MARCH 2013A BEYOND THE ORDINARY MAGAZINE MARCH 2013A BEYOND THE ORDINARY MAGAZINE

Deep Sea

Tragedy Paying the

cost offreediving

Fighters Is Back!

XWith New Zealandmotorcycle maestroLevi Sherwood

Exclusive!Can Sebastian Vettel win four F1 titles in a row?

Red Bull

The all-newBMW M135i

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THE WORLD OF RED BULL

MarchMarch

WelcoMe!Formula one’s youngest three-time world champion Sebastian Vettel is proving a master at sport’s oldest conundrum: how to keep on winning. He does have the help of F1’s best team principal, Christian Horner, and its all-time most successful designer-engineer, Adrian Newey, as well as the rest of the infiniti red Bull racing team. all three men reveal the secrets of their winning ways in the red Bulletin this month. While we’re on the subject of high achievers, the stories told by the men, women and children in the 10-storey stacks of Spain’s human towers are remarkable and just a little bit inspirational. and you won’t find a more brutally honest tale of sporting adventure and misadventure than Herbert nitsch’s retelling of his attempt at the world freedive record. enjoy the issue.C

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70reD bUll racinGWhat drives success?

Can the new 2013 car lead the team to another

title? an exclusive look inside F1’s elite outfit

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the hUman Factoronly three drivers have ever won three consecutive Formula one championships. Sebastian vettel is in that exclusive club, but can he make it four in a row?

meet the makeradrian newey has designed cars that have won nine F1 constructor’s titles, including the last three with Red Bull Racing. here, he details his 2013 car

the red bulletin 03

THE WORLD OF RED BULL

restless QUesthip-hop pioneer ahmir ‘Questlove’ thompson is riding high on an unparalleled musical journey

The Red Bulletin

tablet appSee the Red Bulletin come to life in our award-winning tablet edition. this month: exclusive F1 and Dakar video. Both the app and issues are free on Android & iPad

60Deep troUble What happened when freediver Herbert Nitsch attempted to break his own world record

March

54

Diary oF the Dakar Drivers, riders, doctors and

the guy who runs the andes petrol station recall the

merciless 8,500km race across South america

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MarchTHE WORLD OF RED BULL

91 40party centralElectric Pickle is a jewel among the pleasure palaces of Miami. Big DJs come in secret to play for love

the tricksterFreestyle motocross champion Levi Sherwood on tricks, triumph and defending his Red Bull X-Fighters title

the social climbers Making a human tower is a matter of historic civic pride in Catalonia, where teams compete to build a people pyramid 300 strong

28 Bullevard 08 PhotoS oF thE Month Amazing images from around the world 14 nEwS The latest in sport and culture

17 ME anD My BoDy How long jumper Ivana Spanovic defies broken bones

18 kit EvoLution Developments in ski helmet technology

22 whERE’S youR hEaD at? Leading man-of-the-moment Channing Tatum

24 winning FoRMuLa Get to grips with the science of freeclimbing

26 Lucky nuMBERS The stats behind the most daring prison breaks ever

action28 Spain

High-stakes human towers

40 Palmerston North Freestyle FMX champ Levi Sherwood talks about defending his title

44 Peru, Argentina, Chile Dispatches from the Dakar Rally

54 New York City Questlove and his band The Roots: mainstream and underground

60 Greece Herbert Nitsch’s death-defying freediving world record attempt

70 England Formula One exclusive: behind the scenes at Red Bull Racing HQ with Sebastian Vettel and the new RB9 car

More Body & Mind84 tRavEL Unusual places to play

86 tRaining An enduro rider’s workout

88 SounDS oF 2013 Street Chant

90 �nightLiFE Food, drink, music & more

94 �woRLD in action Global goings-on

96 SavE thE DatE Events for the diary

97 kainRath Our cartoonist

98 MinD’S EyE With Russell Brown

AT A GLANCE

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C H A R T E RA V A I L A B L E N O W

L E V I S H E R W O O D

L O S A N G E L E S , C A / P H O T O : G A R T H M I L A N

E T N I E S . C O M

etnies_Redbulletin_Levi_Feb13.indd 1 2/7/13 12:34 PM

VICTORY TASTES SWEET, AND A LITTLE SANDY.

Congratulations to the Monster Energy X-raid Team on another Dakar Rally win, and a big thank you to our fans. Here’s to 8,000 km of MINI ALL4 Racing perfection and next year’s race. Score your own victory at your nearest MINI Garage today. Check out MINI.co.nz or call 0800 23 6464.

MINI. THE LIVING MOTORSPORT LEGEND.

MIN

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C ata m a rC a , a r g e n t i n a

hard placeHalf a million years ago, when Mother Nature forged Campo de Piedra Pomez – the Pumice Stone Field – she could not have had a bike park in mind. With 5,000 white volcanic rocks at 4,000m above sea level, this place is as otherworldly as our world gets. As the site of Red Bull Ramparanoia, it hosted surely the highest altitude BMX contest ever. Homecountry rider Martin Postigo certainly enjoyed his moment in the sun. Watch the video: www.redbull.com Photograph: Luis Vidales/Red Bull Content Pool

08

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Yo s e m it e n ati o n a l Pa r k , U s a

moon walkAs Dean Potter freeclimbed to his highline, strung between rocks on top of Cathedral Peak, cameraman Mikey Schaefer was less relaxed. “The whole scenario seemed crazy,” says Schaefer. “I was over a mile away from my subject, who was walking a tightrope with certain death consequences if he fell.” Potter walked the line, perfectly backdropped thanks to Schaefer’s work with lunar phase data and GPS. “On the highline my thoughts are simple and clear,” says Potter. “I focus completely on my breath, my connection with the line, and making it safely to the other side.” Which he did – then turned and walked calmly back across to the start. See it in full: vimeo.com/56298775 Photograph: Mikey Schaefer

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in a flash“Caves don’t get natural light,” says adventure lensman Robbie Shone, “so it’s up to the photographer to provide it.” In Boxhead Pot, one of a network of caves and tunnels in England and Wales’ third largest national park, Shone had other issues. “I was below Sam Allshorn, on the same rope, and we were spinning continuously. Icy cold water – melted snow from the surface – plummeted down the shaft. The noise was deafening; communication near impossible. In all the spray, my flashguns began to fail. The shoot was over.” Going underground: www.shonephotography.com Photograph: Robbie Shone

of the month

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EVERY SHOT ON TARGET

PHOTOTICKER

Every month we print a selection, with our favourite pic awarded a limited-edition Sigg bottle. Tough, functional and well-suited to sport, it features The Red Bulletin logo.

Have you taken a picture with a Red Bull flavour? Email it to us at: phototicker@redbulletin.com

BullevardBullevardSport and culture on the quick

EVERY SHOT

14 THE RED BULLETIN

Otepaa In Estonia, for Red Bull Snow Kayak, water doesn’t have to be liquid for a boat ride. Jaanus Ree

Magic of filmThe Incredible Burt Wonderstone, out this month, stars Jim Carrey and Steves Buscemi and Carell

as duelling magicians. But cinema has been conjuring tricks

flicks for almost a century

THE GRIM GAME (1919) ...Harry Houdini, who made five

silent films, including this one, to showcase his remarkable talent.

HOUDINI (1953)After two months’ learning tricks,

Tony Curtis was fit to play the greatest illusionist of them all...

MAGIC (1978)Anthony Hopkins, barely less

scary than as Hannibal Lecter, is possessed by his dummy assistant.

THE PRESTIGE (2006)More warring wizards, only here it’s Christian Bale versus Hugh Jackman in Victorian London.

Arch architect: Alexandre

Arrechea’s twisted

rebuilds

Cuban sculptor Alexandre Arrechea imagines humdrum items recombined in a parallel universe. He gives trees basketball-hoop branches, builds oversized espresso machines out of bricks and makes hand-grenade-shaped cabinets. For No Limits, his latest work, the 42-year-old rebuilt 10 New York landmarks with curving, kinetic energy. In his hands, the Empire State Building becomes a 6m-tall fire-hose; the MetLife building an oversized spinning top. “This is what I love, creating a relationship with this city. It hits you, you move; you jab, you hook,” says Arrechea, who lives and works in Madrid, Spain. “This city has been so influential to me because it’s about an exchange: you are watched over, but you offer to it in turn.” Until June 9, No Limits is on Park Avenue, in sight of many of the original buildings. www.alexandrearrechea.com

DECONSTRUCTIONThe New York cityscape becomes a beautifully manhandled skyline

WE HAVE A WINNER!

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Into the internetNow that every sound and every music-making opportunity is available online, the pace of change of music is relentless. A new six-part documentary series, H∆SHTAG$, looking at those who use the internet to create and curate new music, is a welcome entry point into this fast-flowing world. From the difficulties of defining, and absolutely not defining, genre, to the joys of finding on SoundCloud a Polish cover of your signature bass anthem, artists including How To Dress Well, Flying Lotus, Miguel, Mount Kimbie and Bondax candidly reveal what it’s like to be connected in this most vital and influential pop culture scene. Watch it now: www.redbullmusicacademy.com

Miramar This Argentinian skatepark is, indeed, shaped like a watermelon. Gustavo Cherro

Ljubljana Slovenian snowboard scion Maxx Grilc tries on father Marko’s helmet for size. Domen Bizjak

Punta Cana ‘Watch that serve in the wind!’ Red Bull Sun Slide in the Dominican Republic.David Pou

DJ Qbert manipulates his record player like Clapton plays guitar. It says ‘Richard Quitevis’ in the 43-year-old Californian’s passport, but he will forever be known as one of the greatest turntablists of all time. He is a three-time former world DJ champion, and founding member of Invisibl Skratch Piklz, widely considered to be the first true scratch band.What musical instru ment is most like a set of decks?The piano, because with one hand you’re doing the rhythm, and the other being the lead.Is scratching hard on the wrists and fingers? It can be. That’s why you should always take breaks. Gentle massages and stretches

are important, like when runners before competition are hopping up and down. Brisk movements and being loose are important.Is there a record beginners should scratch with?A standard record a lot of DJs use is one called Super Seal Breaks. It’s a record made for scratching, perfect for practising with. [It’s also a DJ Qbert production.] What advice would you give to wannabe DJs?When I was a teenager, I always remembered what Jimi Hendrix said about learning guitar: “If you stick with it, you’ll be rewarded.” It’s banal but it’s so true, especially for DJs. www.qbertskratchuniversity.com

FROM SCRATCHMaster mixmaster DJ Qbert on keeping fingers turntable-ready, passing on his wisdom and humdrum help from Hendrix

See change

How we might look in

the future

Web master: Flying Lotus

PROJECT GLASSDue for release late

2013-early 2104, these goggles from Google show data in the sort of heads-up display usually seen

in military tech.

OCULUS RIFT This virtual reality

video gaming headset has game

developers (several have a prototype version) cooing

about its immersive play potential.

MEMOTO Hello, ‘lifelogging’:

a wearable camera, 36mm square, that takes two

photos per minute, and saves them direct to an app. Available in April.

Most stylus man: DJ Qbert on the decks

Making a hash of it: the online music scene documented

Golden oldiesRod Millen celebrated his 60th birthday in 2011 by inviting his motorsport mates to bring their cars and bikes to his Leadfoot ranch in the Coromandel. The party was such a success that, the following year, the Kiwi motorsport legend invited the public. The third Leadfoot Festival, from March 22-24, will feature over 150 cars and motorbikes from around the world and a spectacular hillclimb race. Vehicles on display will include a 1906 Darracq Grand Prix race car and a 1958 Thunderbird owned by Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top. “People can walk through the pits and talk to the drivers,” says Millen. “That’s what the festival is all about: seeing all these cool, classic cars close up.” www.leadfoot-festival.myshopify.com

Mountain madnessFalling asleep while paragliding is an occupational hazard of Red Bull X Alps. “It’s so easy to drift off in the air,” says Ferdy van Schelven, who finished seventh in the running (and flying) of the 2011 cross-mountain-country race. The

winner, Christian Maurer of Switzerland, took 11 days and four hours to hike and paraglide the 864km from Salzburg to Monaco. As part of van Schelven’s training for the 2013 event, which starts in Salzburg on July 7, the Dutchman came to NZ at the end of January with Belgian paraglider Thomas de Dorlodot. Their plan: to float and hike the 850km from Te Anau to Nelson. www.redbullxalps.com RISING SON

His father won a World Rally Championship, but Tom Blomqvist has his sights set on Formula One

Tom Blomqvist was three years old when his father, the Swedish rally driver Stig Blomqvist, bought him a quad bike. After that early introduction to motorsport, Tom says, it was “inevitable” he’d end up racing cars for a living. He moved from the UK to New Zealand with his mother in 2000, started karting soon after, aged seven, and became the youngest winner of the Formula Renault UK championship at 16, beating the record held by F1 star Lewis Hamilton. In 2013, the year he turns 20, Tom is part of the Red Bull Junior Team driver initiative, and will race in the F3 European Championship. His first race is at Monza on March 23-24. : Has being the son of Stig helped your career? : A lot of people assume it must be easy for me because of who my dad is. They assume he’s rich, but he’s not and motorsport is all about the money. Why is there a gap on your CV after winningthe Formula Renault UK title in 2010? I had a challenging couple of years, struggling for funding. Plus, I broke my back in 2011. In a race in Germany, I got clipped from behind and crashed into the pit wall at 130kph.What are your goals for this year?To work hard and prove myself again. I want to get back on track by winning the F3 title. www.tomblomqvistofficial.com

Back on track: Tom Blomqvist has returned from injury

Ferdinand van Schelven

Wheel party: Leadfoot Festival

A lot of people assume it must be easy for me because of who my dad is. They assume he’s rich, but he’s not and motorsport is all about the money. Why is there a gap on your CV after winningthe Formula Renault UK title in 2010?I had a challenging couple of years, struggling

To work hard and prove myself again. I want to get back on track by winning the F3 title.

Höhnhart Ski jump legend Andreas Goldberger at Austria’s Goldi Talent Cup. Lucho Vidales

Chiriquí Red Bull Air Race star pilot Kirby Chambliss shows off at Aero Fest 2013 in Panama. Alfredo Bocanegra

Valdaora-Olang Skiers dodge fire and ice at the obstacle-laden Red Bull Kronplatz Cross in Italy. Federico Modica

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KEEP CALM, CARRY ON 3 I get lots of small injuries, but rarely anything that stops me

training. I once kept to my track schedule with both ankles

sprained. In the run-up to the Olympics last year, I broke two

bones in my left wrist: I taped it up and carried on. [Spanovic

finished 11th at London 2012.]

2 NAILING IT A few years ago, I got these great, long, false nails and have worn them ever since. I only took them off for training in South Africa at the start of this year, when I did some shot put. When they look good, it helps me in competition.

FOOTING THE PAIN 5 In 2011, just before the

world championships in Daegu, I broke a bone in my

left foot while training. I ignored it, but it got so bad

I couldn’t put any weight on it. I had four months off the

track, then six months of slow recovery. Now it’s good as new.

4 MRS MUSCLE My thighs are the most powerful part of my body, where I get my explosive speed. I look more like a sprinter than a jumper. I train for five hours a day, six days a week, to maintain my strength, which also helps to prevent injury.

MIND GAMES 1Mental preparation is even

more important than the physical. You have to think

constantly about how to be better, so you need to be

prepared, focused and motivated. If your mind’s not

100 per cent in the race, your body won’t perform.

ME AND MY BODY

The Serbian long jumper, 22, defies broken bones and nails her performance with the help of false friends www.facebook.com/IvanaSpanovic

IVANA SPANOVIC

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The development in ski helmets has been rapid. It wasn’t so long ago that leather and linen were used – and wearing one was optional

KIT EVOLUTION

ROUGH & SMOOTHIn the 1960s, helmet shells

were cast from epoxy resins, the surface of which could not be made perfectly smooth. So it was covered with linen, to reduce air resistance.

THE HARD WAYComfort was not on the design checklist back then. The only padding was a single layer of foam. Later, plastic linings such as polyethylene were also used, to little effect.

HEAR, HEARCurrent rules state

that, in the World Ski Championships, helmets

must protect equally the ears and head. In the

past, ear protection used to consist of

a thin layer of cloth.

HEAD RUSH

C. 1967 GANT-GAMET GENOSKI

“Helmet or no helmet – in my day in the Alpine World Ski Championships it was up to the skiers to decide for themselves,” recalls Austria’s 1974 downhill world champion, David Zwilling. “As a kid I just used to wear a leather cap for races. I switched to a helmet when I was 15, just to feel safer. It probably prevented more dire consequences when I took a few heavy falls in the course of my career.” www.fis-ski.com

David Zwil ling, 63, was succeeded as downhill world champ by his countryman Franz Klammer

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UPSIDE THE HEAD

This helmet has been designed so

it is equally strong and protective at all

points, no matter how and where it absorbs

force from an impact.

THICK-SKINNEDThe outer shell, of carbon fibre and thermoplas tic, is ‘baked’ for nine hours under pressure. The vents are made of ultra-light titanium.

SOFT ON THE INSIDEThe standard padded inner

lining is made of a material that allows moisture to evaporate

quickly. Extra pads can be stuck in to create a tighter fit.

2013 SWEET PROTECTION ROOSTER CORSA

Aksel Lund Svindal, 30, won super-G gold, downhill silver and giant slalom bronze at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics

It took three years to develop this lightweight lid made from fibre-reinforced plastic and a carbon fibre also used in making F1 cars. “The really important thing is that the helmet doesn’t have a single weak spot,” explains Norway’s four-time, multi-discipline world champion Aksel Lund Svindal. That’s both vital and reassuring when, like Svindal, you head downhill at up to 150kph. www.sweetprotection.com

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WARRIOR PRINCEAs the new NRL season kicks off, New Zealand Warriors star Shaun Johnson is coping with criticism and kicking it with Dan Carter

At the end of last season, Shaun Johnson came in for serious criticism for the first time in his rugby league career. Hewas accused of laziness and inconsistency, and even called a princess by one disgruntled New Zealand Warriors fan.

“It was tough to hear some of the things that were said,” says Johnson. “Still, it was good for me to learn that footy isn’t all highlights.”

Johnson has been tipped for great things since he was a teenager. He was on his way to becoming a professional skateboarder when his father advised him to choose between the rugby pitch and the skate park.

