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<strong>UK</strong> EDITION<br />
JUNE <strong>2019</strong>, £3.50<br />
BEYOND THE ORDINARY<br />
SUBSCRIBE: GETREDBULLETIN.COM<br />
14<br />
Pages of<br />
Gear<br />
Urban<br />
Legends<br />
MTB’S NEW BREED<br />
Where the mountains<br />
are concrete, trails<br />
are tarmac, slopes are<br />
stone steps, and you<br />
bring your own ramp
<strong>UK</strong> EDITION<br />
JUNE <strong>2019</strong>, £3.50<br />
BEYOND THE ORDINARY<br />
SUBSCRIBE: GETREDBULLETIN.COM<br />
URBAN<br />
FREESTYLE<br />
Downhill MTB<br />
hits the street<br />
SECRET<br />
CINEMA<br />
All revealed.<br />
No spoilers<br />
ULTRA GOBI<br />
Running the<br />
Silk Road<br />
Singer, songwriter<br />
and pro footballer<br />
CHELCEE<br />
GRIMES<br />
tackles the Women’s<br />
World Cup and the<br />
sounds of summer<br />
“It’s not girl’s<br />
football, it’s<br />
just football”
HELL IS HEREBY OFFICIALLY CONQUERED<br />
THE ALL-NEW ROUBAIX | SPECIALIZED.COM/ROUBAIX
EDITOR’S LETTER<br />
THINKING OUTSIDE<br />
THE BOX<br />
“Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like<br />
an artist,” Pablo Picasso is said to have declared. It’s this<br />
kind of unconventional thinking that <strong>The</strong> <strong>Red</strong> <strong>Bulletin</strong><br />
celebrates every month. <strong>The</strong>re’s probably no better<br />
example in this issue than Daniela Ryf (page 32), Iron Man<br />
world champion four years running. Rather than simply<br />
building on her moments of triumph, the Swiss triathlete<br />
draws deep from her most painful experiences to find<br />
secret techniques that can provide an edge over her foes.<br />
CONTRIBUTORS<br />
THIS ISSUE<br />
DAVID GOLDMAN<br />
When the British photographer<br />
first saw mountain bikers pulling<br />
off downhill freeriding tricks in<br />
the concrete landscape of <strong>UK</strong><br />
coastal towns, he knew he’d found<br />
his next project. “<strong>The</strong>se guys are<br />
pioneering,” says Goldman, who<br />
shares his time between London<br />
and New York. “<strong>The</strong> same way the<br />
skaters of Dogtown in the ’70s<br />
were, or the surfers of the Endless<br />
Summer in the ’60s.” Page 54<br />
This month’s issue has two amazing covers: Chelcee Grimes, photographed<br />
by Stephanie Sian Smith; and a special MTB edition, shot by David Goldman<br />
to coincide with the <strong>UK</strong> leg of the UCI Mountain Bike World Cup.<br />
Talking of secrets, in this age of hype Secret Cinema<br />
(page 42) has elevated the allure of the unknown into the<br />
ultimate immersive FOMO experience. Urban rebels turn<br />
bikes built for the mountain into a new sport, MTB street<br />
(page 54), and the ancient Silk Road becomes a race course<br />
for Ultra Gobi’s insane ultrarunners (page 74).<br />
Plus, we have Chelcee Grimes (page 64) on learning the<br />
ropes of two professions – music and football – and actor<br />
Taron Egerton (page 28) on the lessons gleaned from a<br />
great artist who long ago broke all the rules: Elton John.<br />
We hope you find these stories as inspiring as we do.<br />
PIERS MARTIN<br />
<strong>The</strong> chance to interview a star<br />
whose career spans music and<br />
sport was irresistible to the Londonbased<br />
writer of our feature on<br />
singer-songwriter/pro footballer<br />
Chelcee Grimes. “Her passion for<br />
her professions is infectious,” he<br />
says of the Liverpudlian who’s set<br />
for the summer of her life as a BBC<br />
pundit at the Women’s World Cup.<br />
“And she didn’t laugh when I said I<br />
support Plymouth Argyle.” Page 64<br />
STEPHANIE SIAN SMITH, DAVID GOLDMAN (COVERS)<br />
06 THE RED BULLETIN
AMERICAN SPIRIT<br />
SWISS PRECISION
THE FREEDOM<br />
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THE FREEDOM<br />
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© 2018 SRAM LLC
CONTENTS<br />
<strong>June</strong> <strong>2019</strong><br />
74<br />
Hypothermia and<br />
hallucinations: all<br />
in a day’s running<br />
at the Ultra Gobi<br />
JAMES CARNEGIE<br />
BULLEVARD<br />
10 Break from the norm:<br />
eye-popping B-girl<br />
moves at Tricklandia<br />
14 What a ledge: standing<br />
on the brink in Yosemite<br />
16 Rexpress delivery: the<br />
robot dog goes postal<br />
18 One million spins BC:<br />
breaking news from <strong>Red</strong><br />
Bull BC One Cypher <strong>UK</strong><br />
20 Deep sleep: the tent<br />
that was made for<br />
subaquatic slumber<br />
22 Silver surfers: the senior<br />
skateboard crew who are<br />
rolling back the years<br />
24 Swede life: culturemelding<br />
Scandi-Somali<br />
R&B star Cherrie<br />
26 Apocalypse wow: the<br />
ultimate playlist, from<br />
Bastille’s Dan Smith<br />
GUIDE<br />
100 Dive with a legend in<br />
the Azores – only with<br />
Destination <strong>Red</strong> Bull<br />
104 <strong>The</strong> treadmill that’s<br />
elevating athletes to<br />
another level (literally)<br />
post-injury<br />
106 How Apex Legends will<br />
make you a better teamplayer,<br />
from battle zone<br />
to boardroom<br />
108 YT Industries: putting<br />
the fun back into bikemaking<br />
and riding.<br />
Plus our edit of the<br />
best high-tech gear<br />
116 Essential dates for<br />
your calendar<br />
118 This month’s highlights<br />
on <strong>Red</strong> Bull TV<br />
122 It’s a hold-up: humanflagging<br />
in Santa Monica<br />
FEATURES<br />
28 Taron Egerton<br />
<strong>The</strong> Rocket Man actor is set to soar<br />
32 Daniela Ryf<br />
Power is no problem for the top<br />
triathlete: she has a secret back-up<br />
42 Secret Cinema<br />
Making filmgoing an XL experience<br />
54 MTB street-riding<br />
Big air and cracked saddles: mad<br />
bike tricks in the concrete jungle<br />
64 Chelcee Grimes<br />
Meet the goal-scoring, hit-making<br />
Scouser who’s ready to rule <strong>2019</strong><br />
74 Ultra Gobi<br />
<strong>The</strong> desert race that ravages<br />
your body and blows your mind<br />
88 Rock Steady<br />
Hit the trail in this expert kit<br />
THE RED BULLETIN 09
LIFE & STYLE BEYOND THE ORDINARY<br />
BULLEVARD
Boogie wonderland: street<br />
dancer Dassy Lee performs in<br />
Marcel Valko’s hallucinatory<br />
video, shot at Tricklandia<br />
VLADIMIR LORINC/RED BULL CONTENT POOL<br />
Optical illusion dance<br />
TRICK OF THE EYE<br />
Three of the world’s best street dancers, one mind-bending performance<br />
T here are few worlds<br />
as seemingly unconnected<br />
as New York-born street<br />
dance and traditional Slovak<br />
folktales. It might seem<br />
surprising, then, that Marcel<br />
Valko – aka Miniboj – the<br />
creative director of streetdance<br />
production company<br />
and clothing brand <strong>The</strong><br />
Legits, chose to film his<br />
most recent project at<br />
a fairy-tale art experience<br />
in Slovakia.<br />
Tricklandia is a modernart<br />
gallery crossed with<br />
an amusement park – an<br />
imaginary world designed<br />
around the stories and<br />
myths of Slovakian villages<br />
and castles; a game between<br />
artist and audience that’s<br />
11
B U L L E V A R D<br />
Kyoka Yamamoto confounds gravity in the Turned Over Chamber<br />
formulated to deceive you<br />
into seeing things that are<br />
not really there.<br />
A couple of years ago, while<br />
walking around Tricklandia,<br />
an idea struck Valko: “What if<br />
I use this dream-like location<br />
to create a dance video?” He<br />
flew three of the world’s best<br />
freestyle street dancers – Dassy<br />
Lee, Angyil McNeal and Kyoka<br />
Yamamoto – across the world<br />
to perform their outstanding<br />
choreographies amid its optical<br />
illusions and misleading<br />
scenarios. In the performance,<br />
nothing is how it first appears<br />
– it’s all in your head.<br />
<strong>The</strong> <strong>Red</strong> <strong>Bulletin</strong> spoke to<br />
director Valko and dancer Lee<br />
about the process of creating<br />
this magical spectacle and<br />
introducing freestyle street<br />
dance to a wider audience.<br />
the red bulletin: What<br />
inspired you to use<br />
Tricklandia as a location?<br />
valko: I first discovered<br />
the experience with my kids.<br />
<strong>The</strong>re are just so many visual<br />
“ONE ROOM<br />
WAS ALL<br />
MIRRORS. THE<br />
CREW WERE<br />
FALLING OVER”<br />
elements there. My filming<br />
style is to always be as weird<br />
as possible, and I thought,<br />
“<strong>The</strong>re are not many places<br />
in the world like this. I have<br />
to do something with it.”<br />
How was the experience<br />
of shooting in such a unique<br />
and surreal location?<br />
lee: It was awesome. <strong>The</strong>re<br />
are so many rooms that move<br />
