Populous 11

TAYLOR SWIFT FROM NASHVILLE TO NEW DELHI TO NANJING: WHY COUNTRY MUSIC IS GOING GLOBAL

11

PopArt In tribute to the 2014 FIFA World Cup, staff at Populous’s London office were invited to design their own artistic soccer balls. Here are the results.

The clear favourite – as voted for by employees – was Huw Rennie’s Black Heart (main image).

02 welcome

Hello The money-earning potential of athletes and entertainers fascinates us all. So consider this: the highest-earning music artist in the world last year wasn’t Beyoncé, or Rihanna, or Justin Bieber. Not even Madonna or the Rolling Stones. According to music magazine Billboard’s annual Money Makers rich list, the performer bringing home the most cash was pop-country giant Taylor Swift. Nearly 10 million downloads, fifth-highest in terms of streaming royalties, eighth-highest when it comes to album sales. I think you’ll agree these are healthy figures. But it was her live touring that was most impressive of all, bringing in a staggering US$30 million.

So how did country music become such a major cultural phenomenon?

Our lead feature this issue uncovers the secrets of this quintessentially American genre, with all its twanging guitars, chord progressions, narrative lyrics, and its ability to pack enormous arenas all over the Western world.

Even more popular in terms of spectators is the sport of soccer, and one of our key articles this issue addresses the rise and rise of Major League Soccer in the USA. Already, among US teenagers, soccer has overtaken ice hockey in popularity and, perhaps unbelievably, is now on the cusp of overtaking Major League Baseball as well.

We also have stories on the brutally violent Italian sport known as calcio storico, the amazing attempt to reach 1,000mph in the land speed record, and the surf parks that give land-locked surfers the chance to ride big waves. Plus the 21-year-old motorcycling champion Marc Marquez, and the bizarre world of memory competitions.

One thing we never lack in Populous magazine is variety. Enjoy reading.

Tel: +44 (0) 20 8874 7666 Email: popmag@populous.com Web: www.populous.com Editor-in-chief: Rod Sheard Editorial team: Nick Reynolds Michelle Morgan Chris Lee Populous magazine is published by: Alma Media International London, United Kingdom Tel: +44 (0) 20 8944 1155 Email: info@almamedia.co.uk Web: www.almamedia.co.uk Publisher: Tony Richardson tony@almamedia.co.uk Editor: Dominic Bliss dominic@almamedia.co.uk Art direction and design: Deep www.deep.co.uk Images: Cover: Getty Images Getty Images Cybathlon Games Trevor Meeks photography RedBull Media Bloodhound SSC Repsol Honda racing Pierre Sheard Back Cover: Kevin Freeman / Baylor Lariat photographer © Alma Media International Ltd 2014 All material is strictly copyright and all rights are reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without the written permission of Alma Media International is strictly forbidden.

The greatest care has been taken to ensure the accuracy of information in this magazine at the time of going to press, but we accept no responsibility for omissions or errors. The views expressed in this magazine are not necessarily those of Alma Media International or Populous.

TAYLOR SWIFT From Nashville to New Delhi aND beyoND: why couNtry music has the legs to ruN aND ruN

McLanE StadiuM, BayLOr univErSity, tExaS

Rod Sheard 11

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contents 03

START

Contents 4

LEFT FIELD

Great innovations in the design of sports products and equipment.

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MAKING WAVES

6

ANOTHER COUNTRY

Taylor Swift and other country music stars are now just as popular as their mainstream pop peers.

Here’s the story of how country music went global.

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MAYDAY!

10

THE WALL

It’s the high jump for horses. Louise Parkes explains the bizarre intricacies of the equestrian discipline called puissance.

20

DESERT STORM

They twist, they turn, they loop, they skim the water, sometimes they crash... all at over 250mph. These are the insane Red Bull Air Races.

Land speed record-holder Andy Green explains how he plans to jet-propel himself at 1,000mph across a dried-up African lake.

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28

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FROM MINOR TO MAJOR

A new poll puts soccer on level pegging with baseball in terms of popularity among US teenagers. Joe Boyle analyses the commercial and cultural reasons for Major League Soccer’s meteoric growth.

22

THE MARC OF A CHAMPION

MotoGP racer Marc Marquez is unstoppable.

World champion in his rookie season last year, he’s pretty much guaranteed victory in 2014, too. What are his secret weapons?

FINISH

Who needs an ocean?

New technology means surf parks can be built in cities, in landlocked countries, even indoors. Could the Olympic Games be next?

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A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE

Head-butting, choking, breaking noses and causing havoc while dressed in medieval clothing. Discover Florence’s annual sporting event calcio storico.

GOING OFF PISTE

Populous’s Elizabeth Miglierina explains how the speed and danger she experiences in downhill skiing have helped her in the more radical aspects of stadium design.

TOTAL RECALL

Random words, numbers, names, faces, dates and images… competitors in memory championships have to memorise all these and more. How – and why – do they do it?

32

POP HISTORY

The Australian rules football final that ended 68 points apiece and had to be replayed.

04 Left Field

LEFT FIELD

THE DESIGN OF SPORTS PRODUCTS AND EQUIPMENT IS EVOLVING FASTER THAN EVER. HERE WE INTRODUCE YOU TO SOME OF THE MOST EXCITING INNOVATIONS.

ROBOCOP VS THE SiX MILLION DOLLAR MAN Call it the bionic Olympics, if you like. When a new sports event called the Cybathlon takes place for the first time, in the Swiss city of Zurich, in October 2016, many of the athletes taking part will be kitted out like Robocop or The Six Million Dollar Man – with exoskeletons, prosthetic limbs, powered wheelchairs, and electric muscle stimulators. Like the Paralympics, they will have some form of disability. But unlike the Paralympics, they will be permitted any high-tech robotic assistance that science can dream up.

Organised by Swiss robotics researchers, and due to be staged in an ice hockey venue called the Kolping Arena, the games will feature events such as disabled

cycling, walking races in exoskeletons, and powered wheelchair races. There will even be a race for competitors paralysed from the neck down who will control a virtual athlete via a headset that connects their brains to a computer. Medals will be awarded both to winning athletes and the scientists behind the technology.

In charge of the event is Professor Robert Riener, an expert in sensory-motor systems at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. He hopes the Cybathlon will increase public interest in the technology available to disabled people. “We want to push development of assistive technologies towards devices that patients can really use in everyday life,” he told the BBC. “We allow

technology that has previously been excluded from the Paralympics. By making it a public event we want to get rid of the borders between patients, society and the technology community.”

Tickets for the event will be available in early 2016.

The Cybathlon will feature events such as disabled cycling, walking races in exoskeletons, and powered wheelchair races.

LEFT FIELD 05

ATHLETIC tHUMBS It’s the new Sky Sports or ESPN for video games. Twitch, a streaming website that allows fans of video games to watch other gamers playing live, has just been purchased by Amazon for US$970 million.

Back in the 1970s, when video games were first invented, you used to get hordes of little kids watching over the shoulder of one big kid as he blasted Space Invaders in the amusement arcades. Twitch is the modern-day equivalent of this, albeit on a far grander scale.

The San Francisco-based webcaster enjoys more than 55 million visitors every month who watch intently as over a million skilled gamers – playing enormously popular games such as League of Legends, World of Warcraft, Minecraft and the FIFA series – broadcast their exploits live via the website, commentating (often very inanely)

on how they perform. Twitch also broadcasts live e-sports tournaments. The most popular gamers on the website earn money when viewers subscribe, or from tips given to them via Paypal, or through advertisements on their web pages.

