The Red Bulletin 06/19 UK

UK EDITION JUNE 2019, £3.50

BEYOND THE ORDINARY

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14

Pages of Gear

Urban s d n e g Le

MTB’S NEW BREED Where the mountains are concrete, trails are tarmac, slopes are stone steps, and you bring your own ramp

UK EDITION JUNE 2019, £3.50

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URBAN FREESTYLE Downhill MTB hits the street SECRET CINEMA All revealed.

No spoilers ULTRA GOBI Running the Silk Road

Singer, songwriter and pro footballer

CHELCEE GRIMES

tackles the Women’s World Cup and the sounds of summer

“It’s not girl’s football, it’s just football”

HELL IS HEREBY OFFICIALLY CONQUERED TH E A LL-NE W R OUBAIX | S PECIALIZED. COM/R OUBAIX

EDITOR’S LETTER

THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOX

This month’s issue has two amazing covers: Chelcee Grimes, photographed

by Stephanie Sian Smith; and a special MTB edition, shot by David Goldman to coincide with the UK leg of the UCI Mountain Bike World Cup.

Talking of secrets, in this age of hype Secret Cinema (page 42) has elevated the allure of the unknown into the ultimate immersive FOMO experience. Urban rebels turn bikes built for the mountain into a new sport, MTB street (page 54), and the ancient Silk Road becomes a race course for Ultra Gobi’s insane ultrarunners (page 74).

Plus, we have Chelcee Grimes (page 64) on learning the ropes of two professions – music and football – and actor Taron Egerton (page 28) on the lessons gleaned from a great artist who long ago broke all the rules: Elton John.

We hope you find these stories as inspiring as we do.

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CONTRIBUTORS THIS ISSUE

DAVID GOLDMAN

When the British photographer first saw mountain bikers pulling off downhill freeriding tricks in the concrete landscape of UK coastal towns, he knew he’d found his next project. “These guys are pioneering,” says Goldman, who shares his time between London and New York. “The same way the skaters of Dogtown in the ’70s were, or the surfers of the Endless Summer in the ’60s.” Page 54

PIERS MARTIN

The chance to interview a star whose career spans music and sport was irresistible to the Londonbased writer of our feature on singer-songwriter/pro footballer Chelcee Grimes. “Her passion for her professions is infectious,” he says of the Liverpudlian who’s set for the summer of her life as a BBC pundit at the Women’s World Cup. “And she didn’t laugh when I said I support Plymouth Argyle.” Page 64

THE RED BULLETIN

STEPHANIE SIAN SMITH, DAVID GOLDMAN (COVERS)

“Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist,” Pablo Picasso is said to have declared. It’s this kind of unconventional thinking that The Red Bulletin celebrates every month. There’s probably no better example in this issue than Daniela Ryf (page 32), Iron Man world champion four years running. Rather than simply building on her moments of triumph, the Swiss triathlete draws deep from her most painful experiences to find secret techniques that can provide an edge over her foes.

AMERICAN SPIRIT

SWISS PRECISION

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CONTENTS June 2019

74

JAMES CARNEGIE

Hypothermia and hallucinations: all in a day’s running at the Ultra Gobi

BULLEVARD

GUIDE

FEATURES

10 Break from the norm:

100 Dive with a legend in

2 8 Taron Egerton

The Rocket Man actor is set to soar 32 Daniela Ryf

Power is no problem for the top

eye-popping B-girl moves at Tricklandia 14 What a ledge: standing on the brink in Yosemite 16 Rexpress delivery: the robot dog goes postal 18 One million spins BC: breaking news from Red Bull BC One Cypher UK 20 Deep sleep: the tent that was made for subaquatic slumber 22 Silver surfers: the senior skateboard crew who are rolling back the years 24 Swede life: culturemelding Scandi-Somali R&B star Cherrie 26 Apocalypse wow: the ultimate playlist, from Bastille’s Dan Smith THE RED BULLETIN

the Azores – only with Destination Red Bull 104 The treadmill that’s elevating athletes to another level (literally) post-injury 106 How Apex Legends will make you a better team- player, from battle zone to boardroom 108 YT Industries: putting the fun back into bike- making and riding.

Plus our edit of the best high-tech gear 116 Essential dates for your calendar 118 This month’s highlights on Red Bull TV 122 It’s a hold-up: human- flagging in Santa Monica

triathlete: she has a secret back-up

42 Secret Cinema

Making filmgoing an XL experience 54 MTB street-riding

Big air and cracked saddles: mad

bike tricks in the concrete jungle

6 4 Chelcee Grimes

Meet the goal-scoring, hit-making Scouser who’s ready to rule 2019

74 Ultra Gobi

The desert race that ravages

your body and blows your mind

88 Rock Steady

Hit the trail in this expert kit 09

BULLEVARD LIFE

&

STYLE

BEYOND

THE

ORDINARY

Boogie wonderland: street dancer Dassy Lee performs in Marcel Valko’s hallucinatory video, shot at Tricklandia

VLADIMIR LORINC/RED BULL CONTENT POOL

Optical illusion dance

TRICK OF THE EYE

Three of the world’s best street dancers, one mind-bending performance

T

here are few worlds as seemingly unconnected as New York-born street dance and traditional Slovak folktales. It might seem surprising, then, that Marcel

Valko – aka Miniboj – the creative director of streetdance production company and clothing brand The Legits, chose to film his most recent project at a fairy-tale art experience in Slovakia.

Tricklandia is a modernart gallery crossed with an amusement park – an imaginary world designed around the stories and myths of Slovakian villages and castles; a game between artist and audience that’s 11

B U L L EVA R D

elements there. My filming style is to always be as weird as possible, and I thought, “There are not many places in the world like this. I have to do something with it.”

the red bulletin: What inspired you to use Tricklandia as a location? valko: I first discovered the experience with my kids.

There are just so many visual 12

“ONE ROOM WAS ALL MIRRORS. THE CREW WERE FALLING OVER”

What’s freestyle popping? l: It’s a street style of dance.

You use all of the muscles in your body to contract with the rhythm of the music. It can look very robotic sometimes. v: Most people don’t know the difference between popping and hip-hop dance.

It’s hard for a mainstream audience to understand what

Valko’s film makes full use of Tricklandia’s illusionary installations

How important is the music to your creative process? v: It’s always the most important point. Once I’ve figured out the music, I can start with everyone else. It inspires me for what I’m going to shoot. With this video, it was different: I already had my vision, which came from the crazy location, so I just needed to find the right music to fit it. l: It’s important to have timing throughout the track that is always changing – and to have a strong beat. It’s all about being able to use our bodies to play with sound in an authentic way.

How important was it to feature three female dancers in the video? v: These girls are the best poppers we have. They killed it. They’re better than most of the male dancers. l: A lot of street dancing is dominated by men. There aren’t that many female dancers. It was awesome to see different styles of strong women dancing in one dope video. If we can show this more, maybe we can inspire more women to come and give it a go. It will show people there are lots of different types of dancer you can be as a woman.

Watch the full Tricklandia performance at redbull.com THE RED BULLETIN

LOU BOYD

formulated to deceive you into seeing things that are not really there.

A couple of years ago, while walking around Tricklandia, an idea struck Valko: “What if I use this dream-like location to create a dance video?” He flew three of the world’s best freestyle street dancers – Dassy Lee, Angyil McNeal and Kyoka Yamamoto – across the world to perform their outstanding choreographies amid its optical illusions and misleading scenarios. In the performance, nothing is how it first appears – it’s all in your head.

The Red Bulletin spoke to director Valko and dancer Lee about the process of creating this magical spectacle and introducing freestyle street dance to a wider audience.

they are. In my opinion, popping is way more difficult than breaking, because it’s a dance based on contractions.

You can practise popping like crazy for a whole month and not really see any progress.

With breakdance, you learn a basic six-step and at the end of a month you’ll know it, even if it’s a bit sloppy. With popping, you practise and practise and still see nothing.

VLADIMIR LORINC/RED BULL CONTENT POOL

Kyoka Yamamoto confounds gravity in the Turned Over Chamber

How was the experience of shooting in such a unique and surreal location? lee: It was awesome. There are so many rooms that move around you and look crazy.

It was difficult to dance through, though; everything is mirrored, so I was hitting walls because I couldn’t see where to go. We got pretty nauseous dancing in there. v: The illusions make you feel dizzy when walking through them. It feels like they’re pulling you down, and they disorientate you.

We used one room that’s upside down, and one that’s made entirely of mirrors – even the crew were falling about in there. There’s also a ‘never-ending room’; we knew freestyle popping would look really good in there, but it was still hard to show on camera just how crazy it actually was.

Highly

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The aim is to develop top–quality audio equipment that sounds amazing and looks great. Like my approach to everything, Kygo Life is driven to continually improve. So, as each product evolves it embraces the latest technology and focuses on perfecting the details until I’m absolutely happy the end result is the best it can be.

K Y R R E G Ø R V E L L- D A H L L Creative Director, Kygo Life

December 2017

Kygo A9/600

B U L L EVA R D

Yosemite, USA

EDGE OF THE WORLD

EMILIO MAGLIONE-FULCO

Rising almost 1,500m above Yosemite Valley and 2,700m above sea level, Half Dome is a California icon. The granite formation at the eastern end of the valley is the summit of a legendary hiking route which, until a couple of years ago, was just an item on photographer Emilio MaglioneFulco’s bucket list. When he finally got the chance to hike it, he reached its peak at first light, just as the sun began to illuminate the valley. The photographer’s gaze was drawn to this little diving board of a rock – “a small outcropping far from the classic photo-op” – where he captured his companion, fellow snapper Justin Mayers, walking to the edge.

“The way it cantilevered over the void allowed us to showcase the immensity of the rock face,” says Maglione-Fulco. “Only Yosemite is capable of making one feel such an awe-inspiring sense of scale.”

Instagram: @emiliomag

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THE RED BULLETIN

THE RED BULLETIN

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B U L L EVA R D

Robotic courier

POSTMAN’S BEST FRIEND The future of home delivery is going to the dogs 16

efore too long, dogs may be in charge of more than just bringing you the morning newspaper. In partnership with automotive firm Continental, robotics start-up ANYbotics has conjured up another view of the future: one where packages are delivered by mechanical canine courier.

ANYmal is a multipurpose robot with the ability to sense its surroundings and carry heavy weights while traversing complex terrain. “It’s a delivery robot the size of an average dog,” says Péter Fankhauser, co-founder of the Zürich-based start-up. “Standing 70cm tall and 80cm long, it has a camera in its head, flexible joints, and is able to jump and move autonomously in an unfamiliar environment.”

THE RED BULLETIN

ANYBOTICS

B

ANYmal is not the only canineinspired automaton around: Boston Dynamics’ SpotMini, unveiled in 2016, was demoed opening doors. When the robopocalypse comes, it’s likely to enter the room on all fours.

In the meantime, we’re still convinced they’ll serve us.

Visitors to electronics trade show CES in Las Vegas in January saw ANYmal step off a delivery truck with a parcel, walk up to a front door in a mocked-up suburban garden, ring the doorbell, then leave the package on the porch.

While the reality of these delivery dogs may be a while away yet, in the shorter term ANYbotics is planning to use them to carry out industrial inspections or safety work in conditions that would be too hazardous for humans.

Or indeed real dogs. anybotics.com

CHRISTINE VITEL

ANYmal: it won’t chew the sofa, poo on the carpet, or try to hump your leg… unless you program it to

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B U L L EVA R D

Red Bull BC One

POINT BREAK

Winning moves at the UK qualifiers

Above: B-girl Vanessa beat her rival Rawgina to take the crown. Below: in his final bout, Watson triumphed against fellow B-boy Izaak

EVA BERTEN PHOTOGRAPHY

LOU BOYD

B-boy Jackson Watson and B-girl Vanessa Marina wiped the (scuffed lino) floor with their fellow breakdancers at this year’s Red Bull BC One Cypher UK. The knock-out competition at Village Underground in east London featured the first-ever B-girl qualifier battle on British soil, and Marina dropped to her knees on hearing that all three judges had named her the winner. Both dancers will now represent the UK at the BC One World Final in Mumbai, India, on November 9. redbull.com

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THE RED BULLETIN

ULTIMATE COMMITMENT

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ROCKSHOX.COM

1. The inflatable habitat is attached to bridles anchored to the sea floor 2. Interior atmosphere is maintained by a replenishable oxygen source with carbondioxide extractors 3. A dry chamber accommodates two divers in comfort, three at a push 4. The fabric-embedded vinyl shell is reinforced with nylon straps and has windows 5. The entire habitat collapses down to luggage size for transportation

2

5

H

1

Ocean Space Habitat

SLEEPING WITH THE FISHES

This ocean explorer has made it possible to sleep underwater – by creating a subaquatic tent 20

umans have always daydreamed about living in the ocean; from stories of mermaids to the lost city of Atlantis, the deep sea occupies a vivid place in our imagination. Now, an underwater tent that allows us to breathe, eat and sleep hundreds of metres below the surface is bringing that fantasy closer to reality.

The concept behind the Ocean Space Habitat is pretty simple: made from vinyl and nylon with polyester

strapping, it has internal aircirculating fans and carbondioxide scrubbers to provide a breathable atmosphere for up to six hours. “It’s much like placing an inverted glass in a sink to make an air pocket,” says its co-creator, ocean scientist Michael Lombardi.

“It’s essentially a tent filled with air that displaces the water inside, creating a void.”

We currently accomplish very limited and temporary visits to the undersea world.

Compare the knowledge we have of the ocean bed with the exploration of outer space: whereas 12 humans have stepped onto the surface of the Moon, only three have descended to the deepest part of the ocean. “For more than half a century, divers have gone by the rule that we can dive to 60ft [18m] for 60 minutes without suffering from decompression sickness.

Bring an underwater habitat into the mix, however, and a researcher can spend six hours or more working at 60ft throughout the day.”

The next step for the camp is to attempt overnight trips.

“The atmosphere has to be monitored and managed for both carbon dioxide and oxygen,” says Lombardi.

“Our goal over the next year is to develop protocols that allow for an overnight stay.

An afternoon hike is always beneficial to learning, but an overnight or weekend-long camping trip sheds light on all sorts of new discoveries within that environment.

My hope is that we can stray away from being short-time visitors to the ocean towards having a more intertwined relationship with and within the sea.”

Atlantis may only be a fantasy, but this two-man tent is our first step to a genuine undersea life. oceanopportunity.com THE RED BULLETIN

LOU BOYD

4

MICHAEL LOMBARDI

3

CHRISTINA LOCK

B U L L EVA R D

You have to be made of stern stuff to live and ride in Fort William year round which makes Joe Barnes’ Hazzard Racing a perfect match to the no-nonsense DNA of Endura kit. The roots of which are still firmly grounded in Scotland where they have been engineering and testing their kit for over twenty-five years in some of the harshest conditions imaginable.

On one hand, Joe is a massively accomplished racer having stood on the illustrious podium steps of the Enduro World Series. The other half is one of hectic pan and zoom videos with plenty of rut slashing and bog bashing, weird and wacky storylines which only their minds could conjure up. They’ll have you both crying with laughter and have your eyes popping from your skull in disbelief at the riding.

It’s far removed from a clean cut, slow-mo saturated, high budget production, but that’s the beauty of it. A welcome breath of fresh air in an ever-increasingly commercially monotone cycling world, where a dose of personality and originality certainly goes a long way.

Hazzard Racing isn’t bothered about conforming to the usual expectations of how the majority of top-level athletes and race teams tend to go about their business, including in their aesthetics. Free of the constraints of a factory race outfit, Joe and Hazzard Racing can realise their creatively wacky ideas which are developed and brought to life in the kit provided to them by Endura design team.

Hazzard Racing ride and race in the all-new ultra-lightweight MT500 Full Face Helmet coming in at a meagre 580 gms (M/L) despite being fully downill certified. They also ride Endura’s new MT500 Lite and Hard Shell Knee Pads, putting them through the rigours both between the race tape and in their hardcore day to day riding.

#ProtectionItsInOurDNA

RENEGADE PROGRESS

endurasport.com

B U L L EVA R D

SKATE OF MIND

In her sixties, Lena Salmi has created a global skateboarding movement to prove that the sport isn’t only for teens

I

n February last year, Facebook staged a showcase on London’s South Bank, where it exhibited photos of its most inspiring groups.

Among them was an online community of skateboarders.

But the group wasn’t chosen in recognition of its members’ talents or awards. Far from being teenage wonders, the average age of the skaters was

22

closer to 60 than 16, and their only care was skating for as long as they could.

The Very Old Skateboarders and Longboarders group is a global movement of almost 4,000 skaters, aged largely between 60 and 99, who are challenging what the world of skateboarding looks like.

It was founded in 2013 by two women, Lena Salmi (now 65) and Elizabeth Stuart (67), who believed they were being judged unfairly because of their age.

