The Red Bulletin UK 04/21

UK EDITION APRIL 2021, £3.50

BEYOND THE ORDINARY

EXTREME E

THE ECO OFF-ROAD RACING SERIES THAT’S SAVING THE WORLD

UNITED SKATES

FINDING FREEDOM WITH A NEW GENERATION OF ROLLER SKATERS

As he begins his elite career, multi-threat rider TOM PIDCOCK is ready to beat his heroes

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Editor’s letter

Improving, upgrading, advancing: this is the impetus behind most change. But, as we discover in this issue of The Red Bulletin, what that change looks like can differ hugely.

One example is our cover star, British cyclist Tom Pidcock (page 30), who takes dedication to a new level. His desire to become not only better but the best on a bike means gruelling hours outside in all weathers, cancelling Christmas and facing serious injury. But, crucially, it’s still what he does for fun, too.

Then we travel to Spain and Senegal to get up close to Extreme E (page 50), the revolutionary new racing series that’s rewriting the rule book on how large-scale, international motorsports events can operate. Not only does the series cause no harm to the planet, it’s also taking action to save it.

And, as more and more of us are discovering life on eight wheels, we meet the London roller skaters (page 40) who are safeguarding the future of their sport. These skate fanatics, who can be found swerving and spinning in underground car parks and urban alleyways, have created a community to help preserve their culture and offer support during difficult times.

Plus, we solve a mystery in America’s desert skies, summit Everest the vegan way, and help you plan guilt-free adventures that will leave you feeling green rather than blue.

We hope you enjoy the issue.

CONTRIBUTORS THIS ISSUE

TWILA FEDERICA MUZZI

“I know a side of Tom you don’t see on TV,” says the Italian photographer who specialises in shooting cycling events and has built up a rapport with our cover star, Tom Pidcock. “Some would say he keeps to himself, but they’re wrong. He’s goalfocused and professional, but also a down-to-earth and super-funny guy.” Page 30

ALEXIS CHABALA

The north London-based portrait photographer knew that shooting roller skaters at night in a Tesco car park would be a challenge. “But it’s good to come out of your comfort zone once in a while,” he says. “I was really impressed by their skills and commitment to skate every week, even in cold weather. I would have been tempted to lace up a pair of skates myself if it was summer!” Page 40

Low profile: the glamorous side of sports photography, as practised by Twila Federica Muzzi, who shot our cover feature this issue. Page 30

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THE RED BULLETIN

TWILA FEDERICA MUZZI (COVER), BART HAZEN

LEVELLING UP

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CONQUER ALL WITH TERRAIN MANAGEMENT FEATURING FOX RACING SUSPENSION. #NoObstacles

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The Outdoors Beckons Elite Product Testing | Nims Purja, Osprey Ambassador | Chamonix, 2020

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Roll model: Andre Ashley advocates positivity though roller skating

CONTENTS

08 Gallery: falling into place amid

the glaciers of Iceland; stepping out in Hawaii; drifting into view in Stockholm, and coming on leaps and bounds in Sydney

15 Foo’s gold: rock icon Dave Grohl

reveals four classic songs that turn him green with envy

April 2021

16 PPE goes OTT: call that a

protective face mask? This is a protective face mask 18 Breaking stereotypes: meet the

board-riders who are reclaiming surfing for all body types

21 Moon Mark: the lunar racing

tournament that’s like Mario Kart, only with real cars and no shells

22 Clean slate: compared with other

street art, Converse City Forests are a breath of fresh air

24 M ike Shaw

26 P riya Ragu

2 8 Jaimie Monahan

79 Churning point: chart a course to

30 Tom Pidcock

80 Chill out: it’s all go, no goosebumps

Taking flight through music Finding focus in freezing water The British cycling prodigy on beating injury, turning pro, and racing against his heroes

40 Roller skating

We go underground with London’s car-park freewheelers

50 E xtreme E

The zero-carbon racing series that’s giving back to the planet

ALEXIS CHABALA

73 No chicken: how one vegan

mountain-climber scaled new heights without ruffling feathers 78 Whole new ball game: the changing shape of rugby training

Fighting adversity with gratitude

fitness with the WaterGrinder in this cold-swimming gear 82 Blazing saddles: treat your bum 84 Kindred sole: Vans flips the script 85 StayStation: gaming home-life tips 86 No time to waste: sustainable

kit that won’t cost the Earth

95 Essential dates for your calendar 98 Smokin’: climbing a power station

chimney in Slovenia

64 M arfa Lights

Setting the night sky ablaze in the deserts of west Texas

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ALDEYJARFOSS, ICELAND

Irresistible surge When you’re a photographer, you go where the action takes you. “I was working on a project on the Icelandic glacier rivers,” recalls Czech lensman Jan Kasl, “when the guys from FlyOver Iceland called us over to see them shooting by helicopter.” By happy coincidence, FlyOver Iceland – an attraction that presents simulated flights on huge screens – was filming American extreme kayaker Evan Garcia plunging down a 20m waterfall. Which gave Kasl just what he needed for this composite shot. jankaslphoto.com

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JAN KASL

OAHU, HAWAII, USA

Long walk to freedom Hawaiian surfer Mo Freitas’ footprints trace his route as he steps out into the brooding sea on Oahu’s North Shore. Californian photographer Morgan Maassen clinched a place in the final of the 2019 Red Bull Illume contest with this shot. “I naturally gravitate towards shooting from the water,” he says, “but [using] a drone allows me to explore landscapes and seascapes for their textures, and to juxtapose humans against these incredible scenes.” morganmaassen.com

STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN

Frozen in time

MORGAN MAASSEN/RED BULL ILLUME, JEFFREY KIEFFER/RED BULL ILLUME

Meanwhile, in icier climes, another Red Bull Illume finalist was in the making.

“I was on a stroll in Stockholm,” says Australian photographer Jeffrey Kieffer, “when from around the bend emerged this man’s lemon kayak. [So] I sent up my drone, praying its little mechanical heart would hold up in the cold. Where had this guy come from? Where was he going?” If you can help clear up this mystery, please call 1-800-KAYAK… Instagram: @jeffreyjkieffer

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SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA

Follow the leader Cool your boots, conspiracy theorists – you’re not looking at evidence of a covert cloning programme.

The truth is out there in Oz, where photography wizard Eric Yip created this composite image with the help of parkour athlete Alex Robinson. “I shot it at an old quarry-turned-natural-space south of Sydney,” says Yip of the photo that won him a semi-final place in Red Bull Illume. “The location has always had so much potential for making images – the basalt columns and the orientation at sunrise make it perfect.” eyxl.com.au

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ERIC YIP/RED BULL ILLUME

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DAVE GROHL

Songs to praise The Foo Fighters frontman has written some crackers in his time, but here are four he wishes he had

DANNY CLINCH

MARCEL ANDERS

Last year was meant to be a big one for Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl.

In spring, the LA-based drummerturned-band-leader was set to release a new album, followed by a world tour. COVID-19 thwarted those plans, but Grohl didn’t sit still – instead, he shared short biographical stories on Instagram to entertain fans, engaged in an epic online drumming battle with 10-year-old Zulu-British prodigy Nandi Bushell, and revisited the music of his youth, rediscovering songs he wishes he wrote. In celebration of the Foo Fighters’ 10th studio album, Medicine at Midnight, finally being released, the 52-year-old reveals four of the songs that have inspired him – and made him envious that he didn’t conceive them himself. foofighters.com

Kim Wilde

John Lennon

Bad Brains

Patty & Mildred Hill

Kids in America (1981)

Imagine (1971)

Sailin’ On (1982)

Happy Birthday to You (1893)

“Every punk-rock boy I knew was hopelessly in love with Kim Wilde, and so was I. That’s why I recorded my own version of Kids in America. It was in the days before I [joined] Nirvana – maybe 1989 – and I did it on a whim. I was at my friend’s basement studio and I said, ‘Let me record this thing.’ It’s an iconic, anthemic song from the ’80s, and I love it as much as I loved her!”

“I really wish that I had written Imagine, because it’s such a beautiful song with a really timeless quality – the song just never sounds old. When I was young and I first started playing guitar – around the age of 10 or 11 years old – I would sit and strum along to [John Lennon’s] records all day long. That’s how I learned to play guitar – John was my teacher.”

“Bad Brains were America’s greatest hardcore punk-rock band in the ’80s. They were from Washington, DC, and were the best live band I’ve ever seen in my life. I was in love with their music – it was so fast, so distorted, so dissonant.

It made me want to drink a hundred beers and break windows. Now, if that’s not a good enough reason why I wish it had been written by me…”

“I wish I had written Happy Birthday [to You], obviously, because I’d be making so much more money right now – it would be like owning the rights to pizza. And maybe it would get me some respect at home.

I have one daughter who wants to be a musician, and two [others] who look at me like I’m a fucking janitor. They’re like, ‘Oh, that’s Dad’s job.

Whatever!’ Maybe one day…”

THE RED BULLETIN

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Looking for a good protective face mask? This one may offer more than you’d previously considered Since last year, wearing a mask has become part of everyday life. But, as we’ve all grown accustomed to protecting ourselves from the unseen physical danger of COVID-19, there has also been increased concern about another invisible threat: public surveillance.

Helpfully, a group of technologists in the US and Russia have formulated an elegant solution to both these problems: the Blanc mask.

Created last April in response to the pandemic, the modular mask comprises two vertical halves that lock together with magnets. Internal cushioning 16

adjusts to your facial features, while replaceable HEPA filters remove up to 99.9 per cent of particles from the air you breathe. It also makes you look like a member of Daft Punk – but then, some wearers might crave the semi-anonymity of the French music duo.

Facial-recognition tech, which maps the geometry of your features and adds your ‘facial signature’ to a database, is now commonplace. Benefits include being able to quickly unlock our phones, or speeding through airport passport control with a quick biometric scan, but privacy advocates

Harder, better, faster, safer: the wearer puts on their Blanc mask with a ‘face-washing gesture’

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LOU BOYD

Deft Punk

ELENA VAKHTUROVA

BLANC MASK

have grave concerns about who can use the information.

According to business market research published last July, the industry is expected to be worth more than £9.5million globally by 2027, mostly from marketing and surveillance, and US magazine Forbes reports that the FBI has access to in excess of 412 million facial images. Use of the technology in law enforcement has been controversial, not least because it has proved inaccurate (more so among people of colour and, specifically, Black women).

Meanwhile, the Chinese authorities have reportedly used it to clamp down on petty crimes such as jaywalking.

“Everyone buys and sells your visual information,” says Philipp Egorov, the Russianbased co-founder of Blanc.

“Moscow is the city with [the world’s second-most] visualrecognition cameras. [Our] mask lets you regain control of your identity and privacy.”

Protecting your facial signature in this way would seem to limit social interactivity, but Egorov and his team see it differently – Blanc offers more than 100 face panels in various colours and patterns, which, it says, allow the wearer to forge their own identity. “There are two kinds of people,” says Egorov. “Those who want to make eye contact on public transport or in a café, and people like me who dislike eye contact with strangers. For me, wearing the mask brings comfort.” Clearly, he’s not alone – the Blanc mask, which ships this month, has already raised more than 20 times its Kickstarter launch goal of $20,000 (almost £15K).

“The intention of the mask is anonymity,” says Egorov, “and we’re probably going to scale [the concept] to other lifestyle products focused on protecting you from unwanted recognition. We’re arming people with visual privacy.” blancmasks.com

Ahead of the curve

The plus-sized women board-riders fighting for recognition in the surf community The true surfing community has never been as tanned and toned as the marketing lets on.

While brands push the image of six-packs and supermodels, anyone who’s surfed California’s breaks will know the best surfer in the water is often a wizened old dude on a longboard.

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Now, a new online movement is giving a platform to a surfing demographic that has too long been overlooked: plus-sized women. A growing collective of professional board-riders including Brazilian Silvana Lima and American Bo Stanley, as well as amateurs such as fitness coach Kanoa Greene and online influencer Elizabeth Sneed, are pushing a new narrative in surfing that has space for women of every size.

Texas-born Sneed, who owns the Instagram account @curvysurfergirl, only began

THE RED BULLETIN

LOU BOYD

BODY-POSITIVE SURFERS

surfing three-and-a-half years ago after moving to Honolulu, Hawaii, for work. She quickly fell in love with the sport and then looked for role models to follow. “But there are no images of curvy female surfers online,” Sneed explains. “So I got in touch with surf photographer Tommy Pierucki and asked if he wanted to work together to create some shots.”

Six months later, the Chicago-born photographer’s images of Sneed have been viewed by more than 18,000 followers on her Instagram, and have sparked a global trend for surfers to post their own photos with the hashtag #curvysurfergirl. “We have to believe that we’re worthy and belong in the surfing community,” says Sneed.

“You don’t have to stress out about your body or your insecurities. Seeing women of different body types in the water is so encouraging.”

The body-positive surf movement is about more than self-confidence and good vibes, though. Sneed says that in her early days of surfing she struggled to even find performance gear that fit her.

She now hopes the world’s biggest surf brands will finally pay attention. “This movement is a direct communication to them that there are women in this demographic who have a demand for surfwear and activewear [made for] the water,” she says. “Every single person who follows my Instagram is testament that something needs to be done.

“I hope there are more photographers who will be inspired to turn their camera towards curvy women and create more images of people like me, so that in the near future we have a lot of curvy surfers out there shredding.

We need to show all women, of every shape, that there’s a future for them in surfing.”

Instagram: @curvysurfergirl; @tommypierucki

TOMMY PIERUCKI

On board: social influencer Elizabeth Sneed is among those challenging outdated surfing stereotypes

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LOU BOYD MOON MARK

Entrepreneur Mary Hagy has experience in hosting unique tournaments. In 2015, the US Army veteran launched the Triumph Games, a televised sports competition involving military vets who had overcome catastrophic injuries. But this year she’s taking the challenge to a whole different realm – a remote-controlled car race on the Moon, with drivers selected from the world’s brightest high-school students.

Alongside being a CEO, Hagy is an amateur race driver, which provided the inspiration for her latest idea. “I was on the track and it occurred to me that when you think about going into space or landing on the Moon, there are so many similarities,” she says. Hagy’s plan was to combine the worlds of aerospace and automotive sports, and through her new company, Moon Mark, she sent out a challenge: “To the best and brightest young minds: to design, build and race AI-driven autonomous vehicles.”

Last summer’s Moon Mark’s Lunar Race Car Design Challenge saw 35 teams of high-school students from 11 countries submit videos of their vehicle concepts. Six finalists were rewarded with a $1,000 donation to their chosen charity and their designs presented to a panel of experts in aerospace engineering, technology and motorsports. The judges chose two overall winning teams – from Argentina and China – both of whose designs met or exceeded the technical requirements to race on the Moon’s surface.

Moon Mark has enlisted some big names in space exploration and motorsports to help realise the competition.

These include Elon Musk’s SpaceX service to transport the race vehicles on its Falcon 9 rocket; spaceflight payload firm Intuitive Designs to drop them onto the surface from its Nova-C lunar lander; and aerospace technology company THE RED BULLETIN

MOON MARK

Joining the space race Once, it was a term that symbolised the pursuit to reach the Moon. This year, it takes on a different meaning as motorsports arrive on the lunar surface

Eat my moondust: (above) a prototype lunar racer designed by one of the winning teams, Shanghai-based ILSTAR. It’s not exactly a looker, but you’ll get to the Sea of Tranquillity and back on a full tank; (top) an artist’s impression of this year’s Moon Mark race

Lunar Outpost to adapt the car designs to its NASAapproved Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform (MAPP) buggy, originally built for extraterrestrial scientific research. Legendary automobile designer Frank Stephenson – the creator of iconic cars for Ferrari, McLaren, BMW and Maserati – has been brought on board to refine the vehicles.

This October, the lander will descend to the lunar surface, where the racers will be dropped into their start positions and a 360° sphere of cameras will be ejected to livestream the race.

“We’re in spirited discussion on how to design a track when we really can’t know exactly where it’s going to land,” says Hagy. “We’ll have cameras on the racers, and we have to race

towards the [lunar lander’s] EagleCam so it can capture us.”