All of which means they are technically professional sportsmen. Instead of earning a living by running or striking balls, they are using their thumbs to shoot enemy soldiers or blow up monsters.

Right now on Twitch, as you watch geeky teenagers in their bedrooms (and yes, most of them are), twiddling joysticks and swearing at dragons, you may struggle to understand the popularity of this phenomenon. But e-sports are on the rise. In the United States, at peak times, Twitch has more web traffic than Facebook. Other popular services that broadcast live gaming

include YouTube, Hitbox.tv, Ustream, GamingLive.tv and Pivotshare.

The most successful professional gamers are revered just like global soccer, tennis or golf stars. Lionel Messi, Roger Federer, Tiger Woods and co. had better watch out. One day very soon they risk being eclipsed by e-sportsmen altogether.

Lionel Messi, Roger Federer, Tiger Woods and co. had better watch out.

One day very soon they risk being eclipsed by e-sportsmen altogether.

06 COUNTRY MUSIC

Taylor Swift in full country mode back in 2013.

COUNTRY MUSIC 07

COUNTRY MUSIC While traditional country musicians may only sell within the US, younger singers – led by Taylor Swift – are bringing the uniquely American genre to the world. John Lewis finds out how country music is going global.

TAYLOR SWIFT IS ONLY 23 years old and, already, she earns close to US$40 million a year in the US alone. She may not be the world’s topselling artist in terms of album sales, downloads and streaming royalties but where she blasts all other rivals off the stage is with concert revenue stream. According to Billboard magazine, she earned $30 million in 2013 thanks to her sell-out Red Tour. And with a new album due for October 2014, her star looks set to rise even higher.

Second on Billboard’s rich list of music stars is another country superstar, Kenny Chesney, with total earnings of $32 million.

Other high-earning stars from the same genre include Luke Bryan ($22m), Jason Aldean ($17m), George Strait ($16m) and Blake Shelton ($10m). Country music might be a fringe concern in most areas of the world – its releases tucked away alongside the classical, jazz and

blues albums – but, in the USA, this genre is absolutely massive, the de facto pop music for huge swathes of the white, blue-collar population.

Country & western music used to be dismissed as something that appealed only to an ageing, impoverished, largely male demographic, limited to a few southern and Midwestern states.

However, statistics seem to defy such stereotypes.

A 2011 survey conducted by CMA market research found that country fans are younger, richer, more educated and more tech-savvy than ever.

Half of all Americans earning more than $100,000 a year are country fans. Most country fans are aged between 35 and 44, and around half are women.

Country music has been a major genre for more than 60 years, but it hasn’t always travelled well outside of its American heartland.

In the 1960s and 1970s the old kings and queens

of country – Kenny Rogers, Dolly Parton, Tammy Wynette, Kris Kristofferson, Johnny Cash, Jim Reeves, Slim Whitman, George Jones – had big hits in Europe, Japan and Australia, and could be guaranteed to sell out arenas from Manchester to Melbourne, from Trondheim to Tokyo. Kenny Rogers can still headline huge arenas anywhere on earth, while Dolly Parton was the unlikely star of 2014’s Glastonbury, playing to a crowd of around 100,000 at the UK’s most famous countercultural festival, and watched by millions more on live TV. “What all the great country stars have always understood is that country music is about telling stories,” says Kris Kristofferson.

“It’s about connecting with universal emotions.

That’s why it appeals to people all over the world.”

Country singers used to wear their big, broken hearts on their sleeves, and their >>

08 COUNTRY MUSIC

A survey found that country fans are younger, richer, more educated and more tech-savvy than ever.

Half of all Americans earning more than $100,000 a year are country fans.

songs were a litany of jilted love. The standard joke was that, if you played a country song backwards, your dog would come back to life, you’d get your job back, and your wife would fall in love with you again.

But then country music changed. In the past few decades Nashville has become home to a slick, industrialised brand of pop music, one where the twangy guitars and story-telling lyrics survived, but where the desolate soundscapes, the fiddles, the pedal steel guitars,

and the killer harmonies all but disappeared. In the last couple of decades, even the lyrical content has started to change.

Nowadays, even that heartache has vanished from the music. If you listen to the beered-up, truck-loving ‘bro-country’ of Luke Bryan, Florida Georgia Line or Blake Shelton, whatever way round you play them, you learn pretty much the same story: pick-up trucks are great; drinkin’ and partyin’ are fun; chicks are hot; America is great; and anyone who says otherwise sucks.

“Country music used to be universal,” says Steve Earle, one of the more politicised country singers who emerged in the 1970s. “But a lot of the new music that comes out of Nashville is about American exceptionalism. It stresses the difference between America and the rest of the world. That’s why it doesn’t export so well.”

This exceptionalism didn’t matter to Nashville, because ‘bro-country’ and its other latter-day variants still sold by the pick-up truckload on home turf. A band from Ohio called Rascal Flatts can sell five million albums to the US market in a year – outselling even the biggest rock/pop artists in the world such as Coldplay or The Killers – and still walk naked through the streets of any European city safe in the knowledge that no one would recognise

Luke Bryan in concert.

them. In the past decade Toby Keith has sold 40 million albums, aided by gung-ho Tea Party anthems such as Truck Drivin’ Man, The Taliban Song, and The Angry American, yet he doesn’t get anywhere near the Top 100 in any country outside North America.

Some of the more clued-up country stars are starting to address this transatlantic divide. Country rock’s Eric Church – whose music sounds closer to heavy rock than to country – has been assiduously courting the European market. So have The Cadillac Three (marketed as ‘the Nashville Nirvana’), classy country-pop trio Lady Antebellum, and Arkansas singer-songwriter Joe Nichols, who’ve all toured everywhere from Japan to Croatia. Brad Paisley, a shrewd, old-school country star who has collaborated with the likes of Alison Krauss, Don Henley and even LL Cool J, is starting to cross over to mainstream radio stations in Europe. Garth Brooks, a negligible presence outside of North America, caused a major political scandal in 2014 when local residents forced him to cancel a five-night sold-out run at Dublin’s 80,000-capacity Croke Park stadium.

That means close to one tenth of the Irish population were going to see him.

Country’s most obvious recent success story is Taylor Swift, who certainly emerged from the Nashville machine. Although, sonically, her music bears only the most tangential relationship to country music, worldwide smashes like I Knew You Were Trouble and We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together show she’s not afraid to wear her heart on her sleeve. “She does what the best country music does,” says Kristofferson, who has played live with Swift. “She tells stories in song. She’s got that country vibe.”

The acclaimed ABC television drama series Nashville certainly taps into that vibe. It extrapolates those storytelling lyrics into a fullyfledged soap opera, complete with Dallas-style tales of love, betrayal, political intrigue and family feuds. It also, rather cleverly, represents the different, competing strains of country music.

Rayna James, played by Connie Britton, is the

COUNTRY MUSIC 09

last of the old-school country & western stars, loosely modelled on Bonnie Raitt or Reba McEntire.

Juliette Barnes, played by Hayden Panettiere, is the young pop-country starlet, pitched somewhere between Taylor Swift and Carrie Underwood.

Running alongside the trad and modern battle are Scarlett O’Connor (played by Clare Bowen) and her musical partner Gunnar Scott (Sam Palladio), who represent alt-country artists like Neko Case or The Civil Wars.

It shows that country music is something both very American but utterly universal. Its very navel-gazing parochialism is what makes it universal. Whatever your musical tastes, Nashville has something for you.

