The Red Bulletin_2012_IRL

Aaron Hadlow / Stephen Redmond / Dolph Lundgren / Marilyn Monroe / Mike Skinner / We Cut Corners

A BEYOND THE ORDINARY MAGAZINE

AUGUST 2012

EVERY SECOND COUNTS

The incredible life of a bomb disposal expert

ALL AT SEA

Hell on high water: the Volvo Ocean Race

EUR 3.50

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BEING

WARE DEMARCUS of the

August 2012

Dallas Cowboys on faith, violence and the NFL’s future

THE WORLD OF RED BULL

August 17

STEVE CARELL As ‘The 40 Year Old Virgin’ turns 50 this month, we explore what makes this most smart of dumb guys so funny

WORLD IN ACTION From a festival of fire in El Salvador to Usain Bolt speeding through Switzerland: the best global events for the month ahead

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COVER PHOTOGRAPHY: PATRICK HOELK. PHOTOGRAPHY: PICTUREDESK.COM, GETTY IMAGES (2), MARTIN MIERZWA/RED BULL CONTENT POOL

WELCOME There’s tension in this month’s issue of The Red Bulletin..

For starters, the remarkable skydivers flying in unison with glider pilots to execute a perfectly synchronised stroke of genius.. Fancy free falling dangerously close to two speeding aircraft, just centimetres away from the wings? Thought not.

Meet the magnificent men who attempt this stunt.

What about the stress of competing in the Volvo Ocean Race, entering the Howling Fifties, where winds can rip the mast from the hull? Crews are beyond rescue, unless a rival boat can help. Then there’s the stratonaut Felix Baumgartner, who will experience an extreme of human emotion as he prepares to leap from the edge of space. We hope you enjoy the issue – even if you need to go for a lie down when you’re done.

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LUCKY NUMBERS Marking 50 years since Marilyn Monroe’s death, some facts that might surprise you-boop-be-do

“ The distance between the jump plane and gliders has to be so narrow ”

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THE SKY’S THE LIMIT Five wingsuit divers, two gliders, one ambitious stunt: how a squadron of men and machines took to the skies and came together in perfect formation

THE WORLD OF RED BULL

August 82

TIME TO PARTY Notting Hill Carnival perennial Norman Jay presents his top tips on how to prepare for the Good Times madness

SEVEN SEAS OF WHY The obsession that drove Stephen Redmond through duvet-sized jellyfish and the world’s toughest open-water swims to set a world’s first

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RED BULL STRATOS The latest chapter of Felix Baumgartner’s trip to the edge of space involves everything from rattlesnakes and gun-slingers to ski resorts and aliens

52 DID SOMEBODY SAY BOMB?

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“ It’s like you’re in a washing machine while a madman bashes the outside with a hammer ”

THE CRUEL SEA: VOLVO OCEAN RACE The most arduous route, the most expensive equipment, the best crews: welcome to the most challenging regatta in the world

08 Pictures of the month 14 Here is the news 18 Meet Norway’s new hero of rock Tony Sylvester 20 Kit Evolution: Moto suits – less handmade, more high-tech 22 The physics of sailing explained

PHOTOGRAPHY: SHUTTERSTOCK, CHRISTIAN PONDELLA/RED BULL STRATOS, PATRICK BOLGER, DANIEL GEBHART DE KOEKKOEK, VOLVO OCEAN RACE

If Eric makes a mistake, he’ll be dead before he knows it – and that’s a good part of his job as a bomb disposal expert

THE WORLD OF RED BULL

“ I take it a play at a time, and hopefully it all turns out OK for me ”

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PHOTOGRAPHY: PATRICK HOELK, RUTGER PAUW/RED BULL CONTENT POOL, BENNY REBEL, FIONA MORGAN

THE SHOW STOPPER DeMarcus Ware is a ruthless football player. As the NFL starts its season of reckoning, the game’s best linebacker reflects on faith, violence, and football’s long-term future

24 ME AND MY BODY: AARON HADLOW

The 23-year-old Brit is a five-time kiteboard world champion whose body has been scarred, inked and sculpted in the pursuit of excellence – so much so, that he’s now got one leg shorter than the other

88 BAND WATCH: WE CUT CORNERS

Their members may number only two, but this Dublin duo’s sonic output is anything but limiting: instead of the bang ’n’ thrash their line-up usually demands, they’ve produced music full of depth and lyricism

more

Body & Mind 84

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Skateboard pro Philipp Schuster’s guide to making a private skate park in your living room

Some special events to ink in your diary

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KAINRATH

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MIND’S EYE

BUILD YOUR OWN SKATE PARK

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REALLY WILD LIFE

His models wear fur and horns and eat photographers for breakfast – literally. But Benny Rebel has no trouble with dangerous subjects.

Just part of the job for one of the world’s leading wildlife photographers

TRAINING

Top work-out tips from freerunner Ryan Doyle

90 NIGHTLIFE

SAVE THE DATE

Our cartoonist

The thoughts of columnist Stephen Bayley

A glamorous club, an exotic cocktail, a midnight snack, the best in music and much more – we’ve got everything you need to get you through the night

BAVARIA CITY RACING DUBLIN Ian Beatty

Ian Beatty of Mondello Park was given the task of piloting the SEAT Leon Cupra R around the streets of Dublin for the Bavaria City Racing Event.

Driving a high performance car around a race circuit has become second nature to me, it’s a regular part of my week. Since graduating from a part-time position as a race school instructor in 2001, to take up my current role as Operations Manager at Mondello Park, Ireland’s only International Racing Circuit, cars and racing have become a daily part of life. My base at the circuit also enables me to have access to the track for the purpose of testing new road cars, as a motoring journalist this resource is invaluable.

Having previously been involved in the design, build and running of the outdoor sprint track at Top Gear Live in Dublin, Mondello Park was approached to assist with the running of Bavaria City Racing Dublin.

From the outset this event was without doubt set to be the largest and most spectacular motorsport event to be witnessed in Dublin. Who would have thought they’d ever see Jenson Button, a Formula One World Champion, drive on the streets of Dublin in a McLaren Mercedes Formula One car. Button was joined by the Caterham F1 team reserve driver Giedo Van Der Garde, along with a host of Irish and UK drivers, driving a wide variety of racing single-seaters and saloons. World Superbike rider Eugene Laverty was also present, riding his Aprilia world superbike.

On the day of the event I had the pleasurable task of driving one of the two SEAT Leon Cupra R safety cars.

Having driven the Leon Cupra R on previous occasions I was confident that the car would be proficient for the task at hand. The Cupra R is somewhat of a ‘sheep in wolf’s clothing’ car, it doesn’t shout out about its performance capabilities. There are just a few subtle ‘R’ badges on the car’s exterior, the large red brake

callipers which sit behind 19” Potenza alloys hint at the car’s sporting potential to the keen observer.

Powering the Cupra R is a 2.0-litre four-cylinder TSI turbo-charged petrol engine which produces a hefty 265hp and 350Nm of torque. As a result it can reach 100km/h from a standstill in just 6.2 seconds, all the more impressive when you consider it’s a practical car with five doors and adequate interior room for four to five adults.

Unfortunately the majority of the day for Bavaria City Racing was rain soaked. Thankfully this didn’t dispirit the fans, with over 100,000 spectators lining the streets of Dublin to catch a glimpse of Formula One cars up close. The course was fast in places with tight twisty and somewhat demanding sections. It was narrow too, just five metres in width at one section. The Leon Cupra R excelled at high speed driving in this environment. The combination of a front-wheel-drive setup complete with SEAT’s XDS differential enabled the Cupra R to transfer all its power to the road despite the wet conditions. You’re held firmly in place by the sports bucket seats which offer support for fervent driving, with a pleasant induction noise transmitted into the cabin from the engine on acceleration. Throughout the day I had some passengers on board who thoroughly enjoyed the experience of high-speed driving on Dublin’s streets, which normally have a 30km/h speed limit enforced.

Despite being surrounded by Formula One cars, race cars and supercars, including Ferraris and Porsches, the €40,300 SEAT Leon Cupra R felt at home and it performed faultlessly all day. If driven economically it will return a combined average fuel consumption of 8.1l/100km (34.9mpg), not bad for a car with such pace. It was fantastic to be involved with Bavaria City Racing and SEAT. Let’s hope this showcase of the pinnacle cars from the world of motorsport continues.

THE CAR ALL OTHERS FOLLOW Exuberant, dynamic and stylish – the Leon Cupra R is all of this and a whole lot more. A star of the recent Bavaria City Racing Dublin event, it is the perfect synthesis of precise engineering and design flair. Boasting a finely-tuned sport suspension, 19� Potenza alloy wheels, Cupra R bodykit, red brake callipers, tinted windows and sports seats, the Leon Cupra R not only looks great, it performs great too. Powered by a 2.0 Turbo engine with a power output of 265BHP the Leon Cupra R can reach 0-60 in 6.2 seconds. Call into your local dealer to experience the SEAT brand of precise engineering, design, and performance across our model range.

Average combined fuel consumption 8.1 l/100km. CO2 emissions 190 g/km.

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SEAT.IE

O D DA , N o rway

Fjord Focus

On a rock plateau 500m above ground, and about five hours’ drive west of Oslo, homecountry boy Eskil Rønningsbakken enters a state of total concentration. “I want to draw pictures in the landscape with my body,” says the 33-yearold, who has made a habit of perching perilously without a safety net. He prepares with “breathing exercises and yoga”; sighs of relief greet his returns to terra firma.

Balancing acts: www.globalbalancing.com Photography: Sindre Lundvold

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Pi e r r e- Lys g o rg e s , Fr an c e

do look down

The Devil’s Backbone route in the French Pyrenees, is aptly named, demanding spinal fortitude of anyone game enough to attempt an ascent. Some people, of course, are born to do it. “Here you can climb relaxed,” says Sam Bié, a photographer who specialises in climbing pics. When he says ‘watch the birdie’, his subjects are up alongside the flying feathered kind.

High-minded shotmaking: www.sambie.fr Photography: Sam Bié

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VIC TO RIA fall s , River Z am b ezi

water view

“The thundering of the waters drowned out my paraglider motor. There were rainbows glittering in the spray.” That’s what adventurer Thomas De Dorlodot remembers most about flying over the world’s largest waterfall. It was part of a four-month aerial trip across Africa the Belgian undertook with Horacio Lorens, but here, on the border of Zimbabwe and Zambia, says De Dorlodot, they got “the best view in the world”.

Expedition diary: www.searchprojects.net Photography: John Stapels

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Helly Hansen catwalk

Scandinavian Design is the cornerstone in all Helly Hansen gear. The optimal combination of purposeful design, protection and style. This is why professional mountain guides, patrollers and discerning enthusiasts choose Helly Hansen.

cOnFIDent wHen It MatteRs JOIn tHe Helly Hansen catwalk at IRelanD’s PReMIeR aDventuRe RacIng event saturday 6th October 2012 - visit www.killarneyadventurerace.ie to discover more

Bullevard Sport and culture on the quick

Loud and airy Germany’s Aline ‘The Devil’s Niece’ Westphal is the reigning Air Guitar World ‘Devil’s niece’ Champion; this year’s contest is in Finland on August 22-24. Here she picks three songs to sling fake axe to.

GLUECIFER, REVERSED “Partly a thrash-about, partly swift fingerboard work. An ideal tune for unleashing wild moves.”

BILLY IDOL, REBEL YELL “With its concise riff, great solo and many breaks, this leads to a multi-faceted performance.”

BIN AND DONE IT

Cans of film: the house from Pixar’s Up and Star Wars robot R2-D2

Garbage recycling bins made by TRASHed are the off-stage stars at music fesivals The journalist and hedonist Hunter S Thompson designed one, and so have the punks from Blink-182, the surfer Jodie Nelson and about 2,400 other sports stars and artists. The bins made for the TRASHed: Art Of Recycling initiative look almost too good to be filled with cans and bottles, but that is their ultimate purpose. They are the brainchild of Global Inheritance, a US firm that devises creative solutions to engender social change, and which hopes to encourage young festivalgoers to recycle with its ‘96-gallon art pieces.’

It’s one rubbish idea that could actually do some good. www.globalinheritance.org

PICTURES OF THE MONTH

EVERY SHOT ON TARGET

FOO FIGHTERS, PRETENDER “When I won my title last year I was playing this song. It’s intense, varied and full of energy.” www.airguitarworld championships.com

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Taken a picture with a Red Bull flavour?

Email it to us: phototicker@redbulletin.com Every month we print a selection, and our favourite pic is awarded a limited-edition Sigg bottle. Tough, functional and well-suited to sports, it features The Red Bulletin logo.

Ljubljana

Avatars ’ave a go into the wild blue yonder at the first-ever Red Bull Flugtag in Slovenia.

Philip Platzer

Reel deal The fact and furious: HD sports docs

PHOTOGRAPHY: GLOBAL INHERITANCE, PICTUREDESK.COM, REXFEATURES (2), CHRISTIAN PONDELLA/RED BULL CONTENT POOL, GETTY IMAGES, BRANEY‘S CHRISTMAS INC., RED BULL MEDIA HOUSE, THATSTHEWAY, DOGWOOF

Ronnie Renner hits the high life in Los Angeles

The best of X Games 2012 The playbook is often torn up at X Games.

In 2006, at X Games 12, Travis Pastrana pulled off the first-ever double backflip on a motocross bike. In 2009, Anthony Napolitan landed the first-ever front flip on a bicycle during a BMX contest at X Games 15. This year, with X Games 18 also marking 10 years of the contest in Los Angeles, there were more star turns: • In the Step Up event (aka high jump on a motorbike, big ramp required), Ronnie Renner set a world record of 14.3m.

• 15-year-old Mitchie Brusco landed after two-and-a-half turns of the first ‘900’ in competition, during Big Air skateboarding.

• Hot favourite Ryan Sheckler was beaten

by Paul ‘P-Rod’ Rodriguez in the urbanenvironment-style Skateboard Street.

• Tanner Foust and Greg Tracy pulled 7G driving cars side-by-side in a loop-theloop – a real-life Hot Wheels toy car track.

However, there was no face-off between Pastrana and Sébastien Loeb, world’s best rally driver, in Rally Cross after Pastrana was rammed into a wall by 58-year-old rookie Andy Scott in qualifying. Said Pastrana: “What the hell was that, dude?” espn.go.com/action/xgames

STRENGTH IN NUMBERS Mountain bike action-travelogue trots globe; boasts stunning camera work and star riders (Atherton, Semenuk).

THAT’S THE WAY As above, but for freestyle motocross.

Features the sport’s So-Cal birthplace and all-time great Robbie Maddison.

ACTION MAN Dolph Lundgren: career as solid as his pecs; smart guy; GSOH When Stallone, Willis, Schwarzenegger et al made retro-action box-office hit The Expendables in 2010, it took Dolph Lundgren out of a long (ergo successful) run of straight-to-DVD films. It’s half his lifetime since the 54-yearold starred in Rocky IV; before that, he was merely a chemical engineer graduate and twotime European karate champ.

August sees The Expendables 2.

Do movie fights hurt?

Yes, when somebody throws you into a wall. When you get thrown, the momentum of your body falling is what hurts you. Kicks and punches are not as dangerous as when you’re doing the wrestling. The takedowns and slamdowns, that’s when you get hurt.

TOWN OF RUNNERS Fascinating look at why and how Bekoji in Ethiopia, (pop. 17,000, and 25 cars), is home to so many worldclass athletes.

Use your degree on set?

I kind of did on Expendables 2, now you mention it! At one point in the movie, we’re stuck in a cave. My character, Gunnar, has a bright idea: to use rock and dynamite to blow a way out of there.

Whether it works or not in the film, I won’t say, but as a chemical engineer, I can assure you that in reality we would all have died trying it.

Politics one day, like Arnie?

I made some comments about the environment, and the Green Party in Sweden got in touch, asking me to run for parliament. I met the leader, who was a nice lady, but I had to say, ‘I live in California and I’m not ready yet to move back to Sweden, but thanks a lot!’ www.theexpendables2film.com

Middle man, l-r: Randy Couture, The Dolph, Terry Crews

WE HAVE A WINNER!

Vancouver Into the Capilano River for endurance race Red Bull Divide and Conquer.

Dale Tidy

Edinburgh

Anna Glowinski on the 25m of world’s smallest track that is Red Bull Mini Drome.

Dougie Cunningham

Breda Jaco de Groot goes for pole at Red Bull Fierste Ljepper, a take on Dutch ‘river leaping’.

Jarno Schurgers 15

B U L L E VA R D

Race Around Ireland: no gentle coastal bike ride

Pedal power For anyone wanting to discover all of the Emerald Isle in seven days, the Race Around Ireland could be the way to go. The 2,172km bike race, part of the Ultra Marathon Cycling Association’s World Cup series, covers the entire periphery of the island, from Mizen Head to the Giants Causeway, with no fixed rest stops or stages: it’s a full-on race to the finish. There’s not so much time for sightseeing. The competition beings on Sunday, September 9 in Navan, Co. Meath. www.racearoundireland.com

New platform: Blake Aldridge has swapped swimming pools for rock pools

Londoner Blake Aldridge, 30, is a gold medal-winning diver and former dive partner of UK hotshot Tom Daley.

Now he’s joined the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series Spectacular surf spot: Bamburgh Castle

From Hawaii to wey-aye When it comes to British surf-spot backdrops, there is none more spectacular than Bamburgh Castle in Northumberland. It stands imposingly just a few metres inland of Bamburgh Beach, the sandy setting for surf contest Red Bull Break 5, which sees 15 teams of five surfers compete for kudos and the top prize of a trip to faraway breaks rather warmer than those to be found off Britain’s east coast. The competition takes to the waves on September 29 and 30; teams can register online until September 7. www.redbull.co.uk/break5

Manchester Twin Atlantic gig VIP meet for Mark Leslie and Tasha Gresham (centre).

Jimmy Throgmorton

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Wet behind the ears. “I’ve always been fascinated by water. On holiday, when I was just 18 months old, I’m told I kept jumping headfirst into the pool in my nappy, and my anxious parents kept fishing me out.”

Feeling the force. “Cliff diving is a whole new experience. The first time I stood on one of the 28m platforms I said, ‘I can’t dive off this!’ Then the impact of the first dive completely pummelled me. There’s no weight training that can prepare you for that.”

No shy guy. “I don’t get self-conscious.

Barcelona

US soul singer Jesse Boykins III brings the Sónar Festival crowd to the boil.

Lander Larrañaga

There’s so much excitement, fear and adrenalin running through your body before a dive, the last thing you think is, ‘I’ve got 70,000 people looking at me in a Speedo.’”

Wales watching. “Competing in the UK for the first time in Pembrokeshire will be amazing.

I’ve got loads of friends and family coming. It will be chilly, but it’s OK. As a Brit, I’m used to that.”

The Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series comes to south Wales on September 8. www.redbullcliffdiving.co.uk

Prague

Red Bull Pump Riders rules: ramp start, no chains, momentum only; Michal Marosi abides.

Dan Vojtech

WORDS: RUTH MORGAN. PHOTOGRAPHY: DEAN TREML/RED BULL CONTENT POOL, RACE AROUND IRELAND, CORBIS

DIVING IN

B U L L E VA R D

WHERE’S YOUR HEAD AT?

STEVE CARELL

As ‘The 40 Year Old Virgin’ turns 50, he’s the smartest dumb guy in movies – and perhaps the most hardworking. So what is that makes this funnyman funny?

THE KID OF COM EDY

TH E LO ST

AR K “I’ve thought a lot about success, because it’s very strange to me that I’ve been successful,” Carell mused in 2010. Tha t year, his fee per film was said to be $15m: big bucks. Large cheques were also wafted on Carellas-Noah, biblical flood comedy Evan Almigh ty. On release in 2007, it was the 11th most expensive movie ever made, but, sadly, was only the 4,011th funniest film ever made. It flopped.

Steven John Carell was born on August 16, 1962, in Concord, Massachusetts, about 20 miles north-west of Boston.

“My husband and I were pretty obsessive and uptight about how we brought up the first three boys,” Harriet, Mrs Carell, told The New Yorker, “and when Steven came along, we were worn out. So we just relaxed and enjoyed him, and he entertained us.”

MO RE STR ING S ON BOW

THANK S AGAIN , FOLKS

Carell’s endearing everyman might be his default comedy setting, but it is certainly not his only one. He was superb as the brooding gay academic in Little Miss Sunshine, and equally good in Dan In Real Life, playing a slightly curmudgeonly widower father-of-three. He’s also done a Woody Allen (but only a small part): 2004’s Melinda and Melinda.

