Issuu

02/2026

BEYOND THE ORDINARY

The superstar DJ balancing parties and parenthood PLUS RED BULL – BORA – HANSGROHE / IDA MATHILDE STEENSGAARD / RED BULL MIDSUMMER / MILLY PICKLES

EDITOR’S LETTER & CONTRIBUTORS

Paddy Maddisson “For this issue, I travelled to Denmark to watch Ida Mathilde Steensgaard complete a gravity-defying assault course built into a working Ferris wheel,” says the UK-based journalist. “It’s difficult to convey the sheer scale of it.”

Ed Cooper The lifestyle and fitness journalist reported on Red Bull Midsummer, the first-ever 28-hour-day party. “It was amazing to speak to people across the world about music,” says Cooper of the interviews.

RAFAEL DEPROST (COVER)

Jessica Salter A regular contributor to titles including Vogue and the FT, the lifestyle journalist interviewed Milly Pickles for this issue. “What really surprised me was her fascination with neuroscience,” Salter says. “She’s so knowledgeable.”

ife is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.” Albert Einstein spoke those words more than a century ago, but their sentiment runs through every story in this issue. For our cover star Fisher, movement means embracing an entirely new rhythm of life: balancing 4am dancefloors with 4am nappy changes as he discovers the joys and challenges of fatherhood. For photographer Pelle Cass, movement is the foundation of his art, transforming fleeting moments into extraordinary, layered images. At Red Bull Midsummer, movement was built into the experience, with a festival that travelled from country to country in pursuit of the longest day of the year. And for cyclists Florian Lipowitz and Remco Evenepoel, Einstein’s words took on a literal meaning as they rode Red Bull – BORA – hansgrohe to its most successful Tour de France in history. Different stories. Different journeys. But all pointing to the same idea: progress comes from moving forward, and your next step is often the one that makes all the difference. Enjoy the issue.

THE RED BULLETIN

WHEN ALL IS SAID AND DONE, WAS IT SAID OR WAS IT DONE?

VISIT BFGOODRICHTIRES.COM

CONTENTS

Bullevard 06 12 13 14 15 16 17

Gallery Playlist Mirror mask art Scent archaeology Emoji interview Pavement power Support squad

Heroes

Arlo Parks

Victor Hoffer

David Keohan

Power of dance Raising the bar

No stone unturned Music

Fisher

Australia’s most energetic DJ is stepping into his next era with a new lease of life

Adrenaline with a view: Two-time OCR world champion Ida Mathilde Steensgaard turns a 30-metre Ferris wheel into her personal climbing gym, scaling it high above the port of Odense

Fitness

Ida Mathilde 36 Steensgaard The two-time OCR world champion on creating a record-breaking project Comedy

MIHAI STETCU/RED BULL CONTENT POOL

Ayo Adenekan

Cycling

One stand-up’s journey from coffee-shop debut to comedy-show dynamite Photography

Pelle Cass

Sporting images with incredible movement and a truly immersive quality

Remco Evenepoel & Florian Lipowitz

Running

Milly Pickles

How a life-changing injury gave this para athlete and creator new drive and determination

From rivals to teammates: a racing power is born

Portfolio

Culture

The photographer shooting live music as you’ve never seen it before

Red Bull Midsummer

Dispatches from the global party that follows the sun across the planet

Henry Hwu

102

116 Column 118 Mind game THE RED BULLETIN

THE RED BULLETIN

GALLERY

Jerez de la Frontera, Spain

Rookie Run

Riders from the Red Bull MotoGP Rookies Cup lean into tight corners and open up on the straights during preseason testing at Circuito de Jerez–Ángel Nieto in Jerez de la Frontera, Spain, on April 8, 2026. The young talents fine-tuned lines, braking points and race craft ahead of the season, using the historic Andalusian circuit to sharpen their skills as they take a step toward MotoGP’s premier categories.

MARKUS BERGER/RED BULL CONTENT POOL

redbull.com

THE RED BULLETIN

Nürburg, Germany

Zoom meeting

For most F1 champions, a weekend off means rest. But in May 2026, Max Verstappen spent his making a 24H Nürburgring debut. The four-time world champion shared a MercedesAMG GT3 with Dani Juncadella, Jules Gounon and Lucas Auer, leading by over half a minute on Sunday morning. It was not to be, however, as a technical issue ended his hopes of victory. redbull.com

THE RED BULLETIN

PHILIP PLATZER/RED BULL CONTENT POOL , ARTO SAARI

GALLERY

Santa Catarina, Brazil

Circle of life

A trip to Florianópolis means beach time for most of its visitors. But Lola Tambling had other priorities. The 18-year-old British skateboarder, already a three-time national park champion , joined Red Bull’s crew of transition riders touring Floripa’s finest concrete in 2026. Between sessions with Hinano Kusaki, Tambling called the trip “fire”. High praise indeed. redbull.com THE RED BULLETIN

THE RED BULLETIN

GALLERY

New York, USA

Sails pitch The USA has welcomed representatives of many nations this year – witness the FIFA World Cup and the New York stop of the SailGP Championship (pictured). In May, 13 national teams hit the Big Apple, intent on kicking ass rather than balls (perhaps) in hightech foiling catamarans at speeds exceeding 100kph. The tour ends in Abu Dhabi in November, when one crew will sail off into the sunset with $2 million. Ka-ching!

SAILGP/RED BULL CONTENT POOL

DAVYDD CHONG

sailgp.com

THE RED BULLETIN

The Hives

Playlist

Royal racket

Frontman Pelle Almqvist, 48, has crowned himself king of rock’n’roll at every Hives show since the band formed in Fagersta, Sweden, in 1993. As The Hives, Almqvist and his bandmates have spent three decades perfecting a sound built on raw garage rock, anthemic hooks and matching black-and-white suits, touring relentlessly and gaining a reputation as one of the most electrifying live acts in the world. The quintet are now gearing up to release their seventh album, The Hives Forever Forever The Hives. “I really think this album is my favourite Hives album,” Almqvist says. “After 30 years of being a band, we’re at the peak of our powers.” Here, he shares the music that keeps him ruling over the planet’s stages, year after year.

Self-crowned rock king Pelle Almqvist has a soundtrack to match his throne

Forever Forever by The Hives is out now.

Beastie Boys

AC/DC

Sabotage (1994)

For Those About to Rock (We Salute You) (1981)

The Misfits Astro Zombies (1982)

“I searched for a long time for a band that looked as cool as Kiss but rocked as hard as AC/DC. That’s The Misfits. They showed me that musicianship isn’t the most important thing in a band – attitude is. We adopted that approach for The Hives.”

THE RED BULLETIN

Little Richard Lucille (1957)

“As a kid, I listened my way through my parents’ record collection. Lucille is one of the crown jewels of ’50s rock. The song has almost a punk beat, it’s fast, and Little Richard screams his soul out. He’s the king of rock’n’roll – until we take over the sceptre.”

PAO DUELL

“I discovered this song when I was six. It gave me the feeling of belonging to the people who were into really cool music. Simply because it’s exciting and you can headbang to it. There’s also a cover version by my brother Nicholaus and me – pure racket!”

MARCEL ANDERS

“That was a hit influenced by both punk and hip-hop, and everyone loved it, even though it came across so hard and dirty. The Beasties cracked a kind of code there. That’s exactly what we wanted, too: to sound really heavy but still be loved by everyone.”

BULLEVARD

FREDDIE YAUNER

MATT BLAKE

he man in the video looks gleefully into the camera. But all that’s visible of his face are his eyes, nose, mouth and flame-red whiskered chin. The rest is obscured by a circular mirror strapped to his head. Reflected in this looking glass, the world unfolds in a montage of vivid fragments: swans afloat, autumn leaves, a purple dusk and tangerine dawn, traffic crawling in dying daylight, all set to the music of electronic duo Bicep. It’s a disarmingly simple spectacle, but one with more than 10 million views on Instagram. The mirror man is Freddie Yauner, a London-based artist and designer whose work dances the line between our physical and digital realities. “It was an idea I’d played with for years,” says Yauner, who began shooting the film series, What I’m Looking At, in 2020. “Then, last New Year’s Eve, we re-edited the footage and put it online. By midnight, it had hit a million views. It was incredible. I think it resonated because people are sick of AI slop and fake stuff [on social media]. This mask captures authentic, natural moments: smiling because you found some mushrooms in a tree, or watching the sun set over a city. It’s very human, very pure.” Yauner calls this an “antiselfie”, his attempt to switch the focus away from personal vanity and back towards nature. “[The mask] allows the world to see exactly what I’m looking at, rather than looking at me. It hides your face, but it also shows that who we are is shaped by our surroundings. That’s why I love using it. When the spring magnolia is out, the mask shows that I’m just as much a part of that blossom as anything else.” The design is also practical: “I’ve taken out a quarter slice of the pizza right where the phone

Mirror mask art

Time for reflection Witness the natural wonders of the world… in one man’s face

Blue-sky thinking: Yauner’s mirror-mask videos are no vanity project, more an “anti-selfie”, he says

would be in a selfie, so it’s a technical design as much as an interesting shape.” The irony of the project isn’t lost on its creator. “The smartphone is core to the experience,” he says, “yet the overwhelming reaction from people staring at their screens was, ‘How wonderful, this makes me want to get off my phone.’ Ultimately, my dream is that it becomes a global movement using the technology we already have to reconnect us to the real world.” Yauner has a track record for turning ideas into public experiments. Signs of Life, his animated fire-exit sign that comes to life when walked past, is in the collection of New York art museum MoMA. But he’s perhaps best known for his performance art project in which, for three months every year, he grows his beard

and adopts the persona and appearance of the Victorian radical artisan William Morris. “An old tutor of mine would talk about ‘dropping pebbles’,” Yauner says. “I think that’s the best thing any of us can do. If I can drop little pebbles that spread ripples to different people, it feels like something worth doing.” Which is exactly what he seeks to achieve with his mirror mask. Yauner has produced 900 and is shipping them out to a mix of artists, musicians and everyday people keen to shoot their own films. “I don’t believe in the highend gatekeeping mentality that art should be exclusive,” he says. “I want the mask to belong to anyone who wants to use it. Flip the camera around, stop looking at yourself, and find some magic in the world.” freddieyauner.co.uk; Instagram: @freddieyauner THE RED BULLETIN

Scent archaeology

Dr Nose By recreating smells from ancient history, this Austrian archaeo-chemist transports us back in time Dr Barbara Huber wants you to know time travel is possible. A vibrating wormhole or fluxcapacitated DeLorean isn’t required: it can be achieved simply by taking a deep breath. Through your nose. An archaeo-chemist and postdoctoral researcher at the University of Tübingen, Germany, Huber is a pioneer in bringing the smells of the past to life. “When we think about history, we usually only consider what we can see: the pottery, bones, buildings,” she says. “We often forget about smell, which is in many ways our most magical sense.” The reason is biological: while vision and hearing are processed in the cerebral cortex – the rational part of THE RED BULLETIN

Scents of the past: (from top) archaeo-chemist Dr Barbara Huber; extracting ‘frozen’ perfume from an ancient Roman glass vessel

the brain – smell is transmitted to the hippocampus and amygdala, areas that govern memory and emotion. “[The novelist] Marcel Proust was right when he wrote that smell is the only sense that can transport us back in time,” Huber adds. “It can trigger a physiological response before we even realise what we’re sniffing.” Reconstructing a lost aroma is laborious. Using an analytical method known as Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS), Huber hunts for ‘biomarkers’ – molecular fingerprints trapped in ancient artefacts for millennia. By identifying these chemical clues, she can rebuild a sensory world, molecule by

molecule, resurrecting everything from the delicate floral notes of a pharaoh’s perfume to the ‘turpentine and barbecue’ stench of a 3,500-year-old mummy. Did those mummies smell good? “I think so,” she says. “Ancient texts say people didn’t want to stink in the afterlife. They used sweet, resinous substances that were antifungal and antibacterial. It was a combination of preservation and scent.” Huber’s latest project involves ‘frozen’ perfumes from ancient Rome. While most liquids from antiquity evaporate into a dry crust, her team recently found a Roman glass vessel so tightly sealed that the scent inside was still a liquid. “We used a syringe to pierce the stopper to extract it. It’s so rare for a container so old to have an actual liquid inside.” They’re currently analysing the substance to recreate the exact perfume once worn by the Roman elite. But history isn’t all flowers and frankincense. Researchers in the Netherlands have tried to recreate the smell-scape of the Battle of Waterloo – gunpowder, blood, wet grass, horsehair, ‘anxiety sweat‘ – while in the UK, biological data was used to imagine the breath of a T rex (rotting meat, septic infections). For Austrianborn Huber, these scents are essential educational tools: “Smell connects so many areas of life. Everyone has to breathe in and out to live, so it affects everyone.” By reviving these lost aromas through scented prints and museum exhibits, Huber is restoring what she calls the “invisible layers” of our history. “Most of the time when you visit a museum, you see or read about something. But when you smell it, you have an experience that makes abstract history more tangible. It’s a time machine for your nose: you get transported back in time the moment you breathe it in.” barbara-huber.com

MATT BLAKE

BULLEVARD

CAROLE CALVEZ, JÜRGEN VOGEL/LVR-LANDESMUSEUM BONN

15 Emoji interview

Say it, Shane! Welcome to our emoji interview: no words, no sentences – just icons. This time we hand the challenge to Shane Klingler, digital creator with a knack for offbeat challenges.

You surf, snowboard and skate. How do board sports make you feel?

And which sports are you completely talentless at?

THE RED BULLETIN:

Please describe yourself in 3 emojis. SHANE:

What are your three summer must-haves? You have a new home in Cologne. What do you love about it?

You share a lot of your adventures with your buddy Leon Labu. What defines your friendship?

You’re considered an especially creative creator. What do you need to come up with good ideas?

JANIS FERCHICHI

And how do you deal with the pressure of constantly having to deliver something new?

In your videos you usually come across as relaxed and likeable. Any tips for staying more calm?

The ‘just do it’ type

Whether he’s creating content or founding something new, Shane Klingler likes to take matters into his own hands and push himself way outside his comfort zone. The German native uses Instagram and TikTok to showcase his adventures, but also to talk openly about friendship, dating and mental health. His most recent adventure? On August 1, he teamed up with buddy Leon Labu for the Red Bull Paddelfest whitewater race in Augsburg. Check it out at redbull.com THE RED BULLETIN

Pavement power

Positive steps For industrial design engineer Laurence Kemball-Cook, the future of sustainable energy is right beneath our feet

Laurence Kemball-Cook’s road to success began with a spectacular failure. In 2008, fresh out of Loughborough University, the industrial design engineer was offered the job of a lifetime: a brief from energy giant E.ON to devise the ‘future of sustainable streetlighting’. “I looked at solar and wind power,” says the 40-year-old, “but I quickly realised the sun doesn’t shine enough in dense urban areas, and there isn’t much wind either. I completely failed, and they fired me.” But Kemball-Cook couldn’t let it go. “Hanging my head in shame, I kept thinking about clean energy in cities,” he recalls. “Then it hit me: what’s the one source of expendable energy all cities have in abundance? Young people.” The idea evolved quickly. “At first I thought about streetlights you could run up to and kick,” he says. “Then I pictured those fairground machines where you hit a mallet and it goes, ‘Ding, ding, THE RED BULLETIN

Sole-r energy: (from top) Pavegen tiles in action in London; the tech revealed; creator Laurence Kemball-Cook

ding’. That’s when I thought, ‘Why not make a floor tile you can stamp on?’ You walk on it and it generates power.” Kemball-Cook retreated to his bedroom and created a prototype from wood, duct tape and Blu Tack. “It went ‘crunch’ when stood on, which didn’t sound great, but it powered a light for five seconds.” He knew he had something, but turning it into a business was another challenge. “No one would invest, because I didn’t have revenue, and no one would

buy, because I didn’t have a finished product. I was in a chicken-and-egg stalemate.” So he decided to force a breakthrough. At 2am one Tuesday in 2010, armed with a prototype and a pickaxe, he climbed a fence at a building site on London’s South Bank. “I was mixing cement at 3am, trying not to get caught, buying bottles of water from a corner shop to mix it.” By 6am, he’d installed a working tile and streetlight – and vanished. “I posted a photo online with the caption, ‘The future of energy is here’. By noon, Westfield retail group called and said, ‘We’ve seen your streetlight. We’d like to buy one.’” The next day, £350,000 landed in Kemball-Cook’s bank account. From there, he refined the tech, replacing the ‘crunch’ with a sophisticated internal flywheel that converts rotational energy into electricity which can be fed directly into lights or signage or stored in portable batteries. Today, his company, Pavegen, operates in more than 45 countries, in locations ranging from Yosemite National Park to Hong Kong’s transport hubs. Projects have included a kinetic football pitch in a Rio favela; a dancefloor in Trafalgar Square, powering a DJ set by drum’n’bass act Rudimental, and an installation that converted the footsteps of 37,000 Paris Marathon runners into energy for a local school. Looking ahead, KemballCook’s mission is now to commoditise the technology and make it the same price as standard flooring. He sees a world where our very presence contributes to the planet’s health. “We want every single city, town and village to be able to power their community with footfall,” he says. “Whether it’s powering the biggest nightclubs in Las Vegas, or lights allowing children to read at night, our goal is to make the world a greener place, one step at a time.” pavegen.com

MATT BLAKE

BULLEVARD

PAVEGEN

17 Emma Hayes

Support squad

Head coach & dance partner

Celebrate your crew Trinity Rodman’s world is shaped by the people beside her. Meet the crew behind the US soccer star’s success, from her biggest supporters to those cheering her on every step of the way

US national team head coach Emma Hayes has always put her faith in Rodman, starting her in every Olympic match in 2024. The pair now have a victory dance that’s become part of the show.

