The Red Bulletin_0710_ZA

www.redbulletin.com

an almost independent monthly magazine / July 2010

Red Bull Street Style World Finals

Freestyle football’s wizards come to Cape Town

The Wimbledon weapon

The physics behind Andy Roddick’s massive serve

Lynch the photographer

The man who documented the rise of SA’s punk rock scene

Go ahead… make my movie

Clint Eastwood reveals his unique approach to film making

EUR ¤3.50 GBP £3 ZAR 34.95 NZD $6.95

Frequent Flyer SA superstar Jordy Smith on life as a pro surfer

Experience

Print 2.0

PumPs Air in Your TYres, And doesn’T Lose iTs fGriP. its

saddin your le ba g

If there’s one thing that’s vital when you’re pushing the limits, it’s to keep a little something in reserve. And at only 60ml, a Red Bull Energy Shot really fits the bill. It’s small enough to fit in your saddlebag or cycling top. So it comes in very handy when your muscles are aching and your

spirit weakening. In one gulp it delivers enough energy to help you reach your peak and head straight for the next one. And with no carbonation and no need to chill, a Red Bull Energy Shot is always pumped up and ready for action. It’s concentrated energy from Red Bull.

The onLY shoT ThAT Gives You winGs.

BullHorn

cover photography: MARTIN SCHOELLER/AUGUST. this page: Getty Images

a man for all seasons Guns. Horses. Cowboys. More guns. Cops, robbers, hard men with soft hearts; old men with tough spirits. Orang-utans, fighter pilots, rugby players, soldiers, lovers, rivals. And guns.

For all these things and so much more (jazz musicianship, virtuoso directorial skills) Clint Eastwood has become a revered figure over the past eight decades, making him Hollywood royalty, no less. Yet as he tells his biographer and friend Richard Schickel exclusively in this month’s Red Bulletin, fame was never the spur. Neither would a “paycheck and a beer” have satisfied him for any length of time. More interesting by far for a man of so much restless talent, was “exploring outside the box,” reaching for the new – but always with the recognisable hallmarks of restraint, intensity and intelligence.

Now 80 and with a body of work behind him that most would be happy to sit back and reflect on, Eastwood is powering ahead with no sign of paying age any respect. His latest project, Hoover, may even be his most compelling yet, taking as it does the life story of former FBI director J Edgar Hoover as its subject. If it proves to be the high point of a hugely distinguished career, Eastwood may, he suggests, finally be satisfied: “[Directing] involves all the elements of film making, rather than just being a component, which an actor is.”

Even one so eminent as Mr Eastwood, cannot alas be more than a component of The Red Bulletin. In this issue, the ever-diverse range of topics over which we cast an (always twinkling) eye includes the power of Andy Roddick’s serve; how Formula One steering wheels have evolved from leather ’n’ steel tillers to multi-buttoned carbon-fibre control centres; a rider’s-eye-view of Megavalanche, the world’s toughest mountain-bike race, and the premiere of the most thrilling B-Boy movie yet committed to celluloid: Turn it Loose.

We hope you’ll enjoy that little lot. We hope, in fact, that a couple of hours with The Red Bulletin might even make your day…

Your editorial team

Timed to coincide with the Red Bull Air Race in New York, we launched a one-off edition of the magazine in The New York Times, featuring a cover by New Yorker illustrator Bruce McCall.

Download it at www.redbull.com

On the heels of our first-ever US edition (top), made possible through our partnership with The New York Times on the weekend of the Red Bull Air Race in mid-June, we bring you American screen legend Clint Eastwood. And who better than veteran film critic, Richard Schickel (above left), to give us an intimate portrait of his friend at 80

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Your Red Bulletin can do more than you think Movies, sounds, animation Print 2.0 – the extra dimension in your Red Bulletin.

In this issue you’ll find it with the following stories:

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68 How to get started: turn to page 7 or enter za.redbulletin.com/print2.0 in your web browser

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The new multi-media experience.

Wherever you see the bull’s eye!

PROMOTION Robert James Louw, regarded by many as one of the best Springboks ever to represent South Africa, was know for his exceptional speed around the fringes of the scrum, anticipation in general play, handling skills like a backliner and mobility that often ensured he was the first to arrive at the break-down point. The lanky Western Province flank forward played in 19 Tests for South Africa, but the first Test against the 1980 British and Irish Lions at Newlands on 31 May 1980 remains embedded in his memory...

“We almost had no chance to beat them...complete underdogs.

Remember that before the series we basically played Currie Cup rugby, we hardly had any exposure against international teams, let alone the best players from the four home nations.

Morné (du Plessis, Bok captain in the 1980 series) saw Wales play England about two weeks before the Newlands Test. All he said was these okes were in a different league. We knew that.

We also knew that the 1974 Lions gave the Boks a huge klap. Maybe this was extra motivation. We ran the ball at them that day. The backline did the damage and in the end we beat them convincingly, scoring five tries to one [Louw scored the first of his five Test tries in this game] to win 26–22. Then we went on to win the second and third Tests [in Bloemfontein and Port Elizabeth] and clinch the series [3–1].

It was a magical moment for rugby in South Africa, the start of great era.

That memory will last me a lifetime.”

CLASSIC MOMENTS Brought to you by ARAMIS Aramis Classic, a recognised fragrance around the world, has an enduring appeal that goes beyond changing trends and shifts in fashion, appealing to the individual who has the confidence to be himself. This distinctive fragrance projects masculinity and authority.

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Contents

welcome to the world of Red Bull Inside your top-scoring Red Bulletin this month…

Bullevard

10 pictures of the month 18 now and next Where to be and what to see in the worlds of culture and sport 21 me and my body Brazilian beach volleyballer Maria Clara Salgado Rufino may be a slave to her training schedule, but popcorn is still a priority 24 kit bag Over the years F1 steering wheels have turned from cumbersome wooden beasts into sleek, multifunctional mini-computers

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27 where’s your head at?

Legendary designer Calvin Klein’s talents don’t stop with fashion. He’s also foiled a kidnapping and rewritten the rules of basketball 28 winning formula Whether it’s an ace or it’s out, it’s the shot that can decide a tennis match. We look at the science of serving 30 lucky numbers Clocking speeds of over 320kph, not even the best riders can count on a finish in the wild world of MotoGP

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Heroes

34 clint eastwood At 80, the actor and director is still enjoying new successes, born out of his constant need to tread new ground.

But he’s nothing if not modest

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40 luci romberg For the world’s best female free-runner, every city is her playground, a fact that hasn’t gone unnoticed by the male elite 42 sainz & Sainz One is a high-achieving god in his field, the other a hopeful unknown, but this father and son share one common passion: motorsport 46 liam lynch The seminal photographer’s work has defined a generation, but that’s not where the story ends 06

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contents

Action Photography: rutgerpauw.com/red bull photofiles, erik aeder/red bull photofiles, ryan miller, Sébastien Boué/red bull photofiles, Flo Hagena/red bull photofiles, dean treml/red bull photofiles, marcel lämmerhirt/red bull photofiles

52 megavalanche This might just be the toughest race in the world on a mountain bike

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60 jordy smith As the ASP world surfing tour reaches his home waters, the young gun is gearing up to take on nine-times world champion Kelly Slater 68 red bull street style Goals are nothing. The real skill is what you do on the ball. That’s the philosophy at the freestyle world finals in South Africa 74 jaCques piccard He was the last real deep-sea adventurer, unafraid of facing the unknown

More Body & Mind

80 huber brothers The mountain-climbing megastars come to Hangar-7 82 get the gear Board sports legend Robby Naish reveals what helps keep him at the top of his game 84 festival Fever Sonisphere fills Knebworth with metal 86 listings Worldwide, day and night, our guide to the ultimate month-long weekend 90 nightlife A woman making art not war, a club in a sauna, Caribbean sound battles and a breakdancing film-first 96 short story A man discovers that fear and violence go hand in hand 98 kevin mccallum Cold beer and sport, a perfect combination

the red Bulletin Print 2.0 Movies, sounds and animation wherever you see this sign in your Red Bulletin 1

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za.redbulletin.com/ print2.0 In your browser window you’ll see the magazine cover. Just click at ‘Start Bull’s Eye’

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Switch on your webcam If a webcam activation window opens, just click ‘activate’

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Hold your Red Bulletin up to the webcam You’ll see all the multimedia content in this month’s mag – movies, sound and animation

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illustration: dietmar kainrath

K a i n r at h

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Print 2.0

za.redbulletin.com/print2.0 Leap into the unkonwn with the Red Bull X-Fighters World Tour

Giza , Egypt

Pyramid Air Even by the standards of what you usually see in the shadow of the last remaining of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, this was spectacular stuff. And for the men of the Red Bull X-Fighters World Tour, the second round of the freestyle motocross world series was a significant event. Jim McNeil, of the USA (pictured) pulled off some exciting moves, but made as little impact on the leaderboard as did the wellfancied Eigo Sato of Japan and Australia’s Robbie Maddison.

It was left to McNeil’s countryman Adam Jones, a sophomoreseason rider who had never finished higher than seventh, to win his first race. Great Pyramid, great job.

Next up: Madrid, Spain, July 22-23 www.redbullxfighters.com

Bullevard

photography: Jรถrg Mitter/Red Bull Photofiles

Over land, sea and big air: action and endeavour from around the world

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photography: Kolesky/SanDisk/Red Bull Photofiles

Cape Town , South Africa

Free Thinking It has recently become apparent that South Africa is a decent place to play football, but that part of the world isn’t known for skateboarding. Mack McKelton, a skater from Berlin who spent many of his formative years in South Africa as well as Cameroon and Botswana, has found commonalities in the spirit of his chosen sport and that of his ‘other’ homeland, as personified by the man whose portrait overlooks his tricking here. “I hope I don’t sound too cheesy,” says the 24-year-old, “but the more you focus your energy with positive enthusiasm, the further you can go.” McKelton is also known as Mr Unbreakable; that can’t have been too far behind Madiba on the list of Nelson’s nicknames.

More Mack McKelton skate action at: en.redbulletin.com/mckelton

Print 2.0

za.redbulletin.com/print2.0 See spectacular diving in Mexico

Bridges, cliffs, houses, ships’ masts and now a cenote: if it’s tall enough and has enough water beneath it, the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series will visit it and jump off it.

The word ‘cenote’ comes from a Mayan term for ‘well’, and is now used to describe the spectacular sinkholes, found mainly on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, formed when caves collapsed.

The Mayans thought they were entrances to the underworld and made sacrifices to their gods there. Hassan Mouti of France (pictured) may have said a quiet prayer to himself on leaping from the 27.2m platform, but divine intervention or not, he couldn’t prevent the UK’s Gary Hunt from winning, to make it a double of the season’s first two contests.

Next up: July 24, Kragerø, Norway www.redbullcliffdiving.com

Been Jumping

Chichén Itzá , Mexico

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photography: Ray Demski/Red Bull Photofiles

Print 2.0

za.redbulletin.com/print2.0 See Taddy take on Kimi Räikkönen in a bike v car race then conquer Erzberg

Ei senerz , Austria

Shocks And Ore For 16 years now, those who really want to see if their enduro skills are up to snuff have headed to Austria for the Red Bull Hare Scramble. Of the 500 starters in the 2010 race, a mere 15 passed through all the checkpoints to reach the top of the Erzberg, the ore mountain formed by the open-air iron ore mine that once flourished there, and that’s not unusual. Taddy Bła´zusiak of Poland, pictured, secured a fourth consecutive victory ahead of Andreas Lettenbichler of Germany in second and England’s 12-time trials world champion Dougie Lampkin in third. Bła´zusiak posted a time of 1:45.43 over the 32km course. An average speed of 22kph isn’t bad when only way is up.

Find out more about Hare Scramble winner Taddy Bła´zusiak at: en.redbulletin.com/harescramble2010

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photography: Philip Platzer/Red Bull Photofiles

The Oscars Of Action Sensational cinematic scenes, and those who appear in them, celebrated at the Taurus World Stunt Awards The men and women who catch on fire, crash cars and fight both leading men and the tide of CGI were rewarded at the Taurus World Stunt Awards in Hollywood.

More than 800 stunt industry professionals gathered on the Paramount Pictures lot at the end of May, with spectacular moments from Fast & Furious and Sherlock Holmes among the winners on the night.

It was a testament to one of the key sectors of film and TV production, one which has had to reinvent itself with the advent of digital effects.

However, now that audiences can spot CGI, a return to realism, and the performers who can provide it, has led to a renaissance for the hidden heroes of action entertainment.

Glenn Foster, who won in the Best Fire category, deserves a special mention, and a cold bath, for his leap through a window onto a horse-drawn

carriage in Sherlock Holmes.

The amazing gas tanker hijack sequence from Fast & Furious was awarded Best Work With A Vehicle, while that film also won Best Stunt Co-ordinator And/Or 2nd Unit Director.

Props must also go to Rob Hayter, who, according to his winning citation in the Hardest Hit category, in the making of I Love You, Beth Cooper, was “unable to avoid a car sliding in the street and takes a direct hit. No wires were used”.

(Watch the film’s trailer online and wince in the knowledge that the hit is real.)

The Taurus Lifetime Achievement award went to Jophery Brown, veteran of more than 400 TV shows and films, who you won’t recall jumping a bus across a gap in the freeway in Speed, because the magic of the movies meant you thought it was Sandra Bullock behind the wheel.

More action and awards history at www.taurusworldstuntawards.com

Words: Paul Wilson. Photography: Red Bull USa (6), Jophery Brown (1), Summit Entertainment N.V. (1), Universal Pictures (1), Warner Brothers Entertainment inc. (1), The Halcyon Company (1)

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A fitting Hollywood setting for the Taurus World Stunt Awards: Paramount Pictures

Fast & Furious’s Tad Griffith, Heidi Moneymaker and Kenny Alexander

PICTURES OF THE MONTH

every shot on target Email your pictures with a Red Bull flavour to letters@redbulletin.com. Every one we print wins a pair of adidas Sennheiser PMX 680 Sports headphones. With a Kevlar-reinforced, two-part cable (it can be short when running with a music player on your arm, or extended with a built-in volume control), reflective yellow headband stripe and fully sweat- and water-resistant parts, they’re perfect for sports. Visit: www.sennheiser.co.uk Email: letters@redbulletin.com

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Salzburg The last heats of the Oldtimer GP. “Oi Gramps, where’s your walking stick?” etc, etc Albert Moser

Jophery Brown won Lifetime Achievement for the likes of Three The Hard Way

Jackson Spidell (and four co-scrappers) won Best Fight for Ninja Assasin

Hiroo Minami with his award won for Best High Work in superhero drama Push

Best Speciality Stunt went to Rick Miller, for a 20m bike jump in Terminator Salvation

Bratislava The cancellation of the kayak championships kept pavement space at a premium Mat Rendet

Lima Aussie surfer Sally Fitzgibbons proves you don’t need to go in the water to improve your board skills Agostin Munoz

Honours of mettle: winners BEST FIGHT Ninja Assassin Kim Do, Jonathan Eusebio, Jackson Spidell, Jon Valera and Damien Walters BEST FIRE Sherlock Holmes Glenn Foster BEST HIGH WORK Push Hiroo Minami and Jeffery Ong BEST WORK WITH A VEHICLE Fast & Furious Kenny Alexander, Troy Brown, Tad Griffith, Gene Hartline and Heidi Moneymaker BEST SPECIALTY STUNT Terminator Salvation Rick Miller HARDEST HIT I Love You, Beth Cooper Rob Hayter BEST OVERALL STUNT

BY A WOMAN Obsessed Angela Meryl and Heather Vendrell Arthur BEST STUNT CO-ORDINATOR AND/OR 2ND UNIT DIRECTOR Fast & Furious Mike Gunther, Freddie Hice, Terry Leonard and Mic Rodgers BEST ACTION IN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM Interceptor (Russia) Vladimir Orlov

Los Angles Dibia$e brings the crowd to the boil in winning the live mix contest Red Bull Big Tune Carlo Cruz 19

Ideal Homes

The Wild West Mattias Ekström of Sweden, two-time German German Touring Car (DTM) Champion, on an eventful NASCAR debut “When I got the chance to swap my DTM Audi for a NASCAR Toyota [in the Toyota/Save Mart 350 at Sears Point, California], I didn’t hesitate for a second.

You should always try out new things in life, which is why I also raced in the World Rally Championship.

“In fact, the rallying helped me work with the NASCAR spotter, the guy who steers you through the traffic over your radio. What was very new was the way the NASCAR car drives, and its almost non-existent grip. And if I hadn’t taken my foot off the gas too early in the finishing straight in qualifying, I’d have been 25th on the grid, not 38th.

“The race still went OK in spite of that. I made my way through traffic and

Wanaka Contenders take a well-earned rest after the action at the Burton Open Kerry Evans 20

was soon up in the top 10 – I even led the race for a couple of laps. I didn’t avoid the action, either: on the track you’re all equal, regardless of whether you’re superstar Jeff Gordon or Mattias the rookie from Sweden. I think I did pretty well, and the accident shortly before the end of the race [he was spun out after contact with another car] wasn’t my fault.

“Coming in 21st might not sound that great, but there’s a huge difference between NASCAR and European touring car races. In America you’ve got another 42 cars to contend with, all pretty much equally quick. And it’d probably be even more exciting on an oval than on a road course like Sears Point.”

An open-door policy has made the Red Bull Studio in Cape Town something of a hive for the city’s music community.

One of that hive’s busiest bees is Damien ‘Dplanet’ Stephens, head of local hip-hop label Pioneer Unit Records. Stephens and his flagship artist, Ben Sharpa, spent a week there, along with hip-hop DJ Raiko and Pioneer Unit’s VJ, Spo0ky, refining the dubstepping hip-hop that was the backbone of Sharpa’s shows during his recent European tour.

Stephens then worked at the Studios with Rattex (below), who is named after a brand of rat poison and a pioneer of spaza, a local hiphop movement. His heavy, swaggering sound is potent and raw, and offers a unique account of living in the Cape Flats township Khayelitsha. redbullstudioscapetown.wordpress.com

Further rev-elations: www.redbullracingusa.com

Perth Red Bull Air Race pilot Hannes Arch in a rare moment on the ground Greg McMurray

Porto A casual wave from Sébastien Loeb before the WRC Rally of Portugal gets underway Nuno Monteiro

Words: Richard Rumney, Werner Jessner. Photography: Red Bull Studio Cape Town, Getty Images

Cape Town’s hip-hop talent has a new clubhouse

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me and my body

Maria Salgado

She’s one half of beach volleyball’s Brazilian super-sisters, and where she finds the time to eat popcorn, pull faces and train 15 times a week is anyone’s guess

Don’t call her babe

Shouldering on

“In beach volleyball it’s tough to make the decision to take time out because your partner needs you. About three years ago I got a bad shoulder injury, and before I admitted defeat and stopped playing, I took painkillers for an entire year as I was in so much pain. In the end I found it hard to brush my teeth, to drive, to do anything it was so bad. The tendons and muscle behind my right shoulder blade were really stretched and sore. I rested it completely for three months and still have to work to keep it feeling right. Each year we get one month off and I need my weights with me if I go somewhere without a gym, to stretch it out every day. I was young then. Now at 27 I understand my body better. I do a lot of exercises to prevent injuries, by building my strength and stretching.”

“Beach volleyball players can’t help but be in good shape as we practise so much. We’re all pretty skinny, but strong. I understand why beach volleyball has a reputation as a sexy sport with some people, because we are women in bikinis, but the reality is different. We’re diving in the sand and sweating, making faces and shouting. We are all very focused on our game, we’re athletes, we’re not trying to be sexy. I like people to come and enjoy the sport.”

Pain in the knee

“As an athlete, I think if you didn’t ever experience pain it would be very strange, but injury is something else: you need to stop and treat it. Right now I’m treating a knee problem.

We’ve recently started doing power training in the gym, with higher weights and fewer repetitions, and we always jump a lot during our ball training, so I’ve got mild knee tendonitis. I’m just avoiding certain exercises to rest it. But before this I hadn’t had to see my physio all year.”

photography: Norman Konrad

Down sizing

“This year is the first time I’ve thought seriously about what I eat – I’ve never had problems with my weight – but I wanted to get stronger. Now, a nutritionist visits me once a month to check my body fat percentage and help me improve, and I feel better. It helps me to recover easier and quicker. Thing is, I really love French fries and fatty food. For two months I went without red meat, fried food, all that, which was really difficult. Trying not to eat popcorn was the worst – I love it. Now I just eat it, and once a week I’ll have fried food too. I eat salad, rice with beans and meat, lots of vegetables, grilled fish, pasta.

My perfect night is going to a good restaurant back home for dinner with friends. You have to have a caipirinha or two – it is Brazil!”

Family business “My younger sister Carolina is my team-mate, and we do all our training together. We’re very different and argue sometimes, but as players I think we fit well. She’s stronger than me so she plays forward; I’m quickest, so I play in defence. We practise with the ball 8-10 times a week: Monday to Saturday mornings for two hours, then some afternoons for an hour or so. We also go to the gym four times a week for two hours, for weight work and stretching, and I also go running. Right now we’re doing circuit training twice a week, too: 40 seconds running, 40 seconds jumping, 40 seconds hitting, and repeat. It’s a lot of training, but I need it to be at my best. It’s nice having my sister there for when it gets tough.”

Follow the Salgado sisters on: en.redbulletin.com/mariasalgado

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Wild Card Marked

Tri-ing hard: Boonstra (leading) goes all out on the bike

The Inside Line How to win an off-road triathlon, by 2009 SA champ Lieuwe Boonstra 1. Hold back in the final fortnight “It works for me to slow my training down at that point and then in the final week I’ll rest on Wednesday and Thursday, then do a very light session on Friday before the race on Sunday.”

2. Scout the course “Two days before a race I’ll do a relaxed ride of the bike course, to check the best lines and the conditions, to make sure I pick the right tyres. I’ll also ride the run and maybe do the swim. This also allows me to work out my race nutrition.”

3. Swim, 1.5km: Don’t dodge the draft “Drafting [travelling in others’ slipstream] is as much of an advantage in open water swimming as it is on the bike. I go out hard for the first 100m and then find 22

a pack of two-four swimmers to slot in with. If you drop off a pack you can lose 30-40 seconds on them in no time.”

4. Bike, 35km: The chase is on “I go all out on the bike, no holding back for the run. In SA races, because my technical skills on a mountain bike are pretty good, I might try and ride solo up front, but in the European races everyone is a strong all-round rider, so I like to chase someone through the course.”

5. Run, 10km: Go off hard “Provided I’ve got my hydration right I’ll still have the legs to push it for the first quarter of the run. Then between 3-7km I’ll motor steadily to the finish.

At this point I should be in the lead!”