Moon Mark is determined not to litter the lunar surface in the process. “We don’t have any intention of leaving space debris,” says Hagy. “There’s the excitement of the race, but also the potential of what we could create and leave behind.”

The plan is to add payload to the racers – such as microreflectors that could become permanent geolocators.

“The next generation of people will be accepting stewardship of a change in humanity,” adds Hagy. “We’re looking to make a portal through which young people know they can access space commercialisation in a way that’s right for them.” moonmark.space 21

Picture of health

That eye-catching mural might be doing more than brightening up the streets – it might be cleaning them, too

Space to breathe: cleaner air, coming to a city near you

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Street art can be a powerful and positive force in inner-city neighbourhoods. While some argue that all forms of graffiti are an eyesore that encourages criminal behaviour, statistical evidence shows it more often has the opposite effect, forging a sense of community and respect for urban spaces, and creating a safer place to live.

Now, a new form of urban art has the ability to literally clean up our streets. Part of a campaign by US shoe company Converse, City Forests is a collection of murals across the planet that can absorb and neutralise air pollution. These artworks have been created by street artists in high-traffic areas of various cities – 14 so far, including Sydney, São Paulo, Bangkok and Warsaw –

THE RED BULLETIN

BILLY ZAMMIT

CONVERSE CITY FORESTS

to promote conservation and send the message of a more sustainable future while also improving the health of locals .

The magic in these artworks is KNOxOUT, a photocatalytic paint developed by Philippinesbased company Boysen, which uses light energy to break down air pollutants such as nitrogen oxides (the NOx in the name), converting them into carbon dioxide, water, and a calcium nitrate residue that’s easily washed off the wall. The paint is not only suitable for murals; it can also be used to cover whole structures in city centres. Tests of KNOxOUT in London between 2007 and 2010 recorded as much as a 50 per cent reduction in environmental nitrogen oxides.

“It could be a viable way to contribute to air purification on a wider scale,” says Sydney artist Elliott Routledge, whose large mural in the city suburb of Woolloomooloo, created in partnership with non-profit Rainforest Rescue, has the airpurifying power of 183 trees. “[The paint] has a working lifespan, though, and would require repainting to maintain its effectiveness,” he adds.

“As a guideline, this [lifespan] is said to be 10-15 years.”

Routledge hopes these murals will not only help the environment in a literal way but inspire people to become more active in protecting their green spaces. “Public art is a powerful tool to convey messages anyone can easily interact with,” he says. “If someone walks past this wall and takes the message on board, then I’m all for it. Not all art has to be a tool for social change, but given the right location and circumstances it can be a worthy billboard for powerful messaging.”

Converse is now actively looking to commission more local artists to support its mission and bring cleaner air to cities across the globe. conversecityforests.com

LOU BOYD

Global reach: Australian artist Elliott Routledge gets to work in Woolloomooloo

We are hikers on remote trails. We are alpinists navigating rock and snow. We are pioneers on hostile summits.

We span seven continents and a thousand landscapes but our intent is the same. For every trail, for every mountain, for every moment. We are Explorers.

# W e Are Ra b

W W W . RAB. EQUIPM EN T

Mike Shaw

Rising to the challenge From wheelchair to 10k: former freeski pro Mike Shaw says gratitude saved his life. Now he wants to run across Canada with 1,000 fellow athletes Words FLORIAN OBKIRCHER Photography ROYCE SIHLIS

One year, four months, 17 days: that’s the time that passed between Mike Shaw being told he’d never walk again and him taking part in a running event. In December 2013, the Canadian freestyle ski coach had a ski accident that left him paralysed from the neck down. Rather than let the doctor’s diagnosis crush his spirit, Shaw began intensive training almost immediately after his surgery.

Three months later, he walked out of the hospital. Then, just 16 months on, he participated in the Wings for Life World Run and, incredibly, ran 10k. The global event, organised by charity foundation Wings for Life, is particularly close to his heart as 100 per cent of the sign-up fee goes to spinal cord research. “There’s no cure yet,” says Shaw, 34. “Really, I got lucky, but it’s still part of my life.

I still can’t fully feel my legs and hands – I lose my balance 50 times a day.”

In order to motivate others for the Wings for Life World Run, Shaw started #TeamCoast2Coast, a national initiative to get participants to cross Canada together, virtually.

Here, the motivational speaker and author talks about the power of community, and how gratitude is the antidote to misery. the red bulletin: After your surgery, the doctor said that you’d never walk again. What made you disagree with their professional opinion? mike shaw: I’m a real optimist.

If things aren’t working out at the

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moment, it just means they’re not finished yet. The very nature of skiing taught me to bounce back.

To progress [in the sport], you have to crash and pick yourself back up.

Then you get to the top of the run again and hit the jump one more time. It’s a mindset I’ve cultivated over time.

In your book, Never Part of the Plan, you say that gratitude helped you through the toughest times. Can you elaborate?

A few weeks after the accident, I fell into a really dark place. I was getting wild spasms and I was in a lot of pain. There were times I just felt like giving up. Then I learned to use gratitude as a tool, and it was mindblowing. I decided to focus on the gifts, not the gaps. Being thankful might seem counterintuitive when things are gloomy. But that’s when the power of gratitude is the most significant. In hospital, I didn’t have to look far to see someone who was worse off than me. It’s about reframing, changing your perspective. When you’re dealing with a sense of uncertainty and you feel stuck, try to be grateful, even for things that might seem obvious. Trust that when one door closes, four others will open. And they all open to a balcony with an ocean view. That ramped up my progress immensely.

In 2017, you launched the initiative #TeamCoast2Coast, a Wings for Life World Run community with big ambitions.

How did that come about?

I told my friend Jim Mullan, who lives in Halifax [Canada] and is also

quadriplegic, about the Wings for Life World Run. He said, “How cool would it be if we could get enough people together to run the distance from Vancouver to Halifax, coast to coast, 5,500km across the length of Canada, virtually?’ It was a month before the event, but we went online and managed to recruit 100 people for #TeamCoast2Coast.

The next year, we got a bunch of Wings for Life ambassadors to support us and activate their networks, and by 2019 we had just over 900 registered runners doing nine organised app runs across the country. In the end, we were only 100km shy of our goal. This year, we want to get to 1,000 runners and smash it!

Would you encourage others to follow the example of #TeamCoast2Coast?

For sure! Teaming up and setting a communal goal is extremely motivating – and people are already doing that. It’s so inspiring to see people starting teams with friends and family all over the world, running apart yet united via the app. Being part of this global community and seeing the heart that people bring to the event is powerful. You run together for those who can’t, and the only person you try to beat is yourself.

Wings for Life World Run What is it?

A race involving thousands of people around the world and starting at exactly the same time. You run as far as you can until a (virtual) Catcher Car passes you.

When is it?

The next edition will take place on May 9. You can take part either via the app (on your own), together with friends, or at an Organized App Run. Sign up and start your own team at wingsforlifeworldrun.com

THE RED BULLETIN

“Trust that when one door closes, four others will open” THE RED BULLETIN

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Priya Ragu

Preparing for take-off It took time for the Tamil-Swiss airline worker to gain confidence in her ability as a singer-songwriter. But, once she did, the 34-year-old found that the sky’s the limit Words SABRINA LUTTENBERGER Photography JENNY BROUGH

In 2019, Priya Ragu challenged herself to move to New York for six months to see what she could create. The Tamil-Swiss singer had a comfortable life in Switzerland at the time, having grown up in the quiet town of St Gallen after her Sri Lankan parents fled the civil war in the ’80s, and worked as a technical buyer for Swiss International Air Lines. Yet she couldn’t shake a nagging question: “Is this really my life now?” While growing up, Ragu sang – in Tamil – in her family band, and as she got older she developed a love of US R&B. Performing at open-mic nights was enjoyable, but was it enough to satisfy her creativity long-term?

Her trip to America provided the answer. Ragu returned with an album’s worth of tracks made with her producer brother, Japhna Gold.

The pair dubbed their blend of R&B, electro-pop and Tamil influences ‘Raguwavy’ – a musical manifestation of their experience growing up between two distinct cultures. Ragu’s song Good Love 2.0 became one of the sounds of 2020, and also featured in the hit video game FIFA 21. Here, the 34-year-old reflects on a life-changing year… the red bulletin: Music has been a lifelong love for you, but you only began releasing your own songs in your thirties. How come? priya ragu: I’m much more selfconfident now than I used to be. It took a long time for my inner voice to say, “Come on, let’s give this a real

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go.” I got a lot of attention as soon as I released my first song. I wasn’t expecting that at all.

Is it true that 20 record companies got in touch straight away?

Yes, there were both indie and major labels. [Signing with Warner Music] was a big step. I’d wondered if a major label was right for me.

I went for a walk with my dog, Crooks, and I found a feather. I saw that as a sign. A feathered quill – a sign to sign! That feather is still on the wall in my apartment.

You have now appeared in British Vogue, been played on BBC Radio 1, and featured on the soundtrack of FIFA 2021. But you still haven’t given up your day job as a technical buyer for an airline. Why? I still do my other job, but only two hours a day now. I think that’s the Swiss in me that can’t quite let go – for as long as it’s doable, at least.

I really never thought that things would happen so quickly, but I’m very grateful they have. In fact, 2020 was the best year of my life.

There aren’t many people who can say that…

I know. It’s a real privilege. I mean, it’s probably also the first time in history that an artist was signed via Zoom. I selected the musicians for my band online, too. The management sent me suggestions, so it was literally four different guitarists, four keyboard players, drummers… and then I could take my pick, as if from a catalogue.

Or like on Tinder: swipe left, swipe left, swipe right.

When did your love of music begin?

I grew up with the Tamil soundtracks from Kollywood films – in northern India, they say Bollywood; in the south, it’s Kollywood. My father formed a small band that performed Kollywood covers. My brother played keyboard, and I sang.

Whenever the family came to visit us at the weekend, it was always like, “Priya, sing us something!”

And you began writing your own songs, too…

Writing definitely didn’t come easily to me, but the tunes always hit me fast. I’m a firm believer in something like a creative energy, and that it’s divine. Sometimes ideas come to you, you record them, and then afterwards you think to yourself, “Oh shit, was that me just now?

How did I do that?” There’s always an inner voice telling you what you really want. I’d heard the voice say I truly wanted to be a musician, but I’d deliberately ignored it. I didn’t have faith in myself.

How did you gain confidence?

With a lot of practice! I would get up in the morning and write three pages in my diary. I’d write down my thoughts, and things I felt unsure about. That way, I found solutions. It was pretty cathartic.

Then I read The Artist’s Way by [US author] Julia Cameron, which is all about discovering your creativity, and it totally motivated me. I think you’ve got to constantly work on yourself, push yourself, and dare to leave your comfort zone.

What are you most looking forward to?

I create these songs, I celebrate them, and when I release them it’s a bit like giving birth. Well, maybe not quite as hard! But I’m looking forward to seeing what comes of it all. So many things have happened that I couldn’t even have dreamed of. I’m still writing in my diary every day about what I’m going through.

That way, the experiences and emotions will stay with me for ever.

Instagram: @priyaraguofficial

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“You have to push yourself and dare to leave your comfort zone”

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Jaimie Monahan

Cracking the ice This New Yorker has a unique approach to sightseeing – submerged in icy water, with only a swimming costume and cap for protection Words RACHAEL SIGEE Photography ARIK THORMAHLEN

Jaimie Monahan insists her swimming isn’t about being the fastest or breaking records. The 41-year-old ice-, winter- and marathon-swimmer says it’s simply about finding personal challenges that make her feel strong, and creating memorable experiences. Perhaps it’s just coincidence, then, that those goals have led Monahan to conquer some of the world’s most staggering – and coldest – feats of open-water swimming, all completed in just a standard costume and silicone cap.

The Manhattanite has been a swimmer since her schooldays, but it was the promise of world travel that saw her dip a toe into icier water. In 2017, she was awarded a Guinness World Record for being the first person to complete the Ice Sevens challenge: swimming a mile (1.6km) on all seven continents, in water below 5°C – including one ‘Ice Zero’ mile at below 1°C. When, like the rest of the world, Monahan found herself stuck at home in 2020, it simply pushed her to find new challenges to fit around her full-time day job in banking recruitment. She used her August vacation time to swim the iconic 46km Manhattan Loop on seven consecutive days. Then in September she became the first person ever to swim a ‘quadruple’ of the loop in one mammoth continuous 183km, 45-hour effort – a feat that saw her dubbed ‘Queen of Manhattan’. “I think I was looking for a way to feel strong after being cooped up for

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months,” she says. “I look back on 2020 and it’s probably one of the years I’m most proud of.” the red bulletin: What enables you to handle these challenges? jaimie monahan: A lot of things in life have taught me that you can only control yourself, not your environment. The water is always in charge. So it’s about just being aware of the power of the water, and that we’re minnows in comparison.

What are your techniques for managing the cold?

It takes a mental shift – you get in and your body almost immediately rebels. Your breathing tenses up, along with all your muscles, and you go into that fight-or-flight response.

Even if you’re very experienced, you still have that initial reaction.

I always say that if I count to a hundred while I’m swimming, by the end of a hundred strokes I’ll feel good and have stoked that inner fire just through activity. For a longer distance, you have to keep a lot of checks on yourself: look at your skin colour – is it normal? I like to flex my hands and feet. And I check in with my breathing. If you feel too good, that’s usually a sign to get out. You can almost get a warm, euphoric sensation and that’s one of the signs that maybe hypothermia is setting in.

In what ways does swimming in ice differ mentally from marathon swimming?

For me, they’re on opposite sides of the spectrum and yet also two sides of the same coin. In the ice, you have to be so intensely focused

– if you lose sight of what you’re doing, you really can fall into some bad places. I’ve seen it where people have a vacant look in their eyes and later you hear crazy stories of the pain they felt, or they blacked out the memory entirely. You have to take your ego completely out of it.

It’s a constant matter of checking in with yourself. On the flipside, a marathon swim is almost a moving meditation where I just let my mind go wherever it wants to. For me, it’s important to give myself free rein.

Some people count, some people pray – you have to almost disengage and let your mind wander. We’re so connected in this world, especially virtually. We’re getting emails all the time, checking social media, bombarded by all these different subsets of life. But in the water there’s a break from that. I don’t want to downplay how difficult it is to swim for 45 hours! But it is, in some ways, a mental break.

Have you ever pushed yourself too far?

I haven’t. You never want to end a swim [in a state] where you’re not in your right mind. You always want to be the one to pull yourself out of the water and walk away. I always want to get out five minutes before I absolutely have to.

What’s been your favourite swim?

My answer always changes. I have a dual nature. I live in Manhattan, surrounded by skyscrapers, and our waters here are some of my favourite places to swim, because you’re in the midst of this big city but there’s also wildlife. At the polar opposite, I’ve been fortunate enough to swim in Antarctica and the Arctic Circle, and any place where there are ice formations is so special to me. These glaciers and icebergs are thousands of years old and they almost give off their own energy. You feel the cold that they generate when you’re in the water with them – it’s intense. That’s such a thrill for me. jaimiemonahan.com

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“The water is always in charge. We’re minnows in comparison” THE RED BULLETIN

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RENAISSANCE RIDER

A combination of natural talent, uncommon dedication, and a childlike love of bikes unabated by more than a decade of competition make podium regular TOM PIDCOCK a rare challenger in every discipline from road racing to cyclocross. As the 21-year-old multi-threat from Yorkshire gears up to begin his elite racing career, he says he’s ready to take on his heroes Words TONY THOMAS Photography TWILA FEDERICA MUZZI

Forging ahead: Leedsborn cyclist Tom Pidcock is embarking on an elite racing career with the revered INEOS Grenadiers, formerly Team INEOS

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T

om Pidcock isn’t riding his bike.

This is odd, because for the past 18 years, since swinging a short leg across his first two-wheeler, he’s barely been off it. Blame his racing- cyclist dad, who got him rolling on the footpaths around Herne Hill Velodrome in south-east London. Blame his ambition, which at the age of 10 sparked a desire to become a pro cyclist. You could also blame his mum, who tied toddler Tom’s feet to his pedals to help him ride.