Ashley Sanchez

BSF (Best soccer friend)

For three seasons, Ashley Sanchez and Trinity Rodman formed one of the NWSL’s most exciting attacking partnerships with the Washington Spirit. Close friends on and off the pitch, their chemistry became a hallmark of the team’s offense.

FOOTBALL

FRIEND

CHRISTIAN EBERLE-ABASOLO

FAMILY

Ben Shelton

A mutual partnership

Rodman and professional tennis star Ben Shelton confirmed their relationship in 2025. Two young athletes competing on the world stage, they share a passion and commitment to elite sport.

Michelle Moyer

JARED MARTINEZ/RED BULL CONTENT POOL, GETTY IMAGES (3), IMAGO, PICTUREDESK

Mum, role model, #1 fan

Michelle Moyer raised her three children largely on her own, persevering through financial hardship. Trinity has called her mother “the strongest person I’ve ever met”, crediting her success partly to her mum’s unwavering support.

Dennis Rodman Legacy and lineage

From her father, NBA legend Dennis Rodman, Trinity inherited elite athletic genes and a fierce competitive spirit. Today, she carries the Rodman name on her own terms.

Trinity Rodman At 24, Trinity Rodman has established herself as one of the biggest stars in women’s soccer, becoming the world’s highest-paid female soccer player in January 2026. Her success is built on more than a famous surname: a 2021 NWSL Rookie of the Year award, a league title with the Washington Spirit and an Olympic gold medal with the US women’s national team in 2024. Known for her creativity both on and off the pitch, the forward brings the same fearless expression to her soccer, as she does her fashion, art and even warm-up routines. @trinity_rodman THE RED BULLETIN

HEROES

Arlo Parks

The London-born, LA-based artist on why her new album is packed with all the power of the dancefloor Words Marcel Anders

While her friends in London were partying in their late teens and early twenties, Arlo Parks was travelling the world. The Hammersmith-born singer – real name Anaïs Marinho – was just 14 when she began writing songs, and she had a record deal before she’d finished her A-levels. Parks is now 25, and her tender, intimate tracks have been streamed hundreds of millions of times and won her numerous awards, including, in 2021, Best New Artist at the BRITs and the Mercury Prize, for her debut album, Collapsed in Sunbeams. Parks is living her childhood dream. But her rapid rise to fame hasn’t come without challenges. In May 2022, she relocated to Los Angeles, but on social media just four months later, Parks announced the cancellation of part of her US tour, citing burnout after 18 months on the road. Since then, alongside the release of a second album – 2023’s My Soft Machine – she has allowed herself to slow down, put down roots and enjoy a period of exploration, indulging in the nightlife she missed out on when she was younger. The culmination is Parks’ dreamy-yetdanceable third album, Ambiguous Desire, its sound inspired by club culture but with lyrics as personal as anything she’s written to date. Losing herself on the dancefloor, she says, proved to be the perfect way to find out where her head was at. “There is a sense of my barriers, my walls, being down in those spaces,” Parks says. “And I think I’ve been able to bring that energy into the studio.”

THE RED BULLETIN

the red bulletin: How are you enjoying life in LA? arlo parks: I like the sun, I like the pace of life, I like being in nature, and a lot of the people I make music with are here, too, which is important to me. Your latest album is partly inspired by American nightlife. Why the new direction? I feel like it was coming to the end of this block of time where I’d been touring so relentlessly and had spent so much time just, like, living my life in these slices. And I was like, “What does spontaneity look like? What does it look like to throw myself into living a life and growing roots and going dancing and being playful and having fun?” And I think that ethos, in terms of how I was living then, translated into the way that I approached production and songwriting. And this new mindset was shaped by the club scene, particularly in New York… Yeah, New York, in part, was the place for that. There’s such an amazing culture of nocturnal spaces and community, and such a music history there, that I was drawn to study places like [legendary clubs] Paradise Garage and The Loft and Studio 54, and also to immerse myself in the spaces that still exist out there. What was your first real experience of club culture like? Most people have time at university, or when they’re around that age, to be really free and throw themselves into those spaces and discover themselves. But yeah, for me, ever since I was 17, I was doing this. [Laughs.] So that time [in New York] was the first

time that I could really throw myself into that world. I feel like it’s almost necessary for growth. I feel like everyone needs to go and dance for a few months in their lifetime. What makes dancing so transformative? It’s everything. It takes you out of your head and into your body in a way that can be difficult to do [in other ways]. It locks you into this headspace which is all gut and feeling. You feel really in touch with yourself. And there’s a confidence that comes from that. As a queer artist, is it important to you to reflect that in your music? For me, it’s less about being a spokesperson and more just me talking about the people I love, and about community and what I embody. I just am [queer], so my songs will have that lens. Hopefully, people seeing me being myself will encourage them to be themselves. I feel really lucky to live in a part of the world where more and more artists feel comfortable in their queerness and make music so unapologetically being themselves. You put a lot of yourself into your music, and there’s a sense that these days you’re more at peace with yourself and who you are. Is that how you feel? Definitely. I mean, it’s a moving target, right? I don’t think we ever arrive at a sense of peace and get to sit there and just be like, “Here I am, this is it.” But I definitely feel more confident, and happier than ever.

Focus on Arlo Parks Born in: London Lives in: Los Angeles Biggest hit: Eugene New album: Ambiguous Desire Loves: writing poems Most creative time: at night Famous admirers: Billie Eilish and Michelle Obama

ALISTAIR MCVEIGH

“Everyone needs to go and dance for a few months” THE RED BULLETIN

HEROES

Victor Hoffer

France’s rising functional fitness star proves that it’s not just raw talent that matters, it’s how relentlessly you train it Words PH Camy Photography Carlos Suárez

Watch Victor Hoffer progress through a Workout of the Day and you will understand why functional fitness calls itself functional: a barbell clean into a wall-ball throw into a sprint outside and back, the transitions so fluid it reads less like exercise than choreography. Where most people see repetition, Hoffer sees the point: keep testing what the body can do, then do it again, better. It’s a discipline that’s carried him a long way. Hoffer was just three when he tagged along to his older sister’s session and his agility instantly set him apart. The shift to functional fitness came in 2019, when his gymnastics-mad family took him to try a workout at a CrossFit box. His first session was rough. His love of the sport was immediate. Now a three-time French national CrossFit champion, Hoffer reached the CrossFit Games in 2024 and in 2025 signed as a pro athlete with the World Fitness Project – the youngest man in the field to earn the honour. Along the way he’s built an Instagram following, documenting his training day by day and proving that consistency and stubbornness carry you further than raw talent alone. Here, we ask Hoffer about his inspirations, and the mental fortitude it takes to be one of the best in his sport… the red bulletin: What are the major challenges that lie ahead for you on your journey to becoming the world’s best in your discipline? victor hoffer: I’m taking it step by step in training, and mentally as well. I’m also working on my running. Mentally, I’m learning how to react quickly in any situations. Because there’s a difference between what you can anticipate and practise in training and the reality of competition.

THE RED BULLETIN

You’ve also spoken about practising visualisation… For me, it might involve visualising how I need to perform a movement in the best possible way. If I’m attempting a lift, which is a risky manoeuvre, I’ll imagine every detail that might get in my way, from the moment I walk towards the weightlifting bar right up to the moment I execute the movement. That’ll help me on the big day. How many hours do you spend in the gym each week? About 20 to 25, maybe even more. I train every day from Monday to Saturday. And on Sundays, it’s a complete rest day. How do you motivate yourself to go to the gym to train six days out of seven? It’s all about discipline. That’s what helps me to go back to training every day. When I was doing gymnastics as a younger person, we didn’t necessarily have a choice. Nowadays, I’m lucky enough to have the choice of whether I want to go to the gym. In fact, it’s that toughness that I learnt at a very young age. I don’t want to let myself down, or to let the young Victor down. It’s a freedom to be able to tell myself that I want to go to the gym. Not all 23-year-olds have the same idea of freedom; many think of going out, having fun… If I compare my life to that of a teenager who goes out clubbing and stays up late at the weekend, it’s true that I don’t do any of those things any more. I’ve learnt to be more disciplined and to do without, and over time, I’ve come to like it. The functional fitness you practise – where does that come from? CrossFit was formalised in the early 2000s by Greg Glassman. The discipline took off by combining weightlifting, gymnastics and endurance sports. Today, through the

CrossFit Games, we test this versatility to identify the most well-rounded athlete in the world. It seems that the CrossFit Games incorporate disciplines that are complementary to functional fitness, but sometimes unexpected… It’s true that the CrossFit Games like to surprise us with disciplines that are a bit out of the ordinary and go beyond pure functional fitness. We’ve already seen paddleboarding, obstacle courses with ladders or pegboards, and quite a bit of technical gymnastics that requires incredible agility. Many of our readers have gotten into fitness activities like HYROX recently. For those looking to switch to crosstraining, what are your top tips for avoiding injury and staying motivated? I’d say start by training at an affiliated box where they offer specialised training. And don’t hesitate to ask the coaches questions. Also, it’s best to set realistic, short-term goals, and not to go all out at 150 per cent. As we say, ‘Brick by brick’. Achieve your first short-term goal, without pressure, without trying to overdo it, by taking it slowly. Instagram: @victor.hfr

Big lifts A selection of Hoffer’s best moments 2023 14th at the CrossFit Europe Semifinal Less than two years after trading gymnastics rings for barbells, Hoffer finishes two spots outside qualifying. A signal of what’s coming 2024 CrossFit Games debut The French gymnast-turnedathlete makes it to Fort Worth, Texas, for his rookie Games appearance – the goal he’d been chasing since taking up the sport in 2019 2025 World Fitness Project Pro Still the youngest name in the field, Hoffer joins the World Fitness Project roster, stepping onto the international stage and launching a bold new era of his professional fitness career

“It’s a freedom to tell myself I want to go to the gym”

THE RED BULLETIN

HEROES

David Keohan

The man known online as ‘Indiana Stones’ is reviving the ancient sport of stone lifting in Ireland, one boulder at a time Words Tom Ward

The heaviest stone David Keohan has lifted – in County Derry, in the north of Ireland – weighed 257kg. As Ireland’s premier stone lifter, the 47-year-old has travelled the length of his home nation – and Scotland and Wales – in pursuit of oft-forgotten stones, each of them integral to their country’s folk history. “My childhood was [spent] wandering the Copper Coast UNESCO heritage site in the south-east of Ireland,” explains the man from County Waterford. “It’s a beautiful landscape of rocky cliffs, coves and beaches, so stone is in my blood.” Keohan, a former kettlebell-lifting champion, started lifting the stones in his garden as something to do during COVID. He quickly realised that “lifting stones feels amazing. It’s really primal”. Six years on, his online videos have helped revive a sport largely forgotten for a century or more. To mark the release of his memoir, The Wind Beneath the Stone, Keohan reveals the beauty of the burden… the red bulletin: What is stone lifting? david keohan: It’s not just picking up stones off the ground. In Ireland, but also in Scotland, in the Basque country and elsewhere, lifting certain stones were rites of passage from child to manhood, or man to warrior. In parts of Iceland, your portion of the fish catch depended on how much you could lift. In Ireland, we used them at fairs, funerals, weddings. There’s a folk culture attached to these things that’s been largely lost, but which we’re trying to bring back to life again. Irish author Liam O’Flaherty wrote a 1937 story, The Stone, which sets out three rules for lifting. What are they? He wrote about a specific 171.2kg stone on the island of Inis Mór. Local lore describes the three stages of manhood.

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The first was getting the stone two inches off the ground to “let the wind pass beneath it”. Then, if you could get the stone into your lap and sit back with it there, you were a champion, equal to the best man. Stage three: if you could stand, hug the stone to your chest and kiss it three times to show you were in control, you were a phenomenon of strength to be spoken about for generations. Why have humans always been obsessed with tests of strength? There’s an aspect of people wanting to be remembered for how strong they were. I’m looking at this through an Irish lens, but stone lifting took place in Africa, Japan, Papua New Guinea – it’s universal. People wanted to lift something heavy, usually either a tree trunk or a stone. It becomes an important part of tribal culture. But it’s about more than strength; it’s a way of becoming certified as a farmhand or a stonemason, a warrior or a fisherman. Lifting was the test you had to pass. What makes a ‘lifting stone’? It will have been lifted hundreds of years ago and its story recorded, usually orally. Picking up a stone on the beach, it’s just a stone, but a story has to start somewhere. The stone I used to train with, we shipped it to Boston. Now it’s the ‘Boston Lifting Stone’, a physical piece of Ireland, and it’s brought to all the Irish festivals there, so it’s taken on its own story. What are the mechanics of your sport? Stand over the stone with your centre of mass above it – think of it as a super-deficit sumo deadlift without handles. Stones can be any shape, so a grip – and the centre of gravity – can be hard to find. Lift it into your lap in sort of a kettlebell swing motion, then hug it to your chest. Sitting with it in your lap is like a very heavy front squat. It’s a full-body exercise taking maximum effort, especially with the heavier ones.

A lot of the records of Irish stones have been lost. How do you locate them? The Irish government recorded a lot of folktales in 1937, and there’s now a database, the Dóchas initiative. Through it, I found out about the Thomas Lonergan Stone, said to be in the graveyard in Shanrahan in Tipperary. Men would come from all over the parish to try to lift it after Sunday Mass, but only Lonergan could. It’s a starting point, but centuriesold graveyards might not exist any more, so you end up looking at clumps of trees on Google Maps, or hacking through bushes. Luckily, the Lonergan Stone was right there. The locals all knew about it. We weighed it at 177.5kg. Suddenly, the story is back. No one has lifted it since the 1800s, but the stone is alive again. Where’s the most remote place you’ve been to lift stones? I’ve identified 54 lifting stones across Ireland so far, some of them on remote islands off the west [coast]. People send me photos or get in touch online and say, “My dad remembers a story from boyhood about a stone. Come have a look.” What’s the appeal of stone lifting in 2026? I’ve seen meek guys do this, and the roar as they lift a stone is a primal thing. It’s a connection to the land that we’re missing. I’ve seen guys break down crying. It’s like you’re connecting with something ancient; you’re lifting the bones of the Earth. How many people have been lifting this stone for 1,000 years? It’s a beautiful thing. Keohan’s memoir, The Wind Beneath the Stone, is out now, published by Bloomsbury. Instagram: @_indiana_stones_

Stone love: Keohan’s wish list “The Clach Ic Caoilte is a 149kg stone on the Scottish island of North Uist. It’s linked to the Irish tales of the Fianna warriors. That’s top of my list.” “The Dritvík stones in Iceland were used to test fishermen. There are four, all different weights – the heaviest, the Fullsterkur [full strength], is 154kg.” “There’s a wonderful [lifting-stone] culture in Japan, with more than 50,000 at Shinto temples. I’d love to go.”

