Powerhouse creator NONA BAYAT is inspiring millions through her ftness journey
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STRONG MESSAGE
Millions of people like to pursue some kind of healthy lifestyle, but if you dig into it you quickly learn that everyone’s motivations and goals are all over the map. Some people chase high performance—trying to get stronger or faster or more competitive at a favorite sport. Others are in search of a leaner or healthier or more confdent self. Many people like to exercise to clear their minds or improve their mood or their overall sense of well-being. And at least a few do it to justify an extra burger or pint of beer. But everyone has an interest in ftness because it makes their lives better in multiple ways. Several stories in this issue explore elite athletes and ftness leaders who are chasing excellence. Like Sam Hurley, a high jumper and pole vaulter at the University of Texas at Austin. His talents are extraordinary, but Hurley is clear that he will only reach his goals by maintaining a relentless work ethic. And while he tries to exercise and eat and sleep with constant intention, he also understands that having fun will help him succeed. He loves the feeling of fying when he jumps—it’s a kind of freedom, he says. That duality, exercising like it’s both work and play, would be good practice for even the most casual athlete. Also featured in this issue is a profle of creator Nona Bayat. Her ftness journey is uplifing in a totally diferent way, as she has built a massive social media following by inspiring millions of people, especially women, to forge a stronger version of themselves. She looks the part of a supremely ft human, with abs that appear molded from marble, but her present mission seeks to activate a ftness revolution more than pursue simple self-improvement. Lastly, there is an expanded version of our regular Train Like a Pro feature, this time highlighting pro wakeboarders
Meagan Ethell and Guenther Oka. Among other things, their approach illuminates the value of all the little things that impact ftness. They are conscientious about what they make for lunch and how they warm up for a workout and even how they carve out time for sporting hobbies that can inch them closer to their goals. They strive for mindfulness rather than single-mindedness.
These individuals, though blessed with remarkable talent, ofer instruction and inspiration to mere mortals who want to make their own ftness journey more rewarding. Get afer it!
These individuals offer instruction and inspiration to anyone who wants to make their own fitness journey more rewarding..
PETER FLAX
Top: Sam Hurley demonstrates his pole-vaulting form on a runway in Austin. Bottom: Nona Bayat puts ftness in focus in Los Angeles.
Marius Bugge (Cover)
PHOTOGRAPHER
JUSTIN BASTIEN
The Ojai, California–based photographer is a solid choice for sketchy assignments. He’s swum off the coast of Alaska capturing the training of the Coast Guard’s elite rescue unit and spent time with eagle masters in Mongolia during the dead of winter. For this issue, Bastien (shown on the right next to writer Mark Jenkins) leveraged his advanced climbing skills to photograph wind turbine technicians working hundreds of feet off the ground in central Idaho. He has worked for clients such as Patagonia, National Geographic, Outside, Apple and the Wall Street Journal. Page 114
PHOTOGRAPHER
MARIUS BUGGE
“I always love it when I can shoot great athletes in motion,” says the New York–based sports and portrait photographer, who shot elite high jumper and pole vaulter Sam Hurley as well as ftness creator Nona Bayat for this issue. “I especially loved the pole vault location In Austin, where we could let Sam loose in a proper training facility.” Bugge, who is originally from Norway, has shot for the New York Times, Men’s Journal and commercial clients like Ferrari, FanDuel and Bloch. Pages 8 and 10
WRITER
NATALIE JARVEY
“It was surreal to meet Nona in person after watching so many of her TikToks,” says the L.A.-based writer, who profled ftness creator Nona Bayat. “I’m always interested in how creators balance the personal and professional aspects of sharing their lives online. And I walked away from our conversation inspired to supercharge my own ftness routine.” Jarvey, a former staffer at Vanity Fair and the Hollywood Reporter, now writes a newsletter about the creator economy called Like & Subscribe Page 22
PHOTOGRAPHER
ASHLEY ROSEMEYER
“I love working with Grace because she’s warm, welcoming and inclusive in any space she’s in,” says the photographer, who traveled to Wisconsin to shoot pro street snowboarder Grace Warner in her element. “She makes shooting photos in any scenario easygoing and relaxed and is down to work around any last-minute asks.” Rosemeyer, who is based in Burlington, Vermont, has shot for clients like the North Face, Vans, Burton, Thrasher and Transworld Snowboarding Page 74
PHOTOGRAPHER
HEIDI ZUMBRUN
The L.A.-based photographer had to cope with frigid temperatures, power outages and a fooded hotel before starting to shoot three NASCAR-related features in North Carolina. “But it was worth it—it wound up being one of my favorite shoots to date,” she says. “Getting a chance to witness some of the training and talent behind the scenes was defnitely worth a few cold showers.” Zumbrun’s clients include HarleyDavidson, Elle, Triumph and Husqvarna. Pages 42, 52 and 60
CONTENTS
8
ELITE FITNESS
10
Sam Hurley
This dual-discipline athlete, social creator and NIL entrepreneur is the complete package 22
Nona Bayat
The ftness creator inspires millions to fnd empowerment through weight lifting
Train Like a Pro Pro wakeboarders Meagan Ethell and Guenther Oka share how they stay in top shape
40 NASCAR 42
Shane van Gisbergen
The veteran Kiwi driver breaks down his unexpected path to success
Picture Perfect Red Bull returns to NASCAR
Connor Zilisch
Accomplished beyond his years, the 18-year-old is racing toward stardom
Stop and Go
How one Trackhouse pit crew trains for success
Dale Earnhardt Jr.
The NASCAR legend and commentator joins Red Bull Soapbox Race
72 WINTER SPORTS 74
Grace Warner
For the pro street snowboarder, her passion for the culture runs deep 84
Red Bull Cascade
Bobby Brown’s freeskiing competition is raising the bar 92
Ryōy ū Kobayashi
The Japanese ski jumper and cultural phenom who jumped farther than anyone, ever
100
WILD JOBS
102
Stunt Couple
Aurélia Agel and Justin Howell, a real-life couple, have fought to secure a place among Hollywood’s top stunt performers
114
Turbine Techs
Meet the men and women who have the technical skills and grit to fx wind turbines from dizzying heights
Heidi Zumbrun, Shamil Tanna, Ashley Rosemeyer
42 Shane van Gisbergen
102 Aurélia Agel & Justin Howell
Grace Warner
A rare dual-discipline athlete, a powerful social creator and a groundbreaking NIL entrepreneur, Sam Hurley is a force to be reckoned with.
WORDS BY PETER FLAX
PHOTOS BY MARIUS BUGGE
“I would rather be stressed about having too much on my plate than worried about not having enough,” says Hurley, who was photographed in Austin, Texas, on January 5.
Sam Hurley is in love. It’s a blustery January afternoon as a nasty cold front begins to blow through Austin, Texas, but the collegiate track-and-field star is talking about how deeply he loves his crazy life. Hurley, 21, has this optimistic energy that is impossible to fake.
The young man with the tousled hair and the piercing blue eyes and the chiseled torso and the easy smile seems to have it all. He’s got world-class potential that he’s pouring into two track-andfield disciplines—the high jump and the pole vault—that basically nobody attempts to double up at the highest level. He’s a legitimate brand, with millions of followers on social media and corporate partners at his doorstep. He’s smart and modest and curiously thoughtful.
It’s easy to get seduced by all the cinematic highlights and overlook the hurdles he’s cleared along the way. Like the three times he ripped his quad last year, meaning he often couldn’t walk and barely was able to compete in his junior year at the University of Texas. Or the time nearly everyone in his high school turned on him—because of, of all things, TikTok. It’s easy to admire the rippled abs and the sculpted deltoids without really imagining the eternally grueling labor put in at the gym. Don’t kid yourself—it takes a lot of work to be Sam Hurley.
Nonetheless, Hurley seems to be enjoying himself and comfortable in his own skin no matter what he is doing—whether he’s jumping a foot over his own height or documenting the minutiae of his daily life or lifting to failure at the gym. Ask him what it’s like to jump seven feet or vault 18 feet: “It’s the feeling of being free,” he says. Ask him about his seemingly boundless natural talent and he’ll tell you about the sacrifices and the work it will take to realize it. Ask him about fishing and be prepared for a long and passionate answer.
“I know who Sam Hurley is,” he says to me early in a wideranging interview. That’s not something you hear 21-year-olds say every day.
But he means it.
“This is a full-time job,” says Hurley, who claims he thinks about winning an NCAA title hundreds of times a day.
“It’s not like I train and go to the track and then I’m off for the day.”
Hurley’s origin story unfolds in Fayetteville, a small, leafy city tucked into the northwest corner of Arkansas. While many contemporary sports fans may first think of Eugene, Oregon, when it comes to American track-and-field history, Fayetteville has solid credentials to back up the nickname “Track Capital of the World.” To wit, between 1984 and 2013, the Arkansas Razorbacks won a mind-boggling 41 national championships in cross-country, indoor track and track and field.
“Fayetteville is the reason I started track and field,” Hurley says. “Growing up, I was the biggest Razorbacks fan and went to every track meet. From such a young age, I was surrounded by Olympians every day. Even as a kid I was like, ‘This is what I want to do.’ And I still feel that way.”
Hurley got involved in the sport very early by American standards. When he was 8 or 9, one of his older brothers had a friend who pole vaulted and actually had a runway and pit in his backyard, and one day Sam, his brother and their dad went by to check it out. Someone asked the youngster if he wanted to
give it a go—“I said yeah, let’s do it,” Hurley recalls. “I had so much fun … I basically haven’t stopped since then. Even when I was a little kid I had a plan to compete collegiately and then go pro.”
Lots of kids harbor fantasies to become a pro athlete, but Hurley was blessed with the kind of speed and athleticism (and an obsessive streak for training) to make that dream a realistic goal. He showed promise in multiple disciplines but focused most on pole vaulting and high jumping.
When he was still in elementary school, Hurley began traveling regionally and then nationally to compete in higherlevel track meets. “I would hop in my dad’s truck and he would drive me everywhere—we went to meets in Jacksonville, Chicago, California, West Virginia, New York and Texas when I was in fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth grade. That’s pretty uncommon for a kid at that age.”
All that early competition and family support (and talent) paid dividends. Over the course of his high school career, Hurley
Skyler
A very rare elite dual-discipline jumper, Hurley has cleared 7’3” in the high jump and 18’ 1 ¹/4” in the pole vault.
assembled a dominant record, demonstrating his elite potential in his two favorite disciplines and his remarkable athleticism beyond those specialties. In 2021, following his junior outdoor season, he was named the top track-and-field athlete in the state. His dominance in Arkansas is hard to overstate. His junior year, he not only won the state championship in the high jump, pole vault, long jump and decathlon; he missed winning the 110-meter hurdles race by one hundredth of a second, altogether scoring 40 points individually to lift his high school to a state championship. Overall, he led Fayetteville High School to a total of three indoor and outdoor state titles.
Not surprisingly, a lot of the top collegiate track programs in the U.S. tried to recruit Hurley, who also had excellent grades and an impressive résumé of volunteer work. In the end, he was offered scholarships to five of the nation’s top programs— UCLA, USC, Texas, LSU and Oregon. He took some flack locally for not seriously considering the University of Arkansas. “Fayette’s
my home forever,” Hurley says. “But after spending my whole life there I needed to know what else is out there in the world.”
In the end, he picked the Texas Longhorns. “It’s an amazing support system here in Austin,” Hurley says. “The education, the facilities, the support within the staff—all of my top priorities were met here. And I love my coach.”
But while everything about the decision came easy for Hurley, the transition from high school to college sports wasn’t a breeze. “High school sports were a blast—I mean, I basically won every meet for four years,” he recalls. “And when I got to Texas and started competing, I got humbled. I learned that everyone there was as good as I’d been in high school.”
That realization was sobering, but it was also an inflection point for Hurley, a chance to reassess his dreams and how hard he was willing to work to make them come true.
Hurley remembers that challenging period well, just as he remembers the moment he formulated his response. “That’s when I was like, ‘I have it in me—let’s see where I can take this.’ ”
There is another Sam Hurley origin story that also begins in Fayetteville. Back when he was in fifth or sixth grade, Hurley began to make videos and post them on social. “I always wanted to do something in front of the camera,” Hurley says. “I’d make little skate edits, football edits, frisbee edits or just film stuff with my friends upstairs, and post them on YouTube. Whatever we were doing, I was filming and then editing it. I just loved that.”
This is of course something that tens of millions of kids like to do, but for Hurley it turned into something bigger. Back when he was a freshman in high school, a girl in one of his classes had a new app called TikTok and he decided to download it and post a video. “From the get-go, the videos just started blowing up,” he laughs. “I kept going at it and the numbers kept increasing. And TikTok started blowing up and getting huge, and luckily I was on there pretty early, posting super consistent stuff and kind of took off with it.”
Those early videos are cute and harmless—a kid with great hair doing backflips off of boats and trendy dances with some clever edits—but back in school he would learn a hard lesson: that not everyone enjoys other people’s success. “Since I was really good at track, the juniors and seniors were always cool with me,” he recalls. “But when I started TikTok, they switched up so quick. I was just doing something different, and doing something different isn’t always accepted in people’s heads.”
What followed was the kind of low-level bullying that many kids experience. Hurley remembers being spit on and guys trying to trip him in the hallway and suddenly sitting alone at lunch, and soon he realized that he only had a handful of friends he could count on. “That whole school year was pretty rough,” Hurley admits, quickly pivoting to the valuable lessons the experience taught him. “It was hard to be that young and go from feeling like everyone at the school was my friend to having only four or five friends. But I learned that a little bullying wouldn’t stop me from chasing my dreams, and I found out who’s actually my friend or not.”
The following year, after he had more success in sports and his TikTok audience went from big to huge, the bullying ended and everyone wanted to be his friend again. But the unpleasant experience would prove valuable as he navigated the rest of his adolescence and continued to find success as an athlete and a creator. Above all, he says, he learned the value of always being himself and knowing who would always be in his corner. “I know who Sam Hurley is, and I always need to be Sam Hurley, no matter what people say or when they say it.”
That decision, to be himself and keep posting, has paid off. Today, Hurley has more than 4.5 million combined followers on TikTok and Instagram. He views it as both a means of selfexpression and a business.
Much like how he got on TikTok in the earliest days of the platform, Hurley was able to perfectly time his involvement in new rules that allow college athletes to receive compensation for their personal brands. Known now as NIL—short for name, image and likeness—these new rules came into effect the summer before Hurley enrolled at the University of Texas and freed him to make marketing and publicity deals with brands. Now his partners include Dick’s Sporting Goods, Raising Cane’s, Hollister, TurboTax and Red Bull.
Hurley’s social feed makes his life look like an exciting and fun-loving fairy tale, but surely there is an immense amount of work and pressure involved in juggling a full-time academic load, an elite collegiate athletic career, a hands-on social media juggernaut and business relationships with various corporations. Nonetheless, Hurley has zero complaints. “This takes a lot of work,” he admits. “I want to do more business endeavors. I want to jump higher. I want better grades. All that takes work. I’d rather be stressed about having too much on my plate than worried about not having enough. And I’m learning to balance it all.”
But somehow, he’s making it work. “When I first saw all the other things he’s doing, I thought what am I getting into,” says Jim Garnham, the vertical jumping coach on the Texas track team, who has worked with Hurley for four years now. “But he takes care of business. There’s never been a distraction. Sam trains extremely hard—it’s always high intensity.”
“I am 100 percent intentional for every rep at the gym.”
In an era of specialization in elite sports, very few athletes try to compete in two disciplines with significantly different physical demands, like the high jump and pole vaulting. But that’s exactly what Sam Hurley is continuing to do.
If you watch Hurley high jump or pole vault, the controlled manner of his approaches belies just how fast he is. “The two events have really different demands and jumping techniques,” he says. “The pole vault requires a lot of core and shoulder and grip strength, while the high jump isn’t really about upper-body strength. But my speed and power output off the ground are the reasons I’ve had success in both.”
Hurley—who stands 6’2” and weighs about 175 pounds—is a bit shorter and more solid than most elite high jumpers. His size is, on paper, better suited for elite success in the pole vault. But to date, the high jump remains his strongest event. “It’d be cool to be 6’5” for the high jump, but at the end of the day, it’s just who can jump the highest,” says Hurley, whose performance backs
that up. After his humbling freshman campaign, Hurley doubled down on his training and methodically improved his jumping.
Last year, he cleared a personal best of 7’3”. To put that in perspective, that jump was only 3.5 inches short of the top three in the U.S., typically the position one needs to qualify for the World Championships or the Olympics. Hurley is confident he can close that gap. “Most of those guys have five or six more years of training and preparation than me,” he says. “I think that as long as I stay consistent and remember this is a full-time job, I’ll get there.” Garnham, his coach, thinks he’s ready to jump 7’5” this year. And while his pole vaulting isn’t quite at the same level, Hurley is quickly closing that gap. At an indoor meet in Albuquerque in late January, he cleared 18 feet 1 ¼ inches, a new personal best that makes him No. 2 all-time at the University of Texas. “He’s just so fast and explosive—he has massive potential in the pole vault,” says Garnham. “I think he’s capable of jumping 6 meters [about 19’8”]. If you do that, you’re elite and going to Diamond League meets.”
Hurley plans to turn pro and compete around the world after he graduates in May. “I’ll just keep doing what I’m doing—I just won’t have to go to class anymore.”
“I try to stay true to myself and make other people feel good.”
That’s the level that Hurley sees himself at, too—in both events. And he’s convinced that his path to that kind of success will require more than mere physical and technical development. “A lot of it will depend on my mentality,” he says. “This is a fulltime job—it’s not like I train and go to the track and then I’m off for the day. It’s my diet; it’s my sleep; it’s the company I keep. I go to sleep at 10 p.m. on Friday night so I can wake up and train at 6 a.m. It’s a 24/7 job.”
