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F1 GOES TO THE MOVIES
world’s best
ACTION SHOTS
17-page photo Special
september 2013
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THE WORLD OF RED BULL
September 24
the dracula rally
Four days and 600km across Transylvania for the world’s hardest off-road enduro motorcycle race
Welcome
Franz Ferdinand say hi: page 94
You probably haven’t been in an outrigger canoe. They look like a cross between a kayak and half a catamaran, and cut across the ocean at tremendous speed. Every year, at the Olamau Race around Hawaii’s Big Island, the world’s best oarsmen and women push these boats, and themselves, to the limit. Our gripping story of the race is just one of the highlights of this month’s issue. Most eye-catching is our portfolio of winning images from the Red Bull Illume action and adventure photography contest. We’ve also got an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at Rush, the movie that retells one of the all-time great sporting rivalries: “ Kanye West came to our James Hunt v Niki Lauda for the 1976 F1 title. All shows and said he was a fan. that, plus future stars of sport and music, and Now we’re fans of his and his much more. We hope you enjoy the issue. tweets are amazing as well” 04
the red bulletin
THE WORLD OF RED BULL
at a glance Bullevard 08 news Sport and culture on the quick 12 Where’s your head at? Stephen King 14 kit evolution Microphones 16 me and my body Manu Vatuvei 20 winning formula The science behind a sprinter’s acceleration 22 lucky numbers Global stat attack
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Features 24 Red Bull Romaniacs
WAVE WArriors
Across Transylvania in the world’s hardest enduro motorcycle race
It’s not all about the surfers in the waters off the coast of Hawaii. Outrigger canoeists take their turn for a punishing, pulsating race
34 Taming The Ocean
New Zealand’s young yachting talent
37 Shots Of Adrenalin
Cover Photography: sean lee/Red Bull Illume. Photography: Predrag Vuckovic/Red Bull Content Pool, Andy Knowles, Chris Baldwin, Brian Smith, Getty Images, Zak Noyle/Red Bull Illume, ATP Bildagentur Muenchen
The 2013 Red Bull Illume action and adventure sports photo contest
54 Heroic Survivor
Matt Damon on carving out a career and saving the world
60 Fat Freddy’s Drop
88 get the gear
American wakeboarder Parks Bonifay reveals how his bespoke kit allows him to innovate and exceed expectations
92 on location in sao paulo
Brazilian supermodel Viviane Orth leads the way through her top five home-city haunts – including its best burger joint
In the studio with NZ’s big band
66 The Hot Stepper Running up the Empire State Building 68 Suburban Hymns NZ singer-songwriter Anthonie Tonnon 70 F1 At The Movies Exclusive interview with Ron Howard, director of Hunt-v-Lauda film Rush
76 Dire Straits
The perils and pain of a four-day canoe race around the coast of Hawaii
Action
37 world’s best images
From backflips in the surf to airtime with the birds: the incredible winning entries in the 2013 Red Bull Illume photo contest the red bulletin
70 Rush: first great F1 Movie?
Niki Lauda’s epic battle with James Hunt for the 1976 F1 title hits the big screen, with Ron Howard in the director’s chair
88 89 90 91 92 94 96 98
get the gear A wakeboarder’s kit party Lesser-known Amsterdam travel Skydiving off Mount Everest training Get fit for pit stops My City A supermodel’s Sao Paulo Playlist Franz Ferdinand save the Date Events for your diary time warp Waterskiing in the ’60s
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contributors Who’s on board this issue
The Red Bulletin New Zealand, ISSN 2079-4274
The Red Bulletin is published by Red Bull Media House GmbH
Robert anasi
Sean Lee This month’s cover shot, of British mountain biker Luke Ball cutting up the course in Mundaring, Australia, is a finalist in the Red Bull Illume action photo competition. A very grand total of 28,257 shots, taken by 6,417 lensmen and women, vied for glory in the largest contest of its kind in the world. Australian snapper Lee should be very proud that his excellent eye took him into the top 250. See the winning images, starting on page 37.
rüdiger sturm So, Mr Sturm, in the 11 years since you first interviewed the Hollywood star Matt Damon, is there anything that hasn’t changed about him? “Only three things: openness, that great, self-deprecating attitude and his boyish face.” That first meeting took place at the Cannes Film Festival, and afterwards Damon gifted the German a bottle of rosé. No alcohol changed hands in the making of this new article, but the pair raised a proverbial glass to a host of topics: death, glory and all things between. It’s on page 54.
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The American writer’s book The Gloves: A Boxing Chronicle detailed his time as an amateur pugilist and earned him comparisons with Norman Mailer. His willingness to really get going when the going gets tough, and then to write about it brilliantly, made him the ideal man to document the Olamau Race for The Red Bulletin. Anasi’s gripping report of the three-day, 101-mile canoe contest around the north tip of Hawaii’s Big Island, is on page 76.
General Manager Wolfgang Winter Publisher Franz Renkin Editor-in-Chief Robert Sperl Deputy Editor-in-Chief Alexander Macheck Editor Paul Wilson Creative Director Erik Turek Art Directors Kasimir Reimann, Miles English Chief Photo Editor Fritz Schuster Production Editor Marion Wildmann Chief Sub-Editor Nancy James Deputy Chief Sub-Editor Joe Curran Assistant Editors Robert Tighe, Ulrich Corazza, Werner Jessner, Ruth Morgan, Florian Obkircher, Arek Pia˛tek, Andreas Rottenschlager, Daniel Kudernatsch (app), Christoph Rietner (app) Contributing Editor Stefan Wagner Design Martina de Carvalho-Hutter, Silvia Druml, Kevin Goll, Carita Najewitz, Esther Straganz Chief Photo Editor Fritz Schuster Photo Editors Susie Forman (Creative Photo Editor), Ellen Haas, Eva Kerschbaum, Catherine Shaw, Rudi Übelhör Repro Managers Clemens Ragotzky (manager), Karsten Lehmann, Josef Mühlbacher Head of Production Michael Bergmeister
HERBERT VöLKER To interview the director Ron Howard, on the occasion of his new film Rush, we could pick no one better than the venerable Völker. Rush tells the dramatic story of the climax to the 1976 Formula One season, in which James Hunt and Niki Lauda duelled for the title in once-in-alifetime circumstances. One of all sport’s most incredible tales, the Austrian writer has greater insight into it than most, having known Lauda for many years and ghostwritten Lauda’s brilliant autobiography, To Hell And Back. He and Howard hit it off; the results are on page 70.
Production Wolfgang Stecher (manager), Walter O Sádaba, Christian Graf-Simpson (app) Advertising Enquiries Brad Morgan, brad.morgan@nz.redbull.com Printed by PMP Print, 30 Birmingham Drive, Riccarton, 8024 Christchurch Finance Siegmar Hofstetter, Simone Mihalits Marketing & Country Management Barbara Kaiser (manager), Stefan Ebner, Stefan Hötschl, Elisabeth Salcher, Lukas Scharmbacher, Sara Varming Distribution Klaus Pleninger, Peter Schiffer Marketing Design Julia Schweikhardt, Peter Knethl Advertising Placement Sabrina Schneider O∞ce Management Manuela Gesslbauer, Kristina Krizmanic, Anna Schober
The Red Bulletin is published in Austria, Brazil, France, Germany, Ireland, Kuwait, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa, Switzerland, UK and USA Website www.redbulletin.com Head office Red Bull Media House GmbH, Oberst-Lepperdinger-Strasse 11-15, A-5071 Wals bei Salzburg, FN 297115i, Landesgericht Salzburg, ATU63611700 New Zealand office 27 Mackelvie Street, Grey Lynn, Auckland 1021 +64 (0) 9 551 6180
“Matt Damon still has a great, self-deprecating attitude” Rüdiger sturm
Austria office Heinrich-Collin-Strasse 1, A-1140 Vienna, +43 (1) 90221 28800 Write to us: email letters@redbulletin.com
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EVERYTHING SPORT. NEWS, PICTURES AND GREAT STORIES. CALL 0800 759 759 TO SUBSCRIBE
Bullevard Sport and culture on the quick
Attack! There are more than 1,000 different martial arts, ranging from the oldest – wrestling in ancient Egypt – to today’s most widely practised, taekwondo. Four of the rarer varieties:
BOKATOR, Cambodia The clue to its toughness, to both study and endure it, is in the name, which means ‘pounding lions’.
DAMBE, West Africa Boxing with some kicks and holds, once only practised by butchers (of meat) due to their lowly status.
SHADOW MAKER One man creates 3D paintings just for the drill of it Andrew Myers takes a long look at his unpainted ‘canvases’ and then says to himself, “Screw it.” That’s because the 33-year-old artist, born in Germany, raised in Spain and now based in Laguna Beach, California makes portraits with paint, brush and a drill. He bores thousands of holes into plywood boards, which can measure 2ft square up to 4ft square (61cm to 1.2m) and are usually papered with pages from the phonebook. He then twists screws into the holes, at varying heights so as to create a 3D landscape of a face. Myers then paints the screwheads, adding shadows to augment real ones cast by the screws. The face is so accurate that the blind can feel it. www.andrewmyersart.com
kalaripayattu, India Total mastery of unarmed and armed combat; near-doctor-like understanding of the body. Easy.
phototicker
EVERY shot ON TARGET
Have you taken a picture with a Red Bull flavour? Email it to us at: phototicker@redbulletin.com BARTITSU, England Jujutsu-boxing hybrid requiring followers (Sherlock Holmes was one) to be tasty with a walking stick.
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Every month we print a selection, with our favourite pic awarded a limited-edition Sigg bottle. Tough, functional and well-suited to sport, it features The Red Bulletin logo.
Zadar Water polo with a current: three against three in a Croatian harbour at Red Bull Sidrun. Marjan Radovic
the red bulletin
MVP to PM
It is said that sport and politics should not mix. Try telling these athletes turned politicians
Photography: dominique tardY, Sunday Alamba, picturedesk.com, Andrew Myers, getty images (4)
Third time around: the new Red Bull Kart Fighter
Vitali Klitschko The reigning WBC boxing world champ entered the Ukrainian Parliament in 2012 as leader of the UDAR Party.
Play your karts right The reviews (and our many hours of playing) confirm it: Red Bull Kart Fighter 3 – Unbeaten Tracks is not only the best in the series, it’s also one of the best topdown racing games for smartphone and tablet. This third version has new karts and tracks on which you can race your friends online. In the game, as in real life, you need to be on good terms with the mechanic. He sets career goals, can tune your kart with his wild-card add-ons and has a whole load of race-winning tricks up his sleeve. Kart until your fingers creak. Red Bull Kart Fighter 3 – Unbeaten Tracks is out now for Android and Apple iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.
Free download: games. redbull.com
GIANNI RIVERA Won the European Cup with AC Milan in 1963 and 1969 before becoming a member of both the Italian and European parliaments.
BILL BRADLEY Two NBA titles with the Knicks, one Olympic gold with the USA, 18 years a US senator with the Democrats (’78-’97).
She’s Next Hollywood up-n-comer Sharni Vinson on the perils of pokers and being behind the internet Swimming pool, school, swimming pool. That was Sharni Vinson’s teenage daily routine. But the Australian decided against a life as a professional sportswoman and went for acting instead. Now the 30-year-old combines both passions in sporty roles: dancing her way through Step Up 3D and fighting off bloodthirsty home invaders in You’re Next, a rare horror-comedy that is both frightening and funny. the red bulletin: How do you prepare for your roles? sharni vinson: This time it was martial arts training. As it was part of my role to constantly knock people out with a fire poker, I had to learn how to twirl it like
a baton, things like that. That was really entertaining. Do you find it hard to slip into your film roles? When we were shooting You’re Next, we were living in a motel in the middle of nowhere. I was so into my role that I even slept with a knife under my pillow. “I hope no stranger comes knocking,” I thought. For his own safety. There is a photo blog devoted to your feet. Is that shocking or flattering? Are you serious? That’s funny. They might need to update their pictures because I just got a tattoo on my foot, my first-ever tattoo. The website is out of date now.
You’re Next is on worldwide release: facebook.com/YoureNextTheMovie
Just axe natural: Sharni Vinson
WE HAVE A WINNER!
Yalta B-Boys Iron Monkey, Kosto and Menno strut their stuff in Ukraine. Sergey Illin the red bulletin
Malcesine
Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series participants salute their Italian fans down below. Dean Treml
Tokyo In the city’s Zounahana Park for Red Bull Pump Jam, BMX riders hit a bumpy patch. Hiroyuki Orihara
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Bullevard
Big draw: Secret Walls
Battle lines Two artists, two blank canvases and 90 minutes on the clock. That’s the format of live art battle Secret Walls. The first Secret Walls took place in London in 2006 and events are now held in over 25 countries. Artists can only use black paint and black markers; two judges and the roar of the crowd decide a winner. The NZ edition launched earlier this year and the next battle is at Cassette 9 in Auckland on September 18 where graffiti artist Haser will take on pop artist Shine Darlington. www.secretwallsnz.co.nz
Roots Manoeuvre
The ringmaster of the Fly My Pretties travelling road show looks forward to this month’s tour
Red Bull Youth America’s Cup
Chasing waves Will Tiller has spent almost as much of his 2013 in the air as on water. The Auckland sailor has competed in the Extreme Sailing Series in Oman, Singapore, China and Portugal. This month Tiller, 23, will be in San Francisco as the skipper of FMJ Racing, one of two NZ teams in the Red Bull Youth America’s Cup. “It’s going to be a spectacular event,” he says. “Ten boats on the start line, all charging for that first marker.” His season will end with regattas in France and Brazil. www.americascup.com
Munich Belgian BASE-jumper Cédric Dumont (right): unlikely golf champion of King Of Greens. Phil Pham 10
The first Fly My Pretties show in Wellington in 2004 was little more than an experiment according to Barnaby Weir, the man who unwittingly spawned a New Zealand institution. Nine years later, The Black Seeds frontman is preparing for another nationwide tour with a handpicked cast of musicians that includes Anika Moa, Ria Hall and Louis McDonald of Five Mile Town. the red bulletin: What can we expect from this year’s show? Barnaby Weir: It’s music from people who you love and the usual mix of folk, roots, soul and rock. The first half of the show will be new songs and the second half is a medley of some older Fly My Pretties tracks. How do you select the cast? I like to work with musicians who inspire me and are a little bit different. It’s risky, but it always comes together. You have to have faith in the artists you’ve invited that they will write some good songs and get into the spirit of things. Who would be in your ultimate jam band? I’d have Kevin Parker from Tame Impala, Beastie Boys, Chuck D from Public Enemy, D’Angelo on guitar, De La Soul, Emmylou Harris and the late JJ Cale. www.flymypretties.com
Atlanta Clearing 7m on a bike was no biggie for US rider Ronnie Renner at Red Bull Raising The Bar. Robert Snow
Dallas Erykah Badu gets a rousing hometown
reception at Red Bull Sound Select Presents Dallas. Gary Miller the red bulletin
Photography: till weigl, balazs gardi/red bull content pool, big rig productions
Hitting the road: Barnaby Weir is doing 19 NZ shows
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© Jörg Mitter
LI K E WHAT YOU LI K E
YOUR MOMENT.
