UK EDITION MARCH 2021, £3.50
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BEYOND THE ORDINARY
THE MINT 400
Desert drama at the iconic American off-road race
ROAR OF THE ROSES
England rugby’s women on the push for sporting glory
CORAL CRUSADE
How freediver GUILLAUME NÉRY and a group of young Polynesian innovators are fighting to save our underwater world
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Editor’s letter
BIG IDEAS
CONTRIBUTORS THIS ISSUE
GAVIN BOND
The British snapper is more used to fashion shoots than motorsports, but somehow found himself at US off-road race The Mint 400. “It was three dusty days in the desert I won’t forget,” he says. “It was my last shoot before the pandemic hit, but dodging trucks and wearing a mask to avoid the inhaling the dust did not prepare me for what followed in 2020.” Page 50
JESSICA HAYDEN
The London-based rugby journalist and women’s rugby columnist wrote our feature on the England women’s rugby team. “The Red Roses are a fun, hard-working and awe-inspiring group of athletes,” says Hayden, who also writes for The Times and The Guardian among others. “This is a monumental year for women’s rugby. It’s the best time to start watching.” Page 68
Out on patrol with the Coral Gardeners, as shot by filmmaker/photographer and crew member Ryan Borne. Page 30
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THE RED BULLETIN
RYAN BORNE (COVER), CORAL GARDENERS
In this month’s issue of The Red Bulletin, we meet inspiring characters who remind us that we don’t need to possess all the answers to have a plan. When Titouan Bernicot gave up his place at business school in France and moved back to Mo’orea, the small island in French Polynesia where he’d grown up, he wasn’t exactly sure how he was going to achieve his goal – to help save the coral reefs around his island. He only knew that trying to do it was the only way he could be happy. Bernicot has since founded the Coral Gardeners (page 30), a group of surfers, fishermen and freedivers who are working to save not only the reefs around Mo’orea, but around the world. And in our feature Think Bigger (page 41) we discover the athletes who used 2020 not as a year to stay at home, but as one in which to push themselves further than ever, using new training grounds, methods and contacts to do it. Then we speak to three of the Red Roses (page 68), the England women’s rugby team, who all successfully fought for a place in the squad despite having to study or work full-time alongside their sporting career. Since winning professional contracts in 2019, the team’s victories have multiplied, and we find out why their best still lies ahead. We hope you enjoy the issue.
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Sands of time: 53 years on from inception, The Mint 400 endures
CONTENTS
08 Gallery: autumnal mountain-
biking in the forests of France; cliff diving in a former salt mine in Romania; ice-cool surfing in small-town Alaska
15 Rap royalty Common captures
the spirit of social revolution in just four songs
16 TouchMe: the musical device
that transforms skin into a whole different kind of organ
18 The self-cultured Ouroboros
Steak makes biting your nails feel like an appetiser
21 Channel Iron Man in the
workplace with the Guardian XO full-body exoskeleton suit
22 Throwing popcorn is still possible
with OMA Cinema’s viewing pods, but only if you perfect your aim
March 2021
24 J oe Joyce
Zen and the art of boxing
26 B en Buddy Slack
Committing memories to music
2 8 Bolanle Tajudeen
Putting diversity in the picture
30 C oral Gardeners
Reef rescue with Polynesia’s defenders of the deep
41 Think bigger Lockdown needn’t be a hurdle to success – here’s the proof
50 T he Mint 400
Eating dust on the trail of America’s oldest desert rally
75 Mountain excitement: ride, sail
and hike through the Norwegian fjords for a spectacular and exhilarating experience
80 Keep the frost at bay in the best
cold-weather cycling garb 82 Inspiring life lessons from
para-athlete Claire Danson 84 ThruDark: next-level mountain kit 86 Step back in time: the return of
the Nintendo Game & Watch 87 Gaming: become a stealth expert 88 Our pick of the hottest hiking gear 94 Essential dates for your calendar 98 Wingsuited wonders in Norway
62 M onki GAVIN BOND
The London DJ playing for kicks
68 R ed Roses
The England women’s rugby team are ready to rule 2021
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BRIOUDE, FRANCE
Falling into place In life, sometimes everything just comes together. Take Jean-Baptiste Liautard’s last-minute assignment to shoot mountain biker Amaury Pierron. Following a flight from Vancouver, then a long drive, the photographer arrived in south-central France tired and short of ideas. Enter a sudden snowstorm. “I remember running in every direction, trying to figure out the shot I should do and the lighting needed,” he says, “but I’m glad I had time to set up everything before it stopped snowing. We were even lucky with the fall tones of the trees perfectly matching Amaury's kit and bike.” Bless you, Mother Nature... jbliautard.com
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JB LIAUTARD
TURDA, ROMANIA
Deep dive
A former salt mine turned tourist attraction, Romania’s Salina Turda is a subterranean wonderland with structures that glow like mutant sea anemones in the gloom. But Red Bull Cliff Diving ace Rhiannan Iffland was only here for the lake, 112m below ground. “We ticked a ‘world’s first’ box: the first-ever underground dive into a salt mine,” says the Australian of her October 2020 plunge. “The water is 17 per cent more dense than seawater, so the impact is different. It pushes you straight up to the surface.” joergmitter.com; Instagram: @rhiannan_iffland
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JOERG MITTER/RED BULL CONTENT POOL
YAKUTAT, ALASKA
Chill wave Action sports photographer Dom Daher was working at the Freeride World Tour in Haines, Alaska, when he received a text from former freeride medallist Anne-Flore Marxer. “She said it was pumping in Yakutat and we should go right after the event,” recalls the Frenchman. “So, the next day, we flew there – in a very small plane.” Yukutat in south-east Alaska has a population of just 600 – “the town cop knows everyone’s home phone number by heart,” reports Daher – and a wave that local surfers keep a fiercely guarded secret. Nevertheless, resident teacher Andrew (pictured) was on hand to add a human element to this dramatic shot. domdaher.com
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DOM DAHER
COMMON
Sing the changes The US rapper, actor and activist shares four songs that embody the sound of revolution
MARK LEIBOWITZ
FLORIAN OBKIRCHER
Social activism and promoting positivity have long been trademarks of Lonnie Rashid Lynn Jr, best known as rapper and actor Common. The Chicagoan, a regular on the frontlines of protest in 2020, is the author of two best-selling books, has appeared in films including 2014’s Selma – for which he co-penned the Academy Award-winning song Glory and starred as civil rights leader James Bevel – and has recorded 13 albums. With his latest, A Beautiful Revolution Pt.1 (out now), the 48-year-old Oscar, Emmy and Grammy winner wants to heal and inspire those affected by racial and social injustice. Here, he lists four classic tracks with the power to change the world… thinkcommon.com
John Lennon
Queen Latifah
Yasiin Bey (fka Mos Def)
Gil Scott-Heron
Imagine (1971)
UNITY (1993)
Umi Says (1999)
“This song has always resonated with me because I’m a dreamer and I really believe in a better world, full of love, compassion and happiness. Imagination is a powerful tool. So many things we create start off as an imagined thought or hopeful feeling. John’s inspiring words make me feel like change can happen. That, to me, is one of the seeds of revolution.”
“The end result of revolution should be unity. Throughout history there’s been an imbalance of male energy and dominance that has negatively affected the world. Queen Latifah is empowering women, telling them they’re queens and they should demand respect. The revolution is nothing without women in power, in leadership roles, with respect and honour.”
“Mos played this to me before it came out, and I remember telling him, ‘This is one of the greatest records I’ve ever heard.’ It felt so soulful and uplifting. When I think of this song – especially the lyric ‘My Umi [‘mother’ in Arabic] said shine your light on the world’ – I see it as an act of revolution. If you’re shining your light on the world, that’s part of it.”
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (1971)
THE RED BULLETIN
“I was really young when I first heard this song. It was unique to me, because I’d never heard spoken word on a song before. As I got older, I really took heed of what he was saying. Gil ScottHeron represents the true core, heart and purity of what revolution is: being unafraid, courageous, clever, and having power in what you say.” 15
Feel the music Human physical contact is vital to our mental wellbeing. It can also keep us in tune with others
Snowboard? No. Tongue depressor? No. Musical innovation? Yes
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Touch is believed to be the first sense we develop in life; our earliest contact with another person, established before birth. It is also one of the experiences that’s been in short supply during the past 12 months. Ask people what they’ve missed most while living through social distancing and many would say closeness and the ability to hug and hold their family and friends. Keen for us not to lose this primal instinct, musician/ designer Sasha Pas has developed TouchMe, a device that encourages human bodily contact… and allows us to make sweet music, too. This spatulashaped object adorned with circuit boards and LED lights is a MIDI controller that, when connected to a computer, transforms your throat into a flute, your arm into a keyboard, or your stomach into a guitar. By each holding an end of TouchMe, two people can turn their bodies into one musical instrument and play a full scale or melody on each other’s skin with their free hand. The device works by measuring the resistance
THE RED BULLETIN
LOU BOYD
TOUCHME
values between contact areas; this data is then sent as a MIDI signal to your computer where it is converted into sounds that are played via an online interface. “TouchMe is a very straightforward expression of our bodies and our tactile activity together,” says 30-year-old, Moscow-born Pas, the founder of Berlin-based creative technology studio Playtronica. “Our main focus is to explore the potential of the human body as an interface. By playing with TouchMe, you can measure the intensity of touch, not through numbers on a screen but by sound.” Through this device, Playtronica wants to tap into our instinctive need for physical touch and play, and summon forth a new era of tactile creativity. “We started a series of interviews with psychologists, therapists and educators this year to find out about other events in history that relate to touch and have changed our behaviour,” says Pas. “Humans always return to a point when we are touching other people. It’s a vital element that we cannot cut out of our life – there would be too many psychological and physiological effects. What we found is that people tend to adapt to most things, but we cannot live without touch.” While Playtronica has purposefully made TouchMe easy to use and affordable to buy, so that anyone can try it at home, it is also suitable for much larger, public projects. “Back when we could still touch strangers safely, we connected 20 to 50 people in a public space and tuned them all differently, as a social, open and public instrument. I think now, more than ever, people think about touch. We hope this past year has been a trigger for people to take more notice of their tactile experience in life and its importance.” playtronica.com
FILIPE CONDE, PLAYTRONICA
“And for my encore, some Diana Ross… TouchMe in the Morning”
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They say you are what you eat. Never has that been truer than with this rather unsettling dish
Grow your own: “May I suggest today’s special… Sir’s loin steak?”
Many of us would like to eat meat without worrying about the effect our consumption has on the environment. One modern solution has been cultured meat – made from cells taken from animal muscle and grown in a lab. Now, this DIY kit goes further, allowing you to cultivate meat at home, creating canapé-sized bites of steak. But there’s a catch: it’s grown from your own cells. The clue is in the name: the Ouroboros Steak – a reference to the ancient Egyptian symbol 18
of a snake devouring its own tail – is made using cells collected from the inside of your cheek with a swab. These are deposited in a pregrown scaffold and fed a ‘serum’ made from unused human blood deposits. The sample is then incubated in a warm environment and fed with the serum for three months until the meat has grown. “Our goal is to supply everything you need to create cultivated food at home from your own cells,” proclaims the
THE RED BULLETIN
LOU BOYD
Culture yourself
official website, ourochef.com. “We provide the nutrients for growing healthy cells, scaffolds to make delicious textures, and all the kitchen consumables, tools and appliances you’ll need to care for your luxurious creations.” Think this all sounds too dystopian to be true? You’d be half right. Although this product and the process behind it is real, it hasn’t been created as a viable future food source. The Ouroboros Steak is an art project conceived by Canadian scientist and biohacker Andrew Pelling, German artist Orkan Telhan and New Yorkbased industrial designer Grace Knight with the aim of highlighting unethical practices in cultivated meat production, including the use of FBS (foetal bovine serum) – the blood of calf foetuses collected after their pregnant mothers have been slaughtered by the meat or dairy industry. The human serum used in this steak is presented as a much more ethical and sustainable option. If you find the notion disgusting, say Ouroboros’ creators, their point has been succinctly made. If we wouldn’t eat meat grown from our own cells and blood at home, are we content to support meat cultivated from the by-products of animals slaughtered during traditional farming practices? “Growing yourself ensures that you and your loved ones always know the origin of your food; how it has been raised and that its cells were acquired ethically and consensually,” reads the mission statement at ourochef.com. The project has been nominated for the Design Museum’s Beazley Designs of the Year awards, which recognise the most thought-provoking concepts of the past 12 months. But its greatest achievement may be in provoking real change. The Ouroboros Steak is at the Design Museum, London, until March 28, designmuseum.org
FELIX SPELLER
OUROBOROS STEAK
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GUARDIAN XO
Strong look: the Guardian XO weighs only 68kg and can be strapped on or removed in just 30 seconds – ideal when you feel the urge to do the Robot
Power dressing
DAN ESCOBAR
LOU BOYD
It’s the workwear of the future – an exoskeleton that’s half man, half machine, and all business
If science fiction is to be believed, we’ll all be wearing robot exoskeletons one day. Now, that reality has edged one mighty, hydraulic step closer thanks to Guardian XO, the world’s first full-body powered exoskeleton, created by American technology firm Sarcos Robotics in partnership with the US military. But, unlike Marvel’s Iron Man or Tom Cruise’s powered armour in 2014’s Edge of Tomorrow, this suit wasn’t intended for combat. Instead, it was designed for the more mundane task of manual labour, and its potential to change everyday life is far more amazing. Attempts to build a practical powered exoskeleton have been in the works since General Electric’s Hardiman in 1965, but that suit weighed three quarters of a ton (680kg), and its (limited) movement was so violent that no human was ever put inside. Since then, many innovators have brought prototypes to the table, most of them ‘partialbody’ exoskeletons intended to help those with lower-body injuries. But Sarcos’ CEO, Ben Wolff, describes Guardian XO as “a fully-functioning wearable humanoid robot” capable of smoothly lifting 90kg (45kg per arm) with no physical strain, and its 24 degrees of freedom allow its operator to move freely and easily within the suit. THE RED BULLETIN
“The exoskeleton can help any industry where humans are lifting heavy objects or doing strenuous activities, by keeping stress off the body,” Wolff says. And that’s where the armed forces’ interest came in. As one of the world’s largest logistics operations, the US military loses – according to Woolf’s estimate – around 27 million work days each year,
not through combat, but construction, transportation and manufacturing. “We talk to people who can only do the job for five to seven years before their body is too broken or beaten to be able to continue, as they have too much pain. [With Guardian XO] we can extend that time so they could work as long as they want to.” The suit’s practical applications could extend to other areas of extreme human exertion, such as emergency services and disaster relief. But, while some technologists are also looking into total automation such as drones or robots powered by AI, Wolff believes human intuition and intelligence will always play a vital role in the workforce. “Our view is that AI won’t be as relevant as some of the fearmongers would have us believe, and we don’t think the Terminator will turn up one day and start doing all of our jobs. Humans will be ‘in the loop’ for a long time to come, so the best thing to do is to focus on how to augment them with technology, not replace them.” sarcos.com 21
Distant vision With the traditional cinema experience under threat, two Parisians have looked to the past for a solution “We could lose movie theatregoing for ever,” said Wonder Woman 1984 director Patty Jenkins last October after her superhero blockbuster was delayed for a third time that year. Here was another example of the devastating effect of COVID-19 on 2020’s big-screen release schedule, which also saw James Bond’s latest outing postponed until 2021 and even reliable hitmaker Christopher Nolan fail to lure most viewers back to theatres with Tenet. The way we socially congregate has changed, and the ritual of gathering in a large movie theatre, seated side by side, row upon row, could be facing an extinction-level event. But to survive is to evolve, as shown by Parisian architects Pierre and Nicholas Chican and their ‘vertical cinema’. 22
Oma Cinema replaces the rowed seating of a traditional cinema with pods for smaller groups. Hung vertically in front of the screen, these seating ‘bubbles’ provide the socially distanced reassurance cinemagoers need, although the idea was born not from safety so much as a desire to create a more immersive experience. “[We wanted to] use the full height of the screen and bring the spectators closer to it,” says Nicholas of a structure that stacks the audience on a 50 per cent incline, rather than the 25 per cent of a traditional cinema. “Spectators will have
Dramatic entrance: Oma Cinema’s futuristic foyer
the feeling of floating inside the room and in front of the screen.” You’re also less likely to have a tall person seated in front of you, blocking your view. The design has been noted for its futuristic style and even its resemblance to the Galactic Senate in Star Wars, but the brothers are surprised by the comparison. “For us, it’s closer to the boxes in opera houses and theatres,” says Nicholas. “Each balcony could have sofastyle seating, armchairs, or a smaller set of cinema seats.” The first Oma Cinema is scheduled to open in Paris this year, and the two founders are licensing the design to other movie theatre owners. “Cinemas are facing very tough times, which is why the industry needs to innovate, find new ways to connect with audiences and make them want to see films together again. There’s a unique nature to watching a film with others in the dark, on the biggest screen you can find, with true surround sound. It’s something streaming can’t replicate. We need to remind people what makes it so iconic.” omacinema.com THE RED BULLETIN
OMA CINEMA
OMA CINEMA
LOU BOYD
Even from three pods away, the glowing phone screen was irking Karen
EDITION
Joe Joyce
Thinking outside the box He’s tall, he’s tough, he’s undefeated. But there’s a lot more to the London-born boxer than you see in the ring Words RACHAEL SIGEE Photography ADAM HILLS
Standing 6ft 6in (just short of 2m) tall and weighing in at 18st 6lb (117kg), Joe Joyce looks every bit the heavyweight boxer. In November last year, the 35-year-old nicknamed ‘The Juggernaut’ took the British, European and Commonwealth heavyweight titles after beating fellow Brit Daniel Dubois, and, still undefeated as a pro, he’s now eyeing up a world title shot in 2021. By traditional boxing standards, however, Joyce is a latecomer – he was only introduced to the sport in his early twenties after abandoning ideas of a career in athletics. He quickly rose through the ranks to win an Olympic silver medal for Team GB at the 2016 Games, before turning pro the following year. And Joyce also bucks the brutish fighter stereotype: from his artistic talents to an unlikely spell as a cheerleader, the Londoner is full of surprises… the red bulletin: You have a degree in fine art, and outside the ring you’re a talented painter. These passions seem worlds apart. Do you see any similarities? joe joyce: Well, they’re both on the canvas! The more art you make, the better an artist you are, and the same goes for boxing. I knew that to succeed as an artist you need to be lucky or connected. It’s hard to make a business out of art, so I thought boxing was more realistic for me.
