The Red Bulletin April 2013 - ZA

beyond the Ordinary The red bulletin 04/2013

A BEYOND THE ORDINARY MAGAZINE

APRIL 2013

BRAN

D

TablNeEW t

BEING ROBBY NAISH A LIFE IN SURF

ORIGINAL OFFERING SA’s Das Kapital on his two new EPs

App FRE E

D OW N

L OA D

THE WORLD OF RED BULL

April at a glance

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conquest of the jungle peak

On one of the last remaining blank spots on the map, a mountain climbing challenge so fiendish that weeks of trekking past deadly snakes in the jungle to reach the rock face are just a warm-up

06 photos of the month Amazing images from top photographers 12 news Sport and culture on the quick 15 where’s your head at? Star of The Great Gatsby, Leonardo DiCaprio 16 me & my body Dai Greene 18 lucky numbers Calculating Star Trek 20 winning formula Weightlifting

Features 22 Guyana

Scaling unexplored heights of the South American jungle

36 Hawaii

Shooting the breeze with legend of windsurfing Robby Naish

48 Scotland

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

The BMXers who love riding so much they made their track their home

58 Armenia

How to build a nation of grandmasters

66 C alifornia

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

48 58 the lost boys of bmx

On the west coast of Scotland, a group of top-level riders have colonised a skatepark to live their dreams 24/7 04

world’s brainiest country

In Armenia, the president greets winning grandmasters at the airport, and kids learn mind games in school chess lessons

84 travel Musical highlights of NYC 86 g et the gear Motocross essentials 88 training Climbing tips from a pro 90 n ightlife Food, drink, music & more 94 s ounds of 2013 Das Kapital 96 save the date Events for the diary 97 kainrath Our cartoonist 98 mind’s eye With Kevin McCallum

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photography: klaus fengler/red bull content pool, rutger pauw/red bull content pool, club midi, greg funnell, daniel gebhart de koekkoek

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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

THDE N I T E L L R E BU !

P P A

OR I E S T S Y R A ES R DI N E X T R AO NG I M AG

OV I M G N I H S C EY Eďż˝ C AT C LUSI V E PHOTO EX

www.redbulletin.com Find a list of all compatible Android devices at www.redbulletin.com

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 , no 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

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The way we are

Speed specifics One BMX looks pretty much like the next one, right? Speak to SA Olympian Sifiso Nhlapo, though, and it’s clear he has some special requirements of his bike.

“People think we’re all on carbon-framed bikes, but they aren’t really necessary for BMX. Carrying momentum is crucial and that doesn’t necessarily mean a light bike,” explains Nhlapo (right).

“Mine is an aluminium 1Zero5 frame with a carbon fork that I designed. I prefer to race my ‘medium’ frame – that’s not the size of the frame; it refers to the angle of the fork.

I also like a bike that’s pretty stiff and responsive, so I’ve used big strong tubing in the rear triangle of the frame. You don’t want any flex when you come out of the gate.” www.skizo105.com

Brandon Bay Wind’s up at windsurfing contest Red Bull Storm Chasers in Ireland Sebastian Marko 14

Ben Hennon pulls off a tailwhip on his way to victory

ROUTE CANAL TREATMENT

For the winner, Red Bull Rich Ditches was a bit like a trip to the dentist: some discomfort, then a big smile There are better places to visit on the Western Cape than a damp ditch just outside the dusty town of Gouda, but Ben Hennon seemed to like it there. The British BMX rider overcame difficult conditions to walk away with first prize from street-meets-park obstacle event, Red Bull Rich Ditches.

Local BMXer Wayne Reiche came up with the idea for Red Bull Rich Ditches when he spotted the water canal while driving to Ceres a few years ago. The event is played out on a huge half-pipe with tight sections, and its series of faces, bridges and walls calls for an extensive repertoire of skills, which Hennon had in abundance.

“There were a lot of big transfers and it’s basically my style to do big tricks over this

Sarajevo Getting cold feet at sub-zero iceslide Red Bull Jump and Freeze Sulejman Omerbasic

kind of stuff,” said Hennon after the event. “I’m a complete allround rider so I guess I can turn my hand at anything, but what I really prefer is riding things that weren’t designed to be ridden – that’s the challenge for me. Red Bull Rich Ditches had a similar vibe to the Red Bull Ramparanoia I won in Argentina last December.

Red Bull Rich Ditches is a peer-judged event. Hennon got the better of Italy’s Alessandro Barbero (second) and South Africa’s Greg Illingworth (third), as well as fellow British riders Sebastian Keep (fourth) and Paul Ryan (fifth) in a final that was universally acknowledged as the best 12 minutes of BMXing ever seen on SA soil. www.redbull.co.za

St Johann In Austria, speedway’s Mikkel B

Jensen (left) gets ice riding tips from Franky Zorn David Robinson the red bulletin

photography: tyrone bradley/red bull content pool, adidas, craig kolesky/red bull content pool

It wasn’t so much a retrospective as it was a celebration. Over the past five years, Joburg has developed one of the most diverse and original music scenes in the world and the ‘From Before They Were Great’ exhibition documented its progress.

Held at the adidas’ Area3 space in Maboneng The Joburg scene celebrated Precinct, the multimedia exhibition looked back on five of the city’s greatest party nights: Thesis Social Jam, Griet, Warm Up Parties, Party People and, of course, Pop Bottles. The man behind Pop Bottles, Tumi Mooi, aka DJ Dimplez, attended the exhibition opening. “It hits home just how many events we actually put on,” he said. “It takes me back all the way to 2008 and the first Pop Bottles. I am proud of what we’ve done and continue to do. It’s helped SA hip-hop find its feet.”

Search for ‘Pop Bottles ent’ at www.facebook.com

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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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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.

b u l l e va r d

HArd & FAST

Top performers and winning ways from around the globe The Netherlands’ Ruben Lenton lifts up to where he belongs at Red Bull King Of The Air in Cape Town

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 gold in slalom.

Photography: craig kolesky/Red bull content pool, picturedesk.com, ktm/taglioni s., getty images, cherie valie/Newsport Media Illustration: Dietmar Kainrath

the air up there Kiteboarding is not just about getting high, it’s also about what you do when you get up there Humans attached to kites, flying up to 150m in the air, and then landing on water. It’s spectacular to watch. But at February’s Red Bull King Of The Air kiteboarding event, it wasn’t easy to figure out who was the best of the highly skilled competitors. The aim was simple: perform the biggest, most radical jump. But with Cape Town’s trusty southeaster howling through Big Bay and a 2m swell running, all the kiteboarders were clocking 25m jumps.

