The_Red_Bulletin_0611_ROI

Ludwig Aigner / Dallas Friday / Tom Hanks / Bon Iver / Raphael Saadiq / Max Stöckl / Summer Festival Guide

a beyond the ordinary magazine

hit for six

june 2011

drawing vroom Designing the world’s best F1 car by hand

splash photography one man’s 40-year underwater odyssey

mark ronson The making of pop music’s kingmaker

kevin o'brien Ireland’s talisman on beating England, being snubbed and the future of Irish cricket

EXCLUSIVE on a bike at 102mph DOwn a volcano!

Bullhorn

Wheeling in the fears …Remember the joy of the first time you swung a leg over a two-wheeler, pointed it down the drive, let go the brakes and went “Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!”?

It’s one of those never-to-be-forgotten ‘first times’ that might come to define a significant portion of the rest of your life, depending on the outcome of that early, intrepid, adventure – zoom or doom. For those who fall off, in one of those kiddie-comedy tumbles that look so spectacular, but usually end up with little more hurt than pride, it might be the end of any future speed attempts.

But for those who stay on, enjoy it, try again and learn to go faster, who knows what the future might hold?

Hold on tight: ‘Mad’ Max Stöckl makes his boneConsider the example of Max Stöckl, shaking descent down Nicaragua’s volcanic Cerro the downhill mountain bike speed Negro mountainside. See page 48 supremo we feature in this issue. Here’s a man who once would have needed a steadying paternal hand to stay upright on his scooter, yet 30-or-so years later, he’s crazy-brave-skilled enough to hang on as he tops 102mph down the side of a volcano.

Pause a second and think about what that might feel like. It’s way faster than any road speed limit; faster, too, than many would dare to drive, legally or otherwise.

So it’s ton-up speeding with only a full-body Spandex skin suit for protection. Even a hint of a speed-shimmy would spell disaster. And as for slowing down with the brakes, forget it. Once this downhill streak has begun, the only way out is to guts it till the end and allow the levelling off of the volcano to decrease your speed.

A record attempt such as this is a long, long way from any tentative first spin down Granny’s drive. But anyone who has ever ridden a bike will have no difficulty appreciating the sheer laugh-in-the-face-of-danger ballsiness of Stöckl’s adventure.

Mad Max, we salute you.

Cover Photography: andreas ehrensberger

Your editorial team

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CONTENTS

WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF RED BULL

Inside your all-action Red Bulletin this month

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Bullevard 14 HERE IS THE NEWS Recent history and crystal balls 17 WHERE’S YOUR HEAD AT? Tom Hanks, the man whose career, it might be said, is “like a box of chocolates” 18 PLANNINGTOROCK A prosthetic nose on stage? Like, obviously 20 KIT BAG Ah, the joy of six. Cylinders, that is…

22 WINNING FORMULA The life-saving role of the Eskimo roll 24 BON IVER The beautiful, brooding tunes of Wisconsin recluse Justin Vernon 25 ME AND MY BODY Wakeboarding wunderkind Dallas Friday 27 LUCKY NUMBERS There’s more to Wimbledon than 15-all

Action

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28 UNDERWATER WORLD The remarkable photographic portfolio of a modern-day Man from Atlantis 40 RAPHAEL SAADIQ Masterclass in reinvention from soul guru 46 ‘MAD’ MAX STÖCKL Mere hills aren’t enough for this MTB speed-freak. He rides down volcanoes 52 FORT WILLIAM On its 10th anniversary, we ask demons of downhill what makes Fort Bill mega 54 WHEN NEWEY MET BAYLEY Columnist Stephen Bayley in conversation with F1 design guru Adrian Newey 60 MARK ONG He’s the man sneakerheads refer to as ‘God’. The Bulletin made do with ‘Mark’ 66 KEVIN O’BRIEN No point in bowling this man a googly 72 AGE SHALL NOT WEARY THEM New hope for dementia sufferers 06

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CONTENTS

More Body & Mind

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PHOTOGRAPHY: SHAMIL TANNA, GETTY IMAGES (2), GARTH MILAN, RED BULL RACING, ANDREAS EHRENSBERGER, DAVID DOUBILET

82 TRAVEL: ANNECY What makes the ‘Venice of the Alps’ an action sports paradise 84 BEST OF THE FEST Yep, it’s the sweep of the bleeps – or where to get electro-heaven this summer 86 KITCHEN DRAMA Presenting not only a world-acclaimed chef, but the best fish dish in Fiji, too 88 GET THE GEAR So, how to keep a vintage plane in the air? Here’s the lowdown on high flying 90 PRO TIPS Beach volleyball torsos don’t come easy…

91 TAKE 5 Mark Ronson on his ‘inner man’ mix-tape 92 WORLD’S BEST CLUBS It started as a cowshed (thought Ibizan locals). Now it’s Spanish for ‘club’: Pacha 94 THE LIST Because we know you can’t do everything, this is our guide to the global essentials 96 SAVE THE DATE Out and about this month? Ink these into your diary right now Every month 08 PICTURES OF THE MONTH 26 KAINRATH’S CALENDAR 98 MIND’S EYE

OUT NOW READY, GET SET, GO! THE RED BULLETIN’S NEW iPAD APP WITH

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LOADS OF VIDEOS! FROM JUNE 9 ON REDBULLETIN.COM/IPAD

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mau i , u Sa

big break

PhotograPhy: BoB Bangerter/red Bull Content Pool

As none of us landlubbers are able to describe how it feels to ride the most dangerous wave on earth, let’s hear what the man in this picture has to say about it. His name is Jason Polakow, he’s Australian and he’s dropping into the mythical ‘Jaws’ wave, on the north shore of Maui. “It’s crazy, but this wave can become a real obsession,” says Polakow.

“Last year I almost drowned. You have to show courage from the moment you get into the water. On the day this photo was taken, the wave towered up in front of me, around 7m high. And even though I shifted all my weight on to the edge of the board, I didn’t tip over. If you’re in the tube, you’re part of the wave: just as if you’re married to it.”

More of this at en.redbulletin.com/jaws

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m u S c at, O man

kung-Fu-ball

Sepak takraw is a rapid net-and-court sport with elements of football, volleyball, martial arts and gymnastics. The leading exponents of this game, played in Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore, have motion techniques that would make Lionel Messi’s bones crack. What you see here is not an exceptional scene, but rather a common net exchange between Thailand’s Komkid Suapimpa (left) and Zaw Latt of Burma, during a match at the Asian Beach Games in the Omani capital. Thailand won the match, in the men’s regu (three-a-side), on their way to gold. The next Asian Beach Games, in 2012, will be held in Haiyang, China.

Put ‘sepak takraw’ into YouTube and prepare to gasp

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photography: Photo by Bryn Lennon/Getty Images

Photography: Andreas Pranter/GEPA

E i S E n E r z , au Str ia

inclined to Fail

A race regularly completed by around three per cent of its entrants is a rarity in the stage-managed, rule-moulded drama that is modern sport. Red Bull Hare Scramble – an enduro epic to the top of Erzberg (meaning iron mountain in German), part of an open-cast iron mine in central Austria – doesn’t have a difficulty curve, it is a difficulty curve. Last year, the burn rate was even higher than usual: only 16 of the 500 starters made it to the top. The (literally) sheer toughness is why you see scenes like this: riders looking after one another. Despite the demands of the conditions, one man has won the last four races, Taddy Blazusiak of Poland. He’ll be going for his fifth on June 26. www.redbull.com

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Bullevard Sporting endeavour and cultural ingenuity from around the world

Un quiz de Le Mans The 79th running of the great race is on June 11-12

DESIGN FOR FUTURE LIFE The 2011 James Dyson Award is asking smart folks to “design something to solve a problem”. The problem of realising the ideas is solved, partly, by a five-figure winner’s cheque. Here are previous clever concepts

1. Audi’s 2006 victory was the first in race history using what engine type?

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Luggage trolley with transport info screen

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Solar-panel tiles to fit any surface

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Electric Wankel Diesel

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2. Which driver is the most successful of all-time, with eight wins?

247mph 240mph 253mph

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Longreach, the 2010 winner: a flotation device ‘bazooka’ with a range of 150m See the full list of entrants: www.jamesdysonaward.org

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3. In 1988, Team WM Peugeot set the all-time speed record. How fast did that French jalopy go?

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Jacky Ickx Tom Kristensen Steve McQueen

PICTURES OF THE MONTH

EVERY SHOT ON TARGET

4. Back in year one, 1923, what was the winning car’s average speed?

57.19mph 60.29mph 63.40mph ANSWERS: 1. ● Diesel, 2. ● Tom Kristensen, 3. ● 253mph, 4. ● 57.19mph

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Email your pictures with a Red Bull flavour to letters@redbulletin.com.

Every one we print wins a pair of adidas Sennheiser PMX 680 Sports headphones. With fully sweat- and water-resistant parts, they’re perfect for sports. www.sennheiser.co.uk

San Francisco An exhibition of first-rate

fixed-gear cycling trickery at Red Bull Ride & Style.

Justin Kosman

Checklist The tricksiest fellows in Red Bull X-Fighters

PHOTOGRAPHY: DPPI (3), LAT (1), NORMAN WONG (1), PREDRAG VUCKOVIC/GLOBAL-NEWSROOM (1), BALAZS GARDI/RED BULL CONTENT POOL (1), JOERG MITTER/RED BULL CONTENT POOL (1), THOMAS ULRICH/VISUALIMPACT.CH (1), JOACHIM BRAUNWARTH/VISUALIMPACT.CH (1)

Katie Stelmanis

Austral projections Mozart, Moroder and melancholy: three inspirational forces behind Feel It Break, the new album from Canadian Katie Stelmanis, now going under the name Austra. Her incisive, classically trained voice (over brisk, sombre synthpop) sets her apart from bubble gum colleagues like Gaga and Perry.

She’s the Northern Lights on this year’s pop horizon. Know this about her: 1. Aged 10 she joined the Canadian Children’s Opera Chorus, and an operatic career was in her sights... until she saw her first punk show and started listening to Nine Inch Nails.

2. Austra is her middle name. She thought ‘Katie Stelmanis’ sounded too much like the girl at the piano.

3. The 25-year-old from Toronto adores Mozart. “He wrote clarinet sonatas when the clarinet was invented,” she says. “I’m pretty sure he would make electronic music nowadays.”

Austra’s Feel It Break (Domino) is out now. www.austramusic.com

Spielberg Thomas Morgenstern, ski jump legend, karts for charity in Austria.

Rene Wallentin

DANY TORRES (ESP) The ‘Whip King’ of freestyle motocross is 2011 tip after win at opener in Dubai.

ROBBIE MADDISON (AUS) All-round daredevil perfecting the Volt Body Varial, which he used in victory at Madrid last year.

THE LITTLE QUESTIONS Demon speed climber Daniel Arnold slows down for a quick chat In 1963, Michel Darbellay made the first solo ascent of the North Face of the Eiger.

It took him two days. On April 20 this year, Darbellay’s fellow Swiss, speed climber Daniel Arnold, set a new record of 2h 28m on an ascent of the mountain’s Heckmair Route.

Why speed climbing?

Simply, it’s a very personal challenge: I want to find out how fast I can climb.

The most important thing?

Being patient, to catch the right moment. I postponed my record attempt several times because I didn’t feel right, or I felt that the conditions weren’t right.

Is it wise to chase records?

Many climbers can lose their respect for the mountain.

Speed climbing, without rope [as it often tends to be], must not be downplayed.

Is the North Face special?

In my opinion, it is unbelievably beautiful.

And it’s near where I live.

Is there specific training for breaking records?

Not really. As a mountain guide, I’m climbing a lot anyway. My basic stamina is good and I’m used to altitude.

Mountains, yes. Oceans?

I appreciate water the most when it’s frozen and hangs from a rock. www.danielarnold.ch

The Eiger (3,970m)

CAMERON SINCLAIR (AUS) Many tried it – including Travis Pastrana – but Cam was the first to do a double backflip in competition.

Videos at: www. redbullxfighters.com

Auckland ‘3-2-1-Lego!’ Blockheaded pit crew build on success at the Red Bull Trolley Grand Prix.

Graeme Murray

Heckmair Route, circa 1,650m

Doha In Qatar, the first-ever one-on-one B-Boy contest in the Middle East: Red Bull BreaKing.

Jonathan Le Marchand 15

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More than 1,000 cyclists are expected to saddle up for the historic Maracycle ride between Dublin and Belfast this month. The annual charity event began in 1984 and ran for 15 years before a 12-year hiatus prompted by safety fears.

After a triumphant return last year with a new, safer route avoiding major roads, Maracycle is back on track. Riders head in either direction between the two capitals, or complete both legs in a 400-mile round trip. For those wincing at the very thought, there’s the Minicycle, a more manageable 50-mile option. The wheels start turning on June 25. www.cooperationireland.org/maracycle

He’s the Manny: Paddy Maguire

check the manual

Ireland’s man heads for old-school skating championship in New York City

Flipping marvellous Dublin’s Armstrong joined the B-Boy A-list when he won the Red Bull BC One Cypher Ireland title. Nearly 1,000 people packed the Ulster Hall in Belfast to see him beat 15 of Ireland’s best breakers, in a series of hard-fought, one-on-one dance-offs. As well as bragging rights, he now has the honour of representing Ireland at an international BC One qualifier in Barcelona next month. A win there will guarantee a place as one of the elite final 16 who will battle it out at the world BC One finals in St Petersburg, Russia, this winter. “I didn’t expect to win,” says Armstrong. “But I had been preparing for a long time, and now my dream’s come true.” www.redbullbcone.com

Auckland ‘Mad’ Mike Whiddett does a crowdpleasing spin at the Red Bull Trolley Grand Prix.

Xavier Wallach

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Basic brilliance: red Bull Manny Mania is a skateboard contest taking things back to basics. during a ‘manny’, one of the key tricks in skating, the trick is in keeping two wheels off the ground, whether front or back, requiring concentration and balance. at Manny Mania, sets of four skaters compete in a jam session format, linking moves on a course thick with ramps, and are judged by an expert panel.

Manny magician: ireland has a clear manny master in Paddy Maguire. the 19-year-old was the uK and ireland champ in 2009. earlier this year, the north Belfast skater took on 50 of ireland’s finest in dublin and emerged the judges’ favourite once again.

“Paddy’s such a naturally gifted manny skater,” says event judge Keith Walsh. “he just keeps pulling out new tricks.”

OMG, NYC: thanks to his win, Maguire is heading for the bright lights of new york city for the world finals on august 20, where he’ll represent ireland against the best manny skaters from 30 countries. “he won here and he won in the uK,” says Walsh. “he can travel to new york full of confidence.” www.redbull.ie

Rio de Janeiro New Zealand’s Nick Franklin

faultlessly fulfils fab feat at Red Bull X-Fighters Jam. Marcelo Maragni

Bangalore At the Aero India airshow,

the Flying Bulls flew in perfect four-mation.

Ashok Gowda

Words: ruth Morgan, Paul Wilson. PhotograPhy: co-oPeration ireland, rutger PauW/red Bull content Pool, rich gilligan

Capital gains

b u l l e va r d

where’s your head at?

Tom Hanks

There are two kinds of people in this world: those who want to kiss him at the top of the Empire State Building, and those who want to help him save Private James Francis Ryan.

And if his life is like a box of chocolates, there’s much to chew on Han kS aS Han k

lit tle go ld en Me

Tom Hanks was born July 9, 1956, in Concord, California. His parents separated when he was five, and moved around a lot with his father and two subsequent stepmothers.

A class clown who knew when to make funny and when to not, he took up acting at Skyline High School.

His first role? Hank, the bus driver, in a production of Night Of The Iguana.

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Nine men have won two Best Actor Oscars, but only two did so consecutively: Spencer Tracy (1937 and 1938) and Tom Han ks (1993 and 1994). Tracy played similar, figurehead roles – a ship ’s captain; a priest running a boy’s home. Hanks played a law yer dying of AIDS in Philadelphia, and, as For rest Gump, a distance-running, ping-p ong playing, shrimp-catching , simpleton war hero. That’s versatility .

co-Sta rring …

44022 a Space ody SSe y

You might think there is a typical Tom Hanks character – little bit geeky, little bit lost, little bits of all of us – and you might be right. And yet he has variously played opposite: a volleyball with a face painted on it, Meg Ryan (three times), a slobbering French Mastiff, a mermaid, a wrongly convicted man who may or may not be the reincarnation of Jesus Christ, and Madonna.

Hanks’ love of space likely formed in 1968, the summer he turned 12, when he saw 2001 A Space Odyssey 22 times. It remains his favourite film.

He’s on the board of governors of US humans-into-space group the National Space Society (as is Buzz Aldrin), starred in Apollo 13 and co-produced From The Earth To The Moon, a mini-series about the Apollo programme and a great ‘lost’ HBO box set.

He Se eM

S ni ce Hanks has a repua tion for being a go od guy (he has never played a baddie). Th is is boosted by his wa lking the line betw een actorly sincerity an d self-mockery.

Promoting Saving Private Ryan, he’d say, “We got to dress up as army men and ca rry cool weapons,” an d, “Is it worth riskin g eight men for one?

There is no answer. ”

Words: Paul Wilson. PhotograPhy: lie-ins and tigers

Hollywood Brea k: a drag

After studying theatre, and jobs on and off-stage in local theatre, Hanks got US$800 for three days work in autumn 1979 on the slasher film He Knows You’re Alone. With that film credit, in 1980 he headed for LA and won a part on the sitcom Bosom Buddies, about two men who dress as women in order to get cheap rent in an all-female apartment block.

YouTube confirms exactly what you’re thinking.

JuSt HiS type

When a young Tom Hanks took his first cheap and cheerful typewriter to be fixed, the guy in the shop told him to forget the repair job and upgrade. Thus began a passion for collecting typewriters. He’s got about 100 (all working), always travels with one, buys them from eBay and posts pictures of favourites on Twitter.

crow ne-ing acHie veMent

nuMBerS gaMe winner In Hollywood, the law of the box office is to be obeyed, and one man is the champion of US ticket-money generation: Thomas Jeffrey Hanks.

His movies have made just shy of $4bn, $260m – or The Da Vinci Code plus The Ladykillers, thereabouts – ahead of Eddie Murphy.

In his latest film, Larry Crowne, which he also co-wrote, co-produced and directed, Hanks taps into the recession zeitgesit, playing a fellow made redundant who goes to college to retrain.

And if you’re going to write/direct/produce/star in a film in which your character develops a crush on his hot, slightly lost teacher, then you damn well make sure Julia Roberts gets the part.

Larry Crowne is in cinemas from July 1. www.larrycrowne.com

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b u l l e va r d

Born to perform

Planningtorock

Only the smartest acts can move into the producer-creator role for that extra musical sparkle. Now with her second album, Janine Rostron is proving she is part of that elite group Name Janine Rostron Born Bolton, Lancashire Proudest moment When Bolton Wanderers kicked off their 2006/07 Premier League season, a song from Janine’s Planningtorock debut album, Bolton Wanderer, was played over the PA system at the Reebok Stadium as the teams walked out. Bolton went on to beat Tottenham Hotspur 2-0

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With her hallucinatory songs, prosthetic nose and imposing stage presence, Janine rostron is not your typical pop star – but that’s precisely what has attracted acts such as The Knife and Hot Chip to collaborate with the berlinbased musician. in fact, so enchanted by rostron’s enigmatic output was lCd Soundsystem mastermind James Murphy that he signed her to his dFA label. (in April this year she took part in Murphy’s band’s three-hour final concert.)

As the one-woman, multimedia performance artist Planningtorock, rostron, who is originally from bolton, in lancashire, has just released her second album, W. With it, she welcomes the listener into a parallel world of her own rich design where, musically speaking, Kate bush and Grace Jones rub shoulders with Janis Joplin and Jarvis

Planningtorock’s second album, W, is out now on DFA/Co-op Records

Videos and more at: planningtorock offical.tumblr.com

What are you hiding? Planningtorock sports a prosthetic nose in press shots, and quite often on your album you process your voice electronically.

Well, Planningtorock has always been about ideas and fantasy. i wanted to make a ‘hybrid gender’ voice on certain songs, where you don’t think of the voice as him or her but rather they or even it. i’m not interested in the idea of an authentic voice, or a so-called honest vocal. i’m really not precious about my voice at all. i get closer to feelings, sentiments and emotional intent from pushing my voice to new places.

Similarly, there’s a fair amount of saxophone on the record, but again you put your own stamp it…

Yes, there can be something embarrassing, humorous and slightly alien about the saxophone, but i’ve manipulated its sound a lot. On Doorway it’s heavy and messed up. it reminds me of a turbine engine or a mental vibrator; it makes the track kinky and moody.

W is not the kind of record we’re used to hearing from New York’s New Wave-meets-disco label DFA… i think James [Murphy] loves the record, but i’m sure he’d be the first to say he has no idea what it’s about or what it is – he just likes what i do. i’ve come to terms with the fact that what i do doesn’t reference immediately recognisable stuff.

There’s almost a hip-hop element to your flamboyant live shows, you must need a lot of confidence to pull it off…

Yes, i love the attitude of hip-hop. i don’t deliberately do it like that, but i know what you mean.

What’s the significance of the letter W? i’ve always liked the letter W because when you say it you’re saying, “double you”. it’s like “two of you” – i always thought that was funny. it’s a powerful letter and i like that people can make their own decisions about what it means.

People might jump for ‘woman’ or ‘work’ or ‘world’ or any other cliché. i felt that the title was very specific and not specific at the same time, and that’s an important balance with Planningtorock.

WOrdS: PierS MArTin. PHOTOGrAPHY: JAnine rOSTrOn

Cocker, and you’re never sure what’s around the corner. W is a sensual record full of black humour and dizzy romance.