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Who would you credit as your inspirations? For my degree, I actually painted my icons. I did Muhammed Ali, Bruce Lee, Beyoncé... I’ve painted the Williams sisters, too. Some people view heavyweight boxing as just two huge guys slugging it out. Would you say there’s more of an art to it? There’s a lot that goes into being a boxer – and especially being a successful one. It’s not all about how muscly you are, or how good your footwork or your punches are. It’s an accumulation of all those things and also your psychological strength – how you deal with the confrontation, how you prepare before a fight. Boxing is very hard as there’s so much you have to think about – it’s like fast-paced chess. It’s a very technical sport and it happens at split-second speed. How do you handle the pain of being hit? I grew up playing rugby, so I’ve always been used to getting right in there, being hit and charging through people. I’m used to bumps – it doesn’t really bother me. It’s better not to get hit, but I don't mind it. It doesn’t really hurt – it’s a dull pain, like a thud. You know when you get a paper cut, it hurts more than a big gash? It’s kind of similar to that. You get used to taking punches and being able to ride them and either block them or move away to take the force out of them. It would hurt a lot more if you were just relaxed with your chin up in the air and someone hit you full-pelt – that’s definitely going to hurt!
How do your loved ones feel about watching you in the ring? Well, my mum is registered blind [she has just seven-per-cent vision]. When I was growing up, I always had to read the numbers on buses and signs at train stations for her, and help with shopping. But I think it’s hard for close family and friends to watch a loved one box. She can’t really see, but I don’t know if that makes it any better, because she can still hear. She uses her monocular [small telescope] to extend her vision and she can see some of it. Is it true that you once trained with Shaolin monks? I did! I missed my university graduation because I’d booked to go a place near the Shaolin Temple [in China] where foreign students could train. I stayed there two months, learning Shaolin kung fu. The first school taught the Wushu side, which is more acrobatic and gymnastic, and the second was more the serious fighting style, the raw form. That set me up well for Team GB, because at the school it was four sessions a day, starting at 5.30am for a run. It got me used to training. And you performed some surprisingly agile capoeira moves in the ring after your win over Daniel Dubois in November. Where did that come from? I did gymnastics when I was little, and then a lot of martial arts while growing up. Then I went on an exchange to Sacramento State University in my third year of uni and ended up doing cheerleading. I contemplated joining the athletics or American Football teams, but you had to be there a whole year – I was only there for a semester. I got talking to a girl who was a cheerleader and she told me about the gymnastic side of it. I told her I’d always wanted to do round-off back tucks, so she said, “You have to come along!” You have to go and hype up the crowd and lead everyone into the stadium. It’s a whole big thing in America, with the band, the cheerleaders and the mascot. By the end of it, I was doing really advanced moves. Instagram: @joejoyceboxing THE RED BULLETIN
“Making it as an artist is hard. Boxing was more realistic”
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Ben Buddy Slack
“Songwriting is a superpower” Meet the Leeds-based musician and would-be detective who’s helping the terminally ill create a legacy through song Words JESSICA HOLLAND Photography OLLO WEGUELIN
“I was nothing, now I’m me,” Vic Simborowski sings quietly, his face wrought with emotion. Opposite him, a heavily bearded man with tattooed forearms strums a guitar and nods along. This is Ben Buddy Slack, who co-wrote the song with Vic, a resident in a Bradford hospice, as part of the Swan Song Project, an initiative set up to help those with terminal illnesses express themselves through music. (Sadly, Vic passed away a year later, aged 70.) Slack understands the power of song. One of his tattoos quotes a lyric from Tom Waits’ track Come On up to the House: “The world is not my home, I'm just a’passin thru.” “The song is very special to me,” says the Leeds-based musician, who has played in bands as well as teaching music skills to those in prison and young offender institutions. “It has remained a go-to in difficult times.” One of these times was the death of his grandmother six years ago. Recalling the many evenings his gran spent singing traditional Irish folk songs, Slack regretted the missed opportunity to co-write a song that would have kept her memory alive. After much mulling it over, he began pitching his songwriting idea to various hospices, which led – with trepidation – to his very first session. Three years later, the Swan Song Project has helped not only those who have co-written with Slack, but the 31-year-old himself. He has forged deep bonds with his collaborators and their families, and has received
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support from the likes of Red Bull Amaphiko – a project that champions social entrepreneurs – and Virgin Radio DJ Chris Evans, who donated £25,000 live on air. As Slack works on plans to expand his team and widen access to the initiative, he explains how the process of sharing songs can be transformative… the red bulletin: Did you connect with music at a young age? ben buddy slack: I remember a New Year’s party at a relative’s house when I was about 12. My uncle got out a guitar and started singing, and the whole thing was transformed – everyone was singing along. It feels like a superpower to do something that brings everyone together and creates this wonderful atmosphere and sense of community. It was then that I got a guitar and began learning. Is that sense of self-expression more important to you than expertise? At school, I always felt excluded in music. I hated how it was taught, so I didn’t do it as a GCSE, even though I was playing in pubs with my uncle. With Swan Song, people worry they’re not a great musician, so I have to remind them what’s important. We’re not trying to win an award for Best Vocal Performance. We just want it to mean something to those who matter. Are people usually nervous at first? They’re not sure what to expect. But then there’s a moment when it clicks and they realise it’s going to be a song that makes sense. That’s always special. A lot of the time, people will get inspired and continue working on it when I’m not there. It gives them a focus, rather than worrying about
their situation. I love seeing them a week later, after I’ve given them the CD and MP3, and hearing how their loved ones reacted. Do you think it helps them to reflect on their life in a new way? Some of the reflections people have had when we’ve been making songs have blown my mind. People come in like, “I’ve not had an interesting life,” and then we’ll talk about it and they’ll say, “Actually, you know, this was really special, this was really meaningful.” It works well with people who might not want any form of therapy. They’ll agree to write a song, and all of a sudden they’re talking about their feelings. It sounds as if just listening is a crucial part of what you do… People say that when they’ve got these conditions, all conversations become about that. So I’m like, “I don’t care about your illness, I care about you and the things that matter to you.” It gives people a chance to remember who they are. This is definitely different from your initial career choice… Yes, for a long time I wanted to be a detective, probably from watching too many TV shows. I thought I’d be good at it because I’m tall. [Laughs.] So I did a BTEC in Uniformed Protective Services, then I started a degree in Criminology. It was fascinating, but I was getting more serious about music. After a year, I decided to give my band, [blues-rock trio] The Blind Dead McJones Band, a go. Then came the community work with music and I never looked back. How has music shaped your life? It gets me out of my shell. It’s been a foundation for many great friendships and happy memories. I’ve seen Bruce Springsteen live six times, and I watch his concert DVDs over and over. That was just one night in his life, but I’ve watched it hundreds of times and loved every time. Songs can live for ever. They stay inside you. Music is a form of magic, really. swansongproject.co.uk
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“Songs can live for ever. They stay inside you” THE RED BULLETIN
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Bolanle Tajudeen
The London creative, activist and entrepreneur is reinventing the education system with her Black Blossoms School of Art and Culture Words RUTH McLEOD Photography ALEXIS CHABALA
When Bolanle Tajudeen began frequenting galleries and museums eight years ago, while studying PR at the University of the Arts London (UAL), it changed her life. She fell in love with art and the creatives she studied alongside. But it was the inequality and injustice the Nigerianborn Londoner encountered in both the education system and the mainstream art world that prompted her to become a curator. Tajudeen discovered that, at UK universities, Black students were 21 per cent less likely to get a first or a 2:1 than their white counterparts, and only 0.6 per cent of university professors were Black. “Plus, I was around so many creatives of colour, but I didn’t see their work reflected in the industry.” Tajudeen began displaying the work of Black artists for Black History Month at uni. By 2019, she’d hosted many successful exhibitions, and taught a sell-out course, Art in the Age of Black Girl Magic, at Tate Britain. Yet she was struggling: “I worked in a fried chicken shop to pay the rent. I was applying for museum and gallery roles and not getting them. I’m from a council estate in Ladbroke Grove, so I had to build my own network. I’d work in the chicken shop, rush home, change, then be at a patrons’ party at a museum in the evening. No one knew I was broke.” Fast forward to 2021 and the 32year-old has found a way to bypass traditional institutions and promote a more diverse perspective on art. Her Black Blossoms School of Art and
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Culture curates affordable, accessible online courses that aim to decolonise, deconstruct and democratise the education system. And, Tajudeen says, that’s just the beginning. the red bulletin: What does art mean to you? bolanle tajudeen: I never went to galleries while growing up – they didn’t feel like spaces for me. But art was everywhere. At Nigerian parties, the way people would tie their head scarves was artistic. Even how the boys would hang around on our estate – compositionally, it was an aesthetic. I feel seen when I see art that speaks to me or has been made with me in mind. I’m very political, but I’m over standing on a soapbox. I believe art can be a tool for change. It speaks to me being a woman, being Black, being a mother. Art helps me articulate feelings that I might not be able to with words. What hurdles did you face in becoming a curator? I’m not from a curatorial background, and I didn’t study history of art. I’ve educated myself. I’ve been on courses and attended conferences and artists’ talks to really understand the history of Black art in this country. And I’ve got a teaching qualification. But I didn’t want to study art history. The courses don’t talk about the things I want to discuss. I didn’t want to spend more money just to learn about old, dead, white guys. Was that sentiment why your Tate Britain course sold out? It was one of the first courses of its kind at any major institution. It focused on the historical and
Is that why you founded your school, Black Blossoms? I first thought about it while working as an education officer at UAL after my studies. I wanted to decolonise the curriculum, get more authors of colour on reading lists, more BAME lecturers teaching courses. Then, when [COVID] closed museums and galleries, I decided to teach online. I realised I knew so many great experts and this was our chance to make a change. For me, the pandemic took away the power of universities and other institutions. We can all be curators now, we’ve got Zoom, and people are doing courses at home in a way that felt unnatural in 2019. Before, I never had the confidence, the social clout or the capital to say, “We don’t need the backing of an institution – we can do it ourselves.” What has the response been like? Amazing. People have said it’s revolutionary. We have great lecturers, including curator and writer Lisa Anderson on Black British Art and cultural art historian Michael Ohajuru on The Black Image in London Galleries. All sorts of people have signed up – the curator of the government’s art collection was on our last course. What’s next for Black Blossoms? I’m working on opening 40 artist studios, a gallery in Ladbroke Grove, and a website where artists and writers of colour can write about the art world. My ideal would be for all Black households in Britain to have a Black Blossoms subscription. There is evidence that a lot of Black people don’t feel comfortable in museums and galleries – this could be their entry point. Basically I’m hoping for a mini Black Blossoms empire! black-blossoms.online
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HAIR: SHAMARA ROPER, @SHAMARA_ROPER; NAIL TECH AND MAKE-UP: JENELLE ROPER, @JENELLEROPER
Making art history
contemporary practices of Black female and non-binary artists, using the Tate collection and work outside that, too. I put a lot about activism in there; how artists have responded to social upheaval and political change. It spoke to people, as there was nothing else like it.