Lieuwe’s online: www.xterraplanet.com

Half a million doesn’t buy you much in motorsport. In Lance Isaacs’ case, it bought him next to nothing. With R500,000, the SA superbike rider’s team could only rent a couple of engines, rear suspensions and other parts from superbike team Ten Kate Racing. Yet, with it all fixed on a locally sourced Honda CBR600RR, Isaacs finished 11th in the World Supersport Championship race at Kyalami, SA’s biggest bike race meet.

“We didn’t hire the full electronics package, which would’ve cost 100 grand,” says Issacs (below), “mainly because we didn’t anticipate just how much difference it makes. It’s a traction-control system and a GPSlinked electronic engine-braking system which is programmed for every corner specifically.”

With that advantage, Isaacs’ rivals gained about two bike lengths through every corner. “On those corners where traction control wasn’t really a factor,” says Isaacs, “our splits show I was in the top three.”

For Isaacs and his BikeFin Honda Racing team, the experience of was invaluable. “Being up against the big boys helped us raise the benchmark.

We’re working harder and smarter, in a totally new groove. My team also learned a couple of tricks they can’t wait to implement at the next round of the SA Superbike Championship.”

Follow Isaacs at www.lancelot38.com

Words: Steve Smith. Photography: www.oakpics.com (1), Craig Kolesky/Red Bull Photofiles (1)

SA superbike ace Lance Issacs upsets the odds

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KIT EVOLUTION

Full circle

Turn Back Time Mercedes-Benz W25, 1934 This four-spoke wheel allowed the car’s driver to change direction and nothing else.

Behind it, four instruments are set into the dash (oil temperature, water temperature, oil pressure and engine speed), which, like the bodywork, was made of an unvarnished metal alloy primarily of aluminium. There 24

is no power steering here, so engineers produced an outsized wheel that allowed drivers enough leverage to steer. It was so large that a quick-release device was also made, to allow the driver in and out of the cockpit. Controlling one of these 750kg, 354bhp ‘Silver Arrows’ was extremely

taxing and required great skill: its roaring, supercharged, longitudinally mounted straight-8 engine took it to speeds of more than 300kph. Rudolf Caracciola became European Champion (the pre-1950 equivalent of the F1 title) in one in 1935. www.mercedes-benz-classic.com

words: werner jessner. photography: Schlegelmilch/Tandem

From huge rounds of wood, steel and leather to ergonomically optimised mini-computers… almost nothing on a Grand Prix car has changed as much as its steering wheel

photography: Will Thom

Steer And Now Red Bull Racing RB5, 2009 The major common feature between this wheel and what came 75 years before is the quick-release feature. But instead of a complete circle, there are two recessed grips, tailor-made for the car’s driver.

Among the buttons on the central section of the wheel are controls for the fuel/air

mix, the differential setting, the front wing angle, the brake balance, the light, the pit-lane speed limiter, the radio and the pump for the drink dispenser. Buttons used more frequently, such as the brake balance, are positioned such that they can be operated with the least movement

of the thumb. All told, there are 23 control buttons and two gearshift paddles, which Formula One drivers such as Red Bull Racing’s Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel have to use, in conjunction with the gas and brake pedals, while driving at 350kph. www.redbullracing.com

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Hard & fast Top performers and winning ways from across the globe

downhill racer

History’s winningest windsurfer, Dutchman Björn Dunkerbeck, emerged victorious at the wind lottery that was the PWA Slalom World Cup event on the Costa Brava.

A comeback triumph at World Cup mountain biking’s toughest event On what is often referred to as the most testing downhill mountain bike run in the world, Gee Atherton (above) secured the most satisfying win of his career last month. At Fort William, the only British stop on the UCI World Cup calendar, the 2008 downhill world champion was a popular winner with the 18,000-strong crowd.

Atherton had battled the 555m descent down tight forest paths, slippery turns and big jumps of the 2.8km boulder-strewn course at the Nevis Range many times before, but on this day his speed, power and control were no match for the world’s best. His richly deserved victory came in a course record of 4m 35s, a second ahead of New Zealand’s Cameron Cole.

Defending champ Greg Minnaar of South Africa, who was fastest in qualifying, finished third. Said Minnaar: 26

“[Atherton] did well. I was just glad to get across the finish line after having a problem at the start.”

“I’m the most excited I’ve ever been about winning an event,” said an exhausted but ecstatic Atherton. “It’s always been a massive goal of mine to win on home soil. The crowd played a huge role for me today. I shredded a huge amount of time from my final stage to take the win, because I could hear them cheering me on.”

It’s a return to form for the man who followed his world title in 2008 with a disappointing performance last season, when he finished fourth.

Atherton’s sister Rachel, a former world champion herself, came second in the women’s race, making it a double celebration for the Atherton clan.

Watch Gee and siblings’ TV show The Atherton Project at www.redbull.co.uk

A French Sébastien called Loeb is usually atop the World Rally podium, but it was Sébastien Ogier (right) and co-driver Julian Ingrassia who won the Rally de Portugal.

At the ASP Movistar Peru Classic, Aussie surfer Sally Fitzgibbons (centre) came second to Silvana Lima of Brazil after pipping local girl Sofia Mulanovich in the semi-finals.

Words: Ruth Morgan. photography: Sven Martin, 2010 FIVB, John Carter, Citroën/McKlein/Red Bull Photofiles, Agustin Munoz/Red Bull Photofiles

US beach boys Phil Danhauser (right) and Todd Rogers top the FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour leaderboard after victories in nd.

Brazil, Italy (pictured) and Pola

b u l l e va r d

where’s your head at?

Calvin Klein

The legendary designer has done it all – rescued his kidnapped daughter, rewritten the rules of basketball and contributed perhaps more than anyone to the last 40 years of commercial fashion Friend s for Life

Smart Kid

Barry Schwartz, six months older than Klein, and his friend for more than six decades, had the business acumen to turn his best pal’s creativity into success.

The two first went into business together aged nine, selling newspapers. Klein once said that it was like sex for Schwartz when they divided up the profits, but that Schwartz always gave him the leftover penny.

Calvin Klein was born in the Bronx on November 19, 1942, the son of Jewish immigrants from Hungary. As a young child, he hung around his father’s grocer y store in Harlem. “I would see grapefruits in the fruit and vegetable section, and some of them were 29 cents a pound and others were 49 cents,” he recalled. “I asked, ‘What’s the difference between the two?’

My father said, ‘Some people like to pay 29 cents and some like to pay 49 cents.’ I learned later that that’s the fashion business to a great deal.

Cash And Grab

In March 2003, six weeks after Klein and Schwartz sold their empire and the Calvin Klein brand for $400 million in cash plus stock and royalties, the designer left his courtside seat at a New York Knicks basketball game and went to talk to one of the players – during the game.

“I think I was overwhelmed [after

the deal] so I went completely crazy,” Klein explained.

Number 613 Klein’s first commission came by accident. In 1968, he was renting Room 613, in the York Hotel in Manhattan where other designers also had showrooms. The purchasing manager of the Bonwit Teller department store stumbled across Klein’s collection and made an instant purchase. Since then, Klein has seen 613 as a lucky number: his first Gulfstream jet had the registration 613CK.

Not Without My Daughter In 1978, Klein’s 11-year-old daughter Marci was kidnapped in broad daylight by a former babysitter with two accomplices. Klein paid the $100,000 ransom and then set off to rescue his daughter himself, which really threw the watching crew of FBI agents. Thanks to some unintentionally false info from the kidnappers, father and daughter were reunited in the hallway of the building in which Marci was being held. She is currently a TV producer in New York, working on 30 Rock and Saturday Night Live.

Words: Uschi Korda. illustration: Lie-Ins and Tigers

CK’s Women

Klein was married to high school sweetheart Jayne Centre from 1964-1974. In 1981 he met second wife Kelly Rector, who gave him the idea of adapting men’s underwear for women – a genius move that netted the company $70 million in 1984 alone. They married in 1986, divorced in 1996, but remain friends.

In the Blood

Moss Gathers The Cash

In the early ’90s, Calvers was fascinated by model Kate Moss. He signed her and her then lover, the as-yet-unknown photographer Mario Sorrenti, for a new advertising campaign for his Obsession fragrance and sent the couple alone to a secluded island, armed with a camera.

It was one of his smartest ideas. “We just saw the sales take off,” Klein recalled. “[Consumers] were sick of fake boobs.”

Celebrity Pants (And Not) “You wanna know what comes between me and my Calvins?” asked the 15-year-old Brooke Shields in an infamous Calvin Klein Jeans ad from 1980. “Nothing.” (“People still come up to me and mention it,” said Shields, 28 years later.) Mark Wahlberg was the face of the brand’s underwear in the ’90s, though it was not necessarily the face of the future Boogie Nights star that caught the eye of passers-by.

CK’s grandmother Molly worked for a fashion house and later ran her own alterations shop. His mother, Flo, was a fashion plate.

“Every time I get crazy about clothes I think about my mother spending all of my father’s money during the war,” Klein told Vanity Fair two years ago. That said, for his first 10 years as a designer, he couldn’t look beyond beige, cream, white and brown, which were the colours of his mother’s wardrobe.

Calvin Klein is appearing at the 2010 Life Ball, July 17, Vienna City Hall, go to www.lifeball.org

27

b u l l e va r d

winning formula

Ace Value

A superfast serve is a tennis player’s deadliest weapon, but it’s not just big shoulders and the grunt of an aggrieved gorilla that helps the ball over the net. Science applied at the right moments can turn fault into fortune

in which we calculate “Cannonball servers like Andy Roddick are born with it,” says Dr Martin Apolin, physicist and sports scientist, “and have many fast-twitch fibres in their muscles. They can only marginally improve performance through practice, but it is possible.

“The acceleration path of the racquet head should be as long as possible, so that the terminal velocity is high. The whole body is used, movement flowing from the legs to the arm – it’s called ‘whip effect’. The ball should be hit on its sweet spot so as few vibrations as possible occur, with maximum momentum transfer. The ball leaves the racquet along a parabola, and thus we can calculate: y=–

g 2v² cos²

x² + (tan ) x + h

where x and y are horizontal and vertical coordinates (metres), g is the acceleration due to gravity (9.81m/s2), v the initial velocity of the ball (m/s), the initial angle and h is the height in metres from which the ball is fired. I assume the serve of A is in the direction of B (see graph) and ball hasa speed of 249.4kph (=69.3m/s). This corresponds with Roddick’s current world record.

“A short player (vertical reach of 2.7m including racquet) would have to manage an angle range of only 0.45° for this hammer blow – impossible! But if a player’s reach is 30cm higher, he jumps up 30cm when hitting the ball, and hits it 1m into the field, as in the picture, then the angle range is increased by a factor of four.

“So: players must hit the ball high above the ground and as far into the service court as possible with surgical precision.”

See how Roddick’s rocket is working out for him at www.atpworldtour.com

28

Words: Ruth Morgan, Martin apolin. Photography: Imago Sportfoto. Illustration: Mandy Fischer

in which he serves “There’s no doubt the serve has become the most important shot in the game,” says Jim Edgar, chairman of TennisCoach UK and a leading performance coach. “Andy Roddick holds the men’s speed record of 249kph, Venus Williams the women’s at 208kph. They achieve incredible speeds, and if you look at the top seeds, more often than not they’ll be a top server.

“As soon as your racquet makes contact with the tennis ball you can feel, from the crispness, the cleanness of it, whether it’s good, how much damage it’s going to do.

“A good serve is like a javelin throw mixed with a basketball slam dunk. With your arm you’re throwing the racquet at the ball like a javelin thrower, while propelling the body upwards as high as possible as you would in basketball. If you can get the two actions to work together, that’s when you’re onto a winner.

“It starts right down in the feet, the toes, to get a strong launch, then the trunk and the hips rotate, the shoulders rotate and then the throwing arm pronates. The idea in the old days was that the wrist snapped forward, but actually the hand and wrist turn away from the body, and that’s pronation. As much as 40 per cent of a serve’s power comes from that one element of the move, so it’s incredibly important.”

Top speed: American Andy Roddick holds the record for the fastest-ever tennis serve at 249kph

B u l l e va r d

Lucky Numbers

World Motorcycling

The champions on two wheels rack up incredible speeds and remarkable records: here are the ones that might have whizzed by you

46

1

SURTEES

John Surtees achieved what no one else had managed before or has done since. The British racing legend, born in Tatsfield, Surrey, in 1934, is the only man to have become World Champion on two wheels and four. From 1956 to 1960, he won 38 Grands Prix and seven World Championship titles in the 350cc and 500cc categories.

Surtees then made his Formula One debut at the 1960 Monaco Grand Prix driving a Lotus, and four yeas later, he won the drivers’ World Championship in a Ferrari, helping his team win the constructors’ championship as well. Surtees was accepted AGOSTINI into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in 1996.

122

ROSSI

18

Rossi (top left) does not have the record books to himself. With his nine titles he is still four World Championships behind Spaniard Ángel Nieto and six behind Italian maestro Giacomo Agostini. Ago dominated motorbike racing from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s. In 1968 he had the perfect season: 10 wins out of 10 in the 500cc category. By the end of his career, he had amassed 122 GP wins in the 500cc and 350cc categories. This currently leaves Agostini 18 victories ahead of Rossi, who has time on his side – he’s only 31 years old.

Jonas Folger is a great future prospect. On August 31, 2008, just 18 days after his 15th birthday, the Bavarian became the youngest rider ever to score a World Championship point, managing the feat in San Marino in just his second Grand Prix (125cc). Briton Scott Redding was a little older, at 15 years, 70 days, when he won his first 125cc GP, on home soil at Donington in 2008. Loris Capirossi is the youngest World Champion from any category. The Italian was crowned 125cc World Champion in 1990 at the tender age of 17 years and 165 days.

217.37

The fastest World Championship heat in history took place 33 years ago. In 1977, Britain’s Barry Sheene reached an average speed of 217.37kph on his Suzuki RG500 at the Spa-Francorchamps circuit in Belgium. The current average MotoGP race speed is about 180kph. The bikes’ top speeds are impressive: in May 2009, Dani Pedrosa managed 349.288kph at the MotoGP race in Mugello, Italy.

30

NAKANO

0.014

FOLGER

Shinya Nakano must still have nightmares about the final bend of the Phillip Island circuit in Victoria, Australia. In 2000, the Japanese rider went into the final race of the season there leading the 250cc World Championship. With victory in sight, he turned into the finishing straight in first place, but Olivier Jacque, his French team-mate who was second in the title race, appeared from his slipstream and just overtook him, to win by 0.014s and pip him to the championship title by seven points 279 and 272 points respectively. Nakano retired due to injury at the end of last year, and during his last decade of racing never again came close to a title.

SHEENE

The fastest things on two wheels are at www.motogp.com

Words: Ulrich Corazza. Photography: Imago Sportfoto (5), Samo Vidic/Red Bull Photofiles (1)

Valentino Rossi is currently the first, last and everything of MotoGP. The Italian, known as Il Dottore for his surgically precise riding, is the only rider to date who has been World Champion in four different motorcycle racing categories: 125cc, 250cc, 500cc and MotoGP. Mr Rossi is also trying his luck in other forms of motorsport.

His race number, 46, also happens to be that of his father Graziano, who had three 250cc race wins in 1979. Last year Rossi Jnr was in talks with Ferrari about a switch to F1, won the Monza Rally Show, tested a DTM car and contested his first GT3 six-hour race.

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BEYOND THE ORDINARY THE RED BULLETIN

Heroes

Big movies, seriously stylish stunts, fast cars and amazing images – these guys do it all

photography: Marcel Lämmerhirt/Red Bull Photofiles

34 clint eastwood 40 luci romberg 42 carlos & carlos sainz 46 liam lynch

American Luci Romberg (see page 40) discovered free-running two years ago. Now, she typically begins her performances with a front-facing backflip (like here, at the finals of the Red Bull Art of Motion in Vienna). Those aspiring to get so good so fast should know that Romberg makes her living as a stuntwoman.

Heroes

Clint Eastwood He’s one of Hollywood’s most prodigious filmmakers, but what is it that keeps the 80-year-old director and actor working when others have long since retired?

Words: Richard Schickel* Photography: Martin Schoeller/August

Name Clint Eastwood Born May 31, 1930 First role As a lab assistant in 1955’s Revenge of the Creature OK, first significant role As a cattle-driving cowboy in the longrunning ’60s TV series Rawhide Oscars Ten Academy Award nominations and four wins since 1993 Music An extremely talented pianist and avowed jazz fan, Eastwood has composed some of the music for his films Politics A Republican since the ’50s, he served as mayor of the tiny Californian enclave of Carmel in 1986 and was a vociferous advocate for the environment during his tenure on the California State Park and Recreation Commission, from 2001 to 2008

*The author is Clint Eastwood‘s friend and biographer (see page 39)

34

“Eighty,” quips Clint Eastwood, “is the new seventynine-and-three-quarters.”

It’s a typically sly Eastwood joke, casually addressing what seems to be the big current news about him – his having become an octogenarian on May 31 – while at the same time suggesting that nothing much is going to change for him as a result of attaining an age when most men (especially most movie directors) are tottering into irrelevance, if not downright senility. With all his buttons firmly attached, his career at a common-consent high point, he and his actors keep winning Oscar nominations and prizes while he commands the awed admiration of the world.

And, of course, there’s more on tap, with Eastwood currently completing post-production on Hereafter, based on an intricately woven script

by Peter Morgan (The Queen, Frost/Nixon). The film is, as Eastwood says, “a very romantic story”, about some people who, as a result of near-death experiences, are granted mystical gifts for understanding – well, yes – the “hereafter”. Matt Damon is the nominal star, as a man resisting his own gift for second-sight and the Belgian actress Cécile De France gives a star-making performance as a journalist investigating her own expanded psyche after almost dying in a tsunami. Realist that he is, Eastwood does not necessarily believe in a hereafter and the film goes after the charlatans who infest this field. But, curious guy that he is, the director gives the possibility of expanded consciousness a very fair shake. “It’s an interesting topic at this time,” he says. And interesting (non-generic) topics are what he seems to care about most right now.

Take, for example, his next movie. After taking a break of a few months – he will have made three pictures in the last two years – Eastwood will begin production on what could well turn out to be his most electrifying project. This is to be a ferociously objective – therefore ferociously devastating – biopic about J Edgar Hoover, the late, unlamented director

of America’s FBI. Brilliantly written by Dustin Lance Black, who won an Oscar for Milk, it is an account of Hoover’s 40-year tenure as America’s ‘top cop’.

Called simply Hoover, it is a wicked, sometimes darkly funny portrayal of the bureaucratic mentality raised to flash point. Hoover is a man in love with – yes – his filing system, which contained all the dirt on America’s political elite, which, in turn, gave him unprecedented power over their careers, not to mention unprecedented celebrity, of which he was pretty much the sole manipulator.

In some sense, this is an almost unprecedented project for Eastwood, in that over the course of his career (64 films, of which he has directed 29) he has made only one previous biographical drama – Bird in 1988 – and he has never before made such an overtly political film.

On the other hand, it strikes me as not the least bit odd. For since 2003, when he directed the great and complex crime drama, Mystic River, Eastwood has been engaged in what amounts to a second career that owes little to what he accomplished in previous decades. Yes, many of these later films, like their predecessors, have their roots in genre.

But thematically, Million Dollar Baby has nothing to do with, say, Letters from Iwo Jima, which, in turn, owes nothing to Changeling or Gran Torino. They may, perhaps, remind us that throughout his career – beginning with the half-forgotten, but very good Play Misty for Me as early as 1971 – he has signalled his restlessness with crime and cowboy movies, without fully abandoning them. Even after the breakthrough critical success of Unforgiven in 1992, he still drifted back to genre, though one such picture, 1999’s True Crime, strikes me as an almost perfect piece of its kind – suspenseful, yet serious, curiously comic yet touched by the possibility of the tragic.

We were sitting around talking one recent day, about the shape of his career, in the study of his Los Angeles home (he has five other residences, and though he spends most of his time in Carmel,

Million-dollar maverick: Eastwood has seamlessly moved from acting to directing and his output remains impressive in both quantity and subject matter

Heroes

Eastwood’s career is astonishingly prolific.

He has acted in films such as A Fistful of Dollars (1) and Dirty Harry (3). He both acted and directed in The Bridges of Madison County (2), Gran Torino (7) and Bronco Billy (4) with his directorial debut in the thriller Play Misty for Me (8). Projects as a director include Bird (5) and Invictus (6) 1 2

4

7

5

3

8

6

36

additional photography: ddp images (1), cinetext bildarchiv (5 ), Warner Bros./Cinetext (2)

Heroes

he also bops restlessly among them). The room is dimly lit (an Eastwood preference in that he is more than usually sensitive to bright lights) and its bookshelves are crammed with the dozens of trophies he has acquired in recent decades. They are a jumble of serious prizes such as Academy Awards and silly ones like a ‘brass balls’ award, whatever that may be. Our conversation turns to this great late run of his and, somewhat surprisingly, some other great directorial names arise.

“I’ve always been in great wonderment why Billy Wilder and Frank Capra gave out in their 60s,” he says, going on to suggest that both stayed with material that had once been highly successful for them, but had now become stale and, in Wilder’s case, sour to the audience’s taste. “They had a bad one or two,” he adds. “But you know they had bad ones when they were in their heydays, too. You go ahead, you continue on.”

As John Huston did. Eastwood, of course, played him in the vastly underrated White Hunter Black Heart, and generally admired him directorially.

But that’s not his point. In his last years when he, like Clint today, turned 80, he made all kinds of movies – a musical, two adaptations of major novels and of popular, sardonic crime fiction, too.

He ended his career with a version of James Joyce’s great short story, The Dead. In contrast to Wilder and Capra – and plenty of others – “he seemed to go ahead and make good pictures right up to the end, even from a wheelchair with an oxygen mask on”. Because, Eastwood believes, he did not limit himself by attempting to repeat his past glories.

Most of these films explored realms that were, for him at least, totally fresh.

And that’s what Eastwood intends to do – sans the oxygen mask, of course, since he remains one of the fittest men on the planet. And, I’m pretty sure, sans “the Kleenex on the collar”, as he likes to put it, or the tissues actors are obliged to tuck around their necks to prevent make-up from staining their wardrobe. Don’t get him wrong – he enjoyed acting, but, in retrospect, he seems to regard it more as a means to an end than an end in itself, which was directing. As early as the seven years he spent on television’s Rawhide he was asking the producers to let him direct – “because it involved all the elements of filmmaking, rather than just being a component, which an actor is”.

From the outset – his first directorial outing was 1971’s Play Misty for Me – he established a unique directorial manner: his sets are quiet, good-natured, unfrenzied and efficient. He is famous for bringing his pictures in under-budget and under-schedule.

A lot of that style derives from his childhood. The Eastwoods were hard hit by the Depression, and for several years roamed west-coast roads while his father looked for work. It was hard on shy Clint – always being the new kid at school. But they were hard-working, close-knit people whose uncomplaining values not only formed

“I don’t need to get my adrenalin going” Calm and unfrenzied on the set, Eastwood films come in on time and under-budget Eastwood, but have continued to rule through the decades of his stardom. He is, to this day, exactly the man I first met 34 years ago.