BY A COUNTRY MILE Pop-country artist Taylor Swift leads the pack when it comes to total earnings. In 2013 she put away an impressive US$39.7 million, more than any other music artist in the USA. In fact, as you see, country singers fare very well on the list of the top money-makers in music.

$40m

Populous-designed venues such as London’s O2 Arena, Houston’s NRG Stadium and Taiwan’s Taipei Arena all hosted Taylor Swift’s recent record-breaking world tour.

“What all the great country stars have always understood is that country music is about telling stories.”

Taylor Swift

$39m

Kenny Chesney

$32m Justin Timberlake

$31m $30m

Bon Jovi

$29m

KRIS KRISTOFFERSON

The Rolling Stones

$26m Beyoncé

$24m

Luke Bryan

$22m

Maroon 5

$22m P!nk

$20m $20m

Fleetwood Mac

$19m Jason Aldean

Justin Bieber

Bruno Mars

One Direction

$18m

$18m

$18m

$17m George Strait

$16m Dave Matthews Band

$13m

Jay-Z

$15m

Michael Bublé

$14m

Mumford & Sons

$14m

Rihanna

$13m

$10m

Taylor Swift earns $30 million a year in concert revenue alone.

Country

Rock

Folk

Pop

R&B

Hip hop

[Figures courtesy of Billboard magazine.]

10 SHOWJUMPING

SHOWJUMPING 11

WALL THE SHOWJUMPING

The little known but spectacular equestrian sport of puissance sees horses leaping over ridiculously high fences. Louise Parkes explains the skills involved.

This is showjumping at its most extreme. In puissance competitions, riders and their horses leap fences and a red-brick wall that, just as in human high jumping, is raised after each round. The puissance world record was set in Belgium in 1991 when the German Olympic champion showjumper Franke Sloothaak, riding Leonardo, cleared 2.4 metres (7ft 10ins).

Approach

During the approach, the horse has a strong, short, active canter stride, its body compacted. The rider is balanced and driving forward.

mouth. The ligaments attached to the back of the horse’s cannon bones (below the knee on the front legs and below the hock on the hind legs) must bear an enormous weight load.

Preparation for takeoff

Jump

The rider sits deep, while the horse transfers its weight to its hocks (the bending joints in the hind legs) and its stifles (the hind joints near the top of the thighs).

Takeoff

In order to generate power for the jump, the horse engages its hips, stifles, hocks, fetlocks, and lower back. Its front legs begin the upward trajectory, and its skeletal frame is arched. The rider ensures his weight is off the horse’s back, and that there is minimum interference with the horse’s

Showjumping horses often weigh more than half a tonne. As they power upwards and forwards, their skeletal frames must stretch and open. Their hind legs are positioned to create a frog-like springing action. The rider sits still.

Flight

As it soars over the fence, the horse’s body curves so that it can clear the top of the obstacle. It draws its front legs up towards its body, while its hind legs move out and away from the body so as not to strike the fence.

PREPARATION FOR LANdinG

The horse shifts its weight forward, preparing its front legs to absorb the shock of the landing. The hind legs return to their normal position.

The rider sits up to take his weight off the front end of the horse.

Landing

The front fetlock joints touch the ground, placing tremendous strain on the superficial digital flexor tendons that run down the back of the legs. The hind legs move into position to transfer weight more evenly across the body.

Recovery and getaway

The hind end begins bearing weight again. The hind fetlock joints take the strain as the horse prepares to return to normal self-carriage.

Populous has created venues to host equestrian events around the world including the equestrian stadium for the London 2012 Olympics.

2.4m

2.45m

1.85m

3m 2m 1m

German showjumper Franke Sloothaak, riding Leonardo, set the world record for puissance in 1991.

The men’s high-jump world record was set by Javier Sotomayor in 1993.

Land Rover Range Rover

12

SOCCER

SOCCER 13

froM MINOR

to majOR SOCCER A new poll puts soccer on level pegging with baseball in terms of popularity among US teenagers. Joe Boyle analyses the commercial and cultural reasons FOR Major League Soccer’S METEORIC GROWTH.

Very few of the millions of World Cup fans around the world had heard of DeAndre Yedlin when he came on as a substitute for USA in their knock-out game against Belgium in Brazil in July 2014. Ninety minutes and a dozen lightning streaks down the right wing later, half of Europe’s top clubs were queuing up to sign him.

The performance of Yedlin, the athleticism, panache and spirit of his teammates, and the sight of packed bars back home all contributed to one of the World Cup’s most compelling narratives: USA was becoming a soccer nation.

In fact, amongst the young, it already is.

Major League Soccer (MLS) is catching up on the more established American sports. In March 2014, the ESPN Sports Poll Annual Report revealed that 18 per cent of 12 to 17- yearolds consider themselves fans of MLS – the same percentage as for Major League Baseball, and more than double for National Hockey League.

This idea of youthful engagement was crystallised in Yedlin. He was talented, he was young and he was a product of the youth academy at Seattle Sounders FC. It was this last point that made Yedlin so totemic for the administrators of MLS. Here was proof the MLS project was starting to bear succulent fruit.

The World Cup in Brazil has been acclaimed as the moment the US “got” soccer.

Almost 197,000 tickets for the tournament were bought by Americans, topped only by Brazilians.

Nearly 25 million people watched the US group game against Portugal, the most watched match in the team’s history.

No one within MLS’s New York headquarters would deny the World Cup’s significance. What they would deny is that MLS’s strategy for growth was built around the tournament. The foundations were more solid than that. One example: on the evening of July 13th 2014, a few hours after Germany had lifted the World Cup trophy, 64,000 soccer fans turned up at Seattle’s CenturyLink Field to watch Sounders FC – boasting Yedlin and Clint Dempsey – beat Portland Timbers 2-nil. Not many matches around the world get attendances like that.

So, yes, the World Cup has provided a boost, but MLS’s growth predates Brazil. There are many facets to a successful league. Dan Courtemanche, executive vice-president at MLS, says the league has identified four: economic viability; a passionate fan base; clubs with local, national and international profiles; and worldclass players.

It is the last of these that predominates.

“During the last 12 months,” says Courtemanche, “our owners made some major commitments to sign players we would describe as ‘difference makers’ – guys we believed would be going to Brazil.” >>

14

SOCCER

Courtemanche points to the likes of Michael Bradley and Clint Dempsey who returned to MLS before playing key roles in Brazil. Even players who didn’t make it, such as Landon Donovan, David Villa and Jermain Defoe, were signed to MLS in the expectation they would appear in the tournament, in some cases under different flags. As a result, MLS was represented by 22 different players on seven different national teams – the ninth-best represented league in the tournament.

“The performance in Brazil is further validation of the increasing quality of our league,” says Courtemanche. “But we need to strive to continue to get world-class talent. David Villa [who will play for the newly formed New York

City FC when they join the league in 2015] is still a fantastic player but can we get him in his 20s rather than when he is 31?”

This is why the return of Bradley, aged 26, to Toronto FC, after spells playing in Germany and Italy, was viewed as so significant. It offered a counterblast to claims that MLS is simply a final chance for ageing pros to earn a final pay cheque. (Though Bradley is paid plenty.) Equally important was the message it sent younger players, emerging from the club’s academies: the MLS is a league where top players at the height of their abilities can forge a career.

In 2007, clubs were mandated to establish an academy. Six teams did so in that year. By 2012, the expansion was such that US$20 million

an ESPN report revealed that 18 per cent of 12 to 17-year-olds consider themselves fans of MLS – the same percentage as for Major League Baseball.

Fans back home cheer on Team USA during the 2014 World Cup.

The kids can kick Which rising stars of the MLS can we expect to see shining brightest in the future?