around you and look crazy.<br />
It was difficult to dance<br />
through, though; everything<br />
is mirrored, so I was hitting<br />
walls because I couldn’t see<br />
where to go. We got pretty<br />
nauseous dancing in there.<br />
v: <strong>The</strong> illusions make you<br />
feel dizzy when walking<br />
through them. It feels like<br />
they’re pulling you down,<br />
and they disorientate you.<br />
We used one room that’s<br />
upside down, and one that’s<br />
made entirely of mirrors –<br />
even the crew were falling<br />
about in there. <strong>The</strong>re’s also a<br />
‘never-ending room’; we knew<br />
freestyle popping would look<br />
really good in there, but it was<br />
still hard to show on camera<br />
just how crazy it actually was.<br />
What’s freestyle popping?<br />
l: It’s a street style of dance.<br />
You use all of the muscles in<br />
your body to contract with the<br />
rhythm of the music. It can<br />
look very robotic sometimes.<br />
v: Most people don’t know<br />
the difference between<br />
popping and hip-hop dance.<br />
It’s hard for a mainstream<br />
audience to understand what<br />
Valko’s film makes full use of Tricklandia’s illusionary installations<br />
they are. In my opinion,<br />
popping is way more difficult<br />
than breaking, because it’s a<br />
dance based on contractions.<br />
You can practise popping like<br />
crazy for a whole month and<br />
not really see any progress.<br />
With breakdance, you learn<br />
a basic six-step and at the end<br />
of a month you’ll know it,<br />
even if it’s a bit sloppy. With<br />
popping, you practise and<br />
practise and still see nothing.<br />
How important is the music<br />
to your creative process?<br />
v: It’s always the most<br />
important point. Once I’ve<br />
figured out the music, I can<br />
start with everyone else. It<br />
inspires me for what I’m going<br />
to shoot. With this video, it<br />
was different: I already had<br />
my vision, which came from<br />
the crazy location, so I just<br />
needed to find the right<br />
music to fit it.<br />
l: It’s important to have<br />
timing throughout the track<br />
that is always changing – and<br />
to have a strong beat. It’s all<br />
about being able to use our<br />
bodies to play with sound in<br />
an authentic way.<br />
How important was it to<br />
feature three female dancers<br />
in the video?<br />
v: <strong>The</strong>se girls are the best<br />
poppers we have. <strong>The</strong>y killed<br />
it. <strong>The</strong>y’re better than most<br />
of the male dancers.<br />
l: A lot of street dancing is<br />
dominated by men. <strong>The</strong>re<br />
aren’t that many female<br />
dancers. It was awesome to<br />
see different styles of strong<br />
women dancing in one dope<br />
video. If we can show this<br />
more, maybe we can inspire<br />
more women to come and<br />
give it a go. It will show<br />
people there are lots of<br />
different types of dancer<br />
you can be as a woman.<br />
Watch the full Tricklandia<br />
performance at redbull.com<br />
VLADIMIR LORINC/RED BULL CONTENT POOL LOU BOYD<br />
12 THE RED BULLETIN
Highly<br />
recommended<br />
LYD & BILDE<br />
ssssst<br />
December 2017<br />
Kygo A9/600<br />
Kygo Life unites my love of music with modern Scandinavian design.<br />
<strong>The</strong> aim is to develop top–quality audio equipment that sounds amazing<br />
and looks great. Like my approach to everything, Kygo Life is driven to<br />
continually improve. So, as each product evolves it embraces the latest<br />
technology and focuses on perfecting the details until I’m absolutely<br />
happy the end result is the best it can be.<br />
KYRRE GØRVELL-DAHLL<br />
Creative Director, Kygo Life
Yosemite, USA<br />
EDGE OF<br />
THE WORLD<br />
B U L L E V A R D<br />
Rising almost 1,500m above Yosemite<br />
Valley and 2,700m above sea level, Half<br />
Dome is a California icon. <strong>The</strong> granite<br />
formation at the eastern end of the valley<br />
is the summit of a legendary hiking route<br />
which, until a couple of years ago, was just<br />
an item on photographer Emilio Maglione-<br />
Fulco’s bucket list. When he finally got the<br />
chance to hike it, he reached its peak at first<br />
light, just as the sun began to illuminate the<br />
valley. <strong>The</strong> photographer’s gaze was drawn<br />
to this little diving board of a rock – “a small<br />
outcropping far from the classic photo-op”<br />
– where he captured his companion, fellow<br />
snapper Justin Mayers, walking to the edge.<br />
“<strong>The</strong> way it cantilevered over the void<br />
allowed us to showcase the immensity of<br />
the rock face,” says Maglione-Fulco. “Only<br />
Yosemite is capable of making one feel<br />
such an awe-inspiring sense of scale.”<br />
Instagram: @emiliomag<br />
EMILIO MAGLIONE-FULCO<br />
14 THE RED BULLETIN
THE RED BULLETIN 15
B U L L E V A R D<br />
ANYmal: it won’t chew<br />
the sofa, poo on the<br />
carpet, or try to hump<br />
your leg… unless you<br />
program it to<br />
Robotic courier<br />
POSTMAN’S<br />
BEST FRIEND<br />
<strong>The</strong> future of home delivery<br />
is going to the dogs<br />
B efore too long, dogs<br />
may be in charge of more than<br />
just bringing you the morning<br />
newspaper. In partnership with<br />
automotive firm Continental,<br />
robotics start-up ANYbotics<br />
has conjured up another view<br />
of the future: one where<br />
packages are delivered by<br />
mechanical canine courier.<br />
ANYmal is a multipurpose<br />
robot with the ability to sense<br />
its surroundings and carry<br />
heavy weights while traversing<br />
complex terrain. “It’s a delivery<br />
robot the size of an average<br />
dog,” says Péter Fankhauser,<br />
co-founder of the Zürich-based<br />
start-up. “Standing 70cm<br />
tall and 80cm long, it has a<br />
camera in its head, flexible<br />
joints, and is able to jump and<br />
move autonomously in an<br />
unfamiliar environment.”<br />
ANYmal is not the only canineinspired<br />
automaton around:<br />
Boston Dynamics’ SpotMini,<br />
unveiled in 2016, was demoed<br />
opening doors. When the<br />
robopocalypse comes, it’s likely<br />
to enter the room on all fours.<br />
In the meantime, we’re<br />
still convinced they’ll serve us.<br />
Visitors to electronics trade<br />
show CES in Las Vegas in<br />
January saw ANYmal step off<br />
a delivery truck with a parcel,<br />
walk up to a front door in a<br />
mocked-up suburban garden,<br />
ring the doorbell, then leave<br />
the package on the porch.<br />
While the reality of these<br />
delivery dogs may be a while<br />
away yet, in the shorter term<br />
ANYbotics is planning to use<br />
them to carry out industrial<br />
inspections or safety work<br />
in conditions that would be<br />
too hazardous for humans.<br />
Or indeed real dogs.<br />
anybotics.com<br />
ANYBOTICS CHRISTINE VITEL<br />
16 THE RED BULLETIN
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B U L L E V A R D<br />
<strong>Red</strong> Bull<br />
BC One<br />
POINT<br />
BREAK<br />
Winning moves at<br />
the <strong>UK</strong> qualifiers<br />
B-boy Jackson Watson and<br />
B-girl Vanessa Marina wiped the<br />
(scuffed lino) floor with their<br />
fellow breakdancers at this<br />
year’s <strong>Red</strong> Bull BC One Cypher<br />
<strong>UK</strong>. <strong>The</strong> knock-out competition<br />
at Village Underground in east<br />
London featured the first-ever<br />
B-girl qualifier battle on British<br />
soil, and Marina dropped to her<br />
knees on hearing that all three<br />
judges had named her the<br />
winner. Both dancers will now<br />
represent the <strong>UK</strong> at the BC One<br />
World Final in Mumbai, India,<br />
on November 9.<br />
redbull.com<br />
Above: B-girl Vanessa beat her rival Rawgina to<br />
take the crown. Below: in his final bout, Watson<br />
triumphed against fellow B-boy Izaak<br />
EVA BERTEN PHOTOGRAPHY LOU BOYD<br />
18 THE RED BULLETIN
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ROCKSHOX.COM
B U L L E V A R D<br />
3 4<br />
Ocean Space<br />
Habitat<br />
1<br />
SLEEPING WITH<br />
THE FISHES<br />
This ocean explorer has made it<br />
possible to sleep underwater –<br />
by creating a subaquatic tent<br />
2<br />
5<br />
1. <strong>The</strong> inflatable<br />
habitat is attached<br />
to bridles anchored<br />
to the sea floor<br />
2. Interior atmosphere<br />
is maintained by a<br />
replenishable oxygen<br />
source with carbondioxide<br />
extractors<br />
3. A dry chamber<br />
accommodates two<br />
divers in comfort,<br />
three at a push<br />
4. <strong>The</strong> fabric-embedded<br />
vinyl shell is reinforced<br />
with nylon straps and<br />
has windows<br />
5. <strong>The</strong> entire habitat<br />
