The Red Bulletin December 2012 KW

America’s Cup / Daniel Bodin / The Bots / Dakar Rally / Grete Eliassen / Martin Freeman / Led Zeppelin / Little Green Cars

a beyond the ordinary magazine

december 2012

freak show Louie Vito and the hottest action sports athletes on fear and glory in 2013 PORTRAITS

BY TERRY RICHARDSON

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THE WORLD OF RED BULL

December 2013 ACTION PLAN Famed photographer Terry Richardson teams with Ashley Fiolek and other athletes tipped for big things next year

WELCOME That man with the tattoos and the T-shirt and the smiling face you see above is Terry Richardson.

His tattoos and T-shirt and smiling face are almost as famous as his photographs of the great and good that have been a permanent fixture on magazine covers and in adverts for two decades.

(He often appears in his photos alongside his subjects, sometimes wearing only the tattoos and the smile.) His stunning portfolio of athletes is the centrepiece of The Red Bulletin this month.

Elsewhere, we ride along with the men who make the Dakar Rally. How do you stake a race course across a continent? Not too far from the rally’s route, we also have the remarkable tale of a BASE-jump from a secret Peruvian waterfall, with snakes and mermaids. Yes, mermaids. Enjoy the issue.

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BATTEN DOWN THE HATCHES It’s part boat, part spacecraft, but America’s Cup sailors love the danger in a craft on the edge of chaos

COVER PHOTOGRAPHY: TERRY RICHARDSON PHOTOGRAPHY: GETTY IMAGES, TERRY RICHARDSON, REX FEATURES. ILLUSTRATION: ALBERT EXERGIAN

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MARTIN FREEMAN What are the habits of the man starring in The Hobbit?

THE WORLD OF RED BULL

December 40

GET THE GEAR The contents of Austrian ice hockey goalie Bernd Brückler’s kitbag keep him alive

MOUNTAIN MEN The riders of Red Bull Rampage got down and dirty as they tricked up Utah’s red soil

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10 The month’s best images 16 Bullevard: sport, culture and more 20 Kit Evolution: ski pants 23 Musically youthful: The Bots 24 The science of ice sailing 26 Lucky Numbers: recorded music

PHOTOGRAPHY: MATTIAS FREDRIKSSON (2), GEPA PICTURES, CORBIS

The Red Bulletin

Tablet App

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THE ART IN ARCHITECTURE When it comes to the world’s great new museums, the buildings themselves are as compelling as the exhibits they house

The America’s Cup boats, Red Bull Rampage, Daniel Bodin, Dakar Rally and Grete Eliassen in action on video.

Free for Android & iPad

THE WORLD OF RED BULL

December “ Knocking

out two teeth is the most painful thing I’ve done” Daniel Bodin

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ME AND MY BODY Daniel Bodin flies through the air with the greatest of ease, on a snowmobile weighing hundreds of pounds

86 TRAINING WITH THE PROS

There are the rigours of skiing, and then there are the rigours of freeskiing. Grete Eliassen, who deals with the latter, is a winter sportswoman of iron

70 GETTING DAKAR ON TRACK

In the months before the great race, a rally course is painstakingly laid out thanks to the efforts of two veteran Frenchman with pen and paper

Body & Mind 82

TRAVEL IDEAS

Dubai is known for the last word in luxury, but the great outdoors also beckons

88 BAND WATCH

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ONE GIANT LEAP

With 10 seconds of untravelled airspace between him and a meeting with mermaids and a giant snake, a Belgian adventurer in the Peruvian Andes journeys to a secret waterfall to make history – or be it

Irish quintet Little Green Cars break America. A little corner of it, anyway

90 NIGHTLIFE

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WORLD IN ACTION

Global goings-on

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SAVE THE DATE

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KAINRATH

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MIND’S EYE

Events for the diary Our cartoonist

Be careful: Stephen Bayley is invoking health and safety

Led Zeppelin live, Middle Eastern midnight snacks, ice skating in New York City and a tip-top cocktail: everything you need to get you through ’til dawn

PHOTOGRAPHY: DANIEL BLOM/RED BULL CONTENT POOL, BRIAN NEVINS/RED BULL CONTENT POOL, HEINZ TESAREK, MARCELO MARAGNI/RED BULL CONTENT POOL

more

HELLY HANSEN CATWALK

Asmus Nørreslet UIAGM Mountain Guide Mont Blanc 3700 m

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

T sai na G l ac i e r , Al a s k a

Tunnel vision Best laid schemes of ice and men: the Ataraxia Project was a meticulously planned 10-week expedition of wildest Alaska, to culminate in the first-ever kiteassisted ascent of Mount Marcus Baker (4,016m/ 13,176ft). On their way, the eight-strong team found a remarkable ice tunnel in a glacier 100km south-east of Anchorage. Weather put paid to the Baker climb; it could not spoil Sebastian Bubmann’s indoor fly-by.

Expedition log: www.ataraxia2012.com Photograph: Mammut/Nicolas Chibas

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TH E W H ITE SEA , Ru s s ia

frozen assets Under the ice in Kandalaksha Bay, at the north-west tip of Russia, about 150km east of the Finnish border, is one of the world’s hot-topic bodies of cold water.

This place is home to beluga whales and uniquely indigenous soft corals; salinity is low due to the many rivers flowing here. But with melting ice caps and nearby oil rigs, the delicate ecology is under threat.

On-the-ground reportage: region51.com/en Photograph: Franco Banfi/Getty Images

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Romsdal, Norway

icicle ride

There are two kinds of adventure-seeker in the Norwegian fjords who never cross paths. The BASE-jumpers proliferate in summer, when this place shows its warm-weather face. Come the winter, with its frozen blanket of snow, the ice-climbers take over, travelling in the opposite direction and at far slower speeds. Austrian ascender Kurt Astner is a leading light of the latter, increasingly popular discipline.

Do it yourself: www.visitnorway.com Photograph: Thomas Senf

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Bullevard Sport and culture on the quick

In the Gangnam A crazy video with the horse dance has become a launch pad for a Korean pop offensive: K-Pop is now taking over the internet, and possibly the world.

Here are three followers in the wake of Psy’s Gangnam Style

HYUNA A featured dancer in Psy’s video, she is a pop superstar in Asia, both as a solo artist and in girl band 4Minute. Her garish hip-hop single Ice Cream has ‘chartmelting hit’ written all over it.

LET THE GAME BEGIN

Red Bull Crashed Ice: coming to a games console near you

SHINEE This five-piece boy band have their own show on South Korean TV. The rest of the world is fast getting the message, too; tickets for Shinee’s last concert in London sold out within minutes.

You can now enjoy the least cosy winter sport in the comfort of your humble abode. Playing Red Bull Crashed Ice Kinect on Xbox Live Arcade means taking command of one of four racers, on one of five twist-and-turn-packed courses based on real Red Bull Crashed Ice race locations.

Splitscreen and party modes allow up to eight

players to take part; races can also take place online. Using the Kinect motion controller, players build speed by pumping their arms, and turn and jump, in the same way that real-life Red Bull Crashed Ice contestants take to the frozen tracks.

All the excitement and skill, then, but not so cold. www.redbull.com/gaming

PHOTOTICKER

EVERY SHOT ON TARGET

2NE1 Black Eyed Peas guru will.i.am is working on this girl group’s English-language debut album.

They have had success with two Korean and one Japaneselanguage albums since 2010.

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Have you taken a picture with a Red Bull flavour? Email it to us at: phototicker@redbulletin.com Every month we print a selection, with our favourite pic awarded a limited-edition Sigg bottle. Tough, functional and well-suited to sport, it features The Red Bulletin logo.

Yeongam At the Korean GP, Mark Webber (left) and Sebastian Vettel (right) in Gangnam Style with Psy. Mark Thompson

Innovate The James Dyson Award 2012

American photographic artist Jason Nocito (above) has exhibited at the 12Mail gallery

Three years ago, a small gallery opened in the heart of Paris with a concept as simple as it was courageous. 12Mail trains its focus on art outside of the mainstream, which usually means work by young or totally unknown talent.

The idea bore fruit; 16 exhibitions and thousands of visitors later, and 12Mail is an established creative point in one of the world’s leading art cities. Paris has this small gallery to thank for bringing it the works of Sophie Bramly, one of the first photographers to document the beginnings of hip-hop in New York, and the haunting work of genius cartoonist Charles Burns. Another highlight was the exhibition by cult French record label Born Bad, the centrepiece of which was a beautifully designed 1970s motorbike that Jarvis Cocker fell in love with at the opening. In celebration of its third birthday, 12Mail has published a fittingly lavish retrospective book.

12 Mail a Red Bull Space | 2009-2013

PHOTOGRAPHY: GETTY IMAGES (2), PICTUREDESK.COM, RED BULL CRASHED ICE, JASON NOCITO/12MAIL, JAMES DYSON AWARD (3), EMI MUSIC

Arty birthday

22/10/12 20:02:16

www.12mail.fr

SAFETYNET This year’s winning entry allows, and actually helps, via light stimulation, small and nontarget fish to escape commercial nets.

REVIVAL VEST A life jacket made of a fabric that can detect if its wearer is unconscious, by monitoring breathing patterns, and then inflate automatically.

THE BETH PROJECT Aimed at the developing world’s 30 million amputees, this ‘adaptor’ fits exactly to the residual limb, and, crucially, can be mass-produced.

KYLIE IN VOGUE A French art house movie and an orchestral live album to mark 25 years in the music biz? Bravo, Miss Minogue!

She released her first record in 1987, while still starring in the Australian soap opera Neighbours. Now Kylie Minogue, 44, is branching out once more. Her new live greatest hits album was recorded with an orchestra at the legendary Abbey Road studios, and she has a role in a new film from French director Leos Carax.

So, an album featuring an orchestra. Why do that?

It was one of my dreams.

Doing my songs this way makes them far more emotive.

Who would ever have thought, that you could be moved by I Should Be so Lucky? The lyrics are actually really sad, but people miss that because

of the poppy sound. The new arrangement fits in with what the lyrics are saying. And I’m proud to have worked in the same studios as The Beatles.

Have you completely turned your back on disco?

Don’t worry: I’m already working on my next album, which will be dance-pop.

Why have you returned to making movies?

I’ve appeared in some of the worst films ever! So I started to think, maybe that’s not for me, I’ll just stick with music, but then I got the call from Leos. He is a visionary. The role I play in Holy Motors was a challenge and it has reawakened my desire to act.

The Abbey Road Sessions is out now: www.kylie.com

Can’t get you out of our heads: Kylie, the perpetual pop princess

WE HAVE A WINNER!

Amman Red Bull Car Park Drift brought motorsport frenzy to the Jordanian capital.

Naim Chidiac

Mumbai F1 cars require precision, regardless of what they’re made of, or how big they are.

Wanda Hendricks

Castleton

In England’s Peak District, only 40 of 250 starters finished the 34km Red Bull Steeplechase.

Rutger Pauw

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The Athertons with teammate Marc Beaumont (second from left)

Family affairs

The sound of style Red Bull Catwalk Studios is a joint venture between futuristic fashion designer Alex Mattson and hotly tipped rap artist Zebra Katz. The outcome: a soundtrack for Mattson’s autumn-winter 2013 show at next month’s London Collections: Men event.

“Music is a starting point, as well as an end; it’s inspiration,” says Mattson, 29, of his experience of the relationship between music and fashion. “My love of hip-hop growing up in Norway shows in my designs.

On the catwalk, bass is important. It’s the part of music that can actually touch people physically.

So getting a good match with an artist is key, and Zebra Katz, whose stuff is dark and bass-heavy, is perfect for me.” The Mix ’n’ match: music will be available for Katz (left) and download from January 8.

Mattson (right) www.redbull.co.uk

Kemer Man and machine took on the Turkish elements in Red Bull Sea To Sky. Lukasz Nazdraczew

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Patrick Sheehy of Irish five-piece Walking On Cars

Band together

Patrick Sheehy, 25, is the lead singer of Walking On Cars, winners of the 2012 Irish Red Bull Bedroom Jam new band contest.

Among other things, their victory brought them closer to Michael Jackson Better than socks My mother bought me a guitar for Christmas when I was 13; I didn’t ask for it. I spent six months getting lessons, but I couldn’t play, then I rediscovered it four years later and we got on better.

Kitchen Jam For the band’s first six months we were playing in a kitchen. We’re all from Dingle in Co Kerry, and there’s not much to do there except leave. We didn’t want to do that, so we just started playing music.

Internet interest We got a lot of exposure from Red Bull Bedroom Jam. Over the six months we were taking part, we just watched our Facebook page numbers going up.

Famous footsteps Our prize was recording at Grouse Lodge near Ballymore. Michael Jackson, Snow Patrol, Bloc Party and loads more have recorded there. There’s a book artists write in before they leave. We were flicking through it getting star-struck.

Bedroom Jam 2013 entry from March: www.redbullbedroomjam.ie

Santiago de Chile A war of words between freestyle rhymers at Red Bull Batalla los Gallos.

Alfred Jürgen

Cape Town Red Bull Street Style hero Chris Njokwana shows fleet feet at Red Bull Shibobo.

Craig Kolesky

photography: sven martin, red bull uk, ruth medjber

The Athertons are a sibling trio who are to mountain biking what the Bee Gees are to disco. Dan, 30, Gee, 27, and Rachel, 24, have amassed nine world championship titles between them, and have been at the top of their game in 2012, with numerous race wins, including a World Cup victory for Rachel. A new short film, streaming online, shows what life is really like for them. In creating Four By Three, filmmaker Clay Porter went to north Wales, where the Athertons live and train, to capture the banter, riding sessions and off-bike moments in a special behind-the-scenes movie that, refreshingly, actually gets up close and personal.

Watch it now: www.redbull.com/fourbythree

B U L L E VA R D

WHERE’S YOUR HEAD AT?

MARTIN FREEMAN Playing the lead in The Hobbit, the follow-up film trilogy to The Lord Of The Rings, means you’re about to go from “oh yes, that guy” to one of the most visible faces on Earth, and Middle Earth. Here’s what goes on behind it

FI RST AC T

Future Shire pin-up boy Martin John C Freeman was born on September 8, 197 1.

He made the TV ap pearance all jobbin g UK actors must make: medical drama Casu alty.

“Can’t exactly do thi s stuff forever,” said his cheeky thief, before falling through the roof of a factory during a botched robbery.

TH UM

BS UP As Bilbo, Freeman makes it a hat-trick of roles playing nerd culture lege nds. His first came as Arthur Dent in the film of The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy in 2005; the n as Watson on TV in Sherlock, with a new series pending. “I can’t deny that it’s quite strange,” he said, of his three-peat.

NOT SO FUN NY

WORK /LIFE BALAN CE

In 2001, a gamechanging part: playing Tim Canterbury in Ricky Gervais’s original version of The Office. More than a decade on, people still quote lines from the show and shout “Tim! Tim!” at him in the street. Perhaps starring in The Hobbit will change all that, but, “Oi, Bilbo!” might not be that much of an improvement.

Between Hitchhiker’s and Sherlock, which began in 2010, Freeman had a run of less-than-stellar movies, such as dampsquib comedies Dedication, The Good Night and The All Together.

Swinging With The Finkels, a wife-swap ‘comedy’, gets an 0 per cent rating at critics’ round-up website Rotten Tomatoes.

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

IS ALL YO U NE ED

Having exposed Tim’s inner turmoil in The Office, Freeman then pushed his outer limits in the 2003 movie Love Actually. In the film’s best-running joke, he is John, on a film le set with fellow body-doub y the ed, nak Judy. On set and and set Off h. laug and t cha can d? Do -tie gue ton are clothed, they istmas Chr a It’s er? eth tog get y the ss. gue a e tak ; edy romantic com

RETRO ACTIV E

Despite being 41 years old, Freeman is really a ’60s child: he loves Mod style and, “I’ve been a fanatic of Motown music since I was a teenager,” he said, giddy with excitement in Detroit, the spiritual home of the record label, making a BBC documentary to mark its 50th anniversary, in 2009. “It makes you laugh, cry, sing, dance.”

REA L NIC E

According to Hobbit director Peter Jackson, Freeman is “very hobbit-y in real life”. He’s not suggesting that his star lives underground, more that he’s a homebody who likes things nice and easy. Freeman enjoys time with his partner and two young children, and once said his ideal day was a trip to the seaside with record shopping and fish and chips, followed by a DVD back at home. Lovely.

COM IC BOO K GUY

kind since, The Hobbit is the biggest project of its days’ well, LOTR. Made in New Zealand; 266 ; 2012 July to 2011 h Marc from filming on 99 sets etimes it much fake hair for hobbits’ feet. “Som Freeman, feels like you’re in a graphic novel,” said by me.” of the production process, “which is fine The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is released on December 14: www.thehobbit.com

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KIT EVOLUTION

Big-Idea Smalls Silk has given way to man-made fibre, but when modern ski underwear applies pressure, it does so for a reason

FRICTION

Although functional, it could be problematic.

“I was as stiff as a post,” says Hubert Neuper, of his posture in these pants. So they were only put to use on really cold days.

FUNCTIONALITY

All-in-one design with a ruff and partially covered zip: ski-jumpers effectively wore a second full layer under their jump suits.

Annoying VPLs were elegantly avoided.

SILK

It insulates well, is pliable, does not irritate the skin, hardly absorbs body odour and is very thin. Before the term ‘micro-climate’ was used, silk was creating just that, effortlessly.

1979 MÄSER ONE-PIECE “I can still remember when we got that underwear,” says Austrian former ski-jumper Hubert Neuper. “From the point of view of functionality and design, it was a great accomplishment. It was light and thin, and it kept the cold out really well, but it created extra friction, which stopped me getting into the perfect position. So I only wore it in extreme temperatures, like at the 1980 Olympics in Lake Placid.”

