The Red Bulletin US 12/18

BEYOND THE ORDINARY

U.S. EDITION DECEMBER 2018, $4.99

BEYOND THE ORDINARY

LINDSEY VONN’S QUEST TO BECOME THE WINNINGEST SKIER EVER

THE ULTRARUNNER WHO CHOSE TO AMPUTATE HIS LEG (and four more inspiring people)

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INSIDE THE RED BULLETIN 12/2018

THE

H ER O E S

ISSUE

EDITOR’S NOTE

FROM ZERO TO HERO In tough times, people are drawn to aspirational stories that offer inspiration and a sense of social justice. It’s no coincidence that today’s biggest blockbuster films revolve around superheroes with magical powers and colorful outfits. But flesh-and-blood heroes walk among us.

People like Dave Mackey, the champion ultrarunner profiled in “All Is Not Lost” (page 46), who suffered a lifechanging injury and refused to be defined by disability, choosing to amputate his leg to continue his running life.

CONTRIBUTORS THIS ISSUE

SUSAN CASEY

The task of capturing Vonn’s dramatic final act fell to Casey, who splits her time between Hawaii and New York. The author of three New York Times bestsellers, Casey, the former top editor at Sports Illustrated Women and O, is the only person to win National Magazine Awards for work as a writer, designer and editor. Page 22

MICHAEL MULLER

The magazine you are holding—our inaugural Heroes issue—is packed with stories of noble champions. There’s the dramatic last act of superstar skier Lindsey Vonn, chronicled in “True Grit” (page 22), who has overcome seemingly endless injuries and obstacles in a quest to be the winningest skier of all time. Elsewhere, stories depict humble people who are fighting for equity and justice, and offer hope through their hard-fought deeds. We all benefit from a reminder that we have the potential to be superheroes in our lives, even if we prefer to wear jeans.

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MATT HART

To capture the redemption story of ultrarunner Dave Mackey, Hart—a former professional distance runner and coach—ventured high into the Rockies to shadow his subject. The Colorado-based journalist’s work has appeared in National Geographic, The Atlantic and the New York Times. Page 46 THE RED BULLETIN

MICHAEL MULLER (COVER)

Shadowed by her Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, Lucy, Vonn spent a hot day riding a champion Arabian horse at a ranch in Santa Ynez, California.

Appropriately, the tenacious skier’s favorite book is called Grit.

Muller traveled to a horse ranch in Santa Ynez, California, to capture the skier’s riding chops. Muller, who has shot for Vanity Fair, Esquire, ESPN the Magazine, Harper’s Bazaar and many Marvel film projects, produced a Taschen coffee-table book featuring his shark photography. Page 22

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17.10.2018 13:52:01

CONTENTS December

FEATURES

2 2 Heroes 2018: Lindsey Vonn On a quest to become the greatest skier in history, the four-time Olympian is living proof that persistence is her greatest strength.

3 6 Heroes 2018: Moral Victors Music manager Doris Muñoz, legendary B-boy Crazy Legs, entrepreneur Lisa Wang and quadriplegic race-car driver Mario Bonfante Jr. are making the world better in a big way.

4 6 Heroes 2018: Dave Mackey After a grisly accident, the ultrarunner chose to amputate his leg so he could return to the sport he loves.

5 8 Slaying the Dragon

In the Himalayas of Bhutan, a one-day mountain-bike race takes riders on a journey that is both punishing and uplifting.

7 0 Sustaining Chicago’s Soul

The next generation of artists in the Second City are fighting for justice, mentoring younger talent and touring with a purpose.

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TRUE GRIT

Champion skier (and avid rider) Lindsey Vonn refuses to let injuries and setbacks derail her final career goal.

MICHAEL MULLER, ZOE RAIN, JUSTIN BASTIEN

70 MAKING SOME NOISE

Rapper Vic Mensa is part of a new crop of Chicago musicians who are integrating activism into their art.

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THE RED BULLETIN

BULLEVARD Life & Style Beyond the Ordinary

9 Noble’s cause: A cyclocross

champ fights for gender equity

12 Fine-dine while watching the

greatest light show on Earth

14 Fantastic Beasts’ Zoë Kravitz

counts her lucky stars

16 Travis Pastrana takes on Evel

Knievel’s most famous jumps

18 Rap crew Warm Brew on four

songs that influenced the group

GUIDE

Get it. Do it. See it.

79 Caribbean queen: Adventure with picture-perfect beaches 82 Fitness tricks: The acrobatic Bailey Payne’s workout tips 84 Fully present: A holiday gift guide for interesting people 92 This month on Red Bull TV 94 Dates for your calendar 96 Global Team 98 Foiling around with Kai Lenny

58 TIGHT SQUEEZE In the Tour of the Dragon in Bhutan, racers encounter messy hurdles (trucks, cliffs, loads of mud) along the way.

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BEYOND

THE

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POWER BROKER

CHRIS MILLIMAN/RED BULL CONTENT POOL

As she rips onto the cyclocross world stage, Ellen Noble is using her platform to give younger female racers opportunities she never had.

“I freaking love racing bikes,” says Noble. “And I love what racing bikes allows me to do.”

THE RED BULLETIN

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T

o understand what drives Ellen Noble, you need to understand the sport in which the 23-year-old is poised to be the next big thing. Cyclocross is a gritty hybrid of road- and mountain-bike racing. Riders fight for position on narrow, winding courses that are littered with tree roots, offcamber sections, sand pits and wooden barriers. The discipline demands top-end power for short bursts, the aerobic engine to go hard for an hour and the technical finesse to pick perfect lines.

The season culminates in the depths of winter, when weather extremes are a given.

Racers usually arrive at the finish mud-splattered and sometimes bleeding.

Appropriately, Noble’s path to the cyclocross world stage has been bumpy. She grew up in Kennebunkport, Maine, the youngest in a blended family consisting of parents Tom and Sandy and Sandy’s three kids from a previous marriage. She developed the kind of big personality the littlest sibling in a rowdy household might need to be heard.

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Noble dreams of a world where what she puts out there won’t be controversial. But until then, she’s happy to stir things up. Irked by the lack of gender parity in bike racing, she began using the hashtag #bunnyhopthepatriarchy to chronicle her mission to hop the wooden barriers in races instead of dismounting and shouldering her bike over them. In the elite ranks, far fewer women than men hop barriers, a fact Noble attributes, in part, to a lack of options for young women: “It’s about giving them the encouragement that men have been given for a long time.”

Beyond the catchy hashtag, Noble is also creating real opportunities for aspiring female ’cross racers—the kind she once struggled to find. In 2017 she launched a weeklong camp for teen girls called the Ellen Noble CX Quest.

Proceeds from #BHTP T-shirts funded five full scholarships this year, and attendees took part in skills clinics, group rides and yoga sessions as well as classes on nutrition, bike repair and goal-setting.

As for her own goals, after devoting much of 2018 to mountain biking with an eye toward the 2020 Olympics, Noble is now deep into a ’cross season with Trek Factory Racing. She’s targeting more World Cup podiums and, of course, the Elite National Championships, where she finished second last year.

And no, she’ll never stop bunny-hopping the patriarchy.

“When you have something to fight for,” she says, “it means even more than it does just to succeed.” ellennoble.com

CHRIS MILLIMAN/RED BULL CONTENT POOL

Noble wants to win races—and help aspiring young women in the sport.

Her dad always knew she had something special on the bike. He’d watched her race since she was 5. He’d seen her gut it out on desolate mountain-bike trails and finish races even if it meant ditching a broken wheel and dragging her bike across the line. And after she did her first cyclocross race, in 2010, he was very sure of one thing.

“You’re going to be national champion one day,” Tom Noble told Ellen, then 14.

What he couldn’t have known was that when his daughter stood atop the podium at Junior Nationals on a cold January day three years later, he wouldn’t be there to see it.

Colon cancer had claimed his life eight months earlier, when he was 46.

It was an emotional moment for the young racer.

“He taught me to keep fighting no matter how many times you get knocked out,” she says. Like when she searched in vain for training opportunities as a junior.

“There were all these camps that got kids to Europe,” Noble says, “but nothing for girls.”

Undeterred, she notched three more national championships as an under-23 rider and the overall U23 World Cup title in 2016. And this past September, at the first World Cup race of the season, she finished just four seconds behind seven-time World Cyclocross champion Marianne Vos, widely considered the best female bike racer in history.

Along the way, she’s put up with the kind of attention that might demoralize someone less resilient. Two years ago, for example, she was body-shamed online after partially unzipping her skinsuit at a World Cup event to cool off on a hot day. Her response: “My body, my rules.”

LEAH FLICKINGER

“MY BIGGEST GOAL IS TO CROSS THE FINISH LINE AND BE UNABLE TO STAND UP.”

THE RED BULLETIN

B U L L EVA R D Noble loves tough conditions: “Anything crazy technical where you need to be powerful, but you can’t just spray watts—that is primo for me.”

THE RED BULLETIN

11

Star-studded meal

DINING UNDER AN AURORA SKY

On the northern tip of Manitoba, where the temps are 40 below, fine-dine on local fare while watching the best light show on Earth.

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diners get to spend the evening indulging in a meal of regional fare while admiring the brilliant colors shimmying across the surreal skies. A host offers a presentation on both the northern lights and the area’s natural history, and later on, participants (after bundling up in fur-rimmed, hooded parkas) can head outside for photos or a stroll to take it all in.

Part of the allure is arriving via Tundra Buggy—a widebodied vehicle that sits atop 5-and-a-half-foot-tall tires and trundles the dinner’s 20 guests from Churchill, across the frozen river and to the venue.

“One of the coolest parts is we approach the spot under the cloak of darkness,” says John Gunter, president and CEO of Frontiers North Adventures.

“There’s this feeling of ‘Where am I going?’ You get there and it’s kind of mysterious and you need to orient yourself.”

The logistics of preparing a tasting menu in these raw conditions are about as challenging as one can imagine. Fossen and staffers do much of the prep in town, then finish off the dinner in a makeshift kitchen adjacent to the dining car that’s outfitted with induction burners and hotboxes. There’s also a large barbecue outside. “Once you’re set up, you just look at what’s in front of you and figure out how best to operate in that space. You MacGyver things,” he says.

MIKE GERE, HANDCRAFT CREATIVE LIZBETH SCORDO

C

anadian chef Jared Fossen has the kind of culinary prowess that foodies love to document on their iPhones. But no matter what he churns out for his multi-course meals in the frozen terrain of Manitoba, Fossen knows nothing on the table can compete with the splendor that’s happening in the sky: the awe-inspiring natural phenomenon of the aurora borealis.

“Guests are blown away that they can get this kind of elevated food out here,” he explains. “But once those lights are dancing around and people see them, they lose it and can’t stop staring.”

Known as Dan’s Diner, this newly imagined culinary experience will occur for only a few weeks in February and March 2019. A few years ago, Frontiers North Adventures, a local travel company acclaimed for its popular polar bear tours, began offering dinners under the northern lights during the offseason, when the bears take off to hunt seals hundreds of miles away and nighttime temps can dip to a mindboggling (and body-numbing) 40 below. After previously holding dinners in a tented structure within a historic stone fort, organizers will now drop a window-and-skylightcovered dining car in a meadow directly under the northern lights’ auroral oval— away from any light pollution of the nearby bayside town of Churchill. For $350 a pop,

The restaurant, known as Dan’s Diner

THE RED BULLETIN

B U L L EVA R D

Tundra Buggy Lodge, near Churchill, hosts accommodation cars and a dining hall.

Incorporating local ingredients is another not-soeasy feat when you’re this far north, but Fossen has managed to pull together a roster of Churchill residents to source from—one who makes lingonberry jam, for example, and another who grows lettuces in a shipping container turned greenhouse. There’s also game and fish that’s regional to Manitoba and the THE RED BULLETIN

north, like caribou, Arctic char and walleye. He might make a grilled elk tenderloin with local cranberries and honey paired with sautéed mushrooms and cabbage, or a roasted beet salad with a puree of arugula meant to mimic the greens and purples of the evening’s light show.

The feedback from guests, Gunter says, confirms that the team is succeeding, blending

the tenets of a luxe culinary experience with one of the world’s most dramatic displays. “It’s such a moving and inspiring experience,” he says. “It’s one of those things where people think they know what to expect but they don’t.

It’s not ‘Oh, it’s like that other time I was dining under the northern lights.’ There are no words. It will blow your mind.” dans-diner.com 13

B U L L EVA R D

hen your dad is rock star Lenny Kravitz and your mom is TV legend Lisa Bonet, there’s expectation placed on your career path.

And sure enough, Zoë Kravitz isn’t an accountant. At 29, the model, singer and actor has been the face of a Vera Wang fragrance, fronts her own band (Lolawolf) and has appeared in hit movies and TV shows including Mad Max: Fury Road and Big Little Lies. She returns this month to the role of Leta LeStrange in the second Fantastic Beasts installment, The Crimes of Grindelwald. “This job is probably in my genes, but I never felt pressure because of who my parents are,” she says.

Instead, Kravitz believes that their cautionary advice and a realistic education grounded her outlook. the red bulletin: When you were growing up, did you ever aspire to be famous like your parents? zoë kravitz: At that time, I didn’t know they were famous.

But I definitely didn’t want to become an accountant. In high school, I was a drama geek, constantly doing plays and musicals. Acting has always

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How were you treated at school?

I was very lucky: I went to a [Steiner] Waldorf school, a very small, artistic school.

In class, it’s not about lectures but conversation. You’re encouraged to participate in the conversation from a very young age. You’re treated like a person with a mind. They pay so much attention to each student. That changes how you develop as a human being.

What did your parents think when you entered the world of showbiz?

My father was very wary of it, and so was my mom. She became famous very quickly, very young. I don’t think it was a conscious decision; she was just trying to make extra money doing commercials and then she was called in for The Cosby Show. That’s why they wanted me to make sure I knew what I was doing.

What was their advice?

Not to take it too seriously.

Maybe that’s the reason I came out level-headed. People seem to get very serious about the Hollywood fame thing, way too deep. But it’s all an illusion, just a job. We are all equal.

How are you dealing with your growing fame?

The point is that I don’t live in Los Angeles. I find L.A. to be really isolating. It’s very spread out, so you’re in a car [a lot] and you’re by yourself.

You decide who you talk to and who you don’t. That’s why I live in New York. I like walking in the street. I like sitting on stoops and taking public transport. I need that interaction with other people.

I like people.

What advice do you have for someone chasing screen roles like yours?

You shouldn’t want them. If you do, that’s when you don’t get them. These were roles that I thought were impossible to get. I didn’t even want to audition for Mad Max, because I thought I stood no chance, but my agent forced me to do it. With Fantastic Beasts [Kravitz also appeared in the first movie in 2016], I thought, “This is a long shot.” But this creates a freedom of thinking where you have the attitude that it doesn’t really matter.

Then, when you get [the role], it’s just good luck.

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald hits movie theaters November 16; fantasticbeasts.com

Zoë Kravitz

“ FAME IS JUST AN ILLUSION”

So says the actor who plays a witch in the latest Fantastic Beasts film. But the 29-year-old believes success isn’t something you can try to conjure up.

RÜDIGER STURM

W

made me happy. I used to put on shows for my grandparents, and I made them pay to watch me singing songs from Grease.

At some point, I met my band [Elevator Fight, her first group] and we started making music.

It all happened organically.

THE RED BULLETIN

17.10.2018 13:53:23

RÜDIGER STURM

“I DIDN’T WANT TO AUDITION FOR MAD MAX— I THOUGHT I HAD NO CHANCE.” TRB1218p015 15

17.10.2018 13:53:44

B U L L EVA R D

Travis Pastrana

TRIUMPH OVER EVEL

In one evening, the motocross star performed three epic motorcycle jumps, beating a series of records that took stunt icon Evel Knievel eight years to achieve.

2018 Half a century after Knievel, Pastrana clears the fountains at Caesars—albeit in the opposite direction.

O

n New Year’s Eve 1967, stunt rider Evel Knievel launched over the fountains at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. Landing awkwardly, he flew over the handlebar of his Triumph Bonneville T120, tumbling across the parking lot before coming to a stop, unconscious.

At 29, just two years into his daredevil career, Knievel suffered a crushed pelvis and femur, a fractured hip and wrist, two broken ankles and a serious concussion. The jump made him a global superstar, and he would go on to perform ever-more-ambitious stunts for another decade. He passed away in 2007 at the age of 69.

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1967 Knievel clears the fountains. At 141 feet, it was his longest-ever jump, but a bad landing cost him dearly.

THE RED BULLETIN

Stunt stats How Pastrana leaped ahead of Knievel’s legendary feats

“THIS WAS DEFINITELY THE COOLEST THING I’VE EVER DONE.” Travis Pastrana

Car jump

NEILSON BARNARD/GETTY IMAGES, BETTMANN ARCHIVE TOM GUISE CHRISTINA LOCK

At Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on February 18, 1973, riding a Harley-Davidson XR750, Knievel clears 50 crushed cars.

This past July, freestyle motocross superstar Travis Pastrana paid homage to the stunt that catapulted Knievel to fame, launching himself over the same Vegas fountains, dressed in his predecessor’s trademark white leather jumpsuit emblazoned with a blue-and-red starstudded V. Riding a lighter— but more powerful—Indian Scout FTR750, the 34-year-old succeeded where Knievel failed. It was the victorious conclusion to a day of topping the legend’s stunts, starting with Pastrana jumping over 52 stacked cars and then clearing 16 Greyhound buses. And this wasn’t the only triple triumph he achieved in Vegas.

“To be here in Las Vegas, so much of my history has been here,” Pastrana told reporters. “I proposed to my wife here, and I had my first Nitro Circus show here. But this was definitely the coolest thing I’ve ever done.”