Luis Gil

Wil Trapp

Born: Nov 14th 1993 Club: Real Salt Lake Position: midfield Only just out of his teens, Gil has been in the Salt Lake team since 2010, cementing his place and reputation as a goal-scoring, attacking midfielder in 2013. He has played for the national side from under-17 all the way up the age ranges, and made his debut in the senior side in a friendly against South Korea in February 2014.

Born: Jan 15th 1993 Club: Columbus Crew Position: midfield Only into his second full season with the Crew, Trapp is being talked up as the natural inheritor of Kyle Beckerman’s place in the USA national side. A defensive midfielder, Trapp has been praised for his positional sense, his ability to anticipate danger, and his consistently high pass-completion stats. He may not be the most creative, but he’s the cog at the heart of his side’s engine.

SOCCER 15 was being spent on academies. They serve a double purpose. They produce talent but they also help cement clubs within their communities – a relationship that is the hallmark of Europe’s top soccer leagues. “Our relationship with the youth soccer clubs around the state of Washington is very strong,” says Chris Henderson, sporting director at Seattle Sounders FC. “We work with clubs, we get out in the community, we identify players. And I think the coaches feel a connection to the Sounders as the pro club in the area.”

Attracting top players (the wage cap and its associated loopholes remain controversial), and developing young talent in free, permanentlystaffed, professional academies does not come cheap. It explains the celebrations when MLS sealed an eight-year television and media rights deals with ESPN, Fox Sports and Univision Deportes Network. There will now be a consistent day and time for broadcasting MLS matches, as is routine in major European soccer leagues and the more established US sports. “It’s now so easy for kids to watch games,” says Henderson.

“You can catch a live game almost every day from around the world. Kids can see a game at the highest level, and then go out in the park and play some pick-up soccer.”

Many hope American soccer will breach international boundaries in a way the country’s most popular sport, American football, never could. “We are the sport for the new America,” insists Courtemanche. “It’s young, it’s diverse, it’s digital. They’re consuming it on their tablets, on their mobile phones. That younger generation is part of a global community. A young adult in Brooklyn may have as much in common with someone in Lisbon as they do with their neighbour down the street in Brooklyn. Soccer’s been embraced by the younger generation.

This World Cup helped it break through to mainstream America.”

“Soccer is the sport for the new America.

It’s young, it’s diverse, it’s digital. This World Cup helped it break through to mainstream America.”

Dan Courtemanche, from the MLS

Populous has created new soccer stadia for MLS teams in Kansas City, Houston and Denver.

Orlando is next.

Sporting Kansas City and Toronto FC go head to head in the MLS.

Shane O’Neill

Bill Hamid

Jack McInerney

Born: Sept 2nd 1993 Club: Colorado Rapids Position: defender Irish-born O’Neill is eligible to represent both USA and Ireland, though he has already played for the US under-20 side and participated in a senior squad training camp in 2014. An increasingly important part of the Rapids’ side, where he is equally comfortable in defence or midfield, he was their first home-grown player to graduate to the first team.

Born: Nov 25th 1990 Club: DC United Position: goalkeeper The US has a tradition of producing spectacular keepers, a reputation enhanced by the performances of first choice Tim Howard in Brazil. Hamid has already proved himself as a shot-stopper but still lacks the consistency to challenge Howard. He already has one cap, earned against Venezuela in 2012. The next two years will tell whether he can live up to that early promise.

Born: Aug 5th 1992 Club: Montreal Impact Position: striker McInerney made his MLS debut for Philadelphia Union aged just 17 and proceeded to justify his early promise with 25 goals in 95 appearances.

His move to Montreal Impact proved the goal-scoring record was no fluke: his first ten appearances yielded an impressive six goals. He’s noted for clever movement and clinical finishing. A move to Europe has been mooted.

Surfing 17

Surfing Who needs the ocean? New technology means artificial surf parks can now be built anywhere in the world. Dominic Bliss finds out if there’s even an Olympic future for surfing.

There’s surfing in the Arabian desert.

And at a theme park in South Africa. And, soon, in the mountains of Wales, and just outside New York City. Not long from now we could see artificial surf parks springing up all over the globe in the most unusual of places. Wavegeneration technology means there’s no reason we can’t bring surfing to landlocked regions, to high altitude, even indoors in city centres.

One engineering company at the forefront of this revolutionary technology is Wavegarden.

Already they have a test facility in the Basque region of northern Spain. By 2015 they will have built their first two working surf parks – one in a mountainous region in north Wales, the other near the English city of Bristol. They expect to produce artificial waves up to two metres in height, 180 metres long, and at a frequency of two per minute. Surfers will be able to ride a wave for up to 18 seconds, provided of course they’re skilled enough to stay upright.

There are plenty of other engineering companies keen to join the party. Using either air blowers or water pumps to create their waves, they are mostly USA-based: American Wave Machines, Webber Wave Pools, and Kelly Slater Wave Company are three developers riding the crest of the wave.

The professional surfer who has lent his name to the latter believes the technology will change his sport forever. His company supplies continuous waves that revolve around a circular pool. “An endless wave, steep, it’s fully barrelling,” says the 42-year-old. “You can ride it as long as you want. You can do airs on it. You can do pretty much any manoeuvre you want to do. You’ll be able to practise over and over and over again. This is the future.”

Surfing’s governing body, the International Surfing Association, is just as stoked (as surfers are wont to say). The new technology allows them to introduce their sport to millions more people, and to stage professional competitions anywhere in the world, regardless of weather or water conditions. “We can now reach new surfing participants and fans who have never been to or even seen the ocean,” they claim.

The ISA has already tried once to gain Olympic status but quickly wiped out. As they concede, that was mainly because of the vagaries of the ocean. The Olympic Games can’t have its athletes hanging around on the beach, waiting for the perfect swell; and nature can’t supply perfect waves on demand. Wave machines, on the other hand, can.

Given time, there’s no reason why the ISA shouldn’t be hosting professional surfing competitions at inland venues. With waves at the flick of a button, why not an international league? And if this is successful, surely, in the future, the IOC might allow surfing to join the Olympic party.

“We may have missed this big wave,” ISA president Fernando Aguerre said after surfing failed to make the short list for the 2020 Olympic Games. “But like any good surfer, we know there are more waves to come and will therefore continue to work with passion towards our objective.”

One can only imagine what the sport’s original practitioners – in Polynesia, before the Europeans first arrived – might think of artificial waves. Presumably they’d be horrified at such a spiritual sport turning into an aquatic version of the running treadmill. Aguerre understands the concern old-school surfers might have.

“Some so-called purists might say, ‘You’re betraying surfing’s soul by bringing wave parks into surfing,’” he says. “I don’t think so. I don’t believe the soul of surfing requires it to be an elite sport for the lucky few who live near the ocean’s waves. My vision is of surfing as a democratic sport.”

Surf parks can be built anywhere and used in any weather conditions.

“We can now reach new surfing participants and fans who have never been to or even seen the ocean.”

The International Surfing Association

18 Aerobatic sport

Aerobatic sport Like fighter pilots dodging enemy fire, the pilots in the Red Bull Air Races fly fast, often just a few feet from the water, twisting and turning between inflatable pylons.

Dominic Bliss finds out how close they are to calamity.

Matt Hall is a very lucky man. While competing in an aircraft race a few years ago, he accidentally stalled his plane, dropped out of the sky and skimmed the surface of the Detroit River.

A former combat pilot in the Royal Australian Air Force, it was a mark of his flying skills that he managed to recover from the potential crash and, minutes later, land his MXS-R single-seater safely on the runway.

