The Red Bulletin UK 10/21 by Red Bull Media House

UK EDITION OCTOBER 2021, £3.50

BEYOND THE ORDINARY

FIRST

CLASS

LUCY CHARLESBARCLAY WAS BORN TO COMPETE IN IRONMAN. NOW SHE’S BUILT TO WIN IT

SUBSCRIBE: GETREDBULLETIN.COM

Editor’s letter

CONTRIBUTORS THIS ISSUE

MIRIAM WALKER-KHAN

The London-based sports journalist has written for gal-dem, Guardian Opinion, SEASON zine and Dazed, and reports for BBC Sport. “I’ve never met anyone whose story is so full of resilience and determination,” Walker-Khan says of Lucy Charles-Barclay, whose ‘Pain Cave’ she visited for our cover feature. Page 28

RICK GUEST (COVER), GUILLAUME NÉRY

LEE NXUMALO

The writer and filmmaker from Johannesburg, South Africa, travelled to Roma in Lesotho to meet pump-track racer Khothalang Leuta. “It’s important to me to bridge the gap that exists between women’s and men’s sports, not because of skill but due to gender politics,” says Nxumalo. “I was drawn to Khothalang’s story because she’s had the opportunity to fulfil her potential.” Page 48

OF SINGLE PURPOSE “Being told you’re not good enough just makes you hungry to prove those people wrong.” So says our cover star, Ironman athlete Lucy Charles-Barclay (page 28), who, just four years ago, faced a wall of doubt over her capabilities in the sport. Next year she heads into the World Championship ranked number two and wants to finish it the best on the planet. Listening to others is a good trait, but not at the cost of your own self worth. This issue of The Red Bulletin is filled with individuals who’ve stayed true to their inner vision. R&B singer Tinashe (page 22) walked away from a lucrative recording contract when she found it toxic to her creativity; multi-sports champion Hunter McIntrye (page 24) was written off at school; parkour athlete Pasha Petkuns (page 40) ignored his critics to build his dreams in the form of a five-storey-high pinball table; and photographer Franck Seguin (page 58) follows freedivers whose trust in their instincts is the difference between life or death. And then there’s Khothalang Leuta (page 48), a girl from a remote village in Lesotho who doesn’t even own a bike and is now riding in the UCI Pump Track World Championships. Shared stories of personal ambitions. Enjoy the issue.

The life aquatic: veteran photojournalist Franck Seguin documents the world beneath the waves. Page 58 THE RED BULLETIN

O U T R I D E T H E DAY OUTR I DE T HE ROAD

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CONTENTS October 2021

6 Gallery: treading a fine line in

New South Wales; subterranean skate tricks in Innsbruck; a freerun fantasy in Athens; and stellar mountain-biking in Utah

13 Soul motion: US singer and

dancer Leon Bridges picks four guaranteed floorfillers

14 Speaking volumes: the Human

Library challenges stereotypes and brings stories to life

16 Wave of support: the book Stories

for the Seas is a celebration of the mighty ocean – and a lifeline 19 Green room: commune with

nature in a bike trailer that thinks it’s a treehouse

20 Glued to your phone screen on

the street? Love the cyclops look? The Third Eye is for you

22 T inashe

The R&B star who shook off the shackles of a major label deal and took charge of her career

2 4 Hunter McIntyre

Meet the mulleted macho man who eats world records for breakfast. And lunch. And dinner

26 S am Bloom

How an unlikely friendship with a stricken bird gave the paralysed Australian surfer a new focus

2 8 Lucy Charles-Barclay

Triple threat : Lucy Charles-Barclay has her eyes on the prize

Harder, better, faster, stronger: the British Ironman ace is primed to become world champion

40 P asha Petkuns

Flipping out: the freerunning dreamer who thought big and became a pinball wizard

RICK GUEST

48 Khothalang Leuta

How a small-town girl from Lesotho is putting her country on the map in pump-track cycling

58 Franck Seguin

A deep dive into the aquatic world of the veteran photojournalist

THE RED BULLETIN

69 Voice of descent: the inside

track on enduro biking in the mountains of Crans-Montana, Switzerland 74 Perfect tents: kit and clothing that fellow campers will covet 84 Circus fitness: a regime made for big tops (and bottoms) 86 One bike for the daily commute

and another for weekend off- roading? Think again

88 Explore the open world of MTB

video game Riders Republic 90 Elise Downing: the ultrarunning

novice who ran the British coast

91 Go with the blow: Red Paddle Co’s

inflatable Ride MSL paddleboard 92 Dial another day: James Bond gets a new Omega Seamaster 94 Essential dates for your calendar 98 Outdoors wisdom from Semi-Rad 05

NEW SOUTH WALES, AUSTRALIA DAVYDD CHONG

High hopes

KAMIL SUSTIAK/RED BULL ILLUME

Every pro snapper knows the agony of waiting for a shot that might not materialise. This was the predicament of Kamil Sustiak as he trained his lens on Aussie slackliner Chris Wallace high above Blue Mountains National Park. “I was ready to bail,” says the Czech, “when all of a sudden the fog dropped and showed us what was going on around us. This seemingly out-of-this-world scenery lasted for about an hour before the clouds disappeared and the world turned normal again.” In photography, as in Wallace’s craft, it’s a thin line between success and failure. kamilsustiak.com

INNSBRUCK, AUSTRIA

Spot on This moody shot of Austrian skater Peter Mader won Manuel Kokseder a semi-final place in the Best Of Instagram category of global photography competition Red Bull Illume. The Tyrol-based lensman is best known for his images of stunning vistas, but when was the last time you saw a mountain pull off a trick like this? Exactly. koksederphotography.com

ATHENS, GREECE

Motion of the ocean

MANUEL KOKSEDER/RED BULL ILLUME, ALEX GRYMANIS/RED BULL CONTENT POOL

DAVYDD CHONG

Red Bull Art of Motion is to freerunners what BC One is to the breakdancing community – a global competitive showcase where creativity is paramount and respect is hard-won. Here, we see Greece’s Dimitris Kyrsanidis and Germany’s Silke Sollfrank jumping ship (pun unashamedly intended) this April in the run-up (yes, that one, too) to July’s finals at Mikrolimano marina in Piraeus, Athens. redbull.com

UTAH, USA

Star trip troupers

NOAH WETZEL

DAVYDD CHONG

“There’s a reason why I asked Blake [Sommer] and Jack [Graham] to join me on this adventure,” says Colorado-based photographer Noah Wetzel of the MTB aces captured in this atmospheric night-time shot. “Besides their amazing riding abilities, they are incredibly mildmannered and motivated.” Stoicism and determination are essential traits when braving the 40°C daytime heat of the Utah desert then shooting into the early hours (still a sweaty 20°C). Plus some good antiperspirant, obviously. noahwetzel.com

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LEON BRIDGES

Soul to sole The award-winning singer started out as a dancer. Here are four tracks that always get him moving

PAVIELLE GARCIA

WILL LAVIN

When soul music went massive in the early 1960s, Todd Bridges’ father was barely a child. While soul has evolved into myriad styles, it’s this traditional sound – rooted in gospel, jazz and R&B – that can be heard in the music of 32-year-old Todd, better known as Leon Bridges. The Texan-born singer-songwriter rose to fame in 2015 with his top-10 hit Coming Home, and four years later won a Grammy for the song Bet Ain’t Worth The Hand. Bridges has collaborated with the likes of Common and John Mayer, and performed at Barack Obama’s 55th birthday at the White House. But he’s also an accomplished dancer from his college years. Here, he shares four irresistible grooves. Leon Bridges’ new album Gold-Diggers Sound is out now; leonbridges.com

Yung Nation

Marvin Gaye

Future

James Brown

Club Rock (2012)

Sexual Healing (1982)

March Madness (2015)

The Payback (1974)

“This tune is a big part of Dallas and Fort Worth dance culture. We have a very specific way of dancing to it, which we call ‘boogie dancing’. I’ve always considered this a personal anthem; I often put it on at the end of a photoshoot and it always sparks such a good mood. I question anyone who doesn’t want to get up and just move to it. It’s like lightning to the feet. I can never get bored of what this song does to me.”

“Marvin Gaye’s trajectory is the blueprint for me. This is not an obvious dance tune, but it has such an undeniable groove. When it comes on, I’m stopping everything just to move to it. It has a totally different vibe to Club Rock, but sometimes you gotta slow things down and let the song transport your body where it wants to take you. It should be a staple for study in dance schools, if it isn’t already. Perfection!”

“There are so many Future songs I could have chosen, but this one’s special – when it comes on in the club, there’s an immediate response. It has a strong sense of camaraderie, so me and my homies will be dancing and singing the lyrics straight away; we all sort of move as one, with our bodies directed by the beat. That has to be one of my favourite feelings. It makes me smile just thinking about it.”

“I love how there’s so much space in this song. Normally when I’m moving to it I’m using an amalgamation of styles, because you can’t really label it; it’s just James Brown being a badass. It’s perfect for freeform dance, which is my favourite kind of movement because there are no rules; you just express how the music makes you feel. I’ve bust out moves to this more times than I care to remember.”

THE RED BULLETIN

Life lessons Never judge a book by its cover – that’s the ethos behind this diverse collection of living, breathing, speaking page-turners

What do you notice first when meeting a person? Is it their clothes? Their voice? What they say? Making judgments is human nature: we read facial clues, study body language and come up with assumptions that fit our world view. Now, a non-profit storytelling collective wants to correct this instinctive bias – by turning people into open books. The Human Library allows you to borrow a person and discover their story firsthand, challenging your prejudices and looking beyond any stereotypes. Its founder, Ronni Abergel, was inspired by his own experiences of judging and being judged as a teenager.

“I went to high school in the United States as an exchange student,” says the 48-year-old, who was born in Denmark to a Danish mother and a Moroccan Jewish father. “There was always someone in class who was that odd one out; someone with red hair, or who was introverted, or was from a different country like me. I wondered why we couldn’t just figure out how to get along.” This spurred Abergel to devise a safe space for those suffering from stereotyping, and to invite others to meet them and be confronted with their own biases, both conscious and unconscious. In spring 2000, he launched the first Menneskebiblioteket

THE RED BULLETIN

LOU BOYD

HUMAN LIBRARY

MARTIN KUBERT

Shelf expression: at the Human Library, book reading is truly interactive

(Danish for Human Library) at Roskilde music festival near Copenhagen, running it for four days straight, eight hours a day, with 50 ‘titles’ available. The ‘books’ are listed according to stigma — from the tattooed and the homeless to single parents and those who follow a certain religion — and are borrowed by ‘readers’ for half an hour. Each book sits down with their reader and shares their own experience, answering questions and talking through taboo subjects safely and freely without the fear of being judged. “We have simple rules,” says Abergel. “You have to treat the book with respect and bring it back on time in the same condition. Don’t take it home, don’t tear out any pages.” The Human Library attracts people who want to learn something new, but also those keen to challenge themselves and their opinions. “People have travelled across the country to speak to a particular book, to sit with a Muslim or talk to survivors of sexual assault, understand what it’s like to be autistic, a young parent or LGBTQ+. We’ve had a few negative incidents, but I can count them on one hand. I can tell you about thousands of positive interactions where minds have been opened and opinions changed.” The library is now spread across more than 80 countries and recently went online. Simply take out a ‘library card’ and start looking through the literature available. Books are available as first editions (those who are new to the library), ‘hardbacks’ (where books and readers meet face to face) and ebooks. “We’re not fighting stigma or combating prejudice,” says Abergel. “We’re just a neutral space. A library where you can learn and explore the agendas in your hands. We hope you make the most of it.” humanlibrary.org

Go anywhere, do everything. The all-new Roll Top. The pack that has your back, whatever the conditions.

The mighty ocean covers more than 70 per cent of the Earth’s surface. This new book tells its stories – and seeks to help safeguard its future Sean Kobi Sandoval hadn’t originally planned to publish a book about the ocean. When the then 22-year-old from Huntington Beach, California, moved to the Netherlands in 2017 to study photography at the Royal Academy of Art, he thought he’d spend less time thinking about the sea and more on his new studies. However, a chance meeting with Magnus Ekermann, brand manager for watersports earplug company SurfEars, 16

and designing and collating the book. “It was an amazing idea and I needed an internship, so I jumped on board,” he says. “My three-month internship ended up a 10-month passion project.” Profits from sales go to four environmental organisations: the UK’s Surfers Against Sewage, Denmark’s Plastic Change, Argentinian marine rewilding project Sin Azul No Hay Verde, and the Californiabased, women-led Changing Tides Foundation. “This is not just a coffee table book to raise money for our partnering non-profits,” says Sandoval, “but also to inspire [others] to spend more time in the ocean and take better care of it. We want everyone to question how the ocean affects our own lives as well as marine life.” Stories for the Seas is on sale at surfears.com THE RED BULLETIN

LOU BOYD

Wave power

changed those plans. The Dane told Sandoval about his dream project – one that would bring together the world’s best surf photography and raise money for marine conservation. Last year, the duo’s efforts came to fruition with the release of Stories for the Seas, a book about the ocean, for the ocean. The 270-page tome features contributions from more than 50 activists, artists, athletic swimmers and seafarers, from the beautiful surf images of Bryanna Bradley to first-hand perspectives such as the story of the Fight For the Bight protest (see opposite page). “I have a lot of contact with surf photographers through my work and wanted to tap into that huge inventory,” says Ekermann. Sandoval took charge of the creative side, contacting the contributors

MARÍA FERNANDA, BRYANNA BRADLEY. JARRAH LYNCH

STORIES FOR THE SEAS

Maria Fernanda (opposite) Mexico “People who spend a lot of time in the ocean always make [it] a priority to respect and protect marine life, as well as the oceans and beaches… Sadly, you can see the negative impact selfishness and greed have left on nature, especially our oceans. Since 2013, the change I’ve experienced in [coastal town] Puerto Escondido has been dramatic. Every year, it’s more crowded, more polluted… The government has accepted bribes so buildings can continue construction without following rules and laws [protecting] nature.”

Bryanna Bradley (left) British Columbia “I associate the ocean with connection. Articulating just how complex those connections are [is] beyond what I’m capable of with words, which is why I spend much of my time trying to capture it through photography. I have seen the embrace of saltwater bring people back to themselves, to happiness, to community [pictured: surfer Hanna Scott]. I can’t imagine anything in this world that’s capable of having the same effect on humans [as] the ocean does.”