Almost two decades on, ahead of his first season as a senior pro with INEOS Grenadiers, Pidcock is tied to his bike more than ever. But not today.

“It was biblical this morning,” he says, perched at the table of his part-time racing home in Belgium and referencing the day’s early downpour. “It’s better now, though. I’ve just been out to the shops.”

If this sounds impossibly ordinary for one of the brightest cycling prospects on the planet, it really shouldn’t, because Pidcock hails from Yorkshire – that part of northern England so proudly down-toearth it’s almost subterranean. Cycling on the hard hills of the Yorkshire Dales and the bleak North York Moors builds strength, toughness, and a resilience to bitter weather. What Yorkshire lacks in alpine scale, it compensates in grit – territory not unlike the sparse acreage beyond Pidcock’s Belgian base, where roads made of cobbles, and Sunday crowds for the cyclocross races, are woven into local lore.

As we speak, at just after 4pm on a Wednesday in December, it’s almost dark and deep-winter cold outside. The hardiest pro would be forgiven for not wanting to ride into its grip for five, six, seven hours… but only if the training schedule permits respite. For these are the days of dour kilometres that feed the flashing colours of the spring classics and the summer peloton; when the gloom has gone and racing butterflies emerge from their kit-layered cocoons.

“Yeah, there are days when none of it is good, none of it is nice, and you don’t want to do it,” Pidcock reflects, casting his gaze through a window into the creeping gloom. “But that’s just part of it. You have to learn to manage your emotions and almost try not to have them. Just do your job. And it doesn’t matter if it’s not your best ride or it’s not your best efforts, or whatever. If you do them, that’s what counts.”

He speaks with a veteran’s wisdom. Yet Pidcock – 157cm and 58kg of cycling assassin – is still only 21, looking ahead to a first year on the road-racing pro 32

Chasing glory: Pidcock (number 61) competes at the Cyclocross World Cup in Hoogerheide, Netherlands, in January 2020 – he finished in seventh place THE RED BULLETIN

Tom Pidcock

Pidcock has learned how ride tactically, flowing with the race around him before striking for the lead when rivals tire THE RED BULLETIN

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Tom Pidcock

“Tom could be a unique cyclist… the kind we’ve never seen before” Kurt Bogaerts

tour. Baby-faced and exuding youth, he nonetheless wears a shadow of exertion behind the smile, born of almost two decades’ riding, 11 of them racing.

Those years and miles have brought results, raised his profile, and taken him to the brink of the big time. Highlights include a dominant victory on last year’s under-23 Giro d’Italia and two age-grade world titles in cyclocross – the muddier, more intense cousin of road racing. Myriad other wins in both disciplines, as well as in mountain biking – including E-MTB world champion status – and track cycling, litter Pidcock’s CV like gold and silver confetti.

What’s next is tantalising. “I’m super-excited,” he says, talking with sudden animation at the prospect of a 2021 season that includes elite-level mountainbike competition and perhaps racing the Vuelta a España – the Spanish equivalent of the Tour de France – for INEOS Grenadiers. “I haven’t been so excited about anything for a while.”

Few riders reach the point of being signed by probably the best team on the pro tour – formerly Team Sky, home of British Tour de France giants Bradley Wiggins, Chris Froome and Geraint Thomas – while still being spoken of as a shining light in ’cross and a future Olympian in cross-country mountain biking. In years past, a rider would have been expected to specialise in a given discipline by the time he or she turned pro, and then to have found their groove as a climber, a sprinter, or a one-day ‘Classics’ ace.

Pidcock, though, has options, somewhat in the mould of the Netherlands’ Mathieu van der Poel or Belgium’s Wout van Aert, both stellar road talents in their twenties, who are also winning at the highest level of off-road competition.

There’s no hint of the Brit being awed by the scale of the challenge, nor of being overshadowed by the eminence of Grand Tour winners in his team such as Geraint Thomas and Egan Bernal. Pidcock just feels ready: “It’s been the long game, so I’ve been anticipating it for a while. A lot of other young guys are doing so well [he name-checks Van der Poel, Van Aert and France’s Julian Alaphilippe], so it’s quite normal nowadays. People say I’m a good rider, but waiting till I’m 21 [to race as a senior pro] is almost a long time now. In all honesty, it doesn’t seem like I’ve come far so quickly.”

Even the prospect of a three-week Grand Tour reckoned by some to be tougher, though less glitzy, than the Tour de France doesn’t faze Pidcock. “The 34

biggest thing for a Grand Tour is not straight-up preparing for it,” he says. “It’s more like being in full training mode. When you can see the progression and you can see your body working efficiently… that’s what you need. If I’m in that state, I don’t think there’s a problem. I recover very quickly.

Obviously it’s a long time, but if I do everything right I think I can perform for three weeks.”

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uch a matter-of-fact approach is not uncommon in elite competitors; their confidence is a function of repeat success layered on profound self-belief.

But in Pidcock’s case there may be something more.

“He could be a unique rider who does something that has never been done – possibly even a kind of cyclist we have never seen before,” says Kurt Bogaerts, Pidcock’s coach for the past three years at the Trinity Racing team that was built to further his junior career. “He has such high ability, he’s so diverse. In the proper environment, he’s right to have big dreams.”

Bogaerts is a widely respected coach and proteam directeur sportif, who has lent his expertise to legends such as Ireland’s Sean Kelly, as well as latter-day hotshots like sprinter Sam Bennett. “He [Pidcock] is a cyclist of the new generation – very good at a young age,” says Bogaerts. “What makes Tom so good is that he’s an athlete – more of an athlete than a bike rider. He can run really well. He can ride well in any discipline. If you go skiing with him, he’s a good skier, too. He clearly has good genetics, and on top of that he can handle workload. He has a good lifestyle naturally, so what’s difficult for some is quite normal for him.”

Pidcock’s response to this kind of acclaim is simply to refer back to a childhood spent on a bike, including riding to and from school every day. “Riding a bike is like a third arm,” he says. “It comes naturally. That makes it easier to go between disciplines, I think.

It’s about riding the bike fast and not so much about technical aspects. It’s just what I do.”

Steep task: Pidcock, Van der Poel and Van Aert out of the saddle and climbing at the Cyclocross World Cup, December 2020

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“Riding a bike is like a third arm.

It comes naturally” No slipping up: Pidcock negotiates the treacherously muddy course at the Cyclocross World Cup in Namur, Belgium, in December 2019, en route to a fourth-place finish

Tom Pidcock

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Games time

Could Pidcock add an Olympic medal to his collection?

Road racing’s pro tour is where cycling legends are forged: Bartali, Coppi, Fignon, Induráin, Merckx, Pantani, Thomas, Wiggins… the stellar cast reaches back more than a century. Some day soon, Tom Pidcock might be counted among their number. But then, he could achieve his breakthrough representing Team GB in cross-country (XC) mountain biking at the Olympic Games in Tokyo. Many stars will have to align for Pidcock to fulfil the qualification requirements of the British 38

squad. Then there’s the awkward matter of when the already delayed Games will go ahead. On merit alone, Pidcock’s case for inclusion as a hot medal prospect is compelling, according to Stephen Park OBE, performance director of British Cycling. “Tom has been on our radar for a couple of years,” says Park, who cites his widely recognised cross-disciplinary abilities and, in particular, his exceptional bike-handling. “The skills he has learned in cyclocross and mountain biking allow

him to maintain a higher average pace around a lap than his rivals.” Park relates how, at the 2020 XC World Championships, Pidcock won his under-23 class seemingly at ease while setting faster lap times than senior riders in the elite (non-agegrade) category. “Tom has a huge natural talent and a great love for the sport, so I have no doubt he’s part of the next golden generation of British riders. With his desire to be the best, he can definitely become a pin-up boy for cycling.”

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Tom Pidcock

Mud, sweat and gears: Pidcock at Hexia Cyclocross Gullegem in Belgium this January.

After a battle with Van der Poel, he finished the race in second place THE RED BULLETIN

Notions of a ‘lightbulb moment’, when a future path suddenly became clear, are similarly dismissed. “I never thought, ‘This is what I’m going to do when I’m older,’” he says, “because I was already doing it.

I was already a cyclist, living like a cyclist. So I never thought, ‘I want to be one,’ because I already was one, if you know what I mean.”

Destiny’s child? Maybe. But Pidcock is also making sure Destiny gets a firm shove on the cranks.

Bogaerts enthuses about his focus and dedication – traits emphasised by fellow pro and likely British Olympian Evie Richards, who has frequently raced at the same meetings as Pidcock, and who trains with him whenever schedules permit. Richards tells how Pidcock’s festive period last year was spent in Belgium, away from his family, in order to commit to his training programme, whereas she preferred to “go home and have a great Christmas”. She believes this sheer desire to be one of his greatest assets: “He just loves winning and being the best. He wants it the baddest of everyone, and he’s always dreamed of success on a bike. That probably gives him fuel to the fire, and an extra drive that maybe not everyone has.”

Pidcock’s competitive hunger makes training with him a lesson in tough love, as Richards can attest from ego-bruising experience. “Tom is very… honest,” she confirms with a hint of nervous laughter. “If you’re going slow, he’ll say, ‘You’re absolutely shit today.’ And it’s not to be mean, because it brings you on. You’re only going to get better if people point out your weaknesses. And he’s very good at doing that.”

There’s no doubt that Pidcock brings impermeable self-assurance to his riding, though the taut line between supreme confidence and arrogance is the one on which elite athletes must teeter if they are to achieve their full potential. Should they falter, pro road cyclists are punished harder than most, for theirs is still a sport in the raw, whose protagonists risk frequent injury and even mortal danger.

Pidcock learned hard how road cycling can bite when he crashed in August 2019 on the Tour de l’Avenir – the self-styled ‘mini Tour de France’ for under-23 riders. Carving into a fast right-hand descent on a wet road in the final kilometre of stage six, he lost his bike and slammed into the tarmac, before skidding at speed into a barrier. He took a heavy blow to the face, which knocked him out, broke teeth, and scarred his nose, mouth and chin.

Pidcock later posted a bloody selfie to Instagram, accompanied by the message: “I don’t really remember much at the moment, but I remember enough to know what Instagram is and was also told I was going to win, which is a bit shit. Anyway I’ll live to fight another day.” He admits that since the accident he’s “not nearly as confident or as competent as before” on wet descents. But Bogearts cites the Pidcock steel that soon had him back in the saddle for a full winter of training: “Tom dealt with the injury and it gave him the mental strength to know he can overcome it. He was very professional.”

“Tom just loves being the best… He wants it the baddest of everyone” Evie Richards Bogearts also doubts there has been any lasting dent to Pidcock’s abilities: “He’s still at a higher speed than is normal for the rest of the peloton. He can still stay near the front on descents. It’s just that, before, his speed was putting pressure on other riders. But Tom doesn’t need to rush this. He has the physical strength and talent to make it up in the climbs.”

The crash remains unexplained – “maybe it was a patch of oil” – and mystifying to Pidcock-watchers, as his bike-handling skills, honed off-road in cyclocross and mountain biking, are of the highest order. He’s as happy popping wheelies to celebrate stage wins as he is performing stoppies, hops and ‘Superman’ poses – arms out front, legs straight back, belly on saddle – just for kicks.

And, for Bogearts, Pidcock’s unbridled love of riding, and the enduring kid-like thrill he derives from being on a bike, may be a blessing beyond even his prodigious physical and technical gifts. “When you are working with a young rider,” says the Belgian, “you need to allow time for the body to develop, not to rush and maybe miss steps. Tom is still jumping on the bike every day like he is doing his hobby.

Riding because he likes to be outside. Having fun.”

“He just loves being on two wheels,” echoes Richards. “I’ve tried to get him to stop for a break when we’re training in Girona, but he just wants to get back on the bike.”

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t’s still too early to know what impact Pidcock will have on road racing’s pro tour, but the backwaters of life as a domestique (a team worker who supports the superstars) are surely not his fate. On his route to the pro tour, he has shown huge ability as a climber, a sprinter and as a time-triallist – each a key test for any rider with designs on victory. And while quite capable of winning from the front, Pidcock has also learned – on account of never being the biggest or strongest in the field – how to ride tactically, to flow with the race around him before striking for the lead, often late on when rivals have tired. Poised on the start line of his senior pro career, he appears to possess boundless potential, with few weaknesses.

“The reason I’ve stayed so long in the under-23s,” says Pidcock, “is to be in a position to win when I do move up. It dawned on me recently that the guys I’ve been looking at as my heroes are now my rivals, and I have to race them. But I want to be ready to win straight away.” Somehow that’s not in doubt. tompidcock.co.uk 39

SKATE ESCAPE

Last year, a world in lockdown went wild for the retro cool of roller skates, but, for some, life on eight wheels was already ingrained. These skaters are the latest generation of a longextant community in London pushing possibilities and finding freedom against the odds Words JESSICA HOLLAND Photography ALEXIS CHABALA

Sister kicks: Caitlyn Espenilla and Lenisha Benjamin – both of whom live alone so have created a bubble – in Asda car park in Colindale, London

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Roller skating

“What we’re trying to build is about family, love, community, good mental health, positive body image”

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t’s an autumn morning, and at a supermarket in Tottenham, north London, early starters are walking through the covered ground-floor car park en route to work. Amir BacchusMarquis is just getting ready to head home to bed. Dressed in a black tracksuit, with loosely tied roller skates on his feet, he has been here since the night before. This cold, stark and dimly lit space has become a refuge for the 25-year-old, and for the roller-skaters who joined him here last night. They spent hours freestyling to beats from a Bluetooth speaker – soca, grime, R&B, bashment – and while they were pulling off spins, dips, slides, B-boy-style floor moves, complex footwork, and zooming around backwards at high speeds, they could forget about everything else going on in the world. Now, the sun’s up and, as the last stragglers finally leave, Bacchus-Marquis is making sure no rubbish is left behind. “I can’t tell you how many times I go to the car park at midnight to skate and when I look up it’s eight in the morning,” he says. “You’re in a sense of flow; time doesn’t matter.”

A passionate roller skater since he was a small boy, Bacchus-Marquis began practising moves in this car park on his own in 2019. When roller rinks were forced to close in 2020, he came to rely on this decent, dry, smooth patch of concrete, and eventually spread the word via his Instagram account, Skate Tingz.

By early September, when he pulled this all-nighter at the local spot, other skaters would join him, soaking up the energy.

When coronavirus restrictions were reintroduced and these meet-ups could mean a £10,000 fine, Bacchus-Marquis decided to lay low for a while and figure out what to do next. But nothing, he makes clear, was going to stop him from trying to keep this community alive.

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THE RED BULLETIN

Running tingz: Amir Bacchus-Marquis in Morrisons car park, Colindale. Opposite: Espenilla and Benjamin at Colindale Asda

Roller skating

“Anyone who says being in a car park is anti-social doesn’t understand I’m only there because I have nowhere else to go”

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Some of those who attended his Skate Tingz events at their height were new to skating – part of the global roller-skate boom during lockdown as people were incentivised to find fun ways to exercise outdoors alone. The nostalgic aesthetic of old-school roller skates, evocative of ’50s diners and ’70s dancefloors, helped to build a trend on social media platforms such as TikTok. Suddenly these sites were flooded with clips of artfully styled women skating backwards down sunny streets, swaying to a pop soundtrack.

Roller-skate shops worldwide sold out of stock from spring 2020 into this year.

But, for skaters like Bacchus-Marquis, life on eight wheels is about something deeper than followers and ‘likes’. Roller skating has been “what saved my life, many times”, he says. Whatever obstacles get in the way, “We’re not going to stop.”

Open Instagram and you’ll see numerous videos of women dancing on skates in their bedrooms, but you won’t get a true idea of the tightknit quad-skate scene that paved the way for the current explosion THE RED BULLETIN

“Skating is positive for the body and the mind. Anyone you bring in, it stops them from doing something else they shouldn’t”

Guiding light: Andre Ashley at Colindale Morrisons. Opposite: Bacchus-Marquis in action at Tottenham Sainsbury’s

“I could be going through so much, but as soon as I’m skating, everything else fades away.