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Hubert Neuper: wearing this underwear, he won Olympic silver in 1980 www.fis-ski.com

STITCHED UP

The designers used 3D motion-capture footage of hundreds of athletes to optimally position seams and inserts. Sizing system also considers sex, age and body-fat ratio.

AIR-CON

UNDER PRESSURE

Air in the hollow fibres of the nylon/ Spandex material keeps the wearer warmer, while the elasticity and stretchability allow maximum freedom of movement.

WORDS: ULRICH CORAZZA. PHOTOGRAPHY: KURT KEINRATH, PICTUREDESK.COM, ANDREAS JAKWERTH

Surface pressure on the body affects blood circulation, which in turn affects muscle performance.

This suit applies pressure in all the right places to help muscles.

2012 SKINS S400 THERMAL COMPRESSION SUIT Thomas Morgenstern is a strong advocate of the supportive compression clothing made by Australian company Skins. “In the past we just used to wear a thin polo-neck; it wasn’t very comfortable,” says the Austrian, a double Olympic ski-jump champion. “This is really close-fitting underwear, and it goes perfectly under the jumpsuit, because air can be trapped between the two layers, and that is of great use to us ski-jumpers.”

Thomas Morgenstern and the Austrian ski team had a hand in the suit’s development www.skins.net

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1 Going dental Me and my body

daniel bodin

I knocked out two teeth in 2004, but I remember it like it was yesterday.

I crashed the snowmobile and knocked out a front tooth and one at the side – the most painful thing I’ve done. Now I have false ones there.

2 Pain in the neck

In January, practising for the Winter X Games, I landed in the foam pit with the snowmobile on top of me, breaking five vertebrae in my neck. I wore a head cage for three months, rested for two more, then I was back on the bike.

The Swede, 28, a double Winter X Games freestyle snowmobile champ, is also happy dropping backflips on a motocross bike – and dealing with the fallout from both www.redbull.com

4 Cracked rack

I’ve broken six or seven ribs over the years, mainly from freestyle motocross when the handlebar gets jammed in your side. Compared to everything else, breaking a rib is nothing. As long as you don’t sneeze.

3 Pop your collar

I’ve broken my collarbone seven times: five on the left and two on the right. I ride freestyle motocross and snowmobile, and the breaks are about 50/50 between the two. The first one took eight weeks to heal, and the last one took three, so my body’s learning to take it.

I compressed my left ankle really badly in 2008, when I overshot a jump on the snowmobile and landed flat. I still don’t walk right and I can’t run – I didn’t get it treated at the time, and I’m looking to correct that now. But broken bones heal. I’ve been doing this for 10 years and I’m still going. I’m lucky.

See Daniel Bodin in action on the jumps with the Red Bulletin tablet app!

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words: ruth morgan. photography: Daniel Blom

5 Footing the spill

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Think Of The Young’ns

the bots

They have a combined age of just 35, yet they’ve been playing together for a decade. Brothers front a rock band? You’ve not heard it done like this before Names Mikaiah Lei, Anaiah Lei Born Mikaiah: June 21, 1993, Bellflower, California, USA; Anaiah: November 22, 1996, Hollywood, California, USA Influences The brothers first fell for reggae, then their father introduced them to rock ’n’ roll. Current favourites include Arcade Fire, The White Stripes and The xx Celebrity fans Jack Black, Mos Def, Blur, Paul McCartney Dislikes Mikaiah: their mother being on the tour bus; Anaiah: people asking if his afro is a wig

words: ruth morgan. Photography: Dan Wilton

Getting carried away: Anaiah goes crowd surfing during a gig

They’re two teenage brothers without props or pretensions. All Mikaiah and Anaiah Lei need to rock their blend of raw garage-punk as The Bots is a guitar, drums and big sound. Damon Albarn and Jack Black have both taken the Californian brothers on tour with them.

Many of the venues they’ve played would not let them in the front door: Mikaiah is 19 and Anaiah just 16. They write their own songs and there’s no big record company pulling the strings behind the scenes. The Bots are real. And real loud.

They are your rock stars of tomorrow. the red bulletin: Despite your age, you’re pretty experienced rockers.

How did you start making music? mikaiah: We met at rock ’n’ roll fat camp.

The harder we rocked, the faster the pounds dropped off us.

Anaiah: Not quite, but it would make a really good story. We started jamming in our bedroom when we were nine and six years old. We played instruments in a pretty rough way at first, like toys I guess, but it quickly became something more.

You make a tremendous amount of noise for a two-man band. mikaiah: We’re a good team, that’s why we’re the two-piece we are.

Anaiah: We like a big sound. We’ve always been into the same stuff, so together it

The Bots haben bereits drei Platten veröffentlicht. 2013 kommt die neue.

means we can get crazy and wild with it.

You’ve played to crowds of thousands supporting the likes of Blur and Tenacious D. Do you get nervous? mikaiah: I do get nervous before playing to big crowds.

Anaiah: I don’t, I’m fine. mikaiah: Come on, you weren’t nervous at all before that first gig with Tenacious D? Anaiah: Oh yeah, that day I was. mikaiah: I thought so.

How is it trying to balance a life of rock ’n’ roll with school?

Anaiah: Fine! After a long summer of touring in Europe, I’m gearing up for school again. It’s easy to balance it. I get pretty good grades.

Can you be taken seriously as rockers if your mother is with you on tour? mikaiah: She has to come along, because Anaiah is so young. It’s terrible. You’ve got our mum dancing to the songs at the side of the stage. I try not to think about it…

Anaiah: …but then you hear this voice from the side of the stage going, ‘Smile!

Smile at the crowd.’ Just awful.

“It’s terrible.

You’ve got our mum dancing to the songs at the side of the stage”

Music and live dates: www.thebotsband.com

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Winning Formula

Cold Standard

Why is sailing so much faster on ice than on water?

Battle for the 2012 ice sailing world championship in Örebro, Sweden. The 2013 event will take place from January 26-February 2, in the Central Lakes region of the USA

words: Thomas Schrefl. Photography: oskar kihlborg. illustration: Mandy fischer

Out On The Ice “It’s as if you’re flying a few centimetres above the ice,” says Ron Sherry, the world number one ice sailor. “Ice sailboats only weigh about 20kg and accelerate very quickly. In just six seconds, you can reach 100kph. The best ice for high speeds is black ice, which results from low temperatures and no wind.

When it’s smooth as glass and free of grooves, you feel like you could just carry on getting faster and faster.”

Back In The Lab “Ice boats reach top speeds of up to 150kph,” says Professor Thomas Schrefl of the St Polten University of Applied Sciences and the University of Sheffield. “This speed is determined by the equilibrium of propulsion and resistance. The key here is resistance: unlike sailing on water, frictional forces are relatively low in ice sailing. With conventional sailing, water molecules attach themselves to the hull and move along with the boat; molecules further away from the boat are motionless. Because of this velocity differential, the molecules sheer against each other. The frictional force that results increases with the velocity of the boat or the proportion of the hull in contact with water.

“On the ice surface, however, in particularly cold conditions, the uppermost layer of ice molecules assumes a ‘water-like’ condition, and oscillates upwards and downwards, forming a type of lubricating film. At higher temperatures this lubricating level is thicker, and the skids on the ice boat have to force their way through more ‘water-like’ molecules because of the increased friction. This is why experts refer to ‘fast’ and ‘slow’ ice.

“With ice sailing, the resistance between the skids and the ice is negligible compared to wind resistance. The friction coefficient between metal and ice is µ = 0.01. The frictional force results from the product of the frictional coefficient and the weight N to F = µN. “The skids play an important part: they help to keep the ice sailor on track in the face of wind forces. The highest speeds arise when the wind comes from side-on. When the sailor travels in the direction of the wind, he or she can’t sail faster than the wind. Once the glider reaches wind speed, the sail doesn’t ‘feel’ the wind. However, when the wind comes from the side, the air flows around the sail, as it does around the surface area of an aeroplane in flight.

“Varying circulation velocities at the front and rear results in buoyancy, A, which works vertically. The wind resistance, R, operates in the direction of the wind. The balance of forces results in a glider speed of ν = (A/R) Wn + Wp, where Wn represents the wind velocity in the direction of travel, and Wp the wind velocity parallel to direction of travel.” ice.idniyra.org

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LUCKY NUMBERS

RECORDED MUSIC

The gramophone was first played 125 years ago, thus spawning the record industry. From the first vinyl to the largest collection, and the most expensive disc to laser beam turntables, here are the stats

5

In 1870, a 19-year-old man from Hanover, Germany, emigrated to America, taking with him a vision of a machine on which people would be able to record their last thoughts as they lay on their deathbeds. Emile Berliner registered his device with the patent office in 1887. Thomas Alva Edison had unveiled his phonograph 10 years earlier, but its slab rollers meant it was unsuited to mass production. By contrast, Berliner’s machine, which he named the gramophone, played flat, waxed zinc discs, which were cheap to produce.

Emile Berliner The forerunner: Edison’s phonograph

Saville’s New Order cover

33⅓

The quality of the first gramophone records was so bad that they came with printed lyrics, so that the buyer could understand the content. An improvement came in 1896, when Berliner switched production to make discs from shellac. When he finally fitted his gramophone with a clockwork motor to replace the crank handle, the gramophone record became a top seller. In 1948, 19 years after Berliner’s death, Columbia Records released the first vinyl disks to be played at 33¹/³rpm: that’s an LP to you and me.

150,000

The world’s most expensive record is a copy of the John Lennon and Yoko Ono album Double Fantasy signed by John Lennon. What made the record such a bizarre collector’s item was the fact that Lennon had autographed it just a few hours before his death. The man who gave him the record to be signed was Mark Chapman, his killer. The record even served as a piece of evidence in the trial, as Chapman’s fingerprints were found on the album cover. An anonymous collector bought it in 1999 for US$150,000, and is now offering it online for a rumoured US$850,000.

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With over a million sales, the 1983 original version of Blue Monday, by British band New Order, is the best-selling 12in single.

It was success the group’s record label had trouble dealing with. The cover, created by designer Peter Saville to look like a floppy disc, was so expensive to produce, due to the print and stamping processes, that the record label, Factory Records, made a loss of 5p on every copy sold. Saville said later that no one had expected such success and so production costs hadn’t been discussed much beforehand. Factory Records filed for bankruptcy nine years later.

2,500,000 Former US record shop owner Paul Mawhinney took his work home with him and built a collection of 2.5 million vinyl records in his basement. “Only 13 per cent of the songs that came out between 1948 and 1966 are available on CD,” he said. “That means 87 per cent of the music that was made back then isn’t available any more.” In December 2011, Mawhinney, now in his 70s, sold the collection to Leo Yao, a Taiwanese engineer on the team that developed the MP3.

Double Fantasy

by John and Yoko

Early Berliner vinyl

Paul Mawhinney’s record collection The laser turntable

15,910

Conservative music-collectors agree: no digital recording, no matter how sophisticated, comes close to the warm sound of a vinyl record. Yet vinyl is worn down every time a record is played, the result being the familiar crackle. Japanese manufacturers ELP have come to the rescue; their laser turntable sweeps the grooves with a laser beam, not a needle, so that there is no wear and tear as the music is played. Snags for vinyl lovers are that the device itself looks like an outsized CD player, and starting at US$15,910, it costs more than some new family hatchbacks. www.berliner.montreal.museum

WORDS: FLORIAN OBKIRCHER. PHOTOGRAPHY: PICTUREDESK.COM (2), CORBIS, RECORD COMP. (2), MUSEUM VICTORIA, REX FEATURES, ELP

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living

histo 10 marvellous museums, and how they shape our past, present and future by stephen bayley

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NEW MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART

New York, USA

Architect: SANAA Year opened: 2007 Here on Bowery is New York’s first contemporary art museum since the influential MoMA. But while MoMA institutionalised the established darlings of the international art world, MOCA decided on a more subversive role. Even the architects who designed it were unknown in the US at the time.

SANAA is an acronym of Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, who join Shigeru Ban (The Nomadic Museum of shipping containers) and the late Kenzo Tange (Yokohama Museum of Art) as outstanding Japanese museum designers. MOCA is built on the site of an old parking lot. It comprises boxes arranged on a shifting axis to give a staggered effect, as if to explain that MOCA is a non-hierarchical institution.

A paradox is represented here: MOCA is interested in insubstantial digital art, but has acquired a building of emphatic architectonic presence. It’s both a foil and refutation of the videos and light shows on show here.

Although SANAA had earlier designed the Christian Dior shop in Tokyo, MOCA made their international reputation: subsequently they built The Rolex Learning Centre in Lausanne (2010) and the pop-up Serpentine Pavilion in London (2009). A defining characteristic of modern life is that commerce and culture are no longer distinct: indeed, the worlds of brand-experience and museum-visiting are the same. Art and luxury have become the same thing.

photography: wade zimmerman/CORBIS

You want a caricature of museum staff? Old style: a creaking, sallow man in paramilitary uniform attends a grim display of fossils with a feather duster. New style: a black-clad, buzz-cut young buck with an earpiece pours sparkling water for a rich person at a noisy party held under bright lights.

Museums were once vast, stately municipal repositories of knowledge, and they had architecture to match. The imposing classical façade of The British Museum was designed as an irrefutable statement of London’s self-determined role as guardian, if not robber, of the world’s material culture.

London’s Natural History Museum was built in Gothic, the style of Britain’s 19th-century town halls. This was intended to suggest other values. The Natural History Museum was where the first dinosaurs were displayed and classified: perhaps dinosaurs felt at home in an architectural setting which suggested the primitive, rather than the refined. Certainly, wherever they are and whatever they display, any museum betrays the pride, ambitions, beliefs and preoccupations, as well as the anxieties and doubts, of the civilisation that built it.

Significantly, just as the great municipal museums were explaining science and art, the new department stores were putting the manufactured world on display and offering it for sale. Observers made the connection and a stream of metaphors followed. The novelist Émile Zola called Paris’s Le Bon Marché a “cathedrale de la commerce moderne”. His contemporary, Julien Guadet, went further and said it was a “musée de marchandise”.

America added an extra commercial dimension to the museum concept. In New York, The Frick Collection was what happened when new American money met old French furniture.

The Museum of Modern Art was founded in 1929 not by dissolute radicals, but by the Rockefellers. MoMA made art that was once challenging a safe investment. Then, in Paris during the 1970s, the Centre Pompidou showed how startling architecture could make a museum into an urban trophy.

Only confident cultures, cities or individuals build museums.

A new generation of international museums now represents the limits of architectural possibilities. For an architect, a museum is a longed-for commission: an opportunity to design the ultimate building, free, to a large extent, from everyday realities. A museum is a symbol of wealth, status, culture, confidence, virility and style.

ry

SANNA’s shifted-box approach to the design of the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York’s Lower East Side makes for a variety of open, fluid, column-free and lightfilled internal spaces that are different heights at every level

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BMW WELT

Munich, Germany Coop Himmelb(l)au, 2007

Is this what a world designed by BMW would look like? The German car maker has devised a unique brand experience under one huge 16,500m2 roof, which doubles as solar plant, providing power for the whole building

photography: Shutterstock, corbis, iwan baan

Coop Himmelb(l)au was established by young architects Wolf Prix, Helmut Swiczinsky and Michael Holzer in Vienna in 1968. This was a year that saw idealistic student rebellions all over Europe. Thus, the studio’s name is revealing. ‘Coop’ suggests a decent communitarianism, while Himmelb(l)au is deliberately ambiguous: it can, translated, mean either ‘heavenly architecture’ or ‘blue sky’. Or both.

In 1968, when French students were throwing cobblestones at gendarmes, BMW was busy consolidating a reputation made with the ‘Neue Klasse’ cars of 1961.

With their clean lines and Bauhaus heritage, BMW cars became symbols of Germany’s economic progress, and were eagerly endorsed by global markets.

So much so, that by the 21st century, BMW was no longer a specialist Bavarian motor-manufacturer, but a globally recognised luxury product, trading on a reputation for emphatic design, driving pleasure and advanced technology.

So, when BMW decided to create a temple to its own value system near Munich’s old Olympiapark, the brief was a complicated and subtle one.

The Bauhaus values of clarity and functionalism, which were so well

represented by, say, a 1968 BMW 2002, were already being reconsidered. Indeed, the 2003 5-series presented a new design language which was expressive, organic and, some said, perverse.

Coop Himmelb(l)au, which made its reputation at New York’s Museum of Modern Art Deconstructivist Architecture show in 1988, was well able to interpret the ambitious brief.

A BMW Welt of 1968 would have been a well-detailed shed. In 2007, it was instead a vast structure with complex spaces and many layers of meaning.

Technology and quality remain, but assertiveness and complexity have been added to the mix of values. So has a restaurant and bar. Here you can take delivery of your new car or study the past.

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VITRA DESIGN MUSEUM

Weil-am-Rhein, Germany

photography: iwan baan, vitra, Picturedesk.com

various, 1989 The 1980s, they say, was the ‘design decade’.

London’s Design Museum opened in August 1989 and was, technically, the first. Vitra’s Design Museum opened later that same year. But while London’s Design Museum has a single Thames-side building and a focused didactic programme, the Vitra Design Museum is an evolving commercial project.

Vitra is a Basel furniture maker. When it acquired the licence to make Charles Eames’ famous chairs, a relationship with designer-as-celebrity was established. A ruinous factory fire in 1981 gave Rolf Fehlbaum an opportunity to re-invent the family business in full conformity with the Zeitgeist’s taste for designer this and designer that.

Originally, Frank Gehry was commissioned to create a museum to house Fehlbaum’s collection of classic modernist furniture. But Fehlbaum soon had the idea of the Vitra ‘campus’, now moved to Germany, becoming a living experiment in patronage as well as an impressive advertisement of his vision.