“When I met Elizabeth [at a longboarding camp in France], we felt like people were treating us like old

THE RED BULLETIN

BEN AWIN/HYPEBAE

Very Old Skateboarders

ladies, like we couldn’t do stuff,” says Salmi. “It made us realise that no one can treat us like that, and that we were as good as anybody else.

We were inspired to make a space that’s just for older skateboarders.”

Come 2019 and the group has snowballed into something much bigger. Its Facebook page is updated every day with videos and photos of its thousands of ageing skaters, shot at skate competitions, skate parks and even group meet-ups across the world. Its members have been filmed for BBC documentaries and interviewed by global media.

The group’s ethos, however, has remained the same.

“The only entry requirement is that at some point you’ve thought you were too old to skateboard,” says Salmi. “Our youngest member was a 50-year-old woman. People had asked her, ‘Why are you doing that kind of kids’ stuff?’”

According to Salmi, the important thing to learn from the Very Old Skateboarders is to not judge on first sight.

“Open your mind and your ideas,” she says. “Of course skateboarding is rebellious when you are 65, but, in my opinion, the most rebellious thing you can do is to always stay exactly who you are.” facebook.com/groups/ VeryOldSkateboarders

LOU BOYD

“THE MOST REBELLIOUS THING YOU CAN DO IS TO STAY WHO YOU ARE”

B U L L EVA R D

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So the desire to inspire your peers forms part of your creative drive?

Owning houses or becoming CEOs… those are not things that people [who live in Rinkeby] dare to dream about. For them, to see someone like me – a black, Muslim woman – release my own music, tour around the world or work with Vogue [magazine] instils some hope in them. And really and truly, hope is the only thing that is going to push us all forward as a society.

How would you describe it?

It’s a melting pot. I always thought it was such a special place, and that we’re the coolest people. Growing up with so many different influences and cultures makes you smart at understanding the world and how you fit in.

To stay independent, you’ve turned down several offers from record labels. Why is that so important to you?

It’s not an obvious thing for artists to have ownership.

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Cherrie

“SOMALI MUMS ARE SUPERHEROES”

The Swedish-Somalian R&B singer lets loose on the supposed ghetto she grew up in, her kick-ass mum, and the importance of being an independent artist Most of these huge artists we see, they don’t own their music; they create art that someone else takes from them and makes money from. So, for me to be independent means a lot, because I create security for myself and my family. And it shows other people who come from nothing that you don’t need to sign [a label contract]; that you can just buy a computer and learn how to make music and then record yourself.

“WE RINKEBY PEOPLE ARE THE COOLEST”

What does Araweelo mean?

Araweelo was an ancient queen who ruled over Somalia and was super badass. [In Somalia], even if there is a dad in the family, women are the man in the house. And having that female energy has given me the drive.

Is your mother a fan of your music?

She has been to a couple of my concerts. She’s the sweetest. She knows Swedish, but she doesn’t understand a lot of my lyrics, so she makes my little brother play my music for her and explain every single word.

Fashion brand AlphaTauri visited Cherrie in Rinkeby to talk about music and how growing up there has shaped her career. Watch the video at win.gs/AlphaTauriCherrie; alphatauri.com; twitter.com/Chxrrie THE RED BULLETIN

FLORIAN OBKIRCHER

the red bulletin: Your viral hit 163 För Evigt (‘163 Forever’) is an ode to your home suburb of Rinkeby, dubbed by conservative media as a no-go area… cherrie: As a kid, if someone asked, “Hey, what part of Stockholm do you live in?” you’d lie and name an area that’s pretty close to Rinkeby, otherwise people would see you as someone from the ghetto. But I wouldn’t say it’s a no-go area at all.

Do you think your Somali heritage has an impact on your music?

Somalia is called the ‘land of a thousand poets’, so for me making music has never been a weird thing, because music is something that helps Somali people cope during the worst times. Also, Somali mums are the strongest people I’ve ever met. They are superheroes.

For me to come from a place where women are so dominant, it affirms my whole essence – like me having my own label, Araweelo.

CYPRIEN CLÉMENT-DELMAS

orn in Norway to Somali parents, and raised in Finland and Sweden on a diet of Bollywood and American R&B, Sherihan ‘Cherrie’ Hersi’s cultural frame of reference is unsurprisingly broad. Nowhere is this more evident than on her second album, 2018’s Araweelo, on which she transforms R&B’s contemporary sound aesthetics into inspiring anthems sung in Swedish for third-culture kids (meaning those raised in a culture different from their parents’) like herself.

The album gained the 27-year-old a nomination at this year’s Swedish Grammy awards, and having already worked with Stormzy – the grime superstar contributed English lyrics to her 2016 song Aldrig igen [må sådär] – Cherrie’s global profile was raised further thanks to props from the likes of Rihanna, SZA and Ariana Grande.

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B U L L EVA R D

UNDERWORLD BORN SLIPPY (1995) “This tune perfectly captures a woozy, heady party night. It reminds me of happier, less bleak times. Britain in the ’90s was quite a hedonistic place for the artistic community: there was Britpop, and you also had so many new young artists coming through in modern art and fashion. It was before my time, but it’s definitely an interesting period to rediscover.”

REM IT’S THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT (AND I FEEL FINE) (1987) “I imagine it’d be fun to jump around singing this song on our last night on Earth. Music is about articulating things that you maybe haven’t thought, but it’s also about escapism and distraction. These are the moments to strive for; they can offer solace from this bizarrely fucked-up world we live in. So take the blue pill and get lost.”

Bastille

“TAKE THE BLUE PILL AND GET LOST” ormed in 2010 by London-born lead singer Dan Smith, Bastille had their big breakthrough three years later with the single Pompeii, taken from their debut album, Bad Blood. By the following year, it had become the UK’s most streamed single of all time and won the band the title of British Breakthrough Act at the BRIT Awards. Now, following the global success of their 2018 single Happier, which featured US music producer Marshmello, the foursome have upped the ante with their new album, Doom Days, described by Smith as “an apocalyptic party”. Which is why he’s chosen to soundtrack Earth’s big send-off for us…

Bastille’s new album Doom Days is out now; bastillebastille.com

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THE BEATLES BECAUSE (1969)

MOBY PLAY (1999)

“For us, a good night out means being with friends who don’t work in music, who don’t pop champagne corks with models – that’s just not our life. On our last night on Earth, we’d have a little dance, then we’d have a little cry together. Musically you want something to wind down to, and this is a great one to go out on.”

“If there’s a perfect soundtrack for the end-of-the-world afterparty, it’s this album. Do you know the podcast Heavyweight [by Canadian-American humorist Jonathan Goldstein]? There’s an episode [Gregor] where the guy who lent Moby the gospel CDs he sampled heavily on this album asks for them back. It’s so good and really funny – check it out.”

THE RED BULLETIN

UNIVERSAL MUSIC

F

MARCEL ANDERS

The British indie-pop giants pick their playlist for an end-of-the-world party

T HE WO R LD ’S BE S T PAN TS QUICK DRYING

INVISIBLE GUSSET

INCREDIBLE STRETCH U LT R A COMFORT

T E M P E R AT U R E CONTROL ANTI–STINK REINFORCED STITCHING

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TARON EGERTON The Dwight Stuff Words RÜDIGER STURM and JULIA ZIMANOFSKY

In his new film, Egerton relates the story of another man balancing his artistic career with life in the spotlight. Rocketman sees him play a young Reginald Dwight – who became better known as Elton John – as he wrestles with the trials and tribulations of fame and fortune. “I have a comparatively very meagre experience,” Egerton says. “I’m an actor from Wales who has been in five or six films. He is Elton John.” Here, the 29-year-old talks about portraying a living legend and how he got to know the real man behind the performance…

Taron Egerton has been on the verge of superstardom for a few years now. The British actor’s breakthrough moment came in 2014, when he starred in the bigscreen spy comedy Kingsman: The Secret Service, a role that looked as if it would catapult him into squarejawed leading-man territory. The film franchise instantly made him a household name, a situation he found challenging. “You become the focus of attention,” says Egerton, who was born in Birkenhead, near Liverpool, but grew up on the island of Anglesey in north Wales. “It requires you to simultaneously be very vulnerable and emotionally exposed, but also incredibly robust and thick-skinned.”

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How did you go about creating your character for this film?

This idea of becoming someone else, like, “He became so-and-so, he was channelling so-and-so”… you can’t fucking channel someone. I’m an actor and I created a character with elements that are hopefully informed by the real person. My performance, while acknowledging the extremes of Elton’s character and not hiding the fact he has had difficulties, is also just my interpretation of him – and my interpretation is

GAVIN BOND

He’s playing one of the world’s most celebrated icons, but the actor is all too aware of the dangers of fame and fortune

the red bulletin: How old were you when you first became aware of Elton John? taron egerton: He’s been ever-present throughout my life, and I’ve been a fan of his music since I was very young. I was 12 when his Greatest Hits album came out in 2002, and my stepdad and I used to sing along to I Guess That’s Why They Call It The Blues while driving to school. Then I sang Your Song to get into drama school when I was 17. He was my audition piece and now I’m playing him.

THE RED BULLETIN

“My stepdad and I would sing along to Elton songs on the way to school” THE RED BULLETIN

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Taron Egerton

Was this a nerve-racking role to take on?

I felt it was a part that I could do. There is some crossover between his personality and mine; I don’t think I am quite as extreme as Elton, but I do feel that there are extremes of feeling and emotion in me.

I am someone who is quite ‘heart on the sleeve’, and I know I can be a very big personality, but I’m also someone who can be quite vulnerable. I feel that’s who Elton is as well. Don’t get me wrong, I was hugely intimidated and scared and I felt a huge amount of pressure, but I had quite an inherent sense that it was a part that I could or should play.

How was your relationship with Elton John while making the film?

I know that for the sake of promotion I’m required to say we have become good friends, but we really have.

I really love him and I felt quite lucky to be let into his life. It meant that the experience of making the film felt important, not just in the sense of the legacy of Elton John, but because I care about him as a man.

He’s a really beautiful person.

Tantrums, tiaras and Taron: Egerton as Elton John in new biopic Rocketman

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Is it true he gave you access to his diaries?

Yes, he let me read his diaries when I went to stay at his house. He has diaries from 1971 to 1976 that he thought were lost, and he only reacquired them a few years ago. They were great and really informative.

One entry that has stuck in my mind is: “Woke up this morning – went to the laundry – wrote a song called Honky Cat.” Then the next day it would be something equally iconic.

The film doesn’t shy away from portraying Elton John’s problems. Can you understand how someone who is successful in showbusiness gets involved with drugs?

Yes. It’s everywhere. There is no escaping from it in the entertainment industry, and you have a lot of very expressive, emotional, vulnerable people.

Singers, actors, artists… we all feel the need to convey something about our experience of the world.

That means you expose yourself. It can be quite intense and you feel like there is a spotlight on you.

Also, this is fucking Elton John. He was Elton John at 23 and he has been Elton John for the past 50 years.

He has been one of the most famous people alive for decades. The pressure that comes with that, as well as the allure of incredibly glitzy, seemingly perfect party experiences? I can totally understand.

Do you ever feel that kind of pressure in the public eye?

When I leave these junket days, I’ll go back to my flat and I can’t sit still.

I have to walk around, I have to call people, I have to do stuff. Because although this feels like a conversation, I’m actually performing. I’m trying to be genuine and create a true version of myself, but I am still attempting to convey that version through the quality of performance. It’s really hard to come down from that. When I have troubles in my life, I call my mum. She is rational, sane, functional, normal, and she has wisdom to impart. I don’t know that Elton had that with his mother and other people in his life.

How do you protect yourself from the problems that Elton John went through?

I am not Elton John and I don’t know if he did protect himself very well. He got very involved in that lifestyle and ended up going to rehab, where he saved himself. That’s what our film is about. It’s about Elton John saving himself.

Rocketman is in cinemas nationwide from May 24; paramount.com/movies/rocketman THE RED BULLETIN

©2018 PARAMOUNT PICTURES. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

that he is one of the most amazing people I have ever met. At the forefront of my mind was that I wanted everyone to fall in love with him all over again.

FIBERLITE

PRO RAC IN G ’ S MO ST DE CO R ATE D H E L ME T F O R R IDE R S W H O CRAVE FACTO RY PE R F O R MA N CE O N A P R IVATE E R B U DG E T L IG H TW E I G HT FI B E RG L A S S S H E L L W ITH W IN D-TU N N E L P R OV E N A E RO DYN A MICS A N D 2 0 H IG H - F LO W V E N TS T L D’ S SIG N AT U RE STYL IN G A N D R ACE TE A M G R A P H ICS PA IR E D W IT H CO N TO U R E D 3 D CH E E K PA D CO MF O RT

DANIELA RYF The Unfair Advantage What’s the secret power source of the world’s greatest female triathlete?

Problems. Daniela Ryf reveals how failure can unlock an untapped battery, fully charged and ready to go

Words ALEX LISETZ Photography PHILIPP MUELLER, AGNIESZKA DOROSZEWICZ

Steep uphill climb: Ryf has gone from exceptional Swiss talent to the world’s top female triathlete

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Daniela Ryf

D

aniela Ryf is amazingly good at swimming, cycling and running fast, and incredibly bad at swimming, cycling and running slowly.

“I want to give it my all every time I train,” she says. “I only want Daniela to give it her all in races,” her Australian trainer Brett Sutton counters.

The search for a compromise has been going on for five years. Every couple of weeks, it escalates to shouting and screaming. Ryf isn’t nicknamed ‘Angry Bird’ for nothing. “She needs to learn to focus her strengths,” Sutton has insisted since 2015. “Nobody would beat her for years.” But Ryf wants to do things the hard way. “I can only get better when I push myself to the limit,” she says.

But what really delivers success?

Strategic training or total commitment?

Maybe it’s the balance that comes from this quest for a compromise. After all, Ryf is the best female triathlete in the world today. The 31-year-old from the Swiss canton of Solothurn has won every Ironman World Championship since 2015. She has picked up four Ironman 70.3 (half-distance triathlon) World Championship titles, two Ironman European Championship crowns, and at last year’s Ironman World Champs in Hawaii she set a new course record of 8:26:18. Her trainer believes that, given perfect conditions, Ryf could shave another 15 minutes off her time. That would place her in the men’s top 10.

34

And Ryf’s course record in 2018 was attained in the face of crazy adversity: she was stung by a jellyfish shortly before the start, and handicapped by pain and numbness during the swim (see page 40).

Who knows what time she could have achieved in optimal conditions?

Is Ryf so successful because she can put herself through the ringer like no one else? Is it because she’s more talented, trains harder and has greater willpower?

Possibly. But the Swiss triathlete has her own secret for success: she doesn’t solve problems, she uses them as a source of energy. Here, Ryf provides six examples of pain-driven power from her career…

Acts of nature teach you patience May 8, 2010, ITU World Championship, Seoul

The biggest win of her career at the time, this triathlon saw Ryf produce an explosive sprint finish to beat both the world number one and the reigning world champion and finally establish her place among the global elite. But following a relaxed victory celebration at a South Korean club and a short stopover in Singapore, she then endured the worst flight of her life, spending most of the 10,300km journey to Zürich in the toilet.

From that day on, for almost two years, Ryf battled persistent and careerthreatening intestinal problems.

“I mostly suffered this deadening fatigue,” she recalls. “But the constant nausea was almost as bad. As soon as I exerted myself in training, I had to throw THE RED BULLETIN

“I CAN ONLY GET BETTER IF I PUSH MYSELF TO THE LIMIT” Ryf doesn’t believe in relaxed training sessions

CRASH. DISLOCATE SHOULDER. RECOVER. RECHARGE. REFOCUS. RETURN. WIN. TWICE. CRASH. BREAK HAND. RECOVER. REPEAT. IT’S THE ATTITUDE THAT MAKES YOU SECOND TO NONE.

Daniela Ryf

“THE PAIN GAVE MY BODY EXTRA ENERGY” Ryf on being stung by a jellyfish at Ironman Hawaii

up. It wasn’t long before I felt like not giving it my all. I felt bad all the time.”

Ryf suffered for almost a year and a half before doctors finally diagnosed small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, or SIBO (excessive bacteria in the small intestine). With the right diagnosis, she was back to form within a matter of months. “In that year and a half, I had to learn that I couldn’t just crowbar my way through everything. The patience I learnt at that time now helps both in training and in the races themselves.”

She continues, “I enjoy training really hard a lot more now, because I remember how bad it was not being able to put my foot to the floor the way I wanted.”