It’s just me. I feel like I’m floating, like I’m flying. I just feel free” Ready to roll: Ayisha Alli, close to the Greenwich Peninsula Golf Driving Range in south-east London. Opposite: Ashley skates solo at Colindale Morrisons

Roller skating

of interest. Bacchus-Marquis is part of the latest generation of a community of veteran roller skaters that has, for decades in parks and out-of-the-way halls across the capital, been pushing forward what’s possible on eight wheels.

“We’re all young, but we’re trying to forge a long-lasting impression on our community”

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oller skating in London has existed since at least the 1850s, when a public roller rink opened in Covent Garden. More recently, a hybrid form of dance-skating has evolved here that puts its own spin on American ‘jam’ and ‘shuffle’ styles. As the 2018 documentary United Skates explains, these developed in US rinks where unofficial segregation was still enforced by white owners long after the civil rights era – excuses given for turning away Black skaters included the bagginess of their trousers or size of their wheels. Despite this, the nights set aside for these skaters – at unpopular times like late on a Sunday – became vibrant cultural and community hubs, with artists including Queen Latifah playing early shows to a roller-skating audience.

The film also shows how rinks across the US have been closing in recent years, replaced by more lucrative businesses like big-box stores. There has been a similar trend in the UK. Roller Nation in Bruce Grove, Tottenham, was London’s last dedicated venue for roller discos, while Wembley’s Fix8 Rollerdisco and Harrow’s Sk8City London ran regular skate nights in halls. When these spaces had to close during lockdown, BacchusMarquis knew he had to do something to fill the gap.

Roller skating had been a lifeline for him ever since he first laced up a pair of rental skates at the age of seven, at an after-school club in a local sports centre.

“From day one,” he says, “I was in my element.” Not long after this, his younger sister, who was born severely disabled, died. “Things got real serious at home,” he says, “and I didn’t understand why.

I really went off the rails. Roller skating gave me a space where I felt connected.

No matter how awkward I felt or how upset I was, it completely took over.”

He skated alone to and from school every day throughout his childhood and teens, despite being bullied for standing out. It wasn’t until he was about 16 that he discovered a skating community that occupied a Stratford shopping centre after dark, and then Fix8. “It blew my mind, the calibre of skaters there,” he says. “The only thing I ever wanted since

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I was seven was to be around people who love the thing I love. This community was everything I wanted it to be.”

Bacchus-Marquis wishes he’d found it sooner. During the last 10 years, the number of youth clubs in London has almost halved due to a lack of funding.

“It’s caused generational trauma,” he says of this loss. “Not having somewhere safe to go after school, when you live in an area like mine, is what led a lot of people to a life of crime. If you have a brother who’s affiliated to any kind of gang, that’s it. If you don’t have a positive outlet, some positive place where you can go and be around people who are all about pushing forward and learning – which is exactly what we try to promote as skaters – there’s not much chance you’ll survive.”

Bacchus-Marquis becomes exasperated when skaters are accused of anti-social behaviour, which happened to him too often to count in pre-COVID times. “It’s like, bruv, this is the most social thing you can think of. What we’re trying to build is about family, about love, about community, about good mental health, positive body image. It’s about loving yourself and pushing yourself. Anyone who’s telling me I’m being anti-social because I’m in a car park doesn’t understand that the reason I’m there is because I have nowhere else to go.”

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ndré Ashley is another skater whose life was changed when he found this tight-knit community.

The 27-year-old from north-west London rediscovered roller skating in 2019, having gone to roller discos with his family as a kid, and he immediately clicked with the other skaters. With a background in martial arts and ice skating, he progressed quickly and relished the physical challenge of learning new moves.

In January last year, Ashley set up the Instagram account Watch My Wheels and promoted meet-ups, first in a car park near his home in Colindale, then at an open-air basketball court nearby.

With a day job helping young people recover from addiction, and the lived experience of losing a friend to gang violence as a teen, he sees these events as about more than just letting off steam.

“You want to see all your friends make it to old age,” he says. “Skating is positive for the body and the mind. Anyone you bring in, it stops them from doing something else that they shouldn’t be doing.” Along with freestyle sessions, Watch My Wheels organised a silent disco and a ‘sports day’ before lockdown restrictions returned. It also raised donations via Instagram for roller skates that would be lent out to anyone who wanted to give it a try.

“We’re all young,” Bacchus-Marquis says of his generation of roller-skating pioneers, “but we’re trying to forge a long-lasting impression on our community.” He takes care to send out positive messages via the content he puts out – promoting reading and healthy eating, for example – and has started regular Instagram Live conversations in which he talks with other skaters about the issues facing them. He also created a loose collective called the London Skate Alliance so that skaters could “make decisions together about the scene we’re trying to keep afloat”.

The Alliance includes Watch My Wheels, among a large group of roller skaters from across the capital, and the two women behind the Instagram page Skate With Sis: Lenisha Benjamin, 23, and Caitlyn Espenilla, 20. They both began skating in 2019, met at a Skate Tingz event towards the end of that year, and started their page last April. Alongside videos of them dancing on skates at car-park meet-ups and against sparkling cityscape backdrops, they share snippets of Black history in the description text.

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Roller skating

Freewheeling: Alli, shot in Greenwich, posts to YouTube as Ayy Skates

“As much as we’re putting positivity out there for skating,” Benjamin says, “we’re also reminding you that we’re two Black girls, that we’re representing for our culture, and that we love our culture.”

Another member of the Alliance is Ayisha Alli, 23, an aspiring software engineer, who began skating regularly at Fix8 in November 2019 and went to Watch My Wheels events in the summer. She kept herself busy while off work in 2020 by setting up the Instagram account Ayy Skates in April, then invested in a decent camera, tripod and mic, taught herself how to use editing software, and launched a YouTube channel under the same name in August. “I wasn’t finding the content I wanted to see,” she says.

“It was just girls who looked pretty.” On the platform, she posts polished videos of her learning routines, shares her thoughts with viewers, and documents solo street skates and car-park link-ups.

For Alli, like many others on the scene, 2020 afforded a new opportunity 48

“Skating has definitely allowed me to stay sane in a time when I could have gone crazy” to skate all day, every day. “[When I’m skating] I just feel really, really happy,” she says. “Nothing else in the world matters. I could be going through so much, but as soon as I’m skating and listening to the right music, everything else fades away. It’s just me. I feel like I’m floating, like I’m flying. I just feel free.”

D

espite the challenges of the pandemic, both Benjamin and Ashley describe lockdown as the best thing that’s ever happened to them. Having time to dedicate to what they loved most led to opportunities – Benjamin, Espenilla and Alli have all been asked to skate in music videos and

brand promos thanks to the content they created. For some, there was also a psychological shift. “I was never really that confident,” Benjamin says. “Now, I just feel very happy just to be in my own body and be unapologetically myself.”

Espenilla says roller skating through 2020 has changed her, too: “It’s made me feel like I can achieve things I thought I couldn’t. It’s made me a happier person.

It’s given me more excitement in life.

The people I’ve met have changed my views on certain things and inspired me.

And it’s definitely allowed me to stay sane in a time when I could have gone crazy.” There’s a feeling, she says, when you see someone do a move that seems totally out of reach, then you break it down, practise it for weeks, and you finally nail it. “It’s indescribable, honestly, like thinking you can’t walk on water and then you walk on water.

You just defeated gravity.”

As 2021 continues, the weather improves and COVID vaccinations roll out, there’s a chance for these skaters to build on the growth the roller-skate scene saw last year. Bacchus-Marquis is one of many skaters dreaming about securing funds to open a dedicated roller-skating venue when COVID restrictions allow.

“That is the end goal for everybody who’s ever put on a pair of skates and got kicked out of somewhere,” he says.

“I definitely think it’s a possibility.” In a live chat with Bacchus-Marquis, Ashley points out that the X Games give a spotlight to BMX and skateboarding, and it was recently announced that breakdancing will be included in the 2024 Olympics. He wants to host a big event this year or next; something that will put roller skating on the map: “Nothing’s impossible any more.”

Even if none of this comes to pass, there will still be a committed core of roller skaters keeping the art form alive, just as there were in the decades before the pandemic. Whether in halls, on the streets, or in car parks – anywhere with a smooth patch of concrete – there will be people finding escape in the sensation of weightlessness and freedom that comes with gliding a few inches above the ground on eight wheels. BacchusMarquis will be one of them. “The second I tied those laces for the first time,” he says, “I just knew this was what I was going to do for the rest of my life.”

Instagram: @skate_tingz; @watchmywheels; @skatewithsis; @ayyskates THE RED BULLETIN

MORE WIIINGS WITHOUT SUGAR.

DRIVING CHANGE

JORDI RIEROLA/SPACESUIT MEDIA

Motorsport and eco-activism: two camps that rarely sit well together. But desperate times forge unlikely alliances.

Here is the incredible story of the race – an actual race, with revolutionary vehicles – to save our planet from ecological destruction…

January 15, 2021, MotorLand Aragón, Spain. The Extreme E teams get to grips with the Odyssey 21 E-SUV for the first time

Words RICHARD FLEURY

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Extreme E

O

rdinarily, racing cars are heard long before they are seen. But not this one. It emerges silently from the fog like a manta ray gliding through the ocean, before melting back into the gloom with a faint mechanical whine.

Spain’s MotorLand Aragón lies midway between Barcelona and Madrid. Pre-COVID, this racing complex drew massive MotoGP crowds. But today, in the final weeks of 2020, it’s almost deserted, save for these mysterious vehicles drifting and bouncing around a makeshift dirt circuit. They resemble overgrown radio-controlled buggies, but sound unlike anything you’ve heard – quiet at low speed before accelerating into a Scalextric-meetsStar Wars-podracer whine. And yet, these electric-powered SUVs are built for a race that’s even more outlandish than they are.

Extreme E is billed as “the race for the planet”. Its bold aim is to reinvent motorsports as an environmental force for good, highlighting the world’s ecological crisis with zero-emission SUVs racing wheel-to-wheel in far-flung locations messed up by mankind, from felled rainforests to beaches littered with ocean plastic. The series kicks off this April in the desert sands of AlUla, Saudi Arabia, followed in May by a beach race in Dakar, Senegal. In August, Kangerlussuaq in Denmark hosts an Arctic X-Prix, before Extreme E moves to Santarem, Brazil, in October, for a competition on soil where the Amazon once stood. The finale is at the melting glaciers of Tierra del Fuego, Argentina, in December.

Carving around ecologically scarred sites in 4x4s might sound counter to saving the planet, but Extreme E’s bumpersticker motto is: ‘We race without a trace.’

“We drive on rocks and sand,” says its mastermind, Alejandro Agag. “Cars cannot break sand, cannot break rocks. There’s no damage.” The series’ founder and CEO promises his team will leave these “front lines of the climate crisis” in better shape than they found them, investing in

Left: Sébastien Loeb gets to grips with his Team X44 SUV for the first time in Aragón.

Right: the ABT Cupra XE team car in action

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THE RED BULLETIN

CHARLY LOPEZ/SPACESUIT MEDIA

“Cars cannot break sand, cannot break rocks. There’s no damage” THE RED BULLETIN

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environmental projects at each destination. And it aims to be totally carbon-neutral by the end of 2021. The concept is seen by sponsors and host countries as a win-win; governments have welcomed it with open arms. “It’s green, you promote their country for tourism, and it also gives a good image,” says Agag. “For a politician, it’s a no-brainer.”

He’s speaking from experience: the suave and savvy 50-year-old Spanish businessman enjoyed a promising career in politics before becoming a major player in motor racing. It’s an unlikely backstory for an environmental champion, but, as the founder of electric streetracing series Formula E, Agag has done plenty to wean motorsports off fossil fuels and into eco-rehab. This commitment to leaving no damage in its wake means Extreme E will have no ticket-buying spectators, but its impact will be felt.

Media buzz was already growing when, in September, Formula One megastar Lewis Hamilton announced his own team and it went stratospheric.

Make no mistake, Extreme E will be very big indeed.

I

f you’re serious about making a splash as a green A-lister, you need your own boat. Jacques Cousteau had the Calypso. Greta Thunberg has her zerocarbon yacht. Conservation organisations Greenpeace and Sea Shepherd boast entire fleets. Agag has a 30-year-old former Royal Mail ship upcycled into a ‘floating paddock’. Cars aren’t airfreighted to races but transported inside the 6,767-tonne RMS St Helena.

Agag scrolls through his phone to show The Red Bulletin a picture of the vessel after her multimillion-pound refurb, sporting a new black, white and green paint job. He’s particularly pleased with the slogan across the hull: “Not

When Lewis Hamilton announced his own team, the buzz went stratospheric 54

electric… yet!” The engines have been converted to run on low-sulphur marine diesel, cleaner than the heavy diesel (basically crude oil) commonly used in shipping. RMS St Helena can cruise on one engine to lower fuel consumption and emissions, and, says Agag, will one day run on biofuel. Travelling by sea rather than air generates a third of the carbon emissions, but what happens as this ship sails is more amazing still.

In steel shipping containers onboard are hydrogen fuel-cell generators – portable emission-free power sources that can charge the cars either at sea or at the race site. “Green hydrogen is produced by solar panels or wind, depending on location,” explains Agag.

“We’ll prove you can power remote areas with clean energy.” He hopes this offgrid technology might one day supply emergency power to disaster zones.

RMS St Helena sleeps 110 in 62 cabins, and her 20m swimming pool has been stripped out to make space for a science lab inspired by Cousteau’s Calypso.

This is not just for show – Extreme E has also employed a committee of climate experts to provide education and research.

Since her 18-month refit in Liverpool, the ship has been in strict quarantine.

After virus outbreaks obliterated the cruise industry, Agag is not taking any chances – a stowaway microbe could scuttle the entire adventure.

Organising a global racing series of this magnitude was never going to be easy, but doing it during a pandemic was a huge undertaking – an ever-changing obstacle course of travel restrictions, border closures and COVID testing. “It’s been challenging,” admits Agag. “Like walking with a 100-kilo backpack. But soon the backpack will drop.”

And yet, even as the world ground to a standstill, his big idea gained traction.

Motorsports aristocracy wanted in.

Alongside newly knighted seven-time champion Lewis Hamilton, F1’s Nico Rosberg and Jenson Button have their own teams, while Red Bull Racing’s engineering guru Adrian Newey oversees another. From rallying, the roster includes two-time world champion Carlos Sainz, and Sébastien Loeb, the sport’s most successful-ever driver.

“They were waiting for this opportunity, hoping for off-road to become an actor in the climate action we need,” says Agag. That opportunity has finally arrived at MotorLand as they

get to test their cars for the first time: “Today, we see an idea become reality.”

All 10 teams have the same car: the Odyssey 21 E-SUV, built by French firm Spark Racing Technology and powered by dual Formula E motors. This is the teams’ first test at full power – 400kW (536hp).

“I’m happy with their reliability,” says Agag, smiling. “Normally with new technology and so many cars, a lot of things go wrong.

But the only thing that has is the fog.”

THE RED BULLETIN

CHARLY LOPEZ/SPACESUIT MEDIA

Extreme E

The morning sun is already burning that fog away, revealing cars being flung around by some of the most skilled drivers on the planet as drones hum around them like mosquitoes.

These will capture the action during the spectator-less races, streaming it live around the world. Away in the distance stands a lone figure. “Oh look, a nine-time world champion peeing,” deadpans Agag.

THE RED BULLETIN

Sébastien Loeb has done and won it all.

After dominating the World Rally Championship for a decade, winning the Race of Champions three times, and finishing second in the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the Frenchman retired in 2012, but then went on to smash the Pikes Peak record at his first try, and come runner-up in the Dakar Rally. But driving for Lewis Hamilton’s X44 team will take him to places, such as Patagonia, where

Chip Ganassi Racing’s car goes through its paces. It’s since had a redesign to resemble the team’s GMC Hummer supertruck

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RMS St Helena

The ship

3

RACE LOCATIONS Remote areas damaged by human activity

2 LAC ROSE, Dakar, Senegal May 29-30 Terrain: beach Assisting Marine Protected Areas and repairing coastal damage

Transports all the cars to ports nearest each of its five race locations, across four continents.

