a beyond the ordinary magazine
ZAR 30.– July 2013
Reason: He Thinks. He Raps
BUSHFIRE Swaziland's inspirational festival
planet
surf
wave-riding special!
Come and discover more at www.infiniti.co.za
THE PULSE RACES
THE WORLD OF RED BULL
July 70
reinventing the wheel
The World Rally Championship is being rebooted. In a sport with its fair share of character actors, who can be the new star of the series?
Cover Photography: Brian Bielmann. Photography: McKlein, Graham Shearer
Welcome
We’ve gone from coast to coast – that’s the North Shore in Hawaii, Australia’s south and America’s east and west – to bring you a 24-page surfing special that features the best waves, boarders and surf stories on the planet. Elsewhere on the edges, we’ve got an amazing photo essay that lifts the lid on Mexico’s illicit car racing scene. From the world of legal sport, ultramarathon man Ryan Sandes shows how to build a physique that can run 8,000km a year and we also have someone claiming to be faster than Usain Bolt. (That man is Bolt’s manager, and he is only halfkidding. Maybe three-quarters .) From those lofty heights, there is only way to go, and that is down – to the bottom of the world’s deepest cave. All that and much more. We hope you enjoy the issue. the red bulletin
Julian Wilson, leader of surfing’s new wave
THE WORLD OF RED BULL
at a glance Bullevard
SURF SPECIAL
08 photos of the month 14 news Sport and culture on the quick 17 where’s your head at? Hugh Jackman is Wolverine 20 me & my body Ryan Sandes 22 winning formula Flyboards 24 lucky numbers Unlikely champions
08 gallery: the breaks Up close at stunning surf spots with the world’s best wave riders
38 the new brat pack
Young, not dumb, here they come: an ambitious gang of red-hot talents wants to take surfing to the next level
Features
60 roll on, rockaway
26 Mexico’s Secret Racing
A community of surfers is working to rebuild a New York City beach after the devastation of Hurricane Sandy
38 Surfing’s New Wave Julian Wilson leads pro surfing’s
vanguard to new horizons
46 The Gaffer
How Ricky Simms came to keep sport’s fastest movers in check
48 Future SA Sounds
50
92
depth charge
partying in Portland
The journey to the bottom of Earth’s deepest cave is long and dangerous. One man wants to go further down...
Take your front row seat at the acclaimed Sunday night burlesque show at Dante’s in the US of A
Reason is a rapid-fire rhymer but can still choose his words carefully
50 G oing Underground The deepest cave in the world
60 After The Hurricane
Bringing a surf scene back to life
70 Rebooting The Rally How the WRC is going to live and thrive in a post-Seb Loeb world
80 More Than The Music
On-site at Bushfire Festival in Swaziland
Action
20 me & my body
South African extreme athlete Ryan Sandes runs the equivalent of Paris to Beijing every year 04
80 more than the music
Swaziland’s acclaimed Bushfire Festival doesn’t just uplift its audience, it uplifts an entire community
90 92 93 94 95 96 98
travel Deep-water soloing in Croatia party A guide to the best nights out training Red Bull X-Fighters my city In Berlin with Modeselektor Playlist Mount Kimbie’s top songs save the date Events for your diary time warpED Breakdance begins?
the red bulletin
Photography: Ryan Miller/Red Bull Content Pool, Arturas Artiusenka, Kit Engwall, Justin Polkey, Sydelle Willow Smith
The underground car circuit where speed means more than life itself
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contributors Who’s on board this issue The Red Bulletin South Africa ISSN 2079-4282
The Red Bulletin is published by Red Bull Media House GmbH General Manager Wolfgang Winter Publisher Franz Renkin
Daumantas Liekis
Tomasz Gudzowaty Ten years ago, the Polish lensman won a World Press Photo award for images of Shaolin monks in training. In this month’s edition of The Red Bulletin, we showcase his remarkable shots of the Mexican underground car-racing scene. Links between the two? Stories from life’s margins, Gudzowaty’s favourite place, and black-andwhite photos, his chosen colour scheme. When you commission him, you get 12 pictures only, but a dozen does the job, always.
Cole Louison Hurricane Sandy caused more than US$100 million in damage to a New York City surfing community, erasing seven miles of boardwalk and permanently altering the way of life for its residents. “We got out there six months later and people were still chopping wood for fires,” says Louison, a journalist, surfer and resident of Brooklyn, NYC. “No one’s tougher or more insular than Rockaway surfers, yet everyone wanted to talk because everyone had a story to tell.”
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The Lithuanian nature and science journalist travelled to Georgia to explore the deepest cave in the world. This kind of adventure is just another day at the office for him (another day involved research at Chernobyl) because, as well as his journalistic duties, Liekis also works as a biologist. During his time at the Krubera cave, he observed the living things that only exist in the dark, raw environment that extends more than 2km below ground.
Editor-in-Chief Robert Sperl Deputy Editor-in-Chief Alexander Macheck Editor, South Africa Steve Smith
Editor Paul Wilson Chief Sub-Editor Nancy James Deputy Chief Sub-Editor Joe Curran Assistant Editors Ulrich Corazza, Werner Jessner, Ruth Morgan, Florian Obkircher, Arkadiusz Pia˛tek, Andreas Rottenschlager, Daniel Kudernatsch (app) Contributing Editor Stefan Wagner Production Editor Marion Wildmann Creative Director Erik Turek Art Director Kasimir Reimann Design Miles English (manager), Martina de Carvalho-Hutter, Silvia Druml, Kevin Goll, Carita Najewitz, Esther Straganz Chief Photo Editor Fritz Schuster Photo Editors Susie Forman (Creative Photo Editor) Ellen Haas, Catherine Shaw, Rudi Übelhör Repro Managers Clemens Ragotzky (manager), Karsten Lehmann, Josef Mühlbacher Head of Production Michael Bergmeister Production Wolfgang Stecher (manager), Walter O Sádaba, Christian Graf-Simpson (app)
Brian Bielmann
After 35 years working your dream job, you would think a person has no regrets. And yet, Bielmann has one: to have spent “even more time than I did in the water”. Friends of the American surf photographer will tell you that he as an enviably rad dude – which makes him exactly the right person to focus on surf stars like our cover star Julian Wilson, despite heavy swell. His photos appear in adverts, magazines such as National Geographic and on the walls of discerning collectors.
“Six months after the hurricane, people were still chopping wood for fires” cole louison
Advertising Enquiries Andrew Gillett, +27 (0) 83 412 8008, andrew.gillett@za.redbull.com
Printed by CTP Printers, Duminy Street, Parow-East, Cape Town 8000. Finance Siegmar Hofstetter, Simone Mihalits Marketing & Country Management Barbara Kaiser (manager), Stefan Ebner, Stefan Hötschl, Elisabeth Salcher, Lukas Scharmbacher, Sara Varming Distribution Klaus Pleninger, Peter Schiffer Marketing Design Julia Schweikhardt, Peter Knethl Advertising Placement Sabrina Schneider O∞ce Management Manuela Gesslbauer, Anna Jankovic, Anna Schober
The Red Bulletin is published in Austria, Brazil, France, Germany, Ireland, Kuwait, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa, Switzerland, UK and USA Website www.redbulletin.com Head office Red Bull Media House GmbH, Oberst-Lepperdinger-Strasse 11-15, A-5071 Wals bei Salzburg, FN 297115i, Landesgericht Salzburg, ATU63611700 South Africa office Black River Park North, 2 Fir Street, Observatory, 7925 8005 +27 (0) 21 486 8000 Austria office Heinrich-Collin-Strasse 1, A-1140 Vienna. +43 (1) 90221 28800 Write to us: letters@redbulletin.com
the red bulletin
WINGS FOR EVERY TASTE.
CRANBERRY. LIME. BLUEBERRY. AND THE EFFECT OF RED BULL.
SURF SPECIAL Th e B ox , Au str alia
about face
Seasoned surfers describe this spot, out from the town of Margaret River on the south-west tip of Australia, as a “super-shallow right-breaking beast” with “steep entry, fast tubes, thick lips”. A lip is the upper part of the breaking edge of the wave, which goes on to form a tube for the surfer to ride through – as nailed here by Oz native Kieren Perrow. At The Box, a tube should be ridden as fast as possible: falling can lead to painful contact with the coral reef under the waves. Keen on Kieren? www.twitter.com/kierenperrow Photography: Russell Ord
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N E W S O UTH WALE S , AU STR ALIa
deeper down
The ‘duck dive’ is a surfer’s plunge beneath a wave to avoid the impact of a wall of water, as demonstrated here by Belinda Baggs. The Australian is known for the flawless technique of her longboard style, its calm aesthetic distinguishing it from the often brutal riding of the big-wave scene. Baggs’s special trick is the ‘nose ride’: inching step by step to the tip of her board while riding out the wave. “Living without the sea,” she says, “would be really scary.” Know the nose ride: www.vimeo.com/57337399 Photography: Ben Moon
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Wai m e a Bay, Hawai i
board games Big-wave surfing was born on November 7, 1957, on the rugged north coast of the island of Oahu, when Greg Noll and a handful of other young Americans first surfed the waves of Waimea Bay. Almost exactly 17 years later, the first pro surfing contest was staged at the same location. Wave heights can reach 8m. Here, a group of pro surfers battle through a monster set in competition with – as the abandoned boards show – varying levels of success. More on this contest: www.quiksilverlive.com/eddieaikau Photography: Brian Bielman
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Bullevard Auto pilot The idea of a flying car is almost as old as the car itself. Now the dream is set to come true. Here are the major stops along the road to the car of the future
Curtiss AutoPlane (1917) The first car with wings was able to skip along the runway, but not actually take to the skies.
ConvAirCar (1946) A prototype withstood 66 test flights, but a crash eventually halted plans for mass production.
he watts t matter Speaker stacks and booming bass in a new exhibition devoted to the culture and impact of that outdoor party must: the sound system In its truest form, a sound system consists of two turntables, an amplifier and stacks of speakers as high as a house and loud as hell. Its natural habitat is the streets of Jamaica, where the culture of sound systems arose in the 1950s, soon developing into an alternative to overpriced clubs and an important instrument of the counterculture. Out of the stacks flowed bass-heavy, quintessentially Jamaican music styles from ska and dub to dancehall. These days, sound systems are ubiquitous on the global party scene, mostly at festivals and carnivals. Parisian gallery La Gaîté Lyrique is staging Say Watt?, a major exhibition of sound system culture, with early photos and posters from Jamaica (right) and a screening of Babylon, a film about the early sound system scene in London. There are also panel discussions led by French reggae specialist Seb Carayol and workshops at which you can learn how to make your own sound system. You can also expect speaker sculptures by young artists and plenty of concerts, with deep bass frequencies delivering deep tissue massage. The exhibition runs until August 25. Pump up le volume: www.gaite-lyrique.net
Piasecki AirGeep (1962) In development for five years, and flew, but the US military’s final evaluation was: do not proceed.
Say Watt?: sound systems from their origins in Jamaica to today’s versions belting out on bikes
phototicker
EVERY shot ON TARGET
Have you taken a picture with a Red Bull flavour? Email it to us at: phototicker@redbulletin.com Terrafugia TF-x (2009) After a first test flight four years ago, if all goes to plan the first flying car will be on sale in 2015.
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Every month we print a selection, with our favourite pic awarded a limited-edition Sigg bottle. Tough, functional and well-suited to sport, it features The Red Bulletin logo.
Erzberg
Austria’s busiest car wash was found down the road from Red Bull Hare Scramble. Samo Vidic the red bulletin
Photography: Getty images (2), Terrafugia, lyle owerko/say watt, beth lesser/say watt, chris bateman/say watt (3), katie callan
Sport and culture on the quick
A billion there
Photography: carlo cruz/red bull content pool, andrea de maria/red bull content pool, tobias kresse
Tech to make an 11-figure sum
Instagram: the quickest In April 2012, the owner of the photosharing app agreed to sell to Facebook for US$1 billion – just 551 days after it was launched.
‘I shot that!’: Chris Burkard and his championship-winning photo of Chilean surf
Powerful images Chris Burkard can well remember the day that he took his best-ever photo. “The light, the wind, the swell: everything was perfect, as if nature wanted to linger in harmony for just one moment.” The photographer, from San Luis Obispo, California, captured surfer Peter Medina in an emerald-green wave off the coast of Chile with his Nikon D700. The remarkable image won the last Red Bull Illume contest, the world’s largest competition for action and adventure photography. In late August, a jury of 50 international judges will announce Burkard’s Red Bull Illume successor for 2013. “Any kid can capture the world with an iPhone or a GoPro. For me, this is a positive development,” says Burkhard. “It takes years of training to press the button at the right time. His top tip for successful snapping? “Analyse the photos which don’t work.” Burkard’s work: instagram.com/chrisburkard Red Bull Illume 2013: www.redbullillume.com
skype: the biggest In 2011, Microsoft bought the video chat software company from eBay for US$8.5 billion. The online auction house paid US$2.5bn in 2005.
pinterest: THE NEXTEST? The social pinboard site – estimated value: US$2.5 billion – isn’t currently for sale, but the big web companies are showing (p)interest.
IN freefall Cliff diver Anna Bade on role models, fear as an aid to concentration and plunging from the pub into the water Stop four of the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series takes place this month in Malcesine on Italy’s Lake Garda, where a women’s competition will be staged for the first time. Germany’s Anna Bader, 29, is one of the favourites. the red bulletin: What is it about cliff diving that you find so compelling? anna bader: It’s a battle of strength versus gravity, with no external assistance. What are your favourite spots for diving? Switzerland, Thailand and Majorca. It all began for me in Rick’s Café in Negril, Jamaica. There, the locals dive straight from the cliff in front of the pub, into the turquoise blue sea.
Freefalling at 90kph: what does that feel like? When you’re actually in the air you don’t notice anything. I feel almost weightless. Do you ever get scared? The forces at work in diving are enormous, and there is painful punishment for every mistake. Fear is good. Once you have it under control, it can aid concentration, but if you let it gain the upper hand it can paralyse you. What do you admire about your male cliff diving peers? Orlando Duque has the best entry phase. Gary Hunt is the twist pioneer. Artem Silchenko is the specialist for handstand jumps – and that happens to be my strong suit, as well. www.annabader.com
First time out: Anna Bader
WE HAVE A WINNER!