Last year was not easy for Hurley—he was sidelined for much of the track season after tearing his quad on three separate occasions. “The reason I’m kind of confident with my mentality and mindset is because of the trials and tribulations I’ve been through,” he says, buoyed by his injury-free status entering the 2025 season. “Showing resilience gives me confidence in myself.”
Like many top athletes, Hurley doesn’t pause when asked if he has explicit goals he’s expecting to achieve. It’s extremely hard to succeed in elite sports if you don’t have confidence in yourself and clear objectives. “I haven’t won a national championship, and I want to win a national championship as bad as I want to breathe,” Hurley says, talking about his goals for his final season at Texas. “I think about it hundreds of times a day. I understand what it will take, and I don’t mind the work it will take and I’m willing to make the sacrifices. Every bite of food I take, everything I do, ultimately, I’m thinking about that.”
But Hurley is determined that his career will continue even after his college eligibility is over. “I’m definitely planning to go pro and go to meets around the world,” he says, noting that he’s never been to Europe, Asia or South America and is stoked to visit them all. He knows there are a number of incremental steps he needs to master along the way, but Hurley wants to climb as high as he can go—to Diamond League meets, World Championships and of course the Olympics.
“I’m 100 percent intentional at every practice and for every rep at the gym and every film session—and I do that every day,” he says, explaining the work ethic that he hopes will lift him to glory. “If you aren’t willing to do that, you’re not going to be a top dog.”
As our interview winds down, I ask Hurley to expand upon his earlier declaration, “I know who Sam Hurley is.” But this time to more explicitly express what he knows about himself, the things beyond his 18-foot vaults and his 4.5 million followers and his chiseled midsection that define his character. The 21-year-old scratches his chin—it’s not a question he gets every day—but then an interesting conversation ensues.
First we talk about his hobbies and interests—the kinds of things that are harder to grasp flipping through TikTok or watching a big track meet. Like his love of fishing—mostly bass fishing at lakes in the Texas Hill Country but also saltwater fishing for redfish and speckled trout on the coast or fly-fishing on rivers when he has the time. Fishing is peace for Hurley.
Then we talk about music: his obsession with Bob Dylan (and Timothée Chalamet) after seeing A Complete Unknown; his affinity for EDM fueled by his brother, Hootie, a globe-trotting DJ; his love for R&B and indie. “I guess above all, I listen to a lot of country,” he says. “I’m still a country boy from Arkansas.”
Then we discuss the places in the world he’s most excited to see. His father lived in Singapore for a while, so he’d like to visit the island nation with his dad. He’s always wanted to visit Australia and Brazil and more than a few places in Europe. Once this final semester at Texas is done, that sort of travel will begin.
And he’s effusive about his love of extreme sports. For Hurley, getting a Red Bull sponsorship was the culmination of a lifelong romance. He was big into skating growing up and had a Ryan Sheckler poster in his bedroom. (They haven’t met— yet.) He also is a big fan of pro surfing and cliff diving. (“I actually went through a cliff diving phase when I was 15,” he says. “My parents hated that—they told me I need to stop.”)
He describes the meaning of getting his Red Bull cap from twotime Olympic champion Armand “Mondo” Duplantis, quite likely the greatest pole vaulter of all time. “That was a super surreal moment,” he recalls. “I really admire Mondo—part of it is just respecting his greatness but I really admire his consistency and dedication.” Other idols include LeBron James (“I mean, he’s the GOAT”) and MMA fighter Jon Jones (“I’m not a huge fight fan, but I look up to champions who have this eat-or-be-eaten mentality”).
And then, after all this impressionistic conversation about his passions and inspirations, he segues to the heart of the matter— the things that define Sam Hurley on the deepest level. Now he circles back to the lessons he learned after seeing how fickle some so-called friends are and how hard some injuries can be to bounce back from and the way your family, inner circle and sense of self give you the power to be yourself.
“I really try to stay true to myself and to make other people feel good,” he says, describing the intangible things that fuel and center his success. “Growing up my mom always said, ‘You may not remember what people tell you, but you’ll always remember how they make you feel.’ I’m proud of the way I treat people and stay true to myself no matter what.”
Fitness creator Nona Bayat inspires her millions of followers to fnd empowerment through weight lifting.
WORDS BY NATALIE JARVEY PHOTOS BY MARIUS BUGGE
about Nona Bayat is her abs. Smooth and defned, like they’ve been etched into her torso; they’re not just undeniably impressive—they’re aspirational. I dare you to catch a glimpse of them on TikTok—where Bayat spends her days squatting, crunching and curling under the gaze of her 3.7 million followers—and not click on the next video in the hopes of learning how you can acquire a set of your own.
To see them in person is just as remarkable. And presently they’re on full display inside a sun-flled Hollywood studio as Bayat hovers in a high plank position over a pair of dumbbells. She waits for someone to adjust her long, sleek ponytail and then slowly lowers herself into a push-up as lights fash and a camera shutter snaps. Music bumps while crew members bustle about, but Bayat barely seems to register the hubbub, her mind focused on displaying the correct form. This isn’t just a photo shoot; it’s also a workout. And Bayat doesn’t even break a sweat.
There was a time when being observed this closely would have made Bayat so anxious that her palms would become clammy, her armpits damp. Now every time she records a video showing of her gleaming abs, her toned arms, she is quietly commanding respect. For the discipline she’s shown to build her powerful physique, yes, but also for her whole journey to become the 25-year-old in the center of the frame here on this blustery January afernoon, the one with the sweet face, determined gaze and conviction that she was meant to help others, particularly women, fnd their own power and strength through ftness.
“I view weight lifing as life changing,” Bayat tells me afer she’s slipped a pair of pink-accented black track pants over the skintight cerulean workout set she wore for the photo shoot. “It’s the one form of exercise that you truly can see a diference in your mental and your physical health in a short amount of time. And it’s so empowering as a woman to be muscular, to be strong, to take up space.”
on January 7.
Fitness creator Nona Bayat, 25, was photographed for The Red Bulletin at Milk Studios in Hollywood
Physically speaking on a literal level, Bayat doesn’t take up much space at all. Though her thighs are rock hard and her biceps bulging, they’re contained in a slight 5-foot-1 (or maybe 5-foot-2, she isn’t totally sure) frame. Today, Bayat speaks with pride about being “short and strong,” but she spent her childhood feeling uncomfortable in her own skin. Born in Iran, she moved to Los Angeles’s San Fernando Valley when she was a baby, and the otherness she felt growing up as an immigrant, mixed with her debilitating shyness, formed a potent recipe for anxiety.
“I felt like I didn’t belong, and I wanted to hide myself in any way that I could,” Bayat says. It wasn’t until her younger brother, Amir, introduced her to weight training that she began to feel comfortable in her own body. “The gym gave me confdence,” she says.
During her fnal years in high school, Bayat became obsessive about perfecting her strength-training routine. She studied up on the science of lifing, aided by YouTube videos from bodybuilder Jef Nippard. “He’s science based and shows evidence when he talks about workouts,” she says. “Everything I do, it’s all research backed. I will research the heck out of everything before I talk about it.”
“I want to empower women to be the strongest version of themselves.”
PLAYLIST
When ftness creator Nona Bayat wants to get serious in the gym, she turns on classical music. “It helps me concentrate and it doesn’t distract me from the mind-to-muscle connection, which I focus on a lot when I work out,” says Bayat, who’s built a following of 3.7 million on TikTok with videos breaking down the gym routines and healthy recipes that keep her body absolutely shredded. Here she names four tracks that are currently in heavy rotation on her workout playlist.
JOEL SUNNY
“Luminary” (2023)
“Joel Sunny plays the violin like no other. Whenever I listen to ‘Luminary’ I feel like I’m a character in A Court of Thorns and Roses. If you read ACOTAR, it’s very empowering as a woman, and I think [this song] just makes me feel like I’m Feyre or Nesta. It pushes me extra hard in the gym because it makes me not Nona. I become someone else.”
GIBRAN ALCOCER
“Idea 9” (2023)
“Alcocer is the composer I listen to the most. The way that he plays is just so unique. When I listen to ‘Idea 9’ my brain feels mellow. It’s very calm. It’s slower than ‘Luminary,’ but that also helps me concentrate when I’m at the gym.”
SHINIGAMI
“I Feel Too Much” (2021)
“There’s a genre of music that is really popular in the ftness community called phonk, and this is a song that I really like in that genre. It’s a lot darker than my classical music, but it pushes me. It makes you feel like you’re in a video game or an action movie.”
DRAKE
“The Motto” (2011)
“ ‘The Motto’ gives me throwback vibes. It makes me feel like a boss. If I’m getting sluggish and I need a really big boost, I’ll put that on and I’ll be like, ‘Oh OK. You know what? Get to work.’ ”
Weight lifing can be intimidating for young women, but Bayat found a safe space to learn at an all-female gym near her house. “She was my main motivator for becoming ft and staying disciplined,” says childhood friend Emily Yun, who recalls how Bayat would drag her to the gym for daily twohour sessions afer school. “Her energy is contagious in all forms.”
Strength is something you build over months of careful commitment. Internet fame can spark much faster. Bayat’s frst brush with virality came in 2020, during her junior year at UCLA. On a whim, she asked her roommate to flm her “ab day” workout and posted an amateurish 12-second TikTok video splicing together her moves. Back then, TikTok was still an emerging social media app best known for videos of fresh-faced teens trying out silly dance trends, and Bayat didn’t expect anyone to watch her quick gym session. “I was like, ‘No one knows that I’m posting here. It’s kind of a safe space for me to share my passion,’ ” she recalls. But the next day, during a psychology class, one of Bayat’s classmates told her she’d gone viral. “I pulled up my account and the video was at 500,000 views,” says Bayat. She couldn’t believe how many people the clip had reached, but buoyed by the response, she started posting her workouts daily. Amid the crushing isolation of the global pandemic, TikTok became a lifeline. “I found my community through TikTok,” she says. “It flls that hole in me.” But at the time, she was far too focused on completing her psychology degree and going to medical school to consider turning her growing following into anything more than a giant virtual friend group. “I was so convinced that I was going to become a doctor,” she says. “When I was 9 years old, my grandfather passed away from cancer. I was pulled out of class and we went to Iran and were in and out of the hospital a lot. Seeing how that impacted my family made me curious about the human body. It sparked an interest in being in health care.”
But when her med-school acceptance letter arrived in the mail (she declines to say from where in case she decides to reapply in the future), she didn’t feel any excitement. She decided she’d rather devote all her energy to being a ftness creator. “I saw the impact that I was making on a global level,” says Bayat. “So many young girls were messaging me saying, ‘You changed my life.’ I kind of liked that. I was helping people in another way. Afer being in this industry, I realized that I really like preventative health. I want to treat you before you get sick.”
At frst Bayat’s parents didn’t understand. “In our culture, if you’re not a doctor or lawyer, you’re a failure in some sense,” she says, explaining that, as the frst person in her family to attend college, she felt a lot of guilt for not following through with the plan. “They took the risk of trusting me, and I think it paid of.”
To put it lightly. Today, Bayat has 5 million followers across her social media channels; partnerships with brands like Gymshark, Bloom Nutrition and Red Bull; and a ftness app on which she’ll guide you through workouts and meal planning (for $99.99 per year). This year she plans to launch a podcast. As her business has grown, her parents have come around. As proof of Bayat’s ability to infuence, she’s even got her dad doing regular home workouts and her mom training at the gym.
In an industry where bombast typically is rewarded with more and more views, Bayat’s persona is refreshingly reserved. She rarely speaks in her videos and ofen shoots her workouts with a baseball cap pulled down low over her eyes, the better for avoiding unwanted stares at the gym. When she’s not at the gym, she’s probably curled up on the couch with a copy of the latest hit romantasy novel or socializing with her tight-knit group of friends, which includes fellow ftness creators Arev, Elena Stavinoha and Lilly Sabri.
Bayat doesn’t always offer her followers a window into life outside the gym, but one of her goals for the year is to become a little more of an open book. “I’m trying to share more and talk more,” she says. When she does, she’s learning that it can lead to rewarding encounters. The day afer the photo shoot, for instance, she’ll post to TikTok that the wildfres blazing a path of destruction through Los Angeles have forced her to evacuate her home. And on Instagram she’ll share that she’s taking a short break from social media while she heals from a nerve issue brought on by the stress of the evacuation. “I’m never vulnerable online. I’ve had a lot of things happen to me throughout my social media career, but I still posted daily. This was my frst time being like, ‘Hey, I need to take a step back,’ tells me when we touch base a few days later, afer she’s been allowed to return home. The response from her followers has surprised her. “I think it brought us a lot closer.”
For all the ways social media has enriched Bayat’s life, it has complicated it too. Last year she went through a period of burnout, during which, she says, “I did not even want to step foot in the gym.” Working out had long been a passion. Now it had become her job, and she was spending around three hours at the gym each day capturing content and working out. Watching her videos from that time, it’s hard to tell what she was going through, but behind the scenes she established some boundaries that helped her fnd new balance. She now limits her gym time to an hour or less. Some days are for creating content; other days are purely for working out. And she has two separate gyms—one where she flms her videos and another where no cameras are allowed. She also limits her screen time to just 30 minutes a day.
Five years into her social media journey, Bayat no longer considers herself a shy person—a good thing, since she’s now likely to be recognized at the airport or out on a walk with her Cavapoo, Bambi. “At frst it was so diferent,” says Amir—who, when he’s not studying to become a dentist runs an infuencer marketing frm to help Bayat and other ftness creators connect with brands—regarding his sister’s online fame. “We didn’t know anyone who was internet famous. It was interesting to get used to, but she never took it as a negative. She’s always been very grateful for it.”
TikTok has become a comfortable home, Bayat says, in part because it helps her reach her target audience of young women. “It’s the only platform where a woman in ftness isn’t sexualized and we’re respected,” she says. “Fitness as a whole, especially weight lifing, is so male dominated, so it’s just really nice to see women in that space.”
We are speaking on a day when many of her peers are scrambling to prepare for a possible ban of TikTok in the United States, but Bayat doesn’t seem concerned. “The stronger your connection is with your community, they’ll follow you anywhere,” she says.
Bayat’s still fguring out where she’s going. She hasn’t closed the door on attending medical school one day, but she’s got a lot of other big goals, too. “This journey has shown me a lot about who I am and what I want in this world,” she says, her face breaking into a smile as she contemplates how far she’s already traveled. “I want to empower women to be the strongest version of themselves. I’m showing young girls around the world that you can fnd your strength. You can be anyone you want.” It’s a message to her followers, but also to herself.
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TRAIN LIKE A PRO
Professional wakeboarders
Meagan Ethell and Guenther
Oka share insights on how they get into winning shape and stay healthy in a highimpact sport.
WORDS BY PETER FLAX
PHOTOS BY IAN WITLEN
“When we go to the gym, we really focus on movements that give us more strength and mobility out in the water,” says Oka, who along with Ethell was photographed in Orlando on November 6.
Meagan Ethell Wakeboarding
A pro since 2012, Ethell has earned her place as a groundbreaker in the sport. She is an eight-time world champion and has won the sport’s most prestigious contest, the Masters, eight times.
Guenther Oka Wakeboarding
Oka, who turned pro in 2015, has won an X Games gold medal, fve national titles and six world championships. He’s also passionate about video projects like his 2024 edit “Wake Glades.”
The love for wakeboarding, which was born when they were kids, is still going strong.
Meagan Ethell and Guenther Oka are sitting in the living room of their home in Orlando. Gleaming, powerful his-and-hers towboats are moored in the canal just steps from the house. The couple lives and breathes wakeboarding.
Ethell, who grew up outside Chicago, took up the sport when she was 8. “It didn’t feel so serious at first, and I think I just made steady progression,” Ethell, now 28, recalls. But she turned pro when she was only 15 and made an immediate impact in the sport. “Wakeboarding doesn’t have a set of rules like most sports,” she says, describing her love of riding. “You can take it and do whatever you want with it. The freedom is kind of unlimited.”
Oka, meanwhile, grew up in Cincinnati and had his first experiences being towed behind a boat before he was in grade school. He moved to Orlando to pursue a pro career when he was just 17 and hasn’t looked back. “I love the art of doing an action sport where I’ve got full creativity over how I express myself,” says Oka, now 26. “And it’s this time when I can go out and my brain totally shuts off and I’m there, locked in in the present moment.”
Since those formative years, you could say their careers have worked out. Together they have 14 world championship titles and scores of other big wins. And over the years, as the stakes got bigger and the injuries more consequential, they came to realize that passion, creativity and outsized talent would only take them so far—that they’d have to take their off-the-boat fitness, nutrition and mental training more seriously to get and stay on top.
Along the way, the two rising stars became a couple, and they got married this past fall. “What we have and share, being pro athletes who do the same sport but are also in a relationship, it is just such an uncommon thing,” Ethell says. “It just makes it so much easier to achieve what we want to because we know we have our partner’s support no matter what.”
Oka, beaming, agrees. “We’ve been on such an unbelievable journey throughout our careers—both separately and also together,” he says. “We’ve been able to travel the world and experience so much together. It’s just been the best ride ever.”
“I love the freedom of wakeboarding,” says Ethell. “It’s such a creative sport; I can put my own twist on it without a ton of rules.”
RIDING COMES FIRST
Oka and Ethell always try to start multidisciplinary training days on the water. “Even if I have a list of planned activites, I try to prioritize wakeboarding as the frst one that gets taken care of,” Oka says. “The battery level on the body’s at 100 percent—it’s fully charged—and I can kind of give everything I can to my craft. I can use whatever’s left over at the gym, or in the ocean, or things like that.”
