not about building skateparks, it’s about changing mindsets” Walt Pourier
a former skater who grew up near a reservation in Montana, also chipped in. Construction began in September 2011. The park opened a few weeks later, on October 16, to a big ceremony, during which Pourier was given a tribal flag, an honour typically reserved for elders. Murf was given a woven ceremonial blanket. The kids were given an outlet and a support network. “This skatepark gives them more of a reason to live. It’s something to look forward to, it occupies their minds,” says Murf. “You can deal with all of these emotions you’re feeling, or why you’re depressed or why you’re angry. You can work it out on a skatepark, and you’ve got a family of skaters to support you.” Most of the kids at the park come early and stay late. The Saturday Pourier and Murf visit is no exception. Reservation dogs trot around, sniffing the air for the first hints of the barbeque that’s getting started. The dirt parking lot is riven with gullies and bumps carved out by the rough weather. Old Pontiacs with headlights missing, Fords with plastic in the windows, some newer imports, pull in slowly. Among the skaters criss-crossing the park, one stands out. Under a mane of dyed pale-orange hair pulled back in a ponytail, the right side of Joe “Crazy J” Mesteth’s face is covered in a design of silver and blue paint. “He’s a bit opposite of the norm on this reservation,” says Pourier. “I think the skating is keeping him alive. He’s living the idea that skateboarding saves lives.” Crazy J’s biography follows a typical thread. He was raised by his grandparents, as his parents struggled with alcoholism. Though he worked for the tribal president at one point, he says he’s also had to sell drugs in the last year to make ends meet. “The problems here probably don’t compare to the problems out there,” says Mesteth in a quiet voice. “If I was living out there in the white world I could probably hustle around for rent money. Here, you either got the last name, or you’re selling drugs to get money.” But Crazy J isn’t some thug hustler. His home at the moment is a gold and blue Chevy Suburban, because he has to get away from a family caught up in some alcohol-fuelled feud. He’s parked it next to the skatepark, his sanctuary. “Whenever I’m on a skateboard, I feel free,” he says. “I got some problems going on right now, but down here, I feel free.” Earbuds in, he skates the bowl with coiled concentration, his knees bent, absorbing the curves of the concrete as he carves around. When he’s not skating, THE RED BULLETIN
ADDITIONAL PHOTOGRAPHY: CORBIS (1)
The Sioux
From left: Gunhammer, Jaydin, Jake, Janis, and Elijah break from their afternoon skate session
The ancient belief is the undercurrent to the pair’s fervent commitment to skateboarding and its impact here. They plan three more parks for Pine Ridge. “We can’t wait another week, we can’t wait another two weeks,” says Pourier. “We’ve buried too many kids here, and it’s something no one should have to go through. It’s not about building skateparks, it’s about changing mindsets.”
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he’s the first to slide in if a board or a piece of trash goes flying down into the bowl and whisk it away. The younger kids flock to him when he sits down, and he dispenses trick advice or helps fix their skateboards. He’s a role model, and Murf’s made him an official member of the Wounded Knee Skateboards team. “There’s so many problems that plague every one of these kids, stuff they’re not even aware of,” says Mesteth, at 25 one of the elder statesmen at the park. “I’m trying to make a mobile skate shop out of my car. I want to go out and find the kids, really utilise what I’ve got with me.” Murf estimates that for every kid out on a board, there are probably a hundred who want one and can’t afford it. Getting more boards out to those who need them has been the guiding philosophy of his company, and probably the reason he’s never turned a profit. The SUV is full of Wounded Knee decks – prizes in a mini contest Murf and Pourier have organised during their visit. As hot dogs grill on the barbeque, parents, friends and toddlers sit along a concrete ledge watching the action. The judges are lenient, and everyone gets a chance to participate. There’s no PA system, just two volunteers shouting out the names of the contestants. Murf, decked out in a Wounded Knee hoodie and his hair in a ponytail, provides THE RED BULLETIN
colour commentary over the noise of the boards.“C’mon man, you got this!” he shouts. “One more trick!” The camaraderie is striking. Whoops and shouts of encouragement greet every trick, whether it’s landed or not. “It’s amazing how, since October, everyone is just killing it out here,” says Murf. “These kids could be skating at the same level as those kids in California. You just need to build them the same level of stuff.” At the end of the contest, decks are handed out to the winners of categories like ‘best trick’ and ‘most improved’. Eli, who started skating the day the park opened six months previously, wins a deck for ‘most heart’. “I’ve lived here most of my life,” he says. “There’s been not much to do until I got this skateboard. If it wasn’t for Walt and Jim, I wouldn’t be able to be as good as I am right now. I’m pretty sure all of the others feel the same way.” Of course, to Pourier and Murf, skill level takes a backseat to empowerment. One of Pourier’s favourite sweatshirts is a black hoodie with the words “iNative: 7G, The Nations’ First Network” printed on it. “There are two parts to the prophecy of Sitting Bull. One was that it ended at Wounded Knee, with the massacre,” he says. “The second half was that it also begins at Wounded Knee, through the seventh generation, this generation of youth.”
he afternoon sun has begun its slow descent past the hills and copses of cottonwood trees that separate the skatepark from the high school, the dying rays bathing the dozen or so skaters and friends hanging out on cars and park benches. Jaydin Thomas Peters’ gold helmet catches a glint, the bright light matching the grin across his face. In a place looking for success stories, Jaydin is an obvious one. He’s won awards for native grass dancing, and he excels at school. He’s been raised by his grandparents, a stoic woman by the name of Lena and a Bob Marley-loving, Lakota language and culture teacher named Will. “The kid’s tough, he’s grown up here,” says Will Peters, peering through dark John Lennon glasses. “His mom’s in and out of the picture. He knows how it goes.” The Peters’ house is a neat and basic prefabricated one-storey building typical of the reservation. The room in the basement Jaydin shares with his brother is tidy, the beds arranged like your typical dorm room, posters of the Denver Broncos on the wall. Among his prized possessions is a little wooden box, the front of which carries a drawing of a Lakota warrior astride his horse. Inside are gifts from family members: a knife blade, the choker given to him by his mother, a bracelet of porcupine quills. “I only take them out for wakes,” he says. There’s plenty to keep Jaydin down, but if it does, he hides it well. Five years ago, when he started skateboarding, the wooden ramp built on the old tennis courts was the only place near his house to skate. But here he is at the edge of the bowl with Eli, his cousin, watching his friend Jake Roubideaux drop in and get some nice air on the other side. “See what Jake just did? And everyone was clapping?” he says. “That really gets your heart going, knowing these people are here for me.” He pauses and looks out again. “Here, we don’t consider best or worst,” he says. “There’s no ‘I’m better than you.’ Everyone’s equal.” For more info: www.strongholdsociety.org www.redbull.com/skateordie
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world champions
of clever Mind games in Armenia, the brainiest country in the world, where chess is the national sport and taught in schools. The secret of their grandmasters’ success? Desire, fish and honey Words: Andreas Rottenschlager Photography: Daniel Gebhart de Koekkoek
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European U12 chess champion Haik Martirosyan in Yerevan, Armenia
Housing estate in Yerevan
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he Republic of Armenia is tucked between Turkey and Azerbaijan on the southern slopes of the Caucasus mountains, a barren, mountainous country home to 3.2 million people. The travel guides call it the land of stones. Per capita, the country’s gross domestic product is US$3,231 – less than in Swaziland and Iraq. It is also the brain sport centre of the world. Armenia are the reigning world team champions in chess. At the world championship in 2011, this David of a mountainous microstate beat Goliath China, with a population, at 1.3 billion, about 420 times larger. In 2012, Armenia won the Chess Olympiad in Istanbul, an open tournament against 149 other nations. The superpower Russia came second. “Chess wonder” was a headline in the 46
RUSSIA KAZAKHSTAN
Black Sea
GEORGIA Tbilisi ARMENIA Yerevan
TURKMENISTAN AZERBAIJAN Baku
TURKEY
Caspian Sea
Tehran SYRIA Baghdad
IRAN
IRAQ
THE MOUNTAINOUS MICROSTATE Armenia, at 29,800km² (ranking 142 in the list of the world’s 249 nation states, countries and territories), has the second worst economy in the world according to a 2011 report in Forbes magazine. It has two export successes: chess players and cognac. THE RED BULLETIN
“I WOULD LIKE TO SEE CHESS AS AN ART FORM, BUT IT’S A STRUGGLE. YOU TRAIN FOR MONTHS PRIOR TO A BIG TOURNAMENT, THEN ONE WRONG MOVE CAN DESTROY EVERYTHING” Chess class in session. Above: Qualifying tournament in the Yerevan chess hall
Armenian press. “The cleverest nation on earth,” said the BBC. But how do the Armenians do it? How does such a poor, tiny country produce the smartest brain athletes? Can you use your grey matter to play your way out of your position in life?
TIGRAN’S BRAIN TRAINING
Armenia’s capital, Yerevan, is nestled in a broad valley 1,200m above sea level. Grey concreted houses and apartment blocks dominate the suburbs. In downtown Yerevan, with its architecturally OTT municipal buildings from the Soviet era, old Lada taxis grind their way through the streets with horns honking. Chess became a national sport here when Armenian grandmaster Tigran Petrosian became world chess champion in 1963. THE RED BULLETIN
‘Iron Tigran’ died in 1984 a national hero. He still gets his face on postage stamps. At the Yerevan Chess Centre, the home of the Armenian Chess Federation in central Yerevan, the current Armenian national champion sits in a wood-panelled office. His name: Tigran L Petrosian. “My dad named me after the world champion,” he explains. “Of course, the name is also a burden.” Petrosian is 28 years old and plays for the national chess team. He is a quiet man with a round face. “Armenia and chess,” he says. “It’s like Brazil and football.” Petrosian is like a pop star in his home country. His image is emblazoned on billboards; children ask for his autograph. When the national chess team returned from the Olympiad last 47
Armenian national chess champion Tigran L Petrosian
autumn, the country’s president, Serzh Sargsyan, was waiting at the airport. Armenia craves heroes. The trauma of the genocide that happened to its people during World War I still affects the country. At the end of 1990s, it was rocked by a serious economic crisis. Chess players instil national pride: from a battered land to a world power in mind games. “I would like to see chess as an art form,” says Petrosian, “but it’s a struggle. You train for months prior to a big tournament. Then you play for 10 days at a world-class level, seven hours a day – and one wrong move can destroy everything.” Armenia’s national team is under constant scrutiny. Their games are discussed on television; teenagers throughout the country strive to emulate them. When 48
qualification tournaments are held in Yerevan’s great halls, hundreds of children ponder over their chessboards. In each hall is a strained silence, the only sound is of chess clocks ticking. Petrosian trains using computer databases of five million chess matches. He analyses the end games. The champion is known for his aggressive style: “You sacrifice chessmen to accelerate the game.” He claims he can replay from memory roughly half of the 5,000 professional games he has played to now. “Fish and honey,” he grins, when asked to explain his powers of recall. “They stimulate the power of thought.” As a chess grandmaster, Petrosian receives a monthly salary from the state, which he says he can live off; winning
CHESS COUNTRY With 34 grandmasters in a population of 3.2 million, Armenia has one of the highest densities of chess greats in the world. China, with 1.3 billion people, has 31 grandmasters, while the USA has 77 out of 315 million people. In Armenia, chess grandmasters receive a salary from the state. The chairman of the National Chess Federation is Serzh Sargsyan, the Armenian president. THE RED BULLETIN
CHESS PLAYERS INSTIL NATIONAL PRIDE INTO THE COUNTRY. WHEN THE TEAM RETURNED FROM THE OLYMPIAD LAST AUTUMN, THE PRESIDENT WAS WAITING AT THE AIRPORT
Armenia’s national chess team on a billboard in Yerevan. The slogan reads “true heroes”
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THE WORLD AS A BOARD Chess has existed since around 600AD. Today, 177 countries fight for team and individual titles overseen by FIDE, the world chess federation. India’s Vishy Anand, 43, has been world champion since 2007. Magnus Carlsen, 22, from Norway, is regarded as the world’s best player. In February 2103, he achieved the highest-ever FIDE rating of 2,872. Chess’s ‘match of the century’ was the world championship of 1972, between Bobby Fischer (USA) and Boris Spassky (USSR), with the world gripped by the metaphoric clash of Cold War superpowers. Experts estimate the number of possible positions in a game to 2.28 x 1045. Cuban José Raul Capablanca, world champion from 1921-27, worked it out thus: “I only think one move ahead, but it is always the right one.”