Young Steve took his entertaining into the outside world, acting in school plays and studying theatre at university, but he was headed for law school until his parents suggested he do something he “really” wanted to do. In 1987, while living in Chicago, he joined Second City, the comedy improv group whose alumni include Bill Murray, Mike Myers and Tina Fey.

GRE EK TRAGEDY

WORDS: PAUL WILSON. ILLUSTRATION: LIE-INS AND TIGERS

KE EP GO IN ’ EA ST

Carell’s nadir to date came playing a shouty Greek hotel chef in the 1997 sitcom Over The Top. At an awards show in 2006, Carell quoted from a contempor ary review: “I have stood in a freezer full of dead people at the morgue. I have seen a man’ s scalp pulled back over his nose… But I can now honestly say that until Steve Carell’s turn in the premiere of Over The Top, I have never known true horror.”

City, Carell While teaching at Second in 1995, they lls; Wa cy Nan coached one York, after the married and moved to New comedy show TV US on job a new Mrs C got ther Second ano 9, Saturday Night Live. In 199 mended om rec t, ber Col n phe City chum, Ste comedy TV US on t Carell as a corresponden bling bum ell’s Car w.

Sho ly show The Dai il 2005. genius reportage lasted unt

AH, 2005

“Annus mirabilis carelli.” The guy from The Daily Show, the improv vet, exploded into the mainstream with two career-defining, career-upside-down-turning roles, one each on the big and small screens. In The 40 Year Old Virgin, released three days after his 43rd birthday, Carell played a lovable nerd, who despite/because of his lovable nerdiness, finds a lovely lady. And on TV, The Office began.

DUNDER-HEAD When the UK version of The Office was remade for American television, the US team shoehorned Ricky Gervais’s character’s unpleasantness into their leading man, Michael Scott, played by Carell. It wasn’t funny, and not enough people were watching. So Scott was made more goodnatured, to be more like Carell, and the show has just been commissioned for a ninth season (the second without Carell).

ANOTH ER PANTS PARTY

This summer, there are two new Carell flicks: out now is Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World; out later is Hope Springs. In 2013, Carell will co-star with Will Ferrell in a new Anchorman movie, and with Jim Carrey in The Incredible Burt Wonderstone.

The latter has Carell and Carrey as rival magicians – a pitch that has just divided everyone who has read it into ‘Yes!’ or ‘No no no!’ camps.

Watch the Anchorman 2 teaser at www.funnyordie.com

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B U L L E VA R D

BIGGEST FAN

TONY SYLVESTER

Norwegian rock legends Turbonegro are touring with a new singer who was once their loudest champion. Tony Sylvester talks failed soundchecks, royal supporters and Hell’s Angels

Born June 12, 1973, London, UK Multitasker Sylvester also works as fashion journalist. (“I write about tailoring and the history of menswear over the past 120 years.”) He has been a plus-size model and lead singer of UK underground band Dukes Of Nothing.

Turbonegro (from left): Happy-Tom (bass), Euroboy (lead guitar), Tony Sylvester, Rune Rebellion (rhythm guitar) and Tommy Manboy (drums)

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Back in 1997 I was working for a record distributor. Every day record companies would send in packages – 99 out of 100 times it was rubbish. One day a Turbonegro record came in. It was titled Ass Cobra.

Inside the booklet: male nudity and crazy song titles. It was just dizzying.

I immediately fell in love with the band.

Prince Haakon of Norway is a big fan. But if you know Norwegian people, that’s not a big surprise.

A Turbonegro show is like being invited to a party. You know the hottest girls will be there, loads of booze and the coolest kids around. On the other hand, you know that everything could go wrong and the place might get burned down. So when you come to the show, you’re excited and at the same time a little bit worried.

I became the band’s press officer for the UK in 2005. We became friends immediately. After their singer, Hank From Hell, left the band last year, HappyTom [Turbonegro bass player] called me.

“Do you wanna try to sing?” I said, “Yeah.”

There isn’t really a relationship between your band and the other bands at festivals.

But we did play with KISS in Oslo. That’s damn cool, you can’t argue about that.

Just minutes before my first gig, in Hamburg, we had the worst soundcheck ever. We did five songs and I didn’t know the words to four of them. I said to myself, “I’m willfully underprepared. This isn’t

Tony Sylvester wears his influences on his sleeve (among other places)

gonna work.” Then came the realisation that I had to do it, and that was liberating.

I came onstage and it was the collective will of the band and the fans to make it work.

If you’re the new guy in a band, it’s important that you do it your way. Another singing style was important for everyone.

The same would just be karaoke.

Our fan club is known as the Turbojugend [Turbo Youth]. It’s halfway between a religious cult and the Hell’s Angels. They are organised in chapters all around the world from Tokyo to Brooklyn.

To them, Turbonegro is a drinking band, a celebration. They like to booze and party. There are a lot of academics in the Turbojugend. Every person needs a playground. I’d like to start a Turbojugend chapter in the West Bank, which includes both Jewish and Arab young members.

Wouldn’t that be something?

I like the songs on our new album, but Turbonegro have a big back catalogue. We get lynched if we don’t play the classics.

What I’ve learned about the rock ’n’ roll business so far: try to be as self-sufficient as possible. You can sell 1,000 records yourself and make a little bit of money, compared to selling 10,000 or 20,000 on someone else’s label and make nothing.

If you think the world is a sad place, then you’ve got bands like Radiohead.

If you think the world is a playground, live for the weekend and get into all sorts of trouble, then Turbonegro is probably the right soundtrack for you.

“Just minutes before my first gig, in Hamburg, we had the worst soundcheck ever. We did five songs and I didn’t know the words to four of them”

The band’s new album Sexual Harassment is out August 7. Summer tour dates and more: www.turbonegro.com

WORDS: ANDREAS ROTTENSCHLAGER. PHOTOGRAPHY: JAMESMBARRETT.CO.UK, RAYMOND MOSKEN

Name Tony Sylvester

B U L L E VA R D

HARD & FAST

At round five of the Enduro World Championship in Italy, David Knight sealed his first win of the year; with three rounds to go, the Brit is second in the overall rankings.

PHOTOGRAPHY: GETTY IMAGES, GEPA/RED BULL CONTENT POOL, JOB JONES, DEAN TREML/RED BULL CONTENT POOL. ILLUSTRATION: DIETMAR KAINRATH

Top performers and winning ways from around the globe

At Silverstone, Australian F1 ace Mark Webber won a ninth career Grand Prix, a second British GP in three years, for Red Bull Racing’s third victory of 2012.

Two World Cup wins in eight days for UK mountain biker Rachel Atherton, (centre) in Canada and the USA, keeps her on course for a second overall title.

Gary Hunt (centre) plunged best throu gh the Norwegian fog to take first place on the second stop of the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series.

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B U L L E VA R D

KIT EVOLUTION

Leather forecast High-tech instead of handmade, air bags instead of holding your breath. Motorbike suits make racing slightly safer nowadays – no bad thing if you’re travelling at 300kph

ZIP

Touring leathers had buttons, racing leathers came with zips. Leather shrinks, so riders ordered suits in larger sizes, never let them dry in the sun and kept them supple with saddle soap

POCKETS

Early motorbike races were performance trials, during which riders had to carry small tools and spare parts for making necessary repairs

BREECHES

The trousers were wide at the top and narrow at the bottom so they could fit in boots comfortably. The cut is not unlike that in jodhpurs, and was once common in military uniform

Until the 1950s, the best available option in protective clothing for motorbike racers was a two-piece leather suit made out of tanned cowhide. One-piece suits only became popular after Grand Prix riders began using them in the 1960s. Those first all-in-ones also had double stitching, so that seams didn’t come apart so easily when suit met racetrack.

Built-in padding protection wasn’t introduced until the 1970s. www.motorradmuseum.at

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Posthumous 1954 125cc world champ Rupert Hollaus (died at Monza that year) used these leathers

WORDS: WERNER JESSNER

1950s LEATHER BONESACK

Safety first: built-in airbags are deployed before the rider hits the asphalt

AIRBAG

The aerodynamic back spoiler holds a microprocessor, battery and inflation module for the two airbags that are contained in the shoulders

LEATHER

This soft, full-grain leather is 1.3mm thick, with multiple seams, Kevlar panels and 45 distinct ‘flex zones’ to ensure mobility and protection

SLIDER PAD

PHOTOGRAPHY: KURT KEINRATH, ARCHIV HELMUT OHNER, GOLD & GOOSE/RED BULL CONTENT POOL

Made of plastic, the racer’s ‘third wheel’ attaches to the suit with extremely strong Velcro. It can be replaced in seconds

2011

ALPINESTARS TECH AIR RACE SUIT

Today’s tailored leather suits offer the best possible protection in the event of an accident, with back and shoulder shields made from thermoplastic along with one-piece knee and shin guards. These leathers also have two shoulder airbags, which are controlled by sensors and inflate in 45 milliseconds. Despite the tight fit, forcing the rider into a slight stoop, these racing leathers are extremely comfortable on the bike. www.alpinestars.com

Australian Casey Stoner claimed his second MotoGP title wearing these leathers

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B U L L E VA R D

WINNING FORMULA

WAVE RIDER

How can boats sail faster than the wind? A skipper and a chart-flipper explain what’s with the yacht

FOR ALL TO SEE “It is true that sailboats can go faster than the wind,” says Dr Martin Apolin, of the physics faculty at the University of Vienna, “but it only applies to boats with minimal water resistance. An Extreme 40 catamaran can reach a speed of 40 knots (74kph) in a wind of 28kn (52kph).

“However, intuition suggests that a boat would sail fastest with a tailwind: the boat is pushed by the wind and can, at best, sail as fast as the wind itself. To understand faster-than-wind sailing requires three observations and a few vectors.

“Let’s stick with the speed mentioned earlier and assume that the catamaran is sailing at 90° to the wind, on a ‘beam reach’.

“Step 1 (Fig. 1): Calculating the ‘apparent wind’. The wind you would perceive if the boat were at anchor is known as ‘true wind’ (in our example here, it has a speed of vtW = 28kn).

Because the catamaran moves through the air as it sails, it gives rise to an air stream (vAS = 40kn). The two wind velocities are added together to form the apparent wind, which can be calculated with a Pythagorean formula: vAW = √ v²tW + v²AS ≈ 49kn.

The sailor feels this overall wind and determines the course and pitch of the sails.

“Step 2 (Fig. 2): Calculating the total force of the sail.

Because the sail curves, it functions like a vertical wing.

This creates a drag force (FD) and lift (FL). At 90° to the wind, the latter is allocated to the apparent wind parallel to the water surface.

Step 3 (Fig. 3): Calculating propulsion. The total force that the wind creates upon the sail operates on the mast and the catamaran. It can be broken down into two components: transverse force, which is intercepted by the rudder and helm and which has no impact on forward momentum (but can produce spectacular listing), and another component in the direction of travel, propulsion. It’s this latter component, smaller in relative terms, which can propel the boat faster than wind velocity, as counterintuitive as that may sound. That’s because this propulsion is greater than if the catamaran were sailing with a tailwind (assuming that water resistance is low).” www.extremesailingseries.com

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WORDS: MARTIN APOLIN. PHOTOGRAPHY: ROB TRINGALI/RED BULL CONTENT POOL. ILLUSTRATION: MANDY FISCHER

OUT TO SEA “Extreme 40 catamarans go fastest at beam reach [a course steered at right angles to the wind], with minimal water resistance,” says two-time Olympic sailing champion Roman Hagara. “That means calm water and the least possible friction coefficient from the two hulls. We achieve the latter by ‘nanocoating’ the hulls with a particle-thin layer of a material that reduces friction.

“Recently, people have been working on specially bowed helms, which can create huge uplift. Soon boats could be floating on the surface with only the rudder and the helm maintaining contact with the water.”

Roman Hagara, Hans-Peter Steinacher and their crew sail close to the wind in an Extreme Sailing Series race in Boston harbour

B U L L E VA R D

ME AND MY BODY

AARON HADLOW The 23-year-old Brit is a five-time kiteboard world champion whose body has been scarred, inked and sculpted in the pursuit of excellence

5 UNDER PRESSURE

The sport can be draining psychologically; it’s why I stopped competing in the world tour a few years ago.

Taking a break from it was the best thing I’ve ever done.

www.aaronhadlow.com

1 PAIN IN THE NECK

You need a strong neck and shoulders for this sport. We often get whiplash: travelling at speed, water feels hard and the impact of a crash throws your head.

Almost every move you make, from simple turns to tricks, is like doing a sit-up. Every single part of your abs is used – even muscles you didn’t know were there.

3 MUSCLE BOUND

I never bothered with the gym before I had a knee op, but now I see how important it is: muscle helps protect against injury. I focus on my quads, doing leg presses, squats and lunges.

4 KNEESY DOES IT

In February I busted my right knee.

I tore my ACL, and had an operation to recreate it from a bit of my hamstring and calf muscle. I also tore the cartilage. My right leg is still half the size of my left.

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6 FOREARMED

I got a tattoo on my left forearm about six months ago. It says “Believe in your vision, accomplish ambition”. I got it to remind me to keep on it, not to let things slide.

It keeps me motivated.

WORDS: RUTH MORGAN. PHOTOGRAPHY: THOMAS BUTLER. HAIR & MAKE-UP: LUCY GIBSON

2 STRONG TO THE CORE

B U L L E VA R D

LUCKY NUMBERS

MARILYN MONROE

She fluffed her lines, was the world’s first Playmate and knew how to face down a lawyer. Marking 50 years since Marilyn Monroe’s death, some numerical facts that might surprise you-boop-be-do

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Would Marilyn Monroe have any chance of becoming a model today? Probably not. Sex sirens of her day curved from size 12 to 16 – the latter figure now considered a ‘plus’ by fashion agencies, and also said to be MM’s peak dress size. “I’ve always thought Marilyn Monroe looked fabulous, but I’d kill myself if I was that fat,” Liz Hurley once sniped to a beauty magazine. Apparently the in-vogue shape mustn’t bust a size 8.

WORDS: ARKADIUSZ PIĄTEK. PHOTOGRAPHY: CORBIS (3), GETTY IMAGES, PICTUREDESK.COM, ACTION PRESS

20,000 In 1947, Monroe posed naked for photos after her first leading role in a film. A young man bought the rights to them for US $500. His name? Hugh Hefner. Six years later, the first edition of Playboy appeared in the USA. Monroe was on the cover and in a sexually explicit pose on the fold-out centrefold, meaning that the 27-year-old was the first ever Playmate of the Month. In 2007, Hefner had 20,000 copies of the first Playboy reprinted, which are available on Amazon for around $60.

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“It was horrible. The producers kept screaming at me,” said Monroe on the subject of her first celluloid experiences.

During filming of Some Like It Hot, she forgot her line “Where’s the Bourbon?”

59 times. Why? Because she’d stutter as soon as she got nervous. Breathy vocals – later her erotic trademark – eventually brought relief. Marilyn’s inimitable rendition of Happy Birthday to President John F Kennedy in May 1962 remains a classic.

5,600,000 In 2009, controversial film footage emerged apparently showing Monroe inhaling an illegal substance.

The four-minute film, which had been shot by one of the star’s friends, was immediately snapped up by a US documentary filmmaker for $275,000. It’s not the only example of Monroe memorabilia retailing for telephone numbers. At one auction in 2010, Monroe’s school report went for $21,250 and her X-rays for $45,000.

In 2011, her legendary white, nondraughtproof dress from The Seven Year Itch went under the hammer, fetching $5.6m. The buyer remains anonymous.

Joe DiMaggio grieved for Monroe with a lot of roses

Her X-rays went for $45,000

Size 16? She wore it well

Hugh Hefner and his first issue of Playboy

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The ‘dumb blonde’ role eventually became wearisome for Monroe, and despite being under contract with 20th Century Fox, she refused to go in front of the cameras from 1954 onwards. Countless lawsuits followed until Fox gave up 12 months later.

A revised contract guaranteed Monroe more creative involvement and her first film made with greater freedom, Bus Stop (1956), brought her critical praise and a first Golden Globe nomination.

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Many people consider Joe DiMaggio the love of Monroe’s life, even though her marriage to the baseball star lasted less than a year.

DiMaggio didn’t just organise Marilyn’s funeral.

He also arranged for red roses to be placed on her grave three times a week – for 20 years.

www.marilynmonroe.com

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Kiss the hand

His models wear fur and horns and eat photographers for breakfast – literally.

But Benny Rebel has no trouble with dangerous subjects. It’s just part of the job for one of the world’s leading wildlife photographers Words: Manuel Kurzmann Photography: Benny Rebel

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Benny Rebel

Born in Iran in 1968, Rebel moved to Hanover, Germany, in 1987. After training as a precision mechanic, the passionate animal conservationist chose flesh and blood over machines and switched to studying animal behaviour. In the mid-’90s he began to photo-document his travels, staging his first exhibition, ‘Too beautiful to die’, in Hanover in 2000. It launched a successful career.

In 2002 and 2003 Rebel was named best nature photographer in the world’s largest photo competition, the Trierenberg Super Circuit, and soon his work was in demand for books, calendars and magazines, as well as for TV appearances. More recently he has begun organising safaris, to allow animal lovers to share his adventures. www.benny-rebel.de

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“Each animal has its own unique character” Benny Rebel on the appeal of his pictures and his golden rule for survival in the wild red bulletin: How to do you get close to wild animals and predators without being attacked? benny rebel: You have to accept that each animal has its own unique character. Some may be psychologically disturbed, in which case it’s best to keep your distance, because they’re more aggressive than others of their species. That also applies to sick animals or females who’ve just given birth. Before I reach for my camera, I always ask myself: what is the animal trying to say with its body language? I try to learn from them. It’s the only reason I’m still alive.

What makes your photos so special?

I established the wide-angle lens in wildlife photography. Many of those who came before me sat in their Jeeps with telephoto lenses and shot from a safe distance, from 100m away. Because I get closer to the animals my images have a greater depth of field – viewers can put themselves in my situation.

When did you discover your love of animals?

When I was a child. I was seven, a boy scout, and I learned to catch poisonous snakes and keep them as pets. My family often ran out of the house in panic when I came home with one of my finds.

How did you find your calling as a wildlife photographer?

For me photography is just a means to an end – I’m a conservationist first and foremost. Before 1998 I didn’t know anything at all about this profession. I just took a cheap plastic camera with me wherever I went and snapped what I saw. The pictures were terrible, but the stories behind them were fascinating for a lot of my friends. And so in one year I got through 200 reference books and won my first single-lens reflex camera in a competition.

That was more or less the start of my career.

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The violent crocodile At first glance crocodiles seem slow and unwieldy. But don’t believe it: they’ll watch potential prey with incredible patience to strike like lightning at the right moment. It’s not all about speed though: if an adult has eaten its fill, it can live for over a year on these reserves. I had the honour of getting to know one of these creatures better. Friends of mine run a reservation in South Africa where I worked for a few months as a trainee ranger. Among the animals in the wildlife reserve was the crocodile you see here. It lived with other crocodiles in a large waterhole.

The gamekeepers explained to me this reptile was a bad-tempered creature and would – if disturbed – attack without warning. My encounters always went as follows: as soon as someone hit the water evenly with a stick, the crocodile aimed at the perpetrator. Then it dived underwater and a few moments later it shot up on the bank like a rocket. Because I knew the animal’s mode of attack, after a while I managed to confront him with a camera. Nonetheless, the adrenalin surge that came with it was quite something… He’s gone now.

He left the reservation in the high waters of one of the annual floods.

TECHNICAL DETAILS Camera: Sony Alpha 900; lens: Zeiss 16-35mm F=2.8 at 16mm; aperture: 8; exposure: 1/640 seconds; ISO: 200

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My new friends On an expedition in South Africa I visited a nature conservation area on the border of the Kruger National Park. The owners presented me with a young female cheetah, which they had raised and christened Savanna.

While the animal spent most of its time in the bush, it would visit the lodge regularly. The reason: Savanna loved being patted, and it made her purr like a domestic cat. It was fascinating to observe how this hunter brought down gnus and zebras and spent the rest of the day as a tame, affectionate pet.

Later when Savanna had four babies, I flew to Africa straightaway. The gamekeepers had put the young family in a large enclosure to protect them from attack by other big cats. Savanna was relaxed, even when I spent hours near her taking photographs. For the little ones I was a great playmate, because I couldn’t run as fast as they could. After a few months the cheetahs were released into the wild, and for a while everything went well. But one day when she was out hunting she encountered a pride of lions.

Savanna wanted to protect her young and she paid for it with her life. Three of the four young cheetahs survived.

They still roam that same reserve where I first met them as babies.