BEYOND THE ORDINARY
Bullevard
Where’s Your Head At?
Stephen King
As he returns – well, he’s never really been away – with a sequel to one of his most famous books, we go inside the mind of a great storyteller
To E Or Not To E
In 2000, the first massmarket ebook is King’s Riding The Bullet. “I’m curious to see… whether or not this is the future,” he said. In 2013, his novel Joyland, like Bullet, themepark themed, is print-only: “Let people stir their sticks and go to an actual bookstore.”
Clayt Starter
Stephen Edwin King was born in Portland, Maine, USA on September 21, 1947. As a boy, his Uncle Clayt’s dowsing showed him the “shield of rationality” could be “laid aside”. Aged 12 or 13, a box of his father’s old paperbacks (King Sr was a failed story writer) opened his mind further.
Shine On
Worst Fears Come True
King’s Cujo (1981) and Christine (1983) are evil dog and evil car novels, respectively. In 1999, Bryan Smith, distracted by his pet dog, drove into King, out walking. “Our lives came together in a strange way,” said King, of Smith, who died a year later. “I’m grateful I didn’t die. I’m sorry he’s gone.”
Adapt Question
There are 79 TV and film versions of King’s work, including the greatest film ever, says film-fan democracy IMDB – The Shawshank Redemption – and current US TV hit Under The Dome. A third movie of Carrie (there’s also The Rage: Carrie 2) appears next month.
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Behind Every Great Man
The Fall 1966 edition of Startling Mystery Stories has The Glass Floor, King’s first published story. He was paid $35. In 1973, his wife, Tabitha, took a draft of a novel about a psychic teen out of King’s bin and told him to try again; a year later, paperback rights for Carrie sold for $400,000.
www.stephenking.com the red bulletin
Words: Paul Wilson. Illustration: Ryan Inzana
Out this month, Doctor Sleep, King’s 42nd solo novel, is a sequel to his third, The Shining. The boy Danny, now all grown up, meets a girl with the greatest telepathic ‘shining’ gift of all. Now stop thinking of Jack Nicholson gurning though a splintered door. Impossible.
illustration: dietmar kainrath
Bullevard
the red bulletin
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Bullevard
kit evolution
shout out The original King of microphones has sired a device with only the barest connection to the past (and no wires)
THE LOOK
Futuristic and hard wearing thanks to a chrome-plated steel alloy casing. At 1.4kg, the 55SH was the lightest top-end mic of its time: its predecessor weighed 3.3kg.
FLIP IT
The 55SH had a three-way switch to regulate impedance, the sound generated by vibration. Today’s audio gear has very low impedance; back then, with a long mic cable, and therefore more molecules vibrating, you had to choose the low-impedance setting.
1951
With the 55 series, designer Ben Bauer created the first true unidirectional microphones. As long as the voice was in the right place, the sounds around it were not picked up.
Shure 55SH
In 1939, Shure engineer Ben Bauer’s drive to make a microphone free of feedback and background noise resulted in the Shure 55SH. Shure mics quickly became standard kit used in radio broadcast, live music and public speaking. When John F Kennedy promised to put a man on the moon and Martin Luther King said he had a dream, a Shure ensured the world could listen.
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EVERY WHICH WAY
Elvis Presley used the 55SH model so often that it is now known as the Elvis Mic
the red bulletin
HARD HAT
Like the 55SH, the SM58 Digital has a chrome-plated steel skin. Today’s vocalists can be a little less serene than their predecessors: this grille can be dented and the mic still works perfectly.
IT’S ALIVE!
The fully charged battery lasts for about 16 hours. It has a lifetime of 10,000 hours – about 5,000 gigs, with decent encores.
SWITCH CHANNELS
Words: Florian Obkircher. Photography: kurt keinrath, Corbis, GEtty Images
The mic transmits to a base station receiver, which can be anything up to 60m away. If another device interrupts the frequency, there is seamless switching, of both mic and base, to another frequency.
2013
Shure SM58 DIGITAL
The SM58 mic came on the market in 1966. First used in concerts by The Rolling Stones and The Who, it quickly established a presence on stages everywhere. This metallic gherkin is the best-selling live-performance microphone in the world: it’s easy to use and the sound is clear. This month sees the release of a long-awaited update: a wireless digital version, complete with automatic frequency management and smart battery technology.
the red bulletin
Justin Timberlake used a wireless SM58 when performing live at the Grammys in February 2013 www.shure.com
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Bullevard
ME AND MY BODY
Manu Vatuvei
GOLDEN CHILD
3
Gold teeth are a Tongan thing and I got mine done the first time I visited my relatives in Tonga in 2002. My auntie gave me a couple of her rings and I melted them down and capped two of my front teeth as a souvenir.
Nicknamed The Beast, the 27-year-old rugby league winger from New Zealand has a soft spot for pies and a hard time getting to sleep
NEEDLE WORK
1 GRUB DOWN
4
Since getting my first tattoo, the Tongan shield, on my shoulder, I’ve had two koi – because I’m a Pisces – a dragon, a lion, an angel, my surname, kids’ names, parents’ names and verses from the scriptures.
I put on weight easily and the food I like doesn’t help: chop suey, taro, corned beef and pies. My playing weight this year is 108kg and it’s the lightest I’ve been. I’ve still got my strength, but I’ve gained more speed.
2 BROKEN MAN
My body is pretty beat up after 10 years in the game. I’ve torn ligaments in my right ankle and both knees. I’ve broken my left leg, ribs and arm, dislocated my shoulder and chipped a bone in my wrist.
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www.warriors.co.nz
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the red bulletin
words: Robert Tighe. photography: Nic Staveley
SHUT EYE
After a game, I struggle to sleep. I’m shattered and sore, but the adrenalin kicks in after a few hours and sometimes I stay up all night playing video games. I’m into Call of Duty: Black Ops II at the moment.
AUCKLAND
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Bullevard
HArd & FAST
Top performers and winning ways from around the globe
Ronnie Renner of the USA took gold in Moto X Step Up, the motorcycle ‘pole vault’, at the X Games in LA, clearing the bar at 11.7m.
Dressed for success: Dan Gosling (left) and Marc Moore of Stolen Girlfriends Club
Colombian cliff-diving master Orlando Duque beat the UK’s Gary Hunt by just 0.9 points in Barcelona to win the first-ever FINA High Diving World Championship.
Carissa Moore rode the waves to victory at the US Open of Surfing in Huntington Beach, the Hawaiian’s third on the ASP tour this year.
Think Again Stolen Girlfriends Club suggest that you expect the unexpected ahead of their show at New Zealand Fashion Week Even a couple of years after the fashion label Stolen Girlfriends Club launched in 2005, its founders felt that other New Zealand fashion designers considered them to be cowboys. “He still rides a horse,” says Dan Gosling, of his co-creator Marc Moore, before laughing. “We’re just a pair of gunslingers.” Their rivals’ sneering came because the three surfing buddies behind the label had no formal training in business or fashion. “We still wing it a lot,” admits Marc Moore. “The cowboy tag doesn’t apply so much now because we’ve been doing this for eight years. We’re a lot more professional and mature.” Now in their mid-30s, Moore, Gosling and Luke Harwood – the third member of the SGC crew, now based in New York – have built a brand that is sold in 13 countries. Pop’s top ladies love it: Beyoncé, Florence Welch of Florence & The Machine and Lykke Li are among the customers. This month, SGC are taking part in New Zealand Fashion Week with a runway show in the unlikely surrounds of the car park of the Red Bull offices in Ponsonby. “We like to spring some surprises,” says Moore. “It’s not always only about the clothes with us; it’s about the whole experience. A couple of years ago we had the male models walk out of portaloos. You don’t want it to be too gimmicky, but you’ve got to entertain people. That’s what fashion is about for us.” www.stolengirlfriendsclub.com
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the red bulletin
Photography: michael ng, gepa pictures/red bull content pool, dean treml/red bull content pool, garth milan/red bull content pool, getty images. illustration: dietmar Kainrath
At the MotoGP in Laguna Seca, USA, Spanish rookie Marc Márquez overtook pole-position starter Stefan Bradl of Germany for the win.
RED BULL TROLLEY GRAND PRIX 2013. WHERE GENIUS MEETS RIDICULOUS.
AUCKLAND DOMAIN NOV 10 TH
Bullevard
winning formula
The Art of start
LIGHT BULB MOMENT “At major athletics meetings,” says physicist and sports scientist Dr Martin Apolin, “each starting block has its own loudspeaker. At 20°C, the speed of sound is about 342m per second. If the starter is inside and the starting signal comes from the pistol alone, the runner in the outside lane hears the bang 3/100s after the runner in the inside lane – an eternity in sprinting. Therefore the sound is transmitted through speakers without time delay. “In Fig. 1 we see a schematic rendering of the course of horizontal forces in effect when a runner is leaving the blocks. It clearly shows why you should put the stronger leg forward in the starting block. Here, force equals mass times acceleration, F =ma. Acceleration is the rate of change in velocity over time, a= Δv/Δt. And so we get F = mΔv/Δt and thus FΔt = mΔv. “The value of force multiplied by time is called momentum. The momentum corresponds to the area under the curves in Fig. 1 and is responsible for the ‘lift-off speed’ Δv of the sprinter out of the blocks. The momentum of the lead leg is much greater than the trailing leg because it is less stretched in the starting position (Fig. 2) and leaves the block later. That’s why the lead leg should be the stronger. “From the reaction setting in to the detachment of the feet takes around 0.3s. World-class athletes fly out of the blocks at around 4m/s, which equates to about 30 per cent of later maximum velocity. Acceleration at the start can be estimated with a = Δv/Δt = (4m/s)/0.3s ≈ 13.5m/s² If a sprinter could maintain this acceleration, which of course is impossible, he or she would accelerate from 0 to 100kph (27.8m/s) in about two seconds! “But how do you guarantee a fair start to a race? At major meetings, the starting blocks are fitted with dynamometers. Studies have shown that humans cannot react to acoustic stimuli faster than 0.12s. To be safe, world athletics’ governing body, the IAAF, shaved off another 2/100s and so a spike in force within 0.10s is defined as a false start. A sprinter has then ‘started in the shot’, as the electronics incorruptibly demonstrate.” LIGHTNING MAN If he can be said to have a weakness, then Usain Bolt, the fastest human being of all-time, isn’t the best of starters. He false-started out of the 100m final at the 2011 World Championships, and lost the Jamaican Olympic trials last year because he was too slow out of the blocks. “The more I focused on it, I think the worse it got,” he said on the eve of the London Olympics. “So I sat down with my coach. He said stop worrying about the start and compete.” Three subsequent golds suggest he got his head around it. www.usainbolt.com
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Words: Martin Apolin. Photography: getty images. Illustration: Mandy Fischer
Top sprinters accelerate from the blocks at a rate that would see them do 0-100kph in two seconds. Here’s how, says our speed scientist
Blocks party: top sprinters like Usain Bolt can explode out of the starting blocks at up to 4m per second
Bullevard
Lucky Numbers
around the world Globetrotters and circumnavigators through the ages
Jules Verne’s book Around The World In Eighty Days was published in 1873. An eccentric American businessman claimed he was the model for Phileas Fogg: George Francis Train travelled the world three years earlier and had a similarly eventful trip, getting to know Japanese etiquette and the inside of a French prison.
1,426
Graham Hughes visited all 201 countries recognised by the UN, beginning in his hometown of Liverpool, England, on January 1, 2009, and finishing his epic tour in Juba, the capital of South Sudan, on November 26, 2012. Not once in those 1,426 days did he fly. A Russian visa snafu is keeping this world record out of the Guinness book.
Jules Verne
International Space Station
Jean Béliveau
Loïck Peyron
1
In August 1519, Ferdinand Magellan set out westwards from Sanlucar in Spain, with five ships and 237 crew. After mutinies, scurvy and battles with indigenous peoples – the Portuguese seafarer was killed in the Philippines – a single ship, the Victoria, with 18 men, limped back into port on September 6, 1522: the first circumnavigation of Earth.
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Concorde holds the record for the fastest circumnavigation of the planet: 31h, 27m and 49s, set in 1995. At speeds of up to Mach 2.23 (2,405kph), it saw two sunrises and two sunsets. Up in space, however, since 1998, the International Space Station has been completing 91-minute orbits of the Earth at about 28,000kph.
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“My classmates took the bus to school on the other side of the bay, I went by sailboat.” So began the sailing career of Loïck Peyron. In 2012 the French skipper set a new record for sailing around the world. He and a crew of 13 in the Banque Populaire V took 45 days, 13h 42m and 53s to claim the Jules Verne Trophy.