However, there is one record of Knievel’s that Pastrana hasn’t topped, and hopefully never will: the Guinness World Record for the most bones broken in a lifetime. The stunt icon’s tally reached 433. nitrocircus.com THE RED BULLETIN

Cars cleared:

120 FT

141 FT

50

52

Bus jump October 25, 1975: Knievel clears 14 Greyhound buses. His rear wheel clips the last, saving him from flipping backward.

Buses cleared:

133 FT

192 FT

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14

Fountain jump In the 51 years since Knievel’s jump, the area around Caesars Palace has become more built up, giving Pastrana a shorter run-up to reach the 70 mph needed to clear the gap.

141 FT

149 FT

Knievel jump

FAIL

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B U L L EVA R D

Warm Brew

“MAC DRE MADE RAP’S LORD OF THE FLIES” L.A.’s rising stars of rap deliver their personal guide to West Coast hip-hop.

F

ormer high school friends Ray Wright, Manu Li and Serk Spliff were refining their blend of tight funk riffs and chilledout psychedelic beats when, in 2014, they were discovered by underground hip-hop icon Dom Kennedy. A year later, the trio—natives of the beachfront L.A. communities of Venice and Santa Monica—released their critically acclaimed breakthrough album, Ghetto Beach Boyz, and today they’re hotly tipped to be the West Coast’s next big thing. Here the rappers reveal four tracks that helped shape their Westside vibe. Warm Brew’s album New Content is out now; redbullrecords.com

MAC DRE “CALIFORNIA LIVIN’ ” (1991)

Wright: “This tune really started the West Coast sound.

Before that, most rap came from the East Coast and was like, ‘A hip hop, hippie to the hippie . . . ’ When people heard Eazy-E, they got the vibe of how it is to be out here. My family would still blast it in their old-school Chevys years after his death [in 1995].”

Spliff: “ ‘California Livin’ ’ plays an important role in the West Coast story, because it introduced people to a different perspective. Coming from Oakland, Mac Dre describes California’s beauty but also talks about the difficulties of being a minority here. Lyrically, it’s rap music’s Lord of the Flies.”

WARREN G & NATE DOGG “REGULATE” (1994)

KENDRICK LAMAR “ALRIGHT” (2015)

Li: “This song introduced the world to [the genre] G-funk.

The sound is smooth and funky, but they rap about gangs and revenge—it’s ghetto gospel. It taught a lot of people about life in Long Beach, because they could relate to the sample it’s based on: Michael McDonald’s ’80s hit ‘I Keep Forgettin’ (Every Time You’re Near).’ ”

Li: “When we look back on the Trump administration, years from now, we’ll remember this as the great protest anthem of our time. Its rebellious energy calls [L.A. rap legends] N.W.A to mind, but with a soul that can only come from one who knows California’s diverse culture. It reminds me of Marvin Gaye’s ‘What’s Going On,’ but in a rap way.”

ROBB KLASSEN

FLORIAN OBKIRCHER

The Brew crew, from left: Serk Spliff, Manu Li and Ray Wright

EAZY-E “BOYZ-N-THE-HOOD” (1986)

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2018

HEROES Meet six men and women who represent the very best of human potential. Athletes who break records and redefine greatness.

Brave souls who refuse to accept their limitations and instead shatter boundaries.

Individuals who see injustice and suffering and have the courage and creativity to affect real change. In short, genuine heroes—the kind of people who make the world a massively better place and inspire us to do the same.

THE RED BULLETIN

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2018

HEROES

TRUE As she charges into the twilight of her career, on a quest to become the greatest skier in history, LINDSEY VONN is living proof that the secret to winning is refusing to give up.

Words SUSAN CASEY Photography MICHAEL MULLER

“I’m a little crazy, for sure,” says Vonn. “I don’t ever feel like, ‘Oh, I’m going too fast.’ ” The alpine legend was photographed August 1 on horseback—one of her side passions— here riding the champion Arabian horse Om El Shaheed at a private ranch in Santa Ynez, California.

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17.10.2018 16:43:06

2018

HEROES

T

he Los Angeles dusk is sultry and hazy,

a remnant of a day that was hot as a blast furnace. A red sun slinks down behind the Westwood Village Theater, which is lit up with neon and ringed by crowds pressed against barricades. A brigade of black SUVs with dark-tinted windows rolls forward, delivering celebrities to a movie premiere. Paparazzi line a red carpet, security guards wearing earpieces patrol the perimeter, publicists in little black dresses work cellphones, check clipboards. Rock music pounds through speakers, and a guy on the sidewalk drums along on a set of plastic pails.

Actor Mark Wahlberg arrives in one Escalade, and director Peter Berg gets out of another, and then there is WWE fighter Ronda Rousey, waving and smiling. A shout goes up; cameras flash. Now the action is underway and things are gridlocked at the entrance, too many people and too many vehicles jockeying in too tight a space. A half block away, the back door of an SUV opens and a stiletto heel emerges, followed by a long muscular leg, a curtain of platinum hair. Lindsey Vonn steps out and stands in the road, 6’2” in her heels. She is wearing a long black halter dress slit to her thigh, a perfect red lipstick and worldclass quadriceps.

Though she’s never appeared in a movie, it’s a measure of Vonn’s own celebrity that every movie fan at the premiere knows exactly who she is: athletic royalty, one of alpine skiing’s most famous competitors, a four-time Olympian and the only American woman ever to capture gold in the downhill, the sport’s most dangerous event. Winner of 82 World Cup races and counting. They know her for her blonde braids and her Midwestern smile and her unrivaled ability to rip down steep mountains at epic speeds. And some of them know that she has suffered—and overcome—a roster of injuries that would make an orthopedic surgeon flinch. Vonn has endured broken bones and torn ligaments and ruptured joints and shredded nerves.

She has bruised herself so deeply that you’d almost need another word to describe it. She’s been concussed and cut and fractured; snapped ankles, arms, fingers, kneecaps. She has slammed into fences at 80 miles per hour.

One time, at the 2006 Olympics in Turin, Italy, Vonn crashed gruesomely during a practice run, her legs wishboning into the splits before she flew into the air, landing hard on her back. It was the type of accident that sends medics sprinting onto the 24

course; she was taken to the hospital by helicopter. “I thought I had broken my back,” she recalled. “I thought, ‘There’s no way I’m coming out of this.’ ” As it turned out, she had badly slammed her back, hip and tailbone, but her spine was still in one piece.

To Vonn, that meant a green light to get back on the mountain: She attempted to leave in her hospital gown and socks and was gently intercepted at the elevator. Two days later she returned to the Games and competed in four events.

That kind of pain can seriously wear a person down, yet somehow Vonn has managed to arrive at the place she is now— more than a quarter-century of ski racing behind her—stronger and tougher and wiser than she has ever been, and even with her sense of humor intact. In February 2018, she’d competed in what she declared would be her last Olympics, in Pyeongchang, South Korea. Beset by high winds, crushing media attention, equipment issues, grief over her grandfather’s recent death and a new generation of skiers gunning for her crown, Vonn nonetheless came home with her third Olympic medal, a bronze in the downhill. She finished .47 seconds behind the gold medalist, Italian skier Sofia Goggia. “I left it all on the mountain like I said I would,” Vonn said afterward. “Sofia just skied better than I did. But I have no regrets.”

At 34, Vonn has entered the home stretch of her competitive skiing career, already a legend. It’s not like she has anything left to prove. There is, however, one last grail, one goal left unaccomplished, and Vonn isn’t about to walk away from the challenge. The only skier to have won more World Cup races than Vonn is Swedish icon Ingemar Stenmark, who retired in 1989. His record of 86 World Cup victories has stood for 30 years. The math is straightforward: Five more wins and Vonn will surpass him. “I think that would put me in a different category when I retire,” she’s explained. “I don’t want to just fade into the background. I want a legacy.”

Watching Vonn walk the red carpet with her boyfriend, NHL star and Nashville Predators defenseman P.K. Subban, the two emitting enough voltage to light up greater Los Angeles, it’s hard to imagine that a fading of any kind is in the cards. But professional sports is a harsh mistress, characterized by a loudly ticking time clock overhead, and no athletic career lasts an entire lifetime. The human body can only take so much for so long.

Vonn herself has stated that ski racers can compete, at best, until they’re 34. For her, that means one last season—and it’s this one.

The trick is to serve notice on the way out—to finish with a bang, not a whimper—and that is exactly what Vonn intends to do: end her career with an exclamation point, as the greatest ski racer in the history of the sport.

Anyone care to bet against her?

L

ong before Lindsey Vonn redefined the word “fast” in women’s ski racing, she was Lindsey Caroline Kildow, a gawky grommet from suburban Minneapolis, whose grandfather, Don Kildow, taught her to ski as a toddler.

The family’s local ski area, Buck Hill, was a speck of a place that offered a grand total of 310 vertical feet. But what Buck Hill lacked in terrain it made up for in ambition. Vonn joined its junior racing development program, led by esteemed Austrian coach Erich Sailer. In case you hadn’t noticed, Austrians take THE RED BULLETIN

2018

their alpine sports seriously: By the time she was 7, Vonn was Vonn follows a few moments later, limping slightly. She bashing her way through 400 slalom gates each day after school, immediately sets to work loosening up her legs with a Hypervolt circuiting up Buck Hill’s rope tow in the dusk and the dark, deep-tissue massager before hopping onto a bike. She wears under night-skiing lights. purple tights and an orange sports bra, her hair pulled back in an Even as a kid, Vonn’s technique set her apart. She leaned into elaborate, head-encircling braid. It is 7 o’clock; Vonn will train her turns at extreme angles, and she took to the fall line, the nonstop for the next three hours. straightest route to the bottom, with a natural aggression. In Per Lundstam, Red Bull’s director of athlete performance, skiing, a willingness to attack the fall line is not something that leans back at his desk and watches her warm up. Lundstam, a can entirely be taught; either a person has the courage to point tallish, rugged man, comes from an alpine skiing background their tips down the mountain or they don’t. To put it mildly, himself—though at Red Bull, his sports-science expertise is as Vonn did, and from an early age. likely to be applied to motorcycle racers, big-wave surfers, cliff That didn’t necessarily mean instant dominance, though it divers or some athletic pursuit that has yet to be invented. The didn’t take long for her fierce competitive instinct to kick in.

High Performance Center’s approach is driven by technology, he “When I first started racing, the first two races I didn’t know explains. “We’re always trying to use as much data as we can to what I was doing,” she says. “But then I know how we are affecting the athletes. quickly realized that if I wasn’t We’re trying to assess: How much winning, I didn’t like the feeling. So impact does that physiological stress I just figured out how to never have really have?” it again.”

In practice, this might include blood Along with Sailer, another alpine tests to measure mitochondrial expert who recognized Vonn’s potential function or capillary density or immune was her father, Alan Kildow. A former system response or the ratio of free junior national ski champion whose radicals to antioxidants in the body. It racing career was cut short by injury, definitely means exploring where an Kildow was not the kind of parent who athlete’s weaknesses lie, and how they stayed on the sidelines. When Vonn was can be strengthened. In Vonn’s case, it’s 12, he drew up a five-year plan for her the knowledge that raw muscular to make the 2002 Winter Olympics. Step power declines with age; also that her one: The Kildows—Lindsey, her two knees are not brand new. Resilience is younger sisters, Karin and Laura, her even more important than strength. two younger brothers, Dylan and Reed, “We’re doing a lot of work to build From early on, Vonn displayed strong technique her mother, Linda, and her father— integrity into her skeletal system,” and a natural aggression to ski the fall line. pulled up stakes from Minnesota and Lundstam says, gesturing at Vonn, who moved to Vail, Colorado. There, Vonn has moved onto the floor to stretch out could range across 5,300 acres of mountain and race down 3,500 her hips. “We try to build systems that can transfer force in the vertical feet. At first the move was unsettling. Vonn’s purpose body—to use all the force in service of momentum.” He smiles. was clear, but for her siblings it meant leaving friends behind, “We don’t want to have force leakage.” saying goodbye to the only home they’d known, adjusting to new Anyone who’s seen Vonn ski would attest that a whole lot of schools—more than a little upheaval. “My whole family made force is being effectively applied, but in races decided by sacrifices so that I could ski,” Vonn says. hundredths of a second, every tiny adjustment matters. “It’s The list of rapid-fire successes that followed included a Junior interesting to see her being so in tune with her equipment, with Olympics gold medal, a spot on the U.S. National Team, a World her own body, with preparation,” Lundstam says. “She’s looking Cup debut, and sure enough, an appearance at the 2002 Games behind every door, every rock. She’s really looking at it from a in Salt Lake City. Vonn was 17 years old when she competed in professional viewpoint, I feel. She’s building a self-view of how her first Olympics. Her sixth-place finish in the women’s fast and successful she’s going to be.” He shakes his head slowly. combined event—downhill and slalom—was the best alpine “She’s been so dominant for so long it’s incredible.” skiing result by any American woman that year. It was a blazing onn is known for her outsized work ethic, training harder start. But the real pinnacle, and the harrowing trials that would and longer than virtually anyone, and that’s even before attend Vonn’s journey to reach it, still lay ahead. you factor in her multiple post-accident rehabilitations. he Red Bull High Performance Center is cavernous During one brutal eight-month stretch in 2013, she blew and quiet in Santa Monica’s early morning hours, its out the anterior cruciate and medial collateral ligaments in her state-of-the-art machines, racks of weights, spinning right knee, fractured her tibia, had surgery to repair the damage, bikes, massage tables and cryotherapy chambers rebuilt her strength to get back on the racing circuit, then awaiting the day’s first taker—and soon she arrives, padding into reinjured the same knee—only worse. “It was a harder surgery the the gym with her tail wagging: Lucy, Vonn’s Cavalier King second time around,” Vonn recalls. “My meniscus [pads of Charles Spaniel. cartilage under the kneecap] were just torched. They almost took

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COURTESY OF LINDSEY VONN

HEROES

THERE IS ONE LAST GRAIL, ONE GOAL LEFT UNACCOMPLISHED, AND VONN ISN'T ABOUT TO WALK AWAY FROM THE CHALLENGE.

“I THINK WHAT SEPARATES ME FROM THE OTHER COMPETITORS IS MY WILLINGNESS TO THROW MYSELF DOWN THE MOUNTAIN.”

2018

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them out completely, which would have ended my career. But they were able to suture them back up.”

Reluctantly, Vonn sat out the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, Russia, but returned later that year with a flurry of World Cup victories.

In 2015 and 2016 she won plenty of races but also broke her ankle, then her kneecap, then her humerus (upper arm bone), an injury she describes as the most excruciating of all. It took 12 screws and a metal plate to piece her arm back together, a surgery that left Vonn with lingering nerve damage so severe she couldn’t feel her wrist or hand for months. This is hardly a complete list, but even a brief tour of her injuries is enough to leave anyone reeling.

Appropriately, Vonn’s favorite book is Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, the bestseller written by psychologist Angela Duckworth. Over years of research, Duckworth discovered a pattern among ultra-high-achieving people: Though their success was often chalked up to talent, their real secret was that they expended vast amounts of effort, even in the face of setbacks. Like Vonn, Duckworth’s achievers drove themselves hard in pursuit of their goals, long past the point where others would simply quit.

Vonn is what Duckworth calls a “paragon of grit,” a person who is truly unsinkable, who gets up when they’re knocked down, time after time. That doesn’t mean it’s easier for them than for anyone else. But there’s an all-consuming purpose behind their perseverance, a light that never goes out.

After 20 minutes of warm-up, Vonn’s personal trainer, Alex Bunt, takes her through a series of exercises that builds in intensity, deploying weights, resistance bands, medicine balls, battle ropes and assorted other gear. There’s an emphasis on twisting, balance and quick, explosive movements. “This is pretty full on preseason training,” Bunt explains. “Today is agility and upper body. Tomorrow is heavy strength training.” Mixing it up is important, he adds, because Vonn logs so many hours in the gym: “It can get monotonous for her.”

If Vonn is bored she doesn’t show it. More than anything, she’s focused, completing drill after drill until a light sheen of sweat appears across her shoulders. There’s an absence of chitchat, a businesslike vibe. Overhead, giant industrial fans whirl.

This is what Duckworth refers to as “deliberate practice.” This kind of training isn’t meant to be fun. It requires concerted attention and a carefully thought-out routine. Most people go their entire lives without subjecting themselves to it. Deliberate practice is taxing. It’s tiring. It’s also highly effective, and one of the basic foundations for developing grit.

Unsurprisingly, gritty people are not given to whining, and Vonn is no exception. Watching her train, you’d have no clue she’d spent the previous day doing a 12-hour photo shoot for a sponsor, outside in 107-degree heat. That would be arduous enough, but she also had to perform exercises, bundled in heavy clothing, while engulfed in a faux blizzard. “They had paper like ashes, white ashes,” Vonn says. “They sprayed it all over to make it look like winter.” Particles flew up her nose, into her lungs.

“They actually emailed me and said, ‘We’re just confirming that the stuff you inhaled is not toxic.’ ” She laughs. “And everyone else had masks on!”

THE RED BULLETIN

A BRIEF HISTORY OF AWESOMENESS

Vonn’s elite career by the numbers

2002

Vonn makes her Olympic debut at the Salt Lake City Games in February, competing in the slalom and combined.

2004 Vonn wins her first World Cup event in

December, climbing to the top step for the downhill at Lake Louise in Alberta.

2006 At the Turin Olympics, Vonn has a horrible crash and is airlifted to a nearby hospital (but would return two days later to resume competition).

2008

Vonn clinches her first overall World Cup season title.

2010

At the Vancouver Games, Vonn wins two medals, including gold in the downhill.

2012

At an event in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, Vonn earns her 50th career World Cup win in February. The following month, she clinches her fourth World Cup season title.

2016

Vonn becomes winningest all-time female skier with her 74th World Cup win at Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, in January.

2018

Vonn wins bronze in the downhill at the Pyeongchang Games in February. The following month, she takes her 82nd career World Cup win in Are, Sweden.

Vonn won her 82nd World Cup race last March in Are, Sweden.