Calgary
A first urban endurocross for the Canadian city: Red Bull Rocks & Logs. John Evely the red bulletin
Baku At Red Bull X-Fighters, snowmobile
freestyler Daniel Bodin enjoys Azerbaijani hospitality. Denis Klero
Puerto del Carmen
Heat, wind, soft asphalt. No wonder Ironman Lanzarote is feared. Gines Diaz
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Bullevard
One of joBerg2c’s timed Red Bull Runs
Long and fast A new feature of this year’s nine-day joBerg2c mountain bike race was the Red Bull Run. Essentially, this race-within-a-race featured five timed 3-5km enduro-style downhill sections at various points over the 900km between Heidelberg to Scottburgh. German rider Nico Pfitzenmaier clocked the fastest accumulated time after negotiating the newly SA-designed and much talked-about Momsen Vipa dual-susser. He and partner Timo Cooper finished third overall in the joBerg2c race. www.joberg2c.co.za
Against the odds: Brad Binder is on course for a top 10 finish in Moto3 despite his slower bike
in the slipstream
DJ Fosta (left) and Chris D
Deep House Mother The Life Rhythms collective are doing right by their moms. Made up of township luminary DJ Fosta and Scottish-born veteran, Chris D, the two were joined in the Red Bull Studio by Lungiswa Plaatjies, vocalist for percussion ensemble, Amampondo. “At first we had no idea what the message of the song should be,” says DJ Fosta “Then we realised we wanted to praise the mothers of our nation. They’re our light.” DJ Fosta and Plaatjies wrote lyrics to the deep afro-house track. Release info at: www.facebook.com/pages/ Life-Rhythms/660325350649243
London A tiny taxi takes to the UK’s
streets ahead of the Red Bull Soapbox Race. Daniel Lewis
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Making a name for himself in MotoGP this year is 17-year-old Potchefstroom rider Brad Binder. A graduate of the Red Bull MotoGP Rookies Cup, this is Binder’s first full season in MotoGP riding for Ambrogio Racing. Aboard his Suter Honda, Binder has consistently been the fastest of the Honda riders and though the nimble little bike handles really well, the KTMs have had their number on out-and-out top speed. red bulletin: How do you keep up to speed on a slower bike? “I battle to put in one lap time that is really fast. For this reason, I haven’t had very good qualifying sessions. Because my Honda engine doesn’t have the top speed, it’s crucial to get a good slip stream to make a good qualifying lap.”
Soweto I.D.A Crew jump for joy as their dance moves win them Red Bull Beat Battle in South Africa. Craig Kolesky
What’s your race strategy? “In a Moto3 race, one of the most important things is to get a good start and try to hook on to the front guys. This can make your race. Once the race is a few laps in, it is so important to get into a rhythm. Without a good rhythm it is impossible to have a good race.” You’ve put in some noteworthy efforts with a 12th, 10th, 4th and 7th place in the season’s opening four races, despite your handicap. “It’s gone quite well so far, but I still want to be a lot further up the field. It does feel good to be the top Honda at the moment. Realistically, I want to finish the championship in the top 10 this year. This is my goal and I hope to achieve it.” www.bradbinder41.com
Osaka Josh Sheehan gives new meaning to the term ‘sun seeker’ by Japan’s Tower of the Sun. Jason Halayko the red bulletin
Words: Steve Smith. Photography: Kelvin Trautman/Nikon, Scott Gilfillan, Imago
South Africa’s teenage star of MotoGP, Brad Binder, explains how he makes the most of his equipment
Bullevard
Where’s Your Head At?
hugh jackman
With animal instincts and killer pipes, the 44-year-old Australian rules action movies and musicals. But what happened on the set of his Chinese-language debut? And how does he get so ripped?
Chinese Take-Off
Seal Broken
By the 1990s, Jackman was an accomplished stage musical actor. Playing Gaston in Beauty and the Beast, in Melbourne, he wet himself onstage. “I realised that the muscles you release to sing are the ones you don’t want to release if you need to go.”
Punishment Glutton
To shape up as Wolverine, Jackman follows the 8/16 Diet, eating 6,000 calories per day during in an eighthour period, then fasting for 16 hours. “I eat a 12oz steak every day. I don’t know any doctors recommending that.”
words: Toby Wiseman. illustration: lie-ins and tigers
Dark Heart
From helping a fallen Jennifer Lawrence at the Oscars to crooning at Nicole Kidman’s wedding: Jackman is officially Hollywood’s Nicest Man – but not without edge. Making Les Miserables, his soundtrack was metal band Godsmack. “With all this beautiful music playing, in my head I’m hearing Crying Like A Bitch.”
TV Or Not TV
For every US version of The Office, there is Viva Laughlin. A 2007 remake of BBC comedy-drama-musical Blackpool with Jackman starring and executively producing, it was cancelled in America after two of eight episodes were shown, and after just one in Australia: the shortestlived show in Aussie TV history.
the red bulletin
Jackman got mixed reviews playing a Shanghai nightclub performer in Chinese drama Snow Flower and the Secret Fan. After months learning a song in Mandarin, he later told Jay Leno on US TV: “I sang my song [to Wendi Murdoch, co-producer] and after the first syllables she was, like, ‘Great’, but after that it was, ‘What?’”
Cool Hand Hugh
Despite many ‘Sexiest Man Alive’ accolades, Jackman remains in awe of his movie alter-ego. “I pinch myself every day that I get the chance to play Wolverine. Sometimes I think I’d prefer to be him in real life. He’s so much cooler than me.”
A Rare Talon
With The Wolverine, out this month, Jackman has played the titular role seven times, matching Sean Connery as James Bond and one less than Daniel Radcliffe’s Harry Potter. Shintaro Katsu played the blind swordsman Zatoichi in 26 films from 1962-89.
Captive Audience
Coming soon: Jackman in a kidnap thriller for Canadian director Denis Villeneuve. “A film called Prisoners, which I’m real excited about. I loved working with Denis. He’s like [Batman director and Man Of Steel producer] Chris Nolan: same vision, clarity and similar dynamic.”
The Wolverine, out worldwide from July 24: www.thewolverinemovie.com
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illustration: dietmar kainrath
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the red bulletin
JHB 42152/1 As seen on DStv/SuperSport
CHRIS FROOME 2013 TOUR DE OMAN WINNER 2013 TOUR DE ROMANDIE WINNER
BRADLEY WIGGINS 2012 TOUR DE FRANCE WINNER
ROBERT HUNTER 2013 MZANSI TOUR WINNER
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UP THE TEMPO
supersport.com
Bullevard
me and my body
Ryan Sandes
The South African extreme athlete, 31, runs the equivalent of Paris to Beijing every year. The only thing that makes him quake in his boots is the cold
INNER VOICE
3
Long periods of rest are important. I sleep between eight and nine hours a night. In the morning my heart rate is 47bpm; when it’s under extreme pressure, it speeds up to over 200, but I don’t measure it that often. I prefer to pay attention to my bodily reactions.
www.ryansandes.com
SUPPORT SQUAD
One advantage of running long distances is keeping your weight down, even though your body needs fat reserves. I’m 1.78m tall and I weigh 66-68kg for a race. After a 100-mile run, I weigh one to two kilos less.
GREAT SHAKES
2 ACHILLES HEEL
The most common injuries: fatigue fractures, runner’s knee and sprained ankle ligaments. A recovery period can take from three to four weeks, depending. Another problem is that the other foot or leg compensates during recovery and can be overburdened.
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4
So far, I’ve only had cramps during ultramarathons in Antarctica, which is partly due to compression stockings. As soon as you stand still there, when it’s -20°C, your body temperature drops quickly and your muscles start shivering and cramping.
the red bulletin
words: ulrich corazza. photography: justin polkey
1 LOSER WINS
4
I run about 800 hours a year. That’s about 8,000km in distance and 300,000m in altitude. The main focus of my training is to maintain a clean running technique. I work with a coach and a biokineticist twice a week. For my stressed back, there is lots of physiotherapy and chiropractic.
Bullevard
HArd & FAST
Top performers and winning ways from around the globe “I’m speechless,” said SA surfer Jordy Smith after winning the Billabong Rio Pro, his first victory on the ASP World Tour outside his home country.
Sbhujwa crew I.D.A. surprised themselves when they won Red Bull Beat Battle
battle tactics
photography: craig kolesky/red bull content pool (2), Ryan Miller, getty images (2), Sebas Romero/Red Bull Content Pool. illustration: dietmar Kainrath
I.D.A. are the 2013 Red Bull Beat Battle champs. It’s a title they certainly won the hard way
For proof that the hard yards pay off, look no further than dedicated SA street dancers I.D.A. After months of hard graft, choreography and challenging qualifiers, the Sbhujwa crew from Tembisa were crowned the 2013 Red Bull Beat Battle champions. Conquering seven of the country’s top dance crews in the final – including title holders Reptilez – Katlego Mphahlele and his I.D.A Crew withstood the pressure of head-to-head battles in front of a very vocal 2,500-strong crowd at Walter Sisulu Square in Kliptown, Soweto. In the final battle, I.D.A. came up against the hip-hop Clinch Crew, who came at them hard, bringing a coffin and tombstone onto the stage for their final routine. The notso-subtle “we’re going to bury you” message was loud and clear. “We just wanted to have fun on the night,” said a breathless Mphahlele after the final battle. “From the first round to the final, that’s all we have been focused on. Even when Clinch Crew came on to the stage with those props, we were like, ‘You know what, let’s just roll with it and have fun!’” The final was also as close as it gets, with I.D.A. taking victory after coming from behind in a split decision. “At no point in the competition did we ever think we would win it,”said Mphahlele. “We won the first vote from the crowd, but then the next two votes went to Clinch. If one more vote went to them then we would’ve been done. That’s just who we are though. We are not big-headed or arrogant. We always tell ourselves that whatever comes our way we will deal with it.”
Despite starting from sixth place on the grid, Spain’s Dani Pedrosa was triumphant in the wet at the French round of MotoGP at Le Mans, his second win of the season.
Italian golfer Matteo Manassero, 20, became the youngest-ever winner of the BMW PGA Championship by beating Simon Khan and Marc Warren in a play-off at Wentworth, England.
At the X Games in Barcelona, motocross rider Ronnie Renner of the USA won gold in the MX Step Up as the only rider to clear the bar on each of his first attempts up to 31ft.
www.redbull.co.za the red bulletin
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Bullevard
winning formula
jet set
High water: David Goncalves of France in the qualifying round of the 2012 Flyboard World Cup in Doha, Qatar
Words: Martin Apolin. Photography: getty images. Illustration: Mandy Fischer
Flyboarding is watersport’s most spectacular new discipline. This is how to be a rocket man, in theory and in practice ON THE WHITEBOARD “A jet ski turbine, a connecting hose, four control jets and you’ve got a piece of sporting kit with which, according to its manufacturer, you can ‘dive like a dolphin and fly like a bird’,” says Professor Thomas Schrefl of Austria’s St Pölten University of Applied Sciences and the University of Sheffield in England. “To get airborne on a flyboard, the force of the water shooting downwards must be greater than the force of gravity. The force of gravity for the flyboard and the pilot is determined by the product of the total mass and operates downwards: FSch = –(mPi + mPl)g. Here mPi and mPl are the mass of the pilot and the flyboard, respectively, while g is the gravitational acceleration. “The force operating upwards comes from the water shooting out the jets. It is pumped upwards through the hose at a velocity of v¹, redirected through a piping system and then shot out of jets with a velocity of v². The flyboard exerts force on the water, FW, and redirects it downwards. This alters the momentum of the water. The change of momentum per unit of time equals the force acting on the water. Newton’s Third Law states, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. This force, FPl, holds the flyboard in a floating position. “Now we can estimate how many litres of water per second are required to carry the flyboard and the pilot. For this we must compare the weight force with the alteration of momentum in the water, and time. This results in the equation (mPi + mPl)g = W(v² – v¹). As above, g is the gravitational acceleration. We define the amount of water that flows per second as W, and calculate it as the product of the density of the water, the velocity and the cross-sectional area of the inlet pipe, A¹. The amount of water in litres flowing in per second is W = r v¹ A¹ litres. “In other words, the velocity of the water at the inlet is v¹ = W/(r A¹) where r is the density of the water. Because the cross-section of the four jets, A² , is overall less than the inlet, the water comes out of the jets faster than it’s pumped in, that is, with a velocity of v² = –v¹(A¹/A² ). “In conclusion, if we assume a total mass of mPi + mPl = 100kg, an inlet area of 80cm² and a cross-sectional area for all jets of 50cm², that means that 55 litres of water per second are required to keep pilot and board aloft for one second – water that shoots out of the jets at 40kph. Jet power, indeed.” ON THE FLYBOARD It was a combination of jet-skiing, wakeboarding and kitesurfing that Frenchman Franky Zapata had in mind when he devised the flyboard in 2011. “It only takes 30 minutes with an instructor to learn how to use one,” says Zapata. “It feels like freedom.” A year later, his countryman Stéphane Prayas was declared the first world champion of the new discipline, in which judges award points based on the rider’s freestyle manoeuvres. www.zapata-racing.com
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Bullevard
lucky numbers
Unlikely Champions A blind archer? A lightweight sumo wrestler? A footballer with crooked legs? A look at the world’s most extraordinary sporting careers
Jan Molby
Tyrone Bogues
Sumo wrestlers normally weigh at least 150kg and are Japanese. But Pavel Bojar is Czech and tips the scales at a mere 98kg. After bronze at the 2000 world junior sumo championships, he was taken on by the Naruto organisation in 2000, under the ring name of Takanoyama Shuntaro. In 2011, he broke into sumo’s top division. He has tried to gain weight, but his metabolism does not allow it.
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Footballer Jan Molby was plagued by a different kind of weight problem. At the height of his width, the Danish midfielder carried several kilos of excess baggage – though not very far, as he rarely strayed beyond the centre circle. Yet he was good enough to make 218 league appearances for Liverpool from 1984-95, winning three titles and scoring 44 goals.
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Dai Greene
Pavel Bojar Garrincha
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Im Dong-Hyun is legally blind. The South Korean has only 15 per cent vision in his left eye and 20 per cent in his right, but that didn’t stop him setting a world record score of 699, out of a possible 720, in qualifying for the men’s individual archery at the 2012 London Olympics. Thanks to his extraordinary muscle memory, the 27-year-old can fire on target again and again.
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Tyrone Bogues escaped the Baltimore ghetto to play 14 years in the NBA. That is already the stuff of dreams. What makes the man known as Muggsy an all-time hoops legend is his height: at 160cm (5ft 3in), he is the smallest player in NBA history. “I always believed in myself,” he told Sports Illustrated, just before his debut in 1987, “That’s the type of attitude I always took out on the floor, knowing… there’s a place for me out there.”
One of football’s all-time greats was lucky to be able to stand up straight. In 1933, Garrincha was born with a curved spine and a right leg bent inwards and 6cm longer than his left, which bent outwards. After a childhood operation, a doctor suggested: “Play football. It will make your legs stronger.” It was good advice. The winger dribbled Brazil to World Cup victory in 1958 and 1962; in the latter, he was joint top-scorer with four goals.