One of the judges at the event was Jim Gaunt, editor of Kiteworld International magazine, who explained what his educated eyes were looking for. “We didn’t just want guys going hell for leather and not making clean landings,” he says. “It was about controlled risk. We wanted to see progression, but it had to look good. We judged by weighting 70 per cent on height and risk, 20 per cent on style and execution, and 10 per cent on variation.”

The eventual winner was American Jesse Richman, who held off challenges from Denmark’s Nick Jacobsen and Brit Sam Light.

“Jesse attacked the contest at 110 per cent from the start and ended it in the same way,” said Gaunt, explaining why the young American got the nod. “His weapon was his originality as well as his stamina and bravery. Jesse also showed huge strength and skill to unhook in those winds.”

Gaunt is referring to how Richman removed the waist harness hook from the ‘chicken loop’ under the bar of his kite.

“Doing this meant he was taking all the power from the bar straight through his arms – like a wakeboarder – for many of his tricks,” he explains. “The pull of the kite in those winds is huge and at altitude there’s a serious risk of not being able to keep hold of the bar. He’s a big-air machine. He also put together heats with good variety, each time pulling out killer moves at key moments.

He brought a huge element of radical variety and just ‘got’ the nature of the event from the start, consistently going huge.”

Italy’s six-time world champion Antonio Cairoli, 27 (centre), dominated on home soil to add Italian International MX Champion to his impressive list of titles.

It seems Fanny Smith’s Red Bull helmet gave her wings: the first time she wore it, in Voss, Norway, the Swiss 20-year-old took the ski cross world title.

What made triathlete Richard Murray’s win at the South African Championship all the sweeter? It was the first in his home nation. “It was a big day for me,” he said.

www.redbull.co.za the red bulletin

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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

70

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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Epic moments from the world’s best clubs and festivals: Strobelight Anthems on rbmaradio.com

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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 = m¹ g h¹ + m² g h² 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

Conquest of the

jungle peak On one of the last remaining blank spots on Earth’s map, a mountain climbing challenge so fiendish that weeks of trekking past deadly snakes in the jungle to reach the rock face are just a warm-up Words: Alan Lee Photography: Klaus Fengler

The table-top Mount Roraima, in the jungles of South America, is 2,810m tall and forms a world of its own: 80 per cent of its flora and fauna isn’t found anywhere else on Earth

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I

n an unexplored corner of the South American jungle, 115 table-topped mountains break through the treetop canopy. Known locally as tepuis, these striking rock formations are up to 3,000m tall, with vertical faces that plunge for hundreds of metres back into the steaming vegetation, as flat as the plateaus, several kilometres square, that give the table mountains their English name. This region inspired The Lost World, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous 1912 novel, in which he described a forgotten realm of dinosaurs and primeval plants. Indeed, many of the tepuis are inaccessible today, and have only been explored by means of thermal imaging cameras on helicopters, penetrating thick, almost permanent cloud cover.

Mount Roraima, the exact border point of Brazil, Venezuela and Guyana, is the highest point in Guyana.

On the Venezuelan side, it declines gently enough for guided trekking tours, but, in Guyana, there is La Proa (The Bow), a wall 4km wide and 600m high, which in places rates the highest on mountaineering difficulty scales.

German climbers Stefan Glowacz, Kurt Albert and Holger Heuber planned an expedition on which they would be the first to climb the wall according to the trio’s own rule: “by fair means”, meaning that they could only use technical assistance if life and limb depended on it, and that the ascent itself was only part of the adventure, on a par with getting there and leaving again.

The expedition’s first attempt in early 2010 failed after Glowacz had an accident; they met with success on their

Stefan Glowacz (opposite page), Kurt Albert (white headscarf) and Holger Heuber (foreground) had a rule of “by fair means”, which meant mostly low-tech means, using canoes, with the help of local porters (blue cap) so they fought through the jungle to the foot of Roraima

One of the obstacles: South America’s most poisonous snake. “A single bite from a bushmaster and you’ve had it within three minutes”

second attempt later that year. Glowacz and Heuber had to finish their mission alone. In September 2010, Kurt Albert, the inventor of the internationally recognised “redpoint” freeclimbing technique fell to his death, at an oddly unchallenging point on a fixed rope route in northern Bavaria, Germany.

Stefan Glowacz, 48, became Germany’s first professional climber in the late 1980s. He has been one of the world’s best-known mountaineers for two decades. “I’m a top-level sportsman first and top-level adventurer second,” he says

the red bulletin

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Albert (top) and Glowacz in the jungle. Continuous rain kept their clothes and baggage soaking wet; the ground was muddy; the grips slippery.

Their porters turned back after a week

In places, the rockface juts out so far that the climber is swinging metres off the wall in the air while abseiling

“so much rain you could drown on the while climbing“

waLL

Every cloud…: the angle of the wall provides protection from falling rocks and storms. “When it rains it’s like climbing behind a waterfall,” says Glowacz, “but if you make a mistake choosing your route in a place without enough overhang, you could just drown on the wall while bivouacking or climbing”

28

“we’re interested in places

other climbers don’t go”

“ It was savagely nasty right from the start” Stefan Glowacz on a yearning for never-climbed mountains, luxury on the rock face and completing his late friend’s mission

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the red bulletin: There’s a famous – to mountain climbers, at least – scene in Werner Herzog’s film Scream Of Stone [1991], in which you are hanging one-handed, clearly unsecured, under an almost horizontal overhang above an Australian plain which stretches as far as the eye can see. Back then, in your mid-20s, you played a cocky, ambitious competitive climber at odds with traditional mountaineering... stefan glowacz: I didn’t have to act too much.

Would the Stefan Glowacz of those days have managed to complete the Roraima expedition?

Probably not. He would have been too impetuous. He wouldn’t have been calm and patient enough. He would have wanted too much too quickly. He might have just drowned.

Drowned?

