The Red Bulletin US Quarterly 4/24

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THE RED BULLETIN QUARTERLY

SUPPORT VEHICLES

Jett Lawrence, shown here kicking up a dust storm for photographer Joe Pugliese, has declared ambitions to be the winningest supercross rider of all time. But he acknowledges that he wouldn’t be in this position without his family.

So many extraordinary athletes and artists have made a name for themselves through their singularly individual efforts. But often, if you really dig into a high performer’s backstory, you discover how some key relationships—with family, friends and mentors—changed the arc of their rise.

That certainly is true with the subjects of our cover story—Jett and Hunter Lawrence. They presently are the two best motocross racers in the world, winning a combined $1.5 million at a recent championship. But not long ago, their parents sold everything and moved to a faraway continent to give the boys a chance to pursue their dreams. And beyond that, when you read the story, you’ll learn how much Hunter has been willing to give up to help his younger brother to succeed at the highest level.

Some media outlets have played up their story as a sibling rivalry, but in reality theirs is a story of sibling love.

Meaningful relationships hover in the background of many stories in this issue. Consider the profile of two hiphop legends—Method Man and Redman. The two have collaborated for 30 years, and credit their shared creative passion and straightforward communication for the longevity of their partnership. “He’s a straight shooter,” says Redman of his longtime friend. “If he doesn’t like something, he just says it.” This has helped them avoid the fall-outs so common when two huge artists try to blend their solo ambitions with cooperative projects.

An equally symbiotic relationship underlies our feature on endurance cyclist Lael Wilcox, who recently crushed the world record for riding around the globe. Wilcox cranked an astounding 18,000 miles in just 108 days, but somehow pushed through this seeming ordeal with an air of grace and levity. Her secret weapon was likely the presence of her wife, Rue Kaladyte, who lent daily support to Wilcox and shot the photos in the story. It looks more like a vacation than a death march in large part because it was a magnificent experience that they shared.

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One final example is the profile of singer-songwriter Amanda Reifer, who has such obvious talent and style but who has learned how other people can uplevel her art and success. In her case, she was invited into the studio to collaborate with Kendrick Lamar. The work (and album) that has emerged is at once the product of her sweat and genius—and her openness to be uplifted by others.

Of course, you are the captain of your journey toward your dreams. But don’t overlook how enlisting the support of your crew can help you get there.

Let your voice be heard! Take our brief readers survey and share what you want from The Red Bulletin.

Joe Pugliese (Cover)

PETER FLAX

CONTRIBUTORS

@PIPERFERGUSON

PHOTOGRAPHER

PIPER FERGUSON

“When I realized how special of an artist Amanda Reifer is, it inspired me to want to go big or go home!” says the Los Angeles–based photographer, who shot the up-and-coming singer-songwriter for this issue. “And once Amanda got in front of the lens with her positive vibes, everything coalesced like magic! She is such a stunning artist, person, woman, musician.” Ferguson’s clients include Atlantic Records, Apple, Levi’s and O’Neill. Page 46

@OFFICIALILLWILL

WRITER

WILL LAVIN “Despite writing about hip-hop for 20 years, believe it or not, this was actually the first time I got to interview three heroes of mine: LL Cool J, Method Man and Redman,” says Lavin, who relocated from the U.K. to Los Angeles last year. “And it was well worth the wait!” A former managing editor of HipHopDX, Lavin has also written for Vibe, Complex and XXL. Pages 38 and 56

@JOEPUG

PHOTOGRAPHER

JOE PUGLIESE “Watching the Lawrence brothers interact as brothers first and racers second, I got the feeling that ripping through an MX track is just another form of communication for them,” says the L.A.-based photographer, who shot our cover story on motocross revelations Jett and Hunter Lawrence. “I just stepped into their world and watched them having a blast.” Pugliese’s clients include The Hollywood Reporter, GQ, Esquire, Netflix and Amazon Studios. Page 12

@CLAYSKIPPER

WRITER

CLAY SKIPPER “I’ve always had an interest in what makes athletes tick, so I enjoyed talking to two elite competitors about how their brotherhood shapes their mindset,” says the New York–based writer of our cover story on the Lawrence brothers.

“Plus, hanging out with their pet donkeys wasn’t so bad either.” The host of the Farewell podcast and a former GQ staff writer, Skipper has also written for Esquire, Men’s Health and Garden & Gun. Page 12 THE RED BULLETIN

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2024 ISSUE 4

THE RED BULLETIN QUARTERLY

CONTENTS MOTORSPORTS

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Jett & Hunter Lawrence The brothers and friendly rivals ascend to motocross superstardom

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Chloe Chambers The talented driver inches closer to her dream of F1

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Liam Lawson The New Zealander opens up about his long-awaited return to F1

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HIP-HOP

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70 BIKE

72

94 SKATE

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Method Man & Redman The duo reveal their secrets to a solid working relationship

Red Bull Rampage Female freeriders make a groundbreaking debut

Skate the Edge Skate pro Zion Wright logs a skyhigh session in NYC

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Tony Hawk Catching up with the skateboarding icon

Playlist Raekwon shares his top tracks

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Amanda Reifer This singer is ready to hit out on her own

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LL Cool J Don’t call it a comeback

Garrett Reynolds The BMX veteran takes home X Games gold (yet again)

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Lael Wilcox The endurance cyclist crushes a world record

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Train Like a Pro Brazilian-American skate pro Leticia Bufoni shares the details of her insane workout

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COMPETITION

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Postcard from a Pro Nine world-class Red Bull athletes share scenes from their summer in Paris

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Emma Navarro The tennis pro suddenly cracks the top 10 in world rankings

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Gear Elevate your tennis game with these top picks

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Normski The photographer on capturing hiphop’s golden age

126 Mocktail Polar Smash 128 Masthead The Red Bulletin Worldwide 130 Final Take Caitlin Simmers gets a huge lift 08

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Piper Ferguson, Atiba Jefferson, Bartosz Wolinski/Red Bull Content Pool

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72 Red Bull Rampage

46 Amanda Reifer

96 Skate the Edge

BEYOND THE ORDINARY

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THE RED BULLETIN QUARTERLY

T T T T T T

O O O O O O

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S S S S S S Jett & Hunter Lawrence

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Chloe Chambers

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Liam Lawson

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MOTORSPORTS

Motocross superstars Jett and Hunter Lawrence WORDS BY CLAY SKIPPER

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THE LAWRENCE BROTHERS

Jett and Hunter Lawrence were photographed in Corona, California, on September 24.

aren’t chasing each other—they’re chasing history.

PHOTOS BY JOE PUGLIESE

MOTORSPORTS

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But the reality is that despite this string of championships, things are just starting to get interesting for the brothers. First of all, there’s more on the line, and less room for error, in the 450 racing class. Off the track, the boys’ charisma and good looks have granted them a popularity—over 1 million combined followers on Instagram, with Jett adding another 300K+ on TikTok—that puts them in the best position to grow motocross since Travis Pastrana jumped out of an airplane without a parachute. And then there’s a touchy question that hovers around the boys: What happens if a sibling rivalry is doused with the high-octane fuel of celebrity and fame amid 30-plus head-to-head races a year?

To complicate matters, the younger brother’s career has proved more dominant so far. In his 2023 rookie season in the 450 premier class, Jett didn’t just win the MX title; he went 22-0, something no rookie had ever done before, and won the SMX title for good measure. (Hunter was still riding in the 250 class, winning the MX and SX titles.) Jett has said that he hopes to break Jeremy McGrath’s record of 72 all-time supercross wins. On top of that, he’s become the face of the sport, and for good reason: He’s an Australian named Jett who quite literally jets around everyone else and has a jaw structure that Simon Cowell would build a pop group around. Hunter, meanwhile, came into the 450 class one year after Jett and is in the odd position of playing underdog—but doesn’t look far behind. As a rookie, he finished second in MX and was seconds away from taking his brother’s SMX title.

It sounds like something out of a movie: one guy trying to become the greatest motocross racer of all-time. And the rider most likely to beat him is family, the older brother he grew up learning from. But this is no fiction: It’s the reality Jett and Hunter Lawrence have always been working toward.

The boys with their parents, Darren (better known as “Dazzy”) and Emma.

Facing page: Jett (right) and Hunter, just three days after finishing 1-2 at the SuperMotocross World Championship Final in Las Vegas.

Mike Emery/Align Media

It’s a late October morning,

and the Florida sun is already bearing down as Hunter and Jett Lawrence prepare to take their bikes out to practice. They’re at the 63-acre compound near Dade City where they hone the technique that has made them two of the best (if not the two best) motocross riders in the world. Later tonight, they’ll fly to England, where they’ll represent Australia in the annual Motocross of Nations competition. The forecast says rain is likely in England, so the boys—alongside their mechanic, Rene Ebert, and dad and coach, Darren, or “Dazzy” as they call him—are preparing to wet rubber mats to simulate accelerating out of a slippery start gate. Two other riders and friends, Ayden and Blake, plan to join them. Hunter playfully offers Blake a wager: If he can beat him off the line, Hunter will gift Blake a pair of taxidermied kangaroo testicles on a keychain.

This is how it goes at the compound (the boys call it “the farm”): a lot of work, but also a lot of play. This is by design. The boys have been racing for most of their lives—Hunter is 25 and Jett is 21—and though Dazzy has instilled in them a strict work ethic, he tries to keep the training atmosphere light. (To wit: The ratio of humans to animals is about 1:1, with five dogs and two recently acquired donkeys, Clyde and Cowboy, milling around.) After riding their bikes onto the dirt, Blake and Hunter ready themselves, pushing their weight forward onto their toes, hands primed on the throttle. Dazzy prepares to drop a rock as a starting signal. As it falls, engines race and back tires spin violently, flinging wet mud backwards and shooting both riders forward, Hunter clearly in the lead. The precious jewels will remain with the Lawrences.

That’s usually how it goes these days. When a race is for any vor all the marbles—even those of the marsupial variety—the Lawrence brothers usually come home with the hardware. Just 11 days before this training session, Jett and Hunter finished first and second, respectively, in the SuperMotocross (SMX) World Championship Final in Las Vegas—basically the Super Bowl of motocross. To add to the drama, they finished tied in points, with Jett winning on a tiebreaker. Jett was also the 2024 Supercross (SX) champion, and Hunter finished second in 2024’s Motocross (MX) series. (For the uninitiated: Supercross happens indoors January to May, followed by Motocross outdoors May to August, and then three SuperMotocross races to close out the year.)

This sibling dominance is bested in contemporary American sports perhaps only by Venus and Serena Williams—and an ascension burnished by what came before: a long journey that began in Australia and took the Lawrences across Europe and through financial hardship. Even when they made it to America, nothing was certain. Hunter battled health issues, then COVID hit, and though both brothers showed promise in the 250cc class, it didn’t guarantee they’d make it on the premier 450cc level.

(Think of it as motocross’s minor and major leagues.) These obstacles have defined their stunning rise—and their character.

If they keep it up, and most insiders think they will, they could form a historically dominant dynasty. Now, with their one-two SMX finish—pocketing $1.5 million from that series alone—a few choice sponsorships and years of success looming, it might seem like the brothers’ saga has reached critical mass. (Fittingly, a few days later, they will win the Motocross of Nations as teammates, earning Australia its first win in the event since it began in 1947.)

THE LAWRENCE BROTHERS

MOTORSPORTS

THE LAWRENCE BROTHERS Hunter, 25, and Jett, 21, have been racing motorbikes since they were both toddlers.

They train and compete with fiery spirit but otherwise keep things very light.

Both boys have their first memories of riding when they were 2 or 3 years old, tooling around on a Yamaha peewee 50 near their home in Queensland, Australia (literally around the corner from the iconic Aussie, Steve “The Crocodile Hunter” Irwin).

I ask if they got along as kids. “No, no, god no,” Hunter scoffs.

“He wanted to kill me,” Jett says.

Jett, it turns out, liked to mess with Hunter’s stuff, particularly his beloved collection of toy motorbikes, hauler trucks and diecast Hot Wheels. After playing with them, Hunter would meticulously clean them before proudly displaying them on his shelf. Jett, on the other hand, would steal them, play with them in the dirt and put them back without a rinse. “We always had the front door open at our house in Australia, and our feet got so tough because we had a gravel driveway and [Hunter would] be chasing me,” Jett says, laughing. “I’d be sprinting for my life.”

This was an omen. As the boys got older, there was a period when Dazzy worked in mines, spending weeks away from his wife, Emma, and sons Jett, Hunter and their middle brother, Tate.

Hunter, as the oldest, often took the lead. He recalls getting home after they’d go out riding and asking Jett to wash his gear. Instead, Jett would say he needed to use the bathroom and disappear.

“He just didn’t have a care in the world,” Hunter says.

“I was pretty easygoing as a kid,” Jett remembers. “I never really thought too much into anything, kind of just go with the wind, neutral and happy-go-lucky.”

If Jett was easygoing, it was in part because things were easy for him. “He was so talented at everything,” says Hunter, who saw Jett excel at soccer, surfing, even breakdancing. Hunter, by his own admission, was clumsier. “Jett’s got the style, the technique, and I look like a fucking elephant trying to tap dance.”

When it came to riding, both boys were trained by their dad— though Jett’s intuitive athleticism carried over there, too. “I’m good at watching something and picking it up,” Jett says. “Hunter can understand it more. So Dazzy would tell him to do something.

He’d tell me to watch what Hunter’s doing. I’d just try to copy it.”

Jett had a good rider to watch. At age 12, Hunter won the Australian national title in the 65 class. At 16, Kawasaki offered him a contract to come race full-time in Europe. Dazzy, not wanting to split up the family, told Kawasaki they’d have to sign Jett, too. They agreed. It was an example—one of the many, you’ll come to see—of Dazzy’s resolute belief in his boys.

The family sold everything to free up money. In order to make that last, Dazzy would drive the boys to their competitions around Europe. “We ate fucking old bread and horse meat because it was the cheapest meat in the grocery store in France,” says Hunter. They ate so much canned tuna that, to this day, they can’t stand the stuff. The boys kept racing, but the money kept dwindling, and they had to ask for help—a big loan from the brothers’ grandparents, as well as a camper van purchased by Heiko Klepka, the father of motocross legend Ken Roczen—favors they’ve paid back with the boys’ winnings in recent years.

“I knew the stress and risk,” says Hunter. “I did feel that it was a life-or-death situation because there was nothing to go back to.”

But he says there was a weird sense of belief that they’d be OK, in large part because that’s how Dazzy carried himself. “He was always such a strong leader for us to follow that I never felt like we would fail,” says Hunter. “Anytime we would fail, he would be like, ‘We don’t fail, we just learn. We’ll beat them in the long run.’ ” When asked how their dad had faith that they’d make it, they shrug. “I don’t know—he was batshit crazy,” says Hunter.

When I pose this question to Dazzy, how he kept the faith, he makes it sound rather simple. “I knew this wasn’t the end of the road,” he says. “I knew there was more to this story.”

On the day before the brothers fly to England for the Motocross of Nations race, I meet Jett at his house around 10 a.m. He answers the door shirtless, blond curls tousled like confetti strips. Proudly displayed in the foyer of his house—which he shares with mom, dad and Tate—are two bikes from his championship seasons, along with two reptiles: his chameleon, Pablo, and his bearded dragon, Pedro (which Hunter bought him as a birthday surprise).

After throwing on a shirt, Jett leads me to the kitchen, where an SMX trophy sits on the counter, deposited there like a bag of groceries. His English bulldog, Moose, hovers, eventually collapsing at Jett’s feet and soundly snoring. Just above the elbow on Jett’s right arm, which is almost entirely inked, is a tattoo of the words “We Shouldn’t Be Here” on a scroll.

“Technically, for how the path was and how everything was going, we shouldn’t be here at all,” says Jett. A two-story window at the back of his house frames views of a pool and, beyond that, a lake and golf course. (Hunter lives two minutes away by golf cart.)

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THE LAWRENCE BROTHERS

MOTORSPORTS

“Hunter is a 25-year-old going on 30,” says their father, Dazzy.

“Whereas Jett is a 21-year-old probably going on 18.”

Of course, they did eventually make it out of Europe, after showing continual growth and progress, attracting the attention of people in America, including Lucas Mirtl, the boys’ manager.