75,000
Ferdinand Magellan; the Victoria
Business gone bust, midlife crisis… on his 45th birthday, August 18, 2000, Canadian Jean Béliveau left home and walked the Earth for 11 years. He went through 64 countries and 54 pairs of shoes, clocking up 75,000km. He never paid to stay overnight, either camping or staying with locals, including South African cops who let him sleep in an empty jail cell. www.theodysseyexpedition.com the red bulletin
Words: ulrich corazza. Photography: corbis, graham hughes, getty images (3), picturedesk.com (2)
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Graham Hughes
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13 SEPTEMBER 20 A BEYOND TH
E ORDINARY
MAGAZINE
FAT FRE DDY ’S D RO P
EV ER ES T S K YNEDXTIV E
YO UR HO LID AY SO RT ED
HA NG IN G W IT H TH E BA ND
THE D R A C U LA R A LLCRYOS S’S
MO TO SC AR IES T R AC E
R U SESHTO
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Four days and 600km across Transylvania on the hardest off-road enduro motorcycle course in the world
Credit:
words: Andreas Rottenschlager
Photography: Dmytro Vakulka/red bull content pool
Belgian rider Pascal Berlingieri runs into a water section in this year’s Red Bull Romaniacs Hard Enduro Rally
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Photography: Dmytro Vakulka/red bull content pool
Off-road madness: Graham Jarvis goes through a rocky patch. The British rider is a master of trials sections like this
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The fine-featured Walker is the teen idol among the pro riders in the race: 22 years old, British trials bike champion, winner of races across Europe. Girls scream his name at finish lines, but Walker knows that none of that will help him today. He has 131km of off-road biking ahead of him, through the Romanian slate mountains home to Europe’s largest bear population. Walker pushes his visor down. At 6.50am he hits the gas, tears over the steep slope and disappears at the first left turn. What he doesn’t know is that today will be the worst day of the rally.
n his first day riding through the Carpathians, on a bumpy mountain road south of Sibiu,Jonny Walker sits on his KTM bike and stares at the steep, grassy slope behind the arch that marks the start of the rally. In two minutes, the first stage will begin. It’s 6.48am. The thermometer is showing 8°C. 28
At the 2013 Red Bull Romaniacs Hard Enduro Rally, 365 riders battle the Romanian wilderness for four days. The route stretches over 600km through the mixed forests of the southern Carpathian mountains, in wide arcs around the city of Sibiu, former capital of the Transylvania region of Romania. Technically demanding trials routes alternate with mountainsides and downhill stretches. With all the upand downhill racing, the riders in the pro category will experience 80,575m of altitude difference, about nine times the height of Mount Everest. The stages of the rally go through one of the largest forested areas in Europe. A wrong turn wastes fuel, with valuable time lost in the woods. Cyril Despres, three-time victor from France, says that this is “harder than the Dakar Rally”. Jonny Walker says “you ride at the limit for four days”. In the run-up to this year’s race, the most frequently asked question is: who will beat Graham Jarvis? The reigning champion, from the UK, manoeuvres his Husaberg bike through the terrain like a mountain lion. If Jarvis wins, it will be his fourth Romaniacs victory, a record. But that won’t happen if riders like Jonny Walker can help it. About 5km before the finish line of the first stage, the course rises on a slope wooded with beech trees. The race director calls this place “Bad Shape”. A cardboard sign on the approach promises “You are almost there!” Bad Shape has steep gradients, some close to vertical, and the last few days’ rain have left the ground wet. By 2pm on day one, it looks like a battlefield. Motorcycles slip, riders fall, bikes have to be winched over the slope on ropes. Jarvis, currently the best trials rider in the world, shouts for help. Jonny
Photography: Dmytro Vakulka/red bull content pool
IN BAD SHAPE
Wet work: Italian rider Enrico Garavelli steers his Husaberg through choppy water
Uphill struggle: Dutch rider Erik Ekelmans keeps up with the pack Below: Jonny Walker
Walker is held up. New Zealander Chris Birch forms a partnership with English rider Paul Bolton. Together they haul their bikes over the slope. Bad Shape is what most of the pro riders’ pre-race hopes are in: of the 41 riders, only eight make it through the forest within the time limit of nine hours. Reports from the front line reach the finish line, where it’s 38°C. Birch, shirt off, arms way more tanned than his chest, says that “the slope was unrideable. Without Paul’s help I would still be stuck there.” Bolton looks like he’s just got out of a pub brawl. “They told me I fell off, but I can’t remember.” Near the finish line, Walker sits in the grass and pours water from a plastic bottle over his neck. He has the composed face of a gymnast and the worn hands of an old-fashioned dock worker. Calluses bulge on his fingers, souvenirs from thousands 30
of kilometres on the bike. For the riders, the first quarter of the course is over. In the evening a blackboard reads “1st place: Graham Jarvis – 25-minute lead.”
HEAT AND DUST Hard enduro is the most extreme form of off-road motorbike racing, attracting competitors from all over the world. In the riders’ camp in Sibiu, competitors from India work on their off-road bikes. New Zealand has sent a delegation led by Chris Birch. Mexican racer Jesús Zavala is the wild man of the pro group. He has dishevelled hair and is blind in one eye. He underwent three operations after noticing his eyesight deteriorating eight years ago – the doctors couldn’t tell him why. Now his left eye is filled with silicone oil to hold his retina in place. Zavala only gave a moment’s thought to giving
Bad Shape is what most of the pro riders’ pre-race hopes are in: of the 41 riders, only eight make it through the forest within the time limit of nine hours
Photography: Mihai Stetcu/Red Bull Content pool, Dmytro Vakulka/red bull content pool
up motorcycle riding before realising that “your brain can get used to anything”. He says he prefers hard enduro to other kinds of bike racing because of “the motorbikes, the beautiful girls, my friends in the camp. I train the whole year for these four days.” Stage two of the race is over a 163km route from Sibiu to the coal town of Petrila. There are long stretches of relatively simple terrain, where riders can tear it up and put pressure on Jarvis, who is known more as a technical specialist than for his speed. The stage starts early in the morning on a dew-sodden cow field. Back wheels send clumps of earth flying through the air. Motorbikes disappear at the horizon, rattling loudly. At kilometre 160, at Petrila, there is a river crossing. For the riders outside the pro group – there are 260, in teams and competing solo, in hobby and expert classes, with less stringent time constraints than the pros – this is an exhausting torture. Their bikes fly out from under them and land on the riverbank. Spectators cart bikes back to the route. Many riders turn the wrong way and look disoriented. This is why it’s called hard enduro. How heavy is a motorbike when you have to pick it up a hundred times? The buildings of the Petrila coal mine are dismal, soot-caked constructions with
broken windows and rusting steel struts. The last section of stage two leads through the innards of the works. Motorbikes are tearing between hoisting shafts, being hauled up narrow staircases. In the factory hall, it smells of coal dust and sweat. The expressions on the riders’ faces say, “Am I really riding this?” The arch at the finish line is on the flat roof of a pit building, 12 storeys above the ground. Two riders take stock on the scorching roof tar: “The air in there was evil.” “That’s Romaniacs, mate.” In the pro group, the fastest man of the day is Jonny Walker, but Graham Jarvis remains in the lead overall.
SILENT ASSASSIN Ask anyone in the riders’ camp about Graham Jarvis and you’ll get the same answer. The enduro king is quiet, shy and intelligent. Sitting opposite Jarvis before the start of stage three merely reinforces the impression. He is a pale Yorkshireman of average build who drinks water for breakfast and listens to Elton John to relax. He avoids all eye contact. A simple question about his hobbies seems to cause him physical pain. His opponents refer to him as the Silent Assassin, because, he says, “I never talk bullshit.”
RED BULL ROMANIACS When founder of the rally Martin Freinademetz first saw the landscape around Sibiu through the eyes of a motorbike rider, he knew these were the ideal conditions for a two-wheel torture run. The first race took place here in 2004, with Dakar winner Cyril Despres riding to victory and putting Romaniacs on the map. Now adventure specialists from all over the world line up to humbly take their punishment.
UKRAIENE
CHICKEN RUN OR POOL PARTY MOLDova
h ung a r y R o m a ni a
SIBIU
bucharest
SERBIa BULGARIa
THE STAGES
THE TERRAIN
THE STAR
Riders have to slog through 600km in four days. The route varies according to class.
Mountains, streams, forests, quarries, industrial ruins, speed stretches: all the rough stuff that the Sibiu region has to offer.
Graham Jarvis has won the race four times thanks to his total mastery of the trials sections.
the red bulletin
No one controls an off-road bike off-road better than him. “You have to find the line with the most traction,” he says. “Everyone here is looking for that line. I rely on my instinct to find it.” What do you do after a race, champ? “Preferably sleep, but the adrenalin is still pumping through my body. You can forget sleeping.” And what’s your best Romaniacs moment? Jarvis is silent, then says “The afterparties aren’t bad.” Day three brings the field back to Sibiu. Grey clouds hang over the conifer forests. Around midday the rain sets in. Each stage of the Red Bull Romaniacs Hard Enduro Rally is divided into two halves by a service point: a temporary town of vans and plastic tents which provide man and machine with the bare essentials. The service point on day three is by a stream in the little village of Voineasa. Helpers in neon yellow raincoats scurry about the filthy riders. Service personnel tighten screws and change air filters. A soaking wet Jonny Walker scoffs down two Mars bars and a Twix to keep his blood sugar up. The regulations stipulate 20 minutes’ break at a service point. Afterwards, riders disappear into the forest. When the last rider leaves, this travellers’ rest of vans vanishes. German Husqvarna rider Andreas Lettenbichler does the good deed of stage three. He rescues Alfredo Gomez, of Spain, who is stuck under his bike in the forest, waiting for help. Gomez rides to the end in fuel-soaked trousers. Jarvis wins the stage and extends his overall lead.
Paragraph six of the race regulation requires each starter to carry a survival kit. The most important item is the minitracker, known as the “panic button”, which alerts rescue services in an emergency. The race officials boast that they have never yet lost a rider in the forest. Nonetheless, the kit contains a litre of drinking water, a foil blanket and two red smoke flares for attracting attention. Better to be safe than sorry. Day four begins with everyone who is not Graham Jarvis hoping that Graham Jarvis will slip up. Riders always make mistakes during this part of the race, say the riders. The final hurdle after 600km of hard enduro is known as ‘chicken or macho’. About 400m before the finish line each rider must choose between two routes: ‘chicken’, a ridiculous off-road 31
Romaniacs veteran Chris Birch of New Zealand after taking a tumble on his KTM: “We were pulling each other up steep slopes�
Photography: Predrag Vuckovic/red bull content pool
Race officials recommend riders reach 90kph in the run-up to the pool. Then you lean back, step hard on the gas and hope for the best
passage which will eat up 10 minutes’ racing time, or ‘macho’ a pool of water, 20m long and a metre deep, that can only be crossed by aquaplaning. In other words, riders have to make bikes surf. Race officials recommend riders reach 90kph in the run-up to the pool. Then they should lean back, step hard on the gas and hope for the best. By 1pm, some 4,000 spectators bustle around the U-shaped natural arena that spans the finish line area. The southern European minced meat kebabs, ćevapčići, sizzle on the grills. There’s ice-cold beer. The entire ‘chicken or macho’ scenario is in plain view, so that 8,000 eyes get to see how the riders decide. Bow to peer pressure or choose sensibly? Slide safely across the finish line or risk a dunking? Graham Jarvis chooses ‘chicken’ after less than a second’s thought. He rides to his fourth victory and throws his arms in the air in jubilation. The no-bullshit man has just made history. Andreas Lettenbichler pummels his Husqvarna over the surface of the water, almost crashes and then dances like Rumpelstiltskin for the spectators. Jonny Walker surfs the water at full speed. Chris Birch rides straight through the water on the bottom of the pool. All around, sweat-soaked shoulders shake off the tension. The finish turns into a party. Jonny Walker takes his shirt off and goes swimming with the champagne girls. Paul Bolton dives in with them. It takes four riders to throw Graham Jarvis into the pool. He smiles – no bullshit. The cursing, the pain, the bloody scratches are now just souvenirs for the riders in this dirty water hole in Romania. Next year they’ll all be back again, because they love it. www.redbullromaniacs.com
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MOLLY MEECH & ALEX MALONEY
The 49ers
New Zealand’s brightest young yachting talent grew to love the ocean. Now they can tame it without saying a word Words: Robert Tighe Photography: Graeme Murray
Capsizing your boat doesn’t sound like very sensible coaching advice, but that’s what Alex Maloney and Molly Meech have been encouraged to do as part of their preparations for the world championships in the 49erFX class in France this month. “Our coaches tell us we need to push harder and put ourselves in riskier situations if we want to get the most out of the boat,” says Maloney. “We need to make more mistakes and test the limits,” says Meech, “then take a step back from those limits for the worlds.” “We don’t want to fall off our boat at the worlds,” says Maloney. In May there was a reminder of how dangerous sailing can be, when the catamaran of the Artemis Racing team capsized during an America’s Cup training session in San Francisco Bay. British sailor Andrew Simpson was killed and while his death shook the sailing world, all boaties accept the risks involved. Maloney was younger than most when she learned how treacherous the ocean can be. She was just seven years old in 1999 when her parents packed up their belongings and three children and left their home in California to come to New Zealand to buy a yacht. The Maloney family sailed Hijacker around the South Pacific for three years, but it wasn’t all palm trees and plain sailing. Maloney remembers hugging her two older brothers below deck while their parents battled to get their boat out of the eye of a tropical storm that was battering Australia’s Sunshine Coast. As 50-knot winds pushed Hijacker dangerously close to the rocks near Mooloolaba Harbour, 34
Maloney’s father stuck his head below deck and shouted, ‘When I say jump, jump!’ In the end they didn’t have to abandon ship, but the experience has stood to Maloney; big waves and strong winds don’t faze her. Meech is also from a sailing family. Her parents took to the seas with their two children when Molly was three years old. After seven years cruising around the world, they settled back in New Zealand. Meech’s older brother, Sam, began sailing competitively in the same class as Andy
“Friends think we just sit there and pull ropes, but racing is so intense” Maloney, Alex’s big brother. The two families became firm friends, while their young daughters became reluctant sailors. “I was 11 or 12 when I started sailing, but I didn’t really like it,” says Meech. Maloney was equally unenthusiastic. “It’s not much fun on the water on a cold, windy day when your mates are hanging out doing other stuff,” she says. As their technical skills improved and they started winning races, both girls learned to love the sport. Meech, given her height and muscular physique, graduated to the single-handed Laser Radial boat, while Maloney enjoyed success in the
420 class, winning a world title in 2009 with Bianca Barbarich-Bacher. The 420 isn’t an Olympic class, so when it was announced that a women’s double-handed skiff would be included in the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro with the introduction of the 49erFX class, Maloney saw the opportunity to realise her dream of competing in the Olympics. She convinced Meech they would make a winning combination and was proved right when they won the first women’s 49erFX regatta in Melbourne at the end of 2012. Since then they’ve finished in the top three of every regatta they’ve entered. Maloney, 21, is the more outgoing of the two women, and helms the boat, steering and calling the shots. Meech is a year younger and is the crew, manning the sails and maintaining the boat’s momentum. “My friends think we just sit there and pull ropes, but racing is so intense,” says Meech. “You’ve got 10 boats coming into a marker and if you make one mistake you can lose five or six places. Every decision counts. We try and anticipate what the other is going to do.” “On the good days it’s like we’re telepathic,” says Maloney, before bursting into laughter. “We don’t even need to talk.” The pair have worked out a three-year plan to qualify for Rio. Their focus this year is the 49erFX World Championships in Marseilles on September 21-29. Ranked number one in the world earlier this year, they will be one of the favourites. “I’m confident in our ability,” says Maloney. “I think we can come home with a gold medal if everything falls into place.” www.facebook.com/MollyAlexSailing the red bulletin
Molly Meech (on left) Born: March 31, 1993, Tauranga, New Zealand Alexandra Maloney Born: March 19, 1992, Santa Cruz, California
Sibling rivalry The girls’ brothers, Andy Maloney and Sam Meech, are both ranked in the top 10 in the world in sailing’s Laser class and may have to battle it out for one spot in the New Zealand sailing team for the Rio Olympics.
