The Red Bulletin US Quarterly 1/24

With a Coachella set, his first LP and a documentary looming, the soulful artist is ready for his moment.

SOUL POWER

BY PETER FLAX

If you’re a longtime reader of The Red Bulletin, then surely you’ve noticed that the issue you’re holding has undergone a complete makeover—with a bigger format and an elevated design aesthetic and a more visual approach to storytelling. Our team has been grinding for months to upgrade every component of the magazine.

But one big priority has not changed: our defning mission to illuminate and celebrate the soul of Red Bull. This is a brand fully committed to giving wings to certain things—inspiring people to take chances in pursuit of a more extraordinary life; to be curious and whimsical and strategically rebellious; to go hard with the things you care about and love life in a big way.

The issue you’re holding is full of stories that refect those values. Take our cover story—an entertaining deep dive into the life and music of Blxst—which depicts a soulful artist on the verge of stardom, leaning into his creative instincts to make music that moves the masses. With a show at Coachella, a new album and a revealing documentary all on tap in 2024, Blxst is about to break out.

Elsewhere, there are stories that capture the joyfully expressive nature and culturally rich history of dance competitions; the idiosyncratic genius of Formula 1 driver Max Verstappen; and the ways rad events create community within skate culture. There are also bracing shots of inspiration—to get ftter and to celebrate the beautiful texture of subcultures like hip-hop and surfng and even to make a spicy and refreshing drink that will elevate your Saturday nights.

All of this wouldn’t be possible without the talents and hard work of an exciting network of writers, photographers

and illustrators, as well as a ton of our colleagues here at Red Bull. All of these people are authentically passionate about fnding ways to fuel your good times.

In short, we’re hoping the magazine you’re holding gives you more than enough stoke to step out of your ordinary comfort zone and into a place that bristles with energy.

I assure you that we really stepped out of our comfort zone to remake this magazine—and that working through the uncertainty turned out to be surprisingly fun and rewarding. We don’t take ourselves too seriously, but we do hope that reading the new Bulletin makes you smile or laugh or plot a little adventure. Thanks for joining us.

We hope to inspire you to step out of your comfort zone and into a place that bristles with energy.

The cover of this issue and all the imagery of Blxst inside were shot by the Tyler Twins, who brought tons of color and energy to the debut of our new quarterly.

Katherine and Mariel Tyler (Cover)

MIKE DEL MUNDO

Better known as Deadly Mike in some circles, Del Mundo made his name in the Canadian breaking scene before becoming a comic artist. “I still remember battling in those hot, smoky clubs, where B-Boys be slipping on the linoleum,” says the Toronto-based artist, who often works with Marvel and created artwork for our Red Bull Lords Of The Floor zine. “When Red Bull hit me up to do these illustrations, I caught that feeling again. B-Boying is as pure as it gets.”

PHOTOGRAPHER

GREG NOIRE

“There’s no greater feeling for me, both as a creative and a massive fan of music, than being able to capture moments of raw, unfltered emotion and shifting the perspective into something that is distinctly my own,” says the Houston-based photographer, whose powerful live-performance images of hip-hop royalty are curated in a high-energy pictorial. Noire’s clients include Apple, Amazon, Complex and the Washington Post. Page 30

WRITER

DANYEL SMITH

“It’s beautiful to hang out with someone who is basking in their own creativity,” says the L.A.-based writer after profling Matthew Burdette, the musician better known as Blxst. “Matthew is moving to a new level, and those moments in an artist’s life are fascinating.” A contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine, Smith also authored Shine Bright: A Very Personal History of Black Women in Pop, chosen by Pitchfork as 2022’s best music book. Page 12

PHOTOGRAPHERS

KATHERINE & MARIEL TYLER

Katherine and Mariel Tyler—aka the Tyler Twins—specialize in celebrity portraits, concerts and behind-the-scenes event photography. “We had fun playing with colors to match Blxst’s energy and push his vibe,” say the twins, who split their time between New York and L.A. “For being so talented he’s such a laid-back person who had a quiet confdence and West Coast allure that we hoped to capture.” The duo’s recent clients include Netfix, the New Yorker, Popsugar and Nylon Page 12

ILLUSTRATOR

@DEADLYMIKE

@THETYLERTWINS

@GREGNOIRE

@DANAMO

GEAR UP FOR THE ULTIMATE RIDE

The new Wolverine x Red Bull Scramble Series Rush UltraSpringTM work boot is here.

Inspired by the grit and ruggedness of offroad vehicles and designed to take on any terrain, it delivers lap after lap. Get yours at wolverine.com/red-bull.

Greg Noire/Red Bull Content Pool, Mike del Mundo, Laurel Golio

30 Portfolio: Greg Noire

50 Red Bull Lords Of The Floor

40 Hooliboy

Greg Noire shot Metro Boomin up on stage at Red Bull Symphonic in Los Angeles last October.

With his first LP, a Coachella appearance and a documentary looming, the soulful artist opens his heart.

WORDS BY DANYEL SMITH PHOTOS BY KATHERINE AND MARIEL TYLER

Blxst, 31, was photographed in downtown Los Angeles and Santa Monica in February for The Red Bulletin

There were songs and features and production credits and a mixtape and wild-ass club dates and delusional goals and brutal mistakes (and lessons) and big wins—but Blxst only well and truly blew up at the end of 2020. It had been a death march of a year, and in Southern California, where Matthew “Blxst” Burdette was born and raised, shit was still pretty much shut down.

Kids who should have been getting up to hood hijinks or heading to (canceled) Coachella were caregiving, or grieving, or unmasking at mansion parties. DJ D-Nice smoothed over some of our mangiest midnights with his Instagram Club Quarantine, but there was little outside of liquor (or whatever) to douse the parallel thirsts for community, and also silence, and a license, really, to kill anyone who sneezed near your face. We’ve blocked out those unmoored, unmourned, dog days of COVID, when Grand Theft Auto was played ’til the servers burst. When waxy daylight hours melted, one to the next. When, even with Zoom suppers and virtual sex, intimacy was stretched so thin, it vanished.

People were listening to Blxst, though, for that chill, two-step energy. For the melodic rapping and situationship sonnets. In Blxst’s universe, the narrator is usually leaving, returning, wanting too much, making excuses or delicious promises. The urgent, sensual, sexual asks— Can I pull up on you?—are vintage and viral-ready at the same time. And while musicality is always key, Blxst’s vocals are the moonlight, the cognac shot, the primal and post-pandemic perfect pitch. As producer and Blxst collaborator Ben10k says, “In the ’90s, there was a clear distinction between rap and R&B. But in this era, if you can’t hold a tune and you’re trying to make a rap record, you’re definitely at a disadvantage.” And if the work isn’t based in authenticity, and vulnerability, people will scroll past as fast as they swipe left.

“Love, to me,” Blxst told me in Santa Monica, just before Christmas, “is patience, and understanding. I wish I had a fancier way of saying it.” Maybe the new album he’s been working on is that fancier way. As songwriter, rapper, singer and producer, Blxst is a ruthless romantic of these tilted times. Yet his songs come from a personal, long-ago place. “It’s me understanding the

child version of Matthew,” says Blxst. “Wanting to be heard. Wanting my opinion to matter.” He was the youngest. “I remember,” Blxst says with a small laugh, “my sisters and my cousins making fun of me. I just wanted to be accepted. That’s what kinda channels through my music, to where I’m so open and authentic and even ugly—so you have to see it within yourself.”

The Blxst movement officially took off in 2014, when he produced Hitta J3’s “Do Yo Gudda.” The song’s sound, which flashed back to Too $hort’s 75 Girls era and the stuff Afrika Islam produced for Ice-T, bounced so hard that Kendrick Lamar, YG and Problem jumped on a remix. “That was all I needed,” Blxst told the Los Angeles Times in 2022. “It lit a fire.” For a while, Blxst was central in a crew called TIU Muzik. He did some producing and rapping, learned about branding and realized he was a pretty good videographer. He also realized it was time to put together his own thing. In 2015, he and two partners, Victor Burnett and Karl Fowlkes, launched Evgle. As Blxst often says, “The eagle is the highest-flying bird that doesn’t fly in flocks. I look at that as confidence.”

The kind of confidence he felt in 2017, when Blxst added a Rhodes keyboard to his repertoire. The kind of poise evident in songs like 2018’s “Can I,” featuring the Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Eric Bellinger, and 2019’s “Savage,” with Nipsey Hussle collaborator Bino Rideaux. Blxst’s songs—so steeped in California lyricism, lowkey cynicism and love—stood out in an era of rap that included cool kids like Saweetie, Drakeo the Ruler and Roddy Ricch, as well as heavyweights like Tyler, the Creator, Mac Miller and Travis Scott. But by 2020, lockdown was upon us, and Blxst was suddenly on his own. “I got my first [solo] apartment in Inglewood,” he told me, “and I’d just be in there, making music.” He was working on his first EP. “Just me and my laptop,” he says. “And my interface and my RØDE microphone that I bought for $200.”

Pandemic emotions are alive in Blxst’s No Love Lost, the project he released that September 4, 2020. “Be Alone” is a prime example: You be paranoid / Hearin’ sirens again / I been tryna make time / I been movin’ statewide / Hope I’m on the safe side / Flyin’ in the wind. In “Forever Humble,” things are even more

“When you listen to my music, I want you to

be a fan of yourself … not just a fan of me.”

literal. We pandemic dealin’ / Me and Vic young bosses / Lessons ain’t losses No Love Lost is music built in the shadow of lockdown alerts, curfews and the George Floyd uprisings. It soundtracks a span in which people were confused about what even to yearn for. Southern California was chockablock with drive-thru graduation parties, and drive-by baby showers, and Blxst’s own big moments were dampened as well. “This was around the time we got in conversation with Red Bull Records,” says Blxst. “Everything was over Zoom, my label meetings and everything. I was signing my contract at home, in my one-bedroom apartment.”

On December 4, 2020, Blxst released “Chosen,” featuring Tyga and Ty Dolla $ign, into this quagmire of isolation and emergency. It was a single, off the deluxe version of No Love Lost, and it hit, off the rip. Girl, you chosen / Fuck it up when you bust wide open / It’s an ocean / I’m just imposin’ / That you give it to me and just me only. There’s so much tangibility in that “ocean.” So much

glorious La La Land. And the melody, grabbed from a hip-hop sample pack called Electric Soul/Guitar Loops and Riffs (by Treehouz), is pure allure. When team conversations had first begun about a deluxe version of the EP, Blxst knew what he wanted to do. “I was like … I’ve been sitting on this verse, and this hook, for a minute. The EP kinda gave me that extra fire to be like, anything is possible.”

Blxst ran with it. “Didn’t second guess it,” he says. “It felt good from the jump. Felt tropical, like a good time. Which led me to the confidence of even sending it to somebody like Ty Dolla $ign. This was the first record we’ve ever done together.” He knew Ty through a mutual, the L.A. rapper and songwriter Glenda “Gizzle” Proby. “I was like, OK. Let me get over myself and see if he’ll rock with it.” Once released, the song was off and run ning. People, holed up in their homes, were performing their own rap features, playing the song’s melody on saxophones and

Blxst recorded some of his debut LP at the Red Bull Music Studio in Santa Monica. The highly anticipated album will drop this summer.

creating their own choreography. TikTok and Instagram Reels were on fire. The song took on a life of its own.

By August 2022, it was not only a viral phenomenon but also certified platinum. It had soared to No. 1 at Rhythmic and Urban radio. It earned Blxst a feature on “Die Hard,” the third single from Kendrick Lamar’s 2022 Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers—which in turn earned him two Grammy nominations, for Best Melodic Rap Performance and Album of the Year. “Chosen” hit so big, Blxst could tour globally—from London to Frankfurt to Auckland and beyond—and became known for the fact that his shows stay lit. He’s playing Coachella this year.

The song changed Blxst’s life, and his family’s lives forever. “I feel like the pandemic was part of the reason why I got a good reception,” he told BET as the deluxe was being released. “People were able to sit down and actually listen to what I’m saying, to actually feel the words, instead of just vibing to the music.”

Blxst is a self-proclaimed fan of entertainment. “Maybe because I’m a Virgo like Michael Jackson, a Virgo like Beyoncé. I like to make people feel good. I like when people laugh. I like when people smile. I like when people feel emotion. And I like to be connected with those feelings.” Blxst is very serious about not “underestimating” the listener. “People want to be heard. People wanna be connected with, just like artists do. We all want to be loved and acknowledged at the end of the day. So I try to translate that on stage.”

And he’s firm on the idea that his generation has created a new wave. “When I say ‘we,’ I think of artists like Ty Dolla. Like Roddy Ricch, Young Dolph, Rich Homie Quan. It’s just like, boundary breaking—we came up off of hip-hop. But also came up off of neo-soul and R&B. So naturally, that bleeds into the music I make—without even overthinking it.” And then he adds, “I feel like I was born for this moment.”

This April, Blxst will perform at Coachella—the biggest stage near his home turf—for the frst time. A new documentary, produced by Red Bull Media House, is also forthcoming.

Matthew Dean Burdette was born in South Los Angeles on September 17, 1992, five months after a jury acquitted four LAPD officers charged with beating Rodney King. These acquittals led to uprisings in which more than 50 people died, 2,300+ were injured and more than 1,100 buildings were damaged. South Los Angeles smelled like burning edifices for what seemed like years after. The ’92 “L.A. Riots” are among the most catastrophic civil disturbances in American history, and South L.A. has been in a slow-motion physical, economic and spiritual recovery that even in 2024 remains incomplete. South L.A. is where young Matthew lived with his parents and siblings until his mom and dad separated when he was in elementary school.