collapses down to<br />
luggage size for<br />
transportation<br />
H umans have always<br />
daydreamed about living in<br />
the ocean; from stories of<br />
mermaids to the lost city<br />
of Atlantis, the deep sea<br />
occupies a vivid place in<br />
our imagination. Now, an<br />
underwater tent that allows<br />
us to breathe, eat and sleep<br />
hundreds of metres below<br />
the surface is bringing that<br />
fantasy closer to reality.<br />
<strong>The</strong> concept behind the<br />
Ocean Space Habitat is pretty<br />
simple: made from vinyl<br />
and nylon with polyester<br />
strapping, it has internal aircirculating<br />
fans and carbondioxide<br />
scrubbers to provide<br />
a breathable atmosphere for<br />
up to six hours. “It’s much like<br />
placing an inverted glass in<br />
a sink to make an air pocket,”<br />
says its co-creator, ocean<br />
scientist Michael Lombardi.<br />
“It’s essentially a tent filled<br />
with air that displaces the<br />
water inside, creating a void.”<br />
We currently accomplish<br />
very limited and temporary<br />
visits to the undersea world.<br />
Compare the knowledge we<br />
have of the ocean bed with<br />
the exploration of outer space:<br />
whereas 12 humans have<br />
stepped onto the surface of<br />
the Moon, only three have<br />
descended to the deepest part<br />
of the ocean. “For more than<br />
half a century, divers have<br />
gone by the rule that we can<br />
dive to 60ft [18m] for 60<br />
minutes without suffering<br />
from decompression sickness.<br />
Bring an underwater habitat<br />
into the mix, however, and<br />
a researcher can spend six<br />
hours or more working at 60ft<br />
throughout the day.”<br />
<strong>The</strong> next step for the camp<br />
is to attempt overnight trips.<br />
“<strong>The</strong> atmosphere has to be<br />
monitored and managed<br />
for both carbon dioxide<br />
and oxygen,” says Lombardi.<br />
“Our goal over the next year<br />
is to develop protocols that<br />
allow for an overnight stay.<br />
An afternoon hike is always<br />
beneficial to learning, but an<br />
overnight or weekend-long<br />
camping trip sheds light on<br />
all sorts of new discoveries<br />
within that environment.<br />
My hope is that we can stray<br />
away from being short-time<br />
visitors to the ocean towards<br />
having a more intertwined<br />
relationship with and within<br />
the sea.”<br />
Atlantis may only be<br />
a fantasy, but this two-man<br />
tent is our first step to a<br />
genuine undersea life.<br />
oceanopportunity.com<br />
MICHAEL LOMBARDI LOU BOYD CHRISTINA LOCK<br />
20 THE RED BULLETIN
You have to be made of stern stuff to live and ride in Fort William year round which makes Joe Barnes’ Hazzard Racing a perfect<br />
match to the no-nonsense DNA of Endura kit. <strong>The</strong> roots of which are still firmly grounded in Scotland where they have been<br />
engineering and testing their kit for over twenty-five years in some of the harshest conditions imaginable.<br />
On one hand, Joe is a massively accomplished racer having stood on the illustrious podium steps of the Enduro World Series. <strong>The</strong> other<br />
half is one of hectic pan and zoom videos with plenty of rut slashing and bog bashing, weird and wacky storylines which only their minds<br />
could conjure up. <strong>The</strong>y’ll have you both crying with laughter and have your eyes popping from your skull in disbelief at the riding.<br />
It’s far removed from a clean cut, slow-mo saturated, high budget production, but that’s the beauty of it. A welcome breath of fresh air in<br />
an ever-increasingly commercially monotone cycling world, where a dose of personality and originality certainly goes a long way.<br />
Hazzard Racing isn’t bothered about conforming to the usual expectations of how the majority of top-level athletes and race teams tend to<br />
go about their business, including in their aesthetics. Free of the constraints of a factory race outfit, Joe and Hazzard Racing can realise<br />
their creatively wacky ideas which are developed and brought to life in the kit provided to them by Endura design team.<br />
Hazzard Racing ride and race in the all-new ultra-lightweight MT500 Full Face Helmet coming in at a meagre 580 gms (M/L)<br />
despite being fully downill certified. <strong>The</strong>y also ride Endura’s new MT500 Lite and Hard Shell Knee Pads,<br />
putting them through the rigours both between the race tape and in their hardcore day to day riding.<br />
#ProtectionItsInOurDNA<br />
RENEGADE PROGRESS<br />
endurasport.com
B U L L E V A R D<br />
“THE MOST<br />
REBELLIOUS<br />
THING YOU CAN<br />
DO IS TO STAY<br />
WHO YOU ARE”<br />
Very Old Skateboarders<br />
SKATE OF MIND<br />
In her sixties, Lena Salmi has created<br />
a global skateboarding movement to prove<br />
that the sport isn’t only for teens<br />
I n February last year,<br />
Facebook staged a showcase<br />
on London’s South Bank,<br />
where it exhibited photos<br />
of its most inspiring groups.<br />
Among them was an online<br />
community of skateboarders.<br />
But the group wasn’t chosen<br />
in recognition of its members’<br />
talents or awards. Far from<br />
being teenage wonders, the<br />
average age of the skaters was<br />
closer to 60 than 16, and their<br />
only care was skating for as<br />
long as they could.<br />
<strong>The</strong> Very Old Skateboarders<br />
and Longboarders group is<br />
a global movement of almost<br />
4,000 skaters, aged largely<br />
between 60 and 99, who are<br />
challenging what the world<br />
of skateboarding looks like.<br />
It was founded in 2013 by<br />
two women, Lena Salmi (now<br />
65) and Elizabeth Stuart<br />
(67), who believed they were<br />
being judged unfairly because<br />
of their age.<br />
“When I met Elizabeth<br />
[at a longboarding camp in<br />
France], we felt like people<br />
were treating us like old<br />
ladies, like we couldn’t do<br />
stuff,” says Salmi. “It made<br />
us realise that no one can<br />
treat us like that, and that we<br />
were as good as anybody else.<br />
We were inspired to make<br />
a space that’s just for older<br />
skateboarders.”<br />
Come <strong>2019</strong> and the group<br />
has snowballed into something<br />
much bigger. Its Facebook<br />
page is updated every day<br />
with videos and photos of its<br />
thousands of ageing skaters,<br />
shot at skate competitions,<br />
skate parks and even group<br />
meet-ups across the world. Its<br />
members have been filmed<br />
for BBC documentaries and<br />
interviewed by global media.<br />
<strong>The</strong> group’s ethos, however,<br />
has remained the same.<br />
“<strong>The</strong> only entry<br />
requirement is that at some<br />
point you’ve thought you<br />
were too old to skateboard,”<br />
says Salmi. “Our youngest<br />
member was a 50-year-old<br />
woman. People had asked<br />
her, ‘Why are you doing that<br />
kind of kids’ stuff?’”<br />
According to Salmi, the<br />
important thing to learn from<br />
the Very Old Skateboarders<br />
is to not judge on first sight.<br />
“Open your mind and your<br />
ideas,” she says. “Of course<br />
skateboarding is rebellious<br />
when you are 65, but, in my<br />
opinion, the most rebellious<br />
thing you can do is to always<br />
stay exactly who you are.”<br />
facebook.com/groups/<br />
VeryOldSkateboarders<br />
BEN AWIN/HYPEBAE LOU BOYD<br />
22 THE RED BULLETIN
B U L L E V A R D<br />
B orn in Norway to<br />
Somali parents, and raised in<br />
Finland and Sweden on a diet<br />
of Bollywood and American<br />
R&B, Sherihan ‘Cherrie’<br />
Hersi’s cultural frame of<br />
reference is unsurprisingly<br />
broad. Nowhere is this more<br />
evident than on her second<br />
album, 2018’s Araweelo, on<br />
which she transforms R&B’s<br />
contemporary sound aesthetics<br />
into inspiring anthems sung<br />
in Swedish for third-culture<br />
kids (meaning those raised<br />
in a culture different from<br />
their parents’) like herself.<br />
<strong>The</strong> album gained the<br />
27-year-old a nomination at<br />
this year’s Swedish Grammy<br />
awards, and having already<br />
worked with Stormzy – the<br />
grime superstar contributed<br />
English lyrics to her 2016<br />
song Aldrig igen [må sådär]<br />
– Cherrie’s global profile was<br />
raised further thanks to props<br />
from the likes of Rihanna,<br />
SZA and Ariana Grande.<br />
the red bulletin: Your<br />
viral hit 163 För Evigt (‘163<br />
Forever’) is an ode to your<br />
home suburb of Rinkeby,<br />
dubbed by conservative<br />
media as a no-go area…<br />
cherrie: As a kid, if someone<br />
asked, “Hey, what part of<br />
Stockholm do you live in?”<br />
you’d lie and name an area<br />
that’s pretty close to Rinkeby,<br />