Zaha Hadid’s very first real building was Vitra’s private fire station, finished in 1993. Other architects creating stand-alone buildings on the continuously expanding Vitra site included Nicholas Grimshaw (1981 and 1986), Tadao Ando (1993), Álvaro Siza (1994) and Herzog & de Meuron (2010). A virtuous circle of competitive egos was established by Fehlbaum’s daring commissions: few ambitious designers would refuse to join this roster of architectural galacticos.

The Vitra Design Museum became the ‘designer’ phenomenon incarnate. But, enduringly, Fehlbaum confirmed a link between culture and commerce, between trade and art, between shops and galleries.

Rolf Fehlbaum, chairman of Swiss furniture manufacturer Vitra, just wanted somewhere to exhibit his collection of classic modernist furniture. Yet by the time the Vitra Design Museum was completed in 1989, the original concept had grown into a full campus to showcase Fehlbaum’s vision. The main Design Museum building is at the centre of more than 10 structures in Weil am Rhein. As Frank Gehry’s first building in Europe, it has a deconstructivist, geometric exterior that is not apparent from inside, with clean lines complementing various exhibitions

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VULCANIA

Saint Ours les Roches, France Hans Hollein, 2002

The Auvergne in Central France is Europe’s largest volcanic area, and Puy de Dôme, at 1,464m, is its highest volcano. (Although there have been no eruptions for about 8,000 years.)

The region’s wild emptiness and dramatic volcanic remains are a startling reminder of ineffable natural forces. Here, on a 57-hectare military site is Vulcania, named after the blacksmith’s forge in Vergil’s Aeneid. Volcanoes are such

powerful symbols, we readily connect them with mythology.

Vulcania’s architect is Austrian Hans Hollein, one of Europe’s first postmodernists.

The postmodernists aimed to replace the geometric restraint and manipulative moral certainties of modernism with design inspired by irrationality, tolerant of decoration and inclined to narrative, sometimes of a frivolous sort.

Hollein’s great buildings include Frankfurt’s Museum für Moderne Kunst (19831991) and the Haas-Haus (1990), a jaunty monument to playful postmodernist shape-making in front of Vienna’s Stephansdom.

Hollein won The Pritzker

photography: picturedesk.com, rex features, shutterstock

Vulcania is where pre-history meets postmodern, where a volcanic-themed park blurs into a museum of seismology. Inside, there’s a huge volcano simulator (top); its 28m cone is both a reaction to the landscape (this picture) and a lightwell (right). Was Hans Hollein creating a form of popular entertainment or a serious geology lesson?

Prize in 1985, but his most significant association was with Memphis, the collective of architects and designers who gathered around Ettore Sottsass in Milan in 1981.

Vulcania, with its grand concept of connecting to prehistory and suggesting access to the centre of the Earth, was a challenging commission.

Hollein’s museum is buried in a ‘crater’ in the volcanic subsoil: the only structure visible is a 28m cone whose form suggests a volcano, but whose function is to bring light into the building. The Auvernais landscape humbles architecture, and Hollein responded by taking his museum underground.

The elegant spaces of the Modern Wing At Chicago’s Institute of Modern Art increases the museum’s overall size by a third.

Renzo Piano designed the building (top) with a canopy made of aluminium blades that deflects harsh light from the south, while filtering northern light into the third floor galleries that overlook Millennium Park (left)

THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO MODERN WING

Chicago, USA

photography: getty images, corbis

Renzo Piano, 2009 The Genoese architect Renzo Piano is perhaps the outstanding museum designer of today. His portfolio of radically different museums includes the Centre Pompidou, Paris; the Broad Contemporary Art Museum, Los Angeles; The Menil Collection, Houston; and the Parco dello Musico, Rome. Piano’s new extension in Chicago turns The Art Institute into the second largest museum in the United States. The great journalist AJ Liebling said that Chicago is a great city, not just a large place.

Here is its monument.

The Modern Wing houses The Art Institute’s collection of art, photography, architecture and design. A vast sunshade comprises photo-sensitive, computermodelled blades which continuously monitor and adapt to ambient light.

The aim is both to achieve optimum conditions for viewing art, while

maintaining strict conservation criteria responsible energy usage. Despite these sometimes conflicting demands, the Modern Wing satisfies the stringent Chicago Energy Code.

Piano’s ingenuity as a designer is not at a cost to his essential modesty, revealed by the name of his practice: The Renzo Piano Building Workshop.

He says: “It is not enough for the light to be perfect. You also need calm, serenity and even a voluptuous quality. ” All these characteristics are present in this building. Chicago was the birthplace of the skyscraper, but Piano’s Art Institute is essentially lowlevel: the various elements are tied together, and bonded to the immediate surroundings, by an elegant, swooping pedestrian bridge. In some ways this is a conservative design, but appropriately so for such a stately and magnificent institution. Bravura tricks would be out of place here.

The Windy City’s most famous architect was Frank Lloyd Wright.

He said: “Eventually, I think Chicago will be the most beautiful great city left in the world.” You can see for yourself at 111 South Michigan Avenue.

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CITY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES

Valencia, Spain

Santiago Calatrava, 1998 The Valencia architect-engineer Santiago Calatrava is the Ferran Adrià of building design. Just as Catalan chef Adrià represents a new Spain of inventiveness in food, so Calatrava has extended the possibilities of architecture. Adrià takes the chemical composition of food and the comprehension of the customer to its limits. Calatrava does the same with structures, meanwhile creating bridges and buildings which test definitions of what’s sculpture and what’s architecture.

Calatrava’s PhD thesis of 1980 was titled The Foldability Of Space Frames. Ever since,

a highly inventive approach to space and structure has characterised his designs.

Gaining recognition at the Seville Expo of 1992, his Puente del Alamillo is a single pylon cable-stayed cantilever bridge.

It is a dramatic shape by day and night.

The City of Arts and Sciences is a symbol of Valencia’s revival as a major European city. It comprises six elements: L’Hemisteric (a planetarium and cinema); Museum de le Sciences (an interactive museum); L’Umbracle (a pedestrian connector); Palau des Arts Reina Sofia (performing arts); El Puente de l’Assut

d’Or (a bridge); and L’Agora (a sports plaza). Each is essentially populist rather than academic and each component has been designed by Calatrava (and his partner, Félix Candela) as a bravura exercise in expressionist shape-making.

Essentially complete by 2005, this vast, expensive project has had many critics. Opposition politicians called it a “work of the Pharaohs”. The general public’s response is open to interpretation, and critics cannot decide whether Calatrava is a charlatan or a genius.

Of course, he is a little bit of each.

photography: peter gunzel/gallerystock.com, Getty Images, shutterstock, rex features

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Santiago Calatrava’s City of Arts and Sciences is an awe-inspiring entertainment and educational complex. Mostly made of laminate glass and surrounded by water, its six structures include a planetarium that resembles an eye, a dome-like IMAX cinema (left) and the grandiose Príncipe Felipe Science Museum (above)

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MAXXI

Rome, Italy Zaha Hadid, 2010

LOUVRE

Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates Jean Nouvel, 2013 Paris’s Louvre was the first great national museum, a self-conscious statement of France’s magnificent purpose, unequalled prestige and lofty refinement. Most would agree that the Louvre is the greatest museum in the world. So when, as a result of a diplomatic and commercial agreement between France and Abu Dhabi, it was announced that the Louvre Abu Dhabi would open in 2013, there were many critics who damned it as cheapening. This was an exercise in cynical brand extension as fatuous as couturier Pierre Cardin’s decision to put his signature on frying pans.

Jean Nouvel, together with British architectural engineers Buro Happold, is building Louvre Abu Dhabi on Saadiyat Island.

In 2014, it will be joined by that other pioneer of museological brand extension, yet another branch of The Guggenheim (to be designed by Frank Gehry). To complete the list of usual suspects, Norman Foster’s Sheikh Zayed Museum will later compete for attention on the island with a Gary Player golf course.

Nouvel proposes a “floating dome structure” since domes are a traditional feature of Middle Eastern architecture and, additionally, a reliable way of adding prestige to projects where prestige is lacking. (London’s Millennium Dome is, in fact, more like a tent.) But there will be more prestige still in this little bit of the Gulf that will be forever hereinafter France. The Louvre Abu Dhabi will cycle loans from not only the Louvre, but also from Versailles, the Centre Pompidou and the Musée d’Orsay.

There has been a petition in France against the “sale of the Louvre”, but the Museum’s director says it would be irresponsible to ignore the “internationalisation” of museums. In a global market, a travelling Louvre museum becomes an ad for France.

Below: a computer generated image of the dome-shaped Louvre Abu Dhabi in the UAE. It will be located in the city’s Saadiyat Island’s Cultural District (top), near the Norman Fosterdesigned Sheikh Zayed National Museum

For many years, Baghdad-born Londoner Zaha Hadid enjoyed, if that is the correct term, the reputation for being the most outstanding international architect who had never actually built anything.

Her demanding, contrarian, illogical, energetic and sometimes baffling designs delighted critics, but alarmed competition committees and alienated clients. Now, Hadid is one of the busiest architects in the world, designing eye-catching trophy institutions which are often as difficult to build as they are easy to enjoy.

Rome’s MAXXI – the Museo Nazionale delle Art del XXI Secolo – is typical.

It is both magnificent and absurd.

Hadid was one of a group of architects including Coop Himmelb(l)au and Frank Gehry, who came to prominence with MoMA’s deconstructivist exhibition of 1988. “The dream of pure form has been disturbed,” the authors of the catalogue noted. Indeed, it had.

Deconstructivism dismantled and reassembled the component parts of a building in a style that was as astonishing as it was impractical.

MAXXI is doubly absurd in that when it first opened its doors in 2010, it was a museum for work that did not yet exist – the art was not installed until some six months after its official opening.

Yet Hadid is not deterred by rational criticism. Rome’s first modern art museum was, essentially, empty, but its architect said it is “an immersive urban environment for the exchange of ideas”. The dynamic architecture literally reflects this dialogue: indoors and outdoors are not distinct; mobile panels redefine interior spaces; a glass roof disrupts conventional expectations.

MAXXI’s finances have come under scrutiny from the Italian government, but that may be more to do with its outof-town location than its credibility as a cultural space. MAXXI is a museum repurposed as a research lab of design, art, architecture and advertising. Since the 1970s, some new museum architecture has been more assertive than the content it houses. This is doubly the case with MAXXI. As Hadid says, the 21st-century museum is “no longer just a museum”.

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photography: ateliers jean nouvel (2), Iwan Baan (3)

No place like Rome: the serpentine halls of Zaha Hadid’s concrete Maxxi museum offer structural surprises around each corner, which is just as well, because for six months after its official opening, the architect decreed that no art should hang on its walls. “It’s not an object-container, but rather a campus for art,” said Hadid

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Washington DC, USA

hellmuth, obata and kassabaum, 1976 Step off washington’s National Mall and you come face-to face with a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress.

Only a very dull person could fail to be astonished by the confrontation. The Air and Space Museum is the largest of its kind in the world. A part of The Smithsonian Institution, guardian of America’s heritage, it is a fittingly vast memorial to the USA’s greatest achievement: technological subjugation of air and space.

Air and Space is one of the most visited museums in the world. No glorified hangar, the prestige of its contents is emphasised by its neighbour, The Hirshhorn Sculpture garden.

Somehow, when you see the 1903 wright Flyer, a Supermarine Spitfire, a Macchi C.202 ‘Folgore’ and a Messerschmitt Mb109 dangling in the vastness, silhouetted against the sky, mere sculpture seems somewhat wanting both in visual drama and formal inventiveness.

Hellmuth, Obata and Kassabaum, now HOK, is one of the great corporate US architectural practices. For this museum, the brief was to create a “gigantic mechanism for efficiently directing throngs of people”. Air and Space is, in all essentials, a capacious shed finished with very high-quality materials. Despite the size and scale of the densely packed exhibits, there is no sense of overcrowding, but there is a sense of intimacy. A Martin Marauder bomber may have been designed as a lethal weapon, but technology is in itself morally neutral. Here you can suspend morality and enjoy the astonishing machines for what they are: extraordinary technical achievements and objects of beauty.

The National Air and Space Museum in Washington is the most popular museum on The Red Bulletin’s list, with almost 9m visitors per year.

Smaller exhibitions are housed in the series of marble-clad cubes (above left), while the adjoining hangar-like atria are where huge exhibits such as old warplanes (above) and missiles (left) can be found

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PHOTOgRAPHY: NASM, SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTE

nATiOnAl AiR And SPACE MUSEUM

KnUT hAMSUn CEnTER

Hamarøy, Norway

photography: CorBiS (2), Steven holl arChiteCtS

Steven holl, 2009 Ernest Hemingway said Knut Hamsun “taught me how to write”.

The Norwegian’s stream-of-consciousness writing and dark musings (reminiscent of Dostoyevsky and Kafka) influenced James Joyce as well.

A portrait of Hamsun taken in 1890 when Hunger, his first novel, was published, shows a demented-looking young man wearing a monocle.

Hamsun came from a poor family in Nordland, a land of aspen, birch, fjords and worrying solitude. Hamsun thought himself the soul of Norway, and so in his memory in Hamarøy, a town with a population of less than 2,000 on the road to the Lofoten islands, the Knut Hamsun Center was established.

The designer was Steven Holl, an American architect who has fallen under the sway of French philosopher, and buddy of Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty.

Holl’s theory is that buildings are like bodies and are a “battleground of invisible forces”. The Knut Hamsun Museum is a challenging geometric structure of stained black wood, in noteworthy contrast to its natural surroundings. grass grows on the roof. Inside, an escalator penetrates the spaces and works like a body’s spine. The intention is to create strange, diverting spatial experiences for the visitor – and it works.

Dedicated to Norwegian writer Knut Hamsun, this Stephen Holldesigned museum features a tarred black exterior, much like that of wooden mediaeval Norse churches.

The interiors allow light to ricochet in different ways throughout the year, providing an inspiring setting for exhibitions

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to the summit

In the wilds of Utah, the mountain bike event so dangerously demanding that it’s saved for the end of the season. There’s a start line and a finish line: between is where riders seek out limits – their own and the mountain’s Words: Werner Jessner Photography: Mattias Fredriksson

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Andreu Lacondeguy on his way to the start gate. His route down is to his right

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f this were the Alps, there’d be a safety rope. The mountain ridge is less than a metre wide. On one side, the abyss drops maybe 70m, twice that on the other side. “The crash that ends your career is always within the scope of the possible,” says Gee Atherton, the 2012 downhill mountain bike world championship runner-up. He’s resting up right now, having injured his ankles in a full-tilt smash during a practice run for the Red Bull Rampage event.

Hanging around at the finish line, resting on his crutches, or, better still, sitting down, a packet of ibuprofen poking out of the pocket of his shorts.

The summit of this mountain bike race looms out of the Utah desert. Spectators scramble for spots; they crouch on their heels, skidding down two, three critical metres. They’re a friendly bunch up here, offering a helping hand whenever it is required. The view is breathtaking.

Geography teachers should bring their field trips to Virgin, Utah. Without saying a word, kids would understand tectonics, erosion and rock composition.

This is the contest that everyone wants to win.

It defines mountain biking’s limits 42

Where do we come from?

Where are we going? Life’s big questions posed by the elemental geography of Utah. On a factfinding mission here: Kyle Strait

Above: Kurt Sorge is faultless and nimble on the way to winning the event.

Left: Martin Söderström, the man with the steepest learning curve. His jeans deny him FMB World Tour overall victory

In the character of this magnificent reddish-brown mountain lies the secret of Red Bull Rampage, the impossibility of recreating it elsewhere. It is delicate, fragile sandstone, or rather stony sand, which easily crumbles into anything from big clumps to the finest dust.

When combined with water, the sand hardens to become stable, but not set like cement. Such terrain only survives in frost-free areas with little rain.

It’s a glimpse back at the crumbling monuments of a primeval world.

One guy not singing the praises of the Utah desert’s geological features is Brandon Semenuk, winner of the 2008 Red Bull Rampage, who has travelled to the final competition in Virgin as the leader of the Freeride Mountain Bike World Tour. “The ground is hard to read and that doesn’t make you particularly confident,” he says. This could be taken as understatement from a dominant racer who has won the 2012 season’s largest and most important freeride events, but the Canadian muscleman with the designer grunge haircut is being totally honest. “Red Bull Rampage is in a league of its own. This is the contest 43

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that everyone wants to win. It defines the limits of mountain biking every time.”

Semenuk, 21, watched his first Red Bull Rampage at the age of 11, when the event was held on the other side of the village of Virgin; Thomas Vanderham, 31, from Canada, has raced in every Rampage to date. “This year is my seventh time here,” says the charismatic rider from British Columbia. Vanderham has been dubbed the Roger Moore of freeriding, because of his oh-so-cool way of brushing the dust from his jacket after the wildest rides. He think this impression is wrong, “I’ve actually been badly injured,” he says.

“I don’t sleep very well before Red Bull Rampage, even though I know what I have to do. I vividly recall the night before my first attempt: none of us had any idea. I didn’t get a wink of sleep. It was probably not the best way to prepare.”

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he way to prepare, says Vanderham, is to focus on the strengths of, and avoid any weaknesses in, the composition of the course. The only fixed points are the start gate and the finish line, everything else in between is open, the possibilities for creativity are endless. As a rider, during the Monday to Thursday before qualifying on Friday, and on Saturday’s rest day before race day on Sunday, you can dig and irrigate as much as you want, you can build with wood and stone, and you can grab as many helping hands as you can find.

It’s your mountain, your line, your will, your skill. Your madness, your demons.

Your fear, your body, your limits. Your run at Red Bull Rampage, it’s you.

Vanderham doesn’t compete regularly.

These days, he’s more into making mountain biking videos and travel.