Whether writing an opera (she worked with The Knife on darwinian cyber-romp Tomorrow, In A Day) or directing videos – see her extraordinary clips for recent singles Doorway and The Breaks – her skewed, personal touch is always evident. “Planningtorock? it’s all about drama and soul,” she says.

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WORDS: FLORIAN OBKIRCHER. PHOTOGRAPHY: CHARLY RAPPO/ARKIVE.CH (1), LIONEL FLUSIN (2)

PLAY IT AGAIN, CLAUDE The 45th Montreux Jazz Festival will be overseen by the man who ran the first, a true secret music legend Claude Nobs, general manager of the Montreux Jazz Festival since he co-founded it in 1967, must be a brilliant host. Why else would Herbie Hancock be playing in Montreux for a 27th time, and BB King for a 20th, at this year’s festival? Nobs, 75, also has a keen eye for young talent: Norah Jones and the Black Eyed Peas made their major European stage debuts at Montreux. Among the many acts at this year’s festival, from July 1-16, are some of Nobs’ favourite performers: Deep Purple “The story of Smoke on the Water is well known [it was inspired by a fire at the Montreux Casino, on the shore of Lake Geneva, during the 1971 festival]. What very few people know, is that the band were recording their album Machine Head in a studio near my house, and came over for dinner every night. One time, they brought a tape and said, “Claude, we recorded this song just for you.” I listened to it and was blown away by the guitar riff. I told them, “You have to release this.” Originally they didn’t plan to include the song on the record, which would have been a pity because – exactly – it was Smoke on the Water.”

BB King Claude Nobs Deep Purple

BB King “His first time here was in 1967, and since then we’ve developed a deep friendship. At the end of his Montreux gigs, he traditionally invites me up on stage with him for an improvised blues session where I play the harmonica.

After the shows he stays up until 3am to chat with his friends and fans, even though he’s 85 years old! This year he will play his first-ever open-air concert in Europe, alongside friends like Carlos Santana.” www.montreuxjazz.com

B u l l e va r d

Einst Kit Evolution und jEtzt

MAXI SIX AppeAL LAXI

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B u l l e va r d

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Paddle do Nicely “It’s very common for even the best athletes to find themselves upside-down in white water,” says Jana Dukatova, the 27-year-old European and world kayak champion from Slovakia, “so the Eskimo roll is absolutely essential. It’s the movement that allows you to right yourself after capsizing. If you can’t do it, your only option is to swim, which can be extremely dangerous where it’s rocky and rough.

“When you’re under the water, first you need to put your paddle up and out of the water alongside the boat. Then you do a strong forward stroke with the paddle, and use momentum from your hips to start turning the boat. Your body comes out of the water first, then your head.

People panic and try to get their head out first, and that won’t work. When you finish your paddle is back in the basic position across your body.

“On occasions, when the white water is really huge, knowing how to do the perfect Eskimo roll can be a lifesaver.”

The Eskimo roll is the single most important move in a kayaker’s repertoire: getting it right is, literally, a matter of life or death. Here, a paddler and ponderer explain how

Capsize Matters

Winning Formula

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Roll with it: Kayak champion Jana Dukatova demonstrates how to do a perfect Eskimo roll, a technique which can save a paddler’s life

b u l l e va r d

caNoe comPreheNd it?

“The Eskimo roll, also known as the kayak roll, is the righting of an overturned kayak without exiting it,” says Dr Martin apolin, from Vienna’s Institute of Physics. “They say the Inuit invented this technique because they couldn’t swim – and who would want to in ice-cold water? for them, this technique was essential to life.

“When your head is underwater, you are stable, because the buoyancy force acts directly over the force of gravity. any attempt to bring your body upright creates a torque that pulls the body back down (fig. I).

“There are several Eskimo roll techniques, but what physically happens is always the same: the athlete must generate a torque in the opposite direction greater than the downward torque.

To do this, the athlete must bring one end of the paddle just below the surface of the water. Into play here come three elements: newton’s third law (of action-equal-opposite-reaction); the torque mentioned above; and the laws of buoyancy.

“The athlete pushes the paddle into the water and exerts a force, or action. The water exerts an equal, but opposite force on the paddle (reaction f2 in fig. II). now torque, (M) comes into play, defined as force (f) times distance from the axis of rotation (r): M = f x r. Thus torque becomes greater when the same force is applied at a further distance, and hence why the paddler pushes the paddle as far out into the water as possible.

“The torque generated (M2) must be larger when coming upright than the existing torque relating to the athlete and the boat (M1). To make the roll possible, it must therefore apply M2 > M1. (fig. II is simplified because the torques and the rotating point change constantly.) “now, the force of buoyancy is equal to the weight of the displaced water, and points upwards.

Man’s density is only slightly larger than water’s.

Therefore, when the upper body is underwater, the force of buoyancy is almost as large as the weight –in layman’s terms, ‘weightless’.

“To minimise the force required to rotate, the athlete first turns her pelvis and the kayak automatically follows (figs. I and II). Only at the end of the Eskimo roll does she put her body into an upright position (fig. III).

WOrDS: ruTh MOrgan, Dr MarTIn aPOlIn. PhOTOgraPhY: PrEDrag VuckOVIc/rED Bull cOnTEnT POOl. IlluSTraTIOn: ManDY fISchEr

b u l l e va r d

out of the woods

bon iver

Bon Iver frontman Justin Vernon has had a quick, strange trip from obscurity to the limelight

Born April 30, 1981, Eau Claire, Wisconsin, USA Instruments Vocals, Guitar, Percussion, Keyboard Success Bon Iver’s debut album entered the Top 10 Album of the Year charts of magazines such as Mojo and Uncut Side projects Apart from Bon Iver, Vernon is also involved in the bands Volcano Choir and GAYNGS

Justin Vernon (below) is the mastermind of Bon Iver. Live, he adds his friends Sean Carey (drums), Michael Noyce (guitar) and Matthew McCaughan (bass) to the line-up

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back in the summer of 2007, reeling from the break-up of both a band and a relationship, Justin Vernon headed to a cabin in Wisconsin to ruminate and wound up writing and recording a series of songs. He originally meant to pass the tracks around to friends, but when they started to draw attention online, he signed a deal with indie label Jagjaguwar and released them as For Emma, Forever Ago in February of 2008.

The album received critical acclaim and Vernon’s career grew steadily – until Kanye West came calling. The rapper sampled Vernon’s Woods for his track Lost in the Woods, and Vernon also collaborated with him on the hit Monster.

For his follow-up, Bon Iver, Vernon declined to invite any rappers, but drew on a variety of influences to make an ethereal album that recalls some of the best musical moments of the ’80s.

Given the notoriety you gained from working with Kanye West, why did you decide not to reciprocate and work with any hip-hop artists on the new record?

Most of the record was pretty set by the time the Kanye thing happened, and there was nothing on the album that really made sense for him to be a part of. but he’s down to work together if i do come up with something that would be a good fit.

Your first album was recorded off the grid, but this new one is one of the most anticipated indie records of the year. Did you feel any pressure?

No, not really. The first record worked so well because it was so personal, and

“I always come home to the same place and go to my local bar, and no one gives me any sort of adulation” i think this is the same thing. The people who expect a Kanye appearance just for the sake of it are really buying into some sort of industry and branding hype. i just went in and got this one done. i was working on it for three years, really, and i finished recording in May, added some stuff over the summer, and mixed it in the autumn and winter.

The new album is much richer than the previous one, and has some obvious ’80s influences with horns and the keyboards? How intentional was that? it was pretty subconscious. People in europe have said they hear Phil Collins [laughs], but i’m more of a bruce Hornsby man. When i was on tour i would be listening to music, of course, but when i got off the road and went in to record i would sort of shut myself off.

Obviously many things have changed for you since For Emma, Forever Ago, but what are some things that haven’t? i always come home to the same place [eau Claire, Wisconsin] and go to my local bar, and no one gives me any sort of adulation. i bought myself a really nice Canon camera, but i haven’t really bought anything else big. Maybe i should buy a local softball team, or something.

Or a really badass curling team.

Bon Iver: Bon Iver (Jagjaguwar/4AD) is out on June 21

For live dates and audio samples check www.boniver.org

WOrds: COrTNey HardiNg. PHOTOgraPHy: d.l. aNdersON, COrbis

Name Justin DeYarmond Edison Vernon

b u l l e va r d

me and my body

Dallas FriDay

What hurts more than having a rod inserted down your leg to fix nine fractures?

For the 2009 wakeboarding world champ, it’s rupturing three knee ligaments at once – and then having to find the patience for a frustratingly slow recovery

stitche d up

nt, [Last year Friday tore her anterior cruciate ligame posterior cruciate ligament and medial collateral ligament.] I knew I was seriously hurt because I’ve seen lots of injuries in my time. Just the pain: it was like a chain reaction of explosions in my right knee, just one after the other. I definitely knew it was not going to be just a few days off the water. I have some ns gnarly scars up to 10cm long: two straight incisio too. knee, my of sides the on on the front, and two

water shed mome nt

[After leg surgery to fix a nine-part fracture, Friday was induced into a coma.] I saw dolphins and circus animals – I was on so much morphine.

I remember them pulling out my chest tube when my lungs collapsed. They told me to hold my breath because the tube was close to my heart. But they were like, “Hmm, that’s not going to work. Let’s try again.” So they went for it. I don’t remember the pain, but I do remember the terror of the situation.

roa d ahe ad lon g

long, It’s crazy because it doesn’t feel that been but at the same time it’s felt like I’ve back be to y read so I’m er. rehabbing forev when even , head my in knew I – r wate the on I got injured, that it wasn’t the end.

ho pe and glo ry

I see myself accomplishing so much more, and I know I have so much more to give and to show in terms of my abilities. For an athlete, I think the knowledge that there’s more to come is a good thing. I never contemp lated it or second-guessed it. It’s my hope, and I never felt like it was taken from me.

se a leg s

Words: Ann donAhue. PhotogrAPhy: robert snoW

I got the OK to star t carving.

I’ve noticed fatigue and even getting back in the water, you notice how some of your endurance levels have been brought down. It’s just going to take time, the consistency of being on the wat er and training to build that back up. It just felt good to be back to what I know, what I’m pretty much born to do, like I was back at one with myself.

on the ball

Right now we’re just doing lots of stability and a little bit of easy impact work. On the balance ball we do a lot of ball throws, and we’re doing leg presses, squats and lunges of all types of variations for probably two hours a day.

I can’t push it too hard too early. The outdoor training that I’d usually be doing – cardio and being out on the water a lot – has been put on hold. It’s just a long road to recovery and there’s a certain way you’ve got to go about it. You’ve got to listen to your doctors and do what they say, although it’s hard.

bac k on boa rd

Breaking my left femur in 2006 – men tally, that was just unbelievable. The knee was kind of the same thing, though, although the pain was worse than when I broke my leg.

The knee injur y was one of those thing s I never saw coming from a hundred miles. I’ve never felt so completely hear tbroken, drained and frustrated all at once. It took it all out of me and to get another injur y, and to know what I have to look forward to, is really deva stating. But through each injur y, every athlete gets smar ter and learns from it and grows as a person. Mentally, it’s some thing you’ve just got to accept. You can’t really get too stuck on why this happened and I’m so happy and relieved to be back wakeboarding again.

Photos, videos and more: www.dallasfriday.com

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illustration: dietmar kainrath

K a i n r at h

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B U L L E VA R D

LUCKY NUMBERS

WIMBLEDON

The world’s greatest tennis tournament celebrates its 125th anniversary this year, with a lake of cream, a mountain of strawberries and ace stats galore

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Queen Elizabeth II

The Lawn Tennis Championships, the world’s longest-running tennis tournament, is a bastion of tradition. The All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club insists that 90 per cent of a player’s clothes be white. Other rules have relaxed: since 2003, players walking onto and off Centre Court bow or curtsey to the Royal Box only if the Queen or the Prince of Wales – not noted for their love of the game – are in attendance. Yet last year, Elizabeth II dropped by, for the first time since 1977, a break of 33 years. There are only two women and no men currently in the world’s top 100s who were alive then.

Fred Perry

WORDS: ULRICH CORAZZA. PHOTOGRAPHY: ACTION IMAGES (2), PA (4), PICTUREDESK (2), REX FEATURES (1)

Many firsts during a not-so-proud moment in English sporting history. In 1995, Tim Henman, who home fans hoped would become the first British winner since Fred Perry in 1936 (they only gave up this hope when Henman retired in 2007), hit a ball-girl on the head with a ball he smashed in frustration during the first round of the doubles. He became the first (and only) player ever to be disqualified from the tournament. On the other side of the net was bad boy Jeff Tarango of the USA, who was fined a record ¤11,540 after a tantrum during a third-round singles match.

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5,840,000

Some players will forever be associated with Wimbledon. Pete Sampras was men’s singles champion seven times in eight years, from 1993-2000. Billie Jean King and Martina Navratilova each won 20 singles, doubles and mixed doubles crowns.

Navratilova is also the oldest woman to have won a match at SW19. In the first round in 2004, she beat Catalina Castano of Colombia 6-0 6-1 at the age of 47 years and 224 days, a mere 22 years and 208 days older than her opponent.

That’s how many punnets of 10 strawberries this year’s record prize-money fund of ¤16.8m could buy. Last year, on average, 8,615 bowlfuls of the delicious fruits were sold every day, for ¤2.80 a pop – another record. You can’t have strawberries without cream: a total of 7,000 litres of the stuff topped off the 28,000kg of strawbs consumed. Perhaps a glass of bubbly to wash it all down? More than 17,000 champagne corks were popped during Wimbledon 2010.

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Martina Navratilova

Boris Becker always called Wimbledon’s “holy turf” his living room. Boom-Boom Boris set three records at once when he won the Championships in 1985. In winning the first of his three titles aged 17 years and 227 days, he became the youngest men’s singles champion, the first German winner and the first unseeded winner. Switzerland’s Martina Hingis became the youngest Grand Slam winner of all time when she won the ladies’ doubles title at Wimbledon in 1996, at the age of 15 years and 282 days.

1

Boris Becker

John Isner

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6:4 3:6 6:7 7:6 70:68! Last year’s match between John Isner of the USA and France’s Nicolas Mahut is a remarkable note in tennis history. It was played over three days, thanks to two stoppages for bad light, taking 11 hours, 5 minutes to complete. The 6ft 9in (2.06m) big-serving Isner fired down 112 aces during the match; Mahut 103.

They are first and second, respectively, on the aces-per-match list for all pro tennis. In the second round, Isner was thrashed in straight sets by Thiemo de Bakker of the Netherlands.

June 20-July 3: www.wimbledon.com

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2010 Lemon sharks, 3-4m long, patrol for food at twilight beneath a rolling sea at the western edge of the Bahamas Banks.

David Doubilet: “They weren’t aggressive, but I did have to bang some of them on the nose with the camera housing”

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The Seas Unseen A remarkable set of pictures from the portfolio of David Doubilet, one of the world’s greatest underwater photographers Words: Paul Wilson

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“I used an anaesthesiologist’s breathing bag and parts of a face mask to make housing for my Brownie Hawkeye,” says Doubilet, 64.

“My first pictures were terrible, it looked like modern art. I was taking pictures of fish and people’s feet and the side of pools. My first actual dives were in a lake in the Adirondack Mountains nearby. I was about eight or nine.

When I first put on a diving mask, I said, ‘Oh my God, this is the other side of the world, this is where I want to be.’ It was a long way from then to looking out of a faceplate into blue water and watching a great white shark materialise.”

A long way, perhaps, but Doubilet made it in double-quick time. He sold his first undersea shots aged 15, to a South American magazine. A couple of years later, while volunteering at a marine lab at the entrance of New York Harbour, he parlayed a job washing equipment into becoming the lab’s de facto chief photographer.

In 1971, while at university, he got his first credit in National Geographic magazine, after a trip to the Red Sea to shoot garden eels.

His continuing, 40-year relationship with NG is at the heart of his work.

There have been other jobs, too. The summer of 1976 was interesting: he spent a couple of months of that year tracking the Loch Ness Monster using a thenrevolutionary sonar-triggered camera, followed by still photography on the set of 30

additional photography: gary Bell

David Doubilet has spent more than 50 years looking through his dive mask, into a camera and out into the world’s oceans.

The first time he did so – aged 12, in the waters around his family’s summer home in Elberon, New Jersey, around 60 miles south of New York City – he was using an underwater camera of his own invention.

underwater adventure movie The Deep, the unofficial follow-up to Jaws.

“Of course, we got to Loch Ness and the camera didn’t work,” says Doubilet. “I found something that looked like a monster, which turned out to be a really large Oxford shoe, with the upper separated from the sole, nails exposed like teeth. There’s a golden glow to the water there, like good single malt: when you’re 10m down it’s dark but clear, with no surface light. From 10m up, it’s golden.

“Then I worked on The Deep, and with Jacqueline Bisset. I made THAT picture,” he adds, recalling the famous and saucy image of the actress, fresh from the water, wearing the white T-shirt she had worn on a dive. “Sadly, I did not own the rights to that shot.”

In recent years, he has seen up close the effect on the oceans of global warming, and is a founding member of the International League of Conservation Photographers.“ Instead of a dive being a single dive of exploration,” he notes, somewhat ruefully, “we may be documenting a time soon passed.”

And after a lifetime spent in waters from Arctic ice floes to Cuban coral reefs, photographing tiny plankton, giant predators and all marine life in between – much of it alongside his partner, the photographer and writer Jen Hayes – Doubilet has seen as much as any man in his field – and still yearns for more.

In April, he returned from an assignment in the Gulf of St Lawrence, off the coast of Canada, and more trips are scheduled.

He conveys the same passion for being in the water as his eight-year-old self did all those years ago. “It’s amazing,” he says, pausing to no doubt contemplate a deep blue vista in his mind’s eye, “to see the pulse of life.”

1986 Chevron barracuda form a perfect defensive circle around a diver in Papua New Guinea. “This works so well because it’s a geometric pattern in a world without geometry”

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2002 A diver follows a rare American crocodile as it surfaces for breath in the Gardens of the Queen off Cuba’s southern coast. “Nile crocodiles will try to eat you; American ones will not”

1996 A manta ray feeds at night in plankton-filled waters off Kona, Hawaii. “Patio lights from a hotel can attract huge clouds of plankton; we copied that with lights on a boat”

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1995 A box jellyfish captures a shrimp in its tentacles off Townsville on the Queensland Coast in Australia.

“The most venomous of all living creatures, except certain lawyers.

Each tentacle is covered in thousands of nematocyst cells, each with a tiny harpoon of toxin”

2008 A fisherman crosses over a large gathering of moon jellyfish in a remote corner of Gam Bay, Raja Ampat, Indonesia. “Moon jellyfish sting a little bit, nothing like the box (above), which is as big as your fist.

Moon are the size of dinner plates”

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2008 Fishermen stand on their outriggers over a school of baitfish flashing beneath them in Raja Ampat, Indonesia. “This place has the richest coral reefs in the world, and the highest diversity of marine creatures because of that�

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2011 Chinstrap and gentoo penguins on an ice floe near Danko Island off the Antarctic Peninsula.

“They were wary of me as I swam, thinking I might be a hungry seal”

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additional photography: steve jones

2010 “This is me in a field of brash (ice fragments) to photograph leopard seals on the Antarctic Peninsula.

The water’s -2°C here. It’s like swimming in a margarita”

1994 A stingray at North Sound, Grand Cayman. “The cruise ships need everyone back on the boats for lunch, so after 2.30 you have the place to yourself to make pictures. Then it’s a Zen garden, with the waves raking the water”

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1974 A diver inspects the massive propeller of a 300m crude oil supertanker off Eilat, Israel. “I was shooting something else in the Red Sea, when an editor called me and asked me to do this. It’s a decompression dive, 21m down” 2006 (right): A double-headed wrasse swims along the reef edge at Lord Howe Island, 285 miles off Australia’s New South Wales coast in the South Pacific Ocean. “Perfect island: no venomous creatures, like on the Australian mainland.

Hard to get reservations: only 300 beds on the island”

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How to make pictures underwater When he talks about his work, David Doubilet says “make a picture”, not “take”. There speaks a craftsman, and one, who, like any other, needs a set of tools to do the things he does. Along with a camera, the underwater photographer also requires housing (the camera’s waterproof cover), dome ports (covers for the lens) and strobes, usually two, one each attached to either side of the camera and housing. After his homemade Brownie Hawkeye in a bag, Doubilet has graduated through many cameras, “almost exclusively Nikons”, to arrive at a set-up he favours above all others. “My basic kit right now is the Nikon D3, D3S – a fabulous camera – and D700, with the attendant lenses and domes,” says Doubilet. “All housing is made by SECAM, and the strobes are all Sea & Sea YS-250.”He also needs conflict.

“In the water, you are face to face with marine creatures,” he says. “There is a real sense of menace, and a sense of beauty, and the tension between them is what makes an image work.” www.daviddoubilet.com

2004 An African reed frog clings onto Doubilet’s mask during a night shoot in Botswana’s Okavango Delta. “I hadn’t seen him get on there. I thought it was a big spot on my mask”

Few artists have managed to reinvent themselves while staying true to their sound – Raphael Saadiq is one who has. the accidental Frontman talks about role models, learning the craFt, and giving Fans the scooby snack on his new album Words: Richard Thomas Photography: Emily Shur

student oF soul

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Man with a mission: Raphael Saadiq has left his mark on three decades of music

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“ I feel lIke the money Is fIrst now, and that the groove Is sufferIng because of It. I’m not sayIng you shouldn’t be able to make $20 mIllIon doIng what you do, but the product has to be good” 42

A

rtists have gone to great lengths to reinvent themselves in the hopes of capturing just a trace of their former glory. They change labels, change their hair, trade up band members, even shack up with a new domestic partner to make fresh headlines in the blogosphere. In the end, media hawks and longtime fans “who knew you when” feast on their folly with great delight, and the music invariably suffers along with its creator.