The decision to focus his attention on the oval ball was vindicated when the Warriors signed him in 2009. Still only 23, this is his third full season in the NRL, and he starts it as the club’s first choice halfback and goal-kicker. One of the highlights of his pre-season was a kicking session with All Blacks legend, Dan Carter.

“He’s a freak,” says Johnson. “He just didn’t miss. Every kick was exactly the same. It was like watching a robot.”

Watching the Warriors in 2012 was hard work; they struggled all season and finished third from bottom. Johnson and his teammates are looking forward to making amends immediately this year. “We’re keen to bounce back,” he says, “and I feel I’ve got a point to prove.” www.warriors.co.nz

Aiming high: Shaun Johnson knows the Warriors must improve on last season

HARD & FASTTop performers and winning ways from around the globe

Kyle Croxall of Canada made it two

wins in two at the second stop of the

Red Bull Crashed Ice

Ice Cross Downhill

World Championship,

in Saint Paul, USA.

After his triumph at round four of AMA Supercross series in Oakland, USA, Ken Roczen from Germany won again in Anaheim, in the 250SX Class, to top the points standings.

Canada made it two

After his triumph at round four of AMA Supercross series in

Gregor Schlierenzauer made history by scoring his 47th and 48th World Cup ski victories in Harrachov, Czech Republic. The Austrian now has the most World Cup wins of all time.

A win at the Punta Cana Kite Fest in the Dominican Republic was a great way for British kiteboarder Aaron Hadlow to celebrate his return to competition after a knee injury.

Gregor Schlierenzauer

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WHERE’S YOUR HEAD AT?

CHANNING TATUMHe was always going to be a big star in Hollywood: just check out the biceps.But how did he become the most sought-after leading man of the moment?

WORK ETHIC

Also this year, you can see Tatum in Side Effects,

a psychological thriller, White House Down, in

which he has to rescue the hostaged President, and

Foxcatcher, a drama, also starring Steve Carell, from

the director of Brad Pitt’s Moneyball. He’s keeping

busy for a reason. “Big actors,” he said, “have told

me to get it while the getting is good. Grind it.”

CHAN-UPAs Tatum’s 2012 took off, the

makers of G.I. Joe: Retaliation were kicking themselves.

They’d killed off his character at the beginning of the

movie! So: did they shift the film’s release date from last

summer to March 2013 to reshoot more Chan scenes,

or merely turn a 2D film into 3D? Reports are unclear.

NORLINS DARLIN’

Last year, Tatum’s

bar, Saints and

Sinners, opened on

the aptly named

Bourbon Street in

New Orleans’s French

Quarter. “I don’t think I’d

ever open a bar anywhere

else,” he said. “People come to

New Orleans with a little bit of

money in their pocket and they

have one thing they want to do

with it – and that’s spend it and

party with it and go crazy. And

I want to help facilitate that.”

EXPLODING STAR In 2012, three Tatum ‘tweeners’ tipped over into the big league. Romantic drama The Vow, cop comedy

21 Jump Street and Magic Mike, based on Tatum’s time as a stripper, together cost $79 million to make and took $565 million at the global

box office. The pretty guy who can deadlift 425lb became the acting all-rounder

who can carry a movie.

PUPPY LOVEChanning Tatum was born on Saturday, April 26,

1980. Chan – as friends, family and fan club

members know him – grew up excelling at sports,

from baseball to soccer to kung-fu. A football

scholarship took him to college, but he dropped

out, and then worked, among other jobs, in a

pet shop, badmouthing his favoured pooches to

customers so the dogs

wouldn’t be sold.

WHEN SHE MOVES, SHE MOVESPost-college, Tatum also worked as a department-store perfume spritzer, and as an exotic dancer. After being propositioned with the you-could-be-a-model line, he thought, “I could be a model” and joined an agency. He was soon in TV ads and appeared, for one second, as a shirtless barkeep in the video for Ricky Martin’s She Bangs.

USUAL SUSPECT

In time-honoured fashion, model

Tatum moved to Los Angeles to try

to become actor Tatum. The gamble

paid off. In September 2004, he

was telling everyone he knew to

watch CSI: Miami on the last

Monday of the month, for in it he

played Bob Davenport, a dumbass

with his cap on backwards who

steals a speedboat littered with

evidence, including a corpse.

NEXT STEPStarring in 2006 dance movie Step-Up gave

Tatum a first taste of real fame, and also a life

partner: his co-star Jenna Dewan became his wife

in 2009. There then followed a dozen movies over

five years: some good notices, some decent box

office and a few, as Tatum put it, “tweeners – you know,

those mid-level budget movies that just do kinda good.”

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Winning formulaHANG ON!The bumper sticker ‘Freeclimbers do it with their fingers’ is grounded in reality. Here’s the physics of a formidable grip

A GRASP OF THE NUMBERS“What’s the correlation between the depth of grip and the maximum vertical force that the fingers can tolerate in a ‘half crimp? [figure 1]’” says dr Martin apolin, a member of the physics faculty at the university of Vienna.

“a 2012 study tested climbers hanging onto a ledge with one hand, with the aim of objectively measuring finger strength. each test subject was a top-class climber. figure 2 shows the correlation between ledge depth and finger strength: the strength increases with the depth of grip and reaches a plateau at 520n. Kilian fischhuber, a five-time World cup champion in bouldering [a type of short, fast freeclimbing], has had his finger strength measured at an impressive 800n.

“Body weight in newtons, FG, is determined by FG = mg, where m is the mass of the climber and g is gravity (around 10m/s2). at 63kg, fischhuber has a body weight of around 630n. With a slight increase in grip depth he could easily hang on with one hand; this would not be the case with other climbers of the same weight who underwent the test.

“fingers have numerous joints, and therefore numerous calculations apply, but here we consider them as one integral unit. for a balanced lever the following generally applies: strength, Fk, multiplied by lever arm, rk, equals load, FL, multiplied by load arm, rL, or Fkrk = FLrL (figure 3). the flexor digitorum superficialis is the muscle responsible for deflection of the middle finger joint; its strength, FM, we estimate at 650n. however, because its tendons pull at an angle, the vertical force component, FK, is decisive and so we make a modification: FK = FMcosα and thus FL = FMcosα(rk/rL).

“assuming the same muscle strength, finger strength is indirectly proportional to the load arm rL (FL ~ 1/rL). depending on where the main support point of the finger is – that is, where FL comes into effect – the load arm changes. With a deep grip, this point is closer to the pivot, rL is smaller (eg 2cm) and FL is therefore larger (450n). if the grip is narrower, this point moves away from the pivot, rL increases (3cm) and FL decreases (300n) [figure 3]. of course, there are other forearm muscles that increase finger strength. however, with this simple model you begin to appreciate why finger strength decreases with narrower grips.”

LET’S ALL HANDHOLDhow do you increase finger strength in practice? “By training with a campus board – a wooden board with horizontal rails attached,” says Kilian fischhuber. in absence of professional training aids, the rest of us can greaten our grip by hanging around the house. “a stable door frame will also work,” fischhuber says. www.kilian-fischhuber.at 

Austrian climbing  ace Kilian Fischhuber, 29, was overall Bouldering World  Cup champion in 2005, 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2011

Frank Morris

26 THE RED BULLETIN

B U L L E VA R D

9.75During World War II, Saxony’s Colditz Castle

served as a prison camp for Allied officers. In 1944, two British pilots imprisoned

there hatched a plan: they aimed to fly to freedom in a glider launched from the roof of the fortress. They secretly built a flying machine from boards, shelves

and bedding. It had a wingspan of 9.75m. However, the glider was never put to use: US

troops liberated Colditz shortly before the contraption could be cleared for take-off.

Go to jail: www.nps.gov/alca/index.htm

3Pascal Payet may not be the most inventive escapee, but he is one of the more successful. In 2001, he broke out of prison in Luynes, France, with the help of a friend who had commandeered a helicopter. Two years later, he freed three of his former prison-mates – again with a chopper. Once recaptured, he was moved regularly as a precautionary measure. It was unsuccessful: in July 2007, a helicopter landed on the roof of a Grasse prison, and Payet flew to freedom once more. He was back in custody two months later.

33John Dillinger’s career as an outlaw turned

him into a folk hero of Depression-era America. Depending on whom you believe,

he was part of 12 or 24 or more bank robberies, but his prison escapes number two. The second breakout, from jail in Crown Point, Indiana, on March 3, 1934, was aided

by a pistol-shaped piece of wood that Dillinger covered in black shoe polish.

Within 15 minutes of brandishing it, he had 33 people locked up: guards, a

cook, even the warden’s mother-in-law.

1,576Throughout its 29 years of operation, Alcatraz prison, in San Francisco Bay, was regarded as escape-proof. It held 1,576 prisoners from 1934-1963, and every one of the 14 breakout attempts failed – officially. In 1962, Frank Morris and two fellow prisoners used spoons to dig their way to freedom through ventilation shafts, and set sail in a raft made from rubber raincoats. According to the official account, the trio drowned. But, unlike other would-be escapees, their bodies were never found.

320Early in the morning of April 25,

2011, more than 470 Taliban militia members left a prison in Kandahar in one of

the most spectacular mass escapes of all time. They scarpered through a tunnel 320m long,

which had been five months in the construction and dug mostly from the outside in, from the

premises of construction firm opposite the jail. It seemed highly unlikely at the time that all the guards were unaware of what was happening; some prison employees now share cells in the

prison with about 70 recaptured escapees.

40,000The press called him ‘Houdini’ because, in the 1950s, Alfred Hinds escaped custody in England three times. Firstly he cut a copy of his cell key in the Nottingham prison workshop and climbed over a 6m wall. Two years later, he escaped during a trial in London by locking his guards in a toilet cubicle and walking out of court with the crowd. The following year, 1958, he broke out of Chelmsford prison and sold his life story to the tabloids for a reported US$40,000 (worth about seven times that today) in the two years before his recapture.

LUCKY NUMBERS

PRISON BREAKSAlcatraz, the world’s most notorious prison, closed its doors 50 years ago this month. With outlaws locking up in-laws, and a hat-trick of helicopter heists, we remember those who practised the daring art of escape

Pascal Payet

Alcatraz Island

Colditz

Alfred Hinds

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the social climbersMaking a 10-storey human tower is a matter of historic civic pride in Catalonia, where town teamscompete to build a pyramid of people 300 strong

Words: Andreas Rottenschlager Photography: Philipp Horak

28

The human tower building competition

in Vilafranca del Penedès, near

Barce lona

PILING THEM HIGHHuman towers, known as castells, are as much a part of Catalan culture as the architecture of Antoni Gaudí and FC Barcelona. Their origins are in aerial dance moves demonstrated at religious festivals over 200 years ago. Today, about 7,000 castellers in 66 different clubs keep the tradition alive. Competitions are held around Barcelona between April and Novem ber. There are no judges to award points: whoever builds the most spectacular human pyramid wins.

EVERY HANDHOLD COUNTSThe best teams can pile their members on top of one another to build human towers up to 10 levels high. The tower is considered complete when the person on top – almost always a child – raises an arm. Anyone passionate and committed can become a casteller. Profession, age and gender are irrelevant. The clubs, ‘colles’ in Catalan, are great levellers. “You have unemployed people climbing on politicians,” says Josep Cabré, president of the Castellers de Vilafranca. “Everyone in the tower is equal.”

Belt and bracing: the black waistbands offer some much-needed support to the lower back muscles

Building pressure: one of the Baixos (people at the bottom) bites down on his collar, in the absence of a gum shield

The Xicots de Vilafranca club: human towers have developed a complex architecture since their beginnings in the 18th century

31

The members of the Castellers de Vilafranca club at the start of a nine-level tower. There is a precise blueprint for every formation

SOLID FOUNDATIONSThe circular bottom layer of a human tower is called the pinya. It takes shape around the four men at the centre. Other castellers then climb onto their shoulders to form the upper levels.A load-bearer in the pinya has to balance up to 350kg on his shoulders. Salvador Moreno has been doing that for 23 years. “Sometimes I pass out,” he says.

32

Ivan, six, suffered leg injuries after

falling from a castell. “Now I know what it’s

like to fly,” he says, proudly. Children

have been obliged to wear helmets and

gumshields since 2006

LIFE IN THE TOWER

Physique and talent determine a casteller’s

position in the tower. Some climb to the top of the human pyramid

when they are young schoolchildren, form

part of the middle levels as adolescents and

support their friends in the pinya as pensioners. The castellers’ motto is the same for everyone,

regardless of age – “Força, Equilibri, Valor

i Seny”: “Strength, Balance, Courage and

Common Sense.”

The casteller team from Valls, a few seconds after their tower collapsed. Below: Vilafranca team members waiting for the next attempt

RISE AND FALLMost accidents happen when the towers are being deconstructed. One person’s error is enough to make a 300-person castell collapse. But serious injuries remain rare, since the large number of castellers in the base break the fall of those above.

the red bulletin 35

Sound structural analysis: the Castellers de Vilafranca’s nine-level tower has a central column and a supporting ring around the second level

A MOMENT OF SHEER HAPPINESSBuilding human towers means months of training for the short moment when 300 people come together in perfect harmony. Spectators go wild when a castell is complete. Castellers celebrate only once it has been successfully dismantled. “Making human towers,” says Pere Almirall i Piqué, the Castellers de Vila franca trainer, “is like a drug.”

36

Pere,

the Architect. Pere Almirall i Piqué is the go-to guy for planning the perfect human tower. Piqué, 38, has a youthful face and is the cap de colla of the Castellers de Vilafran ca – the coach of Catalonia’s most successful human-tower-building team.

His team, from Vilafranca, a town of 38,000 people about 50km west of Barcelona, has won eight national championships to date, more than any other club. It is one of only two teams worldwide to have built a 10-level castell.

“I like the mix of tradition and thrills,” says Piqué, in his office in the centre of Vilafranca. “Making human towers is like a drug. You’ll get addicted eventually.”

As cap de colla, it is up to Piqué to decide who goes where in the tower. He decides on tactics for competitions and gives climbing instructions. “You learn how to get on with everyone and how to judge their talents correctly. You have to be equally able to motivate builders and bankers.”

He co-ordinates the construction of the tower from outside the pinya, the circular foundation of the castell. “It’s a nerve-racking job, because you’re responsible for its success ,but you can’t get actively involved.”

Piqué says that only one in every 100 of his towers collapses. This usually happens during the critical phase shortly after the tower begins to dismantle, when the people at the bottom are already exhausted.

The last time one of his castells fell in on itself was during

training in the town square, the day before a competition in Vilafranca, with 4,000 home supporters looking on.

“Somebody in the second level put the weight on the wrong foot and slipped off. You can’t afford to make that sort of mistake.”

After the collapse it was up to Piqué, whose day job is selling fire doors, to massage the egos of 300 men, women and children. “I tried to speak to every one of them individually,” he explains. “As the cap de colla, you’re a counsellor too.”

And what did he say to his team? “I said to them, ‘Don’t be afraid. You’re good.’”

Salvador, the labourer. Cal Figarot is the headquarters of the Castellers de Vilafranca association. The two-storey central building has conference rooms and a lavish dining-hall. To get to the gym, where the castellers practise their formations, you go through the adjacent garden. This place is reminiscent of a circus school: a safety net protects the castellers as they climb during training. A pinboard on a wall has sketches of plans for future castells.

Salvador Moreno is stretched out on the grass in front of the gym having his broad back massaged. He is 54 years old and has the upper body of a weightlifter. His position in the tower is called baixos in Catalan, which means ‘the ones at the bottom’. Moreno and his fellow baixos forms the base of the human tower, balancing up

‘DoN’t Be aFRaiD’Three champion castellers on the fear of collapse, pain in the neck (and elsewhere) and the psychology of the human tower

“ it’s hard to breathe in the base. i can’t see the people next to me, but we urge each other on”

38 the red bulletin

Pom de Dalt: Children aged 6-12 form the top three levels of the castell, known as the crown, on account of their low weight. As soon as the enxaneta – the smallest child at the very top – raises his hand, the tower is considered complete.Tronc: This central trunk section goes up from the centre of the pinya to the level under the dosos in the crown. A tower is classified by the number of people in its tronc. The illustration above shows a ‘3d8’ formation: an eight-level castell with three people in each level of the tronc.Pinya: The base, which contains about 200 people, supports the upper sections and prevents the tronc from buckling. If a castell caves in, the pinya also breaks the fall of tumbling castellers.

hUMaN BUilDiNG BlocKsFrom the musclemen in the pinya to the little kid on top, Catalonia’s castells each unite 300 men, women and children in a living work of art. This is how they all fit together

Baixos (ones at the bottom)

Segons (seconds)

Terços (thirds)

Quarts (fourths)

Quints (fifths)

Dosos (twos)

Acotxador (riser)

Enxaneta (rider)

Pinya (the base)

Tronc (the trunk)

Pom de Dalt (the crown)

to nine levels on their shoulders. Depending on weight distribution, he could have to support up to 350kg on his body.

“It’s hard to breathe,” says Moreno, of his state when a tower is complete. “It’s pitch black where I’m positioned. I can’t see the people next to me, but we urge each other on.”

The baixos have to be small and strong. Moreno is 1.69m tall and weighs 96kg. Castellers will tell you that a tower’s heartbeat is in the baixos.

Moreno regularly works on his back muscles. The black cummerbund he wraps around his waist provides extra stability. “I still get back pain anyway,” he says. Moreno has been part

of the human pyramids for 23 years. Often people start out on the top of the tower as small children, he explains, and as years go by they work themselves down to the bottom. Moreno works as a salesman in a gardening store. “Not many people can become baixos,” he explains. “Sometimes I faint when the castellers are coming down off my shoulders, but building human towers makes me happy.”

Silvia, the tower mother. It is evening in Cal Figarot, the association headquarters. The local TV channel, TV3, is showing highlights of the tower-building competitions. While the grown-ups discuss their rivals’ castells over a beer, a gaggle of children maraud noisily through the canteen. Generations come together in the towers. The youngest member of the Castellers de Vilafranca is just six, the oldest is 63.

Silvia Sabaté is 44 and has been helping build castells since she was 18. She helps the baixos in the base with their hard graft. Her children Pere, 11, Foix, 10 and Aina, eight, meanwhile, climb as high as the eighth level. “I get nervous every time they’re up there,” she says.