“The only exception is Red Bull Rampage,” he says. “I’m real good at the wide, fast jumps. I love big-mountain races, extreme terrain.” Ever tried a backflip? “Once or twice, but it feels weird hanging upside down under the bike. I’m more into the long jumps.” As a logical consequence

First, a battered ankle, then some painkillers, followed by a wild crash and more painkillers: the indestructible Gee Atherton ends up a spectator. He’ll be back in 2013

Thomas Vanderham is known as the Roger Moore of freeriding, because of his debonair post-finish removal of dust from his racewear 44

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It’s a long walk to the summit, a long way home when you fall.

Darren Berrecloth (left and far left) needed solace after his courage and imagination were no match for physics

There were many crashes in qualifying on Friday. Kenny Smith stayed down for a worryingly long time

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of his preferences, Vanderham and his back-up troops build a landing on the opposite slope, which is higher by at least 5m than that of the t-crossing, i-dotting Martin Söderström, who uses the same jump at this spot.

The lanky Swede is making his debut at Red Bull Rampage, and the fact that he travels to Utah as the runner-up of the FMB World Tour doesn’t make it easier for him. It’s a case of all or nothing, especially since Brandon Semenuk, the Tour leader, is considered much more of a big-mountain specialist than Söderström with his dirt jump background. In the lead-up to the event, he suspected that Red Bull Rampage would be bigger than anything he had ever done before. The sheer size of the jumps, absurd gradient and exposure of the terrain have put Europe’s best freerider under more pressure than he could have imagined. His strategy: survive the wild upper part and excel at the bottom with its largely artificial obstacles. He hides his trepidation behind his wide smile, but those who watch carefully notice that Söderström is out practising a good part of his course while everyone else is either tinkering around with their bikes or licking their wounds.

In the midst of all the bike talk and dismissal of bruises is a chattering freerider who couldn’t care less. “It’s an important contest, but it’s just a contest.”

Do you fear it? “No, man.” Excited, nervous? “Why, man?” Who will win?

“Lots of the guys could, man.” Including you? “Totes, man!” Andreu Lacondeguy, undoubtedly one of the hot favourites this year, is letting off steam. As a rookie

On the way to victory, his jeans catch on the saddle while he executes his very last 360° jump 46

two years ago, he finished fourth after a gust of wind blindsided him and his bike on a backflip. The Catalonian is always accompanied by his brother, Lluis, a happy-go-lucky kid and a demon on the BMX. (To distinguish between them: Andreu’s knuckles are tattooed with LOVE DIRT, Lluis’s read RIDE BMX.) “I think Red Bull Rampage is less dangerous than other events,” says Andreu, “because you build your own takeoffs and landings and you don’t have to rely on the stuff brainless track builders usually come up with.”

There’s a sense in the paddock that this year’s judges will be looking more for creativity and big-mountain skills.

The days when dumb jackasses could gamble with a single killer trick are over. “In 2001,” Thomas Vanderham says, “you needed a lot more balls than skills. Today it’s more balanced.”

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ee Atherton is on the other side of the balls-versus-skills debate. Despite his ankle injuries, he drags himself onto his bike at eight in the morning on the day of the race, when the light is still clear and the spectators are few. The 20m drop he’s aiming to do is the biggest of his career. He hits an overhang with the right side of his body and head a good 10m above the ground;

Incredible endurance: Thomas Vanderham (above) has finished in the top 10 of every Red Bull Rampage

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he blacks out momentarily, his helmet is covered in blood. It’s not a career-ending injury, but a season-ending one. It is no coincidence that Red Bull Rampage is the last stop before the winter break.

Brandon Semenuk’s line from the mountain is bold. Only he would contemplate riding it, let alone actually go through with it. However, a couple of careless mistakes send him crashing out in both his runs. Suddenly, the FMB World Tour is wide open.

Thomas Vanderham slams out two more Roger Moore runs. With these he would very likely have won all Red Bull Rampages to date. In 2012, they enable him to post an impressive seven top-10 finishes. Van the Man is happy, and now looking forward to the ski season.

Dark horse Andreu Lacondeguy makes two relatively unspectacular screw-ups.

His chattering now has an angry undertone. He finishes fourth again.

Martin Söderström rides the steepest learning curve of the weekend. In his final runs, it is hard to imagine that this is his first time here. Although he rode a bike usually used by recreational and junior downhill riders, he makes the difficult upper section of the mountain look like a walk in the park. Below, he shines as expected – until the last jump.

On the way to overall victory of the FMB World Tour, his jeans catch on the saddle while he executes his very last 360° jump, leaving his Björn Borg underwear exposed to the crowd. Söderström is pissed off, “but being the second-best freerider in the world is not so bad”. The incident with the jeans means Brandon Semenuk is crowned winner of the FMB Tour.

Other finishers: Will White of the USA, on a bike that would have been considered scrap metal 10 years ago.

Geoff ‘Gully’ Gulevich, who makes jumps where other riders just feel their way.

Gulevich’s fellow Canadian, Kurt Sorge, who knocks out two insane runs, charms the judges and wins the event. Best news for all concerned: confirmation of the 2013 event, again in Virgin, Utah. www.redbullrampage.com

Kurt Sorge, winner, Red Bull Rampage 2012

Watch highlights of Red Bull Rampage on The Red Bulletin tablet app.

Download it now for free

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sailing at the

EDGE of control

High-speed catamarans, and races so close to shore you can hear the screaming onboard.

Welcome to the new-look America’s Cup, where success is measured not just by how far you push your boat, but whether you come out of it in one piece

Photography: Guilain Grenier/oracle team usa

Words: Andreas Tzortzis

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Pitch-poled

After capsizing catastrophically during a training run on the San Francisco Bay, the tide dragged Oracle Racing’s AC72 past the Golden Gate Bridge and 7km out to sea. Oracle’s support vessels retrieved the boat, but the wing sail collapsed and broke into several pieces. It will take until the end of the year to repair

photography: guilain grenier/oracle team usa

he San Francisco Bay was typically frosty on a blustery weekday in October. The wind had whipped the choppy water into whitecaps across which criss-crossed a yacht resembling a fighter jet, helmed by the America’s Cup champion and wunderkind skipper, Jimmy Spithill.

Measuring 72ft long, with a carbonfibre-structured ‘wing sail’ 131ft high, the boat has a racing car’s unbridled speed and crash potential. In the gilded, history of the America’s Cup series, in which it will be raced next summer, there has never been anything like it.

“The overall performance of these boats compared to five years ago is staggering,” says Dirk Kramer, a lead designer with Oracle Racing. “Five years ago you had keel boats going upwind in 9 knots [16kph]. You’re now going upwind in 20 knots (37kph). It’s like running the 100m sprint in the Olympics in 10 seconds and four years later running it in five. It doesn’t happen very often in sport.”

Welcome to the new-look America’s Cup, an attempt by those in charge of sport’s oldest trophy series to become both television and crowd friendly, to bust out of the rarefied gin-soaked halls of yacht clubbery and appeal to a broader base. And it starts with the AC72.

“It’s a little bit like going to the moon,” says Spithill. “You don’t really know what you’re going to get on the way.”

Exhibit A: that fateful day in October, when a gust of wind hit the powerful wing sail hard on a turn and the front tips of the hulls dug into the water, beginning a slow capsize that sailors call ‘pitchpoling’. The helmets and armoured Kevlar vests the 11 crew members were wearing

“ The overall performance of these boats is staggering.

Imagine running the 100m sprint in 10 seconds, then four years later running it in five. This doesn’t happen very often in sport”

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kept them from serious harm. The damage to the boat was significant, however, with the wing sail collapsing in several pieces as the tide pushed the boat out under the golden gate Bridge.

“We don’t want to do it again, but this is on the cards,” says Spithill. “It’s kind of like going to a motor race and saying there’s not going to be a car crash.

Because there’s a chance of a crash.

That’s why these boats are so extreme.”

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ince 1851, the America’s Cup has been the ultimate test for the world’s best sailors, requiring a combination of skill, design ingenuity and deep pockets.

That year, when the new York Yacht Club’s America vessel challenged the pinnacle of yachting prowess, the British Royal Yacht Squadron, it was the first boat to sport a narrow bow, or front, and a wide stern in the back. It also had a galley capable of producing banquets and six showers.

The century-plus since has brought a constant drive for innovation in the design of the yachts. Australia II, the

first yacht to wrest away the America’s Cup from the uS after 132 years in 1983, used lightweight carbon fibre, and a winged keel that improved manoeuvrability to great success.

In 2010, Oracle CEO larry Ellison invested millions in developing one of the most radical boats in America’s Cup history. The three-hulled USA 17 featured engine-powered sail trimmers, was wired to collect data as it sailed, and featured a preposterous 20-storey sail made, not of cloth, but of a construction of carbon-fibre ribbing and a clingfilmlike ‘sail’ used on ultra-light aeroplane gliders covering it. The wing sail was 80 per cent larger than a Boeing 747’s wing and, helmed by the young Spithill, it blew its competitor, the Swiss boat Alinghi, away. “This stuff is scary. There’s plenty of things to keep me up at night, believe me,” says Scott Ferguson, a wing sail specialist who helped develop the USA 17 boat. “Sometimes it’s the stupidest, smallest thing that can go wrong. I go on the boats for the first sails, and we’re wearing helmets and I think, ‘Make sure you have your life insurance policy set up.’”

In 2011, Ferguson and other designers from the top America’s Cup teams got together in new Zealand and came up with a design for a new boat: a 45ft

1988: Team New Zealand suffered a resounding defeat at the hands of the 72ft smaller Stars & Stripes, of the San Diego Yacht Club

through the years

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1851 AMErIcA

1903 rElIAncE

1937 EnDEAVoUr II

CLUB New York Yacht Club (USA) LENGTH 98ft BEAM 22.3ft DRAFT 11ft WEIGHT 152.27 tonnes SAIL AREA 4,962ft2

CLUB New York Yacht Club (USA) LENGTH 139.5ft BEAM 25ft DRAFT 20ft WEIGHT 125 tonnes SAIL AREA 15,231ft2

CLUB Royal Yacht Squadron (UK) LENGTH 132ft BEAM 21ft DRAFT 14.5ft WEIGHT 145.53 tonnes SAIL AREA 7,104ft2

The boat that began it all. The first winner of the America’s Cup and the first racing yacht in history to cross the Atlantic Ocean.

The biggest ship ever built for the America’s Cup. The steel mast reached 197ft. The mainsail alone weighed well over a tonne.

Of the beautiful and stately J-class of sailboats, the ship ran into heavy storms while crossing the Atlantic to compete.

IlluSTRATIOn: AlBERT EXERgIAn

Winning the cup requires a combination of design ingenuity and deep pockets

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1937: The US boat Ranger (left) beat Endeavour II

David sailed Goliath into the ground – and ended up in court

phOTOgRAphY: gETTY IMAgES (3), KEYSTOnE-FRAnCE (2)

Dennis Conner celebrates The victorious Ranger was taken apart after with Ronald Reagan in 1987 the 1937 season and used for war materials

Almost Always America’s For 132 years, the US won every America's Cup regatta, countering Great Britain’s assumed superiority with technical innovation and professional preparation. That reign came to an end in 1983, when the Australians captured the Cup. Handover was difficult, as the Americans had

screwed the trophy into their cabinet many years before.

In 1988, another historical milestone: the huge Team New Zealand boat was beaten by the catamaran Stars & Stripes – 72ft smaller.

The legal battle over the disparate design strategies led to a one-design class of yachts.

The trophy of silver and tin is 68cm tall and is known as The Auld Mug

1958 ScEPtrE

1988 StArS & StrIPES

1992 AMErIcA3

2012 Ac72

CLUB Royal Yacht Squadron (UK) LENGTH 67ft BEAM 11.4ft DRAFT 8.8ft WEIGHT 26.78 tonnes SAIL AREA 1,722ft2

CLUB San Diego Yacht Club (USA) LENGTH 60ft BEAM 30ft DRAFT 9.7ft WEIGHT 3 tonnes SAIL AREA 1,792ft2

CLUB San Diego Yacht Club (USA) LENGTH 73ft BEAM 17.5ft DRAFT 12.6ft WEIGHT 14.49 tonnes SAIL AREA 2,829ft2

ONE DESIGN LENGTH 72ft BEAM 46ft DRAFT 14.5ft WEIGHT 12.9 tonnes SAIL AREA 6,242ft2

Dwindling resources following World War II led to a one-design class. The boats became significantly smaller in size.

The first catamaran to compete in the America’s Cup. New Zealand protested, but lost that and the race.

The International America’s CupClass (IACC) marked a quantum leap in design. Modern materials, more sail area, more speed.

An effort to broaden sailing’s appeal, the AC72s are fast and sailed with only 10 crew boasting Olympic levels of fitness.

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Gennaker and jib The sail loft at Oracle Racing HQ has subterranean sewing machines to trim and repair the carbon-fibre sails.

1

Wing The same fabric as used on ultra-light planes is stretched over a carbon-fibre frame.

The sail area is about the size of a two-storey house.

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catamaran of carbon-fibre hulls, smaller versions of USA 17 wing sails and room for five crew. Small enough to be packed into a shipping container, the 45s would serve two purposes: as display models for the new form of racing, and as a starter kit for teams planning the 72ft boat. guiding their efforts is a 45-page document that sets ground rules on materials and dimensions; a designer’s bible, if you will. The margin of victory can be decided in the wiggle room designers find within that America’s Cup-issued document. The number of elements on the wing sail, for example, or the shape of the daggerboard that slides in and out of each hull, and the layout of the trampoline across the crew moves when switching from side-to-side – all these elements can make the difference between a first- and last-place finish.

“These boats – you still have design and engineering pushing the envelope – but on the sailing point of view, these are Formula One,” says Spithill. “The harder you push them, the faster they go. But, you cross the line and there’s some big consequences.”

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the Ac72 The first America’s Cup boat of one design to feature a wing sail, the AC72 can reach 50kph.

Competitors for sport’s oldest trophy can expect to spend up to US$100 million building the boat

1 AC72

Size matters Oracle Racing’s last America’s Cup entry (in 2010) featured a wing sail that was 80 per cent larger than the 747 wing. But the AC72 is only slightly larger

4

www.americascup.com Check out the free Red Bulletin tablet app: there’s special footage of the AC72 getting airborne and an in-depth look at the secret Oracle boat workshop

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Boeing 747 Wing

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“It used to be like watching paint dry” Why the America’s cup had to reinvent itself

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rguably the most successful competitive sailor in the history of the sport, Oracle Racing’s russell coutts is working on a new legacy: bringing the world’s oldest trophy into the 21st century. The newlook America’s Cup features lightningfast boats of one design racing on quick courses in the San Francisco Bay, one of the most windy and intimate arenas for the sport in the world.

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phOTOgRAphY: CAMEROn BAIRD/RED Bull COnTEnT pOOl (4), guIlAIn gREnIER (2).

IlluSTRATIOn: AlBERT EXERgIAn

Daggerboard If the boat hits speeds upwards of 50kph, the daggerboard will help the boat hydrofoil, a potential game-changer. Its design is one of the biggest secrets among teams.

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Hull Made of carbon fibre and an aluminium honeycomb layer of the kind used in F1 cars.

What can people expect from the all-new America’s cup?

First of all they should forget what they’ve seen in the past. The races are much shorter. The America’s Cup final [in September 2013] is going to be two races on the one day with a short race in between. The races used to be miles out to sea, and used to take forever to complete. They were in slow boats. It was technical and to be inside the boats it was great, but it used to be like watching paint dry.

Why was it so important to change?

Most, if not all, sport these days, particularly in this economy, is challenged to lower costs and improve the competitive platform by increasing the TV ratings, and increasing and broadening the audience.

We just can’t have a sport that’s only there for the people who play that particular sport. It’s not going to be commercially sustainable. We needed to broaden our audience and make it more exciting and understandable.

Who do you want to reach?

My kids didn’t used to watch it. We were watching one of the

races recently and my 11-year-old son said, “I don’t know why I didn’t think this was interesting before. This is great.” Those were his exact words. If you don’t want a sport to die, you’ve got to engage with young people. have you walked into a yacht club lately? They’re boring. We need to ramp that up. We need to get young people involved. It’s a place that’s full of 50- and 60-yearolds. I’m one of them. I’m criticising my generation for not recognising that and addressing it. We’ve got to adapt, we can’t be stuck in the past. how are the one-design boats helping you move in that direction?

I brought some people in [to the warehouse] the other day, and they’re looking at it and thinking, “This is more like an aircraft.” And it is when you look at the aerodynamics. You don’t even think about that, you think it’s a boat with a white triangle on a blue background with a bunch of guys sitting around and having a beer. You know that’s the image that people have got. And you look at this thing and it’s just, “That’s a race boat, that’s a machine.” When you launch that, it’s almost a step into the unknown.

The format for racing is split between match racing – or one-on-one racing – and fleet racing. Which do you prefer?

I think the fleet racing is way better than the match racing. The America’s Cup started as a fleet race, and I think the America’s Cup would be better as a fleet race. That would be hugely controversial now. you’re taking amateurs on the boats with you as guests. Why? Because we can. One of the guys said to me, “I thought I was going to come onboard, get handed a glass of champagne and sit in a comfy chair.” And you’re on there, and it’s edgy and quite violent. [Olympic sprinter] Michael Johnson fell off. he thought he could stand up walking across the boat. he obviously couldn’t. That’s a real experience – it’s unique for this sport.

russell coutts

The New Zealander has won the America’s Cup four times

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One giant leap

With 10 seconds of untravelled airspace between him and a meeting with mermaids and a giant snake, a Belgian adventurer journeyed into the Peruvian Andes to leap from a secret waterfall and make history – or be it Words: Armando Aguilar

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photography: Marcelo maragni/red bull content pool

Cedric Dumont BASE-jumps off the Gocta waterfall with photographer Jhonathan Florez behind him

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he girl walking down the side of the road is probably no older than five or six, but she is brave. She could reach out and touch the cars and lorries passing by, the vehicles whipping up gusts of wind that force her to close her eyes. The road is a rural track in the Amazonas department in the north of Peru, and in one of those cars is Cedric Dumont. He is heading for Gocta, which, depending on who’s doing the measuring, is either the third-, fourth- or fifth-tallest waterfall on the planet. What isn’t contested, though, is that Gocta is one of the best-kept secrets of the Andean foothills. For centuries, inhabitants of the nearby villages of San Pablo and Cocachimba had such respect for Gocta that the outside world only found out about it in 2006.