But what about when culture does the reinventing, and you just hang on for the ride? When you do what you love, love what you do, and leave the rest to the music buyers and the headline writers?

Raphael Saadiq has left his mark on three decades of popular music.

As a member of Tony! Toni! Toné!, he turned out jams like Feels Good and If I Had No Loot, which helped transform the face of R&B. His work in late ’90s supergroup Lucy Pearl – with En Vogue’s Dawn Robinson and A Tribe Called Quest’s Ali Shaheed Muhammad – earned him a Grammy nomination. His first solo LP, 2002’s Instant Vintage, earned him five more. Across each of these albums, his tenets never wavered: sing powerfully; sing truthfully; know your instruments; respect the groove; and (most importantly) don’t fake it.

Born and raised in Oakland, California, his childhood was met with an improbable amount of personal tragedy. He lost siblings to drugs, murder, and suicide, but it was his music, not his tragedy, that defined him. Like the title of his latest album, Stone Rollin’, Saadiq has soldiered on, trading up the slick Motown style of 2008’s The Way I See It for a raucous, bluesy sound that invokes the likes of Chuck Berry, BB King, and Muddy Waters. And, like every album before it, Stone Rollin’ is introducing Saadiq to a new era of soul searchers.

On the last Saturday in March, he brought his five-piece band into the Red Bull Recording Studio in Los Angeles to play a few tunes off his new record and talk role models, lyrics, and knowing your instruments with The Red Bulletin.

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The Red Bulletin: You studied a lot of gear and read a lot of books such as Recording The Beatles before you went into the studio to record The Way I See It, and I’m sure you did the same for Stone Rollin’. Why is it important for you to have such an in-depth understanding of the tools you work with? Many artists try to emulate specific vibes and eras, but few can transcend the equipment to make their own sound.

Raphael Saadiq: It’s quite natural for me to think like that, but it always starts with the way somebody holds an instrument – the way Jimi holds a guitar, or BB King, or Elvis, or Neil Young. Then you find out later that there’s so much more behind it. You find out that Stratocasters and Telecasters and Gibsons have all these different pickups, and the electricity that picks up the sound has so many different characteristics, from bluesy sounds to gritty, dirty sounds. The more you start researching, the further you go. To play sports – to be good – you have to find out what the fundamentals are. It’s not just running out there and playing; it’s how to pick up a ball, take it out of your glove, and throw it. There’s a lot that goes into it, but when it all becomes natural, that’s when you start having the most fun.

RB: When did you reach the point where it all started to feel natural?

RS: Weirdly enough, it just happened around The Way I See It. I felt comfortable on stage. It was something I had to do, and I knew it was a sink-or-swim situation all the time, but I didn’t start off being a singer, and it was always somewhat of a struggle for me being a frontman and an artist. I played for a lot of great frontmen as a kid; a lot of blues groups, a lot of quartets. All the dudes who sang lead was bad. They knew how to get a mic, say something to the crowd, and they always set up the songs. I think I picked up those traits naturally. So I had that going forward, but it wasn’t until The Way I See It that I felt like it came together.

RB: Who did you learn the most from?

RS: I think my favourite frontman was probably a guy named Roy Tyler from Oakland. I played behind him and he was real calm. We’d go out there on stage and he’d grace the crowd. He’d say “Good evening” to everybody, but in a mild-mannered way. It would capture people. Before he went on stage, he would whisper to me, “Hey, when you hit that bass line on that song, I’m gonna 43

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“ you can’t mess up the groove. you gotta fIt In where people can stIll feel It” RS: [Laughs] My friend, who is a really good keyboard player, told somebody, “He’s the only person who can write a song with no bridge and you don’t miss it.”

Rollin’ with it: Saadiq and his band perform tracks from his new album in the Red Bull Recording Studio

start shoutin’.” So I would be playing a song, and at this certain pattern he would just start shouting, and people would get into it. He had all these tricks that I paid attention to, and later on I was able to grab a lot of the things he did and add them to what I do in my own way. You can’t help it if you’re watching people like that. I’m behind him, and I can see the back of him and the people responding to him, so that was the best view I could ever get. I’ve had that view a lot.

wanted money. Everybody cared about making cash. But even though they wanted to be paid, the grooves were always first. I feel like the money is first now, and the groove is suffering because of it. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t be able to make $20 million doing what you do, but the product has to be good.

RB: What was your favourite song on Stone Rollin’ to finish?

RS: Moving Down The Line. That one…

I call ’em Scooby Snacks [laughs]. My fans have always been cool to understand that I’m just that person that’s gonna do something that makes me feel good.

So Moving Down The Line is my Scooby Snack for everyone. I always like to do new things, but also things that feel good for touring, being on stage, and just playing. Moving Down The Line was an easy groove, but it was tough to sing.

RB: Patience from the audience is lacking as well. We live in a playlist world, and artists understand that albums come second to singles, and singles are what get you on those playlists.

That doesn’t help the groove, either.

RS: It’s something you have to learn, and a lot of people missed out on it. You don’t have to be old or deep or anything to have those types of characteristics in your music. You just have to have that experience, or somebody had to drop that science on you. You don’t have to be doing music from the ’60s or be some rap star. Isaac Hayes said, “There’s no such thing as old school. It’s either you went to school or you didn’t.”

RB: Lyrically?

RS: The music felt so good. You can’t mess up the groove. You gotta fit in where people can still feel it. I feel like a lot of artists back in the day, they all

RB: Take Just Me and You, for instance, the song you did with Tony! Toni! Toné! for the Higher Learning soundtrack back in ’91. That song didn’t have a bridge, and it barely had a verse.

RB: You didn’t have an easy life growing up, and there was a lot of tragedy in your family. That perseverance, I’m sure, helped shape who you are today, but how is the Raphael of today different or similar to the Raphael of 20 years ago?

RS: There are a lot of similarities. I’m always a little cautious about a lot of different things. Growing up in Oakland, you could be sitting with a girl and she thinks you have the wandering eye, but I’m just looking at everybody because you had to [laughs]! I remember I was in sixth grade and my neighbour was in high school, and he got shot in an argument with some guy. I was the kid who went to his mom’s house and said, “Kenny just got killed.” In that time, they didn’t even take the chalk off the ground, and I’d walk to school for six months and I’d see it every day until it washed off. I can still see that chalk in my head and I’m thinking, “They don’t do that where I live at now.”

So you have all those thoughts, but I think that made me a better person.

RB: And as an artist, you have to be careful that not all your inspiration comes from that dark place.

RS: Right, you do. It made me more positive. Things can be worked out if there’s a problem. There’s always some way out of it. I always called myself the narrator. I saw a lot of things happen just riding my moped through East Oakland listening to [Prince’s] Dirty Mind on my Walkman. I’d see somebody getting shot or going to jail, but Oakland had some of the most beautiful and loving people, man – even the thugs and the gangsters. It’s just what everybody got caught up in. Everybody was good when we got there, but the way it was set up for us, some people fell into it. But the ones who didn’t – the ones who outlived that stuff – it was a beautiful thing.

Stone Rollin’ is out now. Saadiq plays Ghent Jazz Festival on July 7 and North Sea Jazz Festival on July 8.

Find out more on raphaelsaadiq.com

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In 2002, Frenchman Eric Barone almost died setting a mountain bike downhill speed record on a Nicaraguan volcano. Last month, Markus ‘Max’ Stöckl tried to break it. This is what happened Words: Nicolas Stecher Photography: Mauricio Ramos

Wheels in motion: With a surface of loose shale and the blistering sun causing maximum discomfort, Stöckl makes his bone-shaking descent down Nicaragua’s volcanic Cerro Negro mountainside. Opposite page: Stöckl celebrates his new status as record-holder

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Sunday May 12, 2002 Cerro Negro, Nicaragua Eric Barone sits atop his customised prototype mountain bike on the crest of the Cerro Negro volcano, looking down at the slope before him. In the remote wilds of north-west Nicaragua, the clouds of the coming rainy season have yet to arrive, leaving the skies utterly spotless. With the peak bereft of trees or vegetation of any sort, the late morning 40°C sun lasers down directly, transforming his red Lycra aerodynamic bodysuit into a skintight plastic shell.

Underfoot, the black volcanic rock emits waves of heat, obstructing the otherwise clear view to the timer 640m below.

The goal is simple: to descend this mountain faster than any human has before. He’s focused, calm. And why shouldn’t he be? Earlier that day, Barone established the downhill record on a stock (mass-production) mountain bike by clocking 101.68mph. He knows this mountain well; just get a good start, hold tight, maintain perfect form and gravity will do the rest. Then and there, looking down that slope, Barone realises this will be his last speed run on soil. He’s going to break the record, then hang up his aerodynamic helmet in victory. A half

mile below, his best friend and business partner, Marco Rebuttini, and Barone’s Nicaraguan then girlfriend, Jany Salinas Medina, stare up at the apex anxiously, both seemingly more aware of the mortal danger of the impending feat than Barone himself. From the timer where they stand, Barone is little more than a crimson Lycra ant gleaming in the sun.

Then the wind offers a moment of calm, and he’s off. Over the ledge and speeding up as the bike makes its accelerating descent down the face of Cerro Negro. The velocity is remarkable, the sound of the wheels rushing over the rocky slope like a sharp, incoming wind. A growing plume of dust follows

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salsa dancing, is something he can only be upbeat about. (It’s a lasting result of the damage he suffered to his hips.)

MoNday May 16, 2011 Cerro Negro, NiCArAguA The road out to Cerro Negro from the closest village of León is a dusty trip through the vintage lens of Spanish colonialism. Travelling through the second-poorest nation in the western hemisphere assures that once you’re off the main artery to Managua, you are witnessing a way of life that has changed little over the centuries. On this dirt road ox carts outnumber trucks 10 to one.

Caballeros on horseback herd their various livestock and wave as you drive by, curious. you rumble past dry fields of yucca, corn, beans and sugar cane with their young saplings poking through the soil like hundreds of green Sideshow Bob heads, while giant pigs wander freely. Happiness, for some, is riding in the back of a pick-up truck in the remote savannas of Nicaragua.

We finally arrive at the base of the towering Cerro Negro, a lone black monolith reaching far into the sky.

The chain of volcanoes disappearing into the distance all smoulder, white smoke wafting into the atmosphere.

It is ominous. portentous. Markus ‘Max’ Stöckl leaps out from the cabin and surveys the surroundings.

Under the silhouette of the looming mountain, Stöckl looks a bit like a conqueror – all broad-jawed visage and wide shoulders. If you were filming a movie about the germanic tribes of the dark Ages and you were in need of a quintessential visigoth hero, you’d be ecstatic if central casting sent a man who looked like Stöckl. There’s a reason his nickname in the mountain biking community is ‘Hercules’.

Stöckl is here to do one thing: break Eric Barone’s mountain bike speed record on a stock bike on dirt.

That record was established, ironically, on that fateful run that ended his career nine years earlier on this very same slab of rock. Adding to the irony is that Eric Barone himself is here to coach Stöckl to success. But it won’t be easy.

This is the second day of test runs at Cerro Negro, a volcano in the Cordillera Los Maribios mountain range in western Nicaragua. The day before Stöckl spent acclimatising to the terrain, slope and heat. When it comes

“wheN we weNt dowN yesterdAy At speeds ArouNd 37-43Mph it felt uNstAble. todAy froM the first ruN it wAs perfeCt” Max STÖckL to mountain bike speed records, the Austrian is no amateur. Eschewing the expensive customised prototype bikes that Barone used to capture his various speed records, Stöckl prefers to use serial production, or stock, bikes on his attempts – as with this event’s frame which is made by Evil Revolt. presently he retains the Serial Mountain Bike Speed Record on snow, which he achieved at La parva in Chile in 2007 when he clocked 130.74mph. But this is on dirt, a decidedly more difficult and dangerous terrain.

“When we went down yesterday at speeds around 37-43mph, it felt really unstable, loose. Today from the first run it was a perfect, so we know if we go faster it stabilises more; you’re not sinking in the sand, you’re on top of it,” notes Max after this day’s first attempt.

Eric Barone is sitting on a cool box nearby, gingerly trying to fit Stöckl’s shoes over his bandaged feet, badly frostbitten and bloody from a recent ski accident. As Barone’s shoes are too small to fit over his bandages, he’s borrowing Stöckl’s considerably larger trainers.

“Just like he’s trying to fit his feet into my shoes, let’s see if I can follow in his footsteps,” says Stöckl, smiling broadly, his limited English managing to capture the moment adroitly.

Barone grins, quite the image, dressed in a black Metallica T-shirt and extremely tight biker shorts – the type only a European would be caught wearing in public. His muscles are

AddITIONAL pHOTOgRApHy: (pREvIOUS pAgE) ANdREAS EHRENSBERgER (1), JERONIMO OpORTA/pICTUREdESk.COM (1)

his descent like a scalpel. Then the slope hits an elbow where it flattens out from 95 per cent to 40 per cent, and instead of absorbing the grade change, the fork of the prototype buckles instantly, the front wheel disappears before him, and Barone’s chest slams into the ground at 106.88mph. His helmet jettisons like a slingshot, his ribcage colliding with the volcanic rock at full speed, shattering five ribs on impact. He then bounces up and begins cartwheeling like a spineless child’s doll across the black earth. In his violent tumbling, he ruptures the tendons clean from both shoulders, dislocating his left. The forearm muscles in his right arm rip in half when he overextends his wrist. On the last impact he tears his glutes and breaks his hip. Somewhere along the rolling cannonball of collisions, Barone breaks his fourth cervical vertebra.

Finally, he comes to a grinding halt, his body motionless in a broken heap of dust and silence.

“Everyone was saying, ‘He’s dead.’

Imagine, he was sitting there lifeless, not moving,” recalls Jany, who is now Jany Barone. “It horrified me, we were all crying. For me, I had already lost him; he couldn’t have survived that. So we ran over, he was bleeding everywhere and his face was covered in dirt. And suddenly, his eyes opened! We couldn’t believe it. We’re all very Christian here, so to us it was god’s miracle.”

“There was no time for emotion,” says Marco coolly. “There was only time for action.” Unfortunately for Barone, the team had spent all their money on production and preparation, so they didn’t have funds left for a prepared airlift. In fact, they didn’t even have health insurance. So Marco did the only thing he could do: he lifted his crumpled buddy up and placed him in the pick-up truck – unknowingly putting his broken spine in unconscionable peril. In a high anxiety sweat they rushed to the hospital on Nicaraguan dirt roads, his broken body jostling around in the cabin like a shoe in a tumble dryer. When they finally arrived at the hospital 50 minutes later, the elevator was broken, so with Murphy’s Law in full effect they carried him up to the second floor.

Needless to say, Barone’s injuries were critical. His surgeon, dr Laurent Lafosse, argues that if it weren’t for the nearly superhuman bull-like muscles around his neck, he’d now be paralysed or dead.

Barone is lucky to still have the ability to walk, so the fact his gait now comes with a hip-shaking limp, as if perpetually

Above: Serving up Nicaraguan specialities.

Above right: the streets of Léon, Nicaragua.

Right: checking the timing. Bottom: Barone and Stöckl on the trek up the Cerro Negro

There’s taking the rough with the smooth, and there’s a whole lot worse than that: Eric Barone almost lost his life trying to break the record for the fastest speed run on soil, but he still picked up the pieces and agreed to help Max Stöckl successfully break his own record this year

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Shooting star: some tourists dressed head to toe in safety gear take a photo opportunity with a jubilant Max Stöckl

bulging, his features exaggerated, he almost looks like the caricature of a super athlete – a bit like some sort of Cold War-era Captain America. His hands and calf muscles are enormous, his jaw an anvil, his feet flat and wide like iron plates. But this massiveness is betrayed by an omnipresent joviality – Barone is not just helping Stöckl in his attempt to beat his record, he’s sincerely enjoying every second of it with selfless glee. It’s a contagious goodwill.

“It’s going to be a hard target. A record is a record for a reason,” says Stöckl, zipping up his Evoc bag, which is overstuffed with helmet, shoes and water. Then he throws it over his shoulder and begins another long climb up the unforgiving face of Cerro Negro.

The hike up to the peak is an absolutely brutal affair. The pair are not only in direct scorching sunlight, but the grade of the volcano is also incredibly steep. What makes it insufferable, however, is the looseness of the shale; every two steps you take, you lose a step as the ground caves around your feet.

There’s no firmness, no support. It’s like climbing up quicksand. And there goes Barone with his bandaged feet and all, following Stöckl steadily, carrying his bike up the mountain like a crucifix, paying a horrible penance for a crime he didn’t commit. His piston-like legs churn up the incline like a mountain goat.

After the gruelling ascent, the day’s series of test runs get under way. Slowly 50

but surely the test results improve, a welcome sight after the first day’s discouraging times. That first set of times led to Stöckl changing his outfit from a protective leather suit to a more aerodynamic latex one.

After that they decided to move the starting point up another 50m to achieve that extra bit of speed. Then they held him at the start until the wind dropped, waiting for the perfect moment, each step improving the time steadily from 81 to 87 to finally 96mph on the day’s final run. “Today went well, much better than yesterday,” says a sweat-drenched Stöckl as we pack up for the day. “I hoped that with higher speed it would be more stable; it’s nice to be correct this time.”

That evening, over large plates of steak with jalapeño cream sauce (a Nicaraguan speciality), a few beers are imbibed as the team look over photographs and then proceed to break down how to improve Stöckl’s form. As will happen in a table full of Austrians dining with a Californian, the conversation soon turns to Arnold Schwarzenegger, who I assume is a great hero in his homeland. “do they have a lot of statues erected in his honour? Is he like some sort of demi-god over in Austria?” I ask naively.

“He’s from a small village called Thal in the state of Styria,” explains Stöckl sternly. “And this part of Austria creates some very special people.”

“it’s A reCord ANd i’M very hAppy… but At the sAMe MoMeNt i’M thiNkiNg About the NeXt step… is there ANy higher volCANo?” Max STÖckL TuESday May 17, 2011 Cerro Negro, NiCArAguA In the morning Stöckl can be found sitting atop his stock mountain bike on the crest of the Cerro Negro volcano, looking down at the vertiginous slope before him. The wind is blowing stronger than it has all week, whipping the ends of the Red Bull wrap Max has affixed to his head. Quietly he contemplates the run ahead. The first two runs of the day have gone smoothly, and preparation has segued into actualisation. The moment is at hand.

Everything is silent on the peak, the only sound the sharp flapping of the plastic flags set to delineate Stöckl’s trajectory over the volcano’s lip. From here the air tastes like arid rocks. We all wait for him to be ready, wait for the wind to calm even just a bit, offering a clear window for which to make a recordbreaking run for the fastest human on a bike on dirt. Then he puts his helmet on.

It’s an inexplicable feeling to be here, ready to witness such an event. Historic? perhaps not – who will remember such a feat? How many avid fans of speed mountain biking are there? But the anonymity of the endeavour makes it all the more authentic. What is the true motivation for many record-breaking attempts? Money, certain notoriety, fans, women? It’s quite possible this

On his way to victory: Max Stöckl builds up speed on the slopes of Cerro Negro

From left: Stöckl comes to terms with the fact that he is now the record holder; he proudly shows off the print-out of his speed

feat, whether successful or not, will not provide Stöckl with much of the above.

Still, he does it for no other reason than because he simply “likes to go fast”, as he’s fond of saying.

Then, suddenly, he is going fast. He’s going very fast indeed down the face of the volcano. From up top all you can follow is a cloud of black dust. And then there’s the yelling, and the running.

And then there’s the paper read-out feeding out from the timer. It reads 102.49mph. The record for fastest stock mountain bike speed on dirt is reset.

At the bottom of the run there is celebration. Barone is hugging Stöckl in victory, and a long series of photos are taken. Water is poured on his head in triumph. It is a moment of true jubilation. There’s an amorphous bond that’s grown among this group of strangers during these past four days, a bond built on being strangers in

a strange land, seared together by the torrid heat of the sun, melting on a distant black volcano. The beer he has ingested doesn’t seem to hurt either.

But with celebration surrounding him, Stöckl still seems unfulfilled. Removed.

We jump in the sapphire-blue Toyota Hilux and surge forward, rising and falling in the waves of the vast volcanic dunes, a lost boat shimmering in the sun, rolling out of the swells of a coal-black sea. As we drive back towards Leо́n, I say to him: “If you’d been something like 1.2mph slower, you wouldn’t have beaten the record.” “Well,” he begins, considering every word, “Eric had a really good run on his run too. It’s really, really hard to beat the best.” “Well now you’re the best. So how does it feel?”

Stöckl stares straight ahead, driving.

“I registered it as a record, and I’m very happy,” he says. “But at the same moment I’m thinking about the next step and

what’s going on in the future. Is there any higher volcano?” he asks, more to himself than anyone. Stöckl looks youthful, despite his full beard. yet the temples are greying. There’s something there about an athlete perhaps just over his own personal athletic peak, coming to grips with the latter end of his professional career. It’s been three years since his last speed record, and at 36 years old he’s clearly no longer on his way up.

“Even with the stock bike I want to beat Eric’s prototype bike speed record, that’s the goal,” he says. “I’m onto the next thing. Especially because I am not that happy with the end result. I’m not disappointed, but I would love to go faster and it’s just not possible on this hill.”

I suppose, in the end, there are always more mountains left to conquer.

