Spreading joy is the snowboarder’s big idea
Winning is great, but it’s not the only thing—even at the highest level of sport. This issue highlights a few pro athletes who have pursued passion projects or catalyzed social impact. Like cyclist Payson McElveen, who sought (and found) an emotional test crossing Tasmania in 32 hours. Or skater Jake Wooten, who helped uplift skate shops in the South during the pandemic through a oneof-a-kind event at an empty airport terminal.
Our cover profile of Zeb Powell examines one athlete making an impact beyond championship wins. As you’ll learn, the groundbreaking pro snowboarder shines as an ambassador of awesomeness, finding broad cultural relevance by inspiring millions with his credo of inclusion on the slopes and spreading joy wherever he goes. That, perhaps, is the biggest reward in sports—not to win, but to belong, express yourself and have a rad time doing it.
The Brooklyn-based photographer shot pro snowboarder Zeb Powell inside and nearby Red Bull’s new office in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District. “Zeb’s energy was really great the entire day on set,” says Golio, who has shot for The New York Times, The Atlantic and brands like Nike, H&M and Puma. “He was down for anything and brought so much enthusiasm and positivity to anything we tried to capture.” Page 24
The Red Bulletin’s deputy editor, who wrote our cover story on Zeb Powell, traveled through a Rocky Mountain snowstorm to watch the snowboarder in action at the X Games. “Zeb is a joy magnet,” says O’Donnell, who worked at Playboy and Chicago magazine before coming to Red Bull. “Spend a few moments with him and you’ll want to pick up a snowboard, even if you’re a rookie rider. His desire to have fun is addictive.” Page 24
April/May
Snowboarder Zeb Powell is inspiring a new generation of riders who admire his pure joy for the sport and his belief that everyone is welcome to come along for the ride.
Poaching an empty airport is every skater’s fantasy. Red Bull Terminal Takeover turns that dream into an epic reality.
The biggest fight in women’s boxing has raged for 300 years: the battle for recognition. Now is the sport’s time to shine, thanks in large part to four fighters from two historic bouts.
Cyclist Payson McElveen’s nonstop 32-hour solo crossing of Tasmania was a physical—and emotional—expedition.
Finnish freediver Johanna Nordblad dove 338 feet beneath an ice sheet on just a single breath—farther than anyone before.
Since winning gold at the 2020 X Games, Zeb Powell has amassed a legion of fans through his wildly creative tricks and video clips.
Two years ago, the 47-year-old freediver Johanna Nordblad set a record. Her secret? Taking things as slowly as possible.
36
SO FLY
Jake Wooten takes flight at last year’s edition of Red Bull Terminal Takeover. The event returns to New Orleans in April.
Taking You to New Heights
9 Dancer Kid Nimbus describes his unique style
12 Powering forward: Giannis Antetokounmpo
14 Skiing among trees in Utah
16 Comet chasing in Yosemite
18 SCI survivor Justin Lennon pays it forward for others
20 Singer Lady Blackbird spreads her wings
22 The music that influenced legendary DJ Carl Cox
Get it. Do it. See it.
81 Travel: Where to find your groove in the Windy City
84 Fitness tips from pro surfer Griffin Colapinto
86 Dates for your calendar
88 The best new wearable tech, stylish cameras—and more
96 The Red Bulletin worldwide
98 Making an impact in Chile
Two-time Red Bull Dance
Your Style fnalist Kid Nimbus explains his genredefying style—and how he overcame his two left feet.
Words CARLY FISHER
In Latin, the word nimbus refers to a “dark cloud” known as the nimbostratus, a low-hanging formation guaranteed to make it rain or snow. It’s a fitting name for freestyle hip-hop dancer
Derrick Judkins, aka Kid Nimbus, who brings a certain level of unpredictability when he battles on the dance floor.
“You never see the same cloud twice,” he explains.
“They can be gentle; they can
be ominous. They can be violent; they can be peaceful. It really just depends on what type of day and weather. That’s my dance. Some days are impactful and super energetic. Other days can be smooth and easygoing.”
Judkins is somewhat of an underdog in the dance world. Unlike other dancers with storied careers and prominent followings, the 27-year-old two-time Red Bull Dance Your
“I’m like a sponge; I absorb all the types of dances that I like,” says Judkins.
Style national finalist is a fresh-faced addition who has been moonlighting in the underground dance scene for the past five years. Each time he battles, he turns heads— even within his own family, who never saw this coming from the kid with two left feet.
“When I was a kid, I didn’t know how to dance at all. It was super funny because my family would make it a thing,” he says. “They would call me
downstairs during family events just to watch me dance and laugh at me. Which just goes to show how bad I was.”
So, how did Kid Nimbus discover his talent? Born to a military family, Judkins spent his early years bouncing from Ohio to Germany before settling in Chicago. After finding his groove at a seventh grade end-of-the-year celebration, a friend named Mike Asper introduced him to all of it: dance crews like Jabbawockeez and the battle scene, including World of Dance and Red Bull BC One. Suddenly, the kid whose moves served as a holidaygathering punchline was kickstarting his own school dance club called Black Lotus and shooting his shot at house parties and events.
“Everybody’s got that high school bully story, right? I felt like people were looking through me, and I love the way it didn’t make me feel invisible,” he says. “I love the way dance allowed me to build friendships, as well as create a persona around myself. I love the way that it makes me feel, how other people feel, just getting people inspired in the moment in that type of environment.”
Black Lotus, he says, is much more than a crew for him—it’s a labor of love and a community. “It’s a group of super talented people, not just in their dance but their work ethic. It inspires people in the Chicago scene to not only go out and do their best in dance, but also uplift individuals in this community.”
Chicago is a city known for its iconic footwork, but Kid Nimbus says he doesn’t like to limit himself. Beginning as a breaker before progressing into animation, he frequently incorporates a mix of styles, such as waving and freestyle hip-hop, often backed by his favorite R&B music.
“Something that I really value is that I don’t like to stick
myself in one genre,” he says. “It really depends on how I feel. If I’m calm, I’ll probably do more animation-type movements. If I want to be expressive, I might have more contemporary movements and work the floor a bit more. I’m like a sponge; I absorb all the types of dances that I like. I’m gonna try to incorporate it into my own style to make it something unique.”
When he’s not working the dance floor, he’s pursuing a successful 9-to-5 career as a clinical research coordinator specializing in gastroenterology at the University of Chicago’s Pediatric Clinical Trials Office, helping individuals with chronic diseases. In his free time, he loves to lean into his artistic side, whether it’s graphic design on his iPad, booking DJ gigs or shopping for fresh kicks.
“If I’m going to be dancing in front of, you know,
hundreds, thousands or millions of people, I want to make sure I look fly,” he says.
This spring, Kid Nimbus has his sights set on taking the crown at the Red Bull Dance Your Style National Finals in Chicago. Not only would the win help cement his aspirations to become a dance champion and a hometown hero, but he also hopes it will help position the Midwest as a destination for dance.
“I am very excited just to work with my friends in terms of dance and see where it takes us, whether it’s like a solo, individual thing or crew battles. In terms of Chicago, I just want to see the Midwest shine as much as I possibly can. You have so many greats that come from the Midwest— King Charles, the Crown, Lord Fin, Nero the Professor—but when people say ‘I want to travel for dance,’ they’ll go to L.A. or New York or Texas. And the Midwest is a force.”
Giannis Antetokounmpo is a huge NBA star who is determined to do the little things right.
There are some things that Giannis Antetokounmpo would rather not talk about.
For instance, the charismatic star with the Milwaukee Bucks isn’t particularly keen to discuss the individual honors he’s earned in nine NBA seasons. Which is surprising, since the cosmically versatile 7-foot-tall power forward has basically earned them all— he’s a two-time league MVP, NBA defensive player of the year, a seven-time all-star, the MVP of the NBA finals (in a series in which he led Milwaukee to its first championship in 50 years).
“I will think about my legacy more later, when I’m closer to stepping away from the game,” Antetokounmpo says, a few minutes after the Bucks notched a home win against Toronto. “When I have grandkids, I can have barbecue and talk about it all day. Right now, my longterm goal is to win another championship and otherwise I’m trying to remain in the present, to play with an edge and create more art.”
Indeed, there is an art to being Giannis—a flair for the extraordinary, an easygoing charisma that belies an obsessive work ethic. Oddly enough, Antetokounmpo is delighted to discuss his free-
throw shooting, arguably one of the few aspects of his game that isn’t superhuman. He acknowledges the weakness and also how hard he works to get a little better at it. “I practice free throws every day—before games, after games, every time I’m in the gym,” he says, noting that when a championship was on the line—Game 6 of the 2021 NBA finals—he drained 17 of 19 free throws to close out the Phoenix Suns. “There was so much sweat in that moment,” he says with quiet gusto.
These days, Antetokounmpo carries himself with the effortless swagger of a certain future hall of famer, but he had to scrap to be here. Born and raised in Athens to Nigerian parents, he spent most of his childhood effectively stateless, with citizenship to no country. But he had a love and gift for basketball, and also his family’s support to pursue that passion. “The journey has been unbelievable,” he says. “My parents believed in my dream more than I did.” And in 2013, at the age of 18, he was rewarded with Greek citizenship and then a firstround draft pick to play with Milwaukee.
A seasoned veteran but still only 28 today, Antetokounmpo says he’s learned a lot about
how to carry himself like a champion. Starting a family— he now has two young sons— has also impacted his outlook on his life and career. “I’m an easygoing guy and I used to just go with the flow, but now I see how I can be pulled in so many directions, and that can take away from what makes me great,” he says. “I made a decision two years ago that I would only do things that make be better or things that make me happy. So if something won’t make me better as a basketball player or a father or if it doesn’t bring joy to my life, I’m not doing it. I want to live every moment to the fullest.”
But beyond obsessively practicing free throws, how exactly can such a decorated athlete make himself better? Now this is something that Antetokounmpo is happy to talk about. “Every day I work extremely hard—to remain humble, to remain in the moment, to work on improving my skills, to go full speed all the time,” he says. “And then in games, from the first minute to the last, I trust that my instincts will take over and I’ll make as many good decisions as I can.”
The man beloved as the Greek Freak on multiple continents pauses, searching for the words to explain how a commitment to perfecting little things can have a big impact. “Doing these things doesn’t guarantee success,” Antetokounmpo says. “But they do give you more chances to win a championship.”
Antetokounmpo, shown here at a Breitling ambassador event in January 2022, is a twotime NBA MVP.
“I ONLY DO THINGS THAT MAKE ME BETTER—OR HAPPIER.”
Working with a friend has its merits: There’s the companionship, the camaraderie, the suffocating familiarity (jk!) Wisconsin-born photographer Noah Wetzel and pro snow-sports athlete Conor Pelton have skied together for more than a decade, and from this friendship great things have sprouted. Like this image—a “RAW by Leica” semifinalist in Red Bull Illume. “Aspen trees are my favorite,” Wetzel says, “and utilizing wireless flashes allows one to create compelling and unique imagery. On point as always, Conor aired through the tight gap in darkness—and fogged goggles—and skied cleanly out of the frame.” noahdavidwetzel.com; redbullillume.com
Forget Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic— the wonders of the cosmos can be seen without ever leaving Earth. Priscilla Mewborne proved this during downtime from her day job inside Yosemite, where she works to support her true calling as an aerialist and photographer: “I was following the movements of the visible comet Neowise. It was expected to peak in the middle of my work week, but luckily a motivated group of fellow employees was keen to experience it, too.” Before work they caught the sunrise, and she caught this shot—selected as a Red Bull Illume “Lifestyle by COOPH” finalist. Instagram: @adventurous.aerialist; redbullillume.com
Six years ago this June, Justin Lennon broke his neck. It was summer in Columbus, and the then-20-year-old Ohio State University undergrad took what he calls a “dumb flip” on a backyard trampoline. He landed badly on his C5 and C6 vertebrae and sustained a lifechanging spinal cord injury that led to quadriplegia.