If you want to see the Gocta waterfall for yourself, first you have to fly from Lima, the Peruvian capital, to Tarapoto. Then comes a nine-hour journey, mainly by car on unpaved roads with many bends and passes and obstacles, like the road on which the little girl was walking. In the Peruvian mountains, pedestrians call the shots. They stride purposefully along the sides of the roads, where often only a thin strip of grass separates 57

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the two lanes. If there is no pavement, those who would use it simply have to place their trust in God and walk in the road, which is one of the most breathtaking routes in South America, taking in the luscious rainforest, glorious orchid forests and the heavenly Lake Pomacochas.

The drivers here know what to expect. They move deftly, to avoid the families, the groups of dawdling children. At one point, an old woman is walking and does not want to be overtaken. There is a constant stream of traffic in the other direction. The driver behind her blows the horn cautiously and says, to whoever will listen, “Can I get past?” The old woman doesn’t flinch. The driver blows his horn again.

“Please!” Without giving the person harassing her so much as a glimpse, the old lady takes a step towards the side of the road.

After nine hours in the car, the village of Cocachimba appears in the dying evening light.

The sky is overcast, so Cedric Dumont can’t see exactly where he’ll be going next morning. Out there in the darkness is the Catarata del Gocta, all 771m of it (that’s the measurement, given in 2006, that makes it the third-tallest waterfall, after Angel Falls in Venezuela and Tugeal Falls in South Africa). The Belgian BASE-jumper intends to reach Gocta, and then jump off it.

“When I found out how tall and inaccessible this waterfall was, I understood straightaway

that it was the perfect place for a big project,” he says. “It is without doubt one of the greatest challenges of my career.”

Dumont has already completed more than 2000 BASE-jumps, and wants to be the first to BASE-jump from Gocta. If he succeeds, it will be the first BASE-jump of any kind in Peru.

S Heavy going: the approach through the rainforest

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hortly before six in the morning, before sunrise, a 4x4 takes Dumont from Cocachimba, on a dirt road that laboriously snakes its way up the mountain, to the remote village of San Pablo, the last stop on the journey to Gocta. Here, the village houses cluster around a main square with a fountain in the middle. Concrete paths lead from the fountain to the square’s corners and edges. They give the impression of rays of sunlight, yet the sunflowers in the square

For locals, Gocta is home to a mythical creature, which is why they kept it hidden from the world.

Therefore Dumont (above right) and Florez approached the BASE-jump with humility

photography: renzo giraldo/red bull content pool, marcelo maragni/red bull content pool

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are still asleep, heads down, in their beds.

Heavy luggage is loaded onto mules before the final ascent begins. Dumont is accompanied by his friend and fellow BASE-jumper, Jhonathan Florez. The Colombian has regularly leapt after Dumont with a camera, and plans to become the second man to BASE-jump from Gocta, just a few seconds after the first.

Walking alongside the mules, Dumont has a nervous, boyish light-footedness. He is not the type to storm up a mountainside full of tense anticipation, fearing nothing. He has a tattoo on his right calf: a skull, with one eye crossed out, the other scratched out, next to a red heart. “It keeps death at bay,” he says.

Dumont has leapt off the 431m-tall Jin Mao Tower in Shanghai and 327m-tall Vilnius TV Tower in Lithuania, but the Gocta jump is something else. “It ranks among the five most technically demanding jumps I’ve ever done. It is a really special challenge.

You don’t know the surroundings and you don’t know what to expect. There’s an element of the unknown in the air and the unknown always somehow creates an element of fear.”

One thing Dumont and Florez know for sure is that they have to jump while the waterfall is in the shade. “The higher the sun goes, the warmer the water gets,” says Florez. “The rising air creates turbulence which could unbalance the parachute and make it collapse in on itself.

The hardest thing will be descending in the gully. The waterfall creates strong winds and the rock face is very close.”

“There’s no escape route,” adds Dumont.

“No margin of error. The jump has to be perfect. There’s a good chance of injury, or even losing your life.”

The weather on the final ascent is pleasant.

For the first 2km, the paths aren’t particularly steep. They wind past mud brick houses that look like they have grown out of the ground, like the sugar cane, potatoes, cassava, coffee and bananas in the fields nearby. Agriculture is still the mainstay of the economy in this region, but the locals have recently begun to see Gocta as another source of income: an impressive quirk of nature hidden from the outside world for a long time, but which can now be celebrated, and monetised.

German engineer Stefan Ziemendorff came to Cocachimba in 2002. He was working on a project to lay fresh water pipes in the most remote areas of the Amazonas department.

Ziemendorff came across the Gocta waterfall and immediately grasped how significant his find could be. Ziemendorff only made an official announcement regarding Gocta’s existence four years later, in March 2006. The delay was mainly due to the reticence of the locals in revealing a place for which they had great respect. “We 59

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were afraid of the waterfall,” explains Bartolomé Trauco, one of the muleteers making the journey with Dumont and Florez. “A long time ago there was a mermaid there, a mythical creature, who sang songs we couldn’t understand. It was a music unlike any other. The mermaid would seduce people with her music and anyone who went near the waterfall would disappear.”

According to legend, the mermaid was accompanied by an enormous snake; together they stood guard over a pot of gold inside the waterfall. “We were too innocent to know how significant it was,” says Trauco. “We thank God that nature has gifted it to us so that we’ll be able to earn a living more easily in future.”

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aving walked and scrambled for almost 4km, Dumont’s party reaches an altitude of about 2,200m. The sun

Dumont: “Jumping off Gocta was the biggest adventure in my life”

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breaks through the gaps in the drifting cloud cover and illuminates the mountains. A light haze hangs over the ravine. The view is superb.

It is as if the gates to paradise have opened.

“This is why I love this sport so much,” Dumont beams, taking it all in. “You have the ideal excuse to get to know new people and places. I am a nomad. I love nature.

I love living in nature and everything that goes with that. It’s just fascinating.”

There isn’t much time to sit and marvel.

It is almost 9am, with almost 2km to go to the jump site. The plan is to be there by 11, before the sun heats Gocta’s waters, increasing the unwelcome turbulence.

From this point, the landscape changes dramatically. Cliff faces and ravines are left behind, ahead is the rainforest. The

route becomes shaded. Huge ferns sway overhead. There is a path with paving stones made out of huge pieces of rock, which makes progress over the moist ground a little easier.

There’s a history of lugging at altitude in this part of the world; look at Machu Picchu.

After more than three hours of walking from San Pablo, here is Gocta. It is 10.30am.

The waterfall has two sections: a lower section 231m tall, an upper 540m tall. Dumont will jump from the upper section, after negotiating a narrow path leading up to it, covered in interwoven branches and roots. This vegetation gives the ground underfoot a softness. One foot wrong, into a hole between branches, could easily cause a fall.

The last 15m of the journey are its most difficult. Dumont has to abseil his way

photography: enrique castro-mendivil/red bull content pool, renzo giraldo/red bull content pool, marcelo maragni/red bull content pool

Launch pad: safety gear is needed for last part of the trek

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Gocta is a very dangerous place from which to BASE-jump.

The wind and the spray from the waterfall create turbulence that could easily force jumpers against the cliffs

down from the end of the branch-strewn path to his chosen jump point. He slips on his jumpsuit and parachute, but then takes off both of them immediately. Something isn’t right. He puts the suit and parachute back on, then takes them off again twice more before finding out what the problem is. Part of his balaclava was pinching him between his T-shirt and suit.

“It might seem as if I was overdoing it with the balaclava,” Dumont explains later, “but in this job, every little detail matters. You have to concentrate on every little thing, no matter how tiny. This isn’t about winning and losing. This is about surviving.”

With all of his kit in exactly the right place, Dumont abseils down the steep slope until he reaches the jump site: a narrow promontory,

Job done! Dumont (right) and Florez after the jump

barely 50cm wide. The wind is whistling now, and Dumont shoots a glance into the abyss.

“I was curious as to what it would be like.

Being here and knowing that you’re doing something that nobody has ever done before you gives you a sense of emotion and fear.”

He pauses for a few seconds.

“What do I think about just as I’m about to jump into the void? I find myself in a state of perfect meditation. I banish negative things from my head and try to have positive thoughts.

It’s a mental game.”

Five, four, three, two… Dumont bends his knees slightly, leans forward and jumps.

“When I saw him jump, I thought to myself, ‘He’ll be smashed to pieces,’” Bartolomé Trauco, the muleteer, says afterwards. “I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s good that there are brave people who are willing to take such risks.”

Dumont quickly reaches a speed of descent of 200kph, and comes within 20m of a bulge in the rock face. That is dangerously close.

“You don’t think of the speed when you’re falling. Your brain processes everything very quickly. Every second seems a lot longer than it actually is. You experience a distortion of time.”

For the 10 seconds he is in free fall, Dumont brings his spirit in tune with nature.

“I’ve always wanted to be able to fly,” he says. “I’ve flown planes and helicopters before, but for me the best thing to fly is my body.

Being in direct contact with your environment is indescribable. It’s something profound which takes over. It’s what I live for.”

When Dumont opens his parachute, his face looks untroubled. A sense of joy rushes through his body and he calls out, in Spanish, “How cool was that!” The jump was a success. “Climbing over the mountains, trekking through the rainforest and then jumping off Gocta. That was really epic. That was the biggest adventure in my life.” www.cedricdumont.com

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New Year, New Stakes

The cream of the action sports crop on fame, fear, and glory as they take on 2013, with a little help from top Fashion photographer Terry Richardson words: andreas tzortzis & ann donahUe Photography: Terry Richardson 62

Robbie Maddison We could talk about the stunts: jumping up the Arc de Triomphe in Las Vegas on a bike – and then back down again; hurling himself over the harbour in San Diego on New Year’s Eve; flipping through the air with the greatest of ease at the X Games. Or we could talk about the injuries: several concussions; a busted hand; countless cracked ribs.

Both are a fair measure for the unequalled daredevil, and as if all that wasn’t enough, he also did the motorcycle stunts in the recent James Bond movie Skyfall.

FAME “To be recognised and respected; with this comes a unique opportunity, because through influencing and leading others you can make changes for the better.”

FEAR “It’s in us all, but it’s something that can be worked on and overcome.”

GLORY “It’s recognition and celebration of a great achievement.”

2013 “I want to bring a new vision and format to freestyle motocross. I also want to further develop an invention I have been working on and continue to change the game in the motorcycle world.”

brYce MeNZieS The cliché, of course, is that boys love playing in the dirt, but there aren’t many 25-year-olds who make a successful career out of it.

Take a truck and go racing with it off-road, and the American is the guy you want behind the wheel to push the vehicle to its limits. The TORC (The Off Road Championship) champion in 2012 and 2011, he also finished first two years’ running in the Baja 500’s gruelling Trophy Truck category.

FaMe “The privilege to have people know who you are and to be able to influence their lives.”

Fear “There is no room for fear in my life because I have to stay on the edge to stay competitive.”

GLorY “Hard work and perseverance on reaching your goals and making it to the top.”

2013 “I want to hold on to my short course No 1 plate, win the Baja 1000 and also make a name for myself in Global Rallycross.”

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“Terry was going to make anything you did look good”

Louie Vito One of the fittest athletes in snowboarding, Louie Vito’s derring-do on the halfpipe has only improved since the 2010 Olympics, when he finished off the podium. The Ohio native was halfpipe champ on the Dew Tour in 2012 and is looking for more.

He’d never shot with Richardson before, but “the whole thing was a lot more laid-back than I thought. He was going to make anything you did look good.”

FAME “To be recognised for what you do, who you are and how you carry yourself.”

FEAR “An obstacle in the way of achieving a goal or objective.

The bigger the fear, the better the feeling you get after you have overcome and achieved that goal.”

GLORY “The feeling you get when all the hard work, dedication, sacrifices, ups and downs pay off.”

2013 “I want to win everything and anything I do. I have won Dew Tour, but I want to win it again. I always wanted to win the US X Games, because I never have, and the US Open, because I never have. But, I also want to win Euro X Games, even though I’ve won it before.”

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“i’m not a big fan of it, becaUse most of my friends are JUst my friends becaUse of my ‘fame’”

aShLeY FioLek After first getting on a motorcycle when she could barely walk, the 22-year-old is now the four-time champion of the Women’s Motocross Association in the US and is as comfortable getting down and dirty on a bike as she is fending off throngs of boys with a politely worded buzz-off text message. She was the first woman to be signed to the American Honda Racing team, doubtless the first motocrosser, male or female, to get a spread in Vogue and, not that it matters, really – Fiolek makes damn sure it doesn’t matter – she’s been deaf since birth.

FaMe “I’m not a big fan of that word because usually most of my friends just are my friends because of my ‘fame’.”

Fear “Fear is something I like to challenge myself with every day. Fear is tough, but I always try to face it.”

GLorY “Accomplishment.”

2013 “I want to win all rounds at the Global X Games.”

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Julian Wilson A pro since the age of 14, the Australian big-wave surfer created the deliciously named ‘sushi roll’ (Google it), and took some time last year to take on a big wave at the treacherous Teahupo’o in Tahiti. With talent, fame and, yes, the looks, he has banshee-like screams greeting him at every stop on the ASP Tour.

FAME “I don’t feel like I’m famous.

Sure, I get recognised at all types of locations, which is cool, but a little surprising as well. I’m not sure what happens or if there’s a time when someone stipulates you are actually famous, but I don’t think I’m there yet.”

FEAR “I really like big waves! But in saying that, when the waves are enormous there is definitely fear inside me, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. I’m more afraid of things out of my control. I’m confident that if I’m in a situation where I can control the variables then I will always be fine, but it’s those damn ‘uncontrollables’ that scare me.”

Glory “I’m not chasing glory, but I am chasing success.”

2013 “I’ve had a good taste of success in 2012 and really want to carry that over to 2013.”

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“I like to feel fear. It’s challenging to control, but I believe it can empower people”

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Maya Gabeira Few people, let alone women, do what the 25-year-old Brazilian does with regularity in the ocean. The five-time winner of the Billabong XXL Big Wave Award has been chasing and riding giants since she was an 18-year-old waitress newly arrived in Hawaii.

Along the way, she’s encountered a few nasty spills and comments from the boys that rule big-wave surfing.

FAME “Only positive if one can do good with it. In sports, I guess it can be recognition, which is good, but never focus on fame. It should only be a consequence of your work, if you do work under the spotlight.”

FEAR “I like to feel it. It’s challenging to control, but I believe it can empower people. Fear is part of life and it’s what we do with it that is the most important.”

GLORY “To me, glory can be the moment after riding a big and memorable wave. When I get safely to the channel and all emotions and adrenalin are running fresh that is a moment of glory. It’s a pure and strong moment that can only be achieved through my own work and commitment.”

2013 “Looking forward to riding some bigger waves. Still dreaming about paddling Jaws [the legendary big-wave reef break in Hawaii] on the right day and in the right conditions.”

terrY richardSoN

PHOTOGRAPHY: GETTY IMAGES

Terry Richardson’s ease both behind the camera and connecting with the A-listers and freaks he’s photographed is a given. His flash-lit style on a simple background demands his subjects come out of their shell while in front of his lens.

He coaxes, he cajoles and he flirts until he gets the shot. The photos in his books Kibosh and Terryworld feature full-frontal nudity and simulated sex acts.

Though polarising – to put it mildly – his gritty and intimate style has become de rigeur in the magazine and advertising world in the last decade, with many imitators riding his coattails. Eager to shoot the world of action sports, he paired up with Red Bull athletes to give us this portfolio of the unsung heroes of the extreme world.

They were happy to oblige.

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Action

The Racemakers Before the Dakar Rally, a reconnaissance team drives the length of the course to compile the guidebook for the drivers. Ahead of the 35th Dakar – the fourth since its move from Africa to South America – The Red Bulletin called shotgun on this extraordinary exploratory expedition Words: Christophe Couvrat Photography: Heinz Stephan Tesarek

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GPS co-ordinates, inch-perfect mileage, all potential obstacles noted with military precision.

Nothing left to chance

Action

BRAZIL

W

Peru LIMA PISCO

hen you’re travelling at speeds of around 130kph and conditions are more off-road than on, the slightest bump in the road could be fatal. Yet when dangerous-looking ground rapidly fills the windscreen of a 4x4 piloted by two veteran French motorsportsmen as they map out the course for the Dakar Rally, there’s no panic.

Jipé, in the driver’s seat, whispers across something to Jacky as he makes two swift pedal manoeuvres. Jacky makes a note in the book in his lap. These two men know each other, and the terrain, better than anyone.

You might call Jean-Pierre ‘Jipé’ Fontenay and Jacky Dubois an ‘old couple’, but don’t let them hear you. Fontenay, a sprightly 55, has a sun-weathered face rich with wrinkles, but he still has that same beady eye and cast-iron grip that has seen him complete 21 Dakars, including victory in 1998.

Alongside him is Jacky Dubois, an even sprightlier 63, who has raced so many special stage kilometres, on the Dakar and elsewhere and everywhere, that he has lost count. When, as is the case now, he is creating the road book for a rally which each driver and, more particularly, his co-driver will use to navigate through the race, he uses three different coloured felttip pens, which are kept on the dashboard just in front of him, under a GPS device. In this car, a Toyota Hilux that the two men refer to as The Toy, there is a brake pedal under his right foot. Sometimes it’s one, sometimes the other who stops the car. But it is Dubois who notices the slightest changes in terrain.