According to Dazzy, Mirtl was particularly impressed by Hunter’s ability to race his way toward the front of the pack, despite racing competitors on faster factory bikes. “He just loved that grit that he’d seen in Hunter,” says Dazzy.

No doubt “grit” is a hackneyed word in sports journalism, but it has much more heft when it comes from the mouth of Darren Lawrence, who grew up on a farm and understands the nature of hard work. Dazzy maintains that “job’s never finished” attitude with racing, and his influence has shaped the family’s success.

“When you talk to their dad, it really explains almost everything,” says Jason Weigandt, a journalist who has spent 20 years covering motocross and supercross. “He is just brilliant.

He’s able to see development—where their weaknesses are, how to get better. To that end, he was smart enough to say, ‘We need to go to Europe first. It’s harder. It is more difficult.’ There is nothing worse than having to ride in the sand of Belgium in February because it’s the only nonfrozen ground you can even find.”

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When the brothers came to America, that grit would serve them both. Not long after arriving, Hunter ran into a rash of injuries and setbacks: a broken collarbone; a torn ACL, MCL and meniscus; a dislocated shoulder; a canceled supercross season because of the coronavirus. After that, in his second post-COVID race, his bike caught a rut and his shoulder popped out again. “At that point, I was done,” Hunter says. “I was just like, ‘I’ll learn how to mechanic and support Jett. He can be the star. I’m out.’ ” Jett, meanwhile, was becoming just that: a star. His success, like his riding style, was explosive. In his first season in 250 MX, he finished fourth. In his next season, 2021, he won, in what would be the first of six straight championships. He’d go on to win the 250 MX and SX in 2022, and the 250 SX in 2023. He graduated to the 450 class for MX in 2023 and won that, too, as well as the 2024 450 SX. Even Dazzy didn’t know how good Jett would be, making his youngest son the regrettable promise—in hindsight—that he could buy a new car for every championship he won. “I screwed myself big time,” he says, laughing. Once Jett got hot, it was obvious that he had a unique raw talent. But he had something else, too: the hardiness that he carried from his years in Europe.

“I want me and my brother to be the biggest thing the sport’s ever seen.”

THE LAWRENCE BROTHERS

MOTORSPORTS

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THE LAWRENCE BROTHERS A day spent with Hunter and Jett is likely to include a fair amount of unprintable but very funny shit-talking.

“If Jett were an American, at 8 years old, he would have been so advanced that he would have had so many things handed to him,” says Weigandt. “His talent might have made him great anyway.

But to take that talent and a hardscrabble development process?

It’s very rare to get both of those in the same athlete.”

Meanwhile, Hunter, an honors student at the Dazzy Lawrence School of Work Ethic, didn’t quit. Instead, he found a dietician and nutritionist who helped him discover why his body kept falling apart. “I remember the first test, she was blown away, there was just so much inflammation,” he says. “I was intolerant to everything. My body was storing fat around the kidneys. Like fight-or-flight instinct, survival stuff. The body was eating away at the muscle for energy, not using the fat storage or the sugar storage. I was a type 2 diabetic. It was really bad.”

Within a week of that consultation, Hunter had his best result of the year, finishing fourth. He worked his way back—a grind that Weigandt believes has earned him the respect of his peers.

“The level that Hunter is at, even if he’s not quite beating Jett yet, people are like, This guy was not destined to be this good—he made himself this good.” Weigandt adds that no one thought Hunter could be the second-best 450 supercross racer in his first year.

Hunter, for his part, found that with his newfound health and success came a newfound levity. “Since then, I’ve had so much more success than I previously had,” he says. “I think it’s the fact that I’d accepted defeat and was ready to walk away from the sport and support Jett. Everything’s almost a bonus at that point.”

The ultimate showdown, however, had always loomed on the horizon. Though the boys grew up riding around each other, they never really raced head to head because of their age difference.

As it became clear that would happen, Dazzy stepped in with some sage advice. “The media in the real world are fucking shit” is how he put it, as Hunter recalls. “They sell fear, they sell lies, and they sell bullshit. In our sport, unfortunately, they do the same.

One thing that I want youse to never forget, and there will be no misconception: Youse are brothers and blood first, racers second.

You are on this planet for 65 to 85 years. You are racers for 10 to 15.

So don’t throw away and destroy what you have just for racing.”

This is perhaps what people who wondered—whether back then or now—if there might be serious conflict or resentment between the two Lawrences failed to realize: that family comes first.

“It’s funny because people don’t seem to get it,” says Hunter, getting uncharacteristically perturbed for a moment. “Like, you’re telling me that if your brother worked his ass off and became successful in his line of work, that you wouldn’t be happy for him if you weren’t [as successful]? It frustrates me. Because the world’s not in a good place right now and you see what the media and everyone’s broadcasting—it’s not positive stuff. So it’s like two brothers are happy for each other, and it’s like, oh my god, let’s turn them against each other. That’s fucking wild. If I can’t win, there’s only one guy out there I want to win, and he has the same name on his jersey as I do.”

MOTORSPORTS

Hunter has overcome a number of health issues to grind his way to the top of the sport.

Though the Lawrences share a last name, there are some key differences between the two, starting with their demeanor.

“Hunter is a 25-year-old going on 30, whereas Jett is a 21-year-old probably going on 18,” says Dazzy. Both clearly like to have fun, but Jett’s playful lightheartedness is balanced by Hunter’s thoughtful gravitas. From having to take on more of a fatherly role in Australia to being more aware of the family’s troubles in Europe to having his own struggles in America, you get the sense that Hunter’s life has rubbed up against a bit more resistance from being out in front, and that friction has shaped his perspective, while also providing a bit of a smoother wake for his brother. Dazzy says their personalities are a product of how they were raised, deploying an appropriately auto-themed metaphor.

“When you get your first car, you’re all attentive,” he says.

“You’re washing it all the time. You’re taking note of everything about it. So when you get your first son, you’re like, ‘Don’t walk off that step. Don’t eat that dirt.’ You always make them aware of the consequences of what they’re doing. Because it’s your shiny toy.

That’s why Hunter is so analytical. By the time you have your third son, it’s like, ‘Ah fall down the step, he’ll work it out, he won’t do it again. Eat the dirt, he’ll survive.’ So that’s why Jett’s just so

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casual with everything he does. Nothing really stresses him out.

He’s very calm. Hunter’s still calm, but he’s more aware that decisions have consequences.”

Dazzy says that Jett’s fast processing speed and power give him a huge edge. “Things just seem slower to him,” he says. “So he can process stuff and go quicker. And his body is explosive, so he can react quickly to stuff on his first attempt. Whereas Hunter has to build rhythm. His first couple laps are normally not quite as fast, and then he generates speed throughout the moto.”

Hunter also picked up his dad’s pragmatism. So for him, riding is more jigsaw puzzle than poem. “I think Hunter thinks it’s a math equation,” says Weigandt. “I do this and I do that. I got better at this, I need to get better at that. If I put all these pieces together, I will ride well.”

Though when Jett describes how he and Hunter have navigated the tension that could arise between two elite competitors, it’s clear he has imbibed some of this workmanlike mentality, too.

“For us, work’s work,” he says. “We go and race and off the bike we’re fine. It doesn’t change. [People] always ask us, is this going to affect your guys’ relationship? No, this is our job. We get paid to do it. We go race. If one of us wins, then that was the better guy

THE LAWRENCE BROTHERS

MOTORSPORTS

“If I can’t win, there’s only one guy out there I want to win.”

THE LAWRENCE BROTHERS

that day. If the other one wins the next day, then they’re the better guy that day. Dad always kept it pretty simple for us.”

Plus, Hunter sees his own success in Jett’s success. As the older brother, he went through a lot of trial and error so that Jett didn’t have to. “I was always the guinea pig, and then Jett would have the blueprints: This is what you need to do,” he says, adding later, “My dad always said if Jett’s not better than you, we’ve failed.”

In both brothers, Dazzy instilled the importance of mindset (so much so that Jett has the word tattooed inside his left forearm).

“He always said, whatever you’re going to get yourself into, you got to go in with the right mindset,” says Jett. “If you want to jump a fence, you aim to clear the fence. You don’t aim to jump it and clip your ankles.” The right mindset also means never getting too high or low on the pendulum of emotional swings that can take place over a long season.

“Emotion will never do you any good,” says Dazzy. “I’m calm during races. There’s no use stressing because I know we’ve done everything we could do to make sure we’re as good as we can be on Saturday and it’ll be what it’ll be.”

It also means that even when the work has spoken for itself—as it has for the brothers—the work keeps going. “You’re always

working towards being better,” says Dazzy. “That’s the first crack, thinking you’ve made it. For me, that’s dangerous.”

So while others speculate about a potential fissure, the brothers’ focus remains on fortifying the foundation as they always have: by going back to work. “I want me and my brother to be the biggest thing the sport’s ever seen, and change the sport for the better, put it on a platform that no other athlete in our sport has ever put it on,” says Hunter.

Dazzy, meanwhile, says success looks like replicating this year’s SMX finish as often as possible. “One and two in every championship—that’s all I want to aim for,” he says. “I want to dominate the sport so that people eventually just hate us.”

But right now, it’s really just love that envelops Jett and Hunter Lawrence—love from fans and from within the family. The idea that they will battle, with each other and against each other, for world championships for years to come makes them both smile.

“I mean, for the value of Jett and Hunter businesses, that’s incredible,” Hunter says. “If we’re the only two guys that can beat each other? That would be perfect.”

“He’s gonna be a pain in my ass next year, for sure,” Jett says with a laugh. “I’m looking forward to it.”

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Mark Urban/Red Bull Contentpool

F1 Academy driver Chloe Chambers, 20, will race for Red Bull Ford in 2025.

CHLOE CHAMBERS

DREAM CHASER The talented American driver Chloe Chambers inches closer to her goal of racing in F1.

ANDREW LAWRENCE

Contortionists, ventriloquists and dog trainers are just a few of the mind-bending performers who have featured prominently on America’s Got Talent over the years. But those acts had nothing on Chloe Chambers, a magician behind the wheel.

In 2022, Chambers appeared on the hit TV series to show off her driving skills. Never mind that she had only recently earned her license. A year and a half earlier, with just a learner’s permit, Chambers set the Guinness World Record for the fastest vehicle slalom, laying down a 47.45-second time across 50 cones spaced 50 feet apart in a Porsche 718 Spyder.

With NASCAR’s Atlanta Motor Speedway standing in for AGT’s usual theater stage, Chambers performed a handful of stuntdriving tricks before replicating her record-setting run for the show’s panel of judges. None was more impressed than Simon Cowell, a serious gearhead who gamely tried to match Chambers feat for feat but was left spinning his wheels. And while the young driver ultimately lost out on the $500,000 grand prize after a second-round elimination from the show that came via the Superfan vote, she still made a name for herself that night. Now she’s got her sights set much higher, as she seeks to become the first woman in more than three decades to start a Formula 1 race.

“It’s always been my goal since I was little,” Chambers told me on Season 1 of The Red Bulletin’s Ready for the Big Time podcast, an examination of F1’s popularity boom in the U.S. “It seems like I’m going on a very upward trajectory.”

That was back in spring 2022, when we met at the inaugural running of the Miami Grand Prix. At the time, Chambers was still

a teen and moments from making her on-track debut in the W Series, an all-female championship serving as an undercard to F1. What’s more, her racing-team boss was Caitlyn Jenner, an ex-driver who also knows a thing or two about competing on a big stage for the highest stakes. It was a lot of pressure for someone so young, but Chambers can scarcely remember it now. “I was still in my senior year of high school,” Chambers recalls in a recent Zoom interview. “Graduation was still a couple months out. I was probably still preparing for finals, as I was during most weekends that year.”

In October, the now-20-year-old graduated to a new level in her racing career with the announcement that she’ll be joining Red Bull Ford for the 2025 season of F1 Academy, an initiative that hopes to elevate women drivers to the uppermost levels of the sport. That includes Formula 1—the highest level of single-seat, open-wheel racing. Over the course of its 74-year history, F1 has seen a grand total of five women enter a grand prix. Lella Lombardi, a butcher’s daughter who expressed an early passion for racing while thrashing her family’s delivery truck, is the only one of those women to ever score in F1’s point system. In the years since then, a number of women drivers would set their sights on F1—not least Susie Wolff, who, in 2014, became the first woman driver in 22 years to participate in an F1 weekend. Alas, that was just the beginning of the long odds against Chambers, a native of China who was adopted by American parents at 11 months old. Until Logan Sargeant came along in 2023, the last American to race in F1 full-time was Toro Rosso’s Scott Speed.

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Chambers already has a wealth of driving experience, including a Guinness World Record for fastest vehicle slalom.

Mark Urban/Red Bull Contentpool

The upshot for Chambers is that F1 has begun in earnest to reckon with the gender gap in motorsports. In 2019, a group of former racing drivers and financiers came together to launch the W Series, an all-female competition that functioned both as a developmental league for women and an undercard for F1 racing events. In 2022, Chambers joined the series as a driver for Jenner Racing, a team that was started that same year by Cailtyn Jenner—a serious gearhead in her own right.

If Chambers were tracking her F1 goal on a progress bar back then, it would’ve said she’s “20 percent there,” she says. She was not only racing in the same types of cars that F1 pros cut their teeth in on their way to the top, but also competing on the same F1 tracks that they did every weekend. In the case of the Miami Grand Prix, a W Series doubleheader, she raced on that road course before the F1 drivers—and ran well until a series of rookie mistakes cost her in the two races. Making matters worse, rumors of the W’s collapse abounded that weekend, making Chambers’ career prospects that much more daunting.

In October 2022, those rumors were confirmed at an all-hands meeting before a W race in Singapore led by series CEO Catherine Bond Muir. “She basically told us she wasn’t sure we were gonna make it to the end of the season because of funding issues,” says Chambers, recalling that stressful period of uncertainty. “I knew there was going to be another pathway for me somewhere, but I wasn’t 100 percent sure if I would be able to stay in open wheel.”

Despite the W folding after the Singapore race, Chambers found a lifeline in Formula Oceania, an open-wheel series based in New Zealand, where she was one of two women drivers. It was a long way to travel for Chambers, who calls central Indiana home.

But it helped that her dad came along (mostly because she still wasn’t 18), and that there were family friends waiting to embrace her on the other side of the world. The learning experience on the track was no less positive; in the penultimate race of the season, Chambers started on pole and led every lap on the way to grabbing the checkered flag—the first time a woman had ever done that. The result sealed a ninth-place finish in the overall standings and led to her being named most improved driver.

As Chambers was putting in laps Down Under in 2023, a new allwomen racing series called F1 Academy launched with Wolff, the F1 trailblazer, as its director. Soon thereafter, Chambers landed an F1 Academy ride with Campos Racing for the 2024 season and immediately showed how far her racecraft had come along. Back at the Miami International Autodrome for the second weekend of competition, Chambers finished third in the first race of that doubleheader for a maiden podium finish.

Later in the season, in Barcelona, she took her first-ever F1 Academy win, overtaking the pole-sitter in Turn 1 before cruising to a six-second victory—an eternity in motorsports. “My engineer kept telling me on the radio, ‘You know, you can slow down a bit and save the tires,’ ” says Chambers, who couldn’t help marveling at the time she was making. “I remember pulling a second gap on the first lap and thinking, ‘OK, this is gonna be pretty good.’ ” The win practically made her a shoo-in for the Red Bull Ford Academy—which, given Red Bull’s reputation for cultivating champion drivers, can only make Chambers a better racer. She likewise figures to benefit from competing in Formula E, an allelectric series she joins this year that features many former F1 prospects. Time will tell whether she realizes her goal of making it all the way to the top of motorsports. But right now, there’s no doubt this woman’s got talent.

“I knew there was

CHLOE CHAMBERS

going to be another pathway for me somewhere.”

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“Part one of the journey is done,” says Lawson, referring to his long quest to make it to Formula 1.

The next task will be proving he deserves to stay there.

Getty Images/Red Bull Content Pool

MOTORSPORTS

LIAM LAWSON

SEIZING THE MOMENT For Liam Lawson—who recently took over Daniel Ricciardo’s seat for the Visa Cash App RB F1 team—the return to Formula 1 was a long time coming, but the 22-year-old is determined to prove it was worth the wait.