TeCHnICAl DeTAIlS Camera: Sony Alpha 900; lens: Sony 70-400mm SSM at 900; aperture: 6.3; exposure: 1/320 secs; ISO: 200

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The hungry rhinoceros Over 20 years ago I came into contact with environmental organisations and learned about the terrible abuses committed by greedy firms. Nature is being ruthlessly destroyed and even back then many species had already been wiped out in the name of profit.

As I began helping to stop this madness, it was the white rhinoceros that was most at risk. Their horns are made into dagger handles and Chinese hocus-pocus medicine, which is supposed to increase sexual potency – complete rubbish! This picture came about during my ranger training in South Africa. There was a drought and we were in the process of distributing lots of grass next to the watering holes. It was essential for the rhinos’ survival, as there was nothing to eat.

When the rhinos turned up hungry we had to get out of the way to prevent potential attacks. But I wanted to attempt the impossible and photograph them from up close. I crept up slowly to one of the animals, which maintained a distance from the rest of the group.

Thank God it seemed to be in a good mood and hardly noticed me. When I pressed the shutter release I could have stretched my hand out and touched the horn of this giant.

TECHNICAL DETAILS Camera: Canon EOS 1VHS; lens: Sigma 14mm F=2.8 14mm; aperture: 8; exposure: 1/250 secs; ISO: 100 (slide film, Kodak Elite extra color)

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A lens for a photo

A few years ago I met a young man in the Namib Desert. He was looking for someone who could take promotional photos for his parents’ lodge. In return he would give me a half-tame leopard.

The next day I drove to where we’d agreed to meet. I was about to meet one of the most dangerous of all big cats, because leopards are unpredictable and can barely be tamed. So I put on a thick military uniform and mentally prepared myself for a possible paw swipe. On the first meeting the leopard inspected me from a distance. Then he jumped out at me, shredded my trousers and slashed a 3cm-wide wound in my leg. I put up with the injury without flinching. The following week the animal had already accepted me as a companion. Sometimes the playful big cat even stole my camera and disappeared with it into the thorn bushes. I only got it back by bartering: I’d flail around with coins or cloths to get his attention. Then I threw the object as far away as possible, to stall it for a moment and grab my camera back. This picture came about in a similar situation: the leopard destroyed one of my front lenses just after I clicked the shutter release.

TeCHnICAl DeTAIlS Camera: Canon eOS 1VHS; lens: Sigma 14mm F=2.8 14mm; aperture: 8; exposure: ca. 1/250 secs; ISO: 100 (slide film, Kodak elite extra color)

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Action

THE SHOW STOPPER DeMarcus Ware is sitting in the old Dallas Cowboys locker room at the Cotton Bowl.

It’s been four decades since the Cowboys played in this stadium – now a relic adjacent to the Texas State Fairgrounds, something out of a Ray Bradbury story – but the blue of the original tile in the bathrooms still matches the star on the side of Ware’s helmet.

Ware is starting his eighth year in the NFL in the loftier surroundings of Cowboys Stadium in nearby Arlington, Texas, a glossy thunderdome for 110,000 fans and the triple-digit decibels they emit for the team’s star linebacker. “When you’re right there in the centre of everything,” Ware says, “it’s like, ‘Yeah, I’m a gladiator.’”

Besides the outsize environs they now play in, Ware’s Cowboys are very much the same as when they occupied this tatty locker room. The team has never suffered the soft contempt of ambiguity among fans: you either love to love America’s Team or love to hate them. Ware’s daughter, Marley, dresses up in her Cowboys jersey every Sunday, just like Dallas kids have done for generations.

But while the Cowboys have stayed true to their roots, Ware’s NFL is very different from what it was just a year ago.

Since August 2011, hundreds of retired football players and their families have filed class action lawsuits claiming the league concealed information about the damage caused by repeated concussions.

Football kills, they say. Slowly and surely, the body gives up after years in NFL, and then, terrifyingly, as the years pass in retirement, the brain does too.

The lawsuits cite dementia, depression, and Alzheimer’s disease as attributable 38

DeMarcus Ware is a god-fearing family man.

DeMarcus Ware is a ruthless football player. As the NFL starts its season of reckoning, the game’s best linebacker reflects on faith, violence, and football’s long-term future Words: Ann Donahue Photography: Patrick Hoelk

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n 2012, after six Pro Bowl starts and 99.5 career sacks, it seems woefully obvious that Ware was born to be a professional football player – and one of the league’s most explosive defenders at that.

But Ware – even as he stood 1.93m tall and weighed in at 120kg – says it really didn’t dawn on him until his senior year at Troy University at Alabama when the NFL rainmakers came to see him play. “When the scouts came, I was still taking my final exams,” Ware says. “I had to finish school. I was taking an exam at 11am, and then I was going to run for the scouts at 1pm.

It was back and forth – but I knew if I put in the work then, I wouldn’t have to do it later.”

Ware earned a degree in business information systems – the first member of his family to graduate from college – and was picked in the first round by the Cowboys in the 2005 NFL Draft. He tallied eight sacks in his rookie season – tying veteran defensive end Greg Ellis for the most on the team that year – and since then it’s been off to the races. Each season, he’s completed between 11 and 20 sacks on the year; he’s tantalisingly close to Michael Strahan’s single-season sack record of 22.5, which was set for the New York Giants in 2001.

In this era of the superstar quarterback, Ware provides a worthy foil. Just when a football fan can’t stand the smug competency of yet another perfect spiral thrown into the end zone by a pass-happy offense, here comes Ware to knock the quarterback down. Type “DeMarcus Ware sacks…” into the search engine on YouTube, and the Google oracles suggest the following in rapid succession: “DeMarcus Ware sacks Mark Sanchez”; “DeMarcus Ware sacks Tom Brady”; “DeMarcus Ware sacks Drew Brees”; “DeMarcus Ware sacks Eli Manning”; “DeMarcus Ware sacks Peyton Manning” and on and on and on. Ware is the show-stopper.

But when Ware attacks, it isn’t just Sanchez, Brady and the brothers Manning who get jostled and thrown around on the field. In 2009, Ware gruesomely sprained his neck playing against the San Diego Chargers. After spending the night in the hospital, he was released – and went on to sack Brees twice the next week and end the New Orleans Saints’ undefeated season.

Ware will pay a physical toll – even he admits that 10 years in the NFL is about as much of a beating as a body can take.

Dallas Cowboys Hall of Famer Randy White, the defensive tackle known as ‘The Manster’ when he played – half man, half monster – is a plaintiff in a class action lawsuit filed against the NFL in late April; court documents link repeated concussions to cognitive impairment. Can Ware imagine this as a future?

“I think I can worry only about the now,” Ware says. “I take it a day at a time and a play at a time, and hopefully everything

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turns out all right for me. You start looking towards the future? You ain’t got there yet.”

Ware’s live-for-the-moment ethos is the hallmark of a young man, of course, but it’s also generated by the rigours he’s experienced in his 29 years. Cowboys fans are boisterous about Ware’s talent, but speak of his personal life in hushed, reverent murmurs: “Did you read the New York Times story? Did you see the show on ESPN?” they quietly ask.

In 2005, Ware married his high-school sweetheart, Taniqua. Within the next three years, they suffered three failed pregnancies. Hoping to decrease the stigma associated with miscarriages and stillbirths, the couple have been very public about their losses.

“When you think about how short your life is and how life – or a life – can be taken from you, you need faith that you can get through any situation with Christ,” Ware says. “You can’t get through any situation with money. You can’t get through any situation with cars. It takes the intangible to get through anything.”

The couple now have four-year-old Marley and one-year-old DeMarcus Jr. Ware’s glee in being a father is infectious; he chuckles as he sneaks a big chocolatechip cookie from the catering table to take home for Marley. The losses don’t fade for him, of course. But they do fuel him and provide a deeper context to his playing. It’s not just a sport. It’s a statement.

“Sometimes, when I’m out there on the field, I’m tired,” Ware says. “But I’m like, ‘What if one of my kids that I lost had one more breath? They would be here right now.’ So that drives me to keep playing even harder. Because I have this opportunity.”

Off field, Ware is unfailingly polite and soft-spoken, but during a game, he can throw Pittsburgh Steelers’ quarterback Ben Roethlisberger – at 1.95m and 109kg Ware’s close equivalent in sheer mass – to

Super Bowl MVP Eli Manning is a favourite target

additional photo: getty images

to repeated concussions on the field. It seems as though tragedy is stalking the NFL – in the past year and a half, three retired players have taken their own lives. In May, former San Diego Chargers Pro Bowl linebacker Junior Seau committed suicide after reportedly suffering from depression. He was 43. Seau’s memorial service in San Diego was open to the public; 20,000 people paid their respects at Qualcomm Stadium, where he played for more than a decade.

When football stadiums double as funeral parlours for the game’s most revered athletes, there is no doubt that America’s game is in the midst of crisis. As the 2012 season starts, players like Ware – those sparkling with the cutthroat charisma that causes fans to swoon – are taking a field that’s haunted with the ghosts of an uncertain future.

“I

take it a day at a time and a play at a time, and

hopefully everything turns out all right for me�

“Y

ou’ve go to show good sportsmanship,

but football is always going to be a brutal game. That’s what people like”

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season dropped to 190 in 320 preseason and regular season the ground like a child bored with a toy. “Sometimes I go back games from 2010’s total of 218 in 321 games. and watch films of myself and I think ‘Where is that guy coming There is a limit, however. From gladiator battles to boxing to from?’” Ware says.

Mixed Martial Arts, for millennia fans have cheered the showcasing It’s a dichotomy – the God-fearing man who puts the fear of aggression in sports. When tens of millions of people tune in of God into other players. And while he admits that football is each Sunday and billions of dollars are at stake, the physicality a merciless game, Ware argues that his ferocity on the field is of the game isn’t going to be watered down. American football, not at odds with his faith. It is, in fact, a tribute. “What guy for better or for worse, is part of a bloodthirsty lineage. does not want to showcase what God’s given him?” he asks.

“You’ve always got to show good sportsmanship, but football “I’m going to go out there and just play my heart out because is always going to be a brutal game,” Ware says. “That’s what I know I’m playing for Him.” people like. That’s what the guys that are playing like. That’s The injury tally of any run-of-the-mill football game – why they’re playing the game, and that’s why they do it so well.” sprains, fractures, torn ligaments – speaks to a sociopathic, The Dallas Cowboys’ 2011 season was mediocre; the team finished craven desire to do harm. But sports psychologists say there is 8-8 and failed to make the playoffs after losing to the eventual a critical difference: football isn’t actually about violence. It’s Super Bowl champions, the New York Giants, in the NFC East about trained, pinpoint aggression. Trauma isn’t the desired division title game. An opportunity for redemption comes early in outcome – stopping the play is the goal.

2012: the Cowboys will play the Giants in the season opener on “They’re fast, they’re powerful, they’re explosive and on September 5. “Everybody is going to be watching that game,” Ware the defence their job is to run interference and stop a play from says. “Why not be able to showcase, ‘Hey, this is what y’all are unfolding,” says Michael Gervais, director of performance going to have to deal with this whole season, so get ready’?” psychology at the Pinnacle Performance Center, who is working To that end, Ware began voluntary workouts with the team this year with the Seattle Seahawks. “Intent to harm is a very different mindset than focusing on the in April; official training camp started in July in Oxnard, tactics or technique.”

California. As the season starts, workouts are paired with endless reviews of video: In May, the NFL suspended four New Ware watches film of himself, the upcoming refs, the upcoming team and how other Orleans Saints players for a programme players in his position, like the Minnesota Vikings’ Jared Allen or the Indianapolis that rewarded cash bounties for injuring Colts’ Dwight Freeney, played against that team. members of the opposing team. Gervais says this kind of system is an outlier, and the “pay for pain” mentality isn’t part of wider football culture. “A player told me fter all that prep – which takes 45-50 ‘I never went to the line with hate. I never hours a week – Ware views the game as went to the line with rage,’” Gervais a chance to show off what he’s learned. recalls. “’I went looking to find a sense of “You study the whole week, you figure calmness, so I could execute and do the the team out and how you attack them, job I trained my entire life to do.’” like a chess match,” he says. Two quarterbacks are especially hard to crack: the Philadelphia Eagles’ Michael Vick and the Giants’ Eli Manning. “Michael Vick is left-handed, so he’s one of the few quarterbacks in the league who can actually see you coming, and he can actually run faster that you can, too,” ut it’s becoming he says. “Eli Manning is the same way – he’s not as fast, but increasingly hard to he’s a little looser in the pocket and he can play really well.”

Anger Management argue that playing (For the record, Ware has taken Manning down nine times in It may seem obvious, football doesn’t 14 games. “For a guy who has sacked me more than anybody, but one should not cause lasting damage – whether the he’s a nice guy,” Manning said in an interview last December taunt DeMarcus Ware during a game players are hitting the field ready to with the Dallas Morning News.) of football. Red Bull injure or not. (In a statement released Photo shoots are tedious beasts, but Ware is holding up filmed Ware making a in response to the class-action lawsuits, well amid the monotony. Standing in the tunnel that leads to sack using the highthe NFL said it had “never misled players the field at the Cotton Bowl, he agrees to make a half of an inch speed Phantom digital with respect to the risks associated with movement to the left to catch better light, then another quarter camera. The target playing football”). of an inch movement to the right to snap a more flattering was the one-time quarterback for the Ware thinks that in the coming expression. He does one costume change, two costume changes, now-defunct Dallas years the NFL will institute changes to three costume changes – and it’s only noon.

Desperadoes arena enhance player safety, such as protective football team.“The first innovations in pads and helmets – and Suddenly, Ware has had enough. He grimaces in fury and time I hit him, he was Ware says he would be more than happy violently rears back with the helmet in his hands as though to like ‘Man! You’ve got to to help develop and test such gear. He cannon it directly at the crew. The photographer and his hit me harder than that!

You’ve got to make it expects the league also to continue assistants flinch, fearing the impact. look real,’” Ware says. tinkering with gameplay rules to restrict Ware smiles, lowers the helmet and laughs at his feint, “So I went full speed. player contact; last season, the length of all dimples and charm. He’s back to being the gentle man the I hit him, picked him up kickoff returns was reduced. After the photo techs nicknamed “America’s Sweetheart” during the and threw him down 2011 season ended, the NFL released shoot. We laugh with him. And then we ask him to play angry on the ground and he statistics that claimed that, as a result, the again for the camera. Because that’s what we want to see. dislocated his shoulder. www.redbull.com/demarcusware I felt really bad after.” number of overall concussions during the

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highly comple the impossible Formation

Five wingsuit divers, two gliders, one remarkable stunt: how a squadron of men and machines pulled off a perfectly synchronised stroke of genius Words: Manuel Kurzmann Photography: Heinz Stephan Tesarek, Wolfgang Lienbacher

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The team’s finest hour The Red Bull Skydive Team and the Blanix glider team in perfect harmony

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6.30

The day dawns over the Niedeöblarn airfield, in the centre of Austria. Picturebook weather, with only a few scattered wisps of cloud in the sky. As the first engine noises break the silence, Paul Steiner stands near the tarmac, checking the opening mechanism of his parachute. The 49-year-old seems a little distracted, inspecting each of the handgrips twice.

“My head is full of thoughts. I have to be careful. Inner turmoil can make you more prone to mistakes,” he says.

Steiner knows of what he speaks. He is a skydiver who has experienced free fall more than 4,200 times. Today he’s aiming to set a career highpoint with the project known as Akte (Blani)X III, which he has been working on for two years.

The theory Pilot Ewald Roithner demonstrates the make-up of the formation. Will the skydivers manage to catch up with gliders travelling at 180kph?

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In a nutshell, Steiner will form, with four other wingsuit jumpers and two gliders, a diamond-shaped squadron – one skydiver alongside each glider wing and the fifth between the planes – in which the gliders fly cockpit-to-cockpit, Top Gun-style. It’s a stunt fraught with difficulties, chief of which is the waterand-oil combination of magnificent men outside flying machines. “A glider can reach speeds of up to 250kph,” says Steiner, “with a rate of descent of just a few kilometres per hour. Us wingsuit jumpers normally fly at around 160kph, but drop at around 80kph. That’s the issue here: bringing two completely different objects together in a corridor in which they can operate in unison.”

For his project, Steiner put together a team made up of his four colleagues from the Red Bull Skydive Team and two pilots from the Blanix glider team. The seven men have plenty of experience, but a group this size had a major negative impact on planning, which Steiner found to his cost. “When you have seven people all with different ideas, it takes forever to gain some common ground. Often we spent hours in discussion, sometimes about the most banal things, like setting suitable project deadlines.”

Consensus was reached when it became clear to all participants that they would all be operating at the height of their powers.

The main problem for the skydivers was how to arrest their descent while flying close to their maximum speed of 180kph. For the men piloting the gliders, their greatest concern would be finding a way to drop faster than usual, very much contrary to normal practice at a speed of around 75kph, but without exceeding that 180kph maximum speed of the wingsuit guys.

“Finding a gliding angle in which both jumpers and aircraft could operate together took months of calculations, and a lot of nerves,” says Steiner. “On top of that, we had to wait for a perfect weather window to open

The problem: man and machine don’t really fly well alongside one another

The first preparations Paul Steiner (main image, left) and the Red Bull Skydive Team carry out a functionality check on their wingsuits. One more quick briefing (below left), then it’s on

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Action

Hardware Blanik L-13 A two-seater glider developed by the Czech aircraft works LET in 1956.

Originally used for training purposes, its robust construction and excellent flying qualities have made it the most common glider in the world.

Technical Data Length: 8.4m Wingspan: 16.2m Weight: 292kg Maximum speed: 253kph Material: all metal

Approach Phase The two gliders are just a few metres apart. The pilot radios the signal to proceed

up. If there’s any kind of updraft, or too much cloud cover, then it’s not even worth getting into the plane.”

At least choosing the project name, Akte (Blani)X III, didn’t take long. It was inspired by the television series The X Files (Akte X in German) in which FBI agents Mulder and Scully chase after unexplained phenomena. “I’d already carried out two stunts with the Blanix glider team (see Blanix Begins box over the page) which many people thought impossible. So the name seemed to fit this time as well,” says Steiner. With that, he struggles into his wingsuit and waddles like a penguin towards the airfield. Showtime.

his limit now, fighting the centrifugal forces. Strimitzer keeps his colleague above him in view; only a few metres separate the two aircraft. Both pilots push their brake flaps to the limit and increase speed, making the gliders difficult to steer. Then Roithner gives the signal by radio: “Blanik ready.”

Strimitzer follows suit.

Through their headsets they hear the order “Exit, exit!” – the all-clear for the Red Bull Skydive Team, which is preparing itself at the side door of a Pilatus Porter PC6 transport aircraft

9.00

Ewald Roithner and Martin Strimitzer from Team Blanix climb into their gliders. The pilots have been at the controls of planes since the 1990s, and between them have clocked up 12,000 flight hours. They are taken into the air by tow planes. At their target altitude of 4,000m, the thermometer reads -18°C. Their fingertips are numb.

Shortly after the first towrope is released, Roithner flips his Blanik L-13 over 180 degrees, so that it’s flying upside down. He’s flying at close to

Before the jump Close to the showdown, from left: Georg Lettner, David Hasenschwandtner, Paul Steiner and Michael Löberbauer are highly focused on the job in hand

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Wingsuit A nylon full-body suit fitted with stretches of fabric, which allows parachutists to cover great distances in the air. By stretching their arms and legs they can extend the ‘wings’ so that they become taut, which reduces the rate of descent.

Prototypes of the wingsuit were developed as far back as 1930, but such kit has only been commercially available since 1998.

Technical Data Wingspan: 1.5m Wing area: 1.65m2 Weight: around 1.5kg Maximum speed: 180kph Material: man-made fibres, including nylon

Stepping into the void a few hundred metres above the gliders.

Ideally, the parachutists should fall to the gliders in a matter of seconds to create a formation with the planes.

But Strimitzer loses sight of Roithner’s glider. Flying blind, he fears Roithner might collide with him. On top of that, the wingsuit jumpers are out there somewhere: if they collided with a

“I get nosebleeds whenever I do high-altitude jumps. I feel like crap up there”

plane at this speed it could be fatal.

Strimitzer makes his decision in quickly: “Abort, abort!” he yells into the radio.

9.30

Paul Steiner pulls on his ripcord and takes a deep breath.

No unforeseen contact, once again everything’s gone OK. He flew for just a few metres alongside one of the glider’s wings before the formation broke up. At least the landing went according to plan.