Every bump, ditch, trench, rut, dip, stretch of water, patch of water... It all gets noted down, hand-written in, drawn on. >

NAZCA AREQUIPA 1

BOLIVIA

ARICA

PACIFIC OCEAN

CALAMA

2

SALTA Atacama Desert

3

SAN MIGUEL DE TUCUMÁN

COPIAPÓ FIAMBALÁ LA SERENA

LA RIOJA CÓRDOBA

SANTIAGO DE CHILE

ARGENTINA CHILE

What’s the plan?

Jean-Pierre Fontenay (left) and David Castera getting back to Dakar basics. Even in this era of GPS, in the high plains of South America, the two sometimes use a good old-fashioned paper map to work out where they are

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Fontenay has racked up 21 Dakar rallies.

Dubois, sitting next to him, has lost count of how many rallies he has been on

Any bump, ditch, trench, water... It all gets noted down, handwritten, drawn on Steep-sided road In Argentina, Dakar 2013 participants discover stunning landscapes – such as here, just a few kilometres away from the wine-growing area of Cafayate, in the north of the country

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Action

The Toy comes to a halt; it is Fontenay on the brakes this time. Dubois is the judge investigating the road. The two men come to an agreement on the DZ 30s – 30kph danger zones, a compulsory one for the book whenever the race course passes through a village – and the PPs, which are main roads. At each feature, GPS co-ordinates, distances from and to other features on the course, and the level of difficulty and any potential obstacles, are all noted down with pin-point accuracy. On paper, using the felt pens. “Even if we provide a glossary in all languages for foreign drivers,” says Dubois, “nothing’s as good as a drawing.”

This is proof of the old one about experience and there being no substitute for it. David Castera, the Dakar’s sporting director, would not have his road book made any other way.

“Obviously, we have to come up with the best road book possible,” says Castera. “We enter the GPS co-ordinates into the computer every evening. Sometimes we’re too tired, so it all stays in Jacky’s notebooks and we take care of it later, either when we’re on the plane or once we’re back in Paris [where the Dakar’s organising company is based]. Let me tell you, we definitely don’t want to lose those notebooks.”

During the rally itself, only a few top drivers will take the time to conscientiously study the road book every evening before drifting off to sleep. The others will either be up to their elbows in muck fixing cars, or out for the count. But it is unfamiliarity with the road book that causes more problems than anything else. “Take the motorcyclists,” says Castera, who came in third on two wheels on the 1997 Dakar Rally. “There are 15 who are really fast, 15 who are fast and 200 who trundle along at a regular pace because they haven’t read the book.” >

Setting off on the right foot The

reconnaissance missions aren’t all plain sailing. They might well provide a chance to wave and chat to the locals (below right and opposite page), but they can also hold some nasty surprises.

David Castera got the rear end of his Toyota stuck in a slippery, muddy stream (top right).

Fontenay and Dubois tow him out with two ropes; one wasn’t enough. All part of a day’s work

The thermometer reads close to 0°C at an altitude of 4,850m.

Back down in the valleys, it’s showing 38°C

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Castera : “We’ll

sleep anywhere and too bad if there’s no hot water coming out of the showers”

BLUE NIGHT The border crossing at Calama, in northern Chile, is the last sign of life before Argentina and the crossing of the Cordillera mountains

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Action

You get up at 7am and go to bed at midnight. In between are 600km of tracks, dunes and asphalt

6th stage, Arica-Calama

Jean-Pierre Fontenay is a jack-of-all-trades. Consummate driver, occasional mechanic and, here, camp builder in Chile, after a long day in the sand dunes. On the menu for that night’s dinner: red meat, cheese, salad and vino tinto

Castera is the right-hand man of Etienne Lavigne, the director of the Dakar. In November 2005, Lavigne’s predecessor, Stéphane Le Bail, was involved in a scooter accident; the 2006 rally was just two months away. Time was short. They had to get the road book finished, so Lavigne asked Castera to do just that. “All the work had already been done,” Castera says, modestly. He has been responsible for the making of the road book ever since. It’s a job with many potential pitfalls, like last spring, for example.

“We got stuck in the mud in the middle of the Valle de la Luna [a desert valley in western Chile] at an altitude of 3,600m. We didn’t have a satellite phone and we were almost out of food and water. We had to walk 26km to get to the nearest village, by which time our feet were covered in blood.

We stumbled across a couple of Americans who had come to make use of the world’s highest vineyards.”

Even without telling those kind of stories, Castera has the air of one of those guys who never gives up. He always has a word for everyone, is always thinking ahead. Up at 7am and in bed at midnight. In between, there is an average of 600km driven over all sorts of terrain: tracks, dunes, mountains and asphalt. That’s the rhythm the reconnaissance guys work to on their four prerace trips. A routine is essential in this work; after all, the safety of one of the world’s great races is at stake. “There are so many things to think of,” says Castera, as he makes notes in a notebook, for use at a later meeting. (Castera drives the route ahead of Fontenay and Dubois in The Toy; two support cars follow.)

Here, in Calama, an area around the city of the same name in northern Chile, the place is awash with copper mines. The region is prosperous. After the ups and downs of the Peruvian dunes, the seventh stage of the Dakar takes the competitors through the Argentinian province of Jujuy and on to Salta, which means crossing the Andes at the San Pedro de Atacama border post. It is two days to go until Castera and crew have 76

Castera : “Entering

Chile will be the crucial moment for most competitors”

Grains of sand The Arica region is named after a mystical city of legendary beauty. The dunes are not conquered easily here in the Atacama Desert: they stand dozens of metres tall

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Soaking wet, freezing cold but full up Sometimes you’ve got to know when to take the plunge. The Toyota dives straight in. Lit by The Toy’s headlights, the crew pose for the camera at an altitude of 4,950m, with temperatures close to zero (opposite page).

After a good hot meal they’re on their way again (below)

action

There’s not much oxygen up here and so the crew, and therefore their vehicles, are under some strain

Crew’s Control A seven-strong team runs the well-oiled machine that is the recon mission. Two of them, Fran and Pablo, are the Argentinian reconnaissance men for the Amaury Sport Organisation, the French team that runs Dakar. Other local contacts serve as vital staging posts for the organisation in Peru and Chile. Four times a year, the reconnaissance gang do the three-part ‘reconnaissance, work, sleep’ mission.

We asked each of the seven one question: What does the Dakar mean to you?

Above, from left Jacky Dubois (63 years old), navigator, author of the road book: “Surpassing oneself.”

Patrick Juillet (46), mechanic: “A huge human adventure made up of pitfalls, with a unique atmosphere.

In Africa, we used to repair the cars and bikes in villages we passed.”

Jean-Pierre Fontenay (55), 21 Dakars under his belt, won it in 1998: “A 30-year-old human adventure.”

Alberto Gonçalves (56), night-time head of the course command centre: “The chance to live out my passion for rallying and 4x4s.”

Alain Grosman (51), in charge of the Paris command centre: “The Dakar is a wonderful way to get to know yourself. The essence of it hasn’t changed. Thierry Sabine, the Dakar’s founder, summed it up very well back in the day. ‘It’s a race for amateurs where there’s also a place for professionals.’”

Francisco (31, kneeling) and Pablo (37, not pictured), alias Tic & Tac, are also involved with guaranteeing the safety of the 2,500 people who bivouac every night of the race: “We have been immersed in world rally since we were kids. We’re 100 per cent devoted to the Dakar. It’s unique.”

a day off. Perched, for the most part, over 4,000m above sea level, this special stage is amazingly beautiful and amazingly difficult. After 40 very quick kilometres which pose no real danger, the toughest part starts: a harsh section with precipices and villages to negotiate, and all under the watchful gaze of shepherds and their llamas.

Castera asks a local man, who seems to love chewing coca leaves, to point out where the road leads. “You can try over there,” he is told, and the recon mission sets off in God-knowswhat direction. Soon, huge electricity pylons loom into view, as does the Tuzgle volcano, which reaches a height of 5,500m, with traces of lava visible on its mountainside.

A little further along, the course passes under the highest train viaduct in the world, sitting proudly on the horizon in a steep valley. There’s not much oxygen in the air up here, at an altitude of 4,850m, and so the crew, and therefore their vehicles, are under some strain. Everyone is very happy to stop for lunch at the small town of San Antonio de Los Cobres. Fontenay also takes advantage of the break to start a debate : “Footballers aren’t motivated enough when you consider their salaries!”

The argument gets going in earnest. “How much did Ari Vatanen or Carlos Sainz get paid to compete in the Dakar?” someone asks, referring to two former winners of the race. “A huge sum in the hundreds of thousands of euros,” huffs someone else.

After lunch, the team finds Ruta 40 – the longest main road in Argentina, which stretches for 5,500km between Rio Gallegos, a port on the south-eastern tip of the country – and takes it to the charming little town of Cachi, near its northern endpoint, where a cosy bed is welcome. Here, bellies are stretched again by delicious empanadas. Tonight will be a quiet night. In the race proper, many competitors will be suffering at this point. The seventh stage has 400 special stage markers and 200 liaison section markers on roads 4m wide perched along the top of ravines 4,000m high.

T

he next day, with the two petrol tanks in each of the convoy’s four Toyotas filled, the destination is Córdoba, in the centre of northern Argentina, 700km away. More winding roads, ravines, rivers and breathtaking landscapes. This is, without a doubt, the most beautiful stage of the 2013 Dakar. “We’re in for a treat,” Castera warns us. He’s not wrong.

About 50km into the journey, the Toyotas enter the Calchaquí Valley, not far from the town of Laguna Brealito. Every view is beautiful. The French singer Jacques Dutronc sang “Le monde entier est un cactus” – the whole world is a cactus.

Perhaps he was familiar with this part of South America because it is packed with cacti small and large, long and twisted, short and fat, together in clumps or all alone.

Every one is fiercely protected by the local authorities.

On this, the first day of spring, there’s a mechanical breakdown. The bearing on the front left wheel of one of the Toyotas, not The Toy, has given up the ghost. Which doesn’t matter. Patrick Juillet, the mechanic, gets down to business.

He takes the problem area apart, knocks it against his 4x4’s bumper and that is that. In the meantime, in the middle of nowhere, the team has remembered to eat.

With their stomachs full, they enter the Quebrada de las Flechas valley, crossing the Calchaquí River several times. This landscape is pure Dante; Castera was right. The road from here, which runs from Cafayate to Córdoba, lets wine lovers take in the enormity of the local vineyards. Argentina, this country of pick-up trucks, has given back to the Dakar an air of nobility. ww.dakar.com Bring this year’s Dakar Rally to life in the free Red Bulletin Tablet App with a special interactive map of the course and behind-the-scenes pictures of Jean-Pierre Fontenay and Jacky Dubois in action

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Contents 82 TRAVEL Seeking adventure in all-action Dubai 84 Get THE GEAR Ice hockey star Bernd Brückler 86 WORK OUT How to train like a top freeskier 88 THE SOUNDS OF 2012 Irish five-piece Little Green Cars are revving up 90 NIGHTLIFE Everything you need to get you through ’til dawn 94 WORLD IN ACTION What’s happening around the globe 96 SAVE THE DATE Events for your diary 97 KAINRATH Our cartoonist’s calendar

photography: ray demski/red bull content pool

98 MIND’S EYE With columnist Stephen Bayley

Can French B-Boy Mounir dethrone reigning champion Roxrite at the Red Bull BC One World Finals in Rio? Event info: page 94

more body & mind

The all-action emirate

Away days Spectacular travel adventures

dubai Even in a place known for the last word in luxury, the great outdoors beckons

Once a modest fishing village, now a land of luxury and excess. Dubai’s massive transformation has earned it a global reputation for commercial attractions and malls so large you need an indoor taxi to get around them. While the shopping is a big part of the culture here – the sales tax stands at a consumerfriendly zero per cent – there is more to it.

Dubai is a place of futuristic architecture – look up and you’ll see the world’s tallest building, the 160-storey Burj Khalifa – and old world traditions.

But take a short ride in a water taxi, known as an abra to locals, up the Dubai Creek and you’ll find a traditional region where locals make their living 82

raising camels, where falcons, desert foxes and the Arabian oryx roam free.

After stepping off the boat and into the Deira area of the city, it’s clear you’ve left the modern cityscape behind. Here, you’ll wander through cobblestone street souks, haggling for spices, gold and Persian rugs, while chewing on pistachio-stuffed dates.

Back in the shopping areas, the streets of Dubai are brimming with trendsetters. Even women wearing uniform black abayas stroll proudly clutching the latest designer handbags, sporting fuchsia lipstick to complement their immaculately made-up faces.

Locals greet you with a smile, excited to tell you about their favourite falafel house and rave about the latest building development, such as a moving skyscraper slated to continuously change shape with individual rotating floors.

The lure of tax-free shopping brings people from as far as the USA, the UK and Australia, but there are still things to do in the emirate that don’t involve shopping bags.

Words: nicole pajer. photography: jeff provenzano, nicole pajer (2), getty images

The high life: skydiver Jeff Provenzano above Dubai’s Palm Jumeriah artificial archipelago

Sun, snow and a lot of sand: away from the cityscape in Dubai 1 Skiing and snowboarding

With temperatures reaching 40ºC, sweating is quite likely in Dubai. If you must dodge humidity with artificial air conditioning, why not hit the slopes?

Dubai has its own indoor ski resort: five runs as well as a freestyle zone of rails and jumps. After throwing on your gear in a changing area that resembles a Colorado ski lodge, a quick chairlift ride takes you to 3,000m2 of snowy terrain. There’s even a lodge at the top where you can grab a hot chocolate. While it doesn’t compare to outdoor resorts, Ski Dubai does come without wind, ice and rocks. www.skidxb.com

When heading out into the desert, please remember that some 4x4s are furrier than others

2 Sandboarding

The sand dunes in Dubai are perfect for plunging down. Rent a sandboard, essentially a wax-free snowboard, from a local tour operator and find a steep-sided dune. Upon reaching the top, strap in, place your weight on your back foot and sail down. The thrill is well worth the hike back up at the end of the ride. While sand is slower than snow, the rush of sandboarding comes from bombing straight down a dune; there is no turning or jumping involved, and speed is of the essence. www.arabian-adventures.com

3 Skydiving

Sandboarding, the grittiest of the new board sports

If you’re going to jump out of a plane, then you might as well have unique landscape to look at on the way down.

The primary dropzone in Dubai is located high above Palm Jumeriah, a huge artificial archipelago that extends into The weather outside can be frightful, but inside it’s delightful

the sea. Jumpers free fall over the man-made islands that have become an iconic Dubai landmark. Pro skydiver Jeff Provenzano likens the experience to “skydiving over Tatooine, that alien planet in Star Wars, mixed with Bahamaslike blue water”. In addition to the view, daredevils often leap from the plane next to royalty, as Dubai’s Crown Prince, Sheikh Hamdan, skydives here regularly. www.skydivedubai.ae

4 Wadi bashing

In Dubai, dried-up riverbeds (which are called wadis in Arabic) make for exciting off-road terrain. The sport known as wadi bashing involves snaking through twisty riverbeds in specially crafted 4x4 vehicles. Wadi bashing is an adrenalin-filled activity similar to dune driving, except that you bounce over rocks and boulders instead of sand, making for a boneshaking experience. The best time to wadi bash is during Dubai’s dry season, October to April. www.dayoutdubai.com

5 Desert camping

The hotels of Dubai are undeniably glamorous, but there’s nothing better than sleeping under a sky painted with stars. Pitch your tent in a valley of dunes and watch a fireball sunset over pristine sand. You can bed down with nothing more than the desert sky for company, or sign up to a curated overnight adventure, in which your camping experience comes with a barbecue, belly dancers and a hookah pipe. There can be something magical about ‘roughing it’. www.desertrangers.com

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Tender mercies: Brückner’s bulging bag of essentials enables him to play in what is arguably team sport’s most dangerous position

more body & mind

Get the Gear a pro’s essentials

Hard target

Austrian ice-hockey goalie Bernd Brückler is paid to stop pucks that fly towards him at speeds approaching 170kph. The contents of his kitbag keep him alive 1. Wall goalie mask My mask is made from an extremely robust plastic that is also used in the making of cars.

I came up with the design myself.

It retraces my career: Austria, Canada, Finland, Russia.

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2. Reebok Play Dry Performance underwear It’s cold on the ice, as you’d expect, and yet I sweat a lot.

An ice-hockey goalie moves around a lot more than you might think, so the most useful thing about this underwear is its ability to absorb moisture.

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3. Bauer skates I’ve stuck with this venerable American brand since my youth.

The difference now is the skates I wear – size 46, extra wide – are custom-made and cost over €1,000 a pair; I have two.

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WORDS: ulrich corazza. PHOTOGRAPHY: MANfred burger

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4. Warrior goalie stick Made in the US, like my skates.

I’ve been using this type since the 2008/2009 season. Unlike many outfield players’ sticks, which are made of carbon, mine’s made of wood and fibreglass. I take three to every game, and get through about 40 in a season.

5. Brian’s goalie blocker Especially well-padded blocker, with high-density finger and hand protection, made in Canada by Brian’s, a small firm that provides a bespoke service to professional goalie clients like me.

6. Brian’s chest and arm protector Even though it’s heavily

padded, it’s light and doesn’t restrict my movements.

7. Brian’s catch glove I only switched to using this glove this year; Brian’s only makes goalie kit. The glove is light but well-padded, and takes the edge off the hardest slapshots.

8. Reebok hockey pants These pants are already four years old and constantly need to be patched or sewn up.

My team [Red Bull Salzburg of the Austrian Hockey League] has someone on staff who does that. Some of my teammates laugh at me in the dressing room when I wear these, but they’ve got character.

9. Brian’s shin guards Regulation, mass-produced white shin guards, as worn by most goalies. Their oversized look ought to unsettle forwards.