JOHNNY SAVAGE/EYEVINE/APA-IMAGES

“It’s like you’re lifting the bones of the Earth”

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HOUSE HUSBAND

GIANNI GALLANT

The maverick Australian DJ who once rode a penis-shaped surfboard now has a bedtime routine. Welcome to Fisher’s most outrageous era yet: adulthood

Words Lou Boyd THE RED BULLETIN

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Staying grounded: Fisher, photographed at The Dax House in California in April this year THE RED BULLETIN

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n 2002, on Australia’s Gold Coast, 16-year-old Paul Fisher spent his days surfing, hanging out on the beach and bouncing between the area’s endless parties. Born and raised in the region, he looked like any other local teenage surfer – living for the next swell and the next event. But at night, one thing set him apart from the pack: his love of house music. “I was one of the first surfers to start throwing house [music] parties,” Fisher recalls, “because a lot of the surf scene music back then was [Californians] Pennywise, Blink-182, a lot of the punk bands. When I started playing house music at these parties, people were either like, ‘What’s this?’ or, ‘Turn this shit off.’” As his surfing took off, Fisher’s off-kilter sense of humour started getting him noticed as much as his surfing did. He became infamous for his stunts – from riding a penisshaped surfboard to fronting his anarchic interview series, Fish Tales. Then, when he retired from competitive surfing in 2012, Fisher unleashed the full force of his riotous energy on clubland, focusing on DJing and music production. The mononymous Fisher was born. His breakout single, Losing It, released in 2018, turned him into a global phenomenon almost overnight. The track landed Fisher a nomination for Best Dance Recording at the 2019 Grammy Awards, along with the THE RED BULLETIN

“My manager texted, ‘I don’t know what you’ve done, but you’ve broken the internet’”

GUILLE GASTILEO

Free play: NFL Fisher’s teams Spec-tacular: Baltimore Ravens and Thursday-night takeover Cincinnati Bengals at [UNVRS] is already (plus talked cheerleaders) fill being about as the of field Cincinnati, one the in all-time great Ohio, residencies in October 2024 Ibiza THE RED BULLETIN

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“At Coachella, people were climbing under the tent to hear my song”

Sitting pretty: the Aussie DJ’s 2018 track Losing It made him a global phenomenon almost overnight THE RED BULLETIN

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GIANNI GALLANT

number-one spot on the US Dance Club Songs chart and a rocket ride up the DJ Mag ‘Top 100 DJs’ list. His wild streak followed him off the decks, too. At the Grammys in February 2019, he dropped an F-bomb 30 seconds into his red-carpet interview, live on air. His music videos leaned into the same chaos – most notoriously Just Feels Tight (2021), which saw him lead a full thrustpowered aerobics class in nothing but white underwear. Onstage, Fisher built a persona to match, cackling, sprinting across the decks and hurling himself at the crowd with the same energy he once reserved for a heavy shorebreak. Bucket hat, open patterned shirt, shades on at 3am – it became a uniform for a man who never seemed to stop having fun, on camera or off. Now, after more than a decade in the music business, the 40-year-old DJ hasn’t just endured, he’s become one of dance music’s greatest and most respected headline acts. Currently ranked seventh in the DJ Mag list, and the world’s number-one house DJ, he’s built a career that shows no sign of slowing: sold-out shows on every continent, and tracks racking up more than half a billion streams. This summer sees Fisher return to Ibiza for year two of his Thursdaynight takeover of the island’s newest hyperclub, [UNVRS], a series already being talked about as one of the all-time great Ibiza residencies. From a Gold Coast kid being told to turn off his music, to the most-booked, most-talked-about DJ on the planet – it turns out he was playing the long game all along. But for all the public spectacle, the biggest shift in Fisher’s story didn’t happen on a stage at all. Somewhere between the parties and sold-out shows, dance music’s naughty little brother became a husband, and a father of two young daughters. The man who once shut down Hollywood Boulevard for a street rave is now the one on nappy duty between tour stops. The question hanging over Fisher’s new chapter is simple: what happens to the party when the wildest man in dance music grows up?

“I’m not thinking about me any more; it’s all family”

the red bulletin: Losing It was one of the anthems of 2018, crashing onto mainstream radio in a way that’s rare for a house track. How did it happen? fisher: It was so quick. The song came together in maybe two to four hours. Then I got a call from the guys who run the [electronic music stage] Do LaB at Coachella – it was weekend one of the festival and someone had pulled out of a 3pm slot. I just said, “Yeah, I’ll do it.” Driving out to the desert, I played the track for my wife and my manager. Both went, “Holy shit, this is gnarly.” So we got to the stage at Coachella and I said, “Film it, let’s see the reaction.” I pressed play, flicked my wrist and looked out at the crowd. What happened on that dancefloor in that moment was euphoric. I’ll never forget it. I don’t think I’ve had a reaction like that since. That clip is now legendary online… I woke the next morning and my whole life had changed. My manager sent a message saying, “I don’t know what you’ve done, but you’ve broken the internet.” From that moment on, it was just the craziest thing ever. I got put on the lineup the next week at Coachella, which is unheard of. People almost couldn’t get in – I think it was an 8,000cap tent, and there were 13,000. They almost didn’t let me play. People were climbing under the tent to hear the song. Suddenly it was an international hit, it was on the radio everywhere – a dance record with three words in it. I still don’t know what to say about that. It was magic. More than a decade on, what’s an international DJ lifestyle like with two kids under two years old? They’re in it with us. We’re all going on the road this weekend: Norway, London, then Creamfields. I’ve got my headline show in London on Saturday – an early one, 7pm – and I wanted my family there, just to give [eldest daughter] Bobbi those experiences at this age. She’s the funniest character you’ve ever met, and I think it’s because she’s always around my friends, around adults. She’s pretty much on our schedule – last night she didn’t go to bed till 10pm, and she sleeps all night and gets up full of beans, calling out for my friends. She loves being around people; she’s vibrant. How do you structure family life around your touring schedule? The most important thing for me and my wife was not to change our schedule, but for the kids to also be on it, and to try to THE RED BULLETIN

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Fisher made history headlining the Moscone Center in San Francisco to 40,000 people on December 19 and 20, 2025

Moscone Center, San Francisco, US (pictured) Two sold-out nights, one convention centre, and Fisher’s biggest crowd on record: 40,000 people.

Out with the old

Auckland, New Zealand New Year’s Eve energy, southern hemisphere heat and Fisher in full showman mode – bucket hat, big smiles, bigger drops.

Riding the storm

Tomorrowland main stage, Belgium Three years off, zero rust. Fisher returns to Boom with the stage literally rising THE RED BULLETIN

through a downpour, turning a weather disaster into one of 2025’s most talked-about main-stage moments.

Big fish energy

EDC Orlando, US Peak-time Fisher doing what he does best: big-room bounce, crowd-pleasing IDs, zero filler. If you want the main-stage energy that’s made him a festival headliner staple, start here.

The rest is history

Old Royal Naval College, London, UK Baroque architecture meets tech-house bounce. Fisher swaps festival scale for a UNESCO backdrop, proving the tracks hit just as hard beneath 300-year-old ceilings as they do in a field.

get them to enjoy that. It’s working so far. My wife’s very social, too, so we always have people here, and our friends are pretty hands-on, so they help out. When I go away, I get videos of people who’ve come from Australia on holiday, or who live on the island, hanging out with Bobbi and [youngest daughter] Andi. It makes us happy, and you can tell the kids are, too. Was your own upbringing similar? Yeah, your mum would drop you at the beach at 6am and you’d be down there till 6pm, surfing all day, and all the older guys would look after you, and you’d get shouted food. That’s what I’ve always wanted for my kids: to be safe with the people around them, to have that energy around them. It moulded my personality, and I want to do that for my kids. I feel like we’re on the right path with them. Do you still have the same love of house music as you did as a scrappy teenage surfer? I do. I just did a show in San Francisco

GIANNI GALLANT, CLAIRE BURKE

FLYING FISH Five of his finest full-length shows, all on YouTube Record rave

The chill life: Fisher now lives with his young family in Ibiza, Spain

“If you find the right people, who want you to win and want to win with you, you’ll be alright” THE RED BULLETIN

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MATTHIAS HESCHL/RED BULL CONTENT POOL

“You never get the experience of breaking out twice, so just enjoy the ride”

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Fisher plays the Vienna stop of the Red Bull Midsummer festival, June 20, 2026 THE RED BULLETIN

“I just did a trip from Ibiza to Canada to Vegas to Florida, and I didn’t see a bed for two days”

Cool customer: it’s an ice bath rather than a luxury pool that Fisher dips into when life’s pressures build THE RED BULLETIN

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– my biggest headline show – and I was stood on stage looking at these kids at the front, thinking, “Wow, I would love to be there right now with my friends.” All these groups partying, having fun, hugging, smiling, and my music was part of the deal – that’s everything for me. That’s what keeps me going out, getting inspired, or just going and having a mingle and a dance with my wife. Even though it’ll make me tired, it’s worth it. The life of a DJ is more physical than many people think. Do you find yourself having to train your body for big seasons nowadays? Mate, just the travel alone on the body is so intense. I just did a trip from Ibiza to Canada, Canada to Vegas, Vegas to Florida, and I didn’t see a bed for two days. I do training and ice bathing. Coming from a surfing background and always being active and in the water, I need that release. The gym for me is where I can switch off, get a little pump in, feel good about myself, then get on with the day. It helps with my thinking and clarity more than anything else. How does an ice bath help? It sets my stress levels down, and it’s a challenge every day. It never gets easier, and I like those little challenges. I can’t surf in Ibiza – there’s no waves – and mostly I go to cities and not surf spots, so I’ve got to do something to switch off. I know I’m a cliché, but everyone has their thing, and that’s mine.

GIANNI GALLANT

If your kids get to 18 and want to follow you into the music industry, what would you say to them? I think about this. Bobbi might want to create music, same with Andi – they’ve been around music from the start. Honestly, I’d tell them to go out and find their people. If you find the right people, who want you to win and want to win with you, you’re going to be alright. It’s the people who don’t have the right people around them that suffer. Is that what you’d tell yourself at 18, too, if given the chance to go back to before everything blew up? I got a piece of advice when I was coming up. Someone said to me, “You never get that feeling of breaking out twice, so just enjoy that elevator ride.” When you have a hit like Losing It and all of a sudden your world changes, not many people get to experience that feeling. If I could talk to myself back then, I don’t

Party man: Fisher’s bucket hat, open patterned shirt and shades after dark have become his trademark

think I’d try to give any advice. I’d just tell that kid to enjoy the ride. Do you think about that ceiling much now – the idea that you might not get that feeling again? I’m still dreaming and still working. Obviously the goal is to get bigger, and for as many people as possible to enjoy my music, but life has shifted now – I’m not thinking about me any more. It’s all family, 100 per cent. It is different to 10 years ago, where I had the freedom to

“Nothing’s better than what I have right now”

be wild, go party and do what I wanted and be careless in that kind of way, to be more free. But nothing’s better than what I have right now. How does life look different now to those days? The other week, I was playing on a Thursday night in Ibiza, had to finish at six in the morning, had to be at the airport at nine. I went straight home, but there wasn’t time to sleep. My daughter woke up and we watched the sunrise together outside, then my other daughter came and curled up next to me, and my wife came out and we had a coffee. I’d just played in front of 9,000 people in a club, but my kids didn’t know that – they don’t care, because they don’t know. Sitting there with them, watching that sunrise? That was by far the most euphoric feeling of the night. Instagram: @followthefishtv THE RED BULLETIN

Two-time Obstacle Course Racing champion Ida Mathilde Steensgaard attempts a rotating obstacle course inside a Ferris wheel in Denmark THE RED BULLETIN

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REINVENTING THE WHEEL

Ida Mathilde Steensgaard was the athlete everyone wanted to beat in OCR before she left the sport to become the one to watch in HYROX. Now, she’s swapping world titles for world firsts

MIHAI STETCU/RED BULL CONTENT POOL

Words Paddy Maddison

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Steensgaard takes a break in front of the 30-metre-high Ferris wheel in Odense, Denmark THE RED BULLETIN

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“People tell me I need to relax more.” Ida Mathilde Steensgaard laughs as she describes her biggest weakness on a busy press day in July. It seems the irony of spending a rare rest day bouncing between training runs and media interviews isn’t lost on her. “I get bored easily,” she says. “My days are always packed. A lot of athletes are brilliant at recovering between training sessions, but I’m usually squeezing in meetings, work and social plans as well. There’s always something happening. I live a very high-speed life.” Steensgaard might jokingly frame her reluctance to sit still as a negative, but it’s the reason she’s here today. The 35-year-old Dane is a two-time Obstacle Course Racing (OCR) world champion and HYROX Elite 15 athlete. Now, she’s on the ground at Denmark’s Odense Harbour, looking up at one of her biggest challenges to date: a gravity-defying obstacle course suspended between the unforgiving steel bars of a working Ferris wheel. “I remember standing in front of the Budapest Eye,” Steensgaard says on the inspiration for the athletic project. “I was staring at it thinking, ‘I’m sure you could do monkey bars on that.’ A friend who was with me said it was impossible.” Most people would laugh at the idea and go on with their day, but that’s not Steensgaard. She couldn’t get the image out of her head. “From that point on, I became obsessed with Ferris wheels,” she says. “I’ve got this slightly chaotic brain that likes coming up with ideas that sit outside the ordinary. My mum has always described me as someone who’s very optimistic about my own abilities. I’ll often say, ‘Yeah, I can do that.’ Then I try it and realise, ‘Actually... maybe I

A problem waiting to be solved: Steensgaard in action on the Ferris-wheel course of her own design

can’t.’ But then I immediately start asking, ‘OK... but how could I?’” It’s a way of thinking that has shaped her life, both inside and outside of sport. Away from competition, Steensgaard has spent years working as an engineer. Where most athletes simply see an obstacle, she sees a problem waiting to be solved. “I enjoy project management, I enjoy solving problems, and I enjoy creating things. I don’t want to take all the credit, because it was the team who made the 3D animations and all of the technical drawings. But, ultimately, this was an idea that I had brought to Red Bull. When I arrived and saw the real wheel, I cried. It was exactly how I’d imagined it.”