“Growing up, galleries didn’t feel like spaces for me”
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KELSEY WILLIAMSON
New life: cultivated coral is fixed to a dead or damaged reef with a few dabs of marine cement. This is applied using a form of piping bag
Raising the reef
A group of young Polynesians are fighting to protect the world’s reefs against the effects of global warming, one piece of coral at a time Words RUTH McLEOD and CHRISTINE VITEL Photography RYAN BORNE
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Coral Gardeners
Deep concerns: 22-year-old Taiano Teiho (left) and one of his fellow Coral Gardeners set off on a restoration mission
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ach time freediver Guillaume Néry disappears into the underwater world, he learns something new. It is this seemingly limitless potential for exploration that fuels the Frenchman’s passion. And being underwater gives Néry a feeling he can’t find on land. “It’s this sense of zero gravity,” he says. “When I’m descending, there’s a moment when I’m suspended in space and time, and it really feels like I’m flying. There’s a sense of freedom – it’s transformative. I’m switching from a landbound human to an aquatic one.” This desire to learn is what has drawn Néry to the island paradise of Mo’orea, around 40km from Tahiti in the South Pacific. That and something else unique to the underwater world: coral. For the past seven years, the 38-year-old has come here with his partner – fellow 32
freediver Julie Gautier – and daughter Maï-Lou, whom the couple want to raise close to nature. “I’m lucky enough to have been freediving for more than 24 years now,” says Néry, who has four freediving depth world records and two world championship titles to his name. “I’ve travelled the world, had experiences in every kind of underwater environment, from oceans to lakes, under ice. But there’s really something special about tropical areas. It’s the biodiversity you witness, especially here in French Polynesia. The extraordinary examples of life you find underwater here are almost all due to the coral reef system. It’s an entire, complex ecosystem. It’s really something amazing to witness.” But when Néry visited in 2019, after a rise in water temperature caused by global warming, he found that 30 per cent of the coral had died. “Dead coral is monochrome,” he says. “There’s no
colour. It’s a place with no life at all, like a desert. Sometimes you’ll see a fish pass by, but it’s only looking for somewhere else to go. I knew this global warming episode wasn’t natural, it was due to human activity. The scientists say there will be more episodes like that. The ocean is resilient, but there’s a limit. If things change too fast, there’s a big chance most of the world’s coral will disappear. When I realised that, I was terrified.” Now his visits here have become about more than underwater exploration; he’s fighting for the reef’s survival. Néry is working with an organisation known as the Coral Gardeners, who, as the name suggests, tend to and cultivate coral. They have shown Néry how to replant broken coral, and in return he has taught the group breathing techniques that allow them to remain underwater for longer periods while they work. This is a symbiotic relationship that the Coral THE RED BULLETIN
Coral dilemma: freediver Guillaume NĂŠry became an ambassador for the Coral Gardeners after a 2019 visit to French Polynesia, where he witnessed the devastating effects of global warming firsthand
“The more of us who are concerned about this, the bigger the change can be�
Second chance: fragments of damaged coral are collected by the team, then transported here to the ‘nursery table’ for assessment
Coral Gardeners
World of difference: the seabed is home to in excess of a thousand distinct species of coral, and more than 170 of these can be found in French Polynesia alone
Gardeners – a team of young Polynesian surfers, freedivers and fishermen – are keen to foster; after all, it’s a philosophy they’ve learnt from the very coral they’re trying to save. “A coral is an animal, a polyp,” explains Taiano Teiho, a 22-yearold member of the coral restoration group. “It lives in symbiosis with a plantbased life form, the zooxanthella. This is a form of microalgae found in the coral’s tissue. The polyps provide shelter for the microalgae, and, in exchange, the photosynthesis the microalgae perform will provide 90 per cent of the nutrients the polyps need to create the coral’s calcareous exoskeleton. “The one cannot live without the other. When water temperatures rise, the zooxanthella creates toxins that the polyp can’t live with, so it then rejects the microalgae. This leads to coral bleaching, as it was the microalgae that created the coral’s colourful THE RED BULLETIN
pigmentation. All you’re left with is the calcareous skeleton – a dead coral.” The breakdown of this relationship in the world’s coral reefs is a fitting metaphor for the ruinous effect human activity is having on the natural world. “In the worst-case scenario, we’d see the loss of all marine life, from the smallest fish to the largest marine mammals, as we would lose the nutrient input that comes from the sea,” says Teiho. “We would also lose more than half of the oxygen we breathe if all organisms such as phytoplankton, which photosynthesise, died. That’s why we have to act now.”
“The coral reef has been our playground and our school. It has taught us respect”
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ne reason why action is happening now on Mo’orea is local surfer and freediver Titouan Bernicot, who founded the Coral Gardeners. “The Polynesian people have always had a strong link to Mother Nature,” says the 22-year-old, who has lived on the island since he was three. “I’ve grown up surfing, freediving, spearfishing, diving with sharks. The coral reef has been our playground and also our school. It has taught us humility and respect.” Bernicot, the son of Tahitian pearl farmers, has a house on the beach so that he’s as close as possible to the sea, and to the coral garden he has created beneath the surface. “I’ve spent a lot of time learning how to build up [the coral] and finding out more about the underwater ecosystem,” he says. “The coral creates such varied architecture. It’s like a big city where coral, every species of fish, every crab and octopus has an important 35
Depth charge: Teiho keeps a watchful – almost paternal – eye on the coral cuttings in his care
“Our nurseries are like little gardens underwater where the coral will adapt themselves”
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role to play in managing the balance of the reef ecosystem. It’s really like a [conventional] garden, but instead of birds we have fish, and instead of a dog there’s the shark and stingray.” Bernicot has been tending to his garden since he was 16. It was at that age a day’s surfing changed his path in life. Bernicot, his younger brother and a friend had rowed out to the reef break in his small aluminium boat. “And as we were waiting for waves, we saw something
really weird under our feet,” he says. “All the corals were white – they’d bleached. That was the first time we’d seen this. “That same afternoon, I Googled it and discovered two things. First, I learned that corals aren’t simple stones, they’re living organisms, and they were turning white due to global warming. This could be the first ecosystem on our planet to collapse, even as soon as 2050. And it wasn’t happening only on my island of Mo’orea, but everywhere in the world – THE RED BULLETIN
Coral Gardeners
he met a local who was replanting broken coral and showed him how to do it. Bernicot set to work on his own underwater garden. Next, he sought advice from marine biologists working at Mo’orea’s two scientific research centres: the Gump Research Station, administered by the University of California, Berkeley; and the pre-eminent French institution CRIOBE (Centre for Island Research and Environmental Observatory), which has facilitated the study of marine life in Polynesia for more than 30 years and now works in partnership with the Coral Gardeners. But what they told Bernicot wasn’t what he wanted to hear. “I knocked on the doors of all the scientific and research institutions,” he says. “Everyone told me to finish high school, then do a three-year biology degree, then a masters in marine biology and then, ‘If you’re sharp enough, go and do a PhD.’ There’s a real need for scientists – today, we work hand-in-hand with them – but that’s just not me. I’m more of an entrepreneur. I told them they were crazy, I couldn’t do that. It killed my motivation.”
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at the Great Barrier Reef, at the Florida Keys, in Indonesia, Egypt, the Maldives. Second, I learned that the coral, these little organisms, gave me everything I need in my life. From the best moments surfing reef-break waves, freediving, and swimming with sharks, to the fish we eat – the reef feeds my family and my community. It also brings tourism and develops our economy. It protects our coastline by acting as a coastal protection barrier, stopping 97 per cent of the THE RED BULLETIN
waves’ energy, preventing erosion. Coral reefs are also home to a quarter of all the species we know of in the ocean. Reefs are like the rainforests of the sea. Scientists estimate that 70 per cent of the oxygen we breathe comes from a healthy ocean. The most shocking thing? Almost no one on our island realised this. That’s why the Coral Gardeners exist.” That day, Bernicot decided he would devote his life to helping protect the coral around his island. On the beach,
t was actually a stint away from his island home that eventually gave birth to the Coral Gardeners. Feeling defeated, an 18-year-old Bernicot consented to his parents’ wishes that he study business in the south-west of France. He lasted two weeks. “I couldn’t stand it,” he says. “There I was, all alone in my little apartment in Bordeaux. I’d left my island family, my dogs, my friends, my corals. I called my parents, and said, ‘Sorry, but I won’t be going back to school.’ They told me, ‘Titouan, we believe in you, but you won’t have any more money from us now. You have to support yourself.’ That was a shock.” Bernicot decided he would somehow pay back his parents the €7,000 they’d spent on his business course, then return to Mo’orea to try to help save the coral reef. Aptly, it was the South Pacific Ocean that provided the means: Tahitian pearls. “I went to the business centre of the town and created a jewellery company the next day. I went to every hotel, every winery, every house, to sell my Tahitian pearls.” With the earnings, he paid his parents, his rent, then took a surf trip to Morocco. His remaining money went into founding the Coral Gardeners in 2017, following his return to Mo’orea. “I still didn’t know it could be my life plan or my career,” he says. “There was no business model to 37
“Reefs are like the rainforests of the sea� International rescue: the Coral Gardeners plan to expand their reef relief work from a localised concern to a global mission
KELSEY WILLIAMSON
Coral Gardeners
achieve that, except becoming a marine biologist, and I didn’t want to do that, so I had to reinvent everything.” But Bernicot has always had a head for business. At the age of 11 he started his first company, selling stickers at school. The proceeds bought him his little aluminium boat. “I’ve always had the feeling that nothing is impossible. If you work hard and connect with the right people, you can achieve your dreams. And I’ve never worked so hard as this. Day and night.” Bernicot’s team have now grown from one to 20 full-time staff, who are paid a fair wage for their long hours, and all profits are reinvested into the company to fund the planting of coral, raising awareness worldwide, and innovation. Over the past four years, the group have planted more than 15,000 corals on the north side of Mo’orea. When they set off on a restoration mission, they start out by collecting pieces of coral scattered in the water. Destroyed chiefly by swells and human activity, these “fragments of opportunity” – as the team call them – are taken to a nursery, where they will regenerate, stabilise and grow in the best conditions possible over several months. These provide cuttings that are then replanted on damaged or completely dead reefs. The coral is wedged in a small crevice where it can survive alone. Marine cement is dabbed around the coral to strengthen it and keep it in position. “We like to say it’s a second chance for damaged coral,” Teiho says. “Plus it’s bringing new life to a dead coral head.” The Coral Gardeners monitor the replanted coral closely and record their observations to build a more detailed picture of how the changing environment affects them. There have already been breakthroughs. “People often ask, ‘OK, global warming is killing corals, so why are you planting them? They’re going to die anyway,’” says Bernicot. “Well, the scientists here found something super exciting this past couple of years: species of coral they’ve called super corals. Super corals are genotypes of coral that [can tolerate] the rise in water temperature. During a bleaching event, some of these corals are not dying – they’re more resilient. Our nurseries are like little gardens underwater where the coral will adapt themselves. We monitor them and let them grow for 12-18 months until they’re an ideal size. Then we’ll put them back onto a damaged reef in the hope they’ll grow. If so, a couple THE RED BULLETIN
Local hero: Titouan Bernicot spurned a potential career in business to save his island’s reef
of years later they could spawn. If we see this, it’s game on. Then they’ll be populating the reef around them.”