Fight for the Bight Australia “Tens of thousands of surfers and ocean enthusiasts protested against Norwegian [state-owned energy company] Equinor’s plans to drill for oil in the Great Australian Bight, concluding with Equinor cancelling their plans. They’re the third major oil company to abandon plans to drill [here], following BP and Chevron. A beautiful example of the surfing community uniting to protect our ocean environment.” THE RED BULLETIN

CARGO HYBRID: GOT YOUR BACK

CUBE CARGO HYBRID Need to move a bulky load, or looking for a new way to bring your kids along? The all new Cargo Hybrid has got your back! Powered by Bosch‘s fourth generation drive system and featuring an EPP foam carrier with an optional comfortable seat with seat belts; It‘s the best excuse yet to ditch the car.

CUBEBIKEUK / www.cube-bikes.co.uk

LOU BOYD JÖRG HAMMERMEISTER

Imagine this: you’re on a long bike ride down a remote forest path and it’s getting dark. Instead of heading back to civilisation, you ride on further and find a tree. Locking up your bike, you set up a bed within the tree’s branches and spend the night cocooned above the forest floor. This may sound like a scene from an Enid Blyton story, or perhaps the blurb from a brochure for some luxury eco-retreat, but it’s neither. The Tree Trailer is a small house on wheels that is light enough to be towed behind a standard bike and secured to a trunk and branches for a comfortable night snoozing among the birds. Built from repurposed wood and plastic – including some old house blinds – and set on a steel frame with four wheels, it is the work of Netherlands-based design student Henry K Wein, who created it as a DIY project for his college application in 2018. “It started [life] in my garage, [made from] reused parts and offcuts from other construction,” recalls Wein, who, at 18, had graduated from high school and spent much of his spare time cycling. “I didn’t have any art or design background, but I was really into cycling and camping. I didn’t have a plan or any kind of concept worked out. It just came to me while I was out walking; I wanted to make something cool that combined biking and this kind of immersive camping in the trees.” With the trailer’s wheels folded away, the treehouse can be suspended from a large branch using a series of ropes and ratchets, with its body resting against the tree trunk. Once it’s locked in place, the owner can climb in and either look out through the front opening or lie back and gaze out of the treehouse’s windowed ceiling above their head. “The idea was to feel as if you’re just sitting in a tree, seeing all the nature around and above you,” THE RED BULLETIN

TREE TRAILER

Trunk bunk How one design student’s revolutionary portable treehouse grew from the seed of an idea into an internet sensation

Lofty ambitions: the Tree Trailer can be suspended from any sturdy branch (see Wein and his creation, top photo). But please note: strapping it to a lighthouse may invalidate the warranty

says Wein. “As the tree moves with the wind, the ropes give nice suspension, so you feel like you’re actually lying on a branch. It sounds cheesy, but it’s a great experience.” Wein’s application to study at the Design Academy Eindhoven was successful, and his online video showing a day spent in the treehouse has drawn the attention of design blogs around the world. However, he has no desire to capitalise on the invention. “I’m not interested in using this to make myself money,” he says. “It was something I hadn’t seen before, and it was a challenge to make. I just wanted to lift camping off the floor and try sleeping up in the trees.” Instagram: @weinwork 19

Vision excess Pay attention! This gadget alerts its wearer where they’re going, while also warning where we’re all blindly heading

In the Yeongdeungpo District of Seoul, South Korea, pedestrian crossing lights aren’t mounted on poles – they’re embedded into the kerb. Faced with a population increasingly glued to its smartphones, in 2019 the authorities decided that instead of telling people to look up before stepping into the road, they’d simply adapt crossings to suit those who mostly stare downwards. This development horrified 28-year-old industrial designer Minwook Paeng, who responded with his own creation. The Third Eye is a robotic prosthetic that, when fastened to the forehead with a gel pad, allows the wearer to walk without collision while

THE RED BULLETIN

LOU BOYD

THE THIRD EYE

MINWOOK PAENG

The Third Eye: well, that’s just ruined the game of hide-and-seek for all of us now, hasn’t it…

never having to avert their eyes from their phone screen. Built by Paeng – a postgraduate in innovation design engineering at the Royal College of Art and Imperial College London – using the open-source electronics platform Arduino, The Third Eye alerts its user to oncoming hazards. The plastic eyeball senses when the wearer’s head is tilted towards their screen and turns on its ultrasonic sensor, built into the black ‘pupil’. If an obstacle is detected, this triggers a warning buzz. But while Paeng’s invention is a genuine, functional device, it was designed as a satirical commentary on another disaster we’re all stumbling towards. “We’re becoming ‘phono sapiens’ and the world is adjusting to absurdity in real life,” he says. “There’s a term, ‘smombie’ – a mix of smartphone and zombie. It’s rare to see people walking on the street without their smartphones, and we’re not aware of the obstacles in front of us, or the cars coming up behind us.” Paeng hopes his gadget will make others realise how little they interact with the world around them. “I believe we can lose our human nature through technology or products like The Third Eye,” he says. “We’re constantly checking our smartphones, even when we have company. We’re getting used to a new way of being alone together.” The Korean has no intention of manufacturing The Third Eye for smartphone users, but he has identified the technology’s benefits for the visually impaired and is now working a prototype. “I’m interested in the development of modern people’s lives,” he says. “I’ll do anything to make today’s world better than yesterday’s through my projects.” Instagram: @minwookpaeng

IT’S NOT ABOUT A PLAN. You don’t always need a goal. Sometimes it’s enough to pick out your favourite bike kit and see where your ride takes you. It’s about the experience, not an objective. #notaboutaplan

SPORTFUL.COM

Tinashe

Hitting the reset button Walking away from a major recording contract might seem like career madness, but the US pop star says it was a rebirth for her creativity Words WILL LAVIN

Tinashe Jorgensen Kachingwe doesn’t like to sit still for too long. When Tinashe was just eight years old, her parents – mother of Danish, Norwegian and Irish descent; Zimbabwean father (Tinashe means ‘We are with God’ in his native Shona language) – moved the family from Lexington, Kentucky, to Los Angeles to help her pursue a career in Hollywood. At 10, she was acting alongside Tom Hanks in the 2004 movie The Polar Express; by 16 she was opening Justin Bieber’s My World Tour with girl group The Stunners and had three episodes of sitcom Two and a Half Men to her name. In 2012, Tinashe dropped her first two mixtapes, In Case We Die and Reverie, and was signed by RCA Records, who released her 2014 debut album Aquarius, which featured the global smash hit 2 On and the Kanye-endorsed All Hands On Deck. Critics and industry insiders tipped her as the next big thing. But things didn’t go as planned. Creative differences with RCA over her second album, 2016’s Nightride, prompted the record label to refuse to properly promote it, which also had a knock-on effect on the followup, 2018’s Joyride. Within a year, Tinashe announced she was leaving RCA to take back control of her art. Today, at 28, she’s an independent trailblazer back at the top of her game and has just released her fifth album, 333. From frustrated major-label signing to

flourishing independent artist, Tinashe discusses how setting new boundaries helped the creation of her most honest release to date… the red bulletin: Looking back at those turbulent years, what do you make of it all now? tinashe: I feel I was a victim of the system. I really believe all the individuals I worked with at [RCA] did support me and wanted to see me win, but the way the system is set up, and the decisions that were made, ended up being detrimental to my career. Was that the reason why you parted ways with RCA? It really wasn’t something that happened overnight, more a very slow, insidious process where I was starting to have intrusive, negative thoughts about my career. I realised that my self-confidence had been damaged and I let all this criticism seep into my consciousness. That had never happened to me before. As soon as I recognised it, I knew I needed to make a change. How did you make that happen? I built a brand-new team from the ground up. I found new people who understood my vision, or at least supported my vision, so we could grow together – from management and publicity to hair and make-up. I just wanted new inspiration. It helped me transition into a new era with fresh energy and plenty of positivity.

you’re being dragged for whatever reason – or you’re on the receiving end of some criticism online that you don’t want to see – log off, disappear for a day and it’ll probably be OK. You could even log off for a week or a month. Take a break from it all. Unplug from the Matrix… Literally get off and delete the app. It’s just about having that discipline with yourself. You don’t have to read anything, ever. You start reading and you sink deeper and deeper into it. The best thing to do is unplug, get out into nature, go be with your family. Is there anything else you’ve had to work on since becoming an independent artist? I’ve had to learn how to set new boundaries, how to put myself first. Giving my life that structure was really important while creating this new album. So many of those themes, like letting go, grappling with it and going back and forth with it, are what a lot of the songs ended up being about. What’s the story behind the album’s title, 333? They’re angel numbers. To me, they signify that I’m on the right track, moving in the right direction, and that I’m protected in the decisions I make and can move forward without fear or hesitation. So, is it fair to say that this is the most complete version of Tinashe we’ve ever had? At this point, absolutely. I’m continuously evolving and getting better. Right now, it’s in alignment with where I’m at and what I’m moving towards. Hopefully with the next project I’ll be able to say the same thing. Tinashe’s latest album, 333, is out now on Tinashe Music Inc; tinashenow.com

YIMMY YAYO

You mentioned criticism. How do you deal with that now? You soon learn that a news cycle is very quick – 24 hours at best. So, if THE RED BULLETIN

“I’ve learned how to set new boundaries, how to put myself first”

THE RED BULLETIN

Hunter McIntyre

Wrong makes right In his youth, everyone thought this American tearaway would amount to nothing – a bad egg with a talent for trouble. Who’s laughing now? Words RICHARD EDWARDS Photography ERIC WITTKOPF

You can tell a lot from how a competitor approaches their sport. But in the case of Hunter McIntyre – six-time Obstacle Course Racing world champion; holder of the gruelling Murph CrossFit world record; undefeated champion of Steve Austin’s US TV reality show Broken Skull Challenge; one of Sport Illustrated’s ‘Fittest 50’ in 2017; and now world record holder in hybrid endurance and functional-fitness race HYROX – these achievements tell only a small part of the story. This 32-year-old’s journey from academic write-off to mulleted, marathon-running, fitness-world warrior (hashtag: #staymacho) via a spell in rehab and a job as a logger (that’s logger, not blogger) is enough to make your hair stand on end. Not that the man from Malibu has any hair left: since the photo (opposite) was taken, he’s ditched the mullet for his attempt to be the fastest person weighing more than 90kg to run a marathon. Meanwhile, this month he’ll be travelling to London to cement his position as the number-one HYROX athlete, as this relatively new sport, founded in Germany in 2017, comes to the UK for the first time. Each event will see 3,000 competitors – along with many others, simultaneously, at locations around the world – undergo eight 1km runs interspersed with vein-poppingly tough workouts. In Chicago last year, McIntyre completed it in record-breaking 57 minutes and 34 seconds, doing what he has done since leaving high school: proving people wrong.

the red bulletin: Is it fair to say that school was an unrewarding experience for you? hunter mcintyre: I was in the resource room, basically a special room for kids like me. I have ADHD and they said I was bipolar and all sorts of shit. I just think I had too much energy. Half of the room would be kids like me, the other half would have Down’s Syndrome or autism. We were the outcasts of the education system – they thought we’d never amount to anything. They told me medication was the only thing that would get me through life. I haven’t taken any meds since I was 21. Do you stay in touch with anyone else who went through that? There was another kid who had ADD and we shared a classroom for 10 years. We regularly have steaks and beers to celebrate the fact we made it. He now owns a very successful window-washing business – the guy is making over $400,000 [around £300,000] a year. I don’t think we’ve done too badly. What role did sport play in turning your life around? In high school I wrestled and ran, but I didn’t care about it. I just did it because my parents told me to and I didn’t want to get a job bagging groceries at the local store. Then there was a huge change. Right out of high school I had to go to rehab for a whole year – court mandated. I spent a lot of my time drinking or doing drugs and I was arrested on a fairly regular basis. Nothing crazy – I wasn’t kidnapping babies. It was more a case of, “Hunter got drunk and pulled the fire alarm today.”

That’s two felonies. You know that kid who constantly got into trouble doing stupid things? That was me. By the time I got home, I was a different man – all I wanted to do was win. Sport was always a platform I could step up to and rely on. When did you start building your current physique? The longest job I’ve ever held was on a rehab programme when I was a logger for six months. I’ve never been at a desk – the only thing I’ve ever clocked in and out of was that logging job; I’d be in at 5am, out at 4pm. I went from 5ft 11in and 155lb [70kg] to 6ft 2in and 215lb [98kg] in about six months. I’d still be doing it, but they only paid $12 [£8.50] an hour and I almost died every day. You’d be running chainsaws as long as your leg, 9,000ft [2,800m] up in the sky in Montana. We had a blast. Is that when you grew the mullet? Oh dude, I wish I still had my mullet. I had to cut it because all this marathon training meant I was overheating in the sun. I’ve shaved all the hair off my body and changed my diet, too, just so I can become a greyhound rather than a pit bull. But then I’m going back to the old macho-man, long-hair look – that’s the truest form of myself. Will you break that marathon world record? I have two ambitions: one is to beat it, the other is to shatter it into tiny little pieces. Both my shoelaces need to come untied for me not to do that. Or be tied together? I’ll break through that. I’m too strong. Could HYROX become an Olympic sport one day? Something like HYROX, which is measurable, repeatable, relocatable and takes place within a certain window of time, is why the Olympics were created. These days, we like to understand who the world’s fittest athlete is. That’s how triathlon came about. I think we’re at a new dawn. Instagram: @huntthesheriff. HYROX is at ExCeL London on September 25 and NEC Birmingham on October 30; hyrox.com THE RED BULLETIN

“When I left rehab, I was a different man – all I wanted to do was win”

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Sam Bloom

Finding my wings Hollywood made her life into a movie, but that’s just one chapter in this Australian’s inspiring story Words RACHAEL SIGEE Photography CAMERON BLOOM

At 49, Sam Bloom has lived through experiences she never could have imagined. In 2013, while on a family holiday in Thailand, a 6m fall from a rotten hotel balcony onto concrete fractured her skull and shattered her T6 and T7 vertebrae, leaving the Australian surfer and mother-ofthree paralysed from the chest down. Sam’s devastating injuries took her to a dark place and thoughts of suicide. But then an unlikely lifeline appeared – an injured baby magpie that she, her photographer husband Cameron and their sons Reuben, Noah and Oliver found near their home on Sydney’s Northern Beaches. It too had survived a fall, damaging its wing. They named the bird Penguin – due to its black-and-white plumage and large feet – and devoted themselves to nursing it back to health. Sam had a new purpose. As her confidence grew, Sam took up competitive paracanoeing, then adaptive surfing; she has since won gold at two World Para Surfing Championships. Success of a more unexpected kind followed when Cameron’s book about their experiences, Penguin Bloom, co-written with award-winning Australian author Bradley Trevor Greive, became an international bestseller and Sam a public speaker. Today, Sam is also an ambassador for Wings For Life, the charitable spinal cord research foundation, and Penguin Bloom has been adapted into a feature film. Could Sam ever have dreamed she would be played by Oscar-nominated

actress Naomi Watts? “Not in a million years, no way,” she says. “It was a surreal experience.” the red bulletin: What advice did you give Naomi Watts about portraying your life? sam bloom: I didn’t want it to be a Hollywood ending, a ‘life’s great now’. Yes, it gets easier, but it’ll never be as good as it was. It was really cool because Naomi wanted me on set a lot. For example, if she was doing a transfer from bed to wheelchair, she wanted to ensure it looked authentic; I was grateful for that. I spent a lot of time with her. In the film, you’re initially reluctant to allow Penguin to stay. Is that scene true to life? No, they used some artistic license. I loved her – she was so cute. When we found her, all the focus went from me to her. I hate being the centre of attention, and when I came home from my accident, everyone was focused on me. When we found Penguin I put my energy into her, and the kids also had to, because they had to help look after her. We all adored her as soon as we found her. A big moment in the film is when you first get in a kayak. How important was it for you to repair your relationship with the ocean? It was huge. I only suggested trying kayaking because, as far as I was concerned, I couldn’t do anything else I’d loved; I’d written everything off. At first I would only paddle on a Saturday morning, but that [became] my favourite day of the week. It was so nice to be out of the wheelchair, on the water and among nature again.