I do think his professional and personal manner also derives significantly from his passion for jazz.

He is a near professional pianist (and, of late, a composer of his own film scores), whose mother introduced him to music when he was a child. Jazz musicians, he says, “were playing for themselves.

If you wanted to listen, fine, if you didn’t, that was fine, too. They just stood up and performed.” And when tastes changed, around the time Eastwood was an adolescent in the ’40s, and the traditional musical modes gave way to bebop, some of the best players, he says, “had the mentality of just saying, ‘I want to play this. I want to play something different, something my father before me didn’t play.’ And more power to them.”

That, at least partially, explains his previous forays outside the genre box as well as his late, great run of pictures. But not entirely. It omits his decisiveness. And his wilfulness. Eastwood has occasionally developed a film from an idea, but not very often. He’s far too impatient for that process (“The only thing you have is time,” he likes to say).

Far more than most filmmakers he is reliant on the open market for finished scripts. Some of them arrive at his desk as writing samples – Unforgiven is the great example – and some of them just sort of somehow turn up. Bronco Billy, for instance, was sitting on an assistant’s desk when Eastwood, intrigued by the title, starting turning its pages. By the time he’d finished it, still standing at that desk, he’d decided to do it. Nowadays, he has an informal network of people keeping an eye out for new material on his behalf. Gran Torino was sent to him by a Warner executive. Brian Grazer, the producer of The Changeling, called his attention to Hoover.

I asked him if he ever hesitates over his choices.

Oh, sure, came the reply. Take In the Line of Fire, whose producers wanted him to direct as well as star. He’d just come off Unforgiven and didn’t feel like taking the reins. How long did it take for him to work that problem out? “At least a week,” he says. A week? Generally speaking, in Hollywood, it takes that long to open the envelope. Which says nothing about the ensuing memos, conversations and general dither. In any case, once he’s reached 37

All that jazz: playing the piano is not just another string to his bow, Eastwood now composes his own film scores

Heroes

a decision, he usually shoots the script as written.

“My last seven pictures,” he said to me the other day, “have no blue pages.” (Revisions are typed first on pages of that colour, subsequent ones on other colours; a final script can sometimes take on the aspects of a rainbow.)

After that, he goes in and undersells the project to the studio bosses. Typically, he says, his part of the conversation goes something like this: “I can’t guarantee a big-selling picture. I can’t guarantee that on any picture. The only thing I can do is try to make a picture that you’ll be proud to have your shield on [the Warner Brothers’ logo].”

A couple of times in recent years, the studio has dragged its feet and Eastwood had to round up additional financing elsewhere. Both of those films, however, turned out to be resounding hits, which won Oscars to boot. A lesson was learned and apologies were made. After all, the guy’s pictures have made over $4 billion for Warner Bros alone over the years.

Whatever has gone down elsewhere is never mentioned on an Eastwood set. He doesn’t stir the “us against them” feelings some directors like to engender. “I don’t need to get my adrenalin going,” he says. Neither does he like to spend too much time going over locations. Eastwood is pretty sure he must have had moments when choosing the place to put the camera puzzled him. But not often and not recently. As he says, “They’re all OK, so just pick one. The crew around you wants to see you make decisions. They don’t want to see somebody just sit there and ponder, ponder. Or go over and sit by their video village and bring a committee in to make second judgments. I don’t have a video village.

I don’t like that stuff. If I can’t make the decision I shouldn’t have been hired in the first place.”

He occasionally uses storyboards when he’s doing a complicated special-effects sequence. And he admits to wandering around his sets sometimes prior to shooting, looking for angles. “But basically my favourite way is just to walk on and do it.” It is, by modern standards, an incautious way of working, and Eastwood is not an incautious man.

But he is a wilful one – a characterisation that comes as something of a surprise to me. I’ve written two books and made three films about him and I’ve always seen him as this casual, humorous, goodnatured guy who just happened to make more movies – an average of nearly one a year at his peak – than anyone else.

I’ve always said to people that his most ambitious acting came when he was playing taciturn hard guys like Dirty Harry. The Eastwood I knew was more a Bronco Billy kind of guy – wry, watchful, tolerant, easy-going. And he seemed to agree with me. As an innocent youngster in the training programme at Universal in the ’50s, he was always being taught – not always successfully – to ‘own the room’, make sure every eye was on him when, say, he entered the commissary. “Fine,” he said to me recently,

“What if you don’t feel like owning the room?”

Eastwood’s most famous on-screen personas have little to do with the man himself “but what if you don’t feel like owning the room?”

What if, as the male tyros at the studio’s talent discovery programme used to say, you didn’t feel like “taking your man pills”.

Here’s a story he likes to tell, about meeting Rocky Marciano, the retired heavyweight champion – “the ultimate masculine guy, the toughest guy in the world, never lost a professional fight. And he didn’t break my hand or anything. It was a very gentle handshake – he didn’t have to show me anything. He knows who he is. And I just thought that kind of said it all.”

Or perhaps not quite. You can keep your handshake soft and your demeanour pleasant.

But you don’t become an Icon, a Living Legend – choose your own overheated term – sitting quietly at the back of the room, waiting for people to notice you. Somehow, you have to impose yourself on an often recalcitrant, even hostile, system. And that means you need ambition and a plan – even if you pretend you don’t have either.

Eastwood is the sort of person who kind of likes to wander toward, even sort of sneak up on, whatever point he wants to make. But last summer, when I was shooting material for my latest film about him, he surprised me with a briskly coherent statement about what, for want of a better term, his life plan had been.

“I’m always exploring outside the box and that keeps me from just saying, OK, Westerns were successful for me, so I’ll just do Westerns.

Cop dramas were successful; I can just keep doing cop dramas and have a nice little series somewhere and call it a day and have the paycheque and a few beers and a nice life. But that wasn’t enough.

Personally, it wasn’t enough.”

These words were not spoken fiercely – merely firmly. But I’d never heard anything like them from Eastwood. And he tempered them like this: “I’m at this stage in life, where if something isn’t going to be pleasant, I don’t want to have anything to do with it.” At which point he smiles sweetly and adds, “Of course, in recent years I’ve been on a pretty good streak.” That’s putting it about as mildly as you can.

Veteran American film critic and author Richard Schickel first met Clint Eastwood at the home of mutual friends in the summer of 1976. The two soon became friends and Schickel, whose books have included biographies on Elia Kazan and Marlon Brando, wrote a biography of Eastwood in 1996. His most recent book is the large-format Clint: A Retrospective, with an accompanying short film, The Eastwood Factor, that follows Eastwood to the sites of his films and his home.

Warner Home Video, additionally, has brought out what might be the largest film box set released for a single artist, with Clint Eastwood: 35 Films 35 Years at Warner Bros.

Both book and box set are in stores now. Go to www. clinteastwooddvds.com for more information.

For more information on Clint Eastwood and his latest film, Hereafter (currently in post-production), and latest project, Hoover, visit www.warnerbros.com

39

Heroes

luci romberg Free-running is all about – you guessed it – running freely. And for one woman who’s the world’s best at her discipline, it’s also about challenging the male elite Words: Andreas Rottenschlager Photography: Andy Batt

Name Lucia Royce Romberg Nickname Luci Steel Born June 23, 1981, Aurora, Colorado (USA) Occupation Stuntwoman Specialist areas Somersaults, swordfights, selfimmolation Has been in Monk, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and Clint Eastwood’s film Changeling. Has also starred as Peter Pan at the Fantasmic! live show at Disneyland Achievements The first woman to make it to the final round of the Red Bull Art of Motion (2010), the only female member of the American free-running Team Tempest Greatest Weakness Chips with salsa dip Main Ambition “To get more women interested in free-running” Web www.luciromberg.com

40

Luci Romberg can’t remember her first stunt any more. But her mum’s version goes something like this: Li’l’ Luci decides to climb her grandmother’s garden fence. A neighbour sees the three-year-old way too far up the gate and rushes outside. “Do you need a hand, little girl?” Luci, hanging onto the wooden slats, turns her head to the side and answers: “No, I’m tough!”

Twenty-six years down the line, Lucia Royce Romberg’s life is still all about overcoming obstacles. Free-running is a sport in which our everyday surroundings become an obstacle course. And LA’s Luci is the female poster child of urban movement aesthetes.

A free-runner sees the cityscape as a huge playground to be got around with acrobatics and creativity (as opposed to the qualities of efficiency and speed cherished by the related discipline of parkour). For a free-runner, the walls of houses are a springboard for backwards somersaults, while stair-rails become handstand testing areas. “Everyone develops their own style,” says Romberg, who only took up the sport two years ago. “There are no rules.

It took me a while to get used to this mentality.”

Her athletic physique and fluid movement hint at the life story hiding behind the light brown locks of this shooting star. Romberg grew up on a farm in Colorado, the daughter of a semi-professional tennis player. As a child she would scamper around the fields with the goats, loved fire-alarm exercises “because we could climb up onto the roof”, and became hooked on a number of sports. When she was 12, her parents forced her to concentrate on just three.

Romberg chose gymnastics, football and diving.

At Texas Woman’s University, she honed her sporting skills. Romberg was captain of the women’s football team and was national gymnastics champion in her Senior Year. After graduating (with a Bachelor Cum Laude in kinesiology), she got in her car and drove to Los Angeles to make a(nother) dream come true: the girl from Aurora, Colorado

wanted to become a Hollywood stuntwoman.

“I had no idea what I was letting myself in for,” she says. “But the job somehow suited my ideas.”

The dream factory’s obstacles were to prove frustrating, however. “If you don’t have a reputation, nobody will hire you. The most difficult part about stunts is figuring out the business and how to go about training, meeting people, and getting hired.

It’s a constant battle, plus I’m pretty shy when I meet people for the first time.”

After a few years’ graft though, Romberg, 29, is a member of the well-known Stunt Women’s Association, a regular double on TV shows such as crime drama Monk and appears frequently as a figurehead in her own right in commercials. (Check YouTube/Luci Romberg for the American Egg Board and you’ll see what she gets up to.) That stuntmen and women are often the unsung heroes of the major Hollywood productions, doesn’t bother Romberg: “To me, stunts is my art form, just as acting is the actor’s art form.

I do it for the love of the work, not fame or fortune.”

Livewire Luci’s last big career step (to date) came in 2008 when a stuntwoman friend introduced her to the members of Team Tempest. This troupe of the world’s top free-runners gave Romberg the creative boost she craved. “It’s about expressing yourself with unique moves. Free-running has given me greater self-confidence,” she says.

Romberg showed where this learning curve has taken her in May at Red Bull Art of Motion, in Vienna.

In the preliminary round, she left 14 top male freerunners in her wake, even though she’s just 5ft 1in tall, and was the first woman to reach the final round, for the eight best competitors. In her final run, Romberg – just as she had aged three – clambered onto rails that looked too high for her. She hung onto the beam and turned her head to the side. Then did a backwards somersault… this time in front of 3,000 cheering fans, not just a worried neighbour.

Watch video highlights from the 2010 Red Bull Art of Motion final at en.redbulletin.com/aom2010

Print 2.0

za.redbulletin.com/print2.0 See Luci doing what she does best

All the right moves: Romberg only took up free-running two years ago, but is rapidly developing her own style and making a name for herself in the sport

Heroes

carlos & carlos Sainz Motor racing fathers and sons are not uncommon.

But a rally legend with a son who’s determined to succeed on the track, not trail, is a little unusual Words: Anthony Rowlinson Portrait: Thomas Butler

A friend, who has known Carlos Sainz for more than a decade, described his fame like this: “He used to be mobbed like Jesus.”

Some context: before anyone else had done anything, Carlos Sainz had done everything – at least as far as Spanish sports fans are concerned.

He was a double World Rally Champion by 1992, having started winning events two years earlier in his first full world championship season. He went on to enjoy a massively successful WRC career through to 2005, winning 26 rallies against fierce rivals to become a true figurehead of his sport and a national celebrity along the way. He was – and is – massive. Before the emergence of Fernando Alonso in Formula One he was Spanish motorsport.

It’s remarkable, given such ego-stoking success, that Carlos Sainz – ‘King Carlos’ to his most ardent fans – has always been regarded (excuse the cliché, but it’s true) as one of sport’s real gentlemen and he remains one to this day. Yet courteous as he is charismatic, he’s as withering of those he considers ‘unprofessional’ as he is generous to those he respects.

Because, make no mistake, Carlos Sainz, for all his immaculate manners, is no sugar-coated patsy – he’s a ferocious competitor, and earlier this year, at age 47, he proved the racing fires still burn bright, by winning the endlessly challenging Dakar rally raid – one of motorsport’s grand prizes.

A personal friend of the King of Spain, with whom he regularly plays squash, a schoolboy triallist for Real Madrid (the fortunes of which side he still follows with demented passion), Carlos Sainz is, in short, one hell of a class act, and a legend – not merely a name – for any offspring to live up to. Particularly if that offspring is also called Carlos. And particularly if said offspring decides his life path is in motorsport.

This daunting challenge is the one that has nonetheless been accepted by 15-year-old Carlos Sainz Jnr – Carlitos among friends for the purposes of disambiguation – and this year, racing in that noted academy-for-superstars, the Formula BMW 42

Championship, he has started carving a path he hopes will one day make ‘Carlos Sainz’ a twice-feted name.

That’s all in the future, because right here, right now, in the paddock area of the Circuit de Catalunya, hosting the 2010 Spanish Grand Prix, Carlitos can only contemplate what wreaths and garlands may lie ahead. While he has been racing since the age of nine in go-karts, his first-ever ‘car’ race was in Malaysia on April 3 this year, in the Formula BMW Pacific series. There, against somewhat weaker opposition than he will face in FBMW’s European arm, he finished second and fourth in the two races held over the Malaysian GP weekend, at the same Sepang circuit used by the F1 luminaries he aims – as soon as humanly possible – to join.

“Since I was three years old,” he offers, “I would sit on top of the kart and I would feel that sensation of speed. It was an exceptional sensation for me and I said, ‘OK this is my dream, I am going to fight for it and I am going to do what is in my heart and do my best to try to get up there.’”

Carlitos is, by any regular measure, preposterously young to be considered a professional sportsman, yet such are the demands of top-line contemporary motor racing: his idol, Sebastian Vettel, in 2008 became the youngest F1 winner, aged 21 years and 73 days, and if he wins the F1 drivers’ title this year, he will become the youngest ever so to do. As well as being the most celebrated graduate of FBMW, Vettel is also its most successful: in 2004 he won 18 races from 20 – a mark that has yet to be approached.

So, far from being an infant prodigy, Carlitos Sainz is simply in roughly the right place at roughly the right time to achieve his goal of emulating Vettel and other star FBMW graduates – Nico Rosberg, Bruno Senna, Timo Glock, Nico Hulkenberg, Adrian Sutil and Sebastian Buemi – who all made it to F1.

Carlitos cuts a slight figure in the series’ hospitality area, where he meets The Red Bulletin. Young, still with boy-man bum-fluff about his cheeks and so fine-featured he’s almost pretty, he’s a generation away

Name Carlos Sainz Snr Born April 12, 1962, Madrid, Spain Nickname El Matador Records Holds records for most WRC starts, podium finishes and points Winning Ways Earlier this year won the Dakar Rally for the first time, becoming the first Spaniard to do so Web www.carlos-sainz.com

Name Carlos Sainz Jnr Born September 1, 1994, Madrid, Spain Nickname Carlitos Track Dreams His idol is Sebastian Vettel, someone he hopes to race against on an F1 track one day Musical Motivation Before a race he listens to The Killers or Kings of Leon to get in the mood Web www.carlossainzjr.com

Generation game: Sainz Snr and Jnr, rally star and racing rookie

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Great start: Formula BMW, established in 2002, has become the classic entry-level racing series, providing plenty of exciting wheel-to-wheel action

– of course – from the Carlos Sainz sitting alongside, all heavy-eyebrowed, brooding Latin intensity.

The younger man is not overwhelmed, however.

The Sainz at his side is still ‘just his dad’, after all, and however notable the older man’s achievements, and fame, these two relate to each other with an obviously genuine, and touching, mutual affection.

Telling is Carlos Jnr’s admission that he sometimes got nervous for his dad when he was away at rallies: “I always looked out for him,” he says. “I was always looking for him in the results and I’m sure when I’m driving it’s the other way round. It’s natural.”

For such a youngster, Sainz Jnr is remarkably mannered – not ostentatiously so, there’s no pomp – but he has very obviously been well brought up and a strong parental guiding hand is much in evidence.

Sainz Snr, though, is acutely aware that the spotlight in which his son inevitably races, on account of his famous name, also brings shadow – or, more accurately, the risk of being overshadowed.

He’s determined, therefore, to allow young Carlos his own place in the sun: “Everything that he has to do in his career,” says dad, “his mistakes, his learning, must be in his own way.”

That’s not to say instinctive, protective parental concern has been placed to one side: “I can see that Carlitos is very professional and serious about what he is doing, but… he is only 15, so it is important that there is someone to take care of him.”

The big picture – “the principal things”, as Sainz Snr describes attributes such as attitude and approach – will inevitably be passed from rallying dad to racing son. It has happened already for 15 years, by osmosis, even when not by design. “But 44

“My old man is still really fast” Carlos Sainz Jnr

the technical things,” he continues, “his work with engineers, for example, data sheets and what he does on the race track… Here, he is on his own.”

(Amusing then, that later in the day, Sainz Snr can be seen poring over junior’s track data even more intently than did Carlitos himself. Who would want to be the engineer whose technical slip spoiled the chances of the son-of-a-double-world-champion?)

Allowing the fledgling to fly is one of the hardest moments for any parent, but it’s obvious that junior has inherited some of his father’s matador spirit. He qualified ninth for his first of two races in Barcelona, the opening round of the FBMW Europe series, complaining, like all true racing drivers should, of “being disappointed” and “not getting the most out of the car”. Come Saturday, though, he shot from the starting grid to gain four places and run fourth in the early laps, then tiger through to third for a podium finish on his debut, with ‘top rookie’ honours.

Racing, don’t doubt it, runs deep in his DNA: “Since I was three I just loved motorsport,” says Carlitos, grinning, sheepish. “In my house we always had that ambience, motor racing, but I loved it myself, too. Always I was watching Formula One, always asking my father like “How was the rally?” because I was too young and had to be at school…”

Carlitos has touched upon something here and a commanding voice interjects, carrying an echo of an insistence on education: “Carlitos did not come to rallies very often. Only to the Rally Catalunya on some years. I always wanted him to have a good education and he still has his commitment with the school. It’s hard to do this with his racing commitments, but it is very important that he

Heroes

Additional Photography: Frits van Eldik/Red Bull Photofiles (1), Samo Vidic (1), McKlein (2)

Driven to succeed: Carlos Sainz had an extremely successful WRC career winning the drivers’ title twice and finishing runner-up four times

finishes. I keep telling him he has to be prepared to have some culture and to try to do both things.”

It’s clear Sainz Snr’s support for Carlitos’ chosen path is unquestioning, but not unconditional – a likely legacy of his own experience as a young competitor who had to pursue his dream without parental backing. ‘You can have it,’ seems to be the message, ‘but you can’t have it easy.’

Sainz expands: “I am proud of what he is doing of course, but as I have said to him, motorsport is very difficult. It needs very hard work and I have told him that really he has done nothing so far, or very little.

It’s really tough and very difficult, but I see him taking things seriously and working hard, so I think he deserves my help. I suppose if I saw him not enjoying it or not doing very well I would try… with a lot of intelligence… to steer him in a different direction.”

Carlitos’ application has already earned a few rather special rewards. Driving lessons, for example.

Unique driving lessons… There’s a twinkle in King Carlos’ eye as he admits: “I’ve had him in the Touareg, yes… Just the once.”

Turns out Sainz Snr found himself short of a co-driver for a tyre test late last year – “he was in Africa, doing a recce” – so his lad got the call. “I think he enjoyed it,” he grins, reaching over to ruffle Carlitos’ dark thatch in the way only a father can.

Surprising, or maybe not, Carlitos has rarely ridden shotgun with his father and the memory of this particular ride is still vivid: “I’ve driven with him before, but never at such speed, you know? He is a little bit crazy! But you know, he is good. Quite good.” [Cue laughter.] “I was quite impressed.”

Carlos Snr: “He told me I was not so bad for my age.”

“Culture and education are important” Carlos Sainz Snr

Red Bulletin: “Did you really say that?”

Carlos Snr: “You said it on the radio!”

Carlos Jnr: “Yeah…” [sheepish again] “I said it on Spanish radio. We were doing a phone interview and I said, ‘Yeah, he’s not doing bad for his age.’”

The banter between dad and lad is easy and refreshing and there’s no apparent tension between the two. The only burden Carlitos will admit to is that of living up to the family name: “Sometimes there is an extra pressure,” he says, “because people look at me in a different way – more maybe than other drivers my age. But in the end it’s an advantage to have my father beside me. You get used to the attention and you get on with it. In the car I am the man who drives and he can’t help me very much, but for the rest he is always there.”

Twenty-four hours later, early Saturday afternoon, a little Spanish huddle has gathered around the back of the Eurointernational team garage. Sainz Snr is here, as is his former manager, Juanjo Lacalle. A family friend has brought back the half-empty, now fizzless, magnum of Mumm from the podium that Carlitos earned for his third place. The atmosphere is light, happy – low-key celebratory. Early clouds have obligingly made way for Catalan sunshine.

The man of the moment, however, is elsewhere.

He’s located 50m away, beyond the garages and hospitality tents, briefly alone in a few empty square metres of space. Striding slowly, but with purpose, back to his team, he’s where he will have to be if he is to live his dreams: out on his own.

A video portrait of Sainz Jnr at en.redbulletin.com/sainzjr For more on the rookie racers, go to www.redbull-juniorteam.com

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liam lynch

This is the guy whose images have defined the current generation of South African counter culture. But to simply call him a photographer only tells half the story Words: Steve Smith Photography: Liam Lynch

Name Liam Lynch Born May 9, 1976 Lives Pretoria Current exhibition Part of the Reportage Atri Festival in Atri, Italy, June 17-August 29 Just like Jack He identifies with beat writer Jack Kerouac’s famous quote: “The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time…”

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There are two Liam Lynches. And both of them talk a helluva lot. The one most people know is Liam The Cool Band Photographer. This is the celeb Liam – the one in the skinny black jeans and sailor tattoos hanging out backstage with the band. This is the one irrevocably tied to the explosion of SA’s punkrock scene over the past five or six years. Think of that cool black-and-white image of a freezeframed Fokofpolisiekar in mid-frenzy – a levitating Francois Van Coke and Wynand Myburgh halo’d by smoke-machine fog and stage lights. Liam took that photograph. He is at the top of the list when it comes to alternative/indie/punk photo-reportage. And because of that, this Liam enjoys a degree of fame and recognition most bands would kill for.