Being behind gives you control October 15, 2017, Ironman Hawaii

For the world’s top endurance athletes, the Ironman World Championship isn’t just an opportunity to go head to head in a show of power, but also a chance to demonstrate their mental strength. Lucy Charles, Ryf’s fiercest rival that year, knew that. The young Brit set an incredible time in the 3.86km swim – Ryf’s weakest area – missing the 18-year-old record of 48m 43s by just five seconds. Furthermore, THE RED BULLETIN

Charles went on to extend her lead in the cycling – Ryf’s strongest area. At halfway, the Swiss triathlete was six minutes behind. She needed to turn up the heat.

“Your position at the split time doesn’t matter – the important thing is crossing the finish line first,” Ryf explains. This applies to any long-distance exercise, but it’s especially true in Ironman where, she says, “the race only really gets going five or six hours in”. But how to stay cool when you’ve lost ground to your rival?

“It’s easier for the hunter to stay cool than the hunted,” Ryf opines. “After all, it’s the hunter who’s in control of the situation. The hunted is threatened from behind, whereas the hunter has a carrot dangling on a stick in front of them. The hunter can calmly observe, study and take aim at the hunted ahead of them.

The hunted has to maintain their pace and hope they don’t suffer a slump in form. So the hunter can decide when they want to give it their all and overtake.”

And that’s exactly what Ryf did in Hawaii in 2017. Over the course of the final 40km of the cycle, she turned up the heat and went into the lead, then she proceeded to extend her advantage during the run. She crossed the finish line with tears in her eyes, almost nine minutes ahead of Lucy Charles.

What slows you down now will make you faster in the future March 2017, training session, Gran Canaria

Ryf was preparing for a season in which she hoped to surpass herself. It was still early in the year, but she already sensed that feeling she loved so much: the relaxedness of perfectly honed muscles and concentrated energy in her arms and legs. That morning, swim training was on the agenda. Regardless of the tempo of her swimming, Ryf barrelled her way through rough water. Suddenly, a twinge between her shoulders shattered her concentration. She’d torn a muscle. She could barely turn her head the next morning and had to take a complete break for 10 days. How the hell would she be ready for her first challenge of the season, Ironman South Africa?

“The injury completely ruined my preparations,” Ryf recalls. Instead of being able to train harder every day, she was condemned to immobility.

“I didn’t even feel I was an athlete any more,” she explains. But as the days passed, her thinking changed: she would no longer set her targets by the stopwatch or through clocking up kilometres; instead, she would do it by marking her 37

Daniela Ryf

Mistakes bring wisdom July 3, 2016, Ironman European Championship, Frankfurt

“YOUR POSITION AT THE SPLIT TIME DOESN’T MATTER. YOU’VE GOT TO CROSS THE FINISH LINE FIRST” Ryf says she’d rather be the hunter than the hunted

38

stages of recovery. When she could turn her head a centimetre more than the week before, she celebrated.

On the eve of the year’s first Ironman, it was still unclear whether Ryf would be able to complete the swim at all; she was still receiving treatment from a chiropractor shortly before the event got underway. But still she threw herself into it, completing the swim, giving everything on the bike and eventually winning the race. A happy ending, then?

No. This was just the salutary opening gambit of a powerful, secret mental weapon. Anything that slows you down is a dead weight that you can throw off next time.

“I’ve started every race since South Africa with less weight on my shoulders,” explains Ryf. “I think of the extent to which that injury put limitations on me and yet it couldn’t stop me winning. And then I’m happy that there’s absolutely nothing putting limitations on me right now. I imagine myself throwing off the dead weight from back then, and I think of how I can do even better now. That thought is like an extra ace up my sleeve.”

This was an important race for Ryf. She wanted to win it, as she had done the year before, both to assert her position and to gain greater confidence for the next race.

She was also aiming to qualify for the season highlight in Kona, Hawaii.

But there were already signs of things not going to plan during the swim. It was a cool day, the water wasn’t warm, and Ryf couldn’t get into her rhythm. She placed all her hopes on her specialist field – the cycling – but her problems just seemed to get bigger. Travelling at speeds of 40kph with a cold wind to contend with, Ryf’s skinny frame – she’s 1.75m tall and weighed 57kg – cooled down ever further, then went on strike. Her pedalling had no more power and she was dropping down through the field. For the first time in her life, she ended up retiring, bitterly disappointed and humiliated.

“That was an abject day for me,” Ryf says. “But I learnt a lot.” She took away two valuable lessons from Frankfurt. The first: “I’d always thought I could achieve whatever I wanted as long as I trained hard enough and got the most out of my body. But I also have to pay attention to the small details of what my body needs to be able to work perfectly.” In this case, it might have been enough to put on an extra layer of clothing when she got on the bike, maybe just a pair of arm-warmers.

The second lesson? “It doesn’t matter how good I am when I’m good, it matters how good I am when I’m bad. Ever since that day, I’ve known I’m only really seriously prepared when I can win a race on a bad day.” The most important realisation was that while mistakes may drive you mad, it’s better to learn from them.

Defeat focuses your senses October 11, 2014, Ironman Hawaii

A month after winning the Ironman 70.3 World Championship in Canada, Ryf lined up at the start in Kona for her first Iron Man Hawaii. She’d already had an extremely successful season, winning more World Triathlon Corporation (WTC) prize money than any other female THE RED BULLETIN

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Daniela Ryf

In 2018, Ryf won her fourth Ironman World Championship in Hawaii in a row – and set a new course record in the process

triathlete, and now she was in the World Championship. Ryf demonstrated her superiority on the bike to the full – eightand-a-half hours in, she was way out in front, about to take the title – but 5km from the finish, the fire inside went out.

Australia’s Mirinda Carfrae had made up the 10 minutes between them. She closed in on Ryf, overtook and set a pace that the Swiss athlete couldn’t keep up with.

“After the race, I might well have been proud to have given it my best,” Ryf says.

“But when I crossed the finish line, I was already thinking about the next year. After all, I now knew how close I’d come to victory.” Since then, she has woken every morning with the same thought, playing and replaying the moment Carfrae closed in, then passed her at an irresistible pace.

Ryf promptly started the following season with a string of wins. “The fact I couldn’t keep pace with Mirinda still motivates me

“I IMAGINE THROWING OFF DEAD WEIGHT” 40

in every training session,” she says, even though younger athletes are now more of a threat than Carfrae. “If I imagine Mirinda drawing up beside me, I immediately pedal harder or run 1kph faster.” Ryf has transformed a defeat into the perfect mental stimulation to give purpose to her exertions, and it’s been the basis for dozens of subsequent victories. A pretty good deal.

Bad luck mobilises your energy reserves October 13, 2018, Ironman Hawaii

As she prepared for the start of the year’s most important race, the defending champion felt unbeatable. Ryf was in fantastic form and had done all of her homework. But with just two minutes to go before the swim began, a jellyfish stung the underside of both her upper arms. The pain shot through her entire body, right to the tips of her fingers. The previous year, a competitor was forced to retire from the race for the same reason and was rushed straight to hospital. Ryf didn’t let anything show and set off into the maelstrom with the others.

But the pain soon grew worse and she began falling metre upon metre further behind. Then her arms went numb and she began to doubt whether she would

be able to complete the 3.86km swim.

Ryf had already given up hope of a finish near the top of the leaderboard, but she was determined to carry on out of respect for the race itself. She now thought of finishing the race in 14, maybe 15 hours, way down in last place. But when she climbed onto her bike, Ryf realised she was only 10 minutes off the pace. Maybe this wasn’t over after all.

“In the water, I went through all the emotions you can imagine,” she says.

“But once I was on the bike, I could think clearly again.” Ryf decided to ascribe new meaning to the jellyfish sting: “I imagined how an extra dash of anger and additional energy had entered my body with the pain, and that I’d only be able to get both out of my body the harder and more relentlessly I pedalled.” She rode faster than she’d ever ridden in her life.

Ryf picked off her rivals one by one, and by the time she started the run, she’d notched up the fastest-ever bike ride by a female athlete at Kona. She finished the race in 8:26:18, which made her not only world champion but the holder of a new course record. In doing so, Ryf proved that our inner transformer can turn negative energy into something productive. Pain can give you extra power. danielaryf.ch THE RED BULLETIN

In an age of spoilers, how can you create a cultural phenomenon built around the art of revealing nothing?

SECRET CINEMA spills the beans...

Words TOM GUISE

The Empire Strikes Back, Printworks London (2015)

SECRET CINEMA/MIKE MASSARO

“We didn’t want the audience to know the X-wing was there,” says producer Andrea Moccia.

“So it flew out of a hidden parking space, shot a pyro into the huge computer structure, landed, and Luke Skywalker jumped out.

I’ve never seen so many 50-year-old men filled with joy.”

SECRET POWER 43

Secret Cinema

The second rule is: immerse yourself. This is what hundreds of thousands of people have done during Secret Cinema’s 12-year run.

It’s a commitment delivered on a promise – you pay more than the regular cinema price to see an old film. You’re told what to wear and where to meet at a certain time on a certain day. You’re forbidden to bring your smartphone inside, or take pictures. And by the time you leave, you’ve had one of the most incredible experiences of your life. If that sounds like a religion, it’s not far off. There are two types of people in this world: those who know the secret and those who don’t.

In 2012, Andrea Moccia attended Secret Cinema presents The Shawshank Redemption.

The ticket directed him to an east London library, where he was ushered into a makeshift courtroom. “The judge sentenced you for a crime you hadn’t committed,” he recalls.

“Policemen loaded you into a blacked-out van that took you to a school transformed into a prison, where other audience members were shouting at you. You were stripped, put in a prison uniform and locked in a cell. I left that night thinking, ‘These people are insane and I have to work with them.’” Today, he’s one of lead producers for Secret Cinema.

“The first production I worked on was Brazil,” says Moccia. “Day one, I walked into the 12-floor building they’d transformed into this dystopian world and got stuck in a lift with [the film’s director] Terry Gilliam.

That was a baptism of fire.”

This is an apt phrase for anyone experiencing their first Secret Cinema – a six-hour adventure where you enter a sandbox recreation of a movie’s universe with a narrative that unfolds until it reaches a crescendo at the exact moment the film begins. Last year, when Secret Cinema adapted Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 movie Romeo + Juliet – recreating the landscape of 44

Verona Beach for an audience of 5,000 a night, with choirs, police cars, and a masked ball at the Capulet mansion – the film director described it as “a whole new art form”.

That art involves what Secret Cinema calls ‘mirror moments’, where performers reenact scenes in perfect synchronisation with the on-screen action. Before that, audiences might encounter these characters on their adventure. “One of my friends at Romeo + Juliet texted to say girls were chasing the actor playing Leonardo DiCaprio and crying because he looked so real,” says Susan Kulkarni, head of costume at Secret Cinema.

“I was like, ‘We nailed it,’ because that’s the feeling I had as a teenager watching the film.”

For an event the size of Romeo + Juliet, Kulkarni had a team of more than 30 working on as many as 700 outfits on rotation. “The actors have two or three changes throughout the evening, then we costume the bar staff, security, even the cleaners, because one person wearing the wrong thing pulls you out of the world.” Her team has to consider every eventuality. “We create a capsule wardrobe for each character, because if it’s raining you have to imagine what else Juliet would wear.”

Kulkarni also has to consider the look of the general public: “We use the audience to

Brazil, Croydon

SECRET CINEMA/HANSON LEATHERBY

A

t an undisclosed location in London, the bustle of activity is afoot. Inside a cavernous warehouse spanning 6,000m2, contractors feverishly put the finishing touches to a ginormous set that resembles… well, we’d best not say.

Performers rehearse routines in a startling recreation of the backstreets of… actually, never mind. A man who looks suspiciously like Daniel Craig walks among them, broodingly scanning his surroundings. Studying him is Barbara Broccoli, producer of the James Bond movies. This scene may or may not have happened; we can’t really tell you, because the first rule of Secret Cinema is: tell no one.

“The main character had to jump off a tower block and abseil wearing huge wings, but seem to be flying,” says Kulkarni. “We only had a couple of days to create the wings. You figure it out as you go.”

THE RED BULLETIN

The first rule of Secret Cinema is: tell no one. The second: immerse yourself

Dr Strangelove, Printworks London (2016) Following The Empire Strikes Back, this adaptation of Stanley Kubrick's 1964 satire brought back the concept of not revealing the film's identity. The audience had to dress in military uniforms, and the screening took place in the War Room. “The idea was to create a summit,” says Riggall.

“To make the audience feel like world leaders.”

Secret Cinema

create the world.” After a guest buys a ticket, they’re assigned a character and given outfit suggestions. “For The Shawshank Redemption we asked everyone to come in a suit, but once they were stripped we needed 1,200 prison uniforms. I found a guy with some original ’40s Norwegian prison uniforms in his garage.

That made the audience feel part of the world, because they were wearing something real.”

It was very different in 2009 when Kulkarni first joined Secret Cinema for a one-day popup of the Marx Brothers’ A Night at the Opera.

“That was the first that had costumes. It’s just me with a rack of clothes and two days to outfit 40 people,” she recalls. “A tall man came in asking for costume. I put an outfit together and because I didn’t panic I got a call to join the company.” The man turned out to be Fabien Riggall, the founder of Secret Cinema.

T

he idea came to Riggall as a child living in Morocco in the ’80s. “I was 11 and I went to this fleapit cinema in Casablanca without knowing what the film was,” he recalls. “It turned out to be Sergio Leone’s Once Upon A Time In America – an insane film with an epic [Ennio]Morricone soundtrack.

The protagonist was this boy a bit older than me – Noodles – who was in love with Deborah, played by Jennifer Connelly.

I transported myself and became Noodles.”

Seventeen years later, in 2003, Riggall launched a short-film festival called Future Shorts. “A friend of mine had this venue, an underground bunker in Shepherd’s Bush Green [in west London] called Ginglik, which was one of those lavish toilets from the old days. I put on a night – 12 short films, a DJ, people chatting, drinking, in those days when you could smoke inside. The idea evolved into the feature-length Future Cinema with 1922 horror Nosferatu at London club SeOne. “We didn’t reveal the film or location, and I thought, ‘It’s not going to sell,’ but 400 people came.” He experimented with an immersive adaptation of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. “The concept was, ‘How can we make this more real?’ We wanted to play with mystery.”

In 2007, this became Secret Cinema.

“The first [Secret Cinema] was [Gus Van Sant’s] Paranoid Park, about a skater accused

“People want experiences that are mysterious [and] part of a bigger thing” 46

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SECRET CINEMA/HANSON LEATHERBY

28 Days Later, Printworks London (2016) Participants had to arrive at the 'hospital' in scrubs for a routine vaccination, only to 'awaken’ in a detailed recreation of Danny Boyle's 2002 zombie horror, except with food, cocktails and a blood-soaked rave. The ‘patients’ watched the film from hospital beds.

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Secret Cinema

of murder. We did it in some tunnels beneath London Bridge, filled with ramps and halfpipes, and the audience became part of the skateboard community in this hideout, with staged police investigations.”

With each year, the events grew in scale and ingenuity: Alien, Lawrence of Arabia, Ghostbusters. Word-of-mouth built hype, but attendees kept the secret. “I think there’s a real desire to escape the looped existence we have, where everything is revealed and predictable, and everyone knows where everyone is on social media,” says Riggall. “In a world addicted to information, that idea of secrecy is critical, as is a physical, social thing you have to invest in – one you can’t just click and download.”

Getting the audience invested has become a science for Secret Cinema. “Lawrence Of Arabia [2010] was the first time the audience was really asked to participate,” says Kulkarni. “At Alexandra Palace, we made a huge souk [marketplace]. They had to bring things to barter with, and exchanges were happening on the Tube before they arrived.

We had Bedouin tents, and camels and horses wandering out of Ally Pally.”

This attention to detail is even brought to smaller events. “Secret Cinema X is an underground format where we show films that haven’t been released,” says Moccia.

“In 2017, we did a ‘Tell No One’ production, where we don’t tell people what they’re going to see.” It was The Handmaiden by Korean director Park Chan-wook. “The performance was done with silhouettes and you couldn’t speak throughout the night. Walking into a room with 1,000-plus people, all completely silent. And at the bar you had to order on a piece of paper. It was beautiful.”

Moulin Rouge, Printworks London (2017) "The cast and team were like family, much like the Moulin Rouge in 1900," says Moccia. "During the run, the Manchester bombings and the Westminster terror attack happened. We got the audience to sing along to The Show Must Go On. I'm tearing up as I speak about it. It was a really moving moment."

SECRET CINEMA/LUKE DYSON/FRASER GILLESPIE

I

n 2014, Secret Cinema delivered its most ambitious project to date: Back To The Future – a recreation of Hill Valley near London’s Olympic Village. “People could write letters to each other and postal workers would deliver them within the venue,” says Kulkarni. “Each house had a telephone you could call the other houses with.”