Was it scary? Terrifying. Because I’m paralysed from my chest down, I’ve got no stomach muscles, so my balance is dreadful. But I was so lucky – Gaye [Hatfield, her kayak instructor] was there from day one, and she was awesome. I fell in quite a few times, but I’m pretty determined. I’ve always been a tomboy. I’ve always been like, “I can do that.” It was the best thing for my mental health. What has been the reaction to the film? People write messages saying they don’t feel so alone now. If you can make someone else’s day a bit better, that’s nice. I’ve been chatting on Whatsapp with this girl in Spain – she’s only young, maybe 30, and she has a spinal cord injury. She used to ski, so I said maybe she could have a go at surfing. I contacted a friend in Costa Rica who is an adapted surfer, to see if she knew anyone in Barcelona who could teach this girl how to surf. She’s had a few goes and sent me videos, and it’s so cool to see the smile on her face. She gets this massive buzz from doing something she’s never done before. It’s awesome. How did you get involved with Wings for Life? In Australia and New Zealand, 10 per cent of royalties from the book go to SpinalCure Australia, and in Europe we donate [the same] to Wings for Life. The best thing is that 100 per cent of the money they raise goes to their research to find a cure. [If they were successful] it would be the best day of my life; I can’t imagine it. I have to be practical – it’s not going to happen overnight. I was 41 when I had my accident, and I hadn’t done everything I wanted to, though I’d travelled and had my kids. When I meet young people [with spinal cord injuries] – teenagers and people in their twenties and thirties – it breaks my heart, because their lives are just beginning. The sooner they can find a cure, the better. Follow Sam at sambloom.com.au. For more on the mission to cure spinal cord injury, go to wingsforlife.com. Penguin Bloom is streaming now on Netflix

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“When we found Penguin, all the attention went from me to her”

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Lucy Charles-Barclay

Words MIRIAM WALKER-KHAN Photography RICK GUEST

Built to win 28

“You need to just embrace who you are and not try and be someone else. I’m Lucy Charles-Barclay and I’m not comparing myself to anyone else. I’m doing what I need to do to win world titles.”

Lucy Charles-Barclay

Lucy Charles-Barclay is one of the Ironman elite. The Brit went from never having ridden a racing bike to world number two in just two-anda-half years, and she holds the second fastest time in Ironman history. And yet she has never won the top prize: the World Championship in Hawaii. This is how she has rebuilt herself to do just that. It’s a sunny morning in July, and as The Red Bulletin arrives at an unassuming 1930s semi-detached house in Essex, Lucy Charles-Barclay emerges through a garage door to greet us. This is the property of her mother and father-in-law. Calm, laid-back and full of smiles, the 27-year-old British triathlete leads us through the back garden – a giddy mess of twists and turns; her Jack Russell, Lola, energetically skipping around her heels – towards an outhouse at the far end. She calls this special place her ‘Pain Cave’. Her husband Reece was just 10 years old when he built the Pain Cave with his father, Dean Barclay – a super welterweight from Enfield, north London, who boxed in the ’80s and ’90s. Charles-Barclay guides us past the endless pool, which she explains is “like a treadmill but for swimming”. It has a turbulent current to replicate open-water swimming. On one side of a boxing ring are Watto bike trainers, squat racks and rowing machines. There’s a mirror on one wall; on the other, life-size prints of her and Reece in competition. There are signs of family history, too: promotional flyers of Dean’s fights, and old photos of him boxing. The walls not covered in pictures hold shelves of trophies. In many ways the Pain Cave is just a normal gym, but there’s an air of mystery about it. That might be due to the lighting, which Charles-Barclay explains can be set to any colour and changes depending on her mood. Or maybe it’s because this discrete base of operations is where one of the greatest triathletes in history hones herself to compete on the world stage. Charles-Barclay sits down on beanbags in the centre of the boxing ring. She’s wearing training kit – leggings and a vest – her long, blond hair in neat French plaits, which she combs through with manicured turquoise nails. At 1.7m tall, she’s lean and lanky. She trains three times a day, and you can tell from the muscles in her arms and shoulders that she goes hard. THE RED BULLETIN

Lucy Charles-Barclay

“Some might think I’m too skinny, but actually I’m strong,” she says, her voice soft-spoken. “I only look like this as a result of training. I do everything to make my body my machine.” Charles-Barclay says that others at school would make fun of her large shoulders: “But I didn’t mind, because they were my weapon – they make me an amazing swimmer. The thing about Ironman is that people who do well are all different sizes; there’s not one shape to win the race. People sometimes assume athletes are vain, but a lot of us aren’t. We just look at our form and technique. “You need to embrace who you are. I’m Lucy Charles-Barclay and I’m not comparing myself to anyone else. I’m doing what I need to do to win world titles.” And the one she most wants to win is the Ironman World Championship. Usually held every October in Kona, Hawaii, it’s the most important event on the triathlon calendar. Each year, more than 100,000 contestants compete in qualifiers across the world, but little over 2,000 make the big day: a race that starts with a 3.8km swim around 32

Kailua Bay, followed by a 180km bike ride across lava fields and a 42.2km coastal marathon back to Kailua-Kona. The first time Charles-Barclay competed as an adult at Kona was in 2017. It was just her sixth race as a professional triathlete. She’d also just recovered from a serious injury picked up the year before – a stress fracture in her tibia – and knew she should have had the injury checked out much sooner than she did, but being so new to the sport she felt she had a point to prove. “I ignored it and continued to train,” she recalls. “I raced to the point where [the fracture] had gone about 95 per cent of the way through the bone. I was told by the specialist if I did one more race, my leg probably would have snapped. “It happened so early in my career. I’m now much smarter and wouldn’t do that again. I think you need a bit of stubbornness to be a good athlete. But that was stubbornness in a negative way.” After the injury disrupted her training, CharlesBarclay felt she had nothing to lose. Finishing in the top 10 at Kona that year would have been a “dream

“Growing up, I had huge shoulders because I was a swimmer, and people would always make jokes about them. I didn’t mind, because they were like my weapon – they make me the amazing swimmer that I am.”

scenario”, she says. “There were points where I thought I wouldn’t even finish. I went into that race knowing I would be strong on the swim, but the bike and the run were unknowns.” Incredibly, for the majority of the bike ride she led the pack. Only Swiss triathlete Daniela Ryf, the reigning champion and title holder for the previous two years, managed to overtake her. “I knew she would. She was the dominant athlete at the time,” says Charles-Barclay. “I wasn’t even disappointed – it’s the most emotional I’ve ever been finishing a race. I could not believe that I’d come second in my debut race off the back of the lack of training I’d had.” From rookie to the second best Ironman athlete in the world. For Charles-Barclay, there was only one target for 2018: number one.

“I

’d describe myself as a born competitor. Growing up, it didn’t matter what we were doing – running up stairs or playing a board game – I had to win,” recalls CharlesBarclay. “My parents knew they needed to get me into sport at an early age, because I had too much energy.” Her heroes, naturally, were athletes. “One of my biggest inspirations is Kelly Holmes,” she says of the British middle-distance icon who took gold in the 800m and 1,500m at the 2004 Olympics in Athens. “I remember watching her and being amazed.” Charles-Barclay was nine at the time. “At school, one of my friends didn’t understand how an athlete could inspire you. We had to talk about our heroes, and I presented Kelly Holmes to the class. My friend said, ‘I get it now. I understand why you do sport, and how someone can inspire you.’” Charles-Barclay says that Holmes overcoming her mental health struggles – which the now-Dame has

“Someone might look at me and think I’m too skinny, but actually I’m strong. I only look like this as a result of my training. I do everything to make my body my machine.”

“I was told by a specialist that if I’d done one more race my leg probably would have snapped”

Lucy Charles-Barclay

opened up about in books and podcasts – motivated her, too. “I had a swimming coach and it felt like nothing was ever good enough for them. When I came into triathlon, I was beaten down and told, ‘You’re not good enough. You haven’t come through the system. You won’t do what you want to do.’ Before the World Championship in 2017 I was trying to pick up sponsors; I told them what I was about – that I would be first out of that water and I would lead on the bike for most of the day. They didn’t want to know. Being told you’re not good enough just makes you hungry to prove those people wrong.” It was that sense of determination she took into her second attempt at the Ironman World Championship. Heading into Kona in 2018, Charles-Barclay was filled with confidence. After a solid block of injuryfree training, she was fitter than ever. By the end of the swimming stage she’d broken the swim-course record with a time of 48 minutes and 13 seconds. By the end of the race, she’d scored the second-fastest time in race history. As she mounted her bike for the second stage, Ryf was a clear 10 minutes behind her. “Daniela had a nightmare on the swim – apparently she was stung by a jellyfish,” Charles-Barclay says. “I biked so strongly. It was exactly how I wanted to bike.” But somehow the Swiss triple-champion managed to catch her at exactly the same point of the cycle as before. “It was like déjà vu, but this time my mind was completely different, like, ‘How the hell have you done this?’ Because on the first 90km of the bike she wasn’t gaining much. Then, when we turned for the second half of the bike, that gap was getting eaten in chunks. I hadn’t slowed down, I was still biking super-strong, so when she caught me it was [a mix of] annoyance and disbelief. I was racing angry, because this was my race to win.” Once more, Charles-Barclay finished in second place. “I feel I should have won that race. But I know I couldn’t have done anything more that day,” she says, contemplatively.

ucy Charles-Barclay began swimming at the age of eight. At nine, she won her county championships. It was in that year, which coincided with the 2004 Athens Games, that she promised herself she would one day become an Olympian. Everyone at both primary and secondary school knew she wanted to compete at the 2012 London Olympics. “I was fixed on that idea from a young age,” she smiles. At 16, she began training in a performancedriven squad at Hatfield Swimming Club. As she started winning national medals, that Olympic dream felt tangible. When she had to choose between becoming a butterfly swimmer or going down the route of distance freestyle, she chose the latter, “because it was the more difficult event”. A year later, she took up open-water swimming after being drawn to even longer distances like the 10km. It was in this event that Charles-Barclay decided she’d most likely qualify for the Olympics.

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“Being told you’re not good enough, you want to prove them wrong” However, she experienced her first taste of sporting heartbreak after the 2012 Olympic trials, when Team GB said they could only take one athlete for the event. That turned out to be Keri-anne Payne after she won gold at the 2011 Shanghai World Championships. As Charles-Barclay recounts the story, there are tears in her eyes: “I remember watching her at Hyde Park. It was so difficult because obviously I really wanted to be there.” Charles-Barclay told herself she would dedicate the next four years to qualifying for the Rio Games. But in 2013, when she finished fourth in the 1,500m freestyle at the British Championships – a career best – she knew something was missing. “I finished that race and just didn’t feel anything,” she says. It was then that Charles-Barclay wondered if she could keep it up for another four years. “It coming so close to the home Olympics, which I’d worked towards since I was a kid, was really difficult,” she says. “Yes, there was another Olympics, but it wasn’t the one I wanted. I just hated every session.” A month later, she gave up on the sport completely. What followed was an apprenticeship at a local zoo. As an animal lover, Charles-Barclay was in her element, but it wasn’t long before the competitor inside her re-emerged. A month in, she signed up for an Ironman event on a whim. “I didn’t really know what it would entail in terms of the training and equipment, but I knew I needed a goal that scared me enough to start training again.”

t the start, that goal was simply to have fun. “A part of me didn’t even want to be good, I just wanted to enjoy it. But it didn’t take long before that competitive edge took over and I thought, ‘There’s no way I can do sport and be average at it. That’s not who I am.’” Her friends and family thought she was crazy – not only did she have just 11 months to train for the event, but, having never ridden a road bike before, she told them she could do it on a mountain bike. “We soon learned you definitely can’t do it on a mountain bike,” she laughs. “At traffic lights I’d forget I was clipped in and would just fall off. I’d come from a sport where all you needed was a swimsuit, cap and goggles. To be a triathlete you almost need to become a mechanic, because things can go wrong in the race and you need to know how to fix it.” She’d wake at 5am, swim 4km, then run a half marathon – all before 10am. Going from a zeroimpact sport to pounding pavement, Charles-Barclay struggled with the dangers of training on open roads 35

Lucy Charles-Barclay

“You need to do 10,000 hours in a sport to excel at it. In cycling, I still haven’t reached that point”

“I think the really cool thing about Ironman is that people who do well are all different shapes and sizes; there’s not one shape to win the race. No one should be body-shamed for looking super-athletic.”