“I came through with too great an angle to the chicane,” explained the aerobatic pilot after abandoning his race in the Canadian city of Windsor, Ontario. “I stalled the aircraft. I managed to get it back to wing’s level and recover. I felt two impacts [on the water], and flew it away. Then just trying to get it back on the ground safely.”

Near misses like this are a common occurrence in the international series of aircraft races known as the Red Bull Air Race World Championship. Accidents are fortunately very rare. No one has ever died in competition but

there have been several crashes resulting in pilot injury. Most races are staged over water, conveniently cushioning any impact. If required, pilots can bail out in an emergency. They also wear water-survival vests and carry breathing apparatus in case their plane ends up in the drink.

Given the lightning-rapid manoeuvres required by the pilots, it’s a wonder so many of them remain airborne for so long. In a typical race they will execute rolls, half rolls, banks and vertical turns, subjecting their bodies to enormous G forces throughout. From a spectator’s view, as they pitch and twist between the air gates, they look like swallows flitting through the trees. Or World War II fighter pilots engaging in dogfights.

Pilots have been racing one another since aircraft were first invented. A race near Paris in 1909 is considered the world’s first, although neither of the two pilots competing completed the course. Currently there are a handful of regular aircraft races at air shows

Aerobatic sport 19

Designed to be light, fast and agile, the three permitted aeroplanes in the Red Bull Air Races are also very robust to withstand stresses of up to 10 times the force of gravity as they are thrown around the courses.

All three are standardised with Lycoming Thunderbolt AEIO-540EXP engines and Hartzell three-bladed 7690 propellers.

Edge 540 V2 LENGTH: 6.3m WINGSPAN: 7.44m ROLL RATE: 420º/sec CLIMB RATE: 3,700ft/min TOP SPEED: 264mph

MXS-R LENGTH: 6.51m WINGSPAN: 7.32m ROLL RATE: 420º/sec CLIMB RATE: 3,500ft/min TOP SPEED: 264mph

Corvus Racer 540

The Red Bull Air Race in the sky over Putrajaya, Malaysia.

Given the lightning-rapid manoeuvres required by the racing pilots, it’s a wonder so many of them remain airborne for so long.

Air-racing champion Paul Bonhomme.

around the world featuring small sports aeroplanes, jets, biplanes, helicopters, microlights or motorised paragliders. Thanks to great publicity, the Red Bull Air Race series, however, is probably the best known.

There are eight stops on this year’s series.

At each, the 12 pilots in the elite master-class category must fly one at a time between inflatable pylons (that disintegrate on impact) on lowaltitude courses around three miles in length.

Miss a gate, destroy a gate, or negotiate a gate incorrectly and they incur penalty points. Pilots have a choice of three standardised aircraft to compete in: an Edge 540, an MXS-R or a Corvus Racer 540. All have similar top speeds, climb rates, roll rates and body dimensions (see box).

Since the series launched in 2005, races have been staged in locations as varied as the Arabian Gulf, a peninsula in the Adriatic Sea, a lake in Malaysia, motorsport circuits in the USA, and an equestrian racecourse in the UK.

LENGTH: 6.57m WINGSPAN: 7.4m ROLL RATE: 440º/sec CLIMB RATE: 4,300ft/min TOP SPEED: 275mph

The most successful pilot in the history of the series is reigning champion Paul Bonhomme. When the 50-year-old Englishman isn’t racing he flies Boeings for British Airways.

He very much plays down the danger of his chosen sport. “Flying is generally a very safe sport,” he says. “There are lots of things that can change very quickly. Being prepared to deal with those is key.”

He says what keeps him and his colleagues alive is their ability to analyse potential risks. “I wonder how much risk analysis people do before they jump in their car to drive to work in the morning? Probably very little. Before we fly, we’ll have thought of every ‘What if?’ so that, hopefully, we are prepared to deal with anything that comes our way.”

Red Bull Air Races have been staged above several Populous venues including The O2 Arena and Ascot Racecourse, both in the UK.

20 Land speed record

desert storm Land speed record 1,000mph across a dried-up African lake.

In 2016 Bloodhound SSC hopes not just to break the land speed record but to bury it for a long, long time. Supersonic driver, Andy Green, explains how.

There’s a huge swathe of desert in South Africa’s Northern Cape as smooth as a billiard table. Over the last two years, 300 locals have painstakingly cleared every rock, every stone, every tiny pebble along a 12-mile stretch of dried lake bed (the Hakskeen Pan, in northwest South Africa) so that the world’s fastest car is ensured a perfect run. Called Bloodhound SSC, this car will complete several test runs there before attempting the big 1,000mph some time in 2016.

Powered by a Eurofighter Typhoon jet, a hybrid rocket and a Cosworth Formula 1 engine, Bloodhound SSC is 14 metres long, weighs seven tonnes, and produces 135,000 horsepower – six times the combined power of all the cars on the starting grid of a Formula 1 race. SSC stands for ‘supersonic car’ while Bloodhound is named in honour of a 1950s surface-to-air missile of the same name.

In the driver’s seat is British RAF pilot

The need for speed Ever since cars were first invented, drivers have been pushing them to their limits. Here are some of the key milestones in the absolute land speed records over the last century or so. (Nowadays speed records are measured over courses of fixed length. Two runs must be made in opposite directions within one hour, after which an average is taken.)

Wing Commander Andy Green. It was Green who set the current world land speed record of 763mph in Thrust SSC in the late 1990s. Having flown F-4 Phantom and Tornado F3 combat aircraft in Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia and the Falkland Islands, he knows full well what it’s like to travel faster than the speed of sound. And with a team of crack engineers, led by Richard Noble, the brains behind Thrust SSC, he’s confident he’s in safe hands.

“You run on a perfectly flat track, you choose nice weather, there are no obstacles or debris, no other cars,” he says confidently.

“All you have to do is keep all the wheels on the ground.”

Nevertheless, because of his vehicle’s massive acceleration and deceleration on the lake bed, Green’s body will be subjected to forces of up to 3G – in a different direction to those he’d usually experience in a jet fighter.

“He will be shaken, compressed, disorientated, deafened and heated,” his team promise. “But these are all in a day’s work for a pilot.”

The other – albeit very slight – risk is wild animals straying onto the track. Spotters will be posted along the edges to shoo away large birds or antelope. As an extra precaution, Bloodhound’s windscreen has been constructed thicker than that of a Typhoon jet fighter, in case of bird strike. As for antelope, well, as Green explains: “The only thing we need to do is make sure there is nothing on the track before we start. If, as I let the brakes off, a Gemsbok antelope appears out of nowhere and jumps over the fence, he’s already left it too late. There is nothing on the planet fast enough to get in my way before the car’s gone past.”

Although the science and technology of Bloodhound is spellbinding, Green admits his vehicle is hardly practical. “Nobody needs a car

1898 / 39MPH

1 9 0 4 / 9 1 mph

1935 / 301MPH

LOCATION: Achères, France DRIVER: Gaston de Chasseloup-Laubat VEHICLE: Jeantaud Duc (electric)

LOCATION: Lake St. Clair, USA DRIVER: Henry Ford VEHICLE: Ford 999 (internal combustion)

LOCATION: Bonneville Salt Flats, USA DRIVER: Malcolm Campbell VEHICLE: Blue Bird (internal combustion)

Land speed record 21

that’ll do 1,000mph. You’re never going to do the school run at supersonic speeds.”

What is the real purpose of breaking the land speed record, then? Why go to all that expense and bother?