Adjusting to his new normal—no movement or feeling from his upper chest downward—was a challenge that took time, effort and determination. “I had to put my life on hold while I healed,” he says. He dropped his classes and moved back home to Cincinnati, traveling to Columbus twice a week for rehab, where he relearned old skills and learned new
ones, including how to take advantage of accessible housing and paratransit services so that he could get his education back on track.
Today, the 25-year-old is back at OSU, earning his master’s in social work; he expects to graduate next spring. He lives in his own place, plays wheelchair rugby (he has great tricep strength), loves playing the new God of War video game with an adaptive-controller setup and is more than partial to Bengals and Buckeyes football. As part of his graduate program, he works two days a week at the same rehab facility that helped him post-injury. There he provides outpatient counseling to people who are recovering from spinal cord and brain injuries. Compassionate by
nature and motivated to help other people manage the same types of difficulties he encountered, Lennon finds the work fulfilling.
So when a doctor at the Wexner Medical Center at OSU asked if he wanted to join a clinical trial to study a protein molecule that might allow damaged nerve fibers to regrow, potentially restoring sensation and function in spinal cord patients, the decision was a no-brainer. “If I could do anything to help, I would love to,” he says.
Though Lennon didn’t know it at the time, the study was funded—to the tune of $7 million—by the nonprofit Wings for Life Foundation. Dedicated to finding a cure for spinal cord injury, Wings for Life was established in 2004 by Red Bull founder Dietrich Mateschitz and motocross champ Heinz Kinigadner, whose son and brother both survived spinedamaging accidents. With its administrative costs covered by Red Bull, Wings for Life has provided 276 projects with more than $40 million.
At
For the lengthy trial, which ended last year, Lennon routinely endured blood draws, mobility checks and hours of physical therapy before receiving injections into his lumbar spine. Because it was a double-blind study, Lennon doesn’t know if the injections were a placebo or the experimental treatment. Yet to him, that’s almost irrelevant.
the Wexner Medical Center at Ohio State University, a physiotherapist tests Lennon’s sensation using safety pins to determine if he can feel anything.
“I didn’t really care if I got the drug or not. It was more so that I knew this would push the research for spinal cord injury forward,” Lennon says. “I’m here for the cause. Even if the drug doesn’t work, that’s still more information we can build off of, so that in the future there can be a drug or [something] that can help people.”
In May, Lennon plans to take part in the 10th annual World Run, a Wings for Life event in which runners, walkers, wheelchair users and others around the globe come together at the same time to support spinal cord research. The event raises not just funds but also awareness—something Lennon has gotten good at.
Last fall, he traveled with his girlfriend to Hawaii, where he discussed his injury, the study and his experiences with Wings for Life in front of 1,600 people. “It was pretty nerve-racking,” he admits. But for Lennon, overcoming challenges is nothing new. The Wings for Life World Run happens May 7; for more info, visit wingsforlifeworldrun.com
“I knew that this would push the research for spinal cord injury forward,” says Lennon, who signed up for a new study in hopes of helping other SCI survivors like him.
“I’M HERE FOR THE CAUSE.”
After years as a session vocalist, the L.A.-based singer stunned the jazz world with her raw vocal power on her 2021 debut album. Here she talks fate, freedom and the shock of success.
Sometimes everything you need to know is in a name. L.A.-based soul singer Lady Blackbird’s moniker references the jazz-era greats she’s already been compared to—legends such as Billie Holiday and Nina Simone. Listen to her 2021 debut album, Black Acid Soul, and those comparisons quickly become clear when you hear her emotive growl of a voice.
Born Marley Munroe to an evangelical Christian family in Farmington, New Mexico, she trudged the circuit for years as a session singer, performing everything from alt-pop to Christian rock. Her big break came after she began working with friend and Grammynominated producer Chris Seefried, recording her vocals a cappella and letting her backing band build the music around her. The first result of this was her interpretation of Nina Simone’s song “Blackbird.” Despite being recorded a year earlier, its release in 2020 coincided with the immediate aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, bringing a somber contemporary context to the song about Black womanhood.
As Lady Blackbird readies herself for a new stage in her career, the “Grace Jones of jazz” talks about things finally falling into place.
the red bulletin: What role has music played in your life?
lady blackbird: It is my life in the truest sense: I believe this is exactly what I was born to do. There’s not a memory I have that doesn’t involve singing. My
happiest moments, when I’m at my most relaxed and I’m my most open and honest self, are on stage, performing. I kind of suck at everything else. [Laughs.] I’ve had a lot of different jobs, but this one’s my true love. It’s not work for me.
Why did you choose the name Lady Blackbird?
It wasn’t part of the plan to go by a different name. We were in the studio listening to “Blackbird,” which was inspired by Nina’s song [recorded in 1966], and somebody just said it. It just happened. I went, “Hey, Lady Blackbird,” and it stuck. I’ve been doing this for so long, and when you want something so bad, sometimes you grip it too tightly and you choke it out. With this, things were unfolding so easily.
Is Black Acid Soul a genre?
How would you describe it? Chris [Seefried] actually coined that one. We’d just started writing, and in so many different genres and styles we were pretty much all over the map. When we posted things, he’d hashtag them #BlackAcidSoul. So it started as our own kind of subgenre. And when we were looking for album titles, we were like, “Hey!” We thought it was the coolest thing.
It took you a while to get to this place. How does it feel to see such an upturn in your career?
It’s still quite shocking, in the best way. I’ve been doing this for so long: trying to get meetings with labels; having an album complete but never come out;
taking cover gigs at hotels to pay the bills; hoping a few people show up and having my best friends come out to support me. On the road when we started playing these shows, it was 300 people, then 500 people, 1,200 people, and I’m going “Oh my god.” It’s an amazing feeling. It blows me away.
A big turning point was the release of “Blackbird,” which coincided with the emergence of Black Lives Matter. Did all the focus on the single at a time of such heightened feelings bring any pressure?
No, I won’t say I felt any pressure. The album was finished and we were starting to play around town, and then COVID happened. We were holding on to it, going “What do we do?”
The fact that [“Blackbird”] was released at that time was completely unintentional. For me, it was just finally being able to release something we’d worked so hard to put together. It felt so nice to finally be able to do that, despite what all the circumstances were. To have released that album, and for people to have caught onto it and supported it through such a time, that’s really important to me.
Is it important to you that your music reflects your identity as a queer woman of color?
You hear a little bit, like the message in “Woman,” which is on the deluxe edition of Black Acid Soul, or a song like “Beware the Stranger.” It’s the little things here and there. They’re never forced or pushed. It’s just honest in that this is who I am, and if that comes out, it comes out.
What do you hope your music can do for people?
I want them to feel a sense of freedom—the freedom I experienced making it. And then I just want them to be entertained. To come exactly as you are—freedom in every sense of the word.
ladyblackbird.com
“I BELIEVE THAT THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT I WAS BORN TO DO.”
Carl Cox exploded onto the DJ scene in the late ’80s and has become British dance music royalty. Over the past four decades, the now-60-year-old DJ/producer has performed at the Houses of Parliament, seen in the millennium behind the decks twice (in Sydney first, then again after flying to Hawaii) and closed Ibiza’s Space nightclub with a nine-hour set. Though best known for spinning house and techno, Cox says his music is inspired by a range of genres. “I take elements from everything I’ve listened to and create my own sound,” he says. Here, Cox picks some diverse tracks that have stayed with him. Carl Cox’s new album, Electronic Generations, is out now; carlcox.com.
Scan to hear our Playlist podcast with Carl Cox on Spotify
(1977)
“A lot of people don’t know I was a dancer before being a DJ. I remember hearing this track in a club and it drew me to the dance floor. I danced my ass off from beginning to end and I never wanted it to stop. I wasn’t interested in football, girls, nothing—only that moment with the music, which made my life complete at that particular time.”
“GOLDEN YEARS” (1975)
“I got exposed to this through the radio. When I first heard it, I thought David Bowie was Black. Then I saw him perform the song on Soul Train, a Black TV show with Black artists, and this skinny white guy comes out with different-colored eyes and messed-up teeth. It was so soulful and meaningful. It broke down barriers and glued everything together.”
“TUBULAR
(1973)
“I first heard it in a record store and didn’t really get it, but I bought it anyway so I could digest it at home. I invited some school friends over and played it to them—nobody moved or said anything. Then I played part one again and everyone was blown away. It’s probably one of the most beautiful pieces of music I’ve ever heard.”
“This is a very positive record. It’s got me through lots of ups and downs in my life. I got divorced many years ago, had my home broken into a few times, car stolen, that kind of stuff. Not everything goes your way, but put this record on and, for one moment in your life, you forget about everything. It’s always been synonymous with my life.”
©2023 The Museum of Modern Art. The Museum of Modern Art, MoMA, and related logos are Trademarks of The Museum of Modern Art. © 2023 Estate of Roy Lichtenstein. Roy Lichtenstein™
Since winning gold at the X Games in 2020, snowboarder Zeb Powell has amassed a legion of fans through his wildly creative tricks and video clips. But his impact is bigger than that. He’s inspiring a new generation of snowboarders who admire his pure joy for the sport and his belief that everyone is welcome to come along for the ride.
his afternoon competition at the 2023 X Games, and Zeb Powell wants to eat. Though the pro snowboarder is buzzing with energy, he’s in need of some lunch. The tweezered small bites in the luxe VIP station in Aspen are not going to cut it. A member of his team makes a mad dash to the media tent to retrieve some bananas and protein bars. But by the time she returns, Powell has decided he needs to burn off some steam and take a couple of runs on the mountain, so his manager stuffs the food in his coat pockets. It’s just another day in the life of a megatalented 23-year-old athlete in perpetual motion.
Three years ago, Powell burst onto the scene when he won X Games gold in the knuckle huck competition as a rookie.
Unlike established snowboarding disciplines that demand perfect execution of certain moves, this newer event rewarded creativity and seemed custommade for Powell, who wowed judges and spectators with his unconventional tricks. Indeed, the move that clinched his 2020 win, a coffin slide to backflip— which he did while sporting a pair of pink, heart-shaped sunglasses—is still getting talked about by snowboarding pundits to this day.
Seemingly overnight, Powell became known as a rider who embodied snowboarding’s roots, where the goal is simply to have fun with friends and entertain (and impress) each other with originality. And as the first Black snowboarder to win gold at the X Games, his mere existence set off an avalanche of media attention and then celebrity friendships and then broader fame— all of which gave him the opportunity to leverage his exposure for the greater good. Despite the pressure of these labels, Powell takes it all in stride.
“I just do my own thing, and it seems to be working,” Powell says with a small shrug and a smile. By just being himself, he’s become a beloved ambassador for the sport and a change agent for the culture.
The signs of Powell’s impending, high-energy greatness hark back to his earliest years growing up in Waynesville, North Carolina. Powell is the youngest of five children, adopted as an infant by Carl and Valerie Powell. After having a biological daughter, Jessica, when they were a young couple, the Powells decided to adopt what they thought would be their second— and last—child, a son named Tyler. (“I wanted two kids because I have two hands,” Valerie Powell, a former teacher’s assistant, explains with a laugh.) But as the years passed, Carl, who ran a local chip mill, expressed a desire to adopt again, and they brought home another son, Dylan. Two years later, they adopted another daughter, named Scout. OK, they agreed, now we’re done.
But then a couple years after that, they got another call from the adoption agency: “We have five babies who need homes. Would you consider taking one of them?”
“Yes,” they said without hesitation. And the baby they got turned out to be Zeb, who they named after his greatgrandfather, Zebulon. By now, the Powells were pros at raising kids, so they thought rearing their youngest would be a cinch. But then Zeb turned out to be very different.
“I was a freak child,” Powell jokes. (His mom later clarifies, with mock exasperation, “He was a ripped baby!”) He’s still a wall of muscle today, with a neck as thick as a tree trunk.
When he was an infant, Zeb Powell’s motor skills were off the charts. “My body was moving faster than my brain could,” he says. By eight months, he was running. By 18 months, he was riding a bike without training wheels, and by that tender age, he was already getting into all kinds of mischief, including what Zeb fondly recalls as “the scooter incident.” According to family recollections, early one morning Zeb crawled out of his crib and made his way downstairs. Then he pulled a piano bench from the living room to the front door, unlocked the chain and deadbolt and proceeded to jump on a Razor scooter heading toward town. It wasn’t until a neighbor saw Zeb riding the scooter in his diapers and brought him back to the house that his parents realized what had happened.