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VONN IS WHAT DUCKWORTH CALLS A “PARAGON OF GRIT,” A PERSON WHO IS TRULY UNSINKABLE, WHO GETS UP WHEN THEY’RE KNOCKED DOWN, TIME AFTER TIME.

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Vonn recounts this episode cheerfully. To spend time with her (Leo and Bear) to small enough to tuck in a carrier bag and take is to learn that she’s far from a tightly wound warrior diva. When on a flight (Lucy). At a glance the house looks spotlessly clean, she’s not racing, Vonn is relaxed and friendly and funny. “She but Vonn points out that it’s covered in dog hair. “There’s no way couldn’t be more Minnesotan if she were cast in the next season to get rid of it,” she says. “I vacuum almost every day.” of Fargo,” one sports journalist wrote. This ability to stay open After a post-workout shower one afternoon, Vonn comes and positive in heavy situations served her especially well in downstairs to the kitchen. She’s wearing a T-shirt, shorts and Pyeongchang. After missing Sochi, waiting and training eight fuzzy slippers with ears on them. Canisters of protein powder are years for another Olympics—the last Games she’d ever compete stacked on the counter, near a bottle of Dom Perignon and a in—Vonn had a lot riding on a few minutes of skiing. When a white orchid. A sign on the wall reads “Girl Boss.” reporter asked her about visiting Subban follows a few the White House should she win a minutes later, in search of gold medal, Vonn candidly replied lunch. He’s a naturally friendly that she was competing for her guy—unless you happen to get country, not the president, and that in his way in the hockey rink. a celebratory trip to Washington, Like Vonn, he’s at the top of his D.C., would not happen. Instantly, game, training and competing, her social media was flooded with on the road constantly. The two #MAGA trolls—a fetid blast of hate. have an easy manner together “HOPING FOR A BROKEN NECK,” and spend a lot of time wrote one charmer. “I HOPE YOU laughing affectionately at each SKI OFF A CLIFF AND DIE!!” other’s jokes and in general spewed another. Another guy felt goofing around. They’d met at the need to write: “LINDSEY-EVERY the 2017 ESPY Awards, a glitzy TIME I SEE YOU, I FEEL LIKE affair held in Las Vegas. “I was THROWING UP!!” In this instance, wearing an awesome, beautiful Vonn tweeted back: “Well, don’t three-piece suit—stunning— worry, I’ll still hold your hair back if and it was really hot outside,” Vonn’s training routines focus more on fine-tuning her you do.”

Subban recalls. When the redresilience than on developing raw power.

“You take it for what it’s worth carpet commentator thrust a and at some point you just laugh, microphone at him and asked because it’s ridiculous,” Vonn told reporters, dismissing the how he was faring under all that fabric in the searing heat, trolls. After a disappointing first race, she simply posted, Subban replied: “It is really hot outside. But it’s not hotter than “Tomorrow is another day and another opportunity to become how Lindsey Vonn looks.” Vonn, standing nearby in an elegant better. Goodnight.” black-feathered mini-dress, took notice.

“Clearly, as you can see, I shot my shot, and I hit it from long n any given year, Vonn travels in perpetual motion, range,” Subban says now, breaking into a grin. “And the rest is crisscrossing Europe and North America for the World Cup, history. Right, Sugarplum?” Vonn rolls her eyes and smiles. flying to the Southern Hemisphere for winter training during “What else do you want to know about Lindsey?” Subban the Northern Hemisphere’s summer. Olympic years? Follow asks, sitting down to eat a salad. “I’ll tell you—she hates to lose. the torch and you’ll find her. Aside from all that, she could be She can’t stand losing. Everybody loves to win—who doesn’t love anywhere. During her 2018 offseason, for instance, Vonn swung to win?” He gestures with his fork. “But do you hate to lose? And through Greece, Italy, France and Canada, where she and hating to lose doesn’t mean you break your stick or your skis, it’s Subban unwound with a little cliff jumping. At one point she like, in that moment are you able to turn it on and do whatever it went to the Bahamas to film a Shark Week special in which she takes to win? And that’s what she—trust me, I know. When we freedives with oceanic whitetips, one of the feistier species. (“I have our little competitive moments, I get a full blast of whatever love sharks,” Vonn says, holding out her hand to reveal a small she’s got going on.” shark tattoo. “They’re great. I’m obsessed with them now. Yeah, “Really?” Vonn asks with a laugh.

I love sharks.”)

“Oh yeah. I found out real quick why she’s got so many of When she’s not on the move, Vonn’s main headquarters is still those trophies.”

Vail, where she owns a five-bedroom home at the base of the It’s a happy scene, with all the domestic comforts: the mountain. Its living room features a custom-built trophy case partner, the dogs, the quiet lunch in the kitchen. But here is the that covers an entire wall. Her West Coast base is Sherman Oaks, ticking time clock again: Later that same week, Vonn would be a quiet Los Angeles suburb where the streets are lined with palm jetting to Chile; her brother Reed would be driving Leo, Bear and trees and flowering plants. Vonn’s California house is airy and Lucy to Colorado. And soon, the ski-racing season—and the modern, with sleek lines and dark wood floors, punctuated by hockey season—would begin. abstract paintings, oversize couches and a pool table. Oh, and In a life as mobile and high-pressured as Vonn’s, steady, dogs. Vonn has three of them, ranging in size from guard-dog big supportive companionship is often one of the things that falls 32

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CODY PICKENS/RED BULL CONTENT POOL

I

DEPRESSION HAS OCCASIONALY LURKED ON THE SIDELINES, A STRUGGLE SHE’S SHARED IN HOPES OF HELPING OTHERS.

VONN ON THE MEANING OF 87 WINS: “I DON’T JUST WANT TO FADE INTO THE BACKGROUND. I WANT A LEGACY.”

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away. It’s a bit of a job hazard. Relationships can be hard to t some point in the not-too-distant future, possibly this maintain; loneliness can set in. Though she is close to her family, coming winter, Vonn will stand on her final podium and she travels with Bunt; her physiotherapist, Lindsay and, barring injury, shunt the great Ingemar Stenmark Winninger; two coaches; and a ski technician, Vonn is well into second place. “If I can break that record, that’s acquainted with the daunting sterility of a hotel room—the really the last thing I have to do,” she says. It will be the end of a impersonal, if comfortable, state of residence that tennis player brilliant athletic career and, yes, a retirement of sorts, but Vonn Andre Agassi has described as “Not Home—the non-place we is not likely to spend the rest of her 30s, not to mention the next exist as athletes.” several decades of her life, kicking back in an armchair.

Over the past decade in her personal life she has weathered a So, sure, after that 87th World Cup victory she’ll be free to turbulent divorce, high-profile breakups and, for a time, an binge-watch her favorite TV show, Law and Order, and she estrangement from her father. None of this was exactly a picnic, intends to spend more time in the ocean, spearfishing, stand-up especially when Vonn was grappling with injuries at the same paddling and cavorting with sharks, and there will be tennis and time. Depression has occasionally lurked on the sidelines, a horseback riding and skiing for the sheer pleasure of it, and, struggle she’s shared in the hope of helping others. Some of the evidently, attendance at Nashville Predators hockey games, but gloomiest days came during Vonn, one suspects, will not shut the times when it wasn’t clear that engine down—she’ll merely switch her racing career could gears. She already has a foothold in the continue. “That second knee movie business, with an executiveinjury really took a toll on me producing gig lined up; she is also psychologically,” Vonn says. “It intrigued by the fashion and beauty was disappointment. And just industries. Vonn may design a line of being depressed. And skiwear, or workout apparel. There will wondering why I was working be a memoir and other media. And so hard to come back if I was clearly, she’ll make one hell of a just going to get injured again.” motivational speaker.

Yet it is especially in the Inspiring others to find their own darkness that true grit reveals grit is high on Vonn’s to-do list. In 2015 itself. “To be gritty is to keep she launched the Lindsey Vonn putting one foot ahead of the Foundation, a nonprofit that aims to other,” Duckworth writes. “To empower young girls. Angela be gritty is to hold fast to an Duckworth is on the advisory board. interesting and purposeful The foundation’s tagline is “Giving the goal. To be gritty is to invest, future women of the world the day after week after year, in confidence to move mountains.” Four challenging practice. To be times each year, the group runs its gritty is to fall down seven Strong Girl camps, two days of sports Vonn and P.K. Subban did not fly under the radar at the times and rise eight.” and life coaching with Vonn and a team July premiere of The Spy Who Dumped Me. Vonn has always followed of mentors. “We teach the girls about this prescription, though in her perseverance, positive self-talk, setting case it’s more like fall down 378 times (at Autobahn speed) and goals, social media and bullying,” Vonn says, citing some rise 379. Given her intensity, it’s understandable that she deals themes. The program also offers scholarships and community with a spectrum of emotions; that amid her meteoric highs there events with guest speakers. When Vonn talks about the will be some doldrums. “It’s hard to keep it balanced,” she foundation, she brightens, visibly stoked by its mission: admits. “But it’s like anything else—you just have to do your best “Sometimes it takes just a small gesture to help girls deal with and work at it.” She nods toward Subban: “And it helps when their world better.” Duckworth would second that: “Purpose is what drives perseverance, what carries you through the there’s fun, and someone who helps pick you up.” tough times.”

Has she ever felt like slowing down a bit? Taking it, perhaps, a However Vonn’s next chapter unfolds, whatever fills her touch easier? In a word: No. Simply put, Vonn is built for speed. après-ski calendar, it surely won’t be boring. This is a woman “I mean, I’m a little crazy, for sure,” she says, laughing. “I don’t who has raced at the edge of possibility for a good long time, her ever feel like, ‘Oh, I’m going too fast.’ That’s what I love about skis carving razor-thin arcs. In a sense, it is time itself that she is skiing—you can go as fast as you want to go. There’s nothing racing, as the world spins on. “It’s a bit hard to process, because holding you back.” But surely, like the rest of us, she feels fear? it’s been my life since I was 2-and-a-half,” she says, with the At least sometimes? “Not really. Not ever in skiing. I think that’s slightest tinge of melancholy. She pauses and then shrugs. what separates me a bit from the other competitors is just my “I don’t know. I might have to take up skydiving.” willingness to always throw my body down the mountain. That’s probably why I’ve been injured so many times. But it’s also why CREDITS Hair: Laura Polko Makeup: Karan Mitchell Stylist: Monica Rose I’ve won a lot.”

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2018

HEROES

Not all champions win gold medals—some rise to greatness through deeply personal trials that wind up offering inspiration and salvation for others. Turn the page to read the story of music manager turned immigrant advocate DORIS MUÑOZ and then three more incredible heroes.

PIPER FERGUSON

MORAL VICTORS

Doris Muñoz was photographed on September 28 at the Hi Hat club in the East Los Angeles neighborhood of Highland Park.

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DORIS MUÑOZ

D

oris Muñoz was in kindergarten

when her mother taught her the family emergency plan. If no one came to pick her up from school—or if she arrived home and found her parents and two older brothers gone without a trace—she was to call her aunt down the street and follow instructions from there.

The protocol was in place because unlike Muñoz, who was born in California, the rest of her family was undocumented. They had driven up from Mexico in 1989 hoping for a smooth path to citizenship but remained in legal limbo—even today. “My parents have been living in the shadows,” says Muñoz, a music manager who runs her own firm, Mija Management. “It’s crazy to think that they’ve put their life on pause for 30 years.”

Last year, unsettled by the Trump administration’s increasingly aggressive anti-immigration policies, the gregarious 24-year-old decided to take action, organizing a benefit concert to raise funds for the hefty legal fees required to begin filing immigration paperwork for her parents. She hit half of her target with the March 2017 show, which oversold the 300-capacity Hi Hat in L.A.’s Highland Park neighborhood, and after two more concerts had reached her $6,000 goal.

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But Muñoz kept going, and to date her Solidarity for Sanctuary concert series has raised more than $14,000 to assist undocumented persons at risk of deportation.

That threat is painfully real for Muñoz, whose brother José was deported in 2015.

Because of misdemeanors on his record, ICE had required him to check in regularly at an immigration office. This time, “they surprised him with handcuffs and a bus ride to Tijuana. None of us got to say goodbye,” says Muñoz. “I never thought it would happen to us, but there are millions of other families that deal with this on the daily, too.”

Muñoz, who represents rising indiepop star (and fellow first-generation Mexican-American) Cuco, has so far staged eight Solidarity concerts, including three that doubled as tributes to the late Tejano icon Selena. The shows have raised money and awareness for immigration assistance resources including Carecen, Voto Latino and a scholarship fund for undocumented students at Muñoz’s alma mater, CSU Fullerton.

Last September, after Attorney General Jeff Sessions rescinded the DACA program, Solidarity held a concert to raise money for people who needed to renew their visas. The most recent event was the series’ largest, and its first foray outside L.A. In July, just 16 months after that first benefit show at the Hi Hat, she partnered with Lincoln Center Out of Doors to present a “Selena for Sanctuary” show that drew close to 4,000 New Yorkers. “It was beautiful,” Muñoz says of that “mind-blowing” night. “We utilized

that night to remind our community of the work that needs to be done.”

That Muñoz has achieved so much in less than two years is all the more remarkable given that when the road to Solidarity began in January 2017, she was unemployed, having just been laid off from her first post-graduation job as a tour manager for Swedish pop artist Léon. She wasn’t sure how to pay her own rent, much less shoulder the burden of sponsoring her parents’ path to legal status. But a key quality of a hero is courage, and Muñoz has plenty of that— even as she tries to deflect the credit.

“In a year that I was in the dumps in the music industry, it only felt natural to leverage my privilege and platform to help our community,” says Muñoz, who immediately reached out to a handful of unsigned artists she believed in (including Cuco), building her own business and philanthropic vehicle from the ground up.

Muñoz has big plans for what comes next. She’s assembling a team that can help her run Solidarity for Sanctuary, as well as making plans to expand the series to showcase marginalized visual artists and to establish the organization as a formal nonprofit foundation.

In the meantime, though, she has two profoundly simple goals. She plans to buy a duplex in Tijuana, where her brother José now resides, for him to live in. And she hopes to have her parents’ legal status sorted out by year’s end, so they can cross the border to see him. “I just want my family together for Christmas,” she says.

“That’s all I want.” —Rebecca Sun THE RED BULLETIN

PIPER FERGUSON

Unemployed just two years ago, the music manager has become a successful entrepreneur and a powerful advocate for immigrants in need.

“IT FELT NATURAL TO LEVERAGE MY PRIVILEGE AND PLATFORM TO HELP OUR COMMUNITY.”

YOU WOKE AT DAWN, FELL ASLEEP AT DARK, WERE INFECTED WITH THE ZIKA VIRUS.

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HEROES

RICHARD “CRAZY LEGS” COLÓN The legendary B-boy saw the devastation in Puerto Rico and the tepid relief effort and decided he had to do something. And so he did.

BALAZS GARDI/RED BULL CONTENT POOL

H

ere’s what it feels like to be

a 27-year-old hero, right before you’re about to do something stupid.

You have a gun. The money you earned from hip-hop dancing is gone. A lot of your friends are in jail; others are dead. You sell memberships at a gym for money, and you do other, less legal things, for more money.

One of those things leads to a guy jumping you, breaking your jaw. That’s why you have the gun. You don’t see hip-hop dancing bringing you back the fame and fortune you once had.

Revenge, though—you can see that. You can almost taste that.

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And here’s what it feels like to be a 51-year-old hero. You are a beloved elder statesman of breaking. People beg you for autographs. They’re asking now, at a hiphop festival in the Netherlands. All you have to do is what you love: Promote breaking and encourage youngsters to do what they love. But Hurricane Maria has just hit Puerto Rico. People are sick, and dying. What can a B-boy—even a famous, wealthy B-boy—do? You wish you knew the answer. Relief efforts seem stalled.

You don’t know what to do.

So you write an email. You write to ask for help.

You’re thankful that you never made it to see the guy with the gun. The cops who pulled you over helped with that decision.

But you’re the one who decided to walk to the Bronx community center, where you spent years teaching local kids how to break and avoid the mistakes you had made. Miraculously, that service led to a career resurgence, and to the night in the Netherlands. That’s when you ended up sending an email to your corporate sponsors, expressing your desperation to help your people.

That got you on a Gulfstream private jet, and on that trip to the island you drove to houses and entire communities without power, without shelter, without drinkable water. You drove to remote and devastated communities and delivered

scores of filtration systems to make the water drinkable—each system could filter a million gallons. You woke at dawn, fell asleep at dark, were infected with the Zika virus. You would make nine trips to the island in less than a year. You brought more filtration systems and batteries and money. You brought a music festival back to the island.

Deciding to be a hero sounds simple.

Race into the burning building. Grab the screaming infant. Stand up to the scowling bully. That hasn’t been your experience. Before doing heroic things, you have been drunk with thoughts of vengeance. You have been confused. You have been lost.

Just last year, preparing for an exhibition dance-off against a German breaker, in Russia, hardly a heroic deed by most people’s definition, you had some doubts. You already had endured four knee surgeries and at least five herniated discs. You wanted to dance well but you didn’t want to end up crippled. Would dancing signify bravery, or swollen-headed egotism? You sought advice from an old friend and fellow B-boy, Steffan “Mr. Wiggles” Clemente. And he gave you the simplest, most confounding definition of what it takes to be a hero you ever heard.

“You show up,” Mr. Wiggles said.

“And you have already won. Just do what you do.” —Steve Friedman 41

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L I S A WA N G

I

t’s an infuriating, demoralizing and

scary time to be a woman in this country. It is also, remarkably, a somewhat hopeful time. For female entrepreneurs, it can be easy to focus on those first three adjectives. Men, after all, make up 94 percent of the venture capital landscape.

Female founders get just 2.2 percent of investor funding.

African-American women have it even worse: They get just 0.2 percent of total venture capital dollars; when they do get funded, they score an average of $36,000. The typical white male founder? He gets $1.3 million.

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Of course, it isn’t just about the money.