“Where we lived,” says Blxst, “was 75th Street and Central.” The area is home to a vibrant and very stopped-and-frisked community. Gang violence was decreasing around the beginning of Matthew’s tween years, but it was far from gone. The high school nearest his home was John C. Fremont. Its motto? The salty: Find a path or make one. Fremont was known for the kinds of fights that the Los Angeles Police Department responded to in riot formation. “My dad, he didn’t grow up in the gang life,” says Blxst. “And he’s from L.A. My mom, she’s from Oakland. So it was never a conversation, as far as gangs, in my household. It was like, Just go to school.” But the State of California had to file an injunction to shield Fremont students from the violence and intimidation of loitering gangs like the Swan Bloods and the Main Street Crips. And Matthew’s older siblings were in school there. In an upcoming documentary produced by Red Bull Media House, which paints the story of Matt’s whole life, his mother, Deanna, is factual when she says that sometimes, in South Central, there was no place to just “be.”

It takes a village, and Matthew’s grandparents lived in a “back house,” behind his parents. “They were Jehovah’s Witnesses,” he says, “so it was very strict. When I came home from school, it was like, OK. We got to go to meetings. We got to go door-to-door. But I [also] remember days where I was riding my bike with my friends and being places I knew I shouldn’t be.” When asked how he got through it, his answer is faith-based. “I was just protected,” he says, looking back. “By God. By the higher power. And I always had a level head on my shoulders.”

But then the sister closest to Matt in age was assaulted in the neighborhood. “Chanel was graduating junior high school,” says Deanna, “and for no reason, some girls … jumped her on the last day of school. I was so mad. I was so pissed, because they ganged up on her and kicked her.” Deanna left work, got Chanel, went to the school, talked to the principal and the administrative staff. Deanna went to the police station to file a report. “Then I went to the ringleader’s house and talked to her people.” I mean, that’s definitely how Oakland does it, but even with all that proactivity, an alternate plan was put in motion.

“I like when people feel emotion.

I like to be connected with those feelings.”

BLXST’S FAVORITE TRACKS OF ALL TIME

50 CENT FT. NATE DOGG

“21 Questions” (2003)

“This song is something special to me because it speaks on the topic of loyalty, you know—just the test of love. Like, would you love me despite what I’m going through, and if I’m in a position to even be loved.”

TUPAC SHAKUR

“Can’t C Me” (1996)

“That one is like my alter ego. I think Tupac is like my spirit animal, and he speaks from an unapologetic place. You know, just raw, authentic, and sometimes that’s how I feel inside.”

PHARRELL WILLIAMS

“Happy” (2013)

“That’s a great song. I don’t know anybody who hates this song, you know? It just puts you in a good mood, instantly. It’s an automatic pick-upper. Pharrell’s one of my favorite producers and songwriters of all time, and I think it’s one of the greatest songs to be a soundtrack in a movie.”

ERYKAH BADU

“Window Seat” (2010)

“You know, I’ve got a big fear of fying, too, so that song gets me through. I love neo-soul. And I love Rhodes keyboard—that’s my favorite instrument. When I’m on a plane and there’s turbulence, Erykah Badu is like my therapist.”

In the spirit of the Fresh Prince’s mom saying, You’re moving with your auntie and uncle in Bel-Air, Deanna sent young Matthew and Chanel to live with their father in Upland, a town in the Inland Empire, at the foot of the lush, snowy and always visible San Gabriel Mountains. Matt was in the sixth grade. Upland, while a far cry from swank Bel-Air, is nearly an hour and a world away from South L.A. About one tenth of the people, less chaotic public schools. Culture shock. Seclusion. Yet at the same time, more freedom. “It’s an isolated place … where you can authentically just be you,” says Blxst. “You can be a weirdo. You can be a skater. You can be a rapper. You can be a junkie … and nobody judges you. You are who you are.” Away from his old hood, Matthew, influenced by Billionaire Boys Club skater Terry Kennedy and some older cousins from Long Beach, moved from his bike to a skateboard. “People was wearing skinny jeans, and dying their hair,” he says. “It was Black community. So I took that to Inland. You know Inland—a lot of white people out there, so skating was just like, second nature.”

High school Matthew took skating seriously. Ollieing stair sets, riding handrails. “I was everywhere,” he says. “We’d skate the streets. I’d be at Upland Skatepark … taking a train, just traveling to different parks.” As so often happens with skate kings—it’s all fun and games until someone is on concussion protocols, or sprains a wrist. For Matthew it was a broken ankle, and it set him on a course toward his destiny.

Cousins from the South Bay of L.A. visited Matt while he was sitting around with his foot up, and they brought a song they created. Matt was wowed. “I was like, ‘How’d y’all do this? Did y’all go to a studio?’ They were like, No. We just had a laptop. They had a Rock Band microphone from the video game. And they just made a song. So I was like, I gotta try that.”

Matt soon got on his father about going to pawn shops to find him a laptop and mic. But before he even recorded, Matt bought a notebook and started writing raps in it. His interest in words beyond school came from an uncle who consistently tasked him with looking up words in a dictionary. “Just seeing how different words can mean different things,” says Blxst. “The power of words, it’s always been crazy to me.”

Once his father got him a “dirt cheap” laptop, “I’d be in my room every day,” he says, “trying to figure it out.” Matt was basically at YouTube University majoring in FL Studio. “As soon as I heard my voice on a mic,” he says, “I fell in love. It didn’t feel like I had to … what’s the right word? Overdo it. It just came naturally.”

He wasn’t the only one noticing. It was at a talent show that Deanna realized her son’s talent truly affected people. “Through high school, he was in plays and stuff, but this one time … it was his turn to get on stage, and I noticed the whole crowd gave him attention and rushed to the stage.” She says he was 17 then. “Matthew is very clever with how he expresses himself. He’s relatable with what he says. People get it. That’s one of the things I admire, being a fan of Blxst. Not just loving my son, but as a fan of Blxst. That’s what I really admire about him.”

“We’d wake up in the morning with music,” says Blxst’s mother, Deanna. “I want people to wake up to a good spirit. The radio was on.”

All of this was around the time MySpace was peaking as a huge yet intimate scene that dripped with the tastes and energy of kids finding their tribes. This was where Soulja Boy and his “Crank Dat” blew up. Lily Allen, too. Other MySpace fledglings included Nicki Minaj, Drake, Jhené Aiko, Metro Boomin, Arctic Monkeys and Kid Cudi. “It made me believe in myself to see that people from different parts of the world believed in me, too,” Blxst told Passion of the Weiss in October 2020. “When I would go to different girls’ pages that I liked, and they had my song on their page, I was like, Dang, I really must be somebody out here.” Media was transforming, music was shifting, and technology was rising, just as Matthew was discovering that he was an artist, and committing to the life.

Without question, young Matthew grew up in a musical household. Even with his otherwise strict upbringing, Matt-Matt (as his family will sometimes still call him) was not that kid who had to listen to rap, or any music, in secret. “From a very young age, Matt’s always been interested in music,” says Deanna. “Music was just part of our fabric at home, naturally.” Deanna has been living in Los Angeles a long time, but her voice still has that Oakland lilt. Matt is her youngest child, and she says right off the top that though he was the apple of his sisters’ eyes, Matt was not an overly babied baby of the family. “We made songs … I’m just talking about me and him in the kitchen cooking. What are you cooking? A song would be made up about whatever dinner was going to be.”

Music is in the family’s DNA. Blxst’s grandmother, Deanna’s mom, was a singer. “A lot of opera and stuff,” says Deanna. “She had that range. Had a contract to sing in the ’60s. Music was my mom’s lifeline to everything. She sang in school, she sang in the choir, in church, she sang at home.” Even the manner in which Blxst creates has family precedent. “When my sister and I were growing up,” recalls Deanna, “Mom had a tape recorder, and we

would tape ourselves singing, on the play/rewind kind of a tape recorder, and that was fun times. Music wasn’t just on-occasion—I don’t know why that is, it just is.”

Beyond the homemade tunes of her adult residence, Deanna was also the literal house DJ, and she had her favorites. “Gladys Knight & the Pips. Stevie Wonder is all up in there— Songs in the Key of Life is my jam. Michael Jackson.” But then in the ’90s, when Matthew was born, she was very much influenced by the neo-soul movement. “Jill Scott, Erykah Badu … and oh, Mary J. Blige.” Deanna played Snoop Dogg as well, and Dr. Dre.

Matt remembers those artists being played, as well as Prince, Donell Jones—and Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, perhaps the most undercelebrated pioneers of melodic rap. He really loved the idea of rap—and melody. “I used to be a big fan of how DJ Quik would link with Tony! Toni! Toné! I was just a fan of where hiphop met music on that level … the musicality, the instrumentation. Like a Raphael Saadiq, people who actually play instruments.” Blxst says that his dad, similar to his mom, always had his radio on. “He’s a huge fan of Nate Dogg, Ice Cube—a lot of West Coast stuff … that’s always been in West Coast music, the instrumentation.”

It’s this kind of energy that Blxst was creating in that Inglewood apartment, when the pando was on turbo. “When I approach music,” he says, “a lot of it starts with just the melody. The lyrics come in afterwards. But I keep the melody as the driving force.” Perhaps he feels it, flowing in his veins.

For his debut LP, which is slated to drop this summer, Blxst worked a lot with Bay Area–born, L.A.-based producer Ben10k (DaBaby, G-Eazy, Rico Nasty, Leyla Blue). It could have something to do with Blxst’s own Oakland roots (he understands hyphy, gets Messy Marv, and the late Young Curt), but they vibed in other ways. “Blxst and I have been in dialogue for a while,” Ben told me in January. “He was a fan of some work I did with Joony, and with

Brent Faiyaz.” When Blxst flew a bunch of producers to Utah to make magic happen, Ben10k got the call.

Blxst’s team found a big ol’ Airbnb and pulled together a workspace. “It was like a theater room,” says Blxst. “And we pretty much just set up a mic. It felt like a home studio. I love recording at home. That’s the environment I feel most authentic in. We called it the Evgle Camp.” Utah’s landscape reminded Blxst of Upland’s inspiring, mountainous energy. Plus, it was just away from everything, and a place where people could actually work together, and not just send each other beats via text.

Ben10k feels like the in-person thing—in a post-COVID world, and in an era ever more wary of technology’s impact—is back, and that music will be better for it. “People are going back in the studio,” says Ben. “I’m not against sending beats, but the best music is made in-studio.” Ben is about the “sonic trust” they built at Evgle Camp. “It enabled us to go places we would never be able to go if I was just a name on a beat-pak.”

As for Blxst, he was in the mood to expand creatively. “I’m not Stevie Wonder or nothing,” he says with a laugh. Blxst is being modest about playing the keyboards, which he does by ear. “But I get the job done.” When Blxst describes his debut album, he’s rhapsodic about the lush instrumentation—strings, trumpet, flute, live drums—therein. “This is the album I dreamt of as a kid. Like, When I get enough money, I’mma bring in every element.”

One of the songs he’s loving most on the new album is about self-reflection. “About how fast the industry is, and how I got caught up in it,” he explains. “And how you’ve got to understand the role you’re playing. You’ve got to understand the value you hold in the relationships you’re in.”

There’s that nitty-gritty part of the music universe, but Blxst is self-aware about the rare and magical part of making a great living making art. “I’m living a dream,” Blxst says. “My family has literally supported me to the point where I’ve never had a job in my life. It’s literally been [just] music … I’m living in my purpose. Before, it was like, Is this what I love? Am I doing it? Then I was like, This—it’s destined.” Blxst feels he’s doing exactly what his ancestors (DNA says majority-Cameroonian, by the way) knew he would be doing: making music that brings joy and inspires creativity and camaraderie at a time when, for better and worse, old ideas of love and partnership are being punctured. When every day, pandemics of worry, discontent, anger and nihilism can overshadow the most commonplace moments of romance and celebration.

“It’s like I’m wearing a cape,” Blxst says. “I know I got to go fight this … monster or whatever. But I’m equipped with the tools to overcome this battle.” His current energy is less, say, one-person-in-an-apartment-recording, and more glowy with collaborative spirit and wide-open spaces. “It’s no boundaries on the album, musically. I went above and beyond on the production side. So when it comes to the lyrics, I had to match that.” You gotta love the next-level progression. Especially since the artist born Matthew Burdette is definitely still Blxst: “You can also,” he says happily, “dance to it.”

Vickery gained wider recognition after recording a Colors session that now has more than 35 million views.

LIFE AFTER DEAF

A conversation with James Vickery, a hot R&B talent who isn’t letting a hearing impairment slow his rise.

BY WILL LAVIN

A powerhouse vocalist with a buttery-smooth tone, James Vickery is one of R&B’s most exciting prospects. But the 29-year-old British soul singer, who recently signed with Red Bull Records, has had to overcome a lot to get here. As a child he was diagnosed with an abnormal growth of skin cells behind his lef ear; the surgery was a success but required the removal of his eardrum, leaving him deaf in one ear and unable to distinguish the volume and pitch of his voice. With help from a vocal coach, Vickery found his voice. Here, he discusses his journey.

7 QUESTIONS

1 What made you to want to become a singer?

I remember watching the flm Sister Act 2 on VHS back in the day. I wore out the tape because it was the frst time I heard someone like Lauryn Hill sing; I was blown away. I kept playing the clip of her singing in the church and realized I wanted to sing because of that.

2 How would you describe your music?

I’d call it soulful pop. I’ve always tried to make a mix of different sounds—R&B, gospel, pop and some electronic stuff—but soul defnitely brings it together.