Although the many sponsors are set to benefit enormously from being associated with Bloodhound, the team project itself won’t make a profit. Not with estimated costs of between US$50 and $70 million. No, their goal is a far more altruistic one. They want to “get young kids excited about science and technology”, and inspire future generations of scientists and engineers. On the Hakskeen Pan lake bed they are installing a massive communications network and are expecting “tens of millions” of viewers to stream their 2016 record attempt live via the internet.

Public interest in land speed records has always been high. The British dominated the

early years, thanks mostly to the two Campbells, Sir Malcolm and his son Donald. Throughout the 1960s the Americans took over, racing various turbojet-powered vehicles across Utah’s Bonneville Salt Flats. Green, in his Thrust SSC, then wrested back the current record in 1997.

He is confident Bloodhound will now utterly dominate this new space race in the desert.

There’s an Australian driver called Rosco McGlashan designing his vehicle Aussie Invader 5R but Green claims he lacks the funds for the enormously expensive rocket propulsion.

American teams are planning a new record attempt but it’s well below Bloodhound’s ambitions. “They are not in the 1,000mph game,” Green affirms. “They are only trying to break the current record. They know they have a year to do it before the land speed record marches away from them faster than their car can go.”

antelope? BIRDS? “There Is nothing on the planet fast enough to get in my way.”

WING COMMANDER ANDY GREEN

1964 / 403MPH

1965 / 600MPH

1 9 97 / 76 3 M P H

2 0 1 6 / 1 ,0 0 0 mph ?

LOCATION: Lake Eyre, Australia DRIVER: Donald Campbell VEHICLE: Bluebird CN7 (turboshaft)

LOCATION: Bonneville Salt Flats, USA DRIVER: Craig Breedlove VEHICLE: Spirit of America Sonic 1 (turbojet)

LOCATION: Bonneville Salt Flats, USA DRIVER: Andy Green VEHICLE: Thrust SSC (turbofan)

LOCATION: Hakskeen Pan, South Africa DRIVER: Andy Green VEHICLE: Bloodhound SSC (turbofan & rocket)

22

MOTORCYCLE RACING

THE MARC OF A CHAMPION MOTORCYCLE RACING MotoGP racer Marc Marquez is unstoppable. World champion in his rookie season last year, barring disaster, he is already guaranteed victory this year, too. BT Sport commentator Julian Ryder discovers his secret weapons.

MOTORCYCLE RACING 23

The youngest ever race winner. The youngest ever world champion. The first rookie champion in 35 years. Spanish motorcyclist Marc Marquez is only 21 and already he’s rewriting motorcycle racing’s history books. All with an infectious grin and a riding style that takes him scarily close to disaster. Is his secret weapon just natural talent or are there other reasons for his astonishingly rapid rise to greatness?

The reign of Spain

Mental attitude

Motorcycle racing has a well-defined career path in Spain, and Marc has benefitted enormously from it. He started in regional Catalan championships both on and off road.

When he got to tarmac, he rode on all of Spain’s four Grand Prix tracks, places a kid can find his limits, enjoy top facilities, and crash without hitting solid objects. He then moved on to the CEV (Campeonato de España de Velocidad), Spain’s national championship and the prime feeder series for motorcycle Grands Prix. Unlike in other nations, the Spanish system is perfectly designed to produce Grand Prix riders.

Nothing fazes Marquez. Not the fastest crash in Grand Prix history in Mugello last year; not going elbow-to-elbow with Valentino Rossi. Whatever the racing fates throw at this Spaniard, he meets with a smile. Last year, Marquez was disqualified from the Australian Grand Prix because of a technical error made by his team.

It transformed what had looked like a stroll to the title into a nail-biting finale.

Any other rider, says his team manager Livio Suppo, would have wanted to kill someone. Yet Marquez was out with his team the same night, laughing and joking as normal. He’s also humble. How many other world champions have you seen travelling on Ryanair?

1

Riding style

The right team

Marquez has changed the way racing motorcycles are ridden. He is able to put the bike into a corner before the rear wheel has returned in line with the front wheel after heavy braking. He then runs the front wheel up the inside kerb on corner entry, steering by sliding the back tyre under power at full lean. If the front tyre loses grip, he pushes the bike back upright with his elbow; if the rear tyre goes then he’s conventional and uses his knee. His leathers manufacturers have had to produce titanium elbow scrapers to stop him wearing through his suit.

Ducati rider Andrea Dovizioso says that, uniquely, there is no weak point in Marquez’s riding.

In his first year of track racing, Marquez was spotted by Emilio Alzamora, the 1999 125cc world champion and, nowadays, one of the power brokers of Spanish racing. He signed Marquez to his Monlau Competicion team which put him on good, but not top-end machinery for his first year in Alzamora. He then placed him with the Factory KTM team – where he won the title – before setting up a Moto2 team specifically for Marquez.

This time it took Marquez two years to win the title, after which he was ready to move straight into Honda’s factory team in the top MotoGP class.

Starting young

Eating dirt

Family

You don’t get to be a world champion at 20 years old if you don’t start young.

Marc was given his first (albeit very small) motorbike at the age of four, and started competition a year later in 1999 in motocross and enduro (off-road disciplines), moving on to circuits in 2002. By the time he was 15 he was ready for Grand Prix.

Marc’s formative years were spent riding on the dirt in motocross and enduro.

This requires learning the art of controlling a bike with the wheels permanently out of line. That’s exactly how Marquez’s current MotoGP Honda has to be ridden: twitching and sliding; pushing the front tyre and spinning the rear – often at the same time. Marc still trains on a motocross bike and has developed a minor obsession with US dirt-track oval racing.

Any ambitious young sportsman needs the support of his family, and a fast sibling always provides extra motivation.

Marquez’s younger brother Alex races in the Moto3 class where he is starting to show serious talent. The happiest Marc looked this season was when little bro’ got his first pole position.

Populous has designed many motor-racing circuits around the world, including Silverstone, home of the British Grand Prix.

24 Traditional sport

Traditional sport 25

Traditional sport 54 Italians, all head-butting, choking, breaking noses and causing havoc while dressed in medieval clothing.

This is Florence’s annual sporting event known as calcio storico. Nick Harper ducks a few punches.

In the middle of one of Florence’s most picturesque city squares, near the historic Basilica di Santa Croce, two men are trying to murder each other. Heavy set, stripped to the waist, with shaved heads and multiple tattoos, they trade blows like punch-drunk prize fighters. But they are not alone. Everywhere you look across the Piazza Santa Croce, men of a similar dimension and disposition are beating one other onto and into the ground. In London, New York or Shanghai, such a sight would be a matter for the authorities. In this corner of Tuscany, for two days every year, this terrifying activity constitutes sport.

The Florentines call it calcio storico (historic football), the game from which modern soccer in Italy evolved. And somewhere in all of this, there is a ball.

Only it hasn’t been seen for some time and is apparently not all that important. The 10,000 or so locals stuffed onto makeshift bleachers around the piazza came to see blood. And they won’t be disappointed: there will be blood. In calcio storico there always is.

A form of this unusual combat sport has been played since at least the 16th century. The Romans kept their warriors fit for battle by engaging in something called harpastum, a game featuring two teams manoeuvring a ball around the field by any means necessary – the same basic premise of calcio storico. >>

26 Traditional sport

Think a combination of soccer and rugby but with large elements of boxing, mixed martial arts and scenes from the Hollywood film 300 thrown in for good measure.

“Various forms have existed for centuries but calcio storico has been played exclusively in Florence since the 1930s,” says Italian historian Filippo Giovannelli. “The teams of that time were formed of great sporting figures, wrestlers, gymnasts and courageous people who loved their city, and challenged each other on the field, in battle.”