You get rain and brutal thunderstorms there every day, the likes of which we’re simply not familiar with. When it really

rains, it’s like the gates of Hell opening and water shoots down the wall, waterfalls that will drown you if you choose the wrong route or bivouac in the wrong place. It’s as simple as that.

There’s nothing else you can do but check out the wall meticulously before making your ascent, to see where you can climb in the dry, behind the water.

So the younger Glowacz would not have studied the natural drainage system of a rock face?

No, he would have been very bad at waiting. Especially at waiting in the jungle, in the mud, in soaking wet clothes, after a night in a soaking wet sleeping bag. Back then I was all zapbang! “Where’s it steepest? Where’s it at its most difficult? Let’s go up that way.”

Why is La Proa on Roraima considered such a dangerous climb?

You have to understand it in context.

There are walls where there’s a nigh-on 100 per cent probability that you’re going to die, just because there’s basically

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always something crashing around you: falling rock, falling ice, everything.

Things you can’t control which, to a certain extent, are beyond the realms of the predictable. And of course, most of these walls still haven’t been climbed.

Anyone who goes there anyway and comes back to tell the tale is then a great hero. “Wall of death conquered. Ta-da!”

But if they die there, then they’re idiots.

But isn’t the draw of extreme mountaineering to beat the elements, for man to subdue nature?

No. That is not what mountaineering is about. The art of mountaineering is to grow old as a mountaineer. Not to be a hero because you had amazing luck, or to be an idiot because you didn’t. Extreme mountaineering is still bloody dangerous even once you’ve discounted all the risks you don’t have to take. But there are still the ones you do have to take.

Why did you choose Roraima?

No other places interested me personally.

Take the Himalayas: the mountains there are great, but I can’t bear the style of mountain tourism in the Himalayas.

We’re interested in something else: places climbers don’t normally go. We want to find our way in places you won’t find anything about in the specialist magazines or on the relevant internet forums. It starts getting interesting where there are no Google Earth images.

Really far away from civilisation. And there’s probably nowhere more like that than this ‘Lost World’, like that of Arthur Conan Doyle’s. I need to look at somewhere and say, “I want to get up there”. Otherwise, it doesn’t work for me.

Do you have any moral issue with seeking out blank spots on the map and then going there?

In 20, 25 years’ time there won’t be any blank spots left on the map, but that’s not a bad thing in itself. The important thing is how you get there. We have always been committed on our expeditions to the “by fair means” concept: largely without high-tech, treating the world we open up and the people we meet along the way with respect, and starting off on our own from a point that any human could get to. In our case that was Georgetown, the capital of Guyana. So that meant three people with 400kg of baggage and provisions and 350km of jungle between us and the wall. We organised local porters in the jungle.

Doesn’t it break the “by fair means” rule?

Only if you exploit the porters, and not if you integrate them into the expedition.

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“ Mountaineering is not about being a hero because you had luck, or an idiot because you didn’t” They understood that, too. They trusted us, otherwise they wouldn’t have gone along with it. They have enough bad experience with white people. “By fair means” also means setting an example, showing how one should approach these areas, how careful and cautious one should be and how to interact with the people. It wouldn’t do anyone any good to do without porters just for the sake of doing without help altogether. And it would have been stupid, because it would have meant putting our lives at risk. If it hadn’t been for the locals, one of us would probably have been got by a bushmaster, the most dangerous snake in South America. We heard stories about how it doesn’t flee, how it pursues its victims and can leap up to 2m into the air. A single bite and you’ve had it within three minutes. The locals know where they are and how to avoid them.

Why did the porters turn back earlier than planned?

There were some overgrown ascents that really were dangerous, that they

16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6

Bivouac rest points 5 4 3 2 1

Stefan Glowacz and Holger Heuber bivouacked up the 600m wall in 16 stages on ledges less than a metre wide

couldn’t climb, and we understood that. We couldn’t take responsibility for that. That sort of thing only happens to you in places of which you don’t have experience. So we had to carry our baggage to the wall for the final stretch. That added days. They were groundhog days: the same thing every day and rain every day, but rainforest rain, so that nothing ever dried out. It was savagely nasty right from the start.

Did you suffer in those conditions?

Humans get used to things. Eventually you say, ‘OK, shit happens,’ and you just put those wet shoes back on in the morning and that wet T-shirt and those wet trousers, and you stop thinking about it and get on with it. Of course, you’ve always got some inflammation or other and you’ve got wounds on your feet and you poke around at them and there’s a maggot in there. But what can you do? You know it’s going to be nasty beforehand and you mentally prepare yourself for that.

You can prepare yourself for maggots in open wounds?

It’s all about your basic attitude. You can imagine the heat, the humidity, the rain when you’re still back at home. You say to yourself, “OK, it’s going to chuck it down every day. Everything’s going to be wet the whole time, but it’s warm rain.

You won’t freeze.” And it might last six weeks. Life can be nasty for six weeks.

You’ve got to train yourself to be calm.

And it’s a lot easier in heat than it is in the cold. The cold hurts. Something gets frostbitten, your hands get cold, and then it hurts like hell when they thaw out again. Pain really saps morale.

How physically and mentally ready for climbing are you after three or four weeks in the jungle?

It wasn’t that bad. To start with, the wall was a pretty relaxed climb. Upper eights on the 10-point difficulty scale, let’s say.

Then it got progressively more difficult the further up we went. The key stage right at the end is level 10. That’s pretty demanding, especially when you’ve already been on the wall for days.

When you bivouac on metre-wide ledges, are you really getting rest and sleep?

A metre would be a lot. It’s luxury if you can more or less lie down. Finding ledges like that is a real piece of luck.

If they aren’t there, we’d have to set up camp in a hanging frame tent [the supports that look like a combination of a car seatbelt and a hammock].

Can you honestly sleep in those?

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“a climber’s legacy is

a great route we leave a mark”

The climbers fought for five days around a stage of the highest difficulty

Unpredictable weather, solid rain for days, bivouacking on the wall. “That’s what I’m interested in on my adventures,” says Glowacz

Glowacz and Heuber named this route – as climbers may when they climb a route for the first time – Behind The Rainbow, in memory of Kurt Albert. There is a photo of their former colleague in which he looks like he is holding up a rainbow, and a rainbow shone over the Roraima route as soon as the rainclouds cleared

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“ climbers are closer than

any other partnerships“

Final destination: Stefan Glowacz (right) and Holger Heuber on the Roraima plateau

Pretty well, actually. You’ve just got to be really well roped up to sleep. You can always get an hour of deep sleep in them. Then you doze; standby sleep, let’s say, but that’s enough. The nice thing about Roraima was that there was so much overhang from the wall that there was no danger of falling rock or anything like that.