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owever, Bernicot and his team know that replanting alone won’t be enough to stave off the potentially catastrophic effects of global warming. “We have a few little signs of hope,” says Bernicot, “but planting corals itself won’t save the reef, which is why we’re trying to also raise awareness. Basically, we need more people to give a shit about coral reefs. If we really want to help the reef, we need to create a worldwide movement of collaborative action at the same time as planting resilient corals.” To this end, the Coral Gardeners have already amassed a following of more than 500,000 on social media and through their coral adoption programme – their main revenue stream – whereby people pay to adopt a particular coral, for which
“We want to reach a figure of a million super corals planted back onto reefs worldwide by 2025”
they’re sent a picture, GPS coordinates and regular updates. More than 21,000 people have adopted so far, and that number is rising daily. There’s also an innovation centre headed by Drew Gray, a former director of engineering at Uber and the first hire made by Elon Musk when developing Tesla’s self-driving car. The American is using his tech nous to improve restoration of the reef, better monitor human impact, and bring adopters closer to their coral – soon they’ll be able to see it growing online. “We have big plans,” says Bernicot. “We want to reach a million super corals planted back onto reefs worldwide by 2025. That will mean opening 30 international branches in Indonesia, the Maldives, Seychelles, Philippines, Egypt, Australia, Hawaii… and more in the islands of Tahiti. We’ll need hundreds of people planting corals every day. What’s beautiful is the people planting coral in our team are local fisherman, freedivers and surfers, so they’re really comfortable in the water, and then they learn from the scientists. They’re doing their ideal job, restoring the reef. It’s beautiful to watch as a coral gets bigger and there are fish and crabs in it – that’s why we started, and it’s what stimulates us to do more. Tomorrow we’re talking to 50 kids on our island. I want them to have the same feeling I had at 16; to fall in love with the corals and the ocean and want to help it.” And then there’s the awareness that is being spread by ambassadors such as Néry and other athletes and influencers who have been moved by the Coral Gardeners’ ambitions and appreciate the urgent need to highlight the issue. “Adopting a coral, especially for kids, is a very good way for them to understand how important it is to protect it,” says Néry. “Change has to happen locally first, and then, if many people act, it can grow into a huge wave. I see the Coral Gardeners as pioneers in this work. The more of us who are concerned about this, the bigger the change can be. That’s why I’m helping. “I used to be a very optimistic person, then I had a phase where I was very pessimistic, and today I think that I have – that we all have – to give as much positive energy as possible. We each have our own way to make an impact, then we’re connecting, trying to combine our actions and skills for the same cause. It’s only together that we can create hope.” coralgardeners.org 39
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THINK
BIGGER
COLIN HENDERSON
When 2020 was turned upside down, these sporting Brits managed not to lose their nerve. Instead, they reframed and refocused their efforts and have new world records, sporting titles and – in some cases – jellyfish stings to show for it. Here, they share their insights to help you live your best 2021
Giant steps: Donnie Campbell in the Isle of Skye on his record-breaking ascent of all 282 of Scotland’s Munros
Words MARK BAILEY 41
s the world spiralled into chaos last year, many people watched their dreams shrivel and disappear. But a steely group of athletes and adventurers counterattacked by teeing up their biggest challenges yet – and achieved a host of world records, lifelong goals and personal bests in the process. Their triumphs show that with energy, resilience and creativity you can accomplish amazing things, even in a world of frightening uncertainty. Whether fighting for sporting immortality or safeguarding their mental health, raising funds for charity or seeking personal discovery, these heroes converted dark days into golden memories, proving that an effective response to hard times is not to downsize your dreams but to push your plans even further. Here, some of the most inspiring athletes of the pandemic era reveal the psychological secrets behind their motivation, focus and inner drive, to help you make the most of 2021. 42
Some athletes reacted to the pandemic by scaling back their plans, but Donnie Campbell refused to think small. Having dreamed of running up all of Scotland’s 282 Munros – the name given to any Scottish peak taller than 3,000ft (914m) – for many years, and committed to achieving it in 2020, the ex-Marine battled on with his plan. “People said I couldn’t do it, but I wanted to show them I could,” says the 35-year-old coach from Inverness. “So I rescheduled it from May to August with my wife Rachael now driving the support van.” Campbell says the secret to his determination lies in knowing how to stay motivated. The process starts by setting a deeply personal goal, but it often requires mind games, too: “I knew that to do the cold, boggy Munros on the West Coast I’d need extra motivation, so the idea of doing them all at once, while cycling and kayaking between them, provided that. I also chose not to climb some of them on my recce runs so I couldn’t quit the challenge and tell myself I’d done them all separately in training.” After starting with an ascent of Ben More on the Isle of Mull on August 1, Campbell spent weeks running over leg-sapping terrain, and kayaking or cycling between each Munro. But he had steeled his mind by doing hill reps in training. “My time in the Marines taught me you have to get comfortable being uncomfortable. If you simply accept that you’re going to be in pain, you can then learn how to deal with it by making plans for recovery, food and sleep. After a 16-hour day of running, I would get to bed by 9pm and eat lentil Bolognese to recover.” On tough days he used positive self-talk to stay focused. “I said, ‘Today I’ll cover this distance, and anything over that is a bonus.’” Campbell enjoyed mood-boosting THE RED BULLETIN
JON SUTS
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Donnie Campbell Ran up all 282 Munros in less than 32 days
Think bigger
“MY TIME IN THE MARINES TAUGHT ME YOU HAVE TO GET COMFORTABLE BEING UNCOMFORTABLE”
Left: Donnie Campbell – man on a Munro mission; below: Carla Molinaro’s athletic achievements include an epic 240km run along Australia’s Great Ocean Road
rewards like chocolate or salt-andvinegar crisps. And if he felt his motivation waning, he challenged his negative perspective. “I was dropping into glens few people have visited because they are so remote. So I told myself, ‘This might be the only time in your life you’ll see these beautiful places.’” After 1,340km of running and 126,143m of climbing, Campbell finished on Ben Hope in northern Scotland on September 2, with a new record time of 31 days, 23 hours and 2 minutes. “It was a weird feeling,” he says. “I was sad that the journey was over, but also completely relieved I didn’t have to get up at 5am to run.” THE RED BULLETIN
Carla Molinaro Broke the Land’s End to John o’ Groats record Carla Molinaro needs a challenge. So when the ultrarunner – a gold medallist at the brutal 89km Comrades Marathon in South Africa – was trapped by a COVID19 lockdown while training there last year and all her races were cancelled, she felt lost. But she fought back by conjuring up the adventure of a lifetime: a recordchasing 1,327km run from Land’s End to John o’ Groats (LEJOG). “Rather than get frustrated, I realised this is the perfect time to do a mega challenge,” says the 36-year-old from Buckinghamshire. “And I thought it would be amazing to see the UK in this intimate way.” A former Army operations officer, Molinaro relied on militarystyle planning and pragmatism. She stayed fit by doing reps of the driveway at her lockdown home: “I told myself it was good mental training for the monotony of LEJOG.” On returning to the UK, she trained by running 15km on four consecutive days, then lengthened her runs by 5km each week: “I focused on what I could do, not what I couldn’t.” She took her first strides from Land’s End at 5am on July 16. Cheered on by her sister Andrea, who drove the motorhome she slept in each night, Molinaro powered through Cornwall, the Lake District and the Highlands. In dark moments, she recited her pain-neutralising mantra, “This will pass”, or visualised her achievements so far: “You forget all the pain when you look at a map and see how far you’ve run.” Tortured by blisters and shin pain, Molinaro reached John o’ Groats at 5.30am on July 28, after 12 days, 30 minutes and 14 seconds – a new women’s world record. “It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” she says. “But, rather than hide in my comfort zone, I like to shake things up and show what’s possible.” 43
Harry Coppell Set a new British record in pole vaulting Last September, in the toughest year of his life, Lancashire polevaulter Harry Coppell soared to a new British record of 5.85m – 1.4m higher than a double-decker bus – at the delayed British Athletics Championships. “I still get messages when friends see the video online,” laughs the 24-yearold, who is now sixth in the world rankings. “To know I’ve gone higher than anyone in this country has ever been is a crazy feeling.” Coppell loves to explore his limits: he grew up racing BMX bikes, wants to train for a pilot’s licence, and enjoys pole vaulting
because it’s “the closest you can get to flying”. But at the start of 2020 he was under major pressure. “I’d just moved to Loughborough to train full-time, but I had no job, no sponsor and no kit deals, so I really had to make an impact that year. Then COVID hit and everything went up in the air.” Coppell decided the best way to stay motivated was to focus on process goals: all the small weekly gains in his strength, technique and agility that would sharpen his vaults when competitions resumed. Even if your goal is on hold, you can still build the skills needed to achieve it. “I tried to salvage my season by setting realistic goals and focusing on all the physical aspects necessary to get better. Everything I did was purposeful: if I know why I’m doing something, that motivates me to keep doing it.” To improve his run-up, Coppell
“EVEN IF YOUR GOAL IS ON HOLD, YOU CAN STILL BUILD
began doing 40m sprints on football or cricket pitches: “Running was a weakness in terms of my technical form and how I put force through the track, so all that extra work really helped.” He sharpened his vaulting technique through video analysis, performed parallel bar exercises in the gym to build his strength, and hurled shot puts to boost his power. “For the pole vault, you have to be a sprinter, weightlifter and gymnast,” he says. By focusing on process goals, Coppell was primed to deliver the performance of his life at the championships, providing an extra surge of confidence in Olympics year. “All those little things clicked into place,” he says. “I love the feeling of competing, but I’ve now learned that even if you don’t have a competition you should never waste an opportunity to get better.”
THE SKILLS NEEDED TO
Big numbers: Harry Coppell’s recordbreaking pole vault of 5.85m is made official at the 2020 British Athletics Championships
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GETTY IMAGES
ACHIEVE IT”
Think bigger
“IN LOCKDOWN, I WAS SPRINTING UP MY ROAD AT Jessie Knight Became British 400m hurdles champion
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British athlete Jessie Knight could have been excused for taking things easy when the 2020 athletics season was thrown into turmoil. Unlike her high-profile rivals, the 25-year-old primaryschool teacher from Surrey trains part-time, doing sprint drills and gym sessions after school, before returning home to grab dinner at 10pm. But through perseverance
FULL PACE. MY NEIGHBOURS DIDN’T KNOW I’M AN ATHLETE – THEY DO NOW”
and focus, she’s powering into 2021 as the new British 400m hurdles champion. “I really shocked myself,” admits Knight. “I thought I might lose focus and think, ‘This year is a write-off.’ So I’m proud I won the British title even without perfect preparation. I was out of my comfort zone all year, but I kept working hard towards whatever might come up.” When her races were cancelled, Knight switched her focus from external events to personal progress to help maintain her momentum. She worked on her stride patterns, performed Russian twists to improve core strength, and upgraded her carb intake from bread to rice – a lower-calorie option – in a bid to trim down. “It was a real psychological battle, because everything I’d worked towards was cancelled. So I just focused on myself. Even in lockdown, I was sprinting up my road at full pace. My neighbours didn’t know I’m an athlete, but they do now. As athletes we’re normally goal-oriented, but this year showed me I can push my body any time I want, just because I love doing what I’m doing.” Knight had enjoyed a stunning start to 2020 with victories in the 400m at the Indoor Grand Prix and British Indoor Championships, both in Glasgow in February. But while some athletes lost momentum during the pandemic, she retained enough focus to take the British 400m hurdles title in September. “By focusing on my personal progress, I was able to keep that momentum all year – even though some days I didn’t even have a track to train on.” If Knight has handled the disruption wreaked by COVID-19 better than others, it’s because she knows how to turn hard times into motivational rocket fuel. “I was gutted to miss out on the World Championships in 2019, so I had extra hunger in me. When you have success, you can get complacent, but I was determined to make progress in 2020. I now want to get on the Olympic team and make this year even better.” 45
“IF YOU KEEP IN GOOD SHAPE, Jordan Wylie Circumnavigated Great Britain on a paddleboard
STAY POSITIVE AND SURROUND YOURSELF WITH GREAT PEOPLE,
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ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE”
Standing strong: whether running marathons in the extreme cold or tracing the coastline of Britain by paddleboard, resilience, discipline and patience have remained key skills for Wylie
I’ve lost who are no longer with us and who would do anything for another minute in this world.” Thanks to this, Wylie has enjoyed stunning moments at sea, from witnessing a rainbow over Lundy Island to paddling alongside dolphins and seals. But sometimes even resilience is not enough – discipline is required, too. “There will always be days when we don’t feel motivated, so you need to be disciplined in still going out to sea each day, or putting on that cold, damp wetsuit, even when you really don’t want to.”
Wylie’s aquatic adventure, which he hopes to finish in March, has also shown him the value of patience. Confronting nature forces you to accept that you can’t control every aspect of your life, he explains. “Adventure allows me to live in the present,” says Wylie. “Having taken medication for years for anxiety and depression, I know how much of a positive impact adventures can have on our mental health. I encourage everyone to look up from their screens and dream big in the outdoors.” THE RED BULLETIN
ALFIE MARSH, GETTY IMAGES
Soldier-turned-adventurer Jordan Wylie was aiming to run marathons in 10 of the coldest places on Earth, to raise funds for a school for refugees in Djibouti, when COVID-19 crushed his plans. “I had a great start to 2020, completing marathons in Siberia, Yukon, Alaska and Iceland, and then the North Pole marathon was terminated,” says Wylie, 37. “I needed to quickly find a new project to continue my fundraising – and for my own mental health.” Wylie’s past adventures include rowing the pirate-stalked Bab el-Mandeb Straits between Yemen and the Horn of Africa, and running through Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia for charity. But his new creation was The Great British Paddle: a mission to become the first person to stand-up paddleboard more than 2,000 miles (3,218km) around Britain. “I was new to the sport,” he says, “but if you keep in good shape, have a positive mindset and surround yourself with great people, anything is possible.” Since departing Essex Marina in July, Wylie has faced fierce tides, brutal heat and stinging sleet showers. Because of COVID restrictions, he has to sleep on a support boat instead of returning to shore each night. And an incident with a jet skier saw him lacerate his leg and suffer cellulitis – a serious skin infection. But Wylie has stayed strong by focusing on three key mental skills: resilience, discipline and patience. “Going around Scotland in the winter requires a lot of resilience, because Mother Nature is chewing you up and spitting you out daily,” he says. To enhance his fortitude, the former soldier draws on a deep sense of gratitude. “I try to be conscientiously grateful for the adventure I am on. When I need to dig deep, I think about friends
Think bigger
Imani-Lara Lansiquot Claimed her first 100m title Imani-Lara Lansiquot was already stressed out by her university studies – specifically her 15,000word dissertation for the final year of her psychology degree course at King’s College London – when she heard that her first Olympics had been postponed. But the Croydon-based sprinter made it a year to remember by claiming her first 100m title at the British Athletics Championships – and completing her degree. The secret, she says, was keeping an intensely focused routine.
“Having so much on my plate and everything being so chaotic actually forced me to get to a very ‘still’ place and become focused on the intricacies of my routine,” explains the 23-year-old. “That was the only way I could feel in control. It backed me into a corner, so I kind of went into ‘survival mode’, getting into the nitty-gritty of my routine and breaking things down.” Setting a daily routine sharpened Lansiquot’s focus on difficult days. “I had some clear goals each day with two or three things to do: I’m going to get 500 words down; I’m going to do my gym session in the garden; I’m going to stretch. I just made sure that I could execute that list as well as I could, so that I had some structure to my days. I would write down, ‘This is what I want to
achieve today.’ And that’s what kept me motivated all year.” By focusing on her personal daily ‘performance’, she discovered new reserves of mental strength. “I had to push myself, because I couldn’t rely on someone shouting at me to keep me going. And that raw ‘Why are you doing this?’ really put some fire back in my belly, elevated my competitive game, and showed me how much I can do by myself.” Lansiquot had won 2018 European gold and 2019 World silver in the 4x100m relay, but her first solo 100m British title was a huge boost ahead of Tokyo. “I could have decided, ‘Forget this year, let’s get a glass of wine and let it all go.’ But I kept at it. And I wanted to have a reward for that hard work. I have shown potential,
but I’ve never had a British medal before. So you can’t discredit those kinds of experiences. I now know what it’s like to win.” The sprinter maintains the same positive outlook off the track: after being racially abused at a sponsor’s event in early 2020, she used the pain as motivation to become Athlete Lead for British Athletics’ Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Advocates Group. “I was really upset, devastated. But I was lucky to have great people around me who said, ‘Listen, it’s not enough just to have words, you need to have action.’ That’s what my new role is about.” After a tough year, Lansiquot feels stronger than ever. “I’ve matured a lot,” she says, “and I would prefer to go to the Olympics as the Imani I am now than the Imani I was a year ago.”