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Above: Armenian chess textbook for elementary school Left: Smbat Lputian in the garden of his chess academy: “Chess is as important as reading and writing”
tournaments means he can afford to drive an SUV of the Infiniti brand, Nissan’s luxury marque. His goals for the future are “to become world champion. Perhaps a second Olympiad title. The Armenian people need our victories.”
ADDITIONAL PHOTO: TIME LIFE PICTURES/GETTY IMAGES
MR LPUTIAN’S ELITE
Shengavit, a residential suburb of Yerevan, is the last place you would expect to find a world-class training centre for anything. Dreary prefabricated houses dominate the surrounding area: gaping potholes in the road; angry, growling dogs slink through the streets. Right here, at 34 Shevchenko Street, is the two-storey headquarters of the Armenian Chess Academy, with its unpainted concrete walls and a neatly mown lawn. The school for elite players is the only new building in the neighbourhood, and the realm of its director, Smbat Lputian. “During the economic crisis [in the 1990s] many top trainers left the country,” says the 55-year-old chess grandmaster. “We were at risk of losing all of our talent.” Lputian founded the academy in 2002. He then travelled around the country, organising tournaments and asking chess masters to join him. The academy now has about 1,000 students, aged from 5-18 years old, at 47 branches across Armenia. “One or two will become world class,” says Lputian. All of them had to play chess to a very high standard to get a place at the academy. The state pays for their tuition. Of Armenia’s 34 current grandmasters, seven studied THE RED BULLETIN
here. “Armenians make the best out of their situation,” says Lputian, “no matter how bad their chances are.” It is why, he says, the Armenian chess miracle continues. The state support would amount to little without the desire to overcome circumstance of those who receive it. In addition to the elite support for the highly gifted players, the government
THE GREATEST Armenia’s national hero, Tigran Petrosian (below), was born on June 17, 1929. His parents died during World War II, and as a teenager, he swept streets in the day and devoured chess books at night. He became the then youngest-ever grandmaster in 1952, and on May 20, 1963, beat Russia’s Mikhail Botvinnik to become the ninth official world chess champion. Petrosian died in 1984.
has set up broader funding. In 2011, Armenia became the world’s first country to introduce chess as a compulsory subject in schools. Since then, children aged 7-10 have learned how to sacrifice pawns and overthrow kings. “Chess is as important as reading and writing,” says Lputian, who developed the national curriculum in conjunction with educational psychologists, and who has overseen the training of 1,800 chess teachers who have taught it in the Armenian school system. “Children learn to bear the consequences of their actions.” The director is very proud of his academy. He strides through the massive tournament hall (“with grandstands for the press”), shows off the hotel rooms for guest players (“including sauna”) and the gym in the basement (“no success without fitness”). Lputian is an introverted man whose facial expressions rarely reveal what he is thinking. During the tour of his academy, a broad smile is fixed on his face.
HAIK’S HOPE
Armenia’s potentially greatest chess player is a skinny 12-year-old with short hair and bright eyes. Haik Martirosyan was twice European U12 chess champion, and six days a week, he and his mother, Ayser, squeeze into a minibus taxi, alongside 11 other people, for the hour-long, 50km journey to Yerevan. He has three fourhour after-school coaching sessions per week at the chess academy, where he and two other students are trained by a grandmaster, and the same amount of time with a personal coach at home. Haik learned to play chess when he was six years old. “At some point we noticed that he always beat his older opponents,” says his mother, who has given up her work as a nurse to fully support her son’s burgeoning chess career. “He simply wasn’t afraid to make risky moves. He should become a grandmaster as soon as possible.” Haik already answers interview questions like a pro. Standing outside the academy, he clasps his hands behind his back, shirt tucked neatly into his trousers. What do you like about chess? “It is a game for your brain.” Do you sit in front of a chessboard all day? “No, I play football.” Who is your chess hero? “Petrosian, the world champion.” With that, he goes inside the academy to study. On the lesson plan for today: how to open a game. His next big tournament is approaching fast. www.chessacademy.am
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Homecountry haven: NZ rider Brook MacDonald tears up the Rotorua trails
TRAIL
BLAZERS FRED CHRISTENSEN CAME TO ROTORUA, NEW ZEALAND, ALMOST 25 YEARS AGO AND SET ABOUT BUILDING MOUNTAIN BIKE TRAILS. ALONG THE WAY HE MADE FRIENDS AND ENEMIES, AND CHANGED THE CITY FOREVER Words: Robert Tighe Photography: Graeme Murray
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efore Rotorua became famous for its mountain bike trails, before it was touted as one of the places to ride before you die, before seven bike shops opened in a city barely big enough to support one, there was Fred Christensen. Christensen is rightly credited with kick-starting Rotorua’s mountain bike scene. In 1990, he met with forestry managers and persuaded them to let him transform a 10-acre block of woodland into a cyclist’s playground. He supervised the first Department of Corrections work crews who helped build the trails now enjoyed by tens of thousands of riders every year. He organised over 100 events and, 10 years after arriving in Rotorua, left a broken man. 54
FRED CHRISTENSEN The Rotorua trails would not exist if it was not for Fred Christensen. The former motorbike racer pioneered mountain biking in Rotorua by laying down the first proper trails in its vast forest. After a period of illness he is back in the saddle enjoying the flow of the forest bike trails
“WE CARVED THROUGH THE TRACKS AND IT WAS BRILLIANT BECAUSE THERE WAS NO MUD”
Money trail: A study last year showed the median annual recreational value of mountain bikers using the Rotorua forest was NZ$10.2 million
“The trail network wouldn’t be where it is today if it wasn’t for Fred,” says Dean Watson, part of the team that staged the 2006 mountain bike world championships in Rotorua. “He was a visionary but he couldn’t always implement his ideas without upsetting other people.” Christensen grew up riding motorbikes in nearby Tokoroa. In 1976, aged 17, he moved to Australia to race motocross. Ten years later, in a newsagent in Sydney, picking up the first issue of Mountain Bike Action magazine changed his life. “Mountain biking just made sense to me,” says Christensen. “I’d stopped racing motocross the year before: I’d hurt myself too many times. I was road cycling for fitness, but I figured my motocross skills would be better suited to mountain biking. It was a really exciting time.” Within a couple of months of that conversion by magazine, he had built his first bike and entered his first race, the 1986 Australian National Championships. “I turned up in my KTM motocross jersey and rugby shorts. There weren’t many mountain bikers back then – maybe 40 of us on the start line,” he says. Now 53 years old, Christensen lives with his daughter in a flat in a quiet Rotorua street. It’s a home full of boxes and plastic bags filled with memories: photographs, magazines and posters of mountain bike events. Christensen came home to New Zealand in 1987 and organised some of the first mountain bike
events in Riverhead Forest in Auckland. His first road trip to Rotorua was in 1988, to ride in the Green Lake Classic on gravel tracks and access roads. The following year, he made Rotorua his home. “The riding was just too good,” says Christensen. “We carved through the Redwoods walking tracks and it was brilliant, because there was no mud. The pumice soil in the forest soaks up water like a sponge, so you can ride all year long. It’s a stunning place for mountain biking.” Whakarewarewa Forest, which along with Tokorangi Forest is more commonly known as the Redwoods, is a 5,600-hectare woodland on Rotorua’s doorstep. Rotorua is a four-hour drive south of Auckland and blessed with natural attractions: hot mud pools and geysers (and the rotten egg smell that lingers over an active geothermal area) lakes and forest. The Redwoods Visitor Centre opened in 1978 to cater for the growing number of tourists using the walking tracks in the forest, but there were no official bike trails until 1990, when Christensen arranged a meeting with Doug Macredie, the recreation manager for the New Zealand Forestry Corporation, which managed the forests. (Tokorangi is now managed by the Rotorua District Council; Whakarewarewa by Timberlands Limited.) Macredie was fresh out of university, still finding his feet in the job, when Christensen burst into his office to share
Nostalgia trips: Fred Christensen’s Rotorua home is full of photographs, magazines and newspaper reports of how the area became an MTB hotspot
a vision of bike trails in the forest. Macredie, having ridden a BMX in the woods as a kid, recognised a kindred spirit in Christensen. “Fred saw the big picture from the word go,” says Macredie. “He saw the opportunity in the forest. All he needed was the go-ahead and the manpower.” Macredie convinced the forestry management to give Christensen a chance and asked the Department of Corrections to provide work crews of periodic detainees, known as PDs, whose community service obligations led them to help with the building of the trails. “I just happened to talk to the right guy at the right time,” says Christensen. “On a Monday morning, the first work crew arrived and I walked into the forest with a can of paint to mark out the track. A year later the first track was finished. It was 4km long, with 95 corners, and it was a beautiful thing.” He had some trail-building experience from his motocross days, but mostly he learned through trial and error. Christensen remembers those early days in the forest as a very special time. His wife and three kids regularly accompanied him on weekend working bees. They’d carry in hoes, rakes and shovels and spaghetti sandwiches and
drinks in their backpacks. The part of the forest where Christensen built the first trails became known as the Fredwoods. With every passing weekend, more people turned up to ride them. However, after five years of working on the trails, things started to unravel for their maker. “I ran out of Freds,” says Christensen. “I tried to do too many things.” As well as designing and building trails, Christensen was running a bike hire company, organising tours, events and skills courses and had started a magazine. Mountain biking took over his life, but there was little money in it. His relationship with the forestry people also became strained. Macredie, his ally in the office, left the forestry industry in 1996, by which point Christensen was running out of patience with the work crews. “I got fed up hearing the PDs saying, ‘We’re sick of this’ and I got annoyed with the wardens,” he says. “Some of them let the guys get away with doing nothing. Some PDs were smoking marijuana one day and the warden thought they were smoking cigarettes. By midday, it was a joke; there were guys sleeping under the ferns. I complained and I was chased off the site and had my tyres slashed.” “Fred was a bit of a character,” says Malcolm ‘Red’ McHale, a forestry warden
MALCOLM ‘RED’ McHALE The 65-year-old employee of the Department of Corrections has been supervising work at Rotorua since 1994. He takes crews of periodic detainees into the forest and shows them where to dig and what to chop down.
“ THE FIRST TRACK WAS 4KM LONG WITH 95 CORNERS AND IT WAS A BEAUTIFUL THING”
Brook MacDonald (right) was the leading Kiwi downhill mountain biker in 2012, finishing the year ranked sixth in the world
Mud on the tracks: work first began on the Rotorua bike trails in 1994. Since then they have been maintained and extended by volunteers, members of the Rotorua Mountain Bike Club, staff employed by the Rotorua District Council and periodic detainees serving community service orders. The trails were given names: Old Chevy, Hot X Buns, Rockdrop, Pig Track, Gunna Gotta, The Tickler, Be Rude Not To and Mad If You Don’t. Riding a full circuit takes about two-and-a-half hours
who worked with Christensen. “He made things happen in the forest, but he was hard on the PDs. He’d grab a shovel out of their hands and tell them, ‘Do it this way.’” McHale, 65, has been supervising work on the trails since 1994. He takes crews of 10 into the forest, showing them where to dig and what to chop down. “I love having a blank canvas to work with,” says McHale. “We get people riding past and they’ll yell, ‘Awesome job, fellas!’ The young guys working out here have probably never had anyone say that to them before. They get a real buzz from it. McHale has never experienced the buzz of riding his own trails – “I come out here in the evening to walk my dogs, but things go a bit quick when you’re on a bike” – and Christensen feels that shows in the layout of his trails. “I’ve seen some of the trails Red has built, but he’s not a mountain biker and he doesn’t understand flow,” says 57
Wheeling in the woodland: four hours’ drive south of Auckland, Rotorua is a truly wilderness bike park
“ THEY’D GO INTO THE FOREST FOR A TWOHOUR RIDE AND COME BACK SIX HOURS LATER”
Christensen. “He’s put a lot of work into the forest and spent a lot of time there, so he gets a lot of credit for the trails.” That Christensen doesn’t get more credit for the work he started makes him bitter. As mountain biking became more popular, he struggled with other people muscling in on his patch, taking over what he considered were his trails, his forest, his events. Losing his flagship event was the final insult. In 1994, he organised the first Moonride, a night race starting at 7pm and finishing at 7am. The event became very popular very quickly, but in 1999 when Christensen met with the local council to plan the event, he was told it wasn’t his anymore. A man in a suit told him the council had registered the Moonride name. “I had a verbal agreement with the council that I’d retain ownership of events I organised, but I had nothing in writing,” says Christensen. “I turned up to commentate on the Moonride and they 58
wouldn’t give me the mic. I was gutted; so much so that it put pressure on my home life and I became quite dysfunctional.” Dean Watson was recruited by the council to help run Moonride that year. Originally from Auckland, Watson moved to Rotorua as a teenager and raced in the early events organised by Christensen. After travelling the world for six years, he returned to Rotorua and got a job in event management. One of the first events he organised was Christensen’s last. “The Moonride transition was badly managed by council,” says Watson. “It wasn’t our intention to cut Fred out of the mix, but he saw it as a personal attack. He alienated himself from the whole mountain bike fraternity and it was a really awkward time for everyone. He was a revolutionary guy, but there was room for everyone in the forest.” By the late 1990s, the number of mountain bikers had risen dramatically. Many of them built their own trails. THE RED BULLETIN
“Every person who ever went into the forest with a spade or a shovel contributed to what the forest has become,” says Watson. “The trails were built by lots of individuals with a passion for mountain biking and the forest.” As the mountain bike scene thrived, Christensen’s life did the opposite. A year after losing control of the Moonride in 1999, his marriage had broken up and he had walked away from the forest, leaving behind 30km of trails as good as any in the world. In 2000, he moved to Tauranga, to work for a bike wholesaler. In his first week on the job he slipped on a wet floor, broke two discs in his neck and fractured his coccyx. Since then, he has suffered with chronic pain and depression. He moved back to Rotorua last year, to live with his daughter, Bobby, 23. The city he knew before had changed, thanks in no small part its staging of the mountain bike world championships in 2006. “I remember the Swiss team manager coming to see me during the worlds to complain they couldn’t keep their guys out of the forest,” says Watson. “They’d go for a two-hour ride and come back six hours later. They couldn’t believe how good the trails were.”