Witness Max Stöckl at his world-beating best at www.fastfever.com

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Competitors start at the top riding over boulders and rocks, then further down the course they come up against a series of large jumps

2. The Crowd

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As the Fort William Mountain Bike World Cup downhill race in Scotland nears its 10th birthday, we ask the champions what makes it so special 1. The Course

“It’s a high-speed, physical track, with a few big jumps and a big pedal to the finish. They’ve made a few changes to the course this year, so I expect it will be even better than it was before.

It’s a man’s track. It’s my favourite track.”

Steve Peat, three-time UCI Mountain Bike World Cup winner (downhill) “It’s a tough course, it really challenges you physically and technically all the way down. There really is no let-up.”

Gee Atherton, 2010 UCI Mountain Bike World Cup winner (downhill) 52

“From the start, all the way down to the finish, it’s packed with people. The noise is unreal. It’s amazing when you’re hanging out for breath, with people shouting encouragement. It helps you dig deep and can make all the difference. Last time I came out of the start gate there I thought, ‘This is what it’s all about.’”

Rachel Atherton, 2008 UCI Mountain Bike World Cup winner (downhill)

3. The Weather

There can be four seasons in one day on this mountain. It might be sunny, but there’s often snow near the start gate and conditions can change in minutes – even as a rider descends the course. That makes for very interesting racing. “The weather is always an extra challenge on that mountain. You’re trying to second-guess what’s going to happen.”

Gee Atherton

4. The Action

“If you want to see the ultimate in skilful riding you want to be at the top of the course, where it goes over rocks and boulders. Seeing the guys go through that section is unbelievable. I’ve walked it and that’s hard enough, but doing it on a bike at high speed is phenomenal.”

Martin Bullock, Hardcore Fort William fan

Rachel Atherton came out on top in the downhill event three years ago

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The 1.7-mile-long race sees mountain bikers charge down the face of Aònach Mor in the Scottish Highlands

5. The Scenery

“I love being in the mountains and the views from the top of the track in Fort William are amazing.

You can see for miles and miles. It’s all wild mountains and moors, you feel like you’re out in the middle of nowhere and it’s so beautiful.”

Rachel Atherton “The scenery from the top all the way downhill on a clear day is amazing, but for the most part we don’t get to enjoy its beauty; we’re focused on the race.”

Greg Minnaar, three-time UCI Mountain Bike World Cup winner (downhill)

8. The Fanatics

WORDS: HUW J WILLIAMS: PHOTOGRAPHY: VICTOR LUKAS (4), GARY WILLIAMSON (1)

6. The Turf

So many British riders have a real chance of winning at Fort William, and that gives the competition a razor-sharp edge. They all want a home-soil victory, but only one will take it. Gee Atherton will be defending his World Cup Crown against a line-up that includes the likes of Steve Peat, Josh Bryceland, Marc Beaumont, Brendan Fairclough and Danny Hart. The British women such as 2006 World Champion Tracy Moseley and 2008 champ Rachel Atherton will also battle hard.

7. The Awards

It’s not just about the fans, the pros or the locals, Fort William gets the seal of approval from the whole mountain biking world. It has collected a total of 22 awards, including Best UCI (International Cycling Union) World Cup Downhill Event on six occasions, the IMTTO (International Mountainbike Teams, Technical Support and Organisers) Best Mountain Bike Event in the World five times and Singletrack Magazine has voted it the best UK Mountain Bike Event six times.

Gee Atherton won the downhill section of the UCI Mountain Bike World Cup last year

Even during practice the commitment of the fans helps the riders raise their own game. “At most races the crowds turn up for race day and that’s it.

But at Fort William there are people there for the first day of practice cheering you on, they’re watching qualifying, they’re with you the whole way. It makes you put that little bit extra into the race and also makes it much easier to motivate yourself.”

Gee Atherton

9. The Locals

The hospitality shown to everyone involved in the race is unrivalled. Spectators, event workers, the UCI guys and the pros all say it’s the friendliest venue on the tour. Hosting a World Cup Downhill is a big thing for the region and the locals really go out of their way to make sure that everyone who comes has a great time. It’s not just the people either – the local whisky provides a warm welcome all of its own.

10. The Whole Package

“It’s the best event of the year by far. The organisation is second to none; they get it right. The people behind the race manage to keep everyone happy – the supporters, the crew and the riders. The whole thing just works really well for everyone and the fans are awesome. It’s the most fun event to be at and at the same time it’s a very serious competition.

There’s always a really good feeling around the race.”

Steve Peat 53

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PHOTOGRAPHY: RED BULL RACING

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W H AT I N S P I R E S G R E AT D E S I G N E R S? W H E R E DO THEIR IDEAS COME FROM? reD BulleTin C O LU M N I ST ST E P H E N B AY L E Y, A FO R M E R D I R E C TO R O F T H E D E S I G N M U S E U M , P U T T H E S E Q U E ST I O N S , A M O N G M A N Y OT H E R S , TO A D R I A N N E W E Y, R E D B U L L R AC I N G D E S I G N C H I E F, A M A N H A I L E D A S T H E G R E AT E ST R AC I N G C A R D E S I G N E R O F T H E AG E 55

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drian Newey is a very practical person.

At 16, he went on a British Oxygen (BOC) welding course in Birmingham.

After all, Formula One is, despite its magnificent and profligate absurdities, the most practical of sports. In the design of a racing car you are continuously doing trades: penetration versus lift; speed versus reliability; lightness versus strength. It’s the designer’s balance of these trades that makes a winner.

Right now, Adrian Newey, chief technical officer of Red Bull Racing, achieves this balance better than any of his rivals. I wanted to meet him not to steal Red Bull Racing’s secrets and start my own team, but to understand the place of design – the place of creativity – in the hard, mercenary and realistic world of Formula One. I wanted to know if Newey was aware what made him and his cars first, best and different. Do exceptional people know what makes them exceptional?

Newey is mild-mannered, soft-spoken, quite intense, but friendly in quite an unassertive way. He is undemonstrative and calm, but not, one imagines, much 56

given to the toleration of dissent in the workforce. And by ‘workforce’ I mean drivers as well as grease monkies. He is one of those Formula One technocrats who, like Patrick Head of the Williams team, has an unromantic view of the driver’s overall contribution to a car’s performance. For Newey, the design of a racing car is a technical exercise in which the driver is just another (expensive) encumbrance on the way to perfection.

I am guessing that Newey would be just as interested in designing a remotely piloted Formula One car, a Grand Prix drone. Without a driver, you could strip out a lot of unnecessary stuff: things such as seats, pedals, steering wheel, rear-view mirrors and whole load of safety systems. A driver-less Formula One

“A formula one car is a phenomenally messy vehicle”

PHOTOGRAPHY: NEIL BRIDGE, NICKY WRIGHT/NATIONAL MOTOR MUSEUM

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car could become an exercise in pure mechanical engineering, controlled from a distant console in Milton Keynes, just as someone in Nevada controls the unmanned aerial vehicles known as MQ-9 Reapers over Afghanistan. You sense this in the decoration of his office.

By which I mean: there is none. No mementoes. No signed photographs.

No charming knick-knacks.

I have visited most leading road car designers all over the world. Mostly they have a Wurlitzer, a Fender Stratocaster and a model Ferrari 250 GTO in Rosso Corsa on display for instructive and inspirational purposes. Some have guns.

I immediately ask Newey why no Ferrari: irrespective of contemporary Formula One team rivalries, the 250 GTO is surely the ultimate car? He looks disappointed, even confused, and says: “Why does everyone focus on the 250 GTO?” I give him an answer which touches upon the airy fantasies of art and the erotic power of seduction by sculpture, but he is unimpressed. He explains that the 1967 330P4 was the better Ferrari and, in any case, he much prefers the Ford GT40.

But my first big question is very different. Formula One is governed by manically detailed laws which dictate this and that down to millimetres.

And when you have satisfied the FIA’s [the governing body’s] legislators, there are then the even more non-negotiable laws of physics. Why, I want to know, if everybody is subject to the same rulebook and identical physical laws, are the results so very different? Why aren’t all Formula One cars exactly the same? Why isn’t every car a Red Bull Racing car?

“Because there are so many variables,” Newey replies. “A Formula One car is a phenomenally messy vehicle: an open-wheeled car is not something you’d design just by giving it a free hand! Just look at the level of complexity.

An aircraft is much cleaner. The thing is, we set off on a certain route, but it might be a dead end. You can start well, but then end up getting stuck.”

Here, Newey soon gets into an extraordinarily interesting argument between potential and realisation in design. Basically, he believes the creative objective is to design a racing car which has the maximum amount of development potential. This means the perfect car is not necessarily the one that rolls straight out of the transporter into pole position. He cites the 2009 Brawn car as a warning: this was a design which

“GenerAlly, The mosT visiBle pArTs – The upper BoDyWorK – Are The leAsT funcTionAlly imporTAnT” box-fresh won races, but had only limited development potential and, as the season progressed, started going backwards as competitors developed their cars. Or, at least, the 2009 Brawn car stayed still while the competition speeded-up.

Instead, Newey argues, for sustained success you must allow for evolution: the future has to be designed into the car right at the origin. Actually, I think this principle applies to a chair as well as to a Grand Prix weapon. Actually, I think it applies to people, too. We all know one of those sad, tiresome souls who peaked at Oxford or Cambridge and then spent the rest of their lives remembering youthful glories.

I abandon the Ferrari question because I feel Newey would not be much persuaded by my argument that, while the 250 GTO was the first Ferrari developed in a wind-tunnel, its ineffable shape really owes as much to Sergio Scaglietti’s hammer and the pencils at Pininfarina as to aerodynamic formulae.

So now I’m keen to know if Newey has an answer to the question: “Where does engineering end and design begin?” Is

the creation of a racing car pure science or is there an element of art?

It may be a false distinction of mine, but I think it’s a good prompt. It certainly gets a good response. “Our process is,” he says, “research, design and build.

Our philosophy is to spend as much time as possible on the research. In fact, the build time for a new car is only around one week, so research and design can be maximised.” But during this phase, Newey says there is room for whim, expression and even fantasy. “Drawing is not pure science: it’s from the artistic side of the brain,” he adds.

So then I ask him if there is an element of – dread word – ‘styling’, in the design of a Formula One car? It’s not a word Newey would use, and he winces a bit, but then says something fascinating.

“There are areas on a Formula One car where you can make visual changes that make no difference to the performance.

Generally, the most visible parts – the upper bodywork – are the least functionally important.” This reminds me of an American aerospace engineer who once told me there was no doubt 57

that there was plenty of scope for art: they actually wanted the F4 Phantom to look mean and nasty.

I mention that Johannes Brahms had no idea where his music came from, and I want to know where Newey’s ideas come from. “It very much depends on the problem,” he says. “The majority of the work is iterative. We have a wing, so how do we make the wing better? I look at the problem. I try to understand it.

Occasionally I have to get up and walk away. It’s almost as if things are evolving in your mind even when you are not aware of them.” So what does he do when the process gets stuck? A long walk? A run? Listen to rock or opera very loud? A conversation with Jack Daniel?

I’m met with a blank look. But it leads to a revealing anecdote. Newey’s father was a vet who taught him exam technique: time spent in reconnaissance is never wasted, was the rule. Read the questions, Newey senior said, and don’t rush to answer them. It is the same with Formula One regulations: ponder them long and hard before you start drawing.

It is fascinating how, every time the legislators introduce a new rule to slow cars down, it takes only a little pondering before cars start going faster again. So

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how long can lap times continue to fall?

Mile runners keep on going more quickly, but obviously there is a limit somewhere.

And it must be the same with cars. To be absurd, the current Silverstone fastest lap is 1 minute 18.739 seconds. It is easy to imagine that coming down to 1 minute 10 seconds. But how will it happen?

Newey says: “The limits are not established. Drivers can physically stand to go more quickly. Regulations are the main obstacle. We are certainly not yet at the limits of the human body.” The suggestion here is that drivers will have to put up with what comes their way. If a human neck can cope with 6G, it can cope with 8G. But maybe not 15G? We shall see, but meanwhile, progress in racing car design depends on mechanical engineering. “What I do is try to find enough time for inspiration” says Newey reflectively. “I spend my time being an

“DrAWinG is noT science: iT’s from The ArTisTic siDe of The BrAin”

engineer with my fellow engineers at Red Bull, not managing them. I’m not interested in management.”

So what inspires Newey? “Anything that combines form and function,” he says. “Concorde – who knows why it is so beautiful?” So now we are back to the Ferrari 250 GTO, a car made by inspired artisans, not technocrats or sophisticates. “The ’60s was certainly a Golden Age for car styling… but,” he adds provocatively, “the GTO, the GT40 and the 330P4 were not products of stylists.”

Adrian Newey is the most admired and successful racing car designer of his generation. He was born in 1958.

Jonathan Ive of Apple can make the same claim in the design of consumer products.

Ive was born in 1967. Although the iPod, iPhone and iPad have quite literally changed the way we think, Newey does not know Ive. I don’t mean socially. He has simply never heard of him. Mind you, nor do I imagine Ive has heard of Newey.

This is very interesting on two levels.

First, it’s a clear demonstration that ‘design’ is a vast and nearly indefinable subject. Both Newey and Ive are great designers, yet inhabit not just separate geographical continents, but different creative worlds. The person who does your hair will call himself a designer.

The technician-nerd who writes computer code will call himself an ‘engineer’.

And the designer who conceptualises and executes unbeatable racing cars calls himself technical director.

Second, there is the matter of computers and their role in racing car design. Newey turns 53 this year.

Not very many people under 50 will know what a French curve is, except as it applies to Charlotte Gainsbourg.

A French curve is the generic term for a set of templates design-engineers used, when drawing by hand, to replicate curves of differing radii. Computer Aided Design, with its obedient electrons, made French curves redundant in Formula One car design around 25 years ago.

Adrian Newey still has a set of French curves in his office-studio. He also has a vast, parallel-action drawing board, exactly as I remember from childhood visits to my father’s factory, a place of gloomy romance that smelled of hot oil.

The very last time I saw a drawing board like Newey’s was in Terrazzano di Rho, near Milan, visiting the carrozzeria of Zagato in 1990. At the time they still had artisans in leather aprons bashing metal in the dark and the guys at the drawing

PHOTOGRAPHY: RED BULL RACING (2), SUTTON IMAGES (1), ARCHIV AUTOREVUE (1)

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ADRIAN NEWEY Born

Stratford-Upon-Avon, December 26, 1958

Educated Repton School, Derby University of Southampton, BA Aeronautics and Astrophysics, 1980 Career

Fittipaldi F1, 1980 March Engineering, 1981 Williams F1, 1990 McLaren, 1997 Red Bull Racing, 2005 The only designer to have won the Constructors’ Championship with three different teams.

In 2010, Red Bull Racing’s double Championship year, he contributed to Sony PlayStation’s Gran Turismo 5.

On joining Red Bull Racing in 2005, team principal Christian Horner told The Guardian “Given the choice of Adrian Newey or Michael Schumacher, I’d go for Adrian every time.”

boards were wearing white lab coats.

What I am saying is that Adrian Newey likes to draw. It’s the way he thinks.

We get our word ‘design’ from the Latin designare which means to mark out. Lots of claims have been made, not least by me, for the importance of design in technology, culture and business.

Sometimes, the effect is mixed. Dieter Rams created superlative product designs for the Braun electrical company in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s. Applying Bauhaus principles to a food processor or record player, he created objects of exquisite, absolutist, pre-minimal perfection.

Rams raised Braun’s international profile and prestige and became hugely influential. He was a huge influence on Jonathan Ive. Yet Rams’ beautiful designs were impractical in use and

expensive to manufacture. So much so that production engineers at Braun groaned about the “Rams Ausschlag”… or the Rams Surcharge: the extra cost of getting something impractically beautiful into production.

It is completely different with Adrian Newey. So far from adding a cost, his design – his balancing of trades – brings a premium benefit. An American once defined design as “the cash value of art”. Maybe success in a Grand Prix is the ultimate example of that idea.

So, Formula One design inches its way up the tightening helix of invention, exploiting more advantage in ever smaller areas. The great ideas are easy to copy; more difficult to imitate are the modest, successive improvements that come with careful development. It’s all

“The ’60s WAs A GolDen AGe for cAr sTylinG. BuT The GTo, GT40 AnD 330p4 Were noT proDucTs of sTylisTs”

about the increments. Progress, perhaps, lies in the infinite capacity for taking very great pains over very small matters.

Remember: a ‘quantum’ is the smallest possible measurement. Thus, a quantum leap is a very small, but significant, event. This is a business of quantum leaps.

Formula One is, above all, a sport (or maybe an art?) of percentages. So the fantastic spectacle of a Grand Prix in all its blur of noise, deafening colour and plethoric vulgarity is made possible by painstaking work with a set of French curves and a good deal of pondering.

And a billion spectators are regularly stupefied by this brilliant edition of everyday mechanical facts.

Research, Newey and I agree, in concluding our conversation, is a matter of not being absolutely certain where you are going. But being determined to explore. In this sense I found Newey a little like an intrepid Victorian lady traveller whose ambition was very simple: to comprehend the full truth of every subject. In their case, Niagara Falls, in Newey’s, a Gurney flap. www.redbullracing.com; www.formula1.com

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In love with shoes since boyhood, Mark Ong has become one of the most sought-after trainer designers on the planet. But despite his star-studded client list, he keeps it simple: he and his wife produce every design by hand in a basic studio

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SHOES: THE DADDY Self-confessed punk rebel Mark Ong creates shoes worn by Kobe Bryant, Linkin Park, Q-Tip, and custom fans all over the world.

We go inside the mind of a trainer artiste‌ Words: Jeremy Torr Photography: Neil Massey

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darling of the international custom-trainer world, Mark Ong sits at the desk of his Singapore design studio. He’s designing in his head while taking care of logistics: packing, weighing, and sticking stamps on a box of shoes created for a customer in the US. “We do everything – all this real stuff, not just the design work. It’s the punk, it’s the aesthetic, it’s the energy,” he says.

“It’s all part of what we do. I love it.”

Ong is a hands-on kind of guy. He takes trainers from the likes of Nike and DC and paints, chops, and studs them in his own way – to the delight of collectors from Mexico to Malaysia, from his friend Jeffrey Koh at the local shopping centre to US basketball star Kobe Bryant – priced at anything from €175 to €600 a pop.

“It’s a bit weird,” says Sue-Anne Lim, who is Ong’s wife and colleague. “We can go anywhere in Singapore and not be recognised, but when we went to Mexico City for a DC Shoes launch, the publicity people had done this massive trainer logo three storeys high on the front of a warehouse for us, there were TV stations waiting to interview Mark, and we were driving around in a limo. It was crazy.”

Crazy, maybe, but Ong admits he’s never been one for the ordinary life. He started his love affair with shoes when he was a child, a renegade nine-year-old skateboarder in the late 1980s. Ong and his friends – many of whom he still skates with – would hit the street, make their own ramps, learn tricks, run away from the police when they were spotted somewhere they shouldn’t have been, and generally disappoint their parents.

HARD KNOCKS

“I was fascinated by the 1980s American culture,” admits Ong. “I really thought I was living in the US!” Of course, he wasn’t. His family was in Singapore, in the days when it wasn’t yet the glossy city-state of today.

“My dad was really keen for me to be a success,” says Ong. “He wanted me to be a lawyer or a doctor, but I just wanted to do the things he didn’t want me to do.”

He carried on with skating, quickly getting through trainers. Unable to afford new ones, he started patching them up with leather, rubber or whatever he could get his hands on. “We were doing then what we had to do,” explains Ong. “Skating brought us a discipline, and we just fixed up what we didn’t have.”

This creativity, and his ability to craft style out of minimal resources, led Ong 62

Ong’s talents developed out of necessity, repairing and patching up the countless pairs of trainers he’d go through when skateboarding on the streets of Singapore. Then Nike held an online trainer-customising contest, and his life changed forever

“I don’t want to fake it. I want to enjoy every day that I go to work”

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SNEAKER VIRUS They fight, they camp out all night in front of shops, they pay serious money – all for a couple of kicks. Here’s a handy self-diagnosis guide for those who are worried they’ve caught the disease.

Run-DMC are the Big Bang, and Michael Jordan is God There are at least two schools of thought on the origins of the trainer cult. One maintains Michael Jordan set the ball rolling when he broke the rules in 1985 (see Air Jordan 1 Black/Red ‘1985 Vintage’ below), the other honours rappers Run-DMC as the prophets of trainer mania.

The hip-hop trio wore adidas without laces religiously whenever they performed live, but it was a vision Run-DMC member Joseph Simmons’ brother, Russell, had in 1986 that really sparked their love of trainers. “You’ve got to bring out a song,” he informed the DMCs, “and it should go like this: ‘My adidas, standin’ on Two Fifth.’” It was no sooner said than done. My adidas was a hit, and the world has been clocking musicians’ footwear since.

A seminal childhood experience Jordan Michael Geller’s mother walked into the room when he was young, bearing a gift. “Look what I’ve brought you,” she said. “It’s got your name on it!” She held up a shirt with ‘Michael Jordan’ emblazoned across the back. Jordan Junior was blown away. “I felt a certain bond with Michael Jordan straightaway,” says Geller, who then found his idol also had his name on a pair of trainers.

Jordan Michael Geller now owns more than 2,000 pairs, lovingly arranged in his trainer museum, the ShoeZeum, in San Diego (sneakskicks.com).

You get nervous when you see the words ‘quickstrike’ or ‘inline’ as you surf through your favourite trainer websites ‘Quickstrike’ is the call to battle for a trainer hunter; ‘inline’ the signal for a merciless pursuit. There is a cunning marketing strategy behind the terms, both of which refer to limited-edition trainers with cultstatus potential that will go on sale at selected stores at a specific time and for a specific price. ‘Inline’ trumps ‘quickstrike’, as it means fewer shoes in even fewer shops.