“I HAD TO PUSH MYSELF, BECAUSE I COULDN’T RELY ON SOMEONE SHOUTING AT ME TO KEEP ME GOING”
Fast learner: Imani-Lara Lansiquot strides to victory in the 100m final at the British Athletics Championships in Manchester last September THE RED BULLETIN
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Josh Quigley Fought back from injury to break cycling record Hungry for adrenalin and adventure at a time of rigid travel restrictions, ultra-endurance cyclist Josh Quigley decided to ride the North Coast 500 – a gruelling 516-mile (830km) Scottish coastal route – in just one go. After a turbo-charged dash past mountains and beaches, covering 10,635m of ascent – a higher cumulative elevation gain than on an ascent of Mount Everest – he reached Inverness Castle in a record time of 31 hours, 19 minutes and eight seconds. “There is so much focus on what we can’t do right now, I wanted to 48
show what we can,” says the 28-year-old from Livingston. “It’s about accepting and responding to the environment. I couldn’t travel abroad, but I could do this.” Quigley broke the record by just four minutes and 27 seconds, proving the thrill of competition is possible even without formal events. “It was so tight, nobody knew if I would do it – not me, not the spectators cheering me on from bridges, or the 36,000 people following my dot on the live tracker. To do it by such a tight margin made it so special.” Quigley was able to keep his focus last year because of some hard-earned perspective. At the end of 2019, he was just 3,000km away from completing a 29,000km round-the-world cycling challenge when he was hit by a car in Texas, breaking 10 ribs, puncturing a lung
“THE POWER OF COMMITMENT IS SO IMPORTANT. THERE’S NO PLAN B, NO QUITTING”
and fracturing his skull. So, when the pandemic struck, he refused to wallow in pity. “My goal had been to recover and then go back to America, but when COVID ended that, I needed a new project. This challenge excited me. When you’ve come through a bad experience, nothing much frightens you.” But how did he stay motivated when his muscles were flaming with lactate? “The power of commitment is so important,” says Quigley. “I made a decision when I left my house that I’m going to do this, no matter what. As soon as you make that commitment, there’s no Plan B, no alternatives and no quitting.” Whether racing around the world or blasting across Scotland, Quigley is driven on by a simple mantra: “Keep moving forward. Each day, we all have to wake up and keep moving forward.” THE RED BULLETIN
THOMAS HAYWOOD
Moved to tears: an emotional Josh Quigley is greeted by his aunt after reaching Inverness, the finishing point of the North Coast 500
Think bigger
Chris Judge Braved jellyfish on two recordbreaking swims
“WHEN I GOT COLD, I WOULD VISUALISE CANDLES AND FIRE TO TRICK MYSELF INTO FEELING WARM“
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Chris Judge and the Oa Giants relay team shattered two world records last year in the most turbulent, jellyfish-infested waters in the British Isles. On August 2, they swam 35km from Northern Ireland to Scotland to break the North Channel relay record in a time of nine hours, two minutes and 41 seconds. And just six days later they made the 51.8km crossing of the Oa Channel between Islay, Scotland, and the Giant’s Causeway, Northern Ireland – where fierce Atlantic currents meet the swirling Irish Sea – in 16 hours, 57 minutes and 43 seconds. Despite the scale of the team’s achievements, Judge, a 38-year-old council worker from Portadown, insists their success was built on mental steel, not physical strength. “Due to the
COVID lockdown, we were only 60-per-cent fit, because all the pools were closed, which meant we couldn’t train,” he explains. “I had to get up at 5am to train outdoors in Lough Neagh [the largest lake in the whole of the British Isles, located in Northern Ireland]. So this was about willpower, brute force and friendship. The challenge had been planned for years, so we wanted to finish it together.” A gifted youth swimmer who later discovered the joys of openwater swimming, Judge was joined by fellow Northern Irelanders Keith Garry, Dominic Mudge, Bill Donnelly, Colin Lindsay and John McElroy. For both records, each swimmer performed one-hour relay efforts before crawling, shivering and exhausted, onto the Infinity Channel Swimming support boat. But the big challenge was how to calm their fears. “This area is a haven for lion’s mane jellyfish,” says Judge. “At night, the crew shone a light on the water, and when it hit one they looked pretty scary. The stings on my face were the worst. Even when I was on the boat, I would hear the jellyfish warning whistle being blown and the swimmer roaring with pain. And you know you’re next…” Judge used different strategies to control his mind. “To calm my fears, I would pray or sing a song in the water, and before I knew it ten minutes had gone. When I got cold, I would visualise candles and fire to trick myself into feeling warm. But, when the pain kicked in, the motivation was just about not letting your friends down. Colin was badly hit by COVID earlier in the year, but he swam his heart out. I wanted to knock it out the park for the team.” Their two new world records made all the suffering worthwhile. “We finished the second swim on the Giant’s Causeway, which is such an iconic location,” says Judge. “The tourists were all staring at us. We’re called the Oa Giants, and we really felt like giants when we were standing on those rocks.” 49
Keep on truckin’ It was one of the last big motorsports events to take place before last year’s global lockdown. Now, as the world shakes off its stasis, THE MINT 400 is revving up once more. America’s oldest desert rally has endured throughout the many upheavals in its nation’s history, and it remains as wild as ever… Words TOM GUISE Photography GAVIN BOND
Two-time overall winner (2013 and 2018) Bryce Menzies tackles the 2020 Mint 400 in his trophy truck, a vehicle capable of jumping more than 45m. “You’re doing four laps of 100 miles [160km],” says the American. “It’s an iconic race.”
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The Mint 400
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688km blast through the Mojave Desert, The Mint 400 began in 1968 as a PR stunt for the annual deer hunt of Las Vegas hotel and casino The Mint. But the event, which starts and finishes just beyond the glare of the Las Vegas Strip, soon transformed into something bigger: the ‘Great American Off-Road Race’. “I first went in 2018,” says British photographer Gavin Bond. “It was the 50th anniversary, and I knew nothing about it. My producer in LA – this English guy called Skinny – is an amateur petrolhead. He got one of those competition trucks and entered, so I went along. I fell in love with the race and knew I had to go back to shoot it.” And that’s what he did in March 2020. What Bond didn’t know at the time was that the motorsports scenes he’d capture would be among the last before everyday life transformed for ever – 12 days later, the world went into lockdown. 52
A year on, the world has changed, but, against the odds, The Mint 400 is back. This isn’t the first time the event has been in peril – for two decades, it didn’t run. When casino owner Jack Binion bought The Mint hotel in 1988, he shut down the race as he believed it negatively impacted on his businesses. It wasn’t until 2008 that the rights were bought by Matt and Joshua Martelli, makers of viral motorsports series Ken Block’s Gymkhana. Today, The Mint and many surrounding casinos are gone, replaced by entertainment complexes. But the race endures, just as it did throughout the era of the Hollywood macho man – when the likes of Steve McQueen and James Garner took part – and the birth of gonzo journalism; it was while covering The Mint 400 for Sports Illustrated that author Hunter S Thompson was inspired to pen his classic travelogue Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. “You couldn’t have anything more ‘America’,” says Bond of the race. The lensman set out to document a sporting event, but, like Thompson, found something more raw and fascinating. THE RED BULLETIN
The day before the main race, bikes take to the field. “They were part of the original Mint 400, mixed in with the cars, which was crazy,” says co-owner Matt Martelli. “That stopped [in 1976] for insurance reasons. We brought them back in 2018.” Two vintage classes (1980-90, and earlier) are mixed in with pro and amateur riders, a women’s category and even father/son teams. “Bikes have always been the gateway to offroading. Most racers started on one.”
The Mint 400
“It’s definitely a family affair. One guy rides one truck, the son rides in the other truck, and the daughter rides the bike” Photographer Gavin Bond
Left: Red Bull driver Seth Quintero waits by his UTV Pro N/A (utility terrain vehicle, non- aspirated, meaning it isn’t turbo- or supercharged). In 2019, aged 16, the Alabamaborn rider entered the history books as the youngest Mint 400 winner in the UTV Pro Turbo category. “This shot is before the race. It’s hot and they just want to get out on the track,” says Bond. Quintero failed to finish in 2020 after crashing out. Opposite page: a mix of trophy trucks and UTVs in action.
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The Mint 400
Above: “The calm before the storm – a 400-mile war in the Mojave Desert for the next six-to-12 hours,” says Martelli of the race start. “As these guys drive around, helicopters are flying around, getting intel on the race and explaining to the driver who they’re chasing,” says Bond. “That’s how much money they throw at this thing.” Left: “There are three pits: two in the desert, this one is by the start,” says Bond.
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“I had radio info that Bryce Menzies [pictured far right of this page] was about to refuel, so I raced back and got this great shot of Red Bull waiting there with the fuel lines ready… but the car just didn’t stop.” Right: “I didn’t notice the Trump/Pence decal when I took this shot. Now it’s special.” On the issue of competitors fronting their political affiliations, Martelli is matter-of-fact: “Run your colours.” THE RED BULLETIN
“These trucks come in with pieces hanging off them,” says Bond. “The guy underneath is fixing something that fell off during the race. The colours you can see are from the lights of the stage where they receive their prize. Even if you come 15th, you get a little medal”
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The Mint 400
Joseph Jepson of the Diamond J Racing team in his Alumi Craft open-wheel buggy. “This is in Class 10 – the ‘racer’s’ class with equal cars – which is very competitive,” says Martelli. “I’m shooting on a long lens,” says Bond, “but I was probably closer than I should have been. You’re out in the middle of nowhere with five or six other photographers, all trying to get the best shot, and sometimes you get led astray.”
“There are no boundaries in the middle of the desert, just flags,” says Bond of photographing The Mint 400. “Suddenly you find a car hurtling towards you and it doesn’t control itself very well. You just have to dive out of the way. It’s definitely dangerous”
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The Mint 400
“This is the start of the race,” says Bond. “Just out of shot behind the orange vehicle [top, right] is a bandstand where Eagles of Death Metal performed the night before. Here, the trucks are jockeying for position. They come off the hill, then out into the desert, trying to get away from each other.”
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Left: Trucks on the starting grid, in their qualifying positions. “If I was to look to my left, I’d see the rollercoaster of Buffalo Bill’s [Resort & Casino],” says Bond. “It’s where the competitors stay, about 40 minutes from the strip. It’s $18 a night and it’s pretty horrible – the kind of place for people who don’t even make it to Vegas.”
Above: Former winner Travis Chase (right) and co-driver Jacob Lauxen claim their finisher’s medals. Among the other competitors were UFC fighter Donald Cerrone, who fought and lost to Conor McGregor two months before the race. “He calls himself ‘Cowboy’,” says Bond. “The race draws a certain type, and he’s that type – he looks like America.”
The Mint 400 takes place in Las Vegas from March 3-7; themint400.com THE RED BULLETIN
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Pitch shift With her music career on an enforced hiatus, DJ and broadcaster Lucy Monkman, aka MONKI, had to find an alternative outlet for her boundless energy – and life has never been better 62
Words EMMA FINAMORE Photography GREG COLEMAN THE RED BULLETIN
Game on: thanks to her inexhaustible work ethic, Monki has risen from pirateradio station intern to accomplished DJ, podcaster and footballer
“I now do this thing where I don’t use my iPhone on Tuesdays” 64
Lucy Monkman – better known as Monki, the DJ, producer, label founder and broadcaster who has brought us some of the freshest and most innovative electronic sounds around – is revealing some of the small, unexpectedly quiet ways she has navigated this, the most difficult of years. “Sometimes I find myself just scrolling and I don’t even know what I’m looking at,” says the Londoner. She’s been reflecting, reading, listening to a lot of podcasts, and she has also taken up meditation, which she credits to her girlfriend. “Wellbeing stuff. When you’re younger, you think it’s a bit wishy-washy. But it’s real.” At 29, Monki may be an updated version of her younger self, but she’s lost THE RED BULLETIN
Monki
none of the drive and ambition of that football-loving, music-obsessed teen. Having made her name with a BBC Radio 1 show, her own label, and countless international tours as a DJ, she’s also gaining a reputation on the football pitch – she plays in the fifth tier of the women’s game, for Dulwich Hamlet FC Ladies – and as a podcaster; her series on the 2019 Women’s World Cup, Football Inside Out, won the Best Sport category at the British Podcast Awards. Monki has managed what most people don’t: she’s made all her teenage dreams come true. “It’s taken some time to work it out,” she says. “Now [my passions] have actually come together really well, and I’m so happy they did.” THE RED BULLETIN
Our interview takes place in a park near Leyton, east London, on a freezing but bright day. Monki’s look is casual and pared-down yet polished: jeans, trainers, bright white sports socks, a neat beanie. As she reminisces about her unlikely rise to fame, each word carefully considered, there’s an unmistakable energy bubbling beneath the calm surface. It’s a quality that has played a big part in her success. Monki grew up in Kingston upon Thames on the outskirts of south-west London. At home, she was surrounded by electronic music – from The Chemical Brothers, Prodigy and 808 State on her mum’s stereo, to the garage tunes her uncle spun, to the dubstep and grime she listened to on pirate radio. “I really got into music because of radio,” Monki says, emphasising the importance of pirates such as Rinse FM and Deja Vu, which transmitted the beats and voices of the underground across city rooftops and into hungry young ears. “I remember tuning in late at night and hearing dance music that I’d never heard before.” These stations were the training ground for UK pioneers including So Solid Crew and Wiley; the place where MCs such as Dizzee, Kano and Ghetts honed their rap skills; and a space in which homegrown sounds were given room to flex and develop, away from licencefee payers, advertisers or regulators. Not content with being a fan, Monki decided to become part of this world. After hearing DJ Annie Mac play Skream’s ice-cold dubstep ‘Let’s Get Ravey’ remix of La Roux’s In For The Kill on the radio one evening, she quit school the next day. The 16-year-old managed to land an internship at Rinse during a pivotal time when the artists the station worked with were blowing up, and she was on champagne-buying duties when, in 2010, the station won an official licence and became legit. “It was all really exciting – I was around DJs I looked up to and felt really inspired to be like at some point,” Monki remembers. “Katy B [whose career was launched by Rinse] became a pop star when dubstep went global, Magnetic Man [a dubstep ‘supergroup’ comprising Rinse DJ/producers Skream, Benga and Artwork] became huge... all from a radio station in the East End.” Like Rinse founder Geeneus – who set up his station at the age of 16, balancing decks on top of a homemade transmitter in an 18th-floor flat in Tower Hamlets – Monki has made it in music thanks not
“When I quit school, there was a sense of ‘Well, now I can’t fail’” just to her keen ear, but also to a DIY attitude and inexhaustible work ethic. She used her time at the station to hone her engineering and mixing skills – “They gave me my first show, and the equipment, because I couldn’t afford my own” – and to forge vital industry connections. One night after a shift, she recorded a 20-minute set and sent it to childhood hero Annie Mac, who she’d connected with years earlier via MySpace. As a result, Mac gave Monki her first-ever gig, at KOKO in Camden, north London. In addition to stints at iconic clubs Ministry of Sound and Fabric, this led to the fledgling DJ getting a show on BBC Radio 1Xtra and then, aged just 21, a coveted slot on BBC Radio 1. “When I’d quit education, there was a sense of ‘Well, I can’t fail’,” she says. “I had nothing to fall back on. So that was my mantra at that age – it was an ‘all or nothing’ sort of mindset. And it worked. Because you’re young, you just do it.” That ‘just do it’ attitude has taken Monki to the top of her game in music. She’s now a major force in deep house and techno, and a deft selector when it comes to crafting crowd-pleasing sets. As well as playing everything from disco and soul to electronica and piano house on the airwaves and in clubs, Monki has produced and released her own music, putting out EPs featuring a rich mix of producers, MCs and vocalists. She released a live EP with Fabric while still a teenager, splicing together house, UK garage and grime. Monki also has her own label, ZOO Music, as an outlet for all the unreleased jams that fill her inbox. And she has taken this energy out on the road every year, playing all over the globe or at her own curated UK night, Monki & Friends. But then the pandemic hit. Monki describes the effect as being like a freight train slamming on its brakes. “I’d gone full pelt for ten years and then, all of a 65
In the mix: Monki is equally at home in the studio or (opposite page) on the football pitch, playing for Dulwich Hamlet FC Ladies
LIAM ASMAN
Monki
sudden, just a hard stop.” Clubs were closed, tours were suspended, and Monki found herself at home without much to do. “The plan was to come back for a week, but in that seven days everything changed.” For someone who’d always had a very clear vision of the future, even as a teen – “When I quit school I was like, ‘This is my 10-year plan, I want to be on Radio 1 by the time I’m 26’”– this was a severe shock to the system. “It’s the most I’ve ever been home in 10 years,” Monki says. “What all of us lost was a connection with people. It was a massive loss. I thought I might handle it better, but I was actually quite down.” Monki’s aforementioned work ethic didn’t allow her to slow down for long, however. Football gave her another focus, somewhere to channel her energy. The beautiful game had, in fact, been part of her original career plan before she fell in love with music, but at 14 she discovered that – at the time – women weren’t paid for playing. “You could play for Arsenal or Chelsea, but it wasn’t your job,” she says. “At the time, [female] England players had to pay for their own kit! It broke my heart. So I fell out of love with it. If I can’t do it how I want to do it, then I don’t want to do it.” It was in her mid-twenties, with her music career in full swing, that football crept back into Monki’s life. “It took a while,” she says, “but I realised I really missed playing sport.” After getting back into the game via casual five-a-side matches, Monki joined Dulwich Hamlet FC Ladies and began living a “double life”, as she describes it. “I kept football and sport separate [from music]. I didn’t hang out with my team – I just turned up, trained and played. I didn’t tell everyone what I did. I just wanted to play football. I wanted to be treated like everyone else. But, when they found out, they just treated me the same. Everyone is equal. That’s why I love sport – no one gives a crap what you do.” These days, Monki is a linchpin of the club. “I’m so involved [with Dulwich Hamlet] – my girlfriend’s the captain, and we’re like ambassadors,” she says of her about-turn. “I work with them doing community stuff, and I run their social channels as a volunteer. I’m, like, all in.” Rebranded in 2019 after nine years as AFC Phoenix – a team that, for much of that time, didn’t even have matching kit – Dulwich Hamlet Ladies have found themselves on an upward THE RED BULLETIN
trajectory, attracting larger crowds than many clubs further up the football foodchain. Last year, in their first season in the London & South East Premier Division, they were top of the table when – sadly – the league was abandoned because of the pandemic. The club is something of a family, too – players and supporters came together to raise more than £10,000 when beloved manager Farouk Menia passed away in 2019, and it provides vital LGBTQ support in the community. It was Monki’s lifelong love of sport that got her through lockdown. She used the time to reconnect with training and also to build on her new-found enthusiasm for sports broadcasting. This was boosted further when Football Inside Out won the British Podcast Award. “It opened my eyes,” she says of the realisation she could combine her two worlds. “I love broadcasting – podcasting was something I’d wanted to do anyway – but this was something else, not music.” It was really intense, but a great experience.” Never one to do anything but football matches by halves, Monki has since presented The Kick Off – a livestreaming UEFA Champions League party hosted by Heineken and Defected – and worked with sporting legend Peter Crouch on BT Sport. What was at first an uncomfortable change of pace when the pandemic hit has now made Monki rethink her future. “I’ve slowly come to the conclusion that I do love playing shows, but I don’t want it to be my whole life,” she says. “This year has been very much about what I want to do beyond touring and being behind the decks. During the second lockdown, I teamed up with a bunch of others to work on ideas for a women’s sports platform, which will hopefully launch this year.” The platform doesn’t yet have a name, but it does have a strong ethos: “There are some great football and sports content makers [out there], but what we want to do is concentrate less on any sport itself and more on encouraging women to move in any capacity.” Monkman quotes recent research by Sports England, which found that 39 per cent of women are not active enough, the most common reasons being a fear of judgement and lack of confidence. “Not everybody loves sports like I love football, but it’s so important to get exercise, even if it’s just going for a walk with your mates.”