3 Where did this love for soul music come from?

My mum was a big Motown fan and a disco girl. She loved soul and made sure it was the music that was prevalent in the house. She took me to see Boyz II Men for my frst concert.

4 That’s hardly a typical frst concert for a kid. I think I was 8 or 9, and it was the frst time I saw men being able to sing as big and powerful and do the tricks that women could do. I was like, “Wow, I would love to have a voice like that one day.”

5 That dream was almost sidetracked when you were diagnosed with a cholesteatoma, which after surgery left you deaf in one ear. How did you overcome that and fnd your voice?

My parents took me to a vocal coach to teach me how to speak again, as I couldn’t hear how loud I was speaking—and she was an opera singer. One day we decided to do some scales, and one thing led to another.

6 How has it affected your creative process over the years?

It’s something I’m still affected by now. I’ve got 50 percent less hearing than everyone I work with so it takes me longer to do anything. But I’ve been blessed to fnd a team that is very patient with me.

7 Was there ever a point you thought you’d never make it in music because of it?

The fact I’m here is a blessing, because the way the doctor found the tumor in my ear was such an accident. Had he not, two months later I would have been dead. So I’ve always felt like the universe was trying to tell me that I was meant to sing and give people happiness somehow.

YOUR RUN YOUR BEAT ONE GOAL

The Wings for Life World Run takes place on May 5, 2024.

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THE RACE

The starting gun fres at 11am UTC. Thirty minutes later, the Catcher Cars set of to close in on the runners from behind. The last person to be caught is the winner.

THE CHASERS

The Catcher Cars up their speed incrementally. When a runner is caught, their race is over and their distance automatically recorded.

THE COURSES

There are seven fagship runs on six continents. Alternatively, you can start from anywhere in the world using the Wings for Life World Run app.

› Be seen with their LED safety lights

› 9 hours of play time

› Reliable ft

THE MISSION

100% of all entry fees go to spinal cord research and support the common goal of fnding a cure for spinal injuries.

Portfolio

GREG NOIRE

The Houston-based photographer reveals how he captures the raw emotion of today’s top artists when they take center stage.

WORDS BY NORA O’DONNELL

“When I’m shooting, I want the viewer to know exactly what went into this moment—how much emotion, pain, love, blood, sweat and tears that went into each song,” says Noire. “It could be years leading up to this artist getting onto the stage to perform.” Previous spread: “This was the frst stop on Drake’s Summer Sixteen tour. I didn’t get paid a dime, but I just love making art.”

Noire selects this shot as a favorite, capturing Metro Boomin in a unique role fronting an orchestra for his historic Red Bull Symphonic performance at L.A.’s Dolby Theater in 2023: “You can’t see the expression on his face because it’s in shadow, but you know it’s there. I think that enhances the emotion.”

On photographing A$AP Rocky (bottom right, facing page): “I love that he’s looking directly at the camera and has this sinister look. I increased the vibrancy a little bit and I darkened the red, because I wanted his devilish grin to be enhanced by the colors.”

Cardi B

Lil Uzi Vert

Metro Boomin

Describing this dramatic shot of Tyler, the Creator (top): “Usually, I like to make sure you can see the emotion on a subject’s face, but his position and the word ‘LOVE’ tells its own story.”

Regarding his colorful portait of Lil Nas X (left): “This shot was not planned. With each outft change, there would be a series of different colors on the screens. I also used a star flter, because whenever I see sparkly things, I can’t help myself.”

Noire describes a dynamic shot of Big Freedia (facing page, top): “When I see a line formation, I never want to be directly in the center. I go off to the side to make sure there’s more depth, which draws your eye directly to Big Freedia.”

Tyler, the Creator

Big Freedia

Tobe Nwigwe (background) and his wife, “Fat”

How Greg Noire captured this iconic image of Travis Scott

THE CAMERA “My baby girl is the Sony Alpha 1. Besides picture quality, I love the lack of banding— which can happen when you shoot an LED screen. In this photo, you can’t see the banding at all.”

THE LENS “My go-to lens is the 7200. It’s the perfect focal length. For the way I shoot live music, it enables me to get tight shots and zoom out a little bit if needed. If I could only have one lens, this would defnitely be the one.”

THE EFFECTS “The fog and the lasers are all part of the production. The colors were enhanced a little to deepen the reds. Once you crunch the blacks and punch up the contrast, the subject stands out.”

THE SUBJECT Travis Scott, Lollapalooza 2018. “I have a few photos of him looking at the audience, but it wasn’t until he turned around when I thought this could be something.”

THE MOMENT “With the laser cutting into his shoulder and his head looking downward, there’s a bevy of emotion leaping from this photograph. I couldn’t wait to start editing this on my computer. It’s one of my favorites.”

THE STYLE “The purest way to fgure out your style is to get in the photo pit and fgure out where your eye gravitates. Maybe it’s a close-up of the artist, a wide shot of the entire space or an intricate detail.”

THE WORLD’S

As Afrodance sweeps the globe, dancer and choreographer Samuel “Hooliboy” Kyei is ready to shine a spotlight on the culture with Red Bull Dance Your Style.

A STAGE

WORDS BY SHAMIRA IBRAHIM

PHOTOS BY LAUREL GOLIO

From a very young age, the dancer known as Hooliboy was inspired by the moves of Michael Jackson. He was photographed in New York for The Red Bulletin on January 12.

Samuel “Hooliboy” Kyei furrows his brow

as he stands on an outdoor basketball court near Manhattan’s Meatpacking District. It’s a sunny but cold afternoon in the middle of January, and Kyei is dancing to the same 32-count beat on repeat—a fusion of Amapiano, a South African subgenre of house music—while a crew member records his movements on an iPhone. To his side, his longtime friend, supporter and stylist, Toya Mendez, encourages him after every take. Step by step, his motions fall into place, as if he’s working through a delicate puzzle on the blacktop. His moves combine uptown swagger and West African street-dance flair with the patented fluidity of Michael Jackson.

As Kyei’s dance takes shape, it’s like bearing witness to a magical feat of expression. The athleticism, art and imagination of his movements generate a narrative where his body is the storyteller. Dance is a physical representation of legacy, heritage and life experiences made in harmony with music. At its most pure, an 8-count of choreography is a sublime and transformative experience that can immerse the viewer in different cultures.

Kyei understands how the sum of these components adds up to something bigger. A freestyler by nature, he weaves together the threads of his identity with his loose-limbed technique. Today the 29-year-old is a professional dancer, choreographer and content creator whO has performed alongside artists such as Davido and Teyana Taylor. But he’s also a champion of Afrodance, and this May at the Red Bull Dance Your Style National Final in Atlanta, he will spotlight his craft in a special exhibition battle. He hopes his performance—and his story—will illuminate a path for other Afrodancers.

“We belong on these stages,” Kyei says, expressing how cultural forces can appropriate or simplify an artist’s intentions. “For years, African people have been trying to show off their culture, and they hide us, try to water it down.”

Afrodance refers to a broad swath of contemporary African dance styles that are influenced by modern street trends as well as indigenous cultural traditions. The term encompasses different forms of movement from across the continent, ranging from South African Gwara Gwara to Ghana’s famed Azonto. It’s also tangential to the catch-all word “Afrobeats”—a construction of the evolving music market. While the music and the dancing go hand in hand, there is a notable lack of equity for the dancers when their videos go viral on social media. In those instances, it’s the artists and the labels who reap the benefits and not the dancers, who are fighting for a more sustainable way to earn a living.

For Kyei, his journey to success came with its own trials and unexpected blessings. Growing up in the Bronx and nearby Yonkers as the eldest child of a Ghanaian American family, he’s loved dance ever since his uncle showed him the music video for Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” when he was a kid.

He tells his story while sitting in Café Rue Dix, a SenegaleseFrench fusion restaurant that’s a Brooklyn staple. We both marvel at how much New York City has embraced African culture in the last 15 years, even though large communities from the West African diaspora have long called the five boroughs home. There was once a time when any signs of African heritage in the city’s broader culture were few and far between, relegated to the whimsies of cultural fetishization—a museum exhibit here, reductive dance showcase there.

For years, it was rare to see a full-throated embrace of African culture, but Kyei began to observe a shift when he was in high

As a music video choreographer, Hooliboy has worked for massive artists like Davido.

school. As teenagers, he and his friends began coordinating entertainment at house parties, tapping into their networks of African youth. They called themselves Hooligan Entertainment, an intentional reclamation of the word.

“The name Hooligan sounds like we were menaces to society,” Kyei says. “But we were just using that to show that we’re not afraid to do anything we want to do.” As individuals, they referred to themselves “Hooliboys,” a nickname that stuck and now represents his entire brand as he expands his reach as a dancer and creator. (His social handle is @hooliboy94.)

After high school, Kyei majored in computer animation at Daemen University in Amherst, New York, but found his studies dispiriting. “The more I started to get into it, the more I hated it,” he says. “I couldn’t watch cartoons anymore—I’d see flaws in everything.”

Although he lacked passion for computer animation, the internet—as well as the robust dancing network among colleges in upstate New York—became his dance teacher. “I used to watch so many dances online,” Kyei says, rattling off names of performers such as Phillip Chbeeb and Les Twins. As his tastes evolved, he began expanding his style to include representations of his own culture as a first-generation child of Ghanaian immigrants.

“My mom would bring home music videos from the African market, and I used to watch these dancers and how they moved,” he says. When she gave him a recording of the 2004 Ghana Music Awards, he marveled as he saw legendary dancers performing alongside hip-life artists, a popular music style that merges Ghanian culture and hip-hop. From then on, he started consuming everything he could find about African dance trends, diving deep into emerging styles from Ghana, the Ivory Coast and the Congo.

After joining a dance company in college, Kyei began programming free shows throughout upstate New York, coordinating a tour of college campuses that increased visibility of his work. Ultimately, his diligence led to an opportunity to perform at a fashion show in New York City for a brand inspired by West African prints.

Also performing at the show was Nigerian Ghanaian artist Mr Eazi, who was making his first-ever appearance in the U.S. Suddenly, Kyei found himself freestyling on stage for a famous Afrobeats artist. “That’s when I sat back and was like, ‘Wow, I think I might be doing something with this,’ ” he says.

From that moment forward, Kyei felt inspired to lean more heavily into dance, so he began recording videos of himself performing and posting them on social media. He pushed himself

“We belong on these stages. For years, African people have been trying to show off their culture.”

out of his comfort zone, taking cues from videos of dance battles, composing complex set pieces and diversifying his repertoire by adding krump and Jamaican dancehall to his tool kit. He joined Mr Eazi on stage again, and videos of his dances began to go viral, even catching the eye of African music giant Burna Boy.

By 2016, Kyei was at a crossroads: focus on his studies or devote himself to dance full-time. It took a near-death experience to make the decision clear. While visiting some friends off campus in Buffalo, he was robbed at gunpoint while standing at their doorstep. The thief put a gun to his head, taking his wallet and tossing his phone in the scuffle.

“He pulled the trigger and nothing happened,” Kyei says. The perpetrator ran off, and Kyei was left with his life. The incident gave him a new perspective, and with the support of his friends, he knew what he had to do. “That’s when I decided I’m going to live my life doing what I love. And I love to dance.”

Kyei is part of an emerging class of young creatives of African descent in New York who are bringing visibility to their cultural heritage: There’s Young Prince, a Nigerian American MC from the Bronx who’s performed at Afro Nation, the world’s biggest Afrobeats festival; DJ Tunez, a Nigerian American from Brooklyn who is the resident tour DJ for Wizkid; and Abdul Karim Abdullah, a Ghanaian American from the Bronx who is the co-founder of the popular AfroFuture festival (formerly known as Afrochella).

Kyei found fellowship and mentorship in this local community, working with well-known performers in the Afrodance scene like Iziegbe “Izzy” Odigie and Caleb “Ghana Boii” Bonney. As Afrodance takes off in the U.S., Kyei, his peers and the greater diasporic community are all fervent shepherds of contemporary African music and dance. They’re finally getting credit for their cultural influence around the world, but this wasn’t always the case.

The lack of structure and stability in the Afrodance ecosystem, both in Africa and the West, creates an environment that is ripe for exploitation. Musical artists and labels leverage a “hustle culture” mentality that forces a race to the bottom for the dancers trying to earn a living. Despite the global impact dancers have in making African pop music more visible, they’re not the ones getting the credit or benefiting from the profits.

“Dances are hard to trace when they’re not published,” explains Kafayat “Kaffy” Oluwatoyin Shafau, who’s hailed as the Queen of Nigerian Dance and was featured in the 2022 Red Bull TV documentary (Un)credited. She gives an example: Say you’re walking down the streets of a village and you see a child performing an innovative new dance move. If you have access to YouTube and post a video of yourself performing it, “you will most likely own the move before that child,” she says.

“Afrobeats would not have had such an acute success rate [around the world] if dance didn’t accompany it,” she continues. “In fact, dance was the thing that tickled the fancy of the West before the music. People didn’t really know what the music was saying, but people understood a love of movement.”

International dance competitions like Red Bull Dance Your Style, which hosts 80 events around the globe, provide a platform for African dancers to express themselves in context. “Context is where we’re able to build and secure our history, amplify our value and expand the territory for the dancers, in terms of what they can do with dance,” Kaffy says. While not all dancers will become rich and famous, this infrastructure can help sustain the creative community beyond the traps of poverty. Dance competitions and

As Hooliboy danced in Chinatown, the Meatpacking District and other spots in lower Manhattan, his talents drew the eyes and applause of otherwise indifferent New Yorkers.

documentaries like (Un)credited open doors for Afrodance by providing support and building avenues for workshops, networking and exposure to the global dance community.