“I don’t know what I had in store,” Powell says of his scooter shenanigans. “I feel like I was planning to just ride down a hill. Now that I think about it, I really liked that hill.” (“If Zeb would have been my first, I would have had a stroke,” his mom says later.)
But to his parents’ credit, they remained remarkably laid-back about their freakishly athletic baby. “They were just so mellow about me,” Powell says. “I was pretty lucky to have that.” By kindergarten, Powell was diagnosed with a form of attention deficit disorder, which likely explains why he loved to move around a lot.
Powell is describing his hyperactive childhood over breakfast the day before his competition in Aspen. He’s gathered with some of his crew, who are devouring eggs, pancakes and green juice blends. Powell is picking at a disappointingly dry waffle when his mom and his Aunt Terri
walk into the restaurant—and his world stops. He greets the two of them with big bear hugs while happy tears form in mom’s eyes. Spend just a few moments in Powell’s orbit and hugs, laughs and highfives are bound to happen. It’s impossible to ignore how he radiates a positive energy that’s highly contagious.
As everyone settles back at the table, his mom—a spunky and youthful woman in her early 60s who speaks with a Carolina twang—notices the waffles and launches into a tale about her son’s obsession with the breakfast food, but more specifically, his childhood maple syrup addiction. “Now that I live in Vermont, it’s great,” her son admits.
Years before Powell made it to Burlington, Vermont, where the snowboarding craze was born, he was riding on his local mountain in North Carolina, the Cataloochee Ski Area, about 30 minutes from his childhood home. The very first time he tried snowboarding at Cataloochee, he was on a family trip when he was 7 years old. In a tale that has become part of Zeb Powell lore, his parents put him in a class, and his teacher, who was “mean,” set up the goofy rider on the wrong foot. Not surprisingly, he hated it.
It wasn’t until a year later, when a friend had a birthday party at the resort, that Powell decided to give the sport another try. After he did a few runs, he headed for the terrain park—and managed to hit a box jump by the end of the night. After that, he was hooked. From then on, Powell was snowboarding nearly every day after school and up to 12 hours a day on weekends. By the time he was 9, his skills had surpassed what the mountains of North Carolina had to offer.
Luckily, his mom, who grew up in Colorado, had a sister, Terri Baldwin, who lived in Denver. Even better, Baldwin is the quintessential “cool aunt.” On a mission to assist her nephew, she
A young Powell first impressed coaches with his skills when he was only 9 years old (top); before he got on a snowboard, Powell loved skateboarding. Above, he’s pictured with Scout, one of his older sisters.
“I JUST DO MY OWN THING, AND IT SEEMS TO BE WORKING, REGARDLESS OF WHETHER I WIN OR NOT,” SAYS POWELL.
Powell’s gold grills were a gift from the rapper A$AP Ferg. The two bonded on a snowboarding trip.
After he won gold at the X Games, Powell’s Instagram following exploded. These days he gets recognized just about anywhere he goes.
Powell’s motor skills and aerial awareness have been off the charts since he was a small child.
learned that a brand-new facility, Woodward Copper, was about to open a snowboarding camp, and it just so happened she had a friend who had a condo nearby. The year-round action sports hub offered foam-pit jumps, indoor snowboard training and access to top coaches, who immediately noticed Powell’s preternatural abilities. One coach in particular, Chad Otterstrom, encouraged Powell’s parents to enroll their son in the Stratton Mountain School, a boarding academy in Vermont that has trained dozens of winter athletes for the Olympics. Eventually, a few years later and with the help of a scholarship, his parents sent him off to Stratton when he was 13.
“It was crazy,” Powell says about landing at Stratton, a total winter wonderland. “To be in a place where the kids are into the same things as you? I was having so much fun that I would forget to call my parents.”
At Stratton, Powell tried out every discipline—halfpipe, big air, slopestyle, rail jams. He did it all. “As a kid, you don’t really know what you want,” he explains. “But then you start to figure out where you shine and what feels the best.”
Although Powell won competitions, he realized he had the most fun just filming tricks with his friends, and his coaches encouraged that. Dylan Demers, who coached at Stratton, would shoot videos of the kids, and his sharp edits of Powell’s innovative moves started blowing up online. At the time, Powell was only 16 years old.
“Even when he started to get a lot of attention, he stayed humble,” Demers says. “And I really don’t think he’s changed at all from when he was 16. He’s the same person who loves snowboarding just as much.”
Although Powell struggled with his schoolwork because of his ADD, it helped that the class size at Stratton was very small. “He worked his butt off,” his mom
says, “and he got all As and Bs.” At graduation, he received the Lisa Tuttle Award, which is given to a senior who has done the most to “bring joy and a sense of worth to the Stratton Mountain School community through positive action and by being a worthy role model.” Then he did a backflip off the stage. That is Powell in a nutshell.
“I’m prouder of that than anything he’s done on the slopes,” his mom beams.
On the day of the knuckle huck competition in late January, Powell is shuffling from appointment to appointment. In the morning, it’s a quick on-camera bit, followed by an autograph signing in the VIP area. Finely manicured adults in designer snow gear line up to meet Powell, who kindly obliges. But when two young girls approach him with shyness in their eyes, he gets up from his
seat and greets them on their level. Then there are side hugs and selfies, and the girls grin with glee. Whether you’re a seasoned rider or trying snowboarding for the first time, Powell just wants you to have fun. Everyone is welcome on Planet Zebulon.
After he won gold at the X Games in 2020, his Instagram following exploded. Before that historic win, Powell didn’t think much about being a Black snowboarder or how that might influence others. But when he started getting flooded with messages from people who were excited to see someone who looked like them on a snowboard, everything changed. “That’s when I realized I wanted to advocate for the sport because of the color of my skin,” he says.
Less than two months after his win, Powell and his team produced the firstever Red Bull Slide-In Tour. The concept
“AS A KID, YOU DON’T REALLY KNOW WHAT YOU WANT. BUT THEN YOU START TO FIGURE OUT WHERE YOU SHINE.”
“ANYBODY CAN TALK TO ZEB. IT’S AN INSTANT CONVERSATION.”Whether he’s on the slopes or kicking back on a couch, Powell infuses fun into the situation.
was simple. Powell and his friends, including other pro snowboarders, would go on a road trip and visit resorts throughout New England. Even if the conditions were poor, the goal was to have a blast and encourage locals to join them on the mountain.
As the tour has grown, Powell has partnered with nonprofits to help “make the mountains more colorful,” as he puts it. For example, last year at the Mountain Creek stop in New Jersey, the tour teamed up with Hoods to Woods, a Brooklyn-based nonprofit that introduces inner-city children to the outdoors through snowboarding. Mountain Creek, which is located about 60 miles from New York City, is not known for its fresh powder, but that’s not the point.
“We had kids out in the pouring rain wearing sweatshirts,” says Peter Cirilli, Powell’s manager and one of Powell’s filmers. “And they were having the best time ever.”
“Oh my gosh, they were the best,” Powell says. “They were just so stoked. For some of them, it’s their first time on the board. Some of these kids came to that program because of me—I didn’t really know the impact I had.”
These days, almost wherever Powell snowboards, a gaggle of kids will start following him. Rather than speed ahead
and lose them, Powell slows down, lets the kids catch up with him and gives them high-fives when they reach the bottom.
“The biggest thing I take away is, you don’t shut anybody out—ever,” says Cirilli, who has been working with Powell for the past year. “Anybody can talk to him. It’s an instant conversation. As a 23-year-old snowboarder who’s getting pulled in a thousand different directions, to be able to talk to him like a normal person? That’s pretty incredible.”
Of course, it’s not just kids who are drawn to Powell’s magnetism. Fashion designers, musicians and professional football players frequently reach out to him, and the recognition can catch him off guard. One time, after attending a Travis Scott concert that crawled into the early hours of the morning, Powell worked up the courage to approach the rapper, even though he was surrounded by security. “It was a real shot in the dark,” Powell says. But then, to his surprise, Scott lost it. “He just turned around and was like, straight-up fangirling and freaking out. I didn’t even know how to act.”
For the past couple of years, Powell has had the opportunity to introduce Black musicians, athletes and other icons to his sport at an invite-only event
produced by Burton called Culture Shifters. It didn’t matter if the highprofile guests had never snowboarded before; it was about showing them a good time, making them feel welcome and being part of a movement to grow the culture of snowboarding through their audience. One invitee was the rapper A$AP Ferg, who instantly jelled with Powell. The rapper also gamely posted a video of himself falling over on a snowboard to his 5 million Instagram followers, which went viral. Here was this cool and accomplished rapper from Harlem fumbling at something but having fun. Perhaps a city kid might see that clip and give snowboarding a try, too.
“He’s genuine,” Powell says of Ferg. “For him to listen to me and understand the vibe in our culture through that trip, it was so cool.”
The meeting must have made an impression. At last year’s X Games, when Ferg happened to be in Aspen to perform, he gifted Powell his first pair of gold grills. The moment was caught on camera: Powell, struggling to put them on and awkwardly wiggling his lips; Ferg cracking up and making jokes. “You’re like E.T. trying potato [salad] right now,” Ferg says. “Bro, I don’t know what I’m doing,” Powell responds. Then they both
laugh and hug. Powell still proudly wears them to this day, whenever the occasion feels right.
When asked to describe his sartorial style, Powell wrestles to find the right words. But with the help of celebrity stylist Kwasi Kessie, whom he met through A$AP Ferg, he says his world has opened to clothes and colors he didn’t even know he liked until he tried them on. And in the case of his first signature apparel line with snowboard company ThirtyTwo, the inspiration came from a flame-covered NASCAR jacket he found at a thrift store. Whatever Powell wears, the clothing naturally becomes cool because of the person who’s wearing it. The result is a playful mishmash of snowboard gear, sharp streetwear, thriftstore treasures and spontaneous accessory decisions that’s uniquely Zeb Powell.
An hour before the knuckle huck competition in Aspen, Powell finally digs into a banana and peanut butter power bar. He admits he doesn’t have a game plan for which tricks he’s going to attempt. “I have ideas,” Powell says. “But that’s the thing, I can have ideas all I want, but I can completely change my mind on the way down.”
To be clear, almost no one else performs with that kind of spontaneity. Only Zeb Powell knows what he’s going to do a split second before it happens. “I think that’s why people are so excited to watch me compete,” he adds.
At the base of the course, a row of steel barricades divides the media from the scores of fans gathered to watch the event. On-the-ground commentator Nikky Williams asks the crowd, “Who’s here to see Zeb Powell?” Everyone screams. A few minutes later, Williams turns to Valerie Powell, who has a front-row view of the action, and says, “This is Mama Powell, y’all!” More screams.
“Zeb is so unique; he’s a trailblazer,” Williams continues. “He’s pushing the entire sport forward. Does he have any superstitions or traditions that he does before competition?” she asks his mom.
“Not really, except he doesn’t like to get serious. He just wants to have fun,” mom responds with a laugh.
In knuckle huck, athletes speed down the slope and then launch themselves off the crest of the hill. In the air, they attempt to throw their best trick and land without falling. While the riders don’t get as much air as they would off a ramp, the competition typically favors originality.
For a couple of runs, Powell stumbles slightly on his landings. But on his third run, he begins with a backward somersault that propels him down the mountain. Waiting for him at the curve of the knuckle is another rider—a human prop—who’s lying on his side with his attached board sticking up in the air. He hurls his body over the trusting friend, their boards almost kiss and then Powell performs a layout somersault and sticks the landing. “Wooooow!” a commentator exhales on the replay.
In the end, Norwegian rider Marcus Kleveland takes home the gold for the second year in a row. Powell doesn’t place. But among the riders there are smiles, hugs and hearty slaps on the back. There’s no animosity on Powell’s face, only joy.