When #MeToo unzipped the reality of such a pervasive, lopsided power structure, it exposed more grim statistics. Like how 81 percent of women have experienced sexual harassment—including verbal, cyber and physical harassment and assault—with 38 percent saying that particularly dehumanizing form of communication happens to them at work.

It’s important to set such a dismal stage to fully appreciate the work of women like Lisa Wang. As a former world-class rhythmic gymnast, Wang knew about cutthroat competition, zerosum games and—after missing the 2008 Olympics by 0.25 of a point—enduring insecurity. She knew what it was like to win medals, lose friends and question her own legitimacy. As an entrepreneur, she knew about micro-aggressions. She knew what it was like to be ignored by investors who were convinced the white male by her side was the CEO rather than the COO of her startup. She knew about blatant transgressions, too, having been forcibly kissed and followed by a prospective investor. She knew that women made 79 cents for every dollar a man made.

There was so much to complain about.

But complaining wasn’t Wang’s style.

She formed SheWorx as an antidote to it all. As a global networking platform, SheWorx emphasizes collaboration over competition and connects female founders to each other. It’s a sisterhood of ambitious, hard-working women who can talk about money and power and business

without feeling bitchy or bossy or impolite. Where it’s OK to be uncertain and vulnerable and to ask for help. Where empathy and altruism are celebrated as strengths and where those who succeed become role models eager to give back.

Through SheWorx100 summits, entrepreneurs meet directly with investors. In small groups, they pitch their companies and everyone weighs in with solutions and ideas in an environment that is the opposite of the zero-sum, winner-take-all mentality of elite sports and the exaggerated swagger and boastful claims of Silicon Valley. To date, 90 percent of investors at SheWorx100 summits have had follow-up meetings with founders, and 10 percent of founders have met their lead or followon investor. After finding her lead investor at a SheWorx100 summit in San Francisco, Kristina Jones—co-founder of Court Buddy, a company that matches lawyers with clients based on their budget—became the 14th-ever AfricanAmerican female to raise $1 million in her seed round.

It’s easy to feel so bad about so much right now. But Lisa Wang’s “business of the heart” has become the leading global platform and event series dedicated to empowering female entrepreneurs and closing the funding gap. With seven chapters around the world, it has helped more than 20,000 women build their companies.

With numbers like that, it’s getting easier to feel hopeful, too. —Christine Fennessy THE RED BULLETIN

CHRISTIAN ANWANDER

The former elite gymnast understood the huge challenges facing female entrepreneurs. So she founded a platform to enable support—and funding.

WITH SEVEN CHAPTERS AROUND THE WORLD, SHEWORX HAS HELPED MORE THAN 20,000 WOMEN BUILD THEIR COMPANIES.

“THE ACCIDENT ENDED MY MOTORCYCLE CAREER, BUT I WASN’T ABOUT TO LET IT STOP ME FROM DOING WHAT I LOVE.”

2018

HEROES

MARIO B O N FA N T E J R .

So many people said that his injury would lead to a life of immobility, but the obsessive racer and self-taught inventor has shown he can move mountains.

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ne afternoon in the fall of 2006

MIKO LIM

in Northern California, Mario Bonfante Jr. mounted a BMX bike, launched off the top of a massive dirt jump, went over the handlebar and landed so hard on his head that he’d never again be able to walk. Or stand. Or hold a burrito. Worse, he’d never be able to ride a motorcycle.

THE RED BULLETIN

Just 17 years old when he broke three vertebrae in his neck and became a quadriplegic, Bonfante was heading into his second season as a pro streetmotorcycle racer—one of those guys you see knee-dropping through turns at 100plus miles per hour. As was his custom, he’d taken up the sport with a singularity of focus that had made him an expert in every other pursuit he’d tried: motocross, skateboarding, even pee-wee football.

During his rookie year racing street bikes, he earned more wins and accolades and sponsors than most guys in their 20s. His career wasn’t just becoming possible; it was happening.

But now this: a wheelchair, a catheter, a life of immobility. At least that’s what everyone told him. Bonfante saw things differently. “The accident ended my motorcycle career,” he says without drama. “But I wasn’t going to let it stop me from doing what I love.”

What Bonfante loves is speed. He hadn’t even gotten out of physical therapy when he resolved to find a way to keep moving—and moving fast. Today, Bonfante is the inventor and designer of a mechanism that allows him to drive race cars, on a real track, and hold his own against able-bodied drivers. The device, which he designed in his bedroom, is an all-in-one steering wheel, throttle, shifter and braking system. It might take Bonfante

several minutes to get himself out of his wheelchair and into the front seat of his customized BMW M3, but once he’s driving—watch out. Hairpins at 60 mph?

Yup. Straightaways at 130? No problem.

As a kid, Bonfante always figured he’d one day switch from motorcycles to race cars; the way he sees it now, “The injury gave me the opportunity to graduate from two wheels to four.”

Bonfante is still looking for a sponsor that can help make his race career a reality. But in the meantime, he’s given himself an even greater challenge: He’s trying to bring his invention to the masses; rather, to any paraplegic or quadriplegic like him who has some use of arms and hands. In fact, his commitment to perfecting and scaling the device is as big a priority as using it himself. “Even as a kid I always liked helping the other kids—at the skatepark, the race track, wherever. Older guys mentored me,” he says, “and I mentored the younger ones because I like to see people live up to their potential.”

Bonfante would reject the label, but his immeasurable strength in the face of adversity, and the energy he’s putting into helping others in his position, makes him a true hero. He hasn’t just made the best of a bad situation; he’s made a bad situation remarkable and is trying to take others along for the ride. —Mike Kessler 45

2018

HEROES

ALL IS

NOT LO ST After a grisly mountain accident crushed DAVE MACKEY’s leg, the decorated ultrarunner underwent 13 surgeries to try to save it.

When the final outcome left him able to walk but unable to run, he made the harrowing decision to amputate so he could return to the sport he loves.

Words MATT HART Photography CHIP KALBACK

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H

2018

HEROES e had trusted this rock before, hundreds of times,

and it always held his body weight. It was one of the many slabs of mini-fridge-sized sedimentary rocks that jut out from the jagged, steep rock pile that constitutes the summit of Bear Peak, the tallest mountain in Boulder, Colorado’s western skyline. But on Wednesday, May 23, 2015, this 300-pound rock, ostensibly entrenched in the mountain, gave way under Dave Mackey—and he took flight.

Dave Mackey, shot for The Red Bulletin in June, while training for the Leadville Race Series.

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He’d set out from his front door to run up three of Boulder’s iconic green high-rises, South Boulder Peak, Bear Peak and Green Mountain, in a lollipop loop of 13 miles of some of the area’s best trail running. The 5,200 vertical feet of uphill over rugged terrain would be a fairly large endeavor for most runners but was routine training for Mackey, a professional ultrarunner and two-time USA Track & Field Ultrarunner of the Year award winner, who was training for the Western States 100-Mile Endurance Run the following month in California.

The recent rainy weather meant he had the trails mostly to himself on this cloudy and wet Monday morning. It had also saturated the ground, putting the mountains on the move, remodeling them ever so slowly with gravity’s assistance. After scrambling off trail to the summit cone, Mackey had been traversing across the mountain’s ridge at 8,459 feet when he trusted the wrong rock.

As his brain began to sense free fall, his amygdala sent his body into fight-or-flight mode, triggering his sympathetic nervous system to release stress hormones, increase his heart rate, quicken his breathing, speed up his metabolism and pump more oxygen-rich blood directly to the larger muscles of his body. This ingrained evolutionary reaction is a completely involuntary response to acute stress, allowing a person to become instantly energized in the face of conflict and either fight for their life or run away at top speed.

Falling, Mackey torqued his upper body back toward the hillside and clawed at the mountain to stop his progress. He hit his head along the way but doesn’t remember how, exactly. He also can’t say if he broke his leg during the fall or in the aftermath. All he knows is that when he came to a hard stop, the boulder that had sent him tumbling wasn’t quite done with him.

It landed on top of his left leg, pinning him in place. He had fallen about 25 feet and had somehow landed on an improbable flat patch of ground on the steep slopes below the summit. A few feet in any direction and he would have fallen much further, and likely to his death.

Working with a fresh cocktail of adrenaline, endorphins and dopamine, Mackey tried to push the rock off his crushed leg. But the 2-by-3 rock slab, shaped like a miniature flatiron, wasn’t budging. He was just five miles from his home, from his wife, from his kids, but utterly alone.

“I screamed from the pain, but I didn’t pass out,” Mackey says. “Then I started yelling for Paul, who I hoped was close enough to hear me.”

THE RED BULLETIN

Mackey runs at high altitude in the Rocky Mountains around Loveland Pass, about 70 miles from his home in Boulder.

Eventually, a trail runner Mackey had passed earlier in the day, a friend named Paul Gross, heard his cries. “It was kind of an odd sound and I couldn’t hear it that well,” Gross told reporters. “He was well above where I was going, but I heard something, so I went up that way.”

He found Mackey and managed to leverage the rock off his leg with a tree branch. Gasping at the mangle of bloody flesh and exposed crushed bone (most of his calf muscle was stripped of its skin), Gross called 911, setting in motion a massive extraction effort. Fortuitously, Rocky Mountain Rescue, a Boulder-­based volunteer group trained in traumatic mountain accidents, was already in the area attempting to locate a woman who had jumped to her death from a nearby peak. Given his condition and peculiar location, it took the rescuers four hours to get Mackey off the mountainside and into an ambulance.

D

avid James Mackey was born on November 22, 1969, in Baltimore, Maryland, the second of three children.

Though he’s not entirely sure babies can remember things, Mackey swears his first memory is of his mother, Carol, pricking him with a pin while changing his diaper. “I remember her saying, ‘Well if you hadn’t been moving around I wouldn’t have pricked you,’ ” Mackey says.

His parents had met at the University of Toledo and married shortly after graduation. The growing family lived for a time in Baltimore and Portland, Maine, before moving to the coastal New England town of Cumberland in 1976, where his father,

THE RED BULLETIN

John, worked for the American Can Company. Dave was 6 when the family arrived in the small town of about 5,500 people that faces the Casco Bay on the Atlantic Ocean.

His quintessential Maine upbringing included the Cumberland County Fair, fishing in Sebago Lake and hunting camps near Ellsworth in the winter. Though his two brothers were rambunctious, Dave had a quiet and thoughtful side. “Even then he was sort of within himself and reticent,” Carol says. “He didn’t ask for much. He was extremely self-sufficient.”

He was also good at almost every sport he took on. “They came pretty naturally to me,” Mackey says. “Soccer, baseball and ice hockey were my sports growing up.” He had Red Sox posters on his bedroom walls. John coached the boys’ Little League teams.

When I ask Carol where Dave’s athleticism comes from, she says, “His father was a very good athlete. John went to college on a football scholarship and played all four years. I also see it in the genes with my father. Dave’s grandfather was an incredible athlete, too.”

Mackey chose the University of Southern Maine for college and played Division III soccer for two fall seasons. He then transferred to the University of New Hampshire, where he walked on to the soccer team his junior year and began running to stay in shape. Drawn to the skiing and climbing out West, Mackey moved to Colorado to finish his degree in outdoor education by interning at a hospital in a Denver suburb. He would eventually get a job leading groups into the backcountry for Outward Bound.

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“MACKEY HAS ALWAYS BEEN A 1-PERCENTER WITH HIS ABILITY TO DO SO MUCH PHYSICALLY.”

2018

HEROES

B

y the time Mackey arrived in Boulder, the tidal wave of athletes relocating to the Front Range had already crested. As running became a popular recreational trend in the late 1970s, athletic hopefuls began migrating to the laid-back mountain town, which now teems with runners of all stripes and nationalities.

Ultrarunning as it’s known today has its origins in California.

In 1974, an athlete named Gordy Ainsleigh—whose horse had pulled up lame the year before—finished the 100-mile Tevis Cup horse race through the Sierra Nevada range on foot. In doing so, he proved that a human could travel the 100-mile course through the mountains in a single day—which spurred the creation of the world’s first 100-mile trail race, the Western States Endurance Run. There are a handful of races that now occupy exalted positions in the minds of the ultrarunning community. The high-altitude Leadville 100 is one of them. Eight years after the first running of the Western States, Ken Chlouber fired the shotgun into the air for the inaugural Leadville 100, for 45 intrepid starters.

Propelled by the 2009 publication of journalist Christopher McDougall’s book Born to Run and increasing media attention, ultrarunning has picked up even more momentum in recent years, with the number of ultramarathon races growing by more than 1,000 percent in the last decade. There are now four standard race distances: 50 kilometers (31 miles), 50 miles, 100 kilometers (62 miles) and the 100-miler.

Mackey ran his first trail race, fittingly enough in Leadville, finishing third in the Mosquito half marathon in 1995. He then won his first ultra­distance race, the now-defunct Kokopelli Trail 50 km event in western Colorado, and was encouraged to try even longer distances. In 2002, Mackey tried his hand at a 50mile event, choosing the San Juan Solstice, in Lake City, Colorado, a race that is widely considered one of the hardest 50mile races in existence. He won the high-altitude event and set a course record. Now, people were paying attention, and sponsors began clambering to get Mackey in their gear.

By 2004 Mackey was dominating race distances under 100 miles all over the country. For his first attempt at a century run, he would go after the best in the sport, Scott Jurek, at the most competitive race on the calendar, the Western States 100, in a race for ultrarunning supremacy.

Jurek was the reigning champion, and quite possibly the best 100-mile runner of all time, having won the de facto world championship five times in a row. “I had been doing Western a lot and getting closer and closer to [Mike] Morton’s record, but Dave, amongst all the new guys and gals coming in that year, was definitely someone to be feared,” Jurek, now 45, told me over coffee in Boulder. “Back then he was kind of this wild card, a badass mountain runner who was also an adventure racer. We just didn’t know how strong he could be at the 100-mile distance.”

Mackey and Jurek took the early lead at Western States, running together through the first 30 miles of the race. By mile 43 they had shed any other possible contenders—barring catastrophe one of these two would be crowned champion in Auburn. Mackey, who was an exceptional downhill runner, took off on a steep descent and pushed the pace on the climb up to the Devil’s Thumb aid station, near the halfway point. By mile 55 he had a 90-second lead, and it looked to all in attendance like Mackey was going to dethrone Jurek.

The two men were running record pace as they approached the finish line. But in their endurance game of chicken, it was Mackey who cracked first in the California heat. Jurek caught him before the Foresthill aid station, then left him for good on the descent to the major river crossing on the course, Rucky Chucky, at mile 78. He’d go on to win, but he had to run from Squaw to Auburn faster than anyone ever had, clocking a new record of 15 hours, 36 minutes, to beat Mackey (who also ran faster than the previous record time).

“He used to joke that he didn’t like 100-milers, and he didn’t come back to Western the next year,” Jurek says. “Instead he was obliterating course records through 2005 and 2006—I mean, just making some of them look like jokes. He sort of put things on a new level.”

Mackey would win the U.S. trail-running championships at the 50 km, 50-mile and 100 km distances, and in doing so won the USA Track & Field Ultrarunner of the Year in both 2004 and 2005. After winning his second Montrail Cup trail-running series, Mackey was awarded UltraRunning magazine’s North American Ultrarunner of the Year award in 2011.

“He’s always been a 1-percenter with his ability to do so much physically. He’s out there just grinding,” says ultrarunner and journalist Brian Metzler, who has covered endurance sports for

Left to right: Mackey with his wife, Ellen, and two children; on the trail before the accident; in 2014, he came in second at the Leadman Series.

THE RED BULLETIN

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2018

HEROES most athletes begin to experience diminishing returns. Though some ultrarunners run as many as 200 miles in a seven-day training period, Mackey has always stuck to less. “I’m out hiking and running the local peaks six to seven times each week, but I stick to around 50 to 70 miles in that time,” says Mackey. “And I’ll be cross-training on the bike as well.”

In your 40s your body has long since passed its physical prime. By age 26, the research shows that your testosterone begins its long decline and you can start to subtract 1 percent each year from your V02max (which is a measure of your oxygen transport capacity).

In the months preceding the accident, a 45-year-old Mackey had placed second at the Black Canyon 100 km race in Arizona and 12th place at a multi-day 251 km (156 mile) race across the Sahara Desert, known as the Marathon des Sables. Needless to say, he was hardly slowing down when disaster struck.

I

Mackey, 48, ran his first trail race more than 20 years ago.

more than two decades and was the founding editor of Trail Runner magazine. “I’ve seen Dave in adventure races and ultra races for years. It doesn’t matter what age he is, he’s just a monster athlete.”

As far as his best performance thus far, Mackey first mentions his record-breaking run at the Miwok 100 km in 2008, but then rethinks this. “Well, being able to set the course record at the Quad Dipsea, at 44, was pretty special.”

The modern history of ultrarunning is strewn like a battlefield with the past careers of all the former fast guys who overtrained and either burned out or injured themselves beyond repair. This is a sport that most human bodies simply can’t do at the elite level for very long. Yet Mackey has largely avoided the supernova syndrome by adopting a more tempered approach to training.

Though he’s often pushing extremely hard, he hasn’t fallen into the volume trap, where an athlete believes that if some training is good, then more must be better. Beyond 100 miles per week, 52

remember exactly where I was standing when I heard,” says Ellen, Mackey’s wife of 16 years. “I was in the kitchen looking out the window at the pouring rain. We didn’t have all the details, but I got the sense it was bad. I was so sick to my stomach.”

After the dramatic rescue, which involved belaying Mackey off the mountain down steep slopes of loose rock, Ellen met him at the ambulance. “When I first saw it, I couldn’t believe it was his real leg,” she says. He was rushed to a Boulder hospital, where doctors stabilized him and then attempted to put the pieces of his shattered tibia and fibula bones back together. They inserted an intramedullary nail and attached plates, but they were unable to close the gaping wound.