Back on the basketball court in New York, Kyei continues his performance for the camera as he leaps onto his tiptoes. It’s not only a nod to the King of Pop but also New York’s famed “lite-feet” style, a street dance that’s flourished on basketball courts throughout the city—particularly in Kyei’s stomping grounds in the Bronx.

As the crew moves to different locations in lower Manhattan, Kyei runs through iterations of his 8-count. He occasionally generates gentle applause from onlookers, a major feat considering how indifferent New Yorkers can be. During a short break at a subway stop, his friend Toya is overwhelmed with emotion as she joyfully recounts Kyei’s dogged journey to success, tracing all the way back to when he danced and did choreography for her fashion shows in college. Once we’re aboveground, Kyei tests the stretch in his pants as he toys around with various leaps and turns. He contorts himself into a variety of shapes as he scales walls, scaffoldings and other vestiges of the city’s milieu—all while clinging to a small cluster of tree seeds for good luck.

Luck was on Kyei’s side that day of the robbery. And his decision to pursue dance full-time was simply the first step. The life of a professional dancer is highly competitive and laden with a seemingly endless roller coaster of auditions, callbacks and dead ends. Kyei began taking dance classes while working side jobs, but for every opportunity that came his way, many others stopped just short of the finish line. He performed at the Tidal X Brooklyn benefit concert for hurricane survivors but just missed the cut to dance with Rihanna at the 60th annual Grammy Awards, where she famously broke into a South African Gwara Gwara. In his free time, he worked on pet projects with his fellow performers, like an Afrodance interpretation of the “Thriller” dance, which caught

the eyes of Janet Jackson. “I have the reaction in my phone,” he says with a glint in his eye. “I was just like, what?!”

But the day he hit internet gold came while hanging out with his friends, who convinced him to participate in the viral dance challenge set to Drake’s “In My Feelings.” Instead of sticking to the moves popularized by the challenge’s creator, Shiggy, he added his own flair, mixing popular American moves like the Milly Rock with Afrodance street moves like the Nigerian Shaku Shaku. The video exploded.

“Out of nowhere, in like 10 minutes, it hit like 10,000 views,” Kyei says. “My phone kept dying. I’m getting notifications everywhere. I checked Instagram first, and I see my video has like 100,000 views and a thousand comments.” After years of trying to find solid footing in the dance scene, the world was now discovering him, with a new hashtag to boot: #doitlikehooli.

Kyei used the serendipitous moment to expand his reach by offering dance classes, which sold out quickly. “Classes are the best way for [Americans] to understand what is going on,” he explains. “I was teaching my sets of choreography—what I know is the foundation of [popular] African moves.”

Before long, Kyei was being tapped to collaborate with some of the top artists from Africa—choreographing Davido’s video for “Blow My Mind,” featuring Chris Brown, which has amassed more than 94 million views on YouTube. In 2022, he appeared on the reality competition So You Think You Can Dance. In his audition, he drew inspiration from Ugandan youth, dancing to a hit song—“Odogwu Na the Spender (ODG)”—by the Nigerian artist Eltee Skhillz. When he finished, one of the judges, the late Stephen “Twitch” Boss, told him what he was doing was important to “the culture.”

Since then, Kyei’s schedule has been packed. He’s choreographed for the BET Awards, working alongside respected choreographers liked Sean Bankhead; he’s collaborated with Burna Boy and Asake; and he’s toured across Europe and Africa with the Everyday People party series. And in 2023, he joined the frenzy of the Red Bull Dance Your Style World Final in Frankfurt, Germany, where he showed off his moves in an exhibition battle. As the new season of Red Bull Dance Your Style kicks off in the U.S. this spring, he’s eagerly anticipating the opportunity to perform in front of a crowd again at the National Final in Atlanta.

Kyei acknowledges his success is a combination of good fortune and hard work, a circumstance he does not take lightly. Whenever he can, he gives credit to every member of his dance and cultural community who’s helped him along the way, remaining gracious to a fault. As Afrodance rises in popularity around the world, he hopes other performers can be as fortunate as him.

“For what I represent, it’s bigger than me,” Kyei says. “I have to do it. Nothing is impossible, you know? We live in a very special time, and whatever opportunity we have, we gotta take it.”

Hooliboy’s good luck charm for his Red Bulletin shoot: a cluster of tree seeds.

TRACKS

MAKING MOVES

The “Queen of Nigerian Dance” gives us a glimpse of Afrodance history with four handpicked tracks.

As a seasoned dancer and choreographer, Kafayat “Kaffy” Oluwatoyin Shafau has had a front-row seat to the evolution of the Nigerian music scene and its relationship with Afrodance. She’s appeared in videos for artists such as D’banj, Olamide and Tiwa Savage, and in 2006 she broke the Guinness World Record for holding the longest dance party alongside her crew, Imagneto. These days, she’s focused on projects that protect and empower the Afrodance community, ensuring the legacy of street dance lives on. Here, she names four tracks that celebrate the Afrodance history of her homeland—long before artists like Burna Boy and Davido became global sensations.

In 2022, Kaffy appeared in the Red Bull TV documentary (Un)credited, which chronicled the origins of Afrodance in Nigeria and how it has infuenced mainstream culture.

AYINLA KOLLINGTON

“Ijo Yoyo” (1981)

“Ijo Yoyo was a particular movement everyone was doing back then, and it was very street. In the ’80s and early ’90s, Nigerians were consuming a lot of Western sounds, but indigenous people were still vibing to their own sound. Now, artists like Kizz Daniel are going back in time, taking our forefathers’ sounds and reinventing them.”

SOUND SULTAN FT. DADDY SHOWKEY

“Ghetto Love” (2017)

“In the late ’90s, Western music took over, and now we have what they call the Ajegunle movement [named after a neighborhood in Lagos]. That’s where we have artists like Daddy Showkey with the galala [a dance and music genre]. Nigerian music as an Afro sound started coming up gradually and artists were fne-tuning it a little bit.”

AWILO LONGOMBA

“Coupé Bibamba” (1998)

“Between the 1990s and the 2000s, the Western African sound and Eastern African sound traveled—and Nigeria was consuming it all. Artists like Awilo Longomba were closing down stadiums in Lagos. That dance movement really changed the game.”

OLAMIDE

“Bobo” (2015)

“Olamide consistently used dance to push his music, and he took the Westsyde Lifestyle Crew [the group responsible for developing the shaku shaku] under his wing. They were in all of his music videos [and it] did a great job amplifying the movement for the street dancers. Otherwise, we wouldn’t know where it came from.”

BY SHAMIRA IBRAHIM

Tyrone Bradley/Red Bull Content Pool

BATTLE MODE

How to attend Red Bull Dance Your Style

At just 22, Sean Lew has been a viral dance sensation for more than a decade, but even with all his success as a performer and choreographer, his biggest fear was battling. “The beautiful thing about battling is that you’re always going to be mentally and physically challenged,” he told The Red Bulletin last year. “To me, that’s a sign of growth.” Lew grew—a lot—when he won the Red Bull Dance Your Style USA National Final in 2023. And for anyone looking to conquer their fear of battling (or witness it), there’s another season of Red Bull Dance Your Style.

April 20: North USA Regional Qualifer in Chicago, IL

April 27: South USA Regional Qualifer in Memphis, TN

May 4: East USA Regional Qualifer in Boston, MA

May 11: West USA Regional Qualifer in Los Angeles, CA

May 18-20: USA National Final & Weekender in Atlanta, GA

Chris Hershman/Red Bull Content Pool

Pro skater Jamie Foy kickfips into the friendly skies last year at Red Bull Terminal Takeover.

Jonathan Mehring/Red Bull Content Pool

Poaching an empty airport is every skater’s fantasy— and the raison d’être of Red Bull Terminal Takeover.

As the 2024 edition looms, here’s a look at what makes the event so rad—and so meaningful.

WORDS BY PETER FLAX

Ready For Takeoff Ready

Takeoff Ready For Takeoff Ready For Takeoff Ready For Takeoff Ready

Takeoff Ready For Takeoff Ready For Takeoff Ready For Takeoff Ready

Takeoff Ready For Takeoff Ready For Takeoff

Ready For Takeoff Ready For Takeoff Ready For Takeoff

On the facing page, Alyssa Maxwell performs a boardslide at the 2023 Red Bull Terminal Takoever. Above, four more scenes from that frst-class event (clockwise from top left): Dominic Creationist executes a wallie backside tailslide; Philly Santosuosso pops out of a backside 50-50 grind; Lacey Harmon performs a body varial on a quarterpipe; and Maurio McCoy takes fight with a kickfip.

Jonathan Mehring/Red Bull Content Pool

AIRPORT CONNECTIONS

How Red Bull Terminal Takeover has built community beyond the sick clips.

veryone who loves to skate has trudged through an airport and gaped—at the fawless concourse foors and gleaming baggage carousels—and dreamed of taking fight without a ride in the back of a squad car. That’s why Tony Hawk’s landmark game Pro Skater 3, allowing players to go wild on an airport level, stoked narcotic visions in skate culture’s collective brain back in 2001. And that’s why Red Bull Terminal Takeover, created 20 years later, earned instant legend status: It transformed a forbidden daydream into reality.

Most stories about Terminal Takeover celebrate the rad skating action that goes down annually in a vacated concourse at Louis Armstrong International Airport in New Orleans. The format—where regional skate crews get two days to jam and flm content in the space—is a perfect crucible for viral clips.

But as the event approaches its fourth anniversary, it’s clear that the payof is deeper than social media paydirt. If you talk to skaters from shops in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Tupelo, Mississippi, who’ve participated in Terminal Takeover, the event’s ripple efects become crystal clear.

“Skating in that terminal is like the coolest shit ever,” says Daniel Barousse, a skater who has repped the Rukus shop in Baton Rouge for years. “But the real impacts have been about community. Without exaggeration, it has really helped the whole skate-shop community in the Southeast. The disconnects that used to be there have been dissolved.”

The roots of those new ties emerge in New Orleans—as skaters from all over the region bond and cheer each other in the terminal and then forge relationships later at dinners and aferparties. “At the event, everyone feeds of each other’s energy,” says Skyler King, a skater with the Change shop in Tupelo. “It doesn’t matter what team you’re in. Skate culture is like family to me.”

Matt Robinson, the owner and manager of Change, agrees. “I’m stoked to meet all these regional rippers,” he says. “There’s no shop beef around here, and I’m hyped to see this

level of skating in my area. And some real regional networking has evolved from this.”

To wit, the skaters from Rukus and Change share stories of road trips—to Nashville, Birmingham and Philadephia. “Suddenly we can travel to other states and have homies to hang out with and skate,” says Trey Abrams, who has rolled with Rukus since 2010. “In the past, individual guys might have known someone in another city, but now everyone knows everybody. It’s all love.” In smaller Southeastern cities like Tupelo and Baton Rouge, core skate can feel isolated, and this newfound interconnectivity has made them all feel a part of something larger.

The local impacts in each shop’s home city are big, too. Both Change and Rukus have created their own events and know they can count on the attendance and support of the other crews. And all the communal stoke fueled by the social media response grows awareness. “It’s been massive on a local level for all of the shops involved across the Southeast,” says Robinson. “The shop is the clubhouse. For young kids who don’t know anything about skating, and their parents who don’t know anything, the shop is a great place to be the onramp into the culture. And now everyone knows us.”

The guys with both shops rattle of examples of how the attention from Terminal Takeover has led to publicity and tangible benefts to the skate community in their cities. In real terms that means renovated skateparks, glowing segments on the local news and, best of all, kids coming into shops to buy boards and join the culture.

“Everyone wants their hometown to embrace the thing they love the most,” says Carter Riley, who skates with Change in Tupelo, noting that their team, which won last year’s Terminal Takeover, was asked to be grand marshals of the city’s Christmas parade. “It’s crazy how much things have changed. Cops who used to hassle us for skating the courthouse steps—now they’re like, ‘Hey, I voted for you!’ ”

Above: All of the skaters and flmers who communed in the magic of Red Bull Terminal Takeover bring it together with extra stoke for a big group photo. Below: The low-key crew from Team Tupelo, who would go on to be crowned last year’s Terminal Takeover champions, poses for a portrait.

Williams/Red Bull Content Pool

Get Stoked for the 2024 Red Bull Terminal Takeover

It all goes down again in New Orleans, April 18-20. The popular format remains the same, with each team submitting a compilation of their best clips from two days in the airport for a fan-sourced vote. But everything else is bigger this year, with more teams, an enhanced venue, more pros and more chances for relationship building. The expanded roster will include teams from outside the Southeast and one crew from Japan. For more info, follow Red Bull Skate on IG @redbullskate.

More terminally sick shots: Gavin Breaux (facing page, top) performs a crooked grind; Brandon Valjalo (facing page, bottom) scoops a 360 fip; pro Jake Wooten (above) prepares to drop in on a makeshift ramp on an escalator.

Jonathan Mehring/Red Bull Content Pool

Makani Adric surfs a big swell at Oahu’s Waimea Bay during Red Bull Magnitude in 2021. “I love how she showed no hesitation,” says Funk. “The photo makes it clear just how critical the drop is.”

Portfolio CHRISTA FUNK

The Oahu-based photographer shares a selection of top female surfers in action—and the little moments that reflect the beauty of the sport.