The logical result of which is…

You spend all your spare time on internet trainer forums It’s sneakernews.com and kicksonfire.com for breakfast, highsnobiety.com for lunch, and hypebeast.com and flightclub.com for dinner, and then flitting around blogs and ploughing through message boards for the rest of the time. Hundreds of thousands of collectors all over the world trawl their global haunts on a daily basis, looking for the ultimate pair of trainers. “Regardless of what the new model is and regardless of the hype surrounding it,” Austrian sneakerhead Hadi Reda explains, “the information will appear on one of the insider sites and the whole world will know within a few hours.”

You spend the night camped out in front of a shoe shop “It was the Patta Asics GL3 with special packaging,” Christian Wolf, originally from Germany but now living in Vienna, recalls as his mind takes him back to a trip to the Netherlands. “I got to Amsterdam at two in the morning, and a member of staff gave me a number for my place in line.” There were around 300 sneakerheads from the Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany, France, Belgium, England, and Poland in line with him. Wolf was number 66. The following day at 1pm, the keepers of the Holy Grail let the first 20 people from the line into the shop. In no time, sizes seven to 11 were sold out.

There was an insurrection outside

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€3,000 Air Jordan IV ‘Undefeated’ This is one of those times when everything aligned to create the ideal colour scheme of a beloved Air Jordan model.

Los Angeles-based brand and store Undefeated collaborated with the Jordan Brand to create an MA-1 flightjacket-inspired Air Jordan IV. Undefeated is among the most highly regarded trainer stores in the world, the Air Jordan IV is one of the most popular models in the Air Jordan legacy, and the colours of the MA-1 flight jacket created one of the most sought-after, and highly valued trainers ever.

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the shop. There were similar scenes in New York when the ‘Nike Pigeon Dunk’ was released (see below).

You happily fork out €3,000 for a pair of trainers “Everyone has a price.” This is how Hadi Reda distinguishes the passionate collector from those who are in it for the money. Some hunters run into the shop, buy the rarer trainers, run back out again, photograph them, and then put them up for sale on eBay. Within hours, they’re worth many times more. Another couple of months later, and they’re worth more again.

And then there are the legendary cases that show up in an online auction years after their release – brand-spanking new – and cost as much as a trip to the Moon.

You own more pairs of shoes than your girlfriend Christian Wolf has turned the longest wall of his stately hallway into a wall of fame: 140 trophies arranged separately, some in boxes, but never sole to sole, never in plastic bags, and never exposed to ultra-violet light.

It’s at the point where you wonder if sneakerheads ever actually put their shoes on.“It’s like it is for a wine collector,” ShoeZeum director Geller explains, furrowing his brow. “It’s a very difficult decision to make.”

The world’s most expensive trainers, as commented on by Yu-Ming Wu, founder and editor-in-chief of sneakernews.com, the renowned New York City-based trainer forum.

€1,300 Nike Dunk Low SB ‘Pigeon’ The infamous Pigeon Dunk SB is now part of trainer folklore.

In 2005, collectors got word that it would be released at The Reed Space store in the Lower East Side of New York and camped out for days to get one of only 150 pairs available. Jeff Staple, the owner of Staple Design and The Reed Space, had no idea the news would cause a riot, taking trainer collecting to the mainstream through TV and newspaper coverage. The Pigeons are now considered among the rarest and most highly valued pairs of trainers.

€1,100 Air Jordan 1 Black/Red ‘1985 Vintage’ For Air Jordan collectors, it’s like fine wine – the older the better. This is especially true of the Air Jordan 1, the first signature trainer Nike designed for Michael Jordan.

These shoes became infamous in Jordan’s first NBA year with the Chicago Bulls. Most basketball trainers in 1985 were white, and so the NBA banned the garishly coloured Air Jordan 1s, fining Jordan $5,000 for every game he wore them – money Nike was quite happy to pay in return for the unintentional publicity.

€800 Reebok Court Victory Pump x Alife ‘The Ball Out’ When it comes to high-value collectability, Nike and its affiliate Jordan brand are king. There’s rarely a current-generation nonNike or Jordan sneaker that’s valued over €800. This first edition of a collaboration between New York City-based brand Alife and Reebok is one of those rare non-Nike trainers highly valued by collectors around the world.

The shoes were designed by Alife and sold exclusively at their NYC store, Alife Rivington Club, in very limited qualities.

€700 A Bathing Ape x adidas Super Ape Star ‘Bape Camo’ In 2003, with trainer websites growing, Japanese clothing company A Bathing Ape and adidas did a surprising collaboration which is now legendary. They released two styles in three colour schemes, limited to 500 pairs each, with the ‘Bape Camo’ adidas x A Bathing Ape Super Ape Star, and the ‘Super Ape Skate’ being the most sought after.

At the time, ‘Bape’ began to mimic the adidas Super Star trainer, which helped kick-start the collaboration craze of the past few years.

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to study at nearby Temasek Polytechnic for a degree in visual communications.

Like life with his father, it wasn’t all roses. “We had one lecturer, Iskandar Jalil, he was a very hard man,” says Ong. “If he didn’t like what you’d done, he’d just kick it to pieces. That taught me not to take offence, but to look even more critically at what I’d done and be an optimist about the next time.

I think that is still with me.”

But now Ong has come full circle, doing the influencing himself. Aspiring students write to him from all over Asia, and as far away as New Zealand, the UK, and the US, begging to come and learn the art of trainer-pimping with him.

International stars drop by too.

“In our old office on Haji Lane, there was a knock on the door, and when we opened it, there were the guys from Linkin Park,” says Sue-Anne.

“One of their singers Mike Shinoda invited us to their concert. It was great.”

Basketball legend Kobe Bryant bought a pair of Nike Black Mamba customised trainers from Ong; now esteemed names such as Q-Tip, Don Johnson, and DJ Clark Kent proudly wear his trainers – not bad for someone who used to dodge the police in patched-up shoes.

FEET ON THE GROUND

After graduating from university, Ong continued skating, created a graffiti tag (‘Sabotage’, or ‘SBTG’, which he now uses as his label) and worked in a trainer shop. He developed into a real ‘sneakerhead’, buying at least two pairs a month. “By the time I was 22 or so, I had around 80 pairs,” he grins.

Then, in 2003, he entered a competition to customise trainers on www.niketalk.com. He won, and his world changed overnight. The resulting publicity scored him an order for 72 pairs from a Tokyo retailer. “It was, like – boom!

I didn’t know what to do as I’d only done a few for friends before that, so I hired my friend Andy to help me,” he says.

After that it was up, up, and up.

Since that first success, he’s worked with Nike, DC Shoes, adFunture, DJ Unkle, exhibited worldwide with the Finish Line trainer store and established the highly successful SBTG business selling trainers and the Royalefam clothing line.

When it comes to packaging and delivery, there’s plenty of work for him and Sue-Anne, who says there’s much more to come. “Mark has enough creative ideas to last a lifetime,” she says, smiling.

“He doesn’t like doing the same thing twice.” The goal of her husband’s design

Rows of handmade, customised Nike Dunk Lows – these are WA138 (“We are 138”), a collaboration between SBTG and Salt Lake City-based Fice – line up for dispatch in Ong’s studio

is twofold, she says: to create something both organic and empowering. Ong agrees: “I think Royalefam stands for empowerment; I want people to share that when they wear my shoes.”

ROCKET MAN

Although Ong admits he’s something of a Jekyll-and-Hyde character (“my workshop has stuff everywhere, real punk, but our apartment is totally Zen”) he’s still very disciplined in his approach to what he does. In fact, he’s quite a fan of Singapore’s founding father, Lee Kuan Yew – a man not noted for favouring DIY street artists over public order.

“You really have to admire him,” says Ong. “He did so much for Singapore. I’ve been asked to redecorate the offices of Facebook here, and I’m thinking of doing a massive ‘LKY’ portrait in buttons.”

Another big influence on Ong – although he never really saw it as a youngster – was his father. “I remember one time I had a school project to do, to make a model rocket. We were supposed to use an old bottle, bits of cork, and stuff,” says Ong. But his father wanted to make it really good, so he bought some toothpaste, and they used the box to help make the rocket. In a strange way it was a turning point for how Ong looked at his world. “It showed me how something totally irrelevant like a toothpaste box could be used for something else entirely,” he explains. “I guess it helped form one of my main beliefs: that we should evolve beyond our surroundings.”

The work Ong does is also evolving, finding its own level. A couple of years ago, he was seduced by the attractions

of financial success, so he took on some staff, boosted output, and toyed with the idea of mass production. “The commercial aspect did affect me,” he admits. “But I wasn’t entirely happy with it. I found I was catering for what people liked.”

So he cut everything back, and with Sue-Anne, he now goes it alone, keeping all products exclusively handproduced. “If what I do doesn’t resonate, I just don’t do it,” says Ong happily.

“I don’t want to fake it; I want to enjoy every day that I go to work. That’s got to be the most beautiful thing there is.”

TOOTHPASTE MAGIC

The soundtrack from Apocalypse Now pounds out from Ong’s Mac as he works on a new design. Scissors, glue, screenprint stencils, studs, and badges litter the desk. Posters, prints, and painted-wood panels cover every space on the wall. Sue-Anne sits at a sewing machine, sewing badges onto shirts from an old shop nearby. Neighbours from adjoining factory units stop by, unsure what to make of these successful young punks. The Ong Show goes on.

“I always knew what I wanted to do,” he says. “I wanted to do design, and to do skateboarding.” Today, he is doing just that: if a bit more professionally than in the days when he and his father used to argue. That doesn’t happen anymore.

“I love him, and I know he is so proud of me,” says Ong. “I still remember that model rocket. I want people who buy my things to get the same magic as I got from that toothpaste packet.”

Mark Ong’s trainers and clothing line can be found at www.royalefam.com

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HITM 66

AKER With the future of Ireland’s cricket team hanging in the balance, Kevin O’Brien, the side’s most exciting player, is mapping out his own sporting journey Words: Declan Quigley Photography: Shamil Tanna

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evin O’Brien finds it daunting to give true meaning to his recordbreaking exploits against England in the Cricket World Cup. Ask him how he scored his explosive century – with no exaggeration, one of the greatest ever seen in international cricket – and his vision focuses on the middle distance, his mind’s eye replaying the images of an experience that he is still struggling to come to terms with.

“It was just phenomenal,” he says half-smiling and hardly comprehending his life-altering 113 runs off just 63 deliveries in Bangalore. “It was just unbelievable. From 111 for five and then all of a sudden you’re 273 for five in 100 balls or something…”

If the great Sachin Tendulkar had hit a similar hundred for India it would have been a sensation. That an emerging pro from a minor cricket nation did it stopped the sporting world in its tracks. The man swiftly dubbed ‘the gingerbread man’ produced a knock of bravura and brio rarely seen in these days of clinical sporting excellence and forensic preparation. And he plans to watch it soon.

“I have the highlights at home on DVD,” says O’Brien. I have to watch that! I’ve seen two-and-a-half minutes on YouTube – which is just bowl it, four and then the next ball – but I’d love to hear the commentary, to know exactly what they were saying.”

In a way O’Brien encapsulates everything about modern Irish cricket. Confident, cocky, even, but with his feet firmly on the ground and with a very clear idea of where the future lies, both his own and of the game as a whole. With player numbers rising rapidly, O’Brien’s exploits in India have added further fuel to the explosion of interest in a game once dismissed as ‘minority’ and ‘foreign’.

Viewed with suspicion because of its British colonial roots, and incorrectly assumed by many to be the preserve of the wealthy, Irish cricket has made its way into the limelight in the past five years thanks to sound management, careful nurturing of players and a sprinkling of magic. Its rise, starting with the national team’s first World Cup in 2007, mirrors that of O’Brien. The 27-year-old made his debut for Ireland nine months before that tournament in the West Indies which saw Ireland stun everyone by qualifying for the knock-out stages after a tie with Zimbabwe and victory over Pakistan.

O’Brien was then marked out as a batsman of note and a bowler of promise. Four years on and it would take an innings of sheer brilliance to supplant those 2007 images in the minds of Irish sports fans, as Ireland produced one of the great run chases on the back of the fastest World Cup century, and against the old enemy England.

O’Brien’s brother Niall, the side’s wicketkeeper, who plays for Northamptonshire in the English County Championship, said later he’d been aware of his younger brother’s increasing agitation as England piled on the runs during their innings, and knew only too well what the possible consequences of that frustration could be.

Kevin, for his part, wears an air of bemusement at what flowed from his bat, but he says that he expected a big, world-class innings at some point in his life. But not that day, not like that.

“I’ve always known I can hit the ball and I’ve always known I can score pretty quickly, but 100 off 50 balls is phenomenal,” says O’Brien. “I’ll never do that again. I don’t think I’ll even hit 80 off 40 balls. I don’t think I’ll ever hit a strike rate of two a ball for the rest 68

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“I’ve always known I can hit the ball and I’ve always known I can score pretty quickly, but 100 off 50 balls is phenomenal”

Rise of the Gingerbread Man From humble beginnings playing for his local team, the Railway Union cricket club, just a stone’s throw from his family home in south Dublin, Kevin O’Brien has come a long way in a short space of time. After impressing at the 2004 Under-19 World Cup with 241 runs to help the Ireland team to the semi-finals, he then scored 35 runs from 48 balls against England on his ODI debut two years later. Since then, he has helped turn the Ireland team from unheard-of minnows to more than a match for the world’s best.

Clockwise from top: O’Brien in World Cup action in 2007 against the West Indies (Ireland lost but put up a good fight); the all-rounder bowls against the eventual winners, India, in this year’s World Cup; celebrating that century against England; O’Brien leads the celebrations after helping Ireland to a historic tie with Zimbabwe during 2007 World Cup

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“Sri Lanka’s T20 is a fantastic opportunity for me to play with and against some of the best players in the world”

ADDITIONAl PhOTOgrAPhY: INPhO/ANDrEW FOSKEr (1), gETTY ImAgES (3)

of my Irish career. I knew, obviously, when I was on 50, but I looked at the board 10 balls later and I was on 80 off 40 balls and I thought, ‘Where did those 30 runs come from?’

“And then, I thought, ‘I could get a hundred here’ so it clicked in. I just had to refocus and keep taking what was on offer.”

Sporting excellence is a given in the O’Brien family.

Kevin, the youngest, is the sixth member to represent Ireland at youth and provincial level and one of three to wear green as a senior cricketer. his father Brendan ‘ginger’ O’Brien was a leading figure in Irish cricket during the years it meandered in the backwaters of non-affiliated anonymity.

Despite a proud tradition dating back to 1855, cricket in Ireland had long faced hostility from the all-powerful gAA and indifference from the International Cricket Council, to which Ireland was finally accepted as a member in 1993.

By the time Kevin O’Brien was born in 1984, 14 years had passed since the gAA had repealed its ban on foreign games.

The young O’Brien could express his boyhood energy with regular appearances for the Clanna gael Fontenoy football team and the railway Union cricket club.

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’Brien clearly has a flair for the dramatic. his, and Ireland’s, first delivery in one-day international cricket, against England in Belfast in 2006, produced the wicket of Andrew Strauss. Ireland failed to win the game, but showed that they belonged.

Since then, steady progress and occasional moments of brilliance have stoked the fires of interest, with membership of Cricket Ireland going from around 14,000 members in 2007 to its current level of 25,000. This has taken Irish cricket’s focus away from the national team to the ranks below. For example, at the North County Cricket Club, not long before the one-day internationals against Pakistan, the national team’s practice session is moved to later in the day so that the leinster Under-11 squad can train ahead of them. It means a leisurely start to this particular day for the Ireland team, but everything else about Irish cricket seems to be happening at breakneck speed.

Warren Deutrom, Cricket Ireland’s charismatic and politically savvy English-born CEO, has a strategic plan to reach 50,000 members by the time of the next World Cup, in Australia and

New Zealand in 2015. But he also has to ensure that Ireland is allowed the opportunity to compete at the highest level.

The decision by the ICC in April to go ahead with its plans to exclude all but the 10 full member nations from future World Cups outraged the cricketing world and drew condemnation from players and officials from those 10 countries and, of course, associate member nations such as Ireland. The board that took the decision was, of course, made up entirely of representatives of the 10 full member nations.

“We’re victims of our success,” said O’Brien at the time, conveying the widely held view that Ireland’s giant-killing performances in 2007 and 2011 had proved a major headache for some full member nations striving to retain their status, and an ICC looking to shorten a complex World Cup format.

“It probably is greedy,” O’Brien says now, his anger barely quelled. “The 10 teams just want the pool shared among them, rather than letting more teams in to divide up the cash.”

“This isn’t just about cricket, this is a sporting principle,” says Deutrom, a well-connected former ICC official who has worked wonders in getting Ireland game time with the best sides. he is plotting to overturn the decision. “We’re seeking an opportunity to explain to the ICC that the decision has attracted worldwide condemnation; that 95 out of 105 members of the ICC feel strongly about this and are outraged by this decision – that we’ve all been disenfranchised from the World Cup.” Ireland coach Phil Simmons, a languid Trinidadian and former West Indies batsman, whose even manner has been central in steering Ireland through the excitement of the last five years, is exasperated at the ICC’s decision.

“The ICC has put a lot of money into us, and into the six countries below the full members,” says Simmons. “We’ve shown that we’re up there, and then they take the ledge from under us and say, ‘There’s no World Cup’. It doesn’t make sense.”

Adding to the absurdity, Ireland is currently ranked 10th in one-day cricket, one place above Zimbabwe, a full member, in the ICC’s own rankings. legal advice suggests the decision is eminently challengeable, but Deutrom is buoyed by the ICC’s announcement that it will revisit the decision at their annual conference in hong Kong at the end of June. If the associates are successful, and the ICC offer a qualifying tournament for at least a couple of places in 2015, Deutrom can knuckle down to the job of “building the base of the pyramid” by growing player numbers and producing a coaching structure to complement it.

Kevin O’Brien, though, is a man in a hurry. he is mindful that the lack of top-class action is a handicap, and over the summer he will play for English county side gloucestershire and appear in Sri lanka’s newly formed Twenty20 league. he also has one eye on India. “There’s a lot that’s come about with Twenty20 deals in England and around the world,” says O’Brien. “But the main one is the IPl [Indian Premier league]. The auction is next January.”

Some of the mega-bucks deals on offer in IPl are exciting for a young pro, especially one with a big slugging game so well suited to the short, 20-over game. “It would be a fantastic opportunity for me to play with and against some of the best players in the world. Tendulkar’s playing over in India and it would be great to play with him and other top players, and to learn from them, to talk to them about the game.”

So Kevin O’Brien’s not afraid of the big time?

“Nah, not anymore… well, I’ll let you know in 12 months’ time,” he adds with a chuckle. “I suppose it would be a little bit intimidating to walk into a changing room with Tendulkar as your captain. he’s the best player in the world, of all time…

But I’m confident enough. Pretty confident.” www.irishcricket.org

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AGE SHALL NOT WEARY THEM A breakthrough in cell research could herald a bold new era of treatment for the elderly, dementia sufferers and paraplegics Words: Werner Jessner Photography: Helene Waldner Illustrations: Sascha Bierl “I haven’t seen such a massive effect in the last 10 years,” says Ludwig Aigner, head of the Institute for Molecular Regenerative Medicine at the Paracelsus Medical University (PMU) in Salzburg. They are words of hope from the man who leads a team of neural stem cell researchers on the verge of a huge breakthrough that will dramatically improve the lives of the elderly and dementia sufferers, as well as paraplegics.

Aigner is a 2m-tall Bavarian with a dialect resembling that of a German cabaret artist. But Aigner’s no entertainer; rather, he’s a biologist specialising in stem cell research.

Stem cells And at his institute in the PMU, 12 scientists – The raw material from undergraduates, postgraduates and post-doctoral which the body builds fellows – are researching neural stem cells. its various special A topic which at first might seem a little dry cells. In this context, is brought to life by this enthusiastic racing we’re particularly interested in the cyclist and skier: fireflies whirr around, wires mesenchymal stem are insulated, Lego is played with – but at cells (connective a world-class level. As he expounds on his work, tissue progenitor cells) and significant recent potentially life-changing and neural stem discoveries, Doc Aigner suggests we split cells from which brain our conversation into three parts, covering cells are produced – even in adults the three research focuses of his institute.

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Ludwig Aigner, 47, studied in Regensburg, Germany, and Basel in Switzerland.

He came to the Paracelsus Medical University in Salzburg via Montréal and again Regensburg

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the nerve fibres in the spinal cord are severed due to injury.

In many cases, it’s not that the spinal cord is completely severed, but only a part of the nerve tract is damaged. Quite a few of these metal wires – to stay with the electrical imagery – remain intact. But also the insulation sheath is damaged and disappears. And this has the result that the existing – and in principle functioning – nerve fibres can no longer do what they are actually designed to do.

Is it possible that targeted rehabilitation can prevent the depletion of myelin?

No one knows. But what we do know is that whoever manages to repair the sheath of the ‘naked’ nerve fibres has made another huge step forward. That brings us back to our findings: mesenchymal stem cells in the neural stem cells influence brain stem cells to the point that they massively generate oligodendrocytes, that is, produce insulation material. At the moment we are verifying this in clinical tests with various partners, including the Paraplegic Centre Can bone marrow connective tissue of the Orthopaedic Heidelberg University Hospital. The initial data makes us optimistic. stem cells also generate nerve cells?

So, the complete nervous system below the injured L A: Five or six years ago we made an interesting area becomes re-insulated? discovery. Back then it was fashionable for scientists to make That would be the ideal situation yes. In the meantime nerve cells out of bone marrow or haematopoietic stem cells. we’re just taking one step at a time and we’re thrilled with But the initial findings were somewhat misinterpreted. the progress we have been making.