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Im Dong-Hyun
In 2011, Dai Greene became 400m hurdles world champion in Daegu in Korea. The 27-year-old Welshman is epileptic, but eschews medication for the sake of his athletics career. “I could sense that the tablets were having a negative impact on my performance, so I stopped taking them,” he said. “I minimise the risk of fits with regular sleep and by avoiding alcohol.” the red bulletin
words: arkadiusz piatek. photography: corbis, getty images (4), imago
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On Mexico’s illegal racetracks, The laws of the land and the code of the road are forgotten. the only thing that matters is speed Words: Rogelio Rivera Photography: Tomasz Gudzowaty 27
The flagman drops his arms to start the race. At the finish line, only the winner is applauded
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Illegal racing drivers Armando Cerda (left) and Miguel Romero, and their 1968 Dodge Charger
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All the rules of the road are broken in an illicit pursuit of Adrenalin Wheel-repair guys, like Erick Garcia 足Rojas (right), are on standby at all times
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very day, about five million cars turn Mexico City into a pitiless car park. The huge logjam, which unfolds across the world’s third-largest city, leads to a type of chaos from which there appears to be no escape. Illegal racing drivers claw back their lost freedom in rundown areas on the outskirts of the city, isolated spots and outlying roads, dilapidated garages and warehouses. They break all the rules of the road, daringly racing souped-up cars in illicit pursuit of adrenalin. “I’m just addicted to speed,” admits Joaquín, one of the drivers, and he’s speaking on behalf of all of them. “I was already in love with these races before I had a driving licence. My friends and I just used to sneak off to them on Saturday nights back in the day and watch.” In addition to sating a desire for the forbidden, feeding a fascination for mechanical tinkering and escaping from the everyday routine, the races are run in a party atmosphere. “All my friends are there,” Joaquín says. “We play music, smoke, drink, chat up girls, meet new people.” The only thing that can ruin one of these parties is a police patrol. “When we hear the sirens, it means we get the hell out of there.” The Mexican police have no sympathy for the illegal races and are rigorous in their attempts at stamping them out. Cars are seized and drivers are arrested. However, the popularity of illegal racing has led the police to sanction certain races, which take place in a controlled environment and include safety measures for both the drivers and spectators. These events are sparsely attended, though, because much of the appeal of 32
Life is lived on four wheels. Cars are bought, repaired, tuned, driven, but, most importantly, they are proudly shown off
Remote roads, car parks, warehouses. The more isolated and desolate, the better
Hugo Loyo at the wheel. Below left: JosĂŠ Alberto Eleuterio, one of the younger racers, waits for his turn on the track, while Loyo repairs a 1970 Dodge Charger
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"The only thing I'll swap my car for is a wheelchair or a coffin"
this kind of racing lies in playing cat and mouse with the police. After the races are over, the stories Joaquín and his friends tell each other around the campfire are always about the same things: speed, drinking, accidents, death and survival. “Once a friend ‘borrowed’ his father’s car to drive in a race, where he had an accident. The car was a wreck and the only reason he didn’t end up in prison was because his uncle bribed the police.” There is a great deal of danger, but most races pass with drivers suffering nothing worse than a few bumps and bruises. It is a lot easier to get over injuries than it is dented wings or doors. Drivers put all their money, along with all their time, into getting their cars into race condition. It isn’t easy getting classic cars like a 1969 Ford Mustang, a 1970 Chevy C10 or a 1966 Plymouth Valiant Hardtop to look good and perform well enough to win a race. “Speed costs money,” Joaquín says simply. “My cars are only ever as quick as my wallet allows.”
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he races aren’t run for money. The only thing up for grabs here is gaining respect. That hasn’t changed in decades. Whether the drivers are 15 or 45, they take on this challenge for one reason only: to prove that they are the best. “A lot of people ask me why I like these races,” says Joaquín. “I give the answer a professional racing driver would: I want to take the car to new limits.” But, as Joaquín knows, racing like this is more than a battle between man and machine. “It’s between me and my fears.” Like all drivers, he is willing to risk everything for the race. “My girlfriend knows that if she loves me, she has to accept me and my passion for speed. She stopped coming to these events. She says that someone else will have to identify me at the morgue further down the line. I always reply that the only thing I’ll swap my car for is a wheelchair or a coffin. I’ll never give up this type of racing. I’m addicted to speed and nothing will cure me.” 37
SURF SPECIAL
The New
BRAT PACK From shaggy-haired dudes to high-performance athletes, the ambitious stars of surfing’s new guard have an eye on the mainstream – and a sport in transition is hoping they grab the world’s attention Words: Stuart Cornuelle
Australian star surfer Julian Wilson is part of the sport’s new breed of professional athletes
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Photography: Kirstin Scholtz/getty images
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ulian Wilson is in the shower. He’s been in Oregon for two weeks, training at his sponsor’s headquarters in preparation for the first event of the Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP) World Championship Tour. Wilson is working out every day, sometimes twice. Between sessions he sits in design meetings in which the technical merit of an extra-stretchy boardshort is carefully probed. At night he holes up alone in a hotel. He drinks only water, sleeps often and eats a lot. For him it’s a business trip. “Guys now train hard,” he says of today’s surfers, “and they put a lot of effort into the way they come across. It’s not so much the going out and the hardcore parties, things that kind of left that mark on surfing as being a sport where you can just travel the world and have a great time and get paid to do it. If you’re like that these days, you’re going to be left behind.”
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the red bulletin
photography: Kirstin Scholtz/Getty Images, Graham Shearer
iles from the coast, Julian Wilson is sweating. Outside it’s raining, which it does so generously in Oregon, in north-west America. Inside Wilson flips a tractor tyre across the floor of an otherwise empty gym. Only a trainer looks on. Wilson, 24, is a professional surfer – among the best. The gym is one of many like it in a cutting-edge sports complex on Nike’s global campus, built to make Olympians out of merely great athletes. Wilson flips his heavy 6ft tyre some more, then moves to the speed bag before a set of stair sprints. This whole scene is confusing if your image of a surfer involves, say, a board, a beach, or a pathological avoidance of rain-soaked inland gyms – and you wouldn’t be alone in being confused. Things like plyometrics and unilateral strength training just don’t go with the carefree ideal of a genuine surf dude. But this is why Wilson’s sweating there, alone on the gym floor. He wants to get your attention. He wants to change your mind. The Australian earned around US$300,000 in prize money alone last year. His endorsements brought in a lot more on top of that. He’s part of a generation for which surfing isn’t countercultural play time – it’s a sport, a career and a billion-dollar industry. It’s grown up and out, into Iceland and Morocco and Brazil. Surf brands are traded for huge amounts on world stock markets. Talented kids get home-schooled like child pop stars. Hawaiian John John Florence, the ideal of a surf prodigy-turnedpro, has been sponsored since he was six. They can afford BMWs before they’re old enough to drive. Yet for all its growth, surfing still lags behind other sports – even action sports such as snowboarding and skateboarding – in mainstream popularity. Interest may spike and wither but a half-century after surfing became a beach phenomenon, it still remains mostly coastal. A niche. A novelty. Wilson and his peers could change that. They’re – to use a pun – riding a wave of developments that are bringing surfing closer than ever to the global living room, from new media to management, to better performance, to the amount of money spent grooming and marketing young stars. Surfers like Florence and Californian Kolohe Andino, South African Jordy Smith and Brazil’s Gabriel Medina – they might just make you care about surfing.
Julian Wilson born November 8, 1988 Hometown Coolum Beach, Queensland, Australia long life Before switching to shortboards, Wilson won the Australian Junior Longboard title at the age of 14. in the pink Wilson is an ambassador for the National Breast Cancer Foundation, and rides pink boards in competition to raise money and awareness for the American charity.
John John Florence Born October 18, 1992 Hometown Honolulu, Hawaii, USA Hey, bro(S)! Florence is the oldest of three brothers – all of whom are professional surfers. boy genius At 13, Florence became the youngest surfer to compete in Hawaii’s prestigious Triple Crown surf series. Six years later, he became the youngest to win it.
Photography: ASP/Robertson, Kirstin Scholtz/getty images
“ T he next generation of surfers is more serious at a younger age. There’s more work being put in”
This professionalism – a word that’s now eclipsed ‘gnarly’ in the surf lexicon – is driving the sport’s rapid ascent. The old war stories about competing high or hungover, on no sleep, borrowing a board the morning of the contest are just that: old. Totally foreign to the pros today, for whom fitness and preparation are gospel. “The next generation of surfers is even more serious at a younger age,” says Florence, just 20 years old. “There’s more training, and more mental and psychological work being put in at an earlier age.” At every ASP event, it’s normal to see trainers and coaches, managers, agents and cameramen paid to catch a pro’s every ride. Spin bikes and Swiss balls are on-site to help competitors warm up. There’s a massage table and a catering area. “It’s a little less rogue now,” says Peter Jasienski, global media director of surf brand Hurley, who works with Wilson, Andino and Florence. “They’re aware of their influence over an audience, whether it’s kids or adults or fans of the sport. That’s the biggest difference.” The results aren’t surprising: better surfing, better role models and a better image for the sport in general, all of which is music to the ears of the surf industry, and the industry controls the coins. Professionalism, after all, is a symptom; money is its cause. the red bulletin
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wo years ago, Dane Reynolds, then a popular 25-year-old yet to register an ASP World Tour victory, was re-signed by his sponsor Quiksilver for a reported US$23 million, to be paid over six years. (The media halfjokingly called it ‘The Decision’, referring to LeBron James’ 2010 transfer to Miami Heat.) Bidding wars have become a common thing when top surfers hit the market. The 2007 race to sign Jordy Smith was so intense that Nike reportedly organised a call from Tiger Woods to woo the teenager. It’s against this backdrop that squat-thrusting in an Oregon weight room suddenly makes a lot of sense. Annual worldwide surf industry revenue now exceeds US$6 billion, a figure predicted to double by 2017. If surfers have started behaving like professional athletes, it isn’t by accident. It’s because an ASP World Tour victory today nets an six-figure cheque plus extra potential for sponsorship earnings. “Even though companies and contests seem to be struggling, there’s more money in surfing than ever,” says Florence, now in his second full year on tour. “Not just for the surfers, but for the events and the sponsors.” For some of the surfers, that is – the very best ones. “Those three athletes [Wilson, Andino and Florence], I would say, represent modern surfing,” says Jasienski, “but it’s not just the investment surrounding them; it’s the fact that they see it as a professional career. They represent themselves well in the media, they’re aware of their influence on the youth, and they really maintain their own media marketing machines.” They earn their keep, in other words, but it’s not easy. It calls for high-tech gyms and experienced coaches, and a lot of smiling, as well as all the other trappings that come with being a professional athlete. Brands aren’t simply throwing money at the nearest golden boy – they can’t afford to. That US$23 million for Dane Reynolds makes for a nice headline, but Quiksilver also withdrew support for Reynolds’ signature sub-brand Summer Teeth last year, along with several others, in a round of fierce downsizing. Billabong is desperately seeking a private equity rescue for pennies per share, down from US$12-$14 five years ago. Analog Clothing (owned by Burton Snowboards) abruptly dropped its whole team and left the surf business last October. Nike, too, ended its surf programme. The industry is hardly in fat times. The tumult revealed that the core surf market is still relatively small. Huge surf brands only get so big by selling also to non-surfers at urban flagships and landlocked department stores. Of late, their wares just haven’t been selling like they need to. The global economic downturn is one reason; new consumer tastes and trends are another. Both have put a squeeze on the industry just as the sport itself seems ready to progress to the next level. All this has been bad news for mid-level pros, who are an easy expense to cut, but it puts a premium on surfing’s one per cent – true icons who can push a product. Surfers like Wilson, Andino and Florence, who are “their own media marketing machines”. 43
Ko l o h e Andino
Photography: Brian Bielmann/Red Bull Content Pool, Corbis
born 22 March, 1994 Hometown San Clemente, California, USA Pop pops up Andino’s father, Dino, was a pro surfer in the 1980s and ’90s; he won a US Championships in 1990 and was named ASP Rookie of the Year in 1991. and mom too Kolohe’s nickname, Brother, is simply how his parents referred to him after his younger sister was born. Eighteen years later the name has stuck.