The sheer scale proved too staggering; the show wasn’t ready in time for launch. “It was devastating not to be able to open on that first night,” recalls Moccia. “But it’s a learning process.” The show finally opened to rave

“You get to a point where the audience are the performers” THE RED BULLETIN

The Handmaiden, Troxy (2017) "We got the venue at 5am and had to produce the show that night," recalls Bennett. "Following the film's repressiveuncle narrative that no one can talk in his house, the audience took a vow of silence.

They loved it."

reviews, but nature almost intervened. At 11pm one night, a surprise rainstorm struck.

“Every costume was soaked,” say Kulkarni.

“We had to find a way to clean and dry 600 costumes in 12 hours. We hot-boxed an entire cabin and put everything in it.”

If Back To The Future was a lesson in untempered ambition, it didn’t shown; the next year, Secret Cinema took it up another notch with The Empire Strikes Back.

“It took a year of talking to eight stakeholders, from Lucasfilm to Bad Robot to Disney to Fox,” says Riggall. “[Lucasfilm president] Kathy Kennedy supported us. As exec producer on Back to the Future, she was impressed with what we did there. But to give us the rights to do that movie in the year they were releasing The Force Awakens – a $2 billion franchise – was extraordinary. Then, to find an old newspaper factory to build Star Wars in… that was an insane ambition.”

“It was an old printing press not fit for audience members,” says Moccia of the building that is now the nightclub Printworks London. “We transformed it and put in three productions: The Empire Strikes Back, Dr Strangelove and 28 Days Later.”

“I wanted to build a gigantic Secret Cinema that could stay there for ever,” says Riggall. “We put a lot of work into it, invested a great deal, but I know the guys who set up Printworks, and good on them.” He sees Secret Cinema’s contribution to the buildings it inhabits as a positive. “So many are empty, waiting years for planning permission.

Developers are opening their eyes to what we do. We can create this ‘meanwhile use’, filling them with happy people experiencing something. I like to think that in the depths of the night, as people are dancing to some 49

Secret Cinema

"There was a piece in the Evening Standard saying we’d affected the way people dressed that summer, that women were wearing '50s dresses," says Kulkarni.

"It may be just a coincidence or something subliminal.

It's extraordinary to think a cultural event can influence what people wear."

DJ’s set, they go, ‘Shit, wasn’t this where the X-wing flew over my head?’”

“The X-wing was definitely a challenge,” says Moccia of the full-size prop that enacted the finale of Star Wars before the celluloid sequel rolled. “It was built from MDF and rigged to an automation system, with projection mapping to look as if it was flying through space. Luke Skywalker was in it throughout.

One time, the automation system failed and he got stuck up there for about an hour.”

“The Empire Strikes Back was the zenith,” says Matt Bennett, a DJ who joined to head up the music department. “I just needed a change,” he says. That’s what he got. “I was putting on club nights for 1,000 people in Glasgow, and there are more than 400 people working on Star Wars. The production company, Wonder Works, did the [London 2012] Olympics

Romeo + Juliet, Gunnersbury Park (2018) Tied to the theme of youth violence, the show worked with the charity MAC-UK. "We got Loki, a political rapper, to come and work on the project and raise money and awareness on knife crime," says Bennett.

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very member of Secret Cinema has their favourite moment. For Bennett, it might have been DJing in that acid rain at Blade Runner. “It felt important, but it was just playing techno to people who were totally wet and having the time of their lives.” Instead, he has another: “In 2015, we went to the Calais refugee camp. It was the week that small boy [Syrian three-year-old Alan Kurdi] washed up dead on the shore [in Turkey]. Fabien insisted we stage a cultural protest against the treatment of the people at the camp. We took Afrikan Boy, a Nigerian-born London rapper who sings about global politics and immigration, and set up a pop-up cinema screen showing a Bollywood film to all the families in the camp.

“There were thousands of people who had no home and didn’t think they had a future.

They weren’t sitting eating popcorn. It was a very immediate moment of having an impact on people’s lives who maybe really needed to watch a film. The baddies got booed, the girls got cheered. We raised money afterwards to keep the project going, then the political landscape changed when people were killed in Paris and Manchester. But it reflects Secret Cinema’s ethos of getting up and doing stuff, and credit to Fabien for essentially risking his brand with a very divisive political posture.”

Raising awareness for social issues is perhaps Secret Cinema’s most hidden quality.

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SECRET CINEMA/CAMILLA GREENWELL, © 1996 TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX FILM CORPORATION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Back to the Future, Printworks London (2014)

opening and closing ceremonies. I had three months to figure out the music showcase.

It was seat-of-the-pants stuff.”

Bennett’s initiation was made tougher by a new experiment: alongside the four stages at Printworks was a warm-up gig at an undisclosed location. “It was the little secret behind the big secret. We had all the bands from the main site and some DJs – everyone learnt to play the cantina band song.” Actors mingling with the crowd added a new layer of immersion. “Fabien wanted to open up allnight parties in the style of [Berlin nightclub] Berghain. Thankfully we never got to that stage, because we were consumed by delivering 100 nights of Star Wars to 100,000 people.

After the runaway success of The Empire Strikes Back, the window of possibility was thrown wide open. For last year’s Blade Runner that included building a future Los Angeles with an indoor rain system for 86 nights. “We had a massive pool under the floor connected to a closed loop system that pumped water up to a rain rig on the ceiling,” says Moccia. “We had to clean the pool daily, because people dropped chips in it. “But to see that hero moment, with everybody opening their umbrellas, drenched in neon light – it was like being in Shibuya on a rainy night.”

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Secret Cinema

Blade Runner, Canning Town (2018) “We didn't want to break the spell, and playing the Vangelis soundtrack would do that,” says Bennett. “So we took the music from Taffey’s Bar, because it’s a place in the film.

We stretched 18 seconds of Arabic-style dub into six hours of low-end exotica.”

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Riggall and Luhrmann on stage at 2017’s Moulin Rouge

“There’s a desire to escape our looped existence”

abien Riggall may be a master of secrecy, but he’s quite open about some of the plans he has for Secret Cinema.

He wants to take it global. “We’ve done teasers in Berlin, New York, to see how can that works. Universally, I think people want experiences that are mysterious, to become part of a bigger thing. In the US, cinema has a cultural resonance, and bringing these experiences to a country where entire towns transform for Halloween is interesting. And when we start going to places that don’t speak English, how do we translate that?”

As for which films he’d like to do next: “Titanic. The richness of that world could be huge. The question is, how are we going to build it, sink it and then get it back up every night? I’ve always wanted to do Secret Cinema on a train. And ET – to have everyone cycle to a forest on BMXs, strap them onto wires, then they fly over the screen and we never see them again.”

Riggall may be joking about ET, but there’s one idea for the future that he’s serious about: “Once Upon a Time in America, set beneath Brooklyn Bridge. Transforming a district of Brooklyn into prohibition New York, with Morricone and a live orchestra.

I’m definitely going to propose that to whichever mayor of Brooklyn we have to talk to. I think that’s possible.”

Secret Cinema presents Casino Royale launches on June 5; tickets.secretcinema.org THE RED BULLETIN

SECRET CINEMA/AL OVERDRIVE/MIKE MASSARO

“When we bring films to life, that also means whatever message those films have,” says Riggall. “When we did One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, we worked with mental-health charity Mind and integrated fundraising awareness. This year, with Casino Royale, we’re working with Calm, a charity that raises awareness of mental health and male suicide.

The film is very honest about what James Bond goes through, and it’s interesting to allow that to be part of the story. One gesture can change your life and sometimes that thing is cultural. For me, it was cinema. It’s important to create experiences that can be a conduit for change.”

Casino Royale is the first Secret Cinema that Riggall has delegated control of, handing the reins to veteran theatre director Angus Jackson. “It’ll be the biggest indoor show we’ve done – twice the size of Blade Runner,” says Jackson. “It’s 1,500 people a night, 50 performers. This is closest to when I ran the entire Rome season at the RSC [in 2017], when we built a four-show Roman world for Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, Titus Andronicus and Coriolanus. That collapsed in on itself in the space of a year.”

It also heralds a deeper partnership with the film creators. “I had to pitch to Barbara

Broccoli. She listened, asked very astute questions, then said, ‘Yeah, you can do that.’

Next, I got hold of the film’s director, Martin Campbell, and said, ‘What were you thinking when you filmed Casino Royale?’ He said, ‘I looked down the camera lens and asked myself if it was real. And if it was, I filmed it.’”

Jackson, shrewdly, won’t reveal the contents of the show. “We’ve got a casino – that’s not too much of a spoiler,” he laughs.

However, fans of the 1959 Alfred Hitchcock thriller North by Northwest may find the prescreening narrative familiar. Jackson also name-drops Sébastien Foucan, the founder of freerunning, who played bomber Mollaka in Casino Royale’s opening chase in Madagascar.

“Seb’s been in and out a few times,” he teases.

What Jackson does promise is an opportunity for everyone to live out their 007 fantasy in a way that no one, except perhaps the Bond actors, has had the chance to do.

“Spielberg said we go to films to watch people making the choices you wouldn’t make in real life,” he says. “We’re putting these choices in the hands of the audience. You get to a point where the audience are the performers. That’s what a Secret Cinema show is.”

Free s l a c i d a R Bleak, utilitarian city streets are, for many, a daily drag. But for an underground tribe of mountain bikers, urban concrete plus gravity equals a playground of endless possibilities

Words MATT RAY Photography DAVID GOLDMAN 54  

In Portsmouth, some local kids got nosy, so photographer David Goldman invited them to take part in one of Josh Reynolds’ stunts

MTB street

“When you’ve got a big bike, you’re looking for things only the craziest person would ever dream of doing on a BMX”

T

he British city street is under pressure. It’s trapped in a slow-grind crisis where stress is rife and anxiety is the new normal. But within its concrete canyons, beasts are stirring – and it’s not the rats.

Sitting astride burly, overbuilt mountain bikes are a row of riders in full-face helmets and a patchwork uniform of gloves, skinny jeans, unbuttoned shirts and freeride jerseys.

They stare down from a 6m-high asphalt overpass, gazes locked onto a double set of red-brick stairs bordered by concrete slopes, studded with rocks, and scattered with the usual urban debris: broken glass, cigarette ends… Breaking their focus, the riders split, peeling off back up the road and out of sight.

Stop and stare in a city and eventually the street will notice you. Here in Portsmouth, pedestrians have begun to crowd along the top of the overpass, looking down at the stairs and the small portable ramp that has been set up at the top. The rising whoosh of fat rubber tyres accelerated by pedal power reaches their ears as a rider rounds the corner, launches off the ramp and hurtles down the stairs, whipping his back wheel in the air. But he doesn’t quite clear the platform between the flights of stairs, clipping his back wheel and, with a tortured crunch, smacking the underside of his bike’s frame into the edge of a step. Only strength and experience prevent him from being catapulted face-first into the pavement.

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The rider swears into the city air. “That ramp really launches you,” reports Simon Brettle, the 31-yearold carpenter and mountain biker. “My landing zone is exactly the same size as my bike – there is literally no room for error.”

The street is built from intersecting concrete blades. There are harsh, unyielding angles everywhere you look. It’s a far cry from the rounded, flowing lines and loose dirt of an off-road mountain-bike trail.

“I find that terrifying, to be honest,” says another of the riders, Josh Reynolds, who is sponsored by Sick Bikes and works as a fitness equipment engineer.

“Stair sets and bricks are a lot harsher. When you start pushing it, everything becomes more highconsequence.” Consequences leave scars, and Reynolds’ injuries from both MTB and BMX include a dented skull, blown ankles, a shattered collarbone and smashed back teeth. He’s 24 years old.

“If you’re riding off-road, you’ll have a nice big jump with a long landing to hit, which will slope off into the flat,” he continues. “It’s not angular; it doesn’t go from 45° to flat within an inch.” Street geometry and the arithmetic of impact is violent and uncompromising, but Reynolds isn’t complaining.

The riders all wear adversity like a badge of honour – it shows they belong. At one point, Brettle and local rider Ben Matthews compete to gross us out by flexing their injured wrist joints – bones clunk and push against the skin, unanchored by any ligaments that may have survived previous crashes.

The bravado isn’t just a front, and you don’t ride a mountain bike in the street to be subtle; it’s a statement of intent. Reynolds grew up riding THE RED BULLETIN

Left: Reynolds in his Chainbreakers Cycling Club jacket. Below: at Brighton Marina

MTB street a BMX, but ‘mountain-bike street’ has remoulded him – he doesn’t even think in the same way. “BMXs are brakeless, small wheels, no suspension, so you can look at something small on the street, like a ledge, and think, ‘I can grind that, I can 360° hop off that,’” he says. “But when you’ve got a big bike, you’d walk straight past it – you’re looking for things only the craziest person would ever dream of doing on a BMX.” The thing about street furniture is that it’s literally set in stone. Jumping a long double – or triple – stair set will write your name into legend. Once, on London’s Pall Mall, with an audience of 50 riders, Brettle landed an almost 7m drop off a high, rounded wall to the bottom steps of a triple set. “That was the biggest drop I’ve ever done,” he reveals. “I got a ticket for that one.”

Each of these guys says the same thing: riding the street fundamentally changes how you see it for ever.

“Other people go down a road and all they see is the road and a pavement,” says Reynolds. “I’ll go down the same street and be looking at that bank and that stair set and that drop. You can never switch it off.”

Ben Matthews races enduro events, but takes a different approach to mountain-bike street. “It’s about being able to take the hard hits, but also knowing how to look at a wall or a bank and think, ‘Oh, I can jump up onto that and 180° off,’” says the 29-year-old, who works in carbon-fibre engineering. “You need to be able to have great imagination. It’s not like trail-riding, where you’re just following the path in front of you.”

The street has always been there, and mountain bikes aren’t news, so why is the underground bubbling again now? Why do we have outriders on our thoroughfares? For these guys, there’s a practical reason: new tech has been developed. Portable ‘pack-a-ramps’ such as those made by MTB Hopper can be carried from spot to spot as backpacks. These flatpack ramps take minutes to set up and act as a force multiplier for potential tricks and jumps, easing take-off angles between floors and banks (which rob you of speed) and allowing for launches over obstacles. “Some of the ramps feel literally like getting sent to the moon,” says Matthews.

One ramp has been used to turn a grassy bank into the landing zone for a high-speed big-air jump on Portsmouth seafront. Spotters are deployed to watch out for pedestrians, then the riders, unsure if they are going to be moved on, throw themselves into jumping it. “You’ve got to be quick,” says Matthews. “Get in there, set it up, go. It’s all or nothing, basically. You try and get as much out of it as you can, and as soon as you see security coming you just grab your bags and run. I’ve never been arrested, but it has been very close – you try not to be an idiot and actually respect the area, and you avoid doing any damage.”

Matthews races up to the ramp. It strains to absorb his charge, emitting a disconcerting ker-klunk, then he’s in the air, soaring against the sky as it sits grey and heavy above the waves. He’s reaching for a mid-air trick when it all goes wrong. The riders’ landings all

Simon Brettle – known to his fellow riders as ‘Kettle’ – unloads his bikes from his van at an estate at the top of a hill in Brighton

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ILLUSTRATOR

“Some of the ramps feel literally like getting sent to the moon”

Reynolds sends it to the sky mid-whip with the help of a mobile ramp, the MTB Hopper

“You’ve got to be quick. Get in there, set it up, go… and as soon as you see security coming, you just grab your bags and run”

Kettle launches himself down a double set of steps near the Magistrates’ Court in Portsmouth

Henry Durman, Ben Matthews and Reynolds get geared up for the session at Brighton Marina

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Reynolds sends a one-footed euro table (what he calls a “dogpisser�) over a hip at Portsmouth Pyramids

MTB street sound violent, but this is like scrap metal crashing down a mineshaft. They rush to his aid, but he’s OK – kind of. “He slipped a foot and broke his saddle with his balls,” says Brettle, incredulously. It’s no joke – the saddle’s metal rails are both neatly sheared in half.

It’s suddenly obvious why the riders favour a distinctly old-school set-up of overbuilt aluminium frames, 26in (66cm) wheels and downhill tyres, running at 40psi, rather than trail pressures of 25psi, with extra spacers in their suspension. “The bikes take a beating,” says Matthews. “You need something that’s super-burly to take the impacts, because it isn’t like riding dirt – you’re landing on solid concrete.”

Brettle is getting a new frame custom-built for his style – by Frome-based bespoke bike-makers BTR Fabrications – because the modern trend for low, slack and long wheelbase bikes is unsuited to the short, brutal landings of the street. “I ride an aluminium bike, 26in wheels, old-school – just has to be hardcore.” Even within the world of mountain biking, these guys are iconoclasts. As it turns out, they all have very practical day jobs, from carpenter to carbon-fibre engineer, so they’re familiar with breaking points. They know what it is to push metal, bone, carbon fibre and sinew to the limit – and past it.

“That’s the end of my day,” grimaces Matthews, who walks like John Wayne for the next few hours.