10. Reebok goalie box No part of a goalie’s protective kit is more important than any other. However…

11. Red Bulls jersey I used to play wearing 30, historically a number chosen by players in my position.

Legendary goalies Martin Brodeur and Chris Osgood both wore it. However, at Red Bull Salzburg, I’ve got jersey number 26.

12. Reebok hockey bag This huge, wheeled bag is almost a metre long, and weighs about 25kg when it has all my kit in it. www.redbulls.com/icehockey

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MORE BODY & MIND

Eliassen’s off-piste experience stands her in good stead for slopestyle

Harder, better, faster, stronger

Fitter, happier

TRAINING WITH THE PROS

GRETE ELIASSEN The American-Norwegian X Games gold medallist is a freeskier on a mission: Sochi 2014

With slopestyle making its Winter Olympics debut in the Russian city of Sochi in 2014, freeskiers everywhere are upping their game. Grete Eliassen is ahead of the curve. Raised in Norway, the 26-year-old returned to the USA, the land of her birth, and the snowy slopes of Salt Lake City, in 2005 to embark on a new way of training. “To be a good freeskier in the past, what you did was ski a lot,” says Eliassen. “But, in recent years, the sport’s really been professionalised; it’s getting more structured.

“Slopestyle consists of 15-25m jumps, rails and features called jibs that you do tricks off, so your whole body has to be prepared to take the physical force of all that. Now, 50 per cent of our training is on snow, 25 per cent is strength and conditioning, and 25 per cent is aerial awareness training on trampolines. But the creativity and freedom of freeskiing is still as strong as ever.”

Eliassen also focuses on what she eats, reaping the benefits of getting out of her body what she puts into it. “I have to be really strict with my diet,” she says. “Over the last couple of years, I’ve been working with a nutritionist from the US ski team and have noticed such a big difference. Getting your own nutritionist is important, as the plan will be very different for each person. I’ll eat light and snack throughout the day, then at dinner I hammer down the protein, grains and vegetables.”

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With competition season demanding athletes put in up to 10 hours per day on the slopes, it is during the off-season – June to October – that Eliassen builds the strength to take on the world’s best SEVEN DAYS A WEEK Three-hour workout daily, including a dynamic warm-up for one hour: bike for 20 minutes, then stretches, using a foam roller on the muscles before and after, which helps reduce lactic acid build-up.

finished a run and I need to get back up and do it again.”

SATURDAY, SUNDAY Two-hour hike or swim.“At the weekend, I try to keep it mellow and go for something easier.”

MONDAY, WEDNESDAY, FRIDAY Strength: After the warm-up, free weights for two hours: upper body, focusing on shoulders to protect against injury, followed by lower body, focusing on thighs to prepare for landings.

TUESDAY, THURSDAY Cardio/core: After the warm-up, a bike session in two-hour intervals, in the gym or outdoors.

“Running isn’t good for me and my knees, as I’m already doing so much impact skiing, so I stick to my bike. The intervals get my heart rate up above 180bpm.

That is high, considering I’m not an endurance athlete, but it helps at times when I’ve just

www.greteeliassen.com

To watch a video of freeskier Grete Eliassen, download the free Red Bulletin tablet app

WORDS: RUTH MORGAN. PHOTOGRAPHY: ASHLEY BARKER/RED BULL CONTENT POOL, MIKE ARZT/RED BULL CONTENT POOL

WORK OUT

MUST-HAVES! 1

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GO PRO HERO3 CAMERA

The Go Pro HERO3 boasts the same high-performance specs as the Original HD HERO camera it replaces, yet it has built-in Wi-Fi, new UI and is 30 per cent smaller and 25 per cent lighter (73.7g). The Go Pro HERO3 is wearable and gear mountable, waterproof to 197ft (60m), and the built in Wi-Fi means it can also be controlled by iOS smartphones and tablets running the GoPro App! 2

GARMIN FENIX™ GPS WATCH

The Garmin Fenix™ is the first GPS navigator and Altimeter, Barometer & Compass wristwatch to include comprehensive Garmin GPS navigation. Developed together with professional mountain guides and designed for the serious expeditionist and outdoor enthusiast, the Garmin Fenix is the hands-free outdoor navigation tool that guides you with confidence through demanding mountain environments, allowing you to make your own way to the summit and back to the safety of a mountain shelter.

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COLUMBIA ALASKAN II DOWN HOODED JACKET

Now armed with Omni-Heat technology, this king of all puffies is warmer than ever. An Omni-Heat Thermal reflective lining combines with 700 fill power goose down to keep you supremely warm during long, cold hours outside. Omni-Heat Thermal Reflective helps to regulate body temperature by reflecting and retaining the warmth your body generates, while dissipating moisture and excess heat to keep you comfortable. Plus, Omni-Shield advanced repellency keeps wet weather at bay.

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NORTH FACE ETIP GLOVES

The North Face Etip Gloves are form-fitting, four-waystretch gloves that offer warmth and maximum dexterity for use with touch-type gadgets. For urban wear, you can comfortably work your phone, MP3 player or laptop mouse pad with warm fingers in this glove. The stretch knit shell is ideal for three-season wear. Whatever you need to hold–be it a rope, ski pole, dog lead or ice axe–the silicone grip pattern on the palm of The North Face Etip Glove will help you keep a tight grip on it.

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COLUMBIA OMNI-HEAT SLIPPER

With a super-soft footbed and Omni-Heat thermal reflective lining throughout, this lounge-worthy shoe-slipper provides ultimate comfort and warmth to keep feet happy and warm in cold conditions; a high-traction rubber outsole means they’ll do well in outdoor settings as well. Omni-Heat Thermal Insulation keep your toes warm by ensuring you are insulated against the cold. The rock-solid Omni-Grip winter specific lug treads on the outsole keep you locked to the ground, no matter how sketchy the surface.

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BERGHAUS VELUM II GORE-TEX® ACTIVE JACKET

PROMOTION

Designed for the fast and light mountaineer, the Men’s Velum II GORE-TEX® Active Jacket offers maximum breathability and minimum weight without compromising durability. Constructed of three-layer GORE-TEX® Active, this jacket extremely packable, super-lightweight and highly breathable whilse offering full waterproof protection and durability. You will stay fast on your feet whist remaining adaptable to any challenges with features such as a singlehand-adjustable hood and large venting pockets.

All available from 53 Degrees North: Blanchardstown, Carrickmines, Cork and online at

www.53degreesnorth.ie

Driving force: (l-r) Stevie Appleby, Faye O’Rourke, Donagh Seaver O’Leary, Adam O’Regan and Dylan Lynch

THE SOUNDS OF 2012 #8

Soon-to-be famous five

little green cars Emotionally charged, harmony soaked, doing things differently: a Dublin quintet break America – a tiny little corner of it, at least – before the release of their debut album

The John Wayne, Little Green Cars’ remastered single, is out now

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The CMJ Music Marathon is New York City’s other endurance test. Since 1980, this annual series of gigs has showcased bands on the cusp of something big. This year, at 84 venues, mainly in Brooklyn and Manhattan, 1,436 bands played 1,813 sets. For the record industry notables and signers-up in the audiences, that’s a lot of beer in plastic cups and even more cab rides.

And yet, from such an onslaught of live music, cream can rise. Gotye was the breakout star of last year’s Marathon; Mumford and Sons (2009) and Arcade Fire (2004) had similar success. After this year’s event, 15 acts were singled out by the organisers for the impact they had made and the bright future

prospects they had demonstrated; Little Green Cars were among them. The Dublin five-piece played at the Marathon in October as part of their first US tour.

“It’s brilliant to be touring the States, totally surreal,” says designated band spokesperson Stevie Appleby, down a sketchy phone line, from the Music City that is Nashville, Tennessee. “We’re really enjoying the experience, but there isn’t much time to check things out. Hotel, to the gig, sleep and do it all over again.”

Appleby, who shares songwriting duties with Faye O’Rourke, is a very engaging young man – all five members of Little Green Cars are 20 years old – and rightly excited about his band’s upwardly

mobile trajectory. In the US, they are now labelmates of Mumford and Sons and Two Door Cinema Club on Glassnote Records; elsewhere, they are on the legendary Island Records.

“It’s a huge thrill to be signed to great labels,” says Appleby.

“They both [Island and Glassnote] have a track record of being very supportive to acts. They really let you think for yourself. There’s more phone calls, more shows, busier schedules, but, as a band, it’s all about the music for us. As long as people enjoy what we’re doing then we’re happy.”

Earlier this year they travelled to the UK to record their debut album under the watchful eye of Markus Dravs, acclaimed producer

more body & mind

Words: eamonn seoige. Photography: Claire Lorenzo (1)

“We’ve played in a Masonic Lodge next to a cemetery for old Hollywood actors”

of Arcade Fire and Bjork. “It was incredible working with Markus,” explains Appleby, keen to pay tribute. “He’s worked on some of my favourite records. I was really nervous meeting him for the first time, but he made us all feel very comfortable. We didn’t have loads of time – three weeks, and then one with Markus – but we came with a solid plan.”

The band’s debut single, The John Wayne, was originally produced by David Kosten and released as a UK/Ireland single last summer on the Young and Lost Club label. Now rereleased and available as a download, it means the American audiences who heard and loved the song live, and the rest of us, can now own it for ourselves. They will be classified as indie country-rock, but their powerful, emotive songs, filled with intricate melodies, sharp hooks and delicate folktinged harmonies, are tantalising different, gloriously out of step with what any genre label will cause you to expect them to be.

The John Wayne bears all the hallmarks of LGC’s inventive storytelling techniques. It tells the tale of Appleby’s failed liaison with an American tourist on a night out in Dublin. Heartbroken, he returns home later that night and pens a song, gently tapping out its rhythm on a homemade drum-kit to avoid waking the household. Initially, it was titled the The Quiet Man, in reference to both the low-volume percussion and the Wayne movie of the same name. The superb multi-part harmonies, all five band-member voices seamlessly woven together, stick in your ears after the very

Wheels in motion: performing at the CMJ Music Marathon got Little Green Cars noticed

first listen. “We work hard on the vocals in rehearsals,” says Appleby. “We all have a good grasp of it, the second person works off the first and so on.

Afterwards, we sometimes work in some extra ornamentation.”

Flawless vocal arrangements and teasing rhythms have been honed at every Little Green Cars gig.

“You know, if we’re playing in a room to just 10 people,” says Appleby, “they deserve to see a really good show. We’ve practised a lot for that chance to play gigs and we want to bring our music to an audience.”

Going by the fans’ response at the US gigs, that audience is glad to have it.

“Americans love Irish people and that’s a big help,” says Appleby, with a giggle. “We’ve already gigged in some incredible places, like in LA we played in a Masonic Lodge, next to a cemetery for old Hollywood actors. We’ve done bars, guitar shops; it’s all a bit crazy, almost hard to get your head around at times.”

Next up, it’s back home to Dublin for some well-earned rest, then 2013 promises to be even busier, with an album release and increased number of shows.

“Lucky for us,” says Appleby, “we’re all good mates in this band.

It’s not just, do the rehearsals and the gigs; we’re close. It’s almost like going out with someone when you’re in a band.”

Need to know The line-up Stevie Appleby – vocal, guitars Faye O’Rourke – vocals, guitars Donagh Seaver O’Leary – vocals, bass Adam O’Regan - vocals, guitars, piano Dylan Lynch – vocals, drums Discography Volume I (EP, 2008) Volume II (EP, 2009) Absolute Zero (album, 2013)

The story so far Since the age of 14, Stevie Appleby, Adam O’Regan and Dylan Lynch have been in a band together. They went to the same Southside Dublin school, while O’Regan was also in a band with Donagh Seaver O’Leary. Faye O’Rourke was friends with Appleby and they’d already begun to pen their first songs together.

When O’Regan and O’Leary’s first band broke up, it didn’t take long for the pieces to click into place. The resulting band’s name came about when Appleby and O’Regan were on a train journey. They fixed on the idea of an engine, or a vehicle, because every single gear and cog is vital, but they also wanted a name that didn’t necessarily give away too much about their music: thus, Little Green Cars.

In 2008, the band entered the studio for the first time to

record their debut EP, Volume I. Within a year they returned with an equally extravagantly titled follow-up EP, Volume II. Summer 2011 proved to be game-changing, with the release of debut single The John Wayne through UK-based Young & Lost Club. BBC 6 Music’s Lauren Laverne was among those who championed the band. A deal was signed with Glassnote Records in November 2011, followed this year by a match-up with Island Records. Their debut album, Absolute Zero, was recorded this summer, before the band made a first, short tour of the USA in October on the back of a reworked and rereleased version of The John Wayne. Next up is a slot at January’s Eurosonic showcase festival and a spring release of Absolute Zero. littlegreencars.bandcamp.com

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MORE BODY & MIND

Nightlife Whatever gets you through the night

DO IT

Ice skating in the Big Apple ROMANCE: Skating in front of New York’s Rockefeller Center and its Christmas tree decorated with 30,000 energy-saving LED bulbs.

Also available: a marriage proposal package.

SHOW TIME: The 37 x 18m rink is open every day from 7am to midnight, through to April 2013.

THE DOLLARS: During high season (until January 7), tickets are US$25 for 90 minutes, while skate hire will set you back US$10.

OUT NOW

“We hugged each other, went, ‘Pffft’” Led Zeppelin What came next after that comeback It was the musical event of 2007: Led Zeppelin, the gods of hard rock, reunited for a single concert, 27 years after the band broke up in the wake of the death of drummer John Bonham.

Some 20 million fans from all over the world applied online for tickets for the gig at London’s O2 Arena: according to the Guinness Book of Records, the biggest rush on concert tickets of all-time. For all those who didn't get lucky (and the 18,000 that did), Led Zep are now serving up two hearty, satisfying hours of that unique London show on record and on film.

Why wait five years to release this?

John Paul Jones, bassist: Five years is five minutes in Led Zeppelin time.

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What was it like having Jason Bonham [son of John] on drums?

Jones: Jason was great, because all the songs we played throughout the Zeppelin years, we would end songs in a different way, and so we would play something and say, “Well, how does this one end?” And we’d all look at Jason, and he would go, “Well, in 1971, you did this, and in 1973, you went into this...” He has this huge, encyclopedic knowledge and it was just a real compliment.

How did you celebrate after the show?

Robert Plant, vocalist: I think we just hugged each other and went, “Pffft.”

It was nuts that we didn’t do any warm-up gigs. That was the warm-up!

Does that mean that fans can hope for another concert one day?

Plant: Have you seen the film? Did you enjoy it? Then we’ve done our job.

Celebration Day is out now on CD, DVD and Blu-ray: www.ledzeppelin.com

THEY SAID IT...

“ I often think that the night is more alive and more richly coloured than the day ”

Vincent van Gogh, painter (1853–1890)

WHAT SUP

Slow Dancer A drink super-quick in its preparation that guarantees guilt-free cocktail enjoyment.

Conceived by the bar team at Hangar-7 in Salzburg, Austria, the Slow Dancer is a five-fruit refresher that needs a slow hand only in its final flourish. The careful addition of cranberry juice – it’s a trickle, not a rush – will leave a glass glistening with a muddled red hue to rival any sunset Hollywood actors have ever walked off into.

INGREDIENTS 10ml lime juice 20ml kiwi syrup 60ml apple juice 60ml lychee juice 80ml cranberry juice fruit skewer as garnish

CLUB PROPAGANDA

METHOD Pour the lime, kiwi, apple and lychee into a cocktail shaker.

Shake briefly, pour into a glass filled with ice cubes, then slowly pour over the cranberry juice. Done.

PHOTOS: KEVIN WESTENBERG, WARNER MUSIC, LAIF, PROPAGANDA CLUB, FOTOSTUDIO EISENHUT & MAYER

PROPAGANDA Bolshoy Zlatoustinskiy pereulok, dom 7, Moscow, Russia www.propagandamoscow.com

CLUB

“Diners just get up and start dancing” Propaganda By day it’s a charming hipster restaurant; by night, it becomes a temple of dance and an absolute must-visit if you want to sample the best house music Moscow has to offer When the club opened in 1997…

We wanted to carve out a space in Moscow’s nightlife where the quality of the music comes first. Our inspiration was the Body & Soul parties by New York DJs Danny Krivit and Joe Claussell.

From outside, the club looks…

Inviting, with its huge stainedglass windows that make you think of the cosy environment inside.

Things really get going at…

Midnight: that’s when the restaurant turns into a club. The transformation is fluid: people simply get up and start dancing.

To pass the doorman you need…

A positive attitude – and it won’t do any harm to know which DJ you are going to hear. We want people who care about the music.

DJs are selected because…

We like what they play and how they do it. They are house specialists from all over the world; in October, we had KiNK, Gerd Janson and Patrick Chardronnet.

It's considered packed when…

We've got around 500 people in.

Best nearby late-night snacks at...

Propaganda’s two satellites, Filial and Ludi Kak Ludi, both just five minutes’ walk from the club.

Interview: Kirill Saldadze, club owner

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more body & mind

Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (1989) It was the first movie that I ever watched in a movie theatre. I must have been four or five when I first saw it, and I just remember being very terrified of being in a giant black box like that and having this giant silver screen shining down at me.

It spearheaded my love of film, and obsession of going to a cinema to watch movies. Plus, the giant ant was really cool.

Take 3

“The giant ant was cool” Ian Hultquist The keys/axe man of US indie-electro band Passion Pit picks a triple bill that keeps him buff Passion Pit have taken a turn for the serious. On the band’s forthcoming second album, Gossamer, vocalist Michael Agelakos recounts his three-year battle with bipolar disorder, touching on an array of emotions stemming from his hospitalisations and suicidal thoughts. It’s difficult subject matter, but out of such intense experience has come something positive: a suite of exceptional tunes. This is one reason why life in the Passion Pit world is not entirely sombre; another is the band’s extracurricular activities. Keyboardist, guitarist and co-founder Ian Hultquist recognises the importance of distractions to keep himself and his bandmates sane while on tour. The quintet regularly engage in online video game tournaments (their 2010 song, Moth’s Wings, features in FIFA 10), but their main source of distraction is watching movies.