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n a trip to Japan in 2007, Julian Wilson caught an average wave and went left. He launched into the air, spun an inverted backhand loop with his feet completely off the board, his hands grabbing its rails and landed clean and rode out. Wilson named this the Sushi Roll. Footage soon spread across the surf world. The most remarkable thing about the brand-new move was the way news of it broke online. Through photos and YouTube, it become an overnight highwater mark for progressive surfing. This was an early glimpse of the new generation of surfing’s radically technical brand of surfing, captured and shared with equally radical ease – and this was six years ago. Since then, technology has only cranked up the model, bringing things faster, freer, in higher quality. A ride or even a whole contest can be beamed to fans before the surfers’ hair is dry. Cheap equipment and social media websites mean anyone can be a producer, and nothing falls through the cracks. This sea change was on display two years postSushi Roll in 2009, when Jordy Smith stomped a rodeo flip in Indonesia that instantly tore through the web. It features in Done, the short film Florence released online last year, showcasing his best surfing over several months, and the type of project that used to take a team of people at a couple of companies to produce and distribute. Now it’s just one man and his cameraman. Wilson and Andino have dedicated personal cameramen on call. In the last few years, both have created blogs stocked with unseen footage that’s only days old when it is published. Never before have surf fans had this kind of access to the best surfing, and never has the best surfing been this good. “There’s a bigger audience following surfing now than ever since I started,” says Wilson, “definitely in the last eight or 10 years. Back in Australia, it’s becoming a lot more mainstream. It’s on TV. And it was pretty startling last year during US Open time to see a lot of surfing on [ESPN’s] Top 10 Plays Of The Day and that kind of stuff. iPhones are incredible, keeping people in touch with the events and getting updates. It’s a lot more accessible than it ever was for people to follow.” There Wilson hits the most crucial point of all: the new order, his new order, is on display at the ASP World Tour, and at events like this month’s US Open Of Surfing, a week-long contest set to bring millions of visitors to Huntington Beach, California. The best surfing isn’t only found in blogs and magazines, but in competitions, on a global stage, with the ASP juggernaut pumping it out to new eyes. “The athletes are increasingly concerned with putting on an excellent show,” adds Gabriel Medina. “That captivates the audience and brings new fans.” Thanks to a deal the ASP struck late last year, surf contests will be ready for their close-up in 2014. Watch exclusive footage of Julian Wilson in surf action in The Red Bulletin tablet edition. Download it now for free. the red bulletin
Wilson and Andino have dedicated cameramen on call. In the last few years, both have created blogs stocked with unseen footage
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n October 2012, a new company called ZoSea Media acquired all media rights to the ASP tour, announcing plans to renovate and expand the brand. For the first time, a single group – spearheaded by veterans of MTV, Time Inc and the NFL – will produce and broadcast surf contests. The plans are set to turn surfing into a real spectator sport that is easy to find and follow beyond the confines of the coast – a sort of Holy Grail that has been elusive in the past. “Now it’s just accessibility – that’s the biggest issue,” says Peter Jasienski, whose company holds the licence to one of the tour’s longstanding events, the Hurley Pro at Lower Trestles in Southern California. “If you can’t be on the beach, how can you be part of the energy and share that enthusiasm, whether you surf or not? The core surfers, coastal residents, they’re all tuning in, but now it’s about access to sport and access to competition, that energy, that story.” “To be honest, I don’t think its ever going to have a live following on TV like basketball or soccer,” adds Wilson. “It’s just too unpredictable – the waves, getting the time windows and stuff. But if they package the events and put them on TV, and show the best waves as well as how it all works, I think you could captivate a huge audience.” A huge audience leads to huge advertising revenues. ZoSea’s makeover will take the pressure off struggling surf brands, which now pay more than US$2 million a pop to sponsor major ASP events. Instead, ZoSea hopes, high-profile mainstream brands will enter the space with their sizeable mainstream budgets, and then the sky’s the limit. In June this year, Wilson, Andino, Florence and the rest of today’s top surfers are on Tavarua Island for the Volcom Fiji Pro. The event briefly disappeared from the ASP Tour in 2009 for lack of sponsor support, but if things go well in the coming years, it won’t happen again. If things go really well, a million households will see Wilson doing Sushi Rolls on ESPN and no one will bat an eye – it’ll just belong there. That’s the vision, anyway. A sport in transition, out from the shadows and into primetime. A new generation with the star power to take it there. A passionate fanbase so much bigger than just those who visit the beach, just waiting for its opportunity to get engaged. Now is the moment to care about surfing. It’s time to get on board. Surfing’s new heroes on Twitter: @kolohe_andino; @johnjohnflorenc; @julian_wilson
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Ricky Simms
The Gaffer You’ve got to move fast to look after Usain Bolt and Mo Farah, among a roster of world-class athletes, and this Irishman manages just fine
world champion and double Olympic “I wouldn’t want to embarrass Usain,” medallist in 5,000m and 10,000m says Ricky Simms, a grin cracking his It’s a role he fell into naturally, having face open wide, “but I can beat him graduated from Belfast’s Jordanstown at a lot of things.” It’s a brief moment University with a degree in sport and of jocular hubris in the otherwise exercise science and soon after realised groomed, composed manner of the that his own talent as an Irish under-23 manager of the fastest man on Earth. middle-distance international would not So what can he beat Bolt at? carry him on to a full-time running career. “Long-distance running. For sure. Anything over a mile. Easily,” he says, the grin now a chuckle. World sport’s most charismatic personality has a manager who can match him for competitive spirit. Simms, 38, from Milford, County Donegal, wears the sharp suit of a seasoned sports agent with ease, but he’s a sportsman at heart and, even if his lungs and limbs weren’t up to the job of being a world-class middle distance runner back in the 1990s, his competitive zeal hasn’t waned. You don’t get to be the boss of Pace Sports Management, the pre-eminent agency in world athletics, without Ricky Simms makes sure Usain Bolt’s career stays on track the killer instinct, but Simms is quick He soon made his way to Teddington in to dispel the notion that, sharp suit Middlesex to learn the ropes of athletic aside, he is anything like the cut-throat coaching and management under the agents caricatured by Hollywood. tutelage of athletics agent Kim McDonald. “It’s not about us doing well, it’s When McDonald died suddenly in 2001, about the athletes doing well. If the aged 45, Simms and his German girlfriend, athletes are doing well, we do well.” Marion Steininger – the two are now Simms is busy paring down the married and live in Middlesex – took over numbers in his agency so he can generate McDonald’s roster of almost 80 athletes, bigger income for a smaller group. Mo happily discovering that the majority Farah, the superstar of middle-distance were willing to give a rookie a chance. running, is still on the books, having “I think we were fortunate that we talked his way into Pace back when he had good-quality athletes, that we were was a sales assistant working in the already a strong company. Predominately sportswear shop across the road. Kenyan long-distance runners. So, of Simms is first and foremost a coach course, some of [the promoters] made who still writes the training and racing life much more difficult. When Kim was programmes for many of his athletes, negotiating, if he had negotiated a fee of including Vivian Cheruiyot, three-time 46
$10,000 to run the race they’d say to us, ‘No, we’re only going to pay $3,000.’ So you had to work very hard to justify it.” A rewarding business became a ticket to fortune and a sprinkling of fame when, in 2003, he engaged the services of a rangy limbed Jamaican 15-year-old with otherworldly sprint times. Simms knew Usain Bolt had world-class potential, but he’d seen child prodigies fail before. “Everyone was talking about this kid from Jamaica who was winning the under-20s when he was 15. He was a giant. I remember saying, ‘This guy is going to revolutionise the sport.’ But we’d had many talented kids before – maybe he was 15 in a 25-year-old’s body?” Since Bolt’s elevation to sporting deity at the Beijing Olympics in 2008, Simms’s feet have hardly touched the ground. A busy travel schedule has removed him from much of the day-to-day activity at Pace as he works to make the most of Bolt’s speed on the track and his affability off it. “I think our business model changed a little bit in the last five years,” says Simms. “We kind of have a company working full-time for Usain, and another working full-time for Mo. I could spend all day, every day on either one of those guys.” So, who is the next global athletics star? Simms has one name in mind. “I think it’s going to be difficult to have a Usain again in our lifetime. There are always talented sprinters in Jamaica, you know. We have another guy, he ran 9.97. So there’s Usain, then there’s Yohan Blake, and then this guy, Kemar BaileyCole is his name. We look after him, but it’s a long road. This year is a big year for him to see if he can step up.” www.pacesportsmanagement.com the red bulletin
Photography: DPPi (1)
Words: Declan Quigley
On The Pace: Notably Ricky Simms Clients Usain Bolt, Mo Farah, Vivian Cheruiyot, Kemar BaileyCole, Christine Ohuruogu (400m), Phillips Idowu (triple jump) ‘Just 8.5 off the pace!’ According to records at Finn Valley athletics club in Donegal, with whom Simms has been affiliated for many years, his best recorded 10k is 35:03. Mo Farah’s best is 26:46. Tenth Atmosphere Simms is the eldest of a family of 10 children The Kicker He is a lifelong Liverpool FC fan and a regular at Bayern Munich. “I should have been a footballer,” he says.
reason
The Ruminator He’s a master of rapid-fire, think-on-your-feet MC battles, but rising hip-hop star Sizwe Moeketsi, aka Reason, also chooses his words carefully
B4 Reason (2008) and WenzTheAlbum A Lot On My Mind [both tracks appear Reason is a thinker. Answers are not CuminOut? (2009). Hip-hop fans were on Audio3D]. Because I’m more musical, forthcoming without analysis and soon calling for a full album, and Reason I’m at liberty to explore more avenues. deliberation. You hear it in how he views duly obliged with The REASONing. What matters is the idea.” himself in relation to his fans and his Produced by SA hip-hop producers, Each of these avenues have their music as he carefully negotiates a path BattleKat, Reason’s debut LP was own devotees: women’s magazines, among his duties and ambitions of being released at the end 2010 on the nowfor example, clamour to paint him as a rapper, a husband and father. defunct label, Outrageous Records. a rapper you could take home to mom. “Being a father makes me conscious He was still technically unsigned, so On the other hand, hardcore hip-hoppers of what I say,” he says. “I wouldn’t say I’m Tumi Molekane – he of SA hip-hop highlight his battle-rap credentials, censored, maybe just more censored. It royalty, Tumi & The Volume – signed up while also recognising all those years adds perspective on how I view people. Reason to Motif Records, a South AfricaReason spent in relative obscurity. Lately, I’ve tried to be more accurate This situation often leads about my experiences. I’ve learned to periods of reflection for this that people relate to honesty, that thinking man of hip-hop. It’s they want to listen to a song and be a balancing act of appeasing like, ‘I know what he’s talking about. his fans and his listenership, while I’ve been there, too.’ Or maybe they also staying true to the reason haven’t been there. But they know why he started making music in the the experiences. A hard time is a hard first place. It’s all about fulfilling time and a good time is a good time.” your reason – hence the name. Reason certainly knows both “Reason was created by Sizwe experiences. The 26-year-old rapper Moeketsi,” explains Reason, from Katlehong, near Johannesburg, referring to himself in the third has been in the business for a long person. “He comes from Sizwe’s time and he’s paid his dues on his experiences. Reason tells Sizwe’s way up the hip-hop hierarchy. stories. He talks through the music. “Growing up, hip-hop appealed Reason [he pauses, searching for to me the most – more than other Katlehong MC Sizwe Moeketsi is fulfilling his reason through rap the right words] writes Sizwe’s life. genres. I had the best references to based independent music company, I go home and my daughter doesn’t see it, and I guess rapping is easier than whose roster included the likes of Zaki Reason, my daughter sees Sizwe. She singing,” he laughs. “As a youngster, Ibrahim, Perfecto and Molekane himself. sees her dad. She might be like, ‘I saw I listened to kwaito. I was huge TKZee It was at Motif Records that Reason you on TV’, but that’s where it ends. I go fan, but I also listened to Busta [Rhymes] found his home. In 2011, one of his home and I’m a father, and a husband.” and Em [Eminem], but I never followed tracks, Walk On Water, appeared on the Moeketsi seems to be managing kwaito the way I followed hip-hop.” official mixtape of Sara Blecher’s film this balancing act pretty well. Reason’s reputation grew on the back Otelo Burning. The following year he “The whole of last year was my of his MC-slaying abilities as a battle released his first full album, Audio3D, happiest moment,” says Reason. “People rapper – both on the street corner and on Motif. It’s a record that artfully wanted to hear what I was creating, on the stage in official stand-offs. His showcases Reason’s MC skills. It’s also and my audience, well, they were people step-up came in 2005 when he guested a legacy of his days battle rapper. like me: people who wanted to hear on DJ Fresh’s YFM radio show. Reason “I’m flexible, I can rap on any beat,” good music; people who like hip-hop. chipped in with a series of jingles he says. “I can make a jingle. I can And at my album launch at Shikisha, in before becoming a regular guest on rap in isiZulu. I can make something Newtown, I had all my favourite rappers YFM’s hip-hop show, Rap Activity. more old-school like Do It Like I Can, there, and they’d come to see me.” After that, Reason’s music featured on www.facebook.com/reasonthemass or something more up-tempo like two mixtapes, the 28-song Understanding 48
the red bulletin
Photography: chris saunders, Stephanie O’Connor
Words: Lindokuhle Nkosi
Formerly known as… The Mad Massacre was Reason’s MC moniker in the early days. “But I couldn’t see the radio stations saying, ‘And that was the new single by The Mad Massacre’” he says. Discography Audio3D (album 2012)
Otelo Burning (mixtape, 2011) 15 Grand (single, 2011) The REASONing (album, 2010) WenzTheAlbumCuminOut (mixtape, 2009) Understanding B4 Reason (mixtape, 2008)
depth charge the journey to the bottom of earth’s d e e p e s t c av e i s l o n g a n d d a n g e r o u s . one man wants to go further
Photograph: STEPHEN ALVAREZ/National Geographic Stock
words: Daumantas Liekis photography: Artūras Artiušenka
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arly on a bright, clear morning, a radio message crackles through base camp. “Calling all stations, come in please!” About 60 speleologists, from a dozen countries, are camped here at the entrance to the Krubera Cave in the Caucacus mountains, in Georgia’s Abkhazia territory. Recently, at this hour, hungry cavers, scientists and caver-scientists would sit at the breakfast table, with talk of the night’s dreams and the day ahead’s plans reverberating in English, Russian, Spanish and Arabic. Today, there’s no sound but the emergency call, repeated by Vytautas Gudaitis, the camp’s communication co-ordinator, with increasing alarm. 52
the red bulletin
Creeping down The Krubera Cave reveals its hidden depths begrudgingly. The descent, with its narrow passages, is hard going
D e s c e n d i n g o n r o p e s o r o n f o o t, climbing and crawling, worming and diving, the speleologists, as c av e s c i e n t i s t s a r e k n o w n , i n c h i n t o t h e d e p t h s , s l o w ly g e t t i n g closer to the centre of the Earth
The large tent where breakfast is eaten lies in tatters on the ground. The smaller provisions tents are torn to shreds, supplies scattered everywhere. Several men try to cover the field kitchen with a tarpaulin; others hang sleeping bags out to dry. Many more are squatting around Gudaitis, their faces in their hands. The base camp, about 2,200m above sea level and 60km as the crow flies south-east of the Russian city of Sochi, is in tatters. A storm of wind and rain ripped through the night before, severing all connections with the expedition’s other camps, deep underground in the cave – the deepest cave on the planet. Heavy rain makes underground lakes rise and underground waterfalls rage. At this moment, no one at base camp knows if colleagues in the cave have been swept away. The underground supply camps, the only refuge for the people down there, are likely flooded. This is no regular expedition: those camps, and those people, are more than 2,000m below the surface, as part of an attempt to go beyond 2,191m and set the record for the deepest ever journey underground. Descending on ropes or on foot, climbing and crawling, worming and diving, the speleologists, as cave scientists are known, inch into the depths, slowly getting closer to the centre of the Earth. From down there, Gudaitis receives a liberating message: “All OK, the storm only temporarily cut off comms.”
Into the depths The entry to the Krubera Cave opens up unspectacularly among herbaceous plants and rock
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he journey to the mouth of the Krubera Cave is arduous. Hours in trucks on bumpy, ever-narrowing paths into the steep hills of the Caucasus mountains. Waiting at the end of the track are the donkeys of Vano, a local man who works as a shepherd here in the summer. He and his donkeys transport the tons of supplies and equipment to the base camp. Here, the entrance to the deepest cave in the world yawns unspectacularly between bushes and rocks, a hole 4m by 1m, the camouflaged mouth of a monster. Krubera is named after the Russian speleologist Alexander Alexandrovich Kruber. He died 19 years before it was discovered, in 1960, by Georgian cavers. Looking down from above, it only covers an area of about half a square kilometre, but its complex system of limestone tunnels, terraces, shafts and chimneys zigs and zags for several kilometres. Many of the pathways are so narrow and wet that the only way through them is to crawl. Every now and then, a crawling caver will emerge into a chamber the size of a
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cathedral. There are caverns, subterranean landscapes filled with small lakes and waterfalls and blocked by sumps, as stretches of cave filled with ice-cold water are known. It is a proven fact that the cave is 2,191m deep. The floor of the cave is just above the sea level of the nearby Black Sea, but it’s underwater. The purpose of this expedition, under Ukranian leadership, is to reach the floor of the cave, currently mapped at the bottom of the sump known as Dva Kapitana (Two Captains). Camps are erected at intervals on the way down, complete with tents,
Gearing up In terms of equipment and logistics, exploring caves is much the same as mountaineering, only cavers go the other way
A cave with a sea view The Krubera Cave is the world’s deepest, stretching from a plateau in Georgia down to just above the Black Sea
KRUBERA 2,256m 0m 2200 m -100m 2100 m -200m 2000 m -300m The Krubera Cave, discovered in 1960, has been explored down to a depth of 2,196m – thus far moldova
1900 m
-340m
-400m 1800 m -500m 1700m
UKRAINE
-600m RUSSIA
1600 m
Romania BULGARIA
-700m
-740m
Black Sea
1500 m -800m
GEORGIA
1,400 m
Turkey
-900m 1,300 m -1,000m 1,200 m -1,100m 1,100 m -1,200m
-1,200m
1,000m
black sea
-1,300m 900 m -1,400m
The deepest point of the Krubera Cave to have been explored so far – only about 50m above the Black Sea, which is 13km away – was reached on August 10, 2012. Cavers think there could be a direct link between the cave and the sea. They will try to find it this summer
800 m -1,500m 700m -1,600m 600 m -1,700m 500 m
-1,710m
400 m
illustration: Sascha Bierl
The Eiffel Tower is 324m tall
300 m -2,080m
200 m 100 m
-2,197m 0m
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fireplaces and toilet alcoves. There are supplies of food and water, petrol and gas for cooking, air cylinders for divers, batteries for lights and headlights, as well as medicines. The expedition prior to this one had seven campsites, the last at a depth of 1,960m below the cave entrance, a journey of two days. On this trip, everything relies on the precise organisation that Yuri Kasyanov mercilessly drills above ground. Without permission from Kasyanov, the expedition leader, descending alone into the cave 56
is prohibited. Groups working in the cave – such as the biologists who search Krubera for new life forms – must check in with Kasyanov each night at a specified time, explaining the work they have done and any problems they might have. Only then is another day checked off as completed. Unless previously given an exemption by Kasyanov himself, every member of the expedition must report back no later than 11pm, regardless of their position in or above the cave. Should that not happen,
a person is considered missing and a rescue party is immediately deployed. Kasyanov also meticulously assembles each of the descending groups. The Bashkir Honeys are made up of petite women from the Russian province of Bashkortostan, about 1,000km north-east. The girls have known the caves since childhood and feel more comfortable on a rope than on solid ground. The Iron Fist group comprises experienced male speleologists from several countries, who prepare the the red bulletin
Gennadiy Samokhin broke the existing depth record here in 2 0 0 7, a n d a l m o s t p a i d f o r i t w i t h his life. he suffered from the bends Taking it all down Lowering supplies to make underground camps can be painstakingly slow
passage to the underwater floor of the cave and carry heavy equipment for other cave divers. A third group, The Lithuanians, are also experienced divers with a specific and important role: to assist Gennadiy Samokhin in his attempt to set a new depth record.