As Powell makes his exit, he must pass a long row of fans who are waiting for him behind the barricade. He spends the next hour signing autographs and taking selfies. They do not care that Zeb Powell didn’t stand on a podium today. He’s already won their hearts.
“I HAVE IDEAS, BUT THAT’S THE THING. I CAN HAVE IDEAS ALL I WANT, BUT I CAN COMPLETELY CHANGE MY MIND ON THE WAY DOWN.”
Poaching an empty airport is every skater’s fantasy. Red Bull Terminal Takeover turns that dream into an epic reality. As the 2023 edition looms, here’s what makes the event picture perfect.
Words PETER FLAX Photography JONATHAN MEHRING
This is not a video game or a photo of a crime in progress— it’s just another blissful moment in the skateboarding dreamscape called Terminal Takeover.
Jake Wooten is deconstructing the origins of the fantasy. “Skating an airport without getting yelled at is every skater’s dream,” says the 22-year-old pro skater. He is not stating an opinion here; it’s just a fact. Way back in 2001, Tony Hawk’s landmark game Pro Skater 3 introduced an airport level, allowing the glorious vision of that forbidden fruit to bloom in skate culture’s communal cerebral cortex—spawning dreams of gliding across flawless concourse floors, launching off baggage-claim carousels and otherwise taking flight in a feature-rich playground.
And then, in 2021, that pixelated daydream was transformed into reality. That’s when Red Bull Terminal Takeover was born, and Wooten and five regional crews of skaters, each bringing a filmer and representing a shop from the South, descended upon a recently vacated terminal at Louis Armstrong International Airport in New Orleans for a free-form skate jam and content creation competition on three custom-designed build-outs. Wooten can’t help but grin when he recalls the vibe at that inaugural edition. “It was more than anyone thought possible,” he says. “Everyone spent the whole time with a look of shock and awe on their faces. It was the most perfect ground in the world. It really was like being in a video game.”
Terminal Takeover wasn’t just a hit with participants—the resulting videos of Wooten and the regional competitors flying, flipping, grabbing and grinding in an empty airport were addictively entertaining. And the program’s design to uplift and showcase shops in the South was a big success, too. Wooten, who came out of a broken home and found a kind of family in skate culture, intimately
understands the community that these shops provide and the existential challenges that many faced during the pandemic. “A lot of shops help raise kids in their scene,” he says. “So the way these communities were integrated into the project was amazing.”
The sequel, held last April, was even bigger. Pros like Alex Sorgente, Brighton Zeuner and Vincent Matheron brought more star power and Instagram fireworks to the airport. The roster was expanded to give eight squads from shops from the South a chance at glory. Wooten says that he couldn’t believe just how good these shop skaters were. “Shops often are overlooked,” he admits. “These skaters don’t get the attention that pros get. But they are unreal—more than a handful could be pros.”
And this year, Terminal Takeover will be bigger and radder than before. Now, 10 teams, including four shops from outside the Delta region, will converge on NOLA for two days of skating, filming and community. The competition to simply be there—through qualification rounds dubbed Boarding Pass—will be intense. To wit, Wooten says that 17 teams from Texas will be battling for one slot. And competitors will get first crack at a new build-out—a long concourse hallway with a marble-like surface that would bring tears to any skater’s eyes.
Wooten isn’t sure who will win, but he is sure that there will be good times and some crazy #*%$ going down at the Louis Armstrong International Airport April 13 to 15. “The whole thing has blown up bigger than I ever expected it would,” he says. “It’s something you dream about but didn’t think was possible. The energy is unmatched. Honestly, it feels like you’re skating into a dream.”
“It really was like being in a video game,” says Wooten when asked to describe the feeling of participating in Terminal Takeover.
Ordinary objects that one regularly sees at an airport or hotel offer extraordinary opportunities to play at Terminal Takeover. Here Monica Torres performs a hippy jump last year.
“Skating an airport without getting yelled at is every skater’s dream.”
Trying a move previously reserved for video game play, Edgar Hernandez performs a backside 50/50 grind on an escalator in a soaring terminal space—without any fear of getting busted.
Participants in last year’s Terminal Takeover pose for a group photo backed by a stunt plane, symbolizing the crazy spirit of the event.
“These skaters don’t get the attention that pros get. But they are unreal.”
Claressa Shields and Savannah Marshall made boxing history in the ring at London’s O2 Arena on October 15, 2022.
THE BIGGEST FIGHT IN WOMEN’S BOXING HAS RAGED FOR 300 YEARS: THE BATTLE FOR RECOGNITION OF THE SPORT ITSELF. NOW IT’S ARGUABLY BEATING THE MEN’S GAME, THANKS IN LARGE PART TO FOUR FIGHTERS FROM TWO HISTORIC BOUTS.
Words RICHARD EDWARDS
It’s a Friday afternoon in Bethnal Green, a neighborhood in London’s East End. It’s the middle of October, but the mercury remains stuck in the mid-60s; there’s no hint of a winter chill. At least not outside. By contrast, the atmosphere inside the Genesis Cinema is distinctly frosty. Due on stage for the weigh-in are Claressa Shields and Savannah Marshall—the former unbeaten in professional boxing, the latter the only fighter to ever taste victory over her (during their amateur days). For boxing fans, it’s like the night before Christmas, as the pair prepare to face off outside the ring for a final time before the new biggest fight in women’s boxing history.
Looking on, Nicola Adams, the first female boxer to become a double Olympic champion, and Johnny Nelson, a former world cruiserweight champion, talk excitedly while they wait for the American, Shields, and her English opponent to appear. Seats usually reserved for the latest blockbuster movie are full. There’s no popcorn in sight.
In the U.K., anticipation for a fight already delayed four weeks due to the death of the queen has been heightened by the postponement of another last week: Chris Eubank Jr.’s clash with Conor Benn at the O2 Arena, the venue where this fight will take place tomorrow. The buzz spreads well beyond the walls of this nondescript building. Crystina Poncher, a premier boxing commentator for ESPN in the U.S., explains that it’s not just the Shields vs. Marshall matchup but the fact that this is the first all-female card ever that’s creating waves.
“The build-up and excitement from fans, the media, is just as big [in the U.S.] and it’s competing with two other cards on the same day,” says Poncher. Across the Atlantic, the fight is already dwarfing the hype of former WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder’s return against Robert Helenius in Brooklyn, a night that also includes Caleb Plant, the former IBF
Last year saw the first women’s boxing match to ever headline Madison
Billed as “the biggest women’s fight of all time,” it was the most-watched female bout in history . . . for just six months. Another fight was already set to take its crown.
Heavy gains: Shields with her belts in Atlantic City in 2019. For the fight against Marshall, she risked five (WBA, WBC, IBF, WBF and The Ring) for a shot at WBO middleweight and the new Elizabethan Belt.
Marshall training ahead of her fight with Shields. At the time, they had matching pro records: 12 wins, no defeats; (opposite page) the two fighters at the weigh-in.
super-middleweight champion, on the undercard. “I’d say the women have pretty much stolen the show.”
Eventually, the two fighters appear. They follow Alycia Baumgardner and Mikaela Meyer, two fighters separated by similarly bad blood. Marshall, referred to as “the Silent Assassin,” smiles as she steps onto the scales. She weighs in at 159 pounds.
From behind her, Muhammad Ali’s voice suddenly booms out, “The champ is here. The champ is here,” his words sampled on the Jadakiss song of the same name. A brooding Shields walks forth. She’s in the mood. It’s business time. After tipping the scales at an identical weight to her opponent, she prepares to carry her belts for a face-off with Marshall. It’s no easy task. In fact, it’s a three-person job.
That’s when the magnitude of Shields’s incredible achievements hit home. She’s the holder of 12 belts across three weight divisions. If Marshall is under any illusion that Shields will surrender a single one of them, the message is clear. In the pre-fight promo, she stares down the camera: “Anyone who doubts me, that’s OK,” she says. “You’ll be a fan soon enough. And Savannah Marshall? You just wrote a check your ass can’t cash.”
Anyone wondering if this is part of the act only needs to see the glint in each boxer’s eyes. This shit is real. And if Marshall wants to take Shields’s belts from her, she’s gonna need two things. The first is courage. The second is a moving van.
Throughout the ages, boxing has been built on rivalries. From Sugar Ray Robinson and Jake LaMotta in the 1940s and early ’50s, to the triumvirate of Ali, Joe Frazier and George Foreman, right through to Mike Tyson, Evander Holyfield and Holyfield’s ear, the sport leans heavily on the enmity between those stepping into the ring to create narratives, promote fights and put butts in seats.
The growth of the women’s game, although partially driven by the trash-talking that has helped build up the Marshall and Shields bout, has mainly been a result of the standards pioneered by the latter, along with a boxer who, not so long ago, was playing for the Irish national soccer team: Katie Taylor.
Taylor and Shields are unlikely to ever meet each other in the ring—their weight difference makes any matchup too favorable for the latter. But like Shields, the 36-year-old Olympic champion (she won lightweight gold in London back in 2012), born near Dublin, is unbeaten in a professional fight. Since October 2017, when, less than a year after turning pro, she won the WBA lightweight belt by defeating Argentine Anahí Ester Sánchez, Taylor has emerged as one of the preeminent forces in global boxing.
Dubbed “the Bray Bomber,” she’s arguably Irish sport’s finest-ever export, a fighter whose brilliance has caught the imagination of seasoned fightgoers across men’s and women’s boxing. As Matthew Macklin, former middleweight British and European champion and now one of Sky Sports’ boxing analysts, explains, “You only have to go to an Anthony Joshua fight, even a stacked card with several world title fights, and Katie Taylor steals the show pretty much every time. She’s the performance of the night.”
Few would argue with that assessment, least of all the string of boxers who have felt the full force of Taylor’s power during her 22-fight career. Among them is the Puerto Rican Amanda Serrano, another key figure in the sport’s rise, and a fighter who, alongside Taylor, made history in April 2022.
Every sport has its historic venues, synonymous with golden moments. For boxing, Madison Square Garden in midtown Manhattan is one such location. From the moment Rocky Marciano walked into the venue in 1951 and forced Joe Louis back into retirement, right through to the Fight of the Century in March 1971, when Frazier erased the word “unbeaten” from Ali’s biography, or Andy Ruiz Jr.’s demolition job on Joshua in June 2019, MSG has played host to some of the sport’s most iconic battles.
As recently as five years ago, any suggestion that two women would one day headline a card there would have been dismissed as fantasy; a nonstarter in a testosterone-dominated world in which men have held sway across the venue’s 140-year history. This crop of female boxers, though, are cut from a different cloth. All are well aware not only of their extraordinary ability in the ring but how this affects their value outside it. So when Serrano and Taylor’s original U.K. bout in Manchester was knocked off the calendar by the pandemic in May 2020, there
ANYONE DOUBTING THE RIVALRY NEED ONLY SEE THE GLINT IN THEIR EYES.
“KATIE TAYLOR STEALS THE SHOW EVERY TIME. SHE’S THE PERFORMANCE OF THE NIGHT.”
was only one possible location in both fighters’ sights when the rematch was rescheduled.
Reports suggested Serrano was offered $385,000 for the 2020 matchup, but by the time promoters had reconvened it was clear that a fight pitting the number one (Taylor) and number two (Serrano)— the best pound-for-pound fighters in world boxing— against each other would be far more lucrative. MSG was an arena befitting their ambition. And boxing fans who greedily snapped up tickets clearly agreed.
“You obviously know your worth when you’re capable of selling out arenas and stadiums,” Taylor said at the time. “We’re both in a position where we’re able to do it and not just sell out a stadium but sell out Madison Square Garden, which is very special.”
None of these figures, of course, would have been achievable without the promoters working alongside a unique generation of female boxing talent. YouTuber turned boxer Jake Paul signed Serrano to his company, Most Valuable Promotions, after responding to a tweet from the fighter in April 2021. Since then, he has supercharged her career and, alongside Eddie Hearn at Matchroom and Boxxer’s Ben Shalom, helped to raise both the profile of the sport and the size of the purses on offer to those women putting their bodies on the line for global titles. Conor McGregor is also a high-profile fan of Katie Taylor and sent her a good-luck message before her MSG bout. “I hope it just puts [women boxers] on a different pedestal of respect and gets them paid better,” Paul said after signing Serrano, who is also a major MMA star. “Because they are the most underpaid. That’s what I’m looking to do.”