In 2006, in Mataró, 20km north-east of Barcelona, a 12-year-old girl died as a result of her injuries from a fall. The little ones have been obliged to wear helmets and use gumshields ever since. The team warms up together before every competition. They practise how to fall safely in training. Serious injuries, in and out of competition, are rare.

Sabaté works as a paediatrician in a Vilafranca hospital. “If I thought the risk was too high, I wouldn’t let my children go up there,” she says, “and I believe in the educational value of tower-building.”

What can children learn in the castell? Sabaté thinks about it for a moment.

“That everyone is equal.” www.cccc.cat www.castellersdevilafranca.cat

Left: The Sabaté family believes in the educational value of tower building Below: Vilafranca’s lead casteller, Pere Almirall i Piqué. His day job is selling fire doors; as head casteller, he has to manage, and possibly console, 300 people

TITANS OF TOWER BUILDINGThe Castellers de Vilafranca are one of the greatest tower-building teams, with their record nine titles at the Catalan championships in Tarragona. The association has 500 members, 300 of whom are actively involved in building the human towers. President Josep Cabré has a theory about why tower building is so popular in his town. “We don’t see ourselves as an association,” he says. “We are a family.”

the red bulletin 39

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Dave Sherwood leans against a battered white ute in the back paddock of the farm he owns with his son, Levi. He’s watching his boy, the

winner of last year’s Red Bull X-Fighters, put on a show for a TV news crew on the freestyle motocross (FMX) track they built together. It’s a stinking hot summer day in Sanson, the small town outside Palmerston North that Levi Sherwood comes home to when he’s not travelling the world, wowing crowds with his bike skills. Every time Sherwood goes for a ride in Sanson, his dad stands sentry at the top of the pit carved out of the hilly paddock.

“That’s the rule: never go for a ride without someone else. That’s why Levi gave me so much grief after I crashed on my own,” Dave says, pointing to a 6in scar on his right shoulder, a souvenir from the surgeon who repaired his torn rotator cuff. “I was just messing around on the bike. I did it going down that fricking hill over there,” he says, drawing attention away from his shoulder to a corner of his farm.

“We spend most days giving each other grief,” says Levi. “Dad’s been there from the start. He puts me in my place and keeps me grounded.”

Dave Sherwood is a bricklayer with a passion for bikes. Now aged 53, as a young man he raced speedway and put Levi on a quad bike when he was three years old. The boy soon ditched the four-wheeler for a Honda QR50 and honed his skills on a motocross track in the backyard. The youngster was fast but rarely first. “I was never able to put it together for

a full race,” says Sherwood. “I was all or nothing and I usually ended up crashing.”

“He was a bit cautious back then, too,” says his father. “He still is in his own way. He’s not into the 50-50 tricks anymore – the kind of tricks that if you make them, you’re gonna clean up with the judges, but if you don’t you’re gone. You’re in the dirt.”

Sherwood was nine when he did his first jump on a bike, but it took a couple of years for him to build up the confidence to try more elaborate tricks. “When I first started riding freestyle, I sucked,” he says. “It took me three years, then one day it was like: boom! It just clicked.”

In 2003, Sherwood was invited to ride with the Crusty Demons motorcycle display team on their Australasian tour. He was 12 years old. Five years later, he was invited to take part in Red Bull X-Fighters, the international FMX series, and won on his debut, in Mexico. Last year he took the overall title for the first time, clinching victory with a dramatic win in the final event in Sydney, in October. Since then, Sherwood has been back home in New Zealand, recharging his batteries and moving dirt around his freestyle track with a digger, happy as a pig in the proverbial.

The 60-acre property at Sanson is home to 30 cattle and three sheep – the livestock help keep the grass down – but the Sherwoods didn’t buy the land to farm it. They acquired it, in June 2011, to build a motocross compound. A couple of months later, the first jumps were ready. Now, there are two motocross tracks and a freestyle layout the size

Farm hand: Levi Sherwood on his homemade FMX track at Sanson

THE TRICKSTER

Ahead of the 2013 Red Bull X-Fighters series, beginning this month, New Zealand’s freestyle motocross champion Levi Sherwood talks about defending his title, the joy of

diggers and why there’s no place like homeWords: Robert Tighe Photography: Graeme Murray

40

of a football field with a selection of jumps, ramps and landing areas.

While Sherwood talks to a TV crew about the start of his 2013 efforts, a mate of his rocks up for a ride. Dylan Foster used to race motocross competitively.

“I broke myself too much,” says Foster. “I just jump for fun now.”

Foster and five riders use the freestyle track regularly, 15 of Sherwood’s friends use the motocross track whenever he’s home, while a mini-motocross track hosts up to 20 local kids every Saturday.

“It’s pretty mean, eh?” says Foster, of his surroundings. “There’s nothing as good as this anywhere else in New Zealand.”

The same can be said of Levi Sherwood.“It doesn’t look like he’s trying,” says

Foster, of Sherwood’s seemingly effortless riding style. “Other riders put a lot more into it; Levi makes it look so natural. He’s just a bendy little fella, I guess.”

It can also be said that Sherwood was born bendy. “He doesn’t do anything [to improve his flexibility],” says his father. “He doesn’t like exercising – just riding.”

“I’ve never really stretched in my life,” says Sherwood. “People keep telling me,

‘Start stretching or you’ll lose it.’ I need to start working on it, because it’s the one thing that separates me from other riders.”

Sherwood’s flexibility and extension during tricks forced other riders to adapt their styles. Mat Rebaud, the 30-year-old Swiss rider who was the 2008 Red Bull X-Fighters champion, says Sherwood has had a huge impact on the sport. “Levi arrived with a new style of riding and this big extension on his jumps,” says Rebaud. “Before that, all the riders were trying to flip every jump.”

Australian FMX star Josh Sheehan has competed against Sherwood since the Kiwi finished second in the Australasian Championships as a 16-year-old. “Levi looks awesome on the bike, and he’s so calm and collected off it,” says Sheehan. “He’s

“ Levi doesn’t look like he’s trying. He

makes it look so natural. He’s just a

bendy little fella ”

Ramping it up: Sherwood’s freestyle track is the size of a football field

got such a natural style. He does these big tricks but makes them look effortless.”

“I guess I’m a bit lazier than most riders,” says Sherwood. “I don’t like to put a lot of effort in when I’m on the bike.”

Or when he’s off it. He goes swimming and mountain biking to keep fit, but doesn’t work out or have a personal trainer. During the Red Bull X-Fighters season he has an entourage of one: his mechanic. “I like to keep it casual,” says Sherwood.

‘Casual’, and ‘cruise’, are words that crop up often in conversation with Sherwood.

On psyching out the opposition: “You can mess with people’s heads, but I usually cruise. It’s a game to me. It’s pretty casual.”

On his training routine: “Some people practise tricks every day. I go for a ride every other day. If I’m not having a good day, I’ll just cruise. If I’m having a good day, I’ll make the most of it. It’s pretty casual.”

On winning X-Fighters last year: “I turned up in Dubai at the start of last year’s Red Bull X-Fighters and cruised. I did some riding at home before the start of the season, but I didn’t bust my balls.”

He is not saying, however, that winning comes easy. “Not at all. I’ve been

42 the red bulletin

me or 100,000. For me, sitting in a bulldozer all day [working on the track in Sanson] is as enjoyable as Red Bull X-Fighters, but it’s not as rewarding.”

At 21, he has had as many rewards as someone with a dozen more years’ experience. “I don’t know what age I feel,” he says, “but I know I can’t walk further than a kilometre without some part of my body hurting.”

Sherwood dislocated his hip when he was 12. A year later he tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee, got it fixed, then tore it again. As well as the injuries from the 2011 Las Vegas crash, he has fractured both wrists several times, broken both legs and a vertebrae and been knocked unconscious, as he says, perhaps unsurprisingly, more times than he can remember. At the end of last year, he had an operation to remove a rod from his femur and a plate from his wrist. If he can stay injury-free this year, he has a great chance of becoming only the second rider to win consecutive Red Bull X-Fighters titles.

“Levi is so consistent and he’s got the confidence from winning last year,” says Josh Sheehan. “He knows what it takes to win the series so he’ll be hard to beat. He’s so damn confident now. He’s got a long road ahead of him.”

A road that, wherever it takes him, will always lead back to Sanson. www.facebook.com/LeviSherwoodFMX

“ The crash changed me. Now

I can turn off the voice in my head

if I need to ”

doing freestyle for 12 years. The first few years were really hard, and I’ve put the hard work in, but I’ve come to learn it’s all in my head. Me on a good day, I’ll win. Me on a bad day, I’ll be ninth or 10th. That’s why I won last year. I had more good days than bad days.” The good days, says Sherwood’s manager, Russell Stratton, come when Sherwood is relaxed. “Levi does his own thing and for him it has to be fun. The fun aspect is 100 per cent what motivates him. When it’s not fun, he struggles.”

A couple of weeks after his win in Sydney last October, Sherwood celebrated his 21st birthday by going out for dinner with his family and his girlfriend Ellie Chew. Sherwood and Chew, an accomplished 19-year-old BMX rider from Paraparaumu, outside Wellington, have been together for a couple of years. He credits her with helping him take a more relaxed approach to life and to competition. Another contributing factor in his laid-back approach was formed in the aftermath of an accident, during practice for a demonstration event in Las Vegas in June 2011. Sherwood broke his left wrist and two vertebrae, and also suffered damage to his lungs, liver and kidney, after his bike slipped into neutral as he took off from a ramp, causing him to misjudge and to crash-land hard.

“The crash in Vegas changed everything. It put things into perspective. Riding is just 10 years of my life and that crash taught me to think about things more and weigh up what I need to do to win. Last year, I didn’t take risks if I didn’t need to.

“When I was younger, it was all on. I would think of a trick and just do it. Now I can turn off that voice if I need to. I’ve learned to be more patient and relax. Not that I stopped caring, but I stopped worrying about the results.”

Sherwood is an introvert in an extrovert’s sport. He loves what he does, but doesn’t seek the limelight. He hangs out with the same schoolmates he did before he began to compete in international FMX. They go fishing and karting and they all ride bikes. He doesn’t display any of his trophies and medals, and there are no pictures of him on his bike in his house. (“I give all that

stuff to my mum,” he says.) Sherwood’s one indulgence, apart from his motocross compound, is radio-control toys. He has a collection of cars, planes, a helicopter and a racing buggy at his house in Temecula, California, a town full of FMX riders because of the riding opportunities there. He spends six months of the year in Temecula, in a house he shares with Matt Rebaud, coming back home to New Zealand for the off-season and whenever he has any down time.

“I could ride shows and cash in a lot more, but I love coming home,” he says, “and I’ve never done this for the money. That’s not why I ride my bike. I couldn’t care less if there are five people watching

Home boy: Sherwood could cash in by riding

shows, but prefers returning to Sanson

the red bulletin 43

D r i v e r s , r i d e r s , s u p p o r t s t a f f a n d l o c a l s r e c o u n t t h e i r d a y s a n d n i g h t s o n t h e m e r c i l e s s 8 , 5 0 0 k m r a c e a c r o s s P e r u , A r g e n t i n a a n d C h i l eWords: Werner Jessner Photography: Philipp Horak

Diary Dakar

s t A g e s

14s t o r i e s D Ay s

14

45

L i m a – P i s c oL A u r e n t L A z A r D , m o t o r b i k e , u r u g u A y

“‘A red wire and a black one… no. No. The red one, you mean? OK. Speak later.’” Stay calm. My Yamaha’s engine has cut out after just 3.9km of the very first special stage, and isn’t making a sound. After my phone call to the mechanic back at the bivouac [the mobile village of race staff and team support crews], at least the horn is now working, which only makes the whole thing more confusing. Local fans pretending to be motorbike specialists have now descended on my bike, to try to fix it. When all is said and done, internal combustion engines are not spaceships. Petrol, an ignition spark and you’re away. But, sadly, we haven’t got an ignition spark and the petrol isn’t flowing, and I’d made such an effort for my eighth Dakar Rally: I’d grown a moustache and had pink shirts produced with my name on. Today it’s taken me six hours to do what should have taken 10 minutes, and I’m at the back of the field. Even the trucks have long since passed me. If I can get the bike working again, all well and good. If not, then I’ll go down in history as the man with the shortest-ever Dakar experience.”

P i s c o – P i s c os i m i o n V e L A s q u e C r u z ,

u m b r e L L A r e n t A L , P e r u

“I turned 52 this year and I run a beach umbrella rental business in the town where I live, Paracas. I loaded 30 umbrellas onto my 1974 Datsun pickup truck early this morning and drove the 17km to Pisco. There’s not much going on at the local beach today, anyway; half the people in town have gone to watch the Dakar. Apparently, there have been a million Peruvians on the streets since yesterday, watching the cars, trucks and motorbikes. The bivouac is stopping in Pisco for two days, which means good business for me. Down at the entrance, a couple of guys are selling Dakar T-shirts they printed themselves which they’re not actually allowed to do. But I have no guilt when it comes to my umbrellas. Paracas is a lot more beautiful than Pisco. The Dakar should come to Paracas.”

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SAN MIGUELDE TUCUMÁN

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The buggy of Russian driver Sergey Savenko is stripped

bare for repair at the bivouac workshop. It is a similar

scene here each evening, as seemingly hopeless vehicles

are brought back to life by expert mechanics

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N a z c a – a r e q u i P an A s s e r A L - A t t i y A h , C A r , q A t A r

“Our buggy’s driving really well so far. It’s stunning, and we’re absolutely delighted considering it’s such a new project and we didn’t do nearly as many test kilometres as we’d have liked to do. carlos’s car seems to have had a bit of trouble, but everything’s running smoothly for us. [Sainz and Al-Attiyah are teammates in the Qatar Red Bull Rally Team]. It was a great win today: the 16th stage win of my career. I’m just under five minutes behind the leader, Stéphane Peterhansel. It looks like it’s going to boil down to a duel between our new rear-wheel- drive buggy and the experienced four-wheel-drive Mini. I’m very happy at the moment, but there’s still a long way to go in the rally.”

a r e q u i P a – a r i c aA n D r e y k A r g i n o V , t r u C k , r u s s i A

“A regular day for us. We overtook hans Stacey, yesterday’s truck winner. he had a problem and flipped onto his roof. We got stuck soon after, but we managed to free ourselves. Then our teammate Ayrat Mardeev got stuck and we towed him out of the sand. Someone overtook us while we were doing that, but not for long. We finished the stage in second and have moved up to fifth overall. You’ve got to go at your own pace. Our rivals who set off too hard are having problems. Stacey says he went through the mountains so quickly because he’s afraid of them; I think that’s true. Only the mechanic, who’s on board for the first time, complains about the rattling cab, but he hasn’t puked on me yet. That’s probably thanks to the dried fish and beer we eat at the end of stages.”

P i s c o – N a z c at i m o g o t t s C h A L k , C o - D r i V e r , g e r m A n y

“Two years ago, I won the Dakar alongside Nasser Al-Attiyah. This year, it’s my job to show carlos Sainz the best route, in buggy number 303. You’ve got to think of the special stages as a digital treasure hunt: you have to reach one gPS checkpoint after another, in the correct order. That’s a good 50, 60 gPS checkpoints a day with stages lasting 200km, sometimes even 400km. Yesterday, we missed one checkpoint, or rather it wasn’t on the gPS. Today we know why: a gPS failure by the event organiser was to blame. We won the stage, but a rival team protested against us. There’s no room for sentimentality at the top. If the protest is accepted, we’ll be slapped with a 20-minute penalty, which will push us way down the field, even though we did nothing wrong.”

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Clockwise from above: argentinian police officers are on hand to

secure the course; a doctor surveys the damage after an X-ray in the

bivouac; rest is taken whenever and wherever possible; nasser

al-attiyah and Carlos Sainz power across the dusty track

a r i c a – c a L a m ay o u r A m e A s s A t h i A n y , D o C t o r , F r A n C e

“I’m 60 years old and have been manager of the Dakar medical team for eight years. There are 58 of us, and on average we treat 200 patients a day; about 80 per cent of those are motorbike riders. They come with various complaints: diarrhoea, injuries, sunburn, mosquito bites, altitude sickness. We’re at an altitude of almost 5,000m after all. We’re also on hand for fatal accidents. We have X-ray and ultrasound equipment in the bivouac. Two trailers are dismantled and rebuilt at each stage location, moving 12 tonnes of equipment every time we do so. Our patients are extremely stoical. None of them gives up willingly. It’s not our job to stop them. If there’s any way we can, we get them back into the race. Our rush hour starts at 6pm. Things begin to slow down after midnight. We’re on call 24 hours a day.”

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Pascal Thomasse (in buggy) and co-driver Pascal Larroque (holding cable) attempt to rescue their car from a river after a flash flood during stage 11. The French duo’s vehicle was eventually dragged out with the help of a helicopter and they were back on track for Stage 12 the next day

c ó r D o b a – L a r i o j ag A r A y J u L i o C e s A r ,

P o L i C e m A n , A r g e n t i n A

“Today is my 36th birthday. My colleagues and I stood at the 59.4km point and made sure that the spectators didn’t get too close to the course. That wasn’t easy here, as there wasn’t a cordoned-off viewing area. hundreds of people were lying in the river – it was almost 40°c. We were deployed yesterday at 11pm, for a 24-hour shift. The rally is a large-scale operation for the police. Today in córdoba, there were 3,500 police on duty: 1,000 to secure the course, with the rest stretched out along the liaison sections and making sure the bivouac is safe. It’s a nice birthday for me.”