JUSTIN HYNES

It is just a few days before his successful return to Formula 1 racing at the U.S. Grand Prix in Austin after a full year out of the sport, and amid the slightly odd ritual of an F1 film shoot in which he has to adopt a variety of title-sequence poses—from the moodily intense to the cheerily playful—Liam Lawson is thinking about what it will mean to be back behind the wheel. “It’s just the driving, the competition—that’s what I’ve missed all year,” he says. “I probably didn’t realize I’d miss it so much, but I’ve raced a championship every single year since I was 7 years old. And to not have that has been tough. I’ve missed it a lot.”

It’s been almost 12 months since the 22-year-old New Zealander climbed out of the cockpit of an AlphaTauri in the broiling heat of a night in the Qatari desert and ceded control back to Daniel Ricciardo, the Australian whose broken wrist gave Lawson a remarkable shot at stardom at the 2023 Dutch Grand Prix.

Across five impressive outings, Lawson scored points, matched the pace of his more experienced teammate, Yuki Tsunoda, and delivered mistake-free weekends that, in the best way possible, made pundits forget he was there, so comfortable was he with the demands of F1 racing. At Qatar’s Lusail circuit, though, the ride ended, and with fan favorite Ricciardo back in the driver’s seat, that might have been that.

Lawson never saw it that way, though. “I knew that that was potentially the last one,” he says. “I remember after qualifying . ..

I made Q3 and I came in and everybody was really happy. But I’d found out right before qualifying that I wasn’t going to be driving anymore in 2023. And I remember seeing my dad, and he was

obviously super happy with qualifying. I gave him a hug and he told me he was super proud and I said that it didn’t matter. And I remember him telling me that it did. He said, ‘All of this matters and you need to just do the work.’ And that’s how I put my mind to rest.”

The rest was 11 months in the background, grinding through race weekends as the reserve driver for Oracle Red Bull Racing and Visa Cash App RB Racing, spending long hours in the sim working on optimizing race setups before flying out to grands prix to sit on the sidelines as Tsunoda and Ricciardo jumped into the VCARB 01 and headed out on track.

“Stepping back has been tough,” he admits. “It’s definitely not been enjoyable and there were doubts at times, but I never went as far as thinking that it was never going to happen. The message has been pretty clear and simple all year: Stay fit, keep training and be ready. And it changes very quickly when guys have good results and they have bad results and it basically just goes up and down. It was difficult waiting and it was difficult trusting that as well. But I at least knew that at some point this was their goal.”

And over the summer, that conviction began to materialize.

Ricciardo’s form wavered, and while there were never any ultimatums, it became increasingly clear that the team was considering a change.

“I found out in Baku, at the track on Saturday,” says Lawson.

“I knew there was a direction the team was heading in and I knew that the team wanted to put me somewhere; I just didn’t know where that was going to be. And in Baku it was decided. I called THE RED BULLETIN

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my dad. It was like 3 a.m. in New Zealand and he was wide awake.

He picked up the phone straight away and he just said, ‘Tell me.’

You know, my parents, my whole family really have given up pretty much everything they can to put me in this position. So for them, it’s a huge achievement.”

Lawson isn’t kidding. After winning multiple titles on home soil and then finishing second in the 2017 Australian Formula 4 championship, he made the challenging and costly move to single-seater racing’s European heartland to compete in the German F4 championship. It was make-or-break stuff.

“The goal was to try and get picked up by an F1 junior team, because without that happening I was never going to have the money to get to F1,” he says. “I did German Formula 4 and finished second ... and I didn’t get any feedback from Formula 1 teams.

So that was it.”

Lawson had to head back to New Zealand. “I came back to do the Toyota Racing Series, which we had budget for, but I had no plan after that,” he admits. “To be honest, TRS was my last shot. And after the first weekend, we had a contract from Red Bull. Helmut Marko [a longtime adviser to Red Bull Racing] called my manager at the time and basically offered a contract for it at that point. It literally came a couple of weeks before my options ran out.”

The time since hasn’t been much easier, but at every step of the way Lawson has ticked every box. “My first year as a Red Bull junior was extremely tough,” he says. “I sort of got the last seat in F3 in 2019 and we had a difficult season. It was fighting for midfield places, struggling to even make the top 10. And I was trying to prove a point to Red Bull. But Helmut isn’t the type to like excuses, so as much as those races weren’t going well—and it’s the same in any season that I’ve had that has been difficult at times—the simple thing is basically to fix it, not to try and come

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up with excuses. It was always, ‘Find a solution to the problem quickly and just fix it.’ ” Now Lawson’s problem-solving skills have reaped the ultimate reward—a full-time Formula 1 seat. And as he has done throughout his career, he seized the opportunity in Austin, overcoming an engine-related penalty and a P19 start to power through to ninth at the flag. Following that impressive point-scoring effort, Red Bull Racing boss Christian Horner said he had driven “an exceptional race,” while Marko branded him “a man for future.”

Lawson knows, though, that in Formula 1 you’re only as good as your last race.

“Part one of the journey is done,” he says. “The part I’ve spent my whole life on is getting to Formula 1. And now the next part starts, trying to stay here and succeed in the sport. That’s the next target. And obviously that comes with as many, if not more challenges.”

And he is sure he can do that. “I’m confident, and that’s arguably the most important part of being a Formula 1 driver,” he says. “If you’re going into it with the mindset that somebody could be better than you, then you have absolutely no chance. So I have confidence, but being realistic about things is important. I think scoring points is the team’s target and my job is to achieve that, so the goal is to compete with Yuki and score points for the team.

After that my future will be determined by how I execute that task.”

In that regard, Lawson is off to a flying start, and the remaining races on the 2024 calendar present him with another opportunity to edge closer to the goal of a 2025 seat. Does it mean, then, that all good things do come to those who wait? “That’s what they say,” he says with a smile. “But honestly, the most important thing is working hard. Working hard beats everything else at the end of the day. And that’s what I’m here to do.”

Getty Images/Red Bull Content Pool

At the U.S. Grand Prix in Austin this past October, Lawson made an impressive return to F1, finishing ninth for the Visa Cash App RB team after starting P19.

LIAM LAWSON

“I’m confident, and that’s arguably the most important part of being a Formula 1 driver.”

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2024 ISSUE 4

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O O O O O O O O

P P P P P P P P Method Man & Redman

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Playlist: Raekwon

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Amanda Reifer

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LL Cool J

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Portfolio: Normski

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WORDS BY WILL LAVIN PHOTOS BY KOURY ANGELO

MY BROTHER’S KEEPER

HIP-HOP

Method Man and Redman— hip-hop’s dynamic duo—share the secrets to a solid working relationship and the powerful ways they love to stay active.

METHOD MAN / REDMAN

Method Man (left) and Redman were photographed in Santa Monica on August 23.

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showcased a unique synergy, unlocking a collaborative superpower rarely seen in hip-hop. From their incredible chemistry on wax to their awe-inspiring unison on stage, Meth and Red never miss a beat when they’re together.

Some say it’s telekinesis; others say it’s a ton of practice.

Whatever it is, it’s worked very well for the duo, who, 30 years after first crossing paths, are still the best of friends.

“We knew we had something special,” Redman (real name Reggie Noble) says, reflecting on the potential he and Method Man had early on. “We had our own separate careers, which were blossoming, and then we came together and made something special.” The type of special he’s talking about is rare, especially in music.

Longevity is hard enough to achieve as a solo artist, let alone in a group, where there are more ideas, more requests and more egos to navigate. So how is it that Method Man and Redman have managed to maintain their relationship after all these years?

“We’re not money driven, we’re not egotistically driven, we’re not really culturally driven. I try to stay away from a lot of cultural ignorance,” explains Red. “And when I say cultural ignorance, I mean the things that do break people and groups up—like envy, greed, jealousy.” He adds that they “don’t ever point the finger” at each other. If they ever need to resolve a dispute, they just get on the phone and talk it out.

A quarter century after the release of their first joint album, Blackout!, Redman and Method Man continue to perform together.

The duo have a collaborative superpower rarely seen in hip-hop and remain close friends to this day.

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Getty Images

There’s excitement in the air at Red Bull’s Santa Monica studios. No, not because of some crazy caper a stunt team is planning, but because rap icons Method Man and Redman are in the building, shooting an episode of Red Bull Spiral alongside friend and fellow wordsmith Raekwon. Regardless of having been in the game for over three decades, the duo’s dynamic energy—which has been showcased on stage, on record and on screen—is as magnetic now as it was when they first arrived on the scene, causing a few on the show’s production team to get a little starstruck. But for Meth and Red it’s just another day at the office.

The duo first met during rap’s golden era in the early 1990s. Both new to the scene at that point—Meth making a name for himself as part of game-changing rap collective Wu-Tang Clan, and Red introduced to fans via EPMD’s Erick Sermon—they wound up signing solo deals around the same time with legendary hip-hop label Def Jam Recordings. It was there that their friendship began to take shape, collaborating on numerous tracks, including 2Pac’s “Got My Mind Made Up,” LL Cool J’s “4, 3, 2, 1” and their own classic anthem, “How High.”

In 1999, the pair released their first joint album, Blackout!, kicking their bromance into overdrive. The 19-track project—which features the hits “Da Rockwilder” and “Y.O.U.”—not only solidified their megastar status but

METHOD MAN / REDMAN

Discussing their best traits, Method Man (real name Clifford Smith Jr.) points to his partner’s zodiac sign. “Doc is a true Aries, period!” he says, passionately raising the volume of his voice. “I think his best quality is how meticulous he is about his art form. He’s a creative’s creative.” Whereas Redman, who also goes by the nickname Funk Doctor Spock, focuses on a variety of Meth’s qualities: “Besides him being a great dad, a good family man, a good friend and little brother to me, he’s great at motivating people. He takes his star-ism, if you will, very serious . . . another thing I like about him is he’s a straight shooter. If he doesn’t like something, he just says it.”

As formidable as the two rappers are together, they’re just as successful—if not more so—individually. Method Man first burst onto the scene as one of the standout performers on Wu-Tang Clan’s debut LP, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers).

Stealing the show on a number of tracks from the classic album—first and foremost the eponymous “Method Man”— his hardcore bars, witty punchlines, trademark gruff delivery and raspy vocal tone catapulted him to superstardom.

The New York rapper’s debut LP, Tical, arrived in 1994, winning him a Grammy for the album’s iconic R&B collaboration with Mary J. Blige, “I’ll Be There for You/You’re All I Need to Get By.” This in turn opened up a plethora of opportunities and allowed him to flourish in a variety of other pursuits, including a successful acting career. But in recent years, the 53-year-old has turned his focus to fitness, specifically weight training, which has amplified the sexsymbol status he’s modestly worn for the last three decades.

But this focus was more about self-care than a vanity project.

“It started out as just a coping mechanism for insomnia, but then it turned into so much more,” Meth explains. “It’s crazy when you get in tune with your body, and you know what it can do and how much you can get out of it. You start pushing limits that you never thought you could meet before, and then when you meet those, you start to create new limits.”

Meth, who has his own sportswear brand, Tical Athletics, shares his workout videos online to not only track his progress but inspire others to get in the gym. “For anyone wanting to get into fitness, do it,” he says, before preempting one of the common excuses he hears from those who don’t work out. “There’s 24 hours in a day. You’ll take an hour out to watch your favorite program on TV. Why not take an hour out and do something for yourself?”

Not just a fitness buff, Method Man spent a lot of time as a kid playing lacrosse, which proved to be cathartic for the WuTang rhymer. “Because of the environment I grew up in as a child, I didn’t exude a lot of control. I wasn’t in control of what I wore, I wasn’t in control of what I ate, I wasn’t even in control of where I slept, really,” he says. “But being on that field, whether it was lacrosse or football, I knew I could control that. That’s where I found my peace, because that was nobody else’s but mine. And no one else can control what happens on that field.”

This love for the game led to Meth using his star status to help the PLL (Premier Lacrosse League) promote the sport— through merch drops, sportswear collabs and an original new track titled “Boom,” as well as gear donations to 10 different lacrosse nonprofits. “When they presented [the opportunity] to me, I jumped at the chance to be a part of it, and especially

HIP-HOP

“We knew we had something special, and we came together and made something special,” Red says. for some of the ideas they had, as far as putting sticks in the hands of urban youth, because that’s how it was presented to me,” he recalls. “We were in some of the toughest neighborhoods in Long Island, but we had sports, and just the sports alone kept me out of trouble that day or whatever period that I was playing. And not only that, it taught me camaraderie, it taught me sacrifice for others, it taught me how to be a great teammate.”

Redman’s favorite extracurricular activity, however, is more extreme in nature. A keen skydiver, the New Jersey rapper, known for his animated rap style and comedic lyrical content, was first introduced to the high-flying pursuit as part of a photo shoot for hip-hop magazine XXL back in 1997. Coming on the heels of his acclaimed third album, Muddy Waters, and right before the release of his most successful album to date, 1998’s platinum-selling Doc’s da Name 2000, Red trekked up to Jersey’s Skydive the Ranch and jumped out of a plane for the first time.

“I did the four-hour course that day. I jumped tandem with me on somebody’s back, and then they were on my back, and then I jumped by myself that same day, which was unheard of,” the 54-year-old says. However, it almost ended in disaster when only half of his parachute opened.

“I caught my first malfunction on my first solo jump. If I hadn’t paid attention to the course, it probably would have ended very differently for me.”

Despite this near-tragic first jump—which would scare most people away—skydiving became an important part of the Def Squad rapper’s life, helping him through a tough divorce and offering an escape as he fought depression.

“It’s definitely like therapy [for me],” Redman admits.

“There’s no judgment in skydiving, because once you’re ready to jump out the plane, it doesn’t matter if you’re rich, poor, Black, white, green, alien. It’s about the knowledge and the fate of you landing. So the convo is different. How you greet people is different. With skydivers, there’s no dress code; it’s just strictly good conversation and no judgment, and that’s what I love about it.”

He’s also made some good friends along the way, including Red Bull Air Force skydiver Jeff “Jeffro” Provenzano. “If you don’t know who Jeff Provenzano is, do your research,” he says of his daredevil friend. “He’s like one of the Jordans of skydiving. I actually did my first jump when he was on his 97th jump. I remember he asked me to sign his book, which tracks all your skydives.”

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While Redman is known more for his music—in fact, even non-rap fans will probably recognize him from his guest appearance on Christina Aguilera’s global hit “Dirrty”—he’s appeared a few times on the big screen, including alongside Method Man in the pair’s stoner cult classic How High. But it’s his partner in rhyme who has really leaned into acting, so much so that he’s now one of the most recognizable film and TV stars to emerge from hip-hop—although, he didn’t take it very seriously when he first started exploring the craft.

“We were just doing it to have fun. There was never any inclination to go further with acting. My manager can attest to that, because I dragged my ass for a lot of years,” recalls Method Man, who today has over 100 acting credits to his name. “Acting has given me a great second act. I prefer it more than making music. There are so many different nuances, and the aesthetics of it are so vast that you will never get bored. I am pleased to be sitting here able to call myself an actor, and other actors agree.”

Meth has gained some notoriety in recent years for his turn as Davis MacLean in 50 Cent’s popular Starz series, Power Book II: Ghost, a role he says “challenged” him. But given the rapper’s acting résumé, which includes movies like Belly, Trainwreck, Garden State and Keanu, and the TV shows Godfather of Harlem, The Wire and Marvel’s Luke Cage, it seems he was equipped to take on the challenge all along.

As far as partnerships go, Method Man and Redman are the gold standard. A talented pair of comic misfits with a genuine love for one another, they support each other’s solo ventures and always make magic when it’s time to join forces—even if they can’t seem to get on the same page about doing a third joint LP. “I want to do a Blackout! 3, maybe like 12 songs,” Red says with an air of optimism, before Meth laughs it off.

“We are not even focused on no Blackouts! or any of that shit right now. Brother, we are focused on this TV and movie stuff and producing as well. We’ve got to get these stories out there.” Whether the pair release another album together or not, their legacy is built to last.

Check out Method Man & Redman in the latest episode of Red Bull Spiral with Raekwon now.

METHOD MAN / REDMAN

Raekwon (left), a founding member of Wu-Tang Clan, recently joined Redman and Method Man in the studio for a taping of Red Bull Spiral.

HIP-HOP Playlist

TRACKS

RHYME & REASON

Arguably one of rap’s best lyricists, Wu-Tang Clan’s Raekwon salutes the MCs who informed his style.