You don’t sleep all that well when you know that something from above might batter you to death at any second. Adrenalin basically helps a lot too, of course. You only notice how exhausted you really are when you get back and lie down in a hotel bed for the first time. You might sleep for a whole day.

What led to your abandonment of the first attempt of Roraima in 2010?

I injured my heel, and we were running out of time and provisions. So we had to call it off, but we knew we’d be back. What hurt a lot more than my heel was the fact that I had to be taken away by helicopter. It was a damp squib of an ending to something we had put so much time and effort into.

A few months later came the news of Kurt Albert’s death. Why was he so highly respected by the climbing community?

What a loss it was, what a shock, what a watershed. Kurt was the type of guy who taught himself to play the piano because, as he said, ‘Life is all mathematics and I can understand anything mathematical. I’m not interested in anything that isn’t mathematical.’

Kurt could calculate for you how many times you’d have to cross an avalanche-prone slope for you to die on it. Kurt was a guy who didn’t know a word of Spanish and then he got it into his head that he had to learn Spanish and a year later he was giving talks in Spain. On expeditions, Kurt only ever had books that you wouldn’t want to swap with him: scientific essays, intelligence tests from the latest geniuses’ world championships, that sort of thing. That was Kurt. Kurt was the total lone wolf. Completely unattached. No family. There was nothing but mountaineering and he was eerie in the way he defended his independence.

Kurt would have been 60 next year. His death tore us apart. The three of us – Holger, Kurt and I – were the Three Musketeers. We had an intuitive understanding. You won’t find that perfect symbiosis more than once in your life.

Was that because the three of you climbed so well together?

Skills are much less important than the personal side of things. If somebody bugs you on this sort of expedition, it doesn’t get to the point where this is about professional matters.

You’re living with people for weeks at a time, closer than in any other form of partnership, and that was just perfect with Holger and Kurt, precisely because we all knew that each one of us was placid and had a high tolerance

“When I hear people say, ‘I’d love to climb, but…’ I can’t bear it. You either do it or you don’t” threshold. You haven’t just got to be extremely resilient mentally and physically, but you’ve also got to be unbothered when someone jokes first thing in the morning, ‘Hey, you look like shit today!’ You can’t afford to get in a huff about that sort of thing. You just laugh along with the joke. Composure is incredibly important. As is being goal-oriented, not having to be right all the time and deciding things democratically.

How did it feel on the second attempt, accompanied only by Holger Heuber?

We felt closer, even more like kindred spirits.

It’s as if we had a contract. We’d bring it through, in memory of Kurt. For Kurt. That’s the legacy you leave behind when you’re a climber, after all: a great route. It doesn’t matter if someone climbs it after you or they don’t. In the same way that a writer writes a book or a painter paints a picture, we climb a route. We leave our mark. And this route is here now, left by Kurt.

How do your wife and children feel about your climbing?

Once I’ve decided what I’m doing, I go home and say, “I’m going to be away for six weeks at such and such a time.” And no more is said about it.

Isn’t that a little bit harsh?

It only works if the port you’re setting sail from is secure. There’s got to be an understanding there.

If there was a fight every time you wanted to set sail, it wouldn’t be the right kind of relationship.

Are there mountaineering careers that have faltered because of family?

Lots. When I go climbing somewhere, I hear a lot of people say, “Oh, I’d love to do what you do, but then I met my wife, had children.” I get annoyed every time I hear that “I’d love to, but…” I can’t bear it. You either do it or you don’t. It doesn’t matter whether you want to be a successful manager or a good painter. At some point you’ll have to be selfish. I think it’s the greatest thing in life to discover your passion and then gear your life towards it with all the consequences if that’s what you have to do.

So are you saying a person’s passion is something they would be willing to give up a great love for?

Yes. You recognise the passion is so great that it would be self-denial to give it up.

Self-abandonment. And that self-abandonment leads to sentences starting, ‘…Oh, I’d have really loved to…’ In actual fact, you should look in the mirror in such cases and say, ‘I just didn’t have the balls to live my life.’ www.redbull.com

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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 38

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.

41

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, 42

“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.

WINGS FOR EVERY TASTE.

CRANBERRY. LIME. BLUEBERRY. AND THE EFFECT OF RED BULL.

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 46

“ I h av e flexibility – no one is telling me W HAT t o 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.

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THE L O ST B O YS O F

BMX On the west coast of Scotland, a group of top-level riders, led by one of the world’s best, have made the ultimate commitment: they’ve colonised a skatepark to live their sporting dreams 24/7 Words: Ruth Morgan Photography: Greg Funnell 48

Wild ride: BMX pro Kriss Kyle at the Unit 23 skatepark, Dumbarton

Good friends: Kriss Kyle (right) with French rider Maxime Chaveron (centre) and fellow Unit 23 resident Scott Quinn

at midnight on a wednesday, on a small, dark industrial estate in the Scottish town of Dumbarton, the Unit 23 skatepark is lit up like a beacon. Inside a brick and corrugated iron warehouse, the Rolling Stones’ Let’s Spend The Night Together merges with cheers and the sound of wheels on wood, as Kriss Kyle seems to defy gravity on his BMX, topping 20ft ramps and riding along walls with a fluidity that makes the bike seem like part of his anatomy.

Kyle and about 20 of his fellow Unit 23 regulars are enjoying a late-night session on the virgin birch of the newly refurbished Hall 1, which they have helped build over the previous six weeks. A love of BMX has created an unlikely family at Unit 23, a group of professional and amateur riders – joiners, airport workers, welders and others – from across Scotland, the rest of the UK, Ireland and beyond. They whoop their approval as new lines are found, riders 50

exchanging fist bumps and grins at the platform that runs around the bowls, marking the top of the skatepark. They began riding as soon as they finished working on the park, at 8pm, and show no signs of slowing down, excitement about their new playground dismissing the inevitable aches in their thighs. In any case, there’s no pressure to leave, no closing time. Many dedicated sportspeople claim to live and breathe what they do, but Unit 23 has become a home for Kyle and many of the others here in the most literal sense. It’s where they eat, sleep and ride every day.