“I think sometimes people assume athletes are vain, but a lot of us aren’t. We just do our job. We probably don’t even look in the mirror. We just look at our form and our technique.”

Lucy Charles-Barclay

“That desire to go to the Olympics is still there. I can’t shut it down” – a huge contrast to the safe zone of a pool, and a valid concern after her bike was hit by a car. “That really set me back, because I was nervous to return. When you’re descending a mountain at speed, you don’t want to think about what can go wrong. You have to think about exactly what you’re doing. It’s completely different from swimming.” That wasn’t the only challenge: “Mentally, it’s even harder. In training you’re doing the physical toll, but race day is 90 per cent mental, 10 per cent physical. It can be super-hard when you’re three hours into the bike with two left and then you’re running a marathon.” Fortunately, she wasn’t on the journey alone – husband Reece is also a pro triathlete and her coach. She describes him as “a weapon. He’s that bit better, so I’m always striving to catch him”. Lucy Charles and Reece Barclay met as swimmers in 2011. Barclay studied sports science at the University of Hertfordshire, which had links to the elite swimming squad at Hatfield. “We got engaged in 2012, and after our mad triathlon journey took off in 2014 we didn’t get married until December 2018,” Charles-Barclay says. “We still haven’t had a honeymoon, due to our busy schedule. I hope that if we have kids, sport is what they want to do, because they should have really good genes. It’d be cool to tell them about all the things we’ve done.”

fter Ironman 2018, Charles-Barclay took two months off training to “refresh my mind”. When she returned, she decided the only way to win was to get better at cycling. “They say you need to do 10,000 hours in a sport to excel at it. I’d done that in swimming, but in cycling I still haven’t reached that point,” she admits. Even when training at a high intensity, she does less volume than most triathletes. “Normally, I’m out front because I’ve had a great swim. It always feels like my race to lose, like I’ve got the target on my back and the girls are chasing me.” Going into Kona 2019, that was exactly the case. Towards the end of the cycle stage, CharlesBarclay was leading and, powered by euphoria, began pedalling harder than ever. Then came the calf cramp. Halfway through the running stage, she was overtaken by Germany’s Anne Haug, one of the best runners in long-course triathlon. “When she came past I thought, ‘I’m glad it’s her,’ because I have so much respect for her,” says Charles-Barclay. Haug won, and 2019 ended the same way for the Brit as the previous two years: second again. “It was hard, but I finished that race knowing I’d given everything I could. I’ve had a different emotion

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after each of those races. People might think I haven’t progressed, but every year I’ve got stronger, become more mentally resilient, and my performance has improved – the progress for me has been huge.” After Kona 2019, Charles-Barclay went back to the drawing board. “I was like, ‘I rolled the dice and it went slightly wrong, but we can learn from it – now it’s about improving the run.’ I was really motivated. Then the pandemic happened.”

ack in the Pain Cave, Charles-Barclay is trying not to laugh as she tells off Lola the dog for always being the centre of attention. But, seconds later, she gets her to perform a trick – a run and jump over a weights bar. For eight weeks in spring 2020, there was a double bed in the middle of the boxing ring as she and Reece stayed here during the first lockdown. The pandemic meant her 2020 competitions were cancelled, but in true Charles-Barclay fashion she’s positive: “It taught me you have to enjoy each win, because you don’t know how many you’ll get.” This year, she has grabbed any opportunity to compete, even going back to her roots and entering the Tokyo 2020 swimming trials, which she says she didn’t expect to qualify for, but felt was necessary to drag her out of her comfort zone. She also entered an Olympic-distance triathlon – two hours instead of the usual eight-and-a-half of Ironman. “I get the most satisfaction from hard, intense sessions. I feel I could make an Olympics in the shorter-distance triathlon while also having success in the long course. Less than a handful of athletes have managed to do that.” And then there’s Ironman in Kona. Charles-Barclay was set for her rematch with destiny this October when a surge of COVID cases in Hawaii forced its postponement to February. She remains undeterred. “I feel that this time I can win this race,” she says. “I know what to do. I’ve committed to the right training and I’m listening to my body. There are still things I need to tick off mentally, but I’m in a good place.” As for her past nemeses, Charles-Barclay says her focus is firmly on herself rather than on other athletes: “My biggest detriment, which I’m happy to admit, is that I never believe I’ve done enough. I drive my husband mental saying that, and he always says, ‘But how could you possibly have done more?’” Throughout 2022, the pursuit of triathlon victories will continue, but Charles-Barclay will also attempt to break the eight-hour barrier for an Ironman distance and claim the women’s world record, which currently stands at 8h 18m 13s, held by fellow Brit Chrissie Wellington. And she’s hoping to make the Olympic team for Paris 2024. “That burning desire to go to the Olympics is still there and I can’t shut it down,” says Charles-Barclay. “I believe I could win the Olympic gold medal, and I never really dreamt of that in swimming. I want to be an amazing athlete. But I also just want to be a nice person and someone who will inspire others.” lucycharles.com

World view: Latvian freerunner Pasha Petkuns sees his vision come to life

Words HOWARD CALVERT Photography LEO FRANCIS

Dream machine

Freerunner PASHA PETKUNS sees the world as one big playground, and now he’s literally built it as one. But then this is an athlete who calls his fantasies by another name: plans

Pasha Petkuns

Flippin’ hell: Petkuns’ clone army goes globe-trotting – with the help of camera trickery, obviously; (below) vertical hold

veryone has a childhood dream of what they want to be when they grow up: an athlete, a musician, or perhaps a teacher or a vet. Pasha Petkuns wanted to be a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. Like so many kids in the 1990s, the youngster from Daugavpils, Latvia, was a fan of the sewer-dwelling superheroes. “I used to play Ninja Turtles with my friends, doing all the moves,” he recalls. “And every day at four o’clock we’d run back to our houses to watch the show.” But there was one of the ‘heroes in a half-shell’ he particularly identified with: “I was always [hotheaded rebel] Raphael. He was my favourite.” Unsurprisingly, Petkuns didn’t grow up to become a Ninja Turtle. But he did follow the example of his antihero hero in other regards. Today, at 28, Petkuns is a real-life daredevil, one of the world’s foremost freerunners – a sport that blends gymnastics, martial arts and breakdance moves to turn cities into urban playgrounds. The release of a self-made showreel in 2009 brought him recognition on the scene, but what followed made him a superstar. After three consecutive wins (once in 2011, twice in 2012) at Red Bull Art of Motion – a global competition of freerunning and parkour (the antecedent of freerunning) – came two victories at the Parkour World Cup. This success earned him the nickname ‘The Boss’, and his mind-blowing tricking videos on TikTok have attracted more than 5.2 million followers. A rebel? Undoubtedly. Hot-headed? Not so much. For all his showmanship, Petkuns is still that dreamer. And a few years ago a new dream formed… It begins with the Latvian waking inside a giant pinball machine. Suddenly, the plunger launches him forward – Petkuns is the ball. Disorientated, the tiny freerunner scrabbles to work out what’s going on as he’s bounced around by the bumpers. Like all pinball tables, this one has a theme: world 42

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landmarks. Petkuns grabs hold of the Eiffel Tower before dropping from it, sliding down the Great Wall of China and landing on a Mayan pyramid. Each time he falls past the flippers, he’s launched back into the game, quickly adapting to sliding, flipping and spinning himself around the obstacles. “Cut!” shouts director Mike Christie, and an exhausted Petkuns drops past the large mechanical flippers – each operated by two burly men – and lands on a safety mat. “This has been my dream for a long time,” says Petkuns of this absurd vision. But whereas once it was just the work of his overactive imagination, today it’s a physical reality. It’s May 2020, and inside a cavernous hangar in north-west London, bathed in floodlights, stands this monument to the Latvian’s musings. Mere words – or even the pictures that accompanying this feature – can’t do it justice. A wall, five storeys high and angled at 45°, rises to the ceiling. The back is a lattice of scaffolding, the front a fully realised pinball table with backlit bumpers, rails and those giant flippers. Weighing 23,000kg, it’s so heavy that once constructed it had to be sawn in half due to fears it might pull the roof in. A camera operator sits atop an extended cherry picker, while a camera drone hovers overhead. It’s a film project over a decade in the making. “The biggest challenge was the engineering,” says Christie, who also produced trial-bike legend Danny MacAskill’s equally surreal 2013 toy-based movie, Imaginate. “It took eight months to figure out how to build it. Most companies we approached thought it sounded fun but said we were mad.” It’s difficult to convey the steepness of that tilt – a log-flume drop would be a close approximation. Petkuns explains that when you’re on the wall, it feels like you’re standing and lying down at the same time. On the monitors, we watch Petkuns stop midtake to pour a can of Red Bull, but the way gravity affects the liquid, it seems to falls sideways. “I play with gravity,” he says. “On the first day, I thought, ‘What have I done?’ The wall was massive, unreal. The builders said, ‘This looks like a fun toy,’ but then they winched it up to the ceiling and said, ‘It’s not a toy, it’s a killing machine.’ I had to think, ‘I’m ready. I’ve practised, and I know I’ll enjoy it. I know what I’m doing.’ After four weeks, I can control my speed. But it’s not jumping on a wall, it’s riding it.”

uring his teens, Petkuns’ fascination for Ninja Turtles was replaced by new role models: Jackie Chan, Jean-Claude Van Damme, and stars of the silent-movie era such as Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. “I’d try to repeat their jumps and moves,” he says. “As an adult, I realised there’s so much to learn – they were the ones who started experimenting with movement. Rewatching those silent movies now, I feel like an archaeologist discovering and working out how they did the moves.” The comedy aspect of these films is something Petkuns brought to his freerunning; together with

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Pasha Petkuns

“On the first day, I thought, ‘What have I done?’ It was unreal” his gift for acrobatics, this helped build his massive social-media following. “Movement is more than just movement,” he says. “It’s in everything, including the way you talk to people, because, unlike language, movement is the same everywhere. That’s what we’re doing: storytelling through movement, which is a limitless area for me to explore.” In the mid-2000s, as Petkuns’ interest in physical art forms grew, he gravitated towards early parkour videos on YouTube. One proved to be an epiphany: a 2006 clip titled The Russian Jumper, featuring Latvian parkour pioneer Oleg Vorslav. Petkuns says he watched it “maybe 1,000 times”. He set himself the target of learning how to do a ‘gainer’ – a backflip performed moving forwards – while building a bank of tricks. “Tricks were my currency. I didn’t want to be a regular freerunner, I wanted to be different.” Petkuns believes his propensity for risk-taking runs in the family. He recalls the time his mum leapt from a second-floor balcony when she locked herself out of her flat. “She just hung on the balcony and jumped. When she landed, she kneed herself in her eye. She gets what I’m doing – she always said that if she were younger she would try it with me. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” Soon, Petkuns began entering competitions, but it was only when he stopped following the rules of freerunning that his work was noticed. “People told me I had to learn things a certain way. But if I want to slide on my face, I’ll slide on my face. Who says I can’t? Only you are limited by saying you have to land on your legs. The body is an instrument and you are playing it.” Victories at global competitions came thick and fast, and before long this fan of the stars of the silver screen was being courted by Hollywood himself. Moving to LA, he worked as a stuntman on the 2019 Michael Bay actioner 6 Underground and last year’s Wonder Woman 1984. He also appeared in Cirque de Soleil. It was only a matter of time before Petkuns would star in his own movie.

T A different slant: (top) Three years of design and testing went into the creation of the machine; (left) Petkuns runs through the footage with the project sports director Michael ‘Frosti’ Snow; (above) a camera operator atop a fully extended cherry picker captures an elevated view of Petkuns’ trickery THE RED BULLETIN

he origins of Petkuns’ pinball project can be traced back to 2010, after a new bridge was constructed in Daugavpils. “The bridge had slanted walls,” he recalls. “We started sliding under it, and there were columns you could bounce off. Then something clicked in my head: what if you had rails and obstacles and you slid into them and did flips? I called it ‘freesliding’. I thought it would be sick to build a huge wall with obstacles on it.” The idea took root, but it required something more for the shoots to grow. That thing was a Nokia 45

Pasha Petkuns

everything. You learn some tricks are not for you and you just move on.” But today on set there’s a close call. While performing a seemingly innocuous grab, he feels something painful give in his hand. The crew take no chances and halt filming. Eight hours later, Petkuns exits an orthopaedic surgery in north London. “It’s not broken,” he beams, holding up his injured thumb. The doctor, following behind, corrects him: “There’s a tiny fracture.” “I didn’t want any drama,” Petkuns says, sheepishly. “I always feel happy I lived through an injury. It means I know what can happen, and how to deal with it.”