WILL LAVIN

Few MCs can command respect quite like New York rapper Raekwon.

The 54-year-old (real name Corey Woods) rose to prominence in the early ’90s as a founding member of the legendary hip-hop collective Wu-Tang Clan before his classic solo debut, Only Built 4 Cuban Linx…, solidified him as one of rap’s all-time greats. Rae believes that any true lyricist should pay homage to those who came before him: “If you want to be great, you have to acknowledge the greats,” he says. Here the revered wordsmith highlights four songs by the MCs who inspired his captivating rhyming style.

ERIC B. & RAKIM “Eric B. Is President” (1986)

“This came at a time I started to pay attention to hip-hop on a bigger scale, and I had an idol in Rakim to look at from a lyricist perspective—he was dropping some serious knowledge. Then when I saw him perform it live, it really was a lights, camera, action moment for me, because it gave me a blueprint to the lifestyle I wanted to live.”

SLICK RICK “Children’s Story” (1988)

“Just like us, Rick had the mindset of a young vandal getting into things.

He was a dope storyteller, and that’s what I started to realize was one of my superpowers. I kind of built my career around doing a lot of stories, cinematic rhymes and just trying to paint pictures.

But Rick was the godfather of that.”

BIG DADDY KANE “Ain’t No Half-Steppin’ ” (1988)

“Kane was a master at emphasizing the strength behind your wordplay—and the cleverness. That’s what I loved. This was just a dope rhyme all the way through.

‘You’re just a butter knife, I’m a machete’— when I heard that bar, my mind started picturing objects. It was a big part of me loving the culture of music.”

Catch Raekwon in the latest episode of Red Bull Spiral with Method Man and Redman.

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“This record took everything to the next level. I think we played it probably 500 times in the community, walking up the street in 80-degree weather with the radio in our hand. As far as hooks go, this record amplified our energy. When it came to being on the block representing hip-hop, it’s when I knew hip-hop was going to be here forever.”

Koury Angelo

MC SHAN “The Bridge” (1986)

HIP-HOP

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On the eve of her solo-album debut, the Bajan artist Amanda Reifer talks about breaking out on her own— and how Kendrick made her a better songwriter.

WORDS BY DANYEL SMITH PHOTOS BY PIPER FERGUSON

HIP-HOP

Her towering chignon is adorned with charms. Silky

tights cling to softly muscled legs, and chunky rings grace long fingers. The singer-songwriter Amanda Reifer, who stands in 5-inch heels as if they were Loewe Flow Runners, nimbly drops into a hip-hop squat, bottom inches away from a patch of seamless black paper. Strobe lights flash, and staffers stage-whisper about oat milk lattes and spicy lamb pitas. This is a photo shoot, and the looks are a classic music-marketing mood: sexy-girl-singer-onthe-cusp-of-what’s-next. But Reifer’s energy transforms the typical It Girl aesthetic. Just as her artistic vocabulary is both raucous and relaxed, her serene body language quivers with irrepressibility.

“Right here, Amanda!” In the dark room, people call for her to look toward the lights, but Reifer’s hazel eyes have drifted into a thousand-yard stare. She’s focused on the details of her shoot, but she has been thinking a lot about how she got here—from Barbados to London to Montreal to California. From ambitious teen in a popular singing group to a solo artist collaborating with the most esteemed rapper of our time. “This whole journey,” Reifer tells me later, “has been one of discomfort. And constantly putting myself in positions. Even moving to Los Angeles—with no money, no plan.” She didn’t even know where she would live.

“I knew I could couch surf for a minute,” she says. “It wasn’t comfortable, but it was necessary.”

Staying creative and disciplined even while her life was chaotic was a challenge, but Reifer would have it no other way. “I humbly was just reaching out to people saying I’d love to work,” she tells me, in a cinnamon-scented huddle room at the Red Bull North America HQ in Santa Monica. When working out of various studios, she’d remind people that she was willing to write for other artists.

I just want to make music was her mantra, and it, along with her work ethic, began to pay off. “I’d come in the studio early,” she tells

me, “or stay later after [someone else’s] session to work on my stuff.” This led to relationships with creatives like Grammynominated producer Charlie Heat (Kanye West, Madonna, Travis Scott, Sevyn Streeter), whom she eventually worked with on the singles “Duppy” (2019) and “Rich Bitch Juice” (2020).

Other standout songs from that period include “Ransom,” with its arresting zip-tie graphic, and “Shitty Day,” which captures—with emotional nuance and lyrical specificity—the dog days of Southern California’s COVID-19 lockdowns. Reifer’s caged-bird verses about loneliness and Love Island and violent thoughts are vital and make one feel less crazy for remembering not only that it all really happened but that we were surviving with only our metaphorical panties on, not even caring if it was “nice outside.” By the time the pandemic eased and work picked up again, Reifer was working with manager and Title 9 Productions founder Carmen Murray, and they placed themselves on a path of completing a full Amanda Reifer album project. Reifer was also being called to the studios more—and not just to write for others. People wanted to work on her songs.

She was thrilled. Because as much as Reifer can create alone, at home, she loves the collaborative and community spirit of good recording studios. “I’ll mull off an idea for days,” says Reifer about her process. “But oftentimes it’s in-the-moment, instinctual. It may start with me hearing chords. I always go to, What does that make me feel? Because I don’t want to restrict myself to the planning of, I have to write this record. I want to hear something.

For it to move me.” Soon after, Reifer was moved by something extraordinary.

At a recording studio, while putting in work on a fellow artist’s project, the girl who had only just started making a living again, in music, simply turned around. And Kendrick Lamar was standing there. “No one warned me that there was a possibility!”

Amanda Reifer was photographed for The Red Bulletin in Santa Monica on September 9.

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AMANDA REIFER

HIP-HOP

Reifer’s signature updo is a soft callback to the Mauby women of Barbados, who balanced buckets of the spiced drink on their heads.

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Getty Images

AMANDA REIFER

she says, clearly still wowed by the moment. With a huge smile, Reifer tries to explain the feelings: “As Caribbean people, we try to be cool . . . but what the fuck? Right?” She is laughing. “I was definitely like, ‘Yo, this is crazy.’ ” She says Lamar listened to what she was working on. “He was like, ‘Your pen is crazy. It is, though.’ He really liked my work. And at that time, he was working on Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers.”

Lamar told her he had an idea for something. “He was wondering if I’d be interested in being a part of his idea,” she says. “I managed to stay conscious and be like, ‘Yeah.’ ” But Reifer knew not to set her heart on anything. “Just that acknowledgement that I was doing well meant so much to me,” she says. “If that was all I got out of that moment, I was grateful.”

But Lamar’s people did reach out a few weeks later—just when Reifer was fighting an ugly lack of inspiration. “I was like, ‘God, how do I get out of this . . . writer’s block?’ And he goes, ‘Get in the studio with Kendrick Lamar and team.’ Oh yeah, God was looking out. I was like, ‘This week?’ I had no choice.” So she reached into herself. “You got to show up. Right?” She throws her head back at the memory. “I tried to show up as my best and give my best. I was also like, ‘I’m going to learn. This is a gift. This is an opportunity for me to grow.’ ” Reifer says that working with Team Kendrick helped her become a better writer and a better artist. “I really appreciate them,” she says, “because these are men with incredible accolades, and they gave me the space to have my voice, and say what I want, and write how I want, without any pressure of them imposing what they wanted on me.” The situation was unlike anything she’d experienced before.

“Die Hard,” the grimy yet effervescent song Reifer co-wrote with Kendrick Lamar and Blxst, became the third single from 2022’s universally acclaimed and wildly successful Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers. Produced by Baby Keem, Sounwave, FNZ, DJ Dahi and J. Lbs., “Die Hard” is a near-perfect, three-artist rapcentric performance in the dazzling tradition of not only Usher’s flawless 2004 “Yeah” featuring Lil Jon and Ludacris, but also Wale, J. Cole and Melanie Fiona’s 2009 “Beautiful Bliss,” Luis Fonsi’s remix of “Despacito” with Daddy Yankee and Justin Bieber, and Taylor Swift’s “End Game” featuring Ed Sheeran and Future (both from 2017).

That time in the studio was flagrantly fruitful. “Die Hard” is a song in which Blxst hopes—like so many of us—that it’s not too late to set his demons straight. A song in which Lamar earnestly wants to know if he can open up and if he’s in a safe space—or not. It’s a song where Reifer sings with honeyed urgency of deepdeep feelings and the goddess Seraphina’s flames. Like the ankle straps on Reifer’s photo-shoot pumps, her chorus is both dainty and tough. And like at the shoot, Reifer stands 10 toes down on the truths of her art. “Die Hard” was eventually Grammynominated for Best Melodic Rap Performance, and since Mr. Morale was also nominated for Album of the Year, Amanda Reifer has the honor (and industry status) of two Grammy nods. Her first solo album, The Reifer Files, is now on deck, and each “file,” whether it’s audio or visual or a combination, is being released bit by tantalizing bit.

At the photo shoot, Reifer moves into a few dramatic poses.

She’s doing that thing, staring into space when a mostly tasknegative brain is active. Neurons make connections between the unconscious and the unseen. Sis is with us, but she’s deep within her own imagination. It feels like she’s considering her future, and how it intersects with her past.

As a teenager and aspiring singer-songwriter growing up in Barbados, Reifer worked for Red Bull as a member of the Wings Team, a program that gives student marketers the opportunity to gain experience by generating enthusiasm for the brand. The job allowed her to save money to buy her first laptop, pay for studio time and network at music events.

At the same time, the ambitious teen was also the lead singer of a burgeoning high school group called Cover Drive. The Barbadian quartet, which also included Jamar Harding, T-Ray Armstrong and Barry Hill, soon left the island nation for London. Against almost all odds, the band became a huge success. By 2011, they had a top 10 U.K. hit with “Lick Ya Down,” and they were soon opening for their Bajan countrywoman Rihanna on her Loud tour of that same year. In 2012, the group’s bouncy “Twilight” debuted at No. 1 in the U.K., and they traveled on the Stronger tour with Kelly Clarkson.

But over the following five years, the crew’s energy shifted.

“The manager of our group,” says Reifer, “was our drummer’s mother . . . [And] slowly but surely, I started to give up my voice.

That started to change the dynamic and increase the control people had over my life. Even though I was lead singer, I wasn’t really in control of my own life. A lot of decisions were made for me.” She was isolated—and depressed. “I found myself in a position where even financially I didn’t have independence. Even down to if I needed to make a doctor’s appointment. I had to ask.”

Shortly after high school, Reifer had a No. 1 hit in the U.K. as the lead singer of Cover Drive. In 2012, the Barbadian group opened for Kelly Clarkson’s Stronger tour.

THE RED BULLETIN

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“I’ll mull off an idea for days, but oftentimes it’s instinctual. What does it make me feel?”

AMANDA REIFER

THE RED BULLETIN

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HIP-HOP

At that point, Reifer says, she finally took a hard step back. For the group’s fans, she wanted to preserve a lovely memory of what Cover Drive had been, but it was difficult. “There was this whole other side that was heavy, and . . . dark.” In 2018, with barely any money in hand, Reifer bolted to her sister’s place in Montreal.

“I was able to get a flight, and . . . I didn’t tell anyone [in the group] what I was doing.”

She stayed in Canada for a bit, and then Reifer went home to Barbados, to rally creatively. “I didn’t represent the three guys in Cover Drive and what they felt or thought. I’m a woman . . . my thoughts are not going to be what theirs are. And so the freedom that has come now is everything. Being able to just—without censorship—include all of who I am. Including the parts that aren’t that pretty.”

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Those parts are within some of the released and as-yetunreleased audio and visuals from The Reifer Files, her debut solo LP on Atlantic Records. Comparisons will be made to Rihanna because they’re both Barbadian and have mesmerizing goldhazel-emerald-slate eyes. Both of them have cool, idiosyncratic voices, and an apparent and enviable comfort with their bodies.

Add to that a glowing charisma? It’s ultramagnetic.

But Reifer has her own specific influences. Perhaps it was all the time in London, but in some moments, like in the underwater visual for “Bitch Like Me (Intro),” and the smoothly operating vocals of so many Reifer songs, the pacific intensity of Sade is clear. Reifer’s signature tall updo is a soft callback to the Mauby women of Barbados, who became popular around the 1950s for balancing buckets of the spiced drink on their heads and

AMANDA REIFER

dispensing it from a tap for thirsty customers. But in the glory of Reifer’s crown is also the aura of Erykah Badu, especially her imagery from around the time of 1997’s Baduizm. Erykah’s headwraps reached for the sky back then (as her bowlers and top hats often still do), and the effect was often that of a casual, yet profoundly meaningful halo. Tendrils of Badu’s deliciously arcane sass—in songs like 1997’s “Tyrone” and 2008’s “Honey”—creep into songs like Reifer’s upcoming “Tell You About Yourself.” In the video for the song, Reifer’s masked hood homies pop wheelies on off-road dirt motorcycles as she, in a wisp of a tank top, rides one backward, in stilettos. She’s rapping hard as Megan or Flo Milli— or Patra—about a guy who’s always coming “around town talking heavy-heavy.” The song is rowdy and hyper-relevant and needs to live in the world, right now. “It’s a conversation,” Reifer says of the soulful, raunchy ditty. “I like when people show up . . . for real.”

It’s so clear how much Reifer loves her work. The photo shoot has been over, but charms still sparkle in her hair. She’s excited and wants to show more clips than have been approved and tell more secrets than she should—about collaborators, about proper release dates—but she gets herself sorted and goes back to the video for “Tell You.” She’s proud of having directed it on the tightest of budgets, and of having done her own stunts. She also knows that the song, in far more relatable language, asks sophisticated questions about love and relationships. How do you regulate your emotions? Are you able to self-soothe? How do you deal with your troubles? What are you into? “Yes,” says Reifer with a sigh. “Who do you show up as? The whole thing is about who a guy really is, not who they’re trying to act like to pull a girl. I’m interested in that: Do you meditate? Or do you fuck bitches? Which one?” Kendrick Lamar was correct when he said Reifer’s pen is crazy. “Let me know,” says Reifer. “So I can make a proper decision.”

Amanda Reifer’s mother is a French teacher, and her father is an engineer and builder. “I love figuring things out, and puzzles,” she says. And as she talks about language, and building songs, it all makes sense. “When I started writing,” she says, “it was in my room with a notebook. Then a few years later, I saved up some money, got a laptop. Started recording myself in GarageBand.”

Reifer says she still has her old notebook, but her process has evolved even further. “I like to actually sit with my co-writer, or on my own on the mic, and just . . . record and edit and hear and write all at once.”

Hear what, though? Her own imagination? “Yeah.” It’s giving golden-era hip-hop immediacy. It’s giving faith in one’s ability.

“There are a few songs.” she says, “where I’ll go back and edit what I’ve done. But I prefer to write and record as I go.” She pauses. “Sometimes,” Reifer says, “I don’t refine it.” At all.

Her face is calm. People drift by like friendly ghosts—some hoping for a croissant, some tugging at Amanda to come see this bit of video, or that bit from a chat. Others just want her gaze to grace them for a moment. But Amanda’s mood has shifted. The talk of process and notebooks and collaboration has stirred her.

It feels like she’s already elsewhere, perhaps at a studio, where there is both community and dark spaces where she can create, solo. On her way out, she can be heard charming folks up and down the hallway. She’s long since shed the pumps and tights in favor of more cozy gear. She’s shed all of us, really. In her mind, Amanda Reifer is already wherever brilliant music needs making.

“What we made,” she says dreamily of her time with Team Kendrick, “in that room, was right.” Yes indeed. Big dreams die hard.

HIP-HOP The Conversation

DON’T CALL IT A COMEBACK LL Cool J discusses his longawaited return to rap, his impressive fitness journey and the best advice he’s ever received.

WILL LAVIN

After 40 years of making music, LL Cool J is still a force to be reckoned with. So fittingly, his first album in over a decade is named The FORCE (an acronym for “Frequencies of Real Creative Energy”). The album sees the rapper, actor and business mogul teaming up with hip-hop heavyweights including Eminem, Nas and Snoop Dogg for a project produced entirely by A Tribe Called Quest legend Q-Tip. Beginning his rap career in 1984 at the age of 16 with the release of his first single, “I Need a Beat,” LL (real name James Todd Smith), now 56, wants to prove that age is nothing but a number and eradicate the stigma that hip-hop is a young person’s game. “I don’t know where that perception came from other than the fact that it’s a young genre,” he says. “I feel like I can still move the needle creatively.”