otherwise people would see<br />
you as someone from the<br />
ghetto. But I wouldn’t say<br />
it’s a no-go area at all.<br />
How would you describe it?<br />
It’s a melting pot. I always<br />
thought it was such a special<br />
place, and that we’re the<br />
coolest people. Growing up<br />
with so many different<br />
influences and cultures makes<br />
you smart at understanding<br />
the world and how you fit in.<br />
To stay independent, you’ve<br />
turned down several offers<br />
from record labels. Why is<br />
that so important to you?<br />
It’s not an obvious thing for<br />
artists to have ownership.<br />
Cherrie<br />
“SOMALI MUMS ARE<br />
SUPERHEROES”<br />
<strong>The</strong> Swedish-Somalian R&B singer lets<br />
loose on the supposed ghetto she grew up<br />
in, her kick-ass mum, and the importance<br />
of being an independent artist<br />
Most of these huge artists<br />
we see, they don’t own their<br />
music; they create art that<br />
someone else takes from them<br />
and makes money from. So,<br />
for me to be independent<br />
means a lot, because I create<br />
security for myself and my<br />
family. And it shows other<br />
people who come from<br />
nothing that you don’t need<br />
to sign [a label contract]; that<br />
you can just buy a computer<br />
and learn how to make music<br />
and then record yourself.<br />
“WE RINKEBY<br />
PEOPLE ARE<br />
THE COOLEST”<br />
So the desire to inspire<br />
your peers forms part of<br />
your creative drive?<br />
Owning houses or becoming<br />
CEOs… those are not things<br />
that people [who live in<br />
Rinkeby] dare to dream<br />
about. For them, to see<br />
someone like me – a black,<br />
Muslim woman – release<br />
my own music, tour around<br />
the world or work with Vogue<br />
[magazine] instils some hope<br />
in them. And really and truly,<br />
hope is the only thing that is<br />
going to push us all forward<br />
as a society.<br />
Do you think your Somali<br />
heritage has an impact on<br />
your music?<br />
Somalia is called the ‘land of<br />
a thousand poets’, so for me<br />
making music has never been<br />
a weird thing, because music<br />
is something that helps Somali<br />
people cope during the worst<br />
times. Also, Somali mums are<br />
the strongest people I’ve ever<br />
met. <strong>The</strong>y are superheroes.<br />
For me to come from a place<br />
where women are so<br />
dominant, it affirms my whole<br />
essence – like me having my<br />
own label, Araweelo.<br />
What does Araweelo mean?<br />
Araweelo was an ancient<br />
queen who ruled over Somalia<br />
and was super badass. [In<br />
Somalia], even if there is<br />
a dad in the family, women<br />
are the man in the house. And<br />
having that female energy has<br />
given me the drive.<br />
Is your mother a fan of<br />
your music?<br />
She has been to a couple<br />
of my concerts. She’s the<br />
sweetest. She knows Swedish,<br />
but she doesn’t understand<br />
a lot of my lyrics, so she<br />
makes my little brother<br />
play my music for her and<br />
explain every single word.<br />
Fashion brand AlphaTauri<br />
visited Cherrie in Rinkeby<br />
to talk about music and how<br />
growing up there has shaped<br />
her career. Watch the video<br />
at win.gs/AlphaTauriCherrie;<br />
alphatauri.com;<br />
twitter.com/Chxrrie<br />
CYPRIEN CLÉMENT-DELMAS FLORIAN OBKIRCHER<br />
24 THE RED BULLETIN
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B U L L E V A R D<br />
UNDERWORLD<br />
BORN SLIPPY (1995)<br />
“This tune perfectly captures<br />
a woozy, heady party night. It<br />
reminds me of happier, less bleak<br />
times. Britain in the ’90s was<br />
quite a hedonistic place for the<br />
artistic community: there was<br />
Britpop, and you also had so<br />
many new young artists coming<br />
through in modern art and<br />
fashion. It was before my time,<br />
but it’s definitely an interesting<br />
period to rediscover.”<br />
Bastille<br />
“TAKE THE BLUE PILL<br />
AND GET LOST”<br />
REM<br />
IT’S THE END OF THE WORLD<br />
AS WE KNOW IT (AND I FEEL<br />
FINE) (1987)<br />
“I imagine it’d be fun to jump<br />
around singing this song on<br />
our last night on Earth. Music is<br />
about articulating things that<br />
you maybe haven’t thought,<br />
but it’s also about escapism<br />
and distraction. <strong>The</strong>se are the<br />
moments to strive for; they can<br />
offer solace from this bizarrely<br />
fucked-up world we live in. So<br />
take the blue pill and get lost.”<br />
<strong>The</strong> British indie-pop giants pick their<br />
playlist for an end-of-the-world party<br />
Formed in 2010 by London-born lead singer Dan Smith,<br />
Bastille had their big breakthrough three years later<br />
with the single Pompeii, taken from their debut album, Bad<br />
Blood. By the following year, it had become the <strong>UK</strong>’s most<br />
streamed single of all time and won the band the title of<br />
British Breakthrough Act at the BRIT Awards. Now, following<br />
the global success of their 2018 single Happier, which featured<br />
US music producer Marshmello, the foursome have upped<br />
the ante with their new album, Doom Days, described by<br />
Smith as “an apocalyptic party”. Which is why he’s chosen<br />
to soundtrack Earth’s big send-off for us…<br />
Bastille’s new album Doom Days is out now; bastillebastille.com<br />
THE BEATLES<br />
BECAUSE (1969)<br />
“For us, a good night out means<br />
being with friends who don’t<br />
work in music, who don’t pop<br />
champagne corks with models<br />
– that’s just not our life. On our<br />
last night on Earth, we’d have<br />
a little dance, then we’d have a<br />
little cry together. Musically<br />
you want something to wind<br />
down to, and this is a great one<br />
to go out on.”<br />
MOBY<br />
PLAY (1999)<br />
“If there’s a perfect soundtrack<br />
for the end-of-the-world afterparty,<br />
it’s this album. Do you know<br />
the podcast Heavyweight [by<br />
Canadian-American humorist<br />
Jonathan Goldstein]? <strong>The</strong>re’s an<br />
episode [Gregor] where the guy<br />
who lent Moby the gospel CDs<br />
he sampled heavily on this album<br />
asks for them back. It’s so good<br />
and really funny – check it out.”<br />
UNIVERSAL MUSIC MARCEL ANDERS<br />
26 THE RED BULLETIN
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TARON<br />
EGERTON<br />
<strong>The</strong> Dwight<br />
Stuff<br />
Words RÜDIGER STURM<br />
and JULIA ZIMANOFSKY<br />
In his new film, Egerton relates the story of another<br />
man balancing his artistic career with life in the<br />
spotlight. Rocketman sees him play a young Reginald<br />
Dwight – who became better known as Elton John<br />
– as he wrestles with the trials and tribulations of<br />
fame and fortune. “I have a comparatively very<br />
meagre experience,” Egerton says. “I’m an actor from<br />
Wales who has been in five or six films. He is Elton<br />
John.” Here, the 29-year-old talks about portraying<br />
a living legend and how he got to know the real man<br />
behind the performance…<br />
He’s playing one of the world’s<br />
most celebrated icons, but the<br />
actor is all too aware of the<br />
dangers of fame and fortune<br />
Taron Egerton has been on the verge of superstardom<br />
for a few years now. <strong>The</strong> British actor’s breakthrough<br />
moment came in 2014, when he starred in the bigscreen<br />
spy comedy Kingsman: <strong>The</strong> Secret Service, a role<br />
that looked as if it would catapult him into squarejawed<br />
leading-man territory. <strong>The</strong> film franchise<br />
instantly made him a household name, a situation<br />
he found challenging. “You become the focus of<br />
attention,” says Egerton, who was born in Birkenhead,<br />
near Liverpool, but grew up on the island of Anglesey<br />
in north Wales. “It requires you to simultaneously<br />
be very vulnerable and emotionally exposed, but<br />
also incredibly robust and thick-skinned.”<br />
the red bulletin: How old were you when<br />
you first became aware of Elton John?<br />
taron egerton: He’s been ever-present throughout<br />
my life, and I’ve been a fan of his music since I was<br />
very young. I was 12 when his Greatest Hits album<br />
came out in 2002, and my stepdad and I used to sing<br />
along to I Guess That’s Why <strong>The</strong>y Call It <strong>The</strong> Blues<br />
while driving to school. <strong>The</strong>n I sang Your Song to<br />
get into drama school when I was 17. He was my<br />
audition piece and now I’m playing him.<br />
How did you go about creating your character<br />
for this film?<br />
This idea of becoming someone else, like, “He<br />
became so-and-so, he was channelling so-and-so”…<br />
you can’t fucking channel someone. I’m an actor and<br />