Mind games Meech is part way through an environmental studies degree, while Maloney has put her psychology studies on hold to focus on her sailing.
Today’s essential music makers tell the stories behind their beat: Fireside Chats on rbmaradio.com
s h ots o f
ad r ena l i n Wo r l d’s b est i m ag es From surf i n the snow to a irti m e w ith th e bi rd s: the i ncre d i b l e w i n n i n g e nt r i es i n th e 2 013 Re d Bul l I l l um e a ctio n a n d a d ve nt u re sp orts p hoto contest
t e n p h o t o g r a p h s ta k e n b y n i n e p h o t o g r a p h e r s f r o m s e v e n c o u n t r i e s
redbullillume.com
lorenz h older germany
w inner catego ry: pl ayg r o und
“I found this place in summer and my idea to shoot in heavy snowfall wasn’t going to be easy. There was pretty much just one chance to get the shot. I used two big strobes to light up the snowflakes and a four-second exposure to get light from the moon.”
Athlete Xaver Hoffmann Location Raisting, Germany Camera Canon EOS 5D Mark II Lens Zeiss Distagon T* 3.5/18 ZE ISO 1000 F-stop 3.5 Shutter speed 4 Flash Elinchrom
romi na amato sw i t z e r l a n d
w inner categ o ry: ener gy
“I was in a boat covering the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series. I like pictures that leave the viewer questioning. In this case: where’s he coming from? Will he survive this? Does that guy seriously think he can fly?”
Athlete Todor Spasov Location Vila Franca do Campo, Azores, Portugal Camera Canon EOS-1D X Lens EF70-300mm f/4-5.6L IS USM ISO 400 F-stop 6.3 Shutter speed 1/1600 Flash none
“Tomas tries to do new and ‘impossible’ tricks on his mountain bike. I wanted to create a backstage feeling for the shot. We suspended the bike from the ceiling: one rope for Tomas and two smaller ones for the bike.”
win n er category: New Creat i vi t y
Da n i e l Voj t Ech c z ec h r e p u b l i c Athlete Tomas Slavik Location Prague, Czech Republic Camera Nikon D800E Lens 24-70mm f/2.8 ISO 100 F-stop 7.1 Shutter speed 1/100 Flash Fomei
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Athletes Jake Marshall, Taylor Clark, Frankie Harrer, Thelen Worrell, Colt Ward, Nolan Rapoza, Dryden Brown Location Tavarua, Fiji Camera Nikon D700 Lens Nikon 16mm f/2.8 fisheye ISO 250 F-stop 5.6 Shutter speed 1/500 Flash none
w i n n e r cat ego ry: l i f est yl e by l e i ca
mo rgan maass e n usa
“A group of America’s next generation surfers, surfing 10 hours a day, only coming in for food or sunscreen. I captured them one morning, discussing everything from the surf they were enjoying to homework they’d forgotten to do. I was fascinated by their camaraderie, their laughing and hollering at each other’s successes and misfortunes.”
“We thought it would be a long session of the best cold-water waves any of us had ever scored. Suddenly, the winds changed and within minutes it began to snow. Caught in a blizzard, we paddled in and made it back to the truck to wait out the storm. Snow piled high around us. It was clear the truck wasn’t going anywhere, so Keith and Dane made their way home.”
Wi nner categ o ry: spir it
chris b u r k a r d u sa
Athletes Keith Malloy, Dane Gudauskas Location Unstad, Lofoten Islands, Norway Camera Sony SLT-A77V Lens 70-200mm F2.8 G ISO 200 F-stop 4 Shutter speed 1/320 Flash none
win n er categ o ry: C lo s e U p
J e r oe n N i e u wh u is n l
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Athlete Erik JournĂŠe Location Denekamp, Netherlands Camera Canon EOS 5D Mark II Lens 15mm f/2.8 fisheye ISO 320 F-stop 16 Shutter speed 1/50 Flash none
“My buddy Erik and I thought it would be cool to try something different. I wanted this shot to be less set up, less studio lit. The sun was just right, so we grabbed our skateboards and I grabbed my camera. After almost smashing it on the concrete, I thought I would give it just one more try. This is the last image I shot.�
“This was not a large day by North Shore standards. When the waves are smaller, the surfers usually go out for a surf right before the sun sets. By pulling the lens back, I was able to get the sand and sky, so it is almost as if someone was walking down the beach and looking over – to see Gabriel doing this massive backflip.”
W in n er categ o ry: s eq u e n c e
za k a ry n oy l e u sa
Athlete Gabriel Medina Location Oahu, Hawaii, USA Camera Canon EOS-1D Mark IV Lens EF70-200mm f/4L IS USM ISO 320 F-stop 5.0 Shutter speed 1/800 Flash none
“After shooting on a tripod, I end up with shots that are essentially the same, with minor changes. In Photoshop, I flip them and arrange them to create something that doesn’t exist in real life, with perfect symmetry: something I like a lot. In this one, I mirrored parts of a building to give the impression of a really, really big structure.”
W in n er categ o ry: e xp e r i m e n tal
lor e nz h o l de r ge r m an y
Athlete Jordan Mendenhall Location Ornskoldsvik, Sweden Camera Canon EOS 40D Lens Hartblei 50mm f/2.8 ISO 160 F-stop 4.0 Shutter speed 1/1000 Flash none
winner categ o ry: win gs
sa m o v i d i c slov eni a
Athlete Jorge Ferzuli Location Athens, Greece Camera Canon EOS-1D Mark IV Lens EF15mm f/2.8 fisheye ISO 200 F-stop 3.2 Shutter speed 1/2000 Flash none
“I was booked for the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series stop in Greece, to capture the action from the water. It’s very difficult to shoot from water as you are limited with angles. The bird was pure luck.”
winner Cat ego ry: i l lu m i n at i o n
sc a nca daott s e rfas “I really wanted to shoot a photo from a helicopter, right above Travis Rice as he was riding a line, but another chopper was in the air too. The sun was setting fast, so as Travis dropped into place and made his second turn down the mountain, I snapped this shot – the last photo of the trip.”
Red Bull Illume Partners
Athlete Travis Rice Location Tordrillo Mountains, Alaska, USA Camera Canon EOS 1D Mark IV Lens Ef 100mm F2.0 USM ISO 200 F-stop 10.0 Shutter speed 1/1000 Flash none
Interview: R端diger Sturm
Photography: John Russo/Columbia TriStar
on understanding women, his killer instinct and why
Matt Damon is one of the most successful actors of his generation, but a dozen years ago, he feared his career would be over: “I’d already had two films bomb, and I was about to have my third. It was goodbye, and there was nothing I could do. So I went to London, did a play and I was happy”
the red bulletin
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att Damon has overcome many challenges in his career. He has physically transformed himself – losing 22kg for Courage Under Fire (1996) and gaining 13kg for The Informant (2009). He’s been a regular victim of George Clooney’s notorious on-set pranks. He battled to reverse a downturn in fortunes after a career highpoint: winning the Best Screenplay Oscar for Good Will Hunting. All this has been good training for playing a heroic survivor who takes on Earth’s future ruling class in sci-fi movie Elysium. The 42-year-old actor also showed great stamina while speaking to The Red Bulletin, ignoring a hangover gained at a premiere party the night before.
THE TALENTED MR DAMON
Chasing Amy The Rainmaker Good Will Hunting
Matt’s roll call of roles: some major, some minor and the one where he’s a talking horse
Mystic Pizza
School Ties
Geronimo: An American Legend
1988
1992
1993
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Courage Under Fire
1996
1997
the red bulletin: Do you feel guilty? matt damon: Why should I do that? Because you belong to the chosen few basking in the high life as a opposed to the millions living below the poverty line. Just like the bad guys of your upcoming sci-fi movie Elysium. No, I don’t feel guilty. I feel lucky to have been born where I was born. We were shooting the movie at a dump in Mexico City where there’s 2,500 people who were born and raised there and live there and die there and never leave. That’s by luck of birth. So the question is: how do we lift as many people as possible out of that poverty? I am very optimistic that we can achieve that. Because today’s generation of young people is more aware of the situation and much more engaged than I was at that age. Would you be willing to kill for a place in the sun, like you do in the movie? The motivation of my character goes beyond that. It’s not that he wants to live in this utopian world, he is looking to be cured from cancer. But to answer your question – no. But could you kill someone if your life, or a family member’s life, depended on it? I definitely have the human instinct of protecting myself and my loved ones. And if I could look into somebody’s heart and see that their intentions were pure evil, I might perhaps be able kill that person. But I don’t know that there is pure evil, or at least I have never encountered it. One my close friends, however, went into the special forces, and his job at the end of his career was to track down war criminals in Croatia and Bosnia and take them to the international court in The Hague. He read the dossiers on those people and said there were a few that he thought could be labelled as pure evil. You are fortunate to live in a bubble of luxury. Do you ever worry about losing touch with reality? Yeah and I don’t know what to do. I live in New York
The write stuff Good Will Hunting is the story of a young man forced Saving to use his brainpower to Private Ryan improve his station in life. Rounders Matt Damon was forced to use his brainpower to overcome his station in life: he co-wrote GWH with his pal Ben Affleck, so they could be involved in a good movie, because no one else was offering that chance. The US$10 million film earned US$225 million at the global box office and an Oscar for Best Screenplay.
1998
All The Pretty Horses Titan A.E. The Legend Of Bagger Vance Dogma The Talented Mr Ripley
1999
2000 the red bulletin
Photography: John Russo/Columbia TriStar (1), Rex Features (11), Getty Images (2) Kobal Collection (9), Dreamworks, Paramount, Night Life Inc, Universal
City, which is its own kind of Elysium at this point. It’s pretty elite now, because it’s so expensive to live in the city. But at least you can walk down the street and feel a part of a community. When I lived in Miami it was a much more suburban lifestyle. You go from behind your gate to your car, then to your destination, back in your car, and finally back behind your gate. Do you have an understanding of what’s going on beyond your own experience of the world? Of course. I have since childhood. My mother took me places. We went by bus around Guatemala in the ’80s, and I went to language school in Mexico. Those experiences were really eye-opening for an American kid, so I hope I can do that with my children, when they’re older. I want them to see the world. You have four daughters. Do you enjoy being the only man in the house? I’m lucky to be the only guy in the house. It’s a man’s dream. The testosterone deficit at home makes me very special: you learn a lot by looking at the world from their point of view. I’m now convinced we’re different species, more than I thought before. Do you feel women understand men? Oh, I think they understand us totally. I just don’t think we can completely understand them. What about your daughters? Do they realise that their father is a bona-fide movie star? I don’t know when that’ll happen, but when it does it will happen by osmosis. Alexia, my 14-year-old stepdaughter, heard stuff at school and started asking questions. But by that point the whole thing had been so demystified. They’ve been on movie sets, they’ve seen that process and they’ve met all kinds of people who work in the business. They say things like, “Uncle George is a movie star?” and I say, “Yes, George Clooney is a star, believe it or not.” The movie business can be fickle. Do you worry your star status might go away at some point? It will definitely go away. The movie business is
The Bourne Identity Gerry Spirit: Stallion Of The Cimarron (voice)
Ocean’s Eleven
2001
Team America: World Police (puppet voiced by Trey Parker) The Bourne Supremacy Ocean’s Twelve SPY GAMES In terms of action cinema, the three films in which Damon plays truth-seeking spy Jason Bourne are influential and just plain kick-assingly great. Identity and Supremacy caused the makers of James Bond to reboot with Daniel Craig in Casino Royale (2006), while Ultimatum is the best one-man-on-a-mission movie since Bruce Willis’s Die Hard, 25 years ago.
Stuck On You
2002
the red bulletin
2003
2004
The Brothers Grimm Syriana
2005
BORN TO PLAY IT Damon has acted in only one movie that has won the Oscar for Best Film: The Departed, for which Martin Scorsese also won the Oscar for Best Director. Being from Boston himself, he was perfectly cast as a Boston hood who joins the police. The film was a remake of Infernal Affairs (2002), which won its homecountry Best Film Oscar equivalent, the Hong Kong Film Award.
The Good Shepherd The Departed
2006 57
The Adjustment Bureau Contagion Margreat Happy Feet Two (voice) We Bought A Zoo
Steve adores Directors love Damon. He has appeared in two films by Clint Eastwood and Francis Ford Coppola, three by Kevin Smith and Paul Greengrass and four by Gus Van Sant. But his great partnership is with Steven Sodebergh: seven films, including the Ocean’s trilogy and The Informant!
Ocean’s Thirteen The Bourne Ultimatum
The Informant! Invictus
Behind The Candelabra Elysium
Promised Land
2007
2009
2010
“ The movie business is cyclical. Some guys are up, some guys are down” cyclical. Some guys are up, some guys are down. The key is not trying to retain some level of popularity, trying to do something with what you have and trying to do good work. How much you get paid – that’s always going to go up and down. It’s like when you play poker: you can’t bet scared, you have to bet because you want to bet – not because you need to win the money. If you do a movie, it could be the end of your career, or maybe not – just do it. So you weren’t scared when your career was in the doldrums before the success of the Bourne movies? No, I always knew I could write. I can’t be any more cold than I was when we did Good Will Hunting. Nobody knew who I was at that time. But I was very aware that things weren’t going great. When the Bourne Identity came out, it had bad buzz from Hollywood. Everyone was going, “This is going to be a disaster,” because it had been delayed and delayed. And that was it for me. I’d already had two films bomb, and I was about to have my third. It was goodbye, and there was nothing I could do. So I went to London, did a play and I was happy. Do you regret some of your career choices? 58
2011
2012
matt to the future After playing Liberace’s lover – aged 17! – and a saviour of space in 2013, Damon has two more films due: The Monuments Men, for director and co-star George Clooney, in which he plays a hunter of Nazi art, and “a very small part,” he says, in Terry Gilliam’s The Zero Theorem.