This reduces the race series‘ CO2 emissions by two-thirds compared with air freighting

1 2 4

1 ALULA, Saudi Arabia April 3-4 Terrain: desert Supporting the Great Green Wall initiative to reverse desertification

EXTREME E’S FLOATING COMMAND CENTRE

5 3 KANGERLUSSAQ, Greenland August 28-29 Terrain: arctic Helping countrywide clean-energy solutions to slow global warming

4 SANTAREM, Para, Brazil October 23-24 Terrain: Amazon

5 TIERRA DEL FUEGO, Argentina December 11-12 Terrain: glacier

Replanting an expanse of rainforest the size of the race area each year

Highlighting the rapid recession of the ice sheet in Patagonia

1. Capable of running on one engine 2. Fuel: low-sulphur marine diesel 3. A-deck: science and research laboratory 4. B-deck: car hangar and presentation area 5. Cars loaded/offloaded via crane 6. Hydrogen fuel-cell generators on board to charge cars

Length 105m Tonnage 6,767 Cabins 62 Capacity 110 persons

Maiden voyage 1990 Build cost £32 million Home port Liverpool, UK Former service Royal Mail ship

Extreme E

CHARLY LOPEZ/SPACESUIT MEDIA

LAURIE GREASLEY

Extreme E’s CEO Alejandro Agag (left) takes a break at the Aragón test circuit to chat with race legend Sébastien Loeb

he’s never raced before. “It’s something completely new and I wanted to discover that from inside,” says rallying’s serial achiever. “If we want motorsports to continue in the long term, it’s good to take new directions. This is one.”

At 1,650kg, the Odyssey feels heavier than the highly developed, astonishingly quick WRC cars Loeb is used to. “It’s quite technical to drive,” he says. Usually reserved, rarely smiling, he’s nonetheless clearly thrilled. “We have to fight with the car sometimes. But that makes it exciting. I think in the desert it will be really fun.”

From those who’ve left an indelible mark to those just beginning to make theirs, Extreme E’s drivers are diverse by design. Its youngest is 22-year-old Brit Jamie Chadwick; its oldest, Spaniard Carlos Sainz, is 58. This is also the first motorsport to feature a 50/50 gender split. Male and female racers compete on equal terms, inspired by mixed-doubles tennis at Wimbledon. “I liked the format because the men and the women are equally decisive for victory,” Agag says.

“So I thought we should play this championship as teams – one man and one woman doing two laps, one each.”

One of the championship’s youngest drivers, 23-year-old Catie Munnings, describes Extreme E as “inspirational. It’s going to encourage girls to have a serious THE RED BULLETIN

career in motorsports at the right age.

And for young drivers, it’s the future.”

Munnings got her career off to a flying start, winning the European Rally Championship Ladies Trophy in 2016 in her first season, the first British driver to claim a European title in almost 50 years.

But, after a tough first year in Junior WRC in 2020, she’s joined the Andretti United Extreme E team with World Rallycross champion and fellow Red Bull driver Timmy Hansen. “Women aren’t in the teams just for the media,” she says.

“Everyone’s been picked on merit. All that money, that development, the hours – it’s pointless unless you’ve chosen someone because you think they’re fast.”

Temperamentally, Munnings couldn’t be more different from the low-key Loeb.

While the taciturn rally deity is unlikely to get his own talk show any time soon, the chatty Munnings has already hosted her own children’s TV series: Catie’s Amazing Machines. While she’s clearly thrilled to be in such company, and

“The car is quite technical to drive.

We have to fight it sometimes”

confesses to having done double-takes while hanging out with some of her sport’s greatest names, the Brit isn’t fazed by the calibre of competition: “We’re all just drivers learning a new car.” But then, this is a woman who won her first international rally after surviving a massive crash, and took her Biology A-level the day before qualifying.

Today’s test is a data-logging exercise, but one pair seem to be having more fun than is necessary: the American team owned by NASCAR’s Chip Ganassi.

Drivers Sara Price (a former dirt-bike champion) and off-road racer Kyle LeDuc are going all-out with big jumps and gravel-pinging tail slides. A camera crew are showered with grit as the car careens around a bend. They’re finally ordered out of the way by an anxious marshal, who warns that the Ganassi car span out of control earlier after “popping a tyre off”.

It takes up to two hours to charge Odyssey 21’s batteries for 20 minutes of testing. Range remains a perennial problem for electric cars, so races are short at just two 16km laps. On X Prix weekends, each team is allowed one full charge for the day’s two races. After a few spirited test laps, a plasticky electrical whiff emanates from the Ganassi car. They all seem to do it, but it’s not a smell anyone would want coming from their fusebox at home.

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Above: Odyssey 21’s plant-fibre shell is lifted to reveal its tubular frame. Right: Catie Munnings wraps up a test run. Below: Adrian Newey

“We’re not in this for commercial gain – we believe in it”

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Most electric cars today are powered by lithium-ion batteries, which, on rare occasions, have caught fire, even exploded, in a reaction known as ‘thermal runaway’. But safety is a priority in any motorsport, and Extreme E has a team trained to extract drivers from electric vehicles. Agag insists the Odyssey 21’s batteries, made by the British company Williams Advanced Engineering, are extremely safe, explaining that Spark’s own test driver rolled his car earlier and experienced “no problem at all”.

Lithium ion presents another concern.

Mining for ‘white gold’, as lithium is known, has a devastating impact on ecosystems around the world. Agag is fully aware of the issue, but takes a pragmatic view that climate change is the more pressing threat. “The most urgent thing is not pollution caused by minerals, it’s CO2 in the atmosphere,” he says. “We have to make a choice, and that is to try to cut the CO2 in the atmosphere and the toxic particles coming from cars. For that, batteries are the solution. Are they perfect? No. Are they better than a diesel car in the city? Definitely.”

Adrian Newey has been converted to the cause, which is praise indeed. His cars have won more than 150 Grands Prix, and secured four consecutive F1 drivers’ and constructors’ championships for Red Bull Racing between 2010 to 2013. The 62-year-old engineer and designer has stood at the pinnacle of racing since the 1980s, when F1 teams ran, in his words, “on a diet of cigarettes,

coffee and beige polyester”. Fossil fuels have been the lifeblood of his exceptional career. Now, as ‘lead visionary’ of the Veloce Racing team, Newey has been presented with a new challenge. “[Extreme E] is an interesting concept to combine technology with conservation,” he says. “We know we’re damaging the planet. Everybody is grappling with how we reverse that process.”

For Newey, climate change is a complex engineering problem, but he’s sceptical about battery technology as a long-term solution: “It’s not quite the panacea that governments make it out to be.” He believes the automotive industry has been “press-ganged” into embracing it. “But it will grow and mature, just as the combustion engine did,” adds Newey. “And other sources will creep in –hydrogen being the most obvious.”

He’s a big advocate of hydrogen, and would like to see it fuelling Extreme E as soon as season three: “Hopefully, by then, the boat will be converted to hydrogen and become very sustainable.”

Newey was introduced to Extreme E by his racing-driver son Harrison, who helps run Formula E champion Jean-Éric Vergne’s Veloce team and its esports sister company. “A huge number of people watch gamers competing, and audience figures are massive,” says Newey Sr. “Hopefully, Extreme E will appeal to the same demographic.”

Agag, a gamer himself, definitely had Gen Z’s digital natives in mind when brainstorming both Formula E and his new venture; he even lifted a few tricks from video games. Take ‘Hyperdrive’, where the Extreme E team who perform the longest jump on the first jump of each race get a speed boost to deploy at will. “That’s from Mario Kart,” he admits.

“Alejandro has shown tremendous vision,” says Newey. “I wouldn’t be involved if I didn’t think it had something to offer. We’re not in it for commercial gain – we believe in it.”

But how did a career politician metamorphose into a planet-saving motorsports visionary? Intelligent, charismatic and ambitious, by the age of 25 Agag was a rising star in Spain’s centre-right People’s Party and had been appointed as political aide to Prime Minister José María Aznar. He was elected an MEP three years later and married the PM’s daughter Ana Aznar – after reportedly proposing in her father’s offices – in 2002. The nuptials THE RED BULLETIN

EDER FERNANDEZ/SPACESUITMEDIA(2), ISAAC FORCELLA-BURTON/VELOCE RACING

Extreme E

“Women aren’t in the teams just for the media.

Everyone’s been picked on merit”

Extreme E

For Alejandro Agag, the climate fight should be “above politics”

The next chapter was Formula E, which he started with FIA president Jean Todt in 2014, partly in response to motorsports’ growing image problem.

In the 2019 Formula E documentary And We Go Green, Agag is seen reclining on a sofa, puffing on a fat cigar as he recalls, “I tried to convince a company to become a sponsor for Formula One. And in every email they said, ‘We cannot be involved, because it’s polluting.’ I thought, ‘We have a problem.’”

As Greta Thunberg’s generation approaches the age that Agag was when he entered politics, the environment continues to climb the world’s political agenda. For Agag, the climate fight should now be “above politics”. From Extinction Rebellion to ExxonMobil, everyone has a role to play. Sport, he believes, can be an agent of change.

“Out of the 25 most-watched TV programmes in history, 24 have been sporting events,” he says. “It has the possibility to spread the message in a much wider way.”

Imaginative, driven, seriously wealthy – he dug into his own, evidently very deep, pockets to fund Extreme E – and not so much well-connected as plugged directly into the international power grid, Agag is clearly a man who can sense which way the wind is blowing.

And, right now, it’s blowing very much in his favour.

R

ipping across the sand in an elderly open-top Land Rover, Extreme E’s sporting manager Guy Nicholls shouts directions over a roaring sea wind: “Right at the porpoise.” To the left is the Atlantic Ocean; on the beach to the right, a badly decomposed dolphin carcass.

The sorry cetacean’s final resting place is an ugly tide mark of plastic detritus stretching into the hazy distance.

“It’s tough to see this,” says Nicholls as the driver steers inland.

Senegal’s coastline – more than 700km long, including estuaries – is drowning in plastic waste. The whole of Africa is choking on the stuff. It clogs roads, pollutes soil and contaminates animal feed. Rain washes it into waterways and, eventually, the sea, where it’s ingested by marine life or spat back onshore by the tide. According to an industry report in 2019, almost 360 million tons of plastic were produced the previous year – more than the combined weight of every human on Earth at the last estimate. Plastic can take up to 1,000 years to biodegrade, and it doesn’t only harm dolphins; it breaks down into tiny shreds that can affect human development, reproduction and health.

A 2019 study by the University of Newcastle, Australia, found that the average adult consumes the equivalent of a credit card every week, and

LAURIE GREASLEY

were attended by Spain’s king and queen as well as its celebrated crooner Julio Iglesias, Rupert Murdoch, and members of the world’s political elite. Tony Blair and Silvio Berlusconi were witnesses.

Though strongly tipped as a future party mover-and-shaker, Agag had, by then, already quit politics. He never returned.

Decamping to London, armed with his book of stellar contacts, he moved into motorsports, thriving in the notorious shark pool of F1 and forging a reputation as a formidable dealmaker. In 2002, alongside Flavio Briatore (then managing director of Renault), Agag snapped up Spanish TV rights for F1; in 2007, as part of a consortium with Briatore, F1 chief executive Bernie Ecclestone and steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal, he acquired EFL Championship football team Queens Park Rangers; and the following year he bought an FGP2 racing team. “Being a politician never leaves you completely.

It helps you create agreements and places where people can meet,” says the man with the golden SIM card.

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EXTREME E

At Lac Rose, Senegal, a volunteer collects plastic waste to make an ‘ecobrique’, which can then be used in building construction THE RED BULLETIN

Odyssey 21 E-SUV

The car

Overall length 4.401m Overall width 2.3m Overall height 1.846m Front/rear track 1.99m Ride height 0.45m

Top speed 200kph/124mph

Wheelbase 3.001m

0-100kph/ 0-60mph 4.5 seconds

Weight 1,650kg

Suspension travel 385mm

1. Niobium-reinforced steel alloy tubular chassis and roll cage 2. Bcomp plant-based fibre body shell 3. Electric power-steering system 4. Lithium-ion battery with 20 minutes of charge 5. Extreme-terrain tyres by Continental

Maximum power 400kW/536hp E-motor torque 920Nm

POWER SOURCE Portable fuel-cell generator shipped to the races creates zero-emission hydrogen fuel on site, by water electrolysis or solar charging

GENDER EQUALITY Two drivers per team: one male, one female – alternating as driver and co-driver for one lap each

1 2

4

3

5

Above: the Andretti United Extreme E race car. Opposite page: Senegalese fisherman Abdou Karim Sall surveys the mangrove swamps in his pirogue

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microplastic particles have been found in the placentas of unborn babies.

Nicholls and his team are at Senegal’s Lac Rose beach for their first recce. In May, they will be followed by the whole travelling circus. The Ocean X-Prix will transform this sprawling sand pit into a buzzing techno-village. Container lorries will shuttle race cars, service vehicles and equipment from RMS St Helena, docked at the capital, Dakar, an hour’s drive away. And 70 air shelters – those giant inflatable tents used by relief organisations and murder investigation teams – will house the race command centre, driver change area and garages.

As sporting manager, Nicholls’ first job is to sketch a circuit onto this “huge canvas” that’s practical, televisually appealing, exciting and safe. Mapped out by pairs of flags – “rather like downhill skiing” – each five-minute lap will send drivers out along the beach, returning on bumpier, jumpier inland terrain. “It allows them to go one route or another,” explains Nicolls, who will return in a few weeks with racing driver Timo Scheider and a fast dune buggy to fine-tune the course. “It’s up to them – the shortest distance between two points is not always the quickest.”

Behind the dunes lies Lac Rose, or the Pink Lake. Today, its salty water is rusty grey, but pigmented algae sometimes turns the lagoon a shocking candyfloss hue. For many years, it marked the finish line of another famous – or, more accurately, infamous – off-road race.

If Extreme E promises a greener future

THE RED BULLETIN

CHARLY LOPEZ/SPACESUIT MEDIA, RICHARD FLEURY

Shipping plastic waste to Africa is cheaper than recycling it. Out of sight, out of mind

for motorsports, the bad old days of the Paris-Dakar Rally embodied their grubby excesses. The spectacle of wealthy westerners speeding through impoverished African countries, leaving dust, destruction and deaths in their wake, did little for the sport’s environmental reputation. But it brought visitors and international attention.

Since the Paris-Dakar left Africa in 2009, the local community has felt its loss.

“It was one of the biggest events showcasing Senegal, but when it left people didn’t reinvent the destination,” says Senegalese eco-entrepreneur Stephan Senghor. Pink Lake is no longer a tourist hotspot, and the neighbouring village of Niaga faces “a cocktail of challenges – people are living with the bare minimum here”.

Niaga’s dusty main street is alive with activity and colour, its shops and stalls trading everything from truck parts to traditional dresses, but plastic trash is everywhere; scruffy goats and bony cows graze on it as they wander the roadside. Africa leads the world in its ban on plastic – last year, Senegal prohibited all water sachets and plastic cups – so why is it still so ubiquitous?

One reason is that the continent remains among the developed world’s favourite dumping grounds. Shipping plastic waste to Africa is cheaper than recycling it. Out of sight, out of mind.

Senghor has devoted much of his adult life to cleaning up his homeland. After studying and working in Canada, he came back with an idea to turn plastic waste into building materials. His fix is simple, ingenious and low-tech: filling soft-drinks bottles with compacted plastic waste.

Cemented into walls, these ‘ecobriques’ make strong, long-lasting structures.

Now, with Extreme E’s support, Senghor’s organisation is helping Niaga reinvent itself as a sustainable community or ‘EcoZone’ – a living lab showcasing environmental initiatives while improving lives. Working with schools, Stephan incentivises children by gamifying litter picking. Every ecobrique made can be redeemed for money for community schemes. If successful at the Pink Lake, the project will expand, perhaps into other African countries.