SEASONAL RHYTHM
Ethell says their on-the-water training shifts with the professional calendar.
“During competition season, my focus is what I need to do in order to succeed at contests—things like perfecting new tricks,” she says. “But in the offseason, it’s a little bit less structured. I try to just go back to the feeling of having fun.” She adds that learning tricks that will stand out in a pro contest is mentally and physically taxing. “The process usually involves a bunch of highs and lows,” she admits. “But I ultimately fnd that process fun.”
FUNCTIONAL STRENGTH
When they’re home in Orlando, the couple trains at a gym called New Dimensions that is popular with world-class wakeboarders. “We don’t spend time doing bench presses or squats because that doesn’t refect what we’re doing on the water—out there we’re twisting, turning, jumping and fipping,” Oka says. “So the movements we do at the gym cover the way our bodies and specifc muscles are moving to help us maintain strength and mobility out on the water.”
“Recovery is a huge part of what we do. Sometimes we spend more time recovering than we spend training in the water.” —Ethell
THE REHAB MINDSET
Both athletes have worked through serious injuries, so rebuilding function and preventing future issues is a focus at the gym. “Working in the gym has made me more mindful of my body,” Oka says. Ethell agrees. “Doing rehab on a torn ACL helped kick-start gym life for me and made me hyperaware about my body,” she adds, admitting that it’s more work than fun. “Getting stronger is gratifying, but it’s less exciting than wakeboarding.”
Whether it’s ice baths, compression boots or red-light therapy, Oka and Ethell use a variety of recovery modalities. “As elite athletes, we’re always looking for a 1 percent edge,” Oka says.
A PASSION FOR FOOD AND FUEL
Wakeboarding’s super duo are passionate home chefs. “Being a pro athlete has opened my eyes to nutrition,” Ethell says. “I’ve always loved to cook, and learning how to properly fuel my body has gotten me excited to learn new recipes. And having a partner who has an equal mindset about that just makes cooking healthy food that much easier.” Oka, a bit of a prep specialist, adds, “We’ve got the teamwork thing dialed!”
“We’re big on prepping in advance,” Oka says. “We want to make cooking a bit easier after wakeboarding or hard training at the gym.”
CROSS-TRAINING IS GOOD FUN
Both athletes like to explore other sports. Oka likes foiling, Ethell has been hitting the climbing gym for several years, and both like to surf. “We’re pretty much nonstop the entire summer, so we don’t really have time to do these other sports that we enjoy,” says Ethell, who thinks climbing is a good time—and good for upper-body strength. “It’s really nice in the offseason to give our minds a break from wakeboarding and focus on something fun, without pressure or expectations.”
“Having other hobbies is fun and lets us take a beginner mindset to bringing new things back to our sport.” —Oka
Ethell and Oka in action at Central Rock Gym in Orlando.
nas
RISING STOCK
Veteran Kiwi driver Shane van Gisbergen breaks down his unexpected path to NASCAR success.
WORDS BY ANDREW LAWRENCE
PHOTOS BY HEIDI ZUMBRUN
“I’ve found my place to be,” says
van Gisbergen, who was photographed behind the wheel of a 2025 Corvette Z51 3LT Vert on January 21 in Concord, North Carolina.
Van Gisbergen poses with his No. 88 Chevrolet with new Red Bull livery, which will make its offcial NASCAR Cup Series debut at the Pennzoil 400 at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway on March 16.
Shane van Gisbergen is what you’d call a fast learner, especially when it comes to racing. He was obsessed with cars growing up in New Zealand, forsaking other childhood hobbies, TV time or even hangouts with friends to turn laps around the family farm on a Suzuki quad bike. His dad taught him how to drive at age 9, just in time for him to start racing go-karts. In his early teens, van Gisbergen began his career climb racing kazoo-looking cars called Formula Vees and won the rookie of the year award in 2005. Three years later, at just 18, he reached the big time: V8 Supercars, Oceania’s top stock-car series. He’d go on to win 80 races and three championships, distinguishing himself as one of the best-ever drivers at that level.
Still, it wasn’t until 2023 that van Gisbergen, 35, landed on the radar of American stock-racing fans when he stunned the field at a NASCAR Cup race on the streets of Chicago, where he survived wet and wild conditions en route to grabbing the checkered. After spending last year cramming in all the NASCAR racing experience he could get—from the entry-level ARCA Series to the triple-A-level Xfinity Series, where he finished 12th in the standings—van Gisbergen (or SVG, as he’s come to be known in this hemisphere) will now compete in his first full-time Cup season with Trackhouse Racing, an upstart franchise part owned by the performer Pitbull. The road ahead won’t be easy; IndyCar’s Sam Hornish Jr. and F1’s Juan Pablo Montoya are two in a number of proven winners who have struggled to find similar success in NASCAR. But van Gisbergen, who comes to NASCAR better equipped than most would-be crossover stars thanks to his experience in Supercars, could well set a new standard—not that he’s making any bold predictions for himself or anything. “I’m learning so much and having so much fun doing it,” he says. “I’ve found my place to be.” On his way in to work—on this day, a virtual reconnaissance mission inside a racing simulator—the easygoing Kiwi reflected on the effort to launch his racing career from New Zealand, his epic victory in Chicago, and why it pays to set modest expectations.
Robert Snow/Red Bull Content Pool
THE RED BULLETIN: Did you ever see yourself winding up in NASCAR?
SHANE VAN GISBERGEN: Growing up in Australia and New Zealand, V8 Supercars are pretty much all I wanted to race. There were a few Kiwis who were very good in that series—and I got in when I was 18. I did that until the end of 2023. I had an amazing career and really enjoyed my time there. But, yeah, I had this opportunity to come up and race NASCAR and it went really well in our first race. It was perfect timing for me to make a career change, I guess.
Before we get to that ace triumph—the first time a driver had won his Cup debut in 60 years—let’s talk about the odds against Kiwi racers. IndyCar’s Scott Dixon, maybe New Zealand’s best-ever racing export, has said his racing dream never would’ve come true if his father hadn’t sold off shares of his career stock to area businessmen who were keen for him to succeed. What did it take to get you off the island? It was sort of the same thing; you can’t do it without having amazing people support you the whole way. One of the biggest ones for me is [an auto dealership franchise called] the Giltrap Group. If you look at pretty much any Kiwi driver, they have Giltrap on their helmet visor—and it’s a real privilege to wear that. I was in one of their junior formula cars, and they helped me come through the ranks all the way to NASCAR, where they’re still supporting everything I do. It’s an unreal thing what they’ve done for Kiwis in New Zealand.
But starting out, it seemed more achievable for me to become a pro racer by going to Australia than if I had gone to America or Europe. Because that was the thing, to copy the Scott Dixon model. A lot of people go straight to Europe. Marcus Armstrong, who’s in IndyCar right now, started out in Europe and was even in the Ferrari academy for a few years.
Was your family big into racing?
My father was into rallying a lot in the ’80s and kept going until me and my sister came along—and had us racing quads and bikes. He supported me all the way. In Australia he’d come to a lot of races, but it’s a bit harder now that I’m over here.
Racing was pretty much everything when I was younger. Every year this magazine called Speed Sport would promote a racing scholarship that was a big deal in New Zealand at the time; they’d give money to race in Formula Vee. The first year I tried out, one of my friends won it and went on to race quite successfully that year. I tried again the next year and took up karting while I waited, just to learn circuit racing a little better. Ultimately, I won the scholarship on my third try, in 2004, and started racing Formula Vee. Then in the years after, I raced Formula Ford and Toyota—the three sort of junior single-seat categories in New Zealand.
By the end of that Toyota season, I got to test V8 Supercars for Stone Brothers Racing, which was one of the top teams at the
Van Gisbergen, shown here on the foor at the Trackhouse Shop, made a stylish NASCAR entrance in 2023 at the Grant Park 220 in Chicago, becoming the frst driver in NASCAR’s modern era to win his Cup Series debut.
time, and did pretty well. There was this team called Team Kiwi Racing that had their cars run by Stone Brothers. Halfway through the 2007 season they lost their driver, and I got thrown in at 18 years old—a massive jump in competition and probably one I wasn’t ready for. But I finished off the season without embarrassing myself. The next year, Stone Brothers promoted me to the main team. It was awesome to go from pretty much straight out of school to achieving my dream.
So no part of you was targeting F1 as the ultimate stop?
I was halfway decent at open wheel, but, you know, I’ve always been a pretty big guy. Most of those open-wheel guys look like they should be 14 years old. When I was in Toyota Series, I was overweight and struggling with speed because I was so heavy. So I ended up going more in the touring-cars direction, which is exactly where I wanted to be.
I can remember Roger Penske slinking away from a NASCAR event to catch a private plane to Oz in hopes of checking out the Supercars championship. Was there much of a NASCAR presence on that scene then? Similarly, are Australasia racing fans up on the NASCAR scene?
Not really. I followed NASCAR a bit when [Aussie Cup driver] Marcos Ambrose was racing. But when he stopped, I didn’t really
pay much attention again until [Trackhouse co-owner] Justin Marks launched Project 91 in 2022, with the goal of letting the world’s best driver have a go in NASCAR. When they kicked off the cultural exchange with 2007 F1 champion Kimi Räikkönen, I wasn’t sure I’d ever have a chance to do it. But I put out feelers through former NASCAR Cup driver Boris Said.
Boris knew Justin and sort of started the conversation. To my great surprise and joy, Justin reached out and told me, “There’s a new race happening in 2023 on a street track that I think you’d be perfect for. Gimme a few months to find some sponsors and partners.” That was an awesome conversation, just because I didn’t go into it thinking something would come of it. A few months later, Justin called and said, “Yeah, this is gonna happen,” and it ended up being on a weekend where I didn’t have a Supercars race. Pretty epic how it all worked out.
Was that your first time racing in America?
No, I had raced a few times in IMSA and the Daytona 24. Definitely the first time in Chicago.
NASCAR’s too, in the city proper. It was also their first crack at staging a road-course race. As I remember, it was a roller coaster weekend that culminated in a wet and wild race. What was the view from the cockpit?
It was a pretty awesome weekend for me! I don’t get too fussed about the weather and stuff. Being that I was a visitor, and it was a one-off experience, I just tried to make the most of it—focus, do my best, enjoy myself. I had a blast.
How do V8 Supercars compare with Cup cars? A lot of drivers who come into NASCAR from open wheel can spend years making the adjustment—if they ever do.
They’re reasonably similar in some ways. We do a lot of street circuits in Supercars, but ours are quite different. NASCARs are very, very heavy, though, and a lot less nimble—but still just a car in the end. You just kind of adapt. I did as much studying as I could. And away we went.
Let’s talk about that slip-and-slide race, finally: The rain really threw a spanner in the works. Anytime the frontrunners got settled, a puddle would come along and wipe them out, throwing the race into chaos. Yeah, the race was pretty standard at the start—wet. I was kind of up front and led for a bit and then hovering around second or third. But then we kind of got screwed by an extended weather delay, which screwed up our strategy and put all of the good cars at the back. But it was fun coming through the field. A few guys made mistakes. We had some awesome battles. Yeah, it all worked out.
Can you describe your feelings in victory lane? Did you come away thinking all Cup wins would be that easy?
Well, it definitely wasn’t easy. I had a great bunch of people around me. That makes a huge difference. I felt comfortable right away in the first practice. I knew what to expect. We had a really good plan. My crew chief, Darian Grubb, he’s an amazing guy with so much experience. We were really right on it from the start. It was an awesome thing to share that moment in victory lane with him and the other members of the Trackhouse team, because a lot of the people on the team hadn’t ever won a race before. That’s how unexpected it was.
So at what point does the vibe go from “Man, that sure was something!” to “Are you sure you can’t stick around?”
After that, I decided to come back and do another Cup race—the road-course race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, home of the Indy 500. During that weekend, they asked me if I wanted to run the truck-series race as well, which was down the road at Indianapolis Raceway Park—a little oval circuit. It was very tough, but I had a blast and thought NASCAR could be a lot of fun. Then it just kept snowballing from there. I got the opportunity to race in the Xfinity Series, and a few Cup races for learning last year. I did a lot more racing than I thought I was gonna do.
To the point where Trackhouse says, “How ’bout we sign you up to run full-time?”
Basically, yeah, that’s what they did.
So what changed? Is there a mentality shift that comes with going from racing NASCAR part-time to full-time?
Not really, no. It’s racing. That’s what we do. The biggest thing is, now that I’m racing every week I’ve got to prep with my guys. I’m in the sim every week. It’s that sort of thing. The schedule’s more intense. But for me, that’s what I want to be doing.
not to do donuts,”
Trackhouse’s four-driver roster takes Project 91’s foreign exchange to the next level. Besides yourself, there’s NASCAR’s Mexican champ, Daniel Suarez, and four-time Indy 500 winner Helio Castroneves of Brazil. What’s the shop talk like between you three?
It’s been awesome talking to them. Daniel and Ross Chastain, our Cup vet (don’t leave him out!). It’s amazing how open they are. Anything I ask about racing ovals in particular they happily share—and I won’t hesitate to pay back the favor when the road courses swing around. We’re making each other better. Overall, as a team, I think we keep getting better and better.
So what’s reasonable to expect from you this season? Is rookie of the year too much to ask, given your one-off track record? Honestly, I never set any goals or have aspirations of myself. I just try to do my best. I know that I’ve got a huge opportunity here, and I’m trying to make the most of it. You know, it’s a huge step outside my comfort zone, coming over here and racing something different. Other than really wanting to improve on ovals this year, I’m not putting any expectations on results or championship positioning. If we win some races, that’s great and I’m sure we’ll celebrate. But I just want to take the season as it comes and have fun doing it.
“It’s hard
van Gisbergen admitted after his time behind the wheel of the Torch Red Corvette on loan from Chevrolet. “The car is beautiful. But if I owned it, I think I might end up with some tickets.”
BACK ON TRACK
After a 14-year absence from NASCAR, Red Bull has returned to the Cup Series as a primary sponsor of the Trackhouse Racing Team. The livery here will adorn the No. 88 Chevrolet of Shane van Gisbergen in five Cup races this year, beginning with the Pennzoil 400 in Las Vegas in March and culminating at the Hollywood Casino 400 in Kansas City in September. The branding will also appear on the No. 87 Chevrolet of Connor Zilisch when he makes his NASCAR Cup debut at the EchoPark Automotive Grand Prix in Austin in March.
@teamtrackhouse
Mature and accomplished beyond his years, Connor Zilisch is racing toward stardom.
YOUNG GUN
WORDS BY TONY DIZINNO PHOTOS BY HEIDI ZUMBRUN
Zilisch was photographed at the Trackhouse Motorplex in Mooresville, North Carolina, on January 20.
Zilisch, only 18, has already won professional races in a variety of vehicles and shows staggering promise to succeed at the highest level.
The typical 18-year-old walks a familiar path in life. Friends. Fun. Finding themselves. Figuring out the contours of responsibility. Thankfully, these teenagers generally don’t face an onslaught of questions about whether their future success hinges on them becoming an all-time great in their selected field.
Connor Zilisch is far from your typical 18-year-old. Most of the questions he gets are about what comes next, and how high can he climb in his sport. Presently, the sport is NASCAR—the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, the pinnacle of stock-car racing in the world—and Zilisch has already been hailed as its Next Big Thing. It’s a label bestowed on those blessed with the talent, temperament, determination, drive and, most of all, hype to deliver on that promise.
The arrival has happened so quickly. Just a few years ago, NASCAR wasn’t on Zilisch’s radar—and vice versa. On the surface, he was just your normal kid you’d struggle to pick out of a crowd. “Two years ago, I thought I’d quit racing and go to college at this point in my life,” the young driver says. “Then things took a turn.”
And now everything has changed. Zilisch has already shown that he’s not just capable of winning—he’s capable of winning in nearly every kind of car he climbs into. With that kind of versatility and talent, it’s hard for anyone—including himself—to say what exactly the future will bring. But rest assured it will be fast.
Unlike stick-and-ball sports, motorsports encompasses a huge landscape with numerous significant championships using diverse types of machinery. Drivers can pursue open-wheel disciplines, such as Formula 1 or IndyCar, stock-car series like NASCAR or sports car racing competitions such as those governed by the IMSA (International Motor Sports Association).
Each path requires a different degree of funding to race, and a need to adapt or adjust to wildly different types of cars in terms of horsepower, downforce and weight. Generally, in a modern sports era that rewards specialization, it’s acknowledged that whichever path you choose, you race near your home or in your home country first and stay as close to that discipline as possible.
“There wasn’t really an end goal,” Zilisch says about his early driving years. “F1 was a fever dream because of how expensive it is. I understood that from a young age. Unless something crazy happened, it wasn’t possible. But there was sports car racing, and growing up I watched that and wanted to compete in the biggest endurance races there are.”
Lots of kids have talent and big sporting dreams, but few of them get realized like this. A critical inflection point came when Zilisch was only 11, when he moved from Mooresville, North Carolina, where he was born and bred, to Europe to chase his racing dream. He had showcased his potential racing go-karts since he was 5, but this was a whole new level.
It sounds like the start of a movie script. Zilisch’s father, Jim, worked full-time in the financial sector and couldn’t afford to take time off work to travel for weeks at a time to see his son race. So Connor traveled to Europe with his good friend, American mechanic Gary Willis. They were based mainly in Desenzano del Garda, Italy, a small town in Lombardy on the shores of Lake Garda.
“I told my dad this is what I wanted to do,” Zilisch explains. “Gary and I would fly over and we’d have an apartment or Airbnb for three to four weeks. We’d hit Italy, Spain, France—basically all Western Europe. Looking back on it now, I didn’t realize how insane it was. Those were the coolest days of my life.”