I created a character with elements that are hopefully<br />
informed by the real person. My performance, while<br />
acknowledging the extremes of Elton’s character and<br />
not hiding the fact he has had difficulties, is also just<br />
my interpretation of him – and my interpretation is<br />
GAVIN BOND<br />
28 THE RED BULLETIN
“My stepdad<br />
and I would sing<br />
along to Elton<br />
songs on the<br />
way to school”<br />
THE RED BULLETIN 29
Taron Egerton<br />
that he is one of the most amazing people I have ever<br />
met. At the forefront of my mind was that I wanted<br />
everyone to fall in love with him all over again.<br />
Was this a nerve-racking role to take on?<br />
I felt it was a part that I could do. <strong>The</strong>re is some<br />
crossover between his personality and mine; I don’t<br />
think I am quite as extreme as Elton, but I do feel<br />
that there are extremes of feeling and emotion in me.<br />
I am someone who is quite ‘heart on the sleeve’, and<br />
I know I can be a very big personality, but I’m also<br />
someone who can be quite vulnerable. I feel that’s<br />
who Elton is as well. Don’t get me wrong, I was<br />
hugely intimidated and scared and I felt a huge<br />
amount of pressure, but I had quite an inherent sense<br />
that it was a part that I could or should play.<br />
How was your relationship with<br />
Elton John while making the film?<br />
I know that for the sake of promotion<br />
I’m required to say we have become<br />
good friends, but we really have.<br />
I really love him and I felt quite lucky<br />
to be let into his life. It meant that<br />
the experience of making the film<br />
felt important, not just in the sense<br />
of the legacy of Elton John, but<br />
because I care about him as a man.<br />
He’s a really beautiful person.<br />
Tantrums, tiaras and Taron: Egerton as Elton John in new biopic Rocketman<br />
Is it true he gave you access to his diaries?<br />
Yes, he let me read his diaries when I went to stay at<br />
his house. He has diaries from 1971 to 1976 that he<br />
thought were lost, and he only reacquired them a few<br />
years ago. <strong>The</strong>y were great and really informative.<br />
One entry that has stuck in my mind is: “Woke up<br />
this morning – went to the laundry – wrote a song<br />
called Honky Cat.” <strong>The</strong>n the next day it would be<br />
something equally iconic.<br />
<strong>The</strong> film doesn’t shy away from portraying Elton<br />
John’s problems. Can you understand how<br />
someone who is successful in showbusiness gets<br />
involved with drugs?<br />
Yes. It’s everywhere. <strong>The</strong>re is no escaping from it<br />
in the entertainment industry, and you have a lot<br />
of very expressive, emotional, vulnerable people.<br />
Singers, actors, artists… we all feel the need to<br />
convey something about our experience of the world.<br />
That means you expose yourself. It can be quite<br />
intense and you feel like there is a spotlight on you.<br />
Also, this is fucking Elton John. He was Elton John at<br />
23 and he has been Elton John for the past 50 years.<br />
He has been one of the most famous people alive for<br />
decades. <strong>The</strong> pressure that comes with that, as well<br />
as the allure of incredibly glitzy, seemingly perfect<br />
party experiences? I can totally understand.<br />
Do you ever feel that kind of<br />
pressure in the public eye?<br />
When I leave these junket days, I’ll<br />
go back to my flat and I can’t sit still.<br />
I have to walk around, I have to call<br />
people, I have to do stuff. Because<br />
although this feels like a conversation,<br />
I’m actually performing. I’m trying to<br />
be genuine and create a true version<br />
of myself, but I am still attempting<br />
to convey that version through the<br />
quality of performance. It’s really hard<br />
to come down from that. When I have<br />
troubles in my life, I call my mum. She<br />
is rational, sane, functional, normal,<br />
and she has wisdom to impart. I don’t<br />
know that Elton had that with his<br />
mother and other people in his life.<br />
How do you protect yourself from the problems<br />
that Elton John went through?<br />
I am not Elton John and I don’t know if he did protect<br />
himself very well. He got very involved in that<br />
lifestyle and ended up going to rehab, where he<br />
saved himself. That’s what our film is about. It’s<br />
about Elton John saving himself.<br />
Rocketman is in cinemas nationwide from May 24;<br />
paramount.com/movies/rocketman<br />
©2018 PARAMOUNT PICTURES. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED<br />
30 THE RED BULLETIN
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RYF<br />
<strong>The</strong> Unfair<br />
Advantage<br />
What’s the secret power source of the<br />
world’s greatest female triathlete?<br />
Problems. Daniela Ryf reveals how<br />
failure can unlock an untapped battery,<br />
fully charged and ready to go<br />
Words ALEX LISETZ<br />
Photography<br />
PHILIPP MUELLER,<br />
AGNIESZKA DOROSZEWICZ
Steep uphill climb: Ryf has<br />
gone from exceptional<br />
Swiss talent to the world’s<br />
top female triathlete<br />
33
Daniela Ryf<br />
Daniela Ryf is amazingly<br />
good at swimming,<br />
cycling and running<br />
fast, and incredibly bad<br />
at swimming, cycling<br />
and running slowly.<br />
“I want to give it my<br />
all every time I train,”<br />
she says. “I only want<br />
Daniela to give it her all in races,” her<br />
Australian trainer Brett Sutton counters.<br />
<strong>The</strong> search for a compromise has<br />
been going on for five years. Every couple<br />
of weeks, it escalates to shouting and<br />
screaming. Ryf isn’t nicknamed ‘Angry<br />
Bird’ for nothing. “She needs to learn to<br />
focus her strengths,” Sutton has insisted<br />
since 2015. “Nobody would beat her for<br />
years.” But Ryf wants to do things the<br />
hard way. “I can only get better when<br />
I push myself to the limit,” she says.<br />
But what really delivers success?<br />
Strategic training or total commitment?<br />
Maybe it’s the balance that comes from<br />
this quest for a compromise. After all,<br />
Ryf is the best female triathlete in the<br />
world today. <strong>The</strong> 31-year-old from<br />
the Swiss canton of Solothurn has won<br />
every Ironman World Championship<br />
since 2015. She has picked up four<br />
Ironman 70.3 (half-distance triathlon)<br />
World Championship titles, two Ironman<br />
European Championship crowns, and<br />
at last year’s Ironman World Champs<br />
in Hawaii she set a new course record<br />
of 8:26:18. Her trainer believes that,<br />
given perfect conditions, Ryf could shave<br />
another 15 minutes off her time. That<br />
would place her in the men’s top 10.<br />
And Ryf’s course record in 2018 was<br />
attained in the face of crazy adversity: she<br />
was stung by a jellyfish shortly before<br />
the start, and handicapped by pain and<br />
numbness during the swim (see page 40).<br />
Who knows what time she could have<br />
achieved in optimal conditions?<br />
Is Ryf so successful because she can<br />
put herself through the ringer like no one<br />
else? Is it because she’s more talented,<br />
trains harder and has greater willpower?<br />
Possibly. But the Swiss triathlete has her<br />
own secret for success: she doesn’t solve<br />
problems, she uses them as a source of<br />
energy. Here, Ryf provides six examples<br />
of pain-driven power from her career…<br />
Acts of nature teach<br />
you patience<br />
May 8, 2010, ITU World Championship, Seoul<br />
<strong>The</strong> biggest win of her career at the<br />
time, this triathlon saw Ryf produce an<br />
explosive sprint finish to beat both the<br />
world number one and the reigning world<br />
champion and finally establish her place<br />
among the global elite. But following<br />
a relaxed victory celebration at a South<br />
Korean club and a short stopover in<br />
Singapore, she then endured the worst<br />
flight of her life, spending most of the<br />
10,300km journey to Zürich in the toilet.<br />
From that day on, for almost two years,<br />
Ryf battled persistent and careerthreatening<br />
intestinal problems.<br />
“I mostly suffered this deadening<br />
fatigue,” she recalls. “But the constant<br />
nausea was almost as bad. As soon as<br />
I exerted myself in training, I had to throw<br />
34 THE RED BULLETIN
“I CAN ONLY<br />
GET BETTER IF<br />
I PUSH MYSELF<br />
TO THE LIMIT”<br />
Ryf doesn’t believe in relaxed<br />
training sessions
CRASH. DISLOCATE<br />
SHOULDER. RECOVER.<br />
RECHARGE. REFOCUS.<br />
RETURN. WIN. TWICE.<br />
CRASH. BREAK HAND.<br />
RECOVER. REPEAT.<br />
IT’S THE ATTITUDE THAT MAKES YOU SECOND TO NONE.