“This is the first time they have a race where a project comes with it,” he says.

“It’s about how can we be side by side, doing stuff together. Everything is possible if we want it to be.”

Extreme E

A

bdou Karim Sall was “born a fisherman” in Senegal’s Saloum Delta, a four-hour drive from Dakar. A physically imposing man with a piratey past, the 55-year-old once kidnapped a Chinese sea captain.

For decades, foreign commercial fishing vessels have looted West African waters.

Each one can sweep 250 tonnes of fish into its nets daily – 50 times what a local boat catches in a year. So Sall boarded one of these mega-trawlers and abducted the captain. He was jailed the next day, but a mob of angry fishermen persuaded police to let him go. The episode made national headlines, forcing the government to negotiate a solution.

“To solve problems, you have to create other problems,” Sall says, matter-offactly. That was 30 years ago. Today, he insists, his swashbuckling days are over: “Sometimes it’s necessary to do bad things. But I was younger, I wouldn’t do it again.” However, he’s still banned from China. “They will never give me a visa,” he laughs, looking distinctly unconcerned.

Sall grew up in Joal, a fishing port responsible for more than a quarter of Senegal’s entire annual catch. From the town’s plastic-strewn beach, he launches a long wooden boat called a pirogue.

According to one origin story, this traditional Senegalese fishing vessel gave the country its name (sunu gaal means ‘our pirogue’ in the West African language Wolof). Its shallow draft is perfect for navigating the estuarine backwaters where the mangroves grow.

It’s hard to overstate the importance of the mangrove ecosystem to both fishing and the environment. The mangrove is the only tree that can grow in salt water.

Its tangled roots are a habitat for crabs and shellfish, and a vital nursery for young fish. Mangrove forests create a buffer zone, protecting the land from the sea while sucking up 10 times as much carbon dioxide as the rainforests. “The mangrove is good for the community and for the Earth,” says Octavio Fleury, scientific director of Oceanium, the nonprofit reforesting Senegal’s swamps with help from Extreme E. When a decade-long drought raised salt levels in the 1970s, large swathes of West Africa’s mangroves died. Senegal alone lost more than 100 million, replaced by lifeless salt flats, empty apart from the tyre tracks of smugglers driving across the delta at low tide from neighbouring Gambia. “It was terrible,” says the Frenchman. “A little change like salinity and all the mangroves can disappear.”

Oceanium pays schoolchildren to collect ‘propagules’ – the mangrove tree’s spear-like buds – and plant them in neat rows across the delta mud at low tide.

“The idea is to make restoration easy,” says Fleury, “but we need the population to be involved, to understand the importance of a healthy environment.”

Led by Senegal’s environment minister Haidar el Ali, Oceanium enlisted 150,000 people from 500 villages, planting 70,000 hectares across Senegal. Last year, for the Extreme E project, they

“The mangrove is good for the community and for the Earth” planted another 63 hectares – roughly 120,000 trees.

While growing up, Sall saw the mangrove forests disappear, but he knew little about their importance. When asked if he’d help plant a million, he replied, “What’s the point?” A decade on, his commitment to the cause is total. Thanks to Sall, more than 500,000 new mangrove trees are growing in the Saloum Delta.

The kids call him ‘Mister Propagule’.

But Mister Propagule was not always Mister Popular. When Sall established the waters around Joal as a governmentbacked Marine Protected Area in 2004, local fishermen hated him. “I was everyone’s enemy,” he says. But now, as president of the Fishermen’s Association of Joal and the Committee of Marine Reserves in West Africa, he’s a formidable champion of both the fishing industry and the environment. “To manage local communities here, you need two sides to your character,” he says. “One that is a fighter, and the other with the knowledge to help them understand.”

Sall benefits from Oceanium’s finances and resources, but his local influence is invaluable. “And his mystical support,” says Fleury with a smile, as the bow of Sall’s pirogue noses through overhanging branches. Senegal is predominantly a Muslim country, but the supernatural poetry of voodoo and gris-gris, spirits and sacrifices remains very much alive.

Deep in the mangroves are sacred sites.

Sall believes the forest genies who live there have always protected his home.

Now is his time to return the favour.

If Extreme E is an attempt to ‘greenwash’ motorsports, it is an extraordinarily elaborate and expensive one. And does it really matter? As its founder will tell you, politics is the art of the possible. It’s quite possible that Extreme E will make a real difference in the fight against climate change. After all, how many sports can claim to get motorsports magnates, climate scientists and mystical eco-pirates all working together to save the planet? extreme-e.com

THE RED BULLETIN

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SHOOTING STARS

Mysterious illuminations in the town of Marfa, Texas, attract curious visitors from around the world. But one photographer used the location to capture a different kind of flying object – the Red Bull Air Force Words NORA O’DONNELL Photography DUSTIN SNIPES

The light fantastic This image is actually 48 photos stitched together. Six cameras each took eight long-exposure shots of the Red Bull Air Force as they jumped from the airplane, went into formation, and finally disappeared behind the mountains. “The result is an abstract light painting with an endless night sky,” says photographer Dustin Snipes.

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Marfa Lights

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ike many a wild adventure, it all started with a crazy idea – in this case, executed by American photographer Dustin Snipes.

“The crazier the idea, the better,” Snipes says. “Because that means it probably hasn’t been done before.”

In the high desert of west Texas, USA, the veil of the Milky Way drapes across a night sky bursting with stars. Near the small town of Marfa, high elevation and a lack of light pollution provide the perfect spot to view such astronomical wonders – and to examine the mysteries of the 66

area. For more than a century, locals have reported strange, pulsing orbs of various hues, commonly known as the Marfa Lights. Whether they’re UFOs or simply atmospheric reflections of headlights or small fires, the fun lies in the speculation.

Which is why Snipes leapt at the opportunity to capture the Red Bull Air Force against this celestial landscape. What if these world-class skydivers embodied this phenomenon and became the Marfa Lights?

The LA-based photographer spent months planning out the concept, weighing up hundreds of variables with a team of experts. “More than any shoot I’ve done, there were so many unknowns,” he says. After scrutinising iconic local

Opposite: To make themselves visible in a Moonless sky, the Red Bull Air Force wrapped themselves in LED lights; they also added pyrotechnics to help show the speed and energy of the team during free fall. This effect makes the skydivers appear like human comets.

THE RED BULLETIN

RED BULL AIR FORCE

Snipes (pictured left, with his team) first travelled to Marfa last September to scout potential locations for his shoot with the Red Bull Air Force. “It took months of planning,” he says. “There were a lot of moving parts.”

Marfa Lights

attractions as potential backdrops, Snipes and the Red Bull Air Force settled on the historic Cibolo Creek Ranch, which spans more than 120sq-km and allows plenty of scope for longdistance shots. Snipes also consulted the International Dark-Sky Association to decipher the best time to capture the Milky Way as it moved across the sky.

But, even after calculating the perfect night-time position, Snipes still had to figure out how to photograph illuminated bodies falling from a height of more than 3,000m with only a few minutes on the clock. The set-up used a total of nine cameras, including six Canon EOS1D X Mark III DSLRs that Snipes mounted to a custom-built base, allowing him to shoot a 180° view.

The final result is otherworldly, but the behind-the-scenes shots on these pages show the monumental effort required of Snipes and the Red Bull Air Force to pull off the feat.

“Whenever I do shoots like these,” Snipes says, “I always think of that JFK quote about going to the Moon; that we didn’t do it because it was easy, but because it was hard. You don’t want to just sit there and do a cakewalk all day.”

Watch the video of the Marfa Lights jump at redbull.com 68

Seeing red Shortly after sunset on November 15, 2020, Snipes prepares his gear for the first of three evening jumps. Red lights are an essential tool for night photography because they prevent the shooter’s eyes from readjusting.

THE RED BULLETIN

RED BULL AIR FORCE, DAN WIX

“We needed more pyro, so we asked the athletes, ‘Can you be on fire any longer?’”

Burning man To achieve a comet-like effect, Snipes needed the skydivers to shoot pyrotechnics for as long as possible. No one on the team baulked at the request.

The trickier part? Locating the landing area in the pitch blackness. The headlights of two pick-up trucks were all that marked the spot.

“There were so many unknowns with this shoot. But you do it because it’s hard to do” Snipes asked the skydivers to experiment during the three jumps, using just the LED lights in some shots and pyrotechnics in others.

“The LED just looked like squiggly lines,” he says. “But the pyro added so much randomness and gave it more of a mysterious look.”

Marfa Lights

Touch down Guided by the two tiny lights, they land safely. “Everything else was surrounded by hills… then pure darkness,” says captain Jon Devore. “It would have ended quite bad if we hadn’t made our landing area.”

Made to order RED BULL AIR FORCE

To capture the Red Bull Air Force with a panoramic view, Snipes built a customised mount for six Canon EOS-1D X Mark III DSLR cameras.

Each took eight different longexposure shots of the jump from start to finish. The mount had to be light enough to travel, but sturdy enough to hold all the equipment.

It took Snipes five days to build.

THE RED BULLETIN

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VENTURE Enhance, equip, and experience your best life

MINGMA TENZI SHERPA

HIGHER STANDARDS Scaling Everest with a totally vegan lifestyle

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VENTURE Travel “I knew I had to climb Everest, but first I had to convince trek leaders that veganism could support the endeavour. If I failed, my diet would be blamed” Kuntal Joisher, vegan climber

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Flying the flag: Joisher on top of Mentok Kangri, a 6,000m peak in Ladakh, India, August 2018 THE RED BULLETIN

TENZIN NORBU, KUNTAL JOISHER

y name is Kuntal Joisher. I’m a mountaineer. I’m also a vegan. I was born 41 years ago in Kharagpur, West Bengal, to a Gujarati family, making me a vegetarian by religion, but in 2002 I converted to veganism for ethical reasons. It seemed a natural step, but on entering the world of climbing I realised there were barriers to overcome, not least the misconception that a vegan lacks the muscle-building protein necessary to become an ultraendurance athlete. Twelve years ago, no one in my family would have believed I’d one day challenge this myth by scaling the world’s highest peak. But then I fell in love with mountaineering by accident.

I grew up in Mumbai, where summer temperatures can soar as high as 40°C, so I’m not predisposed to cold-weather sports. And I’m no adrenalin seeker – I worked as a software engineer, and up until my early thirties I avoided physical exercise; I was 40kg overweight before taking up mountaineering.

Then, in 2009, my wife and I took a trip to the Shimla hill station in northern India. Though poorly equipped, with just trainers on our feet, we trekked up Hatu Peak. At 3,400m, it wasn’t especially high, but for me the ascent was transformative.

Looking across the snow-capped landscape, I found new purpose. From that day on, I spent every spare weekend exploring the Indian Himalayan Region, and my fascination with Everest grew.

In October 2010, I took the notoriously dangerous flight to Nepal’s TenzingHillary Airport, 2,845m above sea level, to admire the great mountain at close range from nearby Mt Pumori [the 7,161mtall peak sometimes called ‘Everest’s daughter’]. As I gazed at Everest, aglow in the setting sun, I knew I had to climb it.

But first I had to convince the trek leaders that veganism could support an endeavour usually fuelled by high-fat,

ALEXANDRA ZAGALSKY

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VENTURE Travel

Cruelty-free climbing What makes a 100-per-cent vegan summit suit Goretex 75D shell – a fabric made from 100-per-cent recycled polyester with a perfluorocarbons-free DWR (durable waterrepellent) coating Plumtech thermal filling – a fluffy synthetic down developed by Save the Duck Six months of development

In the shadow of a giant: camp one on the Nepal side of Everest, April 2016

high-protein meat and dairy products. If I failed, my diet would be blamed.

In 2011, as a practice run, I climbed the 6,153m-high Stok Kangri in the Indian Himalayas. Not wanting to be seen as someone whose diet might make them less dependable in high-risk situations, I asked for the menu plans in advance and made sure the cooks at base camp could adapt every item with little fuss. You need a lot of food at extreme altitudes.

At 5,500m, your body burns through 4,000 calories per day at rest, and above that altitude your appetite diminishes, so most climbers load up on meat and dairy THE RED BULLETIN

at base camp, where you spend four-tofive weeks acclimatising to the lack of oxygen. For vegans, this means triple portions of oats with powdered soya milk, fried potatoes, vegetable curries, bread and pulses, plus as many fatty cashews and nutrition bars as possible.

In 2014, I set out to conquer Everest.

I made it to the Nepalese base camp, but the journey was cut short by a colossal avalanche that killed 16 Sherpas. I came back the next year, but there was the terrible earthquake that devastated Nepal. I was at base camp when the avalanche swept through, covering

everything in snow and debris. I was lucky to make it out alive.

Success came in 2016. And it turns out a plant-based diet is conducive to high-altitude climbing. Most climbers require about four days to ascend from either the Nepalese or Tibetan base camp, and an intake of around 15,000 calories a day. As the nervous system becomes starved of oxygen, it ceases to tell your brain you’re hungry. I’ve repeatedly seen non-vegan climbers struggle to put food in their bodies. But I was eating a lot of carbs and fats, which don’t give you the satiated feeling meat does; consequently 75

Above: Joisher at the summit of Everest, May 2019; below: a view of Nepal’s Ama Dablam

it’s easier to eat. At 8,500m, I like comfort foods, which is no bad thing – at that stage it’s not about protein, vitamins or minerals, just calories. I carry Clif Bars, Oreos and meat-free dehydrated meals in my bag, and pitted dates in my pocket – if you leave the stones in, they freeze.

When climbing the Hillary Step, there are three snow humps to cross before you see the top. There in the distance, my Sherpa guide, Mingma Tenzi, waved to me.

It was so overwhelming, I couldn’t hold back the tears. With a minute’s credit left on my satellite phone, I called home, then

The only way is ethics Joisher’s guide to vegan mountaineering Food People assume non-meat dishes at base camp are vegan, but even oatmeal in Nepal has milk or milk powder added. I always explain to the chefs what veganism means.

Gear What you wear is your choice, so research non-animal alternatives.

Finding the ideal option isn’t always possible, but at least you’ve tried to maintain a vegan mindset.

Transport Group gear is often transported by yak, so ask ahead and try to minimise animal exploitation.

I ensure helicopters and human porters carry as much as possible.

More than veganism Ensure you’ve booked with an expedition agency with a good track record. Everyone, from Sherpas to cooks, should be paid a fair wage and have proper insurance cover. These people risk their lives for climbers.

Waste management Separating organic waste from plastic and tins has become more widespread, but a lot of trash is still left at high altitudes.

Everything should be brought back to base camp for recycling.

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I sat down to soak in the view from the top.

I’ll never forget those 20 minutes. The only feeling that compares is the birth of my daughter. It was a huge achievement for me as a mountaineer, but it also shone a positive light on veganism.

Even with a population of more than 20 million, no one from Mumbai had ever climbed Everest, so I was given a hero’s welcome. But I found it hard to celebrate as a true vegan. Before the expedition, I’d looked tirelessly for a featherless suit, but animal-free gear that provides highthermal insulation proved impossible to source, so I completed my 2016 ascent in a cruelty-free feather-down suit.

Ultimately, it clashed with my ethical beliefs. I knew I had to go again and I had to find a company willing to make me a vegan suit, but the market was niche.

To my surprise, a simple Facebook request was answered by Save the Duck, an Italian sustainable-clothing brand whose products are 100-per-cent animal-free. For me and Mingma, they designed a high-performance vegan suit – an industry first – that would withstand temperatures of -50°C and wind speeds of up to 100kph.

We received our suits in April 2018 and decided to test them out on Lhotse [the world’s fourth-highest mountain]. Its peak is just 300m below Everest’s, but it’s a lesser-known mountain, so my thinking was that if I didn’t make it back, at least it wouldn’t make the news headlines.

We reached the summit on May 15, 2018 and, if anything, our suits were too warm.

When the sun beams off the snow, you get hot in so much padding. I asked Save the Duck to make modifications: zippers at the top, and more inside pockets for carrying essentials, because body heat stops your tech from powering off.