Mackey was then moved to the Denver Health Medical Center. “We ended up having to take the nail out and remove a large piece of his tibia that had become infected,” says Mackey’s surgeon, Dr. Cyril Mauffrey. “In short succession we did about five or six surgeries on him.”

On June 14, 2015, he finally returned home from his run, 22 days later. His leg was intact but required a cumbersome bracing system, called an external fixator, that he had to keep elevated for 23 hours of each day.

“I can’t be mad, because if you add up the number of hours I’ve spent in the mountains, inevitably something is going to happen that’s random, like stepping on that rock or a lightning strike or a fall or slip,” Mackey told reporters. “I accept that’s just the nature of the mountains.” He also said that he “hoped to get back to 95 percent of what I was before.” He was the only one who believed this would be possible.

All told, Mackey’s doctors performed 13 surgeries in the first 16 months in an attempt to make him whole again. He endured bone, muscle and skin grafting. He was in constant pain as the leg cycled through multiple infections. Eventually he was able to ride a bike somewhat normally, but walking required assistance, and running was out of the question. For the first time in his life his body had betrayed him, and the prognosis for his future as a functioning athlete was grim.

Mackey could no longer go to work and Ellen was forced to pick up the domestic roles Dave left vacant. The conscientious father and overachiever slipped into an unavoidable funk. “It was extremely tough, and sad,” says Ellen. “It just felt so unfair to someone who used to run so much.”

THE RED BULLETIN

“I THOUGHT I WAS OUT OF THE WOODS, BUT I NEVER REALLY BLOCKED OUT THE POSSIBILITY OF AMPUTATION.”

2018

HEROES The dream of being able to run ultramarathons again sustained Mackey over those long days of recovery, when he was forced to lay still for days, weeks, months, years on end.

“The Leadman competition was something I had been thinking about a lot—even the day of the accident I was thinking about it,” Mackey says. “After the accident I thought, ‘OK, I’ll do it next summer.’ Then another year rolled over and I still can’t even walk.”

Mackey has done the Leadman Series before. In 2014 he came in second place overall in the multi-sport competition, which consists of six off-road endurance events spread out over two months—a trail marathon, your choice of a 50-mile mountain-bike race or a 50-mile run, 100-mile mountain-bike race, 10 km trail run and a 100-mile trail run. If that sounds like a lot, consider that the final three events happen in a oneweek span, bookended by the two 100-mile races. Athletes who finish the entire series can proudly call themselves a Leadman or Leadwoman.

“We weren’t considering amputation so he could run. I mean, he was in a lot of pain. He didn’t talk about it, but I could tell,” says Ellen. “At a certain point it was by far the better choice. It

When not running, Mackey uses a separate prosthetic, good for walking and biking. He’s able to clip into the pedals just like anyone else.

was just a hard thing to face.” The family worked through every possible scenario with his doctors before making the decision, one that now seemed overdue: He had to cut his damaged appendage off.

On Halloween, the night before his amputation, a local running store hosted a “Leg Party” for Mackey. It was a festive yet macabre event, uniquely suited for this particular holiday, with the occasional costumed friend showing up drenched in fake blood. The Boulder running community came out to wish him luck and to sign his leg.

Mackey, who does not enjoy being in the spotlight, appeared to take it all in stride. “I thought I was out of the woods, but I never really blocked out the possibility of amputation,” Mackey told reporters. “Emotionally, it’s tough. It’s going to be tough tomorrow when I wake up without my leg and probably the days after, but that’s only short term.” He told friends he was looking forward to walking his kids to school again.

“I was the last one to sign his leg before it was cut off. It looked pretty angry and painful,” says Metzler. “I know he was resolute with his decision but there were still plenty of unknown days ahead.”

Mackey uses a cycling multi-tool to remove his prosthetic.

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n a clear midsummer morning in Boulder I meet Mackey at the trailhead to Bear Peak, the mountain that took his left leg. It’s just two days before the Leadville Trail Marathon, the race that kicks off the entire Leadman Series.

We get out of our respective Subarus and shake hands.

Mackey is traditionally handsome, with a cartoonishly square jaw and a toothy smile. He’s professional-runner-skinny but not shockingly so—he actually has some muscle mass. At 6’1”, 159 pounds, he has 4 percent body fat (with his shirt off he looks like an anatomy chart).

Sitting down in the passenger side of his Outback, he removes his walking prosthetic with a few turns of a hexagonal bike wrench. He then pulls the trail-running blade from a backpack.

It’s made of a carbon-fiber composite and looks like a large, misshapen, upside-down question mark. The hardware attaches to the bottom of his socket, which is cupped to accept the 8 inches of leg he still has below the knee. When installed correctly it creates a suction that is then aided by a tacky sleeve that slides up his thigh. This marvel of our technological age, the socket and blade, weighs 5 pounds and costs about $12,000.

And it allows Mackey to run up mountains again.

Which is exactly what we do, running up a double-track dirt road before turning onto the rocky single-track trails toward the summit. Since prosthetics can’t yet exactly mimic the biomechanics of the human running form, there is a new hitch in Mackey’s stride. Instead of dorsiflexion and push-off, the blade springs him forward. Since it doesn’t articulate like a real foot, he has to accommodate its size and lack of mobility by swinging it around ever so slightly. Mackey, who’s been exceptionally coordinated his whole life, now stubs his prosthetic “toe” with noticeable frequency. We alternate running with fast-hiking the steeper, more technical sections.

THE RED BULLETIN

From the car the trail climbs 2,600 feet in just under 3 miles.

He’s fast, and I struggle to keep up. His training has gone well. He had his lower leg amputated on November 1, 2016, and returned to ultrarunning one year, two months and six days later, running the Bandera 50 km trail race in Texas.

His return to such extreme distances was faster than any of his doctors thought possible, but they were learning not to underestimate Mackey’s quiet confidence. Regardless of his toughness between the ears, his biological, corporeal body is still 48 years old. There is no getting around that. The soft tissue and bone need time to heal and remodel into something that approximates the sole of a foot. Until that process is complete he’ll have to deal with the thin skin tearing and wearing through as the socket, over time, toughens the tissue.

We stop short of climbing the last 30 feet of jumbled rock that he fell off in May. The prosthetic makes the scramble extremely difficult, though not impossible. He’s been up there since the accident but now chooses not to bother most days.

We follow the trail around to the west so he can show me where he landed and the rock that crushed his leg. His demeanor changes. “I definitely shudder looking up there. I mean, the fall should have killed me, the rock should have killed me. I dodged a bullet,” he says. “I’m now a lot more appreciative of the things I can do. I could have been a paraplegic or a quadriplegic. I could have had a brain injury. Like, holy shit, I’m still around.”

Before we head down the back side of the mountain to make a giant loop, Mackey tells me how, during his recovery, the Leadman Series solidified in his mind, from dream, to possibility, to goal, to necessity. He knows he might fail, but it’s the trying that matters, and he is determined not to let the accident take anything more than flesh and bone from him.

Two days later in Leadville I meet the entire Mackey clan.

Dave, covered in sunblock he definitely put on without a mirror, 55

2018

HEROES introduces me to his kids, Connor, 8, and Ava, 10. We walk to the start of the Leadville Trail Marathon. Dave kisses Ellen goodbye and hugs the rest of us, then the 679 athletes run out of town toward Mosquito Pass, at 13,185 feet.

Today, the course is mostly dirt road, but what’s intriguing about racing around Leadville is its elevation above sea level. Human beings were not designed to thrive at high altitudes, and Leadville is the highest incorporated town in America, at 10,152 feet.

The higher you rise from sea level, the less oxygen there is in the air. Each breath you draw, therefore, gives you less of what your muscles need to function. So you breathe faster, and your heart rate increases in an effort to make up this difference, but this causes you to burn more calories and you reach exhaustion much sooner.

Mackey finishes 53rd in a time of 4:52:42, exactly 37 minutes and 4 seconds slower than when he ran it in 2014, or, 87 percent of his former self. But this is just the warm-up.

Three weeks later, on consecutive days, Mackey races in both the 50-mile mountain-bike race and 50-mile trail run, even though the series only requires he complete one of the two. “I did it just to see what would happen,” Mackey says. “And it almost killed me.” Rain on race day had caused “pistoning,” when the residual limb moves up and down inside the socket. “I got beat up, but I also found where the problem spots will be before the 100.”

The week before the final race, Mackey rides the 100-mile mountain-bike race faster than he did in 2014 by 17 minutes and 45 seconds. “Certainly he would have had more days with podiums and competing with the best had he not had the accident,” says Metzler, who is also racing in the Leadman Series. “But it’s not surprising to me that he’s still so good. I mean, the injury didn’t cut out his heart.”

Maybe the best thing about a 100-mile race is the starting line. The collective hope assembled on August 18, 2018, at 6th

and Harrison could power a city—though about half of the 713 runners lined up at the start will drop out or be timed out of the race. Runners swarm in and around the start corral, making lastminute adjustments and kissing loved ones goodbye. Mackey is comparatively calm and undercaffeinated.

At 4 a.m. a shotgun blasts into the air and the runners lurch into the darkness toward the Sawatch Mountains to the west. Tiki torches, pit fires and Hand Clappers give way to barbwire fences, low-lying shrubs and the odd trailer park. It starts to rain. The course travels along the foothills below the tallest peak in the range, Mount Elbert, which is obscured by low clouds. Thirty-eight miles later Mackey arrives at the Twin Lakes aid station. It stretches four blocks and is lined with hundreds of spectators. He looks good and says the early rain didn’t bother the socket as it has in the past, either an improved fit or luck, but either way he’ll take it.

He runs off toward the highest point on the course, Hope Pass, at 12,600 feet. At that altitude all living organisms are affected: Flies get slow enough to grab with chopsticks, and ultrarunners begin to question their life decisions.

The fascinating thing about those who run long distances is not their psyche but how they affect the psyche of those who witness their feats of endurance. Watching a person run for more than an entire day—a period in which they don’t stop, or sleep, or eat a real meal—is unsettling, if only because it forces you to compare yourself to their efforts.

Now on the last half of the out-and-back course, Mackey returns to the Twin Lakes aid station to throngs of spectators who erupt in applause when he arrives. It’s a scene more akin to the Tour de France than an American ultramarathon.

Running 100 miles is a basic struggle to continue moving forward against a mounting desire to stop. “I almost dropped,” Mackey admits. “I got to Winfield and I was 50-50 if I would drop out, but I just started walking and eventually bounced back.”

Mackey is nothing if not understated. His pacer, Bob Africa, says they passed about 30 runners on the return climb up Hope Pass.

Nine hours later, out of the darkness of 6th Street in Leadville, emerges a silhouette with that recognizable running hitch. Mackey crosses the finish as the announcer bellows his name and his time. He’s the last runner to beat the 25-hour cutoff for the special belt buckle.

“That was brutal,” Mackey says. “I gotta sit down.” And finally, he’s still.

Counterclockwise from top: More than 700 runners, including Mackey, gather at the start of the 2018 Leadville 100; giving Ellen a hug before the race; conquering the final push; becoming a Leadman once again.

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THE RED BULLETIN

“I’M NOW A LOT MORE APPRECIATIVE OF THE THINGS I CAN DO. LIKE, HOLY SHIT, I’M STILL AROUND.”

SLAYING THE DRAGON

Touted as the world’s toughest one-day mountain-bike race, the Tour of the Dragon, in the Eastern Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, takes riders over 15,000 feet of climbing. But in a nation known for promoting happiness, this annual suffer fest is all part of a royal campaign to encourage fitness and personal well-being.

Words SCOTT YORKO Photography JUSTIN BASTIEN

Giant dump trucks, thick mud, cows, cars, waterfalls, landslides and extreme drop-offs are just some of the dangerous obstacles that riders enounter on the Tour of the Dragon in Bhutan.

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Left: A rare smile during the race. Below: The weather in Bhutan can change at a moment’s notice, switching from freezing-cold downpours to warm sunshine that clears the sky for beautiful views.

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t’s 2 a.m. on a clammy, pitch-black morning in early September, and the air smells like cow dung. Under the glare of a spotlight, the Bhutanese road safety crew is dancing what looks like the Macarena. Their gentle movements mimic a slow-tempoed karate while the soft sounds of an Asian flute flutter in the background. Most of the residents of Bumthang, Bhutan (pop. 6,000), are here watching the ceremony (or ransacking the porridge stand) and waiting for the race to begin.

Over at the starting line, 48 mountain bikers are lining up on an oil-splotched road as rear lights flash red across their faces. In the front row, no one— including six soldiers from the Royal Bhutan Army— is over 5’7”. They look weightless, like jockeys poised to whip out of the gates. I suddenly feel the need to ditch my extra snack bars to shed a few ounces. Some riders make casual jokes, while my bladder swells with a nervous urge to pee for the third time in 20 minutes. Before I mount my bike for at least the next 12 hours, I try to relax by taking deep breaths, but my gut keeps seizing with tension. Just before the gun goes off, a race official in an orange jumpsuit taps a microphone and makes a quick announcement: “The weather is not good. The roads are slippery.

Please don’t use our medical team.”

BANG! Off we pedal into the darkness.

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THE RED BULLETIN

“The roads are slippery,” a TOD race official announces. “Please don’t use our medical team.”

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The story’s intrepid writer, Scott Yorko, plows through one of the many obstacles found on the road between Bumthang and the capital city of Thimphu.

“It takes every ounce of everything you have to keep it together,” Einhorn warns.

I

had traveled to the Kingdom of Bhutan to attempt the Tour of the Dragon (TOD), a 167mile bike race on a sketchy, serpentine road that crosses four mountain passes—three of which stand more than 10,000 feet high—all in one long, sadistic day with more than 15,000 feet of climbing.

By comparison, the hardest stages of the 2018 Tour de France covered 13,500 feet of climbing in a day, and that was with ultralight race bikes on paved roads. With its apocalyptic conditions, the TOD is billed as “the toughest one-day mountain bike race in the world,” and there’s no way anyone can ride this course on skinny road-bike tires.

“It takes every ounce of everything you have to keep it together,” warned Joel Einhorn, the founder of Hanah, an herbal supplement company that sources ancient herbs from Bhutan. Einhorn was the only American to cross the finish line in last year’s race, where he dodged multiple landslides and hundreds of cows, monkeys and raging diesel trucks while deep, coarse mud wore two sets of his brake pads down to the metal.

When Einhorn invited me to join him in the 2018 race, I had to look up Bhutan on a map.

Nestled above the far northeast corner of India, Bhutan has a northern border with Tibet that runs along a treacherous seam of the Eastern Himalayan mountain range, which has historically protected the Switzerland-sized country from outside influence and allowed it to remain one of the only nations in the world never to be colonized by an outside power.

Until very recently, this geographic and political isolation delayed Bhutan’s progress toward modernization. Many Bhutanese still live off the land; the first paved road wasn’t completed until 1962 and the government didn’t open its borders to foreign visitors until 1974. There are still no traffic lights in the entire country.

The designated route for the Tour of the Dragon, which takes us from Bumthang to the capital city of Thimphu, can be treacherous. “The road,” as it is most commonly referred to, experiences daily landslides that have to be cleared three to four times per week. During the summer, a three-month monsoon season erodes the earth so much that trucksized boulders routinely tumble down onto the road.

Tour buses can get stranded for days, while mangled guardrails hang above chunks of dislodged pavement and crumbling bluffs.

And yet, the road is still an engineering marvel that miraculously wraps across the faces of steep mountainsides in a delicate ribbon of dirt and asphalt. Thanks to plenty of dynamite, some parts of the road cut through slabs of craggy, white rock.

There are virtually no flat sections, but there are THE RED BULLETIN

Alongside the road, cheerful monks pick apples for an afternoon snack.

hundreds of roadside stupas, memorial crosses, shrines, hydro-powered prayer wheels and warning signs with messages like “Please Don’t Be Unpredictable.” Despite the terror of simply driving it—let alone cycling it in the dark while it rains—the road and the race are tremendous points of pride for the Bhutanese people.

But in the last decade, Bhutan has gained more attention for promoting its philosophy of Gross National Happiness (GNH) as an official index of prosperity and quality of life, rather than Gross Domestic Product. First coined by the fourth Druk Gyalpo (“Dragon King”), Jigme Singye Wangchuck, in 1972, the term GNH was written into Article 9 of its 2008 Constitution, shortly after the king dissolved Bhutan’s absolute monarchy, formed a parliamentary democracy and voluntarily abdicated the throne to his eldest son, His Majesty Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, the fifth king. After the passing of the crown to the next generation, GNH has become a screening tool for policy proposals and potential trade partnerships, based on four guiding pillars: good governance, sustainable socioeconomic development, environmental conservation and the 63

Bhutanese students dressed in traditional ghos line the road to wish the riders good luck, chanting “Do your best!

Do your best!”

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“How can a nation be happy if the people don’t play sports?” asks HRH Prince Jigyel.

The royal family’s love of cycling has caused Bhutan’s citizens to follow suit.

promotion and preservation of culture. These principles are at the forefront of the country’s political and social initiatives to maximize the success of its citizens. Put simply, Bhutan is prioritizing the pursuit of happiness.

At the age of 63, the former king remains a devout cyclist who can regularly be seen riding his full-suspension, carbon-fiber mountain bike through the hills. “He’s a hardcore rider,” says his mechanic, Kinga Wangchuk. “He never gives up.”

It has long been his belief that a love of cycling and an active lifestyle coincide with the values of GNH. Although the current king also loves cycling, it is really his half-brother, His Royal Highness Prince Jigyel Ugyen Wangchuck, who has inherited their father’s fanaticism. A lifelong athlete—who regularly trains with his security entourage and participates in local basketball tournaments—Prince Jigyel believes it was only natural for him to get into mountain biking in a nation where the Eastern Himalayas is his playground. “Cycling is a very important sport to promote national happiness and well-being,” the prince states over email. “My goal has always been to create a world-class cycling event in Bhutan.”