By the time Taylor and Serrano were the headline act at MSG—to global fanfare—a seven-figure payday was assured. The Bray Bomber, meanwhile, made it clear she wasn’t eyeing a temporary rise in purses for women’s boxing—she wanted to secure the sport’s long-term future. Hardly a surprising ambition given that when starting out she’d have to dress as a boy just to get inside the ring. “I feel like we’ve covered a lot of ground over the last few years in terms of the paycheck and purses, but we have a long way to go,” Taylor told CNN on the eve of the fight. “It’s not OK that myself and Amanda are just the ones getting the big paychecks. That has to carry over to other female fighters as well, and I hope that can happen.”
It would be easy to focus on the rewards these fighters are now receiving. But this journey can’t be distilled into dollars-and-cents calculations. To understand how far women’s boxing has come, we must take a trip into London’s past.
At first glance, an event that took place in June 1722 would appear as relevant to modern women’s boxing as Adam and Eve are to the Apollo space program. On the mean streets of Georgian Britain, though, Elizabeth Wilkinson was busy making a name for herself—as a bare-knuckle pugilist. And although the modes of communication were slightly different back then, her challenge to
another fighter by the name of Hannah Hayfield carried with it the same hint of menace.
“I, Elizabeth Wilkinson of Clerkenwell, having had some words with Hannah Hayfield, and requiring satisfaction, do invite her to meet me on the stage, and box me for three guineas, each woman holding half a crown in each hand, and the first woman that drops her money to lose the battle,” reads the statement from Wilkinson, published in The London Journal 300 years ago last summer.
Wilkinson may have been an early pacesetter for the women’s fight game, but the speed at which it evolved over the next three centuries wasn’t so much slow as utterly glacial, despite the best efforts of the likes of Barbara Butterick, the British founder of the Women’s International Boxing Federation. Known as “the Mighty Atom of the Ring,” Butterick was a fearsome competitor, ending her career in 1960 with just one defeat in 32 bouts. Standing at 4 feet 11 inches and weighing just 98 pounds, she was a flyweight who packed a punch. But despite Butterick’s best efforts, both in the U.K. and the U.S.—she toured extensively on both sides of the Atlantic—by the time she hung up her gloves, women’s boxing was no nearer to being accepted than when she’d first strapped them on.
Other attempts ended up being mocked by the establishment. A women-only boxing tournament organized by Sue Atkins in a London pub—the Foresters Arms—in 1993 ended up not being covered in The Ring magazine but plastered across three pages in a soft-porn publication, an ambush that none of the fighters involved were remotely aware of. It wasn’t until August 1998 that the British Board of Boxing Control handed female boxers a license to fight. And that only came about following a sex-discrimination case brought by Jane Couch—a boxer from Northwest England who, for the next decade, would carry the torch for the sport, not just in the U.K. but around the globe. As the millennium dawned, however, the chance of milliondollar purses, sold-out nights at the O2 or MSG and female fighters heading up pay-per-view cards within 20 years seemed about as likely as Wilkinson returning from the dead to reprise her rivalry with Stone Cold Hannah Hayfield.
“I had some very dark times in my life where I did want to give up, I did want to commit suicide,” said Shields after the fight last October. “[But] I stayed strong and didn’t let the doubters who questioned my greatness get to me. I didn’t let my childhood trauma get to me. I would just tell my younger self, ‘Keep pushing. It gets better. Don’t give up.’ ”
The city of Flint, Michigan, recently honored Shields by renaming the street she grew up on. This is a welcome cause for celebration in a corner of Michigan that, according to census data, suffers some of the highest levels of deprivation in the U.S. The national rate for childhood poverty is 16.9 percent; in Flint, that figure skyrockets to 49.8 percent. Some of the city’s residents will never find a way out;
others will look at Shields as the living, breathing embodiment of the possible.
In an interview with the BBC following Rio 2016, shortly after she became the first American boxer in history to defend an Olympic title—a second middleweight gold to add to the one from London in 2012—Shields pulled no punches in describing just how harsh her upbringing had been. “I didn’t start talking until I was 5,” she said. “By then, my father had been in prison for three years for dealing drugs. I wouldn’t meet him again for another four. I’m not going to say my mom didn’t care for us, but she left us to fend for ourselves. She abused alcohol and didn’t know how to control it. There were times my little sister and I would walk around looking for Mom for days on end. I’d have to go out and get food. If there were two packs of ramen noodles, my little sister ate one, my little brother ate one, and I didn’t eat. We’d sleep on the couch or floor, and more than likely my sister or my brother was on the couch, so I’d be on the floor.”
Shields further revealed how she had been raped “every day for about six months” by a person known to the family and how a speech impediment had left her unable to articulate her horrific experiences. Boxing became a way out for her. Since her first professional fight—in November 2016 at the age of 21, against Franchón Crews-Dezurn in the super middleweight division—few fighters in history, male or female, have turned so many negatives into one giant positive so successfully.
In many ways, Shields and Taylor are worlds apart. This is exemplified by their pre-match routines backstage: Shields and her crew burst with energy, rap music blaring, while Taylor sits introspectively, listening to calming music on her earpods. But one factor that unites the two, beyond their unsurpassed skills in the ring, is their Olympic success and the springboard that the Games provided them as they navigated their paths from the amateur ranks to the top of the sport. In the case of Taylor, she was one of the fighters directly responsible for the International Olympic Committee’s historic decision to include the sport, following a meeting in Berlin back in 2009. The die, though, had been cast two years before that.
“I got in front of the whole Olympic Committee in Chicago and fought an exhibition bout at the men’s world championships,” recalled Taylor in 2019. “A few days before the actual fight, I had a meeting with the committee and they told me that this fight was going to be responsible for whether [women’s] boxing was going to be in the Olympic Games or not.
“I was shaking after that meeting. I knew that this was going to be more than just a fight. All the weight was on our shoulders in that fight.”
All those invested in women’s boxing needn’t have worried; as evidenced by the elevation of the sport in subsequent years, the IOC couldn’t have put it in safer hands. And the competition in the London Games, although limited to just three
Serrano training before a fight. Her pro record: 46 fights, 43 wins— 30 of them KOs.
A SERRANO/TAYLOR REMATCH COULD DWARF EVERYTHING THAT’S GONE BEFORE.
Shields celebrates in triumph as the results of the fight against Marshall are announced.
weight divisions—fly, light and middleweight— didn’t only provide a focal point for female boxers around the world; it lit a spark that has been burning ever since.
“They ignited a fire in me to have a dream to go to the Olympics,” says Caroline Dubois, a member of the U.K. Olympic team for the 2020 Games in Tokyo and a fighter on the undercard for the Shields vs. Marshall fight. She was joined on that all-female platform by Lauren Price, a goldmedalist in Tokyo, and Karriss Artingstall, Price’s partner and another medal winner at the same Games. Both aged 28, Price and Artingstall now seek to emulate the success of Taylor, Shields, Serrano and Marshall in the professional game. Strip away all the hype, the purses, the media coverage and the superstardom attained by all four, and their most lasting achievement isn’t measured in belts but rather the opportunities they have created for others to seize.
When you’re talking about the men’s fight game, “it’s all about the O,” says Alex Beer, the photographer who has spent the past four years following the world’s leading female boxers around the globe. His raw black-and-white portraits vividly depict the progress made by both the sport and its athletes during a period that has seen the popularity of women’s boxing explode.
The “O” (i.e., zero) is the unbeaten record and the need to preserve it. In men’s boxing, this often means dodging opponents, evading challengers and the best not always meeting the best. Sometimes this avoidance goes on for years, as anyone who has followed the careers of Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua will attest. “In women’s boxing, that just doesn’t exist,” says Beer. “They’ll take on whoever they need to—we saw that last year.”
Both Taylor and Shields put their reputations and belts on the line in 2022, and both went into the New Year with their O still intact following two stunning fights on era-defining nights on opposite sides of the Atlantic.
Back in April 2022, Serrano had Taylor on the ropes. In every sense. In the fifth round, a right uppercut and a left hook had Taylor bloodied and teetering. By the time the bell rang, she was hanging on to an unbeaten record that had never been under such threat. Ultimately, though, as all great champions do, Taylor found a way. One judge scored the fight 96-94 in Serrano’s favor; the other two made it 96-93 and 97-93 in the opposite direction. The newspaper The Guardian called it as a 95-95 draw, an indication of just how close this bout was.
It was a similarly tough task for Shields at the O2 last October, with her English challenger providing stubborn and often brutal resistance in front of more than 20,000 fans, not to mention the biggest audience ever recorded for an all-female event on Sky Sports. More than 2 million people tuned in to watch a slugfest that some seasoned boxing fans labeled the fight of the year. The final two-minute round provided more drama than some fights produce across 12. Wild hooks from both fighters rained down as a spellbound crowd watched on.
The toast of Flint won a unanimous decision on points, almost but not quite managing to silence a raucous London crowd. Bruised and battered, Marshall gave her view of a fight for the ages: “I’m disappointed I came up short, but if it has pushed female boxing I’ll be happy. I’m very proud—there were times when I was struggling to even get on cards. Next thing, I’m headlining the O2.”
Shields, meanwhile, celebrated her victory in a style reminiscent of her win at the London Olympics, jumping and screaming as the verdicts were read out. “I had to work so hard for a very long time, and nobody has given me credit,” she exclaimed. “It’s a special moment not just for me but for women’s boxing.”
Later, she reflects on her achievement to The Red Bulletin. “Headlining an all-female card at the O2 with a crowd of 20,000 fans and [2] million viewers was unthinkable at the beginning of my career,” Shields says. “But I knew the impossible was possible. I’m proud of the history I’ve made, and the strides toward parity for women. We’re still fighting for equal pay, but we’ve definitely raised the bar.”
So what’s next? Well, if the events at the O2 and MSG were big, the return fight between Taylor and Serrano—potentially on Taylor’s home turf of Dublin—could dwarf them both. A rematch of the Shields and Marshall fight is also in the cards, likely this summer in the U.S.—a bout that likely will have sponsors and major boxing networks falling all over themselves to be involved.
Alongside her ambitions inside the ring, Shields has a more prosaic aim, one shaped by her own turbulent and often violent upbringing. “In my personal life, I just want to focus on my niece and nephews, make sure they pass their grades in school and have a better childhood than I had,” she says. “I’m also planning for my marriage in 2024. The big personal goal after that is having my own kids.”
She pauses, and the Claressa who strode forth at the weigh-in returns. It’s business time once again. “There are more boxing records I’d like to achieve— undisputed in another weight division, world champion in a fourth division—and if someone comes along who people think is better or can KO me, I’ll be ready to prove them all wrong again.”
Thanks to JJ O’ Regan and Matty Lawless at Boxxer and Ross Garritty at Matchroom for their assistance in gaining access to the fights.
At the end of a tough year, McElveen attempted an audacious solo crossing of Tasmania that would turn out to be a rewarding physical and emotional journey.
PAYSON MCELVEEN’S nonstop 32-hour solo crossing of Tasmania was a physical—and emotional—expedition.
Words NEAL ROGERS Photography THRAINN KOLBEINSSON
ltimately it wasn’t the distance, the unrelenting terrain or even the merciless body cramps that truly screwed with Payson McElveen’s mind in the toughest hours of his solo ride across Tasmania last November. That honor would go to the waist-deep nighttime river crossing with the very real threat of venomous snakes.
Unseasonable rain weeks earlier had flooded rivers along the 360-mile route, which he’d designed with the help of Tasmanian bike-packing icon Emma Flukes. A bridge 25 feet above the River Leven had been washed away, forcing McElveen to cross thigh-deep water with his bike perched on his shoulder.