D Flying visit: the freerunner passes over Argentina on his pinball world tour

3200 mobile phone. “It had a pinball game on it, and I realised freesliding is similar,” Petkuns says. “I loved that pinball is so random. When we began the project, I related pinball to life – it shoots us here and there and we just have to bounce [with it].” But it wasn’t until he shared his vision with Red Bull Art of Motion’s sports director, Nico Martell, that Petkuns found a kindred spirit. “I said, ‘A slanted wall as a pinball machine? Let’s make it happen,’” laughs Martell. “It’s taken three years of design and testing to get here. From the top looking down, it’s insane.” As Petkuns loads himself back onto the pinball set and the crew position themselves for another take, paramedic Chris Hewitt is ready with ice packs. “I have to think about all the nasty things that could happen, like [Petkuns] breaking a leg, getting a head injury or paralysing himself,” he says. “He’s constantly putting his body under huge pressure and making it look easy.” But Petkuns’ career has had its moments. In 2013, while performing a flip with four twists, he dislocated his elbow landing on a trampoline. An Instagram clip, viewed more than 500,000 times, shows Petkuns crying out in agony as his forearm pops back at a right angle. “It was pretty terrible,” he recalls. “One of those times where I said, ‘I’ll just do one more.’ You have to respect the danger of the sport and be responsible. You can’t mess around and think you’ve mastered 46

ealing with drama is something Petkuns has also experienced outside sport. In December 2020, he posted a collaborative Instagram video with US porn actress Riley Reid, showing him performing a flip off her back, accompanied by the text: “The true story of how the pimp flip got its name.” It sparked an online debate about sexism in the parkour community. “Posts like this, in the context of our sport, make many women like me feel uncomfortable and/or disrespected,” said Dominican parkour athlete Lorena Abreu. “If women are the butt of your joke, your joke probably sucks,” posted Detroit freerunner Dan Dye. Parkour magazine MÜV ran an article noting that “the actions have been labelled by women in and outside of parkour both as ‘objectifying’ and ‘empowering’”, and opened a Discord panel to debate the issue. Petkuns and Reid, whose real name is Ashley Matthews, stayed silent. Six months later (and just weeks after completing filming of the pinball project), they got married. “I can’t wait spend the rest of my life with you @pashatheboss,” Matthews posted to her one million followers. “We found each other through Instagram DMs,” Petkuns explains. “I fell in love with her pretty quickly because she has an amazing personality. She’s the sweetest girl I’ve ever met.” Now, he says, he can’t wait to be a dad, “doing fun stuff, sliding everywhere together with my kid”. Of any negativity that surrounds his personal life, he thinks it’s nobody else’s business. “Sometimes, people don’t believe in what I’m doing and question me, but the more I consider it, the more I think, ‘Why would I even bother about what people think of what I’m doing?’ I don’t want to change my life for this few seconds of someone thinking badly about me.” Being flipped around inside a giant pinball machine seems a handy metaphor for the challenges the universe has hurled at Petkuns; regardless, the Latvian retains a simple take on life. “Don’t be afraid to talk about your dreams,” he says. “If you want to be a kid, be a kid. If you want to build a 20m-high pinball wall, you can do it. Do whatever makes you happy. I don’t have to listen to anyone, I just have to do what I’m doing. You have this moment – enjoy it.” Pasha Petkuns’ Human Pinball is out on September 24. Watch it by scanning the QR code or heading to Red Bull TV; redbull.com THE RED BULLETIN

Born to ride: Khothalang Leuta at Bocheletsane pump track in Mantsonyane, Lesotho

The fastest girl in the village KHOTHALANG LEUTA has taken over Lesotho’s pump tracks. Now she’s ready to take on the world

Words LEE NXUMALO Photography TYRONE BRADLEY

Khothalang Leuta

On first impressions, Khothalang Leuta seems like a shy girl. But the moment she steps out onto the pump track in her hometown of Roma in the African Kingdom of Lesotho, there’s a bounce in her step and a twinkle in her eye that lets everyone know she boldly means business.

Her record doesn’t lie. Leuta, who is just 18, consistently steamrolls her rivals and cleans up the trophies in local Sky Cycling League tournaments, where she has competed against girls and boys. In February 2020, she won in the women’s division of the Red Bull Pump Track Championship qualifiers in Roma. Thanks to that accomplishment, Leuta qualified for the 2021 World Championships, scheduled to take place in Portugal in mid-October. But before Leuta became known as a competitive daredevil at international tournaments, it was just her and the bike. She began riding BMX when she was just seven, pedalling around the mountainous terrain in the small town of Roma for fun. Then one day she saw a dump truck, a couple of vans, and a group of sweaty men with shovels and wheelbarrows tirelessly working by the Roma Trading Post Lodge near her school. She soon learned they were laying the foundations of the pump track that would change her life. At first she was intimidated by the 157m-long circuit, designed with seven banked turns (or berms) and three platforms so that riders can navigate it

without pedalling – instead they using the up-and-down momentum of their bodies, or ‘pump’, to propel themselves forward. Initially, she had no intention of getting in on the action. When the track began operating, only the boys would use the facility, while the girls would watch from the sidelines. Yet eventually her curiosity intervened. “I thought the pump track was way too scary, but I was interested in trying it,” she says. “It was only the boys [using it], so I thought that I should try.” “Initially, we really struggled to get the girls on the track,” says Maryke Zietsman, communications manager of Velosolutions, the company that built the facility. “They were intimidated by the boys. It wasn’t a situation where the boys discouraged them, but from a cultural point of view it was just not done. We had to beg [Leuta] to race, because I knew she rode around the village. We had to fight the perception that this sport is for males only. Now it’s widely accepted that the girls ride as well.” Zietsman isn’t the only person to have noticed Leuta’s impact. “She’s so fast,” says Nolofatso Buti, a nine-year-old girl who lives in Roma. “She has shown us kids how to ride well.”

Trailblazer: Leuta was the first girl in Roma brave enough to ride the track with the boys; (opposite) she keeps the poster of 2020’s cancelled Red Bull UCI Pump Track World Championships in her bedroom. This year, she’ll be competing – her first time on a plane

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Khothalang Leuta

“Khothalang is super-quiet and doesn’t talk much,” says Zietsman. “But she trains and works very hard. Every year I saw her on the track, she got faster and faster.” The track in Roma is the product of the ‘Pump for Peace’ initiative spearheaded by former professional downhill racer and World Cup standout Claudio Caluori. The Swiss athlete is the owner of Velosolutions, which builds everything from elite facilities used for international competitions to more modest tracks in disadvantaged and war-torn areas, making pump-track riding more accessible, especially to children. Pump for Peace was born during a trip to Asia, where Velosolutions was commissioned to build a pump track in an impoverished area near the border of Thailand and Cambodia. Inspired by what he had seen after completing that facility, Caluori set out with a mission to make pump tracks for young kids a global phenomenon. “When we were finished building [in Cambodia], we immediately saw all of these kids come out and ride with whatever they had,” he recalls. “Some of them had old rusty bikes, others didn’t even have pedals, but they kept riding. I had tears in my eyes. And so I thought, ‘We have to make this possible everywhere in the world.’”

Pump for Peace had its first project in Roma. The village became a place of interest after Caluori was invited to ride in the area as part of the 2017 MTB documentary Following the Horseman; he saw the potential to build a track in Roma as he passed through. Caluori financed the project by sourcing sponsorship from different companies, selling his bikes, and raising funds through events, concerts and raffles. Construction took about four weeks to complete. It was a challenging feat for Caluori and his team. Obtaining the correct equipment and machinery in such a remote area was tough, as was laying the asphalt under heavy time constraints. The pump track became a community project as people poured in to help with materials and labour. Volunteer and community leader Tumelo Makhetha remembers it well. “The day I recall [most clearly] is Asphalt Day,” he says. “We had to shape the soil into that of a pump track and lay the asphalt. Since we laid it in open air, we could not stop [or the asphalt would harden before construction was finished]. That took hours of hard work.” After completion, the people of the village took it upon themselves to manage the upkeep and appearance of

Above: Leuta outside her home with her mother, who was initially reluctant to let her daughter onto the pump track. Opposite: broadening her skills at one of Lesotho’s other tracks in nearby Mantsonyane

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Leuta has built a reputation as a speed monster, but she has a few tricks in her bag, too THE RED BULLETIN

the facility. They also showed massive support for the riders and attended events hosted on the pump track. “Once the track was up and running, the community became more active,” says Caluori. “They organised a system to provide bikes for the kids, kept the track clean, and had little events every week. The whole thing grew and became more than a pump track.” The track’s success, bolstered by the growth of cycling culture in the country,

led to the construction of two more tracks in Lesotho – one in the capital city of Maseru, the other in Mantsonyane, a small rural town located in the heart of the Basotho nation. By the end of 2017, the track in Roma had attracted more than 50 riders in the first iteration of the regional Sky Cycling League. That number soon doubled, with more than 100 kids coming from different regions to participate. Unfortunately, restrictions due to the COVID lockdown caused a 53

Khothalang Leuta

Above, top: Leuta, now 18, started riding BMX bikes at the tender age of seven; below: Karabelo Mohapi, one of her close friends and a fellow rider on the Roma pump track

lengthy pause in competition. The local tournament – organised by Makhetha, who also works as an event manager – was conceptualised to promote cycling among the people in Lesotho. It also aims to attract more children, with the goal of nurturing talent that is able to compete on the world stage and be part of an African cycling dream team. The Sky Cycling League is divided into disciplines covering cross-country, pump-track and marathon-riding. Makhetha also manages a nearby bike shop, which offers rentals as well as repairs, for free or at a low cost, so local riders are not financially excluded from the sport. The store houses a mixture of mountain bike and BMXs, with about a 54

“I’ve become an inspiration to young girls here” dozen available for rent. Some are directly sponsored by Lesotho Sky while others are gifts from donors and sponsors. Leuta is a regular presence, because she rides a bike borrowed from the shop. “Khothalang was the first girl I noticed who took interest in the pump track,” said Makhetha. “I’ve known her since she started riding. She’s always humble and down to earth. But because

girls are not that interested in sports, I never thought she would pick it up and do it at the level she’s at now.” The more she engaged with the pump track, the more obsessed Leuta became. The 18-year-old avidly watches YouTube videos of BMX riders from across the world and tries to emulate their tricks on the pump track. She’s earned a reputation for being a speed monster, but Leuta also has a few stunts in her bag. On any given day, you might find her doing gap jumps and mixing them with creative line choices or her signature move, the mega manual – pumping her weight back and into a pedal-free wheelie. Leuta’s constant presence on the track has allowed her to foster good friendships with fellow riders such as Kopano Matobo, Mosito Mohapi and his cousin, Karabelo Mohapi. She’s known all three since she was a young girl, but their relationship has developed into a close bond because of the track. When they’re not trying new tricks, they hang out as a group or meet to do homework together. Still, none of the boys are spared her competitive streak. Between the four of them, they constantly debate who is the fastest. Leuta has defeated Matobo before and claims to have beaten Mosito, but when asked he completely denies it and a smile creeps across his face. “Khothalang is a hard worker,” he says. “She’s a motivator and has inspired the other girls.” Mosito will be travelling to Portugal with Leuta for his second appearance at the tournament. He qualified and competed in the 2019 World Championships at the Swiss Bike Park in Köniz-Oberried, Switzerland, where he finished in the top 30. Leuta also attempted to qualify in Switzerland, but fell short by a few seconds. The experience was crushing, but it didn’t discourage her. “I was really disappointed – I was looking forward to going to Switzerland and I wanted to win,” she says. “But it motivated me. I practised hard almost every day after school, even on weekends, to prepare for the next qualifiers. I was a little scared [for the second qualifiers] but I knew I was going to win.” Leuta credits her father for her confidence, spirit and determination. He was an incredibly influential figure in her life, but sadly died in a car crash in 2010 while on a trip to South Africa. She was in the first grade at the time. “He was a good person, good-hearted, and THE RED BULLETIN

Khothalang Leuta

Greasing the wheels: Tumelo Makhetha’s bike shop offers a mixture of mountain bikes and BMXs for rental, as well as providing low-cost repairs. This ensures that local riders are not financially excluded from the sport

cared about me so much,” she says. “He taught me how to try and to never give up. He taught me how to fix my bike, and he used to take me everywhere just so that I could see how things work.” Although his presence is sorely missed, Leuta’s father’s values and lessons have left an indelible imprint on her life. “He would have been happy seeing where I am today,” she says. “He always wished the best for me and encouraged me to do what I want to do. He also told me that no one or nothing can stop me from being my best.” Her participation at the Red Bull UCI Pump Track World Championships takes on an elevated meaning for her as an opportunity to represent for her father and to make her family proud. Leuta’s mother was initially not keen on her daughter going to the pump track; she deemed it a dangerous sport. Her intuition wasn’t entirely wrong: Leuta suffered a serious injury on the track two years ago when she rolled her ankle. But over time, as she has seen what riding has done for Leuta on a personal level, 56

“Dad told me no one can stop me being my best” her mother has warmed up to her taking part in the sport. “I managed to show her that even though it’s dangerous, it’s what my heart desires,” Leuta says. “She saw how good I was, and she’s happy for me. As for other family members, they love what I’m doing. They’re so happy [that I’m going to Portugal]. My mum was crying the day I qualified. They all believed in me and knew the day would come.” In preparation for the World Championships, Leuta has been training whenever she can. This has been difficult with the constant changes to Lesotho’s COVID restrictions, which limited her ability to use the track. She has also paid close attention to the BMX competitions in Tokyo, taking mental notes, and Mosito

has given her a lot of advice about preparing for the tournament. “One thing I keep telling her is that the pump track there will be bigger and a lot more technical,” says the 21-year-old racer. “Those tracks are deep, so I’ve said that she needs to maintain speed and do her tricks clean. But I think she’ll be fine.” Leuta is excited to go to Portugal – the first time she’s been on a plane. She understands that she’s representing not only herself but an entire community that looks up to her and will be rooting for her. “A lot of people are proud and are encouraging me,” says Leuta. “I’ve become an inspiration to young girls here. It’s amazing, and I just hope that I can do my best. I know I can. I’ve always wanted to go overseas, to travel and experience new things. And I hope that in the competition I can smoke them all.” The Red Bull UCI Pump Track World Championships will take place at Parque das Nações in Lisbon, Portugal, from October 15-17. For more on Leuta’s story, watch the documentary The Fastest Girl in the Village on Red Bull TV; redbull.com THE RED BULLETIN

MARINBIKES.COM THE VALLEYS, WALES - PHOTO: ANDY LLOYD - RIDER: AJAY JONES

Aqua punks Photojournalist FRANCK SEGUIN lives in a world of shadow and light, following the rock stars of the deep – freedivers on single-breath adventures into the world’s oceans Words PH CAMY

The way of the future Rade de Villefranche-sur-Mer, France, July 2006 “One of my first freediving photos. In those early years, there wasn’t much out there in terms of photography. I started to work with these champions of the scene and wanted to publicise their actions. I became a friend with [four-times world record holder] Guillaume Néry [pictured]. It’s interesting when you’re present at the start of a movement and feel it growing empirically. Here, Guillaume is still wearing swimming goggles. I asked him to get some coloured wetsuits rather than his old black ones.”

Franck Seguin

The walker Mauritius, Indian Ocean, April 2017 “[This image was] captured during the filming of One Breath Around the World – a two-year, globe-spanning project by Guillaume Néry and [his partner] Julie Gautier. It was our last day of shooting, after chasing these sperm whales for more than 10 days. Guillaume is at 20m, descending into this group of females and their calves; he’s stabilising, and the perspective makes it look like he’s walking. The sperm whale is the animal kingdom’s most efficient apneist, capable of diving 3,000m with a 90-minute apnoea [cessation of breathing]. In this photo, there’s balance to how Guillaume, the whales and the light are placed, but also a story to be told – of the man who walks underwater. I wanted Guillaume to wear the same wetsuit for the whole two years.”