T u c u m á N - c ó r D o b aC y r i L D e s P r e s , m o t o r b i k e , F r A n C e

“Two muesli bars, two almond bars, two guarana gels, five power bar gels, one banana bar, a half-litre protein shake, two-and-a-half litres of hydro drink… Sadly, all that wasn’t enough today. I still had to raid a petrol station before the liaison section and buy some more supplies. Back in the trailer, my assistant had prepared two raw egg yolks and a portion of space food, and then there was dinner. So let’s say today’s stage was really tough. I had to drive in a slight crouching position the whole time with my backside 20cm above the seat. That was the only way to be quick. My performance today wasn’t only down to my fitness, it was also because of the correct tyre preparations. The tyres need to be warmed up carefully, as that’s the only way the puncture protection mousse inside them will work perfectly. I had to change my engine two days ago and I had to do it by myself as no mechanics were allowed during that particular section of the race. (I’m being very cautious with the new one.) Today, I limited myself to a top speed of 140kph on the quick sections, even though I could have gone 160kph. Still, I moved from sixth to second place overall and am now only five minutes behind my teammate and support rider, Ruben Faria. Today was what my rivals call a D-day: a Despres day.”

c a L a m a - s a L T a After crashing into a police car, 25-year-old French motorcyclist Thomas Bourgin (above) died at the side of the road in the early hours of the morning before Stage 7. This was during one of the rally’s liaison sections – driving between the end of stages and the bivouac sites. This is not the first fatality of the race. During Stage 5 of the rally, a support vehicle for British team Race2Recovery crashed into two Peruvian taxis while following the race. Two locals died, and seven people were injured. Many drivers, especially the motorbike riders, have long considered the hellishly long, soporific – and irrelevant in terms of competition – liaisons between the stage locations more dangerous than the actual stages themselves.

s a L T a – s a N m i g u e L D e T u c u m á NF e r D i n A n D k r e i D L , m o t o r b i k e , A u s t r i A

“I used to jokingly call my teammate Ingo Zahn the Prussian, and he’d call me a Burgenlander – even though we’re not from those parts of Austria or germany. Just a bit of team banter born out of a desire to make the suffering, torment, lack of sleep and setbacks bearable by keeping spirits high in the tent. But ever since Ingo had a problem with his petrol and I didn’t stay with him, the atmosphere in the tent has gone a little sour. My view is that I couldn’t have helped him out there. Ingo sees things differently. The Dakar creates friendships, but it also ends them. We did achieve our first goal, which was to reach the halfway stage in Tucumán. Last year, my engine conked out 200km before the rest day and Ingo shattered his collarbone on the second day. When we’re not racing, we’re both businessmen, and that’s how we calculate risk when we’re on the bike. People often call riders like us, who come in below 100th place, Dakar tourists. But this type of ‘holiday’ costs €50,000 a head and that’s not including the bike. Although local companies support me too, I’m my own biggest sponsor.”

“The Dakar rally creates

friendships, but it also

ends them”

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F i a m b a L á – c o P i a P óJ o s É m A r i A D i A s ,

P h o t o g r A P h e r , b r A z i L

“Every day, the four of us [Dias and fellow photographers Vinicius Branquelo, Eric Schreder and gustavo Epifano] get up at about 3.30am, have breakfast, make a packed lunch and get out the door. The best spots for taking photos are normally a few hours’ drive off tarmac roads, and at that time of day, no fool is going to come to your rescue if you get stuck because of carelessness or because you’re too tired. The sun rising as you’re doing your morning business on a dune, rather than in the chemical hell of a portable loo: those are the moments that stay with you. Work starts the moment the first motorbike looms into view: taking photos, working on them in the car and sending them off by satellite phone. The working day often lasts late into the afternoon, at which point we still have hundreds of kilometres to travel by road to the next stage location. If nothing goes wrong, we’re in the bivouac around 10pm. But something always does go wrong. The Dakar has so far ruined a camera, a laptop display, the tailgate on our Mitsubishi Pajero, a roof-rack and a wheel bearing. But we’ve parted ways since arriving in the bivouac in La Rioja after the car caught fire on the left-hand rear side. Two of us are trying to get the car working again and two are trying to follow the rally by hitching. Our clients want up-to-date pictures; no one asks how or why. But the mood is good.”

L a r i o j a - F i a m b a L ár A F A e L o L m o s , P e t r o L

s t A t i o n o W n e r , A r g e n t i n A

“My brother José and I run the petrol station in Fiambalá. It’s the last one before copiapó in chile, and you have the Andes in between. If you want to cross the border here, you’ve got to fill up with us. We sell 100,000 litres of petrol during the Dakar: that’s as much as we sell the rest of the year combined. Queues are long. Some support vehicles end up waiting three hours. I hope the Dakar will continue to pass through our town for many years.”

“ Two of us are trying to fi x the car and two are trying to follow by hitching”

above: an over-worked mechanic takes a break.Right: Ruben Faria (left)

celebrates with Cyril despres after the kTm Red Bull Rally

Factory Team duo finished second and first respectively

in the bike category

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LauRenT LazaRd gets his bike fixed and finishes the dakar… in 99th place, some 19 and a half hours off the pace.

SImIon VeLaSque CRuz is still renting sunshades in Paracas.

engine trouble forces SaInz and GoTTSChaLk to retire during Stage 6.

The water pump on naSSeR aL-aTTIyah’s buggy conks out on Stage 9, when the qatari is in second place.

andRey kaRGInoV and the guys in the number 510 kamaz truck finish the dakar in second place, having eaten fish all the way to the finish line.

Three-quarters of the dakar retinue uses the medicine tent at least once by the end of the rally.

The Chilean authorities say they want to investigate the death of ThomaS BouRGIn.

FeRdInand kReIdL and InGo zahn soldier on to Santiago… as solo competitors. zahn finishes 85th, kreidl three places further back.

CyRIL deSPReS notches his fifth dakar Rally victory in the bike category. on January 1, four days before the start of the race, he found out he will become a father for the first time this summer.

once the dakar passes through Córdoba, the police can get back to regular work. event organiser aSo keeps an eye on the speeds via GPS. every kph over the speed limit attracts a hefty fine.

Peace reigns once again at the olmos brothers’ petrol station.

one of the four photographers makes it to Santiago. Their boss is thinking of buying a decent car in time for 2014.

GInIeL de VILLIeRS takes second place overall, coming in 42 minutes behind overall winner Stéphane Peterhansel, who is now the only man to have won the rally five times with a car.

The South american fans hope that the dakar will swing by again in 2014, and that the dakar Rally never goes near dakar in africa ever again.

www.dakar.com

c o P i a P o – L a s e r e N ag i n i e L D e V i L L i e r s , C A r , s o u t h A F r i C A

“The quickest cars out there are the good buggies. If they don’t suffer problems, they’ll win the rally with an hour to spare. The Minis are quicker than us too. They’re advanced and have a much bigger budget. We’re getting a lot out of not much with our pickup but we still have to come up with much more in time for 2014; we have to get more out of the engine and chassis and eliminate the brake problems. A podium finish tomorrow would mean we’d more than met our targets, which was also our goal. Stéphane Peterhansel will win and we’ll hang on to second place. The trick is to cut your speed by exactly the right amount so as not to lose concentration. Ten years ago exactly my engine blew 2km from the finish and we almost didn’t make it over the finish line. I think back to that. The race is only done once you’re over the finish line.”

L a s e r e N a – s a N T i a g oThousands of spectators at a petrol station at four in the morning, human cordons on main roads, seas of flags by the side of a motorway, a flurry of camera flashes on the way to the bivouac, girls screaming, boys waving, women blowing kisses, men dancing. You can’t imagine better fans that those who have supported the rally in Peru, chile and Argentina. There’s chanting. There are autographs. There are hugs. A football stadium atmosphere all the way. At least half of all regular cars have Dakar stickers on them. But the fans are considered, not crazed. Always friendly, patient, kind. having your photo taken with cyril Despres is just the same as having your photo taken with a mechanic: it’s unforgettable.

ePiLogue

Watch the stars of this year’s dakar Rally in action in The Red Bulletin tablet edition. download it now for free

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QUESTQUESTQUESTFrom working the lights for his parents’ band aged 10, to playing on American television every night, via two decades of groundbreaking hip-hop leading The Roots, Ahmir ‘Questlove’ Thompson is riding high on an unparalleled musical journey Words: Jonathan Cohen Photography: Jason Nocito

RESTLESS

AAt 11am, in studio 6B of American TV network NBC’s Rockefeller Center headquarters in New York, the loudest noise you can hear is the vacuum cleaner going up and down the aisles of empty seats in preparation for that day’s taping of the chat show Late Night With Jimmy Fallon. Then, a break in the tidying makes audible a series of snare drum hits coming from just outside the studio doors.

Follow the sounds into the hallway, make a left, and you come to a blue door emblazoned with name of The Roots. A Grammy award encased in glass is affixed to the wall nearest to

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“ I ’ M A P E R S O N T H AT L I S T E N S T O M U S I C F I V E H O U R S A D AY ”

the handle. Behind the door, Ahmir ‘Questlove’ Thompson is running through one of several pieces of music he and his bandmates will be performing a few hours later when Jimmy Fallon is recorded. (A show is taped at 5.30pm every Monday to Friday, and broadcast ‘as live’, from 12.35am Eastern Time the same night.)

Every American talk show of this kind has a house band to soundtrack its guests’ entrances and play along with its host, but that Fallon’s house band is The Roots is exceptional. The Roots are a hip-hop band with a dozen studio albums and almost twice as many current and former members. They are critically acclaimed, yet lost none of their kudos when they became a house band. In fact, they earned a little more. A large part of this goodwill is down to Questlove (a name sometimes written as ?uestlove).

He was born on January 20, 1971, in Philadelphia, the son of doo-wop great Lee Andrews of Lee Andrews and the Hearts. His earliest memories involve being on the road with his parents in another band in which his mother, Jacqui, sang. By the time he was a teenager, he was the full-time drummer. He also attended the Philadelphia High School for Creative and Performing Arts, where he met future Roots MC Tariq Trotter and furthered his ambitions alongside classmates who would go on to have stellar careers in the music industry.

: How fortunate were you to have grown up in musical family?: Between the ages of two and 13, I learned every aspect of show business. Every aspect of it. I started off as the navigator, figuring out how to get from my house to a nightclub or to another state. I had to learn to read a map at the age of seven. Then, I graduated to wardrobe. I steamed, ironed, hand-washed whites. By 10, I was running the lights. I had to learn how to cut gels and operate different systems. I would come before soundcheck, mark spotlights and get a ladder. When I was 10 or 11, I started learning chord charts. I learned my dad’s material left and right, so I could identify a B-flat 9, a C-major, an E7 and so on. I became the de-facto bandleader. Then when I was 12 or 13, I became the full-time drummer. That whole time, I was just watching my mom and dad entertain. Later, without even knowing it, I realised The Roots were

circuit. He had a model wife and two kids that defied their age in the show. He used it to his advantage. When I got to high school, suddenly I wasn’t the shark in the small aquarium. I was a sardine in the Pacific Ocean. On the second day of school, Christian McBride and Joey DeFrancesco got yanked out of class to play on Philadelphia morning TV alongside Miles Davis. Meanwhile, I’m like the fifth drummer, playing the triangle and maybe a tambourine. I was by no means the star. I was frustrated, but I’m glad it happened the way it happened. Boyz II Men were stars in our school, with all the screaming girls. Tariq and

incorporating the same exact lessons. We became big on hip-hop karaoke. That’s what my dad did. He didn’t just do his songs. He did the songs of the day, the songs that were familiar. He knew how to perfectly navigate a show. The first five minutes, you hit them with something they know. The next two songs, your mom is the entertainer and the comedian. Of course, I thought that was basic, general education. I just assumed that every kid knew how to get to Muncie, Indiana. And then it was like, ‘What do you mean, you’ve never been to a nightclub before?’ I didn’t realise how privileged I was until I was much older.Was the more structured environment of high school a culture shock? Well, I had to start all over again. I played drums like an adult when I was eight, so there was a novelty factor of having this little kid in the show. My dad’s show was so good that it transcended the oldies

It’s a playground for passionate musicians, a melting pot of musical ideas and visions. Or, as Questlove puts it, “the most progressive entity of music education”.Since 1998, the Red Bull Music Academy has been travelling the globe, setting up shop once a year in cities such as London, Cape Town, São Paulo, Melbourne and Madrid. Two groups of 30 selected participants – producers, instrumentalists, vocalists, and DJs, from all over the world and of all musical genres – come together for a month (two weeks for each group of

30) to work together in music studios, play the town’s best clubs and venues and learn from the professionals. Mentors such as Questlove (who has been working closely with Red Bull Music Academy since 2006) techno legend Carl Craig, composer Steve Reich and star producer Mark Ronson not only drop in to give lectures and classes, they also stay longer, sometimes for days, jamming in the studios with the participants and sharing their wisdom. Now in its 15th year, the Red Bull Music Academy sets course for New York, the birthplace of punk and hip-hop. In

tribute to the city’s creativity, the Academy will deliver to New York a five-week festival with 35 shows by more than 150 artists. Among the highlights: public talks from Nile Rodgers of Chic and James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem; an audiovisual installation from Brian Eno; and gigs by artists like Kim Gordon (Sonic Youth), Four Tet and, of course, 60 Red Bull Music Academy participants from 35 countries.

Red Bull Music Academy, New York City from April 28-May 31. www. redbullmusicacademy.com

R E D B U L L M U S I C A C A D E M Y: N Y

“ T H E R O O T S A R ES U C C E S S F U L B E C A U S E W E G AT H E R E D T W O O F E V E R Y A N I M A L A N D M A D E T H E M O U R I N N E R C I R C L E ”

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I didn’t have that moment, but it did happen after we graduated. Because of our tortoise-and-the-hare journey, we’re able to sustain a very good living now, whereas many of our contemporaries are on decline or on shaky ground. Where today do you think that new artists hone their talents? One of the biggest regrets I have about where music is now is the idea that a subculture in the underground doesn’t matter. Hip-hop kind of turned its own Ginsu sword on itself in about 1997, when suddenly only winners counted, and losers or strugglers weren’t anyone. As a result, nobody wanted to embrace the underground. It became the highlight-reel era. You just want to watch the amazing slam-dunks, not well-executed team play. Puffy started that era, in my opinion. The narrative became aspirational and all about winning. It no longer celebrated the water boy, the statistician or the assistant coach. Those people help the team as well. Everybody began to

fast-forward to highlight, highlight, highlight. Probably the biggest debate I always get into with Jay-Z is about the need to pay it forward and establish a subculture. Right about now, there is no subcultural context for black music. The reason The Roots became successful is because we decided to gather two of every animal and make them a part of our inner circle. It wasn’t a coincidence that The Roots went from selling 200,000 units to being platinum. Mos Def the same thing. And Gang Starr, and D’Angelo, and Talib Kweli, and Erykah Badu.

This movement was brewing and that’s the result of it: the fact that it could be contextualised. As with most strugglers in the underground, once you get that success, it’s like Lot. You don’t want to look back to Sodom and Gomorrah. It’s sacrilegious to look back. But, you can wind up isolated. In the age of YouTube, yes, you can sit in your bedroom, cover a Little Dragon song and be a star overnight on the Internet. It’s cool, but it’s temporary. It doesn’t make a 20-year career.So what basic skills do you feel are necessary to make a career in music?I don’t know if it’s more about skills or

just the willingness to fail in public. A great example is Jill Scott and Jaguar Wright. They were two friends of The Roots. We met them around the same time in 1994 and 1995. When we started having jam sessions at our house, Jill was working retail and going to school, and Jaguar was working at WaWa – like a more refined 7-11. Every week, they’d be at the house for the jam sessions. Even though they were friends, there was an Ali/Frazier thing going on. Jaguar had an insane ability to freestyle as a singer. She had our crowd on the edge of their seats with any words she sang. That made Jill step up her game and prepare and practise at home. So when she’d come back the next week, she’d have the crowd, not Jaguar. This happened every Friday in 1997, 1998 and 1999, and some Sundays. You devote three hours, 365 days a year for several years in a row, and all of a sudden they’re the most seasoned performers you can imagine. It’s the idea of a workshop. The idea of patience and waiting. It is kind of lost on this time period. I wish there was a just-add-water solution where you could get that seasoning. Working here, I’ve seen situations where artists with only “ I N T H E A G E O F Y O U T U B E ,

Y O U C A N C O V E R A S O N G A N D B E A S TA R O V E R N I G H T O N T H E I N T E R N E T. I T ’ S C O O L , B U T T E M P O R A R Y. I T D O E S N ’ T M A K E A C A R E E R ”

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a year or two of experience are in the dressing room shaking and running to the bathroom. The Roots were nervous out of our heads when we did our first two Late Night With Jimmy Fallon shows. But now I laugh, thinking back, because we have done it so many times. You’re going to teach a class on classic albums at New York University. What do you hope to impart to the students that they can apply practically?I decided to start simple. I had the option to make this a 100-student class, but I told NYU that I wanted the minimum. So I have 24 students. I simply want to teach them the art of patience for listening to music. As much as I’m supposed to be an encyclopedia of music, as a hip-hop producer, I was taught to skim through records. You put one on, and you skim, skim, skim, looking for a sample or a break. I’m trying to reverse that and explain to people why some records are more important than others, then leave it in their hands.