“I didn’t tell my teammates what I did. I just wanted to play football”
It makes sense that Monki would apply her boundless energy to a project such as this, being someone who has visibly boosted female representation in several male-dominated fields. This includes success in the largely masculine world of electronic music, becoming the firstever woman of East Asian heritage to host a BBC Radio 1 show – “I wasn’t aware of that until 2020. I didn’t see myself as that person at the time. I wish I’d celebrated it more” – and, of course, playing women’s football. But, despite her plans to improve the health of countless women, and the fact that Asian girls have contacted Monki to tell her how much she’s inspired them, she doesn’t view herself as someone pushing for equality. Her boundary-breaking is more personal, centred purely around her tenacity to do what she loves, despite any risks or hurdles. Now, finding the space in the Venn diagram where her passions overlap has given her the tools to push through strange times – and even emerge stronger. “I feel like I’m being more ‘me’, living this way, with more integrity,” she says. “And that’s the goal, isn’t it? That is literally the goal.” monkidj.com 67
Bloom time
GETTY IMAGES
The England women’s rugby team, the RED ROSES, are on a winning streak. Fuelled by a lifelong passion, the squad’s now-professional status, and the finest chicken wings they’ve tasted, three key players tell us why their best is yet to come…
Words JESSICA HAYDEN YDEN
Prop star: Hannah Botterman (centre) celebrates after scoring England’s sixth try in the Women’s Six Nations match against France in February 2019
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eing an elite female rugby player is tough, but not only for the reasons that first come to mind. Sure, you must be prepared for hard knocks on the pitch. But, as well as this, most international players manage their (unpaid) rugby career on top of full-time work. In fact, while France and New Zealand have some semiprofessional players, England has the world’s only fully professional women’s rugby team – a change that came into force just two years ago. The current squad of the Red Roses, as the team are known, includes a former diver, firefighter and gas engineer. Prop Hannah Botterman previously worked as both a waitress and a painter and decorator – roles she juggled simultaneously with appearances for top rugby union club Saracens and England. When, in January 2019, 28 players were named in England’s full-time professional XVs squad, it signalled a step-up in status for the women’s game here, which has since been mirrored in both the Red Roses’ on-pitch success and growing fanbase. The team won the Grand Slam in the 2019 and 2020 Women’s Six Nations tournaments, then two hotly contested games against closest European rivals France last autumn, which were broadcast live on BBC Two to a peak audience of 800,000 viewers. Barring further interruption due to the global pandemic, 2021 is gearing up to be the most
exciting year yet for women’s rugby. As confirmation of the sport’s growing popularity, every game in the Women’s Six Nations is set to be broadcast live on the BBC for the first time, followed by the biggest event in the women’s calendar: the 2021 Rugby World Cup, which is due to be hosted by New Zealand this autumn. Botterman, Zoe Aldcroft and Sarah Bern are three players at the heart of the England team’s rise to glory. All are rugby forwards, and all – as painful testament to the rigours of the sport – are currently rehabbing injuries, but are determined to get back out on the pitch to compete. Botterman, who is out with an ankle injury, is the youngest of the three, but already boasts an impressive 20 caps for the national side and is also still at Saracens. The Hertfordshire-born 21-year-old comes from true rugby stock: since the age of four, she has watched both parents play the sport – her dad on a Saturday, her mum on a Sunday – and her uncle, Gregg Botterman, and aunt, Jane Everett, both turned out for England. Aldcroft, who’s recovering after breaking her foot for the third time in her career, plays as second row for both England and Gloucester-Hartpury Women. The 24-year-old has 20 caps for her country and last year won the Rugby Players’ Association Telegraph Women’s Sport England Player of the Year award. And we catch up with Bern at an England rehab camp where, following a shoulder injury, she’s been taking part in physio and training to prepare her for the new year. The 23-year-old prop has 36 caps for England and, despite being the youngest member of the squad at the 2017 Rugby World Cup, scored a try in the semi-final against France, which helped take her side through to the final, where they were defeated by New Zealand. Here, the three teammates – speaking to The Red Bulletin via Zoom, as has become the norm – give their insight into what only around 60 women in the world can: life as a professional rugby player.
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GETTY IMAGES
Tough tactics: Botterman takes on Wales’ Natalia John at London’s Twickenham Stoop last March THE RED BULLETIN
Red Roses
Rush hour: Sarah Bern surges forward in the Six Nations against Italy last November
“Winning the World Cup is the ultimate goal as a player, the highest of the high”
Hard knock life: Zoe Aldcroft in action against Ireland at Castle Park, Doncaster, last February THE RED BULLETIN
the red bulletin: How did you first get into rugby? hannah botterman: I played rugby straight out of the womb, basically! I began when I was very young. And then, when I couldn’t play with the boys any more, I took up girl’s rugby at [Hertfordshire side] Welwyn RFC. After that, I went to Hartpury University and College, and then I played my first year of women’s rugby for [London team] Saracens – I’m still there now. sarah bern: Me and my cousin used to play sport a lot. And then he started playing rugby and I thought, “I’ll give it a go… I can beat him up, so I think I’ll be alright with the others!” I went to my first rugby tournament when I was 10. I was the only girl and I’d never met anyone there before. This old guy with the tackle pad said, “Run at me as hard as you can.” So I did. He ended up doing a backward somersault. He went flying! zoe aldcroft: I did everything when I was a child: played musical instruments; did dance, netball and rowing; took part in loads of different sports… I started playing rugby when I was eight. I played with the boys and then against the girls, and finally I went to Hartpury. Then rugby it was! 71
It must make a difference to how much you can train, and the physical care you receive… za: I’ve experienced injury as both a professional and an amateur player.
In the warm-up of the second game of the season [last year], I broke my foot again while landing in a line-out. This is my third break in three years, which is really annoying. Since turning professional, I’ve had better care, and the intensity of my rehab has been so much better. sb: A lot of athletes [at club level] have full-time jobs, too. At Bristol [Bears, her current team], we’ve got a fair few players who are doctors or are in other demanding jobs and don’t have a lot of spare time to work on all the extras, like rehab, prehab and neck strength. So they have to do it in their own time, with the support of their club’s S&C [strength and conditioning] and medical teams, which makes keeping on top of those things harder for them. You were in the middle of a Grand Slam winning streak when the Six Nations stopped due to COVID-19.
“The best part of turning pro is just being able to focus on yourself”
Irresistible force: Botterman holds off French opponents on their home turf in the Six Nations match last February
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Hannah, you seemed to spend a lot of the downtime on Instagram… hb: Me and [fellow England player] Poppy [Cleall] posted every Tuesday, and I think people enjoyed it! We thought that because there’s so much bad stuff going on in the world, we should try to lighten things up. We did 10 episodes of just really random stuff. People could pick what we did, so it was mainly based around food, which is not surprising at all. We did some eating challenges that were pretty rank – there was one with hot wings that was just disgusting – and a make-up challenge. We also featured these specific chicken wings because we’ve got an obsession with them. How did you get back to playing? sb: When everything stopped, our season was null and void, which [at club level] was good for us because Bristol were seventh in the table. But I don’t think [table toppers] Saracens were very happy! It was down to our clubs to give us a programme [that ensured] when we returned we’d be in the best possible shape. We managed to slowly progress back into tiny sessions. You could do handling, but you couldn’t tackle or touch. It was basically running and passing. Then, when we came back into camp, we weren’t allowed within two metres of each other. We could only do contact once we had our test results, and even then only for a certain amount of time. The effects of concussion in sport have become a hot topic recently. In rugby, a number of male players have revealed being diagnosed with early-onset dementia following multiple brain injuries. How has this news affected how you play? za: I think it’s about being more aware, when you are on the field, of how much a knock affects you. And if you do get a knock, you have to make sure you report it. Because sometimes, in the past, I’ve had a knock and then got a headache, but I’ve just thought, “I’ll be OK.” It’s good that they’re now doing more research so that hopefully in the future we’re not going to get dementia. hb: It’s about just being aware, like Zoe said. It’s quite difficult on the pitch not to just carry on after taking a knock, because that’s what everyone does – as a player, you don’t ever want to come off the pitch for anything. THE RED BULLETIN
GETTY IMAGES
Turning professional in January 2019 must have been a pivotal moment in your careers. How did it change things? hb: At the time of my first and second [England] cap, I was still painting and decorating and also working as a waitress at Harvester. I was juggling it all, which was draining. I was working from 6am until 4pm, coming home, then going into work from 5pm until 10pm, and doing rugby, too – it was savage. Then I got my third cap and realised I probably needed to drop the Harvester job. I wasn’t sad to see it go! sb: A lot of the girls at the club, from different nations, have so many other stresses, like getting to work on time, trying to squeeze the gym in, plus travelling. [The best part of turning professional] is just being able to focus on yourself. All those other stresses are eliminated, because your one job is to make sure you’re the best you can be. I’m friends with a lot of internationals, who all have to work extremely hard. Rugby keeps demanding more as the Premiership grows. I think everyone would want their unions to be like ours. Hopefully we’ll see other nations follow suit. It definitely needs to change.
Red Roses
“We’re all on the same path, wanting to be the best in the world”
Above and beyond: Aldcroft soars high to win a line-out during England’s Six Nations match against Wales last March
What would victory in the World Cup mean to you? hb: Quite a few of the girls won it in 2014, so they understand what that’s like. For me, it’s just the ultimate goal as a player. It’s everything you work towards, the highest of the high, so it would be incredible. But there’s a lot to work on between now and then. What’s next for the women’s game? hb: When I got my first cap, we weren’t really selling out Doncaster [Castle Park, capacity 5,000]; now, we sell out Sandy Park [in Exeter], which is a 13,000-seater. The more we get onto mainstream TV channels, the more people can see what we’re producing, and it will only grow from there. It’s just a matter of time.
With the Rugby World Cup taking place, 2021 should be an exciting year for women’s rugby. How are you feeling as you go into it? za: I’m very excited about the World Cup in New Zealand. [The tournament is being staged in Auckland and Whangārei.] But obviously, first things first, you have to get back out on the pitch. My main aim is to not just get on the pitch, but to perform well this year. And to win the World Cup, of course! If we work hard, we’ve got a great chance of winning.