“These freediving photos are my mental projections” – Franck Seguin “Freediving is rapidly evolving,” says Franck Seguin. “We’ve come a long way from that photo of Guillaume Néry in his goggles at the start of this piece.” The photojournalist and picture editor-in-chief at French daily sports newspaper L’Équipe has been documenting the royalty of freediving for 15 years, mainly focusing on French divers. “At the time, there were about 20 of these guys led by a guru in Nice,” he recalls. “They were adventurers, explorers, leaders probing an unknown world.” Today, thanks in large part to Seguin’s photography, these aqua punks have become rock stars of the deep, and freediving has soared into mainstream consciousness. “Now, everybody practises apnoea – under the ice, in the pool, everywhere.” Seguin still works out of Villefranche-sur-Mer, but he also accompanies legends such as Nery and Arnaud Jerald around the world. “When you’re mid-ocean, your perspective changes,” he says. “You feel the full weight of the planet. Freedivers have an exaggerated perception of it, because they’re in contact with nature, immersed in it. When you are surrounded by sperm whales, you become fully aware of it. You tell yourself you’re a microparticle on this planet, that you’re really nothing, and that you must respect it. Because the survival of the planet is our survival.” Instagram: @franckseguinphoto 62

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Franck Seguin

The tomorrow man Rade de Villefranche-sur-Mer, France, August 2020 “Arnaud Jerald will be a great future star of freediving – he’s the new generation, extremely efficient, a modern prototype. [The 25-yearold] has come a long way, as he suffered from dyslexia and [motor coordination disorder] dyspraxia as a boy. He understood that, in THE RED BULLETIN

freediving, if you want people to listen you have to be the best in depth – the hunt for a record is essential. He invited me to be his exclusive photographer on his record attempt, for about 10 days between preparation and attempts. The multiplication of his image is a representation of all the thoughts in his head that he must put in order before diving to 111m. [Last September, Jerald reached 112m, breaking the constant-weight bi-fins world record, On July 17, 2021, he smashed that, reaching 117m at Dean’s Blue Hole in the Bahamas.]” 63

Tales from the deep Tahiti, French Polynesia, December 2019 “Guillaume [Néry, right] is always delighted to take Arnaud [Jerald, left] along with him on a project. The idea behind this picture was to see the young prodigy developing alongside a great champion in a shared moment. Here, we’re at 11m, not 111, but both are having fun. It reminds me of adventure comics with the plane wreck and the fish following them. It could be an illustration.”

Franck Seguin

Generations (Left, top) Tahiti, French Polynesia, December 2019 “Arnaud Jerald on the left, Guillaume Néry on the right: the young prodigy and the master – roles the two divers are perfectly happy to accept. The photo has a certain symbolism, but we’re not talking about a changing of the guard – Guillaume, the elder of the two, remains the uncontested world’s best.”

Cosmic (Left, below) Rade de Villefranchesur-Mer, France, November 2020 “Néry in space. With this photo I feel I’ve conveyed a cosmic aspect of the depths. The cloud of bubbles with Guillaume coming up – we don’t have the impression we’re in water. Once again, we are in the bay of Villefranche with freedivers I know very well, but I tried to reinvent my style with only one blue background. Here, you don’t need a filter on your photo.” THE RED BULLETIN

Superhero (Above, top) Frioul archipelago, Marseille, France, July 2015

confident that nothing [bad] can happen to you. I’ve always seen him as a bit of a superhero. It fits well with this image – he wants to open our eyes to a world we have to protect.”

“Two-time world champion Morgan Bourc’his is a man of extraordinary physical ability and extreme kindness, who reflects on life and his art and cares about others. He’s also an instructor [in Marseille] and when you’re with him you feel

Freediving (Above) Rade de Villefranche-sur-Mer, France, July 2006 “This photo is apnoea. It’s the inspiration before diving, or the

first gulp of air when coming back to the surface. Here, we are again in Villefranche, a historic place for freediving, during my first collaboration with Guillaume Néry, and we come full circle in this portfolio. This kind of freediving image didn’t exist at the time, and 15 years later, with champions like Arnaud Jerald, I’m following a new generation shaping the future of the discipline. We have new stories to tell.” 67

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THE HEIGHT OF MOUNTAIN BIKING

CHRIS LANAWAY

MATT RAY

Enduro riding, CransMontana, Switzerland

VENTURE Travel

“The aim is to link the best downhills from 2,500m to the valley floor without using roads – it’s rallying for bikes” Matt Ray, adventure journalist

CHRIS LANAWAY

feel the frame of my bike dig into my back as we march upwards in single file. My breath roars in my ears as the high-altitude sun brings sweat to my face. This is mountain climbing in the Swiss Alps, enduro-bike style. After taking the gondola from the resort of Crans-Montana as high as it goes, we’ve ridden, pushed and finally carried our hefty bikes even further, seeking the summit of Bella Lui at 2,548m, and the beginning of a monster downhill. In 2021, mountain biking has evolved. Advances in bike design and technology, combined with the restless desire of riders to fully explore high places unrestrained by fenced-off downhill bike parks or the practical limitations of cross-country and trail bikes, has birthed a ‘Goldilocks’ category of enduro mountain bikes – tough enough to tackle steep Alpine descents, while light and efficient enough to pedal uphill. Crans-Montana is the latest venue to be added to the hugely popular Enduro World Series, where pros race down gnarly descents but also have to pedal connecting fire trails (wildfire control lines) within a time limit – it’s rallying for bikes. The aim is to link the best downhills from 2,500m to the valley floor without using roads. This would be almost impossible on a short-suspension crosscountry bike and would take multiple days of pushing on a heavy downhiller, but it’s doable on an enduro. As an adventure journalist I’ve been riding full-suspension MTBs on and off for 20 years, and while experienced I’m certainly not a pro. But you needn’t be one to ride enduro. “Enduro mountain biking is freedom,” says my guide, Julien Paganelli, grinning at the perilously thin trails weaving down steep grassy slopes above sheer cliffs of

grey gneiss [coarse-grained, granite-like rock]. “Are we going BASE jumping?” I ask nervously. By the end of the day we’ll have ridden 32km and climbed 794m of vertical ascent but hammered down an adrenalinpumping 2,510m of vertical descent. We ride down a singletrack with sheer drops to either side, taking care not to bash a pedal into the turf. This trail is the Col du Pochet, and at a rocky outcrop Paganelli unveils the first surprise – a steel ladder bolted to the rock, leading down into a dark chasm. Leaving my bike with our guide to wrangle, I descend and follow a rope attached to the wall.

SWITZERLAND Crans- Montana

Enduro paradise Crans-Montana in Valais, Switzerland, has more than 77km of trails with 11 fully signposted routes, all accessible from the resort. Cable cars are open 365 days a year, while the bike park has three graded trails – blue, red and black. At more than 3km long, you can do multiple laps, taking the cable car back to the top of the runs. The best place to hire an enduro bike in the resort is at Bestwear.ch THE RED BULLETIN

VENTURE Travel

Above: local rider Gregory Corti on the descent from Bella Lui; below left: writer Matt Ray riding the trails with his guides; below right: starting the ascent by gondola

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Still high above the tree line, I look down at a steep field of terrifyingly loose rock. A narrow trail scarcely wider than a wheel runs through it. Beyond that, a lethal vertical drop. Local rider Gregory Corti offers some friendly advice: “Be careful. If you fall here, you only fall once.” My tyres crunch on the scree as I use the bike’s powerful hydraulic disc brakes to control my speed, careful not to lock the wheels into a catastrophic slide. “Every time you ride these trails it’s different,” says Paganelli, explaining that the wind and rain washes them away. We see a group of workmen with rakes painstakingly re-establishing the line through the scree, which will be shared by bikers and hikers. These trails are natural rather than bike-park groomed, and I notice Paganelli has a note inscribed behind his handlebars: “Eyes up, bitch!” Good advice. Focusing on the trail rather than your front wheel allows you to spot obstacles early and maintain smooth speed, otherwise know as ‘flow’. The next section of trail, less exposed but covered in bigger rocks, requires plenty of flow. I hop over some obstacles and weave around others, drifting around tight switchback turns in a shower of stone chips. I use my elbows and knees as human ‘suspension’ to soak up the hits before we tear through a meadow of colourful flowers, my face spattered with mud as we reach the Er de Chermignon trail. We’ve burned a lot of altitude, so it’s time to test the climbing chops of our enduro machines. I get into a steady rhythm, aided by the climbing-friendly geometry and suspension, which eats up the rising switchbacks of fire road until we’re above the alpine reservoir at Lac de Tseuzier, which is green with calcium. After stopping to fill our bottles, we link up with this area’s enduro secret weapon. Hundreds of years ago, winemakers diverted the water flowing off the glacier into their vineyards. They carved precarious irrigation channels called bisses along the sides of the cliffs. The paths alongside these twinkling streams are perfect for linking downhill sections of trail, and this one, the Bisse de Sion, takes us to a narrow descent punctuated with tree roots exposed 71

VENTURE Travel

Winding and grinding: exposed roots and rocks make riding hazardous on the twisty wooded stretch of the trail

Matt Ray is an action-sports and adventure writer/photographer who has ridden everywhere from the Alps to the Mojave Desert; adventurefella.com. On this trip, he was a guest of Switzerland Tourism; myswitzerland.com 72

Anatomy of enduro The Specialized Enduro Expert: an all-mountain machine Rear suspension of 170mm – more shockabsorbent than a trail bike, shorter than a downhiller

Dropper seatpost – raise or lower the saddle via a handlebar control for optimum climbing or descending height

Frame geometry angled for that sweet spot between climbing and fast descents

MATT RAY

Large 29in wheels – easier for long distances and grippier on rough trails

CHRIS LANAWAY

by rain. Summoning every reflex to negotiate this trail without going over the bars, we roll out into the village of Anzère and a shortcut that took Paganelli years to discover, through someone’s back garden and into woods where it becomes fast, rooty and rocky. Being part of a roaming enduro crew is a liberating experience. It’s also a test of trust as we stop at a hobbit-sized hole in the mountainside. Here, I follow Paganelli into an unlit tunnel barely big enough to fit our bikes; a creation of the bisse builders that allows water to flow through the mountain. It’s also a fantastic link to the last section of trail, dropping past vineyards and into the train station at Saint-Léonard. My body is beat, and my endurance, courage and bike skills have been sorely tested, but I’m already looking forward to returning to the top of the mountain for another adrenalin-soaked enduro day.

Carbon-fibre frame – reduces weight without sacrificing strength THE RED BULLETIN

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Into the wild Camping gear to give you an outside edge Photography DAVID GOLDMAN Styling JAMES SLEAFORD

MONTANE Mountain Squall Cap, montane. com; PAYNTER JACKET CO Six Mile Tee, paynterjacket. com; CARHARTT W’ Page Carrot Ankle Pants, carhartt-wip. com; RAB Shredder Belt, rab.equipment; GARMIN Fenix 6S Pro Solar Watch, garmin.com; ORTLIEB Light-Pack Two 25L Rucksack, ortlieb.com

Left to right: Ronin wears GRAMICCI Watch Beanie, gramicci. co.uk; KAVU Etch Art Long-sleeve Tee, urbanindustry.co.uk; DU/ER Live Free Adventure Pants, shopduer.com; NIKE Air Max Essential Shoes, nike.com; MIZU M8 All Stainless Water Bottle (in hand), mizulife.eu Holly wears GRAMICCI Padding Jacket, gramicci.co. uk; PAYNTER JACKET CO Six Mile Tee, paynterjacket.com; HELLY HANSEN Ocean Pants, hellyhansen.com;

GARMIN Fenix 6S Pro Solar Watch, garmin.com; MERRELL Moab Speed Shoes, merrell.com Abbas wears SNOW PEAK Indigo Blue C/N Parka, snowpeak.co.uk; GRAMICCI Bonding Knit Fleece Knee Patch Pants, gramicci.co.uk; OBEY Cooper II Socks, urbanoutfitters.com; Shoes, model’s own Camping equipment, left to right: EXPED AirMat Lite 5 No Pump Mat, exped.com; RAB Solar 2 Sleeping Bag, rab.equipment; OSPREY Tempest 24 Hiking Daypack, ospreyeurope.com;

HEIMPLANET The Cave Tent, heimplanet.com; MIZU Tumbler 20 Insulated Cup, mizulife.eu; BIOLITE CampStove 2+ and CampStove KettlePot, uk.bioliteenergy.com; SNOW PEAK Stainless Vacuuminsulated Mugs, snowpeak.co.uk; OPTIMUS Titanium Three-piece Cutlery Set with Carabiner Clip, optimusstoves. com; TENTREE Cotton Intarsia Blanket, tentree.co.uk

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POLER Napsack and Hal One-person Tent, poler.co.uk

HEIMPLANET The Cave Tent, heimplanet.com; ORTLIEB Light-Pack Two 25L Rucksack, ortlieb.com; MONTANE Prism Booties, montane.com; MIZU M8 All Stainless Water Bottle, mizulife.eu

GRAMICCI Utility Jacket, Back Satin Cargo Pants and GRAMICCI X TAION Inner Down Jacket, gramicci.co.uk; PAYNTER JACKET CO Six Mile Tee, paynterjacket.com

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SNOW PEAK Thermal Boa Fleece Pullover, snowpeak. co.uk; PAYNTER JACKET CO Six Mile Tee, paynterjacket. com; SMARTWOOL Intraknit Merino 200 Leggings, smartwool.co.uk

TENTREE Kurt Wool Beanie, tentree.co.uk; HELLY HANSEN Ocean Crew Neck Jumper, hellyhansen.com; 686 Anything Hybrid Cargo Shorts, everywear-eu.686. com; STANCE OG Snow Socks, stance. eu.com; NIKE Air Max Essential Shoes, nike.com THE RED BULLETIN