Someone born 40 years after I was born, in 1971, they now have more information than ever before. But what I think we’re lacking are teachers to point them in the right direction. Just

I’m a person who listens to music probably five hours a day. Between working out, being in the car and when I go home, I probably devote five hours. Some people do come to the end of their rope. Some DJs I grew up on stopped playing new music long ago. I probably would have become that person if I hadn’t discovered stems [components of a song separated digitally]. Stems have given me a new lease on life, because I get to learn how records are made all over again.Is loving music and having so much music to listen to frustrating?There’s really not enough time to get through it all. I need to figure out what will happen to my record collection if I die. As soon as I know exactly where this show is going to be for the next few years, then I can start building what I call the ultimate library.Is the album still a viable form in which to release music? This year, The Roots will release a new album, a collaboration with Elvis Costello, and the last two albums were quite conceptual.You know how in the movies, when the bad guys know it’s the end, they either push the pedal to the metal like in Thelma and Louise or they give up? There is no precedent for a rap group at this point in their career to be on the same label, releasing their 16th record. I always think, ‘OK, this is going to be your last grand statement, and you always need an exclamation point at the end.’ If you’re not going to compete with what’s winning, like Rihanna, Drake or fun., then maybe you should just do what you know how to do best, and wait for the guillotine to drop. Then you release it, the guillotine doesn’t drop, and you’re like, phew, let’s do it again. That’s pretty much the state of mind I’m in with every record. You’ve had a good run of critically acclaimed albums, so let’s go out with a bang. I want to do a lot of things we haven’t gotten the chance to do yet.You work with the musical guests on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon every night, but with The Roots you have made albums with the likes of John Legend and Betty Wright. Working with new people fires your creative imagination, but do you prefer collaborating on one track or an entire album?Well, I do not have the know-how or the knowledge to make a grandiose statement in three minutes and 30 seconds. I wish I had that gift. But I know how to make a statement in 70 minutes. www.theroots.com

this morning, I had to scold someone who scolded someone for not knowing that It’s a Shame was not a Monie Love rap song, but a Spinners song from the 1960s. I was in that sort of shake-my-head mode when I first got on Twitter, but then I realised that basic things I take for granted have to be passed on, you know what I mean? There’s a wealth of information out there and it’s easier to access, but it takes patience to sift through it, and it also takes patience to help someone do that.Do you think it’s bad that music fans today can discover an artist and not only learn just about everything about them straight away, but also immediately access all of their music?It’s not maddening for me. The three artists I care about the most in that sense – Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson and Prince – I have just enough empty space in my brain to absorb that music. And

“ I L E A R N E D E V E R Y A S P E C TO F S H O W B U S I N E S S W I T H M Y PA R E N T S ’ B A N D . W H E N I WA S S E V E N , I WA S T H EN AV I G AT O R , F I G U R I N GO U T H O W T O G E T F R O M M Y H O U S E T O A N I G H T C L U B ”

Questlove and The Roots at 27th Rock

and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony

THE RED BULLETIN 59

H e r b e r t N i t s c H i s t H e b e s t f r e e d i v e r t H e w o r l d H a s e v e r s e e N . a m a N w H o c o u l d H o l d H i s b r e at H f o r

1 0 m i N u t e s a N d d i v e d o w N m o r e t H a N 2 0 0 m i N t o t H e o c e a N . i N d e f i a N c e o f m e d i c a l s c i e N c e , H e at t e m p t e d t o b r e a k H i s

o w N w o r l d r e c o r d . w H at H a p p e N e d wa s u N p r e c e d e N t e dWords: Ron Mueller and Arek Piątek

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Santorini, June 6, 2012, 2.34pm: Herbert Nitsch with auxiliary divers

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erbert Nitsch, a 42-year-old former pilot from Austria, has broken 31 records in a broad range of freediving

disciplines. He is the current record-holder in the toughest and most dangerous discipline of all, No Limits, in which the freediver goes as deep as possible into the ocean on one breath, with the help of a powered sled on both the descent and ascent. In 2006, Nitsch set the No Limits mark at 183m; a year later, he improved his record to 214m. On June 6 last year, he planned to improve his record to 244m, diving off the coast of the Greek island of Santorini. Doctors advised him that it would be impossible to dive so deep. Here, in his first full interview since the attempt, he recalls a day of triumph and tragedy.

HGreek tragedy: the failed freediving world record attempt off Santorini has left Herbert Nitsch having to reboot his broken body and brain

Nitsch goes through safety checks before the world record attempt

“ w H at H a p p e N st o c H a m p a g N ew H e N y o u p o p t H e c o r k i sw H at H a p p e N st o t H e b l o o d ”

the red bulletin: What’s the last thing you remember about the dive?herbert nitsch: I can’t say. We’ve gone over the video material from Santorini dozens of times since then and my memories get mixed up with what I see there. But the important thing is that we can say with some certainty how the accident happened. And that nothing like it had ever happened before. pH

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timetable of disasterJune 6 2012, Santorini, Greece: when it all went wrong

Final preparations: Nitsch hopes to reach a depth of 244m with a single breath, strapped to a diving sled and return to the surface unscathed. That would break the freediving depth record of 214m, which he set in 2007. The dive was scheduled to last 4m 30s.

The unmanned sled emerges. Rescue divers go down for Nitsch.

Nitsch is brought to the surface, having come round from his underwater blackout. This is 30 seconds earlier than planned. His nose is bleeding, he seems dizzy, and tries to rip the diving goggles off a bemused rescue diver’s face.

Nitsch descends at a speed of 3mps. After about 1m 30s, at a depth of 244m, he opens two compressed air cylinders to propel him to the surface. At a depth of 80m, Nitsch should have left the sled, carried on ascending and then made a one-minute decompression stop at 10m.

Nitsch goes back under with an oxygen cylinder and the auxiliary divers.

Rescuers heave a writhing Nitsch onto a speedboat, which then heads ashore. He is then flown to a military hospital in Athens. The decompression chamber there is set to the value shown on the bathometer on Nitsch’s wrist: 249.5m.

Nitsch resurfaces again. His face is contorted with pain. He is clearly not responsive.

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64 the red bulletin

How fainting underwater led to the accident

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Nitsch breaks depth record

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100m2:15Nitsch faints suddenly

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Nitsch leaves the diving sled and heads for

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10m2:44Auxiliary divers begin the rescue operation

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“ i N g o o d m o m e N t s ,H u m o u r H e l p s .i N b a d , i t ’ s e N o u g H t o d r i v ey o u m a d ”

What exactly happened during the course of the four minutes you were underwater?I got down to 244m as planned. I passed out at a depth of about 100m when I was coming back up. What I’d actually planned to do was get off the sled, come to the surface slowly by myself and then wait at a depth of 10m for a further minute. In that case, nothing would have happened. But I blacked out through nitrogen narcosis [increased nitrogen content of blood and tissue, due to variation of pressure], even if doctors think it was the bends [increased nitrogen coming out of solution in the blood, forming bubbles] that caused me to faint. In any case, the sled and an unconscious Herbert Nitsch ascended to 10m too quickly. the sled stopped automatically and because I had blacked out, the safety divers rescued me so I didn’t drown, because I was strapped to the sled.From the video, we can see that you came round once you were on the surface, and dived down again straight away. Why was that?I grabbed some pure oxygen and went back down to 10m to counteract the bends. that you must go back down if something happens is so deeply embedded in you as a diver that you do it unconsciously. I can’t remember anything about those few minutes.From a medical point of view, you probably had a stroke, didn’t you?multiple strokes. to cut a long story short, air is 20 per cent oxygen and 80 per cent nitrogen. During the dive, the oxygen in the blood gets used up and the nitrogen is compressed. If you resurface too quickly, the nitrogen re-expands, almost explosively, and what happens to champagne when you pop the cork is what happens to the blood, which is no good for you at all. the small bubbles of nitrogen that formed when I resurfaced set off a series of strokes.Where did those small nitrogen bubbles cause the most damage?Several parts of my brain were affected, luckily mostly in the lower, rear part of the head and not behind the forehead, as that’s where the personality traits are located. So even if I’m a long way from being the person I once was, when it comes to my personality and character, I’m still the same person. I only come across differently on the outside.Neurological disorders, difficulty finding words and memory loss are all typical stroke symptoms. have any of these, or other problems, manifested themselves?

I am familiar with those problems and suffer from them. But I’ve become pretty good now at finding another way of saying things when I notice that a word isn’t coming to me. If you ask me a two-part question, I’ll probably answer the first part of it and forget the second. I only just remembered the password for my computer recently, by chance. And names: I’d forgotten almost everyone’s names. I’d be in a fix if it wasn’t for the fact that I’d typed the company people work for next to their names in my phone.how about your movement?I’m back to walking on my own two feet. I don’t use a wheelchair, walking sticks or a zimmer frame. that’s all great progress, but it still looks awkward, as if I’m made of wood. And if I don’t concentrate, my right leg wobbles as if it is dangling off my hip. If I try to run, it looks even funnier, like a cross between goose-stepping and the Lambada.your speech only very occasionally betrays a shakiness.If I try to speak fast or there are more complicated words, it’s too fast for my tongue, or rather, too fast for the nerve conduction between my brain and my tongue. It ends up sounding slurred, like I’m a bit drunk. Oddly, english comes to me much more easily than my native German. I have no idea why. yes, and in general the right side of my body is still very restricted in what it can do.Are you right-handed?yes, I am. It would be a complete mess if I tried to pour tea into a cup with my right hand, for example. I’ve had to learn to write with my left hand, even if just for the sake of having a signature again. If I use my right hand, my handwriting looks pH

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the red bulletin 65

Despite almost killing him, the ocean is in Nitsch’s future plans: he wants to live on it

scrawly, like a primary school kid trying to impersonate an adult, writing every letter differently. I always start brushing my teeth with my right hand to give it practise; I only switch to my left hand when my shoulder gets too tired.so you are fully aware of all your physical impediments?fully aware – and not forgetting the loss of memory! I can see, hear and feel all that with complete clarity. I notice it when I can’t recall the name of someone I’ve actually known for years. It can be embarrassing, too. I once asked a girl I used to go out with if we knew each other. In good moments, humour and self-deprecation help. In bad, it’s enough to drive you mad.how does someone who has only known success in life, deal with this?Sometimes I’m sad that I am so aware of it all. Sometimes I’m grateful. Sad because sometimes it’s very depressing, and grateful because only then can I commit to working to improve things.it’s been over nine months since the accident. has your situation improved much in that time?I’m getting better all the time, but still a long way from being well.how is your rehab going?I do a lot of things myself, such as balance exercises like standing on one leg or reading a book to myself out loud at home to improve my pronunciation. for a while I underwent rehab at the meidling Hospital in Vienna, but they’re not set up for cases like mine. How could they be? Basically, the clinical outpatient rehab was the same for me as it was for a 75-year-old stroke victim who weighed 100kg and had never done any sport in his life. you build little towers out of coloured wooden blocks, or you don’t because you’re not dexterous enough, and the blocks fall off the table. things that are so easy to do, making it all the worse when you can’t do them. It’s humiliating. Sometimes, you think the patients whose brains are affected are better off. they don’t understand the state they’re in.have you experienced any feelings of despair, fear or anger?No anger. Some fear. mostly despair. As much despair as you can imagine. It was really bad at the beginning, after I’d stayed at a clinic in Greece followed by rehab in Germany. there were tubes coming out of my body in places where there weren’t meant to be holes. you can hear the doctors and nurses whispering about you. you don’t really want to hear it, but then you can’t be deaf to it, either.

the snippets that you pick up sound so awful that you think nothing will come of it all. I was incredibly scared that I’d remain in need of total care. I thought if that’s the case, it’s better to just end the whole thing now.Can you be specific about what you were thinking about?I sat in my wheelchair on the balcony in the rehab centre, looked down and thought: it’s a two-storey drop. that might hurt. It was earth down below, not tarmac, which meant the chances of survival were unfavourably high. I have a good friend who’s a trauma surgeon. She once told me about people who’d tried but hadn’t succeeded and what they ended up looking like. So I wanted to play it safe, and decided to postpone that until I was back in Vienna. I live on the 26th floor, there, after all.how did you stop thinking like that?A lot of things improved. And I promised my father. so lust for life was actually a matter of discipline and how much self-pity you allowed yourself?yes, it was. my daily life is now a training camp. If I’m on the telephone, I pace up and down, to practise walking. I go shopping to face people. I’ve started going out again in the evening, too: whereas that used to be a pleasure, it’s now part of my training programme. I had to prove to myself that I could do it.Are there things doctors have told you you’ll never be able to do again? the doctors? forget them. If their initial prognoses are anything to go by, it’s a miracle I’m where I am today. I’ve decided, for the time being, that someone who doesn’t know anything about the accident can’t recognise the consequences.

“ e v e N i f i ’ m a l o N gw ay f r o m b e i N g t H ep e r s o N i o N c e w a s ,w H e N i t c o m e s t o m y p e r s o N a l i t y, i ’ m s t i l lt H e s a m e p e r s o N ”

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Will you ever dive again?I already have – on one of the last nice autumn days at the end of September in Neufelder See, a lake near Vienna. Only to a depth of 3m, but it was nice. Nothing can happen to you in the water there: you can’t fall over, you can’t hurt yourself. But I really enjoyed swimming. It went a lot better than I thought it would, from a technical point of view. I didn’t know if I might end up splashing about like a dog. my right arm and leg might have been unco-ordinated, but I still swam faster than some of the other swimmers. you took freediving to places that were deemed impossible, experiencing things no one had before you. Was it worth it?Do the highs justify the lows, you mean? my highs were the lows, after all.But do your career and success justify

the consequences of the accident?No. If I’d known that this is how it would turn out, I wouldn’t have done it. ever.Did you simply go beyond a point humans aren’t supposed to pass?yes and no. No, because I was always much more cautious and always more aware of the dangers than everyone else. I wasn’t an adventurer. I was a long way from being a risk taker. I’ve given a lot to the sport, especially when it comes to safety. If nothing else it’s what made me so good. you won’t get any better at freediving if you behave more stupidly. you get better the cleverer you are.so how did you end up overdoing it?I went through with the world record attempt in Santorini even though there were bad signs. I shouldn’t have done it. It was a chain of unfortunate circumstances there, murphy’s Law in its purest form. there was bad weather; the boat broke free because it wasn’t anchored properly; a fishing boat caught our anchor and dragged our boat away; we didn’t have a pressure chamber on site both for financial reasons and because partners backed out. there were a lot of organisational things in the run-up, unexpected problems with authorities, disagreements with sponsors. for example, at 2am on the night before the incident, I was up signing a contract. I think I can say if just one of those things hadn’t happened, everything would have been Ok. regular bad luck wouldn’t have been a problem.Why did you have to organise all of the paperwork yourself?the organisational side of things in Santorini was meant to be taken care of by the main sponsor, but after preliminary negotiations, the agreement fell apart and so I had to do it all myself. Some people helped out, like my father, who organised the whole rescue process.With respect, isn’t spending your time on admin instead of dive preparation entirely unprofessional? I rarely slept more than four hours a night in the weeks running up to the attempt, as there was so much to organise. On the one hand, I’d planned a completely different set-up for Santorini, but then the sponsor left me in the lurch at the last minute because they suddenly had very different ideas to the ones we’d agreed to. On the other, things had developed in such a way over the years that I looked after my own affairs myself. for me, diving has never been about money. It has always been my hobby. the paperwork developed alongside it and it was never actually that complicated. Sponsors came

“ i f i ’ d k N o w Nt H at t H i s i s H o w i t w o u l d t u r N o u t, i w o u l d N ’ t H av e d o N e i t. e v e r ”Below: meditational breathing exercises are part of Nitsch’s routine. At one time, he could hold his breath for 10 minutes at rest. Bottom: the diving sled

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68 the red bulletin

to me; it wasn’t me going to them.is it true that the representative from AiDA, the world body for freediving, was with you in santorini but left before the record attempt?Oh, that didn’t matter. I didn’t even know that someone had come. AIDA was being sponsored by a competitor of my sponsors and effectively wanted to sell my record as their sponsor’s achievement. We reached an agreement at first, but then they backpedalled at the last minute. It wasn’t AIDA rejecting me. It was me uninviting AIDA. But any world record wouldn’t have been officially recognised?I couldn’t care less about that. firstly, there are other organisations and, secondly, I had almost a dozen measuring computers down there with me. recognition from some association or other makes no difference.With the preparation on santorini far from ideal, you could have just said, “sorry guys, we’ve got to wait a few days.” Why didn’t you?there were a couple of dozen journalists from all over the world there, as well as the sponsors and, of course, they wanted us to make it into the press before the silly season began. So there was pressure in that respect, and also financially, because I had invested €100,000 of my own money in the event. Delaying it would have meant a great loss of money and media interest. I often thought about putting it off.What finally made you decide to go through with it?my ultimate goal wasn’t the 800ft I was going to descend to in Santorini. It was 1,000ft [244m is 800.5ft; 1,000ft is 304.8m], which I knew was possible, too – 800ft was just a staging post, a good practice run. We weren’t even close to the limit. It’s the same as asking usain Bolt to run the 100m in under 10 seconds. you don’t need perfect conditions for that. I thought my eardrums would burst, and that I’d have a couple of weeks of pain, tops. It didn’t seem important whether I had a couple of hours’ more or less sleep at night. that was probably my mistake. What are your plans for the future? first, I need to keep working on myself, physically and mentally. But what most people don’t know is that even before Santorini, competitive freediving was perhaps only five per cent of what I did. I gave quite a lot of lectures. my experience as a professional pilot and freediver covers a lot: organisational optimisation, risk management, crisis

process. I’d like to use this skill and build a boat I can live on and travel overseas and give lectures. A 50ft boat – sporty, economical, environmentally sound – that can survive for months on solar panels alone. And there are plans for a new type of submarine. there have already been a dozen men who’ve stepped foot on the moon, but only three have been to the depths of the ocean. So that’s a great challenge.how deep did you actually go that day off the coast of santorini?the computers show that I went down to 250m, and some other measurements say 249.5m. But I don’t want to boast about that. from my point of view, I failed.What’s the record now, in your view?Intuitively, I’m more likely to say 214m. But to tell the truth, I don’t care now. www.herbertnitsch.com

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management. So that should be one mainstay. And, because one sled-maker left me in the lurch, a friend and I built my sled together. We did things that were considered impossible and I learned how to work with carbon and fibreglass in the

the red bulletin 69

i s t h e b e s t d e f e n c eAttAckFor the l ast th re e years, InFInItI red Bull racIn g and seBastIa n Vettel haVe proVed

unBeataBl e I n the Formula one World champIonshIp. But can they stay ahead oF the pack and not lose the

edge? on th e tra I l oF F1’s elIte unIt Words: Werner Jessner photography: thomas Butler

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hat is more difficult than defending a world title? Christian Horner, team principal of Infiniti Red Bull Racing, knows the answer: “To score six world titles in three years and then defend them.” The rest of Formula One is hot on the heels of his team. “As a world champion you’re the benchmark,” says Horner. “Everybody is trying to beat you. We have to live with this, and we’re proud of it. We are still a young team. You mustn’t forget that we’re heading into just our ninth season this year.”

For the 2013 F1 season, a number of longer-established teams are keen to make the most of one last chance to beat Red Bull Racing under the existing race conditions before the introduction of new regulations in 2014, chief among them the use of a 1.6-litre turbo-charged V6 engine instead of the current, 2.4-litre V8 normally aspirated engines. (Those teams are fully aware that Adrian Newey, the chief technical officer of Red Bull Racing, is strongest when handed a blank sheet of paper.) For that reason alone, gripping racing is guaranteed in 2013. Still, Horner is not expecting the season to start as it did in 2012, with seven different winning drivers in the first seven races. “I expect we’ll see the usual suspects at the top: us, Alonso in the Ferrari, Jenson Button in the McLaren. Lotus will again have a strong car; Mercedes has repositioned itself with Lewis Hamilton. His teammate, Nico Rosberg, should also be one to watch.”