For Kyle, it’s the realisation of a dream he had from the age of 10, when his feet first touched BMX pedals. Back then, his mother resorted to going in search of her errant son at the local concrete skatepark at mealtimes, with a foil-covered plate of food in one hand and a knife and fork in the other, determined to get him out of

the saddle for long enough to eat. Then, one Saturday morning when he was 15, Kyle left his small hometown of Stranraer and never looked back. He had no money, no job, no qualifications, no fixed address, just a small bag of clothes and his BMX. The only thing he knew for sure when he caught the 07.13 train that day was that he wanted to ride his bike.

Today, a 20-year-old Kyle is one of the world’s best young riders, with numerous high-profile sponsors, a passport full of stamps and YouTube videos of his innovative, fearless riding attracting tens of thousands of views. But most importantly for him, he’s got what he always wanted: he can ride his bike all day, every day.

“Ever since I’ve been at Unit 23, I’ve been living the dream,” says Kyle, in soft Scottish tones, his wild brown hair kept in check with a black elastic headband. “Living the dream” is a phrase he uses a lot. He the red bulletin

Taking a break: Kyle (left) hangs out with Jason Phelan (centre) and another Unit 23 regular

Above: Kyle shows camaraderie with local riders. Below: Downtime in the lounge. Right: Kyle in the refurbished Hall 1

plans to have it tattooed on his neck in the coming months, the latest in a growing collection inked over his 5ft 6in frame. He has the logo of one of his sponsors, bike company BSD, on his left hand, and on the other is a “wee crab”, symbolising his nickname. His most recent was ‘Live’ and ‘Life’, writ large in capital letters just above his knees, done here at the Unit with the tattoo gun that often does the rounds after hours. Yet there’s no boastfulness in these words: they’re affirmations of a life Kyle still can’t believe is his. “I didn’t think I could be a pro,” he says, “I didn’t think anything could come of me riding my bike. It wasn’t about that. I just wanted to ride, so I did.”

When Kyle arrived at Unit 23, bag-inhand and homeless, he was already a familiar face. “I remember the first time I came to Unit 23 – I’ll never forget it,” he says. “I was 13, but I was so small. I could not believe how big the ramps were: back 52

the red bulletin

“I didn’t think I could be a pro.

I just wanted to ride, so I did”

High times: Kyle’s incredible speed allows him to get to the top of the wall

House guest: Maxime Chaveron in the boys’ bedroom

“It was scary being 15 in a massive warehouse by myself at night, no money, surviving off what I found in the cafe”

home they were tiny. I just wanted to be here riding all the time.” What started as an arduous eight-hour round-trip up and down the west coast of Scotland every weekend, on six trains, stretched to four days at a time, then a week, then two weeks… “I’d get up at 6am, go up to Unit, ride the whole day,” Kyle says. “Then I’d go back to school and sit there thinking ‘What am I doing here? I’m just wasting time.’” When owner Chick Mailey offered rent-free lodgings at the skatepark, Kyle jumped at it, becoming Unit 23’s first permanent resident. Without the luxury of a bedroom, Kyle slept on the sofa in the office. “It was scary,” he says, “being 15 in a massive warehouse by yourself at night.

I had no money to eat, I was surviving off what I could find at the Unit café, but it had to be done. I was never worried about leaving home or dropping out of school, I don’t know why. It’s not that I had a plan or knew I would make it.”

The story wasn’t quite the same for Kyle’s parents, Veronica and Alec, who worked at Kyle’s school as a learning support assistant and janitor respectively. They thought Kyle was staying with friends and Veronica would phone him daily, asking

Chow do you do: Jason Phelan (left) in the kitchen with fellow Unit 23 riders

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him when he was coming back, pleading with him to go to school. “It was a nightmare,” she says. “His teachers would say, ‘Where’s Kriss?’ and I had to make excuses. He never sat a single exam. He just wouldn’t go. When he eventually told me he was living at Unit, of course we worried about him. His dad used to say, ‘If anything happens to him it will be our fault.’ And I said, ‘But what can we do?’

We couldn’t have pulled him back home.

Kriss is strong-willed. He would have lived in a cardboard box if it would get him into a skatepark. But I was also happy he was doing what he loved, and he’s done so well.

I’m proud of him, we love him for it.”

Today, four years on, Kyle’s example has been followed by other BMXers keen to experience the round-the-clock riding and lawless lifestyle Unit 23 has to offer.

There are no training regimes or nutritionists here, just a skatepark that’s resolutely oldschool, a place created by riders, for riders.

“This place is unreal,” says Jason Phelan, an affable 26-year-old pro rider from Ireland, who’s lived at Unit 23 for just under a year. “After Unit closes at 10pm, it’s empty and we have these great little sessions.

Then there’s all the banter and randomness that goes on in here. I’m usually at the centre of it. I wish I’d moved here years ago.”

Unit 23’s inhabitants sleep at the back of the warehouse, beyond the two huge halls of ramps and bowls. First come the mismatched sofas of the communal lounge, which are always littered with duvets.

An intriguing array of detritus covers the floor: a car jack; numerous old socks; a shop dummy’s leg; a discarded hospital gown – all left over from Unit 23’s infamous parties. John Deans is a 23-year-old BMX rider who works at Glasgow airport, and who often sleeps in the communal lounge for weeks on end. “Being here is like being a kid with an empty house,” he says, “except it’s all the time.”

Further down the hall, in the garage at the back of the warehouse, is the large makeshift breezeblock structure Mailey had built to house two bedrooms. There’s one for Kyle, his prize as first arrival, and a larger communal room that’s currently home to Phelan, Scott ‘Quinny’ Quinn, a 25-year-old pro inline skater from Charlton, Scotland who’s been at Unit for three years, and George Ecclestone, also 25, a BMXer and ramp builder from Sheffield. French pro rider Maxime Chaveron has also come to stay with his friends, bagging a place on the sofa.