The other Liam Lynch is uncomfortable with all this hoo-ha. “That’s my albatross,” he says. “And the one allows me to do the other. That celebrity culture and my own relatively small profile within that gives me access to do what I really do.”

So what does Liam really do if not make any band performing in front of his considered lens look like the young gods of rockdom?

Turns out The Other Liam has a gameplan that’s wider than the cool pic in the mag. To hear him talk about it requires commitment and knowledge on the part of the listener. You’ve got to concentrate – his words are delivered in the multiple-shot shutter speed of an obsessive personality. And his vocabulary is of someone deeply immersed in his craft. A working knowledge of art theory is a must.

The roots of it all explain much though.

It’s 1996 and South Africa is taking the first ginger steps in squeaky new democratic shoes. The 20-year-old Liam is studying political journalism at Technikon Pretoria – a very politicised campus home to both strongly conservative landbou (agriculture) department students and left-wing radical student organisations. It’s all about the words for Lynch and he’s at a student meeting to write a report on proceedings. Standard stuff…

until the meeting gets jacked by a group of landbou students armed with lead pipes. On him Lynch also has a camera he’d just gotten for his birthday and, amid the ensuing chaos and blood spatter, he’s the only one there taking images of an event that would spray across the next day’s newspapers. His photographs get national coverage. A few months later it happens again, and one of Liam’s photos even makes it as far as The New York Times.

“That whole episode made me realise that if you write there’s only so much you can say – I must have also read at least three different versions of what happened that day. But if you take photographs the facts of it are pretty much undisputable.”

But being a newspaper photographer wasn’t what Lynch wanted to do. “Even then I could already see that aesthetically I was going off in another direction. I wanted to be more of a documentary photographer.” Influenced by SA photographers Paul Weinberg and Omar Badsha – and personally encouraged by Badsha – he began to explore documentary reportage. “Here the story is key.

Everything has to be about the narrative.”

Photographing HIV/AIDS patients, Lynch focused on telling the story of the disease rather than getting the stark and bleak images of AIDS ‘victims’ so stereotypical of images seen in the press in the late ’90s. “There’s a tendency among photographers to create and ‘us and them’ situation that only reinforced the stigma of HIV/AIDS – that it can’t be dealt with. It was a huge problem. People didn’t understand how manageable HIV/AIDS was.

I wanted my photographs to tell that story.”

As both a money-earner and a sliver of insight into Lynch’s often conflicting influences, he worked as an editor/journalist for a quasi-military IT company’s in-house publication. Lynch’s dad is a retired Brigadier-General of the South African Air Force.

“It was just to earn money to buy cameras. I did that and quit. Then I worked in a tattoo studio for R50 a day – squatting in the back of the studio at

Zitat Head: Zitat.Velis exer suscipsusto dion ut loborer ostiniamet in henisse vero exero odigna facipsusto corero

Self portrait: He might look like a rock star, but Liam Lynch is more than just a cool band photographer

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night and walking the streets of Sunnyside, Pretoria, by day taking pictures that I hoped would tell a story.

From then on – particularly when I was shooting nightlife – I started to find the edge of stuff.”

It was now that Badsha’s influence would be critical. He had a look at Lynch’s personal work on the counter-culture scene – the music, the drugs, the people – and made it clear to the young photographer that this was the story he should be telling. He had and ‘in’ no one else had.

“I also played bass in a band called The Slash Dogs and they headlined a show that included a young Afrikaans rock band called Fokofpolisiekar doing an afternoon slot. It was their first-ever live performance. I don’t think everyone got them, but when I saw them perform I was like ‘OK… here it comes. This is going to be phenomenal.’

“Before then they’d phone me up and tell me what their plans were and where they were going and ask me to photograph them. But I wasn’t entirely sure it would work – Afrikaans music fans would be too conservative and the English fans basically just too prejudiced to pay attention to anything Afrikaans, even alternative rock.”

Fokof’s performance that day – a precursor to the incendiary live shows they would build their name on – was enough for Lynch to pick up his camera and, in that gesture, capture the zeitgeist of white South African youth throughout the 2000s.

They are iconic images in the dictionary definition of the word and, along with his eye, they were created by an impeccably professional work ethic.

“Very early on I was photographing on a stage and walked through a door only to get a fat klap from the stage manager because I was too visible.

From then on it was like ‘OK, I only wear black when I’m working… I only move around certain parts of the stage.’ I’ve played in a band and I’ve managed a stage so I’ve learned where to move to not step on anything, how to keep out of the band’s line of sight.

“I learned by paying attention, getting to know all the different people involved. You also have to understand the triangle of forces that make a live show work. The three points are the band, the audience and the stage crew. There are moments in each performance that each of those drive the success.

Nowhere in there does the photographer matter.”

Beyond the story-telling aspect – the depth of which he can only achieve by getting to know his subjects on a personal level – Lynch engages with photography as an art form. “I needed to look at it from an art theory point of view, where photography was an art that didn’t have to justify itself. I had a problem with the way that a photograph is only identified as art because of the way it looks. In other words, only if there was some kind of conceptual value in the image was it considered art.”

Instead, what interests Lynch is what informs the moment of pressing the button to open and close the camera’s shutter. Why was it that moment he chose to capture? “I’m interested in the visual connections and parallels between photos and paintings. There’s this image I took in 2008 I’ve always called ‘The Caravaggio’. It was never a conscious intention to

“I’m not saying I’m ahead of the curve, but it does sometimes take people a while to catch on to what I’m doing”

Every picture tells a story: Lynch’s photographs (left) capture a moment, and what interests him is why he chose that moment to take the photograph

take an image that mirrored the Italian Old Master’s ‘Death Of a Virgin’, but beyond the mere pattern recognition sweep of material in background there’s the similarity between the virgin and the character sleeping in the background of my image. The moment of work in that photograph wasn’t just releasing the shutter. It was sensing that something was happening that others might not see, be it a movement or a play of light. It’s knowledge of what has come before – art theory knowledge that has informed the moment when I have taken the photograph. It’s those ideas that would inform your choice of certain angles, lenses and camera settings.

It’s the same stuff that prompts a painter to pick up a certain brush and choose a certain colour.”

It’s often only when Lynch’s photographs are taken out of print media and exhibited in the context of an exhibition together with a wider body of his work that this further sub-text of his images reveals itself.

There’s a photograph of what looks like a house party – nothing unusual. Except for the naked guy. The image was never viewed as outrageously provocative or anything like that, but the raised eyebrows had more to do with a pop-culture audience wondering why the hell Lynch was taking a photo of a nude oke?

He explains: “It exists as half of a diptych of two photographs. As South Africans we like to polarise issues – whether it’s race or whatever. We fall very easily into ‘us’ and ‘them’. This line was pretty clearly drawn in the past but less so now. What exists in this diptych are distinctions between Jo’burg and Pretoria, black and white, gender, clothed and unclothed. The other image in the diptych features a naked black woman. I like this synchronicity between the two images. I also like that you could only hold those two situations up against each other as photographs.

It wouldn’t work in film, for example. The comparisons would just be too obvious and crass.”

So that’s The Other Liam. A storyteller. A longterm project manager. A sociologist of sorts. An artist.

It’s the artist bit that’s probably most at odds with Liam The Cool Band Photographer. Is his celebrity more appreciated than the art of The Other?

Probably, but he’s working on that perception.

“I’m not saying I’m ahead of the curve, but it does sometimes take people a while to catch on to what I’m doing. I’ll get weird reviews and then a year later I’ll hear it being referred back to as unique and seminal. With each exhibition I think people are beginning to get it more.”

However you choose to define Liam Lynch, “seminal” is one descriptor you’d better use. True to the “question everything” mantra embedded in his website, it’s not a word he’s completely comfortable with. “I’m weary of praise. I can’t help it, my dad taught me about the chain of command and the notion of a team effort. He also instilled in me that if you’re going to do something, then do a proper job of it. I’ll accept being called seminal because I was trying to do something properly that people weren’t paying that much attention to. They didn’t give a damn about telling that story… and to me that story was all important.”

Photography and blogs at www.questioneverything.co.za

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Photography: Kolesky/SanDisk/Red Bull Photofiles

Anders ‘Azun’ Solum from Norway beat 15 of the best freestylers in the world to lift the trophy in this year’s other South African football competition (the one without goals): the world finals of Red Bull Street Style. See page 68

Action

You have to be on the ball to keep up with the exploits on the following pages 52 megavalanche 60 Jordy Smith 68 Red Bull Street Style 74 Journey to the bottom of the sea

MEga v ala Words: Werner Jessner Photography: Jozef Kubica

It’s the longest hour of the summer,

the world’s best mountain-bike race:

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1,800 starters, 2,500m to descend. No excuses.

nche

A marathon down the most infamous Tour de France climb: the Alpe d’Huez

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W

hen you’re in the army – well, the Austrian army, at least – they teach you that if you get caught up in a nuclear attack, you’ve got to throw yourself to the floor with your head facing towards the point of explosion. You should be wearing a helmet to protect your head from debris.

If you open your mouth at the right time before the blast you can protect your eardrums. For health reasons, you have to wait for the radioactive wave to subside before firing back.

“Nuclear explosion!” comes the call. Then get back down on the ground. (Hmm… Must really work in an emergency!)

Up here at the top of Pic Blanc in the western French Alps, things happen in a similar way. But there are differences in detail: a helicopter hovering 3,500m above sea-level, ie just above the starters, is blasting out really shitty Euro-trash pop, which is all the more unbearable for it being an ungodly hour and shattering the majestic peace up here above the clouds.

The band is called 666, the song ‘Alarma!’, and as soon as the nutter yelling through the speakers roars, “La Bomba!”, you know what you’ve got to do. Head down facing in the right direction. Mouth open. And into the pack. Let battle commence!

You can judge for yourself how hard this event is on YouTube, dirt.tv or the regular TV channels that make the effort to cover a race that starts at 3,330m and finishes an 54

hour and two valleys later some 2,680m lower, at 650m above sea-level. The jostling, tumbling and thronging that never seem to abate have to be seen to be believed. It’s as if the glacier is covered in ants, some of which have severed legs. But then you look closer and you see that every one of those ants is a person and what you thought were severed limbs are, in fact, bikes. And they’ve all suddenly tried to find another way down into the valley. Unsuccessfully, of course. Even right at the start it takes several minutes before the last of the starters disappears over the brow of the hill and Pic Blanc gets back to normal. Normal apart from 400 sets of tyre tracks that is.

And these have been left by only the top 400 bikers who set off first. That’s not even a quarter of the original line-up.

This select bunch, sent on their way at 9 o’clock sharp, are the fastest of the 1,800 – maximum – qualifiers. There are also about 80 women who go in a separate race.

The numbers give a clue as to where the Megavalanche stands in the hierarchy of multi-genre extreme sports: it’s the most important of its kind in the world.

It has the most starters. The most world champions. The craziest mountains. The highest elevation. The best value for money (for less than R950 you get to race three times in less than a week, receive lift-passes for the whole area, and shuttle buses, buffets and massage are thrown in). Winning the Megavalanche makes you the unofficial Downhill Marathon World Champion (as there’s no official one). You might even go so far as to say that the Megavalanche winner is the best mountain biker in the world. No other discipline makes such a broad range of demands on the participants and yet is so

action

On the outside, the inside, topside, underside; the direct route or the short cut; riding, rolling, carrying the bike, using one leg, both legs or no legs... There are a lot of ways to descend into the valley, and it’s up to you to decide which to employ at the right moment. To be honest, you don’t often have a lot of choice

true to the original spirit of a sport that has been around since a few crazy Californians dreamed it up in the late 1970s.

If you want to do well in the Megavalanche, you’ve got to be able to pedal like a cross-country racer for an hour at full pelt. And you’ve also got to be able to ride like an experienced downhiller because if you make the slightest mistake, the guy behind you is going to slip by. And then you’ve also got to be able to read the terrain, find a way through the traffic and be ready for constant improvisation. Or, as multiple Downhill World Champion and Megavalanche rookie from last year Fabien Barel puts it: “There are very many factors you have no influence over. That’s what makes the race so difficult.” Despite riding what he felt was a perfect race, the former multiple World Champ was four minutes off the pace. ’Nuff said.

World Cup sprinters such as Messrs Chris Kovarik and Brendan Fairclough, who’d hoped to get off to a flying start, didn’t even make it into the 2009 top 25 in qualifying and had such a rotten time in the race that Fairclough could manage only 138th place, while Kovarik bailed out completely.

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egavalanche is a uniquely French invention, which is no bad thing when it comes to this sort of crazy-but-fun event. It’s the brainchild of George Edwards, a multiple French endurance champion. And, more importantly, he imbibed the mountain-biking spirit very early. He was a true pioneer, attuned to emerging trends and reflexive in acting on them.

This year’s Megavalanche will be the 16th and the legion of competitors reap the rewards of its consistency. Even though the tracks can’t be made safe, injuries are rare. And 56

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Start numbers are decided after the results of qualifying on Friday. The fastest four out of the nine rounds of 200-racers get the letter ‘A’ on their start numbers. They’re the elite.

That alphabet is not long enough to accommodate all of the entrants, so those after ‘Z’ get an added number. Of course, the race will leave physical and psychological scars regardless of whether you start at the front or the back

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Although the race starts on the glacier at the summit of Pic Blanc, as the riders descend the course and the weather changes and the event can cover around 30km in sweltering summer heat

not a single participating rider has ever gone missing or frozen or starved to death. The allocation of starting numbers and other organisational matters that are normally a source of endless queues are taken care of with elegance, ease and a smile. The French may head the field in expertise, but in numbers it’s the Brits who descend from across the Channel in their hundreds and count for about half of all participants.

In recent years there’s also been a notable increase in the number of participants from Germany who are yet to realise that people say hello to each other at over 1,000m above sea level and tend to be on first-name terms when they’re above the tree-line. But they’ll get there eventually.

illustration: andreas posselt

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he person afforded the most respect comes from the middle of nowhere halfway up a mountain in a small country to the east of France. René Wildhaber, who hails from Flumserberg in Switzerland, is Megaman. He’s won the race six times so far and has come second twice. Wildhaber may be small in stature but he’s a racing giant. Of course experience helps, as does the fact that René is a genius on a bike: he’s the current over-30s, Swiss XC Champion. But there’s another more important factor: René is a mountain boy and has a feel for nature.

The Megavalanche rewards the humble, the respectful.

In 2008, the weather was so bad that for a long time it was unclear if the race would go ahead at all. From 6 to 10am, the 400 Megavalanche qualifiers huddled against snow in a draughty cable-car station over 2,000m up like a very colourful yet quiet flock of mountain goats. The top racers were offered their own shuttle to take them to the start.

It would have been dry, warm and quick. But René said no.

As far as he’s concerned, everyone on the mountain is equal.

“René’s a man of the people,” his Swiss friend Fridolin Engler commented from the warmth of the cable-car control room he’d just invaded. René won the race.

Getting a good start is vital. Once a couple of hundred riders have torn up the glacier ahead of you, it’s hard to find a passable route. Which is why everyone puts their foot down for the first few minutes as if this was a sprint. And they encounter an oft-ignored law of physics: where there is already matter, no other matter can exist. Physics students might also enjoy the endless demonstrations of wrong positioning of the centre of gravity; exceeding the limits of adhesion or vector equations (which suddenly become very unequal).

There’s a legendary scene where one rider loses his bike on a long, single track. He doesn’t do anything major. He just makes the mistake of taking his hands off the handlebars. The helicopter camera stays with the riderless bike as it tumbles down the precipice. The shot lasts 23 seconds. The bike probably hasn’t been found to this day.

There can’t be anything else which induces as much pain as the Megavalanche – both for the rider and the bike.

You only know you’ve had a good race if you cross the finish line after an hour wanting to die and swearing that you’ll never, ever take part in another Megavalanche. Ever.

But fear not. By the time registration for the following year’s race opens in January, your mind has tricked itself into remembering this hellishness as the best race on Earth…

Megavalanche L’Alpe d’Huez: July 9-11, 2010: www.avalanchecup.com

Our man on the bike

The heroes: René Wildhaber, 33, is the record holder for victories among the men. The 12-time downhill champion Anne Caro Chausson has won twice in the last three years (she missed out in 2008, having to head to Beijing to compete and win gold in the Olympic women’s BMX event) G E NEVA GE N E VA

LYON LY YON

Sw w itzerl wi z rland a d

Fra ranc an nce cce Gran Paradiso National Park

G RENO RENOBLE OBLE E PIC BLANC 3350 m

I alyy Ital

TURIN T URIN N

Écrins National Park

VALEN N CE NC CE

3000 m

ALPE D’HUEZ

Vanoise National Park

ALPE D’HUEZ 1800 m

2000

1000

ALLEMOND

625 m

3

6

9

12

15 miles

The first 10 minutes are all glacier, followed by a high Alpine single trail on which overtaking is almost impossible. After 15 minutes of hard riding, a dusty, and towards the end muddy, path leads to the finish. Those who need less than an hour to get to the finish line can consider a career in professional mountain biking

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man on a mission Ahead of the premier surfing event on the SA calendar, the ASP World Tour’s Billabong Pro, local hero Jordy Smith talks about life on the pro tour… and the big year he’s having in 2010 Words: Craig Jarvis Photography: Ryan Miller

Forty minutes is all you have. Forty minutes in the water. The waves might be inconsistent. You might be in a rhythm with the ocean. Or you might not be. Your competitors might be getting all the good set waves. You might have a new board underfoot. There are judges watching your every move, spectators cheering on your opponents, fellow professionals watching closely, and thousands upon thousands of armchair critics watching the live webcast all over the world. Win your first heat and the benefits of self-confidence and fan support are yours. Lose your first heat and you risk a loser’s treadmill that is tough to escape. It’s not only the spectators on the beach who will forget you, but worse, the world’s media. Professional surfing moves fast.

Weeks, months and years of training all boil down to 40 frenetic minutes out among the waves, trying to pick up on the ocean’s patterns, trying to keep your head clear and trying not to fall off.

Concentrate too hard and you’re bound to fall, relax too much and you’re sure to tumble. You also need to interact with your opponents, as well as keep them at arm’s length. Finally, you need to have a headspace that tells your body you’re free as a bird, an artist on a canvas, a winner. Pressure, what pressure?

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Print 2.0

za.redbulletin.com/print2.0 Experience a day in the life of surf star Jordy Smith

Ahead of the premier surfing event on the SA calendar, the ASP world tour’s Billabong Pro, local hero Jordy Smith talks about life on the pro tour… and the big year he’s having in 2010.

Words: Craig Jarvis

“i try not to over-amp in either the physical or mental state – it can have a negative effect on competing”

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Durban’s Jordy Smith is the man of the moment in professional surfing circles and, it would seem, an athlete blessed with that rare gift of not feeling pressure.

No butterflies to quell for this six-foottwo SA boytjie who’ll gladly confess that he doesn’t understand the concept of pressure. Widely regarded as surfing’s Next Big Thing when, in the glare of much media hype, he turned pro in 2008, Smith initially found the step up to the Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP) World Tour pretty tough. But, after two years spent learning his craft, Smith made his big move in 2010 and he’s currently ranked second, chasing ninetimes world champion Kelly Slater for the number-one slot.

The legend and the kid will face each other at the next ASP World Tour event, the Billabong Pro at Jeffreys Bay. Both surfers regard it as one of their favourite events, and it’s here that Smith could wrestle the number-one spot from the most famous man in surfing. South Africa and the rest of the world will be watching closely.

Red Bulletin: You seem to be a man of the world these days, travelling to various exotic destinations on the ‘Dream Tour’.

Where do you base yourself?

Jordy Smith: “Two areas recently: first, the Gold Coast in Australia. This works out really well for me logistically as the first two World Tour events of the year are in Australia.

The first is the Quiksilver Pro at Snapper Rocks. It’s known for clean, warm water and excellent waves. After this I go down to the Rip Curl Pro at Bells Beach in Torquay – a right-hand reef/point break that offers long, peeling waves in cold water. I enjoy both and like both waves.

My second ‘base’ is Los Angeles.

There are a few six-star prime surfing events alongside the main Hurley Pro event at Lower Trestles. Trestles is also one of my favourite highperformance waves in the world.

LA has an abundance of surfing hype as well, which is great for my media commitments and for all my sponsors.

It’s also obviously way more accessible to travel to and from LA to some of the other events in Brazil. I also have a few physical trainers based at Newport Beach, so that’s accessible as well.”

How do you prep for a contest like the Billabong Pro? What’s it like for your 62

Clockwise from main picture: At the Quiksilver Pro, Australia, March 2010; in typical relaxed mode; an interview on Bells Beach; relaxing with Damien Fahrenfort

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The Equipment Everyone competing in the Billabong Pro will have a full quiver of boards for Supertubes.

For Jordy Smith, it will be a bunch of JS (Jason Stevenson) boards. Smith normally rides boards of around the 6ft 3in range for four-to-five-foot waves. Anything smaller than that and he’ll downsize to a 6ft 2in or a 6ft 1in: quicker and looser. This is important because when Supers gets small it gets incredibly fast, and the only way to maintain the sort of speed required is with a fast board.

If the swell picks up to a solid six-toeight-foot, Jordy will break out the 6ft 4in rounded pin for more drive and hold.

When Supertubes gets to this size then it’s all about the tube ride, and a rounded pin with a bit more length should hold better in the tube.

“All the different boards in my quiver have different characteristics in the rails, tail, fin and overall plane shape. So it depends entirely on the conditions. I just plan on being tuned into my equipment and to surf with confidence.”

Riding high: Smith takes to the waves with his selection of boards

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body, and mentally when you paddle out for your first-round heat?

“Pre-contest training is done all year round, when time permits. I need to keep my body in shape, and I also have to attain that state where I’m trusting my inner thoughts and instincts when competing. I try very hard not to overamp in either the physical or mental state – it can definitely have a negative effect on competing. This year I’ve been concentrating hard on having fun and enjoying my surfing. Sounds a bit oxymoronic, concentrating hard on having fun, but there you go…”

What about all the travelling? It’s an incredible challenge to juggle World Tour events, World Qualifying Series events, photo shoots and sponsor trips as well as organising boards and equipment all over the world.

Do you have help with this?

“I always try and enjoy the grind of travelling. If you have all the logistics worked out, which my mom does, and you travel with friends and family, travelling can be good fun.”

What sort of hotels do you stay in?

Do you enjoy suitcase life?

“I tend to stay in good places. I can’t afford to get ill and I need good food intake. So accommodation, cars and stuff are usually all pretty good. Living out of a suitcase presented challenges when I started, but it gets better every year, as I tend to hang with the same friends and acquaintances at the same locations.”

From a purely surfing point of view, where are the best and the worst destinations in the world that you get to visit?