Like any pair of friends, they also appreciated their time apart. “I have so many stories to tell about going over there. But one is that Gary would get sick of me throughout the day, so he’d say, ‘Oh, I need some alone time,’ ” Zilisch laughs. “I’d grab a bike and ride to dinner at this small town in Northern Italy, and I’m a 10-, 11-yearold kid who doesn’t speak the language and goes to eat dinner by
On the facing page, Zilisch celebrates a victory at the Mission 200 last September, becoming the seventh driver in NASCAR Xfnity Series history to win his debut race.
“I’m a normal kid. But I know when I have to be a professional.”
myself. It’s times like that I can look back on and say ‘Wow, I can’t believe I did that.’ That shaped me into the person I am today.”
Growing up on another continent and learning how to lose frequently taught Zilisch a lot from the ages of 11 to 15 about racing and life. “It took me a long time to be successful, and it was a struggle at first, I can’t lie,” he says. “A lot of the other American kids would come over for one or two races and they’d struggle, and then they’d quit. I kept trying and got better. That taught me a lot. I learned how to lose before I won. That’s so important in racing because you’re going to lose a lot more than you win.”
The pinnacle of Zilisch’s years spent abroad came when he captured the 2020 CIK-FIA Karting Academy Trophy. He was 14 at the time, and the first American to do so. In layperson’s terms, he was the world’s best karter in an internationally recognized competition, racing his peers in identical equipment. Globally, his performance raised eyebrows.
“I wanted to succeed over there, and I feel like I got set up better by the end of my time there,” he says. “It’s tough at times to accept the losing and understand that. But learning it at a young age was super beneficial.”
Another young teammate of Zilisch’s would play a huge role in his career advancement.
A chance meeting with 2014 NASCAR Cup champion turned Fox Sports broadcaster Kevin Harvick (ironically nicknamed “Happy” for his sardonic wit) and son Keelan changed everything. Keelan was a go-karter who also plied his trade in Europe and was on the same team. The elder Harvick spotted Zilisch, and soon a new path of racing in NASCAR emerged.
“It wasn’t until I met Keelan and Kevin to where I became interested in NASCAR, and if it wasn’t for that, I wouldn’t be where I am today,” Zilisch notes. “Kevin introduced me to the sport, took me under his wing and made it possible for me to start this journey. I’m forever grateful for Kevin and what he’s done for me. I didn’t go to Europe to race go-karts to prepare myself for NASCAR. Had I done that, I would have done ovals, quarter midgets, legends, stuff like that. It came by a surprise, but I’m glad I did.”
Paths opened in the NASCAR community, including a meeting with Zilisch’s now team owner, Justin Marks, who runs Trackhouse Racing. The Nashville-based team has sought to brand and operate differently from traditional race teams and signed Zilisch as a development driver in 2024.
What followed was a season of success for Zilisch that still seems hard to believe. The racer returned to America and won a fullseason scholarship from Mazda to compete in its MX-5 Cup championship in 2022. The cars are best described as 2.0-liter, four-cylinder “buzzing hornets” that make for some of the best pure door-to-door racing in the country. “MX-5 Cup is still my favorite series to have raced in,” he says. “It’s 45 minutes of organized chaos. Every part of that race is insanity, but so much fun.”
Over the next two seasons, he competed in an unusually wide range of racing vehicles, encompassing high-powered sports cars classified as Trans-Am 2 (TA2) and high-downforce aerodynamic prototypes called Le Mans Prototype 2 (LMP2), as well as stock cars and trucks in three different series: ARCA Menards Series, NASCAR Xfinity Series and NASCAR Camping World Truck Series. He rates the LMP2 and the TA2 cars as his favorites due to their visceral downforce and power, although he’s got a fond spot for each car he drives.
His 2024 season racing all five of those cars, plus MX-5, is the equivalent of an 18-year-old basketball rookie also playing pro baseball, football, hockey and soccer in the same season.
If that sounds crazy, imagine what it would be like if he won in multiple series, including in his debut in two of them, in two of the biggest races. But that’s exactly what he did.
He opened the year as part of a four-driver, class-winning LMP2 lineup at the 2024 Rolex 24 at Daytona. Drivers rotate through the car for several hours at a time like a relay event, and Zilisch was one of the two young drivers his Era Motorsport team entrusted to finish the mentally taxing, 24-hour endurance race.
If that wasn’t enough to launch a hype campaign, he also won the Mission 200, his NASCAR Xfinity Series debut, at Watkins Glen in the Finger Lakes region of New York, driving for Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s JR Motorsports Chevrolet team.
The winning text messages flowed like water on Lake Lloyd on the Daytona Beach infield and Seneca Lake near Watkins Glen. “It was insane, honestly,” Zilisch admits. “I never realized how many people care about me, follow me and keep track of me,” he says, estimating roughly 500 notifications received after each race.
The driver says that he responded to every single message. “If they’re going to take the time to congratulate you, they care enough, so I need to be sure to respond to them,” he says. “It was surreal to see how many people reached out after those races.”
Zilisch says he has learned to make preparation a priority, without overpreparing to compete in races. “When I was younger, I had trouble when I had nerves and I’d choke or fumble a race,” he explains. “It’s tough not to get yourself hyped up. That’s a detriment to the end goal. Now I keep the mindset of it’s just another race.”
Right: Zilisch takes a zippy ride down memory lane, piloting a kart around the Trackhouse Motorplex, where he often raced as an up-and-coming junior. The track is based on the famous and historic Kartdromo Parma circuit in Italy.
Seeking the life of a typical 18-year-old isn’t realistic at this point. Zilisch is racing multiple series, representing major companies, brands and sponsors and showcasing a significant chunk of his life on social media. So how the heck does he balance all those demands while still trying to be a somewhat normal kid?
“It’s a good question, actually,” he ponders, offering some insight into his social media intentions. “A lot of parents [of young athletes] find someone to run their kid’s social media. Social wasn’t as big when I grew up, but personality was. But now, if you have someone else running your social media, that’s the only thing people see of you—and that’s not you. It may get to the point where it’s necessary, but until then, I want to make my social about me and personalize it.”
The 2025 season gives Zilisch a chance to add to his legend. He’s set for the full 2025 NASCAR Xfinity Series season, a 33-race commitment, with JR Motorsports as Trackhouse Racing’s development driver and Chevrolet-affiliated driver. He also opened the year trying (without success) to defend his Rolex 24 win, this time in a Trackhouse by TF Sport–entered Corvette he raced with three other drivers. He will make his NASCAR Cup Series debut early in 2025 at 18. It’s the equivalent of a basketball player leaping straight to an NBA game from high school.
The goal is to keep winning, contend for a championship and pursue a full-time move up to Cup in the near future.
How does he handle the noise? “It’s important not to listen to it,” he says. “When you win, you get hyped up and told how good you are. Then the next week when you run 15th, they’ll tell you, ‘You suck.’ I can’t let what people say affect my preparation for the race or how I race. I won’t let people tell me I’m the greatest thing ever when I’m not there yet.”
After the last 12 months, his maturity and reflection on what he’s achieved shines through. “It’s funny that everyone always tells me, ‘Oh, you’re so mature for your age,’ ” he laughs. “With my friends, I’m the jokester. I’m a normal kid. But I have a switch in me that I know when I need to be a professional. I’ve met the right people at the right time and really won the right races, I guess! Getting linked up with Trackhouse, Justin Marks and others has done so much for me not only as a driver but as a person. They’re making sure that in every aspect of my life I feel comfortable and am in the right place to succeed.”
Zilisch pauses to summarize the success he’s had so far. “It’s been a crazy last 12 months, way beyond what I could have ever imagined,” he says. “I’m trying to soak it all in and enjoy it all. I’m still a kid, and I’m trying to enjoy my childhood while I can because you only get that once. It’s tough to remember that at times, when you’re a professional athlete and trying to make a career out of it. I have to enjoy it and have fun. It’s hard not to have fun when you have success, though!”
NASCAR CHANGE OF PACE
Specialization and sports science are transforming how NASCAR teams recruit and train pit crews. Here’s an intimate look at how one Trackhouse crew, full of elite athletes from other sports, seeks perfection.
On a bitterly cold January afternoon, a gray race car flies into a mock pit road beside Trackhouse Racing headquarters in Concord, North Carolina, and the carefully orchestrated choreography of the NASCAR pit crew begins. Three guys jump out in front of the car, to be ready on its right side when it stops, and narrowly avoid getting clipped. Tire carrier Jeremy Kimbrough lugs two 40-pound tires; Aslan Pugh, the jackman, hauls a 20-pound jack; and front tire changer Ryan Mulder holds an air gun to unscrew the tire’s lone lug nut. Just as the car stops, rear tire changer JP Kealey, also toting an air gun, scampers behind the car. Gasman Evan Marchal, the final man on this crew, remains on the left side of the car, his 12-gallon gas can already filling the tank as the driver brakes.
About .8 seconds after the car is stopped, the jackman, with one powerful push, has the right side of the car raised off the ground. Both air guns whizz loudly as the two tire changers remove the front and back tires’ lug nuts. With one second gone, both have been removed and rolled to the wall. Within three seconds, new tires are on, the car is lowered, and the crew sprints around to the opposite side. By five seconds, the jack has the left side of the car off the ground. At seven seconds, the two remaining tires have been replaced. A second later, the car, with four fresh tires and a full tank, is ready to go.
It’s an explosive, chaotic endeavor, requiring an athleticism that might be overlooked by the casual fan. In fact, it’s an athleticism that was overlooked even by teams for much of
and an
and timing
NASCAR’s history. Back in the day, pit crews often were staffed by the mechanics and engineers who worked on the cars. In recent years, though, NASCAR teams have realized the advantages of recruiting and training a pit crew that’s made up of athletes rather than gearheads. “Teams found out really fast that guys who can train all day and worry just about pit stops can do it a lot faster than guys who have to build and set the cars up,” says Shane Wilson, a pit coach at Trackhouse (and jackman on driver Ross Chastain’s No. 1 car).
Recent rule changes at NASCAR have accelerated this specialization. In 2021, NASCAR cars switched from using five lug nuts to hold each tire in place to a single, center-locking lug nut. Pit stops have consequently gotten shorter—and the
margin for error has gotten tighter. One or two tenths of a second slower in the pit might mean 20 extra car lengths on the track. So now pit crews are seeking athletes with explosive speed and an ability to handle high-pressure situations.
Trackhouse Racing is one of the outfits taking this change seriously. They employ and train several pit-crew teams, recruiting many of them from elite college and professional sports backgrounds (including a front tire changer, Josh Bush, who won a Super Bowl with the Denver Broncos). The Red Bulletin recently observed a day of training with the five men who pit Shane van Gisbergen’s No. 88 car. Here, in their own words, they discuss the mental and physical preparation for the job.
With coaches hovering
overhead camera flming
each stop, the fve members of the No. 88 Chevrolet pit crew seek perfection on a very cold January afternoon in Concord, NC.
Jeremy Kimbrough, Tire Carrier
Evan Marchal, Gasman
Aslan Pugh, Jackman
JP Kealey, Rear Tire Changer
Ryan Mulder, Front Tire Changer
and other Trackhouse
Jeremy Kimbrough, Tire Carrier
Played football at Appalachian State and for the (then) Washington Redskins
33 years old, 5’10”, 235 pounds
My pops used to watch NASCAR, but I never really got into it. After I was done with football, a teammate told me about NASCAR and I got involved with the Drive for Diversity program [a developmental NASCAR program that trains athletes from diverse backgrounds]. They had a combine, where they tested our agility and strength, and taught us how to operate the equipment. The first time I put on a tire, I hit it perfectly.
The most physical part is running with the tires and trying not to get hit. I’ve gotten clipped eight or nine times. On the field, I was a linebacker, and that lateral quickness has helped me. I work on both ends of the car: the right rear and the left front. Ultimately, when that car leaves, I’m the last line of defense.
In racing, unlike in football, you don’t have another team trying to hinder you. This is more of a battle with yourself. A race might have eight stops. Can we execute eight times in a row? We’ve got to keep it simple. We’ve done this millions of times. It’s pretty monotonous, but I’ve learned over the years that’s when you’ve got to perform your best. Consistency is boring sometimes, and that’s the challenge and beauty of it.
Evan Marchal, Gasman
Played football at UNLV 36 years old, 6’7”, 290 pounds I played football at UNLV, and [now Trackhouse pit crew coach] Shaun Peet gave a presentation. When my final season was over, I went to Michael Waltrip Racing for two weeks and started learning. When I started 15 years ago, I was a jackman. But I could never hang a tire, so I transitioned to gasman.
To get a perfect pit stop, everything has to be perfect. If you’re chasing a tenth of a second and one person is off, that’s huge. Being an offensive lineman has helped me. Pass protection is similar to gassing, in terms of footwork. As the car is coming in, I’m power-stepping down. When I reach back to exchange gas cans, that’s like a lineman’s kick step, where I’m opening up my hips. It’s all about change of direction, agility and athleticism. Situational awareness is huge. Sometimes it’s more important to get the car out of pit road fast than to get it completely full of gas.
For me, the hardest adjustment is the travel. In football, you go to six or seven away games. Now I’m traveling to 37 away games. My first couple years I was on the road for 150 days. As you get older, that takes a toll. So I try to take care of myself during the week. From a mental standpoint, the most important thing is staying even-keeled. I need to be able to forget a bad stop, forget a good stop and approach the next one like nothing happened.
JP Kealey, Rear Tire Changer
Played lacrosse at Roger Morris and in the National Lacrosse League
36 years old, 6’0”, 200 pounds
I grew up playing lacrosse all summer and hockey all winter. I was a lot more gifted offensively in lacrosse. In hockey, I spent a lot of time in the penalty box. Shaun Peet was from Canada like me, and we connected while I was playing pro lacrosse. He gave me an opportunity to come down here and try out for the pit crew, and I decided to retire from lacrosse and do this.
One of my strengths is my speed in getting to the car. Hand-eye coordination is also really important for a tire changer, as is an ability to be calm in the chaos. In my first races, I’d kind of black out going over the wall. After the stop, I’d forget what had happened. Now it’s like time slows down.
Pugh
pit crew members do not mess around at twiceweekly team workouts.
I’ve gotten much better at moving on from mistakes. You have to separate one stop from the other. I like to tell myself, “Everything is progress.” Even a bad stop is progress, because you’re one step closer to the next stop. In my lacrosse career, I overanalyzed a lot. I still try to watch film and be as physically and mentally prepared as possible—but on race day, I try to go in with a blank slate. I have a ritual: I like to take two deep inhales with my nose and one exhale out of my nose. It’s kind of cheesy but I tell myself I’m the best at this, and then once that car hits pit road, I let it all go.
Ryan Mulder, Front Tire Changer
35 years old, 5’10”, 195 pounds
I grew up around dirt-track racing. My mom drove and my dad built the cars. I started dating somebody in high school whose cousin lived in North Carolina and was pitting for Tony Stewart. Talking to him made me realize this could be a realistic career path. When I graduated, I moved to North Carolina. That was 17 years ago. I was at Stewart-Haas for 11 years, but it closed last year. Trackhouse brought me in for a tryout and made me an offer.
Growing up, I ran cross-country and played a little bit of basketball, but my parents were so busy racing that I was never the kid throwing a ball with dad out back. But I’ve adapted to the athleticism. I came in during the days of five lug nuts. Back then, there were people who weren’t outstanding athletes, but were skilled enough to excel at the highest levels.
Taking the physical part seriously has helped me transition well to one nut. If you’re stronger and more explosive, you can rip tires and move the jack faster. That’s what one nut stop is now— throwing things around as fast as and as accurately as you can. Everybody has a different goal. JP and I are the guys who get down on our knees to work and then explode up and go back down. We need to be big enough to move the weight around but agile enough to get down, stay small and get out of the way.
I never used to stretch, but now I incorporate a 15-minute routine after working out. Staying mobile and flexible is important to preventing injury and prolonging my career. If NASCAR had stayed five nut, I probably could have done this into my 50s, because it took so long to get somebody as good as I am at hitting nuts. Now teams can train people quickly. I’m not old and I’m quite capable, but I am competing for this job against 21-yearolds who are fresh out of football.
Aslan Pugh, Jackman
Played football at Rutgers University 26 years old, 6’1”, 230 pounds I joined Trackhouse in 2022. Shaun Peet played hockey at Dartmouth and his strength coach, Jay Butler, became my strength coach at Rutgers. I was a mechanical engineer and my dream was to work in F1, and they told me Coach Butler knew someone at NASCAR. I played in a bowl game for Rutgers; I packed up all my stuff and moved to North Carolina to transition to this.
The skills I learned as a linebacker translate more than those I learned at running back. The best linebackers know what the offense is going to do. They’re analytical, searching for patterns. As the jackman, the biggest tool is my awareness, because the pit stop can’t go without the jack lifting the car. I need to tell if something’s going wrong or if everyone’s in rhythm. I’m picking things up at tenths of a second, and I need to go off the smallest details on my periphery to know if JP and Ryan hung their tires. I also played special teams in football, and the pit crew is a lot like punting. You don’t have a lot of opportunities to win the game by punting. But if the punt gets blocked, you can lose it there. It’s like that with pit stops, too. No one’s really paying attention to the pit, but if we mess up, then it gets noticed. We have a ton of pressure to perform and we’re expected to be automatic.
I’d tell any athlete, if you want a little bit longer to compete at a high level—where you’re still training, have a grind and a skill you’re trying to get better at—try NASCAR. There aren’t many jobs where you come to work in sweats, work out and get to compete on weekends. It’s fun. I get to jump in front of a car for a living.
Whether they are practicing on pit road or training at the gym, the squad’s athleticism and comradery is palpable.