WORDS BY PETER FLAX

Christa Funk loves to photograph some of the most talented surfers in the world. The lifelong competitive swimmer enjoys being in the water and capturing electric moments of action, but she also has an eye for what she calls the in-between moments. “If you are only focused on the heavy stuff, you can miss things,” she says.

In this selection, Funk shares some of her favorite images of world-class female surfers—of big-wave specialists

chasing monster swells during Red Bull Magnitude, professional competitors seeking technical perfection, and those aforementioned moments that capture the magic of the lifestyle.

“I’m excited to see how women’s surfng is evolving in such a positive direction,” says Funk, who has been passionate about photography for 20 years. “I love what I get to do and to have a front-row seat to see these women push through boundaries.”

Big-wave huntress Emi Erickson (above) exits a ride. “Her kick out is as stylish as it is functional, shifting her hips to slow her movement to gracefully fnish her wave,” says Funk. Carissa Moore (right) barreled at Pipeline. “A couple had closed out on her before this,” says Funk. “So I was happy she got this—and that I was in position for the shot.”

LIz Wheeler (facing page, top) is below the surface in Tahiti. “Liz and I were shooting underwater photos beneath a shallow wave,” Funk recalls. “She fipped backwards to look at the barrel in a way I hadn’t seen before. But it felt natural and not at all forced.” Silvia Nabuco (facing page, bottom) surfs Oahu’s Outer Reefs in January 2024 for Red Bull Magnitude. “It’s not the biggest wave, but there’s something wonderful about the composition and

all the colors,” says Funk. “It captures something elemental about the beauty of being out in the ocean.” And Leah Dawson (above), one of Funk’s favorite subjects for almost a decade, rides a wave in Mexico. “She’s on rails—you can see her fns,” says Funk. “Also, when I was editing the shot I noticed that her right hand looks like a mirror image of the rock behind her. Little elements outside of a maneuver can add to the visual appeal of any photo.”

“I’m on a constant search for the best conditions and new experiences,” says Russell, shown manifesting peak performance in Patagonia.

everything on the lines

Join elite backcountry snowboarder Nick Russell in an up-and-down year traveling the world in search of adventure and hard-won experience—and a few minutes of pure bliss.

WORDS BY PETER FLAX

Matthew Tuffs

Backcountry snowboarder Nick Russell does not aspire to stand on podiums or hang gold medals in his living room. Instead, he seeks to leverage his formidable skill set and athleticism to build a life centered on exploration and self-expression. It’s a pursuit that is demanding on so many levels but ofers extreme levels of freedom and excitement. In some cases he comes home from long expeditions with little more than frazzled nerves and lessons for the next adventure, but sometimes he returns from the mountains with stories and clips and—above all—moments of blissful discovery.

Between September 2022 and September 2023, Russell headed into raw alpine environments in Nepal, California’s Sierra Nevada, the Arctic Circle in Norway, and Patagonia—along the way experiencing a cinematic range of success, failure, joy, heartbreak, grueling work and fow-state euphoria. Together these four expeditions illuminate the life of a seeker-slash-athlete on a quest to discover something beautiful in the world and within himself.

“I’m on a constant search for the best conditions and new experiences,” he says, acknowledging that ofen the real objectives and lessons of his adventures don’t come into focus until he’s out there. “Experience is something you only get afer you meet it.”

nepal WHERE: DHAULAGIRI WHEN: SEPTEMBER 2022

Russell’s season didn’t get of to an ideal start. He led a small team on his frst expedition to the Himalayas, aiming to be the frst to ride down 26,795-foot Dhaulagiri, the world’s seventh-tallest mountain. But they were hammered by an extended monsoon season that brought nonstop weather. It felt too risky to do much more than hunker down. Then Russell got

word that amid the same conditions, his friend and hero Hilaree Nelson had been killed by an avalanche elsewhere in Nepal. “That was super hard for all of us,” Russell admits. “Our hero got taken out doing the same thing we were doing. And we were stuck in tents all alone—it felt like we were on the moon. We decided to pull the plug on the expedition afer that.”

Although he didn’t meet his planned objective amid the storms and the crevasses and seracs of Dhaulagiri, Russell knows he learned a lot along the way. “It was my frst time on an 8,000-meter peak. And we did it without any Sherpa support,” he says, detailing how he gained wisdom about his training and how to carry heavy loads in the high mountains. “The Himalayas just draw me in. I’m attracted to the terrain and the culture. You feel this incredible energy when you’re in villages.” And the trip was a stark reminder of the stakes in his life’s work. “We operate in this gray area, where you decide if it makes sense to keep going,” he says. “I struggle with it at times, dealing with risk. But I try to tell myself this: ‘When in doubt, walk it out.’”

Chris Wellhausen, Blake Gordon (7)

Russell grew up in Connecticut but now lives in California’s Sierra Nevada range. “For me, the best case is a beautiful winter at home,” he says. “And last season had record-breaking snow.” One dream objective was to ride down

14,018-foot Middle Palisade in the Eastern Sierra. “I had tried to ride that thing a few weeks earlier,” he says. “There was too much snow; it was too dangerous. On a line that big, you don’t want that many question marks. It’s a no-

fall zone. If you fall and lose control, it’s as serious as it gets.” But on a second visit, everything fell into place. “The face is 2,500 vertical feet—it’s a true dream line. Days like that are afrmation that I’m on the right path.”

Ming T Poon (3), Blake Gordon (2)

In

you

see Russell kicking up power halfway down the

steep

He (and his crew) had to climb 7,500 vertical feet to reach the summit before tackling a line brimming with consequence.

But with careful preparation, Russell fnds profound joy in such riding.

“When I’m in the fow state, everything is fun—even when I’m scared,” he says. “I don’t compete for gold medals, so moments like that are my championship ring.”

the photo at left,

can

long,

face of Middle Palisade.

Here, Russell is nearly done rappelling down from a mushroomcapped summit in northern Norway to ride a dreamy line. “We had really good conditions the frst half of the trip,” he says. “And then it warmed up and the snow went to shit.

I like to go into big expeditions like this with high hopes and low expectations— because of how fckle conditions can be.”

In April 2023, Russell made his frst trip to the Arctic Circle, to ride with Finnish snowboarder Antti Autti, who was working on a flm project in northern Norway. “It was a surreal trip—and not just because the terrain looked like nothing I’d seen before,” Russell laughs. “I was dealing with jet lag and the sun never set and we were riding at midnight.” But he has no regrets now about the decision to dedicate a few key weeks of the spring season to the trip. “That’s what I do,” Russell says. “When I do something, I go all in.”

argentina

A year afer his trip to Nepal, Russell headed to another bucket-list destination: Patagonia, famous for its gorgeous, technical terrain and unpredictable alpine weather.

“I’ve wanted to visit Patagonia as long as I can remember,” he says.

WHERE: PATAGONIA

WHEN: SEPTEMBER 2023

Once there, he got to summit a few amazing peaks with stable snow, ride a few perfect lines and even get some quality product testing done. “I needed a low-stress trip that fed my soul—and that’s exactly what I got,” he says. It was the

perfect ending to an up and down year. “It comes down to keep showing up and keep trying and putting in the work,” Russell says, summing up his year and also his life’s work. “Eventually the mountain gods reward you.”

After dreaming of it for years, Russell got to ride fresh powder beneath the legendary facade of Fitz Roy, a jagged Patagonian peak near the border of Argentina and Chile. “Moments like this, where everything falls into place, are so rare,” he says. “That’s why they are so meaningful and beautiful.”

Matthew Tuffs (3), Rami Hanaf (3)

CHAMPION OF GOOD TIMES

Snowboarder Zeb Powell gives us a peek at his life on the road and shares what makes it so special.

BY NORA O’DONNELL

Four years ago, Zeb Powell burst onto the scene when he won X Games gold in the knuckle huck competition as a rookie. Since that huge win, fans have fooded Powell with messages, especially young people who are excited to see someone who looks like them on a snowboard. These days, Powell—who recently nabbed a silver medal at this year’s X Games Aspen in January—is known as a rider who embodies snowboarding’s roots, where the real win is to have fun with friends. Here, photographer Peter Cirilli, who’s also Powell’s manager, shares candid images of Zeb’s life on the road from 2023. And in his own words, Powell describes what snowboarding and loving life mean to him.

“The hype I share with the spectators, other riders and fans is at an all-time high right now. If people come out to watch me or ride with me, I like to make sure we all have something to smile about.”

ZEB POWELL WITH FANS AT THE 2023 X GAMES IN ASPEN.

Peter Cirilli

“It’s just about riding friends.withIf I can link up with old friends, new friends, strangers who love to ride that then become friends—and make their experience that much more fun— it’s all worth it.”

“I wouldn’t snowboard if it wasn’t fun. Who I surround myself with has become the single most important aspect of creating fun, no matter where I am or what I am doing.”

Peter Cirilli

FALLING, IN LOVE

Everybody knows that practice makes perfect. But few know it as viscerally as three-time wakeskating champion Brian Grubb, especially after nailing the project called WakeBASE—in which he completed a wakeskate-to-BASE jump from the highest infinity pool in the world. The clip of this jaw-dropping feat was viewed more than 350 million times in just two months. In this dramatic behind-the-scenes photograph, Grubb is in freefall—in the midst of a final practice jump from atop the 964-foot-tall Address Beach Resort in Dubai the day before his record-setting feat last December. In total, he did 106 practice BASE jumps, all under the watchful eye of BASE-jumping legend Miles Daisher.

“I was focused on being patient,” Grubb says of the shot. “Once I started falling, I needed to wait three or four seconds before there’s enough speed and wind resistance to deploy my chute. But there’s something bittersweet about the moment, too. I knew I was ready to go and that this whole amazing experience of preparing was almost over. WakeBASE combined all my passions in a way that was my ultimate dream project. So when I look at that photo, I see myself doing something I love, as in the moment as one can be.”

TRAIN LIKE A PRO

Three extraordinary Red Bull athletes share insights into how they get into world-class shape, bounce back from injuries and have fun while competing at the highest level.

WORDS BY JEN SEE PHOTOS BY MARÍA JOSÉ GOVEA

Ellie Smart High diver

Smart, an accomplished 10-meter platform diver before she found her true love, debuted on the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Tour in 2017 and locked a permanent spot in 2019. She has fnished third or fourth overall for the past two seasons, with two podium results. In 2021, she became CEO of the High Diving Institute, which helps develop talent and foster community in the sport.

The champion cliff diver has a serious work ethic, but is trying harder to have fun.

High diver Ellie Smart has jumped from cliffs, bridges, a $21 million yacht and a helicopter hovering 81 feet in the air. Growing up as a springboard diver, Smart took her sport seriously—too seriously, she believes now. “I remember being 12 and calculating how I was going to get my 10,000 hours so I could be an Olympian,” she recalls. That program didn’t leave time for adventures.

But these days Smart takes a more playful approach to her sport. “I think it’s really easy as a professional athlete to get obsessed trying to be number one,” she says. “I like to think of myself as an innovator, trying new things and pushing my boundaries.” And after seven years in the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series, Smart has found that having fun makes her a better competitor.

Her emphasis on enjoying the process has also motivated her to improve her fitness. Until 2023, Smart had never worked with a trainer. These days, she can sit down with a trainer at the Red Bull Athlete Performance Center Los Angeles and develop exercises for the muscle groups and movements that will give her an edge. With a packed competition schedule, Smart has no time to waste. A month after the final event of the 2023 series took place in January in New Zealand, she traveled to Qatar for the World Aquatics Championships—and the new cliff-diving season starts in May. But she’s made it a priority to spend March in Santa Monica for a big training block in the gym. Smart’s also hoping to resolve an episode of compartment syndrome, a painful condition that causes muscles in her leg to swell and press on nearby nerves.

When she’s home in Florida, Smart trains at the Fort Lauderdale Aquatic Center, one of the few facilities in the world with a 27-meter platform. “When I started, if I wanted to jump from 20 meters, I literally had to go find cliffs and other things,” she says. But the controlled environment in Fort Lauderdale has allowed Smart to refine her diving technique. Last year, Smart became the first woman to do a back-double—that’s two somersaults—with four twists. “Being able to work my way up and do it in a safe and controlled way allowed me to take that leap of faith and try that dive,” she says.

When the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series starts again, Smart aims to be ranked at the top. But she’s got some adventures planned, too. “I’m going to take all these incredible opportunities I’ve gotten from the sport and really try to soak it all up and love what I do,” she says.

“I like to think of myself as an innovator,” says Smart, who was photographed at the Red Bull Athlete Performance Center Los Angeles on February 7.

CORE VALUES

To ensure her body position remains stable throughout the fips and twists that compose her dives, Smart trains planks, side planks and hollow holds. “I do a lot of holds to be able to maintain those positions in the air,” she says. One hold requires Smart to hold a plank position off the end of a bench while a partner sits on her legs. Core strength also keeps her safe when she hits the water, and medicine ball throws and sit-ups are a training staple.

HUNGRY FOR POWER

Earlier this year, Smart did a jump test to measure her vertical. It’s something that she’s looking to improve when she returns to the gym in March. “I just go down,” she says, laughing. “I don’t go up.” Smart knows she needs to focus on explosive exercises like box jumps and more dynamic lifts using lighter weights. “That’s something I have a hard time making myself do, and having my trainer really hold me accountable is going to help.”

VOTES OF CONFIDENCE

Growing up, Smart always dreamed of going to the Olympics, and falling short felt crushing to her. “I felt like I lost my identity in the sport,” she says. Checking in regularly with an expert has helped Smart stay on track. “I was talking to my sports psychologist, and she said, ‘You don’t dance to get to the end, you dance to enjoy the dance,’ ” she says. “That line really resonated. Why do we rush and just want that outcome? We only get one shot.”