“Recently I’ve really enjoyed going to Bali. It has so much to offer and has such rippable waves. Tahiti is another destination that I enjoy, as it’s one of the most scenic and relaxed spots in the world and also has incredibly intense waves. I know Brazil has great waves, but whenever I’ve been there I seem to miss them, and most of my surfing experiences there have been poor.”

Who do you hang with when you’re on the World Tour?

“Usually Travis Logie [a fellow South African surfer], as well as the Hawaiians and Americans. I find them all superfriendly, especially my team-mates Bobby Martinez and Roy Powers. Travis and I really get on well. We gym-train together when we get a chance, play a game of tennis or knock a ball around.

We also try and book into the same hotels and apartments when we can, and share costs wherever possible. Travis is always 64

Clockwise from top left: Jordy Smith and Mitch Coleborn in Bali; sampling a fresh coconut; with Craig Anderson, suffering from a bout of ‘Bali belly’; visiting a Hindu temple in Bali; after winning his quarter-final heat at the Quiksilver Pro 2010 in Australia; celebrating with Taj Burrow; with (far left) Matty Lopez and Damien Fahrenfort; with fans on the Gold Coast

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TOUR HOTSPOTS Quiksilver Pro, Gold Coast, Australia, Feb 26-March 10 The first contest of the season is always an opportunity to open the judge’s eyes. Surfers bring their A-Game and whatever transpires, the performance levels are set for the year.

Three surfers were in a league of their own at this event. Kelly Slater, Dane Reynolds and Jordy Smith came flying out of the gates and went ballistic on the clean open walls of Snapper Rocks. Slater showed his hunger for a 10th world title from the outset, Reynolds showed his disregard for the rules of contest surfing, free-surfing his way through heats, while Smith let loose with a torrent of new-school and classic moves. That Taj Burrow beat him into second place was almost irrelevant. He was a classic case of ‘show-up and blow-up’.

Rip Curl Pro, Bells Beach, Australia, Mar 30-April 10 Bells Beach is another right-hand point break, and although the event was run at four different locations, it was mainly run in right-handers. Smith was again on form.

Looking loose, fast, and incredibly relaxed, Smith seemed a sure bet for the finals until he was ousted in the quarters by fellow Red Bull team-mate and reigning world champ, Mick Fanning. A fifth place to tag onto his second place meant Smith was turning 2010 into his contender year.

Santa Catarina Pro, Santa Catarina, Brazil, Apr 23-May 2 In punchy left- and right-hand beachbreak peaks, Smith didn’t disappoint. Going to town on waves that obviously reminded him of his home break – New Pier in Durban – Smith boosted, spun and flew all the way through to the quarters, his second quarter-final placing in two events. There he came up against a rejuvenated Kelly Slater, who managed to beat him by the narrowest of margins. Slater would narrowly lose to Jadsen Andre in the finals. When the spray had cleared, nine-time world champion Slater took over number-one slot on the World Tour ratings, and Smith popped up at number two.

The Billabong Pro, Jeffreys Bay, South Africa, July 15-25 In 2009 the Billabong Pro was rated as the best event of the year, and given that the waves on the first three 2010 events were just ‘OK’, the Billabong could again scoop top honours. Jeffreys, remember, just needs to get some swell to be excellent. It’s one of the best-sculptured waves in the world, and the waiting period, towards the end of July, is historically the best for good waves. If they get good at Supertubes, Jeffreys Bay, then the world’s best surfers are going to have their work cut out for them when Jordy Smith takes to the water.

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Port Elizabeth Boekenhoutskloof

KwaNomzamo Jeffreys Bay Paradise Beach

Cape St. Francis

THE VENUE Although it is called a ‘mechanical wave’ because it is so perfect and lined up, Supertubes, the location for the Billabong Pro Jeffreys Bay, has many moods. The best waves move up and down the point. Local knowledge include things like the difference between a south swell and a west swell (south swell runs faster, and there is more energy at the end of the wave, good for tube rides) high tide and low tide, southerly and southwesterly winds, and when it’s really powerful, which wave of a set to choose. Smith has spent so much water time here that this knowledge has simply rubbed off and he has become a wave magnet at Jeffreys Bay. If there is one good wave to be had, it will appear to Smith. If there’s a wave selection decision to be made, Smith will make the right decision. All he needs to do is get two good waves per heat at Supertubes, all the way through to the final, and he’ll win the event. It’s that simple. Smith is a property owner at Jeffreys Bay and when he arrives in town he immediately feels at home and at ease. This too plays into his hands, as a relaxed Jordy is a dangerous competitor.

If the contest moves up to Boneyards, the top reef section that picks up more swell when it’s small, Smith will also be in his element. Boneyards is a fast-running right-hander that is conducive to highperformance ripping.

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Additional photography: Marcelo maragni/red bull photofiles (1), kolesky/sandick/red bull photofiles (1), getty images (4), rex features (1), bildagentur (1)

“when the tide changes, the wave changes accordingly and you have to know where to sit to get the good ones. it’s a big playing field”

good for support as well, and I think he probably feels the same about me.”

So who are the characters on the tour?

Who do you bond with and is there anyone you don’t really gel with?

“I’d have to say Kekoa Bacalso and Freddy P (Patacchia). These two have such charisma and are pretty funny and witty. Chris ‘Davo’ Davidson is another one who can get the party going at dinnertime. He steals the show when he gets going. Strangely enough, there’s no one I don’t really get on with.

I haven’t had a bad run in with any of the guys on tour. They all seem pretty chilled in their approach.”

Is there a lot of partying, and how do you deal with temptation?

“Like any sport there will be parties around events. In my case it’s usually on the last day, and we all pretty much go. As for the temptations, we’re all guys and we do have fun on tour as well… But if I told you too much about that, I’d have to kill you.”

What about finances? Your bank account is obviously healthy these days. It must take discipline not letting all that get to you?

“I’m really fortunate in that I have a great support team who look after my funds. My mum and dad have dealt with all the finances, ensuring that my future is secure and that I have some good investments. I’ve always been pretty disciplined where money is concerned.

That’s been my upbringing.”

There’s a lot of money in surfing these days, which means you must have a lot of sponsor commitments.

Is it tough to manage those and still focus on competing?

“I’m happy to say this is one of the easiest things for me. I just take it in my stride, and have fun with everyone, hopefully keeping everyone happy. I also have the best manager in John Shimooka. He’s played a big part in handling most of the contracts I’ve signed in the past. He’s also responsible for making sure that all contracts are honourably carried out in the sense of ‘code of conduct’ towards the brands. He makes sure I meet all deadline dates at brand signings and trade shows all over the globe. He also helps with a yearly schedule to make sure I don’t get double-booked or anything. It happens. He also helps with board shipments, car hire and that sort of easy stuff, as well as ties me in with movie shoots, and even organises me time to go free-surfing.”

Everyone wants to know what your gameplan has been for this year. We’ve

THE SHARKS Jeffreys Bay sees plenty of shark action and there have been a few ‘men in grey suits’ cruising around while contests have been on, showing scant regard for the poor competitors. Taj Burrow got buzzed badly by a shark while surfing in the Billabong Pro a few years ago. “I remember watching Taj that heat. He came in regardless of the result, and didn’t want to paddle out again.”

Smith has seen a few sharks as well.

“One year we were surfing a Pro Junior down at The Point (just down from Supertubes).

A shark hit Joseph Krone and sent him flying about six feet into the air, right off his board.

It happened just metres away from where we were surfing. Then the shark bit his board and left a 22-inch radius imprint bite before it swam away. We still ran the contest.”

always known about your talent, but we’ve noticed that this year you’re competing well too.

“Well, it’s surfing, y’know? You can only approach each event differently as no two are the same. So my gameplan varies, but I obviously try to keep it progressive no matter what. A lot will change through the year, so I just try and keep on top of it all and adjust areas that need it. That’s not giving too much away, is it [laughs]?”

Jeffreys Bay has a special place in your heart, and it’s a place where you’ve really performed at your best in the past. You own a house and pay taxes there… So what comes to mind when you think of Jeffreys?

“It’s a special place for me, sure. I spent a lot of my youth surfing Supertubes and I’ve seen the wave change in many ways. You do need to be in rhythm with both the line-up as well as the wave itself. When the tide changes, the wave changes accordingly and you really have to know where to sit to get the good ones. It’s a big playing field. There are so many variables that come into play at Supers and you really have to be in sync if you want to come away with a win. And we all do, don’t we? Otherwise why compete?”

Hang out with Jordy Smith at za.redbulletin.com/print2.0 To watch him compete in the Billabong Pro check out the live webcast on www.billabongpro.com

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za.redbulletin.com/print2.0 Watch action from the Red Bull Street Style finals in Cape Town

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Freestyle Football’s

Coming Home In Africa, like South America, it’s what you do on the ball that counts, not how you play the game. So when the Red Bull Street Style World Finals came to Cape Town, it was a homecoming for everything the world’s best football tricksters stand for Words: Steve Smith Photography: Dean Treml 69

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Vantage point: Contestants get a view of Cape Town from Lion’s Head

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o the packed-to-therafters crowd, the 2010 Red Bull Street Style World Finals seems to be more than just another sporting event. Up in the stands, it feels like a celebration in honour of someone returning from an extended absence, and though everything is familiar on the surface, there are differences.

The wanderer has grown, matured and learned, but there’s no doubt as to where his roots and heart lie. As a consequence, the arena is being driven by the kind of energy you wouldn’t expect to find at a freestyle football competition.

Or to put it another way, the crowd are going completely and utterly bananas.

Standing in front of these 1,200 people, on a raised circular stage in a short-lived structure next to the Castle Of Good Hope – South Africa’s oldest building temporarily twinned with its newest – is a diminutive Nigerian boy. And, apart from a football balanced perfectly on his head, all he is wearing is his underpants. He didn’t start

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out like this. At the beginning of his roundrobin match-up, young Habib Makanjuola was wearing shorts, a T-shirt, socks, and trainers. But he steadily divested those garments during his three-minute heat, all the while maintaining control of the ball, balancing it on his head or his big toe. You try removing a shoe and sock from a foot while balancing a ball on it.

The crowd, naturally, rather likes this.

One, Habib has just turned 11 and is about 4ft high, begging instant underdog status.

Two, his tricks are highly original. And three, he represents what the audience has known all along: by being held in Africa, freestyle football has come home.

It might have a new name, but at its essence, doing tricks with a ball is nothing new to Africans, and specifically Southern Africans. For decades, a particular kind of township soccer has been played on any available open space. Games of diski, as it’s known, are struck up on anything from a grassless patch of distinctive red African earth, to the concrete of a school playground. Usually a tennis ball is used, but anything vaguely round will do, and

the main object of the game is to display one’s ball skills rather than anything as crass as actually scoring a goal. The basics of juggling, trapping and balancing the ball are a given – what’s crucial is the style you display in the execution thereof. Street cred is made and shattered on this alone.

It doesn’t take the Cape Town crowd more than three seconds of the opening match-up of Red Bull Street Style 2010 before they have recognised, appreciated, and adopted it as one of their own. This is likely the first Street Style event any of them have seen, but its roots and shared DNA are evident to all. The rules are simple: three minutes, two freestylers, one ball and each player has a maximum of 20 seconds with the ball before he must pass it on, so that in total each player has 90 seconds to make his mark on the three judges. You need a majority decision to win. Simple. Elemental. The crowd get it.

The crowd also pick up on the beats being laid down by Ready D, the legendary South African DJ. His is a thrumming, low-frequency backdrop to an anticipatory vibe that just builds and builds. And as

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The style on display is crucial. Street cred is made and shattered on this alone it grows, so does the realisation by many in the crowd that they’re witnessing a reinvention of the familiar. Among the young kids in particular, seeds of ideas are being sown as to how they could grow the Red Bull Street Style repertoire.

It’s a kung fu moment. The Master of the Way Of The Balanced Foot returned to teach his disciples all he has learned on his long travels. Prior to the competition, some of the freestylers visited a couple of local schools to demonstrate the evolution of diski into Street Style. Reigning champion Arnaud ‘Séan’ Garnier blows the school kids away with his B-Boy take on what one could do with a football if one thought outside the pitch. So what if The Master speaks with a French accent.

The blowing away blew both ways: the freestylers were knocked off their feet by what they saw and how they felt in Cape Town. As one of UNESCO’s World Heritage sites, the Mother City is special.

If South Africa is a jewel on the African continent, Cape Town is the standout city within that. It’s a laid-back coastal city with a Mediterranean climate that outMediterraneans its European namesake.

For one thing, its beaches are as good, if not better, lush winelands are a short drive away, and the city is nestled under a very special landmark.

It was right in the shadow of Table Mountain that the 2010 Red Bull Street Style World Finals took place. “As soon as the finals are over,” Hoai-Nam ‘Nam The Man’ Nguyen, Ireland’s well-known and peculiarly-named-for-an-Irishman freestyler, says, pointing upwards, “I’m going up there.” Along with his fellow competitors, Nam had already been up to the top of Lion’s Head, the small outcrop that stands guard next to the Big Flat One, to shoot a spectacular video.

There’s an energy about this mountain that draws people, one that counteracts the news-channel-driven prejudice that suggests South Africa is a “dangerous” country to visit. Interestingly enough, Nam wasn’t mugged the moment he arrived

Street life: Arnaud ‘Séan’ Garnier (top) and Andrew Henderson (above) mix it with the local kids

here. “What strikes me the most are the people,” he says. “They’re very welcoming and open. You hear all these bad stories about South Africa, but I was just looking forward to seeing the place for myself.

And hey, nothing bad has happened to me.”

That wasn’t the case for the entirety of Nam’s visit: he got knocked out in the quarter-finals, which was kind of bad, but given the level of competition seen at the 2010 championships, getting that far was an achievement in itself.

“I started freestyling 20 years ago and it has changed a lot,” says 2010’s MC and freestyle pioneer Steve ‘Eli Freeze’ Elias, “but since the last Red Bull Street Style World Finals in 2008, the sport has really changed. I was impressed with what the guys were doing two years ago in São Paolo, but here in South Africa the level has jumped up dramatically.

“I remember someone coming up to me in 2000 and saying, ‘Aren’t you guys going to run out of tricks?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, well maybe,’ but as you can see now, these guys are raising the bar every year.

Whether I’m watching stuff on the internet

or at events like this, I see creative minds coming up with new tricks all the time.”

One of the most creative of this new generation of freestylers is South Africa’s own Kamal ‘Kamalio’ Ranchod. (You have to have a nickname if you’re going to make a mark in freestyle.) Kamalio and his signature tracksuit bottoms are so relaxed it looks as if both of them have just got out of bed. By rights, Kamalio should be worried, his brow creased by the weight of expectation the hometown favourite carries. Throughout the preliminary heats, Kamalio knocks off lesser-skilled opponents with a smile on his face and a hug at the end of a match-up.

The remainder of the Top 16 are nervous.

A guy this good shouldn’t be this nice.

Here’s his view of the Top 16 showdown: “These guys are all so good. No, I’m not one of the favourites. Definitely not. I’m just happy to have made the Top 16.” What he isn’t saying is that his performances so far have made the other 15 nervous. He won the qualifiers at a canter and hasn’t even rolled out his big move yet. They’ve heard of the Kung Fu Kum Down; some 71

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Anders ‘Azun’ Solum

The winner of Red Bull Street Style 2010, Azun wowed the crowds with a triple Around The World – the first landed in the entire tournament. “It’s the hardest trick in the world,” he says

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Kamal ‘Kamalio’ Ranchod Local hero, Kamalio has technical skills of the highest order. He won his qualifiers easily without even rolling out his big move, the Kung Fu Cum Down, but lost out in the final to Azun

Arnaud ‘Séan’ Garnier

Defending champion Séan looked like a title contender, but despite his complex B-Boy skills, he was knocked out of the Top 16 on a night that produced plenty of upsets

Additional Photography: Kolesky/SanDisk/Red Bull Photofiles (2), Ray Demski/Red Bull photofiles (1)

Star performers: Norway’s Anders Solum prepares to take on Rickard Sjolander of Sweden in the Top 16 in a packed arena

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Perfect judgement: Former Dutch international Edgar Davids was looking for creativity

of them may have seen a video of it on the internet, but no one’s seen Kamalio pull it off in competition. It’s a transition move, controlling the ball from standing up to sitting down. “I flip the ball up, let it bounce twice on the ground and, in between those two bounces, I intersect the ball’s arc by dipping beneath it and doing two, spinning kung fu-style reverse kicks. With each spin I’m lower to the ground until I’m sitting down and the ball’s third bounce is on my knee.”

As the Top 16 round kicks off on April 28, the final night of the three-day event, there are clear champion contenders. The defending champ, Séan, of France, SA’s Kamalio, Christian ‘Rocky’ Mayorga from Columbia – a huge crowd favourite – and Anders ‘Azun’ Solum from Norway and Denmark’s Brian ‘Brizze’ Mengel. Young Habib didn’t make it. As entertaining as his garment-removing routine was, his actual ball-jugging skills were limited.

The guy still has a few years to go before he starts shaving – his time will come.

Judging the final round are football legends Edgar Davids and George Weah, together with former South African Street Style champ Chris Njokwana. Weah and Davids might not be freestylers, but they’re former international footballers (Weah for Liberia, Davids for the Netherlands) and have judged this event before, so they know what they’re looking for. Each judge is assigned a specific element of the action: Weah has his eye on control; Davids on creativity, Njokwana on style.

“I don’t have half the skills these guys have and I played football at the highest level,” says Weah. “I want to see the competitors controlling the ball rather than the ball controlling them. The guys who are able to confine the ball to a small perimeter around them, and who do it with speed, will get my vote.”

It’s this speed and control that would prove vital on the night, with another of Cape Town’s characteristics literally blowing everyone away. The Cape chooses this night to unleash its howling Black Southeaster and, despite the arena being reasonably well sheltered, the swirling wind causes havoc with ball-control skills. A night of upsets was on the cards when Austria’s powerful Faruk Onmaz knocked out Séan and his complex B-Boy skills. Out too went Rocky when the wind deflected his charge for glory.

It was clear from the event’s outset that two schools of freestyle football were in evidence, and they don’t see eye to eye. One is the hip-hop influenced, breakdancing approach, and its proponents seem to be B-Boys first who have incorporated ball

Two schools of freestyle football were in evidence and they don’t see eye to eye skills into their routines. Séan won with this technique in 2008. The other – as championed by Azun and Brizze – is far more football oriented. “I don’t get the breakdance stuff,” says Brizze. “I don’t think it’s part of freestyle and it’s not my style anyway. For the crowd, maybe it’s exciting to see these handstands and stuff, but for me it’s not part of the sport.”

The judges seem to agree with the young Dane, and to the final they have promoted his towering fellow Scandinavian, Azun, and hometown boy Kamalio. Both have technical skills of the highest order.

For the first two minutes of the final match-up, it’s pretty tight – maybe Kamalio has his nose in front – but the final 30 seconds turns the contest on its head. The SA boy loses control on his big Kung Fu Kum Down, while his opponent nails a triple Around The World, which involves tapping the ball up with your foot, then moving the same foot in an orbit around the ball before tapping it up again. A double is tough. A triple hadn’t been landed the whole tournament.

Game, set and match, Azun. “With the level of competition here, I never expected this,” he says later. “There are some brilliant freestylers here. I was hoping for a final 16, and everything after that was a bonus.

Before the triple I was sure Kamalio had won – he did some amazing tricks – but after I landed the move I knew I was in with a good chance. It’s the hardest trick in the world. I’ve practised it for four years and that was the second time I ever landed it in a competition.”

The crowd is a little disappointed, but as all the freestylers clamber onto the stage to embrace the winner, the fans applaud, hoot and whistle in honour of what has been a homecoming, education and celebration all in one. If this 2010 event is anything to go on, the level of skill in Red Bull Street Style is on an exponential upward curve. The next event in 2012 should be sensational.

Finals action at za.redbulletin.com/print2.0 Freestyle video at en.redbulletin.com/streetstyle

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Journey to the bottom of the ocean Fifty years ago, Jacques Piccard descended 10,916m to the bottom of the Mariana Trench in his bathyscaphe Trieste. But what was driving him on? His father’s dream. And what kept him alive? His faith in the laws of nature. His record survives to this day

photography: SĂźddeutsche Zeitung Photo/SZ Photo

Words: Andreas Rottenschlager

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The hefty hulk of the Trieste sinks slowly towards the seabed.

The bathyscaphe’s two passengers can see nothing of the squall whipping up huge waves on the surface. Here in the Pacific, 380km south-west of Guam, the largest island in the Mariana Archipelago, darkness reigns. The lights on board the Trieste have been dimmed. It’s an effort to make out the instructions on the instruments in the faint glow of the lamps. But the explorers want to accustom their eyes to the darkness in order to study the unknown world they’re entering.

Don Walsh, a lieutenant in the US Navy, is on board as the submarine expert and observer. Jacques Piccard, from Switzerland, sits at the controls and manoeuvres the almost 20m vessel towards the Mariana Trench. The two researchers nicknamed their mission ‘Nekton’, after a type of organism that can move underwater independently of currents. Piccard is here to prove that the apparatus will hold out, even at the bottom of the ocean, under extreme pressure.

It is Saturday, January 23, 1960, and the date marks the Trieste’s 65th outing.

The day will produce the deepest dive in history.

helmet. With a dad like this, how could young Jacques become anything but an adventurer? But in the end it was Auguste Piccard’s invention of the bathyscaphe – an extreme-depth submarine – that made Mission Nekton possible.

The name comes from the Greek words for deep (bathys) and ship (skaphos). The basic principle was straightforward.

Buoyancy would be provided by a huge float filled with water and petrol. Upward and downward movement would be controlled by ballast, hence two silos inside the hull each filled with eight tonnes of scrap iron. The pressurised steel bathysphere on the underside of the massive float had room for a two-man crew.

From 1953, Jacques Piccard was involved in the construction of a bathyscaphe called the Trieste. The father-and-son team wanted to reach the lowest points of the Earth’s oceans with their newfangled under-sea vessel.

photography: AP/William J Smith

A dull thud suddenly shatters the silence in the steel ball. Tiny cracks appear in the Perspex porthole

To understand what inspired the learned economist Jacques Piccard to undertake a journey to the bottom of the Mariana Trench is to delve into an exciting episode in scientific history. Because the preparations for Mission Nekton had already started with the adventures of Jacques’s father, experimental physicist Auguste Piccard.

When it came to combining curiosity and recklessness, young Jacques couldn’t have had a better example.