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he success of the world championships changed the perception of mountain biking in the city, cementing its reputation as a world-class destination for the sport. A study last year showed the median annual recreational value of mountain bikers using the forest was NZ$10.2 million, compared to $4.6 million earned through timber export revenues. Yet it’s only recently that the council has provided any funding to the local mountain bike club. The club received $40,000 over the last two years for trail maintenance, with the council also committing to build toilet facilities at the trails’ entrance. “The sport was run on a shoestring for many years,” says Watson. “It took 20 years for the council to grasp how big it could be. Traditionally, Rotorua was about the geothermal pools. No one saw mountain biking becoming what it is today.” Except Christensen maybe. Last November, while Christensen was cycling on the streets of Rotorua, Doug Macredie drove by in his car, stopped, and the two
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MORE MTB MUST-RIDES WHISTLER
Brook MacDonald loves coming home to ride the trails in Rotorua, but if the Kiwi downhill racer had to pick one place to ride for the rest of his life it would be the mother of all bike parks, in Canada. “Whistler is the best place to have fun on your bike, whether you’re a beginner or a pro rider,” he says.
ALPE D’HUEZ The trails in the French Alps boast spectacular views and the unique experience of riding on a glacier.
MOAB Riders flock to Utah, USA, to test themselves on Moab’s devilish trails. Red rock desert scenery is a mere bonus.
LAKE GARDA Manic at peak tourist times, this part of northern Italy has trails through woodlands, vineyards and olive groves.
FINALE LIGURE More bella Italian trails, with a challenging mix of death-defying downhills and narrow single trails.
men spoke for the first time in years. “I shook his hand,” says Christensen, “and said, ‘Congratulations. They didn’t believe we could make it happen.’” “They [the forestry corporation] didn’t,” says Macredie. “There was reluctant consent to let these two upstarts build a few tracks.” Christensen went for his first ride on the trails in September last year, 12 years after he walked away from them. “There was a time when I wasn’t able to ride, but my health is improving and it’s wonderful to be back in the forest,” he says. “It’s a pleasure to look back on what we achieved. Despite everything that happened, I never fell out of love with the forest. I love it in the morning when the sun is shining through the trees and the birds are out, and I love going for evening rides in the forest when it’s quiet. When you enter the forest you leave everything else behind.” www.riderotorua.com
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LIFE INSIDE A BOMB If Eric makes a mistake, he’ll be dead before he knows it – and that’s a good part of his job
Words: Ron Mueller Photography: Daniel Gebhart de Koekkoek
Eric Eric lives in a country in northern Europe. He’s married, has a natural pool in his garden and a mid-range car with a child seat in the back for his two-year-old daughter. Eric and his family are monitored by his country’s secret services. It’s the full package: they are watched, and their telephone, email and internet activity checked. He knows that he is under surveillance and his wife recently found out too. “The guys keep an eye out for us,” he said, as she spoke to him, somewhat rattled, about the inconspicuous men who had become all too conspicuous on a recent shopping trip. Eric’s wife knows what her husband does for a living, but his friends, the guys he plays football with twice a week, the neighbours and most of his family members don’t. Eric’s sister thinks that he’s got some administrative job with the army that is so boring it’s not worth talking about. In actual fact, Eric has been little more than a tiny mistake away from death “about 30 or 40 times” in the course of his career. “We only rarely work with more leeway than a couple of millimetres or one wrong decision,” he says. 60
red or blue?
In James Bond films, there’s always a red wire and a blue wire. But there are a couple more colours than that in the real life of a bomb disposal expert. One false move means death. Guaranteed.
LIGHTS OUT!
It’s not all about high-tech equipment
How do you defuse a bomb that’s been fitted with motion detectors and light sensors? You just have to move slowly enough, and be able to work without light, for hours at a time.
Training camp for those defusing bombs by hand, where you’re taught “to think and feel like a bomb maker”
There are about 1,000 experts around the world who can defuse bombs and mines in war zones and conflict areas such as Afghanistan, Iraq and parts of Africa, and the unexploded bombs that turn up years or even decades after a war is over when a vegetable patch is being laid or a basement dug up. Usually, these mines or remnants of war undergo a controlled explosion or, as they say in the business, are ‘defused conventionally’, that’s to say the bomb disposal expert is at safe cover, wearing a 40-kilo protective suit and protective helmet, using a remote-controlled robot with an extremely precise grappler and X-ray eyes. There are situations when 62
a controlled explosion can’t be carried out and which are beyond the robots’ capabilities. For example, when a bomb has to remain intact because it could hold clues that would give the perpetrator away. Or because a bomb contains chemical, biological or nuclear materials such as poison gas, killer viruses or radioactivity, which an explosion would release. Or when bombs are in inaccessible locations, such as on a high point above a village in Afghanistan, or on the winding staircase of a town hall in a small European town. Or when kidnappers attach explosives to their hostages, with ‘necklace bombs’ being the most common form. When such
cases arise, the services of manual bomb disposal experts are required. Eric is one of about 70 active worldwide. Their working uniform is a T-shirt and their bare hands. No protective suit and helmet required, because there’s no protection available that would do a job if the bombs they’re elbow-deep in go off. All of the above is true, except Eric isn’t called Eric and he doesn’t live in a northern European country. Eric must remain anonymous: bomb disposal experts are triple-A targets for terrorists. Not only can they defuse the bombs made by terrorists, they could also be blackmailed into making bombs for terrorists, bombs that would be impossible for bomb disposal experts to defuse. Bomb disposal experts can make bombs, which they call ‘deadly bombs’. Terrorists know that. And terrorists read The Red Bulletin too. Hence Eric, hence northern Europe. A Game of Chess A bomb disposal expert needs to know more than how to deactivate bombs, or how to make them. “You have to learn to think and feel like a bomb maker,” says Eric. He compares bomb disposal to chess. Your opponent has an arsenal of weapons available, which you are familiar with and whose functions you understand. He THE RED BULLETIN
might have built in a time fuse, or rigged a mobile phone to go off when it receives a call or a text message. A bomb can react to vibrations, or be set off by light or sound sensors or a motion detector. “You always start with the worst-case scenario,” says Eric. “You have to assume that anything that could happen, might happen. And then begin to eliminate all the possibilities one by one.” How do you go about defusing, say, a bomb with a motion detector in it? “Wrong first question,” says Eric. “The correct first question to ask would be, ‘Can we even get to the bomb? Or is there a motion detector or an infrared sensor or something else like that in our way?’” And how do you outwit a motion detector? “You have to move so slowly that it doesn’t register. If necessary, you crawl across the floor from the door to the place where the bomb is for an hour, millimetre by millimetre.” And what if the motion detector is lurking inside the bomb? “We need to find that out before we open up the bomb, then move our hands so slowly that the motion detector doesn’t react before we’ve managed to switch it off.”
Manual bomb disposal experts work with their bare hands. No protective suit and helmet – there’s no protection that would work if the bomb went off Practice scenario: a hostage trapped in a locker fitted with a bomb
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If the tips of your fingers were to tremble just a little bit, would you be dead? “Yes.” A sneeze? “Not a good idea. But you can learn to repress it.” How do you evade a light sensor? “By working in the dark.” You can defuse a bomb in the dark? “You can learn to. The human eye is amazingly powerful.” How long does it take to defuse a bomb? “On average you’re in the death zone for between four and six hours.” Does every bomb maker have a unique style? “Yes. Every bomb contains something of the personality of the person who made it. And you can see pretty quickly who has taught him to make bombs.” Who makes the best bombs? “At the moment, Hezbollah.” 63
DON’T MOVE!
What do you do when the detonator on a bomb (left) is attached to a motion detector (top left)? You evade the detector by moving in super slow motion. If you sneeze, tremble or scratch your nose, you’re dead.
Two dead The main difference between defusing bombs and playing a game of chess is that at least there is agreement about the rules of the game in chess. No player can invent and deploy a new figure in the middle of the game, for example. The duel between the bomb maker and the bomb disposal expert does away with rules. What would happen if, say, a bomb was triggered by an as-yet-unknown sensor that, let’s say, reacted to the bomb disposal expert’s own body heat? “That’s been the case for ages,” says Eric. But what if there was some sort of new development in Afghanistan, or in Pakistan? “Unlikely that our guys wouldn’t know about it. They’ve got the market under quite good surveillance.” But what if…? “Then two of us are dead the first time the thing’s used. And our checklist before we defuse our next bomb will be longer.” 64
Is the job really as cynical as that answer sounds? “We’re talking facts here. Emotions are no-go.” Eric has the hands of a pianist: slender, almost delicate and neatly manicured. He can keep them still for minutes on end without them trembling even slightly, like they’re made of stone. “You have to keep your tools in good order,” he explains. Living Manual bomb disposal is a secure job, in a way. On average there are 500 bomb attacks with serious terrorist background worldwide every month, with estimates of unreported cases ranging from 5,000 to 50,000. Current situations in Iraq and Afghanistan defy all estimates. Terrorist activity is booming, bombs are cheap and relatively easy to make, and the internet is awash with instructions. “Even if there were 10 times more of us, we’d still all have plenty to keep us busy,” says Eric. As the most experienced manual bomb disposal expert in his country, he is responsible for training new staff.
It is the Monday of the fourth week of a four-week training programme for two prospective manual bomb disposal experts. At 7.15pm, a blue coolbox is on the ground in front of a door in an abandoned wing of a barracks building. The floorboards are worn and paint is peeling off the walls. The furniture, with its waves of crumbling veneer, looks like something out of a 1970s primary school. The windows are covered with cardboard. There are naked light bulbs, although they’re not that easy to make out right now as it’s pitch black in the room. Practice scenario: someone being held hostage in a judge’s office in a court building. A digital stopwatch is mounted on the coolbox, counting down the seconds from three hours and 30 minutes. You can just make out the digital display in the glimmer of a thermal imaging camera. Inside the coolbox is a practice bomb made by Eric. “They’ll work on it for three hours now,” Eric says under his breath. He observes every hand movement made THE RED BULLETIN
by his two pupils, who are lying flat on their stomachs on the floor in front of the coolbox with filter masks over their heads. We’ll call them Jan and Axel. Jan has black, curly hair and BASE-jumps in his spare time. Axel is in rimless spectacles and has close-cropped hair. What made you decide to do this job? Jan: “The challenge of having to work at a level that doesn’t allow for mistakes appeals to me. Perfectionism is a sort of cerebral extreme sport. I’m fascinated by concentrating fully for hours at a time.” Axel: “For me, it’s a means to an end. It’s just a special way of taking responsibility, of helping others.” What do your families say? Jan: “My wife knows. That’s enough. She trusts me in what I do. Otherwise I wouldn’t do it. That would be irresponsible towards her.” Axel: “I have no need to talk about what I do for a living in my private life.” How do you deal with the anonymity of the job? After all, it means no recognition for putting your life at risk for others. And not being able to confide in anyone. Jan: “We know what we’re doing within the group. That’s enough.” Axel: “The essence and function of being a soldier is to consciously act into the threat.” And the risk factor? Jan: “It’s like BASE-jumping. The challenge is to be so good that only a minimal risk remains.” Axel: “If there wasn’t an element of risk, more people would do the job.”