This can happen. We looked at this and asked Does this mean that every attempt until now ourselves the question of whether such bone to fix the injured area has been doomed to marrow connective tissue mesenchymal stem failure because the wire loom below cells could also generate nerve cells? So we wasn’t working properly? brought mesenchymal stem cells and brain Exactly. There’s a very interesting study stem cells together. Our approach was that

by Armin Blesch (published in German: the neural stem cells should influence the Neurowissenschaftler in Heidelberg, Anm). mesenchymal stem cells and these should He managed to sprout new nerve fibres in then hopefully an animal model using a cellular bridge and Oligodendrocytes cultivate nerves cells. also managed to expand these regenerating Glia cells that Instead, we noticed nerve fibres into the target region where they provide support the exact opposite: the made new connections – that is, the cable has to and insulate connective tissue stem returned to where it belongs and has found its nerve cells.

Oligodendrocytes cells had a massive appropriate power socket. In functional CELL THERAPY are only found influence on the tests, however, it showed that it still Connective tissue stem cells cause in the central brain stem cells. didn’t work because the myelin sheath brain stem cells to convert massively nervous system T R B: was missing. We want to make this last into oligodendrocytes What happened? Had the cells ‘gone crazy’? step possible. Aside from this, we’re also No, these mesenchymal stem cells apparently emit some sort interested in totally fundamental things: which proteins are of protein about which we don’t yet know much. But this specifically responsible for generating oligodendrocytes? ‘something’ causes the brain stem cells to mature into How does this work? Which signals are needed? Our idea oligodendrocytes – one of the three main cell types in the is to clinically implement it. We want to understand it. brain and the central nervous system alongside the nerve and Does the missing myelin sheath have something supporting cells. We can liken these oligodendrocytes to the to do with the spasms suffered by paraplegics? insulation layer of a cable. Without this insulation layer there Spasms come from the unco-ordinated sprouting of nerves. would be a short-circuit or something wouldn’t work – you Following a lesion, there is a massive growth of short nerve can try this out in the garage. It’s exactly like this in the brain. fibres that throws the system into turmoil, almost comparable The material for the insulation sheath is called myelin. to epilepsy. Growth is good and important, but it’s equally as It’s generated from oligodendrocytes, or cells that have important that this growth is target-oriented. It’s just like on many offshoots and encase the nerve fibres. Basically, the roads: only those who know their destination can actually from a chemical point of view, it’s a layer of fat. get where they are going. Speed alone really gains nothing.

There are at least two diseases Where does the ‘No-go’ protein arise that Myelin where we know oligodendrocytes are prevents the growth of nerve fibres?

A biological extensively involved. One is multiple Our protective layer expresses something membrane that sclerosis, an auto-immune disease where positive, but also something negative. insulates the nerves.

No-go your own immune system attacks this When a growing nerve fibre encounters Generated from A protein that is found safety layer and eats it away.

This leads existing myelin, it retreats.

For starters, oligodendrocytes in the central nervous to signs of paralysis and eventually death. the wire fears its insulation sheath. in the central system and prevents nervous system nerve regeneration Number two is paraplegia. This is when A nerve wants to first grow and then

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cell, but wind it back just two-thirds of the way – now that would be a real milestone.

It sounds like cosmetic surgery for cells.

Exactly, just like an elixir of youth. This is an incredibly exciting topic that will arise over the next few years.

But work is being done, particularly in the USA, with embryonic stem cells that are introduced to the injured area. There’s been huge recent media interest in this subject. What do you think about it?

I think it’s still relatively dangerous.

You transplant cells that insulate the wire from embryonic stem cells. If this study is lucky, a tumour will not develop – due to the reasoning mentioned previously.

If just a single patient develops a tumour in the spine, the entire field of stem cell research goes up in smoke. On the other hand, you have to respect the patient’s wish to clutch at straws and be prepared to take risks. And even if the scientific risk can be minimised, there’s still the ethical problem.

Are you at all religious?

I left the church, but I still probably have faith.

Ludwig Aigner and his I believe I have at least two guardian angels, small team of dedicated otherwise my various biking and skiing accidents students at the PMU in would have turned out much worse. I was very Salzburg are focusing on close to my grandmother, who virtually raised improving the life quality of people with nerve damage me. She died when I was 25. In quiet moments become insulated. The entire No-go field I often think about my grandma, how she’s zipping developed from this knowledge. Research around up there and keeping an eye on me. is currently being done on just how much the And from a scientific point of view? removal of the No-go impacts on nerve growth Primarily, I’m curious. I want to know how things – for instance, by Martin Schwab in Zurich. work. I would love to be able to apply one or two things on There are studies from the 1990s which showed very a patient. I’m aware that I simply can’t research and understand impressively that very young nerve cells from foetal or everything. So I’m not afraid to delve into areas I can’t explain. embryonic tissue, when implanted into an adult nerve system, Particularly with things that I’m working on professionally can generate extremely long nerve fibres. They don’t give – like how an organism works, an organ, the brain – I’m totally a damn about myelin, but instead just keep growing slowly caught up with molecules. by the centimetre. Uncontrolled? We still don’t know this today.

Do you try to allay people’s fears, particularly when it After the ’90s nobody bothered to look into it further, only now has something to do with ‘genes’? In some places, ‘gene’ are we fishing out these old studies and finding that there is almost a dirty word: milk which has ‘GE Free’ written is more to it than we originally thought. Obviously, we don’t on it is better per se than milk that doesn’t have the label… want to implant just any embryonic cell somewhere in the We have to realise what we’re talking about here. You have to area – for ethical reasons alone. But what we can imagine clearly differentiate between genetic engineering and stem cell – and I assume it’ll happen in the next couple of years – is research, etc. And you can’t simply say one or the other is good how can we manage to reprogramme an old, mature cell or bad as such. There are limits: what can I take responsibility to make a journey back in time until it feels like a young, for, what would I be better to leave alone? Going back to genetic immature nerve cell? How can I programme nerve cells back? engineering, almost every lab researcher uses it – it’s our Wouldn’t a process of making things younger actually standard tool kit. In order to research, I have to tinker around go against nature? with proteins. That’s the research aspect. But when we talk A couple of years ago there were the first discoveries that about buying a normal, unsprayed tomato like we all used showed we can make any old cell from a body, like a skin cell, to eat, or a modern, genetically modified one that sits in into an embryonic stem cell by introducing a couple of genes: a bowl for three months without rotting and then tastes a specialised cell becomes a cell that can do everything, like nothing, then I much prefer the original tomato. a ‘joker’. We call this type of cell ‘induced pluripotent stem cells’. Pluripotent because they can do anything, induced because they’ve been ‘forced’ to do it. And now for the bad news: pluripotency often comes with tumour risks, and that’s why we’re still far away from a clinical application despite the excitement in this field. Pluripotent stem cells are the uncontrolled teenager of the cell family. If you could make an uncontrolled pluripotent stem cell out of an old nerve

“ There are limits. What can I take responsibility for, what would I be better to leave alone? ”

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don’t know yet. We have to overcome many hurdles: things like toxicology, pharmacology, which involves many years of work.

But you’re pretty confident about this substance…

I haven’t seen such a massive effect in 10 years. It is so effective that we immediately gave it on to our patent lawyers.

A eureka moment?

I’m constantly preaching to my team to – of course – follow their own goals and hypotheses and to check the results on the one hand. But on the other, you have to keep your eyes open and be aware of what’s happening around you. Selective perception can be tricky: I concentrate on the five per cent where I expect something exciting to PMU emerge. But at Paracelsus Medical the periphery something much more University, named sensational is happening. Satisfying after Philippus expectations can be tricky, because Theophrastus a lot of insights are left by the wayside.

Aureolus Bombast von Hohenheim, On the other hand, you have to not get referred to as bogged down. You need a good nose. In Paracelsus, who a laboratory like ours many projects run died in Salzburg in parallel, but they’re interwoven. From in 1541. It opened How can I make stem cells or young, each of these projects come offshoots, its doors in 2003 immature nerve cells mature? which sometimes take you to the destination quicker L A: Here we’ve been working on differentiation, than the main route. You have to stay flexible. or maturation, over several years. We designed a couple of tools Maybe this approach works better at a new university that haven’t existed before in this form. We’re particularly like PMU than at a more established institution? interested in proteins that influence the brain cells and cause You can’t really generalise. Science is extremely dependent on them to mature. Secondly, we’re interested in low molecular the surroundings. As a researcher you network nationally and weight structures, small building blocks. internationally, but then the local micro-region plays a major Oestrogen If you want to develop an instrument, role. We started projects in the last two years which we would Oestrogens, or a medicine, then these little building never have thought we’d stumble into. I attribute this to the also known as blocks are whoppers in doing that in fresh surroundings and our new contacts with scientists.

Estrogens, are the necessary spot.

They simply So, ideally, you should burn down the university the most common slip into the brain quicker. every 10 years and rebuild it somewhere else? female sexual More precisely, we’re You need long-term goals. And it’s also true hormones and belong to the group working on substances that colleagues want to keep some things of steroid hormones. that originally came to themselves and try to do the research Men also have them from hops: we know on their own. But that’s not me. in very small doses that hops contain Where and how would it be possible many bio-active substances. For instance, to apply medicine to nerve growth? there is oestrogen, with modified Research on spinal cord injuries leads us molecules that come from this area. That’s directly to the topic of ageing: here and there what set us down this path in the first place. nerve cells can die. Ageing is a huge topic.

We then collaborated with chemists from The Can we manage to stimulate the stem cells University of Munich and began to explore, in an ageing brain in such a way that diseases blindly at first, how far slightly modified like dementia, Alzheimer’s, etc, can be treated? substances from this group stimulate Which, of course, is much more NERVE FERTILISER nerve products. We found a substance interesting from a commercial A medication that can cross the bloodthat does this impressively. Now we have point of view than paraplegia? brain barrier and helps allow nerve to see whether it proves true in animal Quantitatively, chronic neurodegenerative cells to mature in a controlled way experiments. If it’s true, then we get a low diseases have a much greater market, molecular substance that can in fact cause nerves to regenerate. obviously. But, much of what we discover about paraplegia can T R B: So drinking a lot of beer won’t be also be applied elsewhere. In brain trauma, in strokes. If I learn enough to make this happen? something and then apply it in another way, so much the better.

Blood-brain barrier No. The substance we’re talking about That’s even a popular strategy, especially in the area of rare A physiological here is only found in hops in very tiny terminal diseases. I get through the barrier between ALS the blood stream amounts. The raw material is extracted clinical tests much quicker than with Short for and the central from the plant and becomes the more common diseases like Alzheimer’s. amyotrophic lateral nervous system. sclerosis. With this necessary substance in a further step.

So authorities can allow for It also works as disease, the motor We don’t yet know how to transfer more leeway because there’s less a filter, which can neurons gradually this substance to the affected place potential for doctors to do wrong? sometimes hinder degenerate. The in the patient. Will it get through the Exactly. An example is ALS (a form of the treatment of cause? Unknown. neurological diseases blood-brain barrier? Can you develop motor neurone disease). It’s incurable The treatment: none a medicine that you take in tablet form, or is it injected? We Even if we could find a way to make the tomato taste good?

I just don’t believe it. Without being able to judge it properly.

My trust in genetic engineering stops here.

One of the very few cases where genetics are a question of taste and not ethics…

Absolutely. Early on we made a conscious decision to follow ‘adult’ – that is, mature – stem cells, instead of embryonic ones. One reason for this was to avoid the whole ethical discussion. Looking back today, I would say that embryonic stem cells were important because there was a great deal we could learn here. Since the development of induced pluripotent stem cells, I would answer the question of whether we still need them from a clinical perspective with a ‘no’.

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Pinky with a brain: when a brain stem cell in this mouse is mature, a CCD camera can detect it

and the patient will die sooner or later. Only the nerves that are responsible for motor function are affected. The patient is clearheaded until at some point breathing doesn’t work anymore, because the chest doesn’t rise anymore. There is no treatment.

Here, I have the chance to try a new medication in clinical trials relatively quickly, because I need fewer patients. This gives small or mid-sized pharmaceutical companies the chance to develop a medication that, if it works with ALS, in all probability it will also work with dementia and Parkinson’s disease. In this way, science takes short cuts courtesy of rare diseases.

“ If you were to ask me to provide proof of your stem cell activity, I’d have to cut open your brain ”

FOCUS 3 THE LUMINOUS MOUSE How can I verify brain stem cell activity?

L A: Our major topic in the lab is neural stem cells.

We know they exist, that they multiply and that some of them develop into nerve cells. And I can measure this wonderfully, but for that I need to cut open the brain. If I dye all of them beforehand I can count and measure them under a microscope.

But if you were to ask me to provide proof of your stem cell activity, I’d have to say no. There is no possibility, no machine, no method to measure stem cell activity in the brains of living people. I can only show this in animals or the deceased. This is obviously bad for the research branch, because for instance, I can’t prove that patient XY has reduced brain stem cell activity due to stress, burnout, etc. The problem has been identified – quite a few scientists are researching this. But so far there’s nothing for humans. Parallel to this, we’ve developed a method that allows us to at least make stem cell generation visible from 77

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outside in animals – a world first. We noticed that when a new nerve cell is created it carries a special marker.

There is a protein that appears in an emerging nerve cell over a couple of weeks – as opposed to stem cells. When the nerve cell is completed, it then turns the thing off again. Each protein is genetically coded. And for every gene there is generally a switch, which, via some sort of signal, can be turned on or off. We did nothing more than find the actual switch to the gene – that’s not easy but we know a couple of tricks.

Then we took the switch and crafted a gene behind it that illuminates the cell when the switch is flipped. This luminous-gene very much resembles a glowworm. Creating such a gene is, in the meantime, a tool of the trade: I take a screwdriver from here and a nut from there and build myself a cell that is luminous. We implanted this glowworm gene with its switch into the egg cell of a mouse. From these egg cells, Ludwig Aigner: CCD camera transgenic mice were created Making the body’s Charge-Coupledin which all somatic cells own spare parts Device Sensors are contain these switches with store useable for light-sensitive and damaged nerves the illuminated gene. Now, radiate electrical signals in proportion whenever a stem cell is in the to the light received. process of becoming a nerve cell These signals it illuminates – for the several are processed by failure, which presents a host of problems. In this respect, weeks that it takes. When the nerve the camera and I believe it’s smarter to tackle one objective after the other. cell is finished developing, it goes out. stored digitally The positive approach on these problems is that I know I could go into a dark room with exactly what happens from a certain lesion level. the mouse where a highly-sensitive CCD camera I know which functions are absent at what injury takes individual photons. So I can see that level. When I achieve an improvement in light signals are coming out of the mouse’s function of one or two segments, then head and comprehend what’s happening.

I improve the quality of life substantially We even have a tool that allows us to for those patients. To move a shoulder measure the number of nerve cells without or a hand is a big improvement for having to cut open the mouse’s brain. a quadriplegic patient. And for a paralysed So, how is this relevant? person it is essential to be able to resume Several years ago, major pharmaceutical a normal sex life. Walking comes right at companies weren’t that interested in brain the end. And here we’re digressing a little stem cell research – until it was discovered from my field. Regardless of this, I think that certain anti-depression medications many improvements are needed in rehabilitation. were effective on exactly those brain stem Even if I manage to prompt a nerve cell to cells that produce new nerve cells, so if you THE ILLUMINATED MOUSE grow, they will only do this when they’re block the stem cells, antidepressants are A programmed protein illuminates, while stimulated from the outside. Particularly no longer effective. That was the kick-start. the stem cell turns into a nerve cell with paralysed patients, you have to take As antidepressants are a huge market, many aspects into consideration, ideally particularly in the USA, suddenly, even the in a clinic where a great deal of expertise converges and large companies jumped on the brain stem cell bandwagon, where the individual fields communicate with each other. to activate the regeneration of nerve cells and perhaps replace Is it fair to say a great deal has happened in this field dead nerve cells with them. Today, we enjoy a close working of medicine over the last years? relationship with one major pharmaceutical company, with Indeed, a lot has been done. We’ve realised that small steps whom, based on our mouse, we develop medicines that have for patients yield a lot and it pays to focus intensely on this. the potential to become introduced in the area where nerve At the same time, machine-supported functions have improved cells are dying – starting with depression disorders through considerably. One approach from the 1990s will influence to paraplegia and predominantly age-related diseases such research in the next years: will we manage to rejuvenate as dementia, Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s. old nerve cells? Personally, I think there is huge potential A big vision of an aspirin for neuropathy... here and we’re only at the beginning.

In principle, yes. Our approach is to use the spare parts So do we have to bid farewell the old image of an electrician warehouse that I already carry in my brain in such a way who simply reconnects the wire with a terminal? that something comes out. But there is a whole raft of It’s actually not that easy. other approaches in the area that are equally as exciting.

Paracelsus Medical University: pmu.ac.at Will we live to see the healing of spinal cord injuries?

Making spinal cord injury curable: www.wingsforlife.com Paraplegia isn’t some little electrical fault. It’s a major engine 78

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Body+ Mind more

Contents 82 TRAVEL IDEAS An adventure paradise in France 84 FESTIVALS Our pick of the best 86 FOOD A chef’s secrets and a recipe to follow 88 GET THE GEAR The things that aid a smooth take-off 90 TRAINING Tips from the pros 91 TAKE 5 The music Mark Ronson keeps going back to 92 BEST CLUBS Pacha, Ibiza 94 THE LIST 96 SAVE THE DATE

Photography: Olivier Laugero/Red Bull content pool

98 MIND’S EYE

From a Lockhead P-38L (pictured) to a North American B-25J Mitchell, there are 14 vintage aircraft in Red Bull’s Salzburg-based Flying Bulls fleet. Discover the things that keep them flying on page 88

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Up and away

Good air days

this month‘s travel tips

flying high in Annecy

Thanks to a perfect climate and topography for aerial- and watersports, Annecy in south-east France is a bona-fide action-adventure paradise

Whether you’re flying in the skies above or roaming the old town known as ‘the Venice of the Alps’, being stuck for things to do in Annecy isn’t likely

need to know

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Annecy

VeyrierLac du-Lac d’Annecy MenthonSaint-Bernard Saint-Jorioz Duingt Lathuile

200 km 200 miles

Words: ruTH morgAN

There’s only one way to truly take in the ancient forests, snow-capped mountains and crystal-clear lake of Annecy in south-eastern France, and that’s to get airborne. The region is a centre for aerial sports, attracting those seeking their next high with its near-perfect climate for non-powered flight. And it’s not a playground exclusively for the aerially initiated; novices with a head for heights can be riding the thermals in minutes thanks to tandem flights in paragliders, hang-gliders or hot-air balloons. Not convinced? Here are eight reasons to opt for an adventure in the air.

Fly: Geneva airport in Switzerland is a 40-minute car ride from Annecy town centre, or a on- anda half-hour journey by coach. Trains run from the airport to Annecy, with one change required.

Stay: L’Impérial Palace hotel is as grand as its name implies, and offers fantastic views of Lake Annecy’s north shore.

Eat: La Ferme du Pépé restaurant in the village of Le Grand-Bornand, a short drive out of the town, is an Alpine haven of home-cooked French food and reasonably priced wine. www.annecyaravis.com Annecy-le-Vieux

eiGht top tips on how to…

Get high with a little help from the French Hitting the heights It’s no coincidence that paragliding, an aerial sport using a harness attached to a fabric wing, was born 25 miles from Annecy in 1978. The Aravis and Bornes Massif mountain ranges around Lake Annecy provide an almost perfect climate for aerial sports, as thermals fed by air currents from the valleys allow novices to learn gently and experts to disappear off above the mountains.

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fresh, so clean 2 So Lake Annecy is France’s second largest and Europe’s cleanest. In summer months it reaches a bath-like 24ºC, making it a popular spot for watersports, especially the aerial sport of kitesurfing. It also provides a soft landing option for beginners in paragliding or hang-gliding, and professionals practising more acrobatic aerial manoeuvres.

It’s only natural The 21,000 hectares of protected natural land in the Haute-Savoie region mean the views are more than worth taking off for. Paraglide from Planfait in nearby Talloires to catch a glimpse of Mont Blanc, or take a hot-air balloon flight from the village of Le Grand Bornand to sail over La Tournette, the area’s highest peak, at 2,400m.

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Aerial infrastructure Nature isn’t to thank for all of Annecy’s charms. Local authorities have embraced aerial sports and provided some of the best facilities in Europe. There are now 70 equipped take-off points at diverse locations, with mats allowing easier take-offs for all fliers, including those with disabilities.

With 150,000 take-offs each year, they have also taken the step of introducing their version of air traffic controllers at popular points such as Montmin.

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While hot-air ballooning above Annecy is quite relaxing, snowkiting is anything but

Great outdoors The sheer number of sports and pastimes on offer in Annecy means a day without flight won’t be dull. From sailing to scuba diving, the lake is a hive of activity in warm weather, as is the cycling track created from an old rail line that runs the length of the lake and beyond. And during winter, the Annecy/Aravis mountain region offers 155 miles of ski runs that have made it a strong candidate to host the 2018 Winter Olympics.

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Professional playground As an aerial sport paradise, Annecy is home to some of the world’s best airborne athletes, including paragliding world champion Elisa Houdry, and some of the most experienced instructors. It’s possible to watch the pros in action at contests held throughout the year, such as last month’s Red Bull Élements, a multi-sport event including aerial sports, and next month’s national paragliding competition in La Clusaz.

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PHoTogrAPHy: JAmes PeArsoN-HoWes

There’s also a forest adventure trail and the chance to try the new sport of speed-riding

It’s no slave to the seasons Whenever the desire to take to the sky arrives, Annecy can oblige.