Cream of the crop

While the Ferris-wheel aspect is new – a world first, in fact – completing obstacle courses is what Steensgaard is best known for. In the world of OCR, there was a time when she seemed unstoppable. Over the course of a decade, Steensgaard became one of the sport’s defining athletes, winning two world titles, three European medals and earning a reputation as the best of the best. But any athlete who operates at the apex of their sport inevitably ends up with a target on their back. And that was no different for Ida. “There was constantly this pressure,” she explains. “It got to a point in Denmark where organisers would invite international athletes over specifically to THE RED BULLETIN

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try and beat me. Every year there’d be lots of publicity around this new athlete who was supposedly going to beat Ida. I found it quite funny to begin with. I’d think, ‘OK... let’s see.’” Over the years, her bemusement turned to frustration and, eventually, exhaustion. Being the one everyone wanted to beat began to burn her out. She can even pinpoint the exact moment when things shifted. “It was at the 2024 European Championships,” she explains. “The federation introduced a rule saying coaches weren’t allowed to be near the athletes during competition. I was one of only a handful of athletes who approached obstacle racing with a fully professional setup. I had my own coach, physio and support team. Most athletes were coached by their partners or friends. That was still allowed. But because my coach wasn’t my partner, suddenly he wasn’t allowed near me. It felt strange. As if rules were being created that specifically made it harder for me to perform. That was really difficult.” Steensgaard eventually finished fourth at the event. It was a disappointing result for someone so used to towering over her rivals on the podium, which made the general reaction to it all the more surprising. THE RED BULLETIN

“I’d never received as much support as I did after that race,” she recalls. “It became one of my most-liked social media posts ever. Everyone was commenting with encouragement, and I remember thinking, ‘So... am I only interesting when I lose?’” Ultimately, Steensgaard began to realise she wasn’t enjoying OCR any more. The pressure and expectations that come with being at the top had taken their toll. For many athletes that would spell retirement, but for Steensgaard, it was simply another problem to be solved. And the solution, as it turned out, was to start from scratch in a completely different sport.

A new direction

HYROX is a global fitness race that pairs eight 1km runs with eight functional workout stations – such as sled pushes, wall balls, farmers carries – completed

“I want to showcase what I’m capable of as an athlete”

in a fixed sequence. Unlike OCR, the course never changes, so times are directly comparable across every event in the world, making it as much a test of pacing and repeatable strength as raw endurance. “Starting HYROX was refreshing because suddenly I was the underdog again,” Steensgaard says of her move to the new sport. “I enjoyed a HYROX relay weekend in Nice far more than I enjoyed the OCR European Championships. That told me everything I needed to know.” Most people would rather be the favourite, but for Steensgaard, there was fulfilment in rebuilding herself from the ground up. “After the pressure I had felt in 2022 and 2023, it was such a relief to start somewhere new, where nobody expected anything. Every race became a bonus. Every good performance surprised people. That brought the enjoyment back into sport for me.” Starting again didn’t mean staying anonymous for long. Steensgaard soon climbed into HYROX’s Elite 15 – the highest level of the sport – establishing herself among the best athletes and proving that her success wasn’t confined to OCR. But while the results came quickly, it was the shift in mindset that mattered most.

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“Starting HYROX was refreshing because suddenly I was the underdog again,” Steensgaard says of her move to a new sport

Steensgaard competes in Women’s Elite 15 at the HYROX World Championship in Chicago, USA, on June 12, 2025

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HYROX gave Steensgaard the freedom to enjoy competing again, but it also confirmed something she’d begun to realise towards the end of her OCR career. Medals had stopped being the end goal. Increasingly, she found herself drawn to challenges that couldn’t be measured in world rankings or finishing positions, where the only person she was competing against was herself. “Creating something is different from simply going after another medal,” she says. “You start with this tiny little idea in your head and eventually it becomes this huge, beautiful thing that didn’t exist before.” Recent years have seen her pursue a series of world-first projects that blur the lines between elite sports, engineering and spectacle, from constructing and completing The World’s Toughest Playground – an extreme-obstacle-course stunt that whipped the internet into a frenzy – to her record-breaking rope climb, where she dangled perilously from the roof of the Copenhagen Opera House. Yet her ideas remain grounded in athletic performance. “The sporting aspect is still incredibly important to me,” she says. “I’m always very clear that I want whatever we build to genuinely challenge me. I don’t want it to look too easy. I don’t want it to be something I can just walk through. I want it to showcase what I’m capable of as an athlete.”

Built different

A 30-metre-high Ferris-wheel obstacle course surely nails the brief. Towering above Odense Harbour, it features six obstacles that Steensgaard must surmount before the wheel completes one full rotation, clambering between each one with sufficient speed to avoid being carried too far around. “The obstacles are built to be really challenging, but not impossible in themselves. The hard part is that everything is moving, and it’s moving so fast. Your momentum changes. Everything you think you know about moving your body changes because everything else is moving, too. Mentally, that’s actually been the hardest thing. “I’ve been able to prepare really well in terms of endurance, upper-body

“You have to be completely locked in” THE RED BULLETIN

The Ferris-wheel obstacle course consisted of six obstacles plus start, finish and transition sections

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Steensgaard attempts a world-first obstacle course on a moving Ferris wheel on July 14, 2026, in Odense, Denmark

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strength, grip strength, explosive power and plyometrics. I’ve tested all of the obstacles on the ground. But I had absolutely no idea how it would feel once everything was moving.” Coaching Steensgaard for the unique set of demands posed by the wheel is her friend Leon Kofoed, a World and European OCR champion himself, who has a clear vision of how to tackle the project. “The biggest challenge was building confidence,” Kofoed explains. “How do you prepare someone for something that’s never been done before? There’s no blueprint. You can’t visualise it because it doesn’t exist yet. “We had to find anchor points. Ida had been away from obstacle racing for a few years. We started with the basics – movements that reminded her she was a world champion. Then we gradually added the crazy stuff. We’d ask her to jump a little further, catch something a little harder and keep pushing the limits. “Ida has everything she needs physically. Once you start changing that many variables, it becomes a mindset challenge. You have to be completely locked in.” There was only one question left to answer: could it even be done? “I try to remind myself that pressure is a privilege,” Steensgaard says. “But it’s so fucking scary up there. I can’t think about completing the whole wheel. I have to stay completely present and focus on one obstacle at a time. That’s the only way I can do it.” Despite the safety systems, Steensgaard was under no illusion about the risks involved in her record-breaking project. “People might see the safety line and assume you’re fine,” she explains. “But it isn’t that simple. There’s slack in the system because there has to be. If you fall, there are still metal bars, moving obstacles and a huge amount of force involved. We’re talking about career-ending injuries or worse. It’s right on the limit of what’s considered acceptable by Danish law. “Your brain knows the risk. Your whole nervous system goes into fight-orflight mode. It feels like pure survival. Everything becomes tense, but at the same time you have to stay relaxed enough to move properly. You have to breathe, stay calm and trust every movement, because if you get it wrong, the consequences can be serious. I’ve always said this is an experiment. We had to accept that there’s a chance it simply isn’t possible.”

Steensgaard completes the world-first obstacle course in three minutes and 33 seconds

The following day, after months of planning, testing and uncertainty, Steensgaard stepped onto the wheel. She had one objective: negotiate all six obstacles before it completed a full rotation. When she finally returned to the platform, shaken, exhausted and overcome with emotion, her experiment had its answer. She cleared six obstacles in three minutes and 33 seconds – it was possible, and Steensgaard had become the first person in history to do it. On paper, the Ferris wheel may seem different to anything Steensgaard has ever done before, but it’s not an outlier. This endeavour is simply the latest manifestation of a mind that refuses to stand still. Whether it’s

“There’s a chance it simply isn’t possible”

swapping the familiarity of OCR for the uncertainty of HYROX, hanging from the roof of an opera house or doing monkey bars 30 metres in the air on a moving fairground ride, the pattern is the same. Once the problem is solved, another appears in its place. Today’s challenges aren’t driven by a desire to prove that she’s better than somebody else. Winning world championships allowed Steensgaard to demonstrate what she’s capable of as an athlete. Creating world firsts requires something different of her. It demands imagination as much as strength, engineering as much as endurance, and a willingness to pursue an outcome with no guarantee of success. It’s about forcing herself to confront and overcome the seemingly impossible. “I’ve spent so many years chasing performances and competing,” Steensgaard says. “I still love setting difficult goals and asking myself whether something is actually possible. But with these projects there’s another level of satisfaction. I’m not chasing perfection. I’m chasing progression.” Instagram: @idamathildee THE RED BULLETIN

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SHIRT, WAX LONDON

FINDING THE FUNNY

At 24, Scottish comedian Ayo Adenekan knows exactly who he is. And he has stand-up to thank for it Words Ralph Jones Photography Amanda Fordyce Styling Alicia Ellis THE RED BULLETIN

COMEDY

s the last episode of Saturday Night Live UK was being broadcast this May, all of the show’s writers came out of the basement and onto the studio floor. Ayo Adenekan – who, at 24, is the youngest in the writing team, as well as in the cast – stood watching the cold open and taking in the enormity of where he was. “Just being in that room and seeing everyone do their jobs,” he says, “it felt like such an insane jump to be like, ‘I’m part of this team. I made this show with people I look up to so much.’ In that moment, I was like, ‘Wow, things are going OK.’” ‘OK’ is a typical Adenekan understatement. It’s only been three years since he performed his first-ever stand-up gig, at a coffee shop in his native Edinburgh, fuelled by rum and nerves. And just a year since he won £5,000-worth of support from THE RED BULLETIN

Brass Tacks Comedy to fund his debut Edinburgh Fringe show, the award-winning Black Mediocrity. Six months later, he was a finalist in the BBC New Comedy Awards; three months after that, he’d left Scotland and moved to London to work six days a week on SNL, helping to supply a constant stream of topical sketches and jokes. It’s only 48 hours after the first-season wrap party at London’s Soho House, and his head is still spinning. “It’s kinda crazy, you know,” Adenekan says, smiling over a half-pint. “The last year’s been mad and busy and full of so many things that I never thought would happen. And now we’re here.” ‘Here’ is the back room of a pub in Bethnal Green, east London, where the young comic has just posed for a shoot for this issue of The Red Bulletin – the latest

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“That first gig, I was like, ‘If this goes badly, I’m moving to Glasgow’”

Stump of approval: Ayo Adenekan, photographed for The Red Bulletin in east London in May this year THE RED BULLETIN

in a long line of firsts. Now, he’s enjoying the rare opportunity to stop and reflect. Even when he’s sitting down, it’s clear the Scot is strikingly tall – 6ft 3in (1.9m) – with an instinctive grin and a soothing, deep voice. When he talks, his hands dance around, as if playing an invisible piano. He’s affable, polite, considerate – not the first attributes that might come to mind when thinking of a stand-up comic. The fact that Adenekan is Black, bisexual, dyspraxic and Scottish gives him something of a unique perspective in comedy. He never saw Black Scottish comics when he was growing up. (As he jokes onstage, there are so few Black people in Edinburgh that they have their own WhatsApp group.) The urge to try comedy himself only came after attending a show at The Stand, arguably Scotland’s best comedy venue, with a mate. The opener, Brennan Reece, started chatting to Adenekan during his set. “My responses were quite quick,” Adenekan remembers. “People were laughing. I was like, ‘Oh, I could do this.’” That night, with a bit of Dutch courage, he signed up to perform a set at an open mic event happening a fortnight later. “The day before the gig,” he says, “I sat in a Wetherspoon’s and just kinda wrote down everything I thought was funny about myself.” Was he nervous? “Oh definitely, yeah. I remember bouncing my knees up and down, shaking my legs, like, ‘Oh my God, it’s going to happen.’ I didn’t invite friends – I was fully like, ‘If this goes badly, I will move to Glasgow.’ But the minute I got up there and started speaking, the nerves just went away.” During the set, he spoke about his Nigerian parents and his overachieving older sister. He also talked about the fact he was taking antidepressants. “I thought that would be quite relatable,” he says. “It was quite a tricky time. I’d just dropped out of uni and I was just kind of lost in the world.” Few in Adenekan’s position back then would have turned to a mic, a stage and an audience of strangers for answers. But for him something clicked. The set was only five minutes long, but it’s likely to be one of the most significant five minutes of his life. “I remember coming off the stage just thinking, ‘Oh, I cannot wait to do this again,’” he says. “I truly fell in love with it.” Comedy had never been the plan. For the first chunk of his life – before moving to Leith at the age of 13, following his parents’ divorce – Adenekan lived in Pilton, a working-class area in the north of Edinburgh that he describes as “a bit rough”. The writer Irvine Welsh lived on a housing estate nearby. “A bit of Trainspotting [Welsh’s acclaimed debut novel] is set there,” Adenekan says. “At the very beginning, when Renton goes to pick up drugs from his bad drug dealer, he goes to Pilton.” Adenekan remembers his family’s car windows

being smashed. “It wasn’t the nicest area to live,” he says. “But it was home, you know?” Although he was shy around other children’s parents, Adenekan was the class clown and found it hard to pay attention in school. Plus, standing out academically was difficult – his sister, six years older, was a tough act to follow. “I remember always feeling that kind of shadow,” he says. His parents, too, were academic: his father works for the publicly funded arts body Creative Scotland, his mum as a children’s librarian. “There was the big kind of pressure to go to university and get a good job, but that kind of didn’t happen,” he laughs. Inspired by his love of football – Hibs, not Hearts – Adenekan wanted to be a sports journalist when he left school. But, noting he was “really good at talking to people”, his guidance teacher advised him to go into advertising. This prompted a surreal few years during which Adenekan dropped out of an advertising degree, completed a media course, but then failed to finish a course in journalism at uni. How did his parents feel about his decisions? “Ups and downs,” he says, laughing. “At that point I was like, ‘I’ve got to try some new things,’ and it was lucky that stand-up was one of the first. I just fell in love with it so quickly. I was like, ‘OK, this is me,’ you know?”

hough Adenekan says he’s mostly experienced “really, really nice gigs”, it hasn’t all been plain sailing. He remembers a spot last year in Stirling. “I was on first, and it was almost silent for the whole 15 minutes,” he says. When the MC came back on, he asked a woman in the audience what she thought. “Oh, it’s not for me, actually,” she said. Adenekan doesn’t beat himself up after gigs like this. “You know when a bit works and it’s good,” he says. “And still sometimes people won’t like that bit, and that’s OK.” He invokes the ‘11 O’Clock Rule’, or Millican’s Law – named after stand-up comedian Sarah Millican, who’s credited as its inventor – which allows you to dwell on a bad gig until 11am the next day, at which point you have to move on. A bigger issue than stony silences or hecklers for most comedians trying to establish themselves is the money – or the lack of it. Having to cover your expenses while travelling the country for small returns can feel like a bad joke. And performing a weeks-long stint at a world-renowned festival such as the Edinburgh Fringe is unachievable for many. “There are definitely barriers to entry in Edinburgh because of how expensive it is,” says Adenekan. “So you’ve got folk taking even more time [to do a full hour-long debut] because they’re like, ‘I can only afford to do one, so I’ve got to do it when I’m properly ready.’”

“I’m now more comfortable in my own skin. Stand-up’s great for that” THE RED BULLETIN

COMEDY

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Couch session: Adenekan enjoys a chance to relax and reflect on a “mad and busy” year that culminated in a prime-time TV gig as part of the first-ever SNL UK team

With the benefit of already having accommodation in the city, Adenekan covered the costs of appearing at his first Edinburgh Fringe by splitting an hour’s slot with fellow comic Alvin Bang. The run, in 2024, went well, and he came third in the stand-up competition So You Think You’re Funny?. The routine of doing a show every day for a month was an enormous help: “I was riding high after the 2024 Fringe,” he says. Without substantial financial backing, however, his next steps were unclear. Then he saw an ad for the Debut Fund, a prize awarded by Scottish production company Brass Tacks Comedy. To be eligible, Adenekan would have to create his first hour-long set, which felt daunting. “You just really want that first hour to be great and special,” he says. But he applied – with just an hour to go before the deadline – and was selected from more than 50 Scottish or Scotland-based comics for the allimportant cash injection of £5,000.