The scene we’re witnessing today is the Torneo dei Quattro Quartieri, an event played annually in June by four local teams beside the 14th-century Basilica di Santa Croce, Florence’s principal Franciscan church. There are two semi-finals and then a final, a week later on June 24th, the feast day of the city’s patron, San Giovanni. For each match the rectangular piazza is transformed into a pitch, topped with sand on which two teams wage war for 50 brutal minutes, aiming to get the ball into their opponents’ goal using either their hands or their feet. Think a combination of soccer and rugby but with large elements of boxing, mixed martial arts and scenes from the Hollywood film 300 thrown in for good measure.

Each side comprises 27 players, usually lining up with four goalkeepers, three defenders, five midfielders and 15 forwards. The formation is said to resemble that of a Renaissance infantry regiment, and this military symbolism is no coincidence.

Before the final, the players and several hundred Florentines in Renaissance dress parade through the city streets. When they arrive at the Piazza Santa Croce, the bells of the basilica ring, the ball is thrown to the centre line, and a

RULES

No sucker punching

No kicks to the head

All fights must be one-on-one

cannon fires to announce the commencement of battle. “It sounds like a war because it is a war,” says Stefano Lorenzi, whose upcoming film Voglio Vivere Così explores the sport’s bloody history. “There is no point pretending it’s not violent.

It’s far more a battle than a sporting encounter.”

The four teams taking part are drawn from the four historic quarters of Florence – San Giovanni (the greens), Santa Maria Novella (the reds), Santa Croce (the blues) and Santo Spirito (the whites), each named for their local church.

“The four districts are not as densely populated as they were so many years ago,” explains Giovannelli. “But the sense of belonging to the district and to its colour remains very strong.

Players train all year just for these two games and to fight for the honour of their neighbourhood.”

Where once they were warriors, nowadays the teams feature Florentines with ordinary jobs – butchers, bankers, bakers and the like. The game they play is simple to follow in that it has only three very basic rules: no sucker punches, no kicks to the head, and all fights must only ever be one-on-one.

Almost everything else is allowed – so regular punching, elbowing, head-butting and choking are all permitted.

Unsportsmanlike tactics such as biting or strikes to the genitals are uncommon but not unheard of. There is a referee on hand, dressed in Renaissance robes with a velvet hat and a sharp sword, but he’s there to keep the score rather than the peace.

Crucially, when a player is no longer able to compete, he cannot be substituted. “The main aim is to score more goals

Traditional sport 27

than your opponent,” says Simone Calonaci, a veteran of six tournaments. “But how do you score? By taking out the other team’s players; by pinning them to the ground for the whole match so that your teammates can score, or by hurting them so much that they have to leave the field and do not return.”

More often than not, he says, the strongest team prevails.

“The most important component of calcio storico is fear,” says Alessio Giorgerini, a Santa Croce player. “Those who say they don’t feel fear are telling lies. But when you walk into the arena and the cage is closed, the fear becomes a pleasurable sensation.” Giorgerini’s aim is simple: “To survive 50 minutes against 27 men who want to kill me on the arena.”

His opponents may want to kill him but nobody has ever actually died playing this sport. “It’s not uncommon for players to get poked in the eyes, tear ligaments, sprain an ankle or get a shoulder bone knocked out of its socket,” says Calonaci. Concussion is common and almost every competitor sports a broken nose as a badge of honour. “But when you have fights, you are going to have injuries,” he shrugs.

Fearful that injuries could soon lead to the first death, organisers cancelled the 2006 tournament amid concerns that tensions were running dangerously hot. A new code of conduct was drawn up – including those three rules mentioned earlier – but it hasn’t made much difference. The 2014 tournament was cancelled after a particularly dangerous semi-final in which several players refused to leave the field despite being dismissed.

“It happens every so often,” says Kirsten Hills, a journalist on The Florentine newspaper. “Players get disqualified for ignoring the rules and the tournament gets suspended.

“It’s not uncommon for players to get poked in the eyes, tear ligaments, sprain an ankle or get a shoulder bone knocked out of its socket.”

Calcio storico player Simone Calonaci

The organisers return with more stringent rules but they usually end up going out of the window. We’ve been here before and I guess we’ll be here again.”

If a cloud of uncertainty hangs over calcio storico, history suggests it will soon pass. “This is just how it is,” shrugs Giovannelli. “The game gets suspended or cancelled like it has this year but it always comes back. Calcio storico is a tradition thousands of years old, and no one can ever take it away from Florence and its people. The joy of the battle will never die out.”

28

POP STAR

POP STAR 29

Going SKIING Populous’s Elizabeth Miglierina explains how the speed and danger she experiences in downhill skiing have helped her in the more radical aspects of stadium design.

Photograph: Pierre Sheard.

off Elizabeth Miglierina has a bionic leg. At the age of 15 she broke her femur in a skiing accident, back in her native Canada.

“I still have a metal bar in my leg,” says the 27-year-old architectural assistant, now working in Populous’s London office. “Just two months later, I was back on the slopes.”

But sadly it ended all hopes she had of becoming a professional skier. At the time of the accident she had been competing in top-level junior races. “I fell really badly. I was training for the Super G and going so fast, then tumbled off the piste. I cried when the doctors told me my ski season was over. It meant I wouldn’t be able to take my junior training to the next level.”

However, after choosing instead to study architecture at the University of Montreal, Elizabeth now uses her experience as a lifelong skier when it comes to the building design process. One of the attractions of downhill skiing she loves most is the fear factor. “My coaches always used to tell me: ‘You need to get out of your comfort zone when you’re skiing’,” she explains. “If I wanted to win I knew I had to be scared. I had to find that dividing line between going really fast through the gates, and going so fast that I was out of control. That’s the only way to win. That’s what really gives you the fear and the adrenalin.”

Elizabeth believes this ability to step outside of one’s comfort zone and take risks is a skill often required in stadium architecture. One

project she’s working on – the Grand Stade Olympique Lyonnais football stadium in Lyons – is a good example. Her area of focus was the pavilions (retail, catering and toilets) that will surround the main stadium. After many other designs had been rejected, she finally hit upon an idea that was acceptable to both client and contractor, and that fit within the strict budget.

The solution was to design angled exterior wall and roof faces for the pavilions, designed to match the roof over the seating tiers of the main stadium.

“In architecture, when the client wants you to suggest something new, you have to push the envelope,” Elizabeth explains. “You must find a creative solution that is original and outside of what you know. And what you don’t know is always a bit scary. It’s the same idea with getting out of your comfort zone in skiing. You may ski the most perfect course, with beautiful turns and no mistakes, but usually those runs are really slow. If you don’t find ways to change it, and push it, you won’t get a faster time. In both sport and architecture, pushing the envelope is how innovations happen.”

Another innovative project Elizabeth worked on was an arena design in Istanbul. The building wasn’t allowed to exceed the maximum height of the surrounding trees – six metres. The solution was to embed the arena into the hillside so that it became fully integrated into the topography of the forest.

“Our design merged the building with the hill next to it,” Elizabeth explains. “Skiing is very like that, too. To ski efficiently you need to merge with the mountain.”

Just as architects try to design in harmony with the environment surrounding their buildings, so skiers have to adapt to the weather and topography of the mountain. Snow conditions, temperatures, light conditions, trees and the angle of the slopes all come into play. “You feel the ice and the snow beneath your skis,” Elizabeth says. “You feel the wind in your face, you see the shadows on the piste surface, you see the trees approaching you. And sometimes it’s a complete whiteout and you see nothing.”