But that, at least, happened during daylight hours. That night, about halfway into the 32-hour
adventure, he had to ford the larger and muddier Mersey River. McElveen was concerned about all the electronics aboard his bike—lights, powerbank, spare drivetrain batteries, satellite tracker, iPhone— but getting them wet didn’t pose a lethal threat. Tiger snakes, however, were another story. And he had spotted them all along the route.
“They’re far more venomous than anything we have in the States,” he says. “They’re 3 to 5 feet long, jet black and look like Satan incarnate. They’re just absolute weapons. And they just got into my head. Like many people, I just have this visceral reaction to snakes.”
Even with bright lights, McElveen couldn’t discern how far it was to the other side of the river. It was likely a few hundred yards, though it looked like more. Rushing water, the color of chocolate milk, rose above his waist. He had no choice but to hoist his fully loaded bike over his head. Weaving through flood debris, he made it across just as his arms began to give out. Then it was time to navigate his way through a thick tangle of driftwood uprooted from flooding—a prime spot for hidden tiger snakes.
That anxiety-producing crossing would have been a dramatic moment to capture for the sevenperson film crew and support team that was documenting the adventure—which included McElveen’s fiancée, Nichole Baker. Instead, like much of the ride, it was McElveen’s experience and his alone. (Everything that was captured is being edited into a 20-minute film, tentatively titled “Crossing Tasmania,” which will premiere at the Sea Otter Classic in April.)
This wasn’t McElveen’s first solo crossing of a distant land. In September 2021, he rode 257 rugged and remote miles across Iceland in just under 20 hours, a feat no one had accomplished before. Prior to that, he’d set the FKT (Fastest Known Time) on the
Prepared for tough and varied conditions, McElveen rode a mountain bike with extremely wide gearing and aerobars for comfort.
There were only three resupply spots along the 360-mile route, meaning that McElveen spent nearly the entire journey in complete solitude.
White Rim Trail, just outside of Moab, Utah—a fivehour drive from his adopted home in Durango, Colorado. These self-supported solo adventure rides are the continuation of personal exploration for the 30-year-old former cross-country mountain bike pro, who has branched into gravel racing, podcasting and epic challenge rides.
“They are all a ton of work, but if one is not going well, I can lean into the others until the previous thing comes back around,” he says. “Rides like Tasmania are pretty much a direct response to the strict rigors of traditional racing. I don’t think that I could maintain the racing career without some of these things where I just leave the competitive stuff behind for a massive adventure. And then the competitive stuff makes it so that I can ride across Tasmania in a single push and do 360 miles unbroken at a pretty good high average power and see an entire place in a single go.”
As soon as he finished the trip across Iceland, McElveen knew he wanted an encore. He began looking at maps and plotting routes to locate the next challenge. He likes the notion of running out of terrain—of riding from one coast to another. But in some respects, Tasmania was the polar opposite of Iceland, its geology teeming with what McElveen describes as “the most exotic animals and plants you can imagine.”
Ultimately the chosen route would travel west to east, hoping to capitalize upon the Roaring Forties—westerly winds found in the Southern Hemisphere between the latitudes of 40 and 50 degrees. McElveen began riding at 6:21 a.m. on November 7, dipping his wheels in the Southern Ocean at the “Edge of the World” in the beach community of Arthur River, home to the cleanest air in the world, due to an uninterrupted expanse of ocean that spans all the way to Argentina.
McElveen traversed gravel roads, abandoned railroad tracks, dense rainforest, boggy riverbeds, long paved stretches and nasty climbs.
Along his voyage, he would traverse gravel roads, abandoned railroad tracks, dense rainforest, boggy riverbeds, 100 miles of pavement and a nasty 1,000foot climb 6 miles from the terminus at Bay of Fires on the Tasman Sea. Before finishing, however, he’d plotted his route through the massive ferns and slabby rocks that line the singletrack throughout the Blue Derby trail network, repeatedly voted “Trail of the Year” by riders of the Enduro World Series.
In total, the route would deliver nearly 35,000 feet in elevation gain, much of it coming in the final 100 miles. And while McElveen had set out to cross Iceland in under 24 hours, this time around he knew that would not be possible. There would be no objective other than finishing—and avoiding wildlife. He lost count of how many wallabies and wombats he saw (though he did spot one Tasmanian devil); his fingers hovered over his brake levers to avoid hitting any stray animals.
The ride also gave McElveen the opportunity to process a disappointing season. While he’d accepted that 2022 was going to be a year of change and transition—he’d left behind his established Orange Seal team, and longtime bike sponsor Trek, to go it alone as a self-supported privateer riding for Allied Cycles—his campaign began with a hospital visit to treat several broken bones sustained in a crash while defending his title at the Mid South in Oklahoma. As he worked to put those injuries behind him, a bout of COVID derailed his chances at Unbound Gravel in Kansas. Then came untimely mechanicals at big races during the summer, and severe illness before Big Sugar Gravel in Arkansas in October that prevented him from even starting. This last setback also limited his training for the Tasmanian ride.
It wouldn’t be accurate to characterize his 2022 as all bad, though. Despite the frequent misfortune, McElveen produced some of the best power numbers
with “the most exotic animals and plants you can imagine.”
Highlights of the route included singletrack in Blue Derby, a purposebuilt trail network that cuts through a forest of ferns.
Tasmania, he says, teems
The trip included one long night; McElveen was understandably nervous about run-ins with highly poisonous tiger snakes as he forded rivers in the dark.
of his entire career; the fitness was there, even if the luck was not. And the year had begun with his engagement to Baker—an epidemiology student at Johns Hopkins and sponsored adventure athlete who also handles many of McElveen’s logistics. They plan to marry in the fall.
These highs and lows formed the backdrop of McElveen’s state of mind as he pedaled alone, through the night, across a rugged and isolated island. This was his frame of reference as he watched the sunrise from Mount Maurice, a magical, slowmotion light show cast against mountains on the horizon, his own unique reward for pushing on through the darkness. What bubbled to the surface was a deep sense of relief—and gratitude.
“I cried multiple times during the actual ride, not out of despair so much as it’s just . . such a rich experience,” McElveen says. “On a very personal level, this is the best human version of myself.”
On his Adventure Stache podcast, recapping his Tasmanian epic, McElveen addressed a recurring question he’d received from listeners and friends: What had he learned from the experience? He discussed his relationship with time, how so much of racing and training revolves around watching the clock, often at the expense of other experiences that riding a bike can provide. As he spoke, the full weight of the emotional journey came through in his voice.
“Throughout the ride I found myself further letting go of time,” he said. “By the time I was starting to fall apart physically, mentally I had unlocked something, which was new to me, which was this acceptance, or surrender of control. I had achieved that true timelessness. That felt so healthy. Even though something that extreme certainly isn’t for everyone, there was something powerful and special about that.”
“I cried multiple times during the ride, not out of despair so much as it’s just . . . such a rich experience.”
Two years ago, Finnish freediver Johanna Nordblad dived 338 feet beneath an ice sheet on just a single breath—farther than anyone before. In this cold, dark, underwater world, it’s the 47-year-old’s lack of speed that’s become her greatest strength.
Words KARIN CERNY Photography ELINA MANNINEN
Ice diver Johanna Nordblad sits on a frozen lake in her swimwear. The ice hole in front of her reveals dark, threatening-looking water beneath a 24inch-thick rim of solid ice. The air is 19°F, the water about 35°F. It’s not easy to even imagine slipping slowly beneath the ice into this unknown environment, to dive the full length of a soccer feld with just the oxygen that’s in your lungs. But this is what the Finn did on this day in March 2021, setting a new world record in the process. No man or woman has ever dived farther beneath the ice without an oxygen tank: 103 meters, or about 338 feet, on a single breath. No fippers. No wetsuit.
Nordblad knew that diving into this hostile world for almost three minutes would push her to the very edge of what is humanly possible. It’s why the makers of the Netfix documentary Hold Your
Breath: The Ice Dive tailed the extreme diver for more than a year, capturing her self-doubt, training and willpower in twilight-blue images of a world of ice and snow.
“It’s eerie trying to set that type of record, because there is no background data to go on,” says Nordblad now. The 47-year-old freelance graphic designer lives in Helsinki—close to the water, of course. “I took it to the absolute limit. From 80 meters on, it felt like my heart was only beating once an hour. The last few meters seemed to go on for days. I thought my heart was going to stop working.”
Nordblad laughs a deep, warm laugh, her eyes shining. There’s something of the Greenland shark about her, vital yet sedate. The sluggish giants of the Arctic Ocean, which live three times longer
“I took it to the absolute limit.”
Ice diving was not part of Nordblad’s original plan, but a mountain-biking accident in 2010 changed all that.
Being slow is my way of dealing with this life-threatening challenge.”
than those from warmer waters, are part of a genus of sharks known as Somniosus —a Latin word meaning “sleepy.” In the cold, the metabolism runs on its lowest setting and everything slows down to an astonishing extent. It took time for Nordblad to get used to this life in slow motion, to the unsettling feeling of lethargy in both body and mind.
Ice diving is a paradoxical affair. You’re in a life-threatening situation, but you must remain calm and relaxed. The diving refex sets in underwater. The body knows it has to conserve oxygen and switches to survival mode: the heart rate drops—as low as an incredible 10 beats per minute in professional freedivers—and the blood retreats inward so as just to supply the vital organs. A kind of trance sets in. It can quickly lead to a deadly blackout.
“The cold is so overwhelming,” Nordblad explains. “You feel so many different things at the same time. That’s why you have to be totally in the moment to decide, ‘Can I dive to the next hole?’ ” In this situation, of course, the wrong move could be fatal —there’s no room for hasty decisions. “I was always the slowest diver in competitions,” says Nordblad. But what was once a handicap is now a strength. “Being slow is my own way of dealing with this life-threatening challenge.”
Ice diving, Nordblad says, has taught her a lesson for life. It has made her calmer and more relaxed but also more
focused. Anyone venturing into this strange, dark world must be at one with themselves. A single wrong thought can cost valuable oxygen. “The secret to freediving is that there’s absolutely no room for fear,” says Nordblad. “For me, that’s also the beauty of it. I have to leave all my problems on land. My mind must be relaxed when I’m diving.” If something makes her nervous or is bothering her, Nordblad makes a date in her diary. “It gives me a kind of peace. On that date, I will try to solve the problem. But for now I don’t have to think about it anymore.”
Nordblad’s compulsion to be in the water began when she was a child. She spent every spare minute at the pool. Then, in 2000, she discovered freediving. Nordblad lay at the bottom of the pool and watched the people swimming above her. “They looked like animals,” she says. “Everything was so peaceful. I felt like I was at one with nature. I soon realized I was addicted to this feeling.”
In 2004, Nordblad broke the women’s world record in distance diving with fippers: 158 meters (518 feet) in 6 minutes, 39 seconds. She also coached the Finnish national men’s freediving team and competed at world championships in Serbia and her home country. But in 2006 she found herself falling out of love with freediving. “Suddenly it wasn’t fun anymore,” she says. “It had somehow become like a job. I no longer wanted to compete against
When the lakes in Finland freeze over, Nordblad starts diving, sometimes in a neoprene suit, but more often without one.
Netflix and chill: Nordblad is the star of the documentary
Hold Your Breath: The Ice Dive.
others. I wanted to explore myself.” She looked for new, untested ways of doing that. “I started to train in my own way. I swam as slowly as I could for 20 minutes, to free up my head for new ideas.”
The cold wasn’t really part of her plan; Nordblad only fell in love with ice after an accident in 2010. She was downhill mountain-biking, but the track was slippery, and when her bike toppled over, her left foot got stuck in the pedal. She suffered severe damage to her leg. The wound had to be kept open in the hospital for 10 days to avoid necrosis setting in. She was given morphine for the excruciating pain. While the bones eventually healed, the neural pathways didn’t want to play ball. Three years later, Nordblad was still waking up in the night, screaming in pain. “I thought I was going crazy,” she says. But then a doctor prescribed cold-water therapy. “I found it horrible at frst, sitting by the pool, putting my foot in the cold water.
I had tears running down my face.” But two minutes later there was relief. The pain had disappeared. The cold helped Nordblad achieve inner peace and gave her a deep sense of satisfaction.