Daniela Ryf<br />
“THE PAIN GAVE<br />
MY BODY<br />
EXTRA ENERGY”<br />
Ryf on being stung by a<br />
jellyfish at Ironman Hawaii<br />
up. It wasn’t long before I felt like not<br />
giving it my all. I felt bad all the time.”<br />
Ryf suffered for almost a year and<br />
a half before doctors finally diagnosed<br />
small intestinal bacterial overgrowth,<br />
or SIBO (excessive bacteria in the small<br />
intestine). With the right diagnosis, she<br />
was back to form within a matter of<br />
months. “In that year and a half, I had<br />
to learn that I couldn’t just crowbar my<br />
way through everything. <strong>The</strong> patience<br />
I learnt at that time now helps both in<br />
training and in the races themselves.”<br />
She continues, “I enjoy training really<br />
hard a lot more now, because I remember<br />
how bad it was not being able to put my<br />
foot to the floor the way I wanted.”<br />
Being behind gives<br />
you control<br />
October 15, 2017, Ironman Hawaii<br />
For the world’s top endurance athletes,<br />
the Ironman World Championship isn’t<br />
just an opportunity to go head to head<br />
in a show of power, but also a chance to<br />
demonstrate their mental strength. Lucy<br />
Charles, Ryf’s fiercest rival that year, knew<br />
that. <strong>The</strong> young Brit set an incredible time<br />
in the 3.86km swim – Ryf’s weakest area<br />
– missing the 18-year-old record of 48m<br />
43s by just five seconds. Furthermore,<br />
Charles went on to extend her lead in the<br />
cycling – Ryf’s strongest area. At halfway,<br />
the Swiss triathlete was six minutes<br />
behind. She needed to turn up the heat.<br />
“Your position at the split time doesn’t<br />
matter – the important thing is crossing<br />
the finish line first,” Ryf explains. This<br />
applies to any long-distance exercise,<br />
but it’s especially true in Ironman where,<br />
she says, “the race only really gets going<br />
five or six hours in”. But how to stay cool<br />
when you’ve lost ground to your rival?<br />
“It’s easier for the hunter to stay cool<br />
than the hunted,” Ryf opines. “After all,<br />
it’s the hunter who’s in control of the<br />
situation. <strong>The</strong> hunted is threatened from<br />
behind, whereas the hunter has a carrot<br />
dangling on a stick in front of them. <strong>The</strong><br />
hunter can calmly observe, study and<br />
take aim at the hunted ahead of them.<br />
<strong>The</strong> hunted has to maintain their pace<br />
and hope they don’t suffer a slump in<br />
form. So the hunter can decide when they<br />
want to give it their all and overtake.”<br />
And that’s exactly what Ryf did in<br />
Hawaii in 2017. Over the course of the<br />
final 40km of the cycle, she turned up<br />
the heat and went into the lead, then<br />
she proceeded to extend her advantage<br />
during the run. She crossed the finish<br />
line with tears in her eyes, almost nine<br />
minutes ahead of Lucy Charles.<br />
What slows you down<br />
now will make you<br />
faster in the future<br />
March 2017, training session, Gran Canaria<br />
Ryf was preparing for a season in which<br />
she hoped to surpass herself. It was still<br />
early in the year, but she already sensed<br />
that feeling she loved so much: the<br />
relaxedness of perfectly honed muscles<br />
and concentrated energy in her arms and<br />
legs. That morning, swim training was<br />
on the agenda. Regardless of the tempo<br />
of her swimming, Ryf barrelled her way<br />
through rough water. Suddenly, a twinge<br />
between her shoulders shattered her<br />
concentration. She’d torn a muscle. She<br />
could barely turn her head the next<br />
morning and had to take a complete<br />
break for 10 days. How the hell would<br />
she be ready for her first challenge of<br />
the season, Ironman South Africa?<br />
“<strong>The</strong> injury completely ruined my<br />
preparations,” Ryf recalls. Instead of<br />
being able to train harder every day,<br />
she was condemned to immobility.<br />
“I didn’t even feel I was an athlete any<br />
more,” she explains. But as the days<br />
passed, her thinking changed: she would<br />
no longer set her targets by the stopwatch<br />
or through clocking up kilometres;<br />
instead, she would do it by marking her<br />
THE RED BULLETIN 37
Daniela Ryf<br />
“YOUR POSITION AT<br />
THE SPLIT TIME<br />
DOESN’T MATTER.<br />
YOU’VE GOT TO<br />
CROSS THE FINISH<br />
LINE FIRST”<br />
Ryf says she’d rather be the<br />
hunter than the hunted<br />
stages of recovery. When she could turn<br />
her head a centimetre more than the<br />
week before, she celebrated.<br />
On the eve of the year’s first Ironman,<br />
it was still unclear whether Ryf would<br />
be able to complete the swim at all;<br />
she was still receiving treatment from<br />
a chiropractor shortly before the event<br />
got underway. But still she threw herself<br />
into it, completing the swim, giving<br />
everything on the bike and eventually<br />
winning the race. A happy ending, then?<br />
No. This was just the salutary opening<br />
gambit of a powerful, secret mental<br />
weapon. Anything that slows you down<br />
is a dead weight that you can throw off<br />
next time.<br />
“I’ve started every race since South<br />
Africa with less weight on my shoulders,”<br />
explains Ryf. “I think of the extent to<br />
which that injury put limitations on me<br />
and yet it couldn’t stop me winning. And<br />
then I’m happy that there’s absolutely<br />
nothing putting limitations on me right<br />
now. I imagine myself throwing off the<br />
dead weight from back then, and I think<br />
of how I can do even better now. That<br />
thought is like an extra ace up my sleeve.”<br />
Mistakes bring<br />
wisdom<br />
July 3, 2016, Ironman European<br />
Championship, Frankfurt<br />
This was an important race for Ryf. She<br />
wanted to win it, as she had done the year<br />
before, both to assert her position and to<br />
gain greater confidence for the next race.<br />
She was also aiming to qualify for the<br />
season highlight in Kona, Hawaii.<br />
But there were already signs of things<br />
not going to plan during the swim. It was<br />
a cool day, the water wasn’t warm, and<br />
Ryf couldn’t get into her rhythm. She<br />
placed all her hopes on her specialist<br />
field – the cycling – but her problems just<br />
seemed to get bigger. Travelling at speeds<br />
of 40kph with a cold wind to contend<br />
with, Ryf’s skinny frame – she’s 1.75m<br />
tall and weighed 57kg – cooled down<br />
ever further, then went on strike. Her<br />
pedalling had no more power and she was<br />
dropping down through the field. For the<br />
first time in her life, she ended up retiring,<br />
bitterly disappointed and humiliated.<br />
“That was an abject day for me,” Ryf<br />
says. “But I learnt a lot.” She took away<br />
two valuable lessons from Frankfurt. <strong>The</strong><br />
first: “I’d always thought I could achieve<br />
whatever I wanted as long as I trained<br />
hard enough and got the most out of my<br />
body. But I also have to pay attention to<br />
the small details of what my body needs<br />
to be able to work perfectly.” In this case,<br />
it might have been enough to put on an<br />
extra layer of clothing when she got on the<br />
bike, maybe just a pair of arm-warmers.<br />
<strong>The</strong> second lesson? “It doesn’t matter how<br />
good I am when I’m good, it matters how<br />
good I am when I’m bad. Ever since that<br />
day, I’ve known I’m only really seriously<br />
prepared when I can win a race on a bad<br />
day.” <strong>The</strong> most important realisation was<br />
that while mistakes may drive you mad,<br />
it’s better to learn from them.<br />
Defeat focuses<br />
your senses<br />
October 11, 2014, Ironman Hawaii<br />
A month after winning the Ironman 70.3<br />
World Championship in Canada, Ryf<br />
lined up at the start in Kona for her first<br />
Iron Man Hawaii. She’d already had an<br />
extremely successful season, winning<br />
more World Triathlon Corporation (WTC)<br />
prize money than any other female<br />
38 THE RED BULLETIN
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Daniela Ryf<br />
In 2018, Ryf won<br />
her fourth Ironman<br />
World Championship<br />
in Hawaii in a row –<br />
and set a new course<br />
record in the process<br />
triathlete, and now she was in the World<br />
Championship. Ryf demonstrated her<br />
superiority on the bike to the full – eightand-a-half<br />
hours in, she was way out in<br />
front, about to take the title – but 5km<br />
from the finish, the fire inside went out.<br />
Australia’s Mirinda Carfrae had made up<br />
the 10 minutes between them. She closed<br />
in on Ryf, overtook and set a pace that the<br />
Swiss athlete couldn’t keep up with.<br />
“After the race, I might well have been<br />
proud to have given it my best,” Ryf says.<br />
“But when I crossed the finish line, I was<br />
already thinking about the next year. After<br />
all, I now knew how close I’d come to<br />
victory.” Since then, she has woken every<br />