This time, I climbed Everest’s North Face from Tibet, which is considered a more technical route because the conditions are harsher. I summited on May 23, 2019, at 5.30am, standing proud in my bright yellow, vegan Save The Duck suit, all my toes and fingers intact, and without so much as sunburn. Today, I’m proud to say I’m the first recorded vegan to summit Everest. But what I’d love even more is to normalise vegan mountaineering. It’s like Sir Edmund Hillary said: “It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.” If I can make a positive, tangible difference in someone’s life, that’s the legacy I want to leave. Everything else is secondary.

Follow Kuntal Joisher’s expedition blog at kuntaljoisher.com THE RED BULLETIN

MINGMA TENZI SHERPA, KUNTAL JOISHER

VENTURE Travel

VENTURE Fitness Train functionally

“We focus on exercises that are specific to our needs. If you come to our gym, you’ll see very few boys squatting and deadlifting. We do an exercise called a safety-bar hand-supported split squat, which lowers the boys into a position they’d be in at the bottom of the tackle when carrying the ball.”

Keep it interesting

“In the lead-up to the 2019 World Cup camp, we wanted to offer the players some variety, so we set up CrossFitstyle exercises. We had lots of different bits of gear, and it was a mental challenge as well as a physical one. When you have a lot of training volume, especially in big tournaments, it’s good to give the boys something a bit different.”

A healthy mind is key

“Game training is the biggest mental challenge the boys will face, so it’s important to focus on psychological recovery, too. On a recovery day, we go through a 40-minute breathing protocol to help with the internal stresses of training.”

BUILD

The ultimate rugby player Becoming a rugby pro takes more than brawn and ball skills.

It requires throwing tradition in the bin and innovating hard

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“Training is not as straightforward as it used to be”

innovation is where the team can gain even more ground.

“The game is so hard and you have to train at such a high level,” Clarke says. “I’ve always thought we’ve limited players with what we haven’t allowed them to do.” This, then, is his guide to rebuilding an inventive, world-class team…

Go harder

“People talk about increasing training workload 10 per cent each week. During our 2019 World Cup cycle, we increased by 50-70 per cent some weeks, and it got the boys to a point where they could endure so much. They were so fit. That was one of the reasons we did so well in the World Cup.”

Try out England Rugby’s ‘Get Fit for Rugby’ training programme, designed by the strength and conditioning team, at englandrugby.com THE RED BULLETIN

TOM WARD

decades. When he stopped playing, in 2014, Clarke took a masters in sports science.

In 2018, he joined the strength and conditioning team at England Rugby, then last year he became its head coach.

Under Clarke’s training, England achieved its best result in 12 years at the 2019 World Cup, coming second to South Africa, with players Owen Farrell and George Ford among the top 10 try-scorers.

The results were good, but, for Clarke, eschewing tradition for

“We have a bespoke, individual outlook to recovery.

The forwards – the engine room of the team – do so much work throughout the week, but we actually give them extra to do on their recovery day. Rather than that perfect passive recovery – that bath-and-massage day – we do quite an active one. It’s about pushing the boundaries of what traditionalists would say a recovery day should be.

By doing so, the players [including England ace Jack Nowell, pictured] understand the demands that will be put on them on game day.”

PHILIP PLATZER/RED BULL CONTENT POOL

The ‘rugger bod’ has changed – measurably – over the years.

A 2018 study by researchers at Imperial College London found that, between 1955 and 2015, the average body mass of a male rugby union pro grew from 84.8kg to 105.4kg.

Part of this is down to the game’s status – when rugby turned professional, in 1995, players were able to dedicate more time and money to their fitness. But it’s their methods that have seen the real gains.

“Training is not as straightforward as it used to be,” says Jon Clarke, head of strength and conditioning at England Rugby. He should know – the 41-year-old was a rugby league pro for two

Tailor your training

VENTURE Equipment

EXERCISE

Ship shape

TIM KENT, WATERROWER NOHRD

Set sail for fitness by getting into the daily grind

As any yacht crew will tell you, the most physically taxing job is ‘grinder’ – the person who must furiously winch the sails. The F50 – the near-levitating catamaran of extreme race series SailGP – surpasses 50 knots (93kph), making it the fastest-ever sail racer, and that’s mostly down to the upper-body exertion of its two grinders. As Matt Gotrel, grinder for the Great Britain SailGP Team, says, “It took me six months to get to the level where I was training properly.” And he won a gold for rowing at Rio 2016.

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The NOHrD WaterGrinder might have helped him. This solid-wood fitness device replicates a grinder’s regime, with hand winches that push a paddle through a water tank (think cycling with your upper body); the harder you crank, the greater the water resistance and cardiovascular workout. A detachable seat is included, and a touchscreen displays speed, heart rate, time, distance and wattage – there’s even a virtual race mode. All that’s missing is the spray of saltwater and the seasickness. waterrower.co.uk 79

VENTURE Equipment SWIM

Fluid motion Cold-water swimming boosts your immune system, endorphins and circulation, but be prepared...

“Cold water is my Achilles heel,” says Dan Jones. Surprising words from the 23-year-old Welshman, considering he’s a two-time winner of Neptune Steps – the swim-race in Glasgow’s Forth and Clyde Canal that also requires scaling seven locks and enduring winter temperatures.

“The first year I did it was two weeks after the ‘Beast from the East’ [in March 2019] and the water was 2°C. I didn’t do any prior open-water swimming. I’d tried on my wetsuit in a 27°C pool, so it was a shock.”

Jones is now much wiser about coldwater swim prep. “Buy a wetsuit between 3-5mm thick. Swim gloves and socks, too.

There are wetsuit hats that cover your chin, but I find they restrict breathing, so I wear two regular silicone swimming hats.”

That’s not the only thing Jones wears two of: “At that first Neptune Steps, a lot of triathletes put on their race suit under their wetsuit. I was like, ‘I haven’t got one.’ I train in a pair of Speedos, so I just doubled up on those.”

Dan Jones is a member of the Welsh national swimming squad and a GoPro ambassador; Instagram: @danjones199

“The cold isn’t so bad on the eyes, but your goggles will fog up. Spit into them – it’ll match your body temperature and stop them fogging”

“When open-water swimming, it can be daunting not being able to see that far ahead, or how deep the water is. Always go in a group so there’s somebody there in case of currents or should you veer off”

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DAVID EDWARDS

Annette wears SPEEDO Fastskin Xenon Fullsuit and Futura Biofuse Flexiseal goggles, speedo.com; VIVOBAREFOOT Esc Tempest swim-run shoes, vivobarefoot.com; ABOVE BELOW RuckRaft, which includes a drybag for your rucksack, abovebelow.sc THE RED BULLETIN

VENTURE Equipment “There are wetsuits of different thicknesses.

My Neptune Steps one is 5mm – the kind people wear for surfing.

The first year I was there, [Great British Swim endurance athlete] Ross Edgley did it too, and because his arms are so big he was in a tank-top wetsuit. He was bright red because the water was so cold” Robbie wears SPEEDO Fastskin Xenon Fullsuit, made using Y39 (the world’s most buoyant foam), and Hydropulse goggles with anti-fog and 100-percent UV protection, speedo.com; TEVA Terra Fi 5 Universal sandals, teva-eu.com; TEKRASPORT TekraPod open-water safety device (shown inflated, below), tekrasport.com Models: ANNETTE REGIS and ROBBIE LUBOYA @ W Model Management

“When the water is so cold, you feel it even less, because the blood’s trying to get back into your core.

You can’t feel your hands and feet” THE RED BULLETIN

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RIDE

Seats of power When cycling, there are three contact points: hands, feet and bottom. Neglect the last of these at your peril 82

Every human’s butt is as unique as their fingerprint. You wouldn’t wear a glove that didn’t fit, so pick the best saddle for your cycling discipline, for your terrain, and for your backside.

This page, clockwise from top: SPANK Oozy 280, spank-ind.com; SPECIALIZED Women’s Power Pro, specialized. com; ERGON SM Enduro Pro Titanium

Men, ergonbike.com; SUPACAZ Ignite Ti, supacaz.com; TIOGA Undercover Stratum, tiogausa.com; FIZIK Antares Versus Evo 00 Adaptive, fizik.com; WTB SL8, wtb.com; BROOKS Cambium C17, brooksengland.com; SDG Radar Ti-Alloy, sdgcomponents.com.

Opposite, from top: GENETIC STV Sportif, geneticbikes.com; FABRIC Tri Flat Pro,

fabric.cc; GUSSET R-Series, gussetcomponents.com; SYNCROS Belcarra R 1.0, syncros.com; SELLE SAN MARCO GND Supercomfort Racing Wide, selle sanmarco.it; DMR 25 Year, dmrbikes.com; SELLE ITALIA SLR C59, selleitalia.com; FABRIC Cell Elite Radius, fabric.cc; PROLOGO Scratch M5 PAS CPC, prologo.it THE RED BULLETIN

TIM KENT

VENTURE Equipment

VENTURE Equipment

THE RED BULLETIN

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WEAR

Inverse logic Vans UltraRange EXO Hi MTE 84

Few soles are more iconic than Vans’ ‘waffle’ design.

It was created by 1966 by California resident Paul Van Doren, who set out to make an affordable deck shoe with a high-quality rubber ‘sticky’ sole. This feature made Vans the footwear of choice for ’70s skate pioneers the Z-Boys, and for generations of board-riders ever since. Though super-grippy on a skateboard, the sole is less practical in the elements, so when Vans designed this outdoor shoe it had to rethink its most famous feature. The answer: flip the waffle. With its protruding lugs, the new sole won’t slip on any surface – skateboards included. vans.co.uk THE RED BULLETIN

TIM KENT

VENTURE Equipment

VENTURE Gaming

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ike many of us, Lee Sang-hyeok has spent much of the past year living and working in the same space as his housemates. He’s also played a lot of video games. The difference is, that’s his job.

The 24-year-old South Korean – gaming handle: Faker – is considered to be the greatestever League of Legends player, and his housemates are pro esports team SK Telecom T1.

League of Legends (LoL) is a multiplayer online battle arena game (MOBA) – a mix of combat, magic, skill and strategy where two teams of five move their ‘champions’ around a battlefield to destroy the opposition’s base (‘Nexus’) and defend their own. It’s also one of the world’s biggest esports. More than 100 million fans saw the 2019 World Championships – more than that year’s Super Bowl. Tickets to the Paris final resold for up to £400, and, at its peak, 44 million viewers watched the livestream to see who’d win the $1.1m (£800,000) prize.

Faker has been a pro since 2013, earning around almost £1m in prize money on top of an estimated £1.8m annual salary with SKT T1. He can also boast 3.1 million Twitch subscribers, and is one of only two players to have won the World Championship three times (2013, 2015 and 2016).

But this kind of success takes hard graft, and Faker lives and trains daily at the team’s Seoul ‘gaming house’. What can his extreme work-from-home lifestyle teach the rest of us?

GETTY IMAGES

JOE ELLISON

Manage your time

Between competitions, Faker’s day includes two three-hour gaming sessions (1pm to 4pm and 7pm to 10pm). “I train according to the schedule of the team,” he says. “Through self-management, I try to stay healthy both physically and mentally, including getting enough sleep.” He also keeps work and living spaces distinct: “The practice room THE RED BULLETIN

LIVE

Home advantage

Still getting to grips with the ‘work-from-home’ life? Take some tips from an esports player who’s been at it for seven years… is close but separate to the player house. We focus best when we work in there.”

Come together

In LoL, the battlefield between the rival bases consists of three lanes (top, middle and bottom) surrounded by jungle.

Faker’s role is ‘mid-laner’ – a central tactical position. He’s also often the ‘shotcaller’ – the team member who decides which targets to attack. This team ethic is something he also brings to the household.

“One of my strengths is understanding not only my

“Being competitive can be helpful for motivation”

own play but the situation of the overall team,” Faker says, stressing the importance of keeping competitiveness out of their offline lives. “Like they say, there’s no ‘i’ in team.”

Learn to chill

LoL contests are intense and, at Faker’s level, the stakes and stresses get high. “I’m used to playing under pressure, and I’ve developed ways to keep calm,” he says. “I meditate before a game to clear my mind of anything going on around me. I also prepare with stretching.” However, his ultimate wellbeing weapon is the humble house plant.

“I put them in visible places to remind me to water them,” he explains. “They ease my eyes and keep my mind calm.

And the colour green has a calming effect.”

Enjoy yourself

Keeping your spirits up can be tough in a high-stress job; even more so when you spend every hour with workmates.

“Being competitive can be helpful for motivation,” says Faker, “but it’s more valuable to focus on ways I can be satisfied. I used to go through a slump when I lost, but now I take failure as a learning process and concentrate on moving forward. Whether it’s a League game or just with friends, I find fun when I play.”

Follow Faker on his Twitch channel: twitch.tv/faker.

League of Legends is available for Windows, and LoL: Wild Rifts is on Android and iOS 85

VENTURE Equipment

Gear and brands that help you look after the planet you’re exploring Words LOU BOYD and TOM GUISE

Where did the inspiration come from?

We had wanted start our own brand, but until now the time was never right.

It was important to be part of a product we’re passionate about. As a category, flip flops had gone stale; there wasn’t really anything out there.

Flipping the narrative FoamLife What happens when three watersports enthusiasts band together to disrupt the industry they’ve worked in for so long?

Pro windsurfer and sales specialist Timo Mullen, sports marketeer Daniel Macaulay and design director Karl Read are longtime friends and colleagues, having worked in adventure sports for years. Over lockdown, they decided the time had come to launch their own empire: a new flip-flop brand that aims to inject a little maverick spirit into the shoe trade while helping the planet (pictured above: the Mully flip flop).

Here, Read explains why it’s important to treat sustainability as a long-term promise, rather than a fleeting trend…

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How eco-friendly are your shoes?

For year one, we have 25 flip flops in the range, and the majority are made from recycled foam. The toe post uses recycled plastic bottles, and the upper part of the strap is hemp canvas – a really sustainable material – lined with 100 per cent organic cotton. Even the label is made from the same canvas.

What about the packaging?

The flip flops will be hung on a recycledcard hanger and the swing tag made from recycled card attached by paper string. And we’ll use biodegradable bags made from starch. We’re trying to be entirely plastic-free in our packaging.

Is that important to you as a brand?

We’re trying to do everything possible, but I wouldn’t say we’re a ‘sustainable brand’. We don’t want to ‘greenwash’ people and put ourselves out there as this brand that’s saving the day.

Comfort and quality are important to us; sustainability is something we’ll keep building on. thefoamlife.com

Pushing further ADIDAS FIVE TEN Leading the pace with its running, climbing and MTB shoes, Adidas’ Five Ten range is part of the company’s larger goal to reduce its virgin polyester usage to zero by 2024. Its high-performance Primeblue material uses Parley Ocean Plastic – upcycled waste intercepted on shorelines.

Pictured opposite, top: Adidas Five Ten Freerider Pro Primeblue; adidas.co.uk

Sole survivors ALLBIRDS In 2018, this NZ footwear brand became a billion-dollar company – proof that caring for the planet can be great for your bottom line.

Its SweetFoam material is made from recycled sugarcane – a plant that removes carbon from the atmosphere – and its biomass powers the mill and fertilises future crops. Allbirds even made the formulation patent-free, so countless copycats can use it, too. Pictured, middle: Allbirds Tree Dasher; allbirds.com

The bare minimum VIVOBAREFOOT Vivobarefoot’s wide, thin, flexible soles utilise the biomechanics of barefoot running, promoting the foot’s natural strength, movement and regenerative capabilities, and connecting us closer to the earth. This ethos stretches to the British firm’s manufacture, too, employing organic cotton and recycled materials and reducing waste.