Justin Williams Cyclist

Williams, who has won more than 10 national championships in three different disciplines, is a specialist in criterium racing. In 2019, he and his brother Cory founded L39ion of Los Angeles, a pro team that has a goal to increase inclusion and diversity while winning at the highest level.

The pro cyclist, in injury-recovery mode, has gotten serious about nutrition and off-the-bike training.

This year is a comeback year for Justin Williams. The crit racer, who won a U.S. national championship in 2019 and Belize’s national road championship in 2021, has had his racing disrupted in the past few years—by COVID shutdowns, by obligations related to the pro team L39ion of Los Angeles he founded and manages and by a separated shoulder and other injuries. Williams is in the midst of a long, slow build to return to his best. “I’ll be really good by the end of this year,” he says. “And next year, I’m going savage mode on everybody.”

The gym serves as a kind of auto body shop for Williams. “A lot of my gym time is identifying issues and trying to remedy them,” he says. A repeatedly sprained ankle means Williams works with a slant board to loosen the joint. “I have overbuilt hip flexors, because I use my hips to compensate when I’m getting tired,” he says. Squats open his hips, while core exercises like planks improve his stability on the bike and help stave off fatigue.

Williams used to hate going to the gym, but he’s recently found purpose there and has come to love it. These days, he focuses on leg strength and mobility. “I love leg press,” says Williams. “It’s where I get to show off.” The seated position on the bike locks his body into a limited range of movement, so mobility exercises are especially important. Using a set of hurdles, he’ll do six or seven passes where he alternates among forward, backward and sideways steps. “Those always loosen up my hips and give me more mobility,” he says. “When I do those, I notice instantly that I’m better on the bike.”

As his comeback gets underway, Williams is mindful of all the things that will put him in position to win the biggest races. If all goes well, he gets to post up after an explosive sprint, but he knows that success requires more than pure speed—it takes a combination of power, endurance and tactical smarts.

“For me the last 10 seconds of a crit are the easiest part,” he admits. “It’s the two minutes before the last 10 seconds where my fitness really plays a role. My heart rate is spiked, and I’m trying to think my way through a sprint as I’m slowly but surely draining the tank. So success is all about managing those things so I can still have an explosive pop in the last 10 seconds.”

When it comes to fueling, Williams says he likes to drink a can of Red Bull before a big ride and then consume at least 100 grams of carbs per hour on hard workouts.

MENTAL FITNESS

Williams must make hundreds of decisions and adjustments during a race. That’s hard when he’s maxed out physically. At home on his trainer, he practices by singing songs during intervals. “When I get to the point where I can’t predict the next lyric, I know I’m in the box. He also races local crits in the early season to refne his skills.

“Everyone knows me and is racing against me,” he says. “I have to be sharper in how I make decisions and use my power.”

FUEL

“As I’ve gotten a bit older, nutrition has become the most important thing,” Williams says. “It can mean the difference between whether I retain 90 percent of what I do in a workout versus 50 percent.” To that end, he eats small meals every three hours and uses a meal-prep service to manage portion control. On the bike, he pays special attention to his carb intake—getting 60 grams per hour on endurance rides and 100 grams per hour when he’s racing.

SPEED WORK

Williams wins races by outsprinting everyone at the end of a long endurance ride. This requires work on and off the bike. In the gym, he does tons of plyometrics. And on the bike, it’s all about repetition and effort. “My brothers and I do a lot of sprinting in training, working on form and reaction time,” he says. “When you do explosive efforts your muscles get these little microtears that get more rubbery when they heal, which helps you sprint better.”

Miles Chamley-Watson Fencer

The two-time Olympian, who has competed internationally since 2008, won a bronze medal in the team competition in 2016. His résumé at World Championships includes an individual and a team gold medal and three team silver medals. Chamley-Watson has made podium in individual and team competitions at the PanAmerican Games 17 times.

The two-time Olympian fencer isn’t afraid to work on his weaknesses.

Unconventional and inventive, Miles Chamley-Watson is a larger-than-life figure in the insular world of fencing. “My style is different,” he says. “I don’t try to be in this little box or to fit in. Because why? It’s boring.” He stands 6’5”, has walked the runway for Tommy Hilfiger and has a signature fencing move named after him. Chamley-Watson also boasts an impressive longevity; he won a Junior Olympic title at age 13 and today, at 34, remains among the world’s best. “It’s hard to go to practice every day for 20 years,” he says. “But it’s also cool, because you can always learn and you can always get better.”

While Chamley-Watson spends three hours each day in the gym before heading to fencing practice, he attributes his durability in the sport to something different altogether. “Everyone gets physically good,” he says. “It’s easy to pick up weights. It’s not hard. But to really have the mental strength, that’s what separates the best from the legendary.” He tries to make his training as difficult as possible. That way, competition feels easy. And he brings a fearless approach to his matches.

This spring, Chamley-Watson faces a significant test of that mental strength, as he’ll compete in a series of high-stakes matches, with a trip to Paris potentially on the line. He thrives on that kind of intensity. “The pressure is a privilege,” he says. “I have nothing left to prove, but a lot to accomplish.” With its mix of physical effort and tactical thinking, fencing is an unpredictable sport, and Chamley-Watson never quite knows how a match will go for him. “There’s no rhyme or reason to the sport,” he says. “You can train every day—and you might lose. I try to take it all as it comes.”

When he needs motivation, Chamley-Watson thinks of the kids who are out there watching his career and who may not yet have found a place where they fit in. “I was a bad kid growing up and I actually got into fencing as punishment.” The sport saved him and gave him direction. “I’m super ADHD and I couldn’t sit still,” he says. Once given somewhere to focus his energy, Chamley-Watson found success. “I want to inspire new generations of kids and show them that they can be the best at whatever they want.” It also doesn’t hurt that he enjoys the training process, even at its most grinding and tedious. “It makes me want to go to practice with a smile on my face.”

“I want to be strong but also fexible,” says Chamley-Watson, who regularly integrates explosive efforts into his workouts.

READY TO EXPLODE

Fencing bouts involve short, intense bursts of action followed by brief periods of recovery, and they can last anywhere from 20 to 30 minutes. His daily gym training emphasizes explosive efforts like power cleans and medicine ball throws. “I don’t want to be too big,” he says. “I want to be strong, but also fexible.” He also does sprints on an exercise bike. “I smash those things, honestly. I’m pretty good at that.”

KNOWING THE DRILLS

Chamley-Watson devotes 25 to 30 hours a week to fencing. He divides his time among drills, sparring and working one-on-one with his coach. “Drills suck,” he says. “But that’s what makes me good.” Drills may focus on fencing technique like defensive moves or footwork like lunges. “We’ll do 100 advance lunges in a 2-meter box,” he says. “I’m 6’5”, so it’s harder for me.”

Ladder drills and other plyometric exercises like box jumps also help his footwork.

SERIOUS SNACKING

Chamley-Watson has recently changed his approach to nutrition. “I used to not eat enough after training, and then it’s like, why am I tired? I need the fuel.” These days, he makes a protein shake directly after his morning workouts. “I like cherries, or any frozen fruit, peanut butter, a touch of honey, collagen, amino acid, fax seeds—all the good stuff,” he says. “Just put it all in. Smash it.”

The Wings for Life World Run brings runners, walkers and disabled participants together to test themselves for a common cause. The one-of-a-kind event takes place on May 5.

Marv Watson/WFLWR

The Human Race

There’s really nothing like the Wings for Life World Run. With a one-of-kind format, you join people around the globe at the same time with a common cause—to have one hell of a good time while raising money to find a cure for spinal cord injuries. Here’s a look at why, how and where you can get involved, whether you run, walk or roll.

WORDS BY PETER FLAX

The Pro

Elite ultrarunner David Kilgore has a little bit of advice and a whole lot of stoke about the Wings for Life World Run.

David Kilgore is a mellow guy, but his running life is hardly mellow. The elite ultrarunner, a former All-American collegiate athlete who has since run 100 miles in a day, recently won the World Marathon Challenge—running seven marathons on seven continents in seven days with a faster total time than 34 other hand-selected participants. All this to say that the guy can run.

Kilgore’s first running life was in Florida, but these days he lives in New York City. “Honestly, New York is one of my favorite places to run in the whole world,” he says. “It’s so diverse in every way. There are so many walks of life participating in the sport. Every time I run trails in Central Park I can get a little lost; it feels like I’m in a forest. And then I’ll pop out and see the skyline. It’s inspiring.”

And for a few years now, Kilgore has brought his unique energy to the Wings for Life World Run. No stranger to running events with unusual formats, Kilgore says he loves the World Run’s unique qualities. “You can pick the distance you run,” he says. “You do it with people all over the world at the same time; that communal quality is amazing. It raises money for such an inspirational cause. And even by running-culture standards, it’s such a welcoming event.”

Kilgore loves participating with adaptive athletes and runners with a huge range of ambitions and fitness. “The vibe at the starting line is really special,” he says. “Everyone knows they’re there to serve a bigger purpose.”

Every year has brought a new World Run experience for Kilgore. One year he did a low-key run in Central Park. Another time he created a long point-to-point course from Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx to the beach on Long Island, a route that highlighted New York’s distinctive variety in terrain and culture.

For 2024, Kilgore is helping lead an official World Run event in New York City. “The course runs along the West Side Highway,” he says, noting that there will be a “rowdy” celebration afterward with swag giveaways. “It’s rare to have such a fun time for such an amazing cause. The registration fee is pretty low. And the vibes are going to be high.”

As an interview winds down, Kilgore sums up his love for the event’s inclusivity. “It’s inspiring to see people out there who have been affected by a spinal cord injury and see them as athletes,” he says. “We’re bonded raising money for everyone who is like them. And you get to see these people put themselves out there in a whole different light.”

THE FORMAT

At the Wings for Life World Run, everyone starts at the same time, worldwide. Professional athletes, fun runners, total newbies and adaptive participants are all in it together against a common foe. The moving fnish line, the virtual Catcher Car, begins its pursuit 30 minutes after the start, passing runners, walkers and wheelchair users, at which point each person’s race is over. A participant’s fnal result is not based on how quickly they run—it’s how much distance they cover. The best part of the event is that 100 percent of all entry fees and donations go directly to research to fnd a cure for spinal cord injury.

Drew Reynolds, Robert Snow/WFLWR, Matthias Heschl/WFLWR, Mpumelelo Macu/WFLWR

FLORIDA

AUSTRIA

SOUTH AFRICA

With a format unlike any other running event, the Wings for Life World Run takes place globally at the same time. Participants can essentially choose how far they want to go. And every penny of the entry fee goes to important medical research.

THE TIPS

David Kilgore’s intentionally uncomplicated advice to get prepared for good times at this year’s World Run.

Get Out There

The more time you get in motion, the more comfortable you’ll feel on the day of the event. “Just get out the door and explore where you live,” Kilgore says. “It matters less whether you run or walk or mix it up—the key is to get time on your feet.”

Love Your Feet Participating in an event like the World Run doesn’t require a lot of specialized gear, but shoes are an exception. “I always recommend people go to their local running shop, where they’ll get good advice and a chance to try different shoes on,” he says.

Practice Fueling Many people land on different strategies for food and hydration—the key, Kilgore says, is to test out your plan a couple times before the morning of the World Run. “No one wants to spoil a good time with gut issues,” he says. “So if you’re lining up at 6 a.m., pick a few early workouts to test your chosen hydration mix or carbohydrate plan.”

Keep it Simple

If you’re starting out (or restarting after a long break), don’t be too proud to mix in some walking or keep it slow. “Some people feel like they have to literally hit the ground running, but that’s not the case,” he says. “I think they can burn out because of that—they run too far too quickly. The point is for it to be fun.”

Find Good Company Because it’s not always easy to stay motivated on your own, Kilgore suggests fnding a partner to walk or run with. “Running is always better when you have someone to inspire you,” he says.

The Advocate

Mason Spellings, a Wings for Life ambassador, says the World Run has given him something powerful: hope.

Mason Spellings has a lot of emotional memories. There’s that day five years ago—“It started out like a regular Saturday,” he recalls—when a seemingly minor crash in motocross practice left him flat on his back. Clouds floated across the sky and he thought he had knocked the wind out himself. But moments later he realized that he was paralyzed.

Spellings, now 34, also remembers the helicopter ride to the hospital and the all-night surgery and the grinding realities of waking up to a spinal cord injury. He recalls what it felt like to start losing hope about rehab—facing an endless regime of hard work while not being able to walk to get a glass of water. What, he asked himself, was the point?

“When you get injured like that, it takes a while to look forward rather than backwards,” Spellings says. “This kind of injury breaks everyone at some point—you have to start over. You have to rediscover the beauty of life.”

And Spellings’ journey has been uplifted by the Wings for Life World Run. He got his first taste deep in pandemic times, heading out on a handcycle with his wife in 2021. The more he learned about the World Run—how every penny raised goes directly to fund medical research—the more he wanted to test himself on a walker and get more people involved. “I love the way that the event happens everywhere at the same time,” he says. “That sacrifice makes it more meaningful.”

So in 2022, Spellings stepped it up; he got a small crew of friends and family to join him for predawn coffee and the World Run. “It was so cool,” he recalls. “It was dark—a little spooky in a good way. All of a sudden I stood up on my walker and everyone began clapping. I didn’t know how far I’d go, but I walked for an hour. It wasn’t far by most people’s standards, but it was a big effort for me. I sat down, my wife gave me a hug—and I was overwhelmed by emotion.”