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amokhin has been involved in speleology for over 20 years. The gaunt, bearded Ukrainian lives in Crimea and reckons he spends five months a year underground. During a 2007 expedition in Krubera, Samokhin broke the existing depth record. He travelled the last few metres underwater, in the Dva Kapitana sump, and almost paid for it with his life. To get out of the sump, he had to squeeze through three narrow passages. In the last tight spot, his wetsuit ripped and
icy water came in direct contact with his body. To avoid hypothermia, he had to get out of the water quickly – too quick to dispel the nitrogen that had accumulated in his body during the dive. He appeared at the mouth of the sump more than half an hour before scheduled, and suffered horrendous vision problems from the bends, tiny nitrogen bubbles clogging the capillaries in his brain and his eyes. Samokhin finds caving inspiring. He uses every spare minute above ground to look for new caves, to ask questions about their topography. He talks only of caves. Yet breaking the depth record is last on his list of goals. He prefers instead to consider the complexity of the undertaking, because he knows that for the journey down, he needs an experienced and trustworthy team. He knows he has to pace himself. He 57
only enters Krubera when the passage is prepared until just before the floor. Nothing about the journey worries him. “Fear is just a premonition of death,” says Samokhin, over dinner the night before his record attempt. For those who don’t live large parts of their lives underground, the cave entrance can be unnerving. The closer you get, the more you feel the damp and cold seeping up through the hole into Hell. There is nothingness. The pitch-blackness even swallows the light of a headlamp. The Krubera begins as a sheer abyss. Its chimneys and shafts and caverns of sharp rocks are hostile. People are not welcome here. Metre by metre, rope length by rope length, it gets colder and frostier. Sunlight beckons only briefly in the mist overhead, then blackout. After a pause to acclimatise at a depth of about 250m, the first tight bottleneck then opens into a large chamber with high ceilings. Emil Vash, one of the speleologists, tells how he always enjoys the drop into this inner world. “Every time I descend into a cave I feel at home,” he says. “Problems disappear, suffering disappears, I can relax.” Positive thinking might be a precaution: the cave takes revenge on those who speak ill of it, say cavers, and they mean it. They honestly believe that the cave can punish them if they leave garbage behind, or break off too large a piece from a rock face. “Feeling respect and even a little fear is maybe not such a bad thing,” says Aida Gudaitis, the head of The Lithuanians. “Unless fear mutates into panic, it is a healthy boundary between sound reason and stupid decisions.”
Alexei is one of the strongest and best-prepared members of the group. Bad news for Yuri Kasyanov: his illness slows down the transport of supplies in the cave considerably. 1,400m: Else is sick. Could possibly be heartache. Lies in her sleeping bag and cries nonstop. Else is a member of the Bashkir Honeys crew. She joined the expedition with her long-term boyfriend. Before descending into the cave, she secretly read the texts on his mobile phone
and discovered that he had cheated on her. Else is now depressed and refuses to leave the camp. 1,600m: Aida Gudaitis suffers from an ear and bladder infection. Kasyanov orders him to return to the surface camp, but he refuses. He is supposed to lead The Lithuanians to the Dva Kapitana sump. With an ear infection, diving is out of the question, but the ambitious Gudaitis ignores all warnings and continues his descent.
A long and winding road The bulky equipment in waterproof bags hinders any chance of a quick descent
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he deeper the advance into the cave, the more monotonous the daily routine. Secure lifelines, haul material, check and repair equipment; eat, drink, sleep. Day and night, sunrise and sunset, rain and shine exist only in Yuri Kasyanov’s messages. The longer a team spends below ground, crowding around gas cookers and heaters under tarps, the more welcome are his messages received from above. In contrast, radio messages to the outside are short and clipped, business-like missives from the belly of the Earth. At 700m down: Alexei falls ill. Probably a stomach ailment. Says he feels bad, goes to the toilet constantly. Possibly from dirty water?
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the red bulletin
Deep down and delighted The moment Gennadiy Samokhin sets a new world record sees him submerged in a flooded area of a dark cave 2,196m underground
L at e a f t e r n o o n o n t h e d ay a f t e r the storm, another radio message a r r i v e s : “ W e h av e s e t a w o r l d r e c o r d ! T h e c av e i s 5 m d e e p e r ”
1,960m: Camp Rebus, the deepest cave camp in the world. Week three of the expedition, and Gennadiy Samokhin is ready to make a first record attempt. The team is highly motivated, although no one knows if the weather will improve. At night underground they can hear how the rising water ‘snores’ in the sump. Even those with steady nerves feel anxious. Late afternoon on the day after the red bulletin
the storm, another radio message arrives at the surface camp: “We have set a world record! The cave is 5m deeper.” Some members of the party, above and below ground, had expected Samokhin to extend the record further, but he risked his life for these 5m. To avoid a repeat of the problems that almost proved fatal in 2007, he used a different gas mixture. This time, the dive through the passage in the sump is a balancing act. Samokhin leaves spare tanks behind. Bends and ledges slow his progress. The pressure gauge in his tank shows one per cent of his oxygen left. When he resurfaces, his dive computer confirms the depth of 2,196m. Samokhin firmly believes that he can go deeper,
that he hasn’t reached the bottom of Krubera. He told Ukranian reporters that the Dva Kapitana sump could be 10 miles long, and that it ends in the Black Sea. But because the sump is only about 100cm by 60cm, with barely a slope to it, advancing 40m yields only 5m in depth. On his next attempt, Samokhin wants to use a rebreather, which captures exhaled air and enriches it with new oxygen. Using this method, dives can be extended from 30 minutes to several hours. He may even look elsewhere to try and break his record. If Samokhin should find another entrance to Krubera, it might lead to a more convenient way to go deeper. He will never stop trying. 59
SURF SPECIAL
roll on,
ROCK AWAY Hurricane Sandy swamped the east coast of America, devastating New York City’s only public surf beach. A group of surfers have made it their mission to bring Rockaway beach back to life Words: Cole Louison Photography: Benjamin Lowy
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Additional Photography: Spencer Platt/Getty Images
teve Stathis is sitting on the decking between Boarders, his gutted surf shop, and a painted wall of lockers on Beach 92nd Street and Rockaway Beach Boulevard, two blocks from the Atlantic Ocean. “We look forward to hurricanes,” he says, “because they bring big waves. That’s the difference between us and normal people.” Inside the shop, among debris, power tools, and a grumbling generator, Stathis’s son, granddaughter and surf buddies have congregated around a makeshift table where one of them has opened a yellowing album of old surf photos. Five months after Hurricane Sandy, the shop is still without electricity. Stathis, 63, is the guy you seek out when you want to talk to someone about surfing in Rockaway, an 18km peninsula in Queens, New York that Sandy reduced “to a pile of rubble” according to The Wall Street Journal. Home to the only public surf beach in New York City, its breaks are ridden year round by a dedicated group of around 300 local surfers. You might recognise Stathis if you read or watched a lot of news after the hurricane last October. The media followed him like an aura after the tragedy. His hair is mostly white, but 62
he is tan and tall, with a surfer’s upperbody build and the powerfully smooth gait of all water athletes. His accent is flatly Queens, with short vowels and muted r’s, and he speaks in an articulate, friendly way that welcomes outsiders by letting them know who’s in charge. The wind blowing in off the water is cold, with whiffs of salty sand, but Stathis is sitting in the spring sunshine with his workshirt open listening to distant pops of nailguns. He is the founder and president of the Graybeards, a local nonprofit organisation formed in the wake of 9/11. To date, the group has raised and distributed over US$1 million to hurricane victims. He was one of the first people to ride the break two blocks away and is a living legend in the Rockaway surf scene, which is half a century old and spearheaded by himself and the guys inside his shop drinking coffee: Jimmy Dowd, Dennis McClean and John Roberts, the elder of the group, who calls his old surf buddy “a great, great man”. “Rockaway is tight-knit,” says Stathis. “Growing up, you had to be careful what you did in this community, because someone would spot you and tell your parents.” He pauses and watches a plane pass overhead. “And so there’s a lot of localism here. If you paddle out to the line and try to hog waves, you’re gonna get dealt with. But it’s changed. When I started surfing here, there were seriously like 10 guys in the water. Now? Forget about it.” (And yes, he does pronounce it “fuhgeddaboudit”, though nobody says anything.) “Yeah. A lot’s changed since it started.”
Steve Stathis in his gutted Rockaway Beach surf shop
the red bulletin
“We look forward to hurricanes because they bring big waves”
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The isolated community of Rockaway was one of the hardest hit areas in New York
the red bulletin
urfing didn’t start in Queens, Florida, California, or even Hawaii. It probably started 3,000 years ago in French Polynesia, an island nation of seagoing people who brought heenalu, or ‘wave-sliding’, to Hawaii sometime in the 16th century. The earliest surviving records are the journals of European explorers, who first banned the activity, but soon found themselves sliding waves. Surfing stayed on Hawaii until 1907, when a local named George Freeth formally introduced it to America when he was hired by the Pacific Electric Railroad to ride waves for a public relations event organised to coincide with the opening of the company’s Redondo Beach line. Surfing took to California and sprung up almost immediately in Florida, slowly moving up the coast. According to former 63
The boardwalk at Rockaway Beach was washed away by the storm
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professional surfer and surf historian Mike Tabeling, people paddled boards, but didn’t surf, off Virginia Beach throughout the 1920s, and there’s a 1934 record of a Californian named Tom Blake giving surf demonstrations in New York and New Jersey, although the surfers at Boarders, who have been riding the waves at Rockaway for six decades, say nothing caught on until the late 1950s. It was Korean War veterans, they say, who made up the first scene: native New Yorkers returning from abroad with a newfound passion they were determined to try out at home, despite the comparatively small waves and 5OC water temperatures that drove surfers to wear two bathing caps and wool sweaters coated in oil. Korea, now famous for its waves, saw the war end in July 1953, about five years before Dennis McClean started the red bulletin
“Every year they tell us to evacuate, but we’re used to hurricanes here”
Jimmy Dowd, owner of surfing company St James, stands where the boardwalk used to be
surfing the break off his neighbourhood beach, but he remembers the older kids paddling out to the break a year or two before. This is around the time that a quiet fishing village 160km east of Rockaway was turning into a secret surf town, and today both Montauk’s waves and wild ’60s surf culture are the stuff of legend. (Entire books have been devoted to both Montauk and Korea’s surf scenes.) If this were Top Gun, McClean might be Tom Skerritt, call sign Viper. Even among the skilled Rockaway surf elders, he is revered for his talent on a board. He was one of the first surfers on the east coast sponsored by legendary California surfboard company Hobie, and he was riding Rockaway “about two years” before he was regularly surfing with the core group that included John Roberts and Steve Stathis. “What year? Hmmmmm,” he says, his winter hat pulled down past his eyebrows. “It was the year I was turned down for Little League. The scene was very small – my brother Dee and a couple of other guys. So I borrowed my friend’s board with a seam all the way around it and I didn’t do so well. Then one of the older guys said to move up on the
John Roberts, one of the first to surf the Rockaway break
the red bulletin
board, so I did and caught the next wave. That was it.” Everybody here has their and-thenI-started-surfing story. They all begin in different places and end in the water, where they stay. “Surfing kind of takes over your life,” says Stathis. “I never looked back,” says McClean. “Once that bug bites you…” says Roberts, trailing off. “I can’t imagine not doing it now,” says Michelle Cortez, a 20-something Manhattan-born artist, who visited Rockaway in 2011 from Williamsburg and never left. “Surfing took over.” Collectively, they offer their mostly overlapping histories of Rockaway surfing, the ebbs and flows of its popularity, their picketing City Hall for the surf beach they finally got in 2005, the reasons for the aggressive local culture, etc, and slowly but surely, a spooky truism arises: hurricanes mean big waves and waves mean good surfing. “Every year they tell us to evacuate,” says Stathis. “We always say, ‘Well, we didn’t evacuate then and we’re not evacuating now, we’re used to hurricanes here,” he continues. “Hurricane Donna. Faith. Gloria. And we got excited when we heard Sandy was coming.”
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urricane Sandy brought big surf. Double-headers, waves twice the height of a person, rolled into Rockaway 48 hours before the storm, bringing out the surfers and cops. Cortez, who’d spent Hurricane Irene taking pictures from the boardwalk, found the surf too strong, but hung out on the beach. Police asked her and some friends to paddle out and tell the surfers not to surf. At 4pm on Sunday, October 28, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg ordered the evacuation of Zone A, which included the coasts of Lower Manhattan, Williamsburg, Red Hook, Staten Island and all of Rockaway. “This evacuation is mandatory,” said the mayor. “It is for your own safety.” Anyone who stayed did so at their own risk. Cortez and her neighbours decided to stay. A dozen friends congregated to make dinner and camp out in a second-floor room in the steel and brick building across the street. They called the gathering a ‘hurricane party’. As winds picked up, Stathis watched the storm in a bar in Florida, where he’d gone with McClean for a holiday. His wife, Kathy, planned to fly down in two days. Hours before the storm hit, Kathy 65
Rockaway has been largely cleaned up, although it has yet to be rebuilt
“The surfing community gets a bad rep, but if it wasn’t for us, a lot of people would be dead”
emailed a video of herself with their baby granddaughter, Charlotte. “Here we are in big, bad Hurricane Sandy,” she said, holding Charly up to the screen.