“Playing for England is just pure happiness. There’s no feeling like it” THE RED BULLETIN
Power grab: Bern of Bristol Bears is tackled by Exeter Chiefs Women in their Premier 15s game
Given rugby’s physically punishing nature, what keeps you on the pitch? hb: We just love the sport. We enjoy winning and that’s what drives us. Some days are better than others, of course, but playing for England… I struggle to describe it. It’s pure happiness. There’s no feeling like it. za: I love the thrill of playing rugby – I don’t think there’s a sport quite like it. You have to use your whole physical force to tackle, but you also need good footwork, kicking, ball-handling skills, good communication, spacial awareness… It entails so many different skills. It takes a whole team of people of different shapes and sizes, with each position bringing their own special skill set. We train each week to be the best version of ourselves and push ourselves to get better all the time. We’re all on the same path, wanting to be the best in the world. That’s a great place to be. At the time of going to press, the start date of the Women’s Six Nations had not yet been confirmed. The 2021 Rugby World Cup is scheduled to take place from September 18 to October 16; englandrugby.com 73
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VENTURE Enhance, equip, and experience your best life VIKING BIKING
H+I ADVENTURES
Hike, ride and sail the fjords of Norway
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VENTURE Travel “‘Easy’ is not a word I’d associate with this glacier-ravaged landscape – it’ll make you work, and feel insignificant at times, but that makes it all the more rewarding” Ross Bell, MTB photographer
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H+I ADVENTURES
he first sounds I hear on waking are the gentle hum of the engine and the sound of waves lapping against the wooden hull. The ship has stopped. Swinging my legs out of the bunk, I pull on my clothes with a mix of trepidation and excitement, then head up to the deck to be greeted by a cold mist hitting my face. My boots squelch underfoot and our bikes, sitting in the corner, are sopping wet. Towering before us are the Trollstigen mountains – named after the serpentine 55km road linking the range. The name translates from Norwegian to English as ‘Troll’s Staircase’, which is certainly apt – with a steep nine-per-cent incline and 11 hairpins, this mountain pass is a monster, and today we’ll be ascending it. This is day three of a week-long mountain-bike adventure through the Norwegian fjords – those ancient inlets forged by glaciers where mountains meet ribbons of emerald water. Our floating home is HMS Gåssten, a retired Swedish warship luxuriously refitted to accommodate 10 guests as she navigates this labyrinth of waterways, from mountain to mountain, in search of backcountry heaven. As a mountainbike photographer, my job has taken me from New Zealand to Canada, Namibia to Ecuador, but Norway is a destination I’ve long lusted after, eager to ascend up to 1,000m a day and ride some of the world’s most technical trails with the spectacular fjords as a backdrop. The smell of coffee entices me into the cabin where I find our guide, Ole, planning the route for the day. Our party of eight will head 22km into the cloudenshrouded mountains. After loading the skiff with bikes and bodies, our captain, Sven, takes us ashore and we wend up ‘the staircase’ by van, before ditching the trail and ascending the glacier on foot,
ROSS BELL
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Deck hands: HMS Gåssten’s crew, Sven and Tash, help to unload bikes after a big day in the mountains THE RED BULLETIN
VENTURE Travel Lifting gear: Bell and his party hikea-bike across the rugged Trollstigen mountains
Blue view: the fjords provide a spectacular backdrop
carrying our bikes. ‘Earn your turns’ is a phrase that comes to mind as I force one foot in front of the other, much to the complaint of my calves and thighs. The mountains flirt with us as they drift in and out of cover, teasing glimpses of the sheer scale of the terrain we’ll be dealing with. Although it’s mid-August, the remnants of winter still cling to the hollows as we trudge across slushy patches of snow, reaching our destination by a crystal-clear meltwater lake. But we barely pause long enough to catch our breath – the allure of an epic descent is too strong. Front wheel THE RED BULLETIN
pointing downhill, I tease open my brake levers and begin my grapple with gravity. Sections of steep, slick rock are linked by narrow laces of technical singletrack littered with tyreshredding rock gardens. There are a few tactics you can opt for, ranging from the slow and tentative approach to the all-out hold-on-and-hope. The decision must be made quickly or the terrain will chew you up before you get acquainted. Nail it, though, and it’s an incredible feeling. Bombing down the open mountainside with dirt
flying in every direction, it’s not long before my brakes are cooking and my arms begin to ache. I’m not stopping, though, and my grin grows ever wider as the rollercoaster-like trail ebbs and flows with the contours of the hill and we slash our way through the lush undergrowth. As we near the valley floor, the gradient – and my adrenalin – eases as we skirt a river cutting through silver streaks of birch trees. This welcome change in pace allows me to digest this beautiful environment as we reach the edge of the fjord, ready 77
VENTURE Travel
Down time: the group descend towards the turquoise waters of the fjord from the slopes of Liahornet
Riding the fjords requires a high-level of fitness and MTB competency, including technical climbs, rugged singletrack descents and rock gardens. Here are a few areas to brush up on… Hike-a-bike technique: lay your bike on the ground with the drivetrain facing downwards. Place your left hand on the fork, right hand on the crank. Squat and lift the bike over your head. Rest the downtube on your back/rucksack.
to head back offshore for dinner aboard the waiting HMS Gåssten. On our final day, I emerge from below deck to a canopy of blue sky and the sun – which barely sleeps at these latitudes in summer – shimmering on the water’s surface. “I saved the best for last,” says Ole, smiling, as he points to Liahornet, the 961m-tall gateway to the mountain range that greets Norddalsfjorden – the fjord we’re anchored in. We’ll be ascending to its peak on a mere 7km of steep trail.
Take your bike out 4-5 times a week, in all weather, to get acquainted with steep and slippery trails. Practice riding roots, rocks and drops. Ensure your bike is well maintained – a brake bleed, fresh pads and grippy tyres pay dividends. Prepare to dig deep, both physically and mentally. Climbing and descending is guaranteed to challenge you, regardless of ability.
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Fjord escort Used as a minesweeper by the Swedish Navy from 1973 to 1999, the oak-hulled HMS Gåssten is one of the last wooden ships to serve in any naval force. Owned by captain Sven Stewart, the 24m-long vessel has been refitted with five ensuite bedrooms and a saloon. HMS Gåssten’s size allows it to enter fjords other cruise ships cannot.
As we ride through the village of Liabygda and its surrounding farmsteads, I enjoy the brief opportunity to spin my legs before things turn steeper and our bikes are on our backs. The gradients here are so severe that no matter what your fitness level, you’ll find yourself more often than not climbing on foot. ‘Easy’ and ‘accessible’ are not words I’d associate with this glacier-ravaged landscape – it’ll make you work, and feel insignificant at times, but that makes it all the more rewarding when you overcome it. Red-faced and drenched in sweat, we reach the summit, our ship a mere pixel in a vast blue strip below us. The hard part is over. It’s all downhill from here, in the best possible sense. After that? The promise of a cruise to the world-famous Geirangerfjord, where Sven will edge the ship to a stop at the base of the 410m-tall Seven Sisters waterfall for a post-ride dip in the icy waters to soothe our tired bodies. The ideal way to unwind after an action-packed week.
Ross Bell is an action-sports photographer based in Scotland; rossbellphoto.com. His trip was with H+I Adventures, which organises MTB and E-MTB tours around the world and is planning another tour of the Norwegian fjords this August; mountainbikeworldwide.com THE RED BULLETIN
H+I ADVENTURES
Steep learning curve
OUTRIDE T HE DAY OUTRIDE THE ROAD
Maxx-D Mk13
Diablo Mk12
4000 Lumens Handlebar mounted Reflex Technology
1800 Lumens Helmet mounted TAP Technology
VENTURE Equipment PROTECT
Freezy rider Cold-weather cycling can be bliss, but you need to prepare... “Winter is the enemy of cycling in most people’s minds,” says Canadian author Tom Babin in his book Frostbike: The Joy, Pain and Numbness of Winter Cycling – a personal account of riding in the coldest elements following an ill-prepared snowy commute in his home city of Calgary. Babin isn’t alone in riding out during winter. In the Finnish city of Oulu, where winter temperatures regularly sit below zero and snow falls more than 160 days a year, 12 per cent of the population winter-cycled in 2016 (by way of comparison, just two per cent of Londoners did so the following year). Coldweather cycling is tougher – weather
conditions aside, cooler air has a higher density and cold tyres a higher rolling resistance, requiring more exertion. But with that comes a winter workout, the avoidance of crowded public transport, and a chance to appreciate the world around you. As Babin says in his book, “Perhaps those widely held assumptions about the impossibility of winter cycling are wrong. Maybe it can be something wonderful.”
Shielding your head in snow, slush or icy conditions is vital, but it’s about more than just impact protection. Your head is an extremity, like your hands and feet, and keeping it warm is crucial. A skullcap such as the DHB Windslam is completely wind- and waterproof and fits comfortably beneath your helmet. Keep your neck (and the blood going to your head) insulated, too, with a scarf or tube like the ENDURA Baabaa Merino one worn here.
Combined with bib tights or leg warmers, a jersey such as the long-sleeved ENDURA Jetstream does the job. Throw on a gilet like ALBION’s weatherproof example (opposite) to control your body climate with layers.
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DAVID EDWARDS
Annette wears KASK Valegro Team INEOS Grenadiers helmet, kask.com; DHB Windslam cycling skullcap, Dorica road shoes and Aeron Lab Neoshell overshoes, wiggle. co.uk; ENDURA Baabaa Merino Tech Multitube, FS260-Pro Jetstream Longsleeve jersey, Pro Shortsleeve bib tights and FS260-Pro Nemo II gloves, endurasport.com
THE RED BULLETIN
VENTURE Equipment If your hands and feet freeze, you can’t operate your brakes or pedals. DHB Extreme Winter gloves guard against wind and water, with a fleece lining to keep your pinkies toasty. Overshoes such as the Neoshell-fabric DHB Aeron Labs worn here will protect your shoes from muck and spray, and make your feet forget it’s winter.
Robbie wears MET Trenta 3K Carbon performance road helmet, met-helmets.com; OAKLEY Sutro sunglasses, oakley.com; DHB Windslam cycling skullcap, Extreme Winter gloves, Regulate Thermal leg warmers, Troika road shoes and Aeron Lab Neoshell overshoes, wiggle.co.uk; ALBION insulated jacket, insulated gilet and ABR1 bib shorts, albioncycling.com
Cold commutes can be brutal for bikes – condensation can turn to ice on the frame, and road salt can rust your gears, chain and brakes. That said, MARIN’s Headlands 2 gravel bike delivers vital traction in less-than-ideal conditions.
Models: ROBBIE LUBOYA and ANNETTE REGIS @ W Model Management
THE RED BULLETIN
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VENTURE Wellbeing the balance between work and my sporting career. It was the best thing I did. Life is short and anything can happen. Why spend your life doing something you don’t love?”
Focus on what you can control
“There was a moment when I was with my mum, in tears, thinking, ‘Things will never be better. I’ll never be the person I was before.’ I couldn’t control the fact I was feeling so awful, but I could go for a walk [in the wheelchair] and call friends. These are things I can control, to help how I’m feeling.”
Develop a sense of structure
Claire Danson was a member of Team GB when an accident changed her life for ever. A year-and-a-half on, the triathlete reveals an important lesson the experience has taught her: it’s not what happens to us that defines us, but how we respond
I
t was meant to be just another training ride, but, for the reigning European triathlon champion, that morning in August 2019 proved to be anything but routine. Claire Danson was cycling through rural Hampshire when she was involved in a collision with a tractor. Her spinal cord was severed, causing paralysis from the waist down; both lungs were punctured, and her ribs, shoulders, neck and wrists were broken. As she drifted in and out of a coma in intensive care, Danson communicated by squeezing the hands of her loved ones as they pointed to letters of the alphabet. One of the first words she spelt out was ‘para-athlete’.
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It took time to learn how to sit up unaided, and to gain the strength to roll her wheelchair, but smashing goals is what the 31-year-old has done her whole life. “With a spinal cord injury, you have goals upon goals,” she says today. Last May, less than a year after the crash, Danson took part in the Wings for Life World Run, pushing herself around a 5km circuit. Soon, she began training for a Half Ironman: a 1.9km swim, 90km handbike ride and 21km wheelchair push. “We’re all capable of a huge
“I see the barriers I face as a wheelchair user like sporting targets”
amount more than we think,” she says. “So, if you’re not sure whether you can do something, take it that you definitely can.”
Don’t undersell yourself
“I’m working at getting better at transfers [in and out of the chair] at the moment. I see the barriers that I’m now facing as a wheelchair user like sporting targets. When I first wheelied the length of the hallway, it was so exciting. You can apply that mindset to so much in life.”
Find what makes you happy
“That may involve a risk, but as long as it’s a calculated one I’d say go for it. Before my accident, I quit my job and started tutoring to improve
Be content to change your goals
“It’s important to let yourself grieve, to say, ‘I’ve lost a relationship. I’ve lost my sporting career.’ But now I can do parasport, which I want to take to a higher level, and I’ve got more of a voice than before. Hopefully I can help people. Things often don’t happen as imagined, so the ability to adapt and reimagine your future is really important. I know that if I’m not fast enough for parasport I can do other big challenges, like cycling from London to Paris [on the handbike]. It would be hard, but I know I could do it.”
This year, Claire Danson will be taking on an Ironman challenge for Wings for Life. Support her and follow her journey on Instagram: @cdanson10. To take part in the Wings for Life World Run on May 9 and help raise money to find a cure for spinal cord injury, go to wingsforlifeworldrun.com THE RED BULLETIN
JESSICA HOLLAND
Reframe your reality
JAMES MCKEWON
ADVANCE
“Yesterday I had the worst day. If I was going to give up on things, it would have been then. But I’ve organised my life in such a way that quitting isn’t an option. I tutor young people, and that brings me out of myself. I can’t let those people down, and in helping them I’m helping myself.”