Last year’s car, known as the RB8, after all the time and energy invested in its development, was still performing to a high level at season’s end. “On some tracks we were the fastest, yes,” says Horner. “On others, McLaren, especially, had gained ground very quickly. At the end of the day, it was enough. Of our three world championship-winning years, 2012 was definitely the most difficult.

“In 2010 we had the best car in the field; in 2011 our organisation was very strong. When we had to catch up last year, we proved what we are capable of as a team. We have grown stronger from year to year. And to get [the 2013

car] RB9 ready by early February, after having developed the RB8 up until late November, was a Herculean achievement.”

With the trophy in hand, it’s easy to forget just how closely fought was Sebastian Vettel’s title. “If he had not overtaken Jenson Button in Abu Dhabi, we would not have become world champions. Or the problems with the alternator: one more would have been one too many.”

Miracles and big leaps are impossible in the highly controlled and competitive environment of Formula One. Every little improvement counts: no matter where, no matter how small. Horner encourages everyone on staff – the team is based on the outskirts of Milton Keynes, about 80km north-west of central London – to think like this. “Adrian Newey and I set the direction – very precisely and with high expectations – but our doors are always open. We have a flat hierarchy at Red Bull Racing, any suggestion will be heard. We are the team in the paddock with the highest prevalence in jeans and the lowest in ties. We get loads of job enquiries from members of other teams. The Red Bull Racing shirt holds a real fascination.”

If Red Bull Racing was a football team, which one would it be? Non-football fan Horner has to think for a moment. “I would like to think, probably Manchester United, even though we are

much younger. Like us, they never give up, they are always aiming for the top and second best will not do.”

The forthcoming season will probably be the toughest in the career of F1’s youngest team principal. He is 39 years old and was 31 when he was appointed at Red Bull Racing in 2005, when both he and the team made their F1 debuts. On one hand, world titles must be defended, again, but on the other, a course must also be set for the future. Horner says that “less than 10” people are already working on the RB10 car for 2014, with that number changing up or down depending on the 2013 championship standings.

Pre-season tests of the RB9 car suggest it has what it takes to be a strong contender

2013

“ oF our t hree champIonshIp WI nnI ng ye ars, 2012 Was the most dIFFIcult”

72 the red bulletin

Behind the screens: secrecy surrounded the development of the RB9 car (below right), overseen by team boss Christian Horner (below left)

“ W h e n W e h a d to catc h u p l ast y e a r , W e p r oV e d W h at W e a r e ca pa B l e o F as a t e a m

W e h aV e g r oW n st r o n g e r”

in the 2013 world championship. Crucially, it appears to have the virtues of speed and reliability.

It will probably be another long season, and the experience that has been gained developing current and future cars in tandem will be extremely valuable. However, confidence levels in the team have grown: no other young team is as successful as Red Bull Racing, and the hunger for victory has not diminished during the triumphant years.

If Christian Horner and Adrian Newey were in the cars instead of Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber, who would win? “Adrian is totally crazy and completely fearless,” says Horner. “I bet he would be faster than me. But whether he would make it to the finish? I am glad he is not in the car.”

Looking to a more certain future from outside the vehicle, Newey sees Red Bull Racing’s cars mainly changing because of one thing.

“The big difference between the 2013 and 2014 cars will be the engines,” he says, and this will impact on the overall design. “Turbo engines need more cooling than the V8 that we’re using at the moment. We will need an intercooler and larger air inlets for the radiators.” For the last year, his team has worked with Renault Sport on a new generation of engines, with special attention given to power, driveability (more critical with turbo engines than normally aspirated V8 engines) and fuel consumption.

In an effort to make Formula One more environmentally friendly, from 2014 on, a maximum 100kg of fuel (about 140 litres) may be burned per car per race, but more recovered energy may be generated (the current KERS method of collecting energy from braking will be replaced by a more powerful system, ERS). For this, and much more, brains are already shifting into high gear at Milton Keynes.

2013

Chief technical officer of Infiniti Red Bull Racing, Adrian Newey

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In the driving seat: Sebastian Vettel has dominated Formula

One for three seasons

76 THE RED BULLETIN

T Y R E S “Pirelli has changed the tyre construction for the new season. We were allowed to test just one set beforehand – unfortunately, at high track temperatures and on a green circuit with not a lot rubber on it. How you handle the tyres is the key to lap times.”

S I D E P O D S “Visually, the greatest difference in the RB9 is the smaller side pods for the cooler for aerodynamic reasons. Problems with the engine cooling are still not to be expected.”

N O S E “The step in the nose is defined by the regulations. In 2013, we are allowed to cover it for the first time, but there is no longer a ‘letterbox’ on the front. To save weight, we use a relatively short vanity panel, which has no use, apart from an aesthetic point of view.”

F R O N T W I N G “Here, the rules have changed. The front wing must not be as flexible as before. Up to now, almost all the teams have exploited this, as have we. It’s no longer possible in 2013. These changes mean we have to solve structural problems.”

PAC K AG I N G “The RB9 is the last car in which we can put the batteries for the KERS in the clutch bell. From next season they must be housed under the fuel tank – apparently for safety reasons.”

T H E M A N ’ S M A C H I N EENGINEERING GENIUS AND INFINITI RED BULL RACING CHIEF TECHNICAL OFFICER ADRIAN NEWEY ON HIS CAR FOR THE F1 2013 SEASON, THE RB9, AND HOW IT DIFFERS FROM ITS CHAMPIONSHIP-WINNING PREDECESSORS

2013

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E X H AU S T “At the moment, it is quite similar to our end 2012 configuration. In

general, the importance of exhaust gases for downforce has significantly

lessened in the last two years, especially through regulation-related

changes in engine mapping. Hence the cars are now much slower

entering the corners.”

B R A K E S “The difficulty in keeping the tyres

within the operating window of optimal temperature is apparent when you look at the attempts to manage the waste heat from the

brakes. A few degrees up or down is decisive, depending on the track.”

D I F F U S E R “The car is constantly evolving.

A large part of resources goes into the classic areas of the front

wing, diffuser and, to a lesser degree, exhaust ducting. ”

S U S P E N S I O N “Although the tyres are

new, we will essentially retain the suspension geometry. At initial season tests, we

continued using the front of the RB8, but we’ll bring the

new one to [the first race in] Melbourne. The wheelbase

is virtually unchanged.”

“ T H E F I R ST F EW DAY S ON T R AC K A R E A LWAY S E XC I T I NG FOR US” A DR I A N N EW EY HOW N EW I S T H E R B 9 R E A L LY ? Since 2009, there was nothing but new restrictions in the regulations. Our scope to move has become smaller and smaller. We also had to keep developing last year’s car to the end of the season in order to have a chance of winning the title. This was at the cost of the advance development of the RB9: it inevitably

follows the philosophy of its predecessor. Instead of new concepts, there is now ongoing development of the car.

WA S T H E R B 8 T H E UG L I E ST C A R YOU ’ V E EV E R DE SIG N E D? Beauty, they say, lies in the eyes of the beholder. Of course, the step in the nose takes a little getting used to. In that

respect, this year’s RB9 is somewhat less unattractive than the RB8. But since 1998, when narrower cars were introduced, the proportions have become less consistent. Our job is to make the cars fast within the regulations. Ideally, the results also have aesthetic qualities.

C A N YOU ST I L L B E AT A L L S U R PR I SE D BY A N EW C A R? Our simulations are very good. Nevertheless, the first few days on the track are always exciting for us. There are some things you just can’t simulate, like the characteristics of the tyres.

How does the RB9 feel compared with its predecessor? It only took me a couple of laps while testing in Jerez to get used to the new car, and the regulations haven’t changed that much from last season, so the adjustment wasn’t so big. What is important is that the car is reliable and works well and the speed seems to be there too. We have a little more grip in the fast corners, this was striking right from the outset. I think it’s a step up from the RB8. What do you think of the new tyres?We had certain expectations, also partly based on the data we have been receiving from Pirelli. These expectations appear to be confirmed, but we won’t really know until Melbourne. I think that the quicker lap times at the tests can be attributed to the new car as well as the Pirelli tyres. Will lap records be smashed in 2013?It’ll be tough, at least in qualifying, because we are no longer allowed to have unlimited use of DRS, only in defined zones.What one thing do you miss the most during the Formula One downtime? Without doubt the driving. After a couple of laps at the first test I blew off the cobwebs and did what I love the most.The F1 season, from mid-March to late November, chases good weather around the globe. Do you notice the change of seasons?More, in fact, than those who always stay home, because nature changes so radically from one homecoming to the next. One minute, you’re jogging through slush and before you know it you come home to flowers everywhere. I really like winter. Cold, snow: it’s nice.Who shovels the snow from around your home?

I have been known to lend a hand. I do have help, but if I have to I’ll grab a shovel. My house in Switzerland is only 500m above sea level. I can handle the snowfall there myself without a snow blower.Do you make your own breakfast at home?I enjoy it very much if I have the time. I love a big, long breakfast, with muesli and fresh fruit. But I still have to go out for two training sessions and I don’t necessarily like getting up too early. Do you do your own shopping?Not always, but sometimes. To be honest, my girlfriend does the shopping more often than I do. How much cash do you normally carry on you? Something between zero and €400, depending on when I last went to the ATM. I like to have a little cash in my pocket, despite the credit card. At vending machines in Japan, or at car parks, it pays to have a little ready money. I once flew to Australia with just €10 on me. Of course, I still had the €10 on me when I came home. What was your last purchase over €100?A wet-and-dry vacuum for the garden.

Are you patient with fans because you’ve always been like that, or have you had to work at it?It’s great to have fans. Some of them queue up for hours, in any

weather. I can’t always make them all happy, but I try the best I can. You see some fans again and again over the years and you forge a certain closeness.How do you escape from life under the microscope?I never escape. It is more that you always enjoy coming home. As for the Swiss, they are basically very conservative. I can tell that I am recognised, but they rarely approach me

T h e h u m a n Fa c T o r

2013

“ f e a r o f fa i lu r e i s g o o d. i t m a k e s yo u

m o r e a l e rt ”

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a o n e-to - o n e w i t h t h e r e i g n i n g t r i p l e fo r m u l a o n e wo r l d C h a m p i o n : w h o h e s e es i n t h e m i r r o r , s e n s i n g Ca rs o n t h e t r aC k a n d b u y i n g g a r d e n to o ls

78 the red bulletin

Back up to speed: Sebastian Vettel at 2013

testing in Jerez, Spain

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first victory at Monza, looking down from the podium at the crowds below. Personally experiencing what I’ve seen on TV for years. To be actually in the middle what I’ve seen for so long. Photographers would say: shot, reverse shot. Does that experience diminish as you win more races? No, because my victory with the Toro Rosso team in Monza will always be memorable. That was really special. What do you mean when you say, in a post-race interview, that you had to change your driving style during the race?If you were to record all the changes that are made during a race, it would fill many pages. You have to simplify it considerably. If I notice, for example, that the tyres are deteriorating from one lap to the next, it means that I can no longer brake at the same point, otherwise I’ll fly off the track. I could slow down, of course, but I don’t want to do that. So I have to solve the situation with parameters that I can actively influence, like the throttle, steering, brakes, the technical adjustment possibilities on the car. That’s the game we play, lap by lap, corner by corner. For example, if the front tyres deteriorate, I can’t carry as much speed into a corner. So I have to try to approach the corner more aggressively, brake harder, turn in later and hit the throttle earlier in order to keep the actual cornering when I need the grip on the front axle as short as possible. So I trade the gain at the apex for a small gain entering and exiting the corner. These are all tiny nuances. Do you notice when you’re one or two 10ths of a second faster per lap? Apart from the fact that we see it on the display in the

to talk to me. If I want to have a little time to myself I can go for a walk and that’s never a problem.Without F1, you would probably have carried on with your education. Where would you be today?Some of my friends are at a turning point right now, between their studies and a career. One friend has just started his first full-time job, another is doing his doctorate, and the other is still studying. But would I know what I would have done for the rest of my life? Probably not. Depending on how hard you try and how mobile you are, there are so many more possibilities these days than I could have imagined during my school years.It is said that F1 ages you quickly. How old do you feel?You definitely mature faster in motorsport than in ‘normal’ life. You are confronted with the consequences of your decisions faster and more radically. You travel and get around, so you inevitably expand your horizons. And you have to deal with a lot of older people, whereas when you’re a student, your experiences tend to be with people of your own age. You are trained to make decisions. If you like, adult life begins earlier as a race driver. At 15 or 16, you set the course that others only have to think about 10 years down the track. In hindsight, was the first world title the most difficult?[long pause.] The first title stands out in the sense that you have proved to yourself you could do it and the faith in yourself was justified. That’s something no one can take away from you, but that doesn’t mean life is over after the first title. On the contrary: you broaden your expectations and goals automatically and take it to the next level. When you reflect on the great moments in your career, what do you see?The strongest memory is of standing on the podium and experiencing the familiar images from my own perspective: the

“ yo u m at u r e fast e r i n m oto rs p o rt t h a n i n

n o r m a l l i f e ”

car anyway, yes of course. A 10th of the second is a long time. Do you feel the different speeds?Not really. The wind is quieter than you think. The revs of the engine tell you the difference, but the engine actually sounds the same in every gear. Can you feel the ‘dirty air’, as it’s known, when closely tailing another car? It means the car no longer does what I expect of it. You can’t see this dirty air. It’s not like the air turns green behind the guy in front. You have to sense this to some degree. What role do your senses pay alongside the work of the engineers? There is a point where they have to trust the driver, even if the data says something else. There is this feelgood factor, and without it you can’t perform at your best.Does the authority of three world championship titles help when you communicate with the team?I think so. What helps the most though is the amount of time we spend together. Who would you take for a ride in an F1 car, if it was allowed? Right off the bat I can think of lots of people I’d like to show what I do. Above all, I’m thinking

2013

80 the red bulletin

f 1 2 0 1 3 wo r l d c h a m p i o n s h i p c a l e n da r

march15-17 Australian GP Melbourne22-24 Malaysian GP Kuala Lumpur

april 12-14 Chinese GP Shanghai19-21 Bahrain GP Sakhir

may10-12 Spanish GP Barcelona 23-26 Monaco GP Monte Carlo

June7-9 Canadian GP Montréal 28-30 British GP Silverstone

July 5-7 German GP Nürburgring19-21 TBA26-28 Hungarian GP Budapest

august 23-25 Belgian GP Spa-Francorchamps

september 6-8 Italian GP Monza20-22 Singapore GP Singapore

october 4-6 Korean GP Yeongam11-13 Japanese GP Suzuka25-27 Indian GP New Delhi

november 1-3 Abu Dhabi, GP Yas Marina15-17 United States GP Austin22-24 Brazilian GP São Paulo

You only know this when the situation happens. In the car, you weigh up the risks based on experiences. If you decide to take the risk, you’re more worried about whether the manoeuvre will go wrong, or that you will fail. But this fear is good; it makes you more alert. Where do you look for challenges?At the moment, racing gives me more satisfaction than anything else. I’m lucky to have found my calling. I would have a problem with the idea that the kick I get from it might fade one day. Why did you have the letter S on your helmet when you raced karts as a boy?As a child I was a Senna fan. The opportunity to wear the Red Bull logo made me proud and it replaced the Senna ‘S’ on the back of my head. Prior to the blue and silver I never had my own design. You have the same number of world championship titles as Senna. How does that feel? You shouldn’t even think about it. When you look in the mirror, you see only yourself, and not the race driver. Thinking back, did you idolise race drivers as a child? Of course. Now I have an insider’s perspective, that doesn’t change my respect for those race drivers. everyone has a bad race at one time or another, it’s normal.How has your perception of Michael Schumacher changed since you competed against him?Alongside Senna, Michael was also my hero, of course. Now Michael himself is in the foreground, rather than him as a race driver. On a sporting level it was of course absolutely fantastic to race against him. Is it possible to make friends in Formula One?You spend a lot of time with people on the race weekends, so the chemistry has to be right. This doesn’t mean, for example, that I have to drink a beer with my engineer every Sunday, but I have to be able to trust him on a technical and human level. This applies to everyone in the team. When I come to the pitstop, I want to know that every single person lives for his job. Of course, things aren’t always rosy during the season, but I believe it’s better to tackle problems as soon as they crop up and then move on. Bad feelings will affect the performance sooner or later. What boundaries do you draw for people around you?

If I don’t want someone to smoke when I’m there, I just don’t go there. If I don’t want the people I’m walking down the street with to throw empty cans on the street, then I don’t walk down the street with them. I can only make rules for myself. I don’t want to change anyone else. What headline would you like to read about yourself?

I don’t generally read much, and so in that respect have no real expectations. As far as what is written or said, there is a guiding principle: one is never as good as they say or write, and one is never as bad as they say or write. www.infiniti-redbullracing.com

of people I’m close to. But would I really want to do that to them? The bashes, the g-forces, the balancing on the edge of a big shunt, the unglamorous side of actually working in the cockpit. Maybe it’s better that I don’t answer this question. The people I might choose would probably worry about me. Before this year, you’d raced in 101 Grands Prix, with no serious accidents and very few minor ones. Were there moments when you pulled back?You should always have respect. That has never changed. How do you calculate risk in everyday life? Risk increases depending on what you do. Fear is good, but too much is not. Once, for instance, when I jumped out of a plane, I wasn’t afraid to jump in the sense of becoming a paraplegic. Fear came during free-fall. During the first few metres, I had forgotten that someone else is with me and we are attached to a parachute and it’s all OK. Where is your fear threshold?