2013
No. Regret is the worst thing in the world. All the decisions I’ve made professionally and personally, even if they have not worked out, I have taken something away from them. I have made the decisions for reasons that I can back up. The way I choose a movie is: I just look for a director and screenplay that I can learn from. All The Pretty Horses, for example, is one of my favourite things that I’ve done. In its original version it was three hours and 12 minutes long. The studio took it away from director Billy Bob Thornton and cut it down to two hours. The critics tore it apart and it bombed at the box office, but I am incredibly proud of that movie. It had a big impact on me, as an actor and hopefully some day as a director. Knowing what I know now, I would go back and do the movie again and again. You’re a big fan of poker [Damon starred in the poker movie Rounders (1998)]. What’s been your most painful loss at the poker table? The last time I played was a couple of months ago. I was against a really good player and I was very wary of him. We got it all in, I had a higher full house than he had, and on the final card he pulled four of a kind, so it was a bad beat. That was my most recent and painful loss. But the main thing is: you may know you are going to lose, but don’t do it by playing your hands wrong. You should lose when you’re doing the right thing in that moment. Then you can leave the table with some dignity. It’s been reported that at one point in your career you were so desperate for success that you were willing to give up your dignity and do a porn movie. That was a joke. The director of The Bourne Identity, Doug Liman, came up with it. He said, “We should add one shot in at the end and make it the most expensive adult movie ever: The Porn Identity.” Elysium is out now: www.itsbetterupthere.com
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We’re With W o rd s : s a m w i c k s P h o t o g r a p h y : N i c St a v e l e y
The Re d Bu lletin sp en d s th e d ay i n co l l e cti ve
Magnificent seven (from left): Iain Gordon, Scott Towers, Dallas Tamaira, Toby Laing, Chris ‘Mu’ Faiumu, Tehimana Kerr, Joe Lindsay
The Band tho u g ht w ith Fat Fre d d y ’s D ro p
fter more than 800 performances as a musical group of seven, after thousands of hours in rehearsal, a band develops a highly nuanced onstage language, an essential means of directing complicated musical traffic, mid-flight. Wellington soul collective Fat Freddy’s Drop have it down to a finely tuned art. “At any one time in our live set there are different people to look to for different cues,” says the band’s trumpet player, Toby Laing. “There might be a cue from the rhythm section or the horns or the vocals, sending a clear signal to everyone else about what our next move is. You’ve got to stay sharp and in touch at all times.” “I was lost for the first year when I played for the band, I probably caught half of it at best,” admits saxophonist Scott Towers, the group’s most recent recruit. “I’d be scrambling my way through arrangements and thinking, ‘What the hell is happening here?’ Freddy’s’ approach is really close to the true spirit of an improvising group. That’s what I love about the band.” The ESP-like lingua franca of Fat Freddy’s Drop is honed in the suburb of Kilbernie, Wellington, above a brightyellow branch of Tony’s Tyre Service, its signage proudly extending a Welcome to the Best Tyre Company in New Zealand. This is Bays, the group’s inner sanctum, from where they have been exporting their wares for over a decade. It’s a potent and staunchly independent brew, infused with disco, rootsy dub, soul and electronic funk. As international acclaim for their music grows, so their 62
“Tour buses are pretty cool, but they get pretty uncool after 14 days of travelling” and headlining appearances in the UK, Germany, France, Italy and beyond. “The first time we took the band to Europe in 2002, we were living in Tooting, South London, in a really disgusting flat,” says Duckworth. “I remember the boys carrying their gear 15 minutes to the Tube station to get to this residency we had. We could afford to catch a taxi home at night, but we couldn’t afford to taxi both ways.” “There was one interesting interaction downstairs on the Tube,” adds the group’s audio mastermind, Chris ‘Mu’ Faiumu. “There was a busker who was hassling us for some money, and we just said, ‘Bro, we’ve just been busting our arses for 20 quid each. Bugger off!’” Arses are still busted in the Freddy’s camp, but on a far grander scale. the red bulletin
Additional Photography: Getty Images (1)
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surrounds remain quintessentially Kiwi. “Once you’re at Bays, there’s nowhere else to go except to the post office, or maybe over the road to get a muffin from the cafe,” says Laing. Bays is a one-stop shop for Fat Freddy’s Drop’s entire operation, where ideas are refined in mammoth jam sessions, songs committed to tape, worldwide tours booked and business plans strategised. There is a studio brimming with a ragtag collection of instruments – horns, keyboards, drums, guitar – and a simply furnished office with walls covered in LP covers and album plaques. The social heart of Bays is the kitchen, into which the musicians trickle to break bread with The Red Bulletin. As a food-focused band whose creativity is fuelled by the meals served by keyboardist and in-house chef Iain Gordon, culinary and musical experimentation go hand in hand. A coffee machine is tucked under a shelf that heaves with Tui awards, bounty reaped from wins at the New Zealand Music Awards. The trophies fight for space with an odd assortment of wine glasses, later filled with top-shelf pinot noir gifted by the actor Sam Neill, who is also the proprietor of a boutique vineyard. Neill recently made contact with the band, praising the title track of Blackbird, their new album. “It’s a real ball-tearer,” he enthused in an email. Ball-tearer is an unlikely tribute for a sweet, skank-powered song that hits you ever so gently, but it is testament to Freddy’s’ full-bodied tunes, which continue to impact music lovers from the pinot vineyards of Central Otago to the festival circuit of Europe. This international support allows the band to deliver their famed live show across Europe twice a year, performances that reach the ears of over 200,000 fans a year. Back home after a run of 12 European festival dates, the group swap war stories from the road, brew freshly roasted coffee, and wax lyrical on the pleasures of tacos, ragu and flounder. “I’ve been reading about flounder – it’s going to be my new thing,” says Towers, one half of Freddy’s’ Auckland contingent. “You just cook it with a bit of flour and butter, bro, it’s amazing,” adds Dallas Tamaira, the group’s lead vocalist. Meanwhile, the band’s manager, Nicole Duckworth, formulates Freddy’s’ ongoing tour of duty, plotting moves on an increasingly crowded 2013 wall calendar. Details of their forthcoming New Zealand and Australia shows are scrawled alongside family birthdays
“Festivals break new audiences for you, I reckon,” says Mu. “It allows us to win over new fans and opens a door into that particular market.” These days, Fat Freddy’s crisscross Europe in relative style, courtesy of a tour bus equipped with bunk beds and all mod cons, travelling conditions far removed from the splitter vans they first piled into on trans-Europe adventures. But, as Scott Towers explains, it’s not all sweetness and light on board when the band’s in the grips of what he describes as “tour scurvy”. “The buses are pretty cool, but they get pretty uncool after 14 days of travelling,” he says. “This last jaunt we had a 27-hour trip from Rome up to Amsterdam. There’s no way to make that the red bulletin
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sort of experience pleasant when there’s 14 of you in various states of hungover-ness.” While Duckworth juggles phone calls and finalises plans for the Australian and New Zealand shows, Mu flicks through a sampler, reviewing a new batch of beats. Dallas Tamaira gently strums a guitar and listens in, suggesting vocal samples that could be triggered live. “How long’s our set in Aussie?” he enquires. “About an hour. Not long enough for a trip, eh,” laughs Mu. According to Towers, 90 minutes is a “really luxurious time for Freddy’s to play, with the option of an encore if we’ve just slayed them”. Such luxury is not always afforded when they’re slotted into a busy festival line-up, whether that’s Glastonbury or Splendour in the Grass. Therefore the jam sessions that can fill the days at Bays are tailored neatly to fit bespoke festival specifications. “Our set’s always evolving,” says Tamaira. “We have to keep pacing it differently and making sure the set is building around the new songs that we have. It’s not rocket science, though. We don’t want to change it too much. We just want to have a few fresh ideas thrown in there.” While several of the instruments in Bays’ studio space are arranged for The Red Bulletin’s photographer, the 64
Additional Photography: Getty Images (1)
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“Before a show, when you put on your suit and stick a nice hat on, it’s like putting on your game face” the red bulletin
band rifles through three suitcases containing blood-red top hats, camelcoloured homburgs, ink-black fedoras and deerskin duckbill caps. Each band member chooses a hat according to style and head size, putting their selections to one side. The hats are the latest care package from Simon Smuts-Kennedy, a milliner with Hills Hats in Petone and a friend of Mu’s. It’s an ideal business alliance: local hatter exporting its goods as far as Japan supplying another area independent as they prepare for their next export drive. The hats are now such a key component of Freddy’s’ stage show that this fresh batch will travel to the gigs in its own special hat box, wheeled into the band’s dressing room after their other gear is unloaded. “When you put on your suit and stick a nice hat on, it’s like putting on your game face,” says Gordon. “Before the show we open up the hat box and
there’s a whole selection to choose from, depending on what you’re wearing. It’s just a nice addition to the traditions we’ve developed.” After the photo shoot, 30 boxfresh hats are returned to their cases to make way for a huge stack of fish and chips from Fish Fins, another local business with a long-time Freddy’s association. The band that eats together stays together, and a communal meal is a long-standing band tradition. As plates are heaped high with food to be chased with glasses of pinot, conversation turns to New Year’s Eve engagements and gigging opportunities in the United States, a market into which the band has only just begun to dip its toes. Opportunities abound, but for now Fat Freddy’s Drop have a chance to eat, laugh, daydream and fill their energy reserves before their next round of shows for which they’re so loved. Tour details: www.fatfreddysdrop.com
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THOMAS DOLD
The Hot Stepper The world’s most successful stair runner thinks like a Shaolin monk, swears by bananas and explains why you should never take the lift again Interview: Andreas Rottenschlager Photography: Alexander Schneider
I grew up in Steinach, a village of 3,000 people in the Black Forest. I was part of the German national mountain running team when I was 17. When I was 19, I took part in my first stair race at the Donauturm [Danube Tower] in Vienna. A lot of mountain runners don’t deal well with steps, but with me it’s always been the steeper, the better. Up to a million people can be cheering you on when you run a marathon, but when you’re in the mountains you can enjoy nature. The fascinating thing about stair running is the minimalism of it. No headwind. No rain. No heat. You can forget all those excuses. Your heart rate is high. The blood runs to your legs. By the time you reach the finish line you’re empty and have forgotten everything. It’s as if someone’s pressed a reset button in your brain. I admire Shaolin monks. They don’t wear smart clothes or drive fast cars. Only the essential things count. If you said to a Shaolin, ‘This exercise doesn’t work’, he’d say back, ‘As a matter of principle, everything works.’ People once thought it would be impossible to smash iron bars on your head, as the Shaolin do. People also say climbing stairs is too much of a strain. I know Goldman Sachs bankers in Frankfurt who work between the 50th and 60th floor of the MesseTurm [Trade Fair Tower] and walk down to the ground floor to get their pizza. That’s a good 200m of altitude. Anyone who doesn’t drink a bottle of vodka or smoke two packets of cigarettes a day can climb stairs. Make it into a game. Bet who’ll be the first to walk up 50 flights over the course of a week. Put a list up in the office and challenge your colleagues. 66
In 2004, I finished the Donauturm run just 0.695 seconds behind the winner, Markus Zahlbruckner. Markus won a flight to New York. I won a toy truck full of savoury snacks. It’s at times like those when you realise that it all boils down to details. I’m staunchly economical. Costs, time and resources are what count for me. At home, I work out the quickest way
“Taking two steps at a time is like running up a sloping plane” from the armchair to the fridge. When I’m travelling, my luggage is always one step ahead of me on the escalator so that I can get off as quickly as possible at the top. At the Taipei 101 Run-Up in Taiwan, you can win $6,649 in prize money. Minus taxes and even if the exchange rate is bad, you’re still left with $3,000. So basically, a stair runner’s travel costs
eat up all his winnings, and I win practically everything. Which means even when you’re the best, you’ve got to have another job on the side. [Dold works as an athlete manager.] I won the Empire State Building Run-Up seven times in a row. If Usain Bolt was to run it against me, the race would probably be up for him at the 20th floor. [There are 86 flights of stairs in the building.] He’d either be out of breath or struggling with the stairs. Bolt has an incredibly quick stride frequency. The problem with stair running is that you can’t just put your feet anywhere. The length of your stride has to be exactly the same as the step, including when you’re completely exhausted. Before a race, I have muesli with water and bananas. After the race, I go for orange juice and honey to avoid the chesty cough you can get from the dry air. My stair formula is “two for the win”. If you take one step at a time, you’re running a staccato rhythm. If you take three, your movement is too heavy. But if you take two at a time, it’s like you’re flying up a sloping plane. When I’m training, I listen to house music with about 130 beats per minute. Let’s say I’m not that into soft rock. During competition, I don’t expose my ears to noise. If I had an MP3 player on my arm, that’d be an extra 20g to carry. I’ve achieved everything I wanted to achieve. In 2013, I’m being more specific in the competitions I choose to take part in. In February, I won the race at the tallest building in Qatar: 1,304 steps in 6 minutes 32 seconds. What I definitely won’t do is travel somewhere just to come second. My motto is: “All in.” www.thomasdold.com the red bulletin
Born September 10, 1984, Wolfach, Baden-足 W端rttemberg, Germany Height/Weight: 1.79 m/ 71 kg Stair Well Four-time overall Tower Running World Cup winner; seven-time Empire State Building Run-Up winner; seven-time Sky Run Berlin winner
Anthonie Tonnon
Suburban Hymns He sings of regular people in the real world, but the New Zealander’s musical tales are a welcome break from the norm
There’s a curious collection of Antipodean strugglers who have been given life through the songs of Anthonie Tonnon. The Dunedin native, who now calls Auckland home, has elevated the drab lives of a mob that includes an aspiring talent show contestant, an upwardly mobile real estate agent and a 14-year-old suburban skateboarder into something more heroic. By grafting their fictional stories onto pop melodies – Barry Smith Of Hamilton, Marion Bates Realty and Bird Brains, respectively – he’s following in the footsteps of Ray Davies, the singer-songwriter behind The Kinks who found inspiration in the aspirations and frustrations of the great British unwashed. Tonnon welcomes this motley crew of characters into the world from a small, sparsely furnished room he rents in the Auckland neighbourhood of Grey Lynn. The 27-year-old has lived here for four years, scrubbing the mould off the ceiling and assembling the barest of essentials to keep him home and hosed: an outmoded iBook sits on a small desk, which is next to a bed that rolls up to makes room for a keyboard, two guitars and an amp. The only shiny new thing here is an iPad, necessary for drafting demos and documenting some of the personalities who inhabit his songs. “Early on, having a character to riff on always seemed to be the thing that worked best, but it’s not necessarily a thing that you can plan either,” says Tonnon, who has made room in his little HQ so that The Red Bulletin can pay him a visit. “A lot of my characters are a little bit ugly; ugly, older figures who nevertheless find themselves in beautiful situations. “Sometimes it takes a long time for them to appear. Other times, I’ll sit at a piano and play two or three notes, 68
and somehow this character arrives fully formed, a character who’d never make an appearance if I tried to write them without the music. It’s a mystical language, songwriting. If I could write songs half as good as I can spin a yarn over a beer, I could write books of them.” The pages of Tonnon’s expanding songbook include 2012 album Up Here For Dancing and three EPs, but it’s only with this year’s Live At Inch Bar EP that a record bears the name that appears
Once upon a line: Anthonie Tonnon’s songs tell stories
on his birth certificate. Previously, he went by Tono And The Finance Company, a nom de plume thought up in a pre-recession Dunedin. The financial theme of the name referenced his studies at Otago University, and he parlayed his economics coursework into Love And Economics, a 2008 EP which riffed on the opportunity costs incurred in affairs of the heart across five perfectly formed pop songs. Late last year, Tonnon played a handful of solo shows in America, under his own name in intimate venues in California and New York City, and the name stuck. On his return, he booked his first concert back as ‘Anthonie Tonnon’ and put
up gig posters without The Finance Company moniker. “I’d been thinking about the future, really,” explains Tonnon, “about what name I’m going to perform under when I’m 40 or 50 years old, and I looked at the songwriters who I admire and the ones who are trying to do similar things and tell similar stories with their songs. A lot of those artists are people who go by their own names, people like Lou Reed and Bill Callahan.” Tonnon returns to the States this month to play shows with Seattle musician Shenandoah Davis, a support slot that will allow the new gang of personalities he’s written into existence to meet bigger audiences than he encountered on his first American adventure. Some of these characters were first seen and heard on Live At Inch Bar, a sketchbook of songs that announced, among others, a frustrated librarian who runs for council, on the track Railway Lines, and a selection of hopeful young folk on A Friend From Argentina. But while the suburban scenes they’re set against might be familiar to residents of Auckland and Tonnon’s Dunedin stomping grounds, he says that he’s begun to look further afield for new neighbourhoods to accommodate his brainchildren. “The songs I’m writing now are a little less specific than they used to be. I’m not particularly attached to Auckland, or the dry lands of the South Island, or wherever it is in New Zealand that I first thought of the song. I’m quite happy to crush that up with snapshots of Seattle or San Francisco and create whatever amalgam of places I need to service the story – it’s the story’s that’s important.” www.anthonietonnon.com the red bulletin
Additional photography: Georgia Schofield
Words: Sam Wicks Photography: Kristian Frires
The line-up Anthonie Tonnon – vocals, piano, guitar Discography Live At Inch Bar (EP, 2013) Up Here For Dancing (album, 2012) Fragile Thing (EP, 2010) Love And Economics (EP, 2008) University challenge Tonnon honed his songwriting chops under Dr Graeme Downes, of Otago University’s Contemporary Music Performance programme and lead singer for The Verlaines. Flatting blues The estate agent of Marion Bates Realty was inspired by a real-life realtor who raised the rent on Tonnon’s first Grey Lynn flat, forcing him to leave.