10 QUESTIONS

1

You’ve been making music professionally now for 40 years. What is it that inspires you to keep on rapping all these years later?

It’s the love. I really love music that much. People will say, “Well, financially you have the freedom to do whatever you like, so why this?” But what people don’t realize is, why would I stop doing something that I used to do for free once I’m getting compensated to do it?

When you love it, and when you really care, you should just want to do it.

2

You famously told fans in the opening line of your 1990 hit “Mama Said Knock You Out” not to call that release a comeback. Your new album, The FORCE, is your first in over 11 years. Is this finally your comeback?

No. It’s not a comeback because I’ve been loving music and doing music this whole time. It might be a reintroduction of sorts, but no, we can never call it a comeback.

3

The album is produced entirely by Q-Tip. What was it that made you want to work on an entire project with him?

I think Tip is a really, really sophisticated producer. He’s a feel kinda guy, but he’s also science and soul. So he’s going to play with the math and be like, “This is arpeggio— does that mathematically line up?

These chords, do they mathematically line up?” So he’s science and soul, plus he’s a musician and obviously an MC as well.

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4

Before Q-Tip came on board, you were actually working on an album produced entirely by Dr. Dre, but you ultimately scrapped it. Why was that?

The music Dre made was incredible.

I mean, it’s unbelievable. I just felt like the songwriting, which is what I was bringing to the table, it wasn’t undeniable. It just wasn’t doing it for me. And I think it comes from being in a bubble and not knowing you’re in a bubble. I think a lot of artists can get a couple of dollars, or their lifestyle changes, and they can be in a bubble and not know it. You can lose touch on what’s going on in the real world, and that affects your songwriting. Bob Dylan is not gonna write “All Along the Watchtower” if he’s not out there seeing what’s going on, you know?

You’re not writing that from the suite, you’re writing that from the ground floor.

5

So are you saying you were a little out of touch?

That’s exactly what I’m saying.

And I think that being out of touch and not knowing it is very real, and if you don’t acknowledge that and remedy it in some way, shape, form or fashion, you’re going to create music that doesn’t resonate with the people that you expect to walk through your gallery. You’re going to paint paintings that no one in the gallery can relate to. So with Dre I felt like I was writing but I wasn’t really relating. The music was there, the sonic beds, the soundscape was there. There’s no question about that. But it’s like, what are you writing? You can’t just rap good about the wrong thing.

“I really love music that much. When you love it, you should just want to do it.”

Chris Parsons

LL Cool J, 56, recently sat down to discuss his return to rap.

HIP-HOP The Conversation

During the New Year’s Eve 2024 celebration in Times Square, LL Cool J revved up the crowd with an electrifying performance of his 1997 hit “Phenomenon.”

6

You’ve become a very accomplished actor over the years, too, with some impressive film and TV credits to your name. Would you say you prefer acting or music more?

It’s funny, man. I don’t like to limit myself but I know I love music more.

But I do enjoy doing these films and television shows. I really do. I just love music more.

7

One of your earliest acting roles saw you star alongside Robin Williams in the 1992 comedy Toys. This year marked the 10th anniversary of his death. What can you remember about working with him?

Robin was hilarious, man, and he was so quick-witted. He was smart.

He was a good guy. I would have never in a million years thought he wasn’t happy. But we had a ball working together. We were cool.

He was making all these crazy jokes.

He’d come to the set sweating, like a

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8

I was looking in the mirror one day and I turned to the side, and when I looked at the side of my body [my obliques], it looked like somebody had taken a pebble and [acts out a throwing and wobble motion], and I said, “What the fuck?

Nah, I gotta get in shape.” And that was it. It was that simple. You know what you see in the mirror. It could be somebody who’s slim. Even though they err on the slim side, they know when that slim is the right slim or the wrong slim.

9

10 Given the success you’ve had, what would you say is the best advice you’ve ever received, and from whom?

That’ll be my grandmother. “If a task is once begun, never leave it ’till it’s done. Be that labor great or small, do it well or not at all.”

That’s been an amazing bit of programming. She programmed my software very good with that one.

And my mother told me, “You could do anything you put your mind to.”

Those two pieces of advice and that combination of programming [is what got me here].

full lather of sweat, as if he had just come from a workout. He was a real one. He really was. You know how they say don’t meet your heroes?

He was great and always funny.

Besides rapping and acting, you’re also very dedicated to fitness. You’re 56 and in incredible shape. When did your interest in working out first begin?

Me and my mother always loved boxing. I used to see [Muhammad] Ali training, and then as I grew older, I’d see Sugar Ray [Leonard] training, and [Marvelous Marvin] Hagler and [Mike] Tyson. I’d also see guys in my neighborhood come home from prison in great shape, so it was just ingrained in me from a young age to stay in shape.

Judging from your physique in the “Luv U Better” video, you kicked your training up a notch in the early 2000s. Was there something in particular that motivated you to do this?

LL Cool J’s new album, The FORCE, is out now via Def Jam Recordings; llcoolj.com

Getty Images

Forty years after his professional debut at age 16, LL Cool J (pictured here in 1985) remains passionate about making music.

HIP-HOP

Portfolio

NORMSKI In his own words, British photographer Normski recounts how he captured hip-hop’s golden age.

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Public Enemy’s Chuck D and Flavor Flav

NORMSKI

Def Jam Tour, Hammersmith Odeon, London, 1987 “I’m very proud of this photograph. It was the ’87 Def Jam Tour [also featuring Eric B. & Rakim and LL Cool J], which was the turning point for hip-hop. The whole world changed when Public Enemy came on that stage to the Armageddon siren.

They shouted things that we all never even knew we were thinking, and I’m right at the front. I had never seen people run up and down the stage like that. They had the S1Ws [Security of the First World] marching in formation, Terminator X was cutting and scratching ...

I didn’t know what to look at. It was insane!

I’ve had this photograph reposted by Chuck D, proudly saying this was the first time they ever played London. A huge moment in hip-hop.”

Goldie

HIP-HOP

Blue Note, London, 1996 “Goldie always talks about how this one picture captures his soul more than any other.

This was at one of his Metalheadz events at the Blue Note club in Hoxton.

I was on the floor and then—bam!—he walked straight into me. It was the prime of our lives, really. I had my sneaky little Olympus compact camera with me, and I did the rabbit-in-headlights kind of shot on him, which was a bit unfair. I’m lucky because he could have hated it. But he really didn’t. He loves it.”

Jazzie B and Chuck D

NORMSKI

Londoner Norman Anderson, known as Normski, has a knack for being in the right place at the right time. In 1980, aged just 14, the British-Jamaican photographer, DJ and broadcaster bore witness to the inception of hip-hop. Armed with his 35mm camera, he immortalized what would later be known as hip-hop’s “golden age,” capturing the journeys of acts such as LL Cool J, Run-DMC, Public Enemy and N.W.A as they rose to global superstardom in the mid-’80s and early ’90s. “I was a young Black British homeboy photographer,” he says.

“I wasn’t on the sidelines—I was in the thick of it.”

As well as photographing rap culture, Normski, now 58, documented the early history of three of hip-hop’s other pillars: DJing, graffiti and breaking, which were becoming intrinsic parts of the youth scene in the States. And, as an exciting electronic music scene began to develop in the U.K., giving rise to homegrown genres such as jungle and drum’n’bass, Normski found himself in a key role once again.

New York City, 1989 “I knew Soul II Soul from Camden Town. I’d hung out with them several times, and my mates were making music with them. The group had just hit number one on the Billboard chart.

When I heard the news, I thought it was epic.

Next thing I know, they’re in New York to do a live gig supporting Funkadelic at the Palladium, and I happened to be there.

So I extended my stay and waited in the car park at the back of the venue to surprise them.

This picture was taken right after they got out of their limo. Chuck D [of Public Enemy] was a VIP guest who’d come to congratulate the group on their number one.”

Traveling between Detroit—the birthplace of techno—and London, he recorded the evolution of these emergent musical and social movements, too.

His book, Normski: Man with the Golden Shutter, released last year, features previously unseen photographs of young artists from this time, including Ice Cube, Goldie, Queen Latifah, De La Soul, Salt-N-Pepa and Cypress Hill. “There are young Black males in a lot of my photographs,” he says.

“That’s because I understood those guys; I felt their journey reflected mine. I had an honest interest in their world, which meant that I was respected and accepted into their circles, and in turn, they made me the photographer I became. In time, I was lucky enough to be at the genesis of movements— notably hip-hop, techno and jungle—that would become global phenomena.”

Here, Normski walks us through his career and shares what it was like witnessing the birth of hip-hop in real time.

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Queen Latifah

HIP-HOP

Empire State Building, New York City, 1980s “This was a crazy day. We were shooting for [nowdefunct mag] Hip-Hop Connection, and the interviewer suggested it might be cool to go to the top of the Empire State Building and shoot young Queen Latifah like the queen of New York. It was super windy, and her hair was blowing all over the place—it really proved to be quite difficult. But we did manage to get this moment. And she didn’t get blown off the roof.”

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NORMSKI

B-boy Drew

HIP-HOP

Covent Garden, London, 1985 “In this photograph, I’m shooting on color slide film for the first time. This is me learning, shooting at night and using flash, which was something that I hadn’t really done much at that point.

I caught the emotion of Drew, though. He was one of the baddest B-boys. It was a spectacle. It was amazing just standing around in a circle, watching these nutters swinging around and making it look cool. The finish and freeze put the exclamation point on it.”

Music of Life Records, Hanway Street, London, 1988 “We used this shot for MC Duke’s single “I’m Riffin.’ ” I really love this shot. This is me trying to create a lovely, stylish, fashionable black-and-white portrait, and we got it. And look at those rings!

There’s the signet ring, the money rings—they’re so English.

He was an east London boy. We didn’t have chunky jewelry like the Americans; we had a different way, slightly more refined.”

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MC Duke

NORMSKI

Carl Craig

HIP-HOP

Covent Garden B-boys

NORMSKI

Detroit, 1987 “This photo was taken on my second trip to Detroit. Carl Craig was a second-generation Detroit techno musician and protégé of [Metroplex Records founder] Juan [Atkins], who was on the come-up, so he was shyly just having a little mix kneeling down on the floor. The Metroplex building we’re in was like a madhouse of techno people. Juan’s studio looked like a living room he’d converted, and there were tape machines all around where they would put these amazing loops together.”

London, 1983 “This is the first hip-hop photograph I ever took. It’s really early on and hip-hop was just starting out. While I don’t know the name of this crew, I recently found out that the guy on the right is actually MC Duke, and it’s his little crew that performed down there from 1980 to ’81. Covent Garden was derelict and busted up, but buskers would go down.”

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2024 ISSUE 4

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E E E E E E E E E Red Bull Rampage

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Garrett Reynolds

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Lael Wilcox

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Bartek Wolinski

Casey Brown

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LEAPS BOUNDS WORDS BY PETER FLAX

AND

With the groundbreaking debut of female competitors, the 2024 rendition of Red Bull Rampage was one for the history books.

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Vaea Verbeeck (left) blitzed a triple jump with three consecutive airs, earning her a fourth-place finish.

(Right) Goomes, who jokingly calls herself “Backflip Barbie” and rides a pink and blue bike, shows her stuff in her winning run.

Bartek Wolinsk (2), Robin O’Neill

Vaea Verbeeck

seven of the best female freeride mountain bikers carried and rolled their bikes up to the iconic and lofty start gate to participate in the inaugural Red Bull Rampage women’s competition—and then demonstrated to the world that they were ready for the moment. Years of advocacy had set the table for this historic occasion, and now those seven women feasted.

Though the groundbreaking session was packed with amazing riding, the first run of the day turned out to be the best, as Robin Goomes of New Zealand had a stunning performance, executing two perfect backflips, nailing a 40-foot-plus drop and showing tons of technical finesse.

It was good enough for an 85-point score and a first-place trophy at the end of the day.

Two Canadians—Georgia Astle and Casey Brown—joined Goomes on the first-ever women’s Rampage podium. Astle, originally an alternate, justified her inclusion with a precise ride that ended with a sweet suicide no-hander. And Brown, who has long been an advocate for the inclusion of women in the event, flew down an extremely narrow and steep chute and then spent hours in the finishing corral hugging the other competitors. But beyond the podium, everyone who participated was a key part of a huge victory and leap forward for women’s freeriding. Surely there were young women watching—whether at the venue in Virgin, Utah, or spectating online—who saw history being made and imagined their own possibilities shifting.

Chelsea Kimball

History was made on Thursday, October 10, when

Robin Goomes

RED BULL RAMPAGE

Georgia Astle shows her style near the bottom of her second-place run.

(Facing page, bottom left) Casey Brown, who first watched Rampage in 2008, finally had her dream to participate come true—and she stomped it.

Bartek Wolinski

Georgia Astle

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A Rampage fan drops facts

Casey Brown

Christian Pondella (2), Robin O’Neill

Astle, Goomes and Brown

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Showing his trademark artistry, Brandon Semenuk won his fifth Rampage title with a stunning second run in difficult windy conditions.

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Bartek Wolinski

Brandon Semenuk

It was a windy day for the men contesting Red Bull Rampage on October 12. With potentially dangerous gusts disrupting the schedule and causing multiple delays, the competitors had no choice but to wait, make adjustments and hope for a little luck. But despite the blustery challenges, nearly all of the riders put down some sick rides.

For most of the day, the lead was held by Poland’s Szymon Godziek, who laid down a mind-blowing run, somehow piecing together five different flips in less than three minutes. There were front flips, double flips and a backflip over a truly massive drop. Godziek was rewarded with a 91.66 score, which seemed good enough for the win.

American Tyler McCaul also had a strong first run, nailing a beautifully frightful 74-foot canyon gap and integrating stylish tricks into his run. He would end the day on the podium in third.

But the day ultimately belonged to Brandon Semenuk.

In the morning, the Canadian had to bail on his first run after he wasn’t able to complete a backflip tailwhip in windy conditions. Then it was hours of waiting to see if a second run was possible. While most riders chose to pass on a second run, Semenuk dropped in and showed his slopestyle grace, nailing an amazing sequence of tricks, including the tailwhip that had ruined his first run. In the end, Semenuk earned a score of 92.73, narrowly edging Godziek and becoming the first five-time Rampage winner.

RED BULL RAMPAGE

Tyler McCaul

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Tyler McCaul (above) cleared a spine-tingling 74-foot-wide canyon cap en route to a third-place finish at Rampage. The veteran rider finally reached the Rampage podium after 15 years and 11 attempts at the event.

Godziek, Semenuk and McCaul

Thomas Genon

Bartek Wolinski

Szymon Godziek

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BIKE Garrett Reynolds Reynolds, shown here competing at the 2023 X Games in Ventura, California, has won a staggering total of 23 X Games medals.

GOLD STANDARD

BMX veteran Garrett Reynolds has won X Games gold more than anyone in history.

“I’m pretty good with pressure,” says Garrett Reynolds, low-key articulating the BMX equivalent of Steph Curry saying he’s pretty good at free throws.

It certainly was true about Reynolds’ performance at the 2024 X Games in Chiba, Japan, this past September. There, in both his first and second runs, the 34-year-old veteran had minor crashes, which left him sitting in sixth place before his final run. But then, with everything hanging in the balance, he nailed the trick that had gone sideways in his second run—a backward grind on an upward rail to a full cab—and finished strong to win X Games gold.

“To make that last run was a relief,” Reynolds admits.

“I wanted to break the record with my best run.”

The record was one for the history books. There in Chiba, Reynolds had an X Games gold medal draped around his neck for the 16th time, breaking a deadlock with two action-sports legends—snowboarder Shaun White and skater Nyjah Huston.

Reynolds won his first X Games gold way back in 2008.

“I was just a kid when I started going to the X Games,” he says. “I mean, I remember just being psyched that they had free food.” Jokes aside, he recalls competing against

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all the legends of the sport he had grown up watching.

“I was just so excited to see them in person.”

Now, 16 years later, the well-liked rider has been surprised by all the interest in his record-breaking win.