On the ground, Steiner goes to talk to one of the other skydivers, Marco Waltenspiel. His nose is smeared with blood. “I get nosebleeds whenever I do high-altitude jumps. I feel like crap up there,” says Waltenspiel, who has also just recovered from the flu. He lay in bed for a week while the rest of the team was at a training camp in Slovenia with the glider pilots, but without Waltenspiel, the project would have collapsed. He had to

At 4,000m altitude, -18°C, no wind: the skydivers drop out of the jump plane, keeping an eye out below where the gliders are getting into position

jump. “It sucked that I couldn’t be at the camp,” he says, “but then, this is hardly the first time I’ve flown with a wingsuit.”

17.00

Due to thermal uplift, there’s been a stoppage for the last few hours; take-off can only occur with absolutely still conditions. Pilots and parachutists used the break to analyse the shock of the morning’s efforts.

But now the wind has died down and they can try again. The seven men come together for a last briefing. Pilot Ewald Roithner announces a change in proceedings: “The distance between the jump plane and us gliders has to be narrower. That way, we increase the 49

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Success!

From left: Paul Steiner, Martin Strimitzer, Ewald Roithner, Georg Lettner and Marco Waltenspiel celebrate. The morning’s aborted attempt is a distant memory

“It makes you feel uneasy when you’re clambering about between two 300 kilo gliders” how it all began Akte (Blani)X I In 2008, Paul Steiner and the Blanix glider team created their first joint aerial stunt.

Steiner: “I met the lads at an air show. We had a heated debate about whether it was possible for a parachutist to climb on top of a glider in mid-air. No one had ever tried it before. The pilots thought my idea was crazy, because there is hardly any room on the wings.”

Steiner spent weeks looking for a solution, and found it on the road. “I saw two workers carrying a glass pane with two suction cups on it. The very same day I rang up a glazier friend of mine and borrowed a few.”

The suction cups were the last piece of the puzzle in implementing the project.

They were attached to the wings of the Blanik L-13 and served as grips after the skydiver left the cockpit.

The pivotal moment from Steiner’s wild ride at an altitude of 1,800m: when the glider pivoted 180 degrees, he climbed onto the underside of the wing, at 160kph and with a G-force of 2G. He also sat down on the fuselage of the aircraft for 40 seconds.

Akte (Blani)X II In 2010 Steiner was once again chauffeured in a Blanik L-13, this time at an altitude of 2,100m, where he climbed on to the edge of the wing and then onto a second glider.

“The pilots had the idea that I could hold on to both aircraft. They maintained that during their close formation flights a person couldn’t fit between the aircraft.

I said: ‘It’s up to you to prove it.’” The stunt attracted a lot of media attention: from a spot on the ABC show Good Morning America in the US to public congratulations from the Pacific island nation of Tonga.

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chances of catching all the parachutists on time. Last time it took too long.”

The issue with this alteration is that it also changes the parachutists’ angle of descent in relation to the gliders, but there’s no more time for training.

17.30

Last preparations for the second attempt.

The parachutists form a circle, exchange high fives, and then Steiner gets into the PC6. Georg Lettner follows. He occupies the riskiest position in the flight formation: between the two gliders. “It makes you feel pretty uneasy, clambering about between two 300 kilo gliders,” says Lettner.

On the way up, Lettner sits in silence at the side window of the plane. All he can think about is the exit: he is the first skydiver to leave the plane. If it happens a split second too late, the two gliders

will already be too far away to reach. The pilot gives the all clear and Lettner gets up. He opens the side door and has a perfect view of the glider below him.

He drops out of the plane and the other four jumpers follow close behind him.

The conditions are perfect – there’s hardly a breath of wind. Lettner controls his flying suit by lightly and carefully moving his arms and legs up and down.

He approaches the gliders and glides between them. The other jumpers are floating just centimetres away from the wings. For more than 40 seconds, the squadron made up of man and machine floats through the sky. From the ground, the parachutists are barely visible – just five little dots floating next to the aircraft.

Then the formation breaks up. Lettner yells for joy as his parachute opens. The impossible formation has become reality. www.redbullskydiveteam.com; www.blanix.com

A Record Broken Is A Record Shared It took 15 specialists, five aircraft and hundreds of hours of preparation to make the Akte (Blani)X III a reality

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life inside a bomb If Eric makes a mistake, he’ll be dead before he knows it – and that’s a good part of his job

Words: Ron Mueller Photography: Daniel Gebhart de Koekkoek

Eric Eric lives in a country in northern Europe. He’s married, has a natural pool in his garden and a mid-range car with a child seat in the back for his two-year-old daughter. Eric and his family are monitored by his country’s secret services. It’s the full package: they are watched, and their telephone, email and internet activity checked. He knows that he is under surveillance and his wife recently found out too. “The guys keep an eye out for us,” he said, as she spoke to him, somewhat rattled, about the inconspicuous men who had become all too conspicuous on a recent shopping trip.

Eric’s wife knows what her husband does for a living, but his friends, the guys he plays football with twice a week, the neighbours and most of his family members don’t. Eric’s sister thinks that he’s got some administrative job with the army that is so boring it’s not worth talking about. In actual fact, Eric has been little more than a tiny mistake away from death “about 30 or 40 times” in the course of his career.

“We only rarely work with more leeway than a couple of millimetres or one wrong decision,” he says.

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red or blue?

In James Bond films, there’s always a red wire and a blue wire. But there are a couple more colours than that in the real life of a bomb disposal expert. One false move means death.

Guaranteed.

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Lights out!

It’s not all about high-tech equipment

How do you defuse a bomb that’s been fitted with motion detectors and light sensors? You just have to move slowly enough, and be able to work without light, for hours at a time.

Training camp for those defusing bombs by hand where you’re taught “to think and feel like a bomb maker”

There are about 1000 experts around the world who can defuse bombs and mines in war zones and conflict areas such as Afghanistan, Iraq and parts of Africa, and the unexploded bombs that turn up years or even decades after a war is over when a vegetable patch is being laid or a basement dug up. Usually, these mines or remnants of war undergo a controlled explosion or, as they say in the business, are ‘defused conventionally’, that’s to say the bomb disposal expert is at safe cover, wearing a 40-kilo protective suit and protective helmet, using a remote-controlled robot with an extremely precise grappler and X-ray eyes. There are situations when 54

a controlled explosion can’t be carried out and which are beyond the robots’ capabilities. For example, when a bomb has to remain intact because it could hold clues that would give the perpetrator away. Or because a bomb contains chemical, biological or nuclear materials such as poison gas, killer viruses or radioactivity, which an explosion would release. Or when bombs are in inaccessible locations, such as on a high point above a village in Afghanistan, or on the winding staircase of a town hall in a small European town. Or when kidnappers attach explosives to their hostages, with ‘necklace bombs’ being the most common form. When such

cases arise, the services of manual bomb disposal experts are required. Eric is one of about 70 active worldwide. Their working uniform is a T-shirt and their bare hands. No protective suit and helmet required, because there’s no protection available that would do a job if the bombs they’re elbow-deep in go off.

All of the above is true, except Eric isn’t called Eric and he doesn’t live in a northern European country. Eric must remain anonymous: bomb disposal experts are triple-A targets for terrorists.

Not only can they defuse the bombs made by terrorists, they could also be blackmailed into making bombs for terrorists, bombs that would be impossible for bomb disposal experts to defuse. Bomb disposal experts can make bombs, which they call ‘deadly bombs’. Terrorists know that. And terrorists read The Red Bulletin too. Hence Eric, hence northern Europe.

A Game of Chess A bomb disposal expert needs to know more than how to deactivate bombs, or how to make them. “You have to learn to think and feel like a bomb maker,” says Eric.

He compares bomb disposal to chess.

Your opponent has an arsenal of weapons available, which you are familiar with and whose functions you understand. He

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might have built in a time fuse, or rigged a mobile phone to go off when it receives a call or a text message. A bomb can react to vibrations, or be set off by light or sound sensors or a motion detector.

“You always start with the worst-case scenario,” says Eric. “You have to assume that anything that could happen, might happen. And then begin to eliminate all the possibilities one by one.”

How do you go about defusing, say, a bomb with a motion detector in it?

“Wrong first question,” says Eric. “The correct first question to ask would be, ‘Can we even get to the bomb? Or is there a motion detector or an infrared sensor or something else like that in our way?’”

And how do you outwit a motion detector?

“You have to move so slowly that it doesn’t register. If necessary, you crawl across the floor from the door to the place where the bomb is for an hour, millimetre by millimetre.”

And what if the motion detector is lurking inside the bomb?

“We need to find that out before we open up the bomb, then move our hands so slowly that the motion detector doesn’t react before we’ve managed to switch it off.”

Manual bomb disposal experts work with their bare hands. No protective suit and helmet – there’s no protection that would work if the bomb went off Practice scenario: a hostage trapped in a locker fitted with a bomb

If the tips of your fingers were to tremble just a little bit, would you be dead?

“Yes.” A sneeze?

“Not a good idea. But you can learn to repress it.”

How do you evade a light sensor?

“By working in the dark.”

You can defuse a bomb in the dark?

“You can learn to. The human eye is amazingly powerful.”

How long does it take to defuse a bomb?

“On average you’re in the death zone for between four and six hours.”

Does every bomb maker have a unique style?

“Yes. Every bomb contains something of the personality of the person who made it. And you can see pretty quickly who has taught him to make bombs.”

Who makes the best bombs?

“At the moment, Hezbollah.”

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Don’t move!

What do you do when the detonator on a bomb (left) is attached to a motion detector (top left)? You evade the detector by moving in super slow motion. If you sneeze, tremble or scratch your nose, you’re dead.

Two dead The main difference between defusing bombs and playing a game of chess is that at least there is agreement about the rules of the game in chess. No player can invent and deploy a new figure in the middle of the game, for example. The duel between the bomb maker and the bomb disposal expert does away with rules.

What would happen if, say, a bomb was triggered by an as-yet-unknown sensor that, let’s say, reacted to the bomb disposal expert’s own body heat?

“That’s been the case for ages,” says Eric.

But what if there was some sort of new development in Afghanistan, or in Pakistan?

“Unlikely that our guys wouldn’t know about it. They’ve got the market under quite good surveillance.”

But what if…?

“Then two of us are dead the first time the thing’s used. And our checklist before we defuse our next bomb will be longer.”

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Is the job really as cynical as that answer sounds?

“We’re talking facts here. Emotions are no-go.”

Eric has the hands of a pianist: slender, almost delicate and neatly manicured. He can keep them still for minutes on end without them trembling even slightly, like they’re made of stone. “You have to keep your tools in good order,” he explains.

Living Manual bomb disposal is a secure job, in a way. On average there are 500 bomb attacks with serious terrorist background worldwide every month, with estimates of unreported cases ranging from 5,000 to 50,000. Current situations in Iraq and Afghanistan defy all estimates.

Terrorist activity is booming, bombs are cheap and relatively easy to make, and the internet is awash with instructions. “Even if there were 10 times more of us, we’d still all have plenty to keep us busy,” says Eric. As the most experienced manual bomb disposal expert in his country, he is responsible

for scouting and training new staff.

It is the Monday of the fourth week of a four-week training programme for two prospective manual bomb disposal experts. At 7.15pm, a blue coolbox is on the ground in front of a door in an abandoned wing of a barracks building.

The floorboards are worn and paint is peeling off the walls. The furniture, with its waves of crumbling veneer, looks like something out of a 1970s primary school.

The windows are covered with cardboard.

There are naked light bulbs, although they’re not that easy to make out right now as it’s pitch black in the room.

Practice scenario: someone being held hostage in a judge’s office in a court building. A digital stopwatch is mounted on the coolbox, counting down the seconds from three hours and 30 minutes.

You can just make out the digital display in the glimmer of a thermal imaging camera. Inside the coolbox is a practice bomb made by Eric.

“They’ll work on it for three hours now,” Eric says under his breath. He observes every hand movement made

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by his two pupils, who are lying flat on their stomachs on the floor in front of the coolbox with filter masks over their heads. We’ll call them Jan and Axel. Jan has black, curly hair and BASE-jumps in his spare time. Axel is in rimless spectacles and has close-cropped hair.

What made you decide to do this job?

Jan: “The challenge of having to work at a level that doesn’t allow for mistakes appeals to me. Perfectionism is a sort of cerebral extreme sport. I’m fascinated by concentrating fully for hours at a time.”

Axel: “For me, it’s a means to an end. It’s just a special way of taking responsibility, of helping others.”

What do your families say?

Jan: “My wife knows. That’s enough.

She trusts me in what I do. Otherwise I wouldn’t do it. That would be irresponsible towards her.”

Axel: “I have no need to talk about what I do for a living in my private life.”

How do you deal with the anonymity of the job? After all, it means no recognition for putting your life at risk for others.

And not being able to confide in anyone.

Jan: “We know what we’re doing within the group. That’s enough.”

Axel: “The essence and function of being a soldier is to consciously act into the threat.”

And the risk factor?

Jan: “It’s like BASE-jumping. The challenge is to be so good that only a minimal risk remains.”

Axel: “If there wasn’t an element of risk, more people would do the job.”

“You have to move so slowly that the detonator doesn’t register, crawling across the floor for an hour, millimetre by millimetre” Sleeping Eric explains that they always work in teams of two. “The job would be too complex for one person to do alone, and the second person acts as a supervisor the whole time. You can’t make a single hand movement without telling the other man first; before you make it, he has also thought it through and given his approval. The second man is the only safety margin in our work.”

The tools of a bomb disposal expert’s trade are of two sorts: high-tech equipment produced by a handful of specialist firms that comes with a five-figure price tag,

The 70 manual bomb disposal experts around the world belong to different armies, but they are connected. Information is shared, including on deployments that have not turned out well

and everyday tools like soldering irons, tweezers, scalpels, voltmeters and duct tape in different colours.

After almost two and a half hours, Jan and Axel sever the final wire, take off their masks and blink in the light Eric has just switched on. A couple of minutes’ break, and then on to a critical assessment. Lots of it was very good, says Eric, but it wasn’t all perfect. He’ll only go into detail regarding the trial when the three men are alone together later.

It is just before 10pm when Eric informs Jan and Axel that they’ll be spending that night in the barracks, they won’t be sleeping and that the next bomb will await them early next morning: “Go and get yourselves a coffee and text home.” It’s not easy training to be a manual bomb disposal expert. “The most important thing,” Eric says, “is the ability to think clearly when stressed. Which is why manual bomb disposal experts are put in stressful situations in training.

Sleep deprivation is one of them.”

Eric trained in the UK. “The British are the best,” he says. “The most experienced.

Historically, that comes from the troubles in Northern Ireland. “Learning by doing,” says Eric, with a slight hint of sarcasm.

“They have a 30-year training regime to fall back on.” Eric won’t say much about his training, just that it was, “very tough, very good. You’re amazed at the strain you can bear, the capabilities you have within yourself. The training turned me into another person.”

British bomb disposal experts stand out for their combination of surgical precision and sporting ambition.

“The Brits still dismantle a bomb the Americans would have long since exploded.” Manual bomb disposal experts are connected at the international level.

They know each other. That doesn’t just mean an exchange of thoroughly lifeprolonging experiences, but sometimes also email attachments like the ones that come in just after 11pm. They show the consequences of a failed attempt to manually defuse a bomb in South America, where a hostage had a necklace bomb placed around their neck. The kidnappers’ ransom demands were not met; instead, attempts were made to defuse the necklace bomb. The hostage and both bomb disposal experts died in the process.

The pictures flickering on the laptop screen aren’t pretty. They are jarring even for an experienced bomb disposal expert like Eric. Jan and Axel look on silently over his shoulder. They’ve texted home.

The place smells of coffee. They weren’t going to get any sleep tonight anyway.

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THE CRUEL SE A The toughest route, the most expensive equipment, the best crews: the Volvo Ocean Race has as much in common with regular sailing as survival has with death. Those who know it best welcome you to the world’s most challenging regatta WORDS: ALEXANDER MACHECK

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PHOTOGRAPHY: YANN RIOU

The fastest yacht in the Volvo Ocean Race 2011/12 was the French team Groupama. Here competitors Martin Strรถmberg and Thomas Coville battle the elements on the fourth leg from China to New Zealand

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of that together, long enough at a high enough level, maybe you have a chance at sailing in the Volvo Ocean Race.” –

he principle of the Volvo Ocean Race is simple: take one racing yacht valued at €9m, put the world’s best sailors on it, and send the whole lot off on a 72,000km marathon, once around the globe. In 2011/12 the route went from Spain via South Africa, the United Arab Emirates, China, New Zealand, Brazil, the USA, Portugal and France, in legs of up to 22 days and nights on its way to the finish line in Ireland. It thus passed through every ocean, hitting the coast of every continent, experiencing every climate.

The boats with their crews (each with 10 sailors and a media man reporting live on board) are met in each harbour by service teams who nurse the oceanbattered boats back to health. The Volvo Ocean Race isn’t just extreme from a sporting perspective: giving one single team any chance of overall victory chews up about €50m. So the team members of the 2011/12 race are employees of major companies: Puma Ocean Racing powered by Berg; Groupama Sailing Team; Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing; Team Sanya; Team Telefónica and Camper with Emirates Team New Zealand.

+ WHO IS THE RIGHT TYPE OF SAILOR FOR A VOLVO OCEAN RACE YACHT? “There are very few sailors who can get that kind of yacht moving in racing conditions. It’s as limited as the number of people who can drive a Formula One car,” says two-time Olympian and skipper in the 2008/09 Volvo Ocean Race Andreas Hanakamp. “You have to train your whole life. You need the instincts to work around the dangers out there, as a sailor but also in confronting nature. It helps to have an additional qualification – sailmaker, for example, boat builder, plastics engineer, electrical engineer, doctor. If you do all

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1ST LEG STA R T: N OV E M B E R 5 , 2 0 1 1 A L I C A N T E ( S PA I N ) – C A P E TO W N ( S O U T H A F R I C A )

Cr a s h t e s t i n t h e A t l a n t i c From Spain to South Africa via Brazil in 21 days, a distance of 12,000km.

Storms. Waves as tall as houses. At Abu Dhabi the mast breaks. Sanya collides with flotsam and springs a leak. “We were lucky,” says Sanya skipper Mike Sanderson. If the main bulkhead, the partition in the hull, hadn’t held, the yacht would have sunk. + WHO SAVES YOU IF THE BOAT SINKS? “When you’re 3,000km from the coast, no one can help,” explains Sanderson.

“Helicopters don’t have the reach and escort motorboats can’t keep up with yachts in these kinds of waves. It’s like mountain climbing. Above 7,000m,

Tactics are decided in the belly of the boat: navigator Tom Addis (left) and helmsman Tony Mutter (Team Puma) analyse the weather data and the positions of competing boats

no one can save you there either. You’re on your own. Only other Ocean Racers can save you. The rules ensure that you get time compensated if you save a competitor.

In 2005/06 that’s what happened.

Movistar sank and ABN AMRO 2 rescued the team from the water.” –

Of the six boats, only three (first Telefónica, second Camper, third Groupama) finish the first leg under their own power.

Puma, Sanya and Abu Dhabi are severely mangled and are shipped to Cape Town aboard a cargo ship. The drop-out rate of 50 per cent leads to discussions: some say the rules inspire reckless solutions, or that the yachts have become too sophisticated. + WHY AREN’T THE BOATS MORE ROBUST? “That’s part of the game. More robust means more weight,” says Sanderson.

“More weight means slower. Lighter, on the other hand, means you need a lot of service personnel and a lot of equipment to patch the boat up after each leg. And a lot of money: 400kg less weight costs you an additional €4 million or so in service expenses. The big teams juggle 30-head service crews and 12 huge workshop containers from harbour to harbour.” –

PHOTOGRAPHY: AMORY ROSS, IAN ROMAN

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Given all those criteria, the list of skippers in the Volvo Ocean Race 2011/12 is a Who’s Who of the sailing elite: they include Olympic champions such as Iker Martínez (Spain); world champions and America’s Cup competitors such as Ken Read (USA), world record holders such as Franck Cammas (France) and the type of old seadog who takes a quick break from the Volvo Ocean Race to meet up with the love of his life at the altar. Memorably, New Zealander Mike ‘The Moose’ Sanderson did just that in the 2005/06 race. Plus he was zippy enough to still go on and win the regatta afterwards.

VO70-type boats are 21.5m long, a maximum of 5.7m wide, weigh 14.5 tonnes and reach a maximum speed in excess of 75kph. From a construction point of view, a VO70 is a racing yawl on steroids. At the lowest point of the seven-tonne steel keel, 4.5m under the waterline, is a keel bulb weighing several tonnes. The keel can be swivelled up to 40 degrees laterally to follow the wind direction. This action forces the boat to position itself against the wind pressure and so present as much sail surface as possible. It’s a brutally simple concept, and thus typical for the Volvo Ocean Race: if the wind blows the sail at maximum force, it presses the foot of the 31m-high carbon mast with the force of 50 tonnes in the hull.