NASCAR
In a new TV series, Dale Earnhardt Jr. provides playful analysis for Red Bull Soapbox events, including this race in Dallas, Texas.
Justin Kosman/Red Bull Content Pool, Natasha Swanson
BOX OF TRICKS
NASCAR legend turned broadcaster Dale Earnhardt Jr. takes his talents in a zany new direction—as commentator on Red Bull Soapbox Race.
Over the course of his hall of fame racing career, Dale Earnhardt Jr. has steered all kinds of speedy contraptions—70 mph go-karts, 500 horsepower dirt fickers and some of the fastest NASCAR machines you can imagine. The son of the seven-time NASCAR Cup champion Dale Earnhardt Sr., Dale Jr. cruised to consecutive titles in the mid-tier Busch (now Xfnity) Series in the late ’90s before grabbing the checkered fag at the vaunted Daytona 500 in 2004 and 2014.
NASCAR’s most popular driver for 15 years running, Earnhardt raced in the Cup series full-time for 18 years before retiring in 2017. Perhaps it was all just a primer for his next big drive: a Red Bull box-cart race. “I would absolutely be down for entering a race,” the 50-year-old racing legend says. “One of the things I think would be cool is walking around the paddock. It’d be a lot of fun to see the ingenuity, creativity and just how people interpreted the rules.”
Earnhardt is the new American voice for Red Bull Soapbox Race, a franchise that exists in a curious spot in the national imagination. Even though events are held all over the country and the best snippets are devoured by millions on social media, there has
never been a TV show to reach a wider American audience. That’s despite the U.K. having a dedicated TV showcase for the derby for more than a decade. But this year, Earnhardt will bring his humor and NASCAR expertise to a fresh role, co-hosting the frst-ever Red Bull Soapbox Race TV show in the U.S. The series, slated for Discovery this spring, will feature 12 hour-long episodes from events around the world.
Producing the series was a race in itself: For one breakneck week in early November, Earnhardt commuted to a studio in suburban Charlotte, North Carolina, to record commentary for each episode, arriving and leaving in darkness. Riding shotgun with him was Mike Bagley, a beloved NASCAR radio voice.
Soapbox racing couldn’t be more diferent from NASCAR. For the most part, the crafs are handmade and fundamentally basic: four wheels, a steering rack and a frame. Gravity does most of the work of powering the car through the course, which is set at a decline and studded with obstacles. The teams are made up of amateurs who further embellish their crafs with catchy designs and names—and much of the fun is seeing how the whole package
For beloved race car driver Dale Earnhardt Jr., there’s perhaps only one trophy that’s eluded him: a Red Bull Soapbox Race Cup.
“I would absolutely be down for entering,” Earnhardt says of Red Bull Soapbox Race.
Natasha Swanson, Red Bull Content Pool
holds up against the strain of competition. Entrants are judged on creativity and showmanship and against the stopwatch. A race can have anywhere from 30 to 50 carts—but only a dozen or so might make the cut for the TV show. It’s like America’s Funniest Home Videos on wheels. “You have to be a little batshit to do this stuf,” Bagley quips on set. “I love it.”
The commentary turns to a race in Dallas, featuring a piñatastyle cart that appears to be made from diferent-colored Post-it notes. It’s name is the Spartan de Dulces—and that last word trips Bagley up a few times. (He keeps saying “dull-says” instead of “duel-says.”) There are other moments when Earnhardt’s delivery fghts against certain pronunciations. Ultimately, his finty Carolina twang and slang wins the day.
Overall, Earnhardt and Bagley will remind you of the announcers in the movie Dodgeball as they pivot from deadly serious to tongue-in-cheek. Although the format of the show has been carefully constructed, they’re still seeing and reacting to the races for the frst time—and the cameras capture every ad-lib. When a glorifed Power Wheel called C’Mon Barbie Let’s Go Party tips over a bump and sends its two pilots fopping onto the course, Earnhardt dutifully rattles through the prepared remarks about the racer’s too-high center of gravity and the crew’s health before adjusting his horned-rimmed glasses, Groucho Marx–like, and snarking: “I’m glad everyone’s OK, but that was funny.”
If Earnhardt seems comfortable calling the action, it’s because he has experience. Along with providing color commentary for NASCAR races on TV since his retirement, he hosts a popular weekly podcast called The Dale Jr. Download, which dives even
deeper into the biggest stories and trends in the sport. But apart from the podcast, Earnhardt didn’t have much racing to talk about in 2024. His deal with NBC expired at the end of the 2023 season, and his new gigs with Turner Sports and Prime Video don’t start until the spring. “I’ve just been kind of goofng of,” he jokes, “doing everything but broadcasting. So this was nice to kinda get back to work.”
But by far the biggest perk of announcing the Red Bull Soapbox Races for Earnhardt is the prospect of sitting down and enjoying it with his young daughters, Isla and Nicole. “I showed them some of the YouTube stuf from the older races,” he says. “They loved seeing the accidents and the goofy-looking builds. That’s probably personally my favorite thing about this whole deal, showing my girls. When I take ’em to the racetrack when I drive races, they’re like, ‘Yeah, I don’t know what’s going on. What are we doing here?’
But I know this will be something they’ll like and laugh at.”
As for his inevitable foray into soapbox racing, Earnhardt is already pondering the possibilities. In addition to his considerable experience behind the wheel, Earnhardt also operates JR (pronounced “junior”) Motorsports, a skunkworks that supports teams in dirt racing and the Xfnity Series. Which is to say he could easily top some of the more ambitious amateur engineers in Red Bull Soapbox Race, who arrive on the starting line with their laser-cut, 3D-printed designs. But winning wouldn’t be his only pursuit. “I wonder what the rest of the event is like,” he says. “There’s 25,000 people there, so you know there has to be some great food trucks, a lot of drinking and hanging out. The racing is probably just a blip. I bet the weekend is fun as hell.”
Joerg Mitter/Red Bull Content Pool
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Grace Warner
84
Red Bull Cascade
92
Ryōyū Kobayashi
STYLE GRACE
For street snowboarder Grace Warner, her passion for the culture is almost as big as her heart.
WORDS BY NORA O’DONNELL PHOTOS BY ASHLEY ROSEMEYER
GRACE WARNER
“Community means the world to me. It’s why I do what I do.”
Grace Warner, 24, shows off her skills at Pine Knob Ski & Snowboard Resort, not far from where she grew up in Michigan, during a stop on the 2024 Red Bull Slide-In Tour.
After a long day of snowboarding in Wisconsin, the vacation rental smells like orange chicken and IcyHot. Spread around the expansive open-concept kitchen are a group of talented young snowboarders in various levels of awakeness. One sleepy-eyed rider kicks up the tunes, while another rips open a bag of Chinese takeout. Zeb Powell—an influential star of the freestyle scene—is crashed out in a nearby bedroom.
The night before, many members of this tight-knit crew were riding until 3 a.m. at Trollhaugen, a charming, family-run resort near the Minnesota/Wisconsin border, where they’ve been shreding features at the terrain park for nearly a week in December. Muscles are sore, but it’s nothing a good stretch and a dab of topical cream can’t fix—especially if you’re in your 20s.
Grace Warner, who only rode until 1:30 a.m., appears chipper. She splays her hands on the kitchen island, while a friend (filmer Colt Morgan) paints a fresh coat of polish on her nails. A bit later, she curls up on a sectional and gushes about her recent snowboarding trip to Japan. “I ate like five meals a day when I was there,” she says with a giggle. “But I felt amazing. I felt light on my feet!”
That bubbly enthusiasm is classic Grace Warner. But for the 24-year-old pro street snowboarder from Michigan, her joie de vivre runs much deeper than her love of Japanese cuisine. Beyond her physical talents, her passion to make snowboarding fun—for everyone—is a key reason why she’s so admired among her peers. And building community, like the one she grew up with in the Midwest, is Warner’s dream.
“When you’re part of a community that treats you like family and you have this immense feeling of belonging, you don’t see age or gender or color,” she says. “You just see people for who they are and the passion that you share.”
Last year, Warner became the first woman to win a new streetstyle event introduced at the 2024 X Games. She’s also made a splash at rail jams like Red Bull Heavy Metal, a street contest that’s amplifying the discipline, but she represents a growing wave of elite snowboarders who are less focused on competitions and more excited about filming clips and uplifting the culture.
“The world that my brain lives in is based on the art of selfexpression,” she says. “How do I want people to feel when they watch me? I want to be approachable and have my own persona in the space.”
It’s true, at least to outsiders, that Grace Warner doesn’t fit the classic archetype of a pro snowboarder. She doesn’t center her career on winning competitions or jump out of helicopters to freeride big mountains or churn double flips on a halfpipe. Instead, she’s supported by brands to film clips and compete in contests in the discipline of street snowboarding.
As in its skateboarding counterpart, street snowboarders use their urban environment as a canvas for their creativity. Without a mountain of fresh powder, riders in Midwestern states like Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin devise their own playgrounds by mounding together patches of slushy snow and then jibbing (jumping, riding or sliding) on various objects: stairs, rails, ramps, bridges, roofs, dumpsters—whatever sparks inspiration.
Warner first made waves in the scene with a part in the 2021 video “Corrupt,” alongside her younger brother, Drake, and a small collective of snowboarders from Michigan. The homegrown video begins with a series of crashes and faceplants down slippery rails and concrete stairs, with only a light cushion of snow. But after the obligatory montage of failed attempts, the riders masterfully fly over exterior staircases and rooftops as Chief Keef’s “Hand Made” provides the soundtrack. And then Grace appears, the only woman in the group, stylishly sliding down a rail with a look of determination on her face.
“I’ve seen that spark in her,” says Drake, who’s sharing the vacation rental with Grace and a bevy of snowboarders during their visit to Trollhaugen. “She grew up riding around boys who have different skill sets, but that’s never been a thing for Grace. It’s always been, ‘If he can do this, why can’t I?’ And then she’ll go off and do it.”
Warner was raised in southeast Michigan, near Pontiac, and her home hill was Alpine Valley, a repurposed landfill 10 minutes from her house. Her earliest memories are learning to ride when she was 4 with her father, Chad, and her older brother, Kyle, while her mom, Shannon, held down the fort at the resort lounge. There was never any pressure from her parents to succeed in snowboarding as a sport. “It was portrayed as this fun thing, and it was a family event, which made it more comfortable because we were all together,” Warner explains while taking a break from riding at Trollhaugen, where the cozy and familial atmosphere makes her feel at home. “Since the day I started snowboarding, I knew in my heart that it was never going away,” she adds with a smile. “It was going to be in my life forever.”
Warner gets a touch-up on her nails from friend and flmer Colt Morgan.
WINTER SPORTS
A scene from the front porch of the vacation rental near Trollhaugen.
Left: At Trollhaugen in Wisconsin, street snowboarders like Warner love the familial, Midwestern vibe. “It feels like home,” she says.
By the time Kyle got his driver’s license, the Warner siblings, including Drake and younger sister, Ava, headed to Alpine Valley every day after school. They’d strap in and ride laps, take a break to grab a quick dinner at McDonald’s (“I grew up on McChickens,” she jokes) and then ride again until 9 or 10 at night.
Despite her elite skill set, Warner calls herself a “social snowboarder,” a mindset that developed during all those hours on the same hill with the same kids who shared her passion for snowboarding. A good student, she worked hard to finish her homework during school hours so she could maximize her time honing her skills riding features at the terrain park. During warmer months, she stayed active by playing soccer and volleyball, but her closest friendships were forged in the snow.
After graduating from high school, Warner attended the nearby Oakland Community College, with a focus on business management, and she worked three jobs during the offseason so she could focus on riding in the winter. Along with her Michigan crew, she spent the winter of 2020–21 filming “Corrupt” and publishing parts on YouTube and Instagram. By this time, brands like Burton were already taking notice, sending her free gear and reposting her clips.
Then in August 2021, she received an invite to her first professional snowboard competition, the Slush Game of Big S.N.O.W., a rail jam in which a bracket of riders go head-to-head in elimination rounds. The event, held in East Rutherford, New Jersey, at Big SNOW American Dream, the only indoor snow park in the United States, hosted some of the best rail riders from across the country. Warner, who lacked experience in a more serious contest setting, almost didn’t attend. “I was freaking out,” she says. “I was so nervous.”
Remarkably, she impressed the judges and won her first round, but during round 2 she ran off to the bathroom. “I projectilevomited into the toilet,” she candidly admits. “I was not good after that. I had a full-blown panic attack.”
While she was in the bathroom, Desiree Melancon, another competitor and a legend in the street scene, found her on the floor and offered words of encouragement. “I’ll never forget that moment,” Warner says. “She was like, ‘You don’t have to go back
GRACE WARNER
“How do I want people to feel when they watch me? I want to be approachable.”
out there and do any more snowboarding. What you’ve already shown is going to get you places. People are gonna be talking.’ ”
Melancon was right. Brands started calling, and she ultimately signed with Burton and then Red Bull. That contest in New Jersey didn’t just put Grace Warner on the map; it’s also where she befriended other stars of the scene, including Tommy Gesme, Jill Perkins and Zeb Powell. Of Powell, she says, “We were immediately besties.”
Powell agrees and adds that upon meeting Warner, he quickly noticed her kindness, humility and a shared sense of values when it comes to why they snowboard. As Powell explains, they both have the talent to win competitions, but that’s not where they find joy and fulfillment. “I think we’re on a similar journey,” he says. “I like to support bringing more Black people to snowboarding, and I know Grace likes to support bringing in more women. And we’re lucky to be in a space where we can give back to the communities and do what we do.”
Although Warner has repeatedly said she hates contests, she still crushes them. She won a silver medal at her first Dew Tour contest in 2021, and more recently, she’s stood on podiums at Red Bull Rail Yard 2.0 and Red Bull Heavy Metal. And of course, she won at the 2024 X Games, where her effortless style and clean execution edged her just ahead of the competition. At this year’s X Games in January, she just missed the podium with a fourth-place finish. What Warner actually dislikes is the pressure of competition. “With certain contests, it’s been this weird energy where there’s money on the line and people are getting all serious about it,” she says. “And I have trouble with that.” When she does well in competition, it’s because she’s let go of caring about the outcome. “The main thing I tell myself is I just want to go out and snowboard the way that I snowboard. I just want to feel like Grace. And that’s when I do good, when I’m just in a flow state having fun.”
Drake observes that his big sister is very competitive, but only against herself. “If people around her are riding at a certain level,
Above: Warner and her bestie, Zeb Powell. Opposite page: At Grace’s Getaway at Pine Knob in Michigan.
WINTER SPORTS
she can’t stand being at a different level,” he says, which is especially true when she’s trying to land a trick on a street spot. “She’ll throw herself into a complete trance, where all she wants to do is hit this spot she’s been working for the last three days, and she definitely gets so much more reward for pushing herself.”
Last summer, Warner spent months at the Red Bull Athlete Performance Center Los Angeles in Santa Monica, working with a strength trainer, a nutritionist and a mental performance coach. In particular, Warner found working with a mental coach helped keep her grounded and focused on what she loves.
“Physically and mentally, I feel like my true self when I’m on a snowboard,” she says. “Everything about my energy, the way I feel. It is my way of self-expression. It’s engraved in who I am.” And Warner is happiest when she can share that passion with others. “I’m very much a people person,” she emphasizes. “I want to vibe with you.”
During one of her mornings at Trollhaugen, Warner is up earlier than the rest of her crew and riding features during an all-women private session for an event called Take the Rake. The women joining Warner are all park builders from resorts across the country, and many of them are used to being the only woman in the workplace. Right now, they’re getting a feel for the terrain, but later this week, they’ll resculpt the main park based on their own designs.
As the women explore the park, Trollhaugen’s marketing director, Marsha Hovey, shouts words of encouragement to the riders, who are new to using a tow rope. While they get acclimated, Hovey shares that Warner has been coming to Trollhaugen for years. “She’s always been the most appreciative and selfless rider,” Hovey says. “She is constantly introducing herself to younger girls in the park who might seem timid. She just gives herself to everyone around her, and that’s a rare thing.”
For Warner, it all comes back to building community. One bonus to attending competitions is the opportunity to meet more female snowboarders like herself, which sparked an idea for a new event. What if they just came together to ride for the fun of it?
“Every time I see these girls, it’s an event or a contest where there’s all this exterior pressure,” Warner explains. “I just think there’s way more progression in a space where all that noise is gone.” Without the noise, everyone can try out new tricks and support one another.
Last February, that idea came to fruition in the form of Grace’s Getaway, a small event for which Warner invited about a dozen women to Pine Knob, another resort not far from her home in Michigan. Due to unseasonably warm weather, the resort had closed the hill to the public to preserve the snow, so the conditions weren’t ideal for Warner and her guests. Still, the women made the best of it by transforming their indoor time into a massive slumber party.
“Grace’s Getaway was such a sick event,” says Brantley Mullins, who competed alongside Warner at the 2024 X Games street-style event. Mullins grew up snowboarding with Zeb Powell in North Carolina and, like Warner, was used to being one of the few girls on the hill. “We don’t normally get girl time with snowboarding,” Mullins explains, so the opportunity to bond with other women in Michigan became invaluable. “We built a pillow fort, watched High School Musical and did arts and crafts.”
“Grace is one of my absolute favorite people to snowboard with,” Mullins continues. “She always has the best energy. Even when she’s having an off day, she’s still hyping up her friends, so everyone can have a good time, no matter the conditions.”
When Grace’s Getaway returns this February, she hopes the weather will cooperate so the Pine Knob locals can finally witness their talent. “I want to have them there so they can see all these badass girls riding all over the park, just killing it,” Warner says. “So now we’re exposing the whole community to what female snowboarders can do. I want to normalize that for little boys and girls.”