The fund became a lifeline for Adenekan, which is exactly what Katie Palmer, a producer at Brass Tacks Comedy, had intended it to be. “I had the idea after speaking to a couple of new Scottish comics who weren’t even considering performing at the Fringe because of the huge costs,” she says. “Debut acts can face huge losses if they don’t sell enough tickets to offset their venue costs. In this financial climate, it’s just not a risk a lot of people are able to take.” Adenekan’s resulting debut hour, Black Mediocrity – a play on the phrase ‘Black excellence’ – at the 2025 Fringe last August proved he was more than ready for the step up. The show dealt with his attempts to navigate the complexities of youth. “It was a lot about peer pressure and insecurity,” he says, “and finding where I belonged.” Having predominantly been friends with straight kids early on, Adenekan had felt the pressure to conform to “a rigid view of traditional masculinity”. He says stand-up helped THE RED BULLETIN

World of opportunity: “There was the big kind of pressure [growing up] to go to university and get a good job,” he admits with a laugh, “but that kind of didn’t happen” THE RED BULLETIN

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“I fell in love with stand-up so quickly, like, ‘OK, this is me’”

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“It felt like such an insane jump to be part of the SNL team” THE RED BULLETIN

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“I just hoped I’d get one sketch on SNL, or even a dress rehearsal”

FRINGE BENEFITS Our pick of the best young comics from Edinburgh this summer Eva Peroni

The winner of this year’s Brass Tacks Debut Fund unveiled her debut show, Jungled, about moving from Livingston to Costa Rica and back again. Katie Palmer of Brass Tacks Comedy said the 21-year-old West Lothian is “one of the most exciting (and youngest!) comedians on the Scottish scene”.

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Anna Thomas

This enchanting, offbeat Welsh comic won the BBC New Comedy Award in 2021 and was a Sean Lock Comedy Award finalist two years later. The title of her debut Fringe show, How to Juggle a Ferret, gave some indication of the strange paths she led her audiences down.

Dee Allum

Allum’s second show, Raumdeuter, saw the trans comedian tackle some of life’s big questions with the characteristic flair that has

made her one to watch. Here, she threatens to talk about football as well as “mortality, transformation and genitals”.

Rory Marshall

In its five-star review of Marshall’s barnstorming debut, Pathetic Little Characters, last year, Metro proclaimed, “We should all be keeping a very close eye on Rory Marshall – he’s about to blow up.” This year, the Devon-born comedian and actor brought more superbly observed character comedy to the Fringe with Thank You for the Opportunity.

Cabbage the Clown

And now for something completely different. Multimedia drag clown Cabbage brought their bonkers show Cinemadrome back to the Fringe for a 13-day run. Let’s be honest, it’s not really the Edinburgh Fringe if a comedy show in which a drag artist dances around in a gown made from binbags doesn’t happen.

him get a clearer image of who he was. “I guess I didn’t really have that when I started stand-up,” he says. “These days I’m more comfortable in my own skin, and stand-up’s been great for that.” His set connected with people. Adenekan was crowned joint Best Newcomer at the ISH Edinburgh Comedy Awards – an alternative to the main gongs – and won the Bestie Award for Emerging Talent. It wasn’t until the Fringe was over that he realised the casting director for SNL, who’d seen his show, had been messaging him to try to set up an audition. Landing the SNL job and then moving to London to start work happened fast, but the Scot says that he was unfazed. “It’s been a quick trajectory,” he laughs. “It didn’t hit me till I was going to bed on my first night, and I was like, ‘Oh fuck, I’m in England. That’s wild. I live here now, I guess.’ But I felt so relaxed going to SNL. I knew I was the youngest and least experienced in the room, so I was just hopeful to get one [sketch] on the show – or one to dress rehearsal, even.” The pace of Adenekan’s life only looks set to increase. He’s excited to try his hand at acting and possibly presenting, but right now there’s his next stand-up show, Homeland Insecurity, to work on. “I’ll just be gigging, gigging, gigging and writing, writing, writing, up until the Fringe,” he says. “The show’s about working in hospitality, falling in love, falling out of love, and my life outside of being a comedian while I’ve been a comedian.” Wherever the world of comedy has taken him since that shaky first night in a coffee shop, however new it’s all been, it’s also felt like home to the young Scot. The final host of the first season of SNL was actor Ncuti Gatwa, and for Adenekan that was even more of a buzz than working with Tina Fey on episode one. As a fellow Black, queer, Scottish performer, Gatwa is a rare role model – so rare, in fact, that part of Adenekan’s set is devoted to his fake fury at Gatwa for denying him the possibility of being cast as the first-ever queer, Black, Scottish Doctor Who. Adenekan was perfectly placed to write for him, and one of his jokes – about the actor landing his biggest TV role – made it into Gatwa’s opening monologue: “It was the first time my parents were truly proud of my career,” Gatwa said to camera. “When I told them I got the part, they said, ‘Finally! A doctor in the family!’” Adenekan watched from the wings, soaking up the audience’s laughter and applause, a grin on his face. He was no longer lost. Instagram: ayo_adenekan; Discover more about the annual Edinburgh Fringe at: edfringe.com

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A bigger splash: the university water polo teams of Harvard and Syracuse face off in Brighton, Massachusetts, in September 2024 THE RED BULLETIN

PHOTOGRAPHY

MOTION PICTURES By taking thousands of photographs from just one spot, US photographer Pelle Cass can tell an entire story in a single frame

Words Matt Blake

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PHOTOGRAPHY

“I’m not trying to make something unreal. I’m just trying to show what it felt like to be there”

“A photograph,” said Dorothea Lange, the revered photojournalist, “takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.” But what if a photograph didn’t hold time still at all? What if it could bend it, stretch it, or allow multiple moments to coexist within the same frame? This question sits at the heart of the work of Pelle Cass. The 72-year-old American’s images reject the long-established bargain that photography made with time: a single moment, frozen forever. Instead, Cass compresses minutes, sometimes hours, into a single image, layering hundreds or even thousands of exposures. His collection Crowded Fields is discombobulating at first glance. You know that these moments can’t have all happened at once, and yet here they are, coexisting in time and space. But when the initial unease dissipates, a scene of uncanny beauty is revealed: a space where time’s logic melts away. “I was never fated to be the single-image kind of photographer, where you go out and find this quintessential moment that pierces your heart or whatever,” says Cass from his home in Boston. “For me, ‘conventional’ photography was always like taking THE RED BULLETIN

Photographer Pelle Cass: “My numberone rule is change nothing. Every person is exactly where they were when the picture was taken”

Multi-ball mode: (top) pick-up basketball games in Hong Kong in January 2023; (bottom) a university baseball rivalry between Harvard and Northeastern in Brookline, Massachusetts, in March 2025 THE RED BULLETIN

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High jump: Women’s Pole Vault at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2025. From the series Crowded Fields

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Free play: NFL teams Baltimore Ravens and Cincinnati Bengals (plus cheerleaders) fill the field in Cincinnati, Ohio, in October 2024

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Free kick: Soccer players across the pitch at the BU at Northeastern match in 2025. From the series Crowded Fields.

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EXHIBITED AT THE METRO ART PASSAGEWAY GALLERY AT LOS ANGELES UNION STATION’

“I wanted to do something different in the history of photography” a picture of the moon: the image never looked as beautiful as the real thing. I wanted to do something different in the history of photography.” His eureka moment came in 2008, while he sat on his front porch. “Looking at the sidewalk, I wondered about all the tiny actions that had happened in that spot,” he recalls. “And then it just dawned on me that I could leave my camera there and shoot.” So that’s exactly what Cass did, shooting hundreds of pictures. “Then I took them back to the computer and started combining them,” he says. “I would find the emptiest frame and use that as a base, then add people back in digitally, one at a time, from different moments.” His images become a compression of lived experience: a controlled mishmash of moments. To make these pictures, Cass needed the right conditions. “I started asking myself where the most action takes place within a fixed space,” he says. “The answer, inevitably, was sport.” Cass is not a big fan of sports. But that’s not the point. The point is duration: dozens of divers suspended in mid-air; innumerable footballers kicking innumerable balls; an entire tennis match collapsed into a single frame. “I don’t care who wins or loses. I’m interested in the match itself.” Does he ever manipulate his figures for dramatic effect? “No way,” he says. “That’s my number-one rule: change nothing. Every person is exactly where they were when the picture was taken.” Cass pauses. “I’m not trying to make something unreal,” he continues. I’m just trying to show what it felt like to be there. It’s about freezing a whole experience in one shot.” Therein lies the photographer’s motivation to dedicate his life to this project. “All photography captures things that are instantly gone,” Cass says, “but I wanted to hold more than that. The passing of time, the constant changes in life – it’s upsetting. I wish everything would stay the same. If I have a picture containing a thousand exposures, maybe I can hold a second or two more of life than a single photograph ever could.” Instagram: @pellecass THE RED BULLETIN

Remco Evenepoel is one of the world’s fiercest cyclists. Florian Lipowitz is one of the calmest. How an unlikely duo joined forces to bring Team Red Bull – BORA – hansgrohe the most successful Tour de France in its history Words Christof Gertsch THE RED BULLETIN

FIRE

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CYCLING Double threat: (opposite page, left to right) Florian Lipowitz and Remco Evenepoel; (this page) Stage 10 of the 113th Tour de France on July 14, 2026

& ICE

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t’s a right-hand bend, 6.4 kilometres from the finish of the 16th stage of the Tour de France 2026 that changes everything. Florian Lipowitz is riding a little too fast. He spots the dip in the middle of the road and tries to swerve, but his front wheel skids out. The German slides a few metres across the tarmac and hits the kerb, collarbone first. He doesn’t get back up. A few minutes later, Remco Evenepoel, Lipowitz’s Belgian teammate and co-leader of Red Bull – BORA – hansgrohe, takes the same bend without any trouble. The 16th stage is a 26-kilometre individual time trial from Évian-les-Bains to Thonon-les-Bains on Lake Geneva. The riders set off one by one, in single file. Evenepoel completes the course in just over 32 minutes, faster than anyone, faster even than race leader, Slovenia’s Tadej Pogačar. It is July 21, 2026, Belgian National Day, and to celebrate his country’s holiday, the world’s best time-trialist has just won his second stage of this Tour de France. He still doesn’t know about his teammate’s crash. In the car behind him, sporting director Klaas Lodewyck saw everything and said nothing. Not a word over the radio, not for kilometres. Evenepoel only finds out at the finish. Five days later, he stands on the podium in Paris: second overall, just over six minutes behind Pogačar. The best result of his career, the best in his team’s history. Lipowitz isn’t there.

Clockwise from top left: Remco Evenepoel during the final race of the 2026 Tour de France; Florian Lipowitz riding Stage 15; Evenepoel finishes Stage 16 in second; Lipowitz after his Stage 16 crash THE RED BULLETIN

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High ambitions

Four months earlier, Tenerife Meanwhile, the press has been trying to talk up a rivalry for months. How is it going to play out? Evenepoel, the superstar and newcomer, four-time world champion, two-time Olympic champion and winner of the Tour of Spain; and Lipowitz, the great talent who came third on his tour debut last year. When the team announced Evenepoel’s signing, many thought Lipowitz would be furious. Partnerships are a delicate matter in cycling. The sport is full of examples of two team captains glowering at each other over dinner and coaches having to mediate between two enemy camps. John Wakefield, the team’s director of coaching, has experienced that situation. He knows what it’s like when it doesn’t work out. Hence them being together at the summit of Teide, two very different characters with the same dream. Lipowitz, who was born in 2000, is a family man. Every day he’s up here, he’s missing his girlfriend, Antonia Weeger (a professional mountain biker), his parents in the German town of Laichingen, the normality of daily life. If you walked past him on the street, you wouldn’t guess he was one of the world’s top cyclists. With his almost childlike face, big brown eyes and shy demeanour, he neither shows off nor plays it cool. You could call it his German restraint, even though he has long since lived in Austria.

Down time: Evenepoel (left) and Lipowitz spend a break from the saddle shooting the breeze – possibly about the dark side of the moon; (opposite) racing on Mount Teide THE RED BULLETIN

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Approaching Mount Teide, the 3,715-metre volcano that towers over this Canary Island, from the coast, you witness wildly differing landscapes – the foggy forests that smell of resin giving way to a barren volcanic landscape. Evenepoel and Lipowitz unpack their suitcases for 20 days in late February at the area’s only hotel, at an altitude of some 2,200 metres. In cycling races, team duos are known as wingmen, pairs who will walk through fire for each other. One breaks the wind and the other benefits. And, when necessary, they swap roles. But, as they unpack their gear in rooms next to each other, these two men are relative strangers. Mount Teide is the high altar of modern cycling, a place where sacrifices are made. Weeks without seeing your family, days of lonely isolation, hours spent in the saddle on an empty stomach. All in the hope that it will pay off in July. Altitude forces the body to adapt. In the thin air, the blood absorbs less oxygen, and the body reacts by producing more red blood cells. This natural blood-tuning, which lasts for several months afterwards, is both completely legal and very effective, and explains why several teams regularly rock up on Teide at the same time each spring. This team deliberately had Evenepoel and Lipowitz’s visits overlap so they can get to know each other.

The plan is for them to ride for two and a half hours, 80km. But that turns into three. Then three and a half

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“Remco and Florian are yin and yang, fire and ice…”

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MAX MANAVI-HUBER, SHAMIL TANNA

Tour de force: Evenepoel (opposite) and Lipowitz – wingmen, co-leaders and ultimately friends in this year’s ‘Grande Boucle’

“…they are polar opposites who don’t threaten but rather liberate each other” John Wakefield, Red Bull - BORA hansgrohe director of coaching THE RED BULLETIN

“Florian is a different person in private. More open. More direct” John Wakefield, Red Bull - BORA hansgrohe director of coaching

Lipowitz became a cyclist almost by accident. He used to compete in biathlon, and was one of Germany’s most promising juniors. But when he was 17, he tore his cruciate ligament on a family holiday. He used the bike for rehab, spending months on the road, increasingly often, riding further and further and going with his father, himself a tough endurance athlete, on cycling marathons until he realised the road was more his thing than the cross-country track. In 2019, he won races out of nowhere in Engadin, Switzerland, and the Tyrol. Then a chance conversation between his father and a BORA coach led to a test, and the data Lipowitz produced left everyone dumbfounded. In the middle of the winter, during a huge storm, he rode over 100 kilometres for an interview with team manager Ralph Denk and then rode home again. “Not the way I imagined that day to go,” he says. “But maybe that’s why I got the contract.” He was still too young for the Red Bull – BORA – hansgrohe team, and, more importantly, too inexperienced. Denk arranged for him to work with a more junior team in the Tyrol. Lipowitz’s first professional race was a disaster. He crashed twice. He hated the crush of the peloton and wanted out. “I’m giving up cycling,” he told his parents. They convinced him to give it another year. A year later, he enjoyed the peloton for the first time at the Tour de l’Avenir (Tour of the Future) in France, and thought making it onto a WorldTour team would be a dream. That was five years ago. Now the polite young man from small-town Germany is transformed once he gets on the bike. He attacks on the mountain when least expected. He is instinctive, merciless. He is two people rolled in one – you sometimes wonder if one knows the other exists. Belgium’s Remco Evenepoel, also born in 2000, has a different genesis story. He is a national hero in a country that worships cyclists like Brazil worships footballers. He was himself once a highly talented junior footballer at Anderlecht, before a fractured pelvis brought his career to an end and road bikes took over his world. He is known as a hothead who flies into a rage when he loses and races like a madman, but that’s not who he is outside of racing. Evenepoel goes to each member of staff after a long day of training and thanks them. He knows his mechanics’ names. He writes messages to rookies if they have ridden well. In an interview he looks straight at you, answers questions calmly and in precise sentences and can be disarmingly friendly. THE RED BULLETIN

CYCLING

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Rock stars: the two Red Bull – BORA – hansgrohe teammates cycle side by side through a volcanic landscape during training on Tenerife in late February this year

He has known his wife, Oumaïma Rayane, since their school days. She often travels to races and spends time on the team bus. He discovered Islam through her, after crashing at the 2020 Giro di Lombardia (Tour of Lombardy), when he fell off a bridge and was lucky to survive. “Why didn’t the lights just go out?” he wondered during the long dark hours of rehab. He couldn’t find any answers. But prayer gives him something that sport cannot: peace. The feeling that he is more than just his results. “Protection,” he calls it. Not against defeat, but from a feeling of meaninglessness.