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Cape Town Harbour. All the boats have arrived and are handed over to the service teams. The sailors get 14 days’ shore leave. + HOW DO BOATS AND CREWS GET BACK IN SHAPE? “The boats are cleaned up and completely dismantled,” explains Sanderson. Each part is checked over and, if necessary, replaced.

This happens in a U-shaped yard formed of containers. The space between the containers is covered and serves as a sailmaking workshop. The boats also have to be completely disinfected. When you have 11 guys toiling like madmen and living together for 22 days and nights in a tight space, you have to do more than just give it a bit of a clean. Shore leave of 14 days may sound generous, but only at first glance: the lads are completely worn out. They look years older than they did when they first went on board.” –

2ND L EG D EC E M B E R 1 1 , 2 0 1 1 C A P E TOW N ( S O U T H A F R I C A ) – ABU DHABI (UAE)

Piggy-backing past the pirates From South Africa through the Seychelles to the United Arab Emirates in 22 days and 10,000km. As prevention against possible attack from Somali pirates, the race organisers secretly change the course.

The teams make an interim stop with interim results in Malé in the Maldives, where they’re loaded onto an armed cargo ship and transported to the Gulf of Oman. There they carry out the rest of the second leg. Telefónica wins ahead of Camper and Puma.

3R D L EG JA NUA RY 13, 201 2 ABU DHABI (UAE) – S A N YA ( C H I N A )

Sleepless through the slalom From the United Arab Emirates via India, Singapore, Vietnam and Cambodia to China it’s 22 days and 8,500km. The pirate danger in the Arabian Sea requires the same strategy as the third leg, except Danger can strike round the clock, in any weather conditions and in a variety of ways: crews learn that the shortest route isn’t always going to be the fastest (pictured: the Abu Dhabi team)

The Volvo Ocean Race 2011/12 circumnavigates the whole globe, hitting everywhere from the Hainan Province of China to the US state of Florida

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Groupama in heavy seas on the way to France. The bow plunges into a wave and, for a brief moment, turns the boat into a submarine

in reverse. A sprint through the Gulf of Oman, on a freighter to Malé, starting again on 22 January 2012. Through storms in the Bay of Bengal, then through the Strait of Malacca, a 900km passage between Malaysia and Indonesia.

Slaloming between freighters, tankers and unlit fishing boats: here you have to be doubly attentive. Inside the boats the temperature is over 40°C, with extreme air humidity. + WHAT’S WORSE: COLD AND WET OR HOT AND WET? “In the tropics there comes a moment when the crew wishes they were back in the icier parts of the regatta,” says Sanderson. “You can control cold and wet with good clothing and high calorie consumption, but when you’re hot and wet there’s nothing you can do, except strip off.

The computers on board make it hotter, but not enough to make the air drier.” –

The fleet reaches the South China Sea and sets course for Sanya. The boats get a stiff wind right on the nose.

For seven days, 24 hours a day, the waves hit the carbon hulls, sledgehammer style, and wear the crews down until they’re running on empty. Sleep?

That’s reserved for the specialists.

PHOTOGRAPHY: PAUL TODD

+ GOODNIGHT AT FULL SPEED “A Volvo Ocean Race crew works in a fouron-four-off rhythm: four hours’ sailing, four hours’ free time, and this pattern carries on 24/7,” says Sanderson. “In the berth you feel as if you are lying in a roaring, gurgling washing machine while a madman bashes the outside with a hammer every 10 seconds. Even when you’re tired enough to slip from a doze into sleep, you experience a rollercoaster ride and hit the hull or the edge of your berth with your head and suddenly you’re wide awake again. Somehow you manage to recover. Skippers and navigators don’t have a rhythm; their on-off phases are determined by the weather, the competition and self-exploitation.” –

Telefónica manages to leap out of the South China slalom ahead of everyone else and sail as victors into the harbour of resort city Sanya. Since the beginning of the race in Spain the Ocean Racers have covered 30,000km. They’ve been at sea for 65 days and have had 23 days’ free time. Three of the six boats were so badly damaged that they had to forfeit a leg. Spanish team Telefónica has won all previous legs and so leads in the overall placings, ahead of Camper, Groupama, Puma, Abu Dhabi and Sanya.

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4 T H L EG F E B R U A R Y 1 9, 2 0 1 2 S A N YA ( C H I N A ) – AUCKLAND (NEW ZEALAND)

A clo ud a s b ig a s Te x a s From China to New Zealand via the Fiji Islands in 19 days and 9,700km. Before the start of the race a typhoon rages north of Taiwan. As the Volvo Ocean Race sets out, the worst of the wind has passed, but it leaves behind a hysterically churned-up sea. “We drop like stones off the backs of these steep waves,” reports Nick Dana from Abu Dhabi. If a sail tears, it has to be repaired with a sewing machine below deck. Many repairs have to be carried out manually, with sail set and at full speed.

And if that isn’t enough, one of the men has to climb the mast.

Puma skipper Ken Read reports a strange observation: “It was night. We were going fast and then a green spot the size of Texas appeared on the radar.” A huge rain cloud over the ocean. A lot of water, no wind, no hope of avoiding it.

Puma sits for six hours in the sea as the rest of the field speeds ahead. Groupama is in the lead. Shortly before the finish line of the leg, the bow starts to subside.

Leak. The beating of the waves causes the shell of the hull to come away. + WHY SHIPS PEEL “The technical term is ‘delamination’.

The shell splinters from the enormous forces at work against the material,” says Sanderson. “You have to build thousands of horsepower into the boat so that it sails the same way under engine and sail. So you have a lot of mass times speed, huge

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amounts of energy, a lot of momentum…

Hit the water with an open hand with full force and multiply that many times. Then you have some idea what goes on out there.” –

Despite a hole in the boat, Groupama wins the fourth leg and so sails past Camper to take second place overall.

5 TH LEG MARCH 18, 2012 AUCKLAND (NEW ZEALAND) – I TA J A I ( B R A Z I L )

T h e R oa r i ng Fo r t i e s From New Zealand via the Pacific to the icy Southern Ocean, round Cape Horn and on to Brazil in 19 days and 13,000km. + MADNESS IN THE SOUTHERN OCEAN “Most people have constructed an image of the world for themselves, in which Europe, America and Asia are in the middle, separated by the big oceans – Atlantic, Pacific and Indian” says Sanderson.

“They all empty into an ocean in the south, which we don’t know a whole lot about and which doesn’t really have much significance for most people. Volvo Ocean Racers see it differently: this vast ocean around Antarctica is the centre of their world. It begins at 35 degrees south and if you go right round the globe it is only interrupted by one piece of land: the southern tip of South America, the famous Cape Horn. To get to the Southern Ocean with the Volvo Ocean Race you have to sail the marginal seas, but they’re just the feeder lines to the serious sailing. At 40 degrees south

As the Volvo Ocean Racers set off, they are met by a storm with winds of 120kph off New Zealand. Abu Dhabi’s bulkhead breaks. The rest of the regatta struggles on in the direction of Antarctica.

On March 20, Puma reports two serious injuries. Thomas Johanson (Olympic gold medallist in 49er sailing) has dislocated his right shoulder. Casey Smith has a suspected slipped disc.

On March 22 both patients are doing better, reports skipper Ken Read: “Thomas looks like a real person again!

He was getting instructions on how to put his shoulder back over the radio from our doctor. You should have seen his face!

At first agony, then wide-eyed and then an expression of speechless surprise as the pain suddenly subsided. Casey, on the other hand, carried out a set of exercises to determine whether it wasn’t in fact just a muscle injury. The experts explained that you can tell straight away: if it’s a slipped disc he’ll roar with pain. Casey didn’t roar.”

On March 26, the field reaches the pack ice limit. Wind gusts remain at 120kph and the waves are 10m high.

PHOTOGRAPHY: YANN RIOU

The sleep of the spent: as if business as usual wasn’t hard enough, Groupama’s mast breaks off near Argentina (right)

the Roaring Forties begin, and then come the Screaming Fifties. They’re called that because of the noise that the wind makes from here on in. And then you dive into the peculiar grey of the ocean, the endless expanses that are ruled by the largest birds in the world, albatrosses.

The weather systems are unbridled in their force. Take a storm depression over the Atlantic as comparison. It moves across the ocean, retires after a couple of days and dies out over Europe. A Southern Ocean depression races at breakneck speed three times round the planet, easily.

This is the region where in the old days, the days of the great sailing ships, you’d sail from the Atlantic to Australia. On the other hand, these unchecked weather systems create gigantic waves, liquid Himalayas, which you can just keep surfing with the ship. I know two types of sailors: those who are drawn back here again and again, and those who don’t want to go back under any circumstances.” –

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Helmsman, trimmer, sailmaker: Phil Harmer of Groupama has a perfect combination of talents for a crew member

+ WHY WOULD YOU DO IT TO YOURSELF? “Why do people climb Mount Everest? The Volvo Ocean Race is the best sailing you can get,” says Sanderson. “You can go flatout for months with the best sailors on the best boats. And the places you sail through are fantastic! The exertion, the danger, you know all that as soon as you step on board.

The only stress we have is the race.” –

On March 31, the crews of Groupama and Puma smoke their Cape Horn cigars.

This is the traditional custom among sailors to celebrate rounding the most famous of all landmarks.

On April 5, a shocked Franck Cammas reports by radio from leader Groupama: “We’ve just lost our rig!” Broken mast.

Groupama motors 100km to the harbour of Punta del Este on the Argentinian coast and erects an emergency mast.

On April 7, after a slog of 19 days, 18 hours, 9 minutes and 50 seconds, 13,000 monstrous kilometres through the Southern Ocean and around Cape Horn, Puma is just 12 minutes ahead of Telefónica over the finish line in the

Brazilian port of Itajai. The crew is happy, but hungry: provisions ran out one and a half days before the end. + THE TRUTH ABOUT SHIP’S GRUB “Yes, it’s true that the Volvo Ocean Race is unbelievably demanding and that every sailor loses weight and muscle mass during the race,” says Sanderson. “But it’s not true that the catering on board is terrible. There are dishes that are more for British tastes, like shepherd’s pie, chopped so fine as to be unrecognisable and mixed into a pulp, but for central Europeans it’s salvageable with a lot of Tabasco and pepper. The Brits (and the Kiwis, Aussies and Yanks) on the other hand seem to find risotto with spring vegetables boring. What helps? Correct: Tabasco and pepper. The typical menu on a Volvo Ocean Race yacht? Muesli or semolina for breakfast with tea or coffee and a handful of supplements (vitamins, minerals, etc). Lunch and dinner are main meals, freeze-dried and prepared with hot water. Between meals you have bars (protein, carbohydrates) and supplements. Liquid fibre once a day

to keep the bowels working. After each shift on deck you have a shake to recharge the muscles. You desalinate sea water and stir in powder to make a hypotonic drink.” –

Groupama reaches the finish line four days after Puma. Abu Dhabi and Sanya have given up, in fact Sanya is so broken up that they have to duck out of the sixth leg as well.

6TH LEG APRIL 22, 2012 I TA J A I ( B R A Z I L ) – MIAMI (USA)

Wa r o f n e r v e s i n p a r a d i s e From Brazil through the Caribbean and on to the USA in 17 days, 8,900km.

Friendly weather, holiday mood. But a walk in the park soon turns into a war of nerves. The culprit is the accordion effect.

Puma skipper Ken Read pulls ahead of the field in the wind, hits the doldrums and although still in the lead, on the night before the finish he can only watch helplessly as Camper catches up mile for 65

ACTION Team Puma cuts through the sea. The fastest yachts can cover more than 1,000km in 24 hours

– and arrive in one piece. Telefónica is ahead, followed closely by Groupama, but suddenly the Spaniards’ rudder breaks. They fall back, catch up again, but then the rudder breaks once more.

Telefónica manages to slink towards the finish line. At the end of this leg, the Spaniards fall back to fourth place in the overall placings. Their dream of overall victory is over.

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7 T H L EG M AY 2 0, 2 0 1 2 MIAMI (USA) – LISBON (PORTUGAL)

Tail st o r m From the USA over the Atlantic to Portugal in 12 days, 6,500km. To begin with there’s a hurricane. ‘Alberto’ is moving with gusts of 100kph towards the East Coast of the US. The Volvo fleet heads north quickly in the Gulf Stream, right into the storm. Groupama is the first to reach the hurricane’s theatre of operations and so races ahead of the rest of the field – and later slips into a parking spot in the Atlantic as Alberto loses its breath. + WHY THE SHORTEST ROUTE ISN’T ALWAYS THE FASTEST “The Volvo Ocean Race is like a game of chess on water,” says Sanderson. “The chess board covers all the oceans and the number of possible moves is almost endless. The prerequisites for the game are the predictability of the boat’s performance and the weather. The former is within your control, but the latter leaves

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a lot of room for speculation. Two men on board try to manoeuvre the boat through this jungle of uncertainty, the skipper and the navigator. At least one of the two stays in the depths of the yacht, far from daylight, staring at computers to predict future developments from an avalanche of weather data, with help from satellite images and live data. They are based on global weather models calculated every six hours by mainframe computers and sent to the fleet. In extreme cases a boat starts tearing off in the opposite direction and still finishes first.” –

The top group of the overall placings has been through some changes in the seventh leg: Groupama leads ahead of Telefónica and Puma.

8TH LEG J U N E 1 0, 2 0 1 2 LISBON (PORTUGAL) – LO R I E N T ( F R A N C E )

T h e dr e a m s h a t t e r s in the Atlantic From Portugal via a wide arc in the Atlantic to France in five days, 3,600km. It’s neck and neck, all the teams are close together. The sea is raw and churned up. Winds of 80kph, waves 7m high. A tactical battle, because going fast isn’t enough now. If you want to sail you have to avoid making mistakes

J U LY 1 , 2 0 1 2 LO R I E N T ( F R A N C E ) – G A LWAY ( I R E L A N D )

Wi n n e r s d o n ’ t n e e d running water One and a half days, 900km; for Ocean Racers it’s a stone’s throw from France to Ireland. Groupama could cruise into fourth place and still secure overall victory. However, the Frenchmen grapple with leading team Camper right up to the finish line, ending this leg in second place, but ahead of the final Harbour Race they’re unreachable in the overall placings. After 248 days and 78,000km, the winner of the Volvo Ocean Race 2011/12 is Groupama, ahead of Camper, Puma, Telefónica, Abu Dhabi and Sanya.

And of all people, it was a Volvo Ocean Race rookie who led Groupama to victory. Skipper Franck Cammas, 40, is also an extreme cyclist, skier, swimmer and mountain climber. Up to now he has scored his greatest successes on multihull boats, breaking long-distance records (including a Jules Verne Trophy victory in 2010 for the fastest circumnavigation of the globe in under 50 days), and has won more than 30 high seas regattas.

And Cammas has managed to achieve all these nautical accolades, even though he grew up in Aix-en-Provence, more than 30km away from the open sea, in a house without running water. www.redbull.com/volvooceanrace

PHOTOGRAPHY: YANN RIOU, IAN ROMAN

mile – to then find it is calm again.

Nothing has changed in the overall placings: after six legs Telefónica is ahead of Groupama, Camper, Puma, Abu Dhabi and Sanya.

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“I knew I was going to make it the whole way across.

I was so happy to be in the water – I was definitely going to do it this time”

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The obsession that drove one supremely devoted Irishman through jellyfish the size of duvets and the world’s toughest open-water swims to set a unique and remarkable world’s first Words: Declan Quigley Photography: Spencer Murphy

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tephen Redmond isn’t sure how he became entangled in the chase to become the first person to complete the Ocean’s Seven Challenge, but the moment he stumbled out of the water on July 14 of this year, cracking his head on the first Hokkaido rock he encountered as he did so, was the moment he got his life back.

“Man, I tell you,” he half-laughs, halfcries on emerging from the brine. “I know it sounds very… If anything this was snatched from the jaws of defeat I can tell you that much. Unbelievable, like…”

Of course he and his small crew went through the motions of expressing unconfined joy at finally achieving an epic goal, but those feelings are better reserved for moments when great hope is converted into reality.

Expectation, though, produces more leaden pressures and the final result, whether success or failure, is often simply a release from purgatory.

Spurred on by an almost suffocating fear of failure, Redmond, an extraordinary Irishman affecting an ordinary facade, had driven himself and his support crew to inhuman lengths to complete his three-year odyssey.

A speculative attempt on the English Channel in August 2009 had somehow morphed into a full-blooded attempt on the seven channels selected by openwater guru, Steve Munatones, as the maritime equivalent of mountaineering’s

Seven Summits. Six successful swims later Redmond stood on the brink of nothing more than heroic failure, stymied by the vagaries of the Japanese weather and myriad logistical issues, heading home to leave the stage clear for another hopeful.

But just as it seemed he would be pipped at the post by one of a growing list of better funded and often faster swimmers that had their eyes set on his prize, the unforgiving weather gods relented and he pushed for one last attempt at the Tsugaru Channel that had already defied him on three occasions.

“We were going home, we had the bags packed,” reflects Redmond in a voice quavering with emotion after emerging from the water one last, victorious time.

“I got up about half six this morning and the butterflies were flying around outside. Yesterday they were just like roadkill, they were getting annihilated against the walls from the hurricane here.

“And I said, ‘We have to try, we have to ask the skipper again.’ So, we just rang him and he says, ‘Tomorrow’s no good, there’s a monsoon coming.’ And I said, ‘Look, we don’t care, swimming through the night, I don’t care.’

“And he says, ‘Well, tell me how long it would take you to get ready?

I told him I’d be ready in 20 minutes and he just said, ‘We’ll go at 12 then.’”

So instead of taking the bus to the airport, Redmond was soon dragging his bulky physique through the brine as he pounded out a stroke rate of 69

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England-France 34km Done: 02.08.2009, 20 hours Water temp: 14°C “The first swim. I wouldn’t have made it but my wife didn’t let me in the boat.”

With six of the most daunting open-water swims already under his belt, Redmond was an old hand when he first headed to the 39km of water that separates Honshu, the main island of Japan, from Hokkaido in the north, but as he so often said, “You can take nothing for granted in this game.”

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is first trip to Japan in June had ended in failure after two aborted attempts, neither of which could be blamed on Redmond’s own personal resilience, but rather on a questionable route selection by his hosts and, maddeningly, the lack of a proper licence for his support boat to sail at night.

For the first time in his gruelling four-year quest to secure his place in open-water history, the 47-year-old exrugby player and triathlete had travelled home to Ballydehob in County Cork no closer to his goal. With dwindling finances and a looming sense of failure, Redmond wondered if he would ever be rid of his infernal obsession.

His supporters had a whip-round, and with a trimmed-down support crew of just one – his training companion Noel Browne – he made the return trip in early July, this time with a new Japanese skipper, a new route plan and a highly developed pit in his stomach.

“The fear of failure and having to come back here… Well, I wouldn’t have come back,” says Redmond. “I wouldn’t have been able to come back. It’s as simple as that. And Penny [Palfrey, one of his rivals] would’ve had the seventh. She’s coming over on the ninth of August to swim the

Additional Photography: Noel Browne

never for a moment worried about the one factor he could control: his own ability to endure. “No, no, for some reason or another, not this time at all. I didn’t go there, ya know, I just didn’t go down “the doubts can start that road,” he says. “I never flooding into your asked about how far I had left, head ’cause you’ve I never asked what time it was. got no one to talk to.

“You know, that’s what You’ve got no one to tell happens, you can start you to get on with it” chipping away – the doubts can just start flooding into your head ’cause you’ve got no metres away, and the temptation to touch one else to talk to. You’ve got no one to tell it and in an instant end the Sisyphean hell you to cop yourself on and get on with it.” that is open-water endurance swimming seems a seductive one to the outsider, but Redmond claims that he never wavered for a moment in this final thrust for glory.

“I wasn’t going to stop. I knew I was going to make it the whole way across because I was so happy to be in the water – there was no way of me coming out,” says Redmond. “I was definitely going to do it this time instead of failing. There was no way I was coming out, no matter what happened. We just got away with it.

Noel Browne was here with me now, and you know, he was on the first trip, and like he never ever wavered from saying, ‘If we have a shot, then we take it.’

You had to do your feeds in 10 seconds because the current was running at around three miles an hour at one stage – against us. This has been the most technical swim I’ve ever done.”