The rooms could belong to any 20something males – dirty clothes, unmade beds – but step outside the bedroom door 56

King of his castle: Kyle in the garage next to his bedroom

and you’re in a garage. There’s a ScoobyDoo-themed ice cream van parked here, and several long-forgotten cars, including a neglected VW MK2 with ‘I wish my bird was this dirty’ carved into the dust on its passenger door. Beside it is a muddied dirt bike Phelan was riding around the communal bedroom last night. This morning, all five riders crowded around Quinn’s phone, laughing at footage of Phelan’s late-night antics, which ended with him wheel-deep in a chest of drawers.

This passes as a normal Tuesday night. “I’m constantly laughing when I’m here,” says Kyle. “Each day is amazing. Everyone’s so close, we’re like brothers, like family. I’ve had the best childhood ever.” Chaveron chips in, in his thick French accent: “There is no place in France as free as this,” he says. “It is why I come here.”

The riders have owner Mailey to thank for their BMX utopia. “Chick’s attitude is

Kriss Kyle Since getting his first proper bike for Christmas, when he was 10, all Kyle has thought about is BMX. His parents would take him to watch competitions, and his mum, Veronica, still has an extensive school project Kyle did on BMX aged 11, with detailed drawings of his ideal bike and set-up. Now Kyle is living his dream, residing and riding at Unit 23.

the red bulletin

“I’ve thought of leaving, but I know I’d regret it” the reason that we’re all here,” says Ecclestone, “You come through here once, and you don’t want to leave. Everyone’s mates. It has become the centre of BMX in Scotland because of him.”

Mailey, a former crane hire company owner, is himself a BMXer who never outgrew his love of the sport – the Peter Pan to the Lost Boys his skatepark attracts.

He passed on his passion to his two sons, Chaz and Connor, and when both suffered bad injuries street riding, he decided to sell his business and create a place where they could ride safely. “It’s certainly not about the money,” says Mailey. “You don’t get into this business for that. For me it’s about not lying on my deathbed thinking ‘I didn’t spend enough time with my kids.’

I go to work with them every day.”

Mailey has become a surrogate father to many more. He turned 46 last week and received Dad cards from almost all the riders at Unit. He supports many of them, employing around 15 in some capacity or other to enable them to ride, and gives them all free rein of the chaotic kitchen, which each mid-morning fills with loud banter and the smell of cheese toasties. He and his sister Dot also make sure there are meals on the table twice a day for the extended Unit 23 family, the riders sitting on the long benches in the café together to eat. “It’s well known that if you come and you’re prepared to help out a little bit, you get to stay,” he says.

“The bedrooms are their domain, they get left to it. I’m quite happy for them to be here. It’s a two-way street: I help them and they help me. It’s a good community.

There’s a cracking atmosphere here.”

This environment has benefited Kyle immeasurably. All-hours access to Unit 23’s facilities has improved his inventiveness and skill on a BMX, and brought competition wins, online recognition, a signing with Red Bull and promotion to the Nike Pro team, as well as the BSD and Unit 23 teams. He is now one of the few British riders to compete internationally. “He’s one of the top riders in the world right now,” says BSD owner Grant Smith. “He’s something special.

He has a natural ability that’s very rare.

The first time he was at Unit, I remember being blown away by this tiny guy who was so good on his bike. And he’s so the red bulletin

stoked on riding. Some guys do it as a job, but he genuinely wants to ride all the time. That sincerity is obvious.”

But Kyle’s is a rare case. “kriss is big time on the scene,” says Ecclestone. “When we see kids asking for his autograph we give him a ribbing. We keep him grounded.”

Ecclestone and most of the riders at Unit 23 have had to find other forms of income to support their passion. Even Phelan, a rider on several pro teams, including Nike’s, only began to make a living from BMX three years ago, having dropped out of university in Liverpool to ride, then spending years working various jobs, including as a postman and football steward. Chaz and Connor Mailey and Ecclestone have trained as joiners and build skateparks to keep themselves close to BMX. “Kriss is one in a million,” says Chick Mailey. “It was plain to see from the first day he came here. He just has a different style of riding and his progression has just been so quick. But there’s only a handful of guys in the whole of the UK who can make a living out of it. You get a lot of kids that say, ‘I just want to get sponsored and drop out of school’, but you know it’s not going to happen for them, they’ll need their education and you do feel a responsibility in trying to steer them that way.”

For Kyle, single-minded persistence has paid off. With his life now split between travelling to compete and make BMX videos (in the next two months he’ll be visiting France, Spain, Argentina and Australia) and coming home to his Unit family, ‘living the dream’ is an apt motto.

“I don’t think about how long I’ll be at Unit,” says Kyle. “Me and Jason talked about getting a flat next year but, to be honest, I know I’d regret it. I’ve got this amazing skatepark I can ride when I want, I can literally get up and on my bike, I can party here with all my friends. I’ve got absolutely everything anyone could want.”

At 3am on the Wednesday night, Hall 1 has cleared of riders, who have either gone to bed, exhausted from the night’s exertions, or sit in the lounge with beers.

Only Kyle and Phelan remain, each run topping their last as they get to know the new ramps and contours of the park.

“This is the best,” says Phelan, “who else gets to do this?” The refurbishment of Hall 1 marked Unit 23’s 10th birthday; it has been a decade, too, since Kyle first fell in love with BMX. Though so much has changed for him during that time, much has stayed the same. As he drops in for another run, he’s grinning. Now more than ever, he just wants to ride his bike. www.unit23skatepark.co.uk

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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

T

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 60

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 61

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 62

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”

the red bulletin

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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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the red bulletin

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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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

RED BULL YOUTH AMERICA'S CUP

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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the red bulletin

RED BULL YOUTH AMERICA'S CUP

" I t mea n s 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 a w esome e x perie n ce ” 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

the red bulletin

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.”

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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. the red bulletin: 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? eric kandel: 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?

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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?

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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”

the red bulletin

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 Cape Town’s Das Kapital 96 SAVE THE DATE Events for the diary 97 KAINRATH Our cartoonist

Photography: Simon Cudby/Red Bull Content Pool

98 MIND’S EYE Columnist Kevin McCallum

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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

the red bulletin

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

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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

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BEYOND THE ORDINARY THE RED BULLETIN

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

1

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.”