Watch exclusive footage of the launch and testing of the RB9 in The Red Bulletin tablet edition. Download it now for free

“ w h e n i C o m e to t h e p i tsto p, i wa n t to k n ow t h at e v e ry s i n g l e p e rs o n l i v e s

fo r h i s j o b”

This year’s model: Vettel puts the RB9

through its paces

the red bulletin 81

Today’s essential music makerstell the stories behind their beat:Fireside Chats on rbmaradio.com

RB_ADs_MOTIF3_EN.indd 1 7/12/12 12:31 PM

Living colour: how the coming of spring is celebrated in India. The full spectrum on page 95

Contents

84 TRAVELRemarkable

sporting venues

86 WORK OUTIt’s all about

the bike for enduro champ

David Knight

88 THE SOUNDS OF 2013

Auckland trio Street Chant

90 NIGHTLIFE

Everything you need to get you

through ’til dawn

94 WORLD IN ACTION

What’s coming up in sport

and culture

96 SAVE THE DATEEvents for the diary

98 MIND’S EYEColumnist

Russell Brown

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Breaking the ground rules

1 Way off piste: skiing in Africa africa: home to sun, sand – and snow. ski lovers have been seeking out the continent’s leading resort, in the small kingdom of lesotho, since it opened in 2002. the lowest point in the country, known as the Kingdom in the sky, is 1,400m above sea level; no other country has a highest low point above 1,000m. the small afriski resort (it sleeps 252 people) is 3,000m above sea level in the valley of the malibamatso river, and temperatures can dip to -11°c during winter (June-september). while its slopes may not be steep enough to excite pro skiers, the rest of us can enjoy good skiing with truly unique views. it is the most unusual among the four countries on the african continent where you can ski on genuine snow. Plus, it’s a seven-hour drive to the nearest resort, in south africa. www.afriski.net 

2 Jungle balls: football’s last frontier the arena amazonia stadium, being built for next year’s world cup, represents the unlikely union of two of brazil’s best-known assets: football and rainforest. building a 44,000-capacity arena in the middle of the amazon has its own set of complications. the stadium is in the city

of manaus, an island of civilisation in a sea of untouched jungle. all construction materials have to be delivered by boat. then there’s the ‘tropicalising’ – adapting the german architectural plans to fit the realities of building in a humid atmosphere that regularly exceeds 40°c. if all goes to plan (at the time of writing, the €200 million project was way behind schedule), the arena will be a perfect union of sport and setting. the

sustainable stadium will collect rainwater to keep the pitch green, solar panels will make energy to power the floodlights, while plants inside the stadium will help regulate the atmosphere.  www.fifa.com/worldcup 

3 Jump down: crossing the BASE line the term base-jumping comes from the elevated points leapt from: buildings, antennas, spans (bridges) and earth (cliffs). definitely no ‘c’ for ‘caves’. but, ever a fan of firsts, felix baumgartner headed underground when he leapt into 190m of darkness at the narrow marmet cave in croatia. before his red bull stratos exploits, baumgartner rated this feat his toughest ever. but that didn’t stop him following up the croatian cave with another subterranean free-fall: into the depths of the majlis al-Jinn, near muscat, oman, the world’s second largest cave chamber. “it’s dangerous,” he said afterwards. “it’s low, it’s dark, it’s narrow, it’s hard to see the landing area, it’s tough to judge because you’ve got almost no reference points, it’s a very difficult jump.” that’s the guy who jumped to earth from space saying that something is difficult.  www.youtube.com/redbull 

Depth charge: best BASE-jump in Earth 

unusual places to play from football in the jungle to surfing in the hills, our universal love of sport has led to some astonishing venues

AwAy dAys

Spectacular travel

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the red bulletin 85

Snow joke: in Denmark  a ski slope is being  

built around a waste-treatment plant

proved the perfect training ground for ball control: any miskick meant a dunk in the andaman sea. after their skills attracted attention at a local tournament, investment led to a larger, smoother floating pitch and further improvement. Koh Panyee fc have now been crowned the best team in southern thailand seven times.  www.vimeo.com/41544315 

5 Urban thrall: city skyline skiing action sports and industrial incinerators aren’t often mentioned in the same sentence, but young danish architect bjarke ingels is changing that. his design for an environmentally friendly waste treatment plant in central copenhagen includes a 31,000m2 snow-covered ski area on the roof. in 2016, snowboarding and skiing will take place 100m above the heart of the city. the amagerforbrænding

plant, which turns waste into electricity, will therefore become the first incinerator on any list of ski destinations. there will be no attempt to hide the industrial truth: visitors will get a glimpse into the inner workings of the plant as they take the lift up the side of its central smokestack. www.big.dk 

6 Just not shore: sea-free surf outside the town of Zarautz, a couple of miles inland in the hills of the basque country, a tree-lined, man-made pond has become an unlikely surf hotspot. the wavegarden has two artificial breaks, a left and a right, that mimic the real thing, free from nature’s unpredictability. it’s the brainchild of a group of spanish engineers who decided to combine their brainpower with their passion for surfing. after seven years, they claim to have created a system that’s more effective, ecological and economical than existing artificial wave methods. the exact mechanics are under wraps before the spanish wavegarden opens to the public later this year. more are planned, including one already under construction in bristol, england. the real test came when some of world’s best surfers had a preview: mick fanning, Jordy smith and Kolohe andino all gave a firm thumbs up. www.wavegarden.com 

Top: The ski slopes of Lesotho, Southern AfricaAbove: Surfing among the hills of Spain

Pitch perfect? The Arena Amazonia in Manaus

4 A floating role: soccer at sea an available patch of land is the usual starting place when building a sports pitch, but that wasn’t an option for the football fans of Koh Panyee, a fishing village on stilts off the southern coast of thailand. back in 1986, so the story goes, watching the world cup on tv, waiting for the tiny window of opportunity when the full moon and low tide revealed a small area of beach to play on, frustrated villagers decided to build a floating pitch from old fishing crates. the result was uneven, slippery and nail-ridden, but

The kind of pitch where  taking a dive is permitted

Where in the world?From the ski slopes of Africa to football on the ocean, out-of-the-ordinary sporting locations are spread far and wide

M O R E B O D Y & M I N D

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Check out David Knight in enduro action on the The Red Bulletin tablet edition. Download it for free now

The last place you’ll find David Knight is in the gym. He hatesit with a passion. “When I’m injured and can’t ride my bike I’ll go, but it’s awful,” says Knight, 34. I’m bored in five minutes and just want to be outside.” Instead he takes to the hills and beaches of the Isle of Man. “Enduro racing is very physical,” he says. “So I need to be out doing something every day. I’ve never found any exercise as effective as simply riding my bike. I head to the woods or down onto the sand dunes, which is the hardest type of riding. Then I’ll head off into the hills for fell running or a walk with my dogs. Recently I’ve been in the forest cutting down trees to make new trails, which is a great workout. I don’t want exercise to become a chore that’s separate from the rest of my life.”

Outside the boxDAVID KNIGHT The enduro rider has always done things his way. With 10 national and three world titles under his belt, it’s clearly paying off

MONDAY

Rest/travel day after race weekend.7.30am: Breakfast. “Every day I get up and have four Weetabix and two slices of brown toast.”2-4pm: Long walk of about 10 miles with the dogs.

TUESDAY

10am-2.30pm: Beach riding on sand dune circuit.4pm: Appointment with a sports physio, including massage.

WEDNESDAY

10am-12pm: Endurocross training on my specially made beach-side track. “It’s great practice for indoor racing.”1-3pm: Long forest ride on the motorbike.

THURSDAY

9-11.30am: 10-mile hill run.1-3pm: Beach riding on sand dune circuit.4pm: Chiropractor. “My back gets easily knotted up from all the riding.”

FRIDAY

8-10am: Mountain bike ride on hill trails.

Afternoon: Travel for race weekend.Evening: Racing the Super Special Stage time trial.

SATURDAY

9am-4pm: Racing with five-minute breaks every one-two hours. “I snack all day on fruit, cereal bars and chocolate.”

SUNDAY

9am-4pm: Racing.

During the racing season Knight disappears into the great outdoors on two wheels or none, for workouts that set him up for a full-on race weekend

Basic instinct“My diet is unconventional: I essentially live on steak and chips! I’m a complete chocoholic too. The British team for the ISDE, the equivalent of the Olympics for enduro, hold me up as an example not to follow, but I’m a big believer there’s no absolute right or wrong. If it works, it works, and if for me that’s shoving a bacon sandwich down me before a race, that’s what I’ll do. For some people the special diets are great, but I tried eating healthy for a year and just felt rubbish. Since then I’ve followed my instincts and done what helps me get the best results.”

TOP TIP

LONE RIDER

On trail: David Knight has been training for the FIM Enduro

World Championship, which begins in Chile on March 16

www.knighter.net

WORKOUT

TRAINING WITH THE PROS

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Street Chant (from left): Billie Rogers, Alex Brown and Emily Littler

Opening the Laneway Festival in Auckland in January, the Norwegian folk pop group Kings Of Convenience overran by five minutes, cutting into the timeslot for the next act to play, the hometown rock band Street Chant, by five minutes. The boys from Bergen messed with the wrong musicians.

“Thanks to the Kings Of Leon for conveniently playing over time,” sneered Emily Littler, Street Chant’s lead singer, midway through an exhilarating 20-minute set of short, sharp guitar pop. Littler’s belligerence is a large part of her compelling stage presence. During a break between songs, she appeared to spit on the New Zealand flag draped over the drum kit. Before

the band’s last track, she ignored repeated requests from the stage crew to wind things up: “They’re trying to shut us down,” she told the audience, “but we’re gonna keep playing.” After an extended outro, Littler downed her guitar, climbed off the stage and issued a heartfelt “f––k you” to the crowd, everyone in earshot and possibly Kings Of Convenience.

Littler, 26, is also Street Chant’s lead guitarist, songwriter and mouthpiece. Off-stage, the rhythm section of Alex Brown, 22, on drums, and Billie Rogers, 25, on bass, contribute to the conversation, but Littler is clearly more comfortable in the spotlight, as she proved in the week before Laneway, talking to The Red Bulletin during a break in

rehearsals at their Storage King unit in Parnell that serves as a functional, if cramped, practice space. But it wasn’t always thus.

When Street Chant went into the studio to record their debut album, producer Bob Frisbee had some constructive criticism for the band’s frontwoman. “Bob told me, ‘You know you’re singing out of tune,’” says Littler. “I used to play with my amp at full volume so I wouldn’t be able to hear myself sing. I’d be shouting instead of singing. Bob would say to me, ‘There’s a melody in this song. Why don’t you sing the melody?’ I think I’m a better singer now.”

The album, Means, released in 2010 and nominated for the Taite Music Prize, was compared to bands like The Buzzcocks, Hole,

Full of punkStreet Chant Ahead of their second album, the Auckland trio – their frontwoman mostly – on singing in tune and being out of tune with the world at large

Street Chant’s debut album, Means, was nominated for the Taite Music Prize

The sounds of 2013

#3

88 the red bulletin

Pixies and Sonic Youth. Littler considers it a flawed record.

“We spent way too long mixing it and lost perspective,” she says. “It’s like trying to get one corner of a painting perfect, and then when you stand back to look at it, you have to redo the rest of it.”

Littler is much prouder of the band’s second album, Hauora, out next month, particularly given her view of modern guitar music.

“It’s just gross,” says Littler. “It’s all stupid and sounds like Blink-182. There’s so much stuff going on in the world, and there are bands singing about going to the beach. That’s not punk.”

“There’s no substance to it,” adds Alex Brown.

“I think it’s escapism gone too far,” says Littler. “It’s hard to tell what’s real anymore. It’s like taking pictures with Instagram; people want to put filters over everything, nobody wants to deal with any sort of reality. I think it’s going to come back – guitar

bands sounding like they’re playing guitars, not synths, and singing about actual things.”

Littler writes and sings about what it’s like to be 20-something in New Zealand. Salad Daze, the first single from the new album, is about being on the dole and having a lot of time but no money to do anything. Sink is a snapshot of NZ drinking culture, both a celebration of getting drunk and a health warning at the same time.

“I wanted to write songs that a lot of people could relate to,” says Littler. “I want people to see the new album as something that’s representative of people like us.” And they would be?

“People our age who are into high art and low art, politics and

going to the beach, and getting pissed,” says Littler. “You have to get pissed. When you’ve got no money, you can’t afford to do much else for entertainment. It’s a culture thing, I guess.”

“Or a lack of culture,” says Brown.

The tough love Generation Y gets because of the current economic climate also informs Street Chant’s output.

“Our parents’ generation could buy houses really cheap, they had free university and they’re the ones who screwed the economy,” says Littler. “A lot of parents say things like, ‘You know your school friend? She’s a doctor now’ or, ‘Are you still doing the band thing?’” Well, we’re still doing it, and we’re still fighting to avoid being pigeonholed as a chicks- with-guitars rock band.

“I don’t want to labelled as rock, because that reminds me of Nickelback,” says Littler. “I don’t want to be punk. I guess I want to be pop, but I don’t want to be like other pop. I like writing catchy songs with interesting lyrics and I like putting them across in an interesting way.”

Genre labellers, peers, parents and Norwegian folk combos: you have been warned. Don’t mess with Street Chant.W

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“I didn’t have much confidence when I was younger,” says Emily Littler, of her teenage musical apprenticeship, in various noise bands with names like Cock Destroyer, About Town and With Live Strippers. “So I found it easier to play drunk. I was too sensitive to be sober on stage.” Littler kept bumping into Billie Rogers at gigs on K Road in Auckland. A shared love of musicals and punk rock convinced them that, as well as listening to music together, they should form a band. Mean Street began in 2007 with Mikey Sperring of The Drab Doo Riffs on drums. In 2009, Alex Brown

of The DHDFDs replaced Sperring and the trio changed their name to Street Chant. Their debut album, Means, appeared in 2010, the same year they were surprise winners of the inaugural Critics Choice Prize where they were up against Homebrew and The Naked and Famous, and opened for The Dead Weather on the band’s Australasian tour. In 2011, they toured America with The Lemonheads. At the end of last year, they released three singles from their second album, Hauora, which is due for release in April. www.streetchant.com

THE LINE-UPEmily Littler – vocals, guitar, keyboardsBillie Rogers – bass, backing vocalsAlex Brown – drums, percussion

DIscograPHyHauora (album) – 2013Sink (single) – 2012Frail Girls/Salad Daze (single) – 2012Means (album) – 2010Street Chant (EP) – 2009

Need to know

The story so far

“ I think guitar bands sounding like guitar bands and not synths is going to come back in”

Chant’s meeting: the band came about after Rogers (left) and Littler hooked up on K Road

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NightlifeWhatever gets you through ’til dawn

THEY SAID IT

“ Live for today, plan for tomorrow, party tonight ”Drake, rapper

OUT NOW

Sister actHaim California siblings launching an all-out attack on planet pop – from their parents’ lounge

The girls of Haim are draped across couches backstage before performing at a Los Angeles gig, jetlagged and idly searching for chewing gum and tea. A few days earlier, they played London's O2 Arena, opening for Florence AndThe Machine. Since February last year, when the trio – drummer and keyboardist Alana Haim, 21; drummer and guitarist Danielle, 23; bassist Este, 25 – released the much-discussed single Forever, their career trajectory has been impressive. It was only a few years ago that the winners of the BBC’s Sound of 2013 poll were jamming with their parents in Rockinhaim, the family covers band, at local fairs in the San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles.

The Red Bulletin: You come from a cauldron of musical genius.Alana: Rockinhaim really helped us learn our instruments. Este: You’d have to learn songs by ear. We were playing oldie stations songs: Every Santana song, Tina Turner, Billy Joel, Van Morrison... All the cool guys.Why have you stayed in a band together?A: It’s cheesy what I’m about to say, but it really brought us together as a family. I feel like if we didn’t have Rockinhaim, it would’ve been the age-old tale of sisters fighting.Is there a songwriter-in-chief?E: One of us will come up with a melody, or a song idea, and we’ll meditate on it, and work it out. We’ll sit in our parents’ living room in the Valley and jam on drums or guitar, and we’ll jam on it in rehearsal.

GO SEE

Haim’s new single, Falling, is out now. A debut album follows in May: www.haimtheband.com

Qatar MotoGPNIGHT LIGHTS: Since 2008, the Qatar motorcycle Grand Prix has taken place after dark on the Losail International Circuit – the only night race in MotoGP. The 2013 season kicks off there, just outside Doha, with all lights blazing on April 7.

TIME SPAN: The Losail track, 5,380m long, was carved out of the desert by 1,000 workers in about a year. Last year’s race winner, the Spaniard Jorge Lorenzo, posted a fastest lap of 1m 55.541s (on his way to the 2012 world title).

UNFAIR REFLECTION: Racing in the dark produces amazing TV footage and, more importantly, great racing, but in the wet, riders have complained of too much glare from the damp circuit surface.

Sis is how we do it: Este, Danielle

and Alana Haim

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THE ELECTRIC PICKLE2826 North Miami Avenue Miami, FL 33127, USA www.electricpicklemiami.com

Electric Pickle A jewel among the pleasure palaces of Miami. Big DJs come in secret to play for love

A little house on the playlist

My business partners laughed and thought it was a joke. But I was like, “No, I think it’s so ridiculous that it could work. Once you hear it, you won't forget it.” Plus, there’s innuendo.This place is special, because...Of the passion that goes into making it work. Every year people coming to Miami to open up new clubs. Their motive is to become rich and popular. We on the other hand, do things differently. The best DJs in the world know us and trust us. People like Seth Troxler drop in unannounced to play after their gigs in the bigger clubs. Around the disco ball, we have...A bunch of small, old-style Las Vegas sign lights. All of the interior we put together ourselves. The walls are old wooden pallets we found at the dock. Our club isn't about being shiny and glossy: with a 300 capacity, we want it to be warm and intimate.Interview with Tomas Cedia, owner.

WINTER MUSIC CONFERENCEMarch 15-24, Miami. The programme for the hottest dance music festival is at: www.wintermusicconference.com

Miami is a great party city, because…Of the tropical heat. You feel like you’re on permanent vacation. There’s a lack of seriousness, and everyone just wants to go out and party. The club’s name comes from…I’m a big foodie, and the night before a meeting about the club, I was looking up pickling online, and came across a school science experiment using the salt in a pickle to conducting electricity.

Salzburg ForeverThis light but flavoursome drink has become a favourite at the Mayday Bar in Hangar-7 in Salzburg, Austria. It's an unusual long drink in two respects. Firstly, scotch, with its intense, distinctive flavour, is rarely used in cocktails. Secondly, because the fresh, fruity aromas of pineapple and passion fruit, in tandem with the amber nectar (any scotch can be used, but perhaps save your best single malt) are not what you think they’re going to be – they’re so much better. The drink’s name came from a patron who said it was “unforgettable, like the city of Salzburg”.

WHAT SUP

METHODPut all the ingredients into a shaker and shake until the cocktail is frothy. Pour into a long glass and garnish with a fruit skewer.