grand
Prix’s Greate st story
Inspired by Formula One’s most dramatic season climax, the 1976 clash between James Hunt and Niki Lauda, is Rush the first great F1 movie? Words: Herbert Völker
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the red bulletin
photography: atp
Horror crash: on August 1, 1976, Niki Lauda crashed his Ferrari in the German GP at the Nurburgring. It was the catalyst for one of sport’s most remarkable tales
Grand Prix, Le Mans – rather than the modern films like Fast & Furious. There they move the cameras in ways that are impossible. The physics don’t make sense. Our film should not be like that. I wanted the physics to make sense, to make it something that people could accept: a coherent world with cool characters. A world in which you could lose yourself and not be distracted by the director’s hand. How did you mix real filmed action with the computer-generated footage? Those times required every bit of
the red bulletin
photography: picturedesk.com, atp
on’s OK. He’s a character,” says Niki Lauda. This is high praise indeed by the standards of the Austrian F1 legend. He is talking about Ron Howard, the 59-year-old director of 21 films, including Apollo 13, Frost/ Nixon and A Beautiful Mind, for which he won the Oscar for Best Director. As a director, producer and actor he has, for more than 50 years, been a central figure in Hollywood, a darling of the dream factory. His latest film, Rush, dramatises the battle for the 1976 F1 World Championship as fought by Lauda and James Hunt. Howard’s office, without a hint of Hollywood baloney, is at one of the best addresses in Beverly Hills. Displayed on the walls and shelves are sports memorabilia and family photos, along with trophies of the entertainment industry plonked casually rather than solemnly placed. There is nothing slick, nothing affected about Howard. He is agile, fit and in fine form.
the red bulletin: Formula One is a rather exotic theme for the big movie business. Can it work? ron howard: We didn’t make a film following the typical Hollywood formula. It became a labour of love for us. It’s simply one of those great rivalry stories that one often finds in sport: a clash under extraordinary circumstances. But I also thought that it’s been a long time since racing was dealt with in a theatrical movie with the intensity, authenticity and respect it deserves. ‘Respect’ is a concept that motor racing today might embrace more; in the 1970s it was a lifesaver. There were fewer electronics, more flying aluminium debris and safety zones didn’t exist. Drivers who crashed had a 50:50 chance of serious injury, or worse. Today, they fly off the circuit and walk away with only a bad case of frustration. That’s why the ’70s provide a better setting for a motor racing movie, quite apart from the actual story. You don’t find a rivalry like the 1976 Lauda-Hunt duel every day, even in the hype of motor racing. In fact, something like that doesn’t happen once in a decade. I believed that with today’s film technology that we had a good chance to truly recreate that time as realistically as possible. Did you unleash the digital tool kit for the racing scenes? No, I made a choice to try and replicate the style of the classic racing movie –
Critical condition: Lauda’s injuries were so severe, he was taken to intensive care. Six weeks after he was pulled from his burning car (below left), he was back racing
technical expertise, experience and technology that we could provide. We had Academy Award winners in almost every position behind the camera. We wanted to be authentic. For me, it was a similar challenge to Apollo 13. This time we didn’t have the issue of trying to be weightless, but we still recreated all these races, all the tracks, and we were doing it on a very responsible budget. We used real racing cars. Owners of historic cars actually made the vehicles available to us for filming – that was tremendous. The most challenging exercise was the actual the red bulletin
‘ w e wa n t e d i t to b e au t h e n t i c , s o w e f i l m e d s o m e h i g h -s p e e d s c e n e s w i t h r e a l r ac i n g c a r s . t h e c i n e m at i c p uzz l e o f
replicating races on historic circuits was a challenge’ 73
filming of the high-speed scenes – using cars that cost a fortune so you really didn’t want to crash them. We also built some replicas and had some computergenerated cars to fill the field and re-enact crashes. We used archival footage, plus we created our own footage and sometimes we combined the two. So this puzzle to try to replicate these races, sometimes on historic circuits, was a tremendous cinematic challenge. How did you cast your drivers? We hired action professionals from England and Germany, as well as drivers from the Grand Prix scene. The most famous was Jochen Mass [F1 driver, 1973-1982]. It was great having him there. He’s low-key and very cool. Mass was delighted to be able to drive his original 1976 Marlboro-McLaren in the film, made available to him from a private collection. James Hunt was Mass’s teammate in 1976, with Niki Lauda racing for Ferrari. The season only became interesting after Lauda, leading the championship, suffered nearfatal burns in an accident at the German Grand Prix at the Nurburgring. Hunt was able to catch up in the points before Lauda’s return, which led to a showdown at the final race in Japan. As drama, it has the right stuff: Hunt the playboy versus Lauda the achiever, high life versus iron will, beautiful women all over the place, the resurrection of the almost-dead, damaged inside and out. How much influence did Lauda have on the plot? There are scenes that diverge from reality.
The racers: James Hunt, who went on to win the title, and Niki Lauda (right) a few days after the accident
Peter Morgan is one of the most successful film writers in the world. He would never relinquish creative control. It was explained to Lauda how things would unfold and he could say yes or no to the contract. He had to expect that there would be some details that he wouldn’t like. Poetic movie licence. Right, and Lauda agreed to this licence, that is, he hardly appeared on the set and didn’t complain when he learned of a scene in the script that deviated slightly from his memories. Sometimes he actually found the ‘new’ scenes really good, they were necessary to express
The man behind the movie: director Ron Howard says that making Rush was a labour of love
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the feeling of that time within a few minutes, something that the audience could relate to. So Peter Morgan has written a scene that puts Lauda, a supposedly shy boy, right in the middle of the fan adoration, eroticism and the hard-core thrill of speed that captures the Ferrari magic of the time. On a country road in Italy, an unsuspecting lady in a car, a hitchhiker who turns out to be a fan. In truth, Niki probably won his girlfriend in a somewhat more subtle way. The truth isn’t too bad, either. Lauda says he was in Salzburg at a party hosted by film star Curd Jürgens, most famous for playing the villain in the James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me, and Jürgens’ girlfriend Marlene. He hardly knew anyone and just sat around. Marlene, who knew nothing about motor racing, assumed that the young man was some sort of athlete and said something like, “Um, you’re that famous tennis player.” Soon she left the film star for the Formula One driver, eventually becoming Lauda’s first wife. Did you meet Lauda before deciding to make Rush? No, I’d already decided to make the film, even if I didn’t like Niki. But I liked him immediately, although before the meeting I had found him difficult to pigeonhole. On paper you can’t the red bulletin
Photography: Michael Horowitz/Anzenberger Agency, constantin, Rainer Schlegelmilch/Getty Images, twitter
The film stars: Chris Hemsworth as Hunt (left) and Daniel Brühl as Lauda
understand a person’s sense of humour or intellect, or the way that he solves problems, his thought process. When we finally met, he reminded me of the astronauts I got to know making Apollo 13. It’s a very similar combination: a person who has confidence to put himself into a dangerous situation and believes he can survive it – such people exude a kind of relaxed strength – Niki’s one of them. He has this confidence that reminds me of a karate master. The meeting with Lauda must have been a sentimental return to Vienna for you. the red bulletin
The Journey, which we shot there, was my first job in the film industry. I was four years old. I grew up in showbiz thanks to my father [actor Rance Howard]. Deborah Kerr was also in the film, but what I really remember is Yul Brynner. He played a Russian commander at the border crossing in the Hungarian revolution of 1956. He was great with children. In one scene he takes a shot of vodka and bites the glass. He said to me, “You can’t do this in real life. You can’t bite a glass, you will hurt yourself. This is not a glass, it’s
sugar.” He let me lick the glass and it really tasted like candy. To me, the whole set was like a children’s playground. I sat on top of the tanks and real soldiers played with me. When I met Niki in Vienna a good 50 years later, I had to revisit the highlights of my memories: the Ferris wheel and a castle like Sleeping Beauty’s. How do you feel about the work done by Rush’s two lead actors, Daniel Brühl and Chris Hemsworth? I’m delighted, honestly. Daniel is already an acclaimed actor, but when we filmed in Germany, I noticed that people were curious about what his performance as Niki would be like. They didn’t immediately connect Daniel with Niki. We changed his teeth and some other little things about his appearance, but more importantly than anything, he got to know Niki, who shared a lot of information about those days. Daniel worked very hard on learning to speak like Niki, to get the dialect right. After the screening in Germany, people actually thought he had looped everything – but of course he hadn’t. It just shows you what Daniel’s talent and hard work has led to. And for Chris, who is primarily known for action and fantasy, this is a tremendous breakthrough. People here in Hollywood have seen some of his work in this movie and have offered him different jobs – important dramatic roles – as well as adventure stories. The film’s ending differs from reality. Wouldn’t the truth have been enough? That in the pouring rain at the last Grand Prix of the season in Japan, Lauda was one of three drivers to stop because of the dangerous conditions – understandably so, three months after his accident. He is not the type of guy who throws a world championship away for the love of a woman. He said it was at this point that he really wondered about the script. It’s a little like Casablanca, with the waiting aircraft and so on. Well, he really was on his way to Tokyo airport, and he told me that he simply didn’t want to die in this race under such adverse conditions. There are a lot of good reasons for this. Love for a woman is one, at least subconsciously. Niki doesn’t admit to such sentiments, but we can very well express them in the film. He had to make a decision and we believe Marlene had something to do with it. The audience would also like to see it that way, but that does not necessarily have anything to do with Hollywood. Rush is released this month: www.rushmovie.com
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Hawaiian paddlers Jeff Silva (left) and Nicolas Schenk traverse the tide in the Olamau Race
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At the Olamau Race, the world’s fastest outrigger canoe teams compete around the rugged coast of Hawaii. Skill, grit and knowledge of the ocean aren’t always enough to win, but they do keep you alive W o r d s : R o b e r t A n a s i P h o t o g r ap h y : C h r i s Ba l d w i n
he yellow-and-white outrigger canoe jets across the water, the six-man crew of the Shell Va’a team paddling in an uncanny tight rhythm. The canoe catches each wave perfectly, shooting forward with a grace that belies the sweat on the men’s faces and the muscles bulging under their T-shirts. Day one of the world’s biggest outrigger canoe race seems to be playing out predictably: the best team, Shell Va’a, has taken the lead. They are from Tahiti, where canoe paddling is one of the most popular pastimes. Everyone paddles in Tahiti – mothers, children, grandparents – and big corporations such as Shell sponsor teams. Each member of Shell Va’a is a star. A Shell Va’a victory at the Olamau Race is by no means a foregone conclusion. Mellow Johnny’s Va’a are muscling in on the Tahitian team’s chances. The American outfit is led by Raimana Van Bastolaer, a legendary Tahitian waterman who pioneered stand-up paddleboarding (SUP) techniques and mastered the world’s biggest wave on home surf at Teahupo’o. “In Tahiti you know how to swim, fish, surf and paddle. The ocean is all around us and we live in the water,” he says. “Parents actually enrol their kids in paddling schools and they spend their days racing with friends. To the kids it’s just play, but if they’re very talented, the parents know their child is going to have a good job, social security – everything.” What’s going on between Shell and Johnny’s in the choppy water around Hawaii’s Big Island is more than child’s play. Each team must give as good as they get or be left behind. Today they will paddle 38 miles between Laupahoehoe
The OPT team’s canoe, with its outrigger (right), is one of the most high-tech vessels in the Olamau race
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and Keokea on the north of the island, the first of three days’ intensive paddling. Teamwork and rhythm are everything in paddling. The crews move in unison to the call of the strokers, paddles throwing up spray as they dip and rise. The fastest paddlers are seated at the front to set the pace; those with the most stamina take up positions in the middle and the steersman sits at the end to navigate, coach and monitor the waves. Two hours into the men’s race and the 14 outrigger canoes have spread out. Support teams following in motorboats shout encouragement and drop off supplies. The frontrunners will complete the course in just over three-and-a-half hours; others will take up to five. Over the three days they’ll cover 101 miles. Most teams in the race are picked from a squad of 12 paddlers, and the first 83 miles up to the penultimate stop at Kukio on the west of the island must be completed by an ‘iron man’ crew of six paddlers with no changes permitted. The final stage allows for one change of up to six paddlers. It’s this iron man component that makes a tough event even more gruelling. One of the paddlers in the women’s 404 team has to quit the first stage, flopping out into the water drained of energy, leaving her teammates to finish the stage with five paddlers. “I hope she gets better quick,” says 404 captain, Jill Schooler, “because she’s going out again tomorrow.” The iron man element of the competition and US$50,000 in prize money awarded in men’s and women’s categories aren’t the only factors that separate the Olamau from other outrigger races. It’s also an unlimited event, meaning that teams can bring, with a few restrictions, any canoe they choose – any weight, shape or size. The event is in its second year, but it has grown so fast that the big teams have put the race on their calendars. 80