If they’re shaken by his crash, the other riders don’t show it. They’re focused on the finale: another ramp jump, this time off a 3m wall, over a pavement and onto a banking in the car park below. The run-up is along tarmac to a gravel path and then grass. The ramp makes it possible, but the run-in is “sub-optimal enough” for Henry Durman to have a high-speed wash-out on the lumpy grass, just before the ramp.

Picking himself up, the 23-year-old marine engineer and rigger shouts down from the top of the wall, “Aah! I’m shaking like a sick dog!”

It’s another high-consequence jump with a tiny landing zone. Get it wrong and you could land flat on unyielding tarmac and detonate your knees, or go nose in and be ejected straight off the bike into something pitilessly solid. You can’t see the landing from the top, so the riders are having to line themselves up by looking at a distant lamppost as they jump.

As Reynolds launches off the ramp, he doesn’t seem phased – he whips his hands off the bar to throw his arms behind him and land a ‘suicide nohander’. The landing is the hardest of the day: every millimetre of his downhill bike’s 180mm suspension is called upon as his arms and legs fight to absorb the rest of the impact. After a flurry of fist bumps, he dismounts and demonstrates his commitment by taking off his shoe to adjust the brace he’s wearing, following recent surgery on both ankles.

Despite his scare, Durman sends the next jump, landing with a whoop. He also races downhill, but for him the buzz you get from a street jump can’t be beaten off-road. “With street, you’ve only got one chance to get it right, which is so exhilarating. There’s so much adrenalin coursing through your system, you’re up there just shaking, waiting to drop in.”

What makes MTB street so liberating for these riders is the very fact that it hasn’t been built for them.

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“With street [riding], you’ve only got one chance to get it right“

Durman scopes out steps as he sets up near Portsmouth Magistrates’ Court

Downhill and enduro tracks have big jumps, but they are designed to be predictable and safe. “The distance between where you take off and land is a nice smooth arc,” says Reynolds. “But with street, if you’re jumping off a wall, you go up but there’s still 10-15ft [3-5m] to drop – the arc is lopsided.” The consequences of getting it wrong are greater, but so too are the rewards.

It’s this process of overcoming obstacles from dramatic new angles that seems to define how MTB street riders interact with their environment. Urban worlds can seem compressed, buckling under external strains and internal angst. Normally, in a world under siege from itself, options narrow, possibilities are blocked, and self-expression is stifled. For minds under pressure, streets are recast as prisons. But for the street rider, stairs become launch pads, walls become roads, and obstacles become old friends.

Perhaps being able to see your street from a radically new perspective does a hard reset on your relationship to it. Who knows, it could even set you free.

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One dream job would be enough for most people, but 27-year-old CHELCEE GRIMES has scored success as a rising music star and a pro footballer. Welcome to her life of two halves

Words PIERS MARTIN Photography STEPHANIE SIAN SMITH 64

CHELCEE WEARS CHAMPION CROPPED TANK TOP; ADIDAS TEAM SPORTS TRACKSUIT TOP; PICKLE & POLISH ‘CHELCEE’ CHAIN; HAIRCLIPS, STYLIST’S OWN

LEAGUE OF HER OWN

Chelcee Grimes

“I

’m a Jekyll and Hyde – there are two sides of me, but both are important,” explains the softly spoken Liverpudlian as the lighting and backdrops from her Red Bulletin photoshoot are dismantled. Sitting on a sofa in the corner of a sunny canalside studio in east London, the chatty, easygoing 27-year-old wears a bright orange top, off-white jeans and New Balance trainers. Around her neck hangs a silver chain sporting her name: Chelcee.

Chelcee Grimes is a songwriter in demand. In addition to composing hits for the likes of Dua Lipa, Kylie Minogue, Kesha and Tom Walker, she has worked in LA with Calvin Harris and producer RedOne (Lady Gaga, Nicki Minaj). She launched her own singing career in 2018 with the upbeat R&B-laced pop tracks Just Like That and I Need a Night Out, and she has a debut album scheduled for release next year. But that’s only the half of it: Chelcee is also a professional footballer.

Playing up front for Fulham FC Women, Chelcee scored three goals in this season’s FA Cup, and she brings together her two big passions as the presenter of Chelcee Away, her online show for BBC Sport. Chelcee will also be part of the BBC team covering the Women’s World Cup in France this June and July; and in between all this, she still finds time to contribute to the popular football fan site COPA90. “I’m very busy at the minute,” she understates. “It’s gone a bit mental, but I’m excited.”

Chelcee has barely paused for breath over the past few years.

Yesterday, she visited Anfield to meet Liverpool FC manager Jurgen Klopp for a forthcoming branding venture; being a lifelong fan of the club, this was a dream come true. After our interview, she’ll head to a studio in London’s Shoreditch to finish the vocals for her upcoming single, Girls, which she hopes will be the unofficial anthem of the Women’s World Cup. Tomorrow,

“Kids would have my lyrics as tattoos…

I’d say, ‘Don’t get it done, your mother will kill you’” 66

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CHELCEE WEARS ELLESSE JASMINE CROPPED HOODY; WEEKDAY ROW JEANS; ADIDAS FALCON SHOES

Northern powerhouse: Chelcee is an unstoppable force in music and football

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Chelcee Grimes

Chelcee’s World Cup women to watch Nikita Parris, England

“She’s an attacking player who played for the Everton youth team, one age group below me. Nikita is a speedster – you don’t want her running at you with the ball. When she signed for Man City, I knew she’d become one of England’s best.”

Fran Kirby, England

Nikita Parris

“The female Messi. Fran scored a few goals in the SheBelieves Cup [an annual international women’s tournament in the US]. She’s small, quick and as skilful as anyone.

Definitely one to watch.”

she’ll take part in a songwriting session in Ealing with producer and fellow hit machine Naughty Boy (“I met him last week and we started working together”), and at the end of the week she’ll attend the FIFA eWorld Cup video-game championships. “I’m living my dream,” beams Chelcee, a keen gamer.

Excelling at two high-profile careers is turning Chelcee into something of a celebrity, as well as an ambassador for women’s football. She handles the attention well, not least because of her easy-going nature and her genuine love for what she does, and Chelcee is always ready to share her experiences with young fans who see her as a role model. But she has also been through enough to know how fickle these industries can be.

Megan Rapinoe, USA “The American national squad are always strong. Megan is a great player technically, and someone who will always give her team a big advantage.”

GETTY IMAGES. CHELCEE WEARS NIKE ACG RELAXED-FIT WOVEN JOGGING BOTTOMS; NIKE STRIKE FOOTBALL; TANK TOP AND CHAIN, AS BEFORE

Ji So-Yun, South Korea

“Chelsea’s number 10. She scores and creates goals – you can’t give her space for a shot. Ji is a team player, and she makes chances out of nothing – you have to be switched on when she’s around.”

O

Formiga, Brazil

“The first woman to play in seven World Cups. Formiga will be 41 at this year’s tournament, and the stage is set for her to score the winner in a big game. That’s what competitions like this are set up for – anything can happen.”

Megan Rapinoe

“When I went for trials at Liverpool, I didn’t even own a pair of boots” THE RED BULLETIN

nce upon a time, Chelcee quit football. She was 17 and on the precipice of turning professional, but there wasn’t enough money in the women’s game to support a viable career. This tricky decision was assuaged by the lucrative offer of a major record deal. “Someone was dangling a cheque in front of me, and football hadn’t paid in eight years, so what could I do?” she says. “I obviously chose music and dropped out of football.” If that sounds like a no-brainer, a better appreciation of Grimes’ deep commitment to the game is needed.

Having grown up in Aigburth, Liverpool, the city’s legendary football club has always been a massive part of her life: “If your family are Liverpool supporters, it’s in your blood.” Her father chose her name. “Chelsea weren’t a big team back then, so it wasn’t like they were going to call me Tottenham or something,” she smiles. “My mum was like, ‘OK, we like the name, but we’ll have to spell it differently,’ so that’s how it’s spelt in my passport.

When people don’t believe me, I have to get it out to show them.”

With no siblings, Chelcee realised that if she wanted to get on with her male cousins and hang out with the boys on her street, she’d have to learn to play football. “It was that or stay in and do homework. At first I wasn’t very good, but I quickly improved – I’d be the first one they chose for the team.” After her grandad spotted an ad in the local paper, Chelcee’s mum enrolled her at the Ian Rush Soccer School; she was the only girl to attend. Her skills were soon recognised by Liverpool Ladies (now Liverpool FC Women), who trained at the same ground.

“I was asked to come to their trials. I didn’t even own a pair of football boots, but I turned up and got through. I played for Liverpool Under-10s, then signed up for another five years.”

Her passion for making music, however, didn’t bloom until her mid-teens. A huge pop fan, Chelcee grew up listening to J-Lo, Beyoncé, Pink and Kanye. Her mum would play dance music at home, while her stepdad listened to Sting and Simon & Garfunkel. Having chosen music as one of her GSCE options – mainly because she thought it would be easy – Chelcee was 69

Chelcee Grimes

Now at Fulham, Chelcee has also played for Liverpool, Everton, Tranmere Rovers and Spurs

encouraged by a teacher who noticed her aptitude for songwriting. At 16, she won a six-month recording arrangement through a competition on local radio station Juice FM. The studio belonged to Liverpool winger Ryan Babel, which meant Chelcee went to all the team’s games and learnt her way around a studio with the help of Babel’s engineer. She was hooked.

At the same time, Chelcee began gigging. “I’d play every openmic night in Liverpool,” she recalls. “More people would turn up and a buzz developed. Kids would have my lyrics as tattoos – I can’t even remember the songs. I think one was called The Truth, and someone had that written on themselves. I’d say, ‘Don’t get it done, your mother will kill you.’ But when people started to do that, I could tell a movement was happening.”

This led to the agonising choice between football and music that culminated in Chelcee signing a contract with record label RCA. “They wanted to make me into an English Alicia Keys,” she reveals. Not long after Chelcee signed up, however, her contact at the label was sacked, and two years later she was unceremoniously dropped. Deflated and running out of money, Chelcee moved to London to pursue her songwriting dream, recording in bedrooms, basements, wherever she could.

She looks back on that time with frankness: “At 18 I hadn’t really lived, I’d just played football. I had a bit of a gap for a year, wrote four songs, got a record deal really early. I don’t think I deserved it, if I’m honest.” Instead, she threw herself into new challenges. “It made me travel, learn about myself, and I gave 70

writing a go. Then someone called and said, ‘We think you’re a good songwriter, we’ll give you a publishing deal.’ It’s not what I really wanted – I still wanted to be on stage – but I did it.”

She found herself at a songwriting session in Copenhagen with veteran Danish producer Cutfather. Feeling homesick, Chelcee wrote the lyrics “I feel like I’m a million miles away”, which evolved into Kylie Minogue’s 2014 song Million Miles. Then she began working with Steve Mac, one of the most successful producers in modern pop, responsible for huge hits by the likes of Ed Sheeran (Shape Of You), Clean Bandit (Symphony) and Pink (What About Us). “If you have better players around you, you automatically grow and thrive,” she says, drawing a connection between songwriting and football. “I don’t get intimidated.

If I put my mind to something, I usually go on to do it.”

Chelcee is in no doubt where this self-belief comes from: “It’s because I’m a Scouser. There’s something in the Liverpool water where we think we can do anything we put our mind to.

It’s in the heart of our football team, too. I remember the 2005 Champions League final [the now-legendary match against AC Milan in Istanbul] where we were 3-0 down. To come back and fight and win it in 45 minutes – that embodies everything I believe as a person. It was the first time I saw that magic can happen if you fight for it.”

Looking back, Chelcee believes the whole journey has been a valuable lesson: “I’ve only been [working in music] professionally for four years, but I’ve developed massively from when I was writing songs at 17 in my bedroom with no one saying, ‘Do this or change that.’” After signing to the management agency that represents Dua Lipa, Lana Del Ray and Ellie Goulding, Chelcee’s talent for composing a killer melody and a catchy hook emerged. “It’s a running industry joke how fast I am at writing,” she says. “Yesterday, I went outside the studio and saw a sign that read, ‘Please don’t play ball games,’ and I thought, ‘That’s a dope title,’ so we wrote a song called Please. There’s no yellow brick road to making a hit record. You’ve just got to feel it as you go.”

When you write a song a day, as Chelcee strives to, some are bound to resonate. One she wrote about her father, titled 11:11, was covered in 2016 by South Korean artist Taeyeon and became a huge hit, racking up more than 52 million YouTube views. “Sometimes you don’t remember writing songs, but that’s a special one,” she says. “[The song’s co-writer] Christian Vinten said, ‘What have you never written about?’ and I said, ‘It’s really weird but I’ve never written about my dad.’ He passed away when I was a kid, and I feel like I’ve never wanted to open that box. My mum would say, ‘When it gets to 11:11, make a wish,’ so I used to wish for my dad to come and speak to me. When I hear the opening chord, it takes me right back to writing it.”

Much as Chelcee enjoyed her songwriting success, she never lost the longing to perform, and last year her perseverance paid off when she finally released her own music. “It’s been six years THE RED BULLETIN

CHELCEE WEARS ELLESSE PINZO TRACK TOP; KAPPA AUTHENTIC BALIC JOGGERS; NEW BALANCE 997H SHOES; TANK TOP AND FOOTBALL, AS BEFORE

“I’ve fought my way to be where I am, so I feel like I deserve it”

Chelcee Grimes

“There’s no yellow brick road to making a hit.

You’ve just got to feel it as you go” of slog,” she says. “And it hasn’t been given to me. If it had, I’d be like, ‘Whoa, what’s happening?’ But I’ve literally fought my way to be where I am, so I feel like I deserve it.”

Another pursuit Chelcee missed was playing football. When watching the 2015 Women’s World Cup, she realised a number of girls she used to play with were now wearing an England shirt. “I thought, ‘I need to get back into it.’ So I googled a few teams and got trials with Wimbledon, Spurs and West Ham. They all offered me a contract – it was crazy.” Chelcee is now settled at Fulham – she also lives nearby – though the relegation of the men’s team from the Premier League and its knock-on effect on revenue has created uncertainty for the women.

Chelcee’s top festival picks for 2019 Billie Eilish

“She’s 17 and smashing it right now. [The California-born singersongwriter] makes all her music with her brother, so it’s not manufactured.

Billie’s breaking boundaries, and the whole industry is talking about her.

She’s different and I appreciate that.”

King Princess

“She’s a new singer signed to Mark Ronson’s label. King Princess [aka Mikaela Straus] is big in the LGBTQ community and she’s not selling any part of herself, just being authentic.

She’s also super talented and plays all the instruments on her songs.”

Tom Grennan

“Tom was my first-ever guest on Chelcee Away. I became a fan after hearing his song Found What I’ve Been Looking For on the FIFA 18 soundtrack. We became friends and wrote two songs together.

They might be on his next record.”

Girlpool

“I don’t know anything about the [LA indie-rock duo], but I saw the name Girlpool on a festival line-up and wanted to know more. So you should definitely go to see them.”

Michael Kiwanuka

“I already knew Michael through the industry, but then his song Cold Little Heart was used as the title track of [US drama] Big Little Lies and I became a fan. It’s an amazing record. The show is really good, too.”

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King Princess

THE RED BULLETIN

STYLING: EMILY ROSE MOLONEY; HAIR & MAKE-UP: ALICE HOWLETT USING KAT VON D BEAUTY AND BUMBLE AND BUMBLE; PHOTOGRAPHY ASSISTANTS: PAOLINA STADLER, MARIA MONFORT PLANACHELCEE WEARS PRETTY LITTLE THING HIGH-NECK, RIBBED LONG-SLEEVE CROP TOP

M

uch has changed in women’s football over the past five years, and Chelcee believes the sport is healthier and wealthier than ever. In March this year, Barclays announced a £10 million three-year sponsorship of the FA’s Women’s Super League – the biggest investment by a brand in UK women’s sports. In Spain that same month, more than 60,000 fans watched a match between Atlético Madrid and Barcelona in the Primera División Femenina – a world record attendance for a club game in women’s football – and in Italy around 39,000 people saw Juventus Women beat Fiorentina.

“My little sister is nine now and she plays football,” says Chelcee. “When I was playing, I was the only girl, but she’s one of six in the team. That growth from a grassroots level is all you need. And to turn on the TV now and see [former England and Arsenal Women right-back] Alex Scott as a BBC pundit… that would never have happened when I was a kid. It’s awesome.”

In terms of investment and profile, the women’s game in the UK still lags behind that of the European continent and the US, but 2019 promises to be its biggest year yet. Chelcee believes that change is gradually coming, but a lot of the problem is down to the perception and presentation of the sport.

“It’s like having the best song in the world but the video is shot on an old Nokia phone: it won’t look good,” she says. “No part of the women’s game is as well-publicised or up-to-date as the men’s.