Traditionally thought of as summer sports, paragliding, hang-gliding and hot-air ballooning can be enjoyed here all year round. And in winter, speed riding, an exhilarating new sport combining skiing and paragliding, and snowkiting – snowboarding with a large wing allowing uphill travel – further swell the aerial options.

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Work, rest and play When it comes to après-fly options, Annecy’s old town, known as the ‘Venice of the Alps’ thanks to its two canals, offers numerous restaurants and cafes. There’s also the Château de Menthon-SaintBernard, said to have been the inspiration for Walt Disney’s trademark castle. Annual events include the Annecy International Animation Festival, which brings the Hollywood A-list to town in June, and the Talloires Pyroconcert, a music festival with fireworks in August.

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Mean Beats of Europe

Festivals From helsinki to rome, the continent has switched on to electronic music festivals in a big way. here’s our sweep of the bleeps

Whistles, glowsticks and techno… that’s what electronic music festivals used to be like. and even if our parents still call them raves, the range of digital music and related events on offer has increased enormously. today you’ll only find neon workmen’s overalls being worn at a village disco. the sónar Festival in barcelona – the mother of pulsating festivals – is all about taking pop further. Whether it’s a dJ, band or laptop producer, whether dubstep, digital rock or house, the artists in attendance will be showcasing the very latest music. similar festivals are springing up all over europe. The Red Bulletin has chosen the best eight and drawn up a summer timetable. Plus we introduce a piece of future-music per festival (see right for our very own summer mix-tape). y’see, festivals aren’t always about testosterone, leather jackets and guitar solos, and all the better for it they are too.

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Sónar

June 16-18 Barcelona, Spain The Mecca for all electronic aficionados, who make the pilgrimage to Barcelona every June to see an eclectic array of concerts and DJ-gigs in a museum courtyard in the daytime, and then party on into the night at a massive exhibition centre on the outskirts of the city.

Acts: Underworld, M.I.A., Apparat, Aphex Twin, Die Antwoord, Discodeine, Jackmaster.

Take: Speedos – there’s usually an ad hoc beach party hosted by the festival DJs when the festival ends on the Sunday night.

Avoid: Staying too long at the exhibition centre. Thousands of dancers storm the handful of end-of-the-night shuttles.

Web: www.sonar.es

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Prater Unser

June 30-July 3 Vienna, Austria

A former sauna called Prater was converted into a club two years ago and the area surrounding this hipster mother ship has been Vienna’s partying epicentre ever since. The Prater Unser festival is being held for the second time this year and sees one of Vienna’s landmarks – the Giant Ferris Wheel – transformed into an airborne night club.

Acts: Martyn, Secret Sundaze, Rustie, Cosmin TRG, Visionquest, Tiger & Woods.

Take: Bowling shoes. While Prater Unser is on, the Brunswick Bowling Alley close by turns into a night club for one night only.

Avoid: Don’t opt for a midnight snack of Lángos. The fatty doughy treats may be a common sight on the Prater food stalls, but you’ll regret eating them in the morning.

Web: www.praterunser.at

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Pitch Festival

July 9–10 Amsterdam, Netherlands Pitch takes the form of two nights of sizzling hip-hop beats, futuristic soul and jazz from outer space in northern Amsterdam. By day you should cycle over to Rush Hour – one of the best record shops in Europe.

Acts: Crystal Fighters, Buraka Som Sistema, Flying Lotus, Jamie Woon, Siriusmo, Chromeo, The Gaslamp Killer.

Take: The Booty Shaking for Beginners handbook. You’ll be very glad of it at the hotly anticipated Buraka Som Sistema gig.

Avoid: The ‘Best Coffee-Shop’ if all you really want is a bog-standard cappuccino…

Web: www.pitchfestival.nl

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Hartera

July 15-16 Rijeka, Croatia

Known to many as the little sister of Serbia’s Exit Festival, Hartera offers the perfect combination of beach holiday and culture trip. The location – a dilapidated paper mill situated right on the harbour – creates the industrial feel that goes with the music by night; a Bloody Mary at a beach cafe helps you get going by day.

Acts: Trentemøller, James Holden, Fairmount, Hercules and Love Affair, Petar Dundov, Brodinski, DJ Feadz.

Take: Time to go island-hopping in the Adriatic Sea after the festival: Cres and Krk are just a short distance offshore.

Avoid: Being too last-minute. The location is a bit outside Rijeka, so leave your hotel early or book into the hostel nearby.

Web: www.hartera.com

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Soundtrack of the Summer We pick a track from each festival line-up to create the perfect summer mix-tape of the most pulsating electronic pop music 1. Discodeine – Synchronize This young Paris duo bring together the vocals of Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker and a string-infused disco melancholy. This track is a highlight of their self-titled debut album.

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Words: Florian obkircher. PhotograPhy: getty images (6), rex Features (1), claudio Farkasch (1), david roemer (1), daniel Jackson (1), hartera (1), FloW (1), anton corbijn (1), red bull content Pool (3). illustration: Julia PFaller

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Meet In Town

July 22-23 Auditorium Parco della Musica, Rome, Italy Concerts in an auditorium with seating provided, open-air DJ sets in the park…

Meet In Town, on the former Summer Olympics site in the north-west of the Italian capital, breaks down the divide between high culture and subculture.

This, in a city which is already both a museum and modern metropolis, makes for a pretty unique music festival.

Acts: Lamb, Zero 7, Primal Scream (performing Screamadelica), CocoRosie, Nicolas Jaar, Space Dimension Controller.

Take: A picnic and blanket. The enchanting Villa Glori park is just a short walk away.

Avoid: The stampede when electro posterboy Nicolas Jaar takes to the stage.

Web: www.meetintown.com

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Audioriver

July 29-31 Płock, Poland

Płock was once the capital of Poland, and when it comes to electronic music, it still is. Around 14,000 house music fans flock to the banks of the River Vistula every July to dance at night, watch films in the open-air cinema on the Market Square in the evening and to admire the 12th-century architecture by day.

Acts: Paul Kalkbrenner, Chris Liebing, DJ Marky, Brandt Brauer Frick, Stamina MC, The Qemists, Nu:Tone feat. Natallie Williams.

Take: Patience. The nearest airport – Warsaw – is a three-hour train ride from the festival.

Avoid: Liebing and Kalkbrenner will send the zombie and rave factor seriously sky-high.

Web: www.audioriver.pl

Flow

12-14 August Suvilahden vanha voimala, Helsinki, Finland Flow is the Johnny Depp of the summer festivals: environmentally aware and incredibly cool. It’s been held on the site of an old power-station near the city centre since 2007. The line-up includes superstar rappers and the hippest electronic acts, and €2 from every ticket sold goes to the World Wildlife Fund.

Acts: Kanye West, Q-Tip, Lykke Li, James Blake, Röyksopp, DJ Koze, Midlake.

Take: Er, your birthday suit! You sauna naked here and there’s a rather large sauna on the festival site, which is hardly surprising. This is Finland after all.

Avoid: Booze. The alcohol-plus-sauna combo has been known to go to the heads of Flow Festival novices.

Web: www.flowfestival.com

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Notting Hill Carnival

August 28-29 Notting Hill, London

Started up by London’s Caribbean community in 1964, the Notting Hill Carnival is Europe’s loudest and most colourful street event. Steel bands and parades make their way through avenues lined with market stalls. There are soundsystems on every corner, which keep a million carnivalgoers dancing.

Acts: Street bands and soundsystems such as Aba Shanti-I, Channel One and Major Lazer.

Take: Indigestion pills. The soundsystems turn the streets into an ocean of bass, which can be pretty hard on the body.

Avoid: Leaving London early on Sunday: the second day of the Carnival – Monday – is a bank holiday, so the party carries on.

Web: www.thenottinghillcarnival.com

2. Lone – Animal Pattern British newcomers Lone come up with euphoric techno music as frazzled as it is abstract. The super-catchy twist comes in the form of some captivating melodies.

3. Buraka Som Sistema – Hangover The Portuguese dance act combines Angolan Kuduro sounds with quirky electro, guaranteed to bring any party to life. Their brand-new track is proof of that.

4. Hercules and Love Affair – Painted Eyes Having reinvented disco with their hit Blind, the New York band’s most recent single, Painted Eyes, will have endorphin cups running over once again.

5. Space Dimension Controller – Old Spacey New synth experiments from outer space elegantly combined with distilled house beats by 20-year-old wonder producer Jack Hamill from Northern Ireland.

6. Brandt Brauer Frick – Teufelsleiter In the most successful crossover project of the year, this German trio marry together lush orchestral instrument sounds and harder techno beats.

7. Lykke Li – Sadness Is a Blessing On her new single, the young Swede brings a ’50s ballad bang up to date with noisy electronic sounds and a chorus to melt the hardest of hearts.

8. Diplo (Featuring Nicki Minaj, Sleigh Bells, Swedish House Mafia) – One Kid The man behind Major Lazer is boldly working on the future of hip-hop, and as far as he’s concerned, it’s going to sound as electrified as possible.

You can listen to the mix-tape at en.redbulletin.com/mixtape

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the world’s best chefs who’s cooking at hangar-7?

Unwind and dined

EmmanuEl REnaut You don’t just go to this restaurant to sate your hunger. You also go to learn a little, but mainly to relax

Emmanuel Renaut’s award-winning restaurant, Flocons de Sel, came about thanks to a spell of homesickness for La Belle France.

“In 1997, I took on the position as head chef at Claridge’s in London,” he explains. “The job was great, but I missed the mountains of home.”

So he said au revoir to England after a year and moved back to France, where he found the perfect location for his first restaurant, in Megève in the Savoy Alps. Renaut may cook classic French fare, but he likes it to be highly technical, to the extent of virtually disguising some dishes.

So you might be served ravioli and only realise that it’s actually polenta when you taste it.

“Everything should look very simple on the plate, regardless of how much technology has gone into it,” says Renaut. “I’m really not one to show off.”

Renaut’s hard work was rewarded with a second Michelin star in 2006. But he wanted more. Which is why he upped sticks in 2009, restaurant and all, and opened a hotel with a spa and cookery school a couple of miles outside Megève. “People want more than just good food nowadays. They want peace and quiet too. Flocons de Sel gives them both.”

Vegetable and herb mille-feuille

My RestauRant Flocons de Sel 1775 Route de Leutaz 74120 Megève, France www.floconsdesel.com “We’re in the middle of the French mountains surrounded by forests,” explains Renaut.

“That’s why we went for a classical style of decoration with lots of wood everywhere.

That makes the place warm and cosy, but dignified at the same time. We don’t want our guests to feel oppressed by too many frills.”

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Cosy “Our hotel is fairly small, but that’s what we wanted,” says Renaut.

“That helps us get to know our guests a bit better and find out what they like.

And it also means we don’t just treat them like guests; we treat them like good friends or family members.”

Surprise Renaut doesn’t just disguise his dishes; he’s equally passionate about trying to experiment and play around with different aromas. So he’ll sometimes bring in a bitter or spicy twist to a dish when the guest least expects it.

Makeover Now that he’s moved his restaurant out to the country, the original Flocons de Sel in Megève has a new concept behind it and a new name: Flocons Village, a small brasserie serving simple, regional tasty specialities.

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

The guest chef for June 2011 is double Michelin-starred Frenchman Emmanuel Renaut, who is head chef at Flocons de Sel in Megève, France. Find more information about Renaut’s menus and other guest chefs at Ikarus at www.hangar-7.com. To book a table and to make enquiries send an email to ikarus@hangar-7.com or call +43 662 219 77.

WoRdS: LISA BLAzEk. PhotograPhy: HELgE kIRCHBERgER/REd BuLL HAngAR-7

My PHiLosoPHy

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tastes of the world

national dishes to make at home

Spicy South Pacific Words: Klaus Kamolz. PhotograPhy: fotostudio eisenhut & mayer

KoKoda

All the way from Fiji, to your table

This recipe comes straight from the handbook of paradise-island clichés: fish from the local ocean, served in a coconut shell. Cool, refreshing and spicy, it’s tailor-made for the South Sea climate.

The fish most commonly used to make kokoda is mahi-mahi, but that’s not essential so long as your fish of choice is white. Pick from either sea bass, cod, or sea bream if you can’t get hold of it.

This dish of raw, marinated fish has long been a staple for tourists, but for locals, a kokoda supper often celebrates a good catch. And for any Fijian who’s a long way from home, that ‘taste of paradise’ is the one they most frequently pine for.

In a recent interview printed in the Fiji times, a local businessman, who was chasing deals in India, was asked what he missed most about home: “Fiji, of course,” he said. “And kokoda.”

tHe ReciPe Serves four: 600g white fish, either mahi-mahi, cod, sea bass, or sea bream, filleted 1tsp sea salt Juice of 3 lemons 2 green chillies 250ml coconut milk

1 sweet red pepper, finely diced 2 tomatoes, deseeded and finely cubed 1 medium-sized onion, finely chopped 1tsp Tabasco sauce 2 coconuts 4 lettuce leaves

Skin the fish fillets and cut into pieces approximately 2cm long. Stir together with the salt and lemon juice in a plastic or glass bowl and leave to marinate in the fridge overnight.

Deseed and finely chop the chillies. Before serving, stir in the other ingredients (chillies, coconut milk, pepper, tomatoes, onion, Tabasco sauce) and leave to infuse briefly. In the meantime, cut the coconuts in half and drain. Insert the lettuce leaves in the coconut halves and fill with Kokoda.

In Fiji, the dish is often served with an exotic fruit salad.

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GET THE GEAR ESSENTIAL PRO KIT

Ready for take-off

MICHAEL MADER Having spent the last decade maintaining the vintage aircraft in Red Bull’s Flying Bulls fleet in Salzburg, the Austrian avionics engineer knows a thing or two about keeping planes up in the air

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1 Ideal Aerosmith 1300 Series manual positioning table An oldie but a goodie: this comes with two axes of motion, one for tilting and the other for rotating the table so I can accurately calibrate a range of gyroscopic instruments, such as the altitude indicator.

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2 Twine This is particularly handy for tying cables together securely.

3 Facom ratchet set For the nuts and bolts of my job; these are of the very highest quality.

4 Fluke 87 Series III digital multimeter For measuring everything from tension to resistance as well as things like electrical capacity, frequency and lots of other things. A much-used, vital item.

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5 & 5a DMC crimping tools I use these to crimp contacts on to cables (5) and coaxial wires (5a).

6 Weller WS-150 soldering station In daily use. Soldering is to avionics engineers what welding is to mechanics.

7 Safety wire pliers You really have to make sure things don’t come loose on a plane, which makes for a lot of checking and tightening. As all mechanical parts are secured with fuse-wire, these pliers are the go-to tool for maintenance work.

8 Aeroflex IFR-4000 NAV/COMM test set This is used to gauge and calibrate things like avionics systems, radio and navigation equipment, and emergency transmitters.

Probably one of the most sought-after jobs an avionics engineer could hope for: Michael Mader takes care of the historic Flying Bulls fleet of aircraft in Hangar-7 at Salzburg Airport

WORDS: NADJA ŽELE. PHOTOGRAPHY: HELENE WALDNER

9 Ludolph HPK67 compass Despite all the advances in navigation technology, pilots still use magnetic compasses. With a portable one, I can get my bearings before take-off.

10 Druck Air Data Test Set (505 model) This is used on the runway for testing and calibrating air information. This includes altimeter, air speed indicators, vertical speed indicators and air data computers.

11 Cable strippers I need an accurate pair: to keep weight down, cables can be just 1.15mm thick, with only 0.25mm left for insulation purposes.

12 North American B-25J Mitchell twin-engined medium bomber When I found out that the Flying Bulls had acquired this plane, in the late 1990s, I was working elsewhere, but I knew I had to end up working for the Flying Bulls.

Their world was a world I had to get into. www.flyingbulls.com

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The weighting game Being a champion volleyball player means Todd Rogers does a lot of lifting. He sent us his training schedule

How to get net results

TRAINING WITH THE PROS

TODD ROGERS Thanks to a punishing regime on and off the sand, top beach volleyball pros Rogers and partner Phil Dalhausser rank among the world’s fittest athletes

Todd Rogers: not a fan of training on the track

Beach volleyball pair Phil Dalhausser and Todd Rogers are preparing for the sport’s world championships in Rome from June 13.

The reigning US Olympic gold medallists and former world champs combine intense weight lifting sessions with hours of practice on sand.

The hardest part? Thursdays on the track. “It crushes the legs and lungs, and it’s a mental killer,” says Rogers. “If I can get through that, I can get through anything on the court.”

Rogers’ personal secrets Such an intense work-out deserves an equally powerful chill-out: Todd Rogers favours a weekly deep-tissue massage and a drink While Todd Rogers takes a trip to a sports chiropractor and massage therapist once a week after his track work-out, he also spends some time working out the kinks at home every night using a foam roller – and a baseball.

“The roller acts like a deep tissue massage – only not as good,” he says.

“It works particularly well with the hamstrings, quads, IT bands and calves.”

The baseball gets deeper into the muscles than the roller can, he says, and it is especially effective for the glutes, back, calves and shoulders.

And while massage is relaxing, Rogers also advises athletes to take the time to really chill out. Rogers’ favourite work-out? A glass of wine or a beer or two every Friday night. “I call it my 12 fluid-ounce curl,” he says.

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Tuesday Practice: 3 hours at the beach Wednesday Gym: 5min treadmill warm-up 3x10 half pull-ups 2x15 rotator cuff exercises 3x5 flat bench dumbbell lift 3x5 inclined bench dumbbell lift

And that’s just for starters

3x5 one-arm cable pull-down 3x5 one-arm kneeling cable rows 4x10 medicine ball abs Thursday Track: 5x300m sprint at 50 seconds with 3 min rest in between each one Three laps of the field 80 yards of bounding 30 side-to-side jumps 25 squat jumps with 20lb weight vest 25 medicine ball sit-ups, where you catch a ball mid-sit-up 15 burpees with 10kg weight vest, and finishing with a jump 15 reverse hamstring curls Three laps of the stadium 25 one-leg jumps up the kerb Two-legged bounds to the top of the stadium, jumping to every 4th step; 21 jumps total Sprint up the stands Friday Practice: 2 hours at the beach Gym: 5min warm-up on treadmill, then: 3x10 half pull-ups 2x15 rotator cuff exercises Squats: sets of 5 with a 1sec pause at bottom of each squat Barbell squats: bar only x 15, then doing fewer reps going up the weights from 10 at 40kg up to 5 reps at 100kg 5x12 hamstring curls on machine, from 45kg up to 65kg 3x8 one-leg deadlift with dumbbells: 20kg, 27kg and 30kg 3x8 alternating dumbbell bicep curls: up to 20kg 3x8 two-arm reverse bicep curls on machine: 50kg, 52kg and 54kg 4x8 two-arm tricep push-down: up to 45kg 4x8 alternating dumbbell tricep extensions with one arm on bench: up to 16kg 4x10 alternating kneeling downward cable chops: up to 50kg 4x10 alternating upward cable chops: up to 25kg Saturday 45min jog at 8 min/mile pace Sunday Stair climber: 10min warm-up, 40min sprint with 1min sprints at 180 stairs per min and 1min active rest at 105-120 stairs per min, then a 10min cool down.

Weights: warm-up with bar 10 times, then 40kg x 8, 60kg x 5 and then 80kg in 5 sets of 3.

After each set, do 5 max jumps.

WORDS: ANN DONAHUE. PHOTOGRAPHY: GARTH MILAN/RED BULL CONTENT POOL

WORK OUT

Monday Practice: 2 hours at the beach Gym: 5min treadmill warm-up 3x10 half pull-ups 2x15 rotator cuff exercises with light dumbbells and tubing 2x5 forward lunges, left and right legs with 30kg and then 35kg dumbbells in each hand for first and second set 2x5 backward lunges (as above) 3x5 military press, alternating left and right arms with dumbbells from 22kg to 27kg 3x5 seated front shoulder raises, left and right arms with dumbbells from 9kg up to 13kg 3x5 standing lat raises: dumbbells in each hand, raising from 18kg through to 23kg 5x5 deltoid raises on a bench: dumbbells in each hand to 14kg 4x10 left and right side kneeling downward chops with a cable 4x10 left and right-side kneeling upward chops with a cable

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The Brand New Heavies – People Get Ready I was 14 when the first Brand New Heavies record came out and it blew my mind. Suddenly there was Acid Jazz and this great young English resurgence of good soul music. I was listening a lot of heavy metal and hip-hop at that time, but this record was the first thing I heard that made me go back and discover all the original stuff. My older friends were like, oh, if you like The Brand New Heavies you should check out Roy Ayers or The Gap Band.

People Get Ready was a real seminal record for me because it sent me on my path. The horn arrangements were heavily influential over the first 10 years of my production career.

Take Five the music that influenced the musicians

“There wasn’t one morning when we worked on Amy’s record I didn’t listen to some Motown song”

words: florian obkircher. photography: alexei hay/sony Music

Mark ronson amy winehouse and adele owe their platinum records to this man. now the renowned producer reveals the music that gave him the impetus to skyrocket

Mark ronson is an indefatigable all-rounder. a guy who never seems to rest. the 35-year-old brit commutes between new york and london, juggling dJ gigs, live shows and recording studio appointments all over the world. he produces grammy award-winning albums for the likes of amy winehouse, robbie williams, adele or Q-tip, tours with his own outfit the business intl., runs a record label named allido, models for tommy hilfiger, or composes the score for movies such as the new russell brand comedy, Arthur. so how does ronson spend his (limited) spare time? well, he listens to music a lot, he says. here are some of the records that have stuck on his playlist.