For all the fear of failure, the uncertainty about the weather and the logistical headaches that had heaped Bulking up: Redmond puts on 20kg to help him cope with the chilly open-water temperatures the pressure on his shoulders, Redmond

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Swimming the English Channel is so last century. With that in mind, open-water guru Steve Munatones came up with something a bit more challenging – actually, a lot more challenging. In July Stephen Redmond became the first to complete the gruelling Ocean’s Seven Challenge

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more than 60 per minute, way outside his usual comfort zone of 56. Determined not to let the window of opportunity slam shut, Redmond was breathing in twos as he carved through the water on a frenzied schedule in an attempt to beat the weather and the merciless currents.

Having attempted to swim this stretch of water three times in one month, he knew that things can change quickly in the Tsugaru Strait. There was no time to soak up the experience or even wallow in the misery of it. The monotony of chasing the swim streamer dangling just below the surface a few metres ahead and parallel to Captain Mizushima’s tuna fishing boat is broken for only a few moments every half hour during the feeds of carbohydrates and electrolytes from the shaker bottle tossed from the side.

As always in these swims, the effects of holding the body horizontal in the swells while consuming liquid carbohydrate takes its toll and he is regularly physically sick. It hardly causes him a moment’s delay. The boat is never more than a few

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Gibraltar 13km Done: 08.05.2011, 5 hours Water temp: 16°C “Cruel currents on the African side and a lack of training made it very hard.”

Seventh heaven: Redmond emerges victorious

north channel. And she would’ve done it. I really wanted this to happen. I really wanted to do it for Ireland. No one ever gave us a chance, you know. They thought this is a joker from the back of beyond.

“We were laughed out of the shop.

That’s what really got my goat.”

The pace of the race to be first was speeding up, and Redmond was really feeling the pressure. Even while he was in Japan the second time, Darren Miller from Pennsylvania, USA, swam Tsugaru with the same skipper to clock up his fifth of the seven channels.

Meanwhile, 49-year-old Penny Palfrey has already completed six of the channels and only the daunting North Channel between Northern Ireland and Scotland remains. She’s already tried once but the icy cold defeated her and her planned return gave Redmond his deadline. His

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California 34km Done: 20.10.2011 12 hours, 40 min Water temp: 15ºC “When the Captain said my kids wanted to know why I was stopping, I just cried.”

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Water temp: 12°C “I was attacked by box jellyfish for nine hours.” One of only 15 to swim it.

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Hawaii 42km Done: 25.02.2012 22 hours, 30 min Water temp: 24°C “Doing the longest swim of my life so soon after Cook Strait was crazy.”

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Northern Japan 21.3km Done: 14.07.2012 14 hours, 24 min Water temp: 18°C “The world’s most technical swim. I wasn’t sure I could catch the current.”

extraordinary strength and stamina were well proven from the first six swims, during which he encountered random debilitating challenges that would have repelled a weaker competitor.

Jellyfish “the size of duvets” provided nine hours of almost ceaseless stings in the North Channel between Northern Ireland and Scotland and meant he was monitored throughout for signs of anaphylactic shock, something that was probably only warded off by the numbing effects of the cold water.

In the Molokai Channel near Hawaii there were aching limbs from his swim across the Cook Strait just days previously where sharks provided a constant threat.

By the time he got to Japan a second time he knew that the greatest value of experience was to make no assumptions.

Tacking his way with the currents across a channel that measures just 10 miles as the crow flies meant the distance

this illusion that this is a short channel, but it’s a dog of a channel. Trying to get out was nearly as dangerous as trying to get in. The swell was just so violent trying to get out I smacked my head off a rock because it was dark.”

Before his epic achievement could even take shape in his mind, while his aching body still rattled around the remote prefecture of Aomori on the northwest tip of Honshu, Redmond’s thoughts were already back at home with his family, friends and supporters from West Cork who willed him through the endless weeks of training in the unforgiving waters of Lough Hyne.

Amazingly, within hours of stepping from the water in Japan he was already contemplating his next open-water swim, a repeat of his Around Fastnet Swim, an arduous 26-mile thrash that Redmond was the first person to complete in 2011.

This time round he’s doing it to raise money for an autism charity and, presumably without a wet, heavy and unwelcome “I really wanted to do monkey of personal and it for ireland. no one public expectation clinging to ever gave us a chance. his back. You sense that the we were laughed out Ocean’s Seven Challenge was the shop, that’s what not something he particularly really got my goat” enjoyed, but it’s given him immense personal satisfaction and some excellent stories. swum over 14 hours and 24 minutes “The relief that it’s over, and the relief soon grew. The last swim is usually that we didn’t let anybody down,” he says, the hardest, and Tsugama certainly barely able to articulate the thought. provided its own unique challenges.

“You’ve never seen anything like it. And “I think it was somewhere around the good will, and the belief, and the 24 miles of swimming in the end,” amount of prayers just willed me across.”

Follow Redmond’s progress on Facebook explains Redmond. “See, you have 71

7 The launch site of Red Bull Stratos from above

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Roswell Rattlesnakes and ski resorts, gun-slingers and aliens, white dunes, and a river named Felix: we went out to take a look at the possible landing sites for Red Bull Stratos Words: Werner Jessner

This is Red Bull Stratos Photography: Predrag Vuckovic/Red Bull Stratos

Red Bull Stratos is a mission to the edge of space, in which Felix Baumgartner will ascend to 36.6km in a helium balloon and come down to Earth in free fall, collecting useful scientific data, and setting four world records:

In FEBRUARY we interviewed Felix Baumgartner (1.1) and Joe Kittinger (1.2).

in MARCH we took a look at

Baumgartner’s capsule (2.1), his cockpit (2.2), and the cameras on board (2.3).

In APRIL we looked at how the helium

balloon carrying the capsule and its occupant gets airborne (3.1) and how Baumgartner went about getting his licence for it (3.2).

In MAY we discussed Baumgartner’s spacesuit (4.1) and explored the colourful history of spacesuits (4.2).

1. Break the speed of sound unaided 2. Free fall from the highest altitude 3. Longest free-fall time 4. Highest manned balloon flight

in july we skydived with Luke Aikins (6.1), calculated if Baumgartner can go supersonic (6.2) and listened to the man himself as he tested from 22km (6.3).

The Red Bulletin is following the mission closely, each issue focusing on a specific topic. All back issues can be downloaded for the iPad.

this month we head to the quirkiest place in America, Roswell, New Mexico (7.0) the launch (and hopefully landing) area of Red Bull Stratos.

in juNE we spoke with Jonathan Clark, Medical Director of Red Bull Stratos, about the dangers to Baumgartner’s body (5.1) and took a sci-fi journey to Überworld (5.2).

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years after the alleged UFO crash landing that put the fifth largest city in New Mexico on the map, Roswell is back on the international stage thanks to Red Bull Stratos. Of course, at the moment, UFOs are still hogging the limelight. A quick count on the drive along Main Street turns up 57 extraterrestrials. Next time, there are bound to be at least another three or four. Little green men advertise everything, really everything: eating, sleeping, drinking, cars, shoes, music, plus of course the whole merchandising cavalry from T-shirts with clever slogans (“What if we don’t believe in you?”) on through to paper weights.

Only the baker who’s located in a small side alley beside the museum with the rather long-winded name of “International UFO Museum and Research Center” is somewhat ambivalent.

Hedging his bets, he also believes in

Baumgartner turned up for his first test jump wearing a bomber jacket, but instead of his name, it said “Alien Hunter”

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Jesus, with stickers for the resurrected and the crash-landed harmoniously side by side on the shop front.

And all this because of one William ‘Mac’ Brazel who, in the summer of 1947, found some strange things on his farm 30 miles north of Roswell. He thought the origins of the debris and balloon remnants scattered about seemed suspect. However, between a telephone call to the local newspaper and the worldwide UFO fever that lasted and was cultivated for decades, lay the completely misguided communication policy of the US Air Force: the more they denied, disguised, and hid, the more interested the public became in the story. America, already a fertile breeding ground for conspiracy theorists, had found a great topic – and one that could be very nicely stoked over and over again.

The International UFO Museum and Research Center on Roswell’s Main Street still oozes the unbeatable charm of the ’70s. Laminated neatly on cardboard are

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Apache Ski Resort

ROSWELL 380

Bottomless Lakes State Park

Red Bull Stratos

HAGERMAN 285

White Sands

Felix River

LINCOLN FOREST

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CARLSBAD

Roswell: a thriving city with a population of around 50,000 humans (and countless aliens)

Photography: Sven Hoffmann, ddp, Predrag Vuckovic/Red Bull Stratos. illustration: andreas posselt

White Sands National Monument: until 150 years ago this was Mescalero Apache territory

typewritten placards telling stories of what happened or perhaps didn’t.

Always vague enough not to make themselves look completely ridiculous, but still putting the pieces of the puzzle together powerfully enough not to disappoint those who want to believe that aliens made it to Earth. What had Mac Brazel really found? Jon Clark, Medical Director of Red Bull Stratos, “Part of a balloon, quite similar to the one we use for our Red Bull Stratos.”

And the alleged aliens? Clark laughs, “Instrument-equipped dummies, like those used by the automobile industry for crash tests. In the 1940s such dummies were new, so how could the rural folk of New Mexico of all people have had any idea what they were?”

Roswell thrives on the UFO hubbub: the city has found its USP, it lives well from it, it grows and you would be as hard

Roswell and its surroundings: a lot to discover

pushed to find a local who doesn’t believe in the existence of aliens as you would be to find an agnostic in the Vatican.

What would Roswell be, what would New Mexico be, without aliens? Truth is, it’d probably still be a pretty exciting place.

We take Highway 380 towards the east. Not even an hour from the Roswell city centre is the Bottomless Lakes State Park. The sun beats down mercilessly, signs warn visitors to bring enough drinking water. The sparse vegetation that grows here is tough, grey, and leathery. These plants have adapted to survive here with little moisture, just as all the specialists here have evolved for these unique conditions: at the Bottomless Lakes, the most northerly stretch of the Chihuahuan Desert meets the prairie and this yields gypsum deposits. Water dissolves the gypsum and leaves so-called sinkholes, craters in the earth that fill with water. These are the Bottomless Lakes. The turquoise colour of the water gave cowboys the idea that they were unfathomable (actually they are a maximum of 27m deep).

Over two square kilometres one can find both fresh and saltwater, flowing and 75

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Where the Wild West meets ET: booze, poker, and a pink phone to, um, call home.

Meet fellow Aliens at the annual UFO festival (“A great place to crash”)

first established with the wonderful name of Felix. Why the change? In honour of James John Hagerman who had built the railway line from Roswell to today’s Carlsbad, New Mexico (Carlsbad was called Eddy back then: seems they like giving towns first names in New Mexico).

Railway lines like these changed the lives of people dramatically. Earlier, cattle herds were driven by cowboys on weeklong marches from south to north and then back again. Now an entire profession has become obsolete. The railway drove the wild right out of the Wild West.

Many classic Wild West stories have been played out in this region. What Roswell is to aliens, Lincoln is to the young outlaw, gun-slinging, cattle-rustling Billy the Kid (famous on the screen, in comics

You would be as hard pressed to find a local who doesn’t believe in the existence of aliens as you would be to find an agnostic in the Vatican

Photography: CHRISTIAN PONDELLA/Red Bull Stratos, Werner Jessner, PREDRAG VUCKOVIC/Red Bull Stratos (3)

stagnant. Living in this water are fish and frogs that are found nowhere else. And watch out for the rattlesnakes on land.

Behind every bend one expects to encounter the trailer of Michael Madsen, aka Budd from Quentin Tarantino’s masterpiece Kill Bill 2, with Bill’s exquisite 1969 De Tomaso Mangusta parked out front. But in real life it’s just a retired couple from the north with their gigantic brand-new RV. Linda and AJ are vacationing here. They do every year. It’s because of the area’s good dry air: Linda has problems with her bronchitis, her reticent husband suffers from arthritis (says Linda).

We turn down a side road and cruise along at 80kph through a landscape picture-perfect enough for a Calexico album cover. A bridge, a sign: Felix River.

If Felix Baumgartner is carried to the south by the wind in his capsule he could actually land at the river that carries his name. The closest town was renamed Hagerman in 1905, which is kind of a shame really because back in 1894 it was

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Felix River Bridge: a good spot to land.

When the city of Hagerman just down the road was founded, it was called Felix.

How fitting is that?

and TV) who was eventually shot by his ex-buddy and sheriff Pat Garrett.

Lincoln’s celebrated villain was immortalised in Sam Peckinpah’s movie of 1973 (mostly because of Bob Dylan’s ingenious soundtrack), and is now a fixture in the canon of ultimate Westerns.

Here, in the area around Lincoln, William H Bonney, apparently the real name of Billy the Kid, lived, shot, killed, loved, hid, and was captured.

The border between the US and Mexico has always attracted dubious characters – people who have switched allegiances, or disappeared.

The border serves as a cutoff line between two worlds, between two lives: the cattle rustlers from the prairie who hid here; Black Jack Pershing leading an expedition of men into Mexico to rout Pancho Villa; a poor smuggler, the unrequited love for a Mexican señorita; the Pueblos, the Mescaleros, the Apache, the Zuni. Those travelling through can recognise Indian territory first and

foremost by the casinos on the roadside which sprang up and brought a lucrative income for the Native American tribes since the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988. And there is normally a liquor store nearby. It’s a picturesque but somewhat sad part of the country.

Should the wind blow Baumgartner a quick hour’s drive a little further north, he might think he’s landed back home in Austria. The Ski Apache Resort in Mescalero is a fully fledged ski region even by Central European standards: nine lifts, more black runs than blue, the Sierra Blanca Peak at an elevation of 3,650m, and an annual average snowfall of around 4.5m. On the horizon you can see the bone-dry Chihuahuan Desert. It’s almost impossible to get more diversity over such a small area. If New Mexico was an apartment, it would be located in the city centre of Tokyo and fitted out with Swedish furniture.

Should the southeasterly be a touch weaker, Baumgartner might again land in white powder but this time in gypsum sand. At 700 square kilometres, White Sands is the largest gypsum desert in the world, spectacular not only for its giant white dunes, but also because of the plants and animals that manage to survive in these conditions.

However, Baumgartner would be well advised to be careful in choosing his landing spot. Part of White Sands is a drone and rocket test site for the US Army. Here, on July 16, 1945, the first nuclear bomb of the Manhattan Project was detonated. And 30 years ago the Space Shuttle Columbia landed here because of bad weather at the original landing site, Edwards Air Force Base in California.

In fact, it is somewhat improbable that Felix Baumgartner will be blown

THE International UFO Museum and Research Center on Roswell’s Main Street still oozes the unbeatable charm of the ’70s 77

Action

The Roswell airport doubles as an aviation parking lot, at times hosting more than 300 planes

Drop zone competition

Where exactly will Felix Baumgartner land when he jumps from the edge of space? It’s your guess. Go to www.redbullstratos.com and take part in the Drop Zone competition. This is how it works: decide your position based on wind speed, wind direction, temperature and hints from Red Bull Stratos experts. Pin your position and share it with friends (Drop Zone works with full Google Maps functionality).

Verify your identity via Facebook or Twitter.

The fan whose pin is closest to Felix’s actual landing position (longitude/latitude) wins a prize money can’t buy: a souvenir from the mission. Details at www.redbullstratos.com

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this far to the west. But what if he were to descend exactly to the place of his departure? The airport in Roswell, the location that will serve as the launching pad for Red Bull Stratos, is the former Walker Air Force Base, which the military handed to the city on June 30, 1967.

The Roswell airport and the Walker Air Force Base have a chequered history.

During World War II pilots were trained here. The two bombers that dropped the nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were stationed here. When the military left, they took everything with them. What remained were the runways: more than 2,000 hectares inside the fenced terrain alone.

How do you manage such an expanse of tarmac with air connections?

In 1991, the clever people of Roswell turned it into a parking area for aircraft.

In the spring of 2012, 200 planes stood in Roswell. At the time the US economy hit rock bottom the number was 350, says Jennifer Brady, “and we had more space available if we’d needed it”. She has worked at the Roswell Airport since 1983 and today the petite lady is the airport manager.

In fact, a few of the aircraft have been here since 1991. The fees they have run up must be stratospheric by now. The billing system works like in a parking lot. “We charge by the day and in three different tariffs depending on the size of the plane,” explains Brady.

The business is seasonal. In spring, when vacation season starts, many planes leave, only to return again in the autumn.

Brady and her team are a flexible bunch, relatively undaunted and open

www.redbullstratos.com

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Next month: The big one If everything goes according to plan, we’ll have Baumgartner himself talking about his jump from the stratosphere.

Photography: mauritius

When the military left, they took everything with them. What remained were the runways

to special requests. But she was surprised when Joe Kittinger, the record-holder for a parachute jump and one of Baumgartner’s closest advisors, and some of the Red Bull Stratos crew walked into her office on the first floor of the main building three years ago. But because the airport is a part of the municipal authorities their request was met with open arms: “Yes, Roswell had no problem serving as host for Red Bull Stratos.”

An agreement was made for the area out at the back of the airfield grounds where two empty hangars stand: perfect for Red Bull Stratos, and far enough away from the parked aircraft, the normal air traffic and the UFO freaks who all have just one destination in mind: Hangar 84 where the alleged aliens were examined after their crash landing in 1947.

If all goes according to plan, Roswell will get a second attraction this summer alongside the UFOs. “We have plenty of room for a Red Bull Stratos monument at the airport,” says Brady.

And Baumgartner, the man with a feeling for the locals, turned up for his first test jump wearing a bomber jacket – but instead of his name, it said “Alien Hunter”. Roswell loved him for that.

DROP ZONE COMPETITION

WHERE EXACTLY WILL FELIX BAUMGARTNER LAND WHEN HE JUMPS FROM THE EDGE OF SPACE?

GO TO WWW.REDBULLSTRATOS.COM, TAKE PART IN OUR RED BULL STRATOS DROP ZONE COMPETITION AND WIN AN EXCLUSIVE ZENITH EL PRIMERO STRATOS FLYBACK STRIKING 10TH WATCH. This summer Felix Baumgartner will jump from 120,000 feet in an attempt to break the speed of sound during freefall - for human and scientific advancement.

Wind strength and direction will define his flight path and final landing position in the New Mexico desert. Using clues from the weather and landscape, pin the geographical point where you think Felix will land and share it with your friends on Facebook and Twitter. The closest guess will win a model of the watch that Felix will wear on his record breaking journey – a Zenith El Primero Stratos Flyback Striking 10th. Five runners-up will win Red Bull Stratos merchandise being officially released in August.

REDBULLSTRATOS.COM

Istvรกn GyulaI MeMorIal - HunGarIan atHletIcs Grand PrIx WItH InternatIonal and local toP atHletes

Celebrate with the Champions!

The legend conT conTinues con T inues

20 August 2012, 14:30 Puskรกs FerenC Feren stAdium est, hungAry hung BudAPest, krisztiAn PArs โ ข gold medalist at the 21st European Athletics Championships (Helsinki 2012)

tickets ickets available at ticketexpress offices or on www.tex.hu

Watch LIVE on http://facebook.com/redbullmobile or on the red Bull MoBIle Portal!

For details please check out: http://facebook.com/redbullmobile

www.gyulaimemorial.hu

Contents 82 TRAVEL The best of the Notting Hill Carnival 84 GET THE GEAR The kit required to build a skate park in your living room 86 TRAINING Tips from freerunner Ryan Doyle 88 BAND WATCH Irish duo We Cut Corners 90 NIGHTLIFE Everything you need to get you through the night 94 WORLD IN ACTION 96 SAVE THE DATE 97 KAINRATH

PHOTOGRAPHY: RUTGER PAUW/RED BULL CONTENT POOL

98 MIND’S EYE

Balancing act: Red Bull Art of Motion winner Ryan Doyle explains the combination of activities that keep him in shape on page 86

more body & mind

Party in west London: for two days Notting Hill Carnival transforms the neighbourhood

get into the groove

Street to the beat

Notting Hill Carnival Europe’s most colourful street carnival is also its biggest, with 1.5 million people getting embroiled in London’s late-August street parades and sound systems.

Its figurehead Norman Jay tells The Red Bulletin how best to prepare for the madness

The bass booms from all sides, the smell of barbecues hangs in the air and festivalgoers throng happily along the narrow streets. It’s wild, with dancers in sumptuous costumes, steel bands on colourfully decorated trucks and mobile sound towers cranked up to out-thud each 82

other. On the last weekend in August, Notting Hill’s Caribbean community transforms this nowadays super-chic enclave of northwest London into Europe’s largest street party and the second largest carnival in the world. Originally a small protest by residents

Norman Jay is a Carnival veteran

against racist attacks on immigrants, the Carnival developed through the ’60s into a celebratory cultural happening – each immigrant

community finding a voice.