You’ve got to give it equal leeway. Hopefully, with this injection of money, everything will become a lot more professional.” She hopes her reporting of the Women’s World Cup in France for the BBC and COPA90 will inspire yet more girls to get involved. “I’ll show it’s not women’s football, it’s just football,” she says.

The multitalented Liverpudlian is, in her own way, redefining what it means to be a woman in 2019. “I’m showing you don’t have to be just one thing now. I go in the studio and write songs with some of the biggest acts in the world. I’m playing for Fulham, making my own album. I’m standing up for that, 100 per cent.”

Chelcee Grimes, in her life as in her career, is far more than the sum of the parts.

Chelcee’s latest single, Girls, is out now on TaP Records; chelceegrimes.com

The Gobi Desert, September 2018. British runner James Poole, having passed the 4,000m-high summit that marks the highest point in the Ultra Gobi, descends into a valley devoid of colour or life, with nothing but a biting wind and a dusty trail to keep him company. Two days and more than 200km into the race, this is the halfway point. The approaching night and altitude will see numerous runners succumb to hypothermic conditions.

The Silk Road: the route of China‘s most famous pilgrimage – and now one of the planet’s most brutal ultramarathons.

This is the 400km

Ultra Gobi

Words JAMES POOLE and JAMES CARNEGIE Photography JAMES CARNEGIE

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Ultra Gobi

D

uring his seventh-century pilgrimage along the route that would become known as the Silk Road, Chinese Buddhist monk Xuanzang described the Gobi Desert as “nothing but barren sand and dry river beds; at night, stars shine like fires lit by devils… There is not enough water to nourish even a single blade of grass; one looks for birds in the sky and beasts on land, but finds none”.

Xuanzang’s quest to obtain sacred Buddhist scriptures was adapted into one of China’s most famous novels, Journey to the West, better known outside the country in its abridged form, titled Monkey. Today, the terrain remains remarkably unchanged and the monk’s route draws a different kind of pilgrim: the ultrarunner.

Launched in 2015, the Ultra Gobi is a self-navigating, self-supporting race that follows Xuanzang’s trail along the northern edge of the Tibetan Plateau in western China. Once known as the Gansu Corridor, this was the only path for caravans passing between the sands of the Gobi proper to the north and the mountains of Tibet to the south. “The heat goes through you like a flame and the wind cuts your flesh like a knife,” wrote Xuanzang of this route. The Chinese name for the race translates as ‘Xuanzang’s Route: 800li of Flowing Sands’, and 800li (or Chinese miles) converts to 400km, making Ultra Gobi a ‘super-ultra’ marathon that exceeds the world’s most famous desert race – the Marathon des Sables – by 150km, with a soulcrushing 4,000m mountain-pass ascent to the midway checkpoint.

It took the legendary monk 17 years to complete his journey; Ultra Gobi contestants – of whom there are only 50 invited each year – have just 149 hours to finish the course. In 2017, British runner Daniel Lawson, then aged 43, did it in less than 71 hours. For the 2018 race, the organisers laid down a $10,000 (around £7,500) prize for anyone who could top that.

Fellow Brit James Poole was one of those who took up the challenge.

Photographer James Carnegie joined Poole to document his race, and here they take us through their photo diary. It’s a study of attrition, of human determination, and of the toll that harsh conditions and exhaustion can take on the mind and body. “It wasn’t until I was editing the images that I noticed much of what James was going through,” says Carnegie. “The glazed eyes behind his sunglasses as we climbed out of the canyon and onto the 4,000mhigh plateau will always remind me of how far gone he was at that point.”

At the stroke of midnight on September 25, 2018, the 50 entrants set off into the vast desert expanse as the clock starts ticking towards the 149-hour completion deadline.

This year, there’s an additional £7,500 prize for whoever manages to beat 70 hours and 52 minutes, the record-breaking time set by 2017 winner Daniel Lawson.

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THE RED BULLETIN

Poole at the start line. Festivities at the opening ceremony – a firework show, a few dozen dancers dressed in Mongolian attire, and a makeshift bar lined with cups of rice beer – belie the gruelling race to come.

Ultra Gobi

“This race comes down to how little sleep you can take while retaining the function and ability to plough on”

Sunrise brings respite from the merciless cold and the loneliness of a night spent beneath a canopy of stars.

Much of the route is raced at above 2,000m, at the edge of the Tibetan plateau.

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In an attempt to stave off swelling, blisters, infection, trench foot and the loss of toenails, many competitors stashed fresh socks and medical supplies in drop boxes, which were delivered to checkpoints. “What the Gobi Desert lacks in endless dusty dunes, it makes up for with perpetually uneven rocks that threaten to macerate feet and eat through trail shoes," says Poole. "The luxury of a clean pair of socks and some adeptly applied tape can be the difference between just stepping out the door or climbing onto the bus to the finish.”

With an army of Chinese and international volunteers manning each of the checkpoints, runners are able to receive physio and medical treatment to sufficiently repair injury and any other wear to their bodies. However, staff are encouraged to turn runners around as quickly as possible – they have to continue on or succumb to the threat of DNF (Did Not Finish).

Mandatory survival equipment includes a sleeping bag, GPS, head torch and medical kit. Runners must carry sufficient hydration, nutrition and clothing between checkpoints to endure successive nights in sub-zero temperatures. “Each night I was wearing everything I had and until the sun rose I was still freezing,” says Poole.

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Ultra Gobi

“For all its epic views and endless emptiness, the Gobi offers no help to the wayward runner”

“Forward progress was dictated by one’s ability to follow a thin line on a small digital display,” says Poole. “Flat batteries or a broken GPS handset would be disastrous.”

As would severe sleep deprivation and the decline in cognition that comes with it. Britain’s Nathan Montague followed a broken arrow on his device for several hours, ending up lost. His error was costly: at one point, he was chasing second place; he finally crossed the line in sixth.

Carnegie: “More than 100km in and approaching dawn on day two. Three hours into running through dried river beds and canyons with James, I discovered how useless fingers become in this cold. Trying to capture the mood of utter isolation was challenging. James went from incoherence amid the cold dark of night to wildly hallucinating as the horizon turned to gold, claiming there’d been a dog running alongside me for hours and that the hills were full of apartments with people looking down on us. His mind was mush.”

Checkpoints range from tents manned by a lone person huddled around a fire, to small villages in the middle of nowhere. Each runner has six drop boxes – meticulously packed and checked before race start – from which they can retrieve nutrition, luxuries and changes of clothing en route. The logistics of calculating what they'll need at each checkpoint is immense, especially with a minimum required daily calorie intake of 25,000kcal.

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Poole: “The lowest point occurred shortly after crossing the 4,000m peak at halfway. With little more than two hours’ sleep in two days, I’d seen gnomes, imps and goblins hiding in the scrub. Cliff-sides looked like trains with endless lines of carriages. Shadows in the dying sunlight resembled dogs’ jaws leaning in to nip at my ankles. With less than 3km to one of the lifesaving bases, I was confronted by a frozen lake lined with boats, pontoons and jetties. Listening out for any cracks in the ice, I climbed gingerly between the obstacles. More than an hour later, I staggered into the checkpoint, hypothermic and in serious difficulty.

Seven hours on, I hobbled out of the tent. To my surprise, there was no lake. It had all been in my mind.”

Ultra Gobi

Poole: “The night-time temperatures brought debilitating cold and hypothermia for many, so runners would leave checkpoints with sleeping bags wrapped around their bodies. Ironically, wind – or feng – plays a notable part in Chinese medicine and is regarded as a ‘pernicious influence’ that can cause disease, but not hypothermia.

So, while Western competitors battled the cold with every item they owned, it wasn’t uncommon for Chinese runners, under the guidance of doctors, to head out in little more than shorts and a T-shirt.”

Carnegie: “On the second night of sub-zero temperatures, James was close to hypothermia when he stumbled into the rest-point. Medical staff monitor the runners, and cola bottles filled with hot water were placed around him, but it soon became clear the Chinese definition of hypothermic is different to that of UK medics. Hypothermia is defined as a core body temperature below 35°C, with symptoms including uncontrollable shivering and mental confusion. Both were present.”

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Left: a lone spectator stares at Ultra Gobi’s racetrack – a seemingly endless valley with the Tibetan Plateau in the distance. Right: although the race draws entrants from across the world, the majority are Chinese, reflecting the country’s growing interest in running and endurance sports. (The eventual winner was China’s Liang Jing in 85 hours and 46 minutes.)

“Crumpled mountains look thousands of feet high, but are only a couple of hundred” THE RED BULLETIN

Carnegie: “I learnt to track James using his footprints in the sand.

Locating him and the other runners was a mission in itself. With such vast distances and inaccessibility, I’d encounter him, at best, once a day. Our 4x4 guide was familiar with this part of the Gobi, seemingly able to remember routes across river beds and between the valleys that intersected the course. Whether there was actually anyone there was another matter – our satellite tracker often indicated runners had taken inexplicable detours over dunes and gone off-course.”

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Carnegie: “I’ve never seen someone so close to the edge, yet able to continue regardless.

I know from my own experience of running ultramarathons that after 20-plus hours on the go I don’t have the patience for photos, chat or anything much beyond head down, gritting things out. James, however, never failed to respond whenever I asked for a portrait. I suspect that when I popped up in equally bizarre and random places along the route to document him, the company brought much-needed relief from the silence and confinement of the desert.

“To help me evaluate James’ mental cognition throughout the race, I’d sought the opinion of PhD researcher Chris Howe from Kingston University, who is heavily involved in​investigating the physiological, nutritional and psychological responses to ultramarathon running. On his advice, I attempted to test James at checkpoints, using a series of relatively simple cognition tasks. After 200km, he no longer had the mental energy to face this, nor me the temerity to put him through it.”

“Coming into the last 50km on day four, lips were blistered and sun-cracked”

Ultra Gobi

Carnegie: “I have a voicemail from James saved on my phone. He was less than 500m from the finish, could hear the music blaring and see the lights projecting into the sky, but was aimlessly running around a quarry. It’s one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard.”

Poole: “The Ultra Gobi runners receive an unusual gift before the start: one half of a small statuette of a tiger – a ‘tiger tally’. The other half is awarded after the successful completion of the race. These tallies were used by military officers in ancient China as a representation of authority.

A commander in a frontier region such as the Gobi might leave half of his tally behind in a fortress, then provide the matching half as ID when sending back orders. Leaving half of your tally behind is a pledge you’ll return.”

Carnegie: “After 93 hours and 25 minutes in the desert, James crosses the finish line in Dunhuang. The Ultra Gobi ends at a ‘centuries-old’ fort, which is actually a museum that was built recently to give tourists ‘the Silk Road experience’, complete with staff in warrior suits. It’s completely bizarre and I can’t imagine what it must have felt like emerging to this after four days in a desert.”

THE RED BULLETIN

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Ultra Gobi

“This is what running non-stop for that length of time in such hostile conditions does to you” The photographer’s perspective: James Carnegie “I struggled with a conflict of compassion over commitment during this assignment. I was here, several thousand miles from home, for the singular purpose of capturing James’ story. But when your good friend lurches in from the cold, dark desert, shivering uncontrollably and repeatedly muttering ‘I just need to sleep’ you’re torn between helping them into their sleeping bag and getting the shot. I kept telling myself that if I came away with just one good shot, it would all be worth it.

“I knew that I needed to see James outside the checkpoints, the safety of medics and the race staff; I needed to see him in the darkness and loneliness of the race. I heard his shuffled, slowing and stumbling footsteps alongside me, and also his incoherent, nonsensical speech and hallucinations as we traversed riverbed and gorge.

I could see – and briefly share – the deep, deep cold he was victim to as he drew the hood tight around his face, clenching his numb and useless fingers into a ball in his gloves. This is where he was. This is where the story was. I would have liked to have experienced more of that.

Without actually running this thing in its entirety, that wasn’t possible. I probably pushed as far as I could in my capacity as a photographer on this kind of remote adventure, but I’m left with utter respect for James and all the runners who saw this through.

“A face can tell a thousand words. I hope that in my images I captured some of what James was experiencing. The raw fatigue, the worn exterior and the rollercoaster of emotions were clear to see, but how does one capture that?”

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guide Get it. Do it. See it.

TAKE THE PLUNGE

Bin the beach holiday – go beyond the ordinary on a cliff-diving trip to the Azores with the legendary Orlando Duque and Destination Red Bull

SAMO VIDIC/RED BULL CONTENT POOL

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WALKING ON AIR

TEAM PLAYER

FULLY EQUIPPED

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AlterG: the anti-gravity treadmill developed for space but tailor-made for recovering athletes

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There’s more to gaming hit Apex Legends than shooting and looting. A leadership pro explains

The best gear around, plus a look inside YT Industries, the firm reinventing bike-making

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Raw nature: the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series makes its annual stop at the Ilhéu de Vila Franca

SÃO MIGUEL, THE AZORES

HOW TO BE A CLIFF DIVER With Destination Red Bull, you can book top athletes as your tour guide. Cliff diver Orlando Duque teaches guests to overcome their fear of heights and take the plunge

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s a professional cliff diver for more than 20 years, I’ve travelled to competitions all over the world. There have been some legendary locations, from the jungles of Yucatán to the Antarctic and Easter Island. But I always like returning to the

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island of São Miguel in the Azores – first and foremost for its fascinating nature – and that’s where we’re going on this Destination Red Bull trip.

The nine islands that make up the Azores sit in a remote area of the Atlantic Ocean, around

Your guide: world-class cliff diver Orlando Duque

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The Azores

TRAVEL INFO

BAD BIRD CALLS AND HOT ROCKS

Where the Azores are, why they were misnamed, and what you should eat – here’s some island knowledge to flaunt in the hotel lobby The Azores sit in the Atlantic Ocean, around 1,400km west of Portugal and 1,950km southeast of Newfoundland, Canada. The main island of São Miguel has an area of 744.7km2, making it a little larger than Singapore

Azores

Leap of faith: “I’ll teach you how to enjoy cliff-diving,” says Duque, pictured in fight Corvo Flores

Graciosa

Terceira

São Miguel

São Jorge

Faial Pico

Santa Maria

Ribeira Grande

São Miguel Ponta Delgada

ROMINA AMATO/RED BULL CONTENT POOL, DEAN TREML/RED BULL CONTENT POOL, RED BULL MEDIA HOUSE GMBH/ RED BULL CONTENT POOL, GETTY IMAGES ANDREAS ROTTENSCHLAGER

Ilhéu de Vila Franca

HISTORY

The Ilhéu de Vila Franca and its crater lake, with São Miguel in the background

1,400km west of Portugal, and are famous for their volcanic coastlines and green cliffs. It’s not at all rare to find yourself in the company of dolphins or sperm whales when swimming there.

In other words, the Azores are a great place to get to know the Atlantic in all its variety. And that’s what we have in store.

Santa Bárbara Eco-Beach Resort on São Miguel’s north coast is our accommodation for the five-day trip, during which guests will immerse themselves in the Azorean waters and, at certain times, go pretty deep – naturally, the correct technique for diving off cliffs forms part of the programme.

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“I’ll adapt to your level. There are about 100 diving spots on the island” For our workshop on the second day, we will transfer to the tiny Ilhéu de Vila Franca, just off the south coast of São Miguel.

Anyone viewing bird’s-eye photos of the islet will immediately be struck by the round lagoon that has formed in the crater of the extinct volcano – it’s a natural wonder, and the journey there is magical in itself. Even though

ALL IN A NAME Portuguese sailors named their discovery the llhas dos Açores, or Goshawk Islands. Shame that the goshawks were actually buzzards SPREADING OUT In 1752, 60 Azorean couples left for Brazil and founded what became Porto Alegre, now a city of 1.5 million STAGING POST Early submarine cables between Europe and America went via the Azores, as did the first-ever transatlantic flight, which included two stops on the islands

FOOD COZIDO The volcanic ground underfoot serves as a natural hob for this stew of meat and vegetables BOLO LÊVEDO A sweet, leavened dough roll that looks like a muffin and is eaten throughout the day PINEAPPLE CHUTNEY The Azorean pineapple has been grown in greenhouses since being introduced in the 19th century. This chutney goes perfectly with the islands’ cheeses

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The Azores

DESTINATION RED BULL

YOUR ADVENTURE WITH TOP ATHLETES

Fancy some off-road training in the desert with a five-time Dakar Rally winner, or sailing in the South Pacific with a champion ultrarunner turned yachtsman? Here are some other options awaiting you…

LESOTHO

SOLOMON ISLANDS

WITH CHRISTIAN SCHIESTER Absolute paradise: the former ultrarunner, now a round-the-world yachtsman, takes you on the trip of a lifetime on his 18m vessel El Toro

MUMBAI

WITH THE STARS OF RED BULL BC ONE Meet the B-boy and B-girl elite at the Red Bull BC One World Final, learn their moves in practice sessions, and immerse yourself in Mumbai’s mesmerising nightlife

BARCELONA

WITH SETE GIBERNAU AND DANI PEDROSA Get motorbike training on Sete Gibernau’s exclusive private racetrack, plus a VIP package for the Gran Premi de Catalunya

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“The feeling when you resurface is sensational,” says Duque. We believe him

there are limits on visitor numbers – for conservation reasons – we’ll get to stay there for the whole day and climb the picturesque crater walls or snorkel the rock tunnels at the foot of the island.