“You have to move so slowly that the detonator doesn’t register, crawling across the floor for an hour, millimetre by millimetre” Sleeping Eric explains that they always work in teams of two. “The job would be too complex for one person to do alone, and the second person acts as a supervisor the whole time. You can’t make a single hand movement without telling the other man first; before you make it, he has also thought it through and given his approval. The second man is the only safety margin in our work.” The tools of a bomb disposal expert’s trade are of two sorts: high-tech equipment produced by a handful of specialist firms that comes with a five-figure price tag,
The 70 manual bomb disposal experts around the world belong to different armies, but they are connected. Information is shared, including on deployments that have not turned out well
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and everyday tools like soldering irons, tweezers, scalpels, voltmeters and duct tape in different colours. After almost two and a half hours, Jan and Axel sever the final wire, take off their masks and blink in the light Eric has just switched on. A couple of minutes’ break, and then on to a critical assessment. Lots of it was very good, says Eric, but it wasn’t all perfect. He’ll only go into detail regarding the trial when the three men are alone together later. It is just before 10pm when Eric informs Jan and Axel that they’ll be spending that night in the barracks, they won’t be sleeping and that the next bomb will await them early next morning: “Go and get yourselves a coffee and text home.” It’s not easy training to be a manual bomb disposal expert. “The most important thing,” Eric says, “is the ability to think clearly when stressed. Which is why manual bomb disposal experts are put in stressful situations in training. Sleep deprivation is one of them.” Eric trained in the UK. “The British are the best,” he says. “The most experienced. Historically, that comes from the troubles in Northern Ireland. “Learning by doing,” says Eric, with a slight hint of sarcasm. “They have a 30-year training regime to fall back on.” Eric won’t say much about his training, just that it was, “very tough, very good. You’re amazed at the strain you can bear, the capabilities you have within yourself. The training turned me into another person.” British bomb disposal experts stand out for their combination of surgical precision and sporting ambition. “The Brits still dismantle a bomb the Americans would have long since exploded.” Manual bomb disposal experts are connected at the international level. They know each other. That doesn’t just mean an exchange of thoroughly lifeprolonging experiences, but sometimes also email attachments like the ones that come in just after 11pm. They show the consequences of a failed attempt to manually defuse a bomb in South America, where a hostage had a necklace bomb placed around their neck. The kidnappers’ ransom demands were not met; instead, attempts were made to defuse the necklace bomb. The hostage and both bomb disposal experts died in the process. The pictures flickering on the laptop screen aren’t pretty. They are jarring even for an experienced bomb disposal expert like Eric. Jan and Axel look on silently over his shoulder. They’ve texted home. The place smells of coffee. They weren’t going to get any sleep tonight anyway. 65
RED BULL YOUTH AMERICA'S CUP
Germany’s STG/NRV Youth Team cuts through San Francisco Bay on an AC45 catamaran
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The greatest catamarans, the best sailors, the biggest boat race in the world: every ambitious yachtsman d r e a m s o f o n e d a y t a k i n g p a r t i n t h e A m e r i c a ’s Cup. A select group of young men are one step away from making that dream come true W O R D S : A n n D o n a h u e P H O T O G R A P H Y: B a l a z s G a r d i
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In the first hours of daylight,Pier 80 in San Francisco is a quiet place. Sea lions emerge from the water, peep up at the huge cranes on the dock, then slip back into the depths. The giant industrial-age machinery that moves gravel from one mountainous pile to another at the nearby Pier 94 is silent. At 9am, the teams competing in the Selection Series of the Red Bull Youth America’s Cup arrive in black SUVs after being chauffeured from hotels downtown. The peace of the dilapidated dock is broken by the sailors’ conviviality and back-and-forth bickering – “Screw you, weirdo” echoes through the docks – and blaring remixes of ’80s pop tunes. There is a reason for this noise, of course. The Red Bull Youth America’s Cup teams are made up of men between the ages of 18 and 24, and if someone hasn’t honed their loudmouth bluster during their formative college years, the planet has completely shifted off its axis. Yet their ability to make a racket is also an asset. Two hours from now, the young sailors will be crashing through whitecaps of San Francisco Bay at upwards of 35 knots as they race next to each other on state-of-the-art 45ft catamarans. Making sure the directions issued by their bellowing voices can be heard over the wind, the snap of huge sails and the thump of a 1.4-tonne boat can be the difference between success and failure. The Red Bull Youth America’s Cup is the brainchild of Austrian sailors 68
Hans-Peter Steinacher and Roman Hagara, who won the gold medal in the Tornado class at the 2000 and 2004 Olympics. For many years, the barrier to entry into the America’s Cup was prohibitively high. It required a network of top-level yacht-club connections – a world not generally open to people without a III or IV after their surname – or an Olympic medal to get into the race. With the start of the youth edition of the event, there is now a more egalitarian auditioning process for the big leagues,
providing access to top-of-the-range boats and professional coaching. In February, youth sailors from 12 countries competed in the Selection Series, which determined which five teams will advance to the final, to be held in September in San Francisco. The Selection Series is set up to mimic the intensity of participating in the full-scale America’s Cup, including arduous gym sessions and harrowing instructive sails on the AC45, the most elite class of catamaran in regular use. Teams are judged on their sailing ability, THE RED BULLETIN
Teams get together for a briefing each morning at Pier 80 (left) before moving to the gym at Oracle Team USA (above) or sailing on San Francisco Bay. The intensity is high. A week here is more beneficial than three years unsupervised training, say the coaches
fitness and professionalism. “In the one week of the Selection Series, they’ll learn more than they can learn in three or four years of training,” says Steinacher. In the Red Bull Youth America’s Cup, the catamarans are donated by senior America’s Cup teams, but the determination and teamwork of the youth sailors is all their own. “It’s an opportunity we never would have had,” says 19-year-old Matt Whitehead, skipper for South Africa’s i’KaziKati team. “To come over here and learn how much it takes for the professional 69
Sailing in the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge
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RED BULL YOUTH AMERICA'S CUP
"IT MEANS ALL OUR DREAMS COME TRUE" W i l l T i l l e r, S k i p p e r, F u l l M e t a l Jacket Racing team sailors to succeed, it’s just an awesome experience. No words can describe how much this means to us.” aniel Bjørnholt Christensen, 18, is skipper of the Danish Youth Vikings. The week has taken its toll on the team. They unwisely decided to eat massive burritos just before a training session in a gym at the nearby Oracle Team USA hangar. And it wasn’t just any burrito, but a “really big, fat American burrito”, explains Christensen, as he gestures with his hands to emphasise the immense size of the meal. After speedwinching a 45kg weight across the floor, the burrito didn’t sit well with one of his teammates. “We had a little accident,” he says. “We did the test and we were tired, but we were OK. But one guy started throwing up and then a few others did the same.” The sailors here are taking their participation in this event seriously, but it’s clearly also a different beast to the senior America’s Cup, with its turned-up collars on pastel-coloured polo shirts and affected British-American hybrid accents. For 25 years, the America’s Cup has been won by teams from one of three countries: the USA, Switzerland or New Zealand. The diversity that the junior edition brings to the sport is immediately apparent. Apart from THE RED BULLETIN
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RED BULL YOUTH AMERICA'S CUP South Africa and Denmark, countries participating include relative newcomers like Argentina and Portugal. “It just shows there was a real need for this,” says Russell Coutts, CEO of Oracle Team USA and four-time winner of the America’s Cup. “When you look at the America’s Cup before, it was the pinnacle of the firmament of sailing. But there wasn’t a way to feed that firmament.” The Red Bull Youth America’s Cup shares a pier with the hangar where Oracle Team USA is building their boat for the 2013 America’s Cup. It’s the first time the professional class has raced the AC72 catamaran, a 72ft behemoth, with a 10-storey sail and a hull that looks like a menacing extraterrestrial claw. As the youth teams hold their morning briefings, the sailors keep stealing glances over to the immense boat as it is gingerly lowered via a massive crane into the bay. “When I was young and I saw the America’s Cup, it was a dream to be like those guys,” says 23-year-old
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“ I T ’S A N AW E S O M E E X P E R I E N C E ” M a t t W h i t e h e a d , Te a m i ' K a z i K a t i S k i p p e r
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The Red Bull Youth America’s Cup Selection Series begins with 12 teams. Six crews race against each other in the first week of competition and the final six compete the following week. These February eliminators put five crews forward to meet seven more in the finals in September
Jonas Schagen, of Switzerland’s Team Tilt. “Now it’s me. But it’s going to take a lot of work to get to the next step. Our boats are like a toy compared to that.” The America’s Cup proper sets off from San Francisco on September 7, but by the time the 2016 edition comes around, some of the youth sailors competing here in the Selection Series could be on the boats. The Red Bull Youth America’s Cup helps sailors train their focus on the big prize. “When I first saw the pictures of the Oracle 72 catamaran on Facebook, I thought, ‘Oh my God, what is going on there?’” says Philipp Buhl, 23, skipper of the German STG/NRV Youth Team. “Two days ago we visited the base. They’re working 7am to 7pm, six days a week. There is great professionalism there.” Seven teams qualified for the Red Bull Youth America’s Cup by virtue of an affiliation with teams racing in the AC72 class; the Selection Series decides THE RED BULLETIN
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RED BULL YOUTH AMERICA'S CUP
the other five. Charlie Buckingham is skipper of Team USA45 Racing, mentored by Oracle Team USA. Over his first two days here, Buckingham, 23, is put through fitness tests and receives an introduction to the boat. “They pretty much handed us the keys and gave us little pointers here and there, but I think they really wanted to see who could figure it all out on their own,” he says. The result? “It feels under control if you and the crew are doing the right things,” he says. “We kept the boat upright. We wanted to make sure we didn’t push it too far – we didn’t want to just break the boat and then leave.” 74
t’s the first day of competition in the Selection Series. The sailors are working off their pre-race nerves by playing Formula One video games consoles set up outside the shipping containers where the teams store their gear. Having a few jitters is understandable, as not only is personal ambition at stake, but also a large measure of national pride. “Australia hasn’t really been a presence in the America’s Cup for years now,” says Objective Australia skipper Jason Waterhouse, 21. “This is really just showing that we mean business for sure. The AC45 is the best boat with the best
Selection Series racing took place in two places on San Francisco Bay: east of Alcatraz Island (right) and south of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge (above) THE RED BULLETIN
“ W E C O U L D H AV E H A D 2 0 T E A M S , E A S I LY. IT’S A GOAL FOR NEXT TIME” R o m a n H a g a r a , S p o r t D i r e c t o r, R e d B u l l Yo u t h A m e r i c a ‘ s C u p technology, and these are the best youth teams in the world. We’re going to do the best we can to put on a great show.” The catamarans hit the water just before noon. A dual-diesel-engine boat that can tear through the water at 50 knots pulls up to the dock. It serves as a chase boat, hauling out buoys and supplies for the teams, as well as taking a few members of the media for a white-knuckle ride. It’s a beast of a vessel, and one veteran sailing photographer nods approvingly as he boards. “I want a lot of boat between me and these guys,” he says. The youth sailors may have years of experience competing in college and national teams, but the AC45 is a different animal for them. The strength and agility required to sail it is jarring, even to the pros who regularly race the craft. The youth teams’ experience on the boat is limited to these few days of the Selection Series. “We did a lot of work before,” says Hanno Sohm, 23, a helmsman for the Austrian team. “We studied videos and spoke to people who have sailed the boat. But it’s different to knowing what you have to do, to then do it.” Out on the bay, the wind is starting to pick up. If you don’t face the gale, your sunglasses will be whipped THE RED BULLETIN
off your face. The boats are flying when they’re sailing straight, then coming unstuck as the teams attempt to navigate around the marker buoys. “The big thing is that everything happens so quickly,” says GBR Youth Challenge skipper James French, 20. “If you’re thinking about it, it’s too late.” At the end of the Selection Series, directors Peter Steinacher and Roman Hagara pick the five teams to join the other seven in the September finals. They are New Zealand’s Full Metal Jacket Racing, Objective Australia, Germany’s STG/NRV Youth Team, Switzerland’s Team Tilt and Portugal’s ROFF/Cascais Sailing Team, who came back from a near-capsize on their first day. Making the final decision was tough, Hagara says, and limited by the number of boats available, not by the talent of the teams. “We could have had 20 teams, easily,” he says. “It’s a goal for next time.” For the teams to qualify, it’s the culmination of ambitions that weren’t even imaginable just a year ago. “New Zealand has been involved in the America’s Cup since we’ve been born,” says Will Tiller, 23, skipper of the Full Metal Jacket Racing team. “Getting here and getting to do everything – it means all our dreams have come true.” www.americascup.com