Stevie Wonder – I Was Made to Love Her When you say Motown it’s so easy to think of pop classics like Ain’t No Mountain High Enough, but there’s also an era of Motown from 1964 to 1971 where they didn’t make a bad record. I think there wasn’t one morning when we worked on Amy’s record I didn’t listen to some Motown song. Something like this track by Stevie Wonder, because it’s the more mono-ish scratchy 1966 era of recording where it’s a bit dirty, you can hear the mic is breaking up while he’s singing. When we did Amy’s vocals, we did them a lot on this old RCA mic that has a lot of scratch and hiss in it, but that also gave it attitude and sentiment that wouldn’t have come from just throwing up a good classic clean mic.

Public Enemy – Welcome To the Terrordome (Album: Fear of a Black Planet) That era of Def Jam records including stuff like LL Cool J or this Public Enemy record had a sonic energy, similar to metal bands like Pantera and Slayer.

Welcome To The Terrordome has these great James Brown breaks layer upon layer. What a lot of white middle class kids like myself loved about rap is that you felt you weren’t supposed to be listening to it.

It was kind of dangerous – it was like being a voyeur.

Blur – There’s No Other Way This is simply an outstanding record combining Britpop melodies with a hip-hop influenced beat. When I first heard it I was like, what the heck, I wanna make music one day that sounds like this.

And that has always been the touchstone for music I make all the way to now. It’s just like if you have an amazing beat in the background and you have a great melody you can’t go wrong really.

Tame Impala – Innerspeaker It’s my favourite record of the past year. We just toured with them in Australia and watched them every day before we went on stage. They have a similar aesthetic thing. It seems you don’t have to necessarily sound like someone as long as you share the same palate.

Mark Ronson: Arthur (Soundtrack, Sony); Mark Ronson Fireside Chat: redbullmusicacademyradio.com/shows/2681/

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Cherries, mlike o those r e hanging body above the dance platform, are Pacha’s trademark

& mind

Ricardo Urgell in the ’60s.

Mr Pacha is now 73

The club is a 15-minute walk from the port, but its lights mean you can see it long before you get there

Club SPeCial

A passion for Pacha

The besT parTy spoTs in The world

Pacha For almost four decades this club has been the undisputed number one on Europe’s insular party circuit. Founder and owner Ricardo Urgell reminisces about the early days and reveals the secrets of his success

Ricardo, you opened your first club in 1967. What made you want to get involved in nightlife in the first place?

I grew up in the ’50s in Spain at the time the tourism industry took off. And it transformed the whole country, which was still suffering the effects of civil war, from being grey and sad to exciting and bikini obsessed [laughs]. As a teenager I spent my summers at Sitges, a seaside town south of Barcelona and thought what’s missing here is a night spot for tourists.

So in 1967 I opened my first disco there, originally called Pacha Sitges Vallpineda.

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Six years later you opened the flagship club in Ibiza. How did that come about?

After the first season in Sitges, I went to Ibiza just because I wanted to discover the island. It was wonderful, so three years later I decided to open a place there. But even though I found a good property, it wasn’t easy to get investors on board because there wasn’t a lot of tourism in Ibiza back then. And the people from the island wondered who would go to this place as it was quite a way outside the village. But step by step we gained momentum.

What did Pacha look like in the beginning? you won’t believe it, but in terms of architecture the first Pacha Ibiza was quite a traditional Ibizan building, like a country house. the place was 400 square metres and the locals thought that it looked like a shopping centre – nowadays clubs are 10 times bigger.

Tell us about the early days. the atmosphere was very naïve and sweet. Back then, having a little amount of hashish meant a very big party. So, we were, like, 15 people pulling on a small

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Erick Morillo on the decks.

The house hero gets the Pacha Ibiza crowd going every Wednesday night

The original Pacha Ibiza in 1973 and the club’s first poster

Pacha in profile

WoRdS: FloRIAn oBkIRchER. PhotogRAPhy: PAchA IBIzA (7), REd BUll contEnt Pool (1), VIctoR SPInEllI/gEtty ImAgES (1)

Ricardo Urgell’s Pacha universe includes 20 clubs all around the world, a hotel, radio stations, record labels and a music magazine. The centrepiece, though, is still the flagship club in Ibiza. It’s an experience on six levels: five different floors and a mind-blowing rooftop terrace.

joint. For comparison, at that time Pacha was like Snow White, while now it’s a bit more like Boogie Nights [laughs].

What kind of music did you play at Pacha back then?

We mainly played normal pop music, like the Beatles and the Stones. But the dJ was a simple chap who earned the same money as a waiter, far from the nASA engineer-like fees these superstar dJs get nowadays. When I was young we went to the club to flirt with girls, not to watch a man standing still and putting on one record after the other.

How did Ibiza gain its reputation as the ultimate party island? that happened in two stages, the sweet and naïve one, that I mentioned earlier, and a vulgar one. the latter one started in the early ’80s when open-air discos flooded the island. corrupt politicians allowed them to operate without being legal in terms of urban planning. these people treated Ibiza as if it were their private kingdom, so to speak, and thanks to their ineptitude people thought they could do whatever they wanted, too. But before that point, Ibiza was fantastic.

How would you describe Pacha visitors today?

As I said, Ibiza has changed. nowadays, Pacha has had to become more elitist, as it is much smaller than the island’s other discos, which, at first sight, means that we have fewer people in the premises but, at the same time, we still keep an image that is much less artificial.

SWEET PaCha This is the club’s banquet hall, It can accommodate 160 guests dancing to hits from the ’80s and ’90s.

FUnky RooM (El CIElo) Party hard with mainly Ibizan locals in the Funky Room adjacent to the Main Room and Terrace. The Gaudi-inspired interior, the low ceilings and a massive soundsystem guarantee many sweaty hours.

MaIn RooM Chandeliers hang from the lavishly decorated ceilings, glamorous dancers girate on elevated platforms while up to 1,200 clubgoers devote themselves to the house bangers of DJs such as David Guetta, Erick Morillo and Swedish house Mafia.

RESTaURanTE PaCha/ SUShI loUnGE Smart and stylish, Pacha’s on-site restaurant with its high-class cuisine attracts not only the clubgoers but also sophisticated diners. Choose between Mediterranean and Japanese delicacies and enjoy the quiet garden that almost makes you forget you’re in a club.

Global RooM When Pacha opened this was the main floor, and it still is during the winter season. The music is electronic and more experimental.

It’s Pacha’s playground with live acts and a soundsystem that makes the 250 dancers’ waking dreams come true.

TERRaCE Crowning the building complex, the cushions, low tables, white silky tarpaulins and dimmed lights help add a Moroccan atmosphere to the Terrace. It’s the meeting point for DJs and celebs who are looking to chill out in the moonlight.

Over the last decades, Pacha has grown into a proper party empire.

How many branches are there? there are around 20 Pachas around the world. two new ones in Rio de Janeiro and Poznan, in Poland, will follow soon.

What advice would you give to someone who wants to open a club? you just have to work really hard. the main thing is to be fully committed and to persevere. Step by step you will be able to buy a car and many other things.

And then you will realise you can live more comfortably with less [laughs]. less is more and the best thing about having less is that you can enjoy it to the full.

Pacha Avinguda del Vuit d’Agost, 07800 Ibiza Town www.pacha.com

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MOTORSPORT FORMULA ONE GRAND PRIX CANADA (1) CIRCUIT GILLES VILLENEUVE, MONTREAL, 12.06.11 Last year’s race was dominated by pit strategies, which helped Toro Rosso driver Sébastien Buemi experience leading a Formula One grand prix for the first time.

By the end of the race, which culminated in a McLaren one-two (Hamilton beating Button), the Swiss driver was back in eighth place.

MOTOGP OF GREAT BRITAIN UK (2) SILVERSTONE, 12.06.11 There was no top-class motorbike racing on this legendary race-track for 24 years, but a rework of the circuit changed all that.

As this is only the second MotoGP to be held here, it’d be wise to expect the unexpected.

WRC RALLY GREECE (3) ATHENS, 16–19.06.11 Finnish driver Mikko Hirvonen faces a hot and sandy drive on the twisting, gravelly mountain roads around Athens to defend his 2009 title. But ‘Mr Acropolis Rally’ is still the late Colin McRae, who won here five times.

RED BULL X-FIGHTERS ITALY (4) STADIO OLIMPICO, ROME, 24.06.11 The motocross acrobatics were so popular last year in the 32,000-seater Stadio Flaminio that this time around they’ve been promoted to the 73,000-seater Stadio Olimpico.

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PIKES PEAK HILLCLIMB USA (5) COLORADO SPRINGS, 26.06.11 Drift racer Rhys Millen will try to bring the speed record for the 12.42-mile hillclimb back into the family; his father Rod held it from 1994 to 2007. Nobuhiro Tajima is the man to beat with a time of 10 minutes 1 second.

NASCAR SPRINT CUP SERIES USA (6) INFINEON RACEWAY SONOMA, 26.06.11 The Toyota Save Mart 350 is one of four races in the NASCAR season that isn’t held on an oval track. Kasey Kahne, who put in an impressive race to win here in 2009, will be out for another victory on the 2.52-mile track.

The List June 2011

ALL THE BEST EVENTS FROM AROUND THE WORLD FOR PETROLHEADS, CREATIVE TYPES, FILM BUFFS AND THOSE WHO CAN’T RESIST A GOOD MUSIC FESTIVAL 94

ADVENTURE RED BULL ALPENBREVET SWITZERLAND (7) MEIRINGEN, 18.06.11 For only the second time, 1,000 moped riders take their steeds to the limit in this, a hair-raising moped race which stretches over 82 miles and up to altitudes of 3,500m above sea level in the Swiss Alps.

RED BULL SOAPBOX RACE UKRAINE (8) KIEV, 18.06.11 Speed alone won’t be enough for these engine-free vehicles. The Soapbox Race also demands creativity in bodywork design and plenty of showmanship during the ride.

RED BULL ART OF MOTION BRAZIL (9) THE UNIVERSITY OF SÃO PAULO, 25.06.11 Around 20 of the world’s most gifted freerunners demonstrate their acrobatic agility on a specially designed course that features walls and cars in the heart of the city.

RED BULL FLUGTAG TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO (10) PORT OF SPAIN, 03.07.11 If you’re going to take to the air in a homemade flying contraption, a bay in the Lesser Antilles is a good place to do it.

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RED BULL BC ONE ALL STARS ALBANIA (19) AMPHITHEATRE, TIRANA, 24-25.06.11 Lilou and his six colleagues are to the B-Boy world what the Justice League is to the world of comics. They are light-footed superheroes, each of whom has special powers. This time the Red Bull BC One All Stars head to Albania, with ‘Superman’ Lilou teaching the breakers there a new trick or two.

9 Red Bull BC One champion Neguin

CULTURE KINOTAVR MOVIE FESTIVAL RUSSIA (11) SOCHI, 04-11.06.11 This open-air film festival has been going from strength to strength in Russia since its launch in 1990 and is now the country’s largest. Held in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, it features discussions and masterclasses for young directors and a high-profile platform for the latest Russian underground films.

RED BULL EMSEE COLOMBIA (12) BARRANQUILLA, 25.06.11 Freestyle rap calls for super-quick thinking, a fluency of eloquence, and an accomplished grasp of rhythm. At this event, a series of word magicians are tasked with seamlessly integrating different phrases and images into their raps. Last year, star juror Eminem crowned the young MC FowL the 2010 Red Bull EmSee champion. This year, new rapping hopefuls will get their shot at the big time.

PHOTOGRAPHY: RED BULL CONTENT POOL (3), PICTUREDESK.COM (1)

C/O POP GERMANY (18) COLOGNE, 22-26.06.11 This is considered one of the main industry get-togethers in the worlds of electronic music and media. And, unlike some of the more hob-nobby events, there’s nothing dry or stiff: acts like Janelle Monáe, Kreidler, WhoMadeWho, and Natalia Lafourcade are bound to add some spice to the night.

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BONNAROO USA (13) GREAT STAGE PARK, MANCHESTER, TENNESSEE, 09-12.06.11 Coined by New Orleans musician Dr John in the 1970s, the word ‘Bonnaroo’ means ‘a really good time’. And popular consensus is that the festival lives up its name: in 2008 Rolling Stone Magazine declared Bonnaroo the ‘Best Festival’. Now in its 10th year, the event is still in top shape, featuring acts like Eminem, Deerhunter, Girl Talk, The Strokes, Big Boi and, of course, the man also who helped give the festival its name.

ESCAPE INTO THE PARK UK (14) SINGLETON PARK, SWANSEA, 11.06.11 More than 20,000 dancers, 50 acts, and 11 hours of (musical) electric shocks; Wales’ biggest and best dance festival brings together testosterone-laden acts such as Pendulum, Dot Rotten, Caspa and Zinc.

NORTH BY NORTHEAST CANADA (15) TORONTO, 13-19.6.2011 We all know about SXSW in Texas, but maybe its northern counterpart less so. Now in its 17th year, North by Northeast Music Festival and Conference (NXNE) is the main festival destination in Canada for everything from nascent unsigned bands, indie favourites and major label headlining artists alike.

Hence you’ll see PS I Love You performing alongside New Wave giants Devo, and sweet retro hipsters Cults alongside Twin Shadow.

KINKY FRIEDMAN & VAN DYKE PARKS AUSTRALIA (20) POWERHOUSE, BRISBANE, 24-25.05.11 A double bill of unique legends. Kinky Friedman is a cult Texan singer-songwriter, author and cigar-maker. His companion, Van Dyke Parks, is an ingenious composer and pop-troublemaker who has produced records by acts ranging from The Beach Boys to Joanna Newsom.

WEEK-END AU BORD DE L’EAU SWITZERLAND (21) LAC DE GÉRONDE, SIERRE, 01-03.07.11 Airfields, race-tracks and abandoned factory buildings all make perfectly good festival locations. But the Swiss have their own ideas.

The weekend by the water is held on the shores of the Lac de Géronde in the heart of the Alps, and, from chilled electronic music

by Quantic to deep house by MCDE, it has a line-up good enough to make you yodel.

STREET DANCE KEMP CZECH REPUBLIC (22) JEDOVNICE, 03–10.07.11 For 51 weeks of the year, it’s fair to say that there’s not a whole lot going on in Jedovnice.

This village is dusty, sleepy and just a little on the wrong side of shabby-chic. But for one week, the party rolls into the middle of the Czech Republic, and thousands of dancers from all over Europe come to do everything from krumping and locking to breaking. Basically, it’s all about modern dance being taught new talents by Red Bull BC One champions Neguin and Lilou.

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URBAN ART FORMS AUSTRIA (16) WIENER NEUSTADT, 16-18.06.11 As Europe’s top festival for audiovisual fusion, this event sees DJs and VJs come together on an equal footing and indulge the ravers simultaneously with electronic dance music and overwhelming visuals. Highlights include Fatboy Slim, Deichkind, Carl Craig and the Red Bull Music Academy stage.

Plucky mopeds take on the Swiss Alps

ELECTRIC MINDS LOFT PARTIES UK (17) LONDON, 18.06.11 Low-level lighting, a laid-back atmosphere and a big fat sound system: that’s the menu for London’s best club night, Electric Minds Loft Parties. This time around the organisers have invited expert Belgian DJs from the We Play House label to tend to the decks.

Weirdo Rock from Deerhunter at Bonnaroo

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Save the Date June 2011

The besT Things To see, do, waTch, shouT aT and supporT in ireland This monTh

june 25

Dublin Pride is a colourful affair

You do like to be beside it june 17-26

Out and about Dublin is home to one of the world’s longest-running pride parades, having hosted an event like this since June 1983. Much has changed since then, and now the floats-and-followers journey through the city centre, as great as it undoubtedly is, is the climax of the 10-day Dublin Pride festival, featuring arts, talks, shows and concerts. There’s a vibrancy to the city on parade day that you just don’t get on the other 364 days of the year, driven in no small part by the parade’s theme. This year, organisers have chosen ‘It’s A Human Thing’ as the overarching topic, which, literally, has something for everyone. www.dublinpride.ie

june 17-19

Road racers By adding more stages and more vantage points for this year’s event, there’s little more the organisers of the Donegal International Rally could have done to improve a spectator’s lot, other than sell in-car tickets. The rally, the fourth and most demanding round of the Irish Tarmac Rally Championship, is now 24 stages long, as opposed to the previous 20. The six stages on Friday’s loop to and from Milford begin at 10am, Saturday’s 10 stages begin at 8am, while the concluding eight on Sunday, from 10.30am, include two town stages in Buncrana before a ceremonial finish in

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Letterkenny at 5.30pm. Drivers to watch in a 151-strong field include Derek McGarrity, Tim McNulty, Daniel McKenna, Gary McElhinney and Sam Moffett.

Full race details and programmes are available on the race website. www.donegalrally.ie

WoRDS: RuTH MoRGAN, PAuL WILSoN. PHoToGRAPHy: STEvEN DoyLE, REx FEATuRES, MARK BREEN, INPHo/MoRGAN TREACy

Those two great bastions of summer fun, the seaside and the festival, come together at the unambiguously named Live at the Beach in Portrush this month. Pop heavyweights The Wanted and The Saturdays headline, while two graduates of The X Factor, Alexandra Burke (first, 2008) and Lloyd Daniels (fifth, 2006) ensure much highpitched screaming from the expected 20,000-strong crowd. If your tastes are slightly more off-centre, there’s edgy Essex rapper Fugative and John Snow, a group of Norwegian rockers who have recently made Northern Ireland their home. www.plmpromotions.com

june 24-26

Saddle up This year’s Derby meeting at The Curragh is just that little bit extra special (prize money of €1.25m for the big race notwithstanding). There are definite milestones – it’s 145 years since the first running of the race that became the Irish Derby, and the 50th running of its modern, grander incarnation following the prize money and status upgrade of 1962 – and a possible, remarkable record. Several jockeys have won the race two years running, including the great Lester Piggott, who managed three wins in four years from 1965-68, so all eyes will be on Meath’s Johnny Murtagh, to see if he can secure the first-ever consecutive hat-trick. www.curragh.ie

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ormula One should be on The National Curriculum. I am very glad my school taught me classics, but I can still recall with a shudder those words: “Please open Kennedy’s Latin Primer at page 128 and consider the pluperfect subjunctive of the verb ‘to be’.” How much more appealing is “Gentlemen, start your engines”?

I know they don’t actually say that at races, but you perhaps get my point.

Our old curriculum was based on assumptions founded in Britain’s vast pre-electronic imperium. For many generations, geography lessons which taught statistics of ground nut production in Sierra Leone were a sound preparation for a life in international trade. Learning, as I did, how to calculate logarithms made sense when calculators were as big as shipping containers.

Formula One is a mixture of craft, design, snake-oil, materials, science, specialised manufacturing, marketing, aerodynamics, teamwork, management, graphics, logistics, charlatanism, supplychain management, sex, speed and desire.

In fact, all the elements necessary to a successful modern economy. And in this strange brew of cold, hard technology and black arts, Britain excels. While this country abandoned making trains long ago and now buys Alstom, Bombardier, Siemens, Hitachi and Fiat Ferrovia, Americans, Germans, Japanese, Italians and French have not yet been able to manage all the processes of Formula One so successfully as the British. It’s not so much that Formula One should be on the National Curriculum; it should be The National Curriculum.

In one way or another, I learned almost everything I know from racing cars (at least before the competition for attention from girls and champagne became too intense). It was the sight of a Lotus XI on a trailer near Aintree that, as a very small boy, gave me an aesthetic thrill still with me now. The first article I published

Mind’s Eye

Grand Prix Learning Formula One can teach you about pretty much everything in life, says Stephen Bayley (at 15) included drawings of the Lotus 49’s suspension: at the time I’d never seen anything so beautiful and ingenious.

I would beguile myself with books about racing car design. Outstanding here were Laurence Pomeroy’s The Racing Car Explained, Costin and Phipps’ Racing And Sportscar Chassis Design and LJK Setright’s The Grand Prix Car 19541966. From the first two I learned more about physics than I ever did at school.

Fundamental concepts such as weighttransfer, polar moment of inertia and piston speed were not only fascinating, but also had metaphorical applications to the philosophy of life. From Setright, I learned sentence construction and rhythm. I still re-read this great book now and marvel at its orotund Biblical cadences.

Formula One is about conceiving and making things that perform supremely well. What else is business about? And making things is fundamental to any successful culture and to any successful economy. When Formula One is on The National Curriculum, there will be courses in riveting. If you can understand how a rivet works, you have mastered a

good deal of basic engineering. It’s a matter of tension, loads, stress and shear – as is so much of life. Of course, nowadays there are fewer rivets in a Red Bull Racing RB7 car than there were in a Vanwall, but the same principle applies to the layering of carbon-fibre. If you understand how something is made, you understand everything about it.

The technology of Formula One is glorious, but so too is the art. When we have finished teaching structures, we can move on to sculpture, semiotics and semantics. Never believe everything the Formula One designer tells you: yes, cars are designed to perform in an envelope whose dimensions are dictated by maddeningly detailed rules, but there’s still enough room to allow for a good deal of artistic expression. And the semiotics? It’s amazing to compress such a mass of meaning into so small an area.

Even Formula One neophytes can tell in a blink what car they are looking at. We’ll use this on the Communications course.

Then there is what happens off-TV and off-track. Here is the greatest Formula One drama of all: the intercontinental movements of intellectual property, money, air-time and licensing. The dealmaking is where you find manipulations to humble Machiavelli. Goethe said genius is the ability to put form on the indeterminate, and that’s what Bernie Ecclestone did when he realised Formula One wasn’t chaps in Aertex shirts tugging at wood-rim steering wheels, but a hightech medium of global significance.

Teach Formula One and you teach technology, art, design, manufacturing, media and business. Formula One will make bean shoots on the botany table and Kennedy’s Latin Primer seem very dull. Education should be exciting.

Gentlemen, please start your textbooks.

Stephen Bayley is an award-winning writer and a former director of the Design Museum in London

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

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