In 2010, the prince founded the Tour of the Dragon. The first year was essentially a test run. Of the 23 participants, only nine completed the race, including the prince, but they proved it could be done. Since then, the TOD has become a yearly competition that attracts a variety of locals and a smattering of Westerners. In 2015 it spawned a shorter, 37-mile race called Dragon’s Fury, which is open to adults and junior competitors ages 14 to 18.

“The TOD is a perfect marriage of promoting healthy living through cycling,” he writes.

Today, the prince, 34, also heads the Bhutan Olympic Committee in his ongoing effort to encourage fitness across the country. “How can a nation be happy if people don’t play sports?” he asks.

There’s no denying that the royal family’s love of cycling has caused Bhutan’s citizens to follow suit.

Bike shops and youth cycling clubs are popping up across the country, and more and more villages are becoming linked through trail networks. Even those without access to bicycles have the fever: More than 1,000 volunteers take their posts along the TOD course well before sunrise and remain throughout the day to support riders in any way they can— be it manning aid stations or sweeping gravel off the turns. These helpers range from bald monks in orange robes and older women with wide smiles to schoolchildren who hold up signs of encouragement, offer assistance and hand out water and candy bars.

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E

arly on in the race, I’m pedaling hard just behind a small lead group and ahead of the main peloton. I’m keeping pace with a German private equity investor named Heinz who has two blinding lights mounted to his helmet and handlebar. Together we dodge potholes, camouflaged spectators, tumbling boulders the size of bike wheels and roaming cows. (Two days earlier, on a warm-up ride, one such cow bucked a Frenchman off his bike. Both cow and man were fine, just rattled.)

Locals are camped out with small fires on the roadside, waiting to cheer for riders as they pass. One well-intentioned spectator is trying to heave buckets of water at riders’ drive chains to rinse mud from their gears, but appears to be dousing their lower bodies instead or missing entirely. It’s still dark as we close in on the 11,252-foot saddle of Yotong La, the first major mountain pass, at 4:09 a.m. Starting the day with a 3,000-foot climb was a jolt to the system, but my initial adrenaline is subsiding. Three hundred yards from the top, HRH Prince Jigyel comes riding the opposite way wearing a gho, a traditional white robe, while flanked by his bodyguard. “Good job, guys,” he says in a soft, deep voice. “Keep it up.”

With an encouraging boost from the prince, we crest the summit to a crowd of cheering volunteers and spectators standing beneath a canopy of tattered prayer flags. At the top, it’s 42°F, so I stop to throw on a windbreaker for the 26-mile, 4,000-foot-plus descent to the Trongsa Viewpoint. Heinz takes off without me. I’m soon riding alone on a horrendous stretch of road, nicknamed “Nyala Duem” after a local demoness, that’s in the process of being torn up and excavated for future pavement. The mud is so thick in some sections that it feels as if someone’s fixed a bungee cord to my seat post, and I have to pedal hard to move downhill without sinking deeper into the sludge. I lose count of more than 30 excavators parked just off to the side, waiting to clear the next surprise landslide.

At 4:30 a.m., I look like I’ve been sneezed on by an elephant. At that moment, a big chunk of dirt flips up into my right eye. I’m trying to bat the grit out from under my eyelid, but it’s a desperate struggle to see where I’m going in the dark as I round tight corners at high speed. This is a terrible time for the battery on my front light to die, which is exactly what happens. Suddenly, I’m flying downhill along the edge of a sheer cliff that drops off thousands of feet below with no guardrail—in complete darkness.

Without the glare of a light, my left eye quickly adjusts to see the blanket of clouds hovering way below me. “If you go off one of those cliffs, no one will ever find you,” a local rider told me the day before. It no longer seems like an exaggeration.

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Riders frequently pass stupas, moundlike Buddhist shrines that often contain religious relics and serve as places of meditation.

Not wanting to stop, I try to navigate by moonlight, but the thick shroud of cypress trees overhead forms a tunnel of shadows. I have another hour before the sun will even start to rise in the Trongsa Valley, so I slow to a near halt and then hear what sounds like a war cry.

A handsome Bhutanese man named Chodra comes barreling down the road with his arms off the handlebar, pumping them in a runner’s sprint to keep warm. I hop on his tail and his bright light illuminates the way for both of us until the sun casts a warm glow on the valley and our backs. Only 120 miles and two more mountain passes to go.

Still way out front are four of the Royal Bhutan Army soldiers, cranking hard on their bicycles THE RED BULLETIN

(provided by the prince) and setting a breakneck pace for anyone hoping to crack the top five. One of those soldiers is 28-year-old Tshering Dendup. Although he has only been riding a bike for one year, he sometimes trains on his bike for 24 hours straight. Other times, he breaks it up into eight-hour sessions over three consecutive days. Like his fellow servicemen participating in the TOD, Dendup is short and shy, but his high cheekbones peak when he smiles and declares his love of cycling. “I do it for physical fitness,” he told me before the race, “but I also feel like I’m serving my country by cycling.”

In addition to their military training, these handpicked soldiers are given ample time to log 67

Dragon Supplies

You won’t survive the toughest mountain-bike race in the world without the right equipment.

Consider taking the same gear the author used to give yourself a fighting chance.

Specialized S-Works Epic Hardtail XX1 Eagle

When your 18-pound, hardtail mountain bike is almost as light as your road bike, you can go pretty much anywhere—fast. The 1x12 drive train saves weight, and the Brain front shock compresses only when hitting bumps, so you don’t waste energy pedaling power into the suspension when slogging up hills. $8,500; specialized.com

Ergon GS3

Hours of compressing your ulnar nerve on the handlebar can cause numbness in your hands and fingers; it can also cause long-term damage. These lightweight rubber grips have flexible wings and three-finger bar ends, offering multiple options to shift your grip position. $60; ergonbike.com

Smith Forefront 2 Garmin Edge 520 Plus If you’re going to ride with a bike computer, why not have one that can tell you things like temperature, grade, elevation gain and direction in addition to speed, distance and time? The 520 Plus comes in a compact unit with an adjustable, colored display, and its 15-hour battery life is great for long training rides. The newest upgrades include the ability to add cycling-specific street maps. $280; garmin.com

A protective material that also provides maximum head ventilation?

That’s a double whammy for this helmet, equipped with Koroyd, small tubes in a honeycomb structure that compress on impact, absorbing kinetic energy. The patented MIPS liner offers extra protection against concussions, while a sweatband keeps the sting out of your eyes. $230; smithoptics.com

Light & Motion Seca 2500 Enduro

The author found out the hard way how terrifying cycling in the dark can be. Avoid this horrific pitfall with an LED light that can pump out 1,250 lumens for five hours, or 2,500 lumens for two and a half.

The whole system is completely submersible for worst-case scenarios and the beam is adjustable to wide and narrow settings. Fix it to your handlebar, helmet or wherever else you already have a GoPro mount. $400; lightandmotion.com

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Hanah One Go-Pack

Sugar and caffeine gels are great for when you need a quick boost, but Hanah’s signature Ayurvedic superfood supplement combines honey, ghee and sesame oil with ancient herbs for a longer-lasting, slow-burning energy source that’s easy to get down when your body is at system critical. 12 for $49; hanahlife.com

HRH Prince Jigyel Ugyen Wangchuck greets schoolchildren along the ride.

serious bike mileage. “HRH’s support to our young soldier cyclists is immensely profound,” says Lieutenant Ugyen Dorji, who is also participating in the racea this year. “I am confident that his vision was always to take our country’s athletes to the outside world and give them opportunities to excel among other nations so that maybe one day they can take part in international events and raise the dragon flags higher.” (The national flag features Druk, the Thunder Dragon of Bhutanese mythology.)

But it’s not just the soldiers the prince is here to support. Two days before the race—between butterlamp lighting ceremonies at the ancient Buddhist Jambay Temple and the Burning Lake holy site—the prince asked me if I had been training hard at home in Colorado. I assured him I had and explained that the process had introduced me to many new trails and roads in my own backyard.

“That’s the best part about mountain biking,” he responded with sharp, royal conviction, a goldenhandled sword strapped to his hip. “And it shows us so much of ourselves.” He thanked me for coming and then moved on to advising the Thimphu Mountain THE RED BULLETIN

Riders share stories of broken chains, flat tires and peeing their shorts.

Biking Club youth on proper nutrition for the race and emphasizing the importance of Bhutanese riders becoming competitive on the international stage.

One rider intimately familiar with the prince’s support is 36-year-old Aaron Bayard, an American living in Thimphu who has voluntarily trained local bike mechanics. In 2016, late-season monsoons left the road in some of the muddiest and most miserable conditions ever for the race. Aaron got to the bottom of the 10,207-foot Dochula Pass with the final 25mile climb ahead of him when he broke down physically and mentally. “I was walking it, pushing my bike and limping,” he told me at a prerace barbeque outside the Chakhar Lhakhang palace in Bumthang. “I called my wife and told her I was about to quit and get on the bus. Ten minutes later, the prince pulls up in a car, one of his assistants covers my legs with a pain-killing spray and then the prince gets on his bike to ride with me. He kept saying ‘All those people up there are cheering for you. You can do this.’ Just riding with him, you kind of forget that you’re in pain. I made the cutoff time by one minute.

He’s the reason I finished.”

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Dochula Pass is where most riders quit. The switchbacks are relentless and every tight corner rounded gives way to more turns, with progressively steeper grades and no relief. After an hour-long descent from the 11,206-foot Pele La Pass, I reach the village of Metshina at the base of Dochula, while slogging through 91-degree heat at 4,625 feet. I glance behind me at several miles of road that snake down lumpy ridges and crooked valleys like a shriveled intestine. I see no one in pursuit. My body is pouring out so much sweat that the crusted mud is dripping off my skin. I haven’t taken in enough calories in bananas and candy bars at the aid stations, and I feel delirious.

While my thighs cramp, I start to swerve. My neck is so thrashed that I can’t keep my head up. As my lower back muscles coil tighter and tighter with each pedal stroke, I’m afraid they’re going to snap like overtightened guitar strings. I start to scan the blurry roadside for a patch of shade to dismount and stretch, but as I come around a corner, I see 100 schoolchildren in blue robes screaming their heads off, cheering me on as if I’ve broken out front in a short sprint, waving white khata scarves and chanting “DO YOUR BEST! DO YOUR BEST!” A blast of energy hits me from all directions. There’s no way I can stop now.

After a brief afternoon sun shower, I climb into a veil of dark clouds and ask a monk driving by in a little Suzuki how much farther to the top. “Mmmm, pretty far,” he says before smiling and scooting away. My butt is too sore to remain seated, so I have no choice but to stand up on my pedals as I climb. But minutes after I passed the monk, the final prayer flags adorning the Dochula summit come into view. The descent into Thimphu is littered with sharp curves, and I roll right into busy Saturday traffic. I cross the finish line below the clock tower in Thimphu’s center square in 13 hours, 45 minutes and 24 seconds, a respectable 14th place.

Of the 48 riders competing, only 26 will make the 6 p.m. cutoff time at Dochula. Almost all the Royal Bhutan Army riders crashed, but they still finish with an impressive sixth, fifth, third and second place. The winner? Aaron Bayard, the American who barely finished in 2016, by 50 minutes with a time of 11 hours, 11 minutes and 42 seconds. The locals consider Aaron part of their community and they’re psyched for him.

The next day, at a barbecue just downhill from the fourth king’s palace, riders share stories of breaking their chains, getting multiple flat tires and peeing in their shorts while riding to save time. The Bhutanese riders are shy, but they eagerly ask the same question: “Will you come back to race next year?”

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Agnatquist, aut quiae sandia volupti berrum Agnatquist, aut quiae sandia volupti berrum Agnatquist, aut quiae sandia volupti berrum

Sustaining the Soul of Chicago The next gen of artists in the Second City have no equal as they fight for justice, mentor younger talent and tour with a purpose.

Words ADRIENNE SAMUELS GIBBS Photography ZOE RAIN

Vic Mensa The rapper, 25, made headlines in August for hosting an “anti-bait truck” campaign in response to dubious police tactics.

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Jamila Woods The singer-poet, 29, dedicates six weeks every summer to a teaching program for young Chicago poets.

There’s a new wave rising in Chicago.

It’s propelled by rappers and poets who earn Grammys and host Saturday Night Live and drop huge new hits—yet still come home to help their hometown. This group spans generations, working together for social justice and audience “wokeness” that not only sells music but makes the Chi a better place to live.

Millennials point to the three-time Grammywinning musician Chance the Rapper as the poster child for the new Chicago way, thanks to his Social Works organization, which brings young adults to the voting polls and raises millions of dollars in donations for beleaguered Chicago Public Schools.

Oldheads will name-drop Common, whose South Side rap elevated the city on the hip-hop map and introduced a new era of music. His Common Ground Foundation has worked for two decades to mentor children and make an impact in inner-city neighborhoods.

But to think that this wave of social consciousness started—or has ended—with these artists is to dismiss the city’s rich history of elevating conscious savants who long have fought to prevent bloodshed and increase equality. From organizations like Rhymefest’s Art of Culture to Lupe Fiasco’s M.U.R.A.L. to the energy that relative newcomers Vic Mensa and Jamila Woods bring to social justice issues, it seems the ghosts of Chicago’s artistic past are whispering in the ears of its future.

“I think artists in Chicago recognize that they are full people and they have growing platforms. They come from neighborhoods that they want to stay tied to, committed to,” says Kevin Coval, a Chicago author, social activist and artistic director of Young Chicago Authors. He’s also a discreet mentor or colleague to many local artists, whether he’s low-key hosting poetry slams in Chicago or providing personal mentorship. “Not only do artists have the power and ability to help shift the narrative, but they have the power to shift some of the actual resources of the community, and that’s a beautiful thing to witness.”

Coval could be referring to any number of news events in the past year that put the spotlight on the city’s artists and their giveback. Like when Vic Mensa made international headlines this past August after launching an “anti-bait truck” campaign, which gave away free shoes to any kid who wanted them. This event, tied to his SaveMoneySaveLife Foundation, was a pointed response to a Chicago police operation that set kids up for arrest by deliberately leaving expensive shoes in an unlocked truck that was parked in a lower-income neighborhood. Or the artist Saba, whose album Care for Me (which made Billboard’s list of the best 50 albums of 2018) was made in honor of his cousin, rapper John Walt, who in 2017 was fatally stabbed after a fistfight on a CTA train. This begat the John Walt Foundation and John Walt Day, through which Saba and Walt’s mother, Nachelle Pugh, raise funds to grant scholarships and opportunities to the city’s youth.

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“I think the social justice aspect that has so heavily influenced Chicago music is an effect of the city,” says Saba. (Born Tahj Malik Chandler, Saba graduated from St. Joseph’s High School in Westchester, Illinois, at just 16 and has collaborated with Chance.) “It’s impossible not to develop an opinion early on here. The way that the city is run, you’re able to make a lot of observations that I think in a lot of other places might not happen at a young age.”

Fortunately for young artists, there is a rich tradition of Chicagoans combining art with civic lessons from which to study. Poet laureate Gwendolyn Brooks, raised in Chicago’s South Side, became the first African-American to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1950 for her works detailing the racial inequities unique to the Second City. The writer Dr. Margaret Burroughs co-founded the DuSable Museum of African American History in the early ’60s—a radical move and one of the first of its kind in the country—and also hosted artistic salons in her home to encourage a new generation to tell their stories. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. often talked of the strength he drew from Chicagoan Mahalia Jackson’s gospel singing. And who could forget Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, a play that illustrated, celebrated and critiqued city life and city struggles—the original production starred Sidney Poitier and a 1973 musical adaptation won a Tony.

The work of these artists isn’t always taught in Chicago schools, yet the knowledge is passed down— often through neighborhood, family and church programs. Paired with a strong history of political activism, these stories of old imbue the social actions in the South and West Side neighborhoods where the majority of black and brown folk live. It’s hard to find a popular Chicago artist nowadays who doesn’t in some way refer back to these earlier cultural instigators.

And this is why, despite major success, many of them stay in the city’s limits. To help.

“This is a very rich tradition,” says Coval. “I want to salute that age group of Vic, Chance and Saba, who are immersed in this historical narrative and not waiting for change. Chicago is the home of so much social good and political resistance,” he says. In 2001, Coval co-founded the annual Louder Than a Bomb poetry competition, an affirming experience that encourages more than a thousand Chicago area youth to speak their truth on stage in a series of shows leading to a final. “What I’m interested in— and what these generations of young artists are interested in—is creating a different narrative but to make it for your block. You truly make it if you’re in the business of elevating or transforming your neighborhood and not leaving it or abandoning it.”

Lupe Fiasco’s sister, Ayesha Jaco, is a co-founder of the rapper’s M.U.R.A.L. foundation, which helps empower the city’s young artists and activists. She knows that being part of the narrative isn’t anything new for local artists. “When Wasilu [Lupe] came out we had Bush and things were different. Then Obama came and people got pissed because [my brother] questioned Obama,” Jaco says. “But with Trump in office, I think it’s real for everybody unless you are alt right. It’s different times. People gotta be woke.”

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Millennials point to the Grammywinning artist as the poster child for the new Chicago way.

Chance the Rapper The 25-year-old’s Social Works organization has raised millions of dollars for Chicago Public Schools.

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For Woods, teaching young poets stokes her own creative juices.

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STAYING CONNECTED

Call it networking, call it coincidence, call it karma, but today’s socially conscious Chicago artists can all trace back common connections from before they found fame, either through relationships formed in high school or mentorships. Many of them found their voice through Young Chicago Authors or other city arts programs. Others got together via popular open mic nights, or hosted their own and started ganging up to create musical positivity.

Jamila Woods, a soul singer, poet and YCA’s associate artistic director, knows the historical context of Chicago’s artistic and social collaborators.

“I’m thinking about Gwendolyn Brooks and other writers who always were just engaged with what is going on in their communities,” says Woods, who along with Mensa is one of the headliners at Red Bull Music Festival Chicago this November and has performed on Saturday Night Live with Chance. She also dropped a charity track with Kevin Coval earlier this summer.