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SIMPLY SMART
As a child, Eric Kandel escaped from Hitler’s annexed Austria to America, where he went on to win a Harvard scholarship, become a world-leading neuroscientist and win the Nobel Prize. His expertise is in memory and brain function, in particular the biology of emotion. His recent work brings together the two cultures of science and the humanities, ric Kandel is in a study of the thinkers, 83 years old and what you would artists and doctors of 1900 call upbeat. He’s in the city of his birth, sunny, cheerful, alert and intense. Vienna. Their collective He bounces along the corridors of unconscious, Kandel The New York State Psychiatric Institute believes, can help to unravel at Columbia University, a living advertisement for the joys of science: the mysteries of the mind
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Interview: Herbert Völker, Photography: Gian Paul Lozza 76
well-being both physical and mental, and a positivity of spirit. He is wearing, as always, a bow tie, “for about the last 20 years,” he says, for no particular reason, although the bow-loving pianist Vladimir Horowitz may have something to do with it. In Kandel’s case, the neck decoration signifies a readiness to take off by propeller, if the man and his
manner are any proper indication. Everything fits. The New York State Psychiatric Institute at Columbia University, a sprawling institution, is located three dozen blocks north of the campus in Manhattan. The glorious riverside location more than makes up for the drabness of the building. : Guests in your office will be delighted by the view, through its high windows, across the Hudson River to New Jersey. Do you still enjoy it, or is this place just an office at the end of a corridor of labs? : The view over the Hudson reminds me that I’m doing well. In America, one doesn’t have to retire at 83 if one doesn’t want to. It is a good system. And I very much like the Hudson. My wife and I live not far from here, a few minutes upriver. Do you use the yellow swimming fins lying on the floor of the office? I swim an hour every day, during my lunch break, in the building next door. On Saturdays I play doubles tennis, and singles on Sundays. I don’t eat much; hardly any meat. I intend to stay around for science, it’s simply fun. And THE RED BULLETIN
The joys of science: Eric Kandel has been applying his sunny disposition to studying since the early 1950s
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“IT WAS LIKE A MOVIE. THE WIFE IN THE LAB, CHILD ON HER ARM, SAYING YOU’RE A FOOL. LIFE CAN’T BE NOTHING BUT WORK” Born November 7, 1929, Vienna Living In America Since 1938; US citizenship since 1945 Focused Thinking Core work in neuroscience, the study of the nervous system, which has at its core the brain New York State Of Mind NYU med school grad, 1956; associate professor, NYU, ’65-’74; professor and more, Columbia U, ’74-present Winning Ways First award: 1959, for medical research. Most notable: 2000 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine Other Lifelong Passion Married to Denise, also a scientist, for 56 years. Each of Kandel’s books has the dedication ‘For Denise’ The New Work The Age Of Insight, published in 2012, which looks at the confluence of art, science and the unconscious in Vienna at the beginning of the 20th Century
people in my lab are working with two or three of them every day. How does memory work? When you learn something, it modulates the strength of synaptic connections in the nervous system. I was the first to see this. Indeed, we had an inkling of it, but it just wasn’t precise. We had to find out how it actually works. With short-term memory, I have seen that it only brings about a functional change between the synapses. With long-term memory, however, there is growth of new synapses. New anatomical connections are created. Or in other words, biology opens the door to a detailed understanding of mental processes. This is followed by further insight at a molecular level and beyond. Bridging the gap between various disciplines of neuroscience made THE RED BULLETIN
PHOTOGRAPHY: AFP IMAGE FORUM
yellow fins are OK, don’t you think? You are an eminent specialist in brain research, but have loomed large in other disciplines of biology – now even in art history. Can this be interpreted as the restlessness of an immigrant? To come to the USA at the age of nine was perfect. I quickly turned into an enthusiastic American. Afterwards. I never wanted to go anywhere else – certainly not back to Austria. If there is a little turbulence in my course of studies, it may stem from the fact that I had no real idea what I would do. Later, only at Harvard, I wanted to learn history. Maybe it had to do with the trauma of being a Jewish child then. Luckily, a friend told me, “You cannot understand people’s motivation from history. You have to become a psychoanalyst to do this.” So I read Freud and went to medical school. But in my last year it occurred to me that a psychoanalyst should know something about the brain. There was a brilliant neurophysiologist named Harry Grundfest, and he steered me to cell biology and completely changed my life. I suspect we are about to meet the legendary sea slug Aplysia. It is inevitable, as every diligent reader of Kandel knows. We are talking about the beginning of the 1960s. I tried to study memory in the hippocampus, a very complex area of the brain. I learned a great deal about understanding cell biology, but nothing about memory. With my talent for reductionism, I turned to simpler animals – ones with a less sophisticated nervous system than mammals, but still with a memory. Animals that can learn different things. With them it should have been possible to work out a basic framework of learning processes based on simple reflexes. Hence, I came to the sea slug Aplysia, and I’ve enjoyed a wonderful life with it ever since. I have learned a lot from this marine snail – and I’m still learning. Perhaps I’m becoming more and more like it. They come in various sizes, by the way, from thumb-sized up to a kilo in weight, and when they defend themselves they eject ink, a beautiful purple. Can we imagine them a little bit like a pet with which you spend a lot of time? Well, perhaps, in a figurative sense. It’s never just about a particular specimen. Over the course of my life I’ve worked with thousands of marine snails. Several
“SIGMUND FREUD BROUGHT THE WORLD A STEP FORWARD. THAT’S NOT BAD IS IT? TO TALK ABOUT HIS ERRORS 100 YEARS LATER IS POINTLESS. FREUD IS DEAD. THE YOUNG GENERATION OF SCIENTISTS NEEDS TO MOVE ON”
Brain cred: Kandel accepts the Nobel Prize in physiology from Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf in Stockholm in 2000
you, as an academic and researcher, increasingly successful and famous. Were you ever in danger of being consumed by your work? It was pretty much as you would imagine it in a movie. One Sunday afternoon, the wife appears in the laboratory with a child on her arm and tells you what a foolish man you are. Life can’t be about work and nothing but work. Fortunately I understood this. I was by no means the ideal father for our son and daughter, but I think we handled things quite well. If I may say so, we are a blossoming extended family today with four grandchildren. If at all possible, we celebrate the Jewish holidays together, and, in particular, spend the not-soJewish August in our Cape Cod home. Everyone comes, they love that house, THE RED BULLETIN
the whole family celebrates the August vacation – so totally American. It couldn’t be more American, a wonderful ritual. What part does your Jewish heritage play in your work? A large part. I feel very Jewish. I’m very pleased to be a Jew, even if I don’t believe there is someone ‘up there’. I like the cultural aspect of Judaism. It places a lot of emphasis on scholarship; moral standards are very important; decent ethical behaviours, both to Jews and others who are not Jewish. Of course, they violate those standards. I’m not saying that every Jew is a saint. Far from it. There are as many devils among the Jews, as there are among others. But the moral and intellectual aspects of Judaism I find quite commendable. And many of their laws, even those I don’t follow, the dietary laws, were quite advanced for their day. You don’t eat animals that easily become sick, you don’t mix certain foods. I don’t adhere to it, but in its day, before one had really good stringent inspections, these were sensible ideas. To rest one day of the week on the Sabbath: an excellent idea. I don’t do it, but it’s very good, so I should do it. A film about you had the tagline “From the Synagogue to the Synapse”. Do you like that? This is the first time I’ve heard of it. I have
to say, I find it a bit silly. I like visiting the synagogue, but I don’t go much. In your latest book, The Age Of Insight, you portray Judaism as a catalyst for the modernism that emerged from Vienna 110 years ago. Are you saying that insight is a counterpoint to the historical concept of enlightenment? It also represents the next step. After it was outlined that we are not rational beings specifically created by God, but a product of evolution instead, Freud showed us that we are not particularly “rational”. We are also controlled by unconscious mental drives, and these influences are surprisingly powerful. This had been previously pointed out by Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, but Freud was the one to pick it up systematically. His fascinating depiction of the human spirit was shocking for its time. These days, Sigmund Freud seems to have a question mark after his name. In your opinion, does he still stand at the top of the pillar built from his merits? Freud brought the world a step forward. That’s not bad is it? To talk about his errors a hundred years later is pointless. Freud is dead. The young generation of scientists needs to let him rest and move on. Was Vienna the only place for this debate between doctors, writers and artists, between Jews and non-Jews? 79
This concentration of personalities from different fields could definitely only be found in Vienna at that time. Many things happened in the wonderful salons and coffee houses, where minor or major revolutions were planned at the next table. If you like, it was the beginning of the sort of interdisciplinary research that has determined our science ever since. Of course it helped that the old Emperor was tolerant of Jews. In your book, five people are key – Freud, the writer Arthur Schnitzler, the poet Oskar Kokoschka and painters Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt. What about the architect Adolf Loos and the composer Arnold Schoenberg? It is impossible to bring together the worlds of art and science in one book. So I used an example, a small school of art which is important, but includes only a small selection of people: Klimt, Schiele, Kokoschka. Then I narrowed it down to just their portraits. The reason this is so important is because we can well understand how a face is portrayed in the brain of the observer. In the case of music and architecture, Schoenberg’s grandson has already complained to me. I love music, but I understand too little about the fundamentals of Schoenberg. Architecture in Vienna at this time is explained better than I could manage in the writings of Carl E Schorske. Were those Viennese intellectuals particularly sexually charged, or is that just fanciful thinking? 80
Head space: Kandel at the desk of his New York City office, which is adorned with pictures of his family and his favoured lab subject, the marine snail Aplysia
Ah, the affairs? People have always had affairs. But back then they spoke more honestly about them. Look at the politicians of today: wherever you look, there are affairs. I don’t think it’s anything special. You begin your story with the Second Vienna School of Medicine and its shaping of Sigmund Freud – the conclusion that all mental processes and ultimately symptoms are physiological processes in the brain. From there you link it to eroticism, aggression and fear in art. They all experienced intense soulsearching. As Freud and Schnitzler expressed the unconscious with language, Kokoschka and Schiele were able to visually depict the unconscious. Which brings us to one of the possible definitions of ‘expressionism’. With Klimt, it was really difficult to draw a complete line because his paintings were by and large decorative art, modernist art nouveau. You see the expressionist in Klimt in his fantastic drawings. Klimt’s depiction of women masturbating, compared to the historical view of that, is like day and night. Even Modigliani, who did this after Klimt, was not as honest as Klimt. Klimt was instrumental in the breakthrough of women’s sexuality. But it was Kokoschka who took the major step in Viennese Modernism, in 1909, when he created a self-image of his head as a warrior. Fantastic! And also how he looked deeply into the brains of others, fabulous. Klimt never looked at himself. Why do you give portraits such high priority in your fusion of brain and art? The face plays such a significant role in the perception of the observer. It was a rewarding task finding the biological basis for this. The areas for face recognition in the human brain take up more space than all other regions of the brain that have to do with the recognition of objects. If you consider the extreme forms and colours of expressionist portraits from around 1910, your brain cells respond quite remarkably. In the
“ THE FACE PLAYS A SIGNIFICANT ROLE IN THE PERCEPTION OF THE OBSERVER. FINDING THE BIOLOGICAL BASIS FOR THIS WAS REWARDING. THE AREAS FOR FACE RECOGNITION IN THE BRAIN TAKE UP MORE SPACE THAN OTHER REGIONS TO DO WITH THE RECOGNITION OF OBJECTS”