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wo storeys above 91st Street, spirits were high at the hurricane party. There’d be no work tomorrow, so everyone was having fun, drinking beer and watching the weather forecast. The storm was scheduled to hit the coast at 9pm, but by 5.30 things were picking up. “There was this point of silence at the party,” remembers Cortez, “and then a point where everyone went home.” She decided to check on her dog at
Michelle Cortez went on a surfing trip to Rockaway – and has stayed there ever since
Hurricane Sandy was the second-costliest storm in US history after Katrina, when measured by the amount of damage. The National Hurricane Center estimates close to US$50 billion in property loss
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the red bulletin
“The first thing out of out mouths was, ‘The boardwalk is gone’”
home and, off the kerb outside, stepped into water up to her shins. It was hours before high tide and there was a full moon. She ran across the street, and “in about eight minutes” packed a bag, unplugged everything and got her dog. When she stepped off her porch, the water was up to her hips. “That was the moment when I thought I’d made a mistake. That something really major was going to happen,” she says. A group of about 15 people spent the night in a room whose windows rattled in the storm, even though they were built to withstand 110mph winds. At one point, someone spotted an SUV floating down the street with three young men inside. Jimmy Dowd, the owner of a surf gear company called St James, went upstairs and retrieved three wetsuits, then swam to out the vehicle with two friends and pulled the men through the sunroof. Power was lost at two in the morning when a transformer blew into the side of the building. Cortez stayed up texting her mother every 10 minutes, until her phone ran out the red bulletin
of power. Around this time Stathis got a text from his wife: “We’re going to die.” They all got through the night and at around 5.30 in the morning, Cortez and a friend decided to venture out. They walked down the stairwell to find the lobby more than half a metre deep in sand and the courtyard full of broken glass and sofas. The abandoned SUV was wedged in the doorway. “We stepped outside and the first thing out of both our mouths was, ‘The boardwalk is gone.’ There are so many unbelievable things that happened. But the boardwalk being gone, that was, uh…”
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f the boardwalk represents Rockaway, then what Sandy did to the boardwalk is metaphorically appropriate. The damage estimates for Sandy are upwards of US$50 billion. New York City was the hardest-hit area and Rockaway was among the hardest-hit neighbourhoods in New York City. About US$150 million in damage was done to the beach alone. Boarders was flooded with 2m of water, though the tide stopped
at Cortez’s front door. Much of the 11km stretch of lumber disappeared, leaving a line of concrete pillars down the beach. “Yeah, the boardwalk,” says Stathis. “The lifeblood of our community was the boardwalk, and now there’s no boardwalk.” A football-field-length piece of it had floated down 95th Street. Plane-sized chunks with their railings showed up 200m away. These were some of the first sights to greet Stathis when he came back to town two days later. Cortez describes it as “Armageddon”. Stathis says words can’t describe it. “You had to see it,” he says. No official relief would come to Rockaway for four days, though by midmorning people were out, exploring the ruins and helping one another. Neighbours met on the relocated boardwalk, bartering for supplies. Drop stations were established on Cortez’s and other people’s front porches, with posted lists of what was needed most. Neighbours sought out elderly and housebound people and ran supplies to them. Some packed supplies on their backs and walked from house to house. Dan Sullivan spent the morning paddling around the neighbourhood on his surfboard, rescuing dogs and cats. “The surfing community gets a bad notch,” he says, “but if it wasn’t for us, a lot of people would be dead.” Sullivan stands at the corner of Beach 92nd and Holland Avenue while his cousin chops wood at the house behind him. A musician and producer who lost his studio, Sullivan and his brother distributed gas generators around the neighbourhood to homes without heat. Rockaway has been largely cleaned up, though not rebuilt. Most of the wrecked cars, homes, and the boardwalk have been hauled away, leaving only indications of the storm: water lines, lawns with no grass, homes with no siding. The neighbourhood looks scrubbed clean in a way that’s offputting and violent. As Sullivan speaks, internal and external renovations are taking place on every street, some by work crews, some by families, some by solitary home owners. Homes are patched with bright sheets of new plywood. Like most locals, Sullivan says the widely praised Federal response here was nil, then slow at best. Five days after Sandy, no one had mobile phone service or running water. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) didn’t arrive until November 8, and six weeks later, most residents were still without power and fighting a new problem at home: mould. FEMA would eventually offer grants or loans to local homeowners, 67
The outside of Boarders, which was still without power five months after the hurricane
tenants, and businesses, though residents say the process was untimely, confusing and ultimately ineffective. “We got nothing out here,” says Sullivan. “Last month I got $2,000 for flood insurance that cost $1,800 a year that I’d paid for 20 years. But you know, it doesn’t matter. The community pulled together and made things happen.” Since there were no roads or public transport, the first volunteers arrived riding bicycles with trailers full of supplies. Stathis recognised many as the Williamsburg ‘hipsters’ who would frequent his shop during the summer. “They were riding 15 or 20 miles, helping clean up all day, then riding back,” he says. “We’re gonna have to rename them Helpsters.” One such Helpster was Beastie Boy Mike D. Raised on the Upper West Side, he now lives in Brooklyn with his wife and two kids and has been known to catch a wave or two in Rockaway. The weekend after Sandy, he found himself volunteering alongside his old board buddy Robert McKinley, creator of Montauk’s Surf Lodge. Supplies and volunteers were plentiful, but hot meals were few and far between. With the help of their friend Sam Talbot, a surfer and former contestant on reality TV show Top Chef, they set up a station on 45th and Beach Channel Drive, grilling chicken. As lines grew, they looked to upgrade. Within a few days McKinley found a weathered truck from the Canadian eatery Swiss Chalet and the Rockaway Plate Lunch Truck was born. It still bore the Swiss Chalet logo and, appropriately, the word FRESH. In lieu of an ‘Open’ sign, the guys leaned a salvaged wooden pallet against the front bumper, spray painted with a welcome: “HELLO ROCKAWAYS” it read, “COME + EAT.” By Halloween, Cortez’s drop station was overflowing to the extent that she 68
commandeered an empty townhouse across 96th Street. Originally a storage area with high stacks of tools, matches, diapers, cleaning supplies, canned goods, and bottled water, it became a full-blown relief centre, with a soup station, warming tent and a fleet of volunteers running supplies throughout the neighbourhood.
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ive months later, the house is no longer just 183 Beach 96th Street, but Smallwater, a nonprofit organisation (with a lease) headed by Cortez. Hurricane relief remains the focus, with mould removal and demolition services still in demand, but Smallwater volunteers also offer free trauma therapy and workshops that focus on the local environment. Other organisations have partnered with Smallwater to give locals rebuilding money. A few blocks away, the Rockaway Plate Lunch Truck is still open five days a week
Rockaway resident and surfer Paul Kadish
Steve Stathis with Rockaway native and lifelong surfer Mary Leonard
the red bulletin
“The magnet in this community is the ocean and we’re like pieces of metal that stick to it” and recently served its 20,000th meal. The single-special menu has not changed. A few blocks further on, sitting on his balcony, Dowd watches a work crew clustered around the southern tip of the half-finished boardwalk he used to change under as a kid. “The magnet in this community is the ocean,” he says. “It’s a force and we’re like pieces of metal that stick to it. It holds us here. It brings people to the beach.” Six storeys down, nailguns pop. The wind blows over the flat surf. “No waves today,” says Dowd, “but it’s supposed to be good tomorrow.” www.nycgovparks.org/parks/rockawaybeach Follow the surfers of Rockaway Beach as the deal with devastation of Hurricane Sandy in the free Red Bulletin tablet edition. the red bulletin
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e h t g n i t n e v n i e r
e e wh inated by m o d e d a c e d After a orld Rally W e h t , b e o L n SĂŠbastie eds a fresh e n p i h s n o i p Cham ith its fair w t r o p s a n I . n a m leading actors, who can r e t c a r a h c f o e r a h s he series? be the new star of t cKlein n e r Ph oto g ra p hy: M Words: Werner Jess
l
WRC driver Evgeny Novikov at this year’s Acropolis Rally in Greece
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Doing everything right: Sébastien Ogier (also below left) and Volkswagen Motorsport in the lead after the first sweltering day of action in Greece
he king of rally, the once-in-a-lifetime genius, the demolisher of records, has just one more race to go before the chequered flag falls for the last time. In Strasbourg in October, on the Rallye de France-Alsace, Sébastien Loeb will, on home-country roads, mark the end of his era and a dominance the likes of which rally has never seen and is unlikely to see again anytime soon. When Loeb debuted in the World Rally Championship in 1999, the stars of the show were Tommi Mäkinen, Carlos Sainz, Richard Burns and Colin McRae. To win a race, you needed a Mitsubishi or Subaru or even a Peugeot as long as the 72
charismatic Finn Marcus Grönholm was behind the wheel. Then came Loeb, larger than life, winning nine titles in a row, all of them with Citroën, a manufacturer previously noted for a single Monte Carlo Rally victory in 1966, which came after the Mini Coopers in first, second and third were disqualified for having the wrong kind of headlights. To see Loeb compete – in the formative Xsara, then in the wonderful C4, and finally in the dinky DS3 – was to witnesses greatness. They said that a non-Scandinavian could never win Finland’s 1000 Lakes Rally, but if you were to place a pebble on the apex at the red bulletin
An iconic race. Economic crisis?
Not here, not now
the exit of a curve combination there, every driver would be at least a metre away from the sweet spot – except Loeb. Loeb deserves all platitudes, but the abdication of the “best car driver in the world” (copyright: Michael Schumacher) opens up significant new prospects for the WRC. If changes have to be made, now is the time to make them.
Gladiators
The Acropolis Rally in Greece is one of the iconic events in the calendar, driven on dusty, stony gravel paths around the Isthmus of Corinth, treacherous for every part of its 1,052km course length. the red bulletin
Drained: Russian driver Evgeny Novikov
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Mikko Hirvonen is striving to fill Loeb’s shoes
The spectators along the route love the WRC. They come in their thousands to get covered in dust and bombarded with gravel from the cars’ back wheels. They barbecue at the roadside for the special stages, armed with flags and cameras. Year after year, they stare, gleeful and amazed, as the heroes tear past in their loud, colourful cars. Economic crisis, unemployment, bad mood? Not here, not now. Just put on your VW cap and Ford T-shirt and join the party! Ancient Greek stories established that, before the status of hero can be conferred, there comes a test, which, at least in the short term, leads to failure. 74
Sébastien Ogier, the staunch, upright driver of the VW team, was tested in battle against Loeb last season, driving a second-tier Skoda S2000. The current world championship leader, now driving a Polo, he sets off first as clear favourite. Drivers here have particular respect for two special stages: the first from Kineta to Pissia, because it’s tough and long; the second, Kineta, because it’s driven at night. The banks of hood-mounted spotlights on 300hpplus four-wheel-drives can’t hope to elicit every secret from Greek donkey trails. An average speed of around 90kph is expected on a road
It ’s pitch dark in Greece, but everyone
is wide awake
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Credit:
On the menu at the Greek rally: night, dust, stones, holes
that would shred the nerves of normal drivers in normal cars at normal speeds. Ogier is expected to win the night stage handsomely, with an intimidating time, but it doesn’t turn out that way. After just 10 minutes at racing speed, the VW Polo R WRC and its fuel supply have stopped. It’s all over for Ogier. Later, the mechanics will determine that the plug to the fuel pump has come loose, and who knows how that could have happened. A stupid defect, but decisive for the race. It’s dark in Greece, but everyone’s wide awake. The king of the night (and the next morning) is Russian driver Evgeny Novikov, with the co-driving genius Ilka Minor from Austria at his side. Minor learnt her championship chops at the right hand of Manfred Stohl, for years the best privateer in WRC, and later proved a flawless guide to Norway’s Henning Solberg. She is now leading a rally for the first time. “Finally we’re right where we’re supposed to be,” she says, standing in the dark in the service area. Novikov’s joy is more internalised. He was once the youngest driver to win a WRC special stage, but that pales beside tonight’s achievement. Novikov has the biggest balls of all the top drivers, but the next morning he rips a break disc on a concealed stone, and then a brake line, a wheel rim, a wheel, a strut. But, in the end the man from Moscow wins four of the Acropolis Rally’s 14 special stages. Mikko Hirvonen of Citroën had high hopes for Greece, but the once 75
Around every corner
there’s a rock that could end a driver’s rally
unflappable Finn is flapping about. His stats say he is slow, but if a technical problem in the first special stage means your front wheels no longer do what your steering wheel commands, a light foot on the pedal is better ascribed to caution than cowardice. Nonetheless, Hirvonen, whose 15 WRC victories make him the most successful of the current drivers apart from Loeb, is a long way from fulfilling the role intended for him: to defend the world championship cup for Citroën Sport. Hirvonen is no Loeb, and that’s rarely been more apparent than this season, of all seasons, the one that would really count. For a long stretch of the rally, the battle for the lead moves in time-lapse. To force a decision requires reflexes rather than brain capacity: at the limits the car must become a part of the body, a part you can position down to the centimetre while driving at 160kph on a gravel lane, running on instincts or blind trust in whatever your co-driver tells you. Sébastien Ogier is managing that best, and lately, so has his team-mate, the 28-year-old Finn Jari-Matti Latvala, who has been rally’s ‘man of the future’ for what seems like a decade. By turns lightning fast and error-prone, Latvala has finally found his niche at VW. For a while he was playing dogsbody at Ford, but
the cool, calm, clever VW motorsports director Jost Capito gives him space: “Everyone can be a winner here.” With Ogier’s technical problems, it’s Latvala who carries the team’s hopes in Greece, and he performs brilliantly. On the rutted, unyielding gravel piste there’s a rock or a hole lying in wait around every corner that can stop your race dead. But slow down too much and you become prey to opponents who will notice any reduction in pace instantly. After winning the rally, Latvala thanks and hugs everyone on his triumphant return to the service park, even the mechanics for Ogier and his young Norwegian teammate Andreas Mikkelsen. Forging a dominant troupe out of a functional team and breaking Citroën’s perpetual dominance within half a season: this is all Capito’s doing. Capito says that the objective for the season is to “fight for one of the two championship titles, driver or team, until the end”, and he has an unlikely advocate in Latvala, who says he has “ended many seasons in the top three of the drivers’ championship but never won the team championship. That’s my goal for this year. Anything else, I’ll take it as it comes.” In 2014, manufacturers will be allowed to bring new, improved cars
Additional photography: werner jessnr
Not without my digicam: fans follow Norwegian Ford driver Andreas Mikkelsen
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saturday
september 7th
Greece winners 2013: Jari-Matti Latvala and Mikka Anttila. Above right: Sébastien Ogier studies his final time sheet. Above left: Ogier and co-driver Julien Ingrassia in action
to the starting line. VW voluntarily waived this right, aware of its opponents’ issues. Citroën is casting an eye on the touring car scene as a future sphere of activity. Ford’s involvement is down to the personal interest of motorsports boss Malcolm Wilson, with no more participation from the manufacturing side. And if Hyundai step up as a new manufacturer, it’s only fair that they start on a level playing field.
New rules
One thing is clear: the WRC, a mighty live experience, a superior sporting series, is currently having trouble establishing its force on the ground. In most parts of Europe, JariMatti Latvala can walk the streets unrecognised, “and when I’m on holiday in California I may as well be an alien.” If it were up to the Finn, he would make sure that WRC were broadcast live around the world. He might be in 78
A lot of work is going on
to increase WRC’s standing
luck, because there’s a lot of work going on behind the scenes to ensure better presentation of the sport, and to increase its standing. (Latvala received the Greece cup from the hands of FIA president Jean Todt, an honour rarely even accorded Formula One victors.) About 50 million people currently watch the WRC on television. With Red Bull Media House assuming control of the rights in co-operation with the Sportsman Media Group, the aim is to double this figure in the short-tomedium term. The FIA rally chief, Michèle Mouton, who finished runner-up
in the 1982 world rally championship, and WRC race organisers are currently rethinking the format of the rallies. What about a marathon day without servicing, for example? How do you make the most of the special stages? What do you do on the Sundays? How about a shoot-out for the final special stage: the fastest and second-fastest in the rally to that point competing for first place, third- and fourth-fastest for third, and so on, until 10th place? There are lots of options and ideas on the table, ideas to be discussed, discarded, determined by vote or democratically replaced with something better. These are exciting times for the World Rally Championship. www.wrc.com Watch the extended highlights from the Acropolis Rally in The Red Bulletin tablet edition. Download it now for free. the red bulletin
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© Jörg Mitter
LI K E WHAT YOU LI K E
YOUR MOMENT.