“The injury opened up a whole new world to me,” she says now. She began immersing herself fully in cold water, the shock of it leaving her short of breath. But she learned how to deal with it, understood how the cold crept into her head and lodged in her brain, that it was like pricking the skin with needles. Nordblad also learned that you can’t fght the cold—you have to accept it. The reward: an incredible feeling of freedom, like pressing a reset button. “You get into a meditative state without meditating,” she says. “Ice swimming is a spa treatment for lazy people. A couple of minutes in cold water feels like a 10-day break.” And what about ice diving? “That’s a spa treatment for the even lazier: 30 seconds will completely change your mindset.
The ice hole is a gateway to a beautiful, quiet place where time stands still.”
Despite her experience, Nordblad’s world record was no mean feat. Just getting to the attempt was diffcult. Originally, Nordblad “only” wanted to dive down to 81 meters beneath the ice to break the men’s record of just over 70 meters. But then came the pandemic and her attempt had to be postponed. In the interim, a Russian woman had set an unoffcial record of 102 meters. The bar was suddenly very high. To make matters worse, pools were closed due to COVID, and Nordblad had a feeling she hadn’t trained enough. She was saved by her gallows humor.
“The day before my record attempt, I spoke to a friend on the phone and told her there were two possible scenarios,” she says. “Either I don’t listen to my inner voice while I’m underwater, I dive for too long and I die, or I come back up at the next hole and die of shame.” On the
“There shouldn’t be this distinction between boys’ and girls’ things.”
inside, Nordblad knew there was only one way for her anyway: to trust her slow pace. “If I had thought that morning, ‘I have to dive 103 meters today,’ I would never have made it,” she says. “You can’t plan anything ahead. You have to decide in the moment.”
Nordblad holds not only the women’s record but is unbeaten by any man, too. In the Netfix documentary, she states, “Women can do everything men can do.” But that’s only the half of it, she now says. “That compartmentalization means nothing to me. I have always done what I wanted. It never mattered to me that I was a girl.” She was the youngest in the family and always out and about with her brother and his friends. Even as a little girl there was never any doubt she’d be part of the fun and adventures. “I never thought I was different just because I was a girl. There shouldn’t be this distinction between boys’ and girls’ things.” That wasn’t always easy for her elder sister, Elina Manninen. “We called Johanna a monkey when she was a child,” Manninen says. “I remember she was always doing something odd.”
The two are very different—Manninen is more anxious, not an adventurer—but the sisters make a perfect team: Nordblad dives and Manninen is her emotional support, taking care of the practical considerations to ensure her sister’s safety, allowing Nordblad to concentrate completely on her diving. Manninen is also a photographer and takes stunning underwater pictures of her sister while freediving next to her, getting used to the cold herself. And Kasper, Nordblad’s son, has explored his mother’s world with her, too. “He has faith in me,” says Nordblad. “Before he was a teenager doing his own thing, we dived together a lot.”
On the day of her world-record attempt, Nordblad is on a yoga mat on frozen Lake Öllöri in northern Finland. “Five minutes left,” says a man’s voice. Her eyes are closed, her breathing calm. “One minute.” She sits there, stiff as a statue, wearing a bathrobe to keep warm. “Thirty seconds.” She loses the robe and takes a few more deep breaths. Then she dives, into a dark, icy world where everything happens in slow motion. She glides weightlessly through the water like a Greenland shark, for 2 minutes and 42 seconds. But to Nordblad it feels like days. Instagram: @johannanordblad; @elinamanninen
Johanna Nordblad sometimes trains with flippers, but she broke the world record without them—and without a wetsuit.
“You can’t plan anything ahead. You have to decide in the moment.”
Chicago is known for many things— hot dogs, Michael Jordan, cool architecture, bad weather. But in 2022, the Windy City finally gained recognition for another talent when Mayor Lori Lightfoot declared a year-long focus on a star of its arts and culture community: dance.
For house music obsessives, the honor is severely overdue. After all, this is the city that birthed an international movement led by “Godfather of House Music” DJ Frankie
Knuckles and the legendary label Trax Records, paving the way for pioneers like Joe Smooth, Felix Da Housecat, DJ Pierre, DJ Rashad, RP Boo and DJ Spinn. Driven by chaotic, fast-paced beats clocking in around 150 to 165 bpm, this is the music that provided the backdrop for footwork culture to emerge in the late 1990s. Called juke or Chicago juke, it was put to work by battlescene trailblazers, the Era Footwork Crew. Almost 20 years later, the same city
would give rise to the drill scene, which still makes cameos in dance battles today.
Over the past three decades, the epicenter of the Midwest has rivaled the coasts for its growing headliner outdoor festival culture, drawing glitter-drenched ravers from around the world to combat-boot mosh pits at Lollapalooza, Pitchfork Music Festival, Riot Fest, North Coast Music Festival and ARC Music Festival. Today, you can find virtually every kind of dancer in this city, from bun heads and tap dancers to Red Bull Dance Your Style mavens vying for the national crown, May 18-20. It’s also the city responsible for “The Super Bowl Shuffle” and DJ Casper’s foolproof “Cha Cha Slide,” proving that you don’t even have to carry a beat to dance in this city, so there’s no excuse not to.
The next time you hit Chicago, ditch the welltraveled path—and fill up your dance card at these guaranteed hot spots.
Whether you want to tap, bounce or grind, the options to get down in Chicago are extensive—just pick a vibe. Look to the pros at Chicago’s renowned theaters for some inspiration, starting with Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Visceral Dance Center, Harris Theater at Millennium Park or the Joffrey Ballet. Check out experimental-artist residencies at High Concept Labs and the Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago, or swing by the Ruth Page Center for the Arts on the first Friday of each month to catch DanceWorks Chicago’s Dance Chance event, featuring three different choreographers in an open-mic concept.
Warm up before a night of club hopping with a dropin session at Off the Ground Dance Chicago or Textured Dance Studio, where you can brush up on jazz funk, hiphop and vogue-style dancing. Battle dancing is still a very underground scene, but don’t be surprised if you catch some solid moves at Smartbar or Prysm. These two nightclubs have a reputation for luring international DJs and name-drop-worthy acts like Rich the Kid, Stella Bossi and DJ Seinfeld, with plenty of floor space to get down. Head north to Uptown’s Le Nocturne for Frenchaccented house music vibes from resident DJs over a 25,000-watt KV2 Audio system, including a weekly Afro-fusion DJ set.
In Fulton Market, it’s business up front, party in the back at the Blind Barber, where you can get a fresh cut before hitting its ’70s bar, the Backroom. Late checkouts are encouraged at the Electric Hotel, a disco-ball-decked-out dance club inside a former
For more than 40 years, Smartbar in the Wrigleyville neighborhood has been a key spot to dance the night away.
electrical warehouse inspired by Germany’s underground scene, featuring a FunktionOne sound system, vibrant video walls and cryotechnics that keep the party going until 5 a.m. on weekends.
Find your beat at the Giant Penny Whistle in Pilsen, a music venue and restaurant that features a weekly Chicago-style house music night. Take a detour and grab a craft cocktail at Nine Bar Chicago in Chinatown; along with its cool menu of snacks from Moon Palace—including a McKatsu Japanese-style fried-pork sandwich and White Rabbit candy panna cotta—the bar frequently features killer sets from folks like Will Galvan, Paloma and DJ Van Paugam. For a little bit of all the above, head to the Promontory in Hyde Park, a sprawling venue known to host DJs, live music, burlesque, spoken word and other events.
Who strolls into a club without some fresh fits? Probably not you. Dress to impress with a shopping spree that takes you through downtown, the West Loop and Wicker Park, a road map to all the latest streetwear and hot sneaker drops.
Coveted labels like Supreme and Superdry have both made their foray into Chicago with cool installations worth checking out, but why not support a homegrown brand like Jugrnaut in the South Loop, Leaders 1354 in the West Loop, Iridium 77 downtown or Uprise, a 25-year-old veteran skateshop in Wicker Park? Discover upand-coming designers at community-driven concept shops the Silver Room in Hyde Park and Buddy in the Chicago Cultural Center downtown, featuring functional art and home goods alongside one-ofa-kind threads.
Expect to drop some serious cash if you plan to shop at designer streetwear boutiques like RSVP Gallery in Wicker Park or Notre in the West Loop—the drops from their select luxury labels do not come cheap. Find brands like A Bathing Ape, Rhude, Roa, Givenchy, Hoka and Y-3, as well as Chicago’s finest Off-White and Jordan.
And a trip to Chicago isn’t complete without dropping into the city’s best record stores. Vinyl nerds can dig into the bins for rare finds at iconic spots like Dusty Groove and Reckless Records. In addition to their curated
selection of new and used albums, shops such as Shuga Records and Gramaphone Records also carry a pretty excellent collection of merch and slipmats that are worth stocking up on.
Dancing is guaranteed to burn up some calories, and Chicago is very much a food town, so plan to fit in a whole checklist covering the city’s finest restaurants.
If you head to Hyde Park, a visit to Virtue is essential. The restaurant from James Beard Foundation Award winner Erick Williams showcases elegant takes on homey Southern classics like gumbo, shrimp and crawfish, and banana pudding. Get a two-fer of Thai food and barbecue at the Duplex, a rotating-chef restaurant in Logan Square featuring two concepts under one roof: Thai Bodega and Already Smokin’. Hit up modern soul food restaurant Eleven Eleven in the West Loop, where chef Lamar Moore serves amped up comforts like shrimp ’n’ grits, cacio e pepe and woodfire-grilled chicken. Chances are all these restaurants could send you into a food coma,
so take advantage of Eleven Eleven’s Red Bull menu to catch a second wind.
Frontier, a longtime Noble Square standby owned by James Beard semifinalist chef Brian Jupiter, has got game. More specifically, it has the whole animal experience, where you can order game meat ranging from wild boar and goat to antelope and alligator. Coincidentally, Jupiter also owns Wicker Park hot spot Ina Mae Tavern & Packaged Goods, a New Orleans–style joint that brings a taste of the Big Easy to the City of Big Shoulders. You’ll be thankful for that solid brunch menu of dishes like fried chicken and pancakes, NOLA hot-sausage sliders and morning cocktails when you’re faced with the inevitable hair of the dog.
Legendary record shops like Dusty Groove are worth a quick pit stop.Griffin Colapinto reveals how he prepares to compete against the world’s best surfers.
Words JEN SEE
Perched on his father’s longboard, 3-year-old Griffin Colapinto rode his first wave at San Onofre. It was a quintessential SoCal introduction to surfing life. But he didn’t immediately take to it, and during his early childhood, he played soccer and baseball instead. His younger brother, Crosby, changed that.
“I saw my brother getting really into it,” he says. “ ‘Crosby is out there? I gotta get out there, too.’ ” As he improved, Colapinto thought maybe he could be good at contests.
He was right. Now 24, Colapinto is competing in his fifth year on the World Championship Tour, surfing’s highest level of competition. And 2022
“When I experience failures, I try my best to learn from them,” says Colapinto, shown here surfing Oahu’s Banzai Pipeline earlier this year.
marked his best year so far—he won two stops on the WCT. At the Surf City El Salvador Pro, he took down two world champions on his way to victory. Colapinto sees his career as a slow upward trajectory. “It’s not like, bang! It’s always taken some big failures to get to the big moments.”
Known for his smooth style and easygoing personality, Colapinto doesn’t let the setbacks get to him. “Never give up on your dreams,” he says. The ever-changing ocean makes contest surfing an unpredictable sport. To succeed, Colapinto has to calm his mind, trust his skill and make the most of every wave that comes to him. “I just want to be happy in the moment.”
“I DON’T HOLD
TRAIN LIKE A PRO
“If the waves are really good, I’ll surf all day. I don’t hold back. I just want to go for it, because that’s when I can be the most creative. I want to improve my consistency, and I try to do more practice heats. I want to get better at understanding heat strategy. I need to pay attention to pacing and how many opportunities I can get in a 30-minute heat. Learning to be super patient is probably the hardest thing. I need to think, ‘If I get the wave, I’m going to rip this thing.’ I just need to put my trust in the ocean.”