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jargon, one would say, they run hot. From biology, one can learn how neurological circuits work. Viennese Modernism is an exciting field of research – and I should also say it’s one that gives me pleasure. What is your favourite painting? Klimt’s Judith and Holofernes. But if you were to ask me who my favourite painter is, then it becomes difficult: I think Kokoschka speaks to me most. Judith is a good example for what I said before: it’s aggressive and erotic. It would be a little too bold to explain the reactions of the brain now with technical terms, but you could put it this way: different parts of the brain respond to different stimuli, and all of them are recruited into this emotional response to the work of art. You say that art is incomplete without the perceptual and emotional involvement of the observer. How can one improve his own contribution? You have to look at a lot of paintings, read a lot about paintings... read my book! Then you begin to differentiate, you become more sophisticated, you see things in paintings that you did not see before. When you listen to modern classical music, many pieces – Schoenberg in particular – are difficult to comprehend the first time you listen to them. You don’t understand them at all. But then when you hear them several times, you begin to recognise a certain order that makes it easier to enjoy. But how is that related to biology? Everything has to do with biology. Everything is biology, every thought that we have. This conversation is a biological conversation. The mind is a biological set of processes. Mental activity is to the brain what walking is to the legs, except much more complicated. Your life as a scholar takes place between the brain and the mind. Where does the soul fit in? You’re a romantic. I don’t believe in the soul, I don’t need it. And what about the heart? Sure, it is a very-much-needed pump for our organism. But the brain is much more complicated, more exciting. You give the impression of being an especially warm-hearted person. It would have been nice to hear you talk about the beauty of the soul. We have talked a great deal about the brain. That’s where I create all my feelings, in incredible diversity. THE RED BULLETIN
“EVERYTHING IS BIOLOGY, EVERY THOUGHT WE HAVE. THIS CONVERSATION IS A BIOLOGICAL CONVERSATION. THE MIND IS A BIOLOGICAL SET OF PROCESSES. MENTAL ACTIVITY IS TO THE BRAIN WHAT WALKING IS TO THE LEGS, EXCEPT MUCH MORE COMPLICATED”
Perhaps I am romantic, who knows? In Austria, your old home, the more famous you became, the friendlier people were to you. People spoke of the Nobel Prize “for an Austrian”. The Nobel Prize went to a Jewish American, I have stated that very clearly. I was totally irreconcilable for a very long time, and I could see no real atonement in Austria, Nazi sentiment still lingered. It has improved significantly, but only in recent years. Public figures have made efforts to build relationships that are valuable to me today. This also applies to some of the country’s outstanding scientists. I visit Vienna rarely, but no longer reluctantly. I have made my peace with the old country. I even have Austrian wine delivered to me. Grüner Veltliner from the Summerer Langenlois vineyards. I should really go there. Do you enjoy more leisure time now? I wouldn’t say that. I still enjoy work immensely, as does my wife. Now we’re even working on a mutual project for the first time. We have been married now for 56 years and it has never been boring. The annual rituals of Jewish life in America also help. We love it when
the whole family gets together and my wife cooks a wonderful dinner. Would you like to travel back in time to Vienna of 1900? Sit in the Café Central, refreshed by the wit of the intellectuals? I never go back, I only go forward. Here at Columbia University we are tremendously strong in brain biology. We are the best in brain science in America, probably the best in the world. Yes, certainly the best in the world. It’s fantastic here. We are moving to a new campus downtown in three or four years. The President of the university thinks that what we do is central to the future of the whole university. Because brain science is important for everything: for decisionmaking in business and economics, for art and music, for politics and journalism. To bridge these gaps we’ll have a new synthesis, and I would like to be a part of this, rather than going back in time. So I’m seeing whether we can have a PhD programme that brings people together who study art, people who do imaging experiments on the brain, people who do cognitive psychological experiments. This is what interests me – not the past. http://tinyurl.com/theredbulletinkandel
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Not just the bike: US motocross champ Ryan Dungey on the stuff that makes him on page 86
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Contents 84 TRAVEL A musical history tour of New York 86 GET THE GEAR Ryan Dungey’s motocross must-haves 88 WORK OUT Reaching new heights with climber Angy Eiter 90 NIGHTLIFE Everything you need to get you through ’til dawn 94 THE SOUNDS OF 2013 Auckland quartet Five Mile Town 96 SAVE THE DATE Events for the diary 97 KAINRATH Our cartoonist
Photography: Simon Cudby/Red Bull Content Pool
98 MIND’S EYE Columnist Russell Brown
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MORE BODY & MIND
AWAY DAYS
Aural history tour
SPECTACULAR TRAVEL ADVENTURES
NEW YORK CITY
If you’re a day tripper with an Empire state of mind, NYC is a pop music history mecca From where did the modern nightclub emerge? Where did Jimi Hendrix build his psychedelic recording studio? Where did the Ramones play their first concert? Where was the world’s first hip-hop party? Four questions, one answer: New York City. The Big Apple is the birthplace of many of popular music’s significant The Plan trends. Music is still a Committed fans West Bronx vital element of the city’s can do it in a day lifeblood. So it couldn’t be more appropriate for the Red Bull Music Academy to be opening its doors there Harlem on April 28, turning the city into a five-week festival of Manhattan musical creativity (see facing page). For the downtime Apollo Theater between sessions (in class Minton’s Playhouse and on stage), here is a travel Chelsea Brill Building guide for pop pilgrims. Listen to Red Bull Music Academy stars on the Red Bulletin tablet app. App and issues are free
Electric Lady CBGB Cafe Wha? The Loft 1520 Sedgwick Avenue
CBGB
315 Bowery/Bleecker St Back in the day Punk was born here in 1974, with the Ramones’ first gig and early Television shows. Now CBGB made way for a fashion store in 2006, where fans can gaze in admiration at old concert posters and punk memorabilia. While there, listen to Ramones, Ramones.
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Jimi Hendrix
Electric Lady
52 West 8th St Back in the day Jimi Hendrix’s recording studio, complete with psychedelic interiors, was built in 1970. He died just three months after it opened, but the studio lives on. Artists such as The Rolling Stones, David Bowie and Kings of Leon have recorded here. Now Musicians hoping for Hendrix magic can hire the studio from US$2,000 a day. While there, listen to The Cry Of Love, Jimi Hendrix.
Electric Lady: foxier on the inside
Minton’s Playhouse
210 West 118th St Back in the day Club regulars Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk, invented bebop here in the 1940s during long jamming sessions. Now Currently closed. Due to reopen in June. While there, listen to Midnight At Minton’s, Don Byas.
Thelonius Monk (left)
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MORE BODY & MIND
The Ramones, at CBGB in 1977, during the time when they were effectively the club’s house band
Apollo Theater
Cafe Wha?
115 MacDougal Street Back in the day The 1960s hangout for beat poets and folk musicians. A 20-yearold Bob Dylan played his first New York concert here in January 1961, and even devoted a line in a song on his first album to Cafe Wha? – “Blowin’ my lungs out for a dollar day” – in reference to his many poorly paid performances as a harmonica player. Now Although the bar is now seen as a tourist trap, it’s worth going to on Thursday nights when young, talented bands take to the stage. While there, listen to Bob Dylan, Bob Dylan.
253 West 125th Street Back in the day Ella Fitzgerald, Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson and almost all of the most important African-American musicians got an early career boost here. Now Still attracting a million visitors a year to music and comedy shows, including amateur night. While there, listen to Live At The Apollo, James Brown.
Ella Fitzgerald
WORDS: FLORIAN OBKIRCHER. PHOTOGRAPHY: CORBIS (4), REFLEX MEDIA, REX FEATURES, GETTY IMAGES (4), LAIF (2)
Brill Building
Elvis Presley
1619 Broadway/49th St Back in the day The Art Deco ‘Hit Factory’ of pop: over 165 music publishing companies worked here, turning out over 200 hits for artists including Elvis Presley, between 1958 and 1965. Now Recording studios and music biz offices, including Paul Simon’s, among more mundane workplaces. Great photo ops in the lobby. While there, listen to The Brill Building Sound, various artists.
1520 Sedgwick Avenue
The Loft
647 Broadway Back in the day Where, in 1970, DJ David Mancuso built the template for the modern-day nightclub. At invitationonly parties in his apartment, he played an eclectic mix of funk and soul on NYC’s best sound system, inspiring the ‘legal underground’ disco scene, and clubs such as Paradise Garage and the legendary Studio 54. Now A shoe shop and a deli on the ground floor, but Mancuso is still active and organises loft parties
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David Mancuso in Manhattan a few times a year. While there, listen to David Mancuso Presents The Loft, various artists.
1520 Sedgwick Ave Back in the day DJ Kool Herc was on the decks for the first hiphop party, held in this Bronx high-rise in 1973. Now Still residential; the Hip Hop Bus Tour (www.hushtours.com) drives by with anecdotes. While there, listen to The Adventures of…, Grandmaster Flash.
Red Bull Music Academy 2013 Four highlights on a packed schedule of concerts, parties, events and lectures, from April 28 to May 31. 25 YEARS OF MASTERS AT WORK, May 3, Le Bain at The Standard Hotel New York’s house legends unite behind the decks.
BRIAN ENO, May 5, Cooper Union The electronic pioneer in an illustrated talk. RBMA CULTURE CLASH, May 9, Roseland Ballroom Four teams of DJs, MCs and producers are pitted against each other in a battle to win the crowd’s hearts.
Their chosen weapon is bass-laden music. GIORGIO MORODER, May 20, Cielo Astonishingly, the German master of disco and ’80s film soundtracks plays his first-ever DJ set. More concert info at: www.redbullmusic academy.com
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m o r e b o dy & m i n d
get the gear a pro’s essentials
Heavy metal
Motocross champ Ryan Dungey’s travel companions are high-quality machinery. They don’t talk much, but all the 22-year-old wants over the course of a long season is their protection 1. Fox V4 Race helmet It’s one of the most important things to me. I try and get custom-fitted stuff for every area of my body. This helmet is made from carbon fibre and is lightweight, at 1.6kg. 2. Nike 6.0 MX boots I started with these in 2010. They’re made of carbon fibre and soft rubber foam, and protect you against flying debris and from twisting your ankle. They’re very comfy and give me a good feel for the bike. 3. 2013 KTM 450 SX-F bike A steel frame, electronic fuel injection, 58hp and weighs about 103kg. It’s a good ride and the handling is awesome. The clutch is hydraulically actuated, so it doesn’t burn up as fast and readjusts itself so I can just focus on my riding. 4. Radio headset I don’t have a comms receiver in my helmet, but my team can talk to each other while spread around the track. 5. WP Link TRAX suspension The amount of force that this rear-end shock absorber can take is mindblowing. About 50 to 60 per cent of the bike’s performance comes from getting the shocks right. 6. Motorex Motorcycle Cleaner Used to degrease the bike. We spray it, then scrub with a brush. We’re at the top level of our sport and we have to keep things clean to keep sponsors happy, and for the people watching. 7. Backpack I carry this with me to all 30 rounds of the AMA Motocross and Supercross championships.
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It holds my iPod, sunglasses and my books. I’m currently reading Unbroken, about World War II survivor Louis Zamperini, and The Bible. 8. Pit cart We have four fresh tyre options for every race. As well as the tyres, this cart holds a bunch of power tools, including a hotair blower and impact wrench. There’s also storage for replacement plastic bike pieces.
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9. Dunlop tyres For every race we line up for, we have a new rear tyre. These ones have a diameter of 19in. The front tyre usually doesn’t wear as fast, but there’s much more force on the rear because it’s the tyre that makes the machine go. 10. Snap-On toolbox These are the best tools out there. There are about 250 things in here, but the 8mm and 10mm T-wrenches to adjust the brake, clutch lever and throttle control are perhaps the most important. 11. Asterisk knee brace It’s custom-fitted to your leg and made of carbon. Knee protection is mandatory in motocross. You’re going so fast, and you’re sticking your leg out. It’d be harder to ride without them because you’d scuff up the inside of your knees. 12. Pit board Me and my mechanic, Carlos, use this to communicate with each other on the track. He’ll tell me my position and my lap time. It helps keep me calm and lets me know where I’m at.
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www.ryandungey.com
the red bulletin
Dungey won this season's 450 SX Supercross race in Anaheim
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WORDS: ANDREAS TZORTZIS. PHOTOGRAPHY: PATRICK STRATTNER
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M O R E B O DY & M I N D
Reaching her peak: Angy Eiter is the most successful female sport climber of all time
HITTING THE WALL
Hanging tough
TRAINING WITH THE PROS
ANGY EITER The
champion climber from Austria is scaling new heights in her chosen field, because she is fine-tuning her mind along with her body
In 2012, Angy Eiter won her fourth world championship title and a sixth victory at the revered Rock Masters competition in Arco, Italy – both event records. Her winning ways stem from a multipronged approach. “The key is being adaptable,” says Eiter, 26. “Every route is different, so though you can practise key moves, you don’t know what you’ll need to do until competition day. You don’t want to be too heavy, but you must retain a lot of muscle to manoeuvre well. I eat a good balance of protein and carbohydrates, my favourite is grilled chicken with boiled potato and green veg, and avoid the sweet stuff. Also, I adjust my shoe size depending on my climb. I’m a size 37, but for climbing I wear size 33.5. It gives you more feeling. On longer climbs, the pain can remove that advantage, so I wear a size 35.”
TOP TIP
Mental muscle “Climbing can be mentally draining,” says Eiter, “so it’s important to do mental training. I have techniques, such as breathing exercises, to help me relax and focus before an event. For example, I breathe in deeply and exhale slowly while thinking about a previous positive performance. This calms me down and sets me up to compete. I love that climbing is a puzzle, a new challenge to be solved each time. I like concentrating, focusing on every move. So when I’m not near a mountain, you’ll find me with a crossword. In a way it poses a similar mental challenge.”