INGREDIENTS40ml scotch60ml pineapple juice60ml passion fruit juice20ml apricot brandy15ml banana syrupIce cubes

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take 3

‘Dre makes me go harder’Kendrick lamar Press and peers alike said he made the best album of 2012. Hip-hop hype is nothing new, but this future great, out of Compton, is the real deal. Shout-outs here for three inspirations

There was no escaping Kendrick Lamar last year. His second album, Good Kid, M.A.A.D City, released in October, was a tuneful rap attack thick with wit and wordplay. By year’s end, two million Spotify streams and 250,000 US sales later, the album was topping best-of-2012 lists. The rapper Nas, who released his 11th album last year, also singled out the record, saying, “No disrespect to nobody else in rap music, but Kendrick Lamar. I’m really happy about his record. I needed that. His record reaches you. It gives you hope.” Lamar, 25, is from the Compton district of Los Angeles, from where, 25 years ago, N.W.A exploded with the seminal rap album Straight Outta Compton. With Good Kid, M.A.A.D City, Lamar is showing that little has changed in a quarter-century. His music is informed by childhood memories of the ghetto and traumatic family events, but he relays his hard-knock life with a powerful, eloquent lightness of touch. The album also pays tribute to founding fathers of rap central to his own success. Here, Lamar tells The Red Bulletin who made him what he is.  www.kendricklamar.org 

Manila Banana CueThe sizzle of saba fruit on street food stands is a constant in the Filipino capital

SNOOP DOGG “When I was a kid his music,  

was always played in our house – as well as Dre’s, because you can’t get Snoop without Dre. They really defined my style 

and sound, enabled me to speak on something that's 

 real. I really dig his new reincarnation as Snoop Lion. 

He’s done it all, he's seen it all. Now he's about peace, love, 

happiness – and smoking weed. Meet him in person, you’ll see, 

he’s a real genuine dude.”

TUPAC SHAKUR “He gave me the inspiration  

to talk about things that  most people are scared of talking about, things like 

vulnerability and weaknesses. It’s great to have somebody before me to show me the ropes. I was at the video  

shoot of his song, California Love, when I was a kid. My  

pops took me, put me on his shoulders, gave me the chance 

to see Dr Dre and Tupac.  I'll always remember it.”

DR DRE “He is my mentor. He says, ‘Stay focused, don’t let this  be the peak of your career. 

You’re fresh, you still got so much more to do.” It's like 

when he first got in the studio with Eminem. He was amazed 

how many great songs Eminem was making, but he still today 

feels Eminem hasn't made  his best song yet. (And  

I think the same too). It's  a great feeling to have. He inspires me to go harder.

CUe THe INTRODUCTIONevery foodstuff that gets skewered in the Philippines – and that is a whole lot of foodstuffs – is referred to as barbecue. So, the bananas of the saba variety, when cooked and then served on a thin bamboo stick, are called banana cue, or banana Q. The peeled saba is fried in hot oil for a few minutes, then brown sugar is added. With regular stirring the sugar caramelises on the banana. A skewer is inserted on removal from the pan to make the eating easier.

M.A.A.D skills:Kendrick Lamar

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in a batter made from flour, milk and baking powder, then rolled in sugar. A ginanggang, it could be argued, is the calorie-counter’s favourite: a saba brushed with margarine, then grilled over charcoal (preferably made from coconut tree wood).

under the combined shelter of a huge tree and a parasol, and a queue of students, teachers and locals alike line up eagerly waiting for the first batch to be ready. Campus residents have bestowed upon this woman one of the greatest of all honours: they wear T-shirts with her likeness and pictures of her banana cues on them.

tomatoes were hard to come by. This ket chup isn’t naturally red: it is dyed with food colouring.

STRANGe FRUIT The saba is one of several varieties of banana grown in the Philippines, but is the only one used to make banana cue. This is because the flesh of the fruit is firm when ripe, and won’t fall apart when dunked in the hot oil. A saba banana is 8-13cm long, and about 2.5cm in diameter. The saba banana plant’s leaves are used to make rope or matting, and are also used as a wrapping material in cooking.

Sweet treats: every fruit that gets skewered in the Philippines is called barbecue

SABA KINGDOM There are variations of the banana cue. A turon is a saba sliced lengthways, wrapped in thin pastry, then fried and sugared in the same way. A maruya is a banana baked

KeTCH IT IF YOU CAN (YOU CAN)Just as you might find tomato ket chup on the table in many countries, in the Philippines you’ll find banana ketchup, puso ng saba, widely known as jufran, after one of the main producers of the stuff. The bananas are crushed and mixed with sugar, vinegar and spices. It was invented by a Filipina food technologist during World War II, when

MADAMe SABA ON CAMPUSOne of the most famous banana cue stands is found outside Manila in Cebu City. Its owner, Manang Liza, is a living legend on the university campus there. every day, she opens her stand

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Cool runnings: freestyle halfpipe action in Tignes

A good year: Lindsey Vonn won a Laureus in 2011

March & April 2013

Sport11.03.2013, RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL

Prize giving1 Laureus World Sports Awards Who were

sport’s leading performers in 2012? That question will be answered, at this annual gala, bya secret ballot by members of the Laureus World Sports Academy. The shortlist for each award was decided by sport editors, writers and broadcasters. Favourite to win in the Action category is stratospheric BASE-jumper Felix Baumgartner. F1 champ Sebastian Vettel is on the Sportsman shortlist, and his team, Red Bull Racing, are up for the Team gong. Alpine skier Lindsey Vonn could pick up her second Sportswoman award.

20-22.03.2013, TIGNES, FRANCE

Gold getters3 Winter X Games Tignes This high-profile

winter sports contest is usually an America-only affair, with the action alternating between the slopes of Colorado, California and Vermont each year. This time, however, for only the second time, an additional Winter X Games will be staged outside the US, with the French ski resort of Tignes playing host. European participants will be hoping home advantage plays a much bigger part in proceedings than in Tignes in 2010, when all six gold medals in the snowboarding events went to Canadian and American athletes. Over 100,000 spectators are expected.

31.03.2013, LONDON, UK

Oarsome2 The Boat Race Since 1824, the universities

of Cambridge and Oxford have been competing on the Thames in what is the world’s most famous rowing regatta. The overall score currently stands at 81-76 to Cambridge. Last year, spectators on the 6.8km route – from Putney upstream to Mortlake – witnessed a turbulent race, with a protest swimmer bringing proceedings to a temporary halt near the halfway point. Shortly after the restart an Oxford rower broke an oar and later, one of his teammates collapsed at the finish line. Cambridge won therace with a lead of four-and-a-half lengths.

22–24.03.2013, PLANICA, SLOVENIA

Learn to fly4 FIS Ski Jumping World Cup More than

100,000 spectators turn the World Cup ski jumping finale in Planica into a real Slovenian carnival, complete with the unmistakable sound of Balkan accordions. This village has hosted some special moments in the history of the sport: on March 15, 1936, Austria’s Josef ‘Bubi’ Bradl became the first to achieve a distance of over 100m and on March 17, 1994, Finn Toni Nieminen was the first to get past 200m. Although Gregor Schlierenzauer and local hero Robert Kranjec will both take part in team events in late March, the real focus is on their solo performance at the World Cup.

05-15.04.2013, MOROCCO

Just desert5 Marathon des Sables A 230km race across

the Moroccan desert is so arduous that each participant is required to carry a survival kit consisting of a sleeping bag, 2,000 calories of food per day and a snakebite treatment kit. Adding to runners’ worries are the extreme temperature fluctuations: by day the African heat keeps temperatures around 40ºC, then at night the mercury drops to 5ºC. The extreme conditions don’t put off the ultrarunners, however. Each year the race attracts around 800 entrants, with the winner usually completing the course – equivalent to six marathons – in about 17 hours.

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Dye society: the colourful Holi festival in India

Manga alive: anime characters hit up Tokyo

City on fire: Valencia burns up for Las Fallas fest

The sand troubles: 230km racing across Morocco

Culture08-17.03.2013, AUSTIN, USA

City sounds7 SXSW The most high-profile music trade fair

in the world sees the streets of Austin, Texas, fill with indie kids looking for secret gigs and aspiring new bands dragging guitar amps from one club to the next. Over 100 live venues welcome more than 5,000 musicians, who are here for good reason: the likelihood of getting a record deal is greater here than elsewhere, as journalists and label managers converge on the Texan city in search of the next big thing.

14.03-01.04.2013, LONDON, UK

Brain Battle6 World Chess Candidates’ Tournament

The World Chess Championship doesn’t happen until November, but the players who will take on India’s reigning world champion, Viswanathan Anand, will be decided in March when the eight best chess players in the world meet in London for a preliminary. They include Boris Gelfand from Israel, who lost out to Anand in last year’s final, and Russian grandmaster Vladimir Kramnik, who put the moves on his compatriot Garry Kasparov to claim the world title 13 years ago.

15-19.03.2013, VALENCIA, SPAIN

Desire for fire8 Las Fallas Shortly before midnight, the lights

go out in the streets of Valencia. Silence. Total darkness. Then, ta-da: fireworks shoot into the sky and huge papier-mâché figures go up in flames. The Las Fallas festival is a heaven for pyromaniacs, a fiery spectacle attracting more than two million visitors each year. The residents of Valencia spend months working on the giant dolls, called Ninots, which they erect in the streets before burning them to a chorus of cheers.

23–24.03.2013, TOKYO, JAPAN

Manga mania9 International Anime Fair Publishers,

illustrators and more than 100,000 anime fans travel to Tokyo every year for the Japanese animation industry’s largest gathering. It’s an unusual experience, with balloon animals with huge eyes and snub noses floating above the heads of visitors, as manga princesses and warriors patrol the aisles alongside the latest figurines, films and comics.

27-28.03.2013, DELHI, INDIA

Crowds of colour10 Holi This Hindu festival, marking the end

of winter and the coming of spring, sees the streets of Delhi awash in a sea of colour. It is a celebration of the god Krishna, in which crowds throw coloured powder and coloured water, representing a moment in Krishna’s life when he complained about the contrast between the colour of his skin and that of his lover, Radha. Who attends is coloured in.

MARCH 22–APRIL 1

Biking heavenQueenstown is the snow sports capital of New Zealand, but in recent years it has earned a reputation as one of the best biking destinations in the country. The third Queenstown Bike Festival celebrates all the region has to offer. The highlight of an action-packed 12 days promises to be the Teva Slopestyle, on March 28. The event was awarded silver status by the Freeride Mountain Bike World Tour, meaning some of the world’s top mountain bike tricksters will be in action on the purpose-built freestyle course in the town centre. www.queenstownbikefestival.com

MARCH 15-17

World partyThe truly global experience that is the WOMAD international arts festival comes to its spiritual home in New Zealand, at Brooklands Park and TSB Bowl of Brooklands in New Plymouth. The musical element of the World of Music, Arts and Dance this year includes South African legend Hugh Masakela, Afrobeat group Antibalas and reggae icon Jimmy Cliff. www.taft.co.nz/womad

APRIL 6-7

The long walkIt’s perhaps too late to think about entering this year’s Oxfam Trailwalker, unless you and three of your mates are fit enough to walk 100km in under 36 hours without any proper training. However, spectators are most welcome at Lake Taupo, where more than 1,000 people will take to the start line, in teams of four, to tackle one of the most demanding events of its kind in the country. www.oxfamtrailwalker.org.nz

Save the DateMarch & April

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Music matters

MARCH 13–17

No clowning aroundThere are no jugglers or trapeze artists in the show Urban by Circolombia. Instead, performers from Circo Para Todos, Colombia’s national circus school, tell the story of street life in South America in a physically dazzling circus-opera. Soundtracked by Latin American-infused rap and reggae, the show described as “bad sexy dangerous” by Total Theatre magazine is at The Civic this month, as part of the Auckland Arts Festival which runs until March 24. www.aaf.co.nz

One of the big hits of last year’s music festival circuit was the Summer Sunday at Matakana Music Mountain, an event that proudly affirmed its musical credentials and environmental conscience. It’s back this year, albeit in the guise of Sounds On at Auckland’s North Harbour Stadium. Every festival carries out a major clean-up after fans leave, but this one implants the idea before, during and after, thanks to a partnership with the charity Sustainable Coastlines. Other like-minded organisations will make their presence felt on the festival site in The Good Zone, such as SurfAid, Greenpeace and Sea Shepherd. Free

buses will help reduce the carbon footprint, while dancing feet will be powered by leading lights of Kiwi music, including The Black Seeds, Home Brew, Katchafire, David Dallas, Trinity Roots, AHoriBuzz (above), Tahuna Breaks and Tiki Taane. www.soundson.net

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World partyThe truly global experience that is the WOMAD international

MARCH 23

Music

Instead, performers from Circo Para Todos, Colombia’s national circus school, tell the story of street life in South America in a physically dazzling circus-opera. Soundtracked by Latin American-infused rap and reggae, the show described as “bad sexy dangerous” by month, as part of the Auckland Arts Festival which runs until March 24. www.aaf.co.nz

One of the big hits of last year’s music festival circuit was the Summer Sunday at Matakana Music Mountain, an event that proudly affirmed its musical credentials and environmental conscience. It’s back this year, albeit in the guise of Sounds On at Auckland’s North

arts festival comes to its spiritual home in New Zealand, at Brooklands Park and TSB Bowl of Brooklands in New Plymouth. The musical element of the World of Music, Arts and Dance this year includes South African legend Hugh Masakela, Afrobeat group Antibalas and reggae icon Jimmy Cliff. www.taft.co.nz/womad

The long

entering this year’s

Sounds On at Auckland’s North Harbour Stadium. Every festival carries out a major clean-up after

Brooklands in New Plymouth. The musical element of the

MARCH 23

Music

described as “bad sexy dangerous” by month, as part of the Auckland Arts Festival which runs until March 24. www.aaf.co.nz

One of the big hits of last year’s music festival circuit was the Summer Sunday at Matakana Music Mountain, an event that proudly affirmed its musical credentials and environmental conscience. It’s back this year, albeit in the guise of Sounds On at Auckland’s North

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Mind’s Eye

For human drama and the true theatre of retail, says Russell

Brown, head for the stalls

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My first and only visit to beijing, as the guest of a telephone company, was short and closely

chaperoned. China was open, somewhat, in the late 1990s, and as one of a group of journalists, it was inevitable that we were assigned an earnest, slightly irritating guide who was more of a government minder.

that was oK, right up until the day of departure, when what had promised to be a free saturday morning turned out to be a compulsory bus trip to the Forbidden City. Perhaps it’s better now, but at the time the Forbidden City struck me as a thunderously dull sort of historical site. oh look: and there’s another nested square inside the previous nested square.

What made it particularly irksome for me was that there and back on the bus trip I could see the really interesting places on a saturday morning in beijing: the markets. I twitched as we rolled past the corner of a market square festooned with birds in cages. now that looked good.

If you want to get a feel for people, you go to where they do commerce directly with one another. trawling the markets of Hong Kong was a glimpse into the backstage of multiple worlds: manufacturing, branded sportswear, the things that could be construed as food. I never felt more of a londoner than when plump lady stallholders in brixton addressed me as ‘love’.

Visitors to new Zealand were long denied such joys. We have largely been a nation of shopkeepers, not stallholders. recently, however – and ironically, in parallel with the growth of big-box retail – we have gained our markets.

When I returned from a long oe in the early 1990s, the bright colours and informal networks of south auckland’s otara Market helped me work out where auckland was at. on the other hand, the central city, once home to the bohemian, edgy, Cook street Market, had only the tourist tat of

Victoria Park. this, too, was instructive.In the past decade, following the

boom in britain, we’ve seen the growth of our farmers’ markets. they’re a mixed bag. For every site where you can buy food directly from the people who grew it, there’s another that’s pricey and full of products you’d usually pay to avoid.

there are two auckland markets I visit most weekends. one is the French-style market run by the Parnell importer la Cigale. It doesn’t tend to be cheap, but it is stocked with delicious things, and some of the vendors – Mamaku blue, with their buckets of spray-free blueberries, and genevieve with her mueslis and salad dressing – feel like friends. sometimes, if I’ve earned it by riding there, I’ll have a butter-tastic French savoury.

My other regular could hardly be more different. no one at avondale Markets has, to my knowledge, ever invited me

to join their mailing list or to like them on Facebook. I don’t know any of their names and they don’t ever seem to recognise me. and it’s fabulous.

sunday mornings at avondale are time spent at the edges of auckland. If you want an idea of what’s fashionable, go see what’s there. If you want to see how we relate, watch a thai haggle with a Pakistani over a second-hand rice-cooker, or a Chinese baker practising his Maori on his customers: “Kia ora!”

at la Cigale, we’re often invited to grab a complimentary sprig of French tarragon after we’ve bought our veggies. at avondale, I’m sometimes not sure what the herbs even are, but the amount of basil you can buy for $3 is insane. shopping here teaches you assertiveness. the Chinese matrons know that big pile of peppers is cheap because it’s on the turn, and they’ll stand there, urgently inspecting each one, throwing the bad ones back till they have a bagful. the market is not like the supermarket.

avondale’s slightly mad website confirms that products and services can be sold at the market “as long as it is not any of the following. absolutely no food or eatable-based products,” of which they apparently have plenty already, and “absolutely no live animal products,” which is doubtless a good thing.

the most spirited bit of the site is the news section. It reads, in full: “We hear these silly rumours about the market closing down almost every week, and we get asked if this is true, the answer is no, the market will never close down or relocate, as it’s on council land and this land can neVer be sold for housing or for anything at all as it is zoned as a park.

“these are just silly rumours put out buy [sic] silly people, we will be here on every sunday rain hail or snow.”

In a world of tidy, managed, branded retail and gentrifying suburbs, we should all be very glad of that.

The Red BulleTin new Zealand, iSSn 2079-4274: The Red Bulletin is published by Red Bull Media House GmbH General Manager Wolfgang Winter Publisher Franz Renkin editor-in-Chief Robert Sperl deputy editor-in-Chief Alexander Macheck uK & ireland editor Paul Wilson Contributing editor Stefan Wagner Chief Sub-editor Nancy James deputy Chief Sub-editor Joe Curran Production editor Marion Wildmann Chief Photo editor Fritz Schuster deputy Photo editors Ellen Haas, Catherine Shaw, Rudolf Übelhör Creative director Erik Turek Art director Kasimir Reimann design Martina de Carvalho-Hutter, Silvia Druml, Kevin Goll, Peter Jaunig, Carita Najewitz Staff Writers Ulrich Corazza,

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