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Rolling in the deep: a member of the Alaka‘i Nalu team hauls himself out of the water after capsizing. Facing page: composure before the event’s frenetic start
“Paddling needs to grow,” says race organiser Mike Nakachi. “Last year, we had 11 teams taking part. This year it’s 24 and next year we hope to double that. It will keep getting better.” Mellow Johnny’s not-so-secret weapon in this year’s Olamau race is their pioneering canoe, the latest model to come out of Odie Sumi’s renowned Pure Canoes And Paddles laboratory in Hawaii. Sumi’s design might mean they have the fastest six-man canoe ever to skim the waves. From sleek hull to sharp prow, the outrigger crackles with power. Even the glossy mint-green paint seethes and gleams. To one side of the canoe the ama (outrigger) hangs from the curved ‘iako (struts) like a booster rocket. The canoe looks like a vicious species of wasp or a Star Wars X-Wing starfighter, and on the waves it flies. “They talk about the red bulletin
tradition,” says Sumi, “but if you’re going to paddle a canoe made of fibreglass, why not paddle something fun?” For centuries, Hawaiians built outriggers from single logs carefully selected from the island’s native koa trees in forests covering the volcanic mountains. After months of charring and scraping with a stone adze, the outriggers slowly took shape. The process is very different now. Composite materials and computerised engineering have trumped old methods. For years, cutting-edge canoes have entered races and blown away the traditional boats. The Olamau also serves as a field test for new models of canoe while also having one foot in the sport’s past, and Sumi is at the forefront of this. Out of the 24 canoes in the race, Sumi built 11, making him the Henry Ford of competitive outrigger racing. His rise 81
Tough going: each team must use the same six paddlers for much of the race – changes are only permitted in the final stage
in the field has been rapid. The 31-year-old Hawaiian started out making paddles and selling them on eBay. After graduating from California Polytechnic, he toured surf spots along the west coast of America with a friend, selling paddles and making contacts. His business grew when he moved back to Hawaii four years ago, and before long he had a waiting list. “I was making paddles, so I knew how to glue wood and put fibreglass on it,” says Sumi. “The concept was pretty much the same: take this hollow wood, glue it, sand it, make it into something.” Just three years after making his first canoe, Sumi and his designs dominate racing. His humble origins make him more of a Bill Gates than Henry Ford: like Gates, Sumi started in his garage; he now works out of a couple of warehouses just outside Kona on the west side of the Big Island. One of his race-ready canoes with wood-core hull, carbon fibreglass body, resin-infused ama and carbon-reinforced aluminium ‘iakos will set you back US$19,000. The personal touch remains: each outrigger has waterproof skirts hand-sewn by Sumi’s mother.
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he Olamau Race plays out against a backdrop of astonishing views. In the distance looms the Mauna Kea volcano which, at 10,210m, is the tallest mountain in the world, from base underwater to peak, sorry Everest. Big Island is the newest of the Hawaiian Islands – its youth contributes to the constant landslides and lava flows exploding into the sea. The Olamau teams paddle by black cliffs and dozens of waterfalls that drop sheer into the surf. No team runs closer to the cliffs than Pacific Northwest. At the moment, they’re regretting taking their line inside as the rebounding waves make it impossible to push ahead. They paddle at full tilt, fighting the waves, fighting the current. Most of the teams have a local steersman who knows the course, or at least an escort boat, but Pacific Northwest are struggling, the frontrunners way ahead and out of sight. Paddling is a labour of love for members of the Pacific Northwest team. Conditions are very different in that part of America compared with Hawaii. Wetsuits are a must in winter, when paddlers often have to hack through ice before practice sessions. They are also hindered by having to train in bays and rivers, missing out on gaining experience of big swells, which requires a unique skill set. Plus, the crew – former swimmers, distance canoe paddlers and Hawaiian expats – live many miles from each other and have to fit in training around full-time jobs. “We keep a record of our training days,” says team captain Lance Mamiya. “When you see that someone else has logged in, it drives you to keep going yourself.” Mamiya looks a decade younger than his 46 years. His thick muscles slope from his neck and shoulders down to weightlifter’s arms. He grew up in Hawaii, but his father’s career as an Air Force fighter pilot took the family around the world. It wasn’t until Mamiya settled in the Northwest that he started paddling seriously. For him, it’s both an adrenalin sport and a way to stay connected to his island roots. “When you come back to Hawaii,” he says, “and get to surf and paddle without any kind of wetsuit, you have a pure connection to the water. Every time I visit, it gets tougher for me to get back on the plane to Seattle.” Traditionally, the canoes taking part in the Olamau lack rudders or fins. It’s the steersman’s job to keep the line – not so easy as swell and wind jerks the outrigger stern from side to side. Catching a swell on an outrigger is like six surfers trying
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Dire straits: Mellow Johnny’s get caught in a swell on Day One near Keokea. Hawaiian paddler Heiva Paie (facing page) is one of the stars of their crew
Mauna Loa
Keokea Beach
H awa i i Kawaihae Kukio Kamakahonu
Laupahoehoe Big Island
from battling the waves, they now have to fight each other. “Every time I’d look up another attack was coming,” says Mathisen. “Dropping those teams wasn’t easy.” After winning day one, Mathisen and her team finish second on day two, just losing out to Na Hoa, but retain their yellow jerseys in the overall rankings. Last year, only one women’s team competed in the Olamau – this time round there are five, enough for separate rankings and prize money.
to ride a wave on one longboard. Every paddler has to feel the wave and adjust his stroke. Once the wave speed is matched, the strokes need to be shorter and quicker to keep pace. Meanwhile, the steersman has to keep the canoe angled so the bow doesn’t get buried in the wave in front of it, while staying on course. Yet the Pacific Northwest crew plough forward. Last year, they raced the Olamau in a spec canoe, and finished in last place in the men’s category, but their grit impressed the field so much that Sumi loaned them an unlimited canoe for this year. Day one ends with Mellow Johnny’s and Shell neck and neck. Shell pulls across the line 81 seconds ahead. On shore, a crewman from the Sea Shepherd team lies groaning on a table in the banquet pavilion, an IV needle sunk into to his arm. Croquet, this isn’t, and it’s about to get much worse. The Pacific Ocean erupts on day two. Thirty-knot winds and 10ft swells crash onto the shore. Tourists in sightseeing boats cling to the rails. Just reaching the starting line is a survival test: the Sea Shepherd boat capsizes in the surf, paddlers struggling to keep their heads above water. The escort boats disappear behind the swells, leaving the canoes paddling alone. Minutes into the race, Mellow Johnny’s get swamped and have to bail. The best teams take advantage of the stormy weather, using the wind to drop into the bigger swells. Anna Mathisen is the captain of the Pacific Wahine women’s team, and she’s in her element. A one-time professional swimmer, she’s spent her life in the water. Mathisen’s Norwegian ancestry shows in her ash-blonde hair and light blue eyes, but her soul is at least half Hawaiian. “Personally,” she says. “I thrive in the big stuff. Our head second-day steerswoman Katie Stephens also does canoe sailing and has a ton of experience in rough seas. We weren’t worried.” “I had to lean out of the canoe and hold my paddle firm to keep us straight. Then switch back to paddling. The weight of water and the anaerobic intensity left me shaking.” After an intense hour of surfing, Pacific Wahine enter the flats to find three women’s teams – Oceanic Connection, Kawaihae and 404 – only a few yards away. Exhausted the red bulletin
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n day three the water is pure glass, so velvet and still you feel like you could put a blanket on it and have a picnic. Out in front it’s a three-team race, with Shell, Mellow Johnny’s and EDT fighting for the lead, running side by side. Shell have a four-minute advantage in the overall rankings but they want to win every stage. Finishing a stage in first place will earn a team US$2,500, while the overall winner in the men’s category nets another US$15,000 on top of that. It sounds like decent money, until you think about dividing it 12 ways and the cost of getting to Hawaii. Shell could win every race they enter, and still not come close to breaking even. But the upsides outweigh the downsides for these paddlers: the competition and camaraderie, the practice of an ancient craft along a coast that shimmers with natural beauty. It’s paddling into an ancient tradition, while maintaining a 21st-century competitive edge. At a post-race pool party, the teams mingle, slapping each other on the back, trading war stories and working through their own abiding memories of the race. “The overall message to take away from Olamau can be so many different things: strong life, or live strong, or live life to its fullest,” says race organiser Mike Nakachi. “To me it’s living at its best.” “We were in the first race,” says Lance Mamiya, “and we’re in this one, and we’ll keep coming back as long they’ll have us. It might not be as sexy as BASE-jumping or skydiving, but it has its own intensity, and there’s the tradition. We’re paddling new boats but we’re connected to something that’s a thousand years old.” Shell edge out EDT and Mellow Johnny’s to claim overall victory and a sizeable cash prize, while Pacific Wahine take the US$5,500 prize money for winning in the women’s category. But one team that won’t make a dime from the event is Pacific Northwest. They head back to the mainland with sore muscles and a 13th-place overall finish. One after another, crews paddle into the harbour at Kamakahonu, weary and satisfied. European tourists stare at the paddlers from their sun loungers as they lift their canoes out of the water. It’s a different Hawaii from the ancient heartland, but the Olamau ties all these Hawaiis together. Next year, the race will follow the same route, and continue to transform outrigger racing. www.olamaurace.com
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WINGS FoR EVERY TASTE.
CRANBERRY, LIME, BLUEBERRY. AND THE EFFECT oF RED BULL.
Solar flair: headphones that look good and charge your smartphone. MUSIC, page 94
Where to go and what to do
ac t i o n !
photography: Everest Skydive
T r a v e l / G e a r / T r a i n i n g / N i g h t l i f e / M U S I C / p a r t i e s / c i t i e s / c l u b s / E v e n ts
The Other Everest
Jumping from a helicopter hovering at the top of the world is the ultimate in James Bond-style adventure If the world is not enough, take a trip to Earth’s highest drop zone
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Travel, page 90
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Action!
Safety Fi rst
PRO TOOLS
Ronix Parks Boots
Hot foot The soft inner shoe is heated in a special oven before use. When it’s warm it fits the shape of the foot perfectly
Saving Parks’ life
Comfort break A deeper opening allows more mobility in manoeuvres. A foam insert in the sole softens hard landings
Pro-tec Ace Wake Helmet This has saved my neck on many occasions. Perfect fit, great padding and detachable ear pads. www.pro-tec.net
Ain’t heavy Mesh inserts and fewer seams than other shoes keep the weight down to a mere 2.5kg
Ronix Impact Jacket The light, elastic zip vest fits me like a glove. I’ve worn it when leaping out of helicopters and riding powerful kickers.
Parks Bonifay won his first X Games gold aged 14
www.ronixwake.com
On the best of a wave Wakeboarding Parks Bonifay on the gear that lets him exceed expectations The best wakeboarder of all time? Those in the know regard the 32-year-old Bonifay as the greatest practitioner of his craft. The Floridian developed his kit to exactly suit his wakeboarding style and is also constantly experimenting with new tricks. In 1999, he landed the first-ever switch toeside 1080 – a three-spin move once thought
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impossible. When it comes to equipment, he values manoeuvrability of the board and boots, weight reduction and comfort, but always plays it safe. “Before I was born, my uncle drowned and so my mother never let me go out on the water without a helmet and swimming vest.” www.parksbonifay.com
Ronix Parks ATR EDTN My ‘all-terrain ride’ board is 139cm long and ideally suited to all types of tricks and moves. www.ronixwake.com
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Photography: Chris Garrison/Red Bull Content Pool
Well adjusted The boot is fixed directly to the board with two screws, but the angle remains adjustable
Action!
party
roll with it Can you still smoke joints in Amsterdam?
Last year there was talk of a ban on foreigners buying cannabis. Here’s the blowby-blow of what happened.