Polar opposites

Evenepoel and Lipowitz first meet in the hotel basement and then set off. The plan is for them to ride two and a half hours, 80 kilometres, up and downhill, from the sun into the clouds and back

again. The colours change every few kilometres, from tropical green to brown, and then the rusty black of the national park. They get to talking about 10 minutes into the session. They cover crashes, past races, the route the Tour will take in July. Two hours turn into three. Then three and a half. They keep on going, much further than they had planned to, having forgotten the time. It’s fascinating to see how quickly these two supposed polar opposites legitimately hit it off, and touching to see just how happy the team following them by car is about that. Wakefield says later: “Remco and Florian are yin and yang. Fire and ice. Polar opposites that don’t threaten, but rather liberate each other.” They are still talking when they get back to the hotel. Evenepoel says: “Florian is a completely different person in private from in company. He is more open. More direct. Almost no holds barred.” “It was good,” Lipowitz says when asked, ever the man of few words. But that means it really was good. The pair realise that they have plenty in common: the history, the fight, but above all, a love of cycling. Lipowitz speaks of the feeling when your pedalling becomes smoother and you slip into a rhythm you never want to get out of. “It’s like a drug,” he says. And after this outing, he knows that Evenepoel, a perfectionist whose brain works ten to the dozen according to his trainer and who is still testing in the wind tunnel while everyone else is longing to get home, loves that same feeling. On Mount Teide, Evenepoel, the engineer, and Lipowitz, who rides on instinct, were just two guys cycling because they love it. What most impresses Lipowitz about his new partner are all the comebacks, the crashes many people would never make it back from. He also cites the way Evenepoel is able to fulfil his media duties in addition to all the requisite hard training. For example, at the start of the season, he flew to Belgium and back to attend the Sportsman of the Year gala while in the middle of a training block in Mallorca. “I couldn’t do that,” Lipowitz says. “But I think he might even be energised by it. For me, it would be the exact opposite.” Evenepoel looks at Lipowitz with an analyst’s cool gaze. He’d have to be 100 per cent fit to win a Grand Tour race, but Lipowitz, on the other hand, is like a diesel engine who can keep up with the best when he’s at 90 or 95 per cent, who never exceeds or falls below his level. And now that they know each other, will one take a back seat in France if the other turns out to have the stronger legs? “That was never in question,” Evenepoel says. “Of course I will.” “I don’t care if it’s me or Remco who wins,” Lipowitz says. “As long as we race as a team and one of us is on the podium, we can be really proud of ourselves.” You often hear this sort of thing in elite-level sport. But it’s only ever really proven by what happens when the starting whistle sounds. THE RED BULLETIN

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“I don’t care if it’s me or Remco who wins. As long as we race as a team, we can be proud” Full force: Remco Evenepoel tries to attack on Alpe d’Huez, Stage 19 of the Tour de France

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Evenepoel goes hell for leather, risking his neck on every turn, Lipowitz glued to his rear wheel Team goals

Late March, the Volta a Catalunya (Tour of Catalonia) This is one of the main races in the buildup to the Tour de France. Evenepoel and Lipowitz have come directly from Teide, with huge goals and plenty of red blood cells. Evenepoel doesn’t mention that he’d crashed two days earlier and is in some pain. But on the queen stage it’s clear that Lipowitz is in better stead as he leaves Evenepoel in his wake. An observer could perceive this as a tricky moment: the challenger exposing the ailing superstar’s limits. The following day, there is a technical descent ahead of the final climb. Evenepoel goes hell for leather, risking his neck on every turn, Lipowitz glued to his rear wheel. In the flat section, the Belgian works tirelessly until they are one and a half minutes ahead of Austria’s Felix Gall, who is ahead of Lipowitz in the overall classification. “That was a huge effort,” Evenepoel says at the finish. “But I wanted to help Florian to get on the podium.” Lipowitz says, “Remco did me a tremendous favour. I don’t know what to say.” The final stage of their run-up to the Tour de France is completed, with the team members more bonded and trusting than ever. Soon, they will set off in Barcelona with their six other Red Bull – BORA – hansgrohe team members. But this time, when the wheels start whirring, they’ll know who each other are.

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The Tour

In July, the pair finally reach the Tour de France. Facing the stages together as co-leaders, the big question looms over the Red Bull – BORA – hansgrohe team: can a two-man leadership really work between these two riders? Outside the team, opinions seemed to have been settled by the sixth stage at the latest. On the Col du Tourmalet, Tadej Pogačar leaves everyone behind. Evenepoel and Lipowitz cross the line together, almost three minutes down. In the sprint for third place, Evenepoel is beaten. Afterwards, showered and changed, he tells the team something: he’d asked Lipowitz to lead him out for the sprint. But Lipowitz had not done it. In Catalonia, Evenepoel had ridden 30 kilometres for Lipowitz; here, he’d asked for just one. He was angry. Lipowitz later reassures everyone that they’ve had a proper talk, and it’s all cooled down. Fire and ice.

The mood within the team is still good. There’s a sense that the dual-leadership strategy might just pay off. In the days that follow, Evenepoel climbs to third overall, with Lipowitz lurking a few places behind, less than a minute back. On one hand, Evenepoel, the ‘Explosive One’, fighting for seconds on every stage. On the other, Lipowitz, the ‘Diesel’, biding his time for the long climbs of the third week – just as he did last year, when he lost a lot of time in the opening week before finishing third. Then comes Stage 15, a Sunday, with half of France glued to their televisions. A gruelling 183 kilometres, culminating in the climb to the Plateau de Solaison: 11 kilometres at an average gradient of nine per cent. Many expect Evenepoel to crack here. He doesn’t. Quite the opposite – he’s the only rider who can stay with Pogačar and his teammate Isaac del Toro. In the end, he wins the stage ahead of the pair of them. “I’m shaking with emotion,” he says at the finish. On Instagram, he thanks everyone “who always believed in me”. Lipowitz finishes fifth, almost a minute back. That evening, he says he’s thrilled for Remco – it’s a huge success for the team. He hints that he’ll be riding for his co-leader in the final week, and it looks as though the pair have found their flow. Little does Lipowitz know that he will never get the chance to ride for Evenepoel and finally return the favour given to him in Catalonia. Because just two days later came that right-hand bend...

The end

The morning after Lipowitz’s crash, team manager Ralph Denk addressed the media. He confirmed Lipowitz’s collarbone was broken, and that he’d undergone surgery that very night. Denk had spoken to him, and he was, of course, devastated, but they’d already started cracking jokes from the hospital bed. “We’re glad we went with the dual strategy,” Lipowitz says,“because otherwise things would be difficult for us now.” What follows for those left in the race is hard graft. Three days in the Alps, two finishes on L’Alpe d’Huez. It’s a race Pogačar has long since won. But behind him, another rider remains in imperious form, one now without a co-leader: Remco Evenepoel. He’s not just defending his position – he’s extending it, exceeding every expectation in the process. He establishes himself as the second-best stage racer of the summer. Perhaps one day, Remco Evenepoel and Florian Lipowitz will look back on this year. On Mount Teide, the 20 days they spent together and the way it changed them as riders and as teammates. On Catalonia and the full-throttle descent. Or on the Col du Tourmalet. The question that hung between them on the volcano back in February was never answered: can two people who want the same thing support each other when it really counts? It looked as though they were learning to, but we’ll never know. A bend in the road decided it before the mountains could. And yet: their partnership worked. What lesson they choose to take from that is now up to them. THE RED BULLETIN

CHASING THE SUN Words Ed Cooper

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From a pool club in Tokyo to a 100-year-old hotel in Los Angeles, the inaugural Red Bull Midsummer festival travelled across the planet, bringing together chart-topping headliners and energetic local artists to reflect the diverse nature of electronic music. Here’s what happened, as it happened, at the first-of-its-kind global dance party THE RED BULLETIN

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Sun-drenched: dancers at Red Bull Midsummer in Brooklyn, New York, USA, on June 20, 2026

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It takes a special kind of energy to create an unforgettable night. To pull off a cross-continental party that follows the sun around the globe, moves between cities in a continuous, real-time cycle and finishes 5,493 miles (8,841km) from where it started, however, requires a different playbook. Such was the premise of Red Bull Midsummer, a first-of-its-kind global dance party masterminded to celebrate the legacy of electronic music – from intimate basement clubs to open-air vistas dotted across the Mediterranean. Moving westward from Tokyo to Mumbai and on to Vienna, Berlin, London and New York before its crescendo in Los Angeles, the multi-time-zone festival brought with it a lineup that not only boasted heavyweight international spinners, including TOKiMONSTA, Fisher and DJ Seinfeld, but also platformed emerging and homegrown talents, from artists and promoters to communities and collectives. It all had to start somewhere, though, and it was on a summer’s morning, on the shoreline of Japan’s Chiba prefecture, where the sun would first begin to rise on Red Bull Midsummer. As the decks whirred into life and the speakers sent the first frequencies across the water, the party wouldn’t fade out for another 28 hours, two whole continents away...

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Early risers: Red Bull Midsummer starts at Chiba’s Botanical Pool Club in Tokyo, Japan, on June 20, 2026

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TOKYO, JAPAN Hours into Red Bull Midsummer: 0 of 28 Party correspondent: @Keiichiro.Hash Headliners: Kuniyuki Takahashi / Vegyn / Licaxxx On a typical summer’s day in greater Tokyo, the sun will rise at approximately 4:36am. As the first glimmer of the morning sun spills out over the ocean, Iwai Bay starts to hum with the energy of a new day. The rumble of traditional net-fishing vessels headed out to sea begins to cut through the air, while Chiba’s shallow waters catch the warmth of the morning sun.

Though it may only be a few minutes past sunrise, a few kilometres inland, Keiichiro Hash, better known as Kei, is already awake on June 20, 2026, welcoming the calm that the morning brings ahead of the first of Red Bull Midsummer’s seven worldwide events, where Tokyo will ignite the spark. As Kei sees it, Tokyo’s deep connection with music, combined with its international appeal, THE RED BULLETIN

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Zoning out: DJ Licaxxx in Tokyo, while on the live feed behind her, Perlita performs the Drop Set in Mumbai THE RED BULLETIN

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MUMBAI, INDIA Hours into Red Bull Midsummer: 3 of 28 Party correspondent: @DivyaGupta7811 Headliners: Arjun Vagale / SimSim / Gauriwho Soon after the afternoon heat peaked in Japan, the pulse of Red Bull Midsummer made its massive westward leap to India, chasing the sun as it dipped towards the horizon; and while Tokyo danced under a midday sun, the signal was already flashing across the Indian Ocean, where India’s commercial capital was preparing for its own sonic shift. On the roof of the ICONIQA Hotel, where Mumbai’s ambient roar of rickshaws and local trains recedes to a quiet hum, a new, subcontinental dancefloor is taking shape. And for local creator Divya Gupta, the hotel’s Bombay Swim Club – with direct views of the runway – was the perfect place to celebrate India’s most electric city. “The vibe was very Mumbai. It was energetic and slightly crazy, but in a really fun way,” she says. “The party was already happening from the moment you entered. People were dancing, chilling, meeting each other and enjoying the music; it felt very free and easy.” It’s a city that rarely hits pause, Gupta says, but a 10am party effortlessly shrugged off the early hour, trading the usual morning rush for a crowded dancefloor. “Mumbai knows how to keep going,” she says. “You can have the most tiring week, sit in traffic for hours, complain about the weather and somehow, if there’s a good plan, everyone is ready again.” As the morning blended into the afternoon, Bombay Swim Club saw blends of house, techhouse, techno, Afro, Latin, disco and much more besides, thanks to local and international virtuosos including Luna, SimSim and Gauriwho. It was Arjun Vagale, however, widely considered to be the pioneer of techno music in India and who has shared headline slots with heavyweights including

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makes the capital the ideal starting city. “With events like this you can feel an atmosphere you can’t really find anywhere else,” he says. “That’s what makes Tokyo so special.” A crowd starts to gather inside Chiba’s Botanical Pool Club, the venue where the festivities begin, and after a quick sunrise run across a nearby beach to rev up the vibes, Kei joins the party, thinking of how the first-ever Red Bull Midsummer event is the ideal place to not only see Tokyo from a fresh perspective, but also to meet new people and, crucially, celebrate the community that electronic music brings with it. Even with a 7am start. “Tokyo and music are deeply connected,” he says. “No matter what genre you’re into, you can always find a community here, even if they don’t speak the same language.” As morning turns into midday, and midday into afternoon, artists including ambient producer Gigi Masin, Tokyo-based multihyphenate Chloé Juliette and DJ Kuniyuki Takahashi keep the vibes high. However, it’s during Vegyn’s set – whose catalogue includes close work with Frank Ocean on Endless and Blonde – that Kei sees exactly what this festival is all about. “Everyone gathered in front of the DJ booth and started dancing together,” he says. “Most of them probably didn’t even know each other, but they were all sharing the same energy.” Though Kei was born and raised in Washington, DC (“people watching back in New York messaged me about Midsummer”, he says), Tokyo’s subcultures and underground music scenes really make Japan’s capital city home. “Music gives me a lot of inspiration,” he says. “It makes me feel that life is really beautiful.” As the soundtrack bounced and blended everything from EDM, house and disco music to Balearic and ambient sounds, things were already getting underway in Mumbai, over 4,000 miles away. “We watched the live feed from the next country,” says Kei. “We could see people enjoying the event in Mumbai – there’s a tangible live connection to the other parties around the world.”

Levelling up: SimSim performs at Mumbai’s Bombay Swim Club; (above) the view of Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj airport

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The Chemical Brothers, who brought out the best of Red Bull Midsummer during his sunset headliner. “The crowd was one of my favourite parts. There were people who clearly knew everything about electronic music, and then there were people who were simply there to enjoy the vibe and discover something new,” says Gupta. “Nobody felt out of place and everyone was dancing in their own way, enjoying different sets and meeting new people.” For Gupta, it was the perfect summary of Mumbai – energetic, friendly and completely unapologetic. “Music is everywhere. You hear it in rickshaws, cafés, gyms, even somebody playing music loudly from their house,” she says. “Knowing Mumbai was part of something happening across seven cities around the world made it even more special. It felt like Mumbai was part of one big global moment, as you knew that people in completely different parts of the world were also celebrating.” Much like the planes seen departing from Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj airport, the festival’s momentum was already airborne, lifting off into the night sky to follow the sun further west and, eventually, touch down in Europe.