It started off with around 1,000 visitors; now 1.5 million arrive from the world over, creating an experience that can overwhelm the uninitiated. So who better to ask for guidance than Notting Hill native Norman Jay, owner of the biggest and best sound system at the Carnival? For 32 years his Good Times rig has been living up to its name, pumping out its master’s unique mix of funk, jazz, disco, hip-hop and house.

Notting Hill Carnival August 26-27 2012 London, England www.notting-hill.org/Carnival.html

Words: florian obkircher. Photography: getty images (3), shutterstock (1), Alexis Maryon (1), Dan Wilton/Red Bull UK (1), corbis (2), Rex Features (1)

this month’s travel tips

Have no fear!

MARVEL The parade existed long before there were sound systems and millions of tourists flooding the area. Rival Mas Bands parade through the streets of the area on both Carnival days, honouring Trinidadian tradition.

They’re led by flashily, scantily dressed dancing girls, and surrounded by decorated trucks, groups of drummers or sound systems blasting out soca and calypso music. The best Mas Band is crowned on the Monday afternoon on Westbourne Grove.

The four golden carnival rules from DJ legend Norman Jay Each year thousands of revellers jostle to get close to this Notting Hill-born DJ and his Good Times sound system.

“It’s magical to play records outside, it’s the way nature intended,” says the Carnival veteran. Here he gives his four tips for this enormous party.

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Don’t be late!

In the past you could wander from one sound system to the next and take in three or four, but the huge crowds make that unlikely now. Find a stage you like and stay there, or you’ll get lost in the throng. My tip is to come early: between midday and 1pm latest.

It’s still easy to move around and check out a number of sound systems.

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Know your transport Getting to Carnival is tricky: the nearest Tube stations are either closed during Carnival or are exit only to ease crowd congestion. So check the public transport situation beforehand. Our sound system is at the north end and is best reached from Kensal Green Overground, then by foot to the entry point at the intersection of Harrow Road and Ladbroke Grove.

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Brodinski (left) rocked the 2011 Red Bull Music Academy Party

A Carnival of the senses It’s not just the booming music that comes with a Caribbean twist on the streets of Notting Hill FOOD You’ve got to eat Caribbean food at Carnival. And it’s everywhere. From classics like jerk chicken (marinated chicken grilled over a wood fire) to curried goat, patties to fried plantain – hot specialities served at hundreds of stands throughout the weekend and traditionally washed down with a can of Jamaica’s own Red Stripe or Red Bull and rum.

1 Jay Dee’s Only opened last year, this is already the inside tip for Caribbean food in the area. And the jerk chicken is spicier and better here than elsewhere.

Sunday isn’t Monday Carnival is held over two days: Sunday’s for kids, Monday’s for grown-ups, so if you want to party with your family, come early Sunday to avoid the crush. It’s still just as loud and some of the pent-up anticipation is released with musical energy on day one. Monday is more traditional at the Good Times sound system, with more soul, funk and reggae.

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5 Gaz’s Rockin’ Blues The craziest stage at the Carnival.

Every year, legendary DJ Gaz Mayall suggests a dress code and brings his audience alive with ska, calypso, blues records and live bands.

6 Channel One A must for dub and reggae fans. This legendary sound system has been working its way around Europe since the ’80s. Head over to Tavistock Road and check out its relaxed atmosphere.

7 Red Bull Music Academy Party The new kid on the Carnival block with resident sound system Major Lazer featuring Diplo. Last year, Toots And The Maytals banished the rain with ska.

This year’s party promises to be even bigger with two special guests that will remain a secret until the day.

Register for the guest list from August 16 at: www.redbull.co.uk/carnival

2 The Grain Shop Anyone who feels sorry for the chickens on the barbecue grate isn’t going to have an easy time at Notting Hill Carnival. But veggies can head for The Grain Shop. Even if this takeaway deli looks closed during Carnival weekend, it isn’t.

9 Harrow Road

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DANCING The heavy bass boom of Carnival sound systems can be heard from miles away: metres-high speaker towers see to that. Carnival has its roots in reggae and calypso music, but it has opened up to other styles in recent years. The 40 sound systems play hip-hop, house, ska and soul.

9 D eviation Carnival Session (Monday) Benji B is a discoverer, enthusiast and also one of London’s best DJs. He’ll be performing with fellow musicians including Toddla T, Zinc and Oneman at Paradise, with DJ sets combining house, hip-hop and disco.

Great

3 Roti Stop The roti is Trinidad’s answer to the burrito: chicken or lamb with vegetables and curry wrapped in flat bread. And no one has served it better at Notting Hill Carnival for 23 years than Bernard ‘The Roti King’ Jackson, so keep a look out for his stand.

8 West Carnival Party (Sunday) As long as the weather holds, The Garden is the perfect place for the after-party: 500 Carnival-goers dance inside and out to the house sounds of Bushwacka!, Clive Henry and Co.

rove ke G bro Lad

Norman Jay at the decks

4 Good Times Norman Jay and his brother Joey break down any style barriers and rock the biggest party at Carnival from the top of a red double-decker bus.

e Grov roke Ladb

Don’t be afraid Over the years Carnival has received a bad press in certain media.

But don’t believe the scare stories, they are out of touch with the 2012 reality. As someone who’s been closely involved for more than 30 years, I can tell you that anyone who is into dance music will enjoy Carnival. There’s a warm-hearted atmosphere and it’s free entry. Carnival is now a long way from being just a Caribbean festival. It is a reflection of the multicultural London I love so much. www.normanjay.com

CARRY ON PARTYING The Carnival officially stops at 7pm.

But that doesn’t mean that the party mood evaporates. You’ve got two options: either latch onto a group of locals and carry on the party in their house – Gaz’s sound system is a good place to make contacts – or move on to the local clubs where things carry on till the early hours.

ve urne Gro Westbo

Notting Hill 83

more body & mind

Skate by the grate Skateboard pro Philipp Schuster has made his own private skate park in a Salzburg house due for demolition

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Before‌ the villa is demolished in late August, Schuster, 27, and a few buddies built quarters, wall rides and banks in the house over three days.

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GET THE GEAR ESSENTIAL PRO KIT

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After‌ five days, the concrete was semi-hardened, the rooms were decorated and Philipp could pull some light moves straight from the fireplace.

Checklist and building instructions

Check out his skills at: www.philippschuster.com

WORDS: ULRICH CORAZZA. PHOTOGRAPHY: PHILIPP FORSTNER (2), ERWIN POLANC

Tools Screwdriver, wood screws, bolt cutters, jigsaw, cement mixer machine, shovel, wheelbarrow, pool trowel, face mask and gloves.

1. Plywood In order to give shape to the obstacles, the 3-4cm-thick plywood boards are cut to size.

2. Building lathes The supporting crossbars for the plywood are then screwed into the hearth, floor and wall.

3. Filler Building waste and coarse gravel are perfect as filler. Finer gravel is used for the top layer.

4. Reinforcing grid On top of the gravel one of the following is laid: reinforcing steel mesh (stable), zinc-coated flooring grids (easy to

bend and install) or chicken wire (cheap).

They’re attached to the boards with U-hooks or bound with wire.

5. Coping The top level of an obstacle is usually made out of different materials to the rest. (Stone slabs, metal piping or harder cement. In this case there was already a brick ledge on the fireplace.)

The copings are rounded off with the flex (stuck together) and set with clear varnish spray or epoxy resin.

6. Concrete For a smooth surface, mix Portland cement, sand and gravel in 3:5:8 proportion with water.

The mixture must not be too watery. The steeper you build, the drier the material should be.

7. Pool trowel Excess cement is removed with board offcuts (a concrete layer at least 10cm thick), then a right-angled metal trowel is used to level uneven areas. After that, use a soft round trowel to make the surface completely smooth.

Ideally the cement should be allowed to harden over four weeks.

8. Board Blind 8.25 To skate in narrow corners I use a Blind Board 8.25 with soft Fury Evo 2 axles and 52mm wheels.

For the finishing touches, use a Kraft Tool metal trowel

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more body & mind

Ryan Doyle ripping up the favelas of Rio de Janeiro

Training with the pros

Running free

RYAN DOYLE The 27-year-old freerunner and parkour practitioner from Liverpool is a two-time Red Bull Art of Motion winner and hones his martial artsinfluenced style with a lot of gym and street work

The streets are the undisputed home of parkour and freerunning (a more expressive form of parkour), but training variety is key. “How you do parkour training depends on what’s available to you,” says Doyle. “It’s great to have access to a gymnastic centre as it has crash mats and foam pits, which help to heighten your aerial awareness. But using a sprung floor makes you Ryan Doyle soft, your muscles tune to that environment and you get a shock when you’re back on concrete.

So you need plenty of time out on the street too. You need to adapt to landings on concrete over a long period of time, or big impacts will lead to injuries. I’ve seen people drop off the scene completely because they went too big, too fast.”

Doyle never goes it alone, taking training inspiration and motivation from his fellow freerunners. “One of the most important aspects of parkour for me is training with other people,” he says. “Someone will do something I didn’t think of and that opens up new possibilities. There’s no right or wrong in parkour, just moves that you adapt to your own style, so training together is a constant inspiration. When I won at Red Bull Art of Motion in Brazil last year, one of the moves I did was called a Swivel Palm – a 10-year-old American kid came up with that originally.”

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Variety is key A diverse combination of teaching and learning means Doyle’s always active Monday 8am: Breakfast of granola cereal and an apple. “I’ve been on a diet since I was 16. I eat five small lowcarb meals a day. Favourites include fish and vegetables, and stir fries.”

9-10am: Gym work. “I visit a weights gym most mornings with friends.”

Seven-minute session of core training on abdominals and back 15 minutes on the treadmill 10 handstand push-ups 30-minute stretch 7.30-8.30pm: Teach a tricking class (a flatland version of parkour) Midnight: “I can’t get to sleep unless I’ve done 10 pull-ups on the bar I have in my room – it’s a habit.”

Tuesday 9-10am: Weights gym 12-2pm: Gymnastics gym. Floor work, conditioning and stretching for strength and flexibility. Includes the horse stance, an unsupported squat position held for up to five minutes to strengthen the knees against heavy impacts.

4-6pm: Meet friends in Liverpool for street freerunning session Midnight: 10 pull-ups.

Wednesday 11am-1pm: Street session of parkour/freerunning with friends 6-7.30pm Teach beginners parkour class at the local gym 7.30-9.30pm: Gymnastics gym.

Open session involving a lot of tumbling work on the floor, and tricks practised from a height into the foam pit. “We’re always trying out crazy new things.”

11pm: 10 pull-ups Thursday 9-10am: Weights gym 6-7.30pm: Teaching parkour beginners class at the local gym 7.30-9pm: Teaching advanced parkour class at the local gym 11pm: 10 pull-ups FRIDAY 11am-1pm: Gymnastics gym 2-4pm: Snowboarding lesson.

“I’m learning on an indoor slope in Liverpool. I can already carve about. I’m really enjoying it.”

7.30-9pm: Teach advanced parkour class at the local gym 9.30pm: “On a Friday me and my brother have a treat of fish and chips or Chinese food for dinner.”

SATURDAY 10-11am: Weights gym Midday-5pm: Rehearsing and shooting stunt scenes for upcoming film Shinobi Code. “It’s martial arts parkour training, taking parkour moves and turning them into action, into attack movements. It’s real Jackie Chan stuff, which is great as he’s my all-time martial arts hero.”

Midnight: 10 pull-ups Sunday “I always take a day off. Getting rest is important, but I still do my pull-ups before going to bed.” www.redbull.com

words: ruth morgan. photography: Sebastian Marko/Red Bull Content Pool, rutger pauw/Red Bull Content Pool

work out

MUST-HAVES! 1

1

BODY GLOVE

Since 1953, Body Glove has been all about water. Body Glove has established itself as the leading watersport brand in the world by providing innovative, high-quality products that protect water people and enhance their lives. Body Glove serves every surf market in the world.

Its brands and products are available to people who enjoy the oceans, lakes, rivers and water around the globe. Body Glove also protects the environment through the way it makes its products, as well as through the organisations it supports.

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New for 2012 is the Prime wetsuit (pictured), which is one of the coolest wetsuits on the water right now. For more details or to find your local stockist contact Typhoon International on +44 (0)1642 771461 or email: uksales@bodyglove.com 2

THE NEW MAMMUT SHOP @ BASECAMP

We’re still waiting for summer, but the new Mammut Shop at Basecamp in Dublin has arrived. For 150 years Mammut has put its Swiss know-how into kitting out walkers, climbers and mountaineers with high-quality gear. The new Mammut shop has everything you need for days and nights in Ireland’s beautiful countryside, including footwear, clothing, sleeping bags, rucksacks and climbing gear. And with trained and qualified Basecamp staff on hand, you can be sure that you’ll get the best kit for your next trip. The new Mammut Outlet at Basecamp opens on August 5.

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Basecamp, 108-109 Middle Abbey Street, Dublin 1 (beside Arnotts). Tel: 01 44 30 800, www.basecamp.ie, facebook - basecampireland 3

CONTIGO ADDISON AUTOSPOUT

Contigo keep cranking out that hydration innovation: this time with the Addison Autospout. This clever “one-handed” system allows the user to push a button and up pops a spout from behind a protective shield.

When you are done drinking, just push the spout down and away it folds under the cover. Clever eh? And with the built-in straw you don’t have to tilt your head back to drink. Perfect when you're out on your bike or on a long hike at the weekend.

All Contigo products are made from BPA Tritan, which makes them super-strong, safe to use and toxin-free. Check out this Red Bulletin offer from www.bpafree.ie just enter coupon code “RedBull” and get free shipping. €18.99, retailers nationwide www.mycontigo.com 4

DUBLIN MARATHON

This is the 33rd year of the Dublin Marathon, which is run through the historic Georgian streets of Dublin. The course is largely flat and is a single lap, starting at Fitzwilliam Square and finishing in Merrion Square. Entrants pick one of three time zones when registering. Runners will start according to their allocated time zone, so there is less congestion in the early part of the race and all competitors achieve a smooth and prompt start.

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PROMOTION

Entries must be received by 17:00 on Monday October 1, 2012. Entry fee is €80 (August 1-31).

Late entry fee (September 1-October 1) is €90.

Enter online at: www.dublinmarathon.ie

A cut above: Conall O’Breachain (left) and John Duignan

No corners cut

acts to watch in 2012 #4

We Cut Corners debut album: Today I Realised I Could Go Home Backwards

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Their members may number only two, but We Cut Corners’ sonic output is anything but limiting.

Their distinctive, engaging music spans a broad spectrum from tuneful noise-pop to stripped-down, delicate, thought-provoking tracks.

A beguiling live act, Conall O’Breachain and John Duignan are not your typical two-piece, generally avoiding the blues-soaked leanings of more celebrated combos (White Stripes, Black Keys). Yet, despite the relative success of debut album Today I Realised I Could Go Home Backwards, O’Breachain and Duignan remain true hobbyists, pursuing a musical journey very much in their spare time. Primary school teaching pays the bills; making music fills any remaining downtime.

WCC certainly deserve recognition beyond their native shores and international

appreciation is slowly gathering pace. The animated video for A Pirate’s Life was awarded best video at the esteemed Annecy Festival in France and in a matter of weeks the guys will play their first UK headline shows. For now, school’s out and summer 2012 promises to be a busy one with select festival dates and the recording of their eagerly-awaited follow-up. Come autumn, music will once again compete with the classroom routine for their attention. Duignan outlines how they manage to juggle both.

“We’ve been teachers full-time now for about 10 years and that’s longer than we’ve been playing properly. I think we’re so used to a busy schedule that it doesn’t faze us. Sure, it definitely requires a bit of planning, organising your time and making sure you’re not committing to too much. Basically,

we rehearse and write in our spare time, gig on weekends and record on our holidays.”

Although relatively unknown before their debut, We Cut Corners are now a band whose follow-up will be one of the most highly anticipated Irish albums of 2012.

The buzz hit new heights earlier this year with their nomination for the Choice Music Prize.

O’Breachain recognises this moment as a turning point.

“We never thought we’d make the final selection, considering all the fine releases over the past year. It’s been huge for us. It really helped to establish the band nationally. All of a sudden, people beyond the underground scene were exposed to us.”

Possibly the most appealing thing about WCC is their refusal to be tied to a singular mood or sound.

The strength of Today I Realised

WORDS: Eamonn Seoige

We cut corners An Irish two-piece who shy from the bang ’n’ thrash their line-up traditionally demands, with a depth and lyricism that belies their numbers

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photography: Delphi (1), fiona morgan (1)

“I suppose we drew a line in the sand. We’re really keen to get going on the new record”

I Could Go Home Backwards lies in the eclectic mix of its tracks. Hookladen and engaging, each one is a short, yet highly rewarding listen.

“We whittled down a load of songs we’d been working on and decided to go with a mix of both quiet and louder tracks,” explains guitarist Duignan. “I think overall the album’s very representative of the band. We like to keep the songs short and direct. With only two people, we need to keep things nice and tight.”

Having worked together in splendid isolation for many years, the decision to hire a producer to oversee their debut was daunting.

After some careful thought, Jimmy Eadie was invited on board. O’Breachain feels they got that call just right. “We decided to work with Jimmy based on his great work with interesting acts like Valerie Francis and Mail Order Messiah. He was fantastic and we really got along great. He’s patient and gives you loads of scope to try things. He’s happy to plug away on a track until we’re all satisfied with the results.”

Despite the album’s hooky, altpop sensibility, the lyrical themes are sobering. It’s all about life’s slip-ups and regrets. “Absolutely, it’s about the mistakes you make and the way in which you atone.”

As a pair, O’Breachain and Duignan have been writing songs for over a decade. However, they adopt a ‘don’t look back’ policy when it comes to revisiting earlier material. O’Breachain is quick to point out the major difference between the current WCC and the fledgling, mark I version.

“For those early years we were an acoustic band and the material we were writing isn’t relevant to our direction today. I suppose we

The band produce lifeaffirming, indie-pop with a beating heart

drew a line in the sand. We’re really keen to get going on the next record and we’ve been reluctant to get side-tracked with too many summer gigs. There are some festival shows, but our main focus right now is the album.”

Signing for the Dublin-based Delphi label has also been a very positive move for WCC. Duignan points out that, in reality, Delphi Label equals Alexis Vokos. “He’s an amazing one-man operation.

He works so hard and shares our values on how the music should be presented. We’ve known Alexis for years and he’s been so supportive.

“We’ve also benefited massively from the support of organisations like First Music Contact and Culture Ireland. They help to promote Irish bands and are involved in showcase festivals like Dublin’s, Hard Working Class Heroes. We’ve been brought to amazing overseas events we otherwise couldn’t afford to attend, like Eurosonic and Great Escape.”

What if things were to progress even further? Would the guys take a break from moulding the coming generation and take the band full-time? “It’s not really on the radar. It would really be a massive risk. The plan is to take the band as far as we can, play as many gigs and record as many albums as we can. We really enjoy what we do. All’s good…”

Need to know The line-up Conall O’Breachain – drums, lead vocals John Duignan – guitar, vocals Discography We Cut Corners EP (2010) Today I Realised I Could Go Home Backwards (2011)

The story so far Dubliners John Duignan and Conall O’Breachain first encountered one another in that hotbed of rock ’n’ roll creativity: schoolteacher training college. O’Breachain recalls the band’s first tentative steps. “We met over 10 years ago and immediately hit it off. We both played a bit of guitar and there was an annual college song contest, so we decided to give it a go. Unfortunately, we didn’t impress the judges. Still, we really got a kick out of the whole process and kept at it.”

The pair continued to write in their twin-acoustic guitar incarnation for some years, until they decided to shake things up. “About three years ago, I decided to dust off my old drum kit and John began to experiment with an electric guitar.

I suppose it liberated our song-writing.” In 2010 they announced their arrival on the Irish music scene by coming from nowhere to win the coveted JD Set. Soon, they had their first taste of proper studio time, recorded an EP and got offered plum support slots for established names, such as Two Door Cinema Club, Frightened Rabbit and Joan as Policewoman.

Their game-changing, step forward finally arrived last year with the release of acclaimed album Today I Realised I Could Go Home Backwards, which made the final shortlist for the prestigious Choice Music Prize. This summer the duo will play a small number of select dates and work on their much-anticipated sophomore release. www.wecutcorners.net

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Nightlife Whatever gets you through the night

action

Diving in the dark WHAT YOU NEED: A waterproof and pressure-

resistant LED or halogen diving lamp.