Although Warner is talking about building community in Michigan, her words sound much grander, her philosophies much deeper. She’s really talking about nurturing the heart of snowboarding culture.
“When you see people for who they are and the passion that you share, all you see is that we’re just people snowboarding together,” she says. “And the connection you have with those people is unlike anything else. I want to build that future.”
“Physically and mentally, I feel like my true self when I’m on a snowboard. It’s engraved in who I am.”
Drake Warner snaps a pic of his big sister chowing down at Trollhaugen’s restaurant.
WINTER SPORTS
Marin Hamill shows off her high-fying versatility at Red Bull Cascade in Utah.
Red Bull Cascade, Bobby Brown’s unique freeskiing competition, is raising the bar— and shaping the next generation of skiers.
WORDS BY HEATHER BALOGH ROCHFORT
PHOTOS BY MASON CAMERON AND KYLE LIEBERMAN
WINTER SPORTS
n 2014, Bobby Brown was only 22 years old, but he was already one of the most recognized faces in freeskiing. With multiple X Games wins and a spot on the newly formed Olympic slopestyle team, Brown had a reputation for big tricks and was the frst person to ever land a Switch Double Misty 1440. But despite all those achievements, he was eager to try something new—and he discovered it during a random shred day with his brother at Breckenridge Ski Resort in Colorado.
The duo flmed a top-to-bottom line that began at the Horseshoe Bowl T-Bar before rolling through the Freeway Terrain Park and terminating at the base of the chairlif for Peak 8. It was a one-take, 4.5-minute ski run that dabbled with a bit of everything on the mountain: park, powder and groomers. Brown enjoyed this sort of run so much that he started doing the same thing at other ski hills, like Mammoth Mountain in California and Winter Park in Colorado. That’s when the idea hit him.
“It was such a fun challenge to try and link everything together,” Brown remembers. “What if we could have a contest course that could incorporate that type of thing and get other riders on it to see what they would do?”
Eight years later, in 2022, he got his wish with the test run of a new event at Winter Park called Red Bull Cascade. For Brown, that frst year was more of a photo shoot to see if his idea was even feasible. But the feedback was resoundingly positive. “Everyone was losing their minds and pretty stoked on what they had ridden,” Brown says.
This year, Red Bull Cascade is back for its fourth edition at its current home of Solitude Mountain Resort in Utah. Cascade has evolved over the past few years, as Brown continually seeks the best terrain to fulfll his vision. “It takes up such a large piece of the
resort, and we want to encapsulate freeride terrain mixed with cool turning parts with speed and then ending with a more traditional slopestyle,” he says.
“Once we got to Solitude, I felt like we could really live up to our potential.” For 2025, Brown notes that they’ve moved the course to a new location on the mountain, so it’s now tighter, more condensed and packed with energy throughout the line.
But for Brown, the evolution of Red Bull Cascade isn’t just about perfecting the course; it’s about paving the way for the next generation of skiers, whose versatility is changing the sport. “There is this allterrain type of vibe to everything now, where they have the ability to ski anything,” he explains. This is a noticeable diference from when he frst got started and everyone had their specialties as a halfpipe rider or a slopestyle skier. Now, Brown sees kids who are riding the entire mountain as well-rounded skiers. “I’ve been blown away by how comfortable people are on skis these days,” he laughs.
The timing is perfect, though, as that versatility shines in competitions like Red Bull Cascade. Brown remembers all the people who gave him a chance in his early days, and he hopes to do the same for up-and-comers now. “We want to create an opportunity to be a propulsion for someone’s career,” he says. And that’s not just limited to skiers. Brown is adamant that videographers are the unsung heroes of the ski industry, since capturing high-quality footage is the springboard to the masses. In addition to boosting new skiers into the limelight, Brown wants Cascade to be a place where young flmmakers can come and make a name for themselves.
“They inspire me to push myself just as much,” Brown says. “Every day, I try to get a little better and keep trying to create opportunities that we can look back on. There’s so much more that can be done, and I defnitely have the energy to do it.”
A pioneer in the freeskiing scene, Bobby Brown, 33, has an impressive collection of X Games hardware and a vision to uplift the next generation of skiers.
Above, Brown kicks up some serious powder. Below, the podium fnishers at last year’s Red Bull Cascade. (frst place) Team Mando: Bobby Brown, Colby Stevenson, Rell Harwood, Jed Waters; (second) Team Center Punch: Jay Riccomini, Cody LaPlante, Ben Smith, Birk Irving; (third) Team Overshoot: Marin Hamill, Aaron Blunck, Konnor Ralph, Tanner Blakely.
WINTER SPORTS
Blake Wilson (top) puts down a clean line on the frst day of the event at Solitude Mountain Resort in Utah. Above, Brown (left) shares a laugh with Olympic medalist and media personality Gus Kenworthy. Facing page: Utahn Rell Harwood, representing the winning Team Mando, is a rising star of the scene. She recently nabbed her frst gold medal at this year’s X Games.
WINTER SPORTS
Montana native Konnor Ralph, a member of the U.S. Freeski Team and representing Team Overshoot, goes head over heels on the spectacular course on Solitude Mountain. Facing page: Coloradan Birk Irving (pictured) and his sister, Svea, were crowned the MVPs of the event for their unique style.
Red Bull Cascade at Solitude Mountain Resort will be open for spectators March 27-29. Scan the QR code at left for more details.
FLYING IN
STYLE
How could high fashion, Japanese hip-hop and ski jumping connect?
Perhaps ask Ryōyū Kobayashi, the athlete and cultural phenom who has jumped farther than anyone, ever.
WORDS BY TOM GUISE AND PATRICK
PHOTOS BY NORMAN KONRAD
WINTER SPORTS
All eyes are on Ryōyū Kobayashi as he prepares to jump off the bath ledge. The Japanese ski-jumping sensation is standing against a vivid hand-painted mural of Mount Fuji on the wall of Tamanoyu, a 70-year-old sento, or public bathhouse, in west Tokyo. Kobayashi says he enjoys the occasional trip to these kinds of traditional establishments to refresh and relax, though today feels less of an indulgence with a dozen bystanders watching him being photographed.
“I’ve gotten used to it,” Kobayashi says of the attention. Which is just as well, because he’s become impossible to ignore. As well as being the official holder of the Japanese distance record and officially landing the third-longest jump ever, the 28-year-old athlete is a two-time overall World Cup champion and took gold and silver at the 2022 Beijing Olympics (in the men’s normal hill and large hill events respectively). But it’s what happened last April that dropped jaws everywhere. In Iceland, Kobayashi jumped 37.5 meters (123 feet) farther than anyone in history.
Kobayashi is a laid-back guy. He keeps his sentences short, even with those close to him, like members of his Team Roy club (Roy is what Kobayashi’s friends call him). He’s more likely to flash a smile than to speak at length.
“When I have nothing to do, I clean up around my house or hang out with friends,” he says. Clubs and wild nights out don’t interest him much, but visits to local museums have become common during his days off. Recently, he’s been enjoying the endless-summer fantasy paintings of Hiroshi Nagai and the polka-dot-centric work of Yayoi Kusama.
After the photo shoot in Tokyo wraps, Kobayashi talks with the owner of the public bath, snaps some photos with him and signs a white autograph board in the lobby. The whole time, he seems comfortable being the focus of attention.
“When I met RyŌyū about 10 years ago, he was nothing like this,” Tomohiro Maruyama, the CEO of Team Roy, remarks. “He was reserved and often nervous. He’s changed completely in the last decade.”
A decade ago, Kobayashi was 18, growing up in Hachimantai in the northeast of Japan’s main island, and already an adept ski jumper. When he was 3, his father built a practice hill in their backyard. “It was just a meter tall,” recalls Kobayashi. “They needed to move the snow to get the cars out. That’s how it kind of started.”
What it kind of started was a ski-jumping family. Kobayashi’s older brother and sister, Junshirō and Yūka, and his younger brother, Tatsunao, all became ski jumpers. “I did a lot of other sports, but they organized camps for ski jumping,” says Kobayashi, “so I knew it would get me out of school. But also, it would get me out of my hometown.”
It was at one of these camps, in 2014, that he encountered Japanese ski-jumping legend Noriaki Kasai, the only athlete to ever participate in eight Winter Olympics. That year, Kasai became both the oldest-ever ski-jumping Olympic medalist and winner of a World Cup event. He was 42. A year later, he asked Kobayashi to join his Tsuchiya Home Ski Team.
The team’s coach at the time, Janne Väätäinen, remembers his first impression of the rookie Kobayashi. “He was a good junior ski jumper, but there are many in Japan,” the Finnish former Olympian says. “With RyŌyū, there was something different. How smoothly he moved when jumping, or his in-run position [the pose a skier adopts as they travel before taking off]. I cannot explain it, but I was thinking, ‘This is something special.’ ”
who likes to express himself through fashion, is seen here in Prada—and on facing page, in Undercover at Tokyo food hub Hobo Shinjuku Norengai.
At Kobayashi’s 2016 World Cup debut in Poland, he came in seventh. “Which is amazing,” says Väätäinen. “Good things happened that season, but the next one was really bad.” Kobayashi scored zero World Cup points. Väätäinen says it was a turning point for the young athlete. “He put in more effort, trained constantly. He got better.” In the 2018–19 season, he won every possible ski-jump title, including the overall World Cup and the grand slam of the Four Hills—only the third person ever to achieve the latter. “He was bringing ski jumping to a new level,” says Väätäinen.
That season, Väätäinen parted ways with Kobayashi but reunited with him in 2023. “I was away for four years,” he says, “but the success RyŌyū had in that time gave him the confidence to be what he is today. He is business-minded, for sure. He knows what he wants. He wants to change ski jumping one way or another.”
Kobayashi,
FLYING HIGH
THE STORY OF RYOYU'S EPIC JUMP
Rachael Stott
Kobayashi’s skijumping helmet was designed by his friend Hiroshi Fujiwara, the musician and fashion designer often cited as the “godfather of streetwear.”
Kobayashi fiddles with his smartphone from the back seat of his Range Rover as it heads toward the bustling Shinjuku neighborhood of Tokyo. He’s not blocking out the outside world, though. Rather, he’s excitedly swiping through Spotify to share his favorite Japanese rap songs.
He can seem reserved in more intimate settings. He answers questions broadly. What’s your friend circle like? “They’re all interesting.” What are some of your favorite Tokyo memories? “Honestly, every day is fun.”
The topic of Japanese hip-hop, however, gets him going. He eagerly runs down a list of artists he loves—KOHH, AK-69, Bad Hop, JP the Wavy (“He’s so cool”)—then takes out his phone to do a mini DJ set. He bops along to the beats, reciting lines like he’s been passed the mic when talking about the MCs he digs.
“Hip-hop made me feel I could be myself. It was OK to be honest,” he says. “Like I could live in my own style.”
He’s become tight with many of the Japanese rappers he’s sharing over the Range Rover’s sound system. “Sometimes we eat together. AK-69 took me out to sushi three days ago.” While he’s not a big club person, Kobayashi loves going to festivals organized by his hip-hop pals.
“I’ve never made my own music or tried DJing,” he admits. “I’d be interested, though. Hip-hop is all about expressing yourself, right? I wonder what it would be like if I did that.”
He’s also thinking of how it could be mixed with his sport. “I want to create a space where jumping and music coexist. Hip-hop started from a place with less attention, so I’d like to create a similar vibe in jumping.”
Hip-hop—specifically from Japan—has influenced every element of his life. Maruyama says before Kobayashi really got into the genre, he was less confident and “dressed plainly.” Yet the music and culture surrounding it inspired him to have more swagger, and Kobayashi says his fashion style is completely shaped by it. “The way rappers like KOHH would talk about brands in their songs—that got me interested.”
Recently, he’s made inroads into the fashion world and become friends with Hiroshi Fujiwara, the Japanese fashion designer often cited as the “godfather of streetwear,” who collaborated on Nike’s HTM line (the H stands for Hiroshi), a project that reinvented and revitalized classic shoe designs. Coincidentally, Fujiwara was also one of the first DJs in Japan to play American hiphop back in the ’80s. “He’s someone I respect,” says Kobayashi.
Kobayashi at Hobo Shinjuku Norengai. Coat by Masterkey; shirt, top, pants and hat by Bodysong; shoes by Yoak.
WINTER SPORTS
In September 2023, they went to an F1 grand prix together, where Kobayashi approached Fujiwara about designing his skijump helmet. “He gave a few options. I chose some. It was just a few rounds of feedback.” He wore the helmet during his recordbreaking ski jump in Iceland.
Kobayashi himself has designed clothing items available in the Team Roy store but isn’t currently interested in creating a clothing brand. “What I like about fashion is how you can express your mood,” he says. “It’s about feeling good.”
Another one of his passions away from the ski ramp is playing golf. Outside of hip-hop, Kobayashi says, this is where the bulk of his friends have come from lately. “What’s my lifestyle like now?” He turns the question around from the back seat of the Range Rover, before quoting JP the Wavy.
“Wavy,” he says, smiling. “I’m wavy.”
To those unacquainted with Kobayashi, his economical conversation when it comes to his sport could be mistaken for a lack of enthusiasm. To people who know him, it’s anything but.
“Without passion, you don’t risk your life like this,” says Väätäinen. “Because it’s fucking dangerous.” Back in April in Akureyri, Iceland, Kobayashi demonstrated that passion without uttering a word, on a specially constructed ski jump on a very large hill.
It’s April 24, 2024, the second day of jumping, and although this town with a population of less than 20,000 is remote, word has spread. An unidentified drone has been spotted in the sky, and an
Icelandic news site has already posted spy shots. The day before, Kobayashi made three jumps before the snow got too slushy—the last one, at 256 meters, edged past the official world record. Today, he’s been here since 6 a.m., pushing the upper limit farther—first to 259 meters, then to a staggering 282 meters.
Väätäinen says Kobayashi’s been up since 4 a.m., practicing in the parking lot. “He’s so calm that you don’t really know what’s inside his head,” he admits. “I’m sure I’ve been more scared than he has these couple of days.” Väätäinen’s concerns are fueled by an awareness that the ski-jump season finished five weeks ago. “There aren’t many athletes who can come to a hill like this without jumping for over a month.”
It’s now shortly after 7 a.m. and Kobayashi is back at the top of the in-run for his fourth attempt of the morning. The start gate has been raised to within half a meter of its maximum height. Väätäinen doesn’t think increasing it any more will make much difference—Kobayashi’s speed has been clocked at over 60 mph on every attempt. He also believes the athlete found his form with that last jump. With the sun fully up, temperature is becoming a concern. There’s talk on the radio of adding salt to the in-run to keep it icy. “No salt,” comes the reply. Seated on the start gate, Kobayashi waits for the wind to clear.
“RyŌyū is on the in-run,” comes the message. “3, 2, 1, takeoff!” He emerges over the crest of the hill, his straightened form craned forward like an arrow, skis in a perfect V. Eight seconds pass and he’s still flying, past the official world record marker, nine seconds, 10—he lands smoothly. Distance: 291 meters (955 feet). Kobayashi has flown 18 percent farther than any jumper in history.
With the snow melting fast, that becomes the last attempt. Soon, the hill will be completely gone. Not long ago, it never existed. Later that day, the FIS, ski jumping’s governing body, will say the jump doesn’t meet the criteria to be officially recognized. For Kobayashi, though, that was never the point. He got the world to pay attention to his sport.
“This,” he says in English, “is ski flying.”
Six months later, Kobayashi is posing in front of a large painting of a can of tuna on the side of a building at Hobo Shinjuku Norengai. As evening falls, the restaurants and bars in this dining district of converted old houses and a warehouse are rapidly filling with hungry patrons. Many do a double take seeing the man in an all-black Prada outfit perched atop a table.
“He’s a natural model,” Maruyama says, as Kobayashi adjusts his position. “This is something he really wants to do.”
Kobayashi will happily talk about the immediate future with anyone who asks. Tomorrow, he’ll take the Shinkansen, commonly known as the bullet train, out to Kobe. In a week, he’s heading up to snowy Hokkaido to prep for the ski-jump season. Beyond that, it’s a mystery. “I don’t really think about the future. I’m not really sure what I’ll do next.”
As he skips along Hobo’s backstreets, people on their way home from work turn their heads. A few recognize him and get excited. A restaurant owner asks for a selfie, which Kobayashi obliges.
For RyŌyū Kobayashi, there is no destination, just worlds to explore and impossible leaps to enjoy. “My life,” he says, “is going my own way.”
When Kobayashi is in charge of the tunes, expect Japanese hiphop jams. Outft by Prada. Facing page: At Unagushi Yakitori Ufuku Yoyogi Ten in Shinjuku. Jacket, top and pants by Marni.
Scan the code to see Ryōyū Kobayashi smash the world record for the longest-ever ski jump.
“Ryōyū wants to change the sport one way or another,” says his coach, Janne Väätäinen.
Stunt Couple 114
Wind Turbine Techs
Life partners in the real world, Aurélia Agel and Justin Howell are battling to secure a place among Hollywood’s top stunt performers.
WORDS BY SCOTT JOHNSON
PHOTOS BY SHAMIL TANNA
There’s enough high-octane action crammed into MR. AND MRS. SMITH: Love & War to satisfy even the most hardened fan. That the five-minute short film was shot in a mere 48 hours in an airplane graveyard in the California desert is a testament to its creators and stars, Aurélia Agel and Justin Howell, two of the most talented stunt performers working in Hollywood today. During the summer and fall of 2023, with writers striking and the movie business shuttered, the married duo challenged themselves to make “the best action short film we could in the shortest amount of time.” And the film certainly delivers. In addition to some mind-bending hand-to-hand combat, it also includes fighter planes, explosions and a scene featuring Howell—or rather Howell’s well-articulated bicep— catching a rocket-propelled grenade and returning it to sender. After two days dodging poisonous snakes, blistering heat and utter exhaustion, the pair, having nearly killed each other, wrapped up the project with an on-screen kiss.