The thing that leaps out at you when you first see the Ilhéu de Vila Franca is its steep, rocky cliffs – and, of course, these haven’t escaped the attention of the world’s cliff-diving community.

Let’s get one thing clear from the start: nobody has to dive 27m from the cliff edge as the top athletes do. There are more than 100 places to dive – from various heights – around the island. At the workshop, I’ll work individually with each guest according to their fitness level and wishes. Of course, the trip is about getting the most out of yourself, but the main aim is always to have fun.

Cliff diving is a mental challenge. The crux of the matter is to take a leap of faith, literally.

Many people dive and then seize up. To counter this, what helps is knowing that you can adjust your position mid-air. I’ll show my

guests the correct technique for the flight phase and entering the water, and gradually take them as high as they’d like to go. On our workshop day, we can go anywhere up to 14m. Ideally you’ll also be learning something about yourself – ie, that you’re only afraid of things you don’t know enough about. It’s normal to be afraid when you’re standing on the edge of a cliff and are about to dive for the first time.

But you’re overcome by feelings of happiness when you return to the surface.

And while we’re on the subject of diving, there will be two professional divers with us, who’ll check out every water entry point in advance. These are the same guys the world-class divers of the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series trust, and we’ll watch that competition from the comfort of a 14m catamaran on day four.

Then, that evening, we’ll meet the competitors for dinner and talk shop about the sport.

We’ll all know how cliff-diving works by then, after all.

For further information on the trips and how to book, go to: destination.redbull.com or call +43/664/88 11 07 06

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PREDRAG VUCKOVIC/RED BULL CONTENT POOL

WITH ALFIE COX Spend a week with the South African enduro expert, exploring stunning motorbike tracks along the route of the legendary Roof of Africa rally

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Fitness

ALTER G ANTI-GRAVITY TREADMILL

KNOW-HOW

TAKE THE WEIGHT OFF YOUR FEET

FIT FOR SPACE

These fitness machines were designed by, with and for astronauts

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he treadmill is an essential tool for athletes following an operation or injury. But when is the right time to begin rehab, and how much strain can the body take?

Get the timing wrong and you could do more harm than good; start too late and you could miss the crucial window for recovery. A solution was needed and it came from space.

During his time as a NASA engineer, Dr Robert Whalen was tasked with devising a way for astronauts to exercise in zero gravity. His idea was to place the person inside a pressurised bubble and push them down onto the treadmill using air pressure. NASA didn’t adopt the concept, but Robert’s son Sean saw its potential as a rehab device. By flipping the concept on its head, using air pressure

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“Using this treadmill means I can train and avoid injury at the same time” Nicola Spirig, Olympic triathlon champion

to lift users off the treadmill, it could reduce bodyweight by up to 80 per cent, placing less stress on bones and joints.

Together, they released the AlterG in 2005 and it’s since been used by many professional athletes, including NBA legends Kobe Bryant and LeBron James, and Swiss triathlete Nicola Spirig. “I’ve been using it ever since my preparations for Rio 2016,” explains the 2012 Olympic gold medallist and sixtime European champion. “It also means I can start training again much earlier.” alterg.com

ADVANCED RESISTIVE EXERCISE DEVICE (ARED) Zero-g dumbbell exercises? Won’t work.

The ARED generates its own resistance and thus cancels out the crux of weightlessness. It was first used on the International Space Station in 2009.

MINIATURE EXERCISE DEVICE (MED-2) This machine works on the same principle as the ARED. It looks like a vacuum cleaner, but you use it for squats, arm and leg exercises, or for a total body workout.

The MED-2 was given its space debut in 2016.

OYO FITNESS DOUBLEFLEX PERSONAL GYM Used to maintain muscle mass during endless months onboard the ISS, the OYO Fitness DoubleFlex’s resistance technology works for Earthbound athletes, too. It delivers 11kg of weight from a 1kg device. oyofitness.com

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FLORIAN STURM

Keep on running: air pressure supports your weight while training

PAUL ANDREWS

All of it. Using technology devised for astronaut training, this treadmill allows you to run in almost zero-g… on Earth

Grip Wide Concave Serviceable It's Funndamental

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TEAM TACTICS

STRENGTH IN NUMBERS Battle royale mega-game Apex Legends has one simple rule: play as a team or die.

There are a few life lessons in there…

N

o person is an island. Throughout history, humans have depended on each other to survive, and nowhere is this truer than in smash-hit online squad-based shooter Apex Legends, which notched up a million players within eight hours of its unannounced launch in February, and more than 50 million by the end of its first month.

This popularity is, in large part, due to its deeply satisfying team gameplay, built around a fast-andeasy communication system that pings vital info to your allies. One press sends a basic ‘go’ sign or tags in-game objects, a double tap pings enemy locations, and holding down brings up a menu with quick predictive messages. No need to voice chat with strangers or guess the intentions of a mic-less team member who has sprinted into an enemy’s kill zone.

“The best teams happen when you have a mutual dependency but trust one another,” says leadership expert Jo Owen, who has travelled from high-powered boardrooms to remote jungle tribes, seeking out what makes teams tick. Here, he decodes the Apex Legends (AL) squad skills and applies them to reality…

LEADING EDGE AL randomly chooses a ‘Jumpmaster’, the team member who decides where to drop into the map. After being nominated, you continue to lead on the ground by pinging destinations for your squad to move to – if they agree, that is. “Leadership has to be earned, and you have to keep on earning it,” says Owen. In business, people assume that a grand title makes them a leader. “But they’re wrong. The title has nothing to do with leading; it’s about what you do and how you do it. In the game, if you don’t behave as a leader, within 30 seconds you’ll no longer be leading.”

The game’s world is distinctly post-apocalyptic

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JO OWEN

Team wrangler

An entrepreneur and author, Owen has launched eight not-for profit organisations with a combined annual turnover of more than £100 million, delivers keynote speeches on leadership and teamwork, and has lived with tribal peoples. His latest book, Myths of Leadership, is available now on Amazon.

Apex Legends is out on PC, PS4 and Xbox One

LOYALTY CARD “In business, leaders tolerate incompetent followers much longer than they do disloyal ones,” explains Owen. Loyalty, he says, comes from the realisation you’ll do far better as a loyal member of the team than if you’re alone. This is a key reason for the success of AL: unlike in other team shooters, roaming as a lone wolf is not a viable strategy. “Apex Legends is ultimately tribal warfare, which is pretty brutal. As I’ve seen when studying tribes, people are 100 per cent loyal because they know they won’t survive outside the tribe.”

ROLE PLAYING “You can have mutual dependency and trust but still lack a team,” says Owen. “Everyone has to have some idea of their role. Am I the one taking a risk (a salesperson) or am I a safe pair of hands (an accountant)?” The player characters in Apex Legends fall into the standard video-game archetypes of defensive, offensive and support, but you also need to know how your teammates’ roles interact with yours. “There’s no point in picking a medic role, then running ahead to be first in contact with the enemy,” Owen says. “Likewise, you don’t want your legal advisor betting their houses on roulette.”

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MATT RAY

Power of three: AL characters Bloodhound, Wraith and Gibraltar

CLARITY IS CORE Players of voice-mic’d multiplayer shooters invariably hear something like this: “There’s an enemy by that tree.” The inevitable response in a landscape dotted with identical trees is, “Which one?” “Trust needs good communication,” says Owen. “What AL does is allow communication that isn’t only frequent but clear – a ping [tagging a specific tree] can’t be misunderstood. In business, people will say, ‘Will you fix that report?’

‘Which report? What do you mean ‘fix it’?’ Never assume your team knows what you mean – spell it out.”

EXPERT PROFILE

ELECTRONIC ARTS

TRUST IS KEY AL teams you up with strangers, so how can you build trust? In business, as in life, trust is gained in two ways: by talking about shared experiences to establish commonality, and by achieving credibility through your actions. The ping system satisfies the second of these, keeping your team informed of developments (including real-life dashes to the loo), while neatly sidestepping the first.

“That you don’t have to talk to, text or see your teammates is genius,” says Owen. “You could be blue with two heads, and no one would care as long as you can ping and shoot.

HABIT

*Comes with technology. And we could tell you more about it. But that’s what everyone does. So we’d rather skip the hype and stick to the facts: The all-new Habit is an all-new mountain bike that wants whatever you can throw at it. A mountain bike that feels planted and predictable, light and nimble, solid and unwavering. A mountain bike that feels right at home where a mountain bike should. Slashing, boosting, sending and delivering. On the trail, in the dirt, through the air, and on its edge.

cannondale.com

New mountain bike available.*

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SERIOUSLY FUN With humorous ads featuring Hollywood stars, YT is a company that likes to enjoy itself. But its bikes are no laughing matter

SEATPOST: FOX Transfer Factory

FRAME: Decoy Carbon

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MOTOR: Shimano STEPS E8000 BATTERY: SMP YT Custom, 540Wh

“We want the average rider to have fun on our bikes”

WERNER JESSNER

hen YT (Young Talent) Industries launched in 2007, it had a lot to prove; a late-to-the-game entry in the bike manufacturing market, the German firm was mocked by the bigger players. But today YT is a global force, catering to pros and amateurs alike. Much of this is down to company founder and CEO Markus Flossmann, now 43, who prioritised fun from the off, and who enlisted the likes of Christopher Walken and Vinnie Jones – unlikely advocates for biking – to advertise his products.

The flash of inspiration that spawned YT came to Flossmann during a trip to a dirt-jump park where the local scene was out in force but riding around on rubbish bikes. What if someone could offer them quality, great design and a dash of cool at a low price? He believed there were enough people out there whose talent would awaken if they did things right.

For the last decade, YT has filled that gap, providing bikes at a reasonable price thanks to direct marketing. On the way, it has

YT Industries founder Markus Flossmann

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Equipment

BRAKES: SRAM Code RSC DISPLAY: Shimano STEPS E7000

GEARS: Shimano XT DI2

FORK: FOX 36 Float Factory E

SHOCK: FOX Float X2 Factory

KNOW-HOW

THE YT DECOY

The best electric mountain bike that (a reasonable sum of) money can buy CEO MARKUS FLOSSMANN ON THE DECOY “The three salient features are its geometry, weight and frame.

Whether you’re going uphill, downhill or on the flat, the handling and broad range of options make the Decoy unique.”

“A lot of electric mountain bikes feel more like motorbikes than mountain bikes, due to their weight, the long chainstay and the unbalanced geometry.

Our Decoy is different.”

“The geometry is downhill-oriented, supports a playful riding style, and means the bike can still climb uphill with panache. It’s just a helluva lot of fun to ride.”

“What’s special about the Decoy? The fact that it doesn’t feel like a normal electric mountain bike!”

WHEELSET: E*Thirteen E*Spec Race – front 29in, rear 27.5in

WEIGHT: 21.9kg SIZES AVAILABLE: S/M/L/XL/XXL PRICE: £5,999 plus shipping

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convinced that they achieve the best results when they start out with no pressure, feeling relaxed.

Passion is the best motivation.

What input do your pro riders give on the regular bikes?

We hoover up their feedback. But the trick is filtering and analysing their comments so that ultimately an average rider can have fun on our bikes. It’s like fine-tuning an F1 car so that a new driver could handle one. The bike Aaron Gwin used to win downhill at the UCI MTB World Cup twice was standard except for the suspension set-up. Anyone can buy one.

Still going strong: Flossmann took up riding after injury halted his bodybuilding career

helped pros Andreu Lacondeguy and Aaron Gwin triumph – at Red Bull Rampage and in downhill at the UCI MTB World Cup respectively – all without letting seriousness get in the way. The strategy clearly appeals: 17-yearold downhill prodigy Vali Höli is now signed to the YT family, too.

Flossmann himself is a man who would never let normality get in the way of his vision, having started out as a bodybuilder before deciding to reinvent the mountain bike. He now sits at the helm of one of the most innovative bike firms in Europe. the red bulletin: How does a bodybuilder wind up making mountain bikes? markus flossman: Bodybuilding is a mindset you live 24/7; a sport that demands a lot of willpower.

Preparation for a competition lasts five months and feels like a boot camp. You need a will of iron to come through. That mindset has

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left its mark on me. When I had to give up competitive bodybuilding due to injury, I learnt to love the relaxed world of mountain biking.

Before I founded YT, I’d already been a committed mountain biker for 11 years and was very into technology. I’ve long thought of myself as a hardcore biker.

“I started riding to have fun and relax.

That’s still the main philosophy behind YT” Markus Flossmann

Did you ever race?

No. I didn’t start mountain biking [in the mid-’90s] for the sake of racing at the weekends, or to prove how good I was in competition.

I wanted to create steep turns and ramps with my mates after work and go hard at it, then drink a beer.

In other words, I wanted to have fun and relax. That remains the main philosophy behind our brand.

How do you channel that into riders winning races on YT bikes?

We never pressure our sportsmen and women into taking part in specific competitions or delivering results, and we never will. We’re

For how long does one count as a ‘young talent’?

I’m sure everyone is harbouring hidden talents, no matter how old they are. The important thing is not to be limited by convention.

Take me, for example. I only started motocross three years ago, aged 40, even though all my friends told me I was too old and that it was a sport you had to start young. As long as you enjoy it and feel comfortable, it’s never too late to discover a new talent or passion within yourself.

Where did you get the idea of producing quirky ads starring non-bikers like Walken or Jones?

YT is different. I found bike ads very one-dimensional – it was always just about the product.

No one did anything original.

But mountain biking is about lifestyle. We want to get our values across without putting a specific product in the forefront. If we break a few rules, have fun and encourage people in a way that pushes the bike industry in a new direction, it’s all good. yt-industries.com

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COPYRIGHT © 2019 MNA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

D O N ’ T AS K TH E W O R L D F O R ADVE NTU R E . F I N D I T.

W H AT A R E YO U B U I L D I N G F O R ?

BFGO ODRICHTIRES .COM

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PATH FINDERS

1

3 2

Wherever you lose yourself, trust these trackers to find you again

4 1. Ultra-wide 20MP lens for landscape and macro shots 2. 40MP SuperSpectrum sensor lets in more light 3. Depth sensor for bokeh portraits and AR apps 4. Telephoto lens fitted in a periscope arrangement

HUAWEI P30 PRO

FOUR-EYED MONSTER

SPOT X A tracker and two-way satellite messenger that works beyond cell range – to friends, SOS services and social media. findmespot.com

This quad-camera phone is a photographic beast with more tricks than meets the eye It says something when the fact that this phone’s four cameras are co-engineered by industry pros Leica is their least impressive boast. The 40MP SuperSpectrum sensor can take flash-free shots in near-total darkness, the ultra-wide lens captures dewdrop-close macro, and a ‘periscope’ arrangement of the telephoto lens gives 5x optical zoom (10x hybrid, 50x digital) that can record craters on the Moon. Plus, the depth-sensing lens works with AI for perfect bokeh portraits, and there’s a fifth camera for 32MP selfies on the front. huawei.com

CASIO PRO-TREK The WSD-F30 has full-colour GPS map navigation, a compass, barometer, altimeter, Android apps and fivebar water resistance. wsd.casio.com

BEATS BY DRE POWERBEATS PRO

SPORTS STAR

At last, earpods that let you work hard at the gym while looking good, too Apple’s Airpods are good, but their loose fit makes them poor for sport. Here’s a practical, stylishly superior alternative. Featuring the same H1 chip that smart-switches between Apple devices and responds to ‘Hey Siri’, they fit securely, are waterresistant, work independently of each other, have fuss-free physical buttons and a nine-hour battery, and come in four stylish hues. beatsbydre.com

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CAMMENGA TRITIUM The Compass 3H is resistant to grit, shocks and water; works in temperatures from -45°C to 65°C, and won’t run out of juice. cammenga.com

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THE RED BULLETIN PROMOTION

NATHAN HUGHES

S

urrounded by the lush green slopes of the Pinzgauer Grass Mountains and the picturesque peaks of the Kitzbühel Alps and the Hohen Tauern mountain range, you will find, at an altitude of 1,003m, Saalbach Hinterglemm – the coolest mountain resort in Austria.

In the province of Salzburg, you will find a holiday resort that couldn’t be more diverse.

The most “lässig” of Austria’s mountain villages is no longer exclusively known as a top skiing destination, but is also an Eldorado for mountainbiking and hiking.

Wake up in the early morning hours with the sun shining through the windows, to a wonderful view of the surrounding mountains.