Auguste Piccard was an empiricist whose healthy adventuring spirit meant he didn’t spend all his time in the four walls of his laboratory. In 1931, the bold professor became the first person to advance into the stratosphere in his balloon, the FNRS-1, to improve his research data on cosmic rays. Fittingly, for one with such a cavalier spirit, his landing was more crash than touchdown, on a glacier near Obergurgl in the Ötztal Alps. Contemporary photographs of Piccard Snr show him with an upturned, padded wicker basket on his head – a precursor of the modern crash

The Trieste dives ever deeper towards the seabed. It is now more than an hour since the expedition began south-west of Guam where the crescent-shaped Mariana Trench marks the lowest area on earth.

The temperature inside the bathyscaphe drops with every descended metre.

Piccard and Walsh change their clothes, which are wet through from their transfer from the boat accompanying the mission onto the Trieste. They have a mere 90cm in which to do so. But the next challenge is up to the Swiss to manage alone. Jacques Piccard needs to demonstrate his skill at the helm to find the perfect speed of descent. Time is short as the explorers want to be back on the surface before darkness falls. But descending too fast would increase the risk of colliding with the walls of the Mariana Trench at these unknown depths.

The first incident occurs after 1,280 of almost 11,000m: a small leak. Water begins to seep into the bathyscaphe via a cable duct. But Piccard doesn’t think of turning back. In 64 dives, his bathyscaphe has never let him down. He has no doubt about the Trieste’s capabilities. “For me she was a living creature possessed with a will to resist the increasing pressure,” he wrote years later. At 6,000m, Walsh and Piccard leave the ocean’s abyssal zones behind.

The two per cent of the sea still deeper is named, chillingly, the Hadal zone, after Hades, the underworld of ancient mythology.

The bathyscaphe ventures deeper and deeper, breaking record after record: 7,025m below sea level – a new record for a manned descent; 8,848m – the height of Mount Everest.

A dull thud suddenly shatters the silence in the steel ball 9,875m down. Tiny cracks appear in the Perspex porthole.

The first signs of ever-increasing water pressure. Piccard stays 75

Stops on a voyage to the bottom of the sea: Ingenious balloonist and inventor Auguste Piccard (top left, with his son Jacques) came up with the basic principle for the bathyscaphe, a submarine that would shatter the final frontiers of sea travel. Jacques inherited his father’s enquiring mind and adventurous spirit and helped build the Trieste (above). The bathysphere was made by Krupp. On January 23, 1960, Piccard Jr and US Lieutenant Don Walsh (small picture, second row, second from left, being received by President Eisenhower, on the left in the photograph) made history

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photography: AP/U.S. Navy, AP, interfoto/LP, KEYSTONE/Keystone Pressedienst, SĂźddeutsche Zeitung Photo/SZ Photo (4), UPPA/Photoshot (2)

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calm. He checks the instruments. No other damage. He remembers the calculations he and his father had made. They reassure him that the boat was built for depths of up to 20,000m. And if it works on paper and obeys the laws of physics, it will work in reality too. Piccard and Walsh have more than another 1,000m to go before reaching the bottom of the Mariana Trench.

Why Jacques Piccard undertook this journey with a US Navy lieutenant and the Navy’s money can be explained by two factors specific to the 1950s: a fascination for deep-sea research and the effects of the Cold War. When Jacques Piccard and his father Auguste first tested their bathyscaphe in Italy, their dives attracted a lot of attention around Europe.

Sensationalist articles even suggested that the Trieste had been held on the seabed by a giant octopus. Jacques and Auguste were financing their work at the time with loans from the FNRS, a Belgian scientific fund. Just as funds were drying up from 1955 onwards and Europe was gradually losing interest in expensive deep-sea journeys, the US Marines began to express an interest. Officially, the American military wanted to acquire the Trieste to salvage submarines which had sunk and to conduct scientific dives. And in those Cold-War days of scientific competition with Soviet Russia, the superpower also had an eye on breaking records and gaining prestige.

Furthermore, by the end of the decade, new reports of untapped natural resources were arousing the interest of engineers, adventurers and investors alike.

When Piccard promised that he would reach the greatest known depth of just under 11,000m, he was taken on as part of the team for Mission Nekton. In Essen, Krupp set to work on a new, thicker pod for the submarine. German engineering and 12cm-thick steel walls would protect the explorers at the bottom of the Mariana Trench.

of the Mariana Trench, his submarine will get stuck. There’s no empirical data for the Hadal zone. Piccard reduces the speed of descent and lets his submarine gently sink those final few metres.

At 13:06 local time he reaches his goal. The bathyscaphe Trieste, conceived in 1905 by Auguste Piccard and built in 1953 in the Italian city of the same name, comes to a halt at a depth of 10,916m. The helmsman records his first impressions in the logbook: ‘The seabed looked bright and clear, a desert full of cinnamon-coloured silt. We landed on a nice, flat surface of solid diatomaceous ooze.’ Lights illuminate this inaccessible zone for the first time.

Their stay at these record-breaking depths would last barely half an hour.

Piccard and Walsh measure the radiation and observe the seabed. The temperature in their cabin has now fallen to 10 degrees.

The external pressure is an incredible 1.1 tonnes per cm2. They are in a hurry to ascend to the surface. They take one last look at a newly conquered place on Earth and begin to empty the ballast silos.

At 16:56, cue jubilation on the boat accompanying the mission, the USS Wandank. The flock of journalists who’d also come along for the ride swarm on deck to take photos. Ever since articles about giant octopuses had appeared, the scientist has been wary of newspapers, but today the new deep-sea hero smiles and even waves at the camera. He has proved that the Trieste can withstand even the most extreme conditions.

In accordance with the contract, the Trieste would now pass into American ownership. But Piccard himself returned to Europe. The Nekton mission had anchored his name in the history books forever.

photography: Süddeutsche Zeitung Photo/SZ Photo

The temperature in the cabin has fallen to 10 degrees, the external pressure is incredible and they are in a hurry to ascend

The Trieste was now just a couple of minutes from the lowest point on earth. But on board, helmsman Piccard is suddenly gripped by a worrying thought. If there’s a loose layer of mud at the bottom

No one has reached the 10,916m of Mission Nekton since. The dives were soon considered too expensive and of relatively low scientific value. There was no further evidence of valuable resources lying on the seabed. Yet Piccard remained true to his passion even after the Mariana venture. In 1969, he spent a month drifting along a 2,400km-long course through the Gulf Stream on a vessel called the Ben Franklin that he built himself. And he continued to take part in underwater expeditions up until the age of 82. In one of his books he writes, “In each of us there is a driving force which won’t give you peace when it knows you can still go another step further.”

Jacques Piccard, who this force took to the deepest point in the oceans, died at the age of 86 on November 1, 2008, in La Tour-de-Peilz on the shores of Lake Geneva.

Jacques’s son Bertrand also has the adventuring spirit. He made the first non-stop balloon flight around the world in 1999, and is planning to fly around the world in a solar-powered plane: www.bertrandpiccard.com

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Robby Naish swaps the big waves of Hawaii for the gentler waters of the canals in Venice. Check out his essential kit on page 82

More Body&Mind Change your pace and find out what’s going in music, sport and culture

photography: Damiano Levati/RedBull Photofiles

80 The huber brothers visit hangar-7 82 Get the gear 84 festivals 85 chefs and their secrets 86 listings 90 nightlife 96 short story 98 Mind’s eye

Hangar-7 Interview

The Huber Brothers Thomas and Alexander Huber are mountain-climbing megastars. They do everything together. Well, almost Words: Uschi Korda The first impression of the brothers Huber – the Huberbuam in their local Bavarian dialect – is of how very different they are. Thomas, the elder at 44, towers over Alexander, 42, by more than a head.

They live some 150 miles apart – one in Berchtesgaden, Germany, the other in Traunstein, Austria – but they arrive in a minibus together‚ ‘together’ being the only way they’re ever seen in public. Whether bouldering, climbing, mountaineering or giving speeches, the Huber boys have become a joint trademark.

Today, at Hangar-7, at Salzburg airport, they walk with The Bulletin to the lofty Threesixty Bar. Suddenly, an idea. “Could you guys climb up there? For a photo?” we ask. Alexander considers it for a moment, then gets onto the rail and clambers, unsecured, of course, to the next cross-beam. We’re still wondering at the wisdom of our request when Thomas calmly ascends the ramp in his wake. A living support. Just to be on the safe side.

The second impression of the Hubers: this team knows what it’s doing. red bulletin: Thomas, you started mountaineering aged 10. Do you take your 11-year-old son up mountains?

Thomas Huber: Both my sons, Amadeus, who’s seven, and Elias, who you mention, have already been climbing with me.

What was it like when your ‘little’ brother went climbing with you for the first time?

TH: We started out climbing trees. We would play out scenes that our dad had experienced in the mountains. I first went along as his companion and then Alexander started going too. It led to conflict straight away, as I was a bit jealous when dad was out with him while I was stuck at home.

Did you argue a lot?

TH: I think we did, yes! I see the same thing with my own children now.

I always say: ‘You’re brothers. You have 80

to co-operate.’ But it doesn’t do any good.

Brothers argue to assert their authority.

Do you still argue?

TH: Yeah… we’re brothers, we’re very good at arguing! We say what we think straight away if something’s wrong and then we quickly move on.

Do you need a break from each other after long trips together?

Alexander Huber: It’s very intense during an expedition. Thomas has his family back home. He lives in Berchtesgaden, while I’m in Traunstein.

That’s a healthy distance, because we’re brothers, not man and wife!

TH: It’s important for us to do our own thing in our free time. And to take a breather from the ‘Huber Brother’ brand.

Team spirit: The Hubers are crazy about climbing

What strength training do you do?

AH: We train on artificial boulders. We prefer indoor climbing, without ropes, at a height we can jump from, if we can’t climb safely outdoors.

Were there indoor boulders when you started out?

AH: We built the first climbing wall in our house in 1982…

TH: We put sloping walls in our basement and screwed grips into them.

We were already training hard and very systematically at the age of 15 because we were crazy about the sport.

Does the boom in indoor boulders mean it’s becoming a mass-interest sport?

AH: Definitely. The number of climbers has increased tenfold and there are five times as many indoor facilities. But it’ll never be as big as football.

TH: Indoor climbing has nothing in common with mountaineering; it has become a separate sport. People used to go to the gym; this is the latest way of getting a complete body workout.

Climbing has even been put on the school syllabus in Bavaria this year.

Is it getting crowded in the mountains?

AH: Most people stay indoors. Getting out onto the competitive climbing routes is a big step. And a really huge step if you go climbing in the mountains.

What new trends do you see among younger climbers?

TH: They’re starting very young and kids as young as 13 are already competing at the highest degrees of difficulty.

AH: What we practised at 30, they’re now doing aged eight and are at the top of the game by the time they’re 16. I’d say they’ve peaked by age 22 at the latest.

Do you compete?

TH: We did, but only for a short time, when we were still young.

AH: It just wasn’t our thing and back then competitions were really badly organised. Now we wouldn’t have a chance. Competitive climbing is definitely an aspect of mountaineering where you’re past your best by 26.

Do you have to prepare mentally?

AH: Mountaineering has surprisingly little to do with physical strength. OK, so it’s a physical sport, but the important thing is to be able to transfer that strength to the rock face. If you get too nervous, you put limits on what you can do. The best people in the vertical world are the ones who can keep a cool head when they get into sticky situations and have to consider the prospect of a big fall.

Has there ever been a rock face that you’ve failed to conquer?

AH: Several!

Photography: www.huberbuam.de

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Photography: Valerie Rosenburg

High times: Thomas Huber (left) acts as a living support for his brother Alexander, who’s discovering new ways of getting around Hangar-7 while posing for photos

TH: The success rate is very low wherever we go. Which we see as part of the appeal. If we know in advance that we’re going to succeed, it loses its interest.

We’re curious lads, even if we are both the wrong side of 40.

Is there a climb that you’ve failed to conquer that you definitely want to have another go at?

TH: Latok II in Pakistan is one.

Alexander came a cropper there, but two years later we went back together and conquered it. It was the same thing on The Ogre [Baintha Brakk, part of the same range]. I failed there twice, once with Alexander. Then I went another time with a Swiss team and we managed it. You often need two attempts for really big mountains. There’s one really stubborn boulder in Patagonia that we’ve failed to conquer four times. That gnaws away at us and we definitely want to have another go. But our really huge dreams are mainly to be found in the Karakorum [the range on the borders of China, India and Pakistan]; people have made a number of attempts, but no one’s yet found a successful route.

Can you make a living from mountaineering?

AH: The best-known climbers don’t live from the sport. They live from what they do in public related to it. The most successful thing we do is give lectures, which we can live really well from.

That’s when I have to be an entertainer, not a sportsman, to keep people amused.

And you’re also a rock musician, right?

TH: Ha! Classic!

AH: No, no…

TH: I’m the one in a band!

Do you like Thomas’s music?

AH: Yeah, a lot! We don’t have exactly the same taste in music, but it’s pretty similar. The only difference is that I learned classical piano whereas Thomas studied guitar. I really like his band’s music. They’re called Plastic Surgery

“Indoor climbing has nothing to do with mountaineering; it has become a separate sport”

Disaster. I just strum a bit for friends every now and again.

You’ve just got back off holiday. Could you ever go somewhere flat?

AH: That was only my second-ever holiday.

I was in Tuscany, a dream location for mountain-biking. I went to Mykonos once 10 years ago because I had an injured finger. But to tell the truth, hanging out on the beach all day and then sitting in a bar getting drunk all night isn’t my thing.

TH: Once a year, I take a holiday with my children that has nothing to do with climbing: we go to the beach. When you have little ones of your own – he’s going to be a father soon! – you’ll appreciate the beach too.

Do your wives ever go with you on expeditions?

TH: No. When you’re on the limit, you need to fully concentrate. Of course your family’s never really out of your head, but you have to try and block them out when you’re climbing.

How much of the year do you spend in the mountains?

TH: The whole time, really. Expeditions last three to four months, on average.

Otherwise we go climbing every other day in the Alps, the Dolomites or in Karlstein.

Can you imagine life without climbing?

TH: No! AH: I don’t even want to. I love things the way they are.

TH: I know I’m addicted. If I’m at home doing nothing for two weeks, I start to get flu-like symptoms. I get physically sick.

I only feel fit again once I go climbing.

Can you describe the feelings you get when you’re experiencing the wonders of nature?

AH: The bigger the commitment you have to make to achieve your goal, the greater the satisfaction. Anyone who’s had to work long and hard to achieve something knows what it feels like.

Having prepared for ages, you go out there and know that you’ve achieved what it is you set out to achieve. At those moments, nothing else in the world matters. What you’ve been through before doesn’t matter; the fact that it’s all just been so intense glosses over all that.

You’re just happy. That’s real life, living in the here and now. It’s the same thing with mountaineering. You’re completely cut off. And then you slowly get within reach of the summit. And then, once you’re up there, you don’t think about what happened yesterday or what’ll happen tomorrow. You’re above all that.

Not just metaphorically either. Literally.

For more on the Huber brothers, including details of lectures, visit www.huberbuam.de

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Get the Gear

Robby Naish’s Essentials Robby Naish has been conquering the waves for three decades

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He’s master of the waves with world titles in three disciplines. Now he’s the stand-up guy bringing boardsports to its feet. And for that, he needs kit. “To have fun, you need toys,” he says

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Still Life: Marie Welton. Portrait: Kolesky/SanDisk/Red Bull Photofiles

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1. Naish 11ft 4in Stand-Up Paddleboard Naish Carbon Blade paddle www.naishsurfing.com “If stand-up is on the plan, then this board will cover everything from flat water to decent-sized surf. And this paddle is lightweight and strong, with great reflex.”

2. Quiksilver Robby Naish Signature Boardshorts www.quiksilver.com “Yes, I know: they are mine, but they’re my favourites. I designed them, using camo and my bad-ass skull print.

You can only buy them in Europe!”

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3. Quiksilver Backpack www.quiksilver.com “It has my life in it – necessities like my passport, driver’s licence, credit cards, cash and sponsor stickers.”

4. Naish hot sauce “We have Flaming Skull, the hotter red pepper sauce; Black Label, hot; and Mean Green. I love spicy food, so we made hot sauce for fun. We mainly give it away – but it’s killer.”

5. B vitamins, Aleve and Advil “Vitamin B1 is for concentration, B-Complex for stress relief. Aleve is for lower back pain I occasionally get if I overdo things. Advil is for all other aches and pains.”

6. Sunscreen “Lots of it, SPF30 minimum.”

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7. Neosporin, Band-Aids, bandages and tape “I’m always getting cut up!”

8. Apple iPhone www.apple.com “The main reason I have this is for pictures and video of my family. Of course it’s a phone too, and I can check my emails. As I don’t travel with a computer, this is essential.”

Paddle action in Venice at: en.redbulletin.com/naishvenice

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BRING ME THE HORIZON

Let There Be Rock Three thousand fans, more than 80 bands, six stages, one religion: metal. The Sonisphere Festival tour, makes its biggest and most important stop in Knebworth, UK, from July 30-August 1. The Red Bulletin picks seven bands to see you through several sweaty head-banging hours in the mosh pit

IRON MAIDEN

Words: Florian Obkircher

Iggy & The Stooges

Bring Me The Horizon

Still top dog

Metal’s milksops

The Sex Pistols are said to have invented punk, but Iggy Pop and The Stooges make Johnny Rotten and Co look like the Vienna Boys Choir. Iggy was taking his clothes off on stage during the ’60s, smearing his chest with peanut butter and cutting himself with shards of glass, as the band worked the distortion pedals in a celebration of youthful nihilism. Iggy continues to entertain as one of the great front men.

The members of this young British metalcore band look as if their mums still drop them off at rehearsal with packed lunches, but they sound like the children of the damned. Their approach is simple: singer Oli Sykes roars his lungs out while his four band-mates beat whatever they can out of their instruments. Metal mag Kerrang! called BMTH hard and brilliant, and made them winners of the Best British Newcomer category at the 2006 Kerrang! Awards.

Also playing: Paléo (Switzerland), Way Out West (Sweden), Sonisphere Sweden, Sonisphere Finland

Family Force 5 Unholily holy

Iron Maiden Grandees of rawk

FF5 are Christian rock band, but that doesn’t make the quintet from Atlanta, Georgia, ideal for Sunday morning in church. Their bastard child of hip-hop and metal can be too much for even the hardest of headbangers, but recently they’ve come up with something that sounds like Marilyn Manson pulling 72 hours in the studio with Kanye West. Dance Or Die in 2008 topped the Christian music charts and reached number 30 on the all-music Billboard 200.

Iron Maiden are the Rolling Stones of their world. The band’s debut album was released 30 years ago and founder member Steve Harris is 54.

Only their skull mascot Eddie, who appears on the cover of the group’s 15 albums, looks as fresh as ever, but the fan base has grown as new generations of metal-hungry youngsters discover their older brothers’ Maiden albums. There is no arguing with the power and presence of the guitar riff from 'Killers', one of the best in the history of metal.

Also playing: Rock The Desert, Sonshine, NewSong (all USA)

Also playing: Wacken (Germany), Sziget (Hungary), Pukkelpop (Belgium)

The World’s Other Best Music Fests Sonisphere UK is a major rock gathering. Here are four more from the four corners 84

PLACEBO

Also playing: Vans Warped Tour (USA)

GALLOWS GALLOWS

SONISPHERE TOUR August 7, Stockholm August 7-8, Pori, Finland

Oppikoppi August 6-8, Northam, South Africa

It began in June, reaches its peak at Knebworth (above) and stops in 11 countries. Mötley Crüe and Alice in Chains are on the bus.

This year's theme is 'Sexy.Crooked.Teeth'.

Perhaps displaying hot, unconventional dentistry are the likes of The Narrow, Gemma Talent and Billy Ray.

IGGY POP

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Gallows Nasty and dangerous British hardcore punk band Gallows like to be photographed wearing chic black suits or the get-up of the droogs, the violent gang from Stanley Kubrick’s film A Clockwork Orange. The latter is a fitting link, since almost no other punk band is as good at expressing its aggression to an audience. Singer Frank Carter, an emaciated, manic bundle of energy, spews his soul in the style of major hardcore heroes like Minor Threat and Black Flag.

ANTHRAX

Also playing: Hevy Music (UK), Pukkelpop (Belgium), Rebellion (UK), Jarocin (Poland)

FAMILY FORCE 5

photography: andy buchanan, Getty Images (3), Juan Lafita/Red Bull Hangar 7 (3), john mcmurtrie, sonisphere festival (3)

Anthrax still rockin’

Joan (left) and brother Jordi Roca try to use only local ingredients and enjoy experimenting with new technology – Joan adapted the Roner D thermostat (below left) for use in the kitchen

Scott Ian is a polite New Yorker with a shaved head. You’d trust him to look after your cat while you went on holiday, if you didn’t know he was the beating heart and only permanent member of Anthrax, gods of thrash metal. The cover of their 1984 debut album Fistful of Metal shows someone being punched in the face by a hand sporting a knuckleduster.

This is what Anthrax have sounded like for over 25 years now. Bone-dry, quick guitar riffs. And hard as nails.

Also playing: Lokerse Feesten (Belgium), Sonisphere Sweden, Sonisphere Finland

Placebo Molko Bene The androgynous ways of lead singer Brian Molko don’t sit easily with the testosterone-laden ‘charm’ of the other bands on the bill, but the music of this Anglo-American-Swedish trio has no less power than that of their peers. Given a leg-up in 1996 by David Bowie, when the band supported him on tour, Placebo are now mega successful. A clue to their success is in their name, after all: placebo is Latin for, “I will please.”

Also playing: Exit (Serbia), Highfield (Germany), Pukkelpop (Belgium)

Hevy Music August 6-8, Port Lympne Wild Animal, UK

Gtaranki August 11-15, TSB Stadium, New Zealand

Like Sonisphere, this boasts a Red Bull Bedroom Jam stage featuring eight newto-the-game bands supporting Polar Bear Club and Twin Atlantic.

Now in its third year, this celebration of geetar gods has rock, blues, jazz and all points between, and a star turn from an axeslinging legend: Slash.

A question of taste: a top chef’s secrets

Joan Roca’s food rules We ask the Spanish head chef of El Celler de Can Roca in Catalonia three culinary questions and get three very interesting answers The ingredient he can’t do without is…

“Olive oil is the key ingredient of the house,” explains Joan Roca, head chef and eldest of three brothers responsible for El Celler de Can Roca in Gerona, Spain, which was recently voted the fourth best restaurant in the world.

Youngest brother Jordi is a pastry chef and in charge of desserts, while man in the middle Josep is the sommelier. The brothers trawl the olive-oil producers of the area in their quest to find the many varieties they use in their cooking, a creative and technical tour-de-force that has earned them their third Michelin star.

The one thing he really can’t bear is…

“I like everything,” Roca continues, “and use everything. But as we put a lot of emphasis on regional foods, I don’t like anything that’s had to be transported a long way.”

The most important item of equipment in the Rocas’ kitchen is…

“Our open barbecue on which we burn Portuguese oak or holly oak, which give off really interesting aromas. A close second to that is our Roner D thermostat.