BEAR IN MIND: First, never dive alone! Second,

only choose a diving area you know personally.

Third, don’t dive deeper than 20m.

LOOK OUT FOR: A lot of marine creatures are nocturnal, so you see different fish compared with those you’d see by day. Colours appear more intense due to the artificial lamp light.

WHERE YOU SHOULD DIVE: Manta Ray Night Dive, Kailua Kona, Hawaii, where the manta rays are up to 9m long. Or there's Maaya Thila in the Maldives, with its whitetip sharks, turtles, octopuses, moray eels, and cleaner shrimps.

out now

Get it together TNGHT make robots dance and talk with their futuristic hip-hop. Right now, they're on a world tour of restaurants Such are the skills of DJ/producersof-the-moment Hudson Mohawke, aka Ross Birchard from Glasgow and Montreal’s Lunice, that they count Kanye West, Diplo, Chris Brown and Azealia Banks among their fans. So when the pair joined their considerable forces for bass-heavy hip-hop project TNGHT, the results were explosive.

What are the benefits of collaboration?

Lunice: “It’s great to get another perspective. We rarely encountered writer’s block, as we had someone else there to keep the flow going.”

Hudson Mohawke: “You can get a bit obsessive working on solo material, caught up in details, but we stopped each other doing that and stuck to simple, stripped back, club music.”

And the results are pretty heavy…

HM: “Allegedly our beats shattered glass at SXSW festival. They pulled down

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these big shutters after the set and the whole thing was cracked and broken.”

L: “But we didn’t get to see it. We were already on our way to the next place.”

You both tour the globe, have you become experts in world cuisine?

L: “I love trying new food, I get really excited about it.”

HM: “I always find a place where locals eat, which once led me to a whale burger in Iceland. Music’s actually just a sideline: we’re really doing a world tour of restaurants…”

L: “Yeah, music’s just a hustle on the side so we can get to the meat.”

The TNGHT EP is out now on Warp Records and LuckyMe Records www.warp.net

wise words

“ Night, when words fade and things come alive ” Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, aviator-author

cocktaiL

Buddho Banana Brent Perremore, head bartender at Asoka in Cape Town and one of South Africa's top mixologists, makes one of those thirstquenching drinks that goes down far too easily. The Buddho Banana is sweet with a vodka kick, designed for lazy afternoons when moving around isn't much of an option.

CLUB

Room 26

Words: ruTh morgan. PhoTograPhy: georgia kuhn, geTTy images, room 26 (4), FoTosTudio eisenhuT & mayer

ROME

cLuB

“There are no commercial DJs here”

The sound system at Rome’s Room 26 is one of the world’s best. Hence it’s a place for the highest-grade late-night entertainment, whether from headline DJs such as Louie Vega or by punters plucked out of the crowd

ROOM 26 Piazza G.Marconi 31 00144 Rome, italy www.room26.it

iNGREDiENTS

METHOD

Half a banana, 6 strawberries, 8 mint leaves, 25ml honey, 37.5ml Absolut vodka, 100ml lychee juice, 25ml vanilla syrup, Optional garnish: half a strawberry

Mash the fruit and mint with a spoon; tip in the honey and the liquids; mix well.

Pour through a fine sieve into a glass filled with ice cubes.

Top with crushed ice.

Garnish if you will.

You started your club in order to…

Create the best acoustic space with the best sound system in the world.

From outside the club looks like...

A monumental modern structure made of white Carrara marble, with huge pillars. The building is protected by the Italian Arts Commission.

When you enter the club...

You’re in a multimedia corridor with projections of computer-generated images of you and fellow revellers.

The place is full when there are...

About 2,000 people inside.

Your set-up looks like the film...

Blade Runner by Ridley Scott.

Your DJs are...

The true masters of house music!

There are no commercial DJs here.

Things really get going to...

Mary J Blige’s Ain't Nobody, as remixed by Luis Radio & Spellband.

The best drink to start the night ...

Is a Supreme Capiroska. It has vodka, limes from southern Italy, cane sugar and ice made of a blend of special waters from the Italian alps.

An unforgettable night you had...

Was when we had legendary house singer India as a guest, and she spontaneously came onto the stage.

A taxi to the city centre costs... €15.

Interview: two of four co-founders, Alessio Fabrizi and Massimo Tucci

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Man Like Me I’ve liked the band ever since their first hit, Oh My Gosh.

Even though we’ve never done anything on The Beats before that wasn’t rap, Man Like Me felt like a very good fit, because they’ve got that slightly unconventional take on grime. Now they’re doing a kind of afrobeat thing, which is absolutely amazing. I helped to produce their new album, which will be coming out this autumn on The Beats Recordings.

Take 3

“I go with my gut instinct”

elro I came across one of his videos online and I just really liked it.

It went viral... it was viral!

I wanted the song on my next mixtape, so we met up. His rap and wordplay are ingenious.

Grime flow, conventional in one sense, but also off-the-wall bonkers. In my label’s early days, I signed artists such as Professor Green and Example, and now they’re stars. I go with my gut instinct, and my gut instinct about Elro is a very good one.

Mike Skinner As The Streets, he proved himself one of the best rappers of his generation. Now the Brit is seeking out new talent as a record label boss.

He keeps things in-house for his three record picks The Streets’ first album, Original Pirate Material, came out 10 years ago. It sold a million copies and got rave reviews, and its main man, Mike Skinner, became the Charles Bukowski of 21st-century rap.

His lyrics encapsulated his generation’s attitude to life with shrewd tales of night-time adventures, the hangover the next day, friendship with his mates, frustration with women. But after five albums, the 33-year-old closed down The Streets in order to concentrate on his job as a producer and to revive his old record label The Beats Recordings, which he had shut down in 2007. "I always wanted to be involved with more music than my own," he says, "now I have the time to do that." What makes an artist interesting for The Beats Recordings, then? "I've always come from an angle within rap music that is unconventional, that's what I'm after," Skinner says, and recommends three acts he has recently taken under his wing.

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The D.O.T. This is my new project with Rob Harvey from The Music.

Violence in Australian nightclubs aside, we've met many times at festivals over the past 10 years.

And we've always been on the same side in the fights. Working with him is absolutely magical.

The album, which we’ll release soon, has quite straightforward songs. The drums are electronic, but it’s almost classic rock in places. Brace yourself.

Night snack

Barcelona:

Churros Nights in Catalonia come to a hot, sweet end so late that you could almost call churros breakfast. These traditional sticks of fried doughy pastry are prepared in street stalls and often eaten with hot chocolate

Words: Florian Obkircher, Klaus Kamolz.

Text: Photography: David Levene/Guardian News & MEdia, Getty Images, fotostudio Eisenhut & Mayer

A BIT OF CHURROLOGY Churrereo, el (masculine): the chap who makes and sells churros at a churreria.

Churrera, la (feminine): either a woman selling churros, or the instrument for making churros which has the traditional star-shaped cross-section. These machines range from small, hand-held pumps to electric appliances the size of fridges.

The very basics Flour, butter, eggs and sugar: that’s all you need to make Spain's favourite snack.

The baked choux pastry is rolled in, or dusted with, sugar and is often dipped in thick hot chocolate before eating.

Cheap Thrills You can get a paper bag full of churros for as little as €1.50, with the hot chocolate coming in another bag at €2.50. All in all, from the calorie-counting point of view, at least, churros are almost a complete meal.

social ROUTINE Nights out in Spain often begin in an outdoor cafe, around 10-11pm, then move on to a tapeo – a wander around the tapas bars – and end at a churros stall, or churreria.

LOCAL DIFFERENCES Madrid, Spain's capital, and Barcelona, the Catalan metropolis, rarely see eye to eye on most matters, churros being one of them.

In Barcelona, the considerably thinner strings of pastry are sometimes tied in a loop, while in Madrid, churros are shorter, straighter and thicker.

INCOGNITO AT THE CHURRERIA Pablo Tusset is a Spanish writer shrouded in secrecy, a 'mystery author' in the same vein as Thomas Pynchon and JD Salinger. Despite two further novels since his 2001 breakthrough book, The Best Thing That Can Happen To A Croissant, little is known about his life. Yet the pastry-centric title of his first book may provide a clue: it is rumoured he runs a Barcelona churreria.

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World in Action August 2012

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Sport 11-18.08.2012, ISLE OF WIGHT, UK

Cowes Week

Anyone of a nautical bent can take part in Cowes Week – from the most experienced pros to weekend hobbyists, making it the world’s largest sailing regatta of its kind. Cowes Week has been staged in the same place since its inception back in 1820, with the Solent, between mainland southern England and the Isle of Wight, welcoming 40 regattas, around 1,000 yachts and 8,500 participants. And for those who just want to watch, there’s a spectator boat, a high-speed inflatable or even a spin in a helicopter.

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24-26.08.2012, TRIER, GERMANY

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WRC Rally Germany Only after eight victories in a row here was Frenchman Sébastien Loeb forced into second place by his countryman Sébastien Ogier last year.

He’ll be determined to retake his place on top of the Trier podium this time around in western Germany.

The event is like three rallies in one, with each day held on a different surface. On day one fast straights are followed by fiendish hairpin turns through the hilly vineyards. Day two brings asphalt and concrete sections on the former US army base on the Baumholder parade ground. On the last day comes the challenge of ultra-fast racing on country roads.

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The last Grand Slam tournament of the year takes place in the grounds of Flushing Meadows. With 22,500 seats, the Arthur Ashe Stadium is the largest tennis stadium in the world and is always good for a few surprises. Last year Australian Samantha Stosur beat Serena Williams 6:2, 6:3 in the finals to secure her first singles Grand Slam title. And in 2009, New York produced the last Grand Slam tournament winner who wasn’t named Djokovic (defending), Nadal or Federer.

Instead it was Argentinian Juan Martín del Potro.

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IAAF Diamond League Meeting

19.08.2012, INDIANAPOLIS, USA

Red Bull Indianapolis GP

Since 2004, the ‘Weltklasse Zürich’ in the Letzigrund Stadium has been the most star-studded one-day athletics event of the season.

For the top competitors at the penultimate Diamond League Meeting of the year, an extra incentive to win on the day comes in the form of a US $40,000 prize, plus a diamond trophy, awarded to the series winner in each discipline. The Zurich headliner is Usain Bolt, officially the fastest man in the world after running the 100m in 9.58 seconds in 2009. The Jamaican world-record-holder is making his return to the Zürich track after a two-year absence.

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US Open

30.08.2012, ZÜRICH, SWITZERLAND

The Solent is set to fill with sails this month

“Unbelievably huge”: that’s how US rider Nicky Hayden described his first laps around the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. With room for 300,000 spectators, it’s hardly surprising that this is the largest sports stadium in the USA. The fabled 4.2km long stretch with its legendary brick finishing line has hosted the Red Bull Indianapolis GP since 2008. Last year Australian rider Casey Stoner enjoyed his first Indiana win here before becoming world champ.

27.08-09.09.2012, NEW YORK, USA

Casey Stoner: hoping for a win in Indianapolis

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Diplo brings his big beats to South Africa 29.08-08.09.2012, VENICE, ITALY

Oppikoppi

Venice International Film Festival

The location of this festival makes it an exhilarating and testing experience for both dilettantes and old hands of the festival circuit. It’s held in the isolated, inhospitable steppe of northern South Africa, which is by day extremely hot, and by night extremely cold. Fortunately, local heroes such as Fokofpolisiekar and US guests like Eagles Of Death Metal and Diplo will be there to make sure headbangers and ravers keep warm by dancing.

At the oldest film festival in the world – established in 1932 – the film industry’s glamorous elite always encounter the haunting splendour of La Serenissima. The ‘Golden Lion’ is the focus of attention, one of the most important film prizes in the world. Last year the trophy went to Russia’s Alexander Sokurov for Faust. This time around US master director Michael Mann, head of this year’s festival jury, will crown the winning film.

09-11.08.2012, NORTHAM, SOUTH AFRICA

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27.08-03.09.2012, BLACK ROCK DESERT, USA

Burning Man

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It’s the carnival of crazies: every year some 50,000 free spirits meet up on the Nevadan salt flats and turn the site into a parallel universe with its own rules. And rule number one is: do what thou wilt. Show your art, play with your band, dress up or simply go naked. It doesn’t matter as long as you don’t harm anyone else – and you clear up your rubbish. It’s a week-long paradise for postmodern hippies which winds up every year with the traditional burning of a 12m-high wooden statue.

PHOTOGRAPHY: GETTY IMAGES (5), GOLD & GOOSE/RED BULL CONTENT POOL

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Will Usain Bolt be caught speeding in Switzerland?

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Culture

There’s a fire festival craze ablaze in El Salvador

07-11.08.2012, OSLO, NORWAY

31.08.2012, NEJAPA, EL SALVADOR

the greenest festival in the world, and 6 It’s the recipient of numerous environmental awards: the electricity for all four stages at Øya comes from a hydroelectric dam complete with waterfall; the artists are driven from backstage area to the stages in electric cars; only locally sourced food is sold; and for the rubbish there are 14 different recycling categories. The line-up is just as awardwinning, featuring artists such as Björk, The Stone Roses, The Black Keys, Feist and Bon Iver.

Two teams of young men stand facing each other. Their faces are painted black and white, in their hands they hold blazing fireballs made of wire and material which they launch throughout the fiery competition, lighting up the night sky. What looks at first glance like a street brawl is, in fact, the most spectacular fire festival in the world. Nejapa has been staging this August spectacle since 1922 in honour of Saint Geronimo, who is said to have used fireballs to defend the town from the devil.

Øya

La Bolas de Fuego 10

Canadian singer Feist plays an eco-festival in Oslo

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Save the Date August & September AUGUST 24-26

Water boarding

Graffiti artists head to Nelson Street in Bristol this month AUGUST 16-19

AUGUST 25-27

Fifty shades of spray

Bournemouth may be a long way from the sun-drenched California coastline that is beach volleyball’s spiritual home, but this month England’s south coast will witness bumping, setting and spiking with a West Coast feel. The best of British talent will gather for the finals of the Volleyball England Beach Tour, three days of top-quality action in which teams will attempt to stake a win on the sand of Boscombe Beach. www.volleyballengland.org

Some of the world’s best graffiti artists are descending on Bristol this month as part of See No Evil, a free, city-wide celebration of urban art, back for its second year. Nelson Street, famed for its huge multicoloured street art designs, will be reinvented, as artists including Bristol local Nick Walker, renowned Londoners Remi Rough and Eine, and Glasgow’s Lyken all get their paints out for a live art event curated by Bristol graf legend Inkie. A fitting soundtrack will be provided by sister event Hear No Evil, which includes exclusive performances by Adrian Utley from Portishead and Will Gregory from Goldfrapp, accompanied by 3D projections by AntiVJ. Also planned for the event is a New York-style block party on Saturday and Sunday.

Life’s a beach

SEPTEMBER 7, 8, 11

Rio here we come?

Less than 10 weeks after Spain’s victory at Euro 2012, the road to World Cup 2014 begins with the first round of European qualifiers. Of the five British Isles teams, only Republic of Ireland don’t open with a double-header, the trip to Kazakhstan long enough to keep them busy. England go to Moldova and then host Ukraine, the latter out for revenge after their Euro 2012 loss.

Northern Ireland follow a trip to Russia with Luxembourg in Belfast; Scotland host Serbia and FYR Macedonia; Wales travel to Serbia after a home opener Three Lions against Belgium. skipper www.fifa.com/ Steven Gerrard worldcup

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www.seenoevilbristol.co.uk

AUGUST 23-26

Ships to shore For the last 56 years, the Tall Ships Races have brought together some of the largest sailing boats in the world, turning heads in ports from St Petersburg to Saint-Malo. This year it’s the turn of Dubliners to stare, when a fleet of more than 50 ships sails into the city’s docks. As the last host city on a tour that has included stops in Portugal and Spain, Dublin is a fitting setting for a final celebration.

Once on land, the ships’ crews, which rules state must be half made up of

The Tall Ships Races call in to Dublin

trainees aged 15-25, will be treated to live music, art and watersports displays, and spectators get the chance to board the magnificent vessels. www.dublintallships.ie

WORDS: RUTH MORGAN, PAUL WILSON. PHOTOGRAPHY: BEN MERRINGTON, DYLAN VAUGHAN, GETTY IMAGES

Scotland’s first cable wakepark is hosting the finale of wakeboard series Loch Stock this month.

For the first time in the competition’s five-year history, the tow boats will be ditched in favour of a cutting-edge 2.0 cable system, which has just been installed at the newly opened Foxlake Adventures in Dunbar. The switch will add a new element to the hard-fought competition, which sees wakeboarders of both sexes, from junior to senior levels, do battle on Scotland’s lakes. www.loch-stock.com

illustration: dietmar kainrath

K a i n r at h

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M

any years ago I made a joke that, one day in the future, we would no longer be issued with National Insurance numbers, but would get a phone number at birth and an electronic implant to go with it. Antennae would be grafted onto us before we were able to speak, plus a surgically created power jack designed into our simple, lardy, mortal flesh. You can perhaps imagine where the USB port might best be placed.

We would actually become our phone.

This was one of my better jokes, not because it is so very funny, but because it has come true. Or soon will. The era of the wearable computer is nearly upon us.

Spittle-flecked visionaries of the ’80s used to talk about “convergence”, the day when the phone and the computer would come together in a single system. We have now had that for some years. Next step, full integration with the human body.

We will not have children – instead we will spawn new generations of ambulant PEDs (Portable Electronic Devices).

When this happens, bureaucracy will be removed from existence. Like driving through a motorway toll booth in Europe, we will automatically pay our taxes by transponder to authorities who monitor our activities. Our onboard GPS will mean we are never lost nor ever lonely. On the less bright side, they will always know where we are. Only the guilty need worry!

We are not quite there yet, but we are close. Heaven or Hell? It’s too early to say.

Already, the army has its Future Integrated Soldier Technology (unhappily known as FIST), which turns a brave grunt into a humanoid platform for surveillance, command, control and target-identification electronics. The hardware is expensive, the flesh and blood easily replaceable. Google’s own skunkworks is developing ‘Project Glass’, intelligent spectacles, or what we must now call an HMD (Head Mounted Display), which receive data and put it into the field

Mind’s Eye

Artificial Intelligence Is high tech making us smarter?

Or just incapable of using our own brains, asks Stephen Bayley of vision. Apple is said to be working on its own, presumably more chic, version of wearable computing. Meanwhile, more modestly, Sony will sell you a SmartWatch which has Twitter on a wristband.

So the day will come when we are all walking around generating enough microwaves to barbecue a chicken under our arm. For this reason, speculation has already begun in the US about what this all means for Health & Safety. Evil Beams, or what is technically known as EMI (Electro-Magnetic Interference) have already been blamed for Toyota’s bouts of unintended acceleration wherein a Prius goes berserk with a pensioner on board. It might be more correct to blame ill-fitting carpet jamming the pedals, but that lo-tech explanation is not in concert with fascinating Doomsday scenarios.

What’s going to happen on aircraft when you and I are sending out so large a part of the electromagnetic spectrum that it interferes with navigation systems?

Already the matter is difficult to police.

We all know the safety briefing which, after explaining the mysteries of a

seatbelt and the comforting news that we are, if all goes well, unlikely to land on water, continues to say “may interfere with aircraft systems and must be switched off on landing, approach and when the engines are running on the ground”.

This is widely ignored. Just the other day I, a nervous flier, said to my wife who was busy emailing as we started the takeoff roll: “Don’t you think it is time you turned that thing off?” Grudgingly she did, but only as the wheels went up.

The catastrophists fear that even nonintentional transmitters of microwaves, digital cameras for instance, have the potential for “adverse interference affects to aircraft systems”. And when you consider the more powerful radiation coming from intentional transmitters, it’s quite amazing that planes aren’t falling out of the sky on a more regular basis.

The realists say there is only a very weak correlation between the potential risk and any known event. In fact, there are no known events when an iPod has brought down a plane. And, hey, if phones threaten to send you plummeting and screaming to earth in an out-of-control fireball, would it not be a good idea to ban them altogether rather than politely ask you to turn them off for the moment, please, if you wouldn’t mind? And if iPads generate threatening Evil Beams, why has American Airlines decided that pilots can dump their paper maps, charts and manuals which they used to carry in those big, butch, black leather cases and instead use an all-knowing and slim tablet on the flight deck? Someone, somewhere knows the answer. The curious thing is that in this age of instant access to all the world’s information, that someone is not saying. You and I may slowly be becoming smartphones, but we remain dumb machines.

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

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