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BERLIN,GERMANY As Mumbai’s dancefloors settled into the heavy evening air, the festival’s momentum leaped 3,900 miles west, over to Berlin. On the Kalle Halle rooftop in Neukölln, the scorching afternoon glare made one thing clear: this city might be famous for its underground scene, but trading basement clubs for a sun-drenched terrace was a worthy summer upgrade. “As soon as I heard about Red Bull Midsummer, I just had to go,” says attendee Freddisson. “I’ve seen firsthand how easily the beauty of a place like Berlin lets you express your real self. Nobody minds how you dress, look or behave here. You can just be who you are, and that energy translates straight to the dancefloor.” Despite intense heat, the atmosphere remained completely relaxed. The absolute standout moment of the day came during DJ Seinfeld’s set. Just as his music was peaking, the sharp city skyline gave way to an incredible, fiery sunset that bathed the entire crowd in gold. “Seeing hundreds of people happy and dancing together in that light reminded me of what the producer Rick Rubin once said: ‘The purpose of the work is to awaken something in you first, and then allow something to be awakened in others.’” On the Neukölln rooftop, the giant broadcast screen looked like a portal. Watching the live feeds from the earlier legs in Tokyo and Mumbai, everyone felt a real connection to communities thousands of miles away, all chasing the exact same sun before the broadcast pulled onward toward Vienna. THE RED BULLETIN

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Hours into Red Bull Midsummer: 7 of 28 Party correspondent: @Freddisson Headliners: DJ Seinfeld / X Club / TwoFaced

Upper decks: DJ Heartstring entertain revellers on a rooftop in Berlin’s Neukölln borough; (inset top) the Berlin event flyer

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VIENNA,AUSTRIA With the sun making its way over to central Europe, themes of a sizzling Euro summer continued in Vienna, the true home of classical music. Once the playground of legends such as Mozart, Beethoven and Haydn, this summer saw Austria’s most-populous city take on a new kind of composition with Red Bull Midsummer, and according to local creator @austriasginger, aka Hanna Niedrist, Vienna’s relationship with music gave the global event a distinctly local flavour. “What I love most about Vienna’s relationship with music is that it’s not just something you listen to, but something people experience together,” she says. “Vienna has always had a strong connection to music, but it’s evolved over the years; today you’ll find everything from electronic music and pop to live concerts, festivals and intimate gigs.” While celebrating on the longest day of the year, it also meant that temperatures in Vienna were soaring – at 33°C, it truly was the height of summer in the capital – but on the city’s Freudenau racecourse, June’s rising mercury levels didn’t stop Niedrist from missing a single beat. “The energy never dropped and everyone was in such a good mood, dancing, laughing and making the most of the day,” she smiles. “One moment that still makes me smile was when the afternoon sun got so intense that everyone moved to the shaded side of the dancefloor.” One half was empty in the sun, Niedrist recalls, “while everyone was dancing together in the shade”. Not that the artists minded. From Colognebased DJ and producer Mike Momburg, who has earned a firm spot in the European progressive house scene, to Marten Hørger (whom DJ Mag once labelled as “the future”) and the warm, atmospheric sounds of Frankfurt-based DJ Maruwa, who deftly bounced between ’90s rave aesthetics and modern club culture, Europe’s stretch of the party was now in full swing. Every so often, Niedrist says, “there were moments when we could see DJs from the other cities on the screens at the venue, which made that connection feel even more real, seeing people in Tokyo, Berlin and Los Angeles celebrating the same event at the same time”. For Niedrist, Australia’s own Fisher brought about a welcome crescendo to the proceedings in Vienna. “There was never a moment when the atmosphere slowed down a single bit, but one of my biggest highlights was Fisher’s set,” she says. “The entire crowd was singing along to his biggest tracks and dancing nonstop, fully embracing the moment – it was such an unforgettable atmosphere.” Clearly, it would take a lot to top it. THE RED BULLETIN

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Hours into Red Bull Midsummer: 7 of 28 Party correspondent: @austriasginger Headliners: Fisher / Christian Löffler / Marten Hørger

Operatic house: Fisher headlines the Austrian segment of Red Bull Midsummer 2026

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Breaking the bank: Jarreau Vandal (this page) and Jyoty (right) spin solid gold high above London’s finance district

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LONDON,UK Hours into Red Bull Midsummer: 8 of 28 Party correspondent: @iamjennabennett Headliners: Jyoty / Lancey Foux / Supa D For decades, London has been the ultimate incubator for sounds that end up reshaping the world. The city doesn’t just celebrate iconic music scenes – it creates them from scratch. From the London-Manchester swagger of Britpop to the frenetic energy of drum and bass and the raw, localised grit of grime, few do it better than the beating heart of the UK. And as the sun rose on the sprawling metropolis, it was the City of London itself – the capital’s historic financial district and, bizarrely, the smallest city in England, covering just one square mile – that took the baton from Vienna and ran with it. “London genuinely knows how to have a good time, and when the sun is out, it’s almost like it’s a different city,” says Canadian singer-songwriter Jenna Bennett, one of several artists hand-picked to perform at London’s Wagtail rooftop terrace. Despite it being her first performance in over a year, the city’s deep connection with emerging talent has meant London is now for her. “The support that

came straight from the people has been insane, and it has changed my life,” she says to The Red Bulletin. “Coming to London meant that I was able to flourish, because it creates that space for you to let go, have fun and be yourself.” That freedom was mirrored by Red Bull Midsummer’s global scope. “You were very much in the moment,” she recalls, “but then every once in a while behind the DJ, it would show the different parties happening at the same time, or footage from before in Tokyo, and then our footage, and Berlin, and that would remind you that this is all connected.” As the afternoon wore on and the shadows from the Shard lengthened across the river, that connection became more than just a graphic on a massive screen. London’s rooftop crowd was effectively dancing in relay with thousands of strangers, passing the party forward as grainy clips from Tokyo gave way to new footage from Europe, the festival now moving west, with New York and Los Angeles waiting in the wings across the Atlantic. THE RED BULLETIN

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NEW YORK, USA Hours into Red Bull Midsummer: 13 of 28 Party correspondent: @jennifermika_ Headliners: Anastazja / Ayanna Heaven / BAMBII River, Brooklyn’s Sunset Park Rooftop gave sweeping panoramic views of the 139-year-old Statue of Liberty and the Manhattan skyline as the party unfolded at its penultimate stop on the East Coast. Here, artists including Brooklyn-based Ayanna Heaven, Tim Fields and Atlanta’s own PLAYR1 started the proceedings, giving Mika a few hours of what New York does best. “There’s just so much you can do in such a short amount of time in New York,” she says. “It was like a playground.” As footage flipped between the parties in Berlin, London and, as the New York event progressed, Los Angeles, the second part of Mika’s plan was about to unfold – hotfooting to JFK and catching a flight to the West Coast.

Grand finale: Tim Fields (top lef) and Black Rave Culture (bottom right) at Red Bull Midsummer in Brooklyn, New York. THE RED BULLETIN

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A straight shot across the Atlantic would see Red Bull Midsummer enter its concluding stages – first in New York, arguably London’s hottest rival when it comes to music, and finally in Los Angeles, where the sun will set for the final time in the west. By now, the final notes in Tokyo and Mumbai had been played out, with Berlin and Vienna rumbling into the night. For actor, dancer and creator Jennifer Mika, who splits her time between the creative and self-expressive city of New York and sun-soaked Los Angeles, the opportunity to attend both closing parties was too good to pass up – though it required a little strategic thinking. “To make it to both parties, I had to start in New York at 10am,” says Mika. “Even then, it was buzzing in Brooklyn.” At the mouth of the Hudson

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LOS ANGELES, USA Hours into Red Bull Midsummer: 16 of 28 Party correspondent: @jennifermika_ Headliners: TOKiMONSTA / Austin Millz / Noodles Touching down in Los Angeles, Mika’s second and final stop was the iconic Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. Built in 1926, the 100-year-old bolthole has played host to Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra and, in 1929, the very first Academy Awards ceremony. But, on a summer’s day in June, this unique piece of Old Hollywood history took on a different form, with Noodles, Austin Millz and Los Angeles’ own TOKiMONSTA being tasked with rounding out Midsummer in the entertainment capital of the world. It was a welcome reminder for Mika, arriving just as the sun was setting, of what lies at

Los Angeles’ core. “I had never quite understood what it was like to experience such rich music, dance and culture until I’d moved to LA,” she says. Los Angeles, it’s clear, was the perfect place for the sun to set on Midsummer, some 28 hours since the speakers burst into life in a quiet coastal town near Tokyo. “No one’s standing around in LA,” says Mika, who, fresh off the plane, had just hit the stage at the Roosevelt. “Everyone’s dancing, everyone’s moving,” and, by the time she got there, “it was just this big dance party. We were all dancing together,” she says. “It was electric.” THE RED BULLETIN

92 When Milly Pickles lost part of her leg following a horrific accident, she says she knew she would go running again. What she didn’t know was the crucial part it would play in shaping her new life Words Jessica Salter Photography Neil Gavin

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Train time: runner Milly Pickles, photographed for The Red Bulletin in east London in January this year THE RED BULLETIN

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“IT NEVER OCCURRED TO ME THAT I WOULDN’T EVER RUN AGAIN”

oments before she became, in 2023, the first amputee athlete ever to complete the Red Bull 400 – the world’s toughest and steepest 400-metre race – Milly Pickles was, she admits, “a hot mess. I looked up the hill and it was so steep, and I just didn’t know if my body could handle it. I found it unbelievably scary”. It had been a tough year for the athlete, content creator, presenter and disability campaigner. A cut on her leg that refused to heal had left her unable to walk for three months, never mind run, and she’d only signed up for the race three weeks earlier, slightly on a whim. On top of that, Pickles’ boyfriend, Liam – an extremely fit and able-bodied online fitness coach – had just run it and was in a bad way, unable to even talk. “I thought, ‘I’ve got THE RED BULLETIN

one leg, three toes, and I’ve been unable to even walk for months – what on earth am I about to do?’” she recalls. But a gruelling 17 minutes and 26 seconds later she had, unbelievably, done it. She was on an instant high. “Achieving something I never thought physically possible just gave me so much confidence to think I can actually do crazy, difficult things,” she says. “After that, I was on a hunt to find something else to push me further.” Pickles is no stranger to seemingly impossible challenges. When she first got back into running after her accident in 2017 that resulted in the loss of part of her right leg, she told herself that learning to run on a prosthetic blade “was an exciting new challenge”. She spent two years doggedly practising 100m sprints, with an eye on perhaps making the Paralympics team. After falling out of running for a spell, August 2023 saw Pickles sign up for her Red Bull 400 debut the following month. She followed it with two marathons, despite never having run long-distance on her blade before, and in October last year she returned to complete another Red Bull 400 in just over 10 minutes. “The way I think about these things is that I might not have the body that can absolutely smash this – I don’t even really

Pushing the limits: “Achieving something I never thought physically possible [the Red Bull 400] gave me so much confidence to think I can actually do crazy, difficult things” THE RED BULLETIN

“I JUST WANT TO TAKE OWNERSHIP OF WHO I AM, AND MY STORY” THE RED BULLETIN

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know if I can actually physically do it – but I have an incredibly strong mindset that always carries me through,” she says. “Your mind is so powerful, it might even take you 95 per cent of the way there.” This incredible mental ability has become Pickles’ superpower. But each challenge has left her physically wiped out, due to the extra energy it takes an amputee to take on such feats – studies show increases from 25 per cent to more than 75 per cent – and the raw pain of her amputated leg rubbing in its prosthetic socket. On top of that, she has ADHD and finds huge events overstimulating. “I’ve got the double whammy of being neurodivergent and an amputee. So, as soon as I finish, my body just shuts off.” Late last year, she recognised she was on the brink of burnout. It wasn’t just the gruelling training, but the emotional toll of her ever-online life, which includes the many messages she receives from people sharing their own traumatic experiences. “I feel touched that my DMs are a safe space for people to open up,” Pickles says. “But I was in such a burnt-out state that even the most positive elements of my online experience felt like a lot to handle.” Realising she needed a break, she listened to what her body was telling her and, at the end of November, committed to taking two months off all work. The Red Bulletin catches up with Pickles at a photographer’s studio in east London on a freezing day in 2026, one of her first days back post-break. Switching off was essential, she says, but hard. “For the first week, I replaced Instagram with digitising my entire wardrobe, which has actually been amazingly useful,” she laughs. Slowly, she settled into a gentler pace of life at home in London with Liam and relished the rest and recuperation. In person, Pickles is fun, charming and game for anything the photographer suggests, even running down a street in tiny shorts and a crop top on a day that threatens snow. After turning 29, she’s in a reflective mood. Her twenties have been run at a frenetic pace, largely defined by an accident at their start, and how she reshaped her life afterwards. As she approaches her thirties, Pickles feels she needs a shift. “I’ve changed so much as an individual, and I feel like I’m outgrowing who I was,” she says. But she also knows her story is compelling – and an inherent part of the Milly Pickles who sits here today. In 2017, she was a marketing student at Bournemouth University, undertaking a highly competitive placement at Chelsea

Turning point: Pickles, aged 20, in hospital in 2017, following the devastating accident that ended up costing her part of her right leg

IT’S HARD TO COMPREHEND THE MENTAL STRENGTH SHE POSSESSES. Football Club. Driven and ambitious, the then 20-year-old knew she wanted to be “a leader in something, a CEO”. That morning, her mother had called to say she was worried about her, though she couldn’t explain why. Pickles reassured her she was fine and would soon be back home in her native Hertfordshire. Devastatingly, her mother’s apprehension was justified: later that day, Pickles suffered a catastrophic electrocution of such high voltage that doctors were surprised she survived. “My occupational therapist looked at my notes and said that people who have that level of electricity usually die,” she recounts. The details of the accident are something that, publicly, Pickles hasn’t gone into. “I do want to at some point, but I need more space than an Instagram caption, and it still doesn’t all make sense yet,” she says. She was rushed to hospital, where surgeons spent two weeks operating, cutting away dead tissue and muscle in an attempt to save her legs. All the while, she still had electricity coursing through her body – “it doesn’t leave for weeks” – and was in constant agony.

Eventually, Pickles took control: “I remember one moment looking down at my leg, and it wasn’t even a leg – there was hardly anything there. I just thought, ‘There’s no way they’re going to be able to keep this – we have to amputate.’” The surgeons attempted to talk her through the options. “I just interrupted and said, ‘I don’t want to waste any more time – it has to go.’” Her first thought after making the decision, which she shared with her shellshocked mother: “That means I can compete in the Paralympics.” It’s hard to comprehend the mental strength that Pickles possesses. That fortitude has always been there, she says, but it was crystallised by the accident. When she first looked down at her missing leg post-surgery, there was no sense of disconnection. What she struggled with more was hair loss caused by the shock of the accident or the drugs. “It was about feeling feminine and attractive, which I know sounds silly, but I’d just gone through this awful thing and was dealing with it well – and then this was there to kick me down.” Interestingly, Pickles says she struggles more with body image now, with her life so entwined with social media, than she did after the accident. “That’s another thing I’ve noticed coming back from my break: just how quickly you start to subtly compare yourself again. We all do it, and it’s so bad for us.” Her solution is a negative journal, in which she writes down THE RED BULLETIN

unkind thoughts. “When you read them back, you realise you wouldn’t talk to a friend like that.” Pickles was discharged from hospital in December 2017. A month later, on January 18, she was fitted with her first prosthetic leg. Weeks later, she took herself to the gym. Although she’d been a fiercely sporty child, competing in netball, lacrosse, athletics and cross-country, and had run regularly as an adult, she’d never set foot in a gym – apart from, ironically, her first group class the night before her accident. Now she was going for the first time, in a wheelchair. “I was really scared because I didn’t have a clue what to do. I was so weak, I couldn’t even leg-press 10kg.” The trainers had never coached an amputee before, but “they were keen to learn with me”. As with everything, Pickles threw herself into training; her leg-press PB is now 300kg. What makes Pickles’ journey especially compelling is that alongside her relentless drive – “It never occurred to me that I wouldn’t ever run again” – she’s honest about her lows. “I try to show the realistic side of things as well,” she says. This honesty was the impetus behind her first Instagram post, on January 2, 2018, showing her in hospital. She’d searched online for other “people like me” and found almost none – except one. “This amazing, glamorous Brazilian woman who had a really sparkly glittery [prosthetic] leg gave me hope,” she says. “I was worrying that no one would ever fancy me again. She helped show me that you can dress it cool and look pretty.” So Pickles has become ‘that person’ for other amputees. Over time, she shared the full spectrum of her life – GRWM videos, falling in love, holidays, her sister’s wedding, learning to DJ – while avoiding turning her experiences into “a highlights reel”. Her combined social-media following has grown to more than 750K. The point of it all, Pickles says, is to help others. “If I can be of use to anyone else who’s struggling and give them hope, it’s what I was meant to do.” It’s why she believes her accident “was meant to happen to me. I’m strong enough to deal with this”. It’s tempting to call her inspirational, but she’s increasingly wary of the THE RED BULLETIN

@SIMONRPHOTO, @STONEVISUALSUK, RED BULL CONTENT POOL

“YOUR MIND IS POWERFUL; IT CAN TAKE YOU 95 PER CENT OF THE WAY”