2

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

3

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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The sounds of 2013 #4

Rising Kapital

das kapital Cape Town DJ and rerub wunderkind Kyle Brinkmann has graduated from remixing others artists’ tracks to making music of his own. If you’ve liked his quirky DJ sets, you’re going love this

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Young, gifted and with good tracks: Kyle Brinkmann, aka Das Kapital

There’s an element of risk when an acclaimed young DJ decides to take a break from remixing and put out an album of original music. Kyle Brinkmann, however, is not averse to taking risks, as his Das Kapital stage name suggests. Putting his money where his mouth is, earlier this year the 21-year-old released his first two official EPs within three weeks of each other.

Cape Town-based Brinkmann owns a huge and eclectic collection of music, and is equipped with the deck skills to mix across a broad variety of genres. As a result, the talented producer has received numerous commissions from international record labels to

remix and rerub their artists’ tracks. His drum-led reworking of Bon Iver’s Skinny Love has been a hit on YouTube, garnering more than 900,000 views.

“I’ve always liked the idea of fusing genres,” says Brinkmann, whose EPs, called Free Trades and All Trades, were released in January and February respectively on his own Do Work label. “Different types of music always have these cookie-cutter kind of structures. Take house music: it’s a one-minute intro, then breakdown, then drop, then breakdown, etcetera. It’s all so straightforward. The whole idea with All Trades was the Jack-of-all trades-master-of-none vibe. And

Out now (from top): Das Kapital’s selfreleased EPs, Free Trades and All Trades

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Words: Steve Smith. photography: David Bloomer, Tyrone Bradley/Red Bull Content Pool

m o r e b o dy & m i n d

that it’s not necessarily a bad thing – it’s me saying, ‘Let me just show you what I can do.’

“There’s a lot of varied stuff on the All Trades EP – Dutch house, electro, psytrance and synthpop vibes all mixed together – I’m trying to show people that these genres aren’t entirely different,” he explains. “I want to bring people together and highlight the similarities. The people that say, ‘I only listen to Black Coffee or Euphonik’; and people who say, ‘I only listen to Haezer’ will realise that it’s all dance music at the end of the day.”

The second track on the All Trades EP, Pysche!, is a perfect example of where Brinkmann’s head is at right now. It’s his own in-joke – a song that initially comes across as bang-on-trend psytrance, but then morphs into dubstep.

“Yeah, All Trades is about taking little influences from stuff I’ve seen,” he says. “At the EarthDance festival [in Cape Town], the electro floor was being drowned out by the trance floor.

Trance is super repetitive, but there are good parts about it.

And while I’m not the hugest fan of the new psytrance scene, the music is still cool. So I took that and combined it with a little dubstep. It’s the same thing with the Free Trades EP, but interestingly, although I released it first, Free Trades actually

“ The idea with my second EP was the Jack-of-alltrades-masterof-none vibe” contains newer tracks. I had the tracks on All Trades for about six months before I released it, so Free Trades still sounds much newer and fresher to me.

Brinkmann’s next project on his Do Work label will be the release of a compilation album featuring tracks

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The joy of DJ sets: Das Kapital has proved a hit at SA festivals

from South African, Dutch, British and Swedish artists.

“It’s a showcase of my collaborative productions with under-the-radar artists,” he says. “People like Leechi, a 17-year-old South African kid still in high school who is a genius, and international artists I’ve supported who’ve been supporting my music. I guess it’s a pretty cool collection of interesting dance music.

“I’m also doing some rerubs for the first time in a while. It’s cool to go back to an idea or concept with the knowledge I have now.

I also have a lot of international interest in my third EP, so that won’t be on my label. The deal is almost done, but I can’t tell you who it’s with yet – it’s one of the top US dance music labels. It’ll be similar to what I’ve been doing but just on a bigger scale.”

A new Das Kapital EP should be out by the end of 2013. In the meantime, you can listen to Brinkmann’s weekly Cape Town club shows at www.theassembley.co.za/radio, 9pm-12am every Wednesday.

Need to know The line-up Kyle Brinkmann – programming Discography

Free Trades EP – 2013 All Trades EP – 2013

The story so far Three years after mixing tunes at his friends’ parties, 21-year-old Kyle Brinkmann has now played to huge crowds at every major SA music festival.

As a youngster growing up in the 1990s listening to Outkast CDs, his initial aspirations were to be a rapper, but with no songs to rap over, Brinkmann began making his own music with loops software. “Initially I was terrible at it,” he says.

“I didn’t know how to make the bass duck under the kick drum – I started making this messy, horriblesounding music. It’s only in the last three years I’ve

been making music I’m happy for people hear.”

His popular rerub of Bon Iver’s Skinny Love led to several labels asking him to do similar work – including a commission to remix a track for Rob Zombie’s Mondo Sex Head album. Regular Cape Town and festival gigs have since defined Das Kapital as a talented young gun with the ability to mix across genres while keeping bodies moving. In early 2013 he released two EPs, Free Trades and All Trades, his first official release of original work.

Facebook.com/kid.kapital

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m o r e b o dy & m i n d

Save The Date

April & May 2013 April 19–21

Karkloof Klassik The Sappi Karkloof Classic has been staged in KwaZulu-Natal for the past seven years, during which time mountain biking has become one of the biggest mass participation sports in the country. Some of the events taking place over the area’s diverse trails include a night race, 20km, 40km and 60km cross-country races, a 10km kids ride and – for the first time – an enduro event. www.karkloofmtb.co.za

April 27–May 4

Easy wave riders The SA Longboard Championships will take place at various wave-dependent spots in Cape Town.

Longboarding is at the more relaxed end of a chilled-out sport, so competitors tend to behave more like members of one big family rather than rivals. You’ll see youngsters making these big boards do things they were never designed to do, and old masters carving long, clean lines across the wave face. Venues are yet to be announced – keep an eye on the website for details. www.surfingsouthafrica.co.za

Kingston Nkhatha will be looking to get past Benson Mhlongo April 28

Starry-eyed Chiefs Kaizer Chiefs vs Platinum Stars: this is going to be one very interesting Premier Soccer League fixture. Chiefs have been the league leaders for most of the season, and after an eight-season drought are finally on track for the title. It’ll be a close race with Orlando Pirates, though: if either of these Soweto giants slip up, Stars could be the team to take advantage. The North West Province side have been playing great football under rookie coach Cavin Johnson. In his first full season in the PSL, Johnson has blended the experience of players like centre-back Benson Mhlongo and the youth of new Bafana Bafana sensation Thuso Pala into a formidable outfit. Even though Chiefs will be playing in front of their own supporters at the Soccer City Stadium, the superstars of SA football will be eyeing this fixture nervously. It should be a cracker. Kick off is at 3pm. www.psl.co.za

Fight… For your right… To kart Fancy a trip abroad to race some go-karts?