A paradise with more than 400km of biking trails is waiting to be discovered.

Are you looking for pleasant cycling routes, enjoyable e-biking tours and winding trails? Or are you after more

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challenging enduro and downhill tracks? No matter which exact mountain-biking discipline gets your heart beating faster, Saalbach Hinterglemm provides the perfect blend of fun and adventure for everyone.

Endless mountains with varying terrains, six cableways with bike transport, and all of that amid a mesmerising mountain scenery, make the region a truly unique experience for cycling fans.

Your mountain-bike holiday in Saalbach Hinterglemm will be an unforgettable journey.

AUSTRIA’S COOLEST BIKE RESORT

SAALBACH HINTERGLEMM

Welcome to the “Home of Lässig”*

GlemmRide Bike Festival 03-07.07.2019 You are invited to the GlemmRide Bike Festival, an international bike and party gathering in SalzburgerLand. From July 3, the mountain-bike hotspot of the Alps will be transformed. With the FMB Gold Slopestyle, Specialized Rookies Cup, 50 exhibitors, and parties à la Masters of Dirt, you’ll be served with good times during your Saalbach holiday.

saalbach.com

*Cool and laid-back – or “lässig” as the Austrians say

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Equipment

DOUCHEBAGS SAVAGE BIKE BAG

ROLL WITH IT

WHERE’S YOUR HEAD AT?

Protect your bike wherever you take it – in this lightweight luggage with a built-in roll cage

A safer place if it’s inside a multidirectional impact protection helmet

D3 CARBON MIPS Is it the bike that wins the race, or the rider?

Turns out it might be the helmet – the Troy Lee D3 has won more DH World Cups, Red Bull Rampages and Olympic medals than any other. troyleedesigns.com

When British saloon-car racer John Aley devised the roll bar in 1964 to save drivers’ lives in serious crashes, he probably never imagined it being used to protect mountain bikes in long-haul transit – but that’s exactly what inspired the patented Db Roll Cage in this bike bag. Capable of accommodating any size of mountain bike, the aluminium frame combined with an otherwise soft-bag structure makes it surprisingly light, and, when not in use, it folds up to 35 per cent of its full size. douchebags.com

FULL-9 FUSION MIPS Bell Helmets may have a slightly amusing name, but the brand takes its work seriously. This fullface fibreglass cranium case is the MTB variant of its award-winning Moto-9 motocross shell. bellhelmets.com

TRUST PERFORMANCE MESSAGE FORK

FORK TO THE FUTURE Suspension so smooth you can ride the mountain drinking a cup of tea Dave Weagle is kind of a big deal in mountainbiking circles. He’s the mad professor behind the most successful rear suspension in downhill competition history – the DW-link – and now he has done the same for front forks, replacing telescopic suspension with a trailing multi-link (that’s the arm you can see behind the fork) that delivers insane stability and cushioning. The only shock is the price: £2,500. trustperformance.com

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100% AIRCRAFT CARBON MIPS A fancy name that describes exactly what it is: a tough shell built from an aerospace mix of carbon and Kevlar, with 25 airflow channels to keep your noggin cool. ride100percent.com

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OFFICIAL SPONSOR & RACEWEAR SUPPLIER

In 2011 the Madison Saracen Factory Race Team was created to develop British mountain biking talent to perform at the highest level on a British bike – now into its eighth season, few would have anticipated national champions, multiple world cup wins and two world championship victories!

We are proud to continue supporting the team and we benefit from the hard work, technical feedback, development and in-race testing which in turn we pass onto you. Here’s to another great season!

WWW.MADISON.CC

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May / June

1

to 2 June

UCI DOWNHILL WORLD CUP

The Scottish Highlands have seen many battles throughout history, and that’s set to continue this June as the top downhill mountain-bikers meet on Fort William’s 2.8km track for the UK leg of the World Cup. Can Tahnee Seagrave successfully defend her victory here last year?

Or will Rachel Atherton, who came third after a snapped chain, claim the throne on her newly built and tested Atherton bike?

Fort William, Scotland; fortwilliamworldcup.co.uk

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This art exploration into our obsession with thinking machines includes a sound installation by Hyperdub label boss Kode9, based on the legend of the golem; MIT’s robotic fish, which can swim in the ocean, and Massive Attack encoding their 1998 album Mezzanine into synthetic DNA strands. Barbican, London; barbican.org.uk

23

May to 26 Aug Manga The comic-book art form known as Manga is loved by adults and children alike in Japan, and has influenced Western culture through video games, cosplay, and movies such as Alita: Battle Angel.

Witness the largest exhibit of Manga outside Japan, with examples from its origins in 12th-century scrolls through to modern anime films.

British Museum, London; britishmuseum.org

5

to 19 June David Blaine: Real or Magic If that’s a question, the answer would seem to be ‘illusion’.

The US magician forever blurs the line between trickery and endurance feat; in 2010, Blaine held his breath for a recordbreaking 17m 4.5s. Judge his authenticity for yourself as he embarks on this nationwide tour. Various locations, UK; livenation.co.uk

to 8 June Field Day

NATHAN HUGHES/ RED BULL CONTENT POOL, STEVE TURVEY

16

May to 26 Aug AI: More Than Human

This three-day party is back for a 13th year, shifting roots from its 2018 site – Brockwell Park in south London – to an epic location in the north of the city: four gigantic interlinked warehouses and 10 acres of outdoor space near Tottenham Marshes. Does that still qualify as a ‘field’ day?

Few will complain with a bill that includes Diplo, Octavian, The Black Madonna, Jorja Smith and Skepta (in his only London summer festival show), with after-parties at Printworks London.

The Drumsheds, Meridian Water, London; fielddayfestivals.com

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Whether on a Japanese dancefloor, off the cliffs of the Azores or on the trails of Austria, it’s all about freedom of expression on Red Bull TV this month…

Hear handpicked music and interviews with influential artists.

This month’s pick is…

1

Hip-hop dancer Leo gets busy at the 2018 qualifiers

June LIVE

RED BULL DANCE YOUR STYLE: JAPAN FINAL

Red Bull Dance Your Style inspires and cultivates creativity by providing a premier location for expression in dance and introducing new scenes and communities. Following the 2019 qualifiers in Osaka, Fukuoka and Tokyo this winter, it’s time for Japan’s national final, staged at the capital’s Warp Shinjuku venue. Don’t miss it.

22

June LIVE

RED BULL CLIFF DIVING, PORTUGAL

WATCH RED BULL TV ANYWHERE

Red Bull TV is a global digital entertainment destination featuring programming that is beyond the ordinary and is available anytime, anywhere.

Go online at redbull.tv, download the app, or connect via your Smart TV. To find out more, visit redbull.tv

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You’ve read our travel feature on Destination Red Bull’s exclusive Azores cliff-diving trip with Orlando Duque, now see all the leaps from the main event.

9

June LIVE

UCI MTB WORLD CUP, LEOGANG

This year, the mountain-biking World Cup is bigger and better, with eight locations for downhillers. We bring you the action from this Austrian stop.

THIS SIDE OF NOWHERE

17 June ON AIR

On her monthly Red Bull Radio show (every third Monday, 7pm BST), Veronica Vasicka explores the artists who have shaped the electronic underground. The NYC electro queen and Minimal Wave label founder looks at the maverick spirit of DIY non-conformists, as well as the legacies of particular drum machines and the roots of synthesiser music, from Japanese synth tracks and Australian postpunk to the history of the Fairlight.

LISTEN AT REDBULLRADIO.COM

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JASON HALAYKO/RED BULL CONTENT POOL, DEAN TREML/RED BULL CONTENT POOL, BARTEK WOLINSKI/RED BULL CONTENT POOL

ALL THE RIGHT MOVES

June

WWW.INNSBRUCK.INFO #MYINNSBRUCK

BIKING unlimited

Foto: Innsbruck Tourismus / Voitl

12.6.–16.6.19 HOME OF CRANKWORX INNSBRUCK

CRANKWORX INNSBRUCK June is when the magic happens at Bikepark Innsbruck! From 12 to 16 June, bike heroes pull their best tricks at Crankworx Innsbruck world tour‘s only stop in Europe. Just watching the action will be enough to give you an adrenaline rush! www.innsbruck.info/biking

GLOBAL TEAM

THE RED BULLETIN WORLDWIDE

The Red Bulletin is published in seven countries. This is the cover of June’s French edition, featuring hip-hop dancer Diablo For more stories beyond the ordinary, go to: redbulletin.com

The Red Bulletin UK. ABC certified distribution 154,346 (Jan-Dec 2018)

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Editor-in-Chief Alexander Macheck Deputy Editors-in-Chief Waltraud Hable, Andreas Rottenschlager Creative Director Erik Turek Art Directors Kasimir Reimann (deputy CD), Miles English, Tara Thompson Head of Photo Fritz Schuster Deputy Head of Photo Marion Batty Photo Director Rudi Übelhör Production Editor Marion Lukas-Wildmann Managing Editor Ulrich Corazza Editors Jakob Hübner, Werner Jessner, Alex Lisetz, Nina Treml, Stefan Wagner Design Marion Bernert-Thomann, Martina de CarvalhoHutter, Kevin Goll, Carita Najewitz Photo Editors Susie Forman, Ellen Haas, Eva Kerschbaum, Tahira Mirza Global Head of Media Sales Gerhard Riedler Head of Media Sales International Peter Strutz Head of Commercial & Publishing Management Stefan Ebner Publishing Management Sara Varming (manager), Bernhard Schmied, Melissa Stutz, Mia Wienerberger Communication Christoph Rietner Head of Creative Markus Kietreiber Creative Solutions Eva Locker (manager), Verena Schörkhuber, Edith Zöchling-Marchart Commercial Design Peter Knehtl (manager), Sasha Bunch, Simone Fischer, Martina Maier Advertising Placement Manuela Brandstätter, Monika Spitaler Head of Production Veronika Felder Production Walter O. Sádaba, Friedrich Indich, Sabine Wessig Repro Clemens Ragotzky (manager), Claudia Heis, Nenad Isailovi c,̀ Maximilian Kment, Josef Mühlbacher Office Management Yvonne Tremmel (manager), Alexander Peham IT Systems Engineer Michael Thaler Subscriptions and Distribution Peter Schiffer (manager), Klaus Pleninger (distribution), Nicole Glaser (distribution), Yoldaş Yarar (subscriptions) Global Editorial Office Heinrich-Collin-Straße 1, A-1140 Vienna Tel: +43 1 90221 28800, Fax: +43 1 90221 28809 redbulletin.com Red Bull Media House GmbH Oberst-Lepperdinger-Straße 11-15, A-5071 Wals bei Salzburg, FN 297115i, Landesgericht Salzburg, ATU63611700 General Manager and Publisher Andreas Kornhofer Directors Dietrich Mateschitz, Gerrit Meier, Dietmar Otti, Christopher Reindl

THE RED BULLETIN United Kingdom, ISSN 2308-5894 Acting Editor Tom Guise Associate Editor Lou Boyd Music Editor Florian Obkircher Chief Sub-Editor Davydd Chong Sub-Editor Nick Mee Publishing Manager Ollie Stretton Editor (on leave) Ruth Morgan Advertising Sales Mark Bishop, mark.bishop@redbull.com Printed by Prinovis GmbH & Co KG, Printing Company Nuremberg, 90471 Nuremberg, Germany UK Office Seven Dials Warehouse, 42-56 Earlham Street, London WC2H 9LA Tel: +44 (0) 20 3117 2000 Subscribe getredbulletin.com Enquiries or orders to: subs@uk. redbulletin.com. Back issues available to purchase at: getredbulletin.com.

Basic subscription rate is £20.00 per year. International rates are available.

The Red Bulletin is published 10 times a year. Please allow a maximum of four weeks for delivery of the first issue Customer Service +44 (0)1227 277248, subs@uk.redbulletin.com

THE RED BULLETIN Austria, ISSN 1995-8838 Editor Christian Eberle-Abasolo Proofreaders Hans Fleißner (Ltg.), Petra Hannert, Monika Hasleder, Billy Kirnbauer-Walek Publishing Management Bernhard Schmied Media Sales Management Alfred Vrej Minassian Media Sales anzeigen@at.redbulletin.com

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

THE RED BULLETIN Germany, ISSN 2079-4258 Editor David Mayer Proofreaders Hans Fleißner (Ltg.), Petra Hannert, Monika Hasleder, Billy Kirnbauer-Walek Country Project Management Natascha Djodat Advertising Sales Matej Anusic, matej.anusic@redbull.com Thomas Keihl, thomas.keihl@redbull.com

THE RED BULLETIN Mexico, ISSN 2308-5924 Editor Luis Alejandro Serrano Associate Editor Inmaculada Sánchez Trejo Managing Editor Marco Payán Proofreader Alma Rosa Guerrero Country Project Management Giovana Mollona Advertising Sales Humberto Amaya Bernard, humberto.amayabernard@redbull.com

THE RED BULLETIN Switzerland, ISSN 2308-5886 Editor Arek Piatek Proofreaders Hans Fleißner (Ltg.), Petra Hannert, Monika Hasleder, Billy Kirnbauer-Walek Country Project Management Meike Koch Advertising Sales Marcel Bannwart (D-CH), marcel.bannwart@redbull.com Christian Bürgi (W-CH), christian.buergi@redbull.com

THE RED BULLETIN USA, ISSN 2308-586X Editor-in-Chief Peter Flax Deputy Editor Nora O’Donnell Copy Chief David Caplan Director of Publishing Cheryl Angelheart Advertising Sales Todd Peters, todd.peters@redbull.com Dave Szych, dave.szych@redbull.com Tanya Foster, tanya.foster@redbull.com

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Dimitri Tordo getting sideways

BORIS BEYER

MARKUS GEBHARD

H

ow do you get your kicks? Ripping downhill tracks at the bike park?

Clocking up hang time on dirt-jump lines? Nailing that perfect line on your local enduro trails? No matter what drives you and no matter where you ride, the next descent, the next big kicker, the next nail-biting landing – that’s all that counts.

Shred City means something different for every rider out there, and it isn’t just the place where you send it. It’s much more: it’s a worldwide community and everyone’s invited.

For Dimitri Tordo of the Canyon Factory Enduro Team, Shred City means competing at the most demanding races on the calendar and pitting himself against the world’s best riders. The season could hardly have begun better for Tordo, with the Frenchman bringing home the win at NZ Enduro in New Zealand in

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spite of torrential rain and treacherous conditions. But, in racing, world-class skills are just one part of the puzzle: you can only beat the best if your bike can match your ambition. And when it comes to getting the job done, Tordo and the Canyon Factory Enduro Team turn to the Strive CFR. The Strive is an enduro-racing weapon ready for the toughest stages around – and for your backyard trails. Thanks to the game-changing Shapeshifter tech, it’s possible to alter the geometry and suspension setup while riding, simply by flicking a handlebar-mounted switch. Developed and tested in Koblenz, Germany, this bike is built for the biggest challenges, from Fort William to wherever you call your local Shred City. canyon.com/strive

BECOME A PART OF IT

SHRED CITY Canyon is uniting riders all over the world

Canyon Strive CFR 9.0 Team

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Action highlight

While visiting the famous Muscle Beach in Santa Monica, California, Alexander Megos spotted the ideal photo opportunity. Being one of the world’s top rock climbers, the 25-year-old German couldn’t resist putting his own highly developed delts, lats and obliques to the test with a human flag. For more Megos, go to redbull.com

The next issue of THE RED BULLETIN is out on June 11 122

THE RED BULLETIN

KEN ETZEL/RED BULL CONTENT POOL

DAVID MAYER

Flying the flag

FAST, LIGHT, STRONG: YOU CAN HAVE IT ALL CUBE REACTION TM Pro

The Reaction TM Pro is the heart of the Reaction range. To our designers, that means one thing: they can really go to town.

The combination of RockShox‘s new 130mm Sektor fork and 2.6in Kenda Hellkat and Nevegal 2 tyres serves up a serious dose of technical trail-taming ability, backed up by the Kind Shock LEV dropper post - so you can tackle steeps with ease - and a Newmen cockpit with 760mm handlebar for superb control. With powerful hydraulic disc brakes to keep your speed in check and Sram‘s 1x11 NX transmission with a Race Face Ride crankset, you‘ve everything you need to take the fight to the mountain... and come out on top.

FRAME

Aluminium Lite, Trail Motion Geometry

FORK

RockShox Sektor, 130mm

GROUPSET

Sram NX , 11-Speed

BRAKES

Magura MT Thirty, (180/180)

WEIGHT

13,6 KG

PRICE

£ 1.299,-

FOR MORE INFORMATION ON CUBE BIKES, AND TO LOCATE YOUR NEAREST CUBE DEALER, PLEASE VISIT WWW.CUBE.EU CUBEBIKESUK

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