MONTANE Pac Plus XT Jacket, montane. com; KAVU True Fade Tee, urbanindustry. co.uk; VANS Authentic Chino Loose Pants, vans.co.uk; STANCE X TSA OG Wool Socks, stance.eu.com; DANNER Mountain Light Hiking Boots, outsidersstore.com; CASIO G-SHOCK GA900HC-3AV Watch, g-shock.co.uk

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GRAMICCI Boa Fleece Jacket, Talecut Skirt and Shell Jet Cap, gramicci.co.uk; PAYNTER JACKET CO Six Mile Tee, paynterjacket.com; TENTREE Selkirk Juniper Socks, tentree.co.uk; SNOW PEAK Field Mesh Shoes, snowpeak.co.uk

Photographer’s assistant OKUS MILSOM Fashion assistant ROSIE SYKES Hair and grooming CRAIG TAYLOR @ One Represents for Hari’s Hairdressers, London SW3 Models HOLLY BENDALL and ABBAS MWAMBAKALE @ W Model Management, RONIN ROSSANESE @ Nevs Model Agency Special thanks to Rushmere Country Park, Leighton Buzzard, Beds

VENTURE Fitness PERFORM

Contortion

No place for clowns Roll up, roll up… Learn the secret skills of acrobatic circus performers. Amaze your friends. And prepare to be astounded by the physical – and mental – benefits The idea of running away to join the circus may seem like little more than a old romantic notion – a fantasy of leaving the mundanity of daily life behind, linking up with likeminded misfits and learning new skills. But for Luke Shaw it was more than makebelieve; in 2017, the Londoner launched his own circus school. Shaw already had stage production experience, having worked as a rigger and crew member for festivals including Glastonbury and Boomtown. In 2015, he and his best friend, photographer Rachel Hardwick, founded a circus production company to provide theatrical solutions for events. For the two business partners – along with Shaw’s girlfriend, circus

performer Lindsey Higgins – the next logical step was to invite others to learn the secrets of the big top. “We wanted to show that you can train in circus as adults,” says 32-year-old Shaw, who, by day, was working for a digital commerce agency. The Forgotten Circus School teaches gymnastics, acrobatics, strength training and flexibility routines that benefit more than just showmanship. “We offer an alternative approach to just going to the gym,” says Shaw. “You’re learning to use your body in a different way, The impact of sitting at a desk is felt in your back, hip flexors, in the tightness of your quads. Many office workers develop severe lower-back pain. As

you grow in circus, you learn about how to address your body – opening and lengthening the ribs, rolling out and stretching certain areas, improving posture.” Shaw also believes it provides a valuable creative avenue: “A lot of people are artistic but no longer have an outlet to express themselves. Circus is good for your mind as well as your body.” Here, Forgotten Circus School director Higgins reveals what learning the skills of the big top can do for you…

“Circus is good for your mind as well as your body”

This is the skill of bending your body into extreme positions. “Contortionism promotes a relationship with movement, allowing you to understand how your muscles control this, and to find areas of your body where you didn’t even know you needed muscles,” says Higgins. “With healthy stretching, pain and tightness are alleviated and you achieve greater mobility and dexterity.”

Straps

Here, mid-air gymnastics are performed while suspended by bands around the arms and hands. “This is great if you’re committed to seeing change. It’s tough, it makes you sore, and it feels weird putting all your weight through a strap on your wrist, but perseverance pays off. The core, shoulders and active leg strength come quickly and you develop deep control and stabilisation of your upper-body muscles.”

Trapeze

This well-known form of aerial acrobatics involves a bar suspended by ropes. “Trapeze is a circus artist’s dream as it combines rope and bar work, promoting artistic and dynamic discipline. You learn grace, flow and confidence. Your strength improves with the ability to create body shapes as you take breaks. And you’ll develop upper body strength to lift you on the ropes and under the bar.”

Suspending reality: circus performer Julia Sparkle makes the aerial hoop look simple

forgottencircusschool.com THE RED BULLETIN

RACHEL HARDWICK

More mid-air gymnastics, this time performed on a suspended circular steel ring. “The hoop enables you to create shapes as you move around it. There’s a huge catalogue of moves ranging in strength, flexibility and dexterity. You’ll also develop your pull-up fast – upper body strength is needed just to get onto the hoop, and the backs of your knees keep you holding on, engaging your glutes and hamstrings.”

LOU BOYD

Aerial hoop

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VENTURE Equipment The Exploro Racemax Boost comes in two variants: a dropbar version (pictured) for optimal road speed, and a flatbar model for greater control on the trails

RIDE

All-round player

without giving up speed on-road.” The Exploro Racemax Boost is a gravel bike but with the optimised aerodynamics of a road racer – its frame has drag-efficient aero-tubing but accommodates large wheels and wide tyres. It also conceals a lightweight Mahle ebikemotion X35 system – electric propulsion so smooth it’s easy to forget you’re pedalling an e-bike. “There is no reason why [road racers and e-bikes] should be mutually exclusive,” says Vroomen. “Use electric assist to arrive at work without a sweat, then commute home as your workout.” A solution everyone can get behind. 3t.bike THE RED BULLETIN

DAVIDE ROSSI, PAOLO CIABERTA

Gerard Vroomen is a legend in the cycling world. The Dutch mechanical engineer’s obsessive attention to bike geometry has made road bikes that go incredibly fast. They also polarise opinion. Vroomen’s first product, the 1995 Cervélo Baracchi time-trial racer, was deemed so ugly the sponsor refused to have its logo put on it. But, as he once said, “If more than half of everyone liked it, it didn’t go far enough.” Now, as co-owner of Italian cycle brand 3T, Vroomen hopes to please everyone. “Roadies love speed but want to spend more time off-road,” he says. “The goal was a bike that is super-capable off-road

LOU BOYD

Daily commute bike or weekend off-roader? One bike designer asked, “Why not both?”

Whether you prefer board, ski or bike for your adrenaline hit grab yourself a FREE TICKET for The National Snow Show (23-24 Oct 2021) or National Cycling Show (18-19 June 2022) using code REDBULLETIN. With an all-star line-up including Sir Chris Hoy and Sir Ranulph Fiennes, top class brands and awesome interactive features it’s the perfect weekend spent with family and friends at the NEC, Birmingham.

THE NATIONAL BIRMINGHAM nationalsnowshow.com

nationalcyclingshow.com

VENTURE Gaming anywhere, so we created a multitude of paths and didn’t include any wooden features, making it feel natural.” says Salomon. “We visited [Zion] and took pictures to recreate it, focusing on iconic things people would recognise, then working on tiny details to build atmosphere,” adds product manager Orlane Guignard.

POV OMG

Helmet-cam footage reveals the terrifying reality of what a rider experiences. It also supplied the developers with invaluable info. “GoPro videos were an incredible tool,” explains Salomon. “We took the point of view of the rider and grabbed breathing and tyre sounds. It’s called ‘game feel’. You feel like you’re riding Rampage.”

Add gut drops

What it took to build the most ambitious extreme-sports video game ever made Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise: size matters. And in freeride mountain biking nothing is bigger than Red Bull Rampage. Amid the arid sandstone of Zion National Park, Utah, competitors start atop a tiny plateau 240m up. There’s no course – riders and their crews have four days to shape their own path using shovels and picks, before navigating the near-vertical cliffs and colossal canyons. Where most see a deathtrap, they see a blank canvas. This is where legends – and viral sensations – are born: see Kelly McGarry’s backflip across a canyon gap and Kyle Strait’s 18m suicide no-hander in 2013, and Nicholi Rogatkin falling down a 9m cliff in 2015… then dusting himself off to finish his run. 88

Even for most elite MTBers, Rampage is out of reach – only a limited number of riders are invited (15 this year). But now we can all experience it in the video game Riders Republic. Rampage is just one event in the colossal open world of Riders Republic. As well as Zion, the game simulates six other US national parks – Yosemite, Bryce Canyon, Grand Teton, Canyonlands, Sequoia, and Mammoth Mountain (in Inyo National Forest) – letting players explore and compete on bikes, skis, snowboards, in wingsuits, and even on snowmobiles. Developers Ubisoft Annecy studied geomorphology (the science of landscape patterns) and altimetric data to simulate soil types, climates, flora and fauna, then replicated bikes

and gear from brands such as Santa Cruz, Specialized and YT, building a metaverse for adrenalin junkies. “We’re based in the Alps, where we have a lot of MTB tracks, so the [Ubisoft Annecy] team have a rider’s mindset,” says level designer Rémi Salomon. “It’s about enjoying the outdoors with others and trying the craziest things.”

Natural selection

The developers were keen to convey Rampage’s DIY experience. “Riders go

“We added ‘game feel’… You feel like you’re riding Rampage”

Benefits with friends

At the centre of the world is Riders Ridge – a social space (think festival) where players can hang out. “We put a lot of love into the multiplayer part,” says Salomon. “You’ll discover mass races where up to 50 players [on the latest consoles; 20+ on older machines] race at once.” These are inspired by real events such as Megavalanche at Alpe d’Huez, where thousands of riders descend 2,600m from a glacier. “This,” says Salomon, “is when you get the craziest moments in the game.”

Riders Republic is released on October 28 for PS4, PS5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S, Google Stadia and Microsoft Windows; ubisoft.com THE RED BULLETIN

STU KENNY

Rampage recreated

UBISOFT ANNECY

EXPERIENCE

“The higher the jump, the scarier – it’s a basic thing that feels coherent,” says Salomon. “We focused on creating that vertigo. Also, the tinier the track, the more stressful it is, and Rampage has the tiniest track in the game. We analysed the most stressful experiences. Even if it’s not dangerous in the game, it feels dangerous.”

GIVES YOU WIIINGS. ALSO WITH THE TASTE OF CACTUS FRUIT.

VENTURE How to... structure of her run adventures – 25-30km a day sounded manageable; I could walk the distance if I had to. It would have been fruitless planning every day, because I wasn’t sure how far I’d go.”

Don’t wait until you’re ready

“I didn’t need to be in shape to run 8,000km; I just needed to be able to do day one. I trained on the job, running about 15km a day for the first two months, building up to 30km and then eventually 45-60km days.”

Mind games help

“Bad weather, difficult terrain and long distances were tough but enjoyable in a type-two fun way. The hardest thing was the monotony. I thought about quitting many times. In South Wales, I told myself that if I made it to the Scottish border, I could cycle around Scotland. It was a get-out-ofjail card that I didn’t need, but mentally it helped.”

Set yourself free With minimal training or experience, and zero map-reading skills, one woman embarked on a self-supported 8,000km run around the coast of Great Britain In 2015, Elise Downing hit a crossroads in her life. Not long out of university, the 23-yearold from Northampton was in an unrewarding graduate job and a miserable relationship and felt as if she was merely going through the motions. “The thought of sitting at my desk for the next 40 years was horrendous,” she recalls. Then, one day, while studying a map of the UK to solve a customer delivery problem, Downing was struck by a thought: had anyone ever run the length of the British coastline? Turns out the answer was no. So, on a whim, she committed to doing just that – all 8,000km of it, carrying her kit on her back. Downing admits she was completely unqualified for the challenge: “I hadn’t done any 90

ultrarunning, only two rather pitiful marathons. I walked the last 12km of one, crying, and got heckled by a child.” Having factored in a journey time of 10 months and a daily budget of £10 – she planned to wild-camp to cut costs – Downing spent six months saving up for the run. As well as applying for an adventure grant, she reduced her budget by moving into a cheaper house-share at the end of a London Tube line, before finally quitting her job. Planning was minimal. “I had no idea what I was doing,”

“It’s fine to try something a bit mad, even if you don’t finish it”

admits Downing, who had never pitched a tent solo, couldn’t read a map, and had never even done a run wearing the 20kg pack she’d be carrying. What made her think she could do it? “I followed people online doing big adventures,” she says, “and I thought, ‘If they can do these things, so can I.’” On August 27, 2016 – 301 days, seven pairs of running shoes and one very wet British winter later – Downing completed her task. Here’s what she learned from the experience…

Plan just enough

“Do enough to keep safe, but not so much that you never end up starting. I copied [adventure runner] Anna McNuff’s kit list and the

Humanity will surprise you

“It was mind-blowing how people went out of the way to help, offering me a bed for the night, company on runs, and hot food and showers. I read bedtime stories to the children of the people I stayed with. It was humbling that they trusted me enough to invite me into their homes.”

Reinvent yourself

“We end up putting ourselves in a box of who we think we are and the sort of things we do. There’s a quote by [late British philosopher] Alan Watts that I like: “You are under no obligation to be the same person you were five minutes ago.” It’s fine to try something a bit mad, something not in line with the person you think you are, even if you don’t finish it.”

Elise Downing’s book Coasting: Running Around the Coast of Britain – Life, Love and (Very Loose) Plans is out now; elisedowning.com THE RED BULLETIN

KATIE SPYRKA

REINVENT

VENTURE Equipment PADDLE

Riding on air Looking for a standout stand-up paddleboard? Don’t throw caution to the wind – go inflatable with Red Paddle Co’s 10ft 6in Ride MSL board

The 2.43m leash coils to prevent drag in the water, and fits to ankles and wrists

Large self-closing bungee straps hold your gear securely to the board

Carbon-weave paddle for lightness and strength. Dihedral blade face for smoother stroke

TIM KENT

The Titan II SUP pump (included) has twin chambers, making filling your board quicker and easier

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Inflatable boards are, perhaps surprisingly, more durable than hard ones, better at taking knocks, more portable and easier to store. red-equipment.co.uk

VENTURE Equipment WEAR

Decoding 007 Who is James Bond? That’s the question watchmaker Omega asked when making the super spy’s latest timepiece

James Bond’s wristwatch, like his car and attire, must embody who he is perfectly – in particular, its Seamaster line of diving watches, inspired by standardissue British Navy timepieces from WWII. Stylish, elegant, but most crucially, functional. With each Bond film from GoldenEye onwards, Omega has crafted a Seamaster for

Hands-on: actor Daniel Craig helped in the watch’s development

him to wear. For 007’s latest adventure, No Time to Die, the watchmaker had an invaluable voice in the development process: Bond actor Daniel Craig. “I had some suggestions and they ran with them,” he says of the Omega Seamaster Diver 300M 007. Craig influenced the use of lighter titanium instead of stainless steel – “We’re talking about a difference of grams, but I can wear it and not even think about it” – and the addition of a NATO strap. Omega also gave the watch a ‘tropical’ brown dial and bezel and ‘aged’ faux-patina lumes to signify where 007 is in his life at the start of the film. “In Jamaica, on his boat, sort of retired,” explains Craig. “It makes complete sense.”