BEYOND THE ORDINARY
The BDI performance group entertained the crowd between sets
MORE than
Unique among music festivals, Swaziland’s acclaimed Bushfire doesn’t just uplift its audience, it uplifts an entire community Words: Lloyd Gedye Photography: Sydelle Willow Smith
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s the beat drops, the audience bounces in unison and more than 8,000 pairs of arms reach skyward. It’s Saturday night at the Bushfire music festival in Swaziland and Colombian outfit Bomba Estéreo has just hit the main stage. Pacing its length, their petite frontwoman, Liliana Saumet, scours the onlookers, gazing from left to right before unleashing a torrent of sounds, unfamiliar to the non-Spanish-speaking ear. Dressed in silver high-top sneakers with black stockings, high-cut denim shorts and a bird of paradise-adorned white shirt, Saumet has the crowd eating out of her hand. Behind her, a tight-knit three-piece, mostly dressed in black, are busy demonstrating a sonic power that this seventh edition of Bushfire has over its audience. The fact that Saumet is rapping in a foreign language makes little difference to them. They’re utterly enthralled by the music and attitude of this new-age Aztec princess and her band. With each flailing arm and MC pose, the crowd roars its approval. If you’re looking for the real power of music – that ability to unite people across the boundaries of race and culture for a moment in time – then Bomba Estéreo’s performance is no better example. And when it comes to cultural diversity, you don’t 82
Far left: Dancers from Swaziland in traditional dress. Left: Bomba EstÊreo’s lead singer, Liliana Saumet. Below: A rapturous reception for The Soil
get a music festival in Southern Africa that can compete with Bushfire. “We certainly celebrate bringing different people together,” said Bushfire festival director Jiggs Thorne earlier in the day when The Red Bulletin tied him down for a chat. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.” A few hours later, the physical manifestation of what Thorne was talking about is in full effect. Festivalgoers from Swaziland, South Africa, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Ghana, England, Spain, France, Germany, Holland, America, Brazil and Colombia are shaking their asses in unison. “Our programme reflects the diversity of people who attend the festival,” says Thorne. “When people come together across cultures, there is a fusion of stories. People talk about the Bushfire atmosphere and I think it’s just that, it’s a masala of ingredients from around the world.” This year alone offered up acapella gospel 84
Above: Festival director Jiggs Thorne. Right: Nozinga from Shangaan Electro. Opposite page top (l-r): Khasi soul group The Soil; The Brother Moves On. Opposite page bottom: Festivalgoers in high spirits
“We started in 2007 with 4,500 people and now we are capped at about 20,000. I don’t think we can take any more than that” the red bulletin
FireFest Route
It gets better. Bushfire is now also part of FireFest. Launched in 2013, it is Africa’s first festival circuit. The FireFest Route includes: Harare International Festival of Arts, (HIFA) in Zimbabwe www.hifa.co.zw The Azgo festival in Mozambique www.facebook.com/ Azgofestival.Official The BlackMajor festival in South Africa www.facebook.com/ blackmajorsa The Bushfire festival in Swaziland www.bush-fire.com The Sakifo Musik festival in La Reunion www.facebook.com/ SakifoMusikFestival All five of these festivals take place between April 30 and June 9 – an intentional realignment by all to realise the potential benefits of a festival circuit. “It’s a very exciting project,” says Bushfire festival director Jiggs Thorne. “We started last
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year, trying to get five Southern African festivals into a manageable tour timeframe. It is amazing, because for the first time in our history we have been able to export Swazi acts to the region. We sent artists to Safiko Musik last year and they are sending us artists this year. This means so much to the artists.” One of the main benefits to result from the formation of the festival is the sharing of costs when bringing top acts to perform. In 2013, Colombian act Bomba Estéreo headlined the FireFest Route – appearing at all member events. The Brother Moves On (South Africa), Hope Masike (Zimbabwe), Masikane (Swaziland) and Muzilation (Mozambique) also joined the Firefest Route for its full duration.
pop from South Africa’s The Soil, punk-blues attitude from Reunion Island’s Nathalie Natiembé, acoustic guitar rhythm from Niger’s Tuareg maestro Allouhseni Anivolla, banging break-neck dance moves and beats from Giyani’s own Shangaan Electro, and afro-futurist rock from Johannesburg’s The Brother Moves On. Not to mention the headline act from Colombia. The Setting, the Mission… Bushfire is hosted every year at the fantastical paradise that is House on Fire. Built in the Ezulwini Valley, which translates as ‘Place Of Heaven’, 23km from Swaziland’s capital, Mbabane, this amphitheatre and performance area is a quirky mosaic and sculpture-filled wonder that infuses Bushfire with an other-worldly atmosphere. Founded in 2006, the festival held it’s seventh edition in 2013 and was pretty much at full capacity in 2013, with punters flooding in for its three-day celebration of art, craft, music, dance,
theatre and poetry. The fact that over 10,000 people pour through the gate on Saturday alone, gives an indication of how this festival has gone from strength to strength. Key to its success is Bushfire festival director Thorne and his vision for a PanAfrican arts festival. He explains its history, legacy and impact: “House on Fire hosts a sculpture workshop and ongoing multidisciplinary arts programme throughout the year. After seven years of running House on Fire we wanted to expand the concept. We had this idea of the fire bursting out of House on Fire and escaping, creating a wildfire. Basically a bushfire was the idea behind the festival.” Clearly the fire not only took, but spread. “We started in 2007 with 4,500 people and now we are capped at about 20,000 over the three days,” says Thorne. “I don’t think we can take any more than that.” The recently added venue, The Barn, is a space at the festival for debates, lectures, films screenings and interactive art, illustrating the festival’s commitment to the development of ideas in Swaziland, as much as it’s into developing artists. That, however, is just part of Bushfire’s mission – social responsibility and development are also at the forefront of its agenda, with its partner, Young Heroes, receiving 100 per cent of profits from the festival. Young Heroes is an NGO that assists HIV/AIDS orphans in Swaziland through social grants, medical care, and skills and vocational training for school-leavers. “From the onset I really wanted to use the platform to address issues around development and meet real needs in the area,” says Thorne. “There was this idea of creating a platform that can address arts development, but also broader societal development. I met Steve Kallaugher, the founder of Young Heroes, shortly after I decided to start this festival and he explained to me the very real experiences of orphans in Swaziland and so Young Heroes became the festival’s beneficiary.” Kallaugher picks up the story: “One day I saw Jiggs at a gig and I went to him and said I am doing this project for 85
orphans in Swaziland and I need your help,” says Kallaugher. “I had hoped that he may add R10 to a ticket for some show at House on Fire or do a benefit gig.” Thorne had something a little more radical in mind. He wasn’t thinking an add-on fee to the ticket of a small show, but a new music festival, of which a 100 per cent of the profits would go to Young Heroes. There are an estimated 120,000 AIDS orphans in Swaziland and prior to 2013, Bushfire had raised over R530,000 for the NGO, benefiting over 900 orphans. Bushfire also donates 100 per cent of all merchandise sales to the Gone Rural boMake community development programme, which assists rural women and their children with health, education and water services. Not counting this year, the festival has made over R160,000 for the project to date. That’s not where Bushfire’s economic footprint ends either – a study conducted in 2011 showed that Bushfire generated R12-million in tourist receipts that year, an enormous impact on the Ezulwini Valley. On top of that, every year it creates direct employment for over 1,000 Swazis “Bushfire has been a really big economic driver. I mean this weekend there are no beds left in Swaziland, which shows the impact,” says Thorne. 86
… and the Music and Musicians. Bushfire is not only developing a name among festivalgoers, but the unique vibe and atmosphere it offers is beginning to reach musicians from foreign shores, too. Bomba Estéreo had only played in Africa once before – the Agadir Festival in Morocco last year – so the prospect of travelling south to Bushfire was attractive.
This current tour to Mozambique, South Africa and Swaziland would be a new experience for the Colombians. “Colombia has a rich heritage of influence from African music,” says Simón Mejia, the band’s founder, bassist and keyboard programmer. “My own personal influence with African music is huge – from the ’70s up until now.” the red bulletin
Left: Steve Kallaugher, founder of Young Heroes. Below left: Nathalie Natiembé on the main stage with Cheney. Below: Colombian fans during Bomba Estéreo’s show. Bottom: Jeremy Loops back at Bushfire for the second year running
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He references Fela Kuti and the Afrobeat movement, which tore through the continent in the ’70s, and newer artists like Kinshasa’s Konono No1 and South Africa’s Shangaan Electro. Bomba Estéreo have dubbed their music ‘electro vacilón’ which translates as ‘electro tropical’, an interesting if not obscure description. “They are terms to try to explain a certain mix that is difficult to categorise, as there are many influences, from traditional Colombian music to African music, to electronics, rock, dub, ambient...” However you attempt to describe Bomba Estéreo’s sound, it is heady brew. If you are looking for pointers, imagine M.I.A. was Colombian. It’s also a mix that went down a storm on Saturday night. Another visiting musician with appropriately multi-cultural roots was Ghanaian/Swiss Joy Frempong. Returning to Bushfire for the second time, she previously toured South Africa, Tanzania and Mozambique in 2009 with the band Filewile, and in 2011 she returned to play some gigs in Swaziland and South Africa as a solo artist under the Oy moniker. A creative artist interested in people and their culture, no surprises then that her set on Sunday afternoon was met with roars of approval from the crowd. Frempong’s music borrows from the palettes of jazz, hip-hop and electronic music, but is improvisational and experimental in nature, using loads of found sounds. Her latest album Kokokyinaka was recently released on
Creaked Records and features samples that she collected in Mali, Ghana, Burkina Faso and South Africa. Anything from knives being sharpened at a market in the Burkina Faso capital of Ouagadougou, to the sound of an ill-fitting door being opened in a cottage in Johannesburg, or even to Frempong’s mother’s loud washing machine made it onto the album. “I wanted the lyrics to be based on stories, traditional and everyday, nowadays experiences of people I’d meet on the way,” she says. Alhousseini Anivolla,the Tuareg guitarist from Niger was also no stranger to Southern Africa. In fact he has visited South Africa twice before, with his band Etran Finatawa in 2009, and then again in 2011 for a project called Guitafrik. “I enjoyed our first tour in 2009 so much,” says Anivolla. “I appreciated the audience, the welcome, I felt very comfortable here in Southern Africa.” This time Anivolla played shows in Johannesburg, Pretoria, Harare, Durban and at Bushfire. His performance at Bushfire saw him collaborating with KwaZulu-Natal guitarist Guy Buttery. Their performance early on Sunday afternoon was a laid-back affair, with the two guitarists interlocking rhythms creating a potent fusion. It’s fusion that, when thrown into the already rich blend of Bushfire’s line-up, makes for a memorable audience experience. Dhuha Tawil, an American currently volunteering for Peace Corps in Swaziland raved about the performance afterwards. “That was awesome,” she said. “The thing I love about the festival is the diversity in the artists performing. Bushfire really showcases Africa and its art.” And this from Rob Verrecchia, a 20-something doctor from Sheffield in the UK currently working in South Africa: “I loved the fact that I met so many new people at the festival. My personal musical highlight was definitely South African part-band, part-performance artists The Brother Moves On.” But Bushfire is not just a festival for international travellers, Mzi Lupupa, a lecturer from a local university in Manzini was attending his third Bushfire: “I keep coming back. It’s the warm, friendly people and the great music on offer every year. My favourites this year? The Soil and Toya DeLazy. I’ll definitely be back in 2014.” Ultimately, this is the beauty of Bushfire. Different races, different cultures, different nationalities coming together to have a party and celebrate art – while at the same time making a real difference to local Swazis’ lives. 87
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YOUR MOMENT. BEYOND THE ORDINARY
FREE DOWNLOAD
Padel power: how Red Bull X-Fighters champ Dany Torres hones his lightning reactions Training, page 93
Where to go and what to do
ac t i o n ! T r a v e l / G e a r / T r a i n i n g / N i g h t l i f e / M U S I C / p a r t i e s / c i t i e s / c l u b s / E v e n ts
Rock and awe
photography: mauritius images, shutterstock
The pure adrenalin rush of conquering a 65ft rock face armed only with your wits Travel, over the page
Hanging tough: there are no ropes in deepwater soloing
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Action!
travel
Splashing time: after climbing over water without ropes, there’s only one way down
And anoth er thing do split before you split
Seafood, eat it After swimming with fish, try dining on it. High-end Nostromo is aptly located next to Split’s fish market. Or more rustic is the popular Konoba Matejuska.
Ups and downs Deep-Water Soloing A Croatian climb with no support and no protection, just bare hands on wet rock – then a plunge into the Adriatic There’s a reason the Spanish call deep-water soloing psicobloc or ‘psycho bouldering’: it’s the kind of climbing that involves dizzying heights and a very minimalist approach to kit. Forget carabiners, ropes and hard hats: the only aid is a handful of chalk. It’s man versus rock with a mandatory sea plunge. With 1,000 steep-faced islands, Croatia is an ideal base for both novice and experienced climbers wanting to go it alone, but with rushes come risks. “Any climb over 10m is potentially fatal,” says instructor Daniel Piccini. “Safety is a big concern. This is a totally different experience of climbing, even for a pro. People have to adapt.” Londoner Gary Duke, 31, climbed with Piccini in Split, Croatia’s second largest city. “It’s unlike anything I’d done before, it’s pure adrenalin,” he says. “I’ve been lead climbing for three years, and with this there wasn’t the distraction of clipping and rope work, so you can focus completely on the climb. It’s so freeing. “I got up to 50ft knowing a jump was the only way down. It was extremely scary – but it’s a huge part of the thrill. It was the best climbing I’ve ever done.” Climb with Avantura Adventure: www.avantura.biz
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Have a beach party Join Split’s trendies on Kasuni Beach’s white sand. Relax by day then head to beachside nightspot Jungla for bright lights and beats.
Advice from the inside Go with a pro
“Always take a guide,” says Duke. “They know the area and the tides and can make sure you don’t get into trouble when you’re climbing. There’s always a boat on standby to help, too. And don’t look down!”
Take the leap “The first thing is to practise the jumping,” “It can be difficult,” says Piccini, “and falling is dangerous. Climbers need to be used to it. Climb to a low overhang over deep water, as this is the safest jump. When you are comfortable with that, you can focus on the climb and go higher.”
www.resident advisor.net
Keep on rising If your legs can take it, climb the 200 steps of Split’s 190ft bell tower (left) at the Cathedral of Saint Domnius for an unparalleled view of the rock you just conquered. www.inyour pocket.com
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words: ruth morgan. photography: ricardo alves/red bull content pool, mauritius images, getty images, shutterstock, istock photo
www.konoba matejuska.hr
FATE DOESN’T ASK. IT COuLD ALSO bE mE. Or yOu. David Coulthard.
13-time Formula 1 Grand Prix Winner and Wings For Life Ambassador.