Despite her career as an architect, Elizabeth still manages to ski every winter without fail, either in the Alps or back home in Canada. And the metal bolt in her leg is always with her – a reminder of what can happen if you push the envelope too far.

piste “Our design merged the building with the hill next to it. Skiing is very like that, too.

To ski efficiently you need to merge with the mountain.”

30 MEMORY SPORTS

MEMORY SPORTS Random words, numbers, names, faces, dates and images… competitors in the mentally gruelling World Memory Championships have to memorise all these and more. John Lewis finds out how – and why – they do it.

o 1 T A L 6 R E 8 3 7 C 9 3 2 A 0 L L t

TEST YOURSELF. TAKE a FEW MINUTES TO MEMORISE THE OBJECTS, FAMOUS PEOPLE, NUMBERS AND LETTERS ABOVE, BEFORE TRYING TO RECALL THEM IN THE CORRECT ORDER.

MEMORY SPORTS 31

You’re handed a shuffled pack of cards.

You then have just a few moments to riffle through the entire pack, trying to memorise the exact order of all 52 cards. The cards are taken away from you. You are now given another – unshuffled – pack, which you must reassemble in the order of the first pack of cards.

There are people on this planet who can complete this task in just a few minutes. One man from Germany – Simon Reinhard – can do it in under 22 seconds.

“We used to be impressed if someone could do it in quarter of an hour,” says British chess grandmaster Raymond Keene. “To do that in 22 seconds might once have been considered a magic feat. But these records are tumbling all the time.”

To reward such feats of memory, Keene set up the World Memory Championships (WMC) in 1991, alongside Tony Buzan, an educationalist and author of books on memory. “The Guinness Book of World Records would celebrate the achievements of people who could wear the most number of socks on one foot, or have the most tattoos,” says Keene. “But it would ignore the astonishing achievements in the world of memory.”

Simon Reinhard might be the Usain Bolt of memorising a pack of cards, but this feat is just one of ten rounds that make up the WMC tests.

Others include memorising random binary digits, random words, random numbers, names and faces, dates and images. It’s been described as “Las Vegas under exam conditions”.

For its first decade, each WMC took place in London, but it has since gone global, with championships in Kuala Lumpur, Bahrain and Guangzhou. The next WMC finals take place in the Chinese city of Hainan, in December 2014, featuring more than 100 competitors from around 30 countries. There are national memory championships in the US, the UK, India, Germany, South Africa, Australia, Singapore, China, Japan and Mexico, while other nations are also starting to excel.

“The Germans are becoming particularly dominant,” says Keene. “They prepare physically as well as mentally, with a rigorous aerobics regime. The Chinese also train for up to 10 hours a day. The Mongolians are becoming very strong.”

Some British competitors, apparently, tend to be found down the pub. Sadly, it’s not an entirely level playing field: the Indian champion hasn’t been able to attend any world championships due to lack of funds.

The World Memory Championships is very much the FIFA of mental sports, although there are rival events. One American champion, Nelson Dellis, founded the Extreme Memory Tournament in 2014, with US$60,000 in prize money and an emphasis on short, TV-friendly, head-to-head fixtures. “Like watching a tennis

CARD COUNTING

Sequence 1

Memorising the sequence of playing cards is an integral part of most memory championships.

One German champion can memorise a whole deck of 52 in under 22 seconds.

See how you fare. Take a few seconds to scan the cards in the three sequences (right), and then try to recall each sequence in the correct order.

Sequence 2

Sequence 3

Ben Pridmore holds the world record for recalling the correct order of 28 randomly shuffled decks. (That’s 1,456 separate cards!)

match,” he says. There are other mental sports events, too. Every two years the German-based Mental Calculation World Cup tests competitors over various mental arithmetic calculations. The World Mind Sports Games have taken place every four years since 2008, while the annual Pentamind World Championship was set up in 1997. Both feature games such as chess, draughts and bridge.

But the memory championships remain at the apex of these mental sports. The standard memory techniques, or mnemonics, that are used date back to Ancient Greece. The story goes that the poet Simonides was the sole survivor of a banquet in a hall whose roof suddenly collapsed.

When asked to list the names of those buried in the debris, Simonides found he could remember

the exact spot where each of the guests at the illfated dinner had been sitting. He realised that if, instead of people arranged around the table, it had been numbers, or the words of a poem, he’d still have recalled them perfectly. Thus he codified the idea of a ‘memory palace’ – a means of remembering lists by storing information in the many rooms of a virtual building within one’s mind.

Mental athletes use these memory palaces all the time. When asked to remember the order of a shuffled pack of cards, they will construct a visual chain that stretches, say, from their bedroom to their back garden, assigning each card a place along that route.

“You have to find a way of visualising and remembering each playing card,” says Ben Pridmore, a British accountant who holds the world record for recalling the correct order of 28 randomly shuffled decks. (That’s 1,456 separate cards!) “You develop your own connections for each card – the seven of clubs is the pop group S Club 7, the queen of clubs is Paris Hilton, and so on. Then you arrange them into 28 separate journeys.” Memory athletes all seem sceptical of terms like ‘photographic memory’. “It doesn’t exist,” says Pridmore. “Memory is a technique that anyone can learn.”

It’s comforting to learn that even the best mental athletes don’t extend their phenomenal memories to their personal life. “I’m always going to the supermarket and forgetting to pick up things,” says Pridmore. “And, like everyone, I’ll often forget where I put my mobile phone or my house keys.”

32

POP HISTORY

PopUlous in

history

Where?

Melbourne Cricket Ground, Melbourne, Australia When?

25th September 2010

It’s considered by many to be Australia’s most important sporting event. The AFL Grand Final is an annual match that determines the Australian Football League’s premiership champions. So imagine the disappointment when, in 2010, it all ended in a draw.

It was Collingwood Football Club up against St Kilda. As usual, the match was scheduled for a September Saturday at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (upgraded by Populous). Over 100,000 fans were cheering on their chosen team but couldn’t prevent

proceedings from ending at 68 points apiece.

Afterwards there were the inevitable calls for AFL rules to be changed so that the Grand Final could feature extra time. (Ever since it first started in 1897 the event had been tied just twice before.) The Collingwood captain Nick Maxwell dismissed the situation as “an absolute joke”. Nevertheless, just a week later, both teams squared up to each other once again for the Grand Final replay.

This time Collingwood won convincingly, 108 points to 52.

RECORD TRANSFERS

Since soccer first went professional all the way back in the 19th Century, clubs have been paying huge amounts to attract the world’s best players. Here we highlight the key world records for soccer player transfers over the decades.

(We’ve used £ Sterling since many of the clubs featured are English.)

YEAR

PLAYER

SOLD BY

Bought by

Fee

1893

Willie Groves

West Bromwich Albion

Aston Villa

£100

1928

David Jack

Bolton Wanderers

Arsenal

£10,890

1973

Johan Cruyff

Ajax

Barcelona

£922,000

1982

Diego Maradona

Boca Juniors

Barcelona

£3 million

1992

Jean-Pierre Papin

Marseille

Milan

£10 million

1996

Alan Shearer

Blackburn Rovers

Newcastle United

£15 million

1998

Denilson

Sao Paulo

Real Betis

£21.5 million

2000

Luis Figo

Barcelona

Real Madrid

£37 million

2009

Cristiano Ronaldo

Manchester United

Real Madrid

£80 million

2013

Gareth Bale

Tottenham Hotspur

Real Madrid

£85.3 million

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