“I am super competitive, but mostly with myself way more than with other riders,” he says. “I don’t take my past achievements too seriously. When I was asked to pose for pictures with all my medals, I had to dig some out of a safe and get a few from my mom’s house. It’s not like I’ve got them hanging on the wall at home.”

Reynolds dedicated his 16th X Games gold medal to his father, Rick, who died suddenly of a heart attack when Garrett was 15. “He was a surfer, but he understood my passion,” Reynolds says, his voice cracking a little. “He always took me to skateparks all over the place, feeding my love to ride. He made my achievement possible, and I thought about him when I broke the record.”

When asked to explain what he loves about riding so much, Reynolds lets out a heavy sigh. “Oh man—I love how I can put my brain to sleep,” he says. “When I ride, my concentration is so high, but at the same time, I’m totally zoned out. That combination is insanely peaceful.”

Getty Images, Koury Angelo

PETER FLAX

“I don’t take my past achievements too seriously,” says Reynolds, who gathered his medals for this photo.

BIKE

riding high In September, endurance cyclist Lael Wilcox crushed a world record, biking 18,000 miles around the globe, but it didn’t crush her—not even close.

WORDS BY BILL DONAHUE

PHOTOS BY RUE KALADYTE

On May 26, Lael Wilcox began her journey in Chicago. She ended her first day 220 miles later in Indianapolis.

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BIKE Even for hardcore riders, biking 160 miles in one day is huge. Wilcox aimed to do that more than 100 times in a row— and do it with a smile.

The expedition started so humbly. On a cloudy

morning in Chicago last May, cyclist Lael Wilcox stood in the cold wind on the side of Lake Michigan, waiting, as a motley array of four dozen other people gathered around her, giddy, sharing what was then a sort of an inside secret.

Wilcox, 38, was about to embark on an intricately planned, 18,000-mile around-the-world ride, intent on beating the women’s Guinness World Record for such a journey—124 days, 11 hours—set

by Jenny Graham, of Scotland, in 2018. She aimed, in fact, to finish two weeks faster than Graham, in 110 days.

Wilcox is a highly decorated endurance cyclist who’s ridden every single road in her native Alaska, camping out with the bears and the wolves. She’s bombed her way along a popular 1,500-mile back-roads route through Mexico’s Baja California faster than any person in history, and her proposed around-the-world route, which would include several flights, loomed as legend: Chicago to New York, Portugal to Georgia, west to east across Australia, south to north through New Zealand’s two islands, then finally Anchorage to Chicago via Los Angeles. The ride would require her to average over 160 miles a day. Her fans, tuning in to niche cycling podcasts and blogs, all knew that, even for hardcore riders, 160 is a huge day. And Wilcox aimed to do it over 100 times in a row.

For all the preride hype, though, the start was conspicuously chill. There were no unctuous speeches from bike industry luminaries. No one sang the national anthem. And as for the snobbery that often is associated with the Lycra-clad cycling elite?

That was absent, too. One rider wore a tie-dye T-shirt. Another, a mom, arrived with a child seat attached to her commuter bike; in it sat a helmeted toddler. These fans had come to know Wilcox as an amiable and smiling ambassador for cycling, and now she did not disappoint. “OK,” she cried cheerfully, “it’s 7 o’clock!

Ready to go!”

A whoop rose from the crowd, and as Wilcox rolled out to conquer the world, the woman bearing the toddler fell in behind her and the whole jovial crowd wended south along the lakefront,

For the first leg of her journey, Wilcox biked from Chicago to New York City in a week.

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LAEL WILCOX

Anchorage chicago los angeles

Chicago to New York City Porto, portugal, to Tbilisi, Georgia Perth to Brisbane, Australia Invercargill to Auckland, New Zealand Anchorage, Alaska, to Chicago Wilcox in the lead, chatty and ebullient, playing the Pied Piper. “It was such a kind group,” she’d say later. “People were so thoughtful and considerate.”

Is it really possible to bike the globe in a cocoon of good vibes?

By the time Wilcox reached the Indiana border—about 2.5 hours and 40 miles into the ride—a tornado watch was in effect, and she was pedaling into a headwind so stiff that, when rain began pelting down and she unpacked her jacket, it almost flew out of her hand.

She kept riding in the downpour and 130 or so miles into the route, a new coterie of fans fell in behind her. One of them got hit by a Jeep and was thrown into a ditch, where she lay, conscious, moving her limbs but otherwise immobile.

Wilcox helped trundle the woman back up to the road on a spine board, assisted in loading her into an ambulance and kept on riding—east—until almost midnight, soon to discover that the crash victim would be OK; she’d broken her pelvis and her wrist, but in time the bones would heal.

Wilcox covered 220 miles that day, 259 the day after that and then 194 on Day 3, which took her through the hills of West Virginia.

On the fourth morning, she woke up nauseous, thanks, she said, to food poisoning, and she spent much of the day vomiting—“off the side of my bike,” she’d remember, “onto my shoes, onto my jacket.”

Though she’d burn more than 4,000 calories that day, pedaling for over 11 hours, she ate almost nothing. Meanwhile, it rained the whole day and lightning cracked the sky—not an auspicious sign for

portugal new yorK

tbilisi

perth

brisbane auckland invercargill

a rider who had over 17,000 miles to go. Still, when she discussed Day 4 months later, what Wilcox remembered most vividly was “a really, really wonderful woman named Leanne,” who rode with her many miles and gave her cookies and gummy bears and also offered Wilcox a morsel of wisdom: “Tomorrow you’ll feel better.”

After Mark Beaumont, of Scotland, set the men’s around-the-world bike record in 2017, riding the requisite 18,000 miles in just 78 days, he resorted to the standard patois of endurance sports to describe his experience: He spoke the language of pain. “It’s been the longest two and a half months of my life,” he told a reporter.

“It has been, without doubt, the most punishing challenge I have ever put my body and mind through.” Beaumont, who rode nearly every mile alone, followed by two support vehicles, said he had found himself in some “very low places” and that he shed tears four times during his trip.

When Jenny Graham recapped her 2018 world tour, she too lapsed occasionally into darkness. In Australia and New Zealand, she said, “I would be wet and cold all night and then have to set off again in wet clothes. It was very horrible at times.” Like Beaumont, Graham rode alone.

Wilcox, in contrast, had company the whole way. Her wife, Rue Kaladyte, a 31-year-old Lithuanian émigré and photographer, trailed her daily in a support vehicle. Often, Kaladyte would be 40 or 50 miles behind Wilcox, scrambling to work out their journey’s

After landing in Europe, Wilcox rode more than 4,800 miles from Porto, Portugal, to Tbilisi, Georgia, which included a quick spin through Paris.

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Here, Wilcox takes a short break on her way from Istanbul to Hendek, Turkey. A few days later, she flew from Tbilisi, Georgia, to Perth, Australia.

complex logistics, but the two met up every few hours so Kaladyte could shoot photos, among them the images accompanying this story, and also video for a forthcoming documentary.

Every night the two women found each other once more and, just before bedtime, they recorded a podcast, Lael Rides Around the World, whose episodes, typically 10 to 15 minutes long, are personal and homespun, like the best old-school zine. Listening, we like these two women. We’re rooting for them, and we can’t help but notice how amiable their drowsy late-night voices are, and how hopeful their outlook is.

“I get to do what I love with the person I love,” we hear Wilcox say at the end of Day 4, discussing her around-the-world trip. She’s nursing her nausea at some chain hotel in podunk Pennsylvania, but still her love for cycling—and for her wife—shine through.

The podcasts aren’t polished, and the delivery is very streamof-consciousness. But in their unrehearsed intimacy, these recordings make us feel as if we’re right there with Lael and Rue, in Turkey or Australia or wherever, and most of the time their gentle observations make us happy. If Mark Beaumont’s circumnavigating journey was an existential sufferfest, Wilcox’s feels, comparatively, like a joyous lark. Her podcast makes the world feel small and friendly, and as her trip wore on, the show developed such a cult following that supporters started to co-opt a question that Wilcox poses of her wife in almost every episode.

Gathered roadside to greet the cyclist as she pedaled by, fans began to call out in unison, “How was your day, Rue?” One diehard who met Wilcox en route sported a bike jersey that had this very question printed on the back.

In less than a month, Wilcox rode more than 4,600 miles across the continent of Australia, starting in Perth and ending in Brisbane.

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“I get to do what I love with the person I love,” Wilcox says to her photographer wife, Rue, on their podcast, Lael Rides around the world.

LAEL WILCOX

Although there were periods where Wilcox biked alone, like here in South Australia, many of her followers tracked her GPS online and met up with her along the way.

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Seine. The photographer had hired a cargo e-bike to transport her through town for a time—leading Wilcox to chortle later on the podcast that Rue followed along on “a couch recliner kind of thing strapped to the front as the guest-of-honor seat.”

Two months into her ride, Wilcox made her way across New Zealand.

Wilcox’s admirers were easily able to track her progress online by monitoring GPS-equipped websites. In recent years, dotwatching has become a thing in ultra-endurance sports like running and cycling, so that the most devoted fans always know exactly where an athlete is on the globe and also how fast they are moving. Wilcox had many followers, and she asked them to come out and ride with her—and they did so, faithfully. When she pushed through greater Paris, for instance, an orange-shirted Englishman appeared out of nowhere to guide her along a dangerous road with high-speed traffic. A contingent of women joined her after that, hollering and celebrating as they passed the Eiffel Tower, and then Wilcox met up with Kaladyte down by the

It’s not really a surprise that Wilcox’s expedition felt more like a movable feast than a grim, humorless athletic campaign. For her, bikepacking has always been about fun and adventure. She got her start at age 20, when, lacking bus money one day, she decided to ride her bike farther than she ever had—40 miles, from her college in Tacoma to her sister’s home in Seattle. Riding along, she concluded she’d hit upon “such a cool way to see my country,” thinking to herself, “I could probably ride about 50 miles a day.”

Soon, with her then-boyfriend, Nick Carman, she became a nomad. The couple worked six months a year, so they could spend the other half of the year touring the world by bike. Over seven years, Wilcox and Carman rode 100,000 miles—across Europe, Southern Africa, Baja California and the Middle East. The focus wasn’t on going fast as much as on cultural exploration—say, sipping homemade brandy with shepherds in the Balkans—and when Wilcox showed up at the start line of her first ultraendurance bike race, an 850-miler in Israel in 2015, she looked pretty casual in her tennis shoes and cotton T-shirt.

But she has always borne both athletic hunger and talent. “The first time she ever picked up a basketball, when she was 8 years old,” says her father, Paul Wilcox, “she sank 33 in a row.” Later, she played on a state championship soccer team in high school, then ran track and cross-country in college.

Wilcox came in second in the Israel race, beating all but one of the men. Then in 2016, she notched her first win overall, at a longer, more prestigious race. The 4,200-mile Trans Am saw over 40 intrepid cyclists speeding, sleep deprived, from Oregon to Virginia without aid from support crews. Wilcox caught the leader—Steffen Streich, a German cyclist—on the race’s last morning. When Streich proposed that they cease competing so they could cross the line tied, Wilcox scoffed, “No, it’s a race!”

Wilcox buried Streich, winning by over two hours, in 18 days, 10 minutes, and thereby stoked a mounting scientific inquiry: Increasingly, physiologists have been asking why it is that, while men can easily beat women in sprints, males’ advantage in ultra events is either slim or nonexistent. In September, a 31-year-old female ultrarunner from Virginia, Tara Dower, broke the men’s fastest known time on the Appalachian Trail, completing the steep, rocky 2,197-mile path in under 41 days.

At the beginning of August, Wilcox rode more than a thousand miles—from the south of New Zealand to Auckland near the northern tip—in just a week.

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LAEL WILCOX

After nearly a hundred days of riding, Wilcox crashes out in a motel in Southern California, where she slept during the day to beat the heat.

Why are women so good at going long? A 2017 study hypothesized that the answer is muscle related. Subjects were asked to flex their foot against a sensor 200 times, finding that men, with more massive sinew than women, tired more rapidly. Another study in 2022 homed in on lab mice and found that females have “a greater ability to mobilize and utilize fatty acids for energy.” Full understanding of female endurance is still forthcoming, though, and after Wilcox beat Streich in 2016, the victory was so puzzled over in the press that Wilcox has said she felt like a “data point.”

Still, true fame didn’t come to the cyclist until 2017, when she met Rue Kaladyte and then became the star of numerous Kaladyte documentaries—among them I Just Want to Ride (2019), which follows Wilcox to victory at the 2,745-mile Tour Divide race, along the spine of the Rockies. Payson McElveen, a Red Bull–sponsored mountain bike racer, sees these films as “a huge new thing” for bikepacking, in that they avoid shouting, “Look, I did something no one else has ever done.” Wilcox may be superhuman in her capacity to ride 12 or 14 hours day after day, but, McElveen says, the focus is instead on delivering “relatable messages. They’re about

the people they meet or the funny food they find along the way.

They’re about being fun forward and inclusive and showing the amazing places they’ve visited. They reach a very broad audience.”

I Just Want to Ride has gotten more than 2 million views on YouTube. But the films are just one part of Wilcox’s effort to inspire more people, especially women, to ride bikes. In 2017, she founded GRIT, or Girls Riding into Tomorrow, a cycling mentorship program that so far has introduced more than 100 11-to-14-year-olds to riding. For her sponsor, Komoot, a navigation app, she’s now leading bike rallies that see women covering 400 or so miles in a week over dirt roads and trails. And even in her downtime, Wilcox plays the kindly evangelist.

Cyclist Brooke Goudy, a Denver nurse who’s the co-leader of a group called Black Girls Do Bike, recalls how nervous she was in 2021, readying for her first run on the epic Tour Divide. “On these long endurance rides,” explains Goudy, “there’s definitely very few Black women.”

Wilcox met with Goudy the day before the race started and told her, “This is a journey you can definitely make.” Goudy finished

For the last major leg of her epic bike trip, Wilcox rode from her native Anchorage to Chicago via Los Angeles.

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Wilcox may be superhuman in her capacity, but her focus is on delivering “relatable messages,” says pro cyclist payson McElveen.

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the ride in 55 days, and now, under the nom de guerre Rowdy Goudy, she regularly leads groups of Black women biking into the mountains. “I owe a lot to Lael,” she says. “We keep in touch.

She has believed in me even more than I believe in myself.”

Guinness’s rules for around-the-world cycling aren’t that extensive.

Riders are obliged to cover at least 18,000 miles, to travel in one direction and to touch two opposite sides of the globe. (For Wilcox, this was Madrid, Spain, and Wellington, New Zealand.) They can’t tuck in behind other riders to cut wind resistance. They need to lead, and they have to finish the journey where they started. They can take flights, but the race clock doesn’t stop ticking when they’re traveling. They’re allowed to follow any route they’d like.

Wilcox began her ride in Chicago, in part because that’s where Kaladyte’s family lives. In Europe, she wanted to resume riding in Vilnius, Lithuania, where Kaladyte was born, and then continue east from there, through Belarus, to log many flat, fast miles in Russia, as both Beaumont and Graham did. But Vladimir Putin is tilting against the West in Ukraine right now, so Wilcox decided

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As she neared the final miles of her 18,000-mile journey, Wilcox picked up the pace at a breakneck speed in an effort to finish one day ahead of schedule.

Russia wouldn’t be safe. She chose instead to start Europe in the mountains of Portugal and to continue on through the French Pyrenees, the Swiss Alps and the Balkan Mountains in Serbia. The switch pleased her. To her, flats are boring; mountains are fun.

Riding through Switzerland, Wilcox reveled in the switchback passes. “You just keep going up,” she’d say after climbing more than 12,000 feet in a single day, “and there are these beautiful meadows and then loose rocks and just stunning views.”

Turkey delivered a culture shock. In villages, Wilcox heard muezzins calling the faithful to prayer, their voices bellowing from speakers affixed to high minarets. Riding east into Istanbul, into a ripping headwind, she withdrew from the world, hunching low over her handlebars and tuning into the ’90s workout mix blasting over her earbuds: MC Hammer, Jay-Z, the Spice Girls.

“I was having a party on my bike,” she’d say on the podcast.

Like Jenny Graham, Wilcox experienced misery in New Zealand.

It was “the middle of winter,” she told one reporter. “My water bottles were freezing, and it would get dark about 5 p.m.” Still, she made it to Auckland, then took a couple flights north from there.