SPINAL COrD INJury muST bECOmE CurAbLE. In funding the best research projects worldwide focusing on the cure of spinal cord injury, the Wings for Life Spinal Cord research Foundation ensures top-level medical and scientific progress. We assure that hundred percent of all donations are invested in spinal cord research.
your contribution makes a difference. Donate online at www.wingsforlife.com
Free advertisement.
Action!
party
Captivating performers: cage dancers at Dante’s
show time Portland's best bands
Shins After bailing on the desert climes of Albuquerque, New Mexico, alt-rock darlings The Shins hit their sweet spot in Portland with albums Chutes Too Narrow and Wincing the Night Away.
Burn baby burn Portland, USA Dante's heats up thanks to the acclaimed Sunday night burlesque show, Sinferno Firebreathers? Check. Go-go dancers? Check. Karaoke with a live band? Check. The eclectic offerings of Portland club Dante’s include all of these, as well as a diverse live music line-up that features rock, New Orleans brass bands, reggae and Pink Floyd cover bands. “Sunday night we do Sinferno, a burlesque and cabaret show, and I don’t think there’s a place on the West Coast that could match it,” says Stephen Santoro, co-owner and general manager. If all that wasn’t enough, one of the club’s other regular performers is Nik Sin, the little person performer better known as Mini Marilyn Manson. Dante’s 350 West Burnside Street Portland, Oregon 97209, USA www.danteslive.com
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Life is a cabaret: acts range from fire-eaters to ventriloquists
jeans & m o u s ta c h e s Dante’s owner Stephen Santoro on his night spot
The crowd “Portland has definitely turned into a hipster town, so no matter what the show, we get a lot of long hair, fancy moustaches and skinny jeans.’ The drinks “I try to keep my price point down because I hate going to the hotel next door and paying $10 for a Ketel One greyhound.” The food “We‘ve always had our own pizza kitchen, with New York-style pizza. We open at 11am every day, so we get a lot of people who have a slice and grab a seat for lunch.”
Sleater-Kinney Yes, yes, they’re technically from Olympia, Washington, but band co-founder Carrie Brownstein’s rock chick aesthetic defines Portlandia, the TV show that, well, defines Portland. www.ifc.com/shows/ portlandia
Decemberists The indie folk rock band honed their theatrical live shows in pubs around Portland and released their first album on the city’s Hush Records. www.decemberists. com
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Words: Ann donahue. Photography: KRISTOPHER ENGWALL (5), Annie Beedy, Autumn Dewilde, Subpop.com
www.theshins.com
Action!
workout
All the fun of the air
Words: Ulrich Corazza. Photography: naim chidiac/red bull content pool, dan busta/red bull content pool, shutterstock. illustration: heri irawan
Red Bull X-Fighters Dany Torres flies about on his bike, does Paris Hiltons and cannot be serious
Dany Torres at the Dubai leg of the 2013 Red Bull X-Fighters World Tour
Spanish Freestyle Motocross Rider Dany Torres was Red Bull X-Fighters World Tour champion in 2011, and has been flying through the air on a motorcycle since 2002.
Torres has a tattoo that reads ‘where some see fear, I find fun’. In the course of his FMX career, he has suffered major injuries to his hands and his legs, but the truth of the matter is in his ink. “My motto remains ‘enjoy what you do’,” he says. He applies this philosophy to his training regime. “I want to spend as much of my life as possible on two wheels, with BMX, motocross and mountain biking.” Twice a week, for three hours at a time, Torres practises tricks like the Paris Hilton flip, a backflip with his legs straddling the handlebars of his bike. You certainly won’t find him in the weights room. “I don’t even use the one I have,” admits Torres, who prefers to keep flexible with stretching and strengthening exercises for his back and legs.
D o T r y T h i s At H o m e “Contortions on the bike and impacts on landing: all of that affects your back,” says Torres. “These four exercises – do 10 repetitions of each – will increase the stability of the lower back region.”
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Lay your hips on a Swiss ball, support yourself with your hands, keep your back straight and lift each leg up and down.
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Raise both legs simultaneously and lower them again. They shouldn’t touch the floor, nor be raised too high.
4
M ATC H FIT Anyone for tennis?
Padel do nicely for Dany’s all-round game
“Padel tennis,” says Torres, “is a cross between tennis and squash that’s mainly played in Spain and South America. A dynamic sport that hones your reactions and your flexibility, it keeps my body fit.”
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With toes braced against the floor, put your hands behind your back, then slowly and evenly raise your upper body and lower it again.
Lying on the ball, raise your right arm and left leg, then left arm and right leg, holding the stretch for three seconds.
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Action!
city Guide
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kreuzberg Berlin born and bred: Gernot Bronsert, 34, is a musician, DJ and label owner
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Top Five My berlin Highlights
Schlesischer Busch
BY PLANE From Strausberg airfield in the east of the city, take a one-hour flight over Berlin and Brandenburg in a Cessna 172, carrying up to three people. Make sure you ask for the window seat. www.aeroworx.de
in Europe: a paradise from techno to dub. For years I used to stand behind the counter myself. This shop has really influenced my taste.
“Garlic and herb sauce, spicy, no onions” Berlin Bars for the brave, shops for the shopaphobe, kebabs for the foodie: Gernot Bronsert of electronic duo Modeselektor shares his city’s highlights Berlin is the global centre of club music, and the kings of nightlife here are the duo known as Modeselektor. Gernot Bronsert and Sebastian Szary have been at it since the late 1990s, shaping the underground scene of their hometown through bass-heavy concerts and DJ sets, with their many fans including Björk and Thom Yorke of Radiohead. A new documentary, We Are Modeselektor, tells their story so far. “The city plays a starring role in the film,” says Bronsert, who, when not gigging all over the world likes to spend every spare second in Berlin. But where exactly? Here he tells all. www.modeselektor.com
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1 Civilist
Brunnenstrasse 13 Almost all of my clothes come from here. Perfect for lads who don’t want to spend their life shopping. A small shop run by art-loving skaters, who also do magazines and exhibitions.
4 Il Casolare
Grimmstrasse 30 An Italian restaurant in Kreuzberg run by Communist punks. Amazingly unfriendly waiters with stretched earlobes and dreadlocks. But, along with great pizzas, they have Berlin’s best wild boar ragout.
Scale the walls of an aboveground World War II bunker in Humboldthain Park. The going gets tough, but the reward is fantastic views across the Mitte and Wedding districts. www.visitberlin.de
BY LIFT
2 All in One
Rosenthaler Strasse 43 At some point in the night you’ll go past this place. Which is just as well, because they have the best kebab in the city. My tip: “Garlic and herb sauce, spicy, no onions.”
3 Hard Wax
Paul-Lincke-Ufer 44 One of the best record shops
5 Kumpelnest 3000
Lützowstrasse 23 A bar for the brave. It used to be a brothel and it still looks like one. Berlin’s hardcore scene meets here from about five o’clock in the morning, then parties on into the day.
Berlin’s Fernsehturm TV tower is the tallest building in all of Germany. Bronsert recommends it highly. “It’s a pretty clear declaration when you take a lady up there.” www.tv-turm.de
the red bulletin
Words: Florian Obkircher. Photography: ragnar schmuck, tom haslinger (4), shutterstock, sz-photo, ddp
BY CLIMBING WALL
Action!
music
JT & J ay-z
1 Dom Maker, half of British electronic duo Mount Kimbie
“He played this song to me on the train” playlist The surprising journey of influences to Mount Kimbie’s new album When Mount Kimbie released their debut album Crooks & Lovers in 2010, the music world nodded and grinned as one. The duo’s tracks were both bassy and fragile, both electronic and warmly rounded. Critics came up with a new genre for their music: post-dubstep. Kai Campos and Dom Maker have refined their sound for their second album. Here, Maker reveals what was playing in the studio during the recording of Cold Spring Fault Less Youth (out now). www.mountkimbie.com
h i p to b e s q uar e Photography: getty images (2), picturedesk.com
cornering the MP3 market
The Vamp A little amp that lets you bring old speakers into the 21st century. Wire it to any speaker then connect wirelessly, via Bluetooth, to a phone or music player. Its rechargeable battery
give about 10 hours of play. www.paulcocks edgeshop.com
the red bulletin
King Krule
Rock Bottom
There’s only one guest singer on our album, and that’s King Krule. When people hear his low voice, they imagine a middle-aged black guy, but he’s actually a 19-year-old ginger kid and an amazing songwriter. Rock Bottom is a fantastic tune, with a fantastic video. He’s easily one of the most exciting people I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting in music.
Shawn carter and justin timberlake are on tour together
Facts to impress fellow gig-goers with while you queue to get through security
2 John Maus Hey Moon
This song isn’t all that new, but I’ve been listening to it a lot recently. I really like the marriage between the female and the male voice, and the production is fantastic. Kai and I were listening a lot to Maus’ and Ariel Pink’s music when we worked on our record and a lot of the sound he has on that song really had an impact on our work.
jay-Z Hires a cigar roller when on tour to provide his guests backstage with the most exquisite tobacco products.
3 James Blake Overgrown
He used to perform with us live before his solo career. Now we mostly see each other when we’re on the road. Like last year, when we happened to meet on a train to London. He played this song to me because he wasn’t sure about it. I thought it was the best thing he had ever done. It ended up being the title track for his second album.
4 Actress Hubble
Kai and I are massive fans of everything that Actress has put out. It almost makes me anxious listening to his hypnotic tracks sometimes, but I love the intensity of them and if you’re in the right mood, the music can really take you on a journey. No one is so revered in electronic circles right now. Hubble, from the album Splazsh, is incredible.
5 Tame Impala Lonerism
It usually takes me a while to warm to an album, but with this one I was instantly hooked. I don’t know what it is about this Australian band, but the psychedelic pop on this record inspired us to get back to writing music. The production is sick, the mixing is sick and they are an amazing live band. I’m incredibly inspired by Tame Impala.
justin timberlake The idea for the tour came to him when he saw Sir Elton John and Billy Joel on stage together, interpreting each other’s songs.
kanye west Jay-Z’s bosom buddy is annoyed that his partner is cheating on him with Timberlake. He dissed the pairing’s joint hit, Suit & Tie, while performing on stage in London. Dates and tickets: www.justin timberlake.com
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Action!
save the date
don’t miss ink these dates in your diary
11 july
Skiing for the King Held in honour of Lesotho’s monarch, King Letsie III, the King’s Cup Ski & Snowboarding Champs take place over four days on the 1kmlong slope at the Afriski resort in Lesotho’s Maluti Mountains. www.afriski.net
20 july
July 9-13
J-Bay is back
After the sad cancellation of the Billabong Pro at J-Bay comes news that in its place will be The Jeffreys Bay Open Of Surfing. It’s an ASP sanctioned event, which means among the field of 72 – 64 men and eight women – will not only be SA’s best, but a couple of wildcard internationals, too. www.facebook.com/JeffreysBayOpenOfSurfing August 10
Two shades of blue
July 20-21
Be at Hayter Catch the county’s top cross-country and downhill talent at the SA mountain bike champs at the Hayterdale Trails near Zuurberg, Eastern Cape. www.cyclingsa.com
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After the glamour of the Super 15, rugby fans can look forward to some old-school, SA action as the ABSA Currie Cup kicks off. It’s the opening weekend for the Premier division, of which the highlight has to be the clash between DHL Western Province and Vodacom Blue Bulls at Newlands. ww.sarugby.net
down & dirty Bringing new meaning to the term ‘game run’, the Save The Rhino 2 Day Trail Run involves running with the big five at Legend Golf Safari Resort in Entabeni, near Polokwane. The event supports the Forever Wild Protection Initiative Fund. www.trisport.co.za
August 8-10
Thorn in my side For South African music fans, the iconic Oppikoppi festival is a right of passage. But while an overload of the country’s best musicians is immensely enjoyable, the environment’s very nature will probably be a challenge. The midday heat, evening chill, the dust, the thorn bushes and the campsite are not for the faint-hearted. Intimidated? You should be. Yet it’s also one of the best festivals in the world. Commit. www.oppikoppi.co.za
2
august
on the decks Helping you ease back into varsity’s third term is the Red Bull Studio Night at Tollies in Stellenbosch. Pascal & Pearce will be spinning the tunes. www.redbull studio.co.za
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photography: craig Kolesky/Red Bull Content Pool, picasa, getty images, Tyrone Bradley/Red Bull Content Pool
A top surf competition returns to the water at Jeffreys Bay this month
P RO M OT I O N
MUST-HAVES!
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ISSEY MIYAKE L‘EAU D‘ISSEY POUR HOMME SPORT A fresh invigorating fragrance inspired by extreme sports. A cocktail of citrus fruits and spicy nutmeg which imparts energy and freshness. L‘Eau d‘Issey Pour Homme Sport is for the man who wants to feel refreshed and full of energy. From R650. 2
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3 THULE EASYFOLD BIKE CARRIER The most convenient, fully foldable two bike carrier for all types of bikes. Folds in only two steps for easy mounting, handling and storage. Features: High load capacity (2x30 kg), smart foot pedal tilt for easy trunk access even with bikes mounted, all bike frame holders are detachable for convenient mounting of bikes, pump buckles with long wheel straps for easy fastening of wheels. Integrated carrying handles for ergonomic transport of the carrier, large frame holder for mounting of round and oval frames (22-80 mm), carrier lockable on tow bar and all bike positions lockable to carrier. R8 999.
www.thule.com 4 ISOSTAR HYDRATE & PERFORM Isotonic sports drink Hydrate & Perform was carefully developed by leading European sports nutrition company Isostar in order to replace depletions caused by intense exercise. The product quickly re-hydrates and replaces essential electrolytes. In addition, the unique blend of simple and complex carbohydrates with Vitamin B1 provides a stable nutrition source that is rapidly absorbed by the body without spikes. Hydrate & Perform also boasts excellent levels of sodium, calcium and magnesium to boost muscle function and prevent cramping. R139.
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www.isostar.co.za 5 SONY HDR-AS15 ACTION CAM Prove yourself with the only mountable action camera boasting legendary Sony video quality. Capture every hardcore gravitydefying moment in extreme HD with the new HDR-AS15 Sony Action Cam and share your glory on the fly for instant bragging rights thanks to built-in Wi-Fi®. Featuring advanced Sony optics and an ultra-wide angle Carl Zeiss® lens Action Cam is all you will ever need for stunningly smooth, blur free, Full HD resolution footage that is crisp, clear and incredible as the moment itself. It’s light and seriously compact but waterproof, rugged and built to go hard plus with a huge ecosystem of mounts right out of the box and loads more available it’s the ultimate in hands-free pro shooting. R3 499.99.
www.sony.co.za
100 Years of Breakdance Twentieth-century historians would have it that breakdance, also known as ‘breaking’ and ‘B-Boying’, emerged from the nascent hip-hop scene in Brooklyn, New York City in the 1970s. In fact, an artistic form of rhythmic dance was being practised six decades earlier, about 200 miles north-east of NYC. In Baltimore, the Baker
brothers, Billy and Bobby, who went by the name ‘The B Boys’, had a successful vaudeville act comprising acrobatic spins and turns, what was considered North America’s finest top-hat balance and the then-risqué indoor opening of an umbrella. The only surviving photograph of the pair (Billy not pictured) was taken in July 1913.
The next edition of the red bulletin is out on August 6 98
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photography: roger viollet/getty images
Time warped
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