morning with the same thought, playing<br />
and replaying the moment Carfrae closed<br />
in, then passed her at an irresistible pace.<br />
Ryf promptly started the following season<br />
with a string of wins. “<strong>The</strong> fact I couldn’t<br />
keep pace with Mirinda still motivates me<br />
“I IMAGINE<br />
THROWING OFF<br />
DEAD WEIGHT”<br />
in every training session,” she says, even<br />
though younger athletes are now more of<br />
a threat than Carfrae. “If I imagine Mirinda<br />
drawing up beside me, I immediately<br />
pedal harder or run 1kph faster.” Ryf has<br />
transformed a defeat into the perfect<br />
mental stimulation to give purpose to her<br />
exertions, and it’s been the basis for dozens<br />
of subsequent victories. A pretty good deal.<br />
Bad luck mobilises<br />
your energy reserves<br />
October 13, 2018, Ironman Hawaii<br />
As she prepared for the start of the year’s<br />
most important race, the defending<br />
champion felt unbeatable. Ryf was in<br />
fantastic form and had done all of her<br />
homework. But with just two minutes<br />
to go before the swim began, a jellyfish<br />
stung the underside of both her upper<br />
arms. <strong>The</strong> pain shot through her entire<br />
body, right to the tips of her fingers. <strong>The</strong><br />
previous year, a competitor was forced to<br />
retire from the race for the same reason<br />
and was rushed straight to hospital. Ryf<br />
didn’t let anything show and set off into<br />
the maelstrom with the others.<br />
But the pain soon grew worse and she<br />
began falling metre upon metre further<br />
behind. <strong>The</strong>n her arms went numb and<br />
she began to doubt whether she would<br />
be able to complete the 3.86km swim.<br />
Ryf had already given up hope of a finish<br />
near the top of the leaderboard, but she<br />
was determined to carry on out of respect<br />
for the race itself. She now thought of<br />
finishing the race in 14, maybe 15 hours,<br />
way down in last place. But when she<br />
climbed onto her bike, Ryf realised she<br />
was only 10 minutes off the pace. Maybe<br />
this wasn’t over after all.<br />
“In the water, I went through all the<br />
emotions you can imagine,” she says.<br />
“But once I was on the bike, I could think<br />
clearly again.” Ryf decided to ascribe<br />
new meaning to the jellyfish sting: “I<br />
imagined how an extra dash of anger and<br />
additional energy had entered my body<br />
with the pain, and that I’d only be able to<br />
get both out of my body the harder and<br />
more relentlessly I pedalled.” She rode<br />
faster than she’d ever ridden in her life.<br />
Ryf picked off her rivals one by one,<br />
and by the time she started the run, she’d<br />
notched up the fastest-ever bike ride by<br />
a female athlete at Kona. She finished the<br />
race in 8:26:18, which made her not only<br />
world champion but the holder of a new<br />
course record. In doing so, Ryf proved that<br />
our inner transformer can turn negative<br />
energy into something productive. Pain<br />
can give you extra power.<br />
danielaryf.ch<br />
40 THE RED BULLETIN
In an age of spoilers,<br />
how can you create<br />
a cultural phenomenon<br />
built around the art<br />
of revealing nothing?<br />
SECRET CINEMA<br />
spills the beans...<br />
Words TOM GUISE
<strong>The</strong> Empire Strikes Back,<br />
Printworks London (2015)<br />
“We didn’t want the audience<br />
to know the X-wing was there,”<br />
says producer Andrea Moccia.<br />
“So it flew out of a hidden parking<br />
space, shot a pyro into the<br />
huge computer structure, landed,<br />
and Luke Skywalker jumped out.<br />
I’ve never seen so many<br />
50-year-old men filled with joy.”<br />
SECRET CINEMA/MIKE MASSARO<br />
SECRET<br />
POWER<br />
43
Secret Cinema<br />
At an undisclosed location in<br />
London, the bustle of activity<br />
is afoot. Inside a cavernous<br />
warehouse spanning 6,000m 2 ,<br />
contractors feverishly put<br />
the finishing touches to a<br />
ginormous set that resembles…<br />
well, we’d best not say.<br />
Performers rehearse routines in a startling<br />
recreation of the backstreets of… actually,<br />
never mind. A man who looks suspiciously like<br />
Daniel Craig walks among them, broodingly<br />
scanning his surroundings. Studying him is<br />
Barbara Broccoli, producer of the James Bond<br />
movies. This scene may or may not have<br />
happened; we can’t really tell you, because<br />
the first rule of Secret Cinema is: tell no one.<br />
<strong>The</strong> second rule is: immerse yourself. This is<br />
what hundreds of thousands of people have<br />
done during Secret Cinema’s 12-year run.<br />
It’s a commitment delivered on a promise –<br />
you pay more than the regular cinema price<br />
to see an old film. You’re told what to wear<br />
and where to meet at a certain time on a<br />
certain day. You’re forbidden to bring your<br />
smartphone inside, or take pictures. And by<br />
the time you leave, you’ve had one of the most<br />
incredible experiences of your life. If that<br />
sounds like a religion, it’s not far off. <strong>The</strong>re<br />
are two types of people in this world: those<br />
who know the secret and those who don’t.<br />
In 2012, Andrea Moccia attended Secret<br />
Cinema presents <strong>The</strong> Shawshank <strong>Red</strong>emption.<br />
<strong>The</strong> ticket directed him to an east London<br />
library, where he was ushered into a makeshift<br />
courtroom. “<strong>The</strong> judge sentenced you for<br />
a crime you hadn’t committed,” he recalls.<br />
“Policemen loaded you into a blacked-out van<br />
that took you to a school transformed into a<br />
prison, where other audience members were<br />
shouting at you. You were stripped, put in a<br />
prison uniform and locked in a cell. I left that<br />
night thinking, ‘<strong>The</strong>se people are insane and<br />
I have to work with them.’” Today, he’s one<br />
of lead producers for Secret Cinema.<br />
“<strong>The</strong> first production I worked on was<br />
Brazil,” says Moccia. “Day one, I walked into<br />
the 12-floor building they’d transformed<br />
into this dystopian world and got stuck in<br />
a lift with [the film’s director] Terry Gilliam.<br />
That was a baptism of fire.”<br />
This is an apt phrase for anyone experiencing<br />
their first Secret Cinema – a six-hour adventure<br />
where you enter a sandbox recreation of a<br />
movie’s universe with a narrative that unfolds<br />
until it reaches a crescendo at the exact moment<br />
the film begins. Last year, when Secret<br />
Cinema adapted Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 movie<br />
Romeo + Juliet – recreating the landscape of<br />
Verona Beach for an audience of 5,000 a<br />
night, with choirs, police cars, and a masked<br />
ball at the Capulet mansion – the film director<br />
described it as “a whole new art form”.<br />
That art involves what Secret Cinema calls<br />
‘mirror moments’, where performers reenact<br />
scenes in perfect synchronisation with the<br />
on-screen action. Before that, audiences<br />
might encounter these characters on their<br />
adventure. “One of my friends at Romeo +<br />
Juliet texted to say girls were chasing the<br />
actor playing Leonardo DiCaprio and crying<br />
because he looked so real,” says Susan<br />
Kulkarni, head of costume at Secret Cinema.<br />
“I was like, ‘We nailed it,’ because that’s the<br />
feeling I had as a teenager watching the film.”<br />
For an event the size of Romeo + Juliet,<br />
Kulkarni had a team of more than 30 working<br />
on as many as 700 outfits on rotation. “<strong>The</strong><br />
actors have two or three changes throughout<br />
the evening, then we costume the bar staff,<br />
security, even the cleaners, because one<br />
person wearing the wrong thing pulls you out<br />
of the world.” Her team has to consider every<br />
eventuality. “We create a capsule wardrobe<br />
for each character, because if it’s raining you<br />
have to imagine what else Juliet would wear.”<br />
Kulkarni also has to consider the look of<br />
the general public: “We use the audience to<br />
Brazil, Croydon<br />
“<strong>The</strong> main character<br />
had to jump off a<br />
tower block and abseil<br />
wearing huge wings,<br />
but seem to be flying,”<br />
says Kulkarni. “We<br />
only had a couple of<br />
days to create the<br />
wings. You figure it<br />
out as you go.”<br />
SECRET CINEMA/HANSON LEATHERBY<br />
44 THE RED BULLETIN
<strong>The</strong> first rule of<br />
Secret Cinema is: tell<br />
no one. <strong>The</strong> second:<br />
immerse yourself<br />
Dr Strangelove, Printworks London (2016)<br />
Following <strong>The</strong> Empire Strikes Back, this adaptation of<br />
Stanley Kubrick's 1964 satire brought back the concept of<br />
not revealing the film's identity. <strong>The</strong> audience had to dress<br />
in military uniforms, and the screening took place in the<br />
War Room. “<strong>The</strong> idea was to create a summit,” says Riggall.<br />
“To make the audience feel like world leaders.”