Personal bests: (clockwise from top) running the 2025 London Marathon; her Red Bull 400 breakthrough in 2023; a medal winner on her return in 2025; her Marathon debut in 2024

RUNNING

MILLY’S SPORTING MILESTONES JANUARY 2018 Enters a gym for the first time NOVEMBER 2020 Learns to run on a blade MARCH 2022 Leg-press PB: 300kg

SEPTEMBER 2023 Becomes the first amputee athlete to compete in the Red Bull 400

APRIL 2025 Takes part in her second London Marathon, this time unaccompanied

APRIL 2024 Runs her first London Marathon, accompanied by boyfriend Liam, despite having only completed half the distance in training

SEPTEMBER 2025 Competes in the Red Bull 400 for a second time and completes it in just over 10 minutes, shaving seven minutes off her previous PB

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“IF I CAN GIVE OTHERS HOPE, IT’S WHAT I WAS MEANT TO DO” THE RED BULLETIN

RUNNING

word. “It’s a very tricky one,” she says. “Many disabled people are offended by it. While I haven’t been, and I understand why people [use that word], I sometimes find it uncomfortable. I’m just doing me; I’m not trying to do anything different.” Despite the ordeal of the accident and what has been an arduous road to recovery since 2017, Pickles says it’s the last year that has been the “hardest of my life, tougher than running a marathon or losing a leg. It’s about confronting who I truly am”. She’s embarked on a course of therapy – Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) – developed to access traumatic memories, process the complex emotions involved and enable those affected to move on with their life. “I just want to take ownership of who I am and my story,” Pickles says. But the therapy has taken her to other places, too. “It goes straight into your subconscious mind, and it brings up things you’re not even aware of. It’s crazy that the subconscious mind

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ALONGSIDE HER RELENTLESS DRIVE, SHE’S HONEST ABOUT HER LOWS dictates everything that we do. People beat themselves up about why they’re a certain way, and it comes down to the way you’ve been conditioned, or a trauma you’ve experienced – maybe even one that your parents experienced and passed on to you. It’s fascinating, but painful.” This year, the last of her twenties, is one to really get to the bottom of things: “It’ll be hard, but I think it’s so important to correct what I can now, rather than taking anything self-limiting into the rest of my life.” Armed with new understanding, Pickles feels it’s the right time to write a book about her experiences. She’s also considering applying for a master’s degree in psychology and neuroscience

of mental health, thanks to her new fascination with the power of the mind. “I’d love to take my work on, to get a proper scientific understanding and perhaps one day become a psychologist and help others.” For her own mental health, Pickles goes running, which she says has been life-changing. “Running helps me regulate everything mentally. If I’m anxious, overwhelmed, stuck in my head or just feeling a bit off, getting outside and moving changes my mood almost instantly. It also gives me one of the only moments where my brain goes quiet – which is rare for me because I’m ADHD and my mind is always on!” Pickles has committed to running every day this year, and she makes sure to head out whatever the weather, even if she’s not in the mood. Especially if she’s not in the mood. “It’s not about pace or distance; it’s about showing up. Having a reason to get up and go outside shifts everything – it changes my perspective and makes the rest of the day feel more manageable. I enjoy running, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t enjoy every run. Some days my legs feel heavy, or everything just feels harder than usual, which is so normal. But what never wavers is how proud I feel afterwards about the fact I’ve shown up for myself. “So many people say, ‘I’m not a runner.’ But there’s no such thing as not being a runner: if you can run, you can run. I often find that people aren’t held back by their bodies but by what they’ve decided is true about themselves.” It’s this understanding that has prevented Pickles from limiting her own aspirations since her accident, though she freely admits she’s still figuring it all out. “I’m in a transition phase. I need to work out how to move into this new area, keeping up the things I love and working on my boundaries.” More big sporting challenges are not off the cards: she floats the idea of an Ironman and could, one day, be part of a Paralympic squad, if the stars align. But she’s also listening to her body. “There must be a balance between pushing myself and doing hard things – which I absolutely love – and doing them sustainably so my body isn’t in a permanent state of stress.” It may be less Instagrammable than her most headline-grabbing feats, but the slower, consistent achievement of showing up for her daily runs feels more important to Pickles – even if some days it’s just 1km to shake off the cobwebs. It’s not about scoring likes, she says, it’s about “collecting happiness moments”. THE RED BULLETIN

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TRAVIS SCOTT

“This image is so special to me. I went on tour with Travis during the very early stages of my career. When I edited this shot, I tilted it a little and tried to emulate what Travis had portrayed on his recent album cover. When I shoot a concert, I always try to shoot it from the perspective of the artist and the emotion they’re trying to convey through their music.” THE RED BULLETIN

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SONIC MOTION

Photographer Henry Hwu has crossed continents to capture electrifying images of some of the world’s biggest music artists. Here, he reveals the stories and serendipity behind some of his most striking shots Words Lou Boyd Photography Henry Hwu

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LIL UZI VERT

This page: “I really love this shot because of how different it turned out compared to the original. I spent about two and a half days editing it – not in a heavy Photoshop way; mostly just adjusting and enhancing the colours. I was inspired by thermal maps and the way they use bold, shifting colours. That’s something I really wanted to bring out in this image.”

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Opposite page: “The first thing I thought at this show was, ‘How can I showcase his hair in a way that really stands out?’ As he came on stage, there was a lot of fire, and at that moment I knew I wanted to frame it with a cloud behind him to emphasise his spikes. I was running back and forth and missed it so many times, then finally got the perfect framing.”

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Canadian photographer Henry Hwu is an artist with a distinctive style, capturing performers in moments that reveal the raw intensity of the stage with their individual creative presence. His images feel intimate, almost like studio portraits, despite live settings. “I want the next generation of people to see my work and feel that they’re able to experience these iconic concerts through my images.”

BILLIE EILISH

“Billie’s world tour was 106 shows, and I was the photographer for the entire run, so I had 106 opportunities to get exactly what I envisioned. Having that many chances allowed me to refine my ideas, which was really fulfilling. The left photo almost looks like she’s in a studio. From day one, I knew her eyes were one of her most striking features, so I really focused on highlighting that and drew inspiration from her album artwork.” THE RED BULLETIN

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A$AP ROCKY

“Before this performance, security told us we were strictly allowed to shoot only the first three songs from the front. It was intense, and they were physically pulling photographers out. I remember thinking: ‘What if I just hang back for a moment longer?’ So I hid at the side of the stage. Then, for maybe two or three seconds, Rocky hit this pose – he wasn’t holding the mic; I think he had put it in his back pocket – and everything just froze. In that moment, I knew I had a unique shot.”

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TYLER, THE CREATOR

“This is one of my earliest images. The show was in my hometown, Vancouver. On the day, I arrived 10 minutes late, but that worked in my favour. I couldn’t get to the front, so I shot from the back of the crowd. You can see the fans’ hands in the foreground, and that perspective came entirely from me being late. I was only in the venue for five minutes. I ran in, took the shots and left.”

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“Travis Scott was brought out and everything aligned perfectly. The energy between them was electric”

DRAKE

“This one’s a crazy story. It was taken in Vancouver during Drake’s tour. The night before, I was in Manchester, UK, but my flight got delayed by a day, which meant I was going to miss the show. A few hours later, my brother texted me saying the Drake concert had been postponed by a day. I couldn’t believe I was going to make it! When I got there, Travis Scott was brought out and everything just aligned perfectly. The energy between the two of them was electric.” THE RED BULLETIN

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KENDRICK LAMAR

“Composition is one element of my photography that I like to emphasise. A lot of my photos display my love of scale. This photo is perfect in terms of how everything is composed and how the colours complement each other. This shot of Kendrick perfectly reflects the most important elements of my style.”

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KAROL G

“This photo was taken on a two-year tour I did with Karol G. I was nervous because I didn’t know the whole Latin music scene. Being on tour with her, I realised how massive it is. She’s super friendly. I had to miss a show in Argentina because I was sick, and the next morning, I got a voice message from her, just to say that she hoped I was feeling better. For someone on that level to care about everyone on her crew like that was so great.”

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PORTFOLIO

the red bulletin: How do you prepare to

capture a standout photo at a live show? henry hwu: Before an artist goes on stage, I try to get a sense of what the show might look like, how busy the stage will be, what kind of energy to expect. But honestly, I’m always nervous. That pressure is what fuels me. It forces me to stay focused the entire time and push myself creatively.

The artist

Vancouver-based photographer Henry Hwu has gained a reputation for his dynamic, storytellingdriven imagery. His work captures live music’s raw energy. Instagram: @henryhwu

When you’re in front of a stage, what are you focusing on most? I always prioritise the artist. More specifically, the details. It could be their outfit, jewellery – all of it is intentional. That’s how they’ve chosen to present themselves, so it matters to capture it. I usually start with close shots to focus on details and the emotion, then step back to bring in the wider atmosphere. Your work is instantly recognisable. How do you keep that style consistent when live shows are so unpredictable? It comes back to focusing on what I can control: the way I see things. Even in a chaotic environment, I’m always drawn to the same elements: detail, emotion, intention. By consistently prioritising those, the images naturally start to feel cohesive. Do you consider the lasting impact of your images – how they might define an artist or an era over time? I think about that a lot. There are so many images from before my time that make me wish I could’ve been there, not just to see the artist, but to experience that moment in history. That really shapes how I approach my work. I want people to look at my photos in the future and feel like they were there. If an image can carry a sense of time and place forward, that’s really meaningful. For someone trying to break into concert photography, what should they focus on most? Photograph what makes you happy - that’s the starting point. Experiment, and don’t be afraid to fail; that’s how you discover what you’re drawn to. Every mistake trains your eye. The more you lean into that, the more your work becomes a true passion.

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PLAYBOI CARTI

“Heavy rain, strong winds and very limited space in the photography pit caused me much trouble while photographing his show. I was constantly wiping down my camera lens because of the rain, hoping to capture a good moment. The light flashed on Carti at this exact moment during his low-lit performance, marking one of my most memorable photos yet.” THE RED BULLETIN

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COLUMN

Alpine ski racer Marcel Hirscher writes about his very personal sporting year

s an athlete, I sometimes get asked mindset questions. Lately the most pressing one has been this: how do you stay positive in challenging times? My answer is this: Positivity is a lifelong pursuit – always the right goal, never a permanent state. So much of our world revolves around moods and feelings, that finding solid footing between anxiety and positivity has become a balancing act. Somehow, a ‘good vibes only’ approach doesn’t quite hold up THE RED BULLETIN

MICHAEL JURTIN/RED BULL RING, ORIOL CASTELLO/RED BULL CONTENT POOL, ORACLE RED BULL RACING/RED BULL CONTENT POOL BEN TALLON

Feeling good? It’s all in your head

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any more: forced optimism can feel like shrinking rather than growing. What does that tell us? That we need to understand positivity differently and scale back the allpowerful claims we place on it. Maybe that’s the real insight: positivity can’t be forced. Only practised. Sport is the most reliable mood lifter I know. It doesn’t always thrill me to spend hours indoors on the ergometer while the weather’s nice outside, but after a few minutes, any mental slump will always lift. As a life principle, positivity is always worth pursuing. But demanding it as a permanent state, from yourself or anyone else, is an illusion. Being in a good mood all the time isn’t natural for our species, and ambivalence is part of life. What makes us human is expressing those mixed feelings, not suppressing them. How do we know when we’re being honest with each other? When ‘How are you?’ gets a real answer instead of ‘Great, thanks!’ and a fake smile. Whether we like it or not, even positivity isn’t purely positive. Forcing yourself to play Buddha every day creates stress. And stress creates bad moods. Papering over authenticity with sugarcoating doesn’t help – in fact, psychology has a name for this kind of ‘good vibes’ talk: toxic positivity. Which is why, in the US, ‘positive thinking’ has long had its counterweight in ‘positive stinking.’ The universal truth: a pile of dog poop is still a pile of dog poop, even if it’s sprinkled with glitter. There’s always a reason to not be positive. Wars, crises, catastrophes – we’re aware of them all. Partly because the world genuinely is fighting on too many fronts right now, and that affects us. Partly because we react to these world events each and every day through the medic. It’s not good for our brains: every drone strike that we see on the news sets off a tiny alarm system in the brain. What we focus our attention on isn’t fate – it’s a choice. Media is a lot like food: not everything we consume do we digest well.

“Sport is the most reliable mood lifter I know”

EXCEPTIONAL ATHLETE As a slalom and giant slalom specialist and six-time Sportsman of the Year, 37-year-old Austrian ski racer Marcel Hirscher has rewritten the history of alpine skiing with eight consecutive overall World Cup victories. Follow Marcel on Instagram:

Head of Editorial Print & Publishing Andreas Kornhofer Head of The Red Bulletin Andreas Rottenschlager Publishing Management Sara Car-Varming (Manager), Hope Elizabeth Frater Editors Lou Boyd (Lead), Tom Guise Creative Director Miles English Designers Marion Bernert-Thomann, Kevin Faustmann-Goll Photo Editor Susie Forman

The amygdala – a brain structure shaped a bit like a gummy bear – protects our survival, and it’s very good at its job. It runs on something called negativity bias: we perceive negative events more strongly, weigh them more heavily, and remember them longer than positive ones. Not because we’re chronic worriers, but because it’s an evolutionary safeguard. So, is it all in our head? In a way, yes. I believe you can only be in a bad mood before physical activity, or instead of it – never during or after. There are simply too many good hormones circulating by then. Even watching sport moves something in us. The more uncertain the times, the greater our need for moments that offer stability – for rituals of shared experience, for spaces to step outside of everyday life. Sport creates exactly that. And there’s a lot of it to enjoy in 2026: the World Cup, the Tour de France and Formula 1 are all welcome bursts of colour against a grim backdrop. Sport is inherently optimistic. It teaches lessons of hope that everyone understands. It thrives on competition yet always remains a symbol of togetherness. In a game, something succeeds that so often fails elsewhere: mutual understanding, built on clear values, clear rules, clear roles. In the end there’s a result that applies to everyone – no room for spin or hypotheticals. That alone is enough to lift our spirits. Beyond sport, self-love, self-care and self-responsibility also feed a positive mindset – restful sleep, healthy food, loving relationships. For the smaller troubles of the mind, it’s often enough to just tune out the noise, to stop circling our own mood and find our footing again. The philospher Viktor Frankl put it simply: “You don’t have to put up with everything about yourself.”

Sub Editors David Caplan, Davydd Chong Production Editor Marion Lukas-Wildmann Production Veronika Felder (Manager), Martin Brandhofer, Walter O. Sádaba, Sabine Wessig Repro Clemens Ragotzky (Manager), Claudia Heis, Nenad Isailovic, Josef Mühlbacher Editorial Office Am Grünen Prater 3, 1020 Vienna, Austria Phone +43 1 90221-0; Web redbulletin.com Published by Red Bull Media House GmbH, Oberst-Lepperdinger-Straße 11–15, 5071 Wals bei Salzburg, Austria, FN 297115i, Landesgericht Salzburg, ATU63611700 Printed by Druckwerkstatt Handels GmbH, Hosnedlgasse 16, 1220 Vienna, Austria Executive Directors Dietmar Otti, Marcus Weber Basic direction Entertainment Red Bull Media House GmbH prints, publishes and distributes magazines such as The Red Bulletin. Red Bull Media House GmbH is an international media company, which produces, publishes and distributes print, audiovisual and multimedia material from the World of Red Bull in fields of sports, culture, lifestyle and premium entertainment. Red Bull GmbH and Red Bull Media House GmbH are members of the Austrian Chamber of Commerce. The responsible regulatory authority also for the license for Red Bull TV is the Kommunikationsbehörde Austria at Rundfunk und Telekom Regulierungs-GmbH. Laws applicable are among others the Österreichische Gewerbeordnung (Austrian Trade Act) and the AMD-G.

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Mindgame Train Your Brain

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