“I grew up in San Clemente watching guys like the Gudauskas brothers and Kolohe Andino, who all have really sick styles. I watch footage of my favorite surfers, like Andy Irons, Dane Reynolds, Joel Parkinson and Kelly Slater. I find what I like in everyone’s style and pick one thing that I want to have. It’s cool, because I can try all these different lines. I’ll watch Andy before I go surf, then try to draw some of the lines he draws. Sometimes, someone’s line suits my personality and I connect with it. Then I just try to make my own formula.”
“I feel like surfing is the most spiritual sport, because the ocean controls your destiny, and you have to accept that. Everyone feels pressure and has bad moments in heats. You have to be able to accept them and move on. I have a breathing technique I do before I paddle out that helps me focus. Meditating helps me take a step back and get a different perspective. I also journal every day. Sometimes I get these thoughts on a loop in my head. When I write them down, they go away. I write down goals, too. This feels good and helps me feel more in tune with myself.”
“Pilates works a lot of the core muscles in my body. I like how it connects my mind and body and combines balance and strength training. It helps me activate specific muscles, which is important because when I surf I have to turn on certain muscles at the right time. I’ve also been lifting at the gym for the past two years. It gives me a strong base and it’s good for injury prevention. I do lots of kettlebell workouts. I like boxing, which is a lot of cardio. But surfing is a lot of cardio too, so I don’t need to do too much more.”
“I have a sauna and ice bath at my house for after workouts. I like to do the 12-Minute Foundation Training video on YouTube if I feel tight or my back is sore. For stretching, I don’t do anything crazy: just hamstrings, quads and some foam rolling. If my quads and hamstrings are loose, everything is going to feel good. I’m trying to get better at nutrition and learning what foods work for me.”
“I surf every wave as hard as I can”
“Meditating is big for me”
“When I’m at home, I do Pilates every day”
After a smashing race debut in 2022, the Grand Prix returns to Miami for another round. Indeed, last year’s sold-out weekend was so successful that organizers are adding 3,000 grandstand seats as well as 61 new hospitality suites and upgrading the three-day general admission passes to give fans more access. After two days of practice rounds and a qualifying round, the main event will go down on May 7 at 3:30 p.m. ET. Will reigning world champion, Red Bull driver Max Verstappen, cast his spell in Magic City again, or will another racer, like local fan favorite Sergio Perez, come out on top? f1miamigp.com
Whether you choose to rough it in a tent, splurge on a furnished yurt or gracefully retreat to a luxe hotel suite, this two-weekend festival is the place to be and be seen. This year, Frank Ocean gets to finally fulfill his headlining duties after the 2020 edition got canceled. Joining him at the top of the bill are megastars Bad Bunny and Blackpink, the South Korean girl group. The jam-packed lineup also includes Gorillaz, Björk, Wet Leg, Christine and the Queens, Charli XCX, EarthGang, Sudan Archives, the Breeders and Idris Elba. At press time, the first weekend was sold out, but tickets for weekend two were still available. Thru April 23; coachella.com
In the Mãori language, Rotorua means “second lake,” named by the early Indigenous explorer Ihenga, who discovered this geothermic expanse of water within a volcano caldera on New Zealand’s North Island. Surrounded by hot springs and the redwood-populated Whakarewarewa Forest, it’s a place of beauty, and, for attendees of this stop on the Crankworx World Tour of mountain bike competitions (held here since 2015), a playground of epic trails. Whistler in Canada may be the spiritual home of Crankworx, but there’s a reason Rotorua is called its soul. Catch it live on Red Bull TV. Thru March 26; redbull.com
Sure, there are chart toppers like Ed Sheeran, Lizzo, Santana and the Lumineers headlining the fest, as well as NOLA royalty on the bill—like Jon Batiste and the Queen of Bounce, Big Freedia— but the real treasure of this week-long festival is the stacked lineup of jazz artists. Soak up the local sound and don’t miss acts like Trombone Shorty & Orleans Ave., the Preservation Hall Jazz Band—and many more.
Thru May 7; nojazzfest.com
Ready for sensory overload? Then get your butt over to Sin City for the flagship event of the Electric Daisy Carnival. Now a worldwide phenomenon, EDC features hundreds of performers set against an eye-popping backdrop full of rainbow lights, pyrotechnics and whirly carnival rides, all befitting of an acid trip. As of press time, the lineup wasn’t released, but 2022 featured nine stages, each with a unique “sonic identity,” in an effort to make the fest easier to navigate.
Thru May 21; lasvegas. electricdaisycarnival.com
At 25, few of us know what we really want in life, but Kanoa Igarashi has no doubt. Since the age of 3, when his father—having relocated the family from Tokyo to California—took him surfing in their new home of Huntington Beach, aka Surf City, the Japanese American has had one dream: to lift the World Surf League Championship Tour trophy, the sport’s most elite prize, contested by the year’s 35 best surfers. This follow-up to his 2021 film (both available on Red Bull TV) tracks his campaign for the 2023 title. redbull.com
At the Wings for Life World Run, everyone starts at the same time, worldwide. Professional athletes, recreational runners and total beginners are all in it together against the Catcher Car. A kind of moving finish line, the Catcher Car begins its pursuit 30 minutes after the start, passing runners and wheelchair users one after the other until the race is over. The best part? One hundred percent of all entry fees and donations go directly to research to find a cure for spinal cord injury. If you can’t make the run in New York City, no worries; you can join through the app wherever you live. To register, visit wingsforlifeworldrun.com.
Innovative, useful, stylish—with these new objects of desire, you can get all three.
Words PETER FLAX
Introduced last fall, this is Apple’s most durable and adventure-capable smartwatch to date. The titanium case is lightweight, rugged (water resistant to 100 meters), scratch resistant and dope-looking. The huge retina screen is great for tracking a workout or adventure, and the dual-frequency GPS is extremely accurate. The battery offers 36 hours of intense use or up to 60 hours in a low-power setting. Available with a number of specialized bands for different sporty activities. $799; apple.com
The wearable-tech category is hardly new, but this is the first medical-grade smart ring designed for women. Available to consumers sometime midyear (at a price under $300), the ring tracks health metrics like heart rate and oxygen saturation, whether you’re at rest or working out, and can also track your sleep quality, fitness output and menstrual cycle. Evie will be available in three finishes and has a unique open design that ensures it’s comfortable all day. eviering.com
Evie, the first smart ring designed for women, offers a suite of fitness and healthtracking functionality.
Photography, streetwear and graffiti collide in this cool collab. The camouflage body and included accessories reflect the distinctive style of Japanese streetwear brand A Bathing Ape, while the signature of Josh Franklin—aka graffiti pioneer Stash—confers bonus street cred. Don’t let the urban zeitgeist fool you; this is a serious camera for street photography and reportage, with a fast zoom lens delivering an effective resolution of 17 megapixels and the capability to shoot full-HD 60fps videos. $1,895; leica-camera.com
Talk about a pint-sized party. The smallest Polaroid to date, this tiny instant—you can literally fit it in a jeans pocket—outputs creditcard-sized prints with dreamlike, muted colors, a square format and a classic white frame. The camera obviously has a throwback vibe, but it does come with some contemporary touches—there’s a rechargeable battery and a micro USB port, as well as a self-timer and a viewfinder mirror for selfie fanatics. Available in retro-tastic red, black or white, the Go is at its best at a party or at the beach. $100; polaroid.com
You can fit the Polaroid Go in a rear jeans pocket and then crank out credit-card prints to elevate any party.
You’ve officially run out of excuses not to take your favorite liquor into the backcountry. Weighing in at about 3 ounces, this stylishly designed titanium flask is handmade in Japan using what Snow Peak calls a “historic” manufacturing process. And since titanium is inert, your favorite whiskey won’t have any weird metallic taste when you sip it under a stardappled sky. The elegantly rounded flask comes with a handsome wooden cap and a nifty little funnel—so you don’t waste a drop. $200; snowpeak.com
Is this an electric motorcycle, a moped, an e-bike or an electric trail bike? Depending on how you use it and the ride mode you select, the District is all of the above. Weighing about 180 pounds, the versatile machine perhaps shines most clearly as an e-moto, where it can hit 65 mph and handle itself off-road. But it’s also a fun city cruiser; in e-bike mode it has a maximum speed of 20 mph and a range approaching 120 miles if you buy extra battery packs. The bike can be configured in multiple chassis and wheel colors, plus a variety of rear racks. From $8,200; landmoto.io
The versatile District can hit 65 mph as an e-moto or ride up to 120 miles in e-bike mode.
It’s sleek and stylish and compact. It’s quiet and easy to use. But coffee snobs wouldn’t be drooling over this handsome beast if it wasn’t procafé capable. With 31 grind settings and professional-grade burrs, it can handle single-cup loading for brewed coffee and espresso with aplomb. The huge grindadjustment dial is at once a powerful tool to make a perfect cup of morning joy and a strong visual statement on any kitchen countertop. $255; fellowproducts.com
this handsome or uncomplicated. We recommend ordering the Roccbox in a dual-fuel configuration, meaning it can cook with gas or with wood. With a thick stone floor and dense insulation, the oven can be fired up to 950 degrees—hot enough to cook a perfect thin-crust pizza in about a minute. And with retractable legs and a detachable burner, the 44-pound oven is surprisingly portable. $599; us.gozney.com
The Roccbox fires up to 950 degrees—enough heat for a perfect thin-crust pizza.
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The Red Bulletin is published in six countries. This month’s Austrian edition features downhill mountain biker Valentina “Vali” HÖll, who became a world champ in 2022.
For more stories beyond the ordinary, go to redbulletin.com.
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Outdoor-sports photography isn’t only about capturing the gnarliest ride or wildest stunt; sometimes it can highlight global problems. Take this photo of Chilean athlete Hernán Rodríguez climbing in Cajón del Maipo, a gorge close to his nation’s capital, Santiago. The image featured in a campaign by outdoor brand Patagonia about the environmental impact of the Alto Maipo Hydroelectric Project, a widely opposed enterprise that diverts water from the Andes through 40-mile-long tunnels.
“It’s killing and drying up this valley,” says photographer Patricio José Díaz Rios, whose shot earned him a semifinal spot in the “Emerging by Black Diamond” category of Red Bull Illume. “The campaign [by Patagonia] is trying to protect the valley, the rivers, the local people and the multiple outdoor sports that are possible [here].” redbullillume.com
The next issue of THE RED BULLETIN is out on May 16.
Not to parrot the stock advice delivered by many dads over the years, but tackling obstacles isn’t just good for you, it’s good for the world. We’ll explain. When you are 4x4 driving clearly, you aren’t doing it because it’s the quickest — or easiest — way to get from point A to point B. But when you’re on the trail, sticking to it is paramount, because widening it is bad news for the Earth. Basically, turning onto the trail is a contract with nature that says “I promise to stay in my lane, even if there’s a boulder in it”.
the terrain should be all-encompassing, powerful, and momentary. Take the track above for example. Pretty daunting proposition to roll tons of steel through miles of soft soil. But we design our offroad line, like the BFGoodrich Mud-Terrain T/A KM3 to overcome anything through a Linear Flex Zone that envelops obstacles and soft soil for a brief moment so you can move through the trail with minimal impact so it doesn’t get wider. We engineer incessantly to ensure we uphold that contract for every driver in every situation. Because it’s the right thing to do. But at the same time, isn’t it more fun that way? Maybe our dads were right.
To that end, the force a tire exerts on the terrain should be all-encompassing, powerful, and momentary. Take the track above for example. Pretty daunting proposition to roll tons of steel through miles of soft soil. But we design our offroad line, like the BFGoodrich Mud-Terrain T/A® KM3 to overcome anything through a Linear Flex Zone that envelops obstacles and soft soil for a brief moment so you can move through the trail with minimal impact so it doesn’t get wider. We engineer incessantly to ensure we uphold that contract for every driver in every situation. Because it’s the right thing to do. But at the same time, isn’t it more fun that way? Maybe our dads were right. LEARN
LEARN MORE ON HOW TO TRAVERSE at BFGoodrichTires.com