By design, Love & War functions as a kind of sizzle reel for Agel and Howell, both of whom are very tall and bristle with muscle and a restless energy. In person they seem to have been chiseled from the same granite as the on-screen superheroes they have sometimes doubled—to wit, Thor and Nebula, of the Avengers movies. Not that either Agel or Howell need much more in the way of sizzle. Agel has been dubbed the world’s “sexiest stunt performer” and counts Charlize Theron, Milla Jovovich and Olga Kurylenko as avatars. And the blond-haired Howell, at 6 foot 3 inches, has a stony jawline to rival Superman’s, a character he has also doubled.
Since it was posted online in March 2024, Love & War has racked up 159,000 views on YouTube. And while it’s fun to watch, it’s also emblematic of a larger and more fundamental shift underway in Hollywood. Increasingly, A-list stunt performers like Agel and Howell have their sights set on more than just pummeling each other to bits for kicks. More and more, stunt performers can be found branching out into roles typically reserved for others, including stunt choreography, directing and even acting. Zoë Bell, a veteran stunt performer for Quentin Tarantino, transitioned from doubling for Uma Thurman in Kill Bill to acting and producing; another lauded performer, Greg Powell, started in British TV and went on to coordinate stunts for film franchises like Harry Potter and Avengers
Meanwhile, former stalwarts of the stunt community like Chad Stahelski, David Leitch and Sam Hargrave are fine-tuning the Hollywood action thriller from the director’s chair, blending an intimate understanding of choreography and on-set safety with a knack for storytelling. Stahelski, once Keanu Reeves’ stunt double in The Matrix, is the mastermind behind the John Wick
Agel, 26, has been a stunt double for Hollywood legends like Charlize Theron and Milla Jovovich. She was photographed with Howell in Paris on November 16.
franchise, which has grossed over $1 billion globally. The meticulous action choreography and rich world-building on display in John Wick: Chapter 4 was hailed as a masterpiece of the genre in 2023. Similarly, Leitch, who co-directed the first John Wick before launching a solo directing career, created box office hits like Hobbs & Shaw and Deadpool 2, which took in over $785 million worldwide. Hargrave, another standout, took his experience coordinating stunts for Marvel films into directing Netflix’s Extraction series, known for its jaw-dropping action sequences and innovative cinematography, such as a muchlauded 21-minute single-shot sequence in Extraction 2
And yet, despite the artistic and economic achievements that stunt work has helped nurture, the discipline has long been overlooked by the mainstream bodies that bestow recognition, namely the Academy Awards. Organizations like the Taurus World Stunt Awards have filled this gap. Established in 2001, these awards honor outstanding achievements in categories like Best Fight, Best High Work and Best Specialty Stunt. At the 2022 presentation, the Bond film No Time to Die won Best Specialty Stunt for a sequence in which stunt driver Paul Edmondson launched a motorcycle 40 feet up a 65-foot wall. Elsewhere, nominees for Best Work with a Vehicle included a chase and crash sequence in The Suicide Squad and an intricate set of end-over-end car flips in Fast & Furious 9. In 2024, Hargrave’s latest film, Extraction 2, dominated the Taurus Awards; the film was nominated in seven of eight categories, ultimately being recognized for Best Work with a Vehicle—for a frenetic car chase through a forest meticulously edited to simulate one long take—as well as Best Fight and Best Stunt Coordinator.
The stunt community continues to campaign for an Academy Award category. “If you’re talking about the history and artistry that has brought untold billions of eyes to see these stories, I think it’s hard to argue against stunts having a category in the Oscars,” says Hargrave.
Until that happens, Hargrave is continuing to push limits—and he has enlisted Agel and Howell in his current project. At a studio in Budapest, the trio is filming Matchbox for Skydance, Apple and Mattel Films, based on Mattel’s classic line of die-cast toy vehicles. The live-action thriller, starring John Cena and Jessica Biel, tells the story of a spy who saves the world with the help of some friends—and their cars. “We are going after some world records,” Hargrave says coyly. “If we can jam in all the stuff that we have planned, it’s gonna be a really action-packed movie.” At Howell’s urging, the director modified the script specifically for Agel so that the couple could work together. “We were able to kind of write in a role for her,” says Hargrave. “She plays an assassin who shows up periodically to try and kill our hero, and she gets some pretty fun action set pieces with John Cena.”
Howell, 35, was an elite taekwondo and cheerleading athlete—and a dinner-theater knight—before he broke into stunt work.
Many married couples fght. But this is different.
Courtesy of Aurelia Agel
Aurélia Agel was raised in a working-class French family. She was born in Orleans but spent much of her childhood in Cahors, 90 minutes by car from the city of Toulouse, a gastronomic capital of France. Her father was a high school economics and science teacher who practiced taekwondo and wrote books on Greek mythology in his spare time. Her mother was a nurse and a judo practitioner. The family moved often, sometimes living in rough neighborhoods, like the Paris suburb of La Courneuve. Worried about their children’s safety, Agel’s parents encouraged her and her older sister to pursue martial arts. Agel took to it with gusto; she earned her first black belt in judo when she was just 14, while also studying taekwando, Chinese boxing and full-contact karate. She would go on to compete in Chinese boxing for the French national team.
As a girl, Agel hoped to become a chef. She attended culinary school until she was 17. But when cooking started to interfere with her martial arts training, she dropped it and began to drift. Her parents grew concerned. They suggested she try a course at the Campus Univers Cascades, a renowned stunt school in the north of France. Agel knew almost immediately she had found her calling. The only problem was the price tag. Eventually, the school’s director, recognizing her potential, offered her a 50 percent discount. Before long, she was attracting attention. That year, she auditioned to double Aleksandra Luss, a Russian American model and actress, for the titular role in Anna, a Luc Besson film. She took a train to Paris and three days later called the Adidas store where she’d been working in Toulouse: “I’m never coming back.”
That first year in Paris was touch and go. She was caring for her grandmother, who was slipping into the fog of Alzheimer’s, and working on Anna, all while training and doing as many auditions as she could. After a few failed attempts in France and abroad she went back to school to learn more tricks of the trade, including wire work. Eventually she got hired on Black Widow.
From there her trajectory began to soar. COVID was a bit of a hurdle in 2020, but before long she nabbed a spot in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3., where she doubled Karen Gillan in the role of Nebula. More recently, her work doubling Charlize Theron in Fast X has solidified her reputation as a skilled and versatile performer.
Her rise to stardom did have a few hiccups. Agel recalls an instance early in her career when she was repeatedly harassed on set. But instead of leading her to quit, it only made her stronger. “I could have given up for sure,” she says, “but I decided to continue because it was such a dream for me.” She attributes her ability to push through the difficulty to years of martial arts. “That gave me the mental strength.”
Half a world away, in the Canadian city of Mississauga, Howell was also growing up in a world of athleticism and ambition. His mother, like Agel’s, was a nurse; his father worked in real estate. He also began martial arts training at a young age, progressing through the belt system to become, as a young teen, one of five members of a Canadian “demo team” that traveled North America performing taekwondo for live audiences. As a young man, Howell’s fantasy was to do that forever, but when he was 16, he veered into cheerleading, making it onto Team Canada and performing at the world championships from 2011 to 2016.
Everything changed when he got a job as a knight at Medieval Times Dinner & Tournament in Toronto, where he learned how to ride a horse and fight with longswords. He began serious weight training in a “dungeon gym” with other knights and gained 25 pounds of muscle in two years. Soon he had his eye on the big screen. His first movie was a sword-and-sandal epic called Pompeii. He followed that by doubling Joel Kinnaman in 2016’s Suicide Squad and soon worked his way into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Since then, Howell has doubled for Chris Hemsworth in films such as Thor: Love and Thunder and Extraction 2.
Agel and Howell met on set in Budapest in 2021, while filming the first season of Halo. “I was doubling Master Chief and she was doubling Riz,” says Howell.
“He had a girlfriend and I was single,” says Agel, by way of response. “We were not even into each other really.”
One day, Howell asked Agel if she had a boyfriend. “I was like, ooh,” she says, “I don’t.” They started seeing more of each other and within a few months, Agel says she knew she wanted to marry him. Juggling schedules between Canada, Berlin and Australia, they managed to unite in Prague for a few months while Howell worked on the latest John Wick and they made wedding plans. They had hoped to marry in France, but there was too much
Agel and Howell have doubled (or battled) many Hollywood stars and superheroes. From left: Agel with Keanu Reeves for John Wick 4; Howell doubling Chris Hemsworth in Extraction 2; Agel doubling Karen Gillan in Guardians 3; Howell on location with Pablo Schreiber, whom he doubled in Halo; Agel doubling Charlize Theron in Fast X; Howell doubling Joel Kinnaman in Suicide Squad.
Theyseemchiseled fromthesamegranite as the superheroes they have doubled.
Agel and Howell say they want to have two children and possibly form a family stunt team down the road.
bureaucracy, so they chose Copenhagen instead. “You flew from Budapest, I flew from Italy,” Howell says to Agel. A day later, both of them were back at work in different countries again. If that globe-trotting schedule sounds hectic, it’s because it is. But neither Agel nor Howell seem shy about upping the ante even further. They want to have two children, Agel says. They’re still getting used to juggling the private and public sides of their new life together. Both of them share training routines, behind-thescenes glimpses and lifestyle content with their combined million-plus fans on Instagram and TikTok. But the couple hadn’t been together long when the internet decided it liked a bastardized version of their life instead of the real thing. They had to read unpleasant stories that simply weren’t true. They’ve promised each other to only take projects that let them prioritize their hoped-for family life and vowed to never stay apart for more than three weeks at a time. Stunt work being what it is, however, neither harbors illusions that they’ll be kicking and punching each other forever. Howell plans to transition into fight coordinating. Agel, aware that pregnancy and motherhood may affect her body’s ability to endure hard blows, hopes that projects like Love & War will help her ease into the kinds of acting roles she has begun to covet. As for kids? They’ll come along for the ride and be homeschooled, at least for the first few years. “The goal is when we have kids, we will keep traveling because it’s our work,” says Agel. “But we will have to be together.”
HONORING STUNT EXCELLENCE
Originally conceived by Red Bull founder Dietrich Mateschitz to honor the previously unsung achievements of stunt performers, the Taurus World Stunt Awards were frst held in 2001 and have been conducted every year since. Presently the awards are judged by experienced members of the stunt community and given in eight categories: Best Fight, Best High Work, Best Work with a Vehicle, Best Specialty Stunt, Best Overall Stunt by a Stuntwoman, Hardest Hit, Best Stunt Rigging and Best Stunt Coordinator or 2nd Unit Director. The organization also operates a foundation that provides fnancial assistance to stunt professionals who experience a debilitating stunt-related injury. The 2025 Taurus Awards will be held in Los Angeles on May 10.
The pair has devised bespoke tumbling sequences.
For now, at least, they are. One recent morning, the couple shared espresso and croissants at a gym in a suburb north of Paris while a couple of French parkour practitioners hovered in the wings. Agel gently encouraged Howell in his halting French as the two began to stretch. Then, for the better part of a day, they took turns throwing each other around a mat, kicking and punching their way into the other’s arms. Over time, the pair has devised and choreographed several bespoke tumbling and kicking sequences that they use professionally. Both Agel and Howell are as physically impressive in person as they are on screen. Agel can launch herself into a horizontal springing roundhouse kick and recover into a tumble on command, while Howell takes blow after punishing blow in the chest, making it look like it hurts a lot more than it apparently does, for he’s up in an instant, checking to make sure Agel is OK.
The training they’re doing here in Paris is all in the service of Hargrave’s Matchbox movie. “They’re an amazingly adorable power couple because they’re so physically imposing in an athletic way but also genuine, kind, gentle people,” says Hargrave. “It’s awesome to see that they found each other through the business and they share a passion for filmmaking, physical fitness and action stunts.”
Hargrave has big dreams for Matchbox. The bar he set for himself is already high. The 42-yearold director is possibly best known for a 21-minute, single-shot sequence in Extraction 2 that involved moving through multiple locations seamlessly, including a prison riot, a car chase and a moving train. The logistics were staggering: 400 action performers, 75 stunt crew members and 29 days of filming. To enhance the realism, most effects were done practically, including scenes where Chris Hemsworth, doubled by Howell, was set on fire during hand-to-hand combat. Hemsworth described it as the most challenging scene of his career.
Yakima Canutt revolutionized fight choreography and horse stunts in films like Stagecoach, introducing techniques that are still in use today.
With Matchbox, Hargrave wants to enlist Agel and Howell to ratchet things up a notch further. “Justin will be in some really wild spots,” says Hargrave of the upcoming project. “Like he’ll be doing some stuff that will be very memorable.” The film will mark a debut of sorts for Agel as well: For the first time in her career, she will appear as herself in a hybrid “stunt-actor” role that involves multiple elaborate fight scenes with sustained, onscreen face time as a “badass female commando,” as Hargrave describes her character. “She’ll show up at about one-minuteforty, then we’ll carry it through the whole movie up to the finale.” He adds: “She has a pretty cool big action sequence toward the end that I’m excited to feature.” It’s performances like these that Hargrave wants to draw attention to when he talks about the need to include stunts as a category in the Academy Awards. “I one hundred percent believe stunts is as deserving of an Oscar category as any other department in filmmaking,” he says. “More so than some, just to be candid.” Agel, for one, is champing at the bit to expand her repertoire. “I want to be able to play more roles, and also to produce one day.” In making Love & War, Agel and Howell may wind up with more than just a sizzling short. They’re working with a writer to draft a feature-length script and have started talking to producers. The stunt team that helped them put it together, which included some top Hollywood talent, might want to help them finish the job. “It’s been only positive for us,” says Agel. “It’s allowed us to sell our brands and to show that we can create something new.”
Perhaps inadvertently, Agel and Howell may have also created a template for their life project. After five minutes documenting them trying to hammer each other to bits, the short film concludes with the two action heroes falling into an on-screen embrace.
With some notable exceptions, this kind of high-stakes stunt work is a far cry from the days when actors of the silent era often performed the riskiest maneuvers themselves. Buster Keaton, an early pioneer, blended physical comedy with high-risk stunts in films like The General, which featured a now-iconic train chase in a time before most movies even had sound. Studios began hiring specialists for more intricate sequences; Helen Gibson, widely considered the first professional stuntwoman, gained fame in the serial The Hazards of Helen (1914–17) by leaping from moving trains and motorcycles. The transition to talkies in the 1920s brought more elaborate action sequences, requiring professional stunt performers, who often came from backgrounds in rodeo or circus, such as Tom Mix, who lent his rodeo expertise to several notable westerns. Daredevils like
“I missed you, babe,” says Howell.
“Does it mean that you still love me?” Agel replies.
Only after a steamy kiss does she deliver the coup de grâce to her on-screen foe—a final blow to seal the deal. And while mutual destruction isn’t exactly a metaphor for marriage (at least not a successful one), the inherent tension does get at something deeper. “They’re madly in love—it’s really enjoyable to watch them coexist in this world and not fight for attention,” Hargrave says. “Couples that can fight together can work through a lot of problems together. I think it’s a very special situation.”
Agel has begun pondering what the future will look like and how to wrap children into that vision. “When we have kids, I want to have a kind of a stunt team—the family team.” No word yet on when production will begin.
BLADE
Meet the men and women who have the rockclimbing skills and thirst for adventure to fix wind turbines from truly dizzying heights.
WORDS BY MARK JENKINS
PHOTOS BY JUSTIN BASTIEN
“The first time I popped open the hatch on the nacelle,” Dylan Tarrant says, referencing the cramped engine compartment located at the top of a wind turbine, “I felt like I was going from inside a submarine out onto the wing of a plane.”
Tarrant, 40, throws out his ropey arms to convey the sense of airy astonishment he experienced stepping into the sky atop a lofty turbine. He is standing in a wheat field beneath a giant wind turbine on the Rockland Wind Farm in central Idaho. All around him gargantuan white towers sprout from the rolling farmland. The turbines are all facing the same direction—into the wind—with blades spinning slowly, silently generating electricity.
“It was thrilling!” says Tarrant, a veteran rock climber. “But if you’ve spent a lot of time climbing, especially on big routes that take you way off the ground, those experiences set you up for success in this line of work.”
Tarrant looks up at the tiny human spider spinning down the blade 200 feet above. He lowers his helmet to block out the sun and smooths back his brown mustache.
“I’m always impressed with techs who don’t come from a climbing background,” he says. “It took me years to get over the shakiness that comes from big exposure—the kind of exposure we experience on turbines every day.”
Tarrant is a turbine blade technician. He grew up in Virginia but migrated to California for the outdoor life. Before this job, he was a software designer in San Francisco. “Endless screen time, endless meetings,” he recalls. “I made more than I could have imagined, but I was trading my life for money. So after four years, I quit.”
Tarrant got a job with Rope Partner, a firm that specializes in repairing wind turbine blades via rope access. “I work with a special group of people—smart, passionate, funny and hardworking,” he says. “I love working outside, being on ropes and solving problems.”
His walkie-talkie suddenly squawks. It’s Jonnie Ribera, the crew chief. She’s the one dangling from the blade far above our heads. “I’m ready for the bucket,” she says.
“Copy that.”
Tarrant runs to the base of the tower, where all their blade repair equipment is neatly organized. He begins loading the tool bucket with the equipment a tech might need to repair a blade. Before attaching the bucket to the rope, he lists for Ribera, using the walkie, every item in the bucket: “Grinder, grinder discs grit 36 to 120, grinder gloves, sander with spares, Dremel with attachments, blower, respirator, goggles, blue tape, ruler, rope pro.”