LAEL WILCOX

After she reached her native city, Anchorage, on August 6 and slept at her parents’ house, she’d ridden 11,669 miles and was exactly on pace to finish in 110 days. She traveled south on the Alaska Highway, a route she knows well, into British Columbia, and camped out each night—there are very few motels in the Alaskan bush. Eventually, she hugged the Pacific Coast for 1,300 miles, all the way from Seaside, Oregon, to L.A., then rode into the Mojave Desert of eastern California and Arizona. She slept during the day there, to avoid the heat, but even in the dark it was 107 degrees out.

Wilcox felt like she was pedaling inside a hair dryer.

In eastern Missouri, Wilcox was still on pace for a 110-day finish and feeling good. Save for a little knee pain early in her ride, she’d incurred no injuries on the whole expedition. She decided to gun the last 650 miles into Chicago, in hopes of reaching her starting point, Buckingham Fountain, a day early. Now she rode quickly.

When she neared the arch in downtown St. Louis, there was a little boy sitting beside the trail on his plastic Big Wheel bike, looking eager. Wilcox bent low to give him a friendly wave, but she did not slow down for the kid.

Later, after she’d pedaled through the industrial hinterlands north of St. Louis and across a bridge into Illinois, a pattern emerged. If Wilcox stopped—to pee, say, or to get water—she was brisk and on her own timetable. There were almost constantly other riders moving along in her wake, and they made the journey jubilant, but Wilcox was not about to wait for them. Every second counted. She was on a daunting athletic quest, even if her podcast steered clear of muscle-flexing and swagger. She kept food on her bike and ate as she pedaled. When a middle-aged cyclist named Jennifer Walker tried to ride Wilcox’s wheel as she cut through the cornfields south of Springfield, Illinois, the pro was whaling along at 24 miles an hour. “I wanted to tell her how inspiring she is to me,” Walker says. “But I can’t maintain 24.”

Walker dropped. Wilcox continued on at 24. She wore earbuds and made phone calls. She ate snacks. For her, the pace was business as usual—she was ready to press on at this clip, unfazed, until bedtime. But after Walker caught up to her in a car, Wilcox slowed to a civil 20 miles per hour and Walker got to ride a few miles with her idol. It was evening now, and a fan who lived right on the route was paying tribute to Wilcox. As the two women rode by, he shot fireworks that burst and sparkled in the darkening sky.

Coming into Chicago, Wilcox’s entourage grew. Were there now 60 riders behind her? More? It was impossible to tell, for seemingly at every street corner someone new was standing astraddle their bike, waiting to flow into the peloton.

The herd dominated the roadway, and it moved fast. When Wilcox left the streets, turning left onto Chicago’s Lakefront Trail,

she was going 22 or 23 miles per hour. This is a pace that’s usually reserved for ultraserious cyclists, but now—in the suck of the draft afforded by the large crowd, in the euphoria surrounding Wilcox’s return to Chicago—all manner of riders somehow hung on in the chase. There were cyclists in skirts and in cutoffs. There was a fixie in the midst, and an upright commuter bike. There was something magical about this moment that Lael Wilcox, endurance cycling’s great popularizer, had brought on. And there was danger in the air too: Scores of cyclists, strangers to one another, were redlining it on a narrow, serpentine bike path with blind turns.

Two miles from the finish, an oncoming cyclist cut across the peloton. A scraping sound followed, and then half a dozen riders tumbled to the pavement. Wilcox stopped. Would the last day of her ride be marred, like the first, by a serious crash? Gingerly, she stepped into the crowd to check on the fallen. “Is everyone OK?” she asked. There were a few scraped knees but nothing worse than that. The injured stood up and everyone rode on, swooping over the turns in the path as dusk fell over Lake Michigan.

You could say it was luck—every bicycle outing that ends safely is indebted somewhat to luck. But there was also something more powerful at work. In being at once a super athlete and an accessible human being during the entire 108 days and 12 hours she spent circling the globe, Lael Wilcox had inspired her Chicago fans to take a risk—to go out on a limb, as she’s always done. And there by the lakeside, they were learning that sometimes when you go big, things can work out—in beautiful ways, even.

Wilcox reached the trail’s intersection with Lake Shore Drive at 7:12 p.m. on September 11. She walked her bike across the street and then climbed the half-dozen steps to Buckingham Fountain and held her bike over her head, victorious and silhouetted by the setting sun, as onlookers cheered. Then she slipped off her shoes and sat barefoot on the stone steps, eating a takeout supper Kaladyte had brought to her. That night she slept well.

As the sun set in Chicago, onlookers cheered for a record-breaking Wilcox.

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T T T T T T T T T

E E E E E E E E E Skate the Edge

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SKATE

In an audacious project called Skate the Edge, pro skater Zion Wright braved high winds and a painful wake-up call to notch a historic session 100 floors above New York. Here is an exclusive look at how he pulled off the jaw-dropping demonstration.

WORDS BY COLE LOUISON

PHOTOS BY ATIBA JEFFERSON AND PATRICK O’DELL

SKATE THE EDGE

With lower Manhattan bathed in early-morning light, Zion Wright, 25, takes flight 100 stories above the ground.

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SKATE

The plan was simple; the execution, not so much. Olympian Zion Wright would hold court on a ramp 100 floors and 1,100 feet above Manhattan at sunrise. The project, dubbed Skate the Edge, would enter the record books as the world’s highest skate session.

And if all went well, Wright would pull off a few NBDs—a term skaters use to celebrate tricks that have never been done.

Talks to set it up took almost a year. After all, we’re talking about skating on the highest outdoor observation deck in the Western Hemisphere—a glass-paneled space known as Edge NYC, near the top of 30 Hudson Yards, the sixth-tallest building in New York City.

Marketing, production, building, security and communications teams worked through the challenges for hours over a dozen Zoom meetings. Before shooting day, on the final alignment call, Wright seemed to be the only one unconcerned. “I’ll know when I get there,” he said, as if predicting the future.

On game day, he arrived in the dark, stepping from an Uber at 4:45 a.m., skateboard in hand. Then he crossed the empty lobby and rode the express elevator 100 floors up.

The deck was crowded with producers, filmers, assistants and security personnel. A crew with headlamps had just screwed in the last Masonite panel on the ramp after seven hours of fabrication.

The 8-by-16-foot halfpipe was surrounded by spotlights. Wright hung a portable speaker on one of the lights, then jogged up the ramp’s roll-in to take in the view. To the south, a lonely freighter crossed the harbor, and the top of One World Trade Center blinked at eye level. Far below, the Hudson River looked foil-colored in the dark. A drone buzzed overhead.

Joining Wright in the dark were two iconic skate photographers: Patrick O’Dell and Atiba Jefferson. Both have documented the culture for decades.

Jefferson met Wright a decade ago. The photographer remembers his first impression: “He could skate anything.”

Wright remembers that shoot, too: “It was on.” After 10 years of collaborating, it’s still on.

Wright warmed up to “Thinkin Bout You” (by Frank Ocean, a skater, too). As the horizon began to glow, skater and photographer spoke in code. “Z,” said Jefferson. “Little left. More. Stop. OK.” Wright rolled in again, body tucked and angled, took to the air, spun 360 over Jefferson . . . and landed with a clean, resonant BOOM to roll away, backwards.

“Hell yeah!” shouted Jefferson.

Meanwhile, O’Dell hung back, capturing the whole scene from a wider perspective. “We know Atiba’s going to get the perfect shot of Zion,” O’Dell said. “I don’t need to get that photo. I want people to see how this was done.”

Back on top, Wright nodded along as dawn broke, sweat rolling down his temples. He and Jefferson engaged in a rapid-fire exchange.

“Indy heel?” asked Wright.

“Yup,” answered Jefferson.

“Go?” “Go.” Wright rolled in, took to the air and did a Rockette-like kick to spin the board. Then the wind hit, moving him like a kite. In midair he twisted around, snatched the board, landed on his feet, then jogged back up the ramp. He bailed on the trick (technically a halfcab heelflip indy grab, an NBD this high off the ground) three more times, then nailed it. Spectators watching from inside hit the glass.

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After a crew of builders pulled an allnighter to build this halfpipe, it was up to Wright to brave the windy and low-light conditions and perform at his best.

SKATE THE EDGE

That left one final NBD—the 540, or 1.5 aerial rotations, rare on an 8-foot ramp, and unheard of in high winds. “If this were L.A., we’d be like, ‘We’re not skating today,’ ” said Jefferson.

Up top, Wright sidestepped to Tyler, the Creator as the New York skyline began to light up. “We are skating today,” he said. “The sun is up!”

He rolled down, took to the air and spun—but crash-landed in what looked almost like headstand.

Wright tried again. Then again. And again. More falls. After the last one, he laid there for a minute, then turned over on his back.

Then he fixed his hat, stood and limped back up the ramp. “You got this, Z,” Jefferson said.

Wright waited for a lull in the breeze, then rolled down one side of the ramp, body in a coil. He took to the air and spun once again, illuminated in the orange light, then touched down clean.

BOOM. “Woooooo!” he shouted. Yes!” Inside people hit the glass louder than before.

“I knew he’d get there!” said Jefferson.

Wright knew it, too. He said so the week before.

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SKATE

Early-morning highlights (from top): Wright climbs up the ramp for another stab at a tough trick that took many tries to nail; the intrepid crew of filmers, photographers and social producers who got up before New York City bars closed to capture the project; and Wright with Jefferson, collaborators on skate shoots for a decade.

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“The wind was spooking me,” Wright admits. “I was worried about flipping my board.” But in the end, he says, “it was epic.”

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SKATE With One World Trade Center glowing in the distance, the Hudson River shimmering below—and a ton of cameras clicking and rolling—Wright nailed a bunch of NBDs 1,100 feet above the city.

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SKATE THE EDGE

Joe Gall/Camera Jesus

SKATE The Conversation

TONY HAWK

THE GROUNDBREAKER Catching up with Tony Hawk.

PETER FLAX

There is simply no greater legend in modern skateboarding history than Tony Hawk. Recently the 56-year-old icon and his Birdhouse team participated in Red Bull No Rewind, a nostalgic project in which four elite teams skate and film using vintage Sony VX1000 cameras, modified so they can record but not rewind for on-the-fly viewing or editing. Choice footage from their sessions and selections from three other teams will be released early in 2025. Here, Hawk shares his views on skate nostalgia, the value of skateparks and Olympic inclusion, and the “state of denial” he was in about his age and invulnerability to injury.

12 QUESTIONS

1

Can you talk about what it was like to skate and film for No Rewind?

For me the best part was just the opportunity to get the whole team together in one place. It’s actually rare that we’re all together for a project like that.

2

Why was the VX1000 such an iconic camera in skate history?

It was the first camera that had a design that was conducive to filming skating. The handle revolutionized the way we could shoot follow-cam footage. And then there was the fisheye lens we called the DeathLens.

Together, the DeathLens and the handle was this perfect merging of technology.

3

What has been gained and lost with the progression of filming technology since then?

Honestly, I’m a big proponent of technological progress, so I’d say everything is better now. My phone is my follow cam now. I mean, if you were to airdrop something to my iPhone you’d see it’s called Tony’s DeathLens.

4

“Young skaters need community and a place to gather,” says Hawk, who has used his powerful platform to advocate for wide-ranging change within skate culture.

Do you still relate to the thirst for nostalgia in skating?

For me, I only have nostalgia when it comes to maneuvers. I love old tricks and old techniques. I love to reexamine moves from the past.

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SKATE The Conversation

“I really only have nostalgia when it comes to maneuvers. I love old tricks and old techniques.

I love to reexamine moves from the past.”

5

With your Birdhouse team, can you tell me what sort of skaters you’re looking for?

In general, I’ve always had an appreciation of skaters who are well rounded. But now I’m putting more weight on bringing on talented transition skaters.

6

Did you wish your son Riley was still on your team or do you like the idea of him finding success on his own?

Yeah, he was on the team for a long time, but I thought it was cool he got asked to join the Baker team. He has free will—he can do what he wants.

My biggest reaction was just thinking it was so cool that [team founder] Andrew Reynolds wanted him on his team based on his merits.

What are the ripple effects of the sport’s inclusion in the Olympics on the progression of skating?

Two things come to mind. The first is that there’s a much stronger international presence. I’m thinking of places like Africa and parts of Asia, where I didn’t imagine skate culture could exist, where suddenly there are programs and really good skaters.

And beyond that, now there’s a deeper appreciation in the public for the talent. Not that long ago, many people thought skating was just a novelty, while now, thanks to the Olympics, people have a clearer perception of how athletic it can be.

Are you still advocating for vert skating to be added to the Olympic program?

I keep pushing as hard as possible.

It’s not like I’m on some committee with the Games. I’m just advocating as best as I can. I think the most powerful thing I can do is keep putting on vert events. I’m trying to make vert skating hard to ignore.

9

It’s the 25th anniversary of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. Have you ever thought about how that game has impacted the progression of the sport?

There is a generation of skaters who grew up playing the game. A lot of them played Pro Skater and thought that some of the combos that were in the game, which we put in there as a sort of fantasy, were possible.

I’ve met a lot of skaters who say the game helped get them interested to try the real thing.

10 Can you talk about your nonprofit, The Skatepark Project, and why you think it’s important to build skateparks in underserved communities?

It all started from me being able to have a place to skate in my formative years. Back then I didn’t realize how lucky I was. Young skaters need community and a place to gather. So when I realized I had the power to effect change, that was a priority—to give more people a place to skate. It has taken work.

For a long time, cities needed to be convinced that a skatepark would be a positive contribution to their community and not a scary place where undesirable people would hang out. I go to skateparks all over the world and what I see are people of all ages, sexes, races and skill levels hanging out—and everyone there is being supportive of everyone else. There’s no other sport that’s like that. Now any city that doesn’t have a skatepark is open to it.

11

You broke your femur two and a half years ago and called it the most traumatic injury of your career? How is your recovery going?

I’m as recovered as I expect to be. It’s made me appreciate the joys of skating in a new way and also to not keep chasing highimpact moves like I did for decades. I was living in denial that I could keep skating like that, and that idea came crashing down quite literally. I have a deeper appreciation of being able to do basic tricks now.

12

Do you think you’re going to keep skating until you’re a very old man?

I don’t know. I mean, if I can stand on two feet then I can ride on a skateboard. But if I feel like my skills are really fading, I’m sure I won’t share it on social.

Tim Aguilar

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TONY HAWK

Hawk, shown here with teammate Reese Nelson, skated and filmed a part with his Birdhouse crew for Red Bull No Rewind, which will be out early in 2025.

SKATE

LETICIA BUFONI

TRAIN LIKE A PRO Leticia Bufoni, one of the first pro skaters to work out like a worldclass athlete, shares details of her insane fitness routine.

WORDS BY JEN SEE PHOTOS BY MARÍA JOSÉ GOVEA

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Leticia Bufoni

Skateboarding

“I need to be explosive and fast,” says Bufoni, who was photographed working out at her home near Los Angeles on October 16.

The veteran skater, who turned pro a decade ago, has won more X Games medals (12) than any female athlete in any discipline and represented her native Brazil in the Olympics.

She takes her fitness as seriously as her skating.

POWER MOVES

Squats and lunges are a staple of Bufoni’s training. “When I skate, I don’t land perfectly every time, so I’m always doing different types of squats and lunges,” she says. To build explosive power, Bufoni does plyometric exercises, such as box jumps and reverse lunge jumps with dumbbells.

She works hard, but she avoids lifting heavy weights. “I feel like if I’m too big, it doesn’t help,” she says. “I need to be fit and explosive and fast.”

Growing up in São Paulo, Brazil, Leticia Bufoni played soccer with the boys in her neighborhood.

Then one day, they all started skateboarding. She was not about to be left behind. “I was the only girl,” she says. “And I just fell in love with it.” So when the 9-year-old Bufoni saw all the boys doing their tricks, she couldn’t stop until she matched them. Holding on to a fence, she tried over and over until she learned a heelflip. “Skateboarding is so hard,” she says. “It takes forever to learn a trick.” Somehow, the difficulty made the sport even more appealing to her.