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BEYOND THE ORDINARY The next issue is out on Tuesday 9 March with London Evening Standard. Also available across the UK at airports, universities, and selected supermarkets and retail stores. Read more at theredbulletin.com AARON BLATT / RED BULL CONTENT POOL
Who wears wins What would happen if the world’s best military operatives designed their own apparel? You’re looking at it…
“In our world we’re called ‘kit pests’,” says Louis Tinsley, who, along with Anthony ‘Staz’ Stazicker, owns British outerwear company ThruDark. The world Tinsley speaks of is the UK Special Forces, where the two served in the Special Boat Service together. “We’d operate in all spheres, from deserts to jungles to mountains to the Arctic,” says Staz. “In the Special Forces, you're seen as the rock stars of the military; we always had the best clothing, weapons and optics, but we were still critical of it, so we’d bastardise it, make it fit for purpose." These modifications started small. “You might take the upper of a sock and sew it into your para smock jacket,” says Tinsley, “or put wire in the hood to make it fit more rigidly over a helmet.” But they finally found their calling while free-fall training in the US. “As we were parachuting, zips were exploding,” says Staz. “We wanted to put our expertise into garments. Nobody from our background was doing it at the time.” With ThruDark, they’ve brought their know-how to fabrics like 100 per cent waterproof Cordura or Dyneema, which boasts a strength-to-weight ratio 15 times that of steel, together with a fashion sense borne from life-or-death situations. “We didn’t want to be up a mountain looking like human highlighters, so the look is dark and moody,” says Tinsley. “That’s our vibe.” They also fixed their logo to a Velcro arm patch. “In the military, you wear your call sign on your arm to identify who you’re speaking to through night-vision optics,” 84
says Staz. “You could stick equipment like emergency strobes onto it, too.” These details have made their gear popular with soldiers, but their highestprofile customer is Nepalese mountaineer Nims Purja, who wore a ThruDark Summit Suit on his successful 2019 mission to scale the world’s 14 highest peaks in record time. “He signed up for the SBS at the same time as us,” says
The ThruDark SF Patriot jacket has a Pertex Quantum outer shell and 850 fillpower goosedown insulation
“We don’t want to look like human highlighters – dark and moody is our vibe” Louis Tinsley, ThruDark co-founder
Tinsley. “But the original suit was built for his friend, Hari Budha Magar.” The Gurkha lost both legs during a 2010 bomb attack in Afghanistan, but wanted to climb Everest. “He’d be the first double amputee to do it,” says Staz, “but no company was willing to even modify a suit, so we made him one.” Meanwhile, the fourth edition of Purja’s own suit (pictured right) was made especially for his recent mission to summit K2, the world’s second tallest peak, in winter – something no one had done before. On January 16, 2021, his team achieved it. “It doesn’t get more gnarly than that,” says Staz. “We didn’t want Nims worrying about anything other than the task at hand.” Tinsley adds, “Nims asked for the world – as he always does – and he wants it yesterday, so we created a double-lined suit with an extra layer of synthetic insulation over the top, which, as far as I know, hasn’t been done before. And we still managed to keep the warmth-to-weight ratio below any other suit.” The SF Patriot jacket on this page is redesigned from Nims’ Summit Suit 3. “It’s an amalgamation of what we’ve learned from the prototypes,” says Tinsley. “The fill is Italian goose down – the finest you can get. And we’ve reinforced the shoulder panels with Dyneema to stop any abrasion when wearing a rucksack.” “We wanted a stormproof smock jacket you could take off quickly,” adds Staz. “We were going to call it the ‘Purja Pullover’ as a tip of the hat.” It’s all part of the Special Forces ethos: ‘The unrelenting pursuit of excellence’. “We develop an item, test it, and only put it into production when we’re happy,” says Staz. “Hence why we once launched a fucking parka in the middle of summer.” thrudark.com
Listen to Nims Purja’s story in The Red Bulletin’s Beyond The Ordinary podcast THE RED BULLETIN
MATT HARDY/THRUDARK, SANDRO GROMEN-HAYES/NIMSDAI
INSULATE
TOM GUISE
VENTURE Equipment
VENTURE Equipment January 2021: Nims Purja in his ThruDark Summit Suit on his historic K2 ascent
“Nims asked for the world – as he always does – and he wants it yesterday” THE RED BULLETIN
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VENTURE Gaming
The game and the watch merge on the main clock screen, with the time displayed in Super Mario Bros graphics
UNWIND
Play time Gunpei Yokoi is famous for designing Nintendo’s original 1989 Game Boy console, but that’s not the first time the Japanese inventor shaped popular culture. In 1966, while working on Nintendo’s playing-card assembly line, Yokoi was caught by the company president playing with an extending-arm toy he’d made to amuse himself.
Certain he'd be fired, Yokoi was surprised to see the toy ordered into production. It sold more than a million units and saved the struggling firm. While on a train in the ’70s, Yokoi noticed a businessman absent-mindedly tapping at a calculator to relieve boredom. This inspired him to pitch the idea of a game inside a watch. Between 1980 and 1991, 60
Nintendo Game & Watch systems were released, each featuring a clock and an addictive game. Tens of millions were sold, setting Nintendo on a trajectory to become the gaming powerhouse it is today. Yokoi passed away in 1997, but his influence is in every game we play today – the cross-shaped directional
pad on modern games controllers first appeared on the 1982 Donkey Kong Game & Watch. This new release celebrates the 35th anniversary of Super Mario Bros, as well as featuring a Mario variation of Ball, the original Game & Watch game, which launched 40 years ago. It also tells the time. nintendo.co.uk
TIM KENT
Nintendo’s Game & Watch is well-named – it was created to kill time with fun
VENTURE Gaming ADAPT
The silent treatment It’s the quiet ones you have to watch. SAS: Who Dares Wins advisor Billy Billingham talks essential stealth-game skills
Stealth video games are an unusual breed. Counterintuitive to our gaming instincts, they demand a player avoids action rather than engages in it, sneaking through missions without alerting the enemies. It’s a style of gameplay that’s recently featured in samurai adventure Ghost of Tsushima and Marvel’s Spider-Man (both on PlayStation) but is most famously at the heart of the Metal Gear series and Hitman franchise. In Hitman 3, players once again undertake missions as the world’s best assassin, Agent 47, choosing whether to sneak in undetected or charge in, guns blazing. The former approach earns you bonuses, and it’s an attitude that can yield benefits in real-world situations. Mark ‘Billy’ Billingham MBE is a decorated former SAS soldier who took part in covert operations in Afghanistan and Iraq; has been a bodyguard for Hollywood personalities including Russell Crowe, Tom Cruise and Angelina Jolie; and is a consultant and instructor on Channel 4 reality show SAS: Who Dares Wins. Here, he reveals the techniques that kept him alive and could guide you to 100-per-cent completion of Hitman 3…
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Go slow and steady
“Stealth is always first choice on any operation – you can’t beat the element of surprise,” says Billingham. “Taking the time to approach something by stealth, you put yourself in control. If you can go in quietly, get out quietly, but sometimes THE RED BULLETIN
The Hitman and her: “Hey, Maureen... Maureen... you can see our house from here”
speed and aggression may get you the result you need. Weigh that up, based on your intelligence. When it goes ‘noisy’, you lose that control and have new barriers to overcome.”
Be prepared
“Make sure everything fits correctly, with no Velcro openings or anything in your pockets that will make a noise. Tape down all the metal bits on your weapon. With a nightvision sight you get a green glow on your face, so that has to be light-sealed. And rehearse. Make sure you know what sort of ground you’ll be walking on, wear soft-soled shoes, and don’t carry bulky kit that could catch on something.”
noise travelling. Move slowly, three to four inches with each step, feeling for branches, tripwires or anything that might make a noise. If a patrol passes close, control your breathing or just hold your breath, but remember, they’ll be distracted by their own noises.
Brace for action
“We use what we call a ‘ramping up’ system. The lowest point of ramping up is stealth, but once you try to get through that door, for example, it’s going to get noisy. Then you have to ask
Master the dark arts
“Edging forward on the floor could take all night, so don’t do it until you’re very close. When it’s dark, sound becomes your main sense. Approach the target with the wind coming at you to prevent
Billingham’s one-man show of inspirational stories, An Audience with Mark ‘Billy’ Billingham, is touring the UK this year; markbillybillingham.com
how you’re going to keep the element of surprise. The next part is aggression; it could be an explosive entry. The shockwaves of that hitting someone inside a room will take them a second to realise what’s happening. By then you’re already inside.”
Don’t overthink it
“Spending a long time in stealth mode can be counterproductive – it puts you on edge. If you have too long to prepare, your heart will be racing; your body will react where there’s danger and fear. The flipside is your senses are more heightened. Lots of operations are unseen, unheard, and never talked about, but the reality of creeping up on somebody and knocking them unconscious is virtually impossible. The element of surprise will take you to a point, then it may have to get noisy.”
Hitman 3 is out now on PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, Stadia and Windows; hitman.com 87
Hike!
Spring doesn’t need to have sprung to explore the outdoors. Kit up and get out… Photography JOE McGORTY
Jessica wears MONTANE Bail Out beanie, montane.com; MARMOT WarmCube Featherless Hoody jacket, marmot.com; OSPREY Archeon 30 backpack, ospreyeurope.com; DRAGON Latitude X LL sunglasses, dragonalliance.com; SPOT Gen4 Satellite GPS Messenger, findmespot.com Opposite page: RAB Superflux Hoody jacket, rab.equipment
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VENTURE Equipment
Clockwise from top left: MIZU D7 640ml vacuuminsulated stainless steel bottle, mizulife.eu; SPOT Gen4 Satellite GPS Messenger, findmespot.com; BLACK DIAMOND Spot 350 headlamp, blackdiamondequipment.com; SUUNTO 9 Baro Titanium multisport GPS watch with barometric altitude, suunto.com; LAND ROVER Explore R smartphone, IP68-rated to be fully waterproof in depths of up to 1.5m for 35 minutes, landroverexplore.co.uk
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THRUDARK SF Zodiac jacket with three-layer waterproof ripstop shoulders and hood, thrudark. com; OUTDOOR RESEARCH Stormtracker Gore-Tex Infinium Sensor gloves with Touchscreen Leather, outdoorresearch.com; BLACK DIAMOND Distance FLZ trekking poles, blackdiamondequipment.com; MONTANE X BMC Limited Edition Terra Ridge pants, montane.com
MONTANE Bail Out beanie, montane.com; SMARTWOOL Merino 250 Baselayer Pattern Crew top, smartwool.co.uk; ARCADE Ranger Slim Adventure belt, arcadebelts.co.uk; MONTANE X BMC Limited Edition Terra Ridge pants, montane.com
VENTURE Equipment
RAB Superflux Hoody jacket, rab.equipment; STANCE Uncommon Slab Feel360 outdoor socks, stance.eu.com; KEEN Terradora II waterproof hiking boots, keenfootwear.com; trousers, model’s own Model: JESSICA EMENS @ W Model Management THE RED BULLETIN
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VENTURE Calendar
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February onwards DECODING ATHLETES In this six-part series, England rugby star Jack Nowell reveals the unseen life of an athlete, with guests including surfer Mick Fanning. On all podcast platforms
9 February onwards SKATE AFRICA Kenyan capital Nairobi has more than 60,000 rough-sleeping kids. But some, like Ezra Nyongesa – known as Balo – and his friend Samuel Mwangi, are using skateboarding to get themselves off the streets. “We gave Balo a skateboard, and within months he knew how to kickflip,” says George Zuko, head of the Skateboarding Society of Kenya, which built the Shangilia skatepark and an orphanage to help educate the children, give them a better life, and unlock their talents on a board. This is just one of the true-life stories in this two-part series about skateboard culture in Africa, which also heads to Ghana where the growing skate movement has drawn more women than men. redbull.com
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to 7 March NEW SUNS: A FEMINIST LITERARY FESTIVAL
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February onwards BRAD BINDER: BECOMING 33 In 2020, 25-year-old South African MotoGP rider Binder became his country’s (and team Red Bull KTM’s) firstever rookie winner. “Racing’s the only thing I’ve ever wanted to do,” he says in this doc, which tracks his career from his karting start, aged eight. redbull.com
Sarah Shin is the curator of feminist storytelling project New Suns, and this spin-off book fair, workshop and screening weekend explores the intersection between feminism and technology. This year’s virtual event examines the work of late American science-fiction author Octavia E Butler, whose unfinished Earthseed series depicted a prescient vision of the 2020s ravaged by social division and ecological disaster. Barbican, London; barbican.org.uk 94
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VENTURE Calendar
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February onwards LIFE OF KAI
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RED BULL MEDIA HOUSE, RED BULL ILLUME, GREG COLEMAN/RED BULL CONTENT POOL, GOLD AND GOOSE/RED BULL CONTENT POOL, JOE MAGOWAN, MATTIAS HAMMAR/RED BULL CONTENT POOL, BJARNE SALEN/THE MOUNTAIN WHY
February onwards HIP HOP RAISED ME In 2016, Manchesterborn John Fairbanks – better known as hip-hop broadcaster and author DJ Semtex – released his book Hip Hop Raised Me. This definitive account of the history of rap music and its influence on four decades of culture – as well as on Semtex’s own life (he began his career promoting parties and DJing at legendary clubs such as The Haçienda) – features iconic photos, memorabilia, and interviews with artists including Kool Herc, Wu-Tang Clan, Eminem, Kanye West, Jay-Z, Nicki Minaj and Kendrick Lamar. Now, the 46-yearold presenter of Capital Xtra’s Friday-night hiphop show has launched a weekly podcast of the same name. “These are in-depth conversations, no agenda,” says Semtex. “New cuttingedge artists, A-list artists, architects of sound. Moguls. Icons.” It debuted in January with Public Enemy's Chuck D (who wrote the book’s foreword) discussing his own experiences in the hip-hop community. On all podcast platforms; djsemtex.com THE RED BULLETIN
Born in Maui, Hawaii, to a Californian windsurfer (his mum) and surfer (his dad), Kai Lenny has grown up among the waves and, at 28, is a surfing superstar. What’s it like to live such a life? Find out in this series, where a camera crew shadows Lenny for four months during the 2019-20 surf season as he chases his dream of becoming the world’s best big-wave board-rider. We meet his wave-loving parents and coach; and witness his high-performance training regime, Code Red swells in Hawaii, heats in the World Surf League, and the greatest challenge of all – the gigantic waves at Nazaré in Portugal. redbull.com
9 February onwards THE MOUNTAIN WHY Californian pro freeskier Cody Townsend was in the middle of a mission to climb and ski the ‘Fifty Classic Ski Descents of North America’, as detailed in the 2010 book of the same name, when 2020 ruined his plans. Realising his three-year timeframe was now unachievable, he decided to continue his quest – accompanied by fellow skiing pro Michelle Parker (pictured) – in a socially distanced and altogether more taxing way. So, the pair bike-packed 1,662km across America with climbing, skiing and camping gear, to tick off three of the classic ski runs in Oregon and Washington State before the last of 2020’s skiable snow ran out. Why? The answer lies at the heart of this film. redbull.com 95
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The Red Bulletin is published in six countries. This is the cover of our US edition for March, featuring NBA player and activist Matisse Thybulle... For more stories beyond the ordinary, go to: redbulletin.com
The Red Bulletin UK. ABC certified distribution 153,505 (Jan-Dec 2019)
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Wingin’ it The county of Møre og Romsdal in Western Norway is home to Mardelsfossen, one of Europe’s tallest waterfalls. The merest mention of the word ‘fall’ last August was enough to get Marco Waltenspiel, Marco Fürst and Max Manow of the Red Bull Skydive Team pulling on their wingsuits and flinging themselves into the void. To see these super fly guys in action, drop into redbull.com
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