This poignant experience changed something inside of Spellings. “Before I got passionate about the World Run, I started to question the point of all my physical therapy,” he says. “But suddenly I felt more focused on my recovery. I felt like I had tapped into this energy that I really could use.”

So he went all in for the 2023 World Run. He had a clearer pitch and a better network. Ultimately, Spelling got 130 people to join him. The run took place at a Houston gym, which made it easier for disabled people to participate. “It was more inclusive for sure,” he says, noting that he pushed himself much further than the previous year. And it reminded him that the beauty of the event isn’t defined by how far you go—it’s defined by the sincerity of your effort and your commitment to help raise money for an essential cause.

“The World Run is not just some feel-good thing; it doesn’t exist to make content,” says Spellings, who has an infant now and enough stoke to get a bigger crew to join him for the 2024 World Run. “This will help doctors change the world. I can see how much money is poured into the science and how solid the science is. I can see it happening. One day I’m going to go for a walk with my son thanks to this.”

Spellings, shown at the lumber mill where he works as a manager, says the World Run has given more purpose to his rehab.

Justin Williams/WFL, Suguru Saito/Red Bull Content Pool, Thomas Sweertvaegher/WFLWR, WFLWR

THE SIGN-UP DETAILS

The World Run starts at the exact same time all over the globe. In the U.S., that translates to 7 a.m. on the East Coast and 4 a.m. on the West Coast (folks in the middle, go wild doing the math).

Below is a list of cities hosting offcial App Run events if you want to share the fun with a big crowd. You can also do the run on your own or with a small crew of friends using the World Run app. To sign up for any location or format, check out wingsforlifeworldrun. com. If you’re still looking for one more incentive to sign up, everyone who registers now will get a free Adidas running shirt no matter how or where they decide to participate.

Bentonville, AR

Boston, MA

Charlotte, NC

Chicago, IL

Cleveland, OH

Dallas, TX

Dania Beach, FL

Denver, CO

Houston, TX

Knoxville, TN

Miami, FL

New Orleans, LA

New York City, NY

San Francisco, CA

Santa Monica, CA

There are many reasons to particpate in the Wings for Life World Run—to challenge yourself and have a raucous time.

But the most important reason is to help raise money to help fnd a cure for spinal cord injuries.

JAPAN

CROATIA

Adizero Adios Pro 3

Often on display at the pointy end of world-class marathons, this updated carbon-plated supershoe is extremely plush and built for speed. With three layers of foam and a towering 39 mm stack at the heel, it is extremely bouncy for such a lightweight shoe. The patented carbon-fber Energyrods are now integrated as one cohesive unit, which improves responsiveness and offers a smoother transition at a fast pace. The shoe runs a bit long, so consider going down a half size.

ON Cloudeclipse

If you like maximal foam underfoot when you run, you’ll likely love these striking trainers. Perhaps frmer than you might imagine, the Cloudeclipse delivers a ride that is smooth, effcient and stable. The shoes are a bit heavy and don’t offer exceptional energy return, but they have a fun, reactive feel and above all cradle you in comfort on long runs, adding more recovery to the typical recovery run.

The Hoka Mach 5 is a light and bouncy do-it-all shoe that performs well whether you’re doing easy training or laying down a race effort.

Hoka Mach 5

A great do-it-all option for a large swath of runners, the newest version of Hoka’s Mach line is lighter and bouncier than its predecessor, thanks largely to the updated Profy+ foam in the midsole. Relatively few shoes are this light and this plush—meaning they feel soft and comfortable and responsive whether you’re going fast or slow. With an updated lacing system and a thin tongue, the Mach 5 offers a pleasantly snug wraparound feeling. Available in wide sizes.

RESET REBUILD RACE

In a sport dominated by a few teams, how do you take a bottom-of-the grid operation and put it on the path to podium? For the new-look Visa Cash App RB F1 Team, it’s all about reimagining what’s possible.

Digital Lighthouse/Red Bull Content Pool

It’s nearly impossible to cut through the noise during Super Bowl Week. Especially in Las Vegas. But there, the undeniable cachet of modern Formula 1 was on display on Thursday night, as a 2024 F1 car launch briefly nudged aside all the NFL and Taylor Swift hype. For a hot second, the Visa Cash App RB Formula One Team grabbed the limelight.

On an evening in which Kendrick Lamar banged out a set for a crowd fronted by Marvel star Simu Liu, soul singer Janelle Monáe and Baltimore Ravens wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr., the team formerly known as AlphaTauri shed its old skin to emerge as a glossy, heavily backed new player on the grid. It’s a bigbudget metamorphosis, replete with new faces, new sponsors—and a bold mission to elevate the team from junior-driver finishing school to a genuine contender, one capable of battling for podiums.

That would be no small leap. In 2022, the AlphaTauri squad finished the season ninth out of 10 teams in the Constructor standings, with just 35 points. And last year wasn’t much better. In 2023, only 19 of 66 available podium places went to drivers

from teams other than Red Bull Racing, Ferrari or Mercedes. And nearly all of those were taken by perennial upper-midfield contender McLaren and surprise standout Aston Martin. Thanks to a moderate late-season revival, AlphaTauri rose to eighth at the end of last year, but the team had languished dead last for most of the season as it struggled to be competitive—and also, it seemed, to find its identity and motivation.

This year, the team has reasons to believe that the identity crisis has been solved, thanks to the massive input of Visa, embarking on its first global sports sponsorship in 15 years. But it will take more than a ritzy new identity, top-shelf sponsors and a glitzy Las Vegas launch to propel the team up the grid. The big question for 2024 is whether Red Bull’s junior team is ready to grow up.

The man newly employed to answer that question is team principal Laurent Mekies. Charged with reinventing the racing side of the business, Mekies joins the program from Ferrari, where until last year he held the role of racing director (one step below the

“On the sporting side, top of the midfield for this year— that’s what we are targeting.”

Digital Lighthouse/Red Bull Content Pool, Getty Images/Red Bull Content Pool

team principal position). But long before that, Mekies cut his F1 teeth with his new team in its earliest Red Bull–owned incarnation, as Scuderia Toro Rosso.

Not surprisingly, Mekies says the bones of the team are strong. “It’s more than 10 years since I left Toro Rosso, and in that time everything has massively moved on in Faenza,” he says, referring to the Italian city where the team is headquartered. “I think it has pretty much doubled in size. But it goes deeper than that. When I looked through the list of people, the various departments, I just thought, what an incredible number of talents. It’s not a top team, but the bases are there to build what we want, to take it to the next step.”

For Mekies, who helped engineer seven race wins and consistent high performance at Ferrari, the first step on that road is to bring about a culture shift. “What I’ll try to bring [from Ferrari] is the spirit to fight for wins,” he says. “We all know how tough the battle is at the front of the grid, the kind of mindset it takes to structure a company to get into that fight, but we want to bring that winning spirit to the team in order to do a step change.”

Smiles, everyone: Basking in optimism at the Visa Cash App RB livery launch in Las Vegas on February 8 (from left to right): new team principal Laurent Mekies, drivers Yuki Tsunoda and Daniel Ricciardo and new CEO Peter Bayer.

It’s a big ask. That winning spirit has flowed just twice in the team’s history, both times at its home race, the Italian Grand Prix. The first triumph came when future legend Sebastian Vettel scored his first career win with Toro Rosso in 2008 and the second more recently, when Frenchman Pierre Gasly triumphed at Monza in 2020 for AlphaTauri.

In subsequent years, the team’s trajectory could charitably be characterized as flat. Early in the 2023 season, longtime team boss Franz Tost proclaimed at an official F1 press conference that he no longer trusted his technical staff. “The engineers tell me we make some good progress, but I don’t trust them anymore. I just want to see the lap time, because this is the only thing that counts,” said Tost, who until recently had held the helm since 2005. The deepening slump didn’t go unnoticed in Red Bull’s corridors of power either, and with the team visibly struggling, Red Bull motorsport advisor Helmut Marko said that the team’s performance was “not what we expect.”

“There has to be an improvement,” he told German media. “It is also true that the financial commitment at AlphaTauri is too high. This means that we also have to do something on the sponsor side, on the revenue side.”

Those concerns have been addressed. While Mekies has replaced the retiring Tost on the racing side, new CEO Peter Bayer has been hired to lead the business side of the team. And just a few days before the Vegas launch, the team announced a rearrangement of its technical team, with former FIA technical director Tim Goss joining as chief technical officer, and highly respected former Alpine team manager Alan Permane taking on the role of sporting director. Lastly, aerodynamics specialist Guillaume Catellani bolsters the design team as deputy technical director.

Mekies contends that the new signings are only the beginning. “We want to reinforce in all areas,” he says. “We are doing a 360-degree review of where the team is, and [determining] what fundamentals need to be put in place to go to the next step. And that means improving in every single area.”

For a team whose drain on Red Bull resources was judged too high, an expensive influx of new talent would seem to be an unaffordable luxury. But as Marko hinted, the revenue side of the team has been addressed with the arrival of a slew of high-profile sponsorships, including Hugo Boss, Tudor watches, Cash App and biggest of all, Visa.

“EVERYTHING IS JUST WHERE IT BELONGS”

Daniel Ricciardo has been through a saga of reboots and rehabilitation, but as he kicks off his first full F1 season since 2022 with a newlook team and restored self-belief, he’s sure that the Honey Badger is back.

Even in a sport with a flair for the dramatic like Formula 1, Daniel Ricciardo’s recent story arc reads like a plot device spun by the love child of Drive to Survive and a daytime telenovela. A likable fan favorite has a crisis of confidence on an inflexible team that ultimately casts him into the wilderness. Rescued by his first love, he returns to the fray, only to suffer a debilitating injury that sidelines him until a glorious late-season charge once again proves to the world what they were missing.

Will Cornelius/Red Bull Content Pool

That basically summarizes where Ricciardo, 34, sits at the start of his first full season back in Formula 1. He’s moved on from the crumbling form he showed at McLaren in 2022—results that led to the mutual termination of his contract—and he’s also moved on from the badly broken hand that complicated and delayed his prodigal return to the Red Bull fold with AlphaTauri last year. He was able to rediscover some of his trademark competitive bravado after his comeback at the 2023 U.S. Grand Prix in Austin, punctuated the following week when he dragged his underperforming team to fourth on the grid and seventh in the race in Mexico City.

But the racer known as the Honey Badger and his team sputtered at the end of the season, and it wasn’t clear where Ricciardo’s head was at. Until now.

On a video call from London, Ricciardo beams a smile as pristine as his ice-white, Visa-emblazoned race suit as he ponders the 2024 season. “It definitely feels like a fresh start,” he says. “For me, with the benefit of a full

The long-popular Ricciardo, who turns 35 in July, has eight career F1 wins—the most recent being at the 2021 Italian Grand Prix.

preseason with the team, I feel like it’s the real start of chapter two in my career. There is also a sense that everyone’s coming into this season with a point to prove, and I feel like the people here feel it’s time to step up and take it to that next level.”

And while it’s easy to be distracted by the luster of a rebrand and the bling of the team’s Vegas launch, Ricciardo insists the ascent to that next level is possible, pointing to last fall as evidence of the team’s higher midfield credentials.

“Mexico was a strong weekend and I draw a lot of encouragement from that,” he says. “Now we’ve certainly got more power behind us, and it’s like, ‘OK, what can we actually achieve here?’ Can we aim for consistent top fives, can we put ourselves in a position that maybe leads to a podium? These things now feel like real targets.”

But while he’s happy to bask in the warm glow of revitalization, Ricciardo, entering his 14th F1 campaign, knows that the kind of debilitating scrutiny he suffered in his final months with McLaren is always lurking. He knows that, like his teammate, Yuki Tsunoda, he has something to prove this year and that failing to do so could quickly complicate phase two.

“There’s always a bit of pressure, but I like that,” he says. “It drives me to work harder. I’ll always hold on to a bit of that pressure, but the important thing is that I no longer put the weight of the world on my shoulders. The simplest way I can describe it is that I have belief again. I don’t fear any kind of failure.”

In the cutthroat world of F1, the quickest route to proving your worth is to trounce your teammate, since his performance in identical machinery is the purest metric by which a driver can be judged. Ricciardo, though, has a more collegial goal in mind. “Of course we’re competitive, and it’s good, because that’s going to drive us to get that extra 10th of a second,” he says, referencing Tsunoda. “But we need to have collaboration. We need to work together to try to fast-track everything.”

And Ricciardo is certain that will happen.

“Can I locate the Honey Badger? Sitting here today, 100 percent, I feel it,” he says. “The final part is proving it on track, but all those intrinsic emotions are where I remember them being from the days of me performing at my best. It’s like when you have a gut feeling about something, you just know it’s right. The feeling inside is telling me that everything’s back where it belongs.” —J.H.

For Bayer, bringing Visa on board lifts the team to a different level. “It’s massive news for the sport and for us,” says Bayer, who has held senior roles at the FIA and the IOC in the past. “When I was working for the Olympics, I saw how Visa can activate on a global level, and that’s going to spread the message of everything that we do within the team and what Formula 1 does in a great way.”

With a new identity, extra resources and a refreshed talent pool, the building blocks of the team’s rebirth seem to be slotting into place. The final pillar is of course the talent at the wheel. And in that area, Mekies says, Visa Cash App RB has “one of the most exciting lineups in the pit lane.” He’s talking about eight-time grand prix winner Daniel Ricciardo and highly rated 23-year-old Yuki Tsunoda.