Then there’s the military connection and a callback to author Ian Fleming’s backstory of Bond as an former Naval Commander. Above the six o’clock indicator is an insignia that appears on every British military watch – the ‘broad arrow’ – which is mirrored on the caseback above the inscription 0552 (the code for Navy personnel), 923 7697 (denoting a divers watch), A (indicating a screw-in crown), and 007 62 (Bond’s callsign and the year the film series debuted). “You have that heritage with Omega and the British army watches,” says Craig. “All of those things I wanted to connect through.” Virtually every Bond song – from Radiohead and Sam Smith, to Billie Eilish’s No Time to Die – contains a hidden code: the four chords that open Monty Norman’s iconic James Bond theme. Secret codes in plain sight. That’s the essence of Bond.

No Time to Die is at cinemas from September 30. To learn more about the Omega Seamaster Diver 300M 007, go to omegawatches.com THE RED BULLETIN

TOM GUISE

Sign of the times: the ‘broad arrow’ (see bottom of dial) is a traditional feature on British military watches

OMEGA

In 2015, Radiohead halted the recording of their ninth album, A Moon Shaped Pool, to compose the theme song for the James Bond film Spectre. If that’s news to you, it’s because when the movie came out in October that year, the opening credits were backed by Sam Smith’s Writing’s on the Wall. Radiohead’s song had been rejected. So specific are the requirements of the longest-running film series that even one of the world’s biggest bands can fail to make the cut. That’s the standard by which Omega was measured when it became the maker of 007’s personal timepiece, a relationship that began with 1995’s GoldenEye. The secret agent’s wristwatch – like his car, attire, drink of choice, and soundtrack – must embody who he is. Bond is a man of contrasts: suave yet gritty, glamorous yet discreet, his accessories possessions of British Intelligence. The Swiss watchmaker fitted the bill

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VENTURE Calendar

October BODY MOVEMENTS

DJ Saoirse Ryan and pioneering LGBTQI+ party organiser Clayton Wright launch the UK’s first queer dance music festival. Set across a day and a night, with 40 UK LGBTQI+ collectives taking part at 16 venues around east London, this multi-venue mega-rave brings queer, non-binary and trans artists together for a celebration and some blistering electronic music sets. “It’s time for our bodies, our talent and our movement to take up space,” say the organisers. Various venues, Hackney Wick, London; bodymovements.co.uk

October RED BULL CLIFF DIVING WORLD SERIES FINALE Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, sits on the Caspian Sea and has a balmy climate that touches 20°C in autumn – seemingly the perfect location for a sport that involves leaping into water from a height of up to 28m. However, the newest stage in the World Series doesn’t take place on any cliff, but instead indoors at the recently opened (and air-conditioned) Deniz Mall entertainment centre. Here, competitors including the 2019 winner Gary Hunt (pictured above at the mall in April) will dive from the top floor of the atrium tower into a 6m-deep plunge pool. Watch it live on RBTV; redbull.com

September ONE EXTRAORDINARY YEAR “Not having a schedule, not knowing when that competition is going to be… the uncertainty is terrifying,” says Miles Chamley-Watson, 11-time Pan American fencing champion (pictured top left and right), in this film about the year the world – and sport – stood still. This documentary follows a few of the countless athletes who’d been training for competitions such as the 2020 Olympics before lockdown left them directionless. Among them are Argentinian sailors Santiago Lange and Cecilia Carranza (bottom left) and British heptathlete Niamh Emerson (bottom right), each with a profound story of setbacks, self-determination and reinvention that we can all learn from. redbull.com 94

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VENTURE Calendar

23 DEAN TREML/RED BULL CONTENT POOL, PARABLEWORKS/RED BULL CONTENT POOL, JAPANESE AVANT-GARDE AND EXPERIMENTAL FILM FESTIVAL, BRODIE HOOD/RED BULL CONTENT POOL, GEORGE KARBUS PHOTOGRAPHY

to 24 October THE NATIONAL SNOW SHOW As our distinctly mediocre summer turns into a decisively refreshing winter, true snow fanatics pack up and head for altogether more glacial climes. This weekender showcases the latest snowsports gear, but more than a retail expo it's a warm-up with an indoor slope, snow-skills cabin, and an Alpine après bar where you might meet speakers from the Snow Stage, including Olympic snowboarders Billy Morgan (pictured) and Katie Ormerod, and godfather of mountaineering Sir Ranulph Fiennes. NEC Birmingham; nationalsnowshow.com

to 19 September JAPANESE AVANT-GARDE AND EXPERIMENTAL FILM FESTIVAL The 2020 Tokyo Olympics will be remembered both as a celebration of human perseverance and for the solemnity of the empty stands during its opening ceremony. This third edition of the JAEFF touches on these themes of connection and isolation with works encompassing butoh (dance theatre), ‘pink films’ (nudity) and the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. The final day of the festival brings history full circle, focusing on the 1964 Tokyo Olympics with three films from that year: Nippon Express Carries the Olympics to Tokyo (pictured top) is a look at the preparations to host the event; Record of a Marathon Runner (bottom) follows athlete Kimihara Kenji in training; and Kon Ichikawa’s documentary Tokyo Olympiad (middle) is simply one of the finest sports films ever made. Barbican, London; barbican.org THE RED BULLETIN

14 September to 27 November BANFF MOUNTAIN AND OCEAN FILM FESTIVALS Looking to expand your horizons? Try these two showcases of breathtaking outdoor filmmaking, which transport you from the world’s highest peaks to the deepest ocean floors. Since 1976, the Banff Mountain Film Festival has hosted some of the year’s best mountain-themed documentaries in the altitude-appropriate Canadian town of Banff (more than 1,400m above sea level) before going on tour around the globe. The Ocean Film Festival World Tour originated in Australia and, after going virtual in 2020, is back on the road with a selection of short films celebrating and educating us on our planet’s seas. Both are touring the UK; banff-uk.com; oceanfilmfestival.co.uk 95

GLOBAL TEAM

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The Red Bulletin is published in six countries. This is the cover of our Austrian edition for October, which depicts the high jinks of Red Bull Flugtag – the global competition for homemade, human-powered flying machines. For more stories beyond the ordinary, go to: redbulletin.com

The Red Bulletin UK. ABC certified distribution 145,193 (Jan-Dec 2020)

Head of The Red Bulletin Alexander Müller-Macheck, Sara Car-Varming (deputy) Editors-in-Chief Andreas Rottenschlager, Andreas Wollinger (deputy) Creative Directors Erik Turek, Kasimir Reimann (deputy) Art Directors Marion Bernert-Thomann, Miles English, Tara Thompson Designers Martina de Carvalho-Hutter, Cornelia Gleichweit, Kevin Goll Photo Editors Eva Kerschbaum (manager), Marion Batty (deputy), Susie Forman, Tahira Mirza, Rudi Übelhör Digital Editors Christian Eberle-Abasolo (manager), Marie-Maxime Dricot, Melissa Gordon, Lisa Hechenberger, Elena Rodriguez Angelina, Benjamin Sullivan Head of Audio Florian Obkircher Special Projects Arkadiusz Piatek Managing Editors Ulrich Corazza, Marion Lukas-Wildmann Publishing Management Ivona Glibusic, Bernhard Schmied, Anna Wilczek Managing Director Stefan Ebner Head of Media Sales & Partnerships Lukas Scharmbacher Head of Co-Publishing Susanne Degn-Pfleger Project Management Co-Publishing, B2B Marketing & Communication Katrin Sigl (manager), Mathias Blaha, Katrin Dollenz, Thomas Hammerschmied, Teresa Kronreif (B2B), Eva Pech, Valentina Pierer, Stefan Portenkirchner (communication), Jennifer Silberschneider Creative Services Verena Schörkhuber-Zöhrer (manager), Sara Wonka, Julia Bianca Zmek, Edith Zöchling-Marchart Commercial Management Co-Publishing Alexandra Ita Editorial Co-Publishing Raffael Fritz (manager), Gundi Bittermann, Mariella Reithoffer, Wolfgang Wieser Executive Creative Director Markus Kietreiber Senior Manager Creative Elisabeth Kopanz Art Direction Commercial & Co-Publishing Peter Knehtl (manager), Erwin Edtmayer, Simone Fischer, Martina Maier, Andreea Parvu, Carina Schaittenberger, Alexandra Schendl, Julia Schinzel, Florian Solly, Dominik Uhl, Sophie Weidinger, Stephan Zenz Subscriptions and Distribution Peter Schiffer (manager), Marija Althajm, Nicole Glaser, Victoria Schwärzler, Yoldaş Yarar Advertising Manuela Brandstätter, Monika Spitaler Production Veronika Felder (manager), Friedrich Indich, Walter O. Sádaba, Sabine Wessig Repro Clemens Ragotzky (manager), Claudia Heis, Nenad Isailović, Sandra Maiko Krutz, Josef Mühlbacher Finance Mariia Gerutska (manager), Klaus Pleninger MIT Christoph Kocsisek, Michael Thaler Operations Melanie Grasserbauer, Alexander Peham, Thomas Platzer Assistant to General Management Sandra Artacker Project Management Dominik Debriacher, Gabriela-Teresa Humer Editor and CEO Andreas Kornhofer Editorial office Am Grünen Prater 3, A-1020 Vienna Phone +43 1 90221-0 Web redbulletin.com Published by Red Bull Media House GmbH, Oberst-Lepperdinger-Straße 11–15, A-5071 Wals bei Salzburg, FN 297115i, Landesgericht Salzburg, ATU63611700 Executive Directors Dkfm. Dietrich Mateschitz, Dietmar Otti, Christopher Reindl, Marcus Weber

THE RED BULLETIN United Kingdom, ISSN 2308-5894 Acting editor Tom Guise Associate Editor Lou Boyd Chief Sub-Editor Davydd Chong Publishing Manager Ollie Stretton Editor (on leave) Ruth McLeod Advertising Sales Mark Bishop, mark.bishop@redbull.com Fabienne Peters, fabienne.peters@redbull.com Printed by Quad/Graphics Europe Sp. z o.o., Pułtuska 120, 07-200 Wyszków, Poland UK Office Seven Dials Warehouse, 42-56 Earlham Street, London WC2H 9LA Tel: +44 (0) 20 3117 2000 Subscribe getredbulletin.com Enquiries or orders to: subs@uk. redbulletin.com. Back issues available to purchase at: getredbulletin.com. Basic subscription rate is £20.00 per year. International rates are available. The Red Bulletin is published 10 times a year. Please allow a maximum of four weeks for delivery of the first issue Customer Service +44 (0)1227 277248, subs@uk.redbulletin.com

THE RED BULLETIN Austria, ISSN 1995-8838 Editor Wolfgang Wieser Proofreaders Hans Fleißner (manager), Petra Hannert, Monika Hasleder, Billy Kirnbauer-Walek Publishing Management Bernhard Schmied Media Sales & Partnerships Thomas Hutterer (manager), Alfred Vrej Minassian, Franz Fellner, Ines Gruber, Thomas Gubier, Daniela Güpner, Wolfgang Kröll, Gabriele Matijevic-Beisteiner, Nicole Okasek-Lang, Britta Pucher, Jennifer Sabejew, Johannes Wahrmann-Schär, Ellen WittmannSochor, Ute Wolker, Christian Wörndle, Sabine Zölß

THE RED BULLETIN France, ISSN 2225-4722 Editor Pierre-Henri Camy Country Coordinator Christine Vitel Country Project M anagement Alexis Bulteau Contributors, Translators and Proofreaders Étienne Bonamy, Frédéric & Susanne Fortas, Suzanne Kříženecký, Claire Schieffer, Jean-Pascal Vachon, Gwendolyn de Vries

THE RED BULLETIN Germany, ISSN 2079-4258 Editor David Mayer Proofreaders Hans Fleißner (manager), Petra Hannert, Monika Hasleder, Billy Kirnbauer-Walek Country Project Management Nina Hahn Media Sales & Partnerships Thomas Hutterer (manager), Alfred Vrej Minassian, Franz Fellner, Ines Gruber, Thomas Gubier, Daniela Güpner, Wolfgang Kröll, Gabriele Matijevic-Beisteiner, Nicole Okasek-Lang, Britta Pucher, Jennifer Sabejew, Johannes Wahrmann-Schär, Ellen WittmannSochor, Ute Wolker, Christian Wörndle, Sabine Zölß

THE RED BULLETIN Switzerland, ISSN 2308-5886 Editor Stefania Telesca Proofreaders Hans Fleißner (manager), Petra Hannert, Monika Hasleder, Billy Kirnbauer-Walek Country Project Management Meike Koch Media Sales & Brand Partnerships Stefan Brütsch (team lead), stefan.bruetsch@redbull.com Marcel Bannwart, marcel.bannwart@redbull.com Christian Bürgi, christian.buergi@redbull.com Jessica Pünchera, jessica.puenchera@redbull.com Goldbach Publishing Marco Nicoli, marco.nicoli@goldbach.com

THE RED BULLETIN USA, ISSN 2308-586X Editor-in-Chief Peter Flax Deputy Editor Nora O’Donnell Copy Chief David Caplan Publishing Management Branden Peters Media Network Communications & Marketing Manager Brandon Peters Advertising Sales Todd Peters, todd.peters@redbull.com Dave Szych, dave.szych@redbull.com Tanya Foster, tanya.foster@redbull.com

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Semi-Rad Adventure philosophy from BRENDAN LEONARD

“Last summer, I took my niece and nephew camping for their first time ever, at one of the quietest car-camping sites I’ve ever been to. Upon waking up and exiting our tents in the morning, I asked them how they had slept. Of course they both woke up a lot, which I said was kind of how it went – you fall asleep for a while, wake up, wonder where you are for a few seconds, change positions, fall back asleep again, and then repeat eight to 10 times throughout the night. Sleeping when you’re camping is just a series of naps. Which kind of got me to thinking: why did I ask them how they had slept? Of all the reasons to go camping, is sleeping really the point?” semi-rad.com

The next issue of THE RED BULLETIN is out on October 12 98

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