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MONDAY 10am-2pm: Power exercises using own bodyweight, including pull-ups, push-ups and abdominal crunches. This is followed by bouldering [short climbs without ropes] with a group. Finish with 20 minutes’ stretching TUESDAY 10-11.30am: Bouldering with trainer, to improve technique and power 2-4.30pm: Climbing routes on the indoor climbing wall with trainer, to boost strength and endurance
FRIDAY 10am-2pm: Power exercises using own bodyweight, followed by climbing on climbing wall with trainer, to improve power and endurance SATURDAY 10am-2pm: Climbing routes on the climbing wall to improve endurance SUNDAY Rest day
WEDNESDAY 10am: Running for one hour, or hiking for two hours, around hometown of Imst, Austria. Finish with 20 minutes’ stretching THURSDAY 10-11.30am: Bouldering with trainer, to improve technique and power 2-4pm: Gym, with focus on upper body: work biceps and triceps using medium weights; 3 x sets shoulder press; chest press; finish with sit-ups
www.angelaeiter.com
Watch Angy Eiter in action in the Red Bulletin tablet edition THE RED BULLETIN
WORDS: RUTH MORGAN. PHOTOGRAPHY: ELIAS HOLZKNECHT/RED BULL CONTENT POOL, ASP RED BULL/RED BULL CONTENT POOL
WORK OUT
When it comes to preparation for competition, there’s no substitute for actual climbing. Eiter ensures top results through constant feedback from her trainer
M O R E B O DY & M I N D
Nightlife Whatever gets you through ’til dawn
Sharply dressed: Karin Dreijer Andersson (left) and Olof Dreijer are The Knife
ACTION
Tour de friends LA LATE SHOW Los Angeles is home to a unique biking subculture: up to 1,500 cyclists of the Midnight Ridazz club pedal through the streets after sundown on the second Friday of the month. RANDOM FACTOR Routes are chosen on the fly. Themes, however, are revealed online in advance. There are party rides, Star Wars tributes and processions to mark local cultural events. THE DUDES ABIDE Since 2004, when the rides began with a small bunch of friends, there have been no run-ins with the law. Safety is paramount. www.midnightridazz.com
OUT NOW
Beaks ’n’ beats The Knife Back after a long break, the avant-garde pop siblings talk musical bedsprings and the masks behind the masks
Swedish brother and sister duo Olof Dreijer and Karin Dreijer Andersson, aka The Knife, like to create an air of mystery. In promo photos, they appear pointy nosed, behind plague masks. On record, they alter their voices to add extra depth to their moody electronic soundscapes. It's a successful method: their third album, 2006’s Silent Shout was lauded as one of the decade’s most innovative. Now The Knife have released a new album after a gap of seven years. Why such a long break? Andersson: We had seven years of working together intensively for Silent Shout. The break was important for both of us to be able to follow our own visions. [Both she and Dreijer released solo albums; she, in 2009, as Fever Ray.]
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Why are the songs so different? A: We created our earlier albums on computers. This time round we play instruments, but in our own way. For example, we play bedsprings with bows. The sound cuts your throat. It sounds creepy, and goes well with the macabre masks in your photos. Dreijer: The mask has become an image of The Knife: something that was meant to question identity became a product. It’s time for a change, but don’t worry: behind the masks are other masks.
Shaking The Habitual (Brille Records) is out now. Tour dates at: www.theknife.net
THEY SAID IT
“There is no sun without shadow, and it is essential to know the night ” Albert Camus (1913-1960), writer and philosopher
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WHAT SUP
Badly Lose Lilly This cocktail is the creation of a champion. Michael Steinbacher, from the Mayday Bar at Hangar-7 in Salzburg. He was crowned Austria’s best barman for 2012 thanks to this drink. “I wanted to create a cocktail that speaks to the senses,” he says, “one that speaks to the eyes with the ingredients’ bright range of colours, and speaks to the palate with its refreshingly fruity taste.”
PHOTOGRAPHY: NME/IPC SYNDICATE, SCOTT POMMIER, CLUB MIDI (3), FOTOSTUDIO EISENHUT & MAYER
CLUB MIDI Strada Berariei 6 Cluj-Napoca, Romania www.clubmidi.ro
CLUB
Vamp it up while out for the Count Club Midi In a former bread factory in the unofficial capital of Transylvania, there's no blood on the dancefloor, but superstar DJs play marathon nine-hour sets You would be surprised by the nightlife in Cluj, Romania’s second city, because… Even though the city isn’t big, the influx of international students makes this place so alive and open to electronic music. The club used to be… A bread factory. From outside, you see a big building and some lights, and you just want to know what's going on inside.
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CLUB CLUB MIDI
INGREDIENTS
METHOD
40ml Pyrat XO rum 2 slices of lime 60ml blackcurrant juice 40ml cola 10ml Monin Spicy Syrup Handful of ice cubes To garnish: curd cheese (or plain cream cheese) Kaffir lime leaves
Put rum and lime in a shaker and leave for 15 seconds, then carefully add the other ingredients, slowly swirling the shaker to ‘roll’ the drink. Smear a spiral of cheese inside a glass, strain in the drink and garnish with the lime leaves.
The dancefloor can hold... About 1,000 revellers. In addition to the main area, there's also the Red Lounge, to chill out in, which is usually really packed at about 3am. The best Romanian DJs are... Raresh, Petre Inspirescu and Rhadoo. The three of them run their own minimal house label [a:rpia:r] and are increasingly booked to DJ all over the world, but Midi is their home club. Our best night was when... Ricardo Villalobos deejayed here for the first time. He played from three in the morning through to midday; the crowd just wouldn’t let him go. He clearly enjoyed it: he never checked into the hotel suite we booked for him. The best time to come here is... In early summer, before the students leave and during the film festival. [Transylvania International Film Festival, May 31-June 9.] The whole town is buzzing. Interview: Club Midi PR department of Christian Tomoiaga, Raluca Nicola, Alina Ceusan and Gabriel Aldea.
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NIGHTLIFE Depeche Mode, from left: Martin Gore, Dave Gahan, Andy Fletcher
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JOHN LEE HOOKER
“I like really simple blues, like John Lee Hooker used to play on his acoustic guitar. It’s the raw emotion that gets me. Depeche Mode also have a strategy of keeping things simple. We worked on the song My Little Universe for ages, but it never sounded right. Then we just stripped it back and suddenly there was this magic quality to it. Now it’s one of my favourite tracks on the new album.”
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GEORGE JONES
“Jones has that distinctive country twang, the archetypical country voice. My favourite song of his is The Grand Tour, which is really graphic about missing somebody. Jones invites you into his house; takes you in with the things he’s really missing. He talks about the kids’ nursery and how his wife left him. It is fantastic how he rhymes ‘nursery’ with ‘mercy’ in his country twang.”
TAKE 3
“We don’t show our influences” Depeche Mode The electropop trailblazers who became a planet-straddling supergroup draw on a wonderful world of musical source material Depeche Mode are the most successful electronic pop band of all time. Since forming in 1980, they have sold more than 100 million records and their popularity shows no sign of waning. Twice in the
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last eight years they have undertaken world tours with more than 100 dates, playing to huge crowds from Tallinn to Toronto. In their early days, they created industrial beats using samples of everyday sounds: the basis of pop hits like Everything Counts. They created electronic blues with their 1989 album Violator. For Delta Machine, their recently released 13th album, the band worked on old synthesizers the size of fridges. The resulting songs, reminiscent of current house tracks in their minimalism, also exude the warmth of gospel music. “Even if Depeche Mode are an electronic music band,” the band's main songwriter, Martin Gore, 51, explains, “our influences go way back. I listen to all kinds of music and I love old country and blues records, even if that’s not always all that obvious on our albums.” Allowing a peek behind the Depeche Mode synth curtain, Gore picks a triumvirate of artists who, you’d never know, are très à la Mode. www.depechemode.com
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LOUIS ARMSTRONG
“I love his album Louis And The Good Book, one of my all-time favourites. He interprets gospel and spiritual standards, but in his own style. Listening to this got me into the song Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child, which is really stunning. I listened to a lot of spirituals during the recording of [1987 album] Music For The Masses, for which I even sampled old gospel records.”
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NIGHT SNACK
Trinidad & Tobago Doubles The islands’ finger food: now being served via your mobile phone
PHOTOGRAPHY: ANTON CORBIJN/SONY MUSIC, PICTUREDESK.COM (2), GETTY IMAGES, FOTOSTUDIO EISENHUT & MAYER, LAIF
TWICE AS NICE Two fried flatbreads topped with curried chickpeas, chutney and chilli sauce. The bara flatbread is flour, water, baking powder, salt and turmeric, which gives it a yellow colour. The chickpeas, or channa, almost always contain shado beni, an aromatic herb with a corianderlike flavour. Chutneys are mango, cucumber or coconut.
ACROSS THE OCEANS India and Trinidad are divided by three letters and 14,000km, but inextricably linked. A third of the current Trinidadian population is of East Indian heritage, a legacy of slavery, and it shows across the countries’ cuisines. The Indian dish chole bhature consists of a fried flatbread served with curried chickpeas. ONE IS NEVER ENOUGH It is said the name ‘doubles’ came about in 1937, when the Deen family were selling channa with a bara bread. Customers asked for another bara, and Deen’s Doubles were born. The family went on to open a diner, and Deen’s Doubles lives on today under different ownership.
Two good: wherever there is Trinidadian street food, you will find doubles
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WHENEVER, EVERYWHERE Doubles are a favourite at breakfast time, but you wouldn’t be too out of place eating one at lunch, and they’re sold so
late into the night that you could essentially be eating them for breakfast again. Notable sellers on Trinidad include Sleepy’s Doubles in Port-of-Spain and Ali's Doubles in San Fernando. WORD OF MOUTH When Khafra Murray began listing doubles sellers on Facebook, he had 250 addresses in no time. The IT expert then developed his list into an app: The Trinidad & Tobago Doubles Vendor Directory now has over 400 entries. www.triniberry.com
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Man up
Teenage dream: Five Mile Town (from left) Louis McDonald, Adam Quigley, Levi Heeringa and Ryan Wilson
THE SOUNDS OF 2013 #4
FIVE MILE TOWN How an Auckland three-piece became a quartet, said bye-bye to ballads and made plans for world domination
Five Mile Town, the band’s debut EP
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Picnic blankets, platters of smoked fish and decent red wine aren’t the usual music festival ingredients, but Music at Matua, where they’re found in abundance, is a festival for grown-ups. Held on a summer day in February in a vineyard in West Auckland, this was no excuse for teenage debauchery. One woman in the crowd read House & Garden magazine, oblivious to the bands onstage. Opening act Five Mile Town played in the early afternoon to little more than polite applause. Despite a technical problem with the double bass – and there’s no hiding a technical problem with a double bass – the band still delivered an assured, polished performance that won them a lot of new, mostly middle-aged fans.
Five Mile Town are used to a more immediate response from their audience. In March 2012, the video for debut single Saturated, a heartfelt ballad with a Mumford & Sons-style banjo break, had almost 20,000 hits within 24 hours of being posted on YouTube. A year on and it’s ticked past 85,000 views: impressive, given that most first singles by New Zealand bands struggle to get a thousand pairs of eyes. “It’s everything a teenage girl wants to see in a video,” says Five Mile Town’s drummer, Ryan Wilson, who joined the band after the promo was shot. “Three good-looking dudes in a forest in the sunshine with a chick.” “Don’t say that,” pleads lead singer Louis McDonald, who
also wrote the song. “Please don’t reduce my art to that.” Taking a break from rehearsals at the Music and Audio Institute of New Zealand, where the head of music is John Quigley, father of the band’s guitarist, Adam Quigley, the four teenagers – McDonald and double bassist Levi Heeringa are 18; Quigley and Wilson, 19 – talk over each other excitedly, which is how it should be with a young band discussing their forthcoming debut album. “It’s not that I don’t consider myself a teenager, but I don’t think I write about typical teenage problems,” says McDonald. “What are teenage problems?” asks Quigley. “I don’t even know what that means. I do know that Louis’ lyrics definitely don’t sound
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WORDS: ROBERT TIGHE. PHOTOGRAPHY: FIVE MILE TOWN, MEREDITH REHBURG
“ We’re not expecting it to happen straight away, but we want to play overseas at the big festivals” like Taylor Swift. I also know that the album sounds completely different to our first EP. A friend of mine told me that the EP didn’t have any balls.” “It was sackless,” laughs McDonald. “We had some good songs back then, but we didn’t record them because we knew we couldn’t play them properly,” says Quigley. “We didn’t have a drummer and I was still learning to play the electric guitar. That’s why all of our earlier songs were acoustic.” “The sound has changed a lot,” says Wilson. “I think there’s room for people who mightn’t have liked Five Mile Town before to appreciate our music now.” Wilson had been hanging out with the Five Mile Towners for a couple of years before he started drumming with them nine months ago. He’s the only one who aspired to be a full-time musician from a young age, the only one with any kind of rock ’n’ roll credentials. Quigley was considering medical school before the band took off; Heeringa was set to study science at university; McDonald seems too wholesome to be a frontman. Wilson, on the other hand, has the tattoos, the stories of getting drunk at last year’s New Zealand Music Awards and the musical background. His mother was an opera singer and by the age of 15, he was playing in a hardcore metal group called Saving Grace. “We really need a list of the things you’ve done in your life because we’ve no idea,” Heeringa says to Wilson, with just a tiny hint of admiration. The clash of personalities is clear, but so is the collaboration. These boys seem like they’ve been
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Four-four time: becoming a quartet changed their sound
playing together for years, rather than months. Wilson turning a trio into a quartet was the catalyst behind the band’s new sound. They’ve dropped Saturated from their set list in favour of rockier tunes that owe a debt to Coldplay (think Viva la Vida and Strawberry Swing), Kings of Leon and even U2, with soaring choruses the likes of which fill stadiums. It’s a waypoint on their musical journey that wouldn’t have been charted given their iPod playlists: Heeringa, McDonald and Quigley are confirmed indie kids, into Wilco, Fleet Foxes and Arcade Fire, while Wilson listens to Linkin Park and Jurassic 5, and is a big fan of dance music. They’ve recorded the songs for their debut album and are talking to record labels. The plan is to move to Australia later this year and try and crack that market, before taking on the rest of the world. “We’re not expecting it to happen straight away, but we want to play overseas,” says Quigley. “We want to play the big festivals.” “We’re in that zone where we’ve got a record ready and we’re talking to labels, but it feels like limbo at the moment,” says McDonald. If that happens, those fans at Matua can say that, as well as pinot noir, they partook of Five Mile Town before they made it big.