Pictured, bottom: Vivobarefoot Primus Lite III; vivobarefoot.com THE RED BULLETIN

FOAMLIFE, ADIDAS/FIVE TEN/FRASER BRITTON, ALLBIRDS, VIVOBAREFOOT

Wear it better

Carbon footprints Shoes taking climatepositive strides

VENTURE Equipment

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VENTURE Equipment

The mantra of ‘waste not, want not’ is fundamental to Finisterre

Clockwise from top: FINISTERRE Packaway Rucksack; PATAGONIA Arbor Roll Top Pack; GROUNDTRUTH RIKR 24L Backpack

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VENTURE Equipment

Lighten the load Taking the weight off Earth’s resources The reseller

FINISTERRE, PATAGONIA, GROUNDTRUTH, MOUNTAIN HARDWEAR

PATAGONIA The California-based company is committed to using recycled fabrics and ethical manufacture; last Black Friday, it campaigned against ‘fast-fashion’ practices that foster some of the world’s lowest paid workers and create a staggering excess of waste (according to a 2017 report, on average a whole bin lorry’s worth of textiles is incinerated or sent to landfill every second). Part of the solution is its Worn Wear initiative, which sends trucks on the road to mend people’s Patagonia garments for free.

Now online in the US, Worn Wear also accepts items sent in for repair; there’s also the option to trade items in – rewarded with a gift card – for refurbishment and resale. For items beyond repair, The ReCrafted line turns the fabric into new and unique clothes and bags. wornwear. patagonia.com

The resourceful FINISTERRE When Deborah Luffman started working in fashion in 2004, she was appalled by the amount of THE RED BULLETIN

waste produced by major highstreet brands. After quitting her job with a London-based retailer in 2008, she joined the relatively new Cornish brand Finisterre, promising to create clothing that’s as sustainable as it is fashionable. More than a decade on, her philosophy can be felt in every corner of the business, including the Fabric Use-Up Project, which creates accessories from the leftover material in Finisterre’s factory, including high-quality cuts from its insulation and waterproof jackets. Under Luffman’s direction, the mantra of ‘waste not, want not’ is fundamental to the brand. finisterre.com

The repurposer GROUNDTRUTH GLOBAL Documentary makers Sophia and Georgia Scott know how to deliver important messages.

The British siblings have spent the last decade searching for underrepresented stories to shine a light on – a journey that has taken them from Syria to Bosnia and Herzegovina to the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Now – alongside sister Nina, a textiles specialist – they have brought the same approach to their company Groundtruth Global, which makes bags and accessories from 100-per-centrecycled plastic waste. The entire manufacturing process has been made as transparent as possible, with plastic sourced from a recycling plant in Jakarta, made into fabric at a specialist textile mill in Taiwan, then manufactured by an Indonesian family-run business. The brand has already removed more than 480,000 plastic bottles from the environment, repurposing them for its expedition-ready gear. groundtruth.global

On average, a whole bin lorry’s worth of textiles is incinerated or sent to landfill every second

Sleep soundly MOUNTAIN HARDWEAR LAMINA ECO AF Taking an almost-white sleeping bag on a muddy camping trip seems ill-advised, but – for the planet’s sake – it could be one of the wisest things you do. The shell, lining, insulation, trims and ripstop of the Lamina Eco AF are made from recycled materials, but it’s the lack of colour – or, to be specific, dye – that makes the sleeping bag even more sustainable, vastly reducing the water used in its manufacture. mountainhardwear.eu 89

VENTURE Equipment

Cornish eyewear brand Waterhaul is reducing marine waste by making its frames from 100-per-cent reclaimed fishing-net plastic

Brighter outlook Eco sunglasses, designed for endless summers YUMA LABS When using the word circular, this Belgian eyewear brand is talking about more than lens design – its frames are made from recycled plastic waste. At the end of their life, return the spectacles so they can be recycled again, putting a halt to virgin plastic. yuma-labs.com

Cool beans NEUBAU Most glasses frames are made from highly polluting acetate. Not these. Instead, they use a bio-based polymer from the oil of castor beans sustainably farmed in India. It’s nontoxic, hypoallergenic and durable, yet biodegradable – and, better still, 30-percent lighter than acetate. neubau-eyewear.com

Gift of sight PALA WATERHAUL also sells this Recycled Ocean Plastic Litter Picker on its site, allowing you to help clear shorelines of polluting plastic waste

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The recycled and bioacetate glasses made by this Brighton-based company do more than improve your vision.

Pala works with the charity Vision Aid Overseas to help deliver eye tests and glasses to developing countries including Zambia, Ghana, Sierra Leone and Ethiopia. palaeyewear.com

Clear perspective FRESHFORPANDAS Many eyewear brands apply the term ‘sustainable’ to frames containing just 20-percent recycled material, but this British company thinks that’s not enough.

So, FreshForPandas uses bamboo – the world’s most renewable material – alongside wood to create truly sustainable glasses. freshforpandas.com

Sea view WATERHAUL More than 640,000 tonnes of fishing nets are lost every year, polluting seas and damaging marine life.

This Cornish eyewear brand is helping to reduce that waste by making its frames from 100-per-cent reclaimed fishing-net plastic. waterhaul.co THE RED BULLETIN

WATERHAUL LTD, JOHN PRITCHARD, NEUBAU EYEWEAR, YUMALABS, FRESH FOR PANDAS

360 vision

VENTURE Equipment

From top: PALA Nyota; FRESHFORPANDAS Atticus; NEUBAU Lotte & Hans; YUMA LABS Lazlo; WATERHAUL Harlyn THE RED BULLETIN

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VENTURE Equipment

Respect the ocean If you love the sea, you need to protect it

Left: LIB-TECH Lost Hydra surfboard; below: PICTURE Equation FZ 4/3 wetsuit

Board of ethics If there’s such a thing as an extreme-sports polymath, it’s Mike Olson – surfer, skater, snowboarder, sort of scientist, and head of R&D at Mervin. He’s been building his own boards since school, then redefining their potential – and their environmental impact – since co-founding his company in 1977. “I wanted to live to 100 years old and realised I’d need to find new health-conscious ways to build boards,” Olson once said of his passion. In contrast to the harmony with the sea that surfing instils in surfers, the boards themselves are, in most cases, bad for people and the planet. The polyurethane foam widely used is toxic, as is its resin coating, which, when sanded, gives off lung-damaging particles. Plus, they’re nonbiodegradable. Not so with Mervin’s boards, like this one (pictured) made by its Lib-Tech label. Its up-to-50-per-centrecycled foam core is made using no ozone-depleting agents, the resin isn’t hazardous, and no sanding is employed, plus all off-cuts are recycled to make future boards. And the factory in Washington State is hydroelectric. Most crucially, the end result is more durable than polyurethane, which means fewer broken boards in landfill or lost at sea. mervin.com

World-friendly wetsuits PICTURE ORGANIC CLOTHING Neoprene is an amazing material. Invented in 1930, this synthetic rubber is flexible, 92

durable, and even more water resistant than its natural counterpart – one reason why it’s the most commonly used wetsuit material. But it’s also terrible for the environment.

Traditionally made from a petroleum extract, it’s highly polluting, and the chemical process involved in its synthesis is energy-intensive. Plus, neoprene is rarely recycled.

Picture has been in business since 2008, but the French ethical sportswear company refused to make wetsuits until

it was possible to do so in an environmentally sound way.

That finally happened in 2017 with its NaturalPrene, made from 85-per-cent natural rubber and 15-per-cent petroleum-free synthetic rubber. Then, in 2019, Picture developed EicoPrene, made using limestone, recycled tyres and zero fossil fuels. The wetsuit here is an 80-per-cent NaturalPrene/EicoPrene mix, its lining is recycled plastic (from around 45 used bottles), and the glue is water-based.

But there is a catch: it’s more expensive to make and therefore to sell. The company’s profit margins may be smaller, but it’s a small price to pay to help the world breathe easier. picture-organic-clothing.com THE RED BULLETIN

MERVIN MANUFACTURING MEDIA, RIBLANC

MERVIN MANUFACTURING

VENTURE Equipment up the North Sea, and more.

“We believe the world would be a better place if more people stood up and did the right thing,” says Burbank. Proof that actions speak louder than words. keenfootwear.com

Right: KEEN’s ‘Better Takes Action’ boat tour in Amsterdam retrieves litter from waterways; below: Team DAKINE surfers tackle Hawaii’s infamous Jaws break

Community actors DAKINE

Active activism Working out for a better world Boots on the ground

KEEN EUROPE, DAKINE/ALBEE LAYER

KEEN FOOTWEAR Plenty of brands talk loudly about good causes, but few back it up with as much vigour as this Portland-based footwear company, which launched in 2003 with the message ‘Better Takes Action’. Over an 18-year lifespan, Keen has donated almost £14 million to non-profit organisations, but where the brand really shines is in its rapid response to crisis. During the 2020 Australian bushfires, it donated more than 3,000 pairs of work boots to firefighters; also last year, Keen provided 400 pairs of shoes for refugees in tented settlements in Jordan, in support of the Everyday Refugees Foundation’s Beat the Cold campaign. However, it was when the coronavirus pandemic broke out that the company’s commitment really came to the fore. “The team felt compelled to do something personal for their community,” says Erik Burbank, vice president of Keen Effect, the company’s social and environmental advocacy group.

“The Together We Can Help THE RED BULLETIN

Keen gave away 100,000 pairs of shoes to help those fighting the COVID crisis

The world of action sports is a family bonded by a love of the land and sea. Dakine is a brand that innately understands this.

Through tangible endeavours such as campaigning for trail maintenance at the Trek Dirt Series mountain-bike camps, and working with non-profit Camber Outdoors for a more inclusive active-outdoors industry, Dakine uses its platform to build and support communities. Working for the past five years with the Surfrider Foundation – which fights to reduce ocean waste and promote beach access for all – Dakine has run beach cleanups and held classes on the effects of plastic pollution. In the political space, it recently worked to get environmental policies heard in the 2020 US election, and provided a social media toolkit to share those policies in the run-up to election day. dakine.com

initiative allowed people to nominate those they felt most needed a new pair of shoes at this difficult time. In less than a week, we gave away 100,000 pairs of shoes across the world to help those fighting the crisis.” These initiatives would be more than enough to satisfy most consciences, but in the past 18 months Keen has also worked with The Conservation Alliance to help pass the Great Outdoors Act, fought to protect US wild rivers, worked to clean 93

VENTURE Equipment Below, from top: ICEBREAKER Merino 260 Tech top; SMARTWOOL Merino 150 Unisex top; MONS ROYALE Icon T-shirt

Happiness for a Merino sheep means dwelling in extreme climates, something the hills of New Zealand has in abundance.

Temperatures can range from sweltering to freezing, and the Merino’s coat has evolved perfectly to accommodate that.

Thinner and lighter than ordinary wool fibres, Merino is super-soft, non-itchy and has an exceptional warmth-to-weight ratio, yet is breathable and moisture absorbent, staying warm and dry in the cold, and cool in hot weather. It also traps and effectively neutralises odour molecules. And, being natural, Merino uses less energy to manufacture, is biodegradable, and requires less washing than synthetic fabrics, which release plastic microfibres into the water supply. Proof that performance and sustainability can co-exist as easily as humans and sheep. discoverzq.com

Travelling light MONS ROYALE

ZQ MERINO

Animal magic Respecting the species we share this world with 94

The woollen coat of the ZQ Merino sheep may be an offwhite colour, but it’s also green.

The world’s most ethical wool is farmed under the Five Freedoms charter, ensuring these New Zealand sheep live free from hunger, pain, discomfort, injury and environmental constraint.

Roaming wild, they’re never livetransported or kept in feed lots, never exposed to GMOs, and mulesing (the controversial practice of removing woolbearing skin from around the buttocks to preempt infections) is banned. Only accredited farmers who meet these standards can farm ZQ Merinos.

The result is a mutually beneficial relationship where the sheep enjoy happy and fulfilling lives and we have access to an incredible highperformance natural fibre.

Ahead of the herd ICE BREAKER One of the world’s first adopters of ZQ Merino, founded in 1995

by NZ’s Jeremy Moon with just NZ$25,000 (around £13,000).

Today, this leading outdoorwear brand works with a strong community of farmers and follows fairtrade factory practices. icebreaker.com

Sheer passion SMARTWOOL The ethos of this US firm is that for people to appreciate and respect nature, you first need them to get out into it.

Its garments – from coats to base layers and socks – make use of recycled wool to further minimise the impact on Earth’s resources. smartwool.co.uk THE RED BULLETIN

ALAMY, ICEBREAKER/TOM POWELL, SMARTWOOL

The golden fleece

Founded by NZ pro freeskier Hamish Acland in 2009 – primarily to create versatile woolly underwear that meant less packing for trips – Mons Royale’s range has expanded to include some of the world’s most stylish and comfortable base layers. monsroyale.com

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March onwards

THE CRYSTAL MAZE LIVE EXPERIENCE, MATCHSTICK PRODUCTIONS, DAVE MACKISON/RED BULL CONTENT POOL

THE CRYSTAL MAZE: DOME FROM HOME

The past year has felt not unlike an escape room – trapped indoors, wondering when and how we’ll ever get out. That, and a seemingly endless rotation of Zoom chats.

Entertainment that combines the two might seem like the last thing you need right now. But you’d be wrong. The Crystal Maze – the immersive experience based on the long-running TV show – has closed the doors of its London and Manchester venues during lockdown. But thinking outside the box is kind of their speciality. So this 90-minute virtual version allows you and a team of friends or work colleagues to get together on a Zoom call, together with a live ‘Maze Master’ host to guide you, and use your combined wits and savvy to tackle 16 puzzles in the Maze’s famous four zones, plus the token-filled dome at the end.

Team (and sanity) building at its best. the-crystal-maze.com

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9 March onwards HUCK YEAH! In skiing parlance, to ‘huck’ is to take a great leap into the unknown. The pro freeskiers in this film do just that as they tackle some of the world’s wildest backcountry slopes. It can’t have been easy to make a feel-good ski flick in 2020, but Eric Hjorleifson, Sam Kuch, Bobby Brown, international female collective The Blondes and a host of other powder fanatics remind us why the outdoors are so important to the soul. redbull.com

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March onwards DESIGN AND CONQUER Matt Jones has really embraced the WFH life. Last summer, the 26-year-old mountain biker spent turning his garden into an epic dirt track. Now, in this fourpart series, he seeks the help of fellow pro bike legends Kriss Kyle, Gee Atherton and Kye Forte, in a quest to master three neverbefore-achieved tricks. redbull.com

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THE RED BULLETIN United Kingdom, ISSN 2308-5894 Editor Ruth McLeod Associate Editor Tom Guise Chief Sub-Editor Davydd Chong Publishing Manager Ollie Stretton Advertising Sales Mark Bishop, mark.bishop@redbull.com Fabienne Peters, fabienne.peters@redbull.com Printed by Quad/Graphics Europe Sp. z o.o., Pułtuska 120, 07-200 Wyszków, Poland UK Office Seven Dials Warehouse, 42-56 Earlham Street, London WC2H 9LA Tel: +44 (0) 20 3117 2000 Subscribe getredbulletin.com Enquiries or orders to: subs@uk. redbulletin.com. Back issues available to purchase at: getredbulletin.com.

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THE RED BULLETIN France, ISSN 2225-4722 Editor Pierre-Henri Camy Country Coordinator Christine Vitel Country Project M ­ anagement Youri Cviklinski Contributors, Translators and Proofreaders Étienne Bonamy, Frédéric & Susanne Fortas, Suzanne ­Kříženecký, Claire ­Schieffer, Jean-Pascal Vachon, Gwendolyn de Vries

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Also available across the UK at airports, universities, and selected supermarkets and retail stores.

Read more at theredbulletin.com LORENZ HOLDER/RED BULL CONTENT POOL

Funnel vision At 360m, the chimney of Slovenia’s Trbovlje Power Station is Europe’s highest, and – as two fearless freeclimbers can now attest – is also home to the world’s tallest artificial multi-pitch climbing route. With the Tokyo Olympics delayed, becoming the first to scale this lofty structure was exactly the kind of challenge gold-medal hope Janja Garnbret (pictured nearing the top in January this year) and fellow Slovenian Domen Škofic needed. You could say the odds of victory at the next Games – when they happen – are now stacked in the duo’s favour.

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