“A few years back, Daniel was on the wish list of every top team, and we have the opportunity to build his way back to that,” Mekies says of the Australian, who is in the midst of a promising resurgence, first from a slump in 2022 that cost him a seat with McLaren and then from an injury that paused a comeback with AlphaTauri in the middle of last season. “He’s incredibly focused and motivated. What he brings to the team in terms of energy, technical sensitivity and speed represents a huge opportunity for us.”

Mekies also sees a bright future for Tsunoda, now in his fourth season with the team. “Yuki has surprised us every year,” he says. “With Daniel as his teammate, he has an incredible opportunity to go to the next step. Putting them together is going to push the team very hard to give them the car they need to be more competitive. As a combination, it’s as good as it gets.”

For Bayer, it all adds up to a heady brew he believes is potent enough to allow the team to dream big in 2024. “On the sporting side, top of the midfield for this year—that’s what we are targeting,” he says. “And I really do believe this team has everything we need to go even further in the future.”

It’s a sentiment echoed by the team’s veteran driver, a guy who knows just what it takes to win in F1. “There are a lot of new personnel, some big partners coming on board,” says Ricciardo. “The team has always taken itself seriously, but I feel like this is another step up. It’s no longer just a platform for Red Bull Racing. It’s a time for us to fight at the front of the midfield.”

That’s the big bet that was on full display in Las Vegas. Now it’s time for fans to sit back and see how it pays off.

KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON

Fast, fiery and frequently foul-mouthed, Yuki Tsunoda has been a force of nature in F1. But now, for his new-look team and new bosses, the Japanese driver says he’s determined to present a calmer, more consistent side.

There are more than a few Yuki Tsunoda highlight reels that have more f-bombs than Joe Pesci in Goodfellas. Off the track he might be unfailingly funny, charming and polite, but once the racing begins, it’s different. There, the phenomenally quick Japanese driver has blown his stack many times, with slights real and imagined setting off a fusillade of expletives.

Mention his colorful radio traffic and Tsunoda’s face crinkles into a brief smile before more careful reflections emerge. “I don’t know why, but this stupid right thumb is

Will Cornelius/Red Bull Content Pool

just always pressing the radio button,” he laughs. “You know, in the second half of the season I tried to be calmer, because I understand better how important it is to be calm and how unnecessary it is for the engineers if I shout on the radio. They just want to hear feedback about the car or the tires. Obviously, when I have frustrating moments I still shout but I’m trying to reduce it.”

In that same vein of blunt honesty and selfimprovement, Tsunoda says he’s working hard to deliver more consistently during races. “It’s not easy to put 100 percent into every lap, and if I look back to 2022, some of the races, especially when the car wasn’t performing well and I started like in P16, it put my mindset back slightly,” he admits. “I didn’t like that feeling. So last year I tried to give 100 percent effort every time. It wasn’t easy because it is mentally tough, and at the end of the season I felt mentally and physically exhausted. But I felt much happier because I’d given it all. It was more consistent. And that’s the target for this year—more consistency.”

The affable and mercurial Tsunoda, who turns 24 in May, fnished in the top 10 six times last year, scoring 17 points to complete the season in 14th place in the driver rankings.

Many observers would say that Tsunoda is under pressure to deliver in 2024. This season will be his fourth on the squad now rebranded as Visa Cash App RB F1 Team, and though often hamstrung by uncompetitive machinery, he has yet to fully deliver on what legendarily hard-toplease Red Bull motorsport adviser Helmut Marko once called “unbelievable basic speed.” In his 63 races with the team to the end of 2023, the 23-year-old driver has a highest finish of fourth—at the 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix— and has scored just 61 points.

The pressure is heightened by the presence in the wings of Red Bull Racing reserve driver Liam Lawson. The 21-year-old New Zealander put in an impressive pointscoring five-race stint with AlphaTauri, filling in for an injured Daniel Ricciardo last fall. But despite the polemics about competition between the three drivers in the paddock, Tsunoda quickly dismisses the notion that suddenly it’s crunch time.

“For me every year is crucial,” he says. “Everyone knows that my contract is year to year, so I’ve gotten used to it being crucial. Yes, this season will be important, but I’m more focused on what I want to improve and how I can enjoy this more.”

Tsunoda also is insistent that there’s no cage match brewing with Ricciardo. In fact, the young racer believes he has a lot to learn from his more experienced teammate. “He’s fast and it’s not easy [to beat him],” Tsunoda says. “His approach to race weeks is different, but there are lots of things I can learn from him. For example, a thing I learned from Daniel when he joined our team last year is that he’s really, really relaxed. He’s always calm and always gives the engineers really accurate, consistent feedback. He’s a good reference.”

Tsunoda is being authentically modest. So he does not mention that his “unbelievable speed” saw him outqualify Ricciardo—notoriously good over a single lap himself—in four of their seven races together last season. “That’s just what I have to do all the time,” he laughs. “I just have to be competitive—competitive throughout the week and the season. I just want to score points as much as possible.”

And so Tsunoda will carry on, and (try to) keep calm. “Yes! Honestly, at some point it will come naturally,” he says. “But there are some things I can’t change, you know. Once I put on the helmet and I’m in the car, I change, right?”

That’s Yuki Tsunoda—still fast, still fiery, always himself. —J.H.

GASTORE

GASTORE

MAX VERSTAPPEN ONLY CARES ABOUT ONE THING

The Dutchman’s racing gifts are undeniably extraordinary, but with a fourth F1 title in his sights, the champion’s most potent and underappreciated talent may be his ability to keep things simple.

WORDS BY JUSTIN HYNES ILLUSTRATION BY DALE EDWIN MURRAY

Superstar, generational talent, GOAT-in-the-making. When you search for superlatives to describe Max Verstappen’s career to date, it’s impossible to avoid mythology. But it’s understandable. After all, what’s left for the 26-year-old Dutchman to achieve?

In 2023, he cruised to the Formula 1 drivers’ championship for the third time in a row, winning 19 of the 22 races—a record number of wins for a season, joining such legends as Ayrton Senna, Jackie Stewart and Niki Lauda with three titles. Along the way, he set a new mark for most consecutive wins, with a 10-race streak from Miami to Monza, helped his team break a 35-year-old record for consecutive team wins in a season and banked the most points ever in a single campaign.

Drill down a little more and the stats somehow get even more impressive. In Belgium, at the fearsome Spa-Francorchamps circuit, Verstappen qualified on pole, took a grid penalty for changing a gearbox, started sixth, passed his teammate, Sergio Pérez, for the lead on Lap 17—and 27 laps later won the race by 22 seconds. In Qatar, he took the season title with five rounds to go.

With such singular achievements it’s easy to buy into the notion that the Oracle Red Bull Racing driver is blessed with superhuman powers, some kind of freakish genetic superiority passed on to him by his F1-driver father, Jos, and kart-champion mother, Sophie Kumpen.

Verstappen is the first to dispute that narrative. “I don’t have a defined approach, a process I go through,” he says. “I just do my thing and move on. It’s not rocket science at the end of the day. I’ve been doing this my whole life.”

This blunt dismissal of a juicy storyline offers deep insight into what lies at the heart of Verstappen’s machine-like dominance. And that is simplicity.

There’s nothing Verstappen likes doing more than driving fast cars fast. And the fastest around are Formula 1 cars. If access to that machinery means navigating a riotous circus populated by fairground barkers, then so be it. Just don’t expect him to enter the ring.

That much was clear at the inaugural Las Vegas Grand Prix, where Verstappen, with brutal honesty, refused to embrace the showbiz nature of the race, insisting that while he understood the imperatives around the event, it’s not a trajectory he’s keen on. “Of course, a kind of show element is important, but I like

emotion,” he said. “And for me, when I was a little kid, it was about the emotion of the sport. [That’s] what I fell in love with, not the show of the sport around it. Because as a real racer, that shouldn’t really matter.”

Daniel Ricciardo, winner of eight grand prix and former teammate of Verstappen’s at Red Bull Racing, says the Dutchman’s ability to shut out the noise that increasingly accompanies the sport and focus on the thing he does best is one of his secret weapons.

“That’s Max’s strength,” says the Visa Cash App RB driver. “It’s personal to Max, though. If you look at Lewis Hamilton, one of his strengths is dealing with a lot of the extracurricular activity. He embraces it and uses those as a way to escape and get a little bit of a mental break. But Max has the single-mindedness just to go and drive and not care about anything else.”

“I think that’s also very admirable, because there are so many distractions in Formula 1 these days,” the Australian adds. “I’m sure he has so many people knocking on his door, wanting to pay him to do deals and endorsements. And he probably tells 99 percent of them to keep their money and says ‘I just want to race my car.’ You can’t help but respect him for keeping it simple and focusing on the one and only task.”

And his untrammeled devotion to that cause means that there’s very little to get in the way of winning, something Sergio Pérez, his current teammate, knows all too well. “Max is just able to deliver, weekend in, weekend out,“ Pérez says. “It doesn’t matter what conditions he [is faced with], the level of confidence he has with the car at this stage is extremely high. And we see it with the results. He’s just able to deliver.”

Two-time F1 champion Fernando Alonso—perhaps the only driver Verstappen has admitted to feeling any competitive affinity with—agrees, pointing to last season’s schedule as evidence. “They were not easy races—they were tricky with the weather conditions,” Alonso says. “In June and July, all the races were hit by rain on Saturdays or Sundays. And when you make no mistakes and you deliver the job every Sunday, you know, it’s big respect.”

Verstappen’s drive for simplicity extends beyond the cockpit. In that vein, Ricciardo says that the public perception of Verstappen as a hyperaggressive antagonist with a short fuse

Smiles, hardware and champagne: Snapshots of Verstappen enjoying

“I’ve never really been interested in stats. I just live in the moment.”

and an even shorter tolerance for rules is at odds with the driver he knows so well.

“There’s definitely a bit of a misconception about him,” says Ricciardo. “For sure, when he was younger, yeah. All of us are a bit more outspoken then, but you’re just young, right? But he’s really one of the more simple, down-to-earth guys away from the track. And one thing I respect about him is he doesn’t really ever put himself above anyone. It’s not like he has this air of arrogance about him. He doesn’t go by the whole status thing. He still sees himself as Max the race car driver, not Max the multimillionaire Formula 1 champion. And I think that’s what people maybe don’t see. He treats everyone with respect.”

And again, for Ricciardo, that straightforward nature goes back to Verstappen’s formative years, his singular desire and ability to just drive. Ricciardo saw that in his first race with Verstappen as his teammate, at the Spanish Grand Prix in 2016. At the time Verstappen was just 18, with just one full season of F1

racing under his belt and had been parachuted into Red Bull Racing just 10 days before the race in Barcelona.

“I remember, first free practice, it was like he got in the car and went fast straightaway,” Ricciardo recalls. “Yes, his ability to drive fast was clear, but it was more than that. He just wasn’t fazed. He just didn’t really give a shit. He’s like, ‘yep, I’m now in a great car, I’m going to go and drive it hard and just take it one lap at a time.’ So yeah, immediately I was like, ‘OK, this kid’s got something and he clearly isn’t overwhelmed by it all.’ And that’s Max all over. All he wants to do is drive … and drive it on the ragged edge.”

And now in 2024, Verstappen’s voyage to the edge of possibility in F1 will continue. The target this time is to become just the sixth driver in the history of the sport to reach four titles. That sort of stat won’t change the Dutchman’s mindset. “I’ve never really been interested in stats,” Verstappen said after winning his second title. “I just live in the moment.”

every single one of his 19 wins from his dominant 2023 campaign.

Getty Images/Red Bull Content Pool

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SPICE IT UP

Jump into the season with a refreshing, nonalcoholic cocktail featuring Red Bull’s newest favor: Summer Edition Curuba Elderfower.

Inspired by the sweet and sour notes of Curuba Elderflower, mixologist Evie Negri-Albert crafted an energizing n/a cocktail just in time for warmer weather. “Right off the bat, I knew I wanted to do something

bright and fresh,” she says. Here, she uses watermelon and pineapple juice to complement the subtle fruity and floral flavors of the new Summer Edition, plus a hint of basil and a touch of jalapeño to spice things up.

RECIPE

SPICY MELON FIZZ

Ingredients:

3 oz watermelon juice

1 oz pineapple juice

2 jalapeño slices  4-6 basil leaves

2 oz Red Bull Summer Edition Curuba Elderfower

Garnish: 2 pineapple fronds, watermelon ball/cube

Optional alcohol: 2 oz tequila or split-base mezcal/tequila

Directions: Combine watermelon juice, pineapple juice and jalapeño slices in a cocktail shaker and muddle. Add basil and gently muddle again. Add ice and shake until chilled. Strain into glass over fresh ice. Top with the Red Bull Summer Edition Curuba Elderfower. Garnish with 2 pineapple fronds and a watermelon cube.

Evie Negri-Albert, also known as Drinks by Evie on Instagram and TikTok, is a recipe developer and content creator who specializes in innovative and approachable twists on classic cocktails.

Lew Roberston, Jamie Pearl

“Pipeline’s for the f*cking girls.

That’s all I have to say.”

Pro surfer Caitlin Simmers, 18, made this proclamation seconds after a spectacular win at the Lexus Pipe Pro in February. While the best male pros have competed at the Banzai Pipeline break on Oahu’s North Shore since 1971,

it had not hosted an elite pro event for women until a few years ago. The performance put on by Simmers and her fellow pros on one 8-foot barrel after another punctuates that the women are exactly where they belong.

DON’T SKIRT A CHALLENGE WHEN YOU CAN FACE IT HEAD-ON.

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”.

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.

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

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 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? LEARN

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 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?

WIIINGS FOR YOUR SUMMER.