“Copy that,” replies Ribera through the scratchy walkie.
This process is called a buddy check, a routine that’s repeated throughout the day. Everything that happens, down to the smallest detail, is buddy checked. Before Ribera even climbed up inside the tower, her harness and rigging were buddy checked by her teammate.
Everything in the bucket has a lanyard, so it can’t be dropped. Tarrant pulls the bucket up to Ribera and soon the sound of her delicately boring into a hole in the blade can be heard hundreds of feet below. The damage was unusual, caused by the blades being locked in place but not facing into the wind. Ribera will spend 10 hours aloft, dangling from the ropes, preparing the blade for a foam insert fashioned to fit the hole exactly, which will be covered with a fiberglass patch and then sanded down.
the photographs in this story were
at the
Wind Farm in central Idaho. Right: Noah McIntire, who has worked as a blade tech for Rope Partner for three years.
“It’s physical work,” says Tarrant cheerfully. “After a few hours it can get uncomfortable, but you just hang in there. It takes a special kind of person to be a turbine blade technician. You have to have a certain level of grit.”
Tarrant, like everyone on this turbine tech team, is a special kind of industrial athlete. They’re not famous. They don’t demonstrate their excellence in elite competition. They don’t even post sick clips on YouTube or social. But the technically difficult and physically demanding work makes their lives pretty exciting—and it keeps the country supplied with electricity.
Humans have captured wind power for millennia. A ship under sail appears on a 3500 B.C. Egyptian vase. By the 9th century, communities in the Middle East were capturing wind to grind grain into flour and pump water for irrigation. This knowledge passed to Europe around the 12th century. Originally, the entire wooden structure, called a post mill, turned with the wind, but by the 13th century the windmill cap—a turntable with blades placed on top of a solid tower—was invented. This allowed the cap to swivel into the wind, which is called yawing.
The Dutch began using wind turbines to drain lowlying polders over 500 years ago. Early blades were composed of sailcloth stretched across a wooden lattice. The blades had to be manually pitched, or feathered, to account for varying wind speeds. By the 1800s, wooden shutters, which could be more easily feathered, had replaced sailcloth, and there were as many as 200,000 windmills across Europe. As the Industrial Revolution
All
shot
Rockland
swiftly transformed society, wind turbines began generating electricity instead of grinding grain— providing power for factory flour mills to do the job. There were 72 wind-powered electric generators in Denmark in 1908, and before Roosevelt’s Rural Electrification Administration was established in 1935, small wind turbines were generating electricity on thousands of isolated farms across the U.S.
In the 1970s, NASA, applying the science of aerodynamics, pioneered what is now standard wind turbine technology: a steel tube tower with a variablespeed generator; three blades made up of composite materials; electronic blade pitch control and automatic nacelle yawing (the turbine’s computer always positions the blades directly into the wind).
The first commercial wind farms were built in the 1980s. By 2000, the U.S. was generating 6,000 gigawatts of electricity from wind. (As a reference point, a gigawatt is enough to power roughly 10 million standard light bulbs.) Since then, wind energy has grown exponentially. In 2023, U.S. wind farms produced 425,235 gigawatts of power, supplying 10 percent of the nation’s electricity, surpassing even coal as an energy source. Wind turbines are expected to provide 35 percent of all U.S. electricity needs within 25 years. They already produce 56 percent of all electricity in Denmark, and 17 percent for all of Europe.
With all these humongous high-tech blades spinning in the wind 24/7, the job of repairing them has become essential to the fluid functioning of the grid. Like the linemen before them who once shinnied up wooden poles with metal spikes to repair electrical lines, blade techs, traveling around the country repairing blades, are becoming the unsung heroes of the information age.
“I was rock climbing a lot, but I still had a full-time job,” says Ribera, 30, the supervisor for her eight-person team in Idaho. It is evening, the light is pink, and she has rappelled to the ground after a long day in the air. “My friends were going on big climbing trips and I was working all the time.”
Ribera is lithe but sinewy, with short-cropped hair and a nose ring. She grew up in New Zealand, lived in Germany for a couple years, then came to the U.S. to rock climb. She has worked for Rope Partner for four years. “It was through rock climbing that I got into this business,” she says. “I love climbing, working with ropes, learning knots.”
These skills—plus her grit and work ethic—allowed her to move up at Rope Partner and get paid well. “You know, if you have a crummy-paying job, you have to work yearround just to make ends meet,” she says. “Now I work six months a year and play six months a year.”
Although most rope-access turbine blade technicians work only in the late spring, summer and early fall, Ribera says she has worked straight through winter two years in a row. “The coldest I’ve ever been in my life was working in Pennsylvania in the winter.”
Blade techs can only work when the weather is dry, the temperature is above freezing and the wind is blowing less than about 25 miles per hour—so they make hay while the sun shines. “There have been times when we worked for thirteen 12-hour days straight,” she says. “We just work, eat, sleep.”
A particular set of skills: Members of the eight-person repair team working this rotation at Rockland Wind Farm include (clockwise from above) crew chief Jonnie Ribera, Robert Williams and Xavier Brabeck.
Blade techs for Rope Partner do five-week tours of duty, followed by two weeks off, then start the next tour. If they’re lucky they can do four or five tours a year. The hourly wage is $25 to $50 an hour, but because they work so much overtime, often logging 80 to 100 hours a week, which pays time-and-a-half or even double-time, these techs can make a year’s salary in six months. “It’s hard but it’s fun,” Ribera says. “I love the people I work with.”
She has repaired wind turbine blades all over the U.S., often going rock climbing at a local crag during her break between tours. It’s still a male-dominated field, but she hasn’t experienced much gender discrimination, and none from her colleagues at Rope Partner.
“One time in Nebraska when I was on ground support, a farmer drove his truck right into the hazard zone and I politely asked him to move,” she recalls. “He responded, ‘What’s the hazard—a woman working?’ When I said flatly ‘no,’ he asked if the tech up on the ropes was my husband. I said ‘no,’ then he asked if I was married. I said ‘no’ again, then he asked me if I was looking to get married. Ach! Now that I’m the one on the ropes, I never get asked if my work partner is my husband!”
Despite all the latent risks of being so far off the ground, she says that nothing serious has ever happened to her. “The safety precautions are so rigorous at Rope Partner, I’ve never even heard of a rescue being needed,” Ribera says. “Of course, a minor cut or bruise, and fatigue, come with the job. This work has actually made me a much safer, much more cautious rock climber.”
When asked which state she has enjoyed working in most, Ribera says “Maybe New York, and Massachusetts, but here in Idaho, too. I enjoy every location for different reasons.” She pauses, looking out at the setting sun, clearly pondering all the places she has worked.
Then her eyes light up. “No place was like Block Island, off the coast of Rhode Island,” she says. “I was working on an offshore wind farm. It took us 45 minutes to get there by boat. It was just this endless expanse of blue ocean.”
Ribera explains that oftentimes when she was up high at work, a bank of clouds would roll in underneath her and even the ocean would disappear, leaving her floating above the earth. “There’s a strange phenomenon, which I’ve only seen a couple times, where the shadow of the turbine on the blanket of clouds creates this little rainbow, and you can see the shadow of yourself inside it,” she says, segueing to another memory of life above that offshore wind farm. “I was up there, just yawing about on a perfectly clear day, the ocean vastness all around me. Suddenly, directly below me, I saw a flicker and realized I was staring down at a whale breaching. That’s probably the coolest thing that’s ever happened to me on ropes.”
There are 44 turbines at the Rockland Wind Farm, each of which can generate 2.0 megawatts of electricity per day, enough to provide all the electrical needs of a town with 2,000 homes. This electricity is sold to Idaho Power. Investors put up the money to build the farm with a multidecade, multimillion-dollar loan. The land is owned privately by farmers, and they get a cut of the profits. The turbines were built by Vestas, a Danish company and one of the world’s original wind turbine manufacturers. Vestas does all the turbine maintenance, but the blade repair work is contracted to Rope Partner.
Techs typically work ground support for a time before they head up on ropes.
Opposite: Ribera repairs a blade hundreds of feet off the ground. Like many techs, she’s an experienced climber.
“Just like in the military, every operation on a wind farm has a strict protocol,” says Stephen Slack, 48, operations manager for Rockland Wind Farm. He’s sitting in his field office surrounded by monitors displaying real-time data from all 44 turbines. Slack has worked in the wind business for 23 years, ever since he finished his last tour with the U.S. Army, 82nd Airborne.
“Things have changed a lot in the past 20 years,” he says, offering an example from the old days. “We were hauling a bag of bolts up to the nacelle. I was standing under it, which you can no longer do—now you have to haul from the safety zone—and a little bolt fell out and hit my hard hat,” he says, wincing. “It knocked me flat on the ground. Made me see stars.”
Slack says such an incident could never happen with Rope Partner. “Their safety precautions are the top in the industry. They come here with a highly qualified team, bring their own rigging and top-of-the-line equipment, cut a hole in the blade, take parts out, put them back in exactly like the manufacturer designed it, then fiberglass over it and sand the blade back to its exact original shape. They do beautiful work.”
Given all the meticulous rope work and rigging required to accomplish a relatively small task, one might wonder aloud if it might be cheaper to bring a blade down to the ground and fix it there. When asked about that, Slack vehemently shakes his head.
“You know how much it costs to get a blade on the ground?” he asks. “You’d have to use one of the bigger cranes in the world, and you have to get it here, and then it’s no easy task lowering a 160-foot blade to the ground.” He rubs his face. “That would cost $1 million, minimum. Rope Partner can do it for a quarter of the money.”
Slack says that the Rockland Wind Farm generally runs at 97.5 percent availability—the time the turbine actually runs against the total possible time that the turbine can run. When a turbine isn’t running—for instance, when it’s being repaired—it’s not generating electricity, which means it’s not making money. “The faster you can get the repair done, the faster the turbine is back online.”
Modern turbines are fully computerized, automatically yawing the blades into the wind and feathering the blades to maximize energy production. They produce electricity when the wind is blowing anywhere from 6 to 44 mph. Extreme weather—mostly lightning and hail—is what typically damages a blade.
“The blades are 160 feet long, which means the rotor sweep is almost 350 feet,” Slack says. “We’re advancing technology every year. Turbines are becoming bigger and more efficient; blades are getting longer.”
Experts who track the wind industry expect the size of wind turbines to increase by 60 percent in the coming years, which will substantially increase power generation. “And these blades will get damaged,” Slack says. “They’re standing up there in the wind and the weather 24/7, and we’ll need blade techs to fix them.”
It’s 7 a.m. at the Rockland Wind Farm. Inside a hangar, the techs rub the sleep from their eyes. Some of them worked until 9 p.m. last night and then got up at 5 a.m. They are all staying in a hotel in Pocatello.
There is a safety briefing every morning. Noah McIntire is leading the discussion today. Short but
“It was through rock climbing that I got into this business,” says Ribera, the veteran blade tech, shown working at the offce at right. “It’s hard but it’s fun.”
athletes.”
“The truth is, we are athletes—industrial
powerfully built, with a curly mustache, he’s just 24 but has been working for Rope Partner for three years. Because the techs have been putting in such long hours, today’s safety briefing is about physical fatigue.
“It comes down to body position,” explains McIntire. “If you’re in the wrong position, straining to scarf or sand, you’re putting unnecessary stress on your body. You need to reposition—find the place where you feel comfortable and capable of being efficient.”
He could be advising a dancer, rock climber or kayaker. Body position is everything in these sports. Athletes in such disciplines have to be conscious of their muscles, bones and tendons. Climbers are always straining finger tendons; kayakers can wear out their shoulders; dancers, like skiers, can destroy their knees or ankles. That’s why these techs repeatedly practice the right positions—to develop muscle memory and avoid injury.
In the same vein, Rope Partner works to prevent overuse and repetitive motion injuries. The company issues an ergonomics kit to all rope techs, supplies foam rollers and yoga mats for maintenance and provides health insurance for everyone. (Blade techs get insurance year-round, even when they’re not working.)
“You can’t just go at it hard every day, day after day, without breaking down,” says McIntire emphatically. “You have to look after yourself.”
When techs are hanging on a rope, they use suction cups and guylines attached to a “ringline” (which circles the blade) to move themselves from one location on the blade to another. “OK, so you’ve been up there all day and your body’s hurting, and you still have an hour’s worth of work. What should you do?” McIntire asks.
Answers spring from the techs. “Readjust your seat.” “Readjust your harness.” “Use the ringline effectively.” “Ascend or descend to a better working position.”
“Exactly,” he responds. “All of it. Because what happens if you get too fatigued? You start making mistakes.”
This conversation reminds me of many discussions I’ve had with less-experienced climbers on the world’s biggest mountains—Everest, Aconcagua, Denali—who didn’t know their own bodies and would insist on pushing until they became incapacitated. Often a teammate, or sometimes a Sherpa, would have to rescue them. And sometimes their stubbornness would get them killed. Mountaineering is a mortal sport that abides no big mistakes. So too the high-wire act of turbine techs. McIntire makes this connection too. “The truth is, we are athletes—industrial athletes,” he says. “But we’re not after adventure. We are hyperfocused on safety and getting the job done. The ethos of the company is built on communication and constant risk management.”
Roald Amundsen, the great Norwegian explorer and the first man to reach the South Pole, once said: “Adventure is just bad planning.” Amundsen believed that success came from being well prepared, anticipating difficulties and having solutions already mapped out.
McIntire got a scholarship to play lacrosse at a Vermont college; he was planning to major in environmental
science. Then COVID hit. “I was trying to balance athletics with organic chemistry on a computer at home,” he says. “There was no way I was able to retain the information.” So he dropped out and joined Rope Partner. First he completed the intensive one-week SPRAT (Society of Professional Rope Access Technicians) certification. Then, like all prospective techs, he did some time as an apprentice. Typically, techs do ground support at the base of towers before tackling any larger repairs. “It was exciting,” says McIntire. “I wanted to be one of those badasses hanging from the ropes. But they drill that out of you—there is a protocol you have to follow precisely.”
On the job, techs must wear a helmet, safety glasses and gloves. They learn to follow OSHA policy for inside the turbine and on the ground, and follow SPRAT protocol when on ropes. “After all the training, it really wasn’t that scary going off the nose cone the first time,” he says. “I knew exactly what I had to do, and I did it.”
Turbine techs can’t fully rely on 911 if something goes wrong. No fire department or search-and-rescue team could reach them in a timely manner. Until the EMTs arrive, they are their own backup. “It’s just like having a climbing partner,” says McIntire. “There’s this trust. You put your life in the hands of your partner, and your partner puts his or her life in your hands.”
On this reporter’s final day, after a week shadowing this crew, Robert Williams rappels down off the tower at the end of the day. The evening light is soft and golden. He is silhouetted against the darkening sky, and he lets out a cowboy whoop, as if he were riding a bull. When his feet touch the ground, he roars, “Goddamn I love this job!”
Later that night I share a couple pints of beer with Williams, 35, a proud Texan. He hails from Sweetwater, a little town smack in the middle of the Lone Star State. “I could have a job at home, man, but I just have the itch, you know,” he says. “To git out and see the country.”
Williams has worked in the wind industry for 15 years but only the last two in blade repair. He’s been to 48 states. He has three kids—two teenagers from his first marriage and a newborn with his girlfriend. Williams is not a climber. He likes to fish. He likes to spend his time off taking his two older kids camping by the lake. He works for Rope Partner because it’s hard work. “If it was easy, I wouldn’t want to do it,” he says. “I want to feel like I’ve done something at the end of the day. If you don’t have a work ethic, you’re not going to be on the rope. You’ve got to be motivated. I couldn’t punch the clock.”
When asked to describe his best moments on the job, he laughs. “Listen, it’s work, man. I can’t say anything fun happens on the blade. But I see every sunset. There’s always a moment in the evening when I look around and know that almost nobody in the world gets that view.”
Williams takes a gulp of his beer, ponders what he’s just said, then shares his Texas philosophy of life. “We all have a choice,” he proclaims. “If you don’t like where you are, or where you’re going—hell, steer away. You are the captain of your own ship.”
FRESH & FRUITY
Want something berry delicious? Then enjoy this nonalcoholic cocktail featuring the new Red Bull Pink Edition Wild Berries, available with and without sugar.
RECIPE
FEELIN’ BERRY PINK
Ingredients:
12 blueberries
4 basil leaves
1.5 oz fresh squeezed lemon juice
¹/2 a blood orange, juiced
1.5 oz cream of coconut
1.5 oz water
Basil sprig Red Bull Pink Edition
Wild Berries (Regular or Sugarfree)
Directions:
In a shaker, muddle 8 blueberries. Tap your basil to release the oils and drop in. Add lemon, blood orange and cream of coconut with water. Shake with ice for 10 seconds and strain over fresh ice. Top with Red Bull Pink Edition Wild Berries and tumble twice to combine. Garnish with a few blueberries and a fresh basil sprig.
TIP: Add your water to your cream of coconut and stir to avoid separation.
Jason Michelson
SPRING 2025
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DEFY GRAVITY
“Everyone has their passion. For me, it’s fying.”
Last October, Austrian wingsuit pilot Peter Salzmann broke multiple world records with a groundbreaking fight in the Swiss Alps. Jumping off a snowy ledge at an elevation of 13,300 feet while using a revolutionary foil that improves glide performance, Salzmann sailed 7.7 miles. Thanks to
that foil, developed with support from the Formula 1 wizards at Red Bull Advanced Technologies, Salzmann was able to stay aloft for nearly six minutes. “When I’m on the ground, I long for what I can’t do,” Salzmann says. “Everyone has their passion. For me, it’s fying.”