It was originally designed for use in a chemistry lab, but I adapted it for the kitchen and now it is also made for cooking. It uses a thermostatic bath that enables you to manage temperature very precisely. We can control the cooking process so exactly that we don’t lose any taste or aroma.”

During July, Joan and Jordi Roca will be the guest chefs at the Ikarus Restaurant in Hangar-7, Salzburg. For more information on the brothers and their cuisine, visit www.hangar-7.com

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NASCAR Sprint Cup Series 25.07.10

hot SPOTS

With six races to go before the top 12 drivers enter the Chase for the Cup, the drivers are more focused than ever on winning enough points to make the cut.

Indianapolis, USA

The world’s most exciting sporting events are right here – which ones will you be watching?

New York Red Bulls V DC United 10.07.10 A convincing away win when the two teams last met will keep spirits high in the Red Bulls camp, as the team gears up to take on United at the state-of-the-art Red Bull Arena.

Red Bull Arena, Harrison, New Jersey, USA

Photography: Imago SPortfoto, Jörg Mitter/Red Bull Photofiles, Damiano Levati/Red Bull Photofiles, Dom Daher/Red Bull Photofiles

Red Bull Flugtag 10.07.10 The celebration of all things beautiful and bizarre (if not capable of flight) comes to the party city of Miami to wow an expected 70,000-strong crowd.

Miami, USA

Britsh F1 Grand Prix 11.07.10 After a planned move to the UK’s Donington Park circuit fell through, the British Grand Prix is staying put at the new-andimproved Silverstone track, a popular result with racing fans.

Silverstone Circuit, England

Red Bull Conquer the Coast 11.07.10 Runners contend with 50km of thick forest, black sand beaches, waterfalls and rivers in an adventure raceto-the-finish, the first of its kind to take place in New Zealand. Armed only with a compass and a map, and faced with mandatory tasks and challenges along the way, only the best can hope to finish.

Auckland, New Zealand

IFSC Climbing World Cup 12 – 13.07.10 Slovenian Natalija Gros will be hoping to better the secondplace spot on the podium she earned last year, as the first lead competition gets going.

Chamonix, France

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Ennstal-Classic 14 – 17.07.10 This testing vintage car rally is a favourite the world over, having attracted international greats such as Sir Stirling Moss, John Surtees and Niki Lauda. This year, David Coulthard hopes to make his mark on the scoreboard.

Gröbming, Austria

The Open Championship 15 – 18.07.10 One of the most prestigious golf championships returns to this suitably historic course for the first time since 2005.

Colombian Camilo Villegas looks set to continue his promising early-year form.

Old Course at St Andrews, Scotland

ASP World Tour 15 – 25.07.10 After three events with three separate victors, the championship is wide open and the pressure is mounting on defending champion Mick Fanning, who has yet to stand on the top step of the podium.

Jeffreys Bay, South Africa

red bull car park drift 16.07.10 There will certainly be smoke, if not fire, in the Lebanese capital when national winners from 10 countries spin their wheels in front of 20,000 action-hungry fans. One driver will be crowned 2010 champion.

Forum de Beyrouth, Beirut, Lebanon

Red Bull Rookies Cup 17 – 18.07.10

Red Bull X-Fighters 23.07.10

As the competition reaches the halfway mark, these young potential champions have everything to ride for.

Sachsenring, Germany

Dany Torres is determined to repeat last year’s victory as the competition returns to the revered bullfighting arena.

Las Ventas, Madrid, Spain

more body & mind Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series 24.07.10

Sebastian Vettel Home Run 18.07.10

Two wins from two rounds have put British diver Gary Hunt out in front, as the aerobatic action arrives back in Europe.

Kragerø, Norway

The Formula One star enlists the help of his famous friends, DTM driver Mattias Ekström and stunt rider Chris Pfeiffer, to bring an unforgettable spectacle to his home town.

Heppenheim, Germany

Red Bull Snowboard Camp Performance 24.07 – 08.08.10 Even the snowboarding legends of tomorrow need a hand. Here they get expert tuition and equipment to improve their ability and discipline.

Wanaka, New Zealand

German F1 Grand Prix 25.07.10 Red Bull Racing driver Mark Webber won his first Formula One race in Germany last year and will be aiming to do the same this time.

Hockenheim, Germany

Red Bull US Grand Prix 25.07.10 As the 2010 MotoGP season reaches halfway, the title is far from decided. Spanish racer Dani Pedrosa managed a third place finish last year, a result he’ll want to better.

Laguna Seca, California, USA

O’Neill Coldwater Classic 26 – 30.07.10 The third leg of this extreme surf contest takes place in winter waters, where some of the world’s best do battle against each other and the elements.

Cape Town, South Africa

FIVB Beach Volleyball Grand Slam 27.07 – 01.08.10 Hot on the heels of the women’s competition, it’s the men’s turn.

Two-time grand slam champions, American Todd Rogers and team-mate Phil Dalhausser have good reason to feel confident.

Klagenfurt, Austria

UCI Mountainbike World Cup 31.07 - 1.08.10 As the penultimate Cross-Country competition comes to Italy, Austrian rider Elizabeth Osl is determined to defend her world title.

Val di Sole, Italy

WRC Rally Finland 29 – 31.07.10 With a city-based super-special stage added to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Finnish rally, Kimi Räikkönen hopes to avoid a crash like last year, which ended his chances.

Jyväskylä, Finland

Summer X Games 16 29.07 – 01.08.10 The world’s best skateboarders, motocrossers, BMXers and rally car drivers bring the action to LA for the seventh year running.

Fans around the world can watch the drama unfold on TV channel ESPN as contenders fight to get their hands on a coveted gold medal.

Los Angeles, USA

IFSC Climbing World Cup 30 – 31.07.10 Russia’s Rustam Gelmanov and Slovenia’s Natalija Gros are among those bouldering for victory in the latest leg of this year’s championship battle. And they have good reason to be optimistic in this discipline; both currently rank inside the world top 10.

Munich, Germany

Extreme Sailing Series Europe 31.07 – 05.08.10 The world’s toughest sailing series enters British waters.

The Red Bull Extreme Sailing team had a difficult start to the competition in France due to a series of technical problems, but hope to put that behind them, as they race as part of historic sailing regatta, Cowes Week.

Cowes, Isle of Wight, UK

FIM Motocross World Championship 01.08.10 With only five rounds to go, the heat is rising. German MX1 rider Max Nagl is pushing hard to better last year’s second-place finish.

Lommel, Belgium

Athletics Championships 27.07- 01.08.10

Superbike/ Supersport GP of Great Britain 01.08.10

The European championships land in Barcelona, bringing together the best each country has to offer in every discipline from hammer to high jump.

Barcelona, Spain

British riders Jonathan Rea and Eugene Laverty reach home tarmac looking likely to do well in these championships, after flying starts to their seasons.

Silverstone, England

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more body & mind Turn it Loose The B-Boy movie Turn It Loose has just premiered in Paris. We went behind the scenes and talked to the director and two of the world’s top choreographers on page 90.

Paris, France

night spots

Photography: Ray Demski/Red bull photofiles, Agustin Munoz/Red Bull Photofiles, lukas gansterer, Paul Lowe/Panos Pictures

Music lovers are spoilt for choice this month with an abundance of festivals the world over Garden Festival 02 – 11.07.10

Bilbao BBK Live 08 – 10.07.10

Small but perfectly formed, this boutique beachside festival is now a badly kept secret.

Each year more and more dance-hungry, sunset-loving, sea-swimming festivalgoers flock to the pine forest of Petrcane for the perfect mix of raving and relaxation. Henrik Schwarz, Hercules & Love Affair and Mayer Hawthorne join this year’s party.

Petrcane, Croatia

Bilbao’s number one attraction, the Guggenheim Museum, attracts a slightly alternative crowd during this festival.

These revellers come here for a different type of artist, namely guitar greats such as Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, Rammstein and Slayer.

Kobetamendi, Bilbao, Spain

Montreux Jazz Festival 02 – 17.07.10 This is one of Europe’s oldest festivals, and it’s brought music fans together on Lake Geneva’s shores every July since 1967.

For 2010, legends Roxy Music share poster space with upand-comers Beach House, and jazz legend Keith Jarett.

Various venues, Montreux, Switzerland

The Edge Winter Jam 08.07.10 Organiser Leon Wratt is determined to warm up the winter with his indoor celebration of Kiwi talent, with J Williams, Kidz in Space, Ivy Lies and chart favourite Dane Rumble all on the line-up.

TSB Bank Arena, Wellington, New Zealand

Pohoda Festival 08 – 10.07.10 This festival, which has been growing since 1997, can now make the musical offerings of its western neighbours seem stale. From current scene favourites The XX and Metronomy to the more classic Ian Brown and Leftfield, this festival makes the grade.

Airport Trencin, Slovakia

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Exit Festival 08 – 11.07.10 Founded in 2000 by students, the largest Balkan pop festival was honoured at the UK Festival Awards in 2007. It’s still living up to its reputation judging by the 2010 line-up, which includes LCD Soundsystem, Faith No More, Missy Elliott and Ed Banger boss Busy P. Petrovaradin Fortress, Novi Sad, Serbia

Gilles Peterson’s Worldwide Festival 08 – 11.07.10 When the British jazz connoisseur and radio guru Gilles Peterson throws a party, no one declines their invitation.

From Gil Scott-Heron to Flying Lotus and Hugo Mendez, musical heroes join hordes of Peterson’s fans on a pilgrimage to the small port town of Sete on the Mediterranean coast.

Various venues, Sete, France

T In The Park Festival 09 – 11.07.10 Eminem stages a nimble-tongued comeback in the UK, flanked by the likes of Muse, Kasabian, Madness and Hot Chip. The next generation of musical talent will be on the Red Bull Bedroom Jam Futures Stage.

Balado Airfield, Kinross, Scotland

rodigan V lionface A soundclash of a special kind: the two dancehall legends come together on the turntables in the Caribbean. Find out what happened on page 92.

Woodbrooke, Trinidad

more body & mind

Pratersauna At one time this was rumoured to be the place to do shady deals. These days it provides a mix of music, art, fashion, lifestyle and… swimming. For the hottest nights in the city, check out page 93.

Vienna, Austria

Oxegen Music Festival 09 – 11.07.10 If festivals were a family, Oxegen would be the twin of Scotland’s T In The Park and Glastonbury’s younger brother.

Oxegen shares acts with the former – Eminem, the Black Eyed Peas and Jay-Z– and endless green hills with the latter. The Red Bull Music Academy Stage, is showcasing The Drums, Broken Social Scene and Hudson Mohawke.

Punchestown, Co Kildare, Ireland

Dour Festival 15 – 18.07.10

The grandees of the electronic dance music scene assemble for this celebration of beats.

Richie Hawtin, 2manydjs, Steve Aoki, Mr Oizo and many more send bass ripples across the City of Water.

Parco San Giuliano, Venice, Italy

Traffic Free Festival 14 – 17.07.10

Benicàssim Festival 15 – 18.07.10

In these financially testing times the words ‘free’ and ‘festival’ have never been so welcome. Especially when the line-up is A-list. Across three nights, mod subculture is celebrated with the modfather himself, Paul Weller, indie rock meets dance with Klaxons and Erol Alkan, and Seun Kuti and New York hiphop legend Afrika Bambaataa pay tribute to Africa.

Venaria Palace, Turin, Italy

Sun, sea, paella and more than enough music to satisfy even the pickiest muso: it doesn’t get much better than this. From Cut Copy to animated heroes Gorillaz, and evergreens such as The Prodigy and Echo & The Bunnymen, what’s not to love?

Festival Centre, Benicàssim, Spain

larmer tree festival 14 – 18.07.10 For 20 years this friendly festival has remained independent, and it now offers five days of music, art and comedy to 4,000 happy campers. This year’s line-up could be the best yet, with Toots and the Maytals, Martha Wainwright, comedy from Russell Howard and more.

Larmer Tree Gardens, near Salisbury, England

During the Balkan war she was still a teenager, now she’s an internationally renowned artist. She gives us a true insider’s view of her home town, on page 94.

Sarajevo, Bosnia

US indie-electronica band Disco Biscuits have put on this giant festival for the past nine years. This year greats such as LCD Soundsystem, Major Lazer, Method Man and Thievery Corporation emphasise the broad musical taste the band has become known for.

Indian Lookout Country Club, St Pattersonville, USA

In January, the Dour Festival won a Best Medium-Sized Festival in Europe award. A great honour, but it can only be a matter of time before it rises to the premier league: last year it counted 144,000 visitors, a number set to grow this year.

And attracting acts such as The Sonics and Dum Dum Girls, and reggae from Lee Perry, their chances of elevation are even more certain.

Dour, Belgium

Electrovenice Festival 10.07.10

Sejla Kameric

Camp Bisco 9 15 – 17.07.10

DJ Kentaro 15.07.10 The Japanese master of decks and youngest-ever winner of the DMC championships brings his exquisitely sliced beats and scratch skills to London.

Cargo, London, England

Red Bull EMSE 16.07.10 As if being a great MC wasn’t enough, here contenders have to come up with their own spontaneously good rhymes.

Each rapper has to respond to pictures and keywords and seamlessly incorporate them into their freestyle performance.

The best can qualify for the finals in Atlanta in October, where Eminem will be judging.

103 Harriet St, San Francisco, California, USA

Traffic Jam Open Air 16 – 17.07.10 The German festival has long been a platform for new hardcore, punk, metal and ska bands, as well as a host of international acts such as Evergreen Terrace from the US and The Ghost Of A Thousand from Brighton, England.

Am Bauhof, Dieburg, Germany

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Backstage

Loose Talk

A visually stunning new documentary on breakdancing celebrated its premiere in Paris. Andreas Tzortzis watched it with two of the world’s top choreographers A small French camera crew interviews a pair of smallish, stylish brothers on the banks of the Seine. Dressed in tight button-downs and sporting dark glasses, Rich and Tone Talauega stand out amid the basketball jerseys and T-shirts of the breakdancers practising freezes and windmills in the background.

They share everything in common, however. Like the dancers, the Talauega brothers began dancing at house parties, clubs and in the rugged streets of Richmond, California. After Travis Payne, Michael Jackson’s choreographer, discovered the then-teenagers dancing at a record-release party, the pair have gone on to dizzying success in the music industry.

Following the tour with Michael Jackson during their teenage years, the brothers have made and directed music videos with everyone from Chris Brown to the Black Eyed Peas and last autumn wrapped up Madonna’s ‘Sticky and Sweet’ tour.

But on a balmy Thursday in early June, the Talauega brothers were just two more members of an audience of dancers, journalists and hip-hop aficionados gathered at the world premiere of the breakdancing documentary Turn it Loose at the MK2 Cinema in Paris. Directed by Alastair Siddons, the film tells the story of six breakdancers taking part in the 2007 edition of Red Bull BC One, the world’s biggest one-on-one B-Boy tournament.

Held in an abandoned power station in Soweto, South Africa, Siddons probes the light and shadows of the looming space with as much sensitivity as he does the intricate moves thrown down by the dancers in their ring, surrounded by two stories of braying crowd and watched over by a panel of judges.

Siddons and his crew travel to Senegal, Korea, Japan, Algeria, France and the 90

Print 2.0

za.redbulletin.com/print2.0 Want to know what happens in the film? Have a look at this…

Turn It Loose Paris

Round one at Red Bull BC One in South Africa: Algeria’s Lilou watches as Senegal’s Ben-J busts a freeze; the B-Boys ready themselves for competition (left), the tense atmosphere and dizzying skills palpable in Turn it Loose

United States, exploring the backgrounds and struggles of the featured dancers as they progress through the rounds to a spellbinding finale.

The challenge, as with all films of this genre, is to stay true to the subculture while making its vernacular and spirit transferable to a wider audience. Siddons,

whose background includes videos for The Streets and Roots Manuva, took pains to keep himself in the dark about the technical aspects of breaking. “What you try to do is focus on universal themes,” says Siddons, smoking a cigarette with the Talauega brothers on the deck of the Batofa, a floating bar and nightclub. “In

Rich and Tone keep their cool

Photography: Ray demski/Red Bull Photofiles (2), Turn It Loose Movie (1), Getty Images/ABC/KELSEY McNEAL (1)

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a way, you don’t make it about dance. If you make a film about the human condition…

“You’re going to connect,” says Tone Talauega, jumping into the conversation.

“Because everybody’s not a B-Boy,” adds Rich Talauega. “Everybody’s not a dancer…”

Finding the common ground between authenticity and mainstream appeal is territory the brothers are familiar with. In addition to their work for commercial clients like Gap and Apple, the pair co-produced a film with photographer David LaChapelle on the ‘krumping’ and ‘clowning’ dance culture native to Los Angeles. Rize, similarly, explored its characters with tact and depth, while providing the provocative, colourful imagery that is LaChapelle’s trademark.

The brothers believe Siddons has reached similar heights with Turn it Loose.

“He captured the spirit of the culture the way it is now,” says Tone Talauega, in the unmistakable dip and drawl of a northern California accent. “Alastair really opened up the details of B-Boying. The actual dance itself. He made it simple enough for a nineyear-old or a 75-year-old to understand.”

Beyond the personal stories, several of which are heart-wrenching, Turn it Loose captures the mesmerising acrobatics and skill levels now standard in the repertoire of the world’s top B-Boys. Aerials and freezes, with legs pointed straight up and out, are slowed down or frozen in time, the camera moving 360 degrees around a dancer.

“People are defying gravity 10 times plus, man,” says Rich Talauega. “You see guys when they get on the floor, it’s unexplainable what they’re doing. They’re doing scientific projects right in front of your face, man.”

As opposed to ballet and jazz, which have adhered to similar structures for decades, breakdancing continues to evolve from its ’70s roots in the Bronx and Brooklyn. There’s no real telling where the boundaries lie anymore, and the style and showmanship evident in battles from the streets of inner-city neighbourhoods to the spot-lit stage of Red Bull BC One, suggest there is only more to come. One only hopes Siddons will be there to capture it.

“He made a film, not a movie,” says Rich Talauega, and then explained the difference. “A movie you go sit, you eat your popcorn, you eat your candy, you enjoy it for the moment and after it’s done you go back to your regular business. A film?

You come in and pay attention and get you something out of it. You leave with some info that will stay with you for a lifetime, and last but not least, leave you [more] inspired than a motherfucker!”

Turn It Loose is now available on DVD in selected countries. You can watch the trailer for the film on www.turnitloosemovie.com

Melt! Festival 16 – 18.07.10 This three-day spectacular is a musical flower that blooms each year against the unlikely backdrop of a coalmine. Huge mining towers provide a dramatic set for acts including Jamie Lidell, Carl Craig, The XX, Massive Attack, DJ Shadow and Four Tet. Ferropolis Gräfenhainichen, Germany

Hard LA 17.07.10 DJ Destructo, father of the Hard event series, has brought the American public electronic festivals and rock spectacles for years. This year he presents M.I.A., N * E * R * D, Flying Lotus and The Gaslamp Killer, with every beat being broadcast at redbullmusicacademyradio.com.

State Historic Park, Los Angeles, USA

Audio Tokyo Electronic Music Festival 17.07.10 This venue usually has one purpose: to process the contents of the 90,810,000 tonnes of cargo shipped there every year.

But on one night, there is a more compelling reason to visit, when acts including Octave One, Daniel Bell, Ken Ishii and DJ3000 arrive with packed record boxes to put the ‘hip’ back into shipping.

Harumi Passenger Terminal, Tokyo, Japan

Boogie Brain International Music Festival 22 – 24.07.10 The festival that brings together a clash of musical cultures this year features four stages of sounds, with acts including Dixon, Jahcoozi, Zed Bias and Benji B. The fourth stage will be driven to the site courtesy of the Red Bull Tourbus, showcasing everything from rock to reggae.

Starówka Embankment, Szczecin, Poland

Splash! Festival 23.07.10 The number one German hip-hop festival celebrates hip-hop in all its forms. B-Boys, graffiti artists and beatboxers join Nas, Missy Elliott and Wu-Tang clan, while the stars of tomorrow take to the Red Bull Music Academy Radio Stage.

Ferropolis Gräfenhainichen, Germany

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Rodigan V Lionface Trinidad

The Doctor’s Orders 5th Birthday Party 23.07.10

the big tent 23 – 25.07.10 This environmental festival brings together music, arts, debates, poetry and organic food and drink, to create a green event that also stimulates the grey matter.

Performers include Grammy Award winner Rosanne Cash, local Kenny Anderson aka King Creosote, plus the Capoeira collective Brazil! Brazil!

Falkland, Fife, Scotland

Hard NYC 24.07.10 Following hot on the heels of his show in LA, Hard organiser DJ Destructo brings his travelling festival to the east coast. M.I.A. and Die Andwoord are back on board alongside dubsteppers Skream and Benga, while the Red Bull Music Academy Radio Team will be capturing all for posterity.

South Island Field, New York, USA

Heimspiel 24.07.10 Last year when the Stuttgart hiphop collective Die Fantastischen Vier, also known as Fanta 4, recorded their live album Heimspiel (Home Game) in the city, some 60,000 fans arrived to witness the event. This year, they’ve returned to the city at an open-air festival of the same name, and will be sharing the limelight with acts such as Milow, Camouflage and Matt Bianco.

Stuttgart Beer Festival, Stuttgart, Germany

Nova Jazz & Blues Night 24.07.10 What Bob Dylan did for rock music, Gil Scott-Heron has done for soul.

He politicised his sound, injecting his work with powerful messages.

Now the great master and rebel is back in concert with his new album I’m New Here alongside Gotan Project and Jamiroquai. Get there if you can, because as Scott-Heron himself has said, this ‘Revolution Will Not Be Televised’.

Festival Wiesen, Austria

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Green Room

Clash of the Titans What happens when two dancehall legends go head-tohead in the Caribbean night?

Soundclashes have a long tradition in reggae culture. Two sound systems duel, each upping the bass and microphone shout-outs ’til the crowd declares a winner.

In May, two of the finest practitioners squared off in St John’s Hall in Trinidad.

David Rodigan, the London DJ, went up against Lionface, renowned selector of the New York Sound System, King Addies.

The Brooklyn native began his set wrapped in the Trinidadian flag. For the next 30 minutes he prowled the stage, hungry and aggressive as the crowd shouted approval.

Rodigan, next, took a more measured approach, graciously acknowledging Lionface before unleashing a fireworks display of dancehall classics. Lionface haunted the back of the stage, gesticulating.

The aggression fell foul of the crowd and, after 12 rounds, the title went to Rodigan, who responded with, “Trinidad, I thank you for the warm welcome and for respecting the music.”

To see more on this soundclash, and to hear more recordings from David Rodigan and King Addies, visit www.redbullmusicacademyradio.com

While Rodigan amiably faced the cameras, Lionface refused photographs until it was time to begin

Decked out in the colours of Trinidad and Tobago, Lionface went about his set in deadly earnest

The elder statesman prevailed in the end, and enjoyed a small celebration with the girls backstage High noon: Lionface haunted the stage as Rodigan ripped his set.