“These are people I’d see at open mics!” Woods exclaims. “I think the success is amazing, but I think it’s a result of the communities that helped us see ourselves as a community—as a circle. If you even think about Chance or Vic and how they started out, there was always a collective. There were spaces for them to meet each other and to start collaborating.”

THE INFLUENCE OF HOME

Finding a way to balance the demands of being an artist, activist and mentor is not an easy road. Many artists leave the city because more fortune could lie elsewhere—and even write songs about saying goodbye to their hometown. But many stay to record music and to help. Chance the Rapper recently put down serious roots here—buying a condo in the Streeterville neighborhood in April and purchasing the local news site Chicagoist in July. The rapper Che “Rhymefest” Smith, who co-wrote Kanye West’s Grammy-winning song “Jesus Walks,” even ran for alderman of the city’s 20th Ward and recently created a hip-hop supergroup with Black Thought and Phonte.

West, Smith and his wife, Donnie, created a leadership and mentorship group for young artists called Donda’s House. (Now called Art of Culture, the organization functions independently of West.)

The group occupies a space inside of the Walter H. Dyett High School for the Arts, teaching upcoming lyricists the art of marketing, public relations and even self-care. Rhymefest and Donnie still live on the South Side, not too far from the Pill Hill neighborhood where Common grew up and just blocks away from Chance’s childhood stomping grounds in Chatham.

“I’ll never forget when Che ran for office and we were walking down the street and we saw a group of kids and one of the kids was like, ‘Oh, you’re Rhymefest and if you live here you must’a fell off,’ ” Donnie says. “We realized why it’s important for THE RED BULLETIN

Kevin Coval The 43-year-old author, social activist and YCA artistic director is also a discreet mentor to many local artists.

those of us who ‘make it’ to stay in Chicago. It’s affirming for young people when they can look up and see that somebody they’ve seen on TV or is popular and has some type of influence or fame is in their same neighborhood.”

Similarly, Lupe Fiasco’s M.U.R.A.L. organization posits it is important to be present on the West Side, whose neighborhoods are often left out of the city’s narratives in comparison to more high-profile black neighborhoods like Hyde Park or Bronzeville. With a dad who was a Black Panther, activism for the rapper and his sister became a way of life. “The mantra in my house was to make your community better than when you found it,” says Jaco, who is perhaps best known for her acclaimed dance programs in Chicago. “When you write poetry, you’re going to write about your neighborhood. If you’re gonna rep your neighborhood, you’re repping all the inequities and everything.”

Rapper/actor Common would agree. After finding success as an artist, Common (born Lonnie Corant Jaman Shuka Rashid Lynn) began donating money to various nonprofit groups, but ultimately he wanted to make a more personal impact. In 2002, he established the Common Ground Foundation with his mother, Dr. Mahalia Ann Hines, in order to build on the social messaging of his music. “While we were helping a lot of kids with the donations, we didn’t know the kids,” says Dr. Hines, who serves as the president of Common Ground’s board of directors. “That’s when we decided that it was very important that we had a touch, that we were able to know the kids by name, follow them, make sure they’re doing OK.” Today, the Common Ground Foundation works with kids for the long term, helping low-income students starting in grammar school and mentoring them through after-school-type programs until college. And every year, Common mentors students at the Dreamers & Believers Summer Camp, where he doesn’t just talk about the corner but puts in real work to help Chicago youth find their voices and their strength.

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“It’s impossible not to develop an opinion early on here.”

Saba The 24-year-old rapper raises scholarship funds in honor of his slain cousin, John Walt.

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THE RED BULLETIN

Common Model leadership: The 46-year-old rapper/actor has long mentored local students through his foundation.

MAKING TIME FOR IT ALL

AARON ROGOSIN/RED BULL CONTENT POOL

Jamila Woods, who dedicates six weeks every summer to a Young Chicago Authors teaching program, says working with eager young poets has a way of stoking her own creative juices. “That’s the most intensive teaching period for me,” she says. “It really feeds my creative process. With teaching, I have to be reading and looking for things that could inspire my mentees, so that kind of helps me reengage with what’s inspiring me and what I think is important.”

Part of what Woods talks about with her students is what Coval references in his work: lineage. There’s this whole idea that nothing exists in a vacuum and that all these hot Chicago stars feed and vibe off of each other. Contrary to the common narrative of Chicago being a violent hellhole, for many people it is—has long been—a birthplace of a new form of entrepreneurship, friendship, activism and business.

For Saba and Pugh, the John Walt Foundation is practically a full-time job. For inspiration, they’ve leaned on the words and encouragement of other artist foundations and youth workers like those at Social Works and YCA. “It takes a lot of commitment.

Plenty of days I’m like ‘maybe not,’ ” says Pugh, who poured her free time into the organization as a salve for herself and the city that mourned the young rapper’s death. (By day, she works in the registrar’s office at an Illinois college.) “It’s been really hard, but what is surprising is that I have been embraced by so many other organizations in the city that have put out a helping hand to show and guide me in the right direction.”

That direction led to at least $5,000 in scholarships and this year will bring a fundraising concert and even more scholarship money. With a focus on the city’s West Side, Saba and Pugh think that they can make even more of a difference. “We want to build something in the Austin area,” Pugh says. “If we can save one child, we can save another.

We just want to do things to make things better.”

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On the South Side, another artist—Andre “Add-2” Daniels—opened a music studio in 2016 in the basement of a church in historic Bronzeville. Called Haven, this studio provides kids with a quiet environment where they learn how to engineer and make beats. Add-2, who recently joined the Grammy Recording Academy and has worked with artists such as Kendrick Lamar, even drives the young people to school himself to make sure they get there.

Add-2 agrees with Coval that the city’s social activism is a value that is taught and passed on, generation to generation. “For a long time, it was this silent mentorship going on,” he says, referring to older artists like Common, Lupe, Rhymefest and others who have always supported up-and-comers.

“Once we got older, we realized we all got mentored by the same people. And later on, I figured out it was the same people mentoring Chance and Noname and Saba. This is a generational thing and it’s kind of what we’re bred to do. We had the reputation for being like crabs in a barrel and now it’s like a whole change of guard.”

Chance the Rapper took a strong stance on his version of social activism and music by creating songs that openly challenge the mayor of Chicago regarding his reactions to police killings of black people. “I Might Need Security” was released in the wee hours of the morning in mid-July 2018, with Chance rapping “Bet I get a statue in my hometown when I die / And Rahm, you done, I’m expectin’ resignation / An open investigation on all of these paid vacations for murderers.” By early September, Mayor Rahm Emanuel—who many feel had a hand in an alleged cover-up of the murder of Laquan McDonald by Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke—had announced he was no longer going to seek reelection. Chance was one of the first artists to get on social media to congratulate the grassroots organizations that applied pressure on the mayor, along with a message reminding the city to get organized before the next mayoral race begins.

“We need a new mayor, but not just anybody,” Chance tweeted. “We gotta start to come together around a candidate that cares about equity in regards to education, job development and healthcare in one of the most segregated cities in the country.”

That kind of in-your-face political criticism comes from the same city that birthed President Barack Obama’s historical election wins, fostered Oprah Winfrey and Richard Wright and celebrated Michael Jordan, all of whom have left a legacy that’s larger than their own work and their own profits. As Coval says, there’s a strain of excellence mixed in with awareness.

Add-2 says his cohort passes the torch gladly and is happy to find a place where art and philanthropy collide to great success. They can be socially conscious in their music and writings and still make the time to provide for kids to go to college. “There are more artists who feel responsible for passing this baton down to the next generation and using resources for the next generation,” he says. “As opposed to rapping about it or singing about it, now we gotta do something about it.”

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guide Get it. Do it. See it.

Dominica has 365 rivers and loads of waterfalls—some more accessible than others.

SECRET BAY

TROPICAL THUNDER Justifiably famed for its pictureperfect beaches, the Caribbean is also a wondrous playground for adventurous travelers.

Words EVELYN SPENCE

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Do it

24 HOURS A year after Hurricane Maria made landfall, Puerto Rico is more than up and running— it’s buzzing. Now, tourism makes up 10 percent of PR’s GDP, flights to San Juan from the States are dirt cheap, and locals can’t wait to show it off. “Puerto Rico isn’t just good for adventure—it’s amazing,” says Brian Ramos, an instructor at Surfing Puerto Rico and a former national champion. Start by renting a board or take a surfing lesson from Ramos at La Pared in Luquillo. “Reef breaks, beach breaks, slab reefs, beginner,

“Puerto Rico isn’t just good for adventure—it’s amazing.”

SURF INSTRUCTOR BRIAN RAMOS

advanced—we have it all here,” he says.

Then, to the rainforest: Ziplines can be lame, but The Beast—60 mph, Superman-style, through Toro Verde National Park—is one of the world’s longest and fastest. Set your alarm to beat the tour buses to stormtangled 29,000-acre El Yunque National Forest—the only rainforest in a U.S. National Park. A scrambly 2.2-mile trail leads to El Toro Peak, the highest point in the Luquillo Mountains.

The snorkeling at Champagne Reef is effervescent.

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STAY Over a 400-year history, Hotel El Convento has been home to Carmelite nuns, dance halls, markets, and flophouses—and now it’s a 58-room Spanish Colonial crashpad with handcrafted furniture and Andalusian tile floors. Surf shack meets chic at Serafina Beach Hotel, the first new accommodations to open post-Maria.

EAT The mallorcas—a puffy, sweet, coiled bread—at historic La Bonbonera 1902 are best toasted with butter, dusted with sugar and chased by a café con leche. Lote 23 is San Juan’s answer to a food-truck park: A gathering spot for rising-star chefs and a dozen-plus vendors (fried chicken, ceviche, AsianRican fusion).

Venture 45 minutes down PR’s “pork highway,” Guavate, for stall after stall of lechon—slow-cooked, spit-roasted whole pig.

DRINK At nightfall, La Placita de Santurce, a historic market plaza, turns into an open-air street party (with live salsa and food carts).

La Factoría is San Juan’s take on the speakeasy, with scuffed checkerboard floors, back rooms and really good lavender mules.

Every inch of the walls of seedy El Batey—a favorite pit stop for Hunter S. Thompson and the Stones—are covered with grafitti.

DOMINICA IN

A LONG WEEKEND “Nothing is manufactured in Dominica,” says Don Mitchell, known as Captain Don, a guide at Secret Bay resort and native of an island celebrated for its lush, mountainous landscape, 365 rivers, hot springs, black and white sand beaches—and its lack of tourists. Take Boiling Lake: It’s the second largest of its kind in the world and reachable only by a tough, three-hour-plus hike through the volcanic Valley of Desolation in Morne Trois Pitons National Park. Or Middleham Falls, Dominica’s tallest, a 280-foot spray with a frigid, plungeable pool. At Champagne Reef, snorkel through psychedelic water that fizzes with bubbles let loose from subterranean geothermal springs. Kayak or SUP through twisty-rooted bloodwood trees up the Indian River (you might recognize it, and other Dominica sites, from Pirates of the Caribbean). If canyoning in

STAY After a big blow from Maria, Secret Bay, a swanky eco-lodge perched above Prince Rupert Bay, reopened on November 1 with a new restaurant and treehouse-style spa.

Perched over the water in Rouseau, the Fort Young Hotel used to be a military installation— and now offers voluntourism packages.

EAT The lobster at funky, oceanfront Madiba Beach Café is so fresh that you might see an employee swim out to a trap to fetch one as you dine.

Captain Don likes to spend his Sunday eating fresh lionfish at Keepin’It Real, on the beach in Toucari.

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SECRET BAY(2), GETTY IMAGES(2), JOHNNY DE LOS SANTOS

PUERTO RICO IN

British Virgin Islands

The villas at Secret Bay offer room with a view.

Picture yourself on the beaches of Virgin Gorda.

BRITISH VIRGIN ISLANDS IN

A WEEK Luxe Secret Bay is perched 120 feet above Dominca’s west coast.

DRINK Rum is king here; try potent Dynamite, made with fruit and herbs. Niels Noteboom, a guide with Extreme Dominica, gets his local Kubili beer at JR's Bar.

daylight doesn’t sound challenging enough, Extreme Dominica runs eerie night canyoning trips. End at least one day soaking in the sulfurous, open-air hot springs at Ti Kwen Glo Cho—then sip on bush rum at the property’s bar (which also sells, unironically, snake oil).

Puerto Rico’s best zipline is called the Beast.

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Sailing in the British Virgin Islands is on many a life list—for good reason. “The BVI has the most variety of anywhere in the Caribbean,” says Sarah Bowman, who has been a first mate and chef on more than 100 charters. “Each of the 50-plus islands has their individual feel—large resorts with posh spas, laid-back beach bars where you swim ashore and have a drink under a palm tree, breathtaking deserted islands.”

Once you charter a boat (catamarans are roomy and stable, monohulls are cheaper and maneuverable), the skipper can take you pretty much anywhere. Any greatesthits list leads with The Baths on Virgin Gorda, a geological jumble of granite boulders with secret rock pools in between.

Snorkel through the inky waters of The Caves, on Norman Island. The Indians, a set of four rocky pinnacles nearby, are known for multi-colored coral gardens. Spend a day on Anegada, especially the secluded beach of Loblolly Bay. There are sailing schools everywhere— but Sailing Virgins is the only one that specifically caters to people in their 20s-40s. “We have beautiful sailing conditions, in relatively protected waters,” says Doris Colgate, founder of Offshore Sailing School on private Scrub Island.

STAY The breezy palapas at the Anegada Beach Club look over miles of pristine whitesand beach. Colgate loves Cooper Island Beach Club, on the little gem of Cooper Island, with 10 rooms, a hip coffee bar, a brewery, a rum bar and lots of live reggae.

EAT At Cow Wreck Beach on Anegada, the Adirondack chairs sit on white sand just steps from the water (order conch fritters and Wreck punch). The fried plantains and pulledpork sandwiches are almost as good as the view from Hog Heaven Bar and Grill, which sits on a peak in Virgin Gorda. The open-air Sugar Mill on Tortola blends French and Caribbean influences.

DRINK Tons of police, fire and rescue patches adorn the rafters of the Soggy Dollar Bar on Jost Van Dyke—and pretty much everyone orders the original Painkiller. Willy T’s, a floating bar, recently moved to Peter Island, but the Dark & Stormies are the same. And you can still jump off the second-story deck.

BVI has a few airports that can be reached from San Juan.

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Do it GET FIT LIKE A PRO

“I HAVE TO KNOW MY BODY” For Bailey Payne, the acrobatic discipline of tricking is therapeutic. “If I’m in a bad mood or situation, I can go train and get my anger out. It’s a relief.”

Bailey Payne

Growing up with a single mother in Irmo, South Carolina, where money was tight for youth sports, Bailey Payne (who lives in L.A. now) fell in love with tricking, a discipline that combines gymnastics tumbling, breakdancing and martial arts kicks: “I saw that you could be become good at this crazy sport without having to pay for anything, without having to buy a board or a bike.

It was the most costefficient sport—and the coolest.” Here Payne, 22, explains how he’s made the leap as a tricking pro.

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Payne (@bagels_payne on Instagram) holds the world record for most corks in a row.

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Fitness

FITN ES S

”I’m staying in shape every time I flip, and I‘m flipping every day.”

“Tricking, flipping, tumbling— I’m doing it every day, squeezing every muscle in my body. My legs get a crazy workout. So it’s not like I’m waiting to go to a gym or needing crazy three-hour workouts. I use an exercise ball and focus on my core. I do handstand stuff as well for upperbody strength. I don’t really touch weights. I don’t think they’re going to mold my body into the perfect tricking body—if I get any heavier it’s going to be too much weight on my ankles and knees. I don’t weigh myself. When I do flips, I know.

I know exactly how my body feels.”

IAN WITLEN/RED BULL CONTENT POOL(2), DARREN CARROLL/RED BULL CONTENT POOL

ANDY LEWIS

R EC OV E RY

”Stretches, massage— I’m always trying to mix things up.”

“My recovery routine is exactly like my workout routine—I’m always trying to mix things up. If I have time in the morning, I’ll have my ankle, which I’ve broken several times, massaged, or I’ll get physical therapy or do ankle stretches in different directions with a rubber band tied to a post. I use a leg compression device that inflates around my legs to get the blood flowing. And whenever I can, I use this massage tool called the Hypervolt—it’s this vibrating gun that massages your muscles. That thing is so freaking good.”

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TEC H N I Q U E

“Moving from one surface to another is all muscle memory.”

“Nothing in my training is structured. I always train on different surfaces. Here in California, I go to a freerunning gym with a super trampoline and I also go to an extreme-sports camp with a spring floor—that’s what you see gymnasts perform floor routines on. I also train on concrete and grass, which aren’t as bouncy. Moving from one surface to another is all muscle memory. On concrete, I know I’m going to have to push harder and the landing is really going to be different. At the end of the day, it’s all technique.”

M OTIVATI O N

“It’s inspiring to see people turn this funny concept into a real sport.”

“Right now I train with Gravitated Equations, this super-dope group of people. They’re the best athletes in their sport, the craziest flippers in the world, but they are all funny as shit. No one takes anything too seriously. That’s what makes it the best group of people to train with. It is inspring to see people take this funny concept and turn it into a real sport. Kids who grew up watching me on the trampoline are doing crazy stuff.

I love watching this 13-year-old Japanese kid named Shosei on Instagram—he does tricks I can’t do. I find motivation in that.”

SAFETY “You gotta find the balance between too crazy and not that crazy. I’ve dedicated over half my life to flipping— I’m not going to fall in public on a flip. Would I do a double backflip in public on the concrete? Not a chance. I know what I’m capable of and what I’m not. That’s why I’ll listen to myself and not someone else.”