Hultquist is a film buff, and has composed original scores for four shorts; he is at his most relaxed, he says, when working on a film score.

“Movies have always been ingrained in me from an early age. They inspire so much of what I do and are something that are so natural to me,” he explains. Hultquist took a break from the road to program his dream triple bill for a night in the dark in front of a big screen. www.passionpitmusic.com

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The 400 Blows (1959) The first time I saw it, I watched through almost the entire movie before realising how completely enveloped I was in it. The ending caught me completely off guard. You are going along, following this kid through one mistake after another and it just freezes on this one image, and that's it.

Aside from the acting and directing, the whole story, and the way they are really able to put you into this kid’s life, really opened things up for me.

Night snack

Beirut: Falafel

Everyone’s having a ball – of deep-fried chickpeas, that is The Dark Knight (2008) I am a huge Batman fanboy, so I can’t help but love almost anything that revolves around the character, but this also happens to be an incredible movie. I’m an absolutely huge Christopher Nolan fan – from his first movie, Following, on through everything he’s ever done since. This film brought something to the character that no other Batman movies were able to.

Streets ahead As well as the Lebanese capital, other cities across the Middle East are famous for falafel, such as Cairo, Damascus and Tel Aviv.

Along Beirut’s waterfront, known as the Corniche, you’ll find rows of stalls selling many varieties of this local classic, along with other regional staples, like shawarma kebabs.

Photography: getty images, picturedesk.com, Kobal Collection (2), Fotostudio Eisenhut & Mayer

whose falafel is it anyway?

The origin of these tasty orbs is disputed, since they feature in the national cuisine of many Middle Eastern countries.

Egypt is the most accepted birthplace,some time around the sixth century, when they developed as a meat-free dish to be eaten during Lent. Falafel is now popular the world over, and even made an appearance on the McDonald’s menu: as the McFalafel, of course.

BEIRUT’S BEST The list of the best falafel places in Beirut would run to several pages, but there are a few firm favourites which are permanently recommended by savvy eaters: Falafel Friyha (Furn Al Hayek Street), M Sahyoun (Damascus Road), Falafel Abou Rami (the Corniche), and Falafel Tabbara (Leon Street).

variety: not only the spice Falafel vendors add their own, often secret, blends of spices to their mix, but there are three things they all use: onion, cumin and ground chickpeas. Often, parsley, garlic, coriander or bulgur is added. Some recipes call for the falafel to be rolled in sesame seeds before deepfrying; others add baking powder for a fluffy inside. Falafel is usually served in a pita bread with tahini paste and hummus.

look at the size of that There have been numerous attempts at creating the world’s largest falafel, but the Guinness World Records Committee says that the biggest ever appeared in Beirut in May 2010. Chef Ramzi Choueiri made a falafel weighing in at 5,173kg with the help of 300 students from Al-Kafaàt University.

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World In Action December & January

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Sport

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06-16.12.2012, TOYOTA & YOKOHAMA, JAPAN

FIFA Club World Cup

Which is the best club team in football? Each year the FIFA Club World Cup brings the six continental champions together with the top team in Japan for a contest in Tokyo to discover exactly that.

For the last five years, the trophy has been in European hands; Barcelona won in 2011. This year Chelsea of the English Premier League make their FIFA Club World Cup debut after winning the UEFA Champions League for the first time in 2011/12. The London outfit will take on the likes of Auckland City (New Zealand), Monterey (Mexico) and SC Corinthians (Brazil).

29.12.2012-06.01.2013, GERMANY & AUSTRIA

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Four Hills Tournament

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For the 61st time, a quartet of high points situated in Oberstdorf, Garmisch-Partenkirchen (Germany) and Innsbruck and Bischofshofen (Austria) play host to the aptly named Four Hills Tournament, an event high on the list of highlights on ski jumping’s calendar. Winning here is no easy task: a single mistake can ruin any chance of a good result, as all eight competitive jumps go towards the final score. Since 2009, the winners have all come from Austria – Wolfgang Loitzl, Andreas Kofler, Thomas Morgenstern and, last time, Gregor Schlierenzauer.

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3 Cyril Despres is gearing up for the Dakar Rally Can Chelsea be world champs too?

01.01.2013, MUNICH OLYMPIC PARK, GERMANY

08–20.12.2012, OAHU, HAWAII, USA

FIS Alpine Ski World Cup

ASP World Tour

What better place for surfing’s top series to come to an end than in the birthplace of sport? The Banzai Pipeline on Hawaii’s third largest island, Oahu, is famous for its almighty, and incredibly dangerous, waves which, luckily for the spectators, break near the beach. It’s an exciting two-man battle for the title. Will US surfing icon Kelly Slater take his world championship win tally up to 12 or will his closest rival, Australian Joel Parkinson, secure his first overall ASP Tour victory?

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Ski races don’t have to be held way above sea level: this season, the Alpine Ski World Cup stars will also square off in Munich. The best 16 men and women from the World Cup line-up will take part in parallel knockout battles on a frozen racetrack in the heart of Bavaria’s largest city. As last year’s competition fell foul of warm weather, 2011 winners – Croat Ivica Kostelic´ and Maria Pietilä Holmner of Sweden – will be defending their titles.

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Gregor Schlierenzauer defends his Four Hills title

PHOTOS : GETTY IMAGES (2), GEPA PICTURES/RED BULL CONTENT POOL (2), RUTGER PAUW/RED BULL CONTENT POOL, PICTUREDESK.COM

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MORE BODY & MIND

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5 6 5 14-16.12.2012, LONDON, UK

World Memory Championships In a world where most of us can’t remember our own phone number, there are people at the other end of the spectrum like Wang Feng, winner of the last three World Memory Championships.

Cerebral athletes go head-to-head in memorising exercises in 10 different disciplines, the toughest of which is ‘speed cards’: the quick-thinkers have to remember the sequence of 52 playing cards and reproduce it as quickly as possible. The current record stands at an astonishing 21.19 seconds.

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05-20.01.2013, PERU, ARGENTINA & CHILE

28-30.12.2012, TOKYO, JAPAN

Comiket

Manga princesses, ancient swordsmen, colourful astronauts and every kind of superhero. Fans dressing up as their favourite comic book characters, in incredibly ornate costumes as close to the originals as possible, is known as cosplay.

This movement has its origins in Japan, where the largest convention takes place twice a year. The Comiket fair attracts 560,000 fans – many of them in costume. It’s a place for exchanging beloved comic books and admiring glances.

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Dakar Rally

31.12.2012, SENTOSA, SINGAPORE

Siloso Beach Countdown

This year, the route of the most legendary long-course rally will run north to south for the first time, from Lima to Santiago, but it still takes in the Atacama Desert, the driest on Earth.

There are 14 stages and over 8,000km for man and machine to conquer – and they only get one day off. Frenchman Stéphane Peterhansel is Monsieur Dakar, having won the rally on his motorbike six times and another four times in his car, the most recent occasion being in 2012. His compatriot Cyril Despres is aiming for a fifth title on two wheels.

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To see in the New Year, a perfect stretch of beach in this idyllic corner of south-east Asia will be transformed into a dancefloor for 12 hours. DJs from the Café del Mar venue in Ibiza begin the evening slowly before upping the tempo as the clock nudges towards midnight.

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Culture

French B-Boy Mounir vies for glory in Brazil

08.12.2012, RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL

19-23.12.2012, JAMAICA

Bull BC One is the world championships 6 Red for B-Boying. The world’s 16 best B-Boys face-off in knockout rounds until one is left to claim the champion’s belt. The 2011 winner was Roxrite, who impressed the Moscow judges with his agile acrobatics, creativity and strength of will.

Will the American be able to successfully defend his title in Brazil? His toughest rivals this year will be Frenchman Mounir and local hero Klesio.

Coachella is the coolest music festival in the US. Indie-rock icons like Radiohead and The Black Keys have played here, while the crowd is a mix of savvy music fans and A-list stars.

But so as not to make us wait until April for the main event in California, this a spin-off is taking place in Caribbean waters. The likes of Pulp, Hot Chip, Yeasayer and TOKiMONSTA will be performing aboard the SS Coachella cruise liner.

Red Bull BC One Final

Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker rocks the boat

SS Coachella 8

All dressed up, comic book hero-style, in Tokyo

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MORE BODY & MIND

Save The Date

Going for cold: swimmers brave the icy waters in Hyde Park, London

December & January DECEMBER 26

Running on full The Galway Road Race doesn’t wait for the dust to settle after the over-indulgence of Christmas.

Instead, Ireland’s runners are coaxed back into their tracksuits and out onto the streets on December 26. Over the last decade, the annual 10km run has become as traditional as roast turkey in the medieval town of Athenry, where those braving the burn finish under its ancient arch. www.athenryac.com

JANUARY 16-20

Art attack More than 100 galleries, featuring the work of over 1,000 artists will be at next month’s London Art Fair, an event which has been showcasing the world’s best contemporary art for a quarter of a century.

Established names rub shoulders with up-and-coming talent, while creators and industry figures feature in a wide-ranging programme of talks and discussions.

This year, the directors of the Whitechapel Gallery and the ICA are among those sharing their insights. www.londonartfair.co.uk

DECEMBER-JANUARY

Unseasonal swim For thousands around the UK and Ireland, the festive season means mince pies, mistletoe and… a plunge into icy waters. At Brighton beach, swimmers take to the Channel every Christmas Day in a tradition dating back to 1885.

In Dublin, hundreds brave the Irish Sea at The Forty Foot, a swimming spot immortalised in James Joyce’s Ulysses. On New Year’s Day in Edinburgh, the practice of ‘loony dooking’, or ‘crazy bathing’, which began with six hardy souls in the 1980s, has grown into an annual institution. Last year in Porthcawl, Wales, 900 swimmers put themselves at the mercy of the Atlantic Ocean.

Those convinced that Speedos are only for summer are welcome on shore to join the towel- and tea-providers.

Search Google for ‘Christmas swim’

Rugby trades up Since 2008, Harlequins have made the short journey – at half a mile, no other rugby journey is shorter – from their home ground, The Stoop, to Twickenham Stadium to play The Big Game.

Last year, Quins lost to Saracens in front of 82,000 fans – a world record crowd for a regular season club match. This year, the ‘home’ side will be hoping to repeat their 2010 victory over local rivals London Irish. www.thebiggame.co.uk Harlequins v London Irish in The Big Game

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DECEMBER 16

Bumpy ride Bike riders of all ages and abilities are invited to come and have a go if their thighs are hard enough at the annual Cobble Wobble uphill race, held on St Catherine’s Hill in Frome, Somerset: a bone-rattling 165m dash up steep, uneven cobblestones, with the added challenge for amateur riders to compete against pro riders. More than 20 two-wheeled sportsmen from various disciplines are heading for the start line, including Kye Forte, a BMX dirt rider from Newton Abbot, and

Kye Forte at the 2011 Cobble Wobble race

trials rider Chris Akrigg, who was crowned King of the Cobbles back in 2010. Entry is open now. www.cobblewobble.co.uk

WORDS: RUTH MORGAN. PHOTOGRAPHY: GETTY IMAGES (2), TOM RICKHUSS

DECEMBER 29

illustration: dietmar kainrath

K a i n r at h

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N

ietzsche said, “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”

Today, in a world fretful about security, that can be modified to, “What doesn’t kill you, makes you paranoid and demented.” Security, and its related neurosis, health and safety legislation, are increasingly intrusive, but they rarely achieve their stated ends.

Instead, they create misery and waste.

Far from being more secure, healthier and safer, we are made more anxious, guilty and cross. I am surely not the only person who, on being made to undress at an airport, has thought, “Let them blow the bloody thing up! Thanks all the same, I’d prefer to take the risk and be free to buy a glass of champagne/coffee/ newspaper.” To voice such an internalised thought would get you arrested.

Every time I have to remove my belt, I wonder who’s winning here. I don’t feel like a beneficiary of the most successful civilisation in history when the presumption is the sole purpose of my journey is to blow-up a 737-800 and myself with it. New York University sociologist Harvey Molotch agrees that authorities are becoming counterproductively serious. He says: “It may be best to lighten up.” Imagine your relief at finding a light-hearted airport, a cheerful and humorous cabin crew. Let’s fight alQaeda with jokes and dignified hedonism.

Be that as it may, having just typed PETN into Google, I am now expecting joke-averse Special Branch goons to break into my studio and subdue me with batons and tranquillisers before long.

PETN, pentaerythritol tetranitrate, an explosive, is a favourite tool of politicised psychotics and religious maniacs. It is what the cretinous Shoe Bomber carried aboard the plane he planned to destroy.

Problem is, PETN does not show up on airport scanners, and still we are all intrusively scrutinised. So far as we know, airport security has never found anyone attempting to board a plane carrying a high explosive device. They

Mind’s Eye

Scrambled Regs Why, says Stephen Bayley, do the rules and regulations made to protect us make us feel worse? only got the Shoe Bomber because his feet started fizzing in-flight. On the other hand, I have been threatened with a criminal record for having a domestic corkscrew at Heathrow. On that occasion, I was not even travelling.

With good cause, New York is sensitive about terrorism, but the outcome of Ground Zero’s rebuilding is the ludicrous new World Trade Center. The first 20 storeys are empty and fortified. It is set back 60ft from the building line, causing chaos to urban circulation. Architecture critic Paul Goldberger calls it ‘The Fear Building’. So, far from exuding confidence, it advertises a craven defensiveness.

It’s the same with the new US Embassy in London. The building does not feature medieval bartizans and barbettes, but it does have a moat and grass berms that would be recognised by your everyday castle designer of 1305. They say the cube, covered with blast-resistant plastic, was chosen because it, “reflects the values of the American people”. Alas,

the American people’s values seem to be based on paranoid-depressive tendencies.

We are told cars are safer and more comfortable today. But Alec Issigonis made his 1959 Mini uncomfortable, because he believed backache kept the driver alert. The epochal designer Dieter Rams preferred his Porsche Turbo to his wife’s Volkswagen. Rams said his car’s extravagant handling characteristics kept him awake, while the Golf coddled him with an endangering sense of security.

Modern aircraft have amazing safety systems, but when the engine on a Qantas A380 exploded in-flight, the pilots could not land immediately because its systems first required cancellation of an interminable list of error messages. I have heard aviation experts say that, in real terms, we would be safer flying in a piston-engined DC-3, which a pilot could land in your garden where you could service it with a hammer.

To get a helicopter licence, you have to do ‘auto-rotation’ – windmilling to earth with the power off. This safety procedure has often proven lethal. Just strolling around town, we are suffocated by stop signs, go signs, barriers, threats and obstacles. You feel mortally endangered or shamefully criminalised.

The Dutch traffic engineer Hans Monderman found that when you take all the junk away, people tend to behave better. Or try this: steel-framed buildings are vulnerable to fire because, while steel does not burn, it warps. Whereas oak acquires a fire-retardant carbon coating, and performs well in destructive blazes.

There are several related truths here: ambiguity bests science; the illogical is often the logical; technology makes us stupid; human intuition is better than ‘scientific’ method. Plus the really important one: what doesn’t kill you should make you laugh!

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

THE RED BULLETIN United Kingdom: The Red Bulletin is published by Red Bull Media House GmbH Editor-in-Chief Robert Sperl Deputy Editor-in-Chief Alexander Macheck General Manager Alexander Koppel Publisher Franz Renkin UK & Ireland Editor Paul Wilson Contributing Editor Stefan Wagner Chief Sub-editor Nancy James Deputy Chief Sub-editor Joe Curran Production Editor Marion Wildmann Chief Photo Editor Fritz Schuster Creative Photo Director Susie Forman Deputy Photo Editors Ellen Haas, Catherine Shaw, Rudolf Übelhör Creative Director Erik Turek Art Director Kasimir Reimann Design Martina de Carvalho-Hutter, Silvia Druml, Miles English, Kevin Goll, Peter Jaunig, Carita Najewitz Staff Writers Ulrich Corazza, Werner Jessner, Ruth Morgan, Florian Obkircher, Arkadiusz Piatek, Andreas Rottenschlager Corporate Publishing Boro Petric (head), Nadja James, Christoph Rietner (chief-editors); Dominik Uhl (art director); Markus Kucera (photo director); Lisa Blazek (editor); Christian Graf-Simpson, Daniel Kudernatsch (iPad) Head of Production Michael Bergmeister Production Wolfgang Stecher (mgr), Walter Sádaba Repro Managers Clemens Ragotzky (head), Karsten Lehmann, Josef Mühlbacher Finance Siegmar Hofstetter, Simone Mihalits Marketing & Country Management Barbara Kaiser (head), Stefan Ebner, Elisabeth Salcher, Lukas Scharmbacher, Peter Schiffer, Julia Schweikhardt, Sara Varming Advertising enquiries Deirdre Hughes +35 (0) 3 86 2488504. The Red Bulletin is published in Austria, France, Germany, Ireland, Kuwait, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa, Switzerland, the UK and the USA. Website www.redbulletin.com. Head office: Red Bull Media House GmbH, Oberst-Lepperdinger-Strasse 11-15, A-5071 Wals bei Salzburg, FN 297115i, Landesgericht Salzburg, ATU63611700. UK office: 155-171 Tooley Street, London SE1 2JP, +44 (0) 20 3117 2100. Austrian office: Heinrich-Collin-Strasse 1, A-1140 Vienna, +43 (1) 90221 28800.The Red Bulletin (Ireland): Susie Dardis, Richmond Marketing, 1st Floor Harmony Court, Harmony Row, Dublin 2, Ireland +35 386 8277993.

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