Two decades later, Bufoni has become one of the most decorated women in skateboarding. “I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t have to prove anything,” she says without a hint of bluster. Because it’s true. Bufoni has won numerous Street League competitions and events such as Red Bull Conquest Paris. In 2021, Bufoni won her sixth X Games gold medal, and her 12 total X Games medals remains a record for female athletes in any discipline. She also represented Brazil at the sport’s Olympic debut in Tokyo. Despite her many achievements, Bufoni admits that she always gets nervous before her contest runs. “It still feels like my first time competing every time.”

In recent years, Bufoni, now 31, has cut back on her contest schedule. “For a really long time, I was just skating for competitions,” she says. Injuries stacked up, and skateboarding no longer felt like the sport she’d fallen in love with on the streets of São Paulo. “I was pushing myself so hard, and it was like, ‘I don’t love doing this anymore.’ ” Spending more time in the streets, traveling to new cities and focusing on fewer contests has reignited her passion and kept her inspired.

A long-term dedication to her training accounts for Bufoni’s longevity and has fueled her success. “I was one of the first skateboarders to start working out,” she says. Since her teens, she’s hit the gym to get stronger and prevent injuries. The explosive power she’s developed gives her skating its unique flair. And even after all this time, Bufoni still loves to get out and skateboard with her friends and hit new spots. “I followed my passion and after 20 years, I still love doing it,” she says. “I still make a living doing it, and it’s the greatest thing ever. It’s a dream life.”

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HARD-CORE DEDICATION

Core strength helps Bufoni stay balanced and complete the rotations that tricks like 180s and 360s require. “Many skaters focus on legs,” she says. “But core is really important.” Bufoni regularly does medicine ball twists to train her obliques, which help with stability and rotations. “I do all the abs workouts you can imagine,” she laughs.

Using a balance board, Bufoni tosses a medicine ball with her trainer to work on core strength, balance and coordination.

RECOVERY MODE

With her on-the-go lifestyle, Bufoni rarely sits still. “For most people I know, the training part is the hardest, but for me, it’s recovery.” She has Normatec boots and a foam roller set up next to her couch, so she can watch movies during her recovery time.

“I’m not good at sitting down and relaxing,” she says. Bufoni doesn’t love stretching but tries to do it as much as possible.

Lately, she’s added sauna time to her recovery routine, too.

SKATE

PRACTICING WHAT SHE PREACHES

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Bufoni’s fitness routine integrates a multitude of core-strength workouts, weight training and plyometrics to build explosive power, plus balance work to improve her coordination. Carving out time for proper recovery is perhaps her biggest challenge.

The only way to get better at skateboarding is to do it, so Bufoni practices at a skatepark and focuses on linking tricks into combinations. “To be good at street skateboarding, you have to be very consistent,” she says. It can take many attempts to land a new trick— or even one Bufoni’s been doing for years. “In skateboarding, the first thing you learn is how to fail,” she says.

“Because you’re going to fail over and over again until you get it.”

When she drives around a city, Bufoni constantly sees spots to skate. “We have different eyes from everyone else,” she says. Street spots all come with their own wrinkles and imperfections, and Bufoni will often try an easy trick to test things out. “Sometimes, if it’s something like a big rail, I’ll just go straight into it,” she says. “Sometimes I try something and it’s like, ‘I can’t believe I did this.’ ”

LETICIA BUFONI

To watch video of Bufoni’s fitness routine and lots more Train Like a Pro content, scan the QR code at left.

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COMPETITION Postcard from a Pro

GOLDEN MEMORIES Personal snapshots from nine

Red Bull athletes who competed in the 2024 Games.

PETER FLAX

Vic tor Mo nta l vo

B-boy Victor’s long hours of training and mental prep in Paris did not go for naught.

After winning bronze in breaking’s Olympic debut, he posted a simple declaration on Instagram: “We made HISTORY!!”

Elite athletes who traveled to Paris (and Tahiti) last summer to compete against the world’s best, each had their own goals and dreams. But whether or not those dreams came true, they flew home uplifted by a lifechanging experience. Here, nine world-class athletes— surfers, breakers, a skater, fencer, canoeist and sprinter— share photos that capture a selection of the deeply personal and unforgettable moments that transcend the athletic competition.

While most of the world’s best athletes converged on Paris, the surfing elite were on the other side of the world, in Tahiti. The three women comprising the star-studded American contingent spent a week together in a rental house near the iconic Teahupo’o beach. Marks would fly to the closing ceremonies in Paris with a gold medal around her neck.

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Log an E d ra- - - - - - > “Although I didn’t walk away with the outcome I envisioned, I still fought through to be here,” the breaker known as Logistx wrote from Paris about her historic debut. “And I did what I came here to do and that was to represent and enjoy.”

Courtesy of the athletes, Little Shao

COMPETITION Postcard from a Pro

Ja gg er Ea ton The 23-year-old skateboarder improved upon his bronze medal in Tokyo with a silver in the street skating event. “This was the greatest contest final I have ever been a part of,” he wrote from Paris. “I’m grateful and humbled.”

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THE RED BULLETIN

Among the dizzying multitude of Chamley-Watson’s celebrity hangouts in Paris: a lighthearted moment of triumph with Snoop Dogg.

Courtesy of the athletes

M il es C h am l ey -W at so n an d f ri en d s

Chamley-Watson remains in awe of how many sporting greats he deepened friendships with in Paris, including Simone Biles (facing page) and NBA center Bam Adebayo, who got a fencing lesson from Miles on a day off.

Ev y Le ib fa rt h

Erriy on Knig h ton

Knighton, who missed a bronze medal in the 200-meter dash by less than three tenths of a second, made an effort to slow down and soak in the complete experience in his second Games.

Leibfarth, who gained tons of followers for her high-energy social posting from Paris, backed it all up with a bronze medal in the C-1 slalom canoeing competition.

Jake Jones

COMPETITION

EMMA NAVARRO

SERVING NOTICE After reaching the semifinals of the U.S. Open and cracking the top 10 in world rankings, tennis pro Emma Navarro has arrived.

WORDS BY NATALIE JARVEY

“I’ve always done things very methodically,” says Navarro, who has methodically climbed from 127th to 8th in the WTA’s world rankings in just two years.

There is no experience in tennis more exhilarating than a night match at Arthur Ashe Stadium. The crowd of nearly 24,000 spectators, Honey Deuces in hand, buzzes in the silence before a serve. Competing there under the glow of the lights can feel like playing in the middle of a fishbowl.

There could be no better setting for the next star of American tennis to emerge. On a Thursday night in September, Emma Navarro walked onto the court for the U.S. Open semifinal, still wrapped in the comforting cloak of an identity—“under the radar Emma”—that she’d carried around since turning pro two years earlier. Though she lost to eventual champion Aryna Sabalenka in two sets, Navarro displayed a calm determination and a cool consistency that kept her opponent fighting and the crowd roaring until the very end.

“There’s a different type of energy on Ashe at nighttime, and I felt that for sure,” Navarro recalls a few weeks later, after she’s had time to absorb the magnitude of the moment. She’s been on the other side of such moments before, sitting in the stands as the sun set over Queens after losing in the second round of the U.S. Open Juniors in 2019. If you’d asked her then, she would’ve pictured herself being overwhelmed with emotion down there on the court. “I was able to handle it pretty well,” she says.

By “it” she means the pressure. It’s something Navarro, 23, has fought against since she first took up tennis. She likes to sneak up on her opponents and take them by surprise. It was easier, somehow, when she was ranked outside the top 100 and playing reliable if not exactly inspiring tennis. But then she started winning. After a sensational run, she now sits at No. 8 on the Women’s Tennis Association rankings. There’s no flying under the radar anymore.

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COMPETITION

At the elite level of any sport, the difference between No. 8 and No. 5 in the world can seem impossible to measure. But Navarro says she can feel herself playing the best tennis of her life. “I play way more athletically, way more aggressively and with a lot more confidence,” she says. What changed? Her intense training regimen—a combination of lifting, conditioning, practice, simulated movement and physio—certainly has helped. But it’s her mental game, she says, that has improved the most in the last two years. “I used to think, if I’m playing a player of [a certain] caliber, there’s no way I can win if I’m not perfect,” Navarro says.

There’s that word again: perfect. It comes up a lot when talking to Navarro. It’s what drives her, but it’s also what has held her back.

Lately she’s realized how much better she plays when she’s not aiming for perfection. It frees her mind, allows her to be more aggressive on returns, to scramble after every ball with efficiency and speed. “I have won a lot of matches where I was playing way less than my best,” she says. “So I’ve learned through experience that my mental strength is probably the biggest weapon I can have.”

Just as easily as Navarro can get into the zone, she knows how to snap out of it. “She’s kind of the opposite of how she is on court,” Gauff, who has fallen to Navarro twice this season, recently told reporters. “She has a lot of personality, but she doesn’t show it as much to you guys.” The Navarro that her friends and family get to see is wickedly funny. She likes comedy podcasts and house music, enjoys beach days and wakeboarding, though her team outlawed the latter activity after a bad wipeout a few years ago left her with a concussion and a torn disc in her back. “When I’m not playing, I’m just regular,” Navarro says, but there are some ways in which she’ll never be like the rest of us.

Consider that she now faces a level of scrutiny that would be hard for anyone to handle, let alone a 23-year-old exploring the contours of who she can be. This summer, after losing to China’s Qinwen Zheng in the third round at the Olympics, Navarro initiated a tense exchange at the net, later telling reporters, “I just told her I didn’t respect her as a competitor. I think she goes about things in a pretty cutthroat way.” Her comments made headlines, and not the kind you want. “It got way more attention than I thought it would,” Navarro says. “Probably in hindsight, I don’t say what I said to her on the court. That was the first instance where I was like, ‘OK, maybe more people are watching what I’m doing than I think.’ ” It’s yet another way that Navarro is navigating what it means to be one of the top players in tennis.

Navarro is learning how to embrace her time in the spotlight.

“It’s an uncomfortable feeling dealing with the pressure of knowing you’re supposed to win,” she says. “But I welcome that feeling. I’m like, ‘All right, come get me.’ ” When asked what her relationship with tennis is like now that she’s totally on the radar, she offers a measured response. “I still have that obsession with being good at it and trying to be perfect at it, and I think that’s what drives me every day,” she says. Then, smiling, she adds, “But I’m having the most fun on the court that I’ve ever had.”

Navarro (shown left with her dog, Marti) triumphed over Spain’s Paula Badosa in the quarterfinals of the U.S. Open in September.

Her breakout performance in the tournament propelled her to become the 8th-ranked singles player in the world.

WTA, Getty Images

Navarro is back home in South Carolina before closing out her season with a swing through Asia. It’s a short break, but long enough for her to realize that something’s different. “Everywhere I’ve gone, people recognize me,” she says. “I’ll just be out for a walk and I’ll be stopped.” Before this, she was only tennis famous; now she’s getting a taste of what it’s like to just be famous. Even a baseball cap pulled down tight doesn’t shield her from the attention: “I’m like, wait, I can’t see you. Why can you see me?”

Navarro was born in New York but her parents, businessman Ben Navarro and his wife, Kelly, moved the family to Charleston when young Emma was still toddling around. It was in this slow Southern city, where the air is sticky with humidity for the better part of the year, that she remembers picking up a racket alongside her two older brothers during Saturday-morning sessions on the court with her dad. (Younger sister Meggie also plays and is on the team at the University of Virginia.) “My dad just kind of got all of us into it,” Navarro says. “I think he realized how important the lessons you learn through sports are.”

By fourth grade, she had begun rising early on weekdays, too, as she’d head to her first of two practices before most kids her age had eaten their Cheerios. At 14, she began working with Peter Ayers, who still coaches her today. “I never truly loved it,” she admits, grinning as she recalls how her mom poured water on her head some days to get her out of bed. “But there was something inside of me that told me, you’ve got to be perfect in this.”

When most of her peers on the elite junior circuit were turning pro, Navarro decided to play tennis at the University of Virginia, where she would become the 2021 NCAA singles champion. She needed those extra years to mature, to discover who she was both on and off the court. “I definitely was not ready to dedicate my life to tennis,” she says. “At that age, part of me was still holding onto just being a regular kid. It took me going to college to realize that a more traditional path is probably not for me.”

After closing the book on her college career, she didn’t rush to compete at the highest level. She spent her first year on the pro circuit ping-ponging around the world to play in tournaments so tiny you’d be forgiven for never having heard of them. It was a confidence-building exercise, and it worked. As she started to rack up victories, she discovered that winning was really, really good for her game. “I’ve always done things very methodically, and I don’t like to skip steps,” she says. “When I did make the jump to playing at higher-level tournaments, I felt like it was my time to be there. I was ready to be there and I belonged there.”

Heading into the 2024 season, Navarro’s best showing at a Grand Slam had been reaching the second round at the French Open. But after snagging her first WTA Tour title at the Hobart International in January, she cruised to the fourth round of the French Open and then defeated both Naomi Osaka and Coco Gauff to make it to the quarterfinals at Wimbledon. She entered the U.S. Open as the 13th seed and exited as the 8th-ranked player in the world. Now, Navarro says, she’s set her sights on being top 5.

EMMA NAVARRO

“I’ve learned that my mental strength is probably the biggest weapon I can have.”

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COMPETITION Gear

HOLDING COURT

If you’re looking to elevate your tennis game, here are two gear suggestions to help you meet your match.

NikeCourt Air Zoom Vapor Pro 2 If you like to play tennis in a lightweight shoe, then you’ll love making quick cuts in these Nikes, especially since you won’t have to make any sacrifices to support or agility thanks to the glovelike fit, low-to-the-ground design and stable platform.

With more rubber than its predecessor, the Vapor Pro 2 is a little bouncier and more durable than before. The shoe, which should fit all but the widest feet comfortably, comes in eight colorways for men and five for women.

NIKECOURT AIR ZOOM VAPOR PRO 2 $130, NIKE.COM

TENNIS GEAR

The Babolat Pro Drive, always blue and brimming with power, has been popular with pros and amateurs alike since 1994.

Babolat Pure Drive 30th Anniversary This racket has been a weapon of choice for players of all levels since the mid-’90s for good reasons—its easy playability and intoxicating power. This update integrates a material called SWX Pure Feel that reduces vibration and improves comfort. Still, players who like spin and power will remain happy campers. To honor the long tradition of blue Pure Drive rackets, Babolat is using an innovative painting process that randomizes every azure shade used since 1994, so each racket has a unique design.

BABOLAT PURE DRIVE 30TH ANNIVERSARY $300, BABOLAT.COM

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ENERGY BOOST

VANILLA ICE

Craving something crisp and festive? Then enjoy this nonalcoholic cocktail featuring the new Red Bull Winter Edition.

This season, get in the mood for some cold-weather adventures with the newest Red Bull Winter Edition: Iced Vanilla Berry. The limited-time-only energy drink, available with and without sugar, has notes of blueberry, vanilla, cotton candy and eucalyptus,

which inspired mixologist Saeed House to craft a mocktail recipe that complements those flavors with the addition of fresh blueberries, lemon juice and fresh sage. “What I love about this drink is that you can taste everything in succession,” he says.

RECIPE POLAR SMASH

Ingredients: 1 handful blueberries 4 sage leaves ¾ oz lemon juice 2 oz monk fruit syrup 2 oz Red Bull Winter Edition Iced Vanilla Berry (Regular or Sugarfree)

Lew Robertson, Saeed House

Directions: Add the handful of blueberries and sage leaves to a shaker and muddle. Add the lemon juice and monk fruit syrup. Add ice and shake until chilled. Strain into a glass over fresh ice. Top off with Red Bull Winter Edition Iced Vanilla Berry. Garnish with additional sage leaves and/or blueberries.

Saeed “Hawk” House, also known as Cocktails By Hawk on TikTok and Instagram, is a content creator, recipe developer and bartender based in Los Angeles who personally loves a drink that’s “light, bright and not too complex.”

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FINAL TAKE

A wild year for Caitlin Simmers peaked on September 6, when she was crowned World Surf League champion following a dramatic three-heat battle against defending champ Caroline Marks. Simmers became the youngest competitor to win a WSL title (18 years and 316 days).

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“It was a very high high,” Simmers says about the moment when jubilant supporters lifted her up moments after her win. “Achieving a career goal with all the people I love around me! I was feeling a mix of emotions, including joy, love and so many things I can’t describe.”

Getty Images

“I was feeling a mix of emotions, including joy and love.”

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