Enter the Red Bull Kart Fight competition and you could be on your way. Throughout April, at 10 tracks around the country, you can register and attempt a few hot laps. The fastest will be selected for regional finals in early May, before a grand final at Kyalami on May 11 to decide who will represent South Africa at the Red Bull Kart Fight World Final later this year. The competition is only open to amateur drivers. www.redbullkartfight.co.za

Back To The City From the 3,500 people who attended the first event in 2007, to the crowd of 15,000 that pitched up last year, Back To The City is now Africa’s biggest hip-hop festival. As the festivals title implies, it’s all about getting people back into Jozi’s inner city through a celebration of live music, street art and exhibitions.

You can celebrate Freedom Day with another bomb of a line-up that includes 40 MCs, 12 DJs, graffiti crews, dance crews, B-Boys, skaters, BMXers and beatboxers. There’s also a chill-out zone and a beer garden.

The event starts at 10am and runs to 11pm, and you can get tickets online or at the venue on the day. www.backtothecityfestival.com

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Red Button (right) and PRO at last year’s BTTC

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photography: gallo images, marco campelli/red bull content pool, liam lynch

april 27 May 11

illustration: dietmar kainrath

k a i n r at h

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S

ports journalists, proper sports journalists, are supposed to be cyborgs. Cyborgs with a smidgeon of emotion, but half-robot, halfhuman nevertheless, blessed with the ability to keep it together in the face of insurmountable awesomeness. We save our celebrations of greatness for the pages of our newspapers, take the taste of fandom that exists in every one of us and wash it away with a big swig of cynicism.

Earlier this year, I sat down to talk to a man that tested my cyborg-ness to the maximum. It is not every day that you get to meet someone who was rated as the second-most respectable person in the world, and that after Nelson Mandela.

I told a colleague, Stuart Hess, chief cricket writer of The Star and tennis nut, that I couldn’t make our regular Tuesday afternoon lunch-planning meeting at the World Of Beer in Newtown, Johannesburg, because I didn’t want to drink before my interview with Roger Federer that afternoon. He went quiet. Then swore.

“You got The Fed interview?” he said, well, more cried, gently. I felt horrid.

I offered him the gig, told him the time and the place for it, but he demurred.

He was double booked. Besides, he didn’t think he would be up to it.

He said he had spoke to Jacques Van Der Westhuizen, our rugby writer, and they had agreed that I was perhaps the right person for the job. They said they were unsure if they would be able to hold it together if they had to meet him face to face. They were fans, pure and simple. They were besotted with the man. “We’d probably just sit and look at him with gaga eyes,” said Stuart. He wasn’t the only one. Mat Quinn, who was a world champion in the 4 x 100m, sent me a message to ask Federer to pose with a note that read: “Hey, Mat Quinn.” He also wanted an autograph.

So off I rumbled in the Gautrain to meet Roger Federer at the Intercontinental Hotel at the OR Tambo International Airport. He was late, his flight from Limpopo having been delayed, so our

Mind’s Eye

What The Fed Said Kevin McCallum meets a legend and keeps his composure. Just… interview was pushed back all of 15 minutes. Did I mind terribly, said the apologetic CEO of the Roger Federer Foundation. He would speak to the SABC ahead of me, and then would be all mine for 15 minutes. I’d already been given the conditions of the interview.

No politics. Was I OK with that? I was.

I wanted to talk to The Fed about the Fed, not about anyone or anything else.

Photographer Etienne Rothbart and I waited in another room. I’d dressed up for the occasion by putting a pair of jeans on; my snapper was dressed in sandals, shorts and a polo shirt that was one of those freebie bits of clothing that us true cyborg journalists refuse to wear. We don’t do branding, although I was wearing a pair of green and red Nikes so that The Fed could see that he and I were of the same ilk.

As we sat in another room and waited, a businessman and woman taking a

break from some corporate nonsense in another conference room asked us what we were doing. Name dropping is bad.

Nelson Mandela told me never to do it, but I did. “Oh, just waiting to interview Roger Federer.” They stopped. “He’s here? What’s he doing here? Where is he?” They peaked around the door.

Federer walked past. They gasped.

“I wish he would hurry up. I don’t have all day, you know,” I said. They gasped some more, and laughed nervously.

The SABC finished with him and I was summoned closer. The Fed needed a few minutes to sort out his flight to Dubai and he would be right with us. The cameraman from the SABC couldn’t stop smiling. He begged Etienne to take a picture of him and The Fed. “I’ll never get to see him again. He is a legend.” The Fed posed for a photograph, his arms around the two. Then he came to me: “Hi, I’m Roger.” Gosh, really? “Kevin. Pleased to meet you.” “Where should we sit and talk?” he said. We walked to the room where the businessman and woman were waiting. The look on their face convinced me they’d never be cyborgs.

“Oh, we can’t do it here. We need somewhere quiet,” said The Fed. We found a spot, the same alcove where he had spoken to the SABC. He helped them move their equipment, made sure my bag was in the right place, checked if I was OK to start, moved so Etienne could get some good light on his face, and then we spoke. For 10 minutes and 36 seconds we chatted about his foundation and his career. We finished.

He shook my hand, thanked me and then exited stage left. I didn’t ask him to pose with me, I didn’t get the picture for Mat. I turned to Etienne: “Hey, did you get a picture of me talking to him?” “Oh,” said Etienne. “No, sorry. I didn’t think you’d want one.” I didn’t. Not really.

I’m a cyborg. Mostly. Damn.

Kevin McCallum is an award-winning sports journalist and acclaimed columnist for the Independent Newspapers group

The Red Bulletin South Africa, ISSN 2079-4282: 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 Editor, South Africa Steve Smith 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, Miles English, Kevin Goll, Carita Najewitz, Esther Straganz Staff Writers Ulrich Corazza, Werner Jessner, Ruth Morgan, Florian Obkircher, Arkadiusz Piatek, Andreas Rottenschlager 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.

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FATE DOESN’T ASK. IT COuLD ALSO bE mE. Or yOu. David Coulthard.

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