Hidden in the party and theatre district of Leidseplein
Milky way out
Words: florian obkircher. Photography: de fotomeisjes (4), DigiDaan
AMSTERDAM Once home to hippies, now a hipster haunt: the Melkweg – the ‘Milky Way’ – has been at the centre of subculture for 40 years Two concert halls, two theatres, a cinema, a gallery, space for 3,800 people. In its 40 years of service, the Melkweg has grown to become Holland’s largest cultural centre. It opened in 1972 in an abandoned dairy factory in the heart of Amsterdam and attracted hippies from all over the world. Before the decade was out, the punks followed, and the Melkweg was a popular stop for British and Irish bands making European tours. In September, there are concerts from Californian skate punks Good Riddance, singer-songwriter Kate Nash and the electronic stylings of Jon Hopkins. Together they’re an embodiment of the Melkweg ethos of good times and culture for all. Melkweg Lijnbaansgracht 234A 1017 PH Amsterdam, NL www.melkweg.nl
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GR E E N LIGHT Show time: a concert every day, sometimes even two
Fi rst Things Amsterdam’s breakfast options are as numerous and excellent as its night banquet. Three ways to drive away a hangover
JUICEd Gartine serves produce it grows on the premises. A bucolic spot can make you forget you’re in the middle of the city. Taksteeg 7-BG
BAKED Barney’s Breakfast Bar offers water pipe and space cakes first thing, but they also have great crêpes and breakfast rolls. Haarlemmerstraat 102
FRIED Amsterdammers love fries. The best, at Vleminckx, come with exotic sauces, such as Oorlog (war) with red onion and peanuts. Voetboogstraat 33
The new rule: each city and town can decide if it wants to sell cannabis to tourists. Amsterdam decided for; many places in the south, including Maastricht, against.
RED FLAG You can’t smoke in the coffee shops – at least not tobacco. If you’re smoking pure hash, puff away. But many places offer a herbal substitute as an alternative to tobacco.
GR E Y A R E A Lighting up outdoors is forbidden, but a blind eye tends to be turned. The Blowverbod signs erected in 2007 have been removed permanently – because tourists kept stealing them.
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Action!
travel
On top of the world: the planet’s highest skydiving experience
And anoth er thing See all in Nepal
By water Nepal is known for its exhilarating river rafting. Novices and rafting regulars alike will find a river run at their level. www.nepalraft.com
Might of the mountain
By air Skydivers who’d like a ride in a plane they don’t have to jump out of should take a scenic flight around Mount Everest for a breathtakingly up-close view.
E verest Skydive A leap at more than twice the normal height requires nerves of steel, but the incredible views and adrenalin rushes are a unique payoff
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www.buddhaair.com
Advice from the inside Hit the gym “You trek for six days before the jump to gradually acclimatise to the altitude,” says Bedingfield, “so I started training at the gym two months before. It helped to feel fit, strong and prepared.”
Kitting up
“We supply pretty much everything jumpers will need,”
says Wendy Smith of Skydive Everest, “from puffer jackets to bespoke thermal suits, which look like an astronaut outfit. But for the trek, people need walking boots. I’d recommend they’re nicely broken in and comfortable. We’ll do the rest.”
By land If skydiving hasn’t depleted your energy reserves, Everest Skydive can organise a seven-day trek to Mount Everest base camp followed by a helicopter ride back to Kathmandu.
the red bulletin
words: ruth morgan. photography: wendysmithaerial.com, everest skydive
At an altitude of about 12,500ft, a standard skydive is adventure enough for most. If you double that, then add another 4,500ft, you’re at the cruising altitude of a jumbo jet, or the same height as Mount Everest. Before 2008, no one had skydived near Mount Everest. Many thought it was too high, but, with the help of an extra oxygen supply, a team of daredevils made the first jumps, and have since run an annual expedition in October. To date, fewer than 100 people have made the jump. “It was the first time I’d contemplated skydiving,” says Molly Bedingfield, who jumped with Everest Skydive to raise money for her charity, Global Angels, “but it was the most amazing experience – from trekking to the world’s highest drop zone to the jump itself. I did a tandem skydive with an expert, and when I put my arms out it really felt like I was flying. You drop faster www.everestthan usual as the air is so thin, but you skydive.com have around six-and-a-half minutes Solo skydive from US$25,000 before landing. The scenery, Everest Tandem skydive and the Himalayas, is breathtaking. from US$35,000 It’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing.”
Action!
workout
The ABT crew aim is to achieve pit-stop times of under three seconds
“Our goal is to work on the mechanics at least twice a week. Not easy because their work on the car takes priority,” says Axel Funke
n ever tire with tyres
Four in three
Words: Werner Jessner. Photography: tim Lüdin. illustration: heri irawan
dtm You have to be mighty fit to change the four wheels of a touring car in less than three seconds The souped-up Audi A5 is still a good half-metre from the stop line, but the impact screwdrivers are already at work loosening the still-moving wheels. A lever on the driver’s side activates the pneumatic jack and the car shoots up on four stilts. The man with the screwdriver rests his elbow on his right knee; with his left hand, he sticks the old wheel on a spoke while the second man puts the new wheel on. Screw in, lower the car, drive away. All that in under three seconds. In a day of training, the mechanics of the ABT Sportsline team in the German touring car championship (DTM) do up to 16 pit-stop changes like this, usually in sets of four followed by a break of at least 90 minutes (when they work on the cars). A front wheel of the ABT DTM Audi A5 weighs 22kg, and a rear wheel 24kg – about three times heavier than a Formula One wheel. Using the impact screwdriver is a test of strength: it weighs 6.8kg. the red bulletin
Functional strength training on a weight stack ensures that mechanics’ movements come naturally when called upon, says Axel Funke, Audi Motorsport’s fitness coach and ABT’s sports scientist
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The mechanic’s position at the weight stack corresponds with his pit-stop position: a slight crouch.
Repetitive movements demand all-round strength. Left and right body parts are trained equally to prevent muscular imbalance.
We do two sets of 12-15 reps with weights lighter than the wheel, then one set of 2-6 reps with greater-than-wheel weights.
Consistency can be improved with classic bench presses. Around 80kg is ideal, but 60kg is normal.
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Action!
city Guide
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TOP FIVE MY Sao Paulo HIGHLIGHTS
pumping, with plenty of live music in the bars. I really like the Salve Jorge, which has the coldest beer in the city: they serve the bottles in ice buckets.
Wow in Sao: Vogue and Elle cover star Viviane Orth
1 Ibirapuera Park,
“Burger and Fendi handbag to go”
Av. Pedro Alvares Cabral A great park with structures by genius architect Oscar Niemeyer and a great place to jog. Skateboarders, bikers and skaters fly past as you run. Every kind of sport is allowed here.
SaO PAULO Glamour shops, top bars, jogging in a Niemeyer park: supermodel Viviane Orth leads the way through her city – and to its best burger joint One of the most in-demand models in the world, Viviane Orth grew up in Sao Paulo and is as keen on the city as any of its 12 million residents. “A great city with the most hospitable people in the world,” says the 22-year-old, “although for non-residents it can sometimes be a bit frightening – because it’s so big.” Although Orth now lives abroad, she regularly returns to her favourite city. “The coolest boutiques and the best restaurants in Brazil are here. And the most thriving nightlife.” 92
motor up A Mecca for speed junkies, the Kartódromo Granja Viana offers four excellent outdoor kart tracks. A 25-minute spin costs 85 real, about US$35, including helmet and overalls.
4 Cidade Jardim
Av. Magalhaes de Castro This is the best place for a shopping spree, with shops like Hermès, Chanel and Brazil’s most venerable boutique, Daslu. And the best burger place, Lanchonete da Cidade. I can’t walk past without getting one.
skates on Sao Paulo’s best skateboarding spots are in the Morumbi district and the CEU Butanta skate park. Also try Toobsland, a skate shop with its own skatebowl. You can make reservations and enjoy a private session.
off road
2 Pe no Parque
Rua Inhambu, 240 After jogging I eat in the park’s snack bar, with a clear conscience. Here they have fresh fruit and my favourite food: puréed frozen acai berries, which are best eaten with muesli.
3 Bar Salve Jorge
Rua Aspicuelta, 544 The city’s nightlife is constantly
5 Casa Juisi
R. Roberto Simonsen, 108 This second-hand shop is my insider tip for vintage fashion, antique furniture and retro sunglasses, as well as cool old handbags. My last purchase was a Fendi handbag from 1970.
The Tiete Ecological Park east of Sao Paulo is an oasis of relaxation, a nature reserve and a paradise for BMX riders. With several tracks, it’s perfect for both beginners and freestyle pros.
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Photography: tuca vieira (4)
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Y THAT PHOTOGRAPH REATHLESS LEAVES YOU B
INGENIOUS
HO ARE THE PEOPLE W E WORLD CHANGING TH
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HAT ADVENTURE T DARIES BREAKS BOUN
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FRESH EN U P YOU R VINYL! how to get your platters clean
When Franz Ferdinand released their debut album in 2004, the verdict was unanimous: no other band could so skilfully and casually join references to the Russian avant-garde with jagged New Wave drums and catchy melodies. Nine years and the sale of over three million records later, the kings of art-school rock are back with a fourth album, Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action. Drummer Paul Thomson reveals the music that the Glasgow-based quartet were listening to while they made it.
Art of darkness playlist Gloomy hip-hop, ADHD electro and Danish industrial: music to make a Franz Ferdinand album by
1 Kerri Chandler
www.franzferdinand.com
2 Kanye West
3 Zomby
The original is good, but even better is the remix by Foremost Poets, a house producer from New Jersey. The way he sloganeers over the top to make the track his own is fantastic. I saw him DJing in Glasgow; he had to borrow someone’s records because his had been impounded by customs. He had the charisma to pull it off. Amazing guy.
Apparently this record was inspired by his visits to the Louvre in Paris. I think it’s hilarious that something like this can result from looking at Renaissance paintings. Kanye is amazing and I am glad that he exists. Back in the day he’d come to our shows and he said that he’s a fan. Now I’m a fan of his, and his tweets are amazing as well.
A difficult artist. In fact he’s nuts: 33 electronic tracks on this album, none much longer than two minutes. For DJs, it’s impossible to mix. His beat puzzle pieces are amazing. It’s dance music for people with ADHD. He says everything that he’s got to say and moves on to the next one. He proved that with his remix for our song Ulysses.
4 Vår
5 The Doppelgangaz
Bar A Thym
The World Fell
Elias Ronnenfelt fronts Danish punk band Iceage, one of the wildest young bands anywhere. I saw them in Glasgow and they set the roof on fire. Recently Elias and a friend released a dark album under the name Vår. It’s young boys making music like Depeche Mode. At the moment I’m listening to the track The World Fell all the time.
94
Black Skinhead
HARK!
At school somebody copied me a cassette of Fear Of A Black Planet by Public Enemy. I was blown away; before that I was mainly listening to thrash metal, but Public Enemy had a different kind of power. These kids remind me of great ’90s hip-hop. Like Wu-Tang Clan, or RZA’s side project Gravediggaz, it’s horrorcore at its best.
THE WASHING MACHINE Spin Clean is a plastic tub with brushes on the inside. Fill it with cleaning solution and water, turn the records clockwise then let them dry.
With Love
THE PISTOL Shoot vinyl with the positive and negative ions in the Milty Zerostat gun, which electrostatically neutralises the surface, and the dust just drops off.
shine on rays up your power levels
Onbeat Solar The headband of these headphones is outfitted with solar cells; small lithium-ion batteries in the earpieces store the energy harvested by those cells, which can then charge your smartphone via a USB cable. www.onbeatheadphones.com
THE HOME REMEDY Apply a thin layer of wood glue evenly into the grooves with a spatula. Then let it dry and slowly peel off the film of dust-coated plasticky glue.
the red bulletin
Words: florian obkricher. Photography: Splash News (1)
Paul Thomson, 36, is the drummer for indie rock band Franz Ferdinand
OUR GREATEST ATHLETES. THEIR GREATEST MOMENTS.
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Statement pieces: the World Of Wearable Art
diaries open, pens at the ready
27
september DANCE DUO Disclosure’s debut album, Settle, is likely to feature prominently in the Best of 2013 lists. Find out why when they bring their brand of synth-EDM to the Auckland Town Hall. www.disclosure official.com
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september SOLID STEEL At the Sawmill Café in Leigh, Kiwi blues/roots legend Thomas Oliver will showcase his solo album, Beneath The Weissenborn, on which he plays only the lap slide guitar of the title. www.sawmill cafe.co.nz
WOW factor
Suzie Moncrieff was a struggling sculptor when she organised the first World Of Wearable Art event in 1987. The show was supposed to be a one-off fundraiser for a rural art gallery in Nelson, but now WOW is one of the most innovative art and design competitions, with entries from all over the world. The annual awards show in Wellington features outrageous costumes in a theatrical performance with spectacular sets and sounds. September 2-8
www.worldofwearableart.com
Catwalk cool September 7
O Canada
Until October 28
Under the sea Moana – My Ocean offers a rare glimpse of life off the coast of New Zealand. Interactive exhibits, lifesized sharks and free entry. www.aucklandmuseum.com
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Canadian duo Japandroids complete their NZ tour at the Kings Arms Tavern in Auckland: the perfect place for their loud, proud punk-rock sound. Support comes from hometown boys The Raw Nerves, who released their second EP in March. www.kingsarms.co.nz
Q: What do gay weddings, designer garage sales and gallons of fine champagne have in common? A: New Zealand Fashion Week. Celebrating its 13th anniversary, the annual fashion extravaganza is one of the highlights of the Auckland social calendar. As usual there’ll be a dizzying amount of runway shows, style seminars and parties to choose from, while NZ fashion designer Annah Stretton is giving one couple the wedding of their dreams as part of her show on September 7. www.nzfashionweek.co.nz
5
october WEIRD BUT WONDERFUL A Weird Night Out is the perfect excuse for George FM DJ Nick D to host a party featuring an eclectic mix of live music and DJs in the Auckland CBD (venue TBC). www.iticket.co.nz
the red bulletin
words: Robert tighe. photography: getty images (1)
September 26-October 6
P RO M OT I O N
1 GO PRO Hero 3 - Black Edition $629.99 - only available at Albany
2 BACKPACK Billabong - Atom Camo $49.99
3 WATCH Casio - G Shock $279.99
4 SHOES Vans - Sk8 Hi $129.99
5 SUNNIES Von Zipper - Lomax $179.99
6 HEADPHONES Nixon - Trooper $109.99
Time warp
Ski jump
Photography: Alan Band/Fox Photos/Getty Images
A waterskiing team reach a high-water mark during a high-speed demonstration at Cypress Gardens, Florida, USA, on November 25, 1965. Today at this place, stacking of a different kind: it’s the site of Legoland Florida.
the next issue of the red bulletin is out on october 1 98
the red bulletin
Sebastian Vettel for Pepe Jeans London