Need to know THE LINE-UP Louis McDonald – vocals, acoustic guitar, percussion Adam Quigley – electric guitar, banjo Levi Heeringa – double bass, backing vocals Ryan Wilson – drums, percussion, backing vocals DISCOGRAPHY Five Mile Town (EP, 2012) Kids and their Chemicals (single, 2012) Saturated (single, 2012)
The story so far Louis McDonald and Adam Quigley met through mutual friends and started playing music together in July 2011, with McDonald on acoustic guitar and Quigley (whose father John plays guitar and sings with The Nairobi Trio, an Auckland jazz band) providing electric guitar and tambourine. While on Google Maps, during an online delve into the world of Irish singer-songwriters, McDonald noticed Fivemiletown, a village in Country Tyrone, and the duo got their name. In October 2011, McDonald asked Levi Heeringa, who he’d known since kindergarten, to bring his double bass along to practice one evening.
Heeringa played guitar before taking up the double bass at the age of 15 after he heard the theme tune to American sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond. Within a couple of weeks the trio recorded their debut EP, released in March 2012. Ryan Wilson joined the band in August 2012 to flesh out the rhythm section; no bad thing, given that he’s been playing the drums since he was fours year old. Since the band became a four-piece, they’ve played at the TEDx conference in Auckland, the main stage at Rhythm & Vines and been nominated for an APRA Silver Scroll songwriting award. www.fivemiletownband.com
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M O R E B O DY & M I N D
Save the Date April & May APRIL 10-21, MAY 8-19
Reality bites Pretty Brutal, the story of three skaters and their experiences in New Zealand’s first roller derby league, is one of over 40 local and international films that will feature in the Documentary Edge International Film Festival, which debuts in Auckland before moving on to Wellington. Other highlights of the programme include The Russian Winter, the tour diary/biopic of Fugees producer John Forte, and Her Master’s Voice, featuring ventriloquist Nina Conti. www.documentaryedge.org.nz
Country soul The return of alt-country rockers Wilco to New Zealand is cause enough for celebration on its own. However, the addition of soul singer supreme Mavis Staples to the line-up, for their shows on successive nights at the town halls of Wellington and Auckland, makes this a musical experience not to be missed. www.theedge.co.nz/wilco
APRIL 12-14
Start your engines For the first time since 2007, the V8 Supercars return to Auckland and the home of motorsport in New Zealand: Pukekohe Park Raceway. With over $6 million spent on track upgrades, it promises to be an exciting new venue for the New Zealand round of the V8s. All of the cars in the series are now built to Supercars Car of the Future specifications, a move triggered to produce closer, more competitive racing. The 2013 season also marks the debut of the Red Bull Racing team, featuring the driving talents of Craig Lowndes, a three-time series winner, and defending champion Jamie Whincup. www.auckland400.co.nz Jamie Whincup
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APRIL 20
Vinyl countdown Today’s a great day to say hello to the high fidelity folk at your local music emporium as they celebrate Record Store Day. According to Jack White, ambassador for Record Store Day 2013, the event is a reminder that “there is beauty and romance in the act of visiting a record shop,” and that vinyl “is a more beautiful musical experience than a mouse click”. Real Groovy, on Auckland’s Queen Street, will mark the occasion with an in-store gig from Wellington metal monsters Beastwars. The band will also be selling a special limited edition (vinyl, of course) of their new album, Blood Becomes Fire. Conch Records on Ponsonby Road will have an eclectic assortment of DJs and bands performing in their backyard café, while in Mt Eden, Southbound Records will have a range of Record Store Day exclusive releases. www.recordstoreday.com
APRIL 7
Bunny boilers The South Sydney Rabbitohs will make the trip to Mt Smart Stadium determined to avoid a repeat of the 44-22 thrashing dished out by the New Zealand Warriors in the corresponding fixture last year. The win was one of the few highlights for the Warriors in a 2012 NRL season that saw them lose 16 of their 24 games. The Rabbitohs recovered from their Mt Smart nightmare to finish third on the ladder and new Warriors coach Matt Elliott will know that a repeat of last year’s romp is
unlikely. Players to watch for Souths include Greg Inglis, Sam Burgess, and Kiwi pair Issac Luke and Ben Te’o. www.warriors.co.nz
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WORDS: ROBERT TIGHE. PHOTOGRAPHY: GETTY IMAGES, MARK HORSBURGH/RED BULL CONTENT POOL, FOTO.GRAFFITO
APRIL 5, 6
Rock ’n’ roll store: Beastwars will play live at Real Groovy
ILLUSTRATION: DIETMAR KAINRATH
K A I N R AT H
THE RED BULLETIN
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T
here is a Facebook app for something Facebook itself does very well: alerting you to your friends’ birthdays (and milking everyone who downloads it for precious demographic nectar). Friends and family keep inviting me to let this app into my life, and I keep saying no, thank you. After all, there it is, upper right of your Facebook home page every morning: the birthday or birthdays of people you know. Once a year, it’s you. I’m not saying it’s unpleasant to be wished happy birthday by a chorus of friends, but this is information we didn’t use to have about everyone we knew, information we hadn’t agreed to be shared in this way. The newly public nature of life events brings with it the occasional issue of modern manners. Do we issue a cheery birthday greeting to every Facebook friend whose day pops up? If not, what are the criteria? To offer a virtual hug when a relationship status changes, or not? Births and weddings are more straightforward – our job is to coo over the photographs. But nowhere has the internet changed the way we mark life events more than when life ends. Twenty years ago, few people received public eulogies. There were short memorial notices in the newspaper, but usually only the famous got anything more. Things changed with the mainstreaming of the internet. In 1997, New York researcher Carla J Sofka published a paper with the daunting title Social Support, “Internetworks,” Caskets For Sale, and More: Thanatology and The Information Superhighway. “Gone are the days when avenues for exploring issues of death, dying, grief, and bereavement were difficult to find,” wrote Sofka, listing what was already an array of places to grieve and to talk about death, from the Usenet group alt. support.grief to the World Wide Cemetery. The latter was founded in 1995 by Michael Kibbee, a 31-year-old Canadian engineer, in the wake of his own terminal cancer diagnosis. It is currently, according to the message on
Mind’s Eye
Not The Last Post Lives lived online, says Russell Brown, bring what happens next front and centre its home page, “celebrating 17 years as the web’s premiere memorial site!” But things really changed with MySpace, the breakthrough social space, where the dialogue was controlled by the users, who were of a demographic that had never really been able or encouraged to talk about the death of their peers. When they started doing so, in their own way, it was not universally welcomed, especially if the death was by suicide (and it commonly was: suicide is second only to road accidents as a cause of death among young New Zealanders). In 2008, Christchurch newspaper The Press picked up on a media panic in Britain over supposed suicide clusters driven by “cult” Bebo pages. Wild speculation and statistical ignorance met in farce when The Press declared that several deaths “have been linked to a Bebo website called Suicide Girls”. Anyone
familiar with Suicide Girls will know that it has nothing to do with self-harm, unless you count pierced nipples. Which is not to say that some things weren’t genuinely challenging. My Death Space, a site launched in 2006 that linked social media profiles of the deceased with news reports of their deaths, was an uneasy mix of sincere memorial and voyeuristic distraction. It feels like no great loss that the site has run out of steam. That happened in part because online grieving has been normalised. We customarily post our feelings on the deceased’s Facebook wall, especially if distance prevents us from attending the funeral. That can still be strange. When my much-loved sister died, her teenage daughters immediately received dozens of Facebook friend requests. The friending was done with the best of intentions, but as my nieces noted, it was an uncomfortable way to find out how popular you were. We can leave much behind online when we go. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube all now have established mechanisms for relatives of the deceased to gain access to their accounts. Facebook can “memorialise” a profile on request. The internet has even begun to offer a virtual seat at funerals. A friend of mine has a growing business in video coverage of funeral services, which can be watched on the internet. Although the video links are rarely shared beyond friends and family, he says the services can sometimes be viewed by hundreds of people. Even 10 years ago, funeral webcasts would have seemed exotic. Now, it’s just something people do – something practical. The most striking changes to our lives and our cultures as a result of the internet are often ones we barely perceive as change. We now confront mortality and discuss and deal with death in new ways, even if some of those new ways are simply updated equivalents of the old. This is how we live now. And sometimes how we die. Russell Brown is a media commentator and blogger living in Auckland
THE RED BULLETIN New Zealand, ISSN 2079-4274: The Red Bulletin is published by Red Bull Media House GmbH General Manager Wolfgang Winter Publisher Franz Renkin Editor-in-Chief Robert Sperl Deputy Editor-in-Chief Alexander Macheck UK & Ireland Editor Paul Wilson Contributing Editor Stefan Wagner Chief Sub-editor Nancy James Deputy Chief Sub-editor Joe Curran Production Editor Marion Wildmann Chief Photo Editor Fritz Schuster Deputy Photo Editors Ellen Haas, Catherine Shaw, Rudolf Übelhör Creative Director Erik Turek Art Director Kasimir Reimann Design Martina de Carvalho-Hutter, Silvia Druml, Kevin Goll, Peter Jaunig, Carita Najewitz Staff Writers Ulrich Corazza, Werner Jessner, Ruth Morgan, Florian Obkircher, Arkadiusz Piatek, Andreas Rottenschlager, Robert Tighe Corporate Publishing Boro Petric (head), Christoph Rietner (chief-editor); Dominik Uhl (art director); Markus Kucera (photo director); Lisa Blazek (editor); Christian Graf-Simpson, Daniel Kudernatsch (app) Head of Production Michael Bergmeister Production Wolfgang Stecher (mgr), Walter Sádaba Repro Managers Clemens Ragotzky (head), Karsten Lehmann, Josef Mühlbacher Finance Siegmar Hofstetter, Simone Mihalits Marketing & Country Management Barbara Kaiser (head), Stefan Ebner, Stefan Hötschl, Elisabeth Salcher, Lukas Scharmbacher, Peter Schiffer, Julia Schweikhardt, Sara Varming. The Red Bulletin is published in Austria, France, Germany, Ireland, Kuwait, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa, Switzerland, the UK and the USA. Website www.redbulletin.com. Head office: Red Bull Media House GmbH, Oberst-Lepperdinger-Strasse 11-15, A-5071 Wals bei Salzburg, FN 297115i, Landesgericht Salzburg, ATU63611700. UK office: 155-171 Tooley Street, London SE1 2JP, +44 (0) 20 3117 2100. Austrian office: Heinrich-Collin-Strasse 1, A-1140 Vienna, +43 (1) 90221 28800. Printed by PMP Print, 30 Birmingham Drive, Riccarton, 8024 Christchurch. For all advertising enquiries, contact Sales Manager Brad Morgan or email brad.morgan@nz.redbull.com Write to us: email letters@redbulletin.com
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