But the London DJ legend wasn’t fazed by the competition

Words: Nigel Telesford. Photography: Agustin Munoz/Red Bull Photofiles

When one of the capital’s best hip-hop nights joins forces with one of the city’s best venues, good things happen. To celebrate five years of hosting the best talent on offer, founder and long-term resident Spin Doctor teams up with Guilty Simpson, DJ Dez and more for a happy return.

Fabric, London, England

Prater Sauna Vienna

Just add water: guests have the choice to hang out and chat to friends, eat, drink or take a dip in the pool

World’s Best Clubs

Full Steam Ahead

Photography: lukas gansterer

BBQs begin in the late afternoon at Vienna’s most unique nightlife location. Then it’s on to worldclass DJs and a dance in the sauna Swimming pool, gallery, bistro. Pratersauna is a lot of things but one thing above all else: the coolest club in Vienna. It’s somewhere between a traditional and postmodern sauna, between BBQ and pool party.

One of Europe’s oldest amusement parks, the 18th-century Prater is a sanctuary in the east of Vienna. It has miles of meadows, small lakes, walking paths and green fields in the south. Plus a Ferris wheel, kitsch rides, rollercoasters, lángos [a Hungarian speciality], candyfloss and a beer garden in the north of the park.

Prater is Vienna at its best. And it has been the place for the classic family Sunday out since 1766. But in recent years revellers have also discovered the Praterstern area and promptly renamed it Partystern.

This is thanks to clubs like Fluc Wanne, a redesigned subway. Or the Planetarium, an imposing starred dome which becomes a temple of dance by night. Or the newest arrival in the area, the Pratersauna.

“Almost no one from our generation knows the history of the sauna, but when

you speak to older Viennese, you hear the most amazing stories,” explain Hennes Weiss, who along with his friend Stefan Hiess, re-imagined the ’60s-era sauna and spa into a pulsating hub of European nightlife two years ago.

According to urban myth, the Pratersauna opened in 1965 and was a somewhat shady place. The city’s political elite are said to have met in the steam with members of the underworld, and diamond traders supposedly did deals there on ‘Russian evenings’. Now it’s disco balls, not diamonds, glistening in the charming, two-storey building. And the place is now frequented by fashionistas and hipsters, not low-lifes. People still sweat, but on the dancefloor, not in the sauna. Weiss and Hiess describe their baby as a ‘Social Life & Art Space’ – a place where interdisciplinary borders are transcended, a mixture of art, music, fashion and lifestyle.

The pearl in the Pratersauna’s crown is the pool in the garden. It might sound a bit posh, but it’s anything but. If anything, the

open space fenced off by wild hedges is reminiscent of a sleepy lido. Which is what it is on hot afternoons, with a barbecue and relaxed music from a DJ thrown in. By night, the outdoor area becomes a moonlit oasis. People hang out on sofas or sit by the pool, while inside the music is thumping – techno, soul or indie rock – even when Weiss and Hiess are casually promoting an exhibition or running an afternoon bistro in the garden. The Pratersauna is primarily a club, probably the best in Vienna.

Nighttime activities are spread out over four dancefloors. The main floor sees DJs like Steve Bug, Chez Damier and Simian Mobile Disco alternating at the decks. Other areas are virtually untouched, with sauna pools and yellowing “Have you taken a shower?” signs. Events often turn into nocturnal pool parties. A good idea to have a bikini in your handbag, then…

Pratersauna, Waldsteingartenstrasse 135, 1020 Vienna. www.pratersauna.tv. Our tip: Prater Unser Festival, July 8-11, featuring Kode9, Floating Points and others. Visit www.praterunser.at

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Sejla kameric sarajevo

Play on: Šejla Kameri´ c in her favourite cafe Zlatna Ribica which is well known for its music

Resident Artist

What Was Left After the War Šejla Kamerić was a teenager in the Bosnian capital during the Balkan wars. Her art has since propelled her to international renown and a life abroad, but Sarajevo remains her soul I’ve been living in Berlin for a while now, but I still have a strong bond with my hometown.

I go home once every three months because my family and friends live there and I still have a studio there. The first place I head for is Meeting Point, a café and bar with a cinema. It’s run by the same people who run the Sarajevo Film Festival and the Obala Art Centre. It’s right behind the Academy of Arts. When I was still a student, it was the best place to hang out and meet people.

I had my first solo exhibition there in 1997 and one year later, my video installation – Before Beginning – was shown in the cinema before the main feature. You mostly meet art students there and people 94

Vijecnica, the Bosnian National Library, was almost completely destroyed in the war

only come for the atmosphere. It’s best of all during the summer film festival.

I love food in general but especially Bosnian food. That’s why I like Ašcinica ASDŽ. They serve good, simple fare like my grandmother, mother and aunt make. The same goes for Ašcinica Hadžibajric. Both restaurants are run by families I know well.

You should definitely try typically Bosnian dishes like dolma (stuffed vine leaves), burek (puff pastry pies) and the wonderful desserts. My favourite dish is klepe, a sort of ravioli that’s served at the Hadžibajric every Friday and is the best in the city.

Sarajevo is in a valley surrounded by hills and mountains, which sometimes

more body & mind The graffiti was written by an unknown Dutch soldier on the walls of barracks in Srebrenica.

With this work Kameri´ c became a spokesperson for a Bosnian generation that wants to process their war trauma without feeling like victims HRASTOVI

The artist recommends: Bosnian home cooking in Ašcinica ASDŽ…

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SKENDIRJA

words: uschi korda. Photography: Paul Lowe/Panos Pictures (5), Sejla Kameric/Galerie Krobath Vienna-Berlin (1)

na ma usli Put mladih M

...and a creative atmosphere in Meeting Point

makes me feel claustrophobic. But if I walk out to Bijela and Žuta Tabija (the White and Yellow Bastions) and look at the city from above, my perspective changes. All of a sudden everything seems fresh and I become emotional and love my city more than anywhere else in the world.

The two bastions are closely tied up with the city’s history, forming part of the old city wall. It always brings me back to life’s existential questions: Where do I come from? Who am I? It’s a really spiritual place and young people from Sarajevo love to make a pilgrimage to it. You also see couples up there in the evening, even though Bosnians aren’t very romantic. But it’s a pretty place for a kiss.

An absolute must for me is the Vijecnica, or rather what’s left of it. The building dates from the Austro-Hungarian period. It was originally designed as the City Hall and later turned into the National Library.

During the war and the siege of Sarajevo, Serb forces set fire to it and a lot of books, including important historical works, were destroyed. When the ash from the books rained down over the city like black snow, all I could do was cry. The Vijecnica is

1 Meeting Point Hamdije Kresevijakovica 13 2 Ašcinica ASDŽ Mali Curciluk 3 3 Ašcinica Hadžibajric Veliki Curciluk 59 4 Bijela & Zuta Tabija 5 Vijecnica Mustaj Pašin Mejdan 6 Zlatna Ribica Kaptol 5

a sad reminder of the war and a symbol of the aggression that destroyed a culture. The reconstruction is making slow progress as it’s going to cost a lot of money. But all those old books can never be replaced.

One tiny, odd place right in the centre of Sarajevo is the Zlatna Ribica, my favourite café. It’s not at all typical of Sarajevo; it’s like a spaceship from another planet. The place is packed full of old things, has a very nice atmosphere and it plays good music.

And then there’s Veliki Park, which means Grand Park, even though it’s actually very small. Sarajevo is not a city which has lots of parks like London, Paris or New York, because there’s so much nature close at hand; neither the coast nor the mountains are far away. So Veliki Park is a bit of an oasis in the city centre.

The city is buzzing beyond the confines of the park, yet in there it’s quiet and secure. Even during the war there was protection from the huge old trees.

The Centre Pompidou in Paris is hosting the Prospectif Cinéma exhibition until July 19, 2010 and features a film by Šejla Kameri´ c; more information on the artist can be found at: www.galeriekrobath.at

The indie quartet are busy switching between the UK and Spain this month, ahead of the upcoming release of their new single ‘Say No to Love’ – with another new track as the B-side, ‘Lost Saint’ – on July 29.

Their twee noise pop from New York City is perfect for a summer’s evening by the seaside in Britain’s hippest destination.

Concorde 2, Brighton, England

ltj bukem 30.07.10

5 …the view from the White and Yellow Bastions…

The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart 28.07.10

The classical pianist and one of the leading figures in ‘atmospheric jungle’ never could resist a good beat. Years after swapping his keys for decks, the jazz-loving drum ’n’ bass guru is still riding high, bringing his atmospheric sound to some of the world’s best dancefloors.

Fabric, London, England

Nachtdigital 30.07 – 01.08.10 Attracting 3,000 visitors is not a failure, say the organisers of this boutique festival, but a stand taken against overcrowding. And any electronica aficionado can attest to the quality of this year’s line-up: Cologne queen Ada joins Lusine, Chateau Flight, Floating Points and FS Blumm.

Bungalow Village Olganitz, Cavertitz, Germany

Nature One Festival 30.07 – 01.08.10 A decommissioned US missile base has become the unlikely home to a project that has altogether more peaceful aims.

This green festival has gathered a growing army of followers since its inception in 1995, making it Europe’s largest – this year at least 60,000 ravers will be flocking along to make love, not war.

Rocket base, Pydna, Germany

Field Day 31.07.10 Victoria Park might be in the middle of London’s hip Hackney district, but this gathering promises ‘rustic merrymaking’ with a cuttingedge soundtrack. Grammy Award winning Phoenix join indie bands such as Caribou on the Eat Your Own Ears stage. Atlas Sound and No Age are also featuring, while Bassy and electronic beats are taken care of by Ramadanman, Fake Blood and Joker.

Victoria Park, London, England

95

Henry in the Park A grandfather, a beret, shock and anger, a lynch-mob mentality…

A story by Sam Knight

HE SAT on the park bench watching the children play. The sun shone brightly across the verdant playing fields, but a cool northerly wind blew along the perimeter path and across the greentipped hedgerows that sheltered the now fading daffodils. It was the sort of day Hardy once described as having a summer smile but a winter constitution.

Henry pulled his tweed jacket tightly around him, thrusting his hands deep into the generous pockets, which had strips of brown leather sewn across the openings for extra durability. The jacket was now 40 years old, but he remembered vividly the day he had bought it, and why. He was meeting his seven-year-old granddaughter Miranda for the first time.

He had bought it in Caysers, a stylish independent menswear shop in the high street, before setting off for Heathrow to meet her off the Qantas flight. He remembered how she had run towards him, a wave of blonde hair atop a pink dress, her spindly legs moving sideways as much as forwards. Then she was in his arms, her frail body clasping him strongly like some ivy on an everlasting oak…

96

Nowadays, he reflected with sadness, the simple desire to cradle the softness of a young child was something to be doubted, devalued, or worse still, reviled.

A stranger to most people in the park, he spoke to no one, even though he had started coming here every Friday morning during the months of April and May. He would sit on the same wooden bench, close to the swings, and watch the children sail through the air, sunlight shining through cotton dresses, dangling limbs with innocent abandon.

A MILE away stood the Primary School of Magor in the Meadow, a Church of England school in the Diocese of St Michael’s. Outside, parents were discussing the latest news – that a sex offender had been living in the neighbourhood for the past 12 months. The mood was one of shock and anger. Tom Pelham, who ran a vehicle dismantling yard, was talking the loudest. A stout short-tempered man in yellow check shirt and brown corduroy trousers, he pushed his way to the centre of the crowd. “It’s disgusting. We should be told where he lives, and who he is. All

‘ Screaming mothers dragged him to the ground, scratched his face with animal rage, tore his hair’ our children are at risk. We can’t let them play out on their own anymore.

So what shall we do?” Accusing fingers, beseeching hands, outstretched arms betrayed the fear of families facing the ultimate darkness.

We must find out who he is, they all agreed. But the Parent Teacher Association was powerless. The police cannot give us this information because it will be breaking the law. The police say he has served his punishment and he cannot be identified because his right to privacy must be protected.

“Yes, but what about protecting our children? Isn’t that more important?” snarled Tom Pelham.

The parents agreed to set up street patrols, and to watch the area surrounding the school entrance. We must do this in

More Body & Mind

illustration: James Taylor

pairs, just in case we come face to face with him, said Tom Pelham.

THAT MONTH the fair came to town, to the park Henry enjoyed every Friday.

Sparks-flying dodgems, silent, gliding carousel, a scream-filled haunted tunnel, and white-knuckle helter-skelter; these and other aerial thrills caught the rapt gaze of popcorn-crunching, candyflosslipped children as they pulled their mothers and fathers, and aunts and uncles, from shooting galleries to hoopla hoops, from white-painted clowns to wrinkled fortune-tellers.

Tom Pelham was there too. He was “too handy with his hands”, as one of his neighbours had pointed out more than once. Earlier that evening he had clouted his nine-year-old son harder than he should have done, and sent him upstairs. His wife had screamed at him for being a brute, and she, too, had suffered a stinging slap across the face.

He slammed the front door behind him and walked across to the fairground.

He was on patrol. On the hunt. He didn’t know who he was looking for. But

he would find him. He scoured the grounds, looking for single men, probably aged more than 50, taking an interest in young girls. In the thick of all this normality, of boys teasing girls, of girls beckoning boys, of youngsters chasing each other around the back of stalls, he would find that person.

A full hour passed during which time the grating sounds of machinery, flashing lights of neon bars and strident cacophony of music hammered his brain.

His eyes started squinting, he felt a weakness in his stomach. And then. There he was. You could tell he was a paedo.

The stranger was half in the shadows, looking intently at two young girls probably not even in their teens. He was wearing a light-blue beret, and a grey raincoat with a belt twisted, not buckled, around his waist. Tom thought that was significant: the stranger could get the belt off quickly, strangle his victim and then…

Tom Pelham roared at the stranger standing across the other side of the wide walkway. “Pervert.”

The stranger looked across and ran behind the stalls, Tom in hot pursuit.

“Follow me, I’ve seen the paedo,” shouted Tom to several people around him.

Three men followed as they raced into the darkness, jumping over tent ropes and avoiding generators and water butts.

The stranger scrambled through the bushes and reached the hedgerow which ran along the perimeter of the park. A branch caught the side of his face, and his beret fell off as he lifted his hand to protect his eyes. And then he was on the road. He crouched behind the wall of the bus shelter, and listened while the shouts of the pursuing men died in the distance.

THE SUN shone brightly that Friday morning, a few days after the fair had departed for the next town. Henry walked briskly; he was in high spirits, and as he walked along the hedgerow towards the swings he spotted a light-blue beret half-hidden in the undergrowth.

Bending down he reached between the long grass and retrieved the beret, then flicked off the dried leaves and seed heads before stuffing it in his jacket.

He settled down onto his usual bench, and pulled the beret out of his tweed jacket. “Nice one, Henry,” he thought to himself as he found the beret fitted perfectly. Today he would watch young laughter, secretly share a child’s delight, maybe even hold a child’s hand, and stroke someone’s soft hair.

DURING THE lunch hour parents were meeting in some excitement. “The pervert

has been seen,” said one. “I saw him with my own eyes,” said another. “And we nearly caught him,” said Tom Pelham, strutting in a half circle movement to eyeball those nearest him. “Yes. It was me that spotted him. At the fair. He was wearing a light-blue beret.”

A big-busted woman pushed her way forward. “Then I know where he is now.

He’s in the playground. At the park.”

“Right, let’s get him. I’ll lead the way,” said Tom Pelham. There were 15 of them, determined to be guardians of a world where a child dare not say a kind word to a stranger; men and women, fathers with children cowering in their own homes, mothers whose supply of caring warmth had long run dry.

There he was. Screaming mothers dragged him to the ground, scratched his face with animal rage, tore his hair and spat on his face. Then the men joined in, kicking him as he lay on the gravel path, shielding his head with broken, bloodcovered hands. Heavy boots aimed at his body and he rolled and writhed trying to escape the worst of the blows. “Now get him in the balls,” said Tom, aiming a fierce left foot into the groin. Henry groaned and whimpered. The swings stood still that Friday. Justice had been done.

HE WAS not one of them: chameleon figures who behind conspiring care of family friend prey on innocence, or shadowy figures on schoolyard watch who lie in wait for virgin flesh, or doublelife surfers who capture unaware the chat-room talker. He was not one of them.

Bleeding and bruised, he reached the edge of the bench and slowly, painfully, pulled himself onto the seat. With grit searing his eyes, he reached with aching, muddied hand for his worn wallet and pulled out a faded photo, corners creased, of his granddaughter.

He sees the fragile child of eight, victim of a school-gate stalker, her ravaged body washed ashore by an unknown tide that sweeps aside the memories running like sand through the fingers of his outstretched hand.

About the author

Samuel Knight lives in the village of Undy in Monmouthshire with his wife Jean. He enjoys driving fast, collecting silver spoons, and thinks philosophy should be on the school curriculum.

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M

ost jokes start one of two ways: “Knock knock”; “A man walks into a bar”. Knock knock jokes are not as much fun as they were when you were a kid and liked the idea of the interactive gag. Besides, knock knock jokes were clean and a little bit naff, if we’re honest. The “a man walks into a bar” opening line is more adult because you can be sure that at some stage a four-letter word will be involved, and, if you’re like me, you hope that four-letter word is beer.

For the dedicated sports watcher, beer is as essential to the enjoyment of a match as sports drinks are to the nutrition of those performing for our pleasure. Being a professional sports watcher as I am, the supping of beer usually has to wait until after the game, a recovery drink, if you will, to ease the mind after an intense day or few hours of searching for the soul of a game so I can lay it flat on a piece of newsprint so as to further your enjoyment or displeasure. I do not know why beer feels so right with sport; it is champagne for the masses, a fizz, pop and sigh moment.

In marketing speak, beer is a good fit with sport, which is why there is always an official beer at major tournaments.

At the Rugby World Cup, Guinness, the brew for the 1999 tournament in Wales, has been replaced by Heineken, which now also sponsors the European equivalent of the Super 14. The Olympics changes its official beer from year to year, depending on the city in which the Games are held. At the World Cup, the football one that is, the official beer has been Budweiser for the last few tournaments, much to the dismay of the locals of some countries. As an official sponsor, the American company, the biggest brewer in the world, gets to sell its product in the stadiums and fan parks during the tournament.

This caused much unhappiness in Germany in 2006, a country were most modern brewing techniques were perfected (the first golden, clear beer

Mind’s Eye

Grin and Beer It Kevin McCallum raises a glass to the perfect combination that is sport and a cold pint of ale was brewed in the Czech-Bohemian town of Pilsen, from a strand of yeast smuggled from Germany by a monk. Pilsner Urquell is owned by SABMiller, but enough South African bragging). Visitors would not be able to taste local beers and the whole point of spending billions on the World Cup, the biggest and most expensive PR exercise on the planet, would be lost. The organisers, FIFA and Bud relented and local German beers were given a platform, or bar counter, to display their wares from.

In South Africa, Budweiser thought better of attempting to supply 40 million thirsty South Africans with beer and allowed SAB to sell their products at the fan parks, although they would be keeping the stadium rights. SAB are only allowed to sell their beer in unbranded bottles, which may mean that many will be drinking beer with a label similar to the ones in Repo Man or even Lost.

It was a kind gesture by Bud as the World Cup does tend to leave a hefty

carbon footprint. A recent article in the Guardian reckoned that drinking just a few bottles of imported lager a day might add up to a tonne of CO2 emissions per year, which is equivalent to “around 50,000 cups of black tea”. Based on factors such as packaging, fuel, electricity and transport, not forgetting office stationery and staff travel, as well as the fact that fermentation also releases carbon dioxide, the writer calculated the breakdown of a pint. So, by drinking local beer during the World Cup you are doing the planet a favour. The article doesn’t take into account what sort of bodily gases might emit from 40-million beer drinkers. Perhaps that is a step too far for carbon-footprint counting.

One’s choice of beer is decided by habit as much as taste. Most beer drinkers can’t tell the difference. I know this as I’ve been at many beer-tasting competitions and have watched as dedicated Castle drinkers mistake their brew for Amstel. Carling Black Label is the biggest-selling beer in South Africa.

It is Canadian in origin and became synonymous with English football at a time of prosperity for the sport, being the title sponsor of the Premiership. It also generated one of the cleverest bits of sports-related advertising. A sole German guard is on duty on a dam wall in 1942, a British Lancaster plane drops bouncing bombs; the sentry takes off his jacket and dives left and right to stop bombs from hitting the dam wall and going off. The pilot looks down, peeved, and says: “I bet he drinks Carling Black Label.”

Ah, beer. The frosty length of a glass, the dew forming on the outside, bubbles rushing towards the head as the sun slips through its golden body. What better tipple to celebrate the World Cup in South Africa with? The champagne of the masses, the brew of brotherhood and the froth of friendship. A man walks into a bar…

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

South Africa, ISSN 2079-4282: The Red Bulletin is published by Red Bulletin GMBH Editor-In-Chief Robert Sperl Editorial Office Anthony Rowlinson (Executive Editor), Stefan Wagner Associate Editor Paul Wilson Contributing Editor Andreas Tzortzis Chief Sub-editor Nancy James Production Editor Grant Smyth Photo Editors Susie Forman (Chief), Fritz Schuster Deputy Photo Editors Markus Kucera, Valerie Rosenburg, Catherine Shaw Design Erik Turek (Art Director), Claudia Drechsler, Miles English, Judit Fortelny, Markus Kietreiber, Esther Straganz Staff Writers Werner Jessner, Uschi Korda, Ruth Morgan Contributors Martin Apolin, Ulrich Corazza, Craig Jarvis, Sam Knight, Kevin McCallum, Florian Obkircher, Olivia Rosen, Andreas Rottenschlager, Richard Schickel, Nigel Telesford Production Managers Michael Bergmeister, Wolfgang Stecher, Walter Omar Sádaba Repro Managers Christian Graf-Simpson, Clemens Ragotzky Augmented Reality www.imagination.at General Managers Karl Abentheuer, Rudolf Theierl International Project Management Jan Cremer, Bernd Fisa Finance Siegmar Hofstetter. Editor, South Africa Steve Smith. The Red Bulletin is published simultaneously in Austria, the UK, Germany, Ireland, Kuwait, Poland, South Africa and New Zealand. Website www.redbulletin.com. Head office: Red Bulletin GmbH, Am Brunnen 1, A-5330 Fuschl am See, FN 287869m, ATU63087028. UK office: 155-171 Tooley Street, London SE1 2JP, +44 (0)20 3117 2100. Austrian office: Heinrich-Collin-Strasse 1, A-1140 Vienna, +43 (1) 90221 28800. Printed by CTP Printers, Duminy Street, Parow-East, Cape Town 8000.

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