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GIFT WRAP

Travel 1 VICTORINOX SWISS ARMY ROLLTOP LAPTOP BACKPACK

Roll with It

Rolltop backpacks have multiple benefits—no arcing zipper that can leak or snag, simple access to adjust the bag’s contents and a smoother, more elegant appearance. Case in point: the Victorinox Swiss Army Rolltop Laptop Backpack. With an insulated pocket for your laptop and padded compression-molded backpad, it’s perfect for city commuting and overnight adventures, complete with a bottle opener built into the shoulder strap for happy hour. $89; swissarmy.com

2 PATAGONIA MICRO PUFF HOODIE

Portable Heat Patagonia’s Micro Puff Hoodie marries ultralight weight with unbelievable warmth. How? The jacket’s PlumaFill synthetic insulation replicates the structure—and thus the insulation and packability properties—of down feathers. And the distinctive zig-zag quilting isn’t for show; it stabilizes the fill to reduce cold spots. Bonus: The synthetic fill allows the jacket, available for both men and women, to be water-resistant. $299; patagonia.com

A dependably safe spot for your laptop?

It’s in the bag.

3 DOMETIC CFX 28

5 VAPUR MICROFILTER

Forget about packing ice in a cooler or draining water—the next evolution of coolers for overlanders (as well as tailgaters or car campers) is a plug-in cooler like Dometic’s CFX 28. Connect it to a vehicle’s power port, enter a desired temperature on the control panel and it starts chilling down. The CFX 28 can reach -7 degrees F and make ice. The robust insulation will hold your chosen temp there for hours, sporadically drawing on the car battery to maintain it. $750; shop.dometic.com

Give your global nomad the gift of clean H2O with the 1-liter Vapur MicroFilter, a BPA-free collapsible water bag with built-in microfilter straw. Empty, it takes up hardly any space in a bag and delivers peace of mind by filtering out 99.99% of waterborne bacteria when sucking fluids through the straw. It can even turn muddy water into clean, potable drinking water. $50; vapur.us

The Power of Cool

4 BISON DESIGNS KOOL TOOL

Tool Belt 2.0

The buckle on Bison Designs’ Kool Tool belt does way, way more than cinch a pair of pants tight. The buckle features 17 different tools (18 if you count the belt’s ballisticgrade nylon webbing and buckle’s use as an emergency tie-down), including five metric and five standard hex wrenches, Phillips head and flathead screwdrivers, wire strippers and a bottle opener. $26; bisondesigns.com

Drink Clean

6 SONY RX 100 VI

Picture Perfect With a high-magnification Zeiss 24-200 mm zoom lens that twists into the body, the pocket-sized yet capable Sony RX 100 VI lets you take great travel photography without a cumbersome DSLR camera and separate lenses. Sony says it’s the world’s fastest autofocus among cameras in its class, fast enough to shoot 24 highquality frames per second. Plus, it shoots 4K video easily thanks to Sony’s SteadyShot image stabilization. $899; sony.com

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Innovative holiday presents for the traveler, fitness junkie and techie on your list.

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You no longer need a cumbersome DSLR to shoot high-quality travel photography.

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Now a multi-sport junkie can seamlessly monitor every activity in great detail with one device.

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Workout

3 BLACK DIAMOND FINELINE STRETCH RAIN SHELL

Fresh Coat

Don’t let the slick cut, light weight and playful colors fool you: Black Diamond’s FineLine Stretch Rain Shell is built for high alpine mountain expeditions, where reliable gear is a matter of life or death. Made from the company’s proprietary waterproof/ breathable/windproof fabric, the jacket, available for men and women, is made to fit comfortably under a pack or climbing gear and stretch with a body in motion. $129; blackdiamondequipment. com/en_US

Wireless? Check.

Tiny? Check.

Noise canceling?

Check. Any further qustions?

4 HYPERICE VYPER 2 FOAM ROLLER

On-Demand Massage

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Foam rolling has long been an effective method for loosening up tight muscles and tendons before and after a workout. The Hyperice Vyper 2 foam roller ups the game by bringing a vibrating massage function to those rolling sessions.

With three vibrating speeds, sore users can dial in the perfect intensity for needy muscles. $199; hyperice.com

5 SPY OPTICS ACE EC

Adaptable Goggles

1 GARMIN 735XT GPS WATCH

Flexible Fitness

For the multi-sport junkie who runs, bikes, swims, XC skis, rows, lifts and more, the Garmin 735XT GPS watch can track ’em all.

Bluetooth connects the rechargeable watch to bike sensors, while the internal gyros can track running cadence, stride length and, for rowers, strokes per minute. The built-in heart-rate optical sensor on the back of the watch captures beats per minute through your skin—no chest strap needed. $350; buy.garmin.com

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2 BUFF DRYFIX FLEECE HEADBAND

Head’s Up

The Buff Dryfix Fleece headband simply makes outdoor winter workouts more comfortable.

The wide fleece band, made with sweat-wicking fabric, will keep your forehead and ears cozy, while allowing excess heat to escape out the top. Buff uses an outer fabric woven with reflective fibers on the Dryfix to turn the headband into a 360-degree standout in the dark. $17; buffusa.com

For those dawn-patrol ascents up the ski hill or in the backcountry, there’s now a ski goggle that instantly makes the transition from lightly to darkly tinted. Spy Optics’ groundbreaking ACE EC lithium-battery-powered goggles use electrochromic tech to electrically change the tint of its lens at the touch of a button—no need to stop and manually swap between lenses based on lighting conditions. $275; spyoptic.com

6 SENNHEISER MOMENTUM NOISE-CANCELING EARBUDS

Smarter Buds

For mighty beats in a tiny, wireless package, look no further than a pair of Sennheiser Momentum noise-canceling earbuds. The Bluetooth enabled sound machines sync with a smartphone and feature a wireless charging system as well as touch controls for volume, track and answering phone calls. The wearer can even customize the sound on the buds’ mobile Sennheiser Smart Control app. $300; en-us.sennheiser.com

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Tech 1 CINEMOOD PORTABLE MOVIE THEATER

2 LANDER MOAB INSULATED PHONE CASE

The Cinemood Portable Movie Theater puts an HD projector in the palm of your hands. The movie box throws out a nearly 6-foot image onto any wall and even comes with built-in speakers and a battery that’s good for five hours.

Download your favorite shows from Netflix, Amazon or Hulu onto the projector and you’re ready to watch a video anywhere—even on the side of a boulder. Near a cellular or Wi-Fi connection? The Cinemood can stream movies through a wireless connection to your smartphone or tablet. $399; cinemood.com

When it’s sub-freezing outside, smartphones can slow down or freeze up. Hence the need for the Lander Moab insulated phone case. A layer of ThermoLine fabric inside the case covers the phone’s battery, insulating it against the cold down to 0 degrees F. The built-in lanyard lets users wear their phone around their neck or wrist to protect against dropping the phone in deep snow, or worse, from one’s hand while riding a chairlift. Available for iPhone 6-X and Galaxy Note smartphones. $40; lander.com

Movie Star

Packing Heat

3 POLAROID INSTANT CAMERA

Instant Genius Perhaps you know someone who wants to take his or her episodebinging to a higher level.

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The resurrection of the iconic Polaroid instant camera continues with the OneStep+. It has a second lens for sharp, close-up portraits.

And after you connect the camera via Bluetooth to the Polaroid Originals app on your smartphone, you can click the shutter remotely; control the aperture, shutter speed and flash intensity; and create surreal double exposures before the camera prints a photo. $160; us.polaroidoriginals.com

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It’s an iconic instant camera with a bevy of cutting-edge upgrades.

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17.10.2018 13:55:45

Drivers: Bryce Menzies / Jacob Povey

Mad Media

© 2018 MNA, Inc. All rights reserved.

CHAMPIONS AREN’T CHOSEN. T H E Y ’ R E B U I LT.

W HAT ARE YOU BU I LDI NG F OR? It takes a certain kind of individual to win in the desert. The kind that works harder than you ever thought imaginable. If you have dreams to top the podium, watch how these drivers work. Congrats to Menzies Motorsports and all The Mint 400 class winners who build on BFGoodrich® tires.

BFGoodrichRacing.com

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G U I D E

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Your wait for a drone that can automatically follow you down a ski slope is over.

The new Apple Watch is bigger, louder, faster and more useful.

4 APPLE WATCH

Wrist Strength The latest iteration of the Apple Watch, the 4 is finally the Apple watch everyone thought it could be. The new, larger, curved display has 30 percent more room for graphics, yet the battery lasts longer, now up to 18 hours. Its new S4 chip runs faster. An optical heart-rate sensor on the back can track your beats during any activity, tracking your baseline fitness as long as the watch is worn. Even the built-in speaker is 50 percent louder, making it easier to take phone calls on your wrist. $399; apple.com

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5 AMAZON ECHO SHOW

Alexa in Pictures

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Thanks to Amazon’s Echo Show voice-command web browser, Alexa can now show you the answers to your voiced questions in addition to telling you. Sound comes via premium Dolby speakers and sight through the 10-inch HD screen. Stream TV through Hulu or watch shows through Amazon Prime. Think of the Echo Show as the tablet that functions more as an always-on appliance. $230; amazon.com

6 ANKER POWERLINE II 10-FOOT USB POWER CABLE

The Long Game

The Anker PowerLine II 10-foot USB power cable for phones and devices is simple, but once you try it, you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it. It frees those charging their phones from huddling on the floor next to a power outlet so they can still use their phone (or tablet). Instead, they can sprawl across the couch, stay in bed or stay plugged in from the third row of their SUV. Available for Apple, Micro USB and USB-C devices. $15; anker.com

7 DJI MAVIC AIR DRONE

First-Class Flight Quadcopter camera drones vary from really cheap to over-the-top professional. The versatile, foldable DJI Mavic Air Drone sits in a sweet spot between them. The ’copter packs a 3-axis gimbal to steady the 4K digital video camera, which can also shoot 120 frames per second in 1080p HD quality to capture crystal-clear action in slow motion. The remote control connects to your smartphone to help fly the drone and see what it sees from the air. Or turn on its ActiveTrack function and the drone will follow you down a ski run, mountain-bike trail or wave. $799; dji.com

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G U I D E

See it

KEEPING A FLOW PROFILE

Spanish-language rap battles, snowboard craziness and dirt-bike drama—just some of this month’s highlights.

WATCH RED BULL TV ANYWHERE

Red Bull TV is a global digital entertainment destination featuring programming that is beyond the ordinary and is available anytime, anywhere. Go online at redbull.tv, download the app, or connect via your Smart TV. To find out more, visit redbull.tv

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December LIVE

RED BULL BATALLA DE LOS GALLOS WORLD FINAL 2018

See MCs from Spanish-speaking countries across the world unleash their lyrical skills in head-to-head freestyle rap battles at the 12th edition of this contest, staged this year in Buenos Aires. Last time around, Mexico’s Aczino won the title on his native turf after defeating rookie Wos from Argentina. Will home advantage work in the favor of this year’s Argentinian hope, Dozer?

Up in his (Gaucho) grill: Thorny (right) vs. Danyelus in Argentina.

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November / December

Hear handpicked music and interviews with influential artists.

This month’s pick is . . .

Dozer (right) beats fellow MC Stuart to win the national final in Argentina in August this year.

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GUSTAVO CHERRO/RED BULL CONTENT POOL (2), ORCHARD ENTERPRISES NY (2), METHOD MAGAZINE/RED BULL CONTENT POOL, CARYS HWUS

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December PREMIERE

DROP EVERYTHING

Award-winning filmmakers Matchstick Productions (Claim, Days of My Youth) present a fun-filled adventure through the world of freeskiing, with stunning locations, a potent soundtrack and stellar cinematography.

FIRST FLOOR

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METHOD MOVIE 3

The final film in this series from Method Magazine is another globetrotting collection of insane snowboarding and good times. As the makers say, “All you need is your board, your homies and a bit of help from Mother Nature!”

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November ON AIR

Every Thursday (7 p.m. GMT), host Shawn Reynaldo casts an ear over the latest releases from the worlds of house, techno, disco and beyond, and talks to some of the artists responsible. (Past guests on the show have included Mr. Fingers, Peggy Gou and Bicep.) And, as 2018 winds down, Shawn will be dedicating several episodes to his year-end review.

December PREMIERE

MOTO 9: THE MOVIE

Journey to the world’s most incredible riding locations with MOTO 9: The Movie. From the soul-shredder life to the woods to the AMA Championship, this film brings every part of the dirt-bike spectrum to the screen.

LISTEN AT REDBULLRADIO.COM

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Do it

The best ski racers from around the globe head to Beaver Creek, Colorado, for one of the most challenging stops of the men’s World Cup tour. The Birds of Prey course has a starting altitude of 11,420 feet and a vertical drop of 2,470 feet—but you can safely watch the action (for free) while racers rocket down the mountain at 70 mph. Thru December 2; bcworldcup.com

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December Curling World Cup Although curling has been an official Olympic sport since Nagano in 1998, it’s not the first event that comes to mind when it comes to international competition. In an effort to develop the sport ahead of the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing, the World Curling Federation has created a new tournament with four legs. The second leg happens this month in Omaha, Nebraska, ahead of a third round in Sweden and the Grand Final in China in May. Thru December 9; worldcurling.org

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December Wrangler National Finals Rodeo This year marks the 60th anniversary of the granddaddy of all rodeo events: For 10 days in Las Vegas, the country’s top cowboys and cowgirls will compete for a chance at the coveted gold buckle. See them rope and wrestle steer, barrel race and bull ride—hopefully without breaking any major bones. Thru December 15; nfrexperience.com

December

SANTACON NEW YORK

What began as a performanceart experiment in San Francisco in 1994 has ballooned into a spectacle in cities across the country, where hordes of revelers dressed as Santa Claus take to the streets for an annual bar crawl. If you want to drink an enormous cup of holiday cheer in NYC, just slap on a white beard and a cheap red suit and join the fun. If seeing a bunch of drunken Santas stumbling around sounds like the plot of a horror film, best to avoid Midtown. santacon.nyc

December Art Basel Miami Beach At this glamorous and splashy art fair in Miami, more than 80,000 people gather to explore offerings from more than 4,000 artists from some of America’s top galleries—all while partying and rubbing elbows with celebrities like Drake, Michael B. Jordan, Rosario Dawson, Will Smith and Owen Wilson. If you have a deep pocket, then great art is available to purchase for those who seek everything from established artists and rising stars to bona fide discoveries of new talent.

GETTY IMAGES, ART BASEL

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THE RED BULLETIN

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The Red Bulletin is published in seven countries. This cover is from this month’s French edition, featuring an insider’s guide to France’s skiing and snowboarding scene.

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THE RED BULLETIN

THE RED BULLETIN PROMOTION

CRYSTAL-CLEAR WATER AND CAVE PAINTINGS BY DAY, A SMORGASBORD OF FUN BY NIGHT

Text: arsánchezq

LOS CABOS HAS EVERYTHING YOU NEED, WHENEVER YOU WANT IT, YOU JUST HAVE TO GO OUTDOORS. "We were looking for deep pools when we came upon cave painting", says Didier Goidard, the 23-year-old Mexican Enduro rising star, remembering his most recent stay at Los Cabos, Mexico. Picture an out-of-this-world scene — the river, the deep pools, crystal-clear water and suddenly, rocks covered with paintings. However, it's not as if they discovered the paintings by chance. Didier and friends were doing a photoshoot, visiting different Los Cabos spots, trying out the world-famous Baja lifestyle, the deserts and the sea. "While we were getting some shots, our guide led us further downriver to see the paintings. He told us a bit about the art and the site", he remembers. Sure, the pictures Didier got from that day are spectacular, but nothing compares to the feeling of awe that grows from being in that river with those paintings before you.

Well, forget that last part; there's something quite as amazing as discovering some ancient doodles —Los Cabos' nightlife. But let's go back to the start.

Earlier that morning, Didier and the crew started their journey at Rancho Madrigal. After having breakfast, they rode their ATVs – Didier preferred his Enduro bike, obviously – and reached for Sierra de la Laguna.

"Rancho Madrigal appears to be a small hub with a big sierra aside where they have all these activities", says the Red Bull Enduro rider. In addition to cave painting, the team could have visited the Faro Viejo (the old lighthouse) and the Los Cabos Natural History Museum, or they could have gone horseriding through the sierra. "Sierra de la Laguna was beautiful. The vegetation is so different from what we had seen previously… Oh, it was hotter than hell, though. The humidity was unbearable."

Lucky there's always that granite stone pool and a delicious Mexican-style lunch waiting back at the Rancho.

"The night at Los Cabos has a distinct vibe — it is tourist friendly." So tourist friendly that Goirand and friends decided to walk along the shore and settle for a nice little Italian restaurant to begin their adventure. "It was delicious", he says, "and there were lots and lots of restaurants for every taste." An ice cream and a walk back to the clubs later, Didier was ready to party. "It's astonishing how many places there were", remembers Didier. First, they hit a bar to get in the mood. Then they went to a bigger club to party the Los Cabos way. "If you want to go out at night, have dinner and party, Los Cabos is the perfectspot", says Didier.

And probably it's also a great spot for cave painting appreciation by the day, but that may not be for everyone, right?

Action highlight

Makes you fly

The next issue of THE RED BULLETIN is out on December 11.

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THE RED BULLETIN

KYLE LIEBERMAN/RED BULL CONTENT POOL

High and dry Great waves—who needs them? Not surfer Kai Lenny. The Hawaiian appears to float above the Hudson River thanks to hydrofoil technology. A submerged wing on his board’s fin provides the necessary speed and lift. Even observing New Yorkers were impressed.

THE ALL-NEW TURBO LEVO More power, more range, more kickass.

THE POWER TO RIDE MORE TRAILS

S P E C I A L I Z E D . C O M / N E W -T U R B O - L E V O

LIVE.SKI.REPEAT. Boundary Pro 107 Ski An award-winning ski built for big lines & high speeds on either side of the rope.

BD Athlete Tobin Seagel | British Columbia

Mattias Fredriksson

B L A C K D I A M O N D E Q U I P M E N T. C O M