Secret Cinema<br />
create the world.” After a guest buys a ticket,<br />
they’re assigned a character and given outfit<br />
suggestions. “For <strong>The</strong> Shawshank <strong>Red</strong>emption<br />
we asked everyone to come in a suit, but once<br />
they were stripped we needed 1,200 prison<br />
uniforms. I found a guy with some original<br />
’40s Norwegian prison uniforms in his garage.<br />
That made the audience feel part of the world,<br />
because they were wearing something real.”<br />
It was very different in 2009 when Kulkarni<br />
first joined Secret Cinema for a one-day popup<br />
of the Marx Brothers’ A Night at the Opera.<br />
“That was the first that had costumes. It’s just<br />
me with a rack of clothes and two days to<br />
outfit 40 people,” she recalls. “A tall man<br />
came in asking for costume. I put an outfit<br />
together and because I didn’t panic I got a call<br />
to join the company.” <strong>The</strong> man turned out to be<br />
Fabien Riggall, the founder of Secret Cinema.<br />
<strong>The</strong> idea came to Riggall as a child living<br />
in Morocco in the ’80s. “I was 11 and I<br />
went to this fleapit cinema in Casablanca<br />
without knowing what the film was,”<br />
he recalls. “It turned out to be Sergio Leone’s<br />
Once Upon A Time In America – an insane film<br />
with an epic [Ennio]Morricone soundtrack.<br />
<strong>The</strong> protagonist was this boy a bit older<br />
than me – Noodles – who was in love with<br />
Deborah, played by Jennifer Connelly.<br />
I transported myself and became Noodles.”<br />
Seventeen years later, in 2003, Riggall<br />
launched a short-film festival called Future<br />
Shorts. “A friend of mine had this venue,<br />
an underground bunker in Shepherd’s Bush<br />
Green [in west London] called Ginglik, which<br />
was one of those lavish toilets from the old<br />
days. I put on a night – 12 short films, a DJ,<br />
people chatting, drinking, in those days when<br />
you could smoke inside. <strong>The</strong> idea evolved into<br />
the feature-length Future Cinema with 1922<br />
horror Nosferatu at London club SeOne.<br />
“We didn’t reveal the film or location, and I<br />
thought, ‘It’s not going to sell,’ but 400 people<br />
came.” He experimented with an immersive<br />
adaptation of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. “<strong>The</strong><br />
concept was, ‘How can we make this more<br />
real?’ We wanted to play with mystery.”<br />
In 2007, this became Secret Cinema.<br />
“<strong>The</strong> first [Secret Cinema] was [Gus Van<br />
Sant’s] Paranoid Park, about a skater accused<br />
“People want<br />
experiences that are<br />
mysterious [and]<br />
part of a bigger thing”<br />
46 THE RED BULLETIN
SECRET CINEMA/HANSON LEATHERBY<br />
28 Days Later,<br />
Printworks London (2016)<br />
Participants had to arrive at the 'hospital'<br />
in scrubs for a routine vaccination,<br />
only to 'awaken’ in a detailed recreation<br />
of Danny Boyle's 2002 zombie horror,<br />
except with food, cocktails and<br />
a blood-soaked rave. <strong>The</strong> ‘patients’<br />
watched the film from hospital beds.<br />
THE RED BULLETIN 47
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Secret Cinema<br />
SECRET CINEMA/L<strong>UK</strong>E DYSON/FRASER GILLESPIE<br />
of murder. We did it in some tunnels beneath<br />
London Bridge, filled with ramps and<br />
halfpipes, and the audience became part of<br />
the skateboard community in this hideout,<br />
with staged police investigations.”<br />
With each year, the events grew<br />
in scale and ingenuity: Alien, Lawrence of<br />
Arabia, Ghostbusters. Word-of-mouth built<br />
hype, but attendees kept the secret. “I think<br />
there’s a real desire to escape the looped<br />
existence we have, where everything is<br />
revealed and predictable, and everyone knows<br />
where everyone is on social media,” says<br />
Riggall. “In a world addicted to information,<br />
that idea of secrecy is critical, as is a physical,<br />
social thing you have to invest in – one you<br />
can’t just click and download.”<br />
Getting the audience invested has become<br />
a science for Secret Cinema. “Lawrence Of<br />
Arabia [2010] was the first time the audience<br />
was really asked to participate,” says<br />
Kulkarni. “At Alexandra Palace, we made a<br />
huge souk [marketplace]. <strong>The</strong>y had to bring<br />
things to barter with, and exchanges were<br />
happening on the Tube before they arrived.<br />
We had Bedouin tents, and camels and horses<br />
wandering out of Ally Pally.”<br />
This attention to detail is even brought<br />
to smaller events. “Secret Cinema X is an<br />
underground format where we show films<br />
that haven’t been released,” says Moccia.<br />
“In 2017, we did a ‘Tell No One’ production,<br />
where we don’t tell people what they’re going<br />
to see.” It was <strong>The</strong> Handmaiden by Korean<br />
director Park Chan-wook. “<strong>The</strong> performance<br />
was done with silhouettes and you couldn’t<br />
speak throughout the night. Walking into<br />
a room with 1,000-plus people, all completely<br />
silent. And at the bar you had to order on<br />
a piece of paper. It was beautiful.”<br />
In 2014, Secret Cinema delivered its most<br />
ambitious project to date: Back To <strong>The</strong><br />
Future – a recreation of Hill Valley near<br />
London’s Olympic Village. “People could<br />
write letters to each other and postal workers<br />
would deliver them within the venue,” says<br />
Kulkarni. “Each house had a telephone you<br />
could call the other houses with.”<br />
<strong>The</strong> sheer scale proved too staggering; the<br />
show wasn’t ready in time for launch. “It was<br />
devastating not to be able to open on that<br />
first night,” recalls Moccia. “But it’s a learning<br />
process.” <strong>The</strong> show finally opened to rave<br />
“You get to a point<br />
where the audience<br />
are the performers”<br />
Moulin Rouge,<br />
Printworks London (2017)<br />
"<strong>The</strong> cast and team were like<br />
family, much like the Moulin Rouge<br />
in 1900," says Moccia. "During<br />
the run, the Manchester bombings<br />
and the Westminster terror attack<br />
happened. We got the audience to<br />
sing along to <strong>The</strong> Show Must Go<br />
On. I'm tearing up as I speak about<br />
it. It was a really moving moment."<br />
<strong>The</strong> Handmaiden,<br />
Troxy (2017)<br />
"We got the venue<br />
at 5am and had<br />
to produce the show<br />
that night," recalls<br />
Bennett. "Following<br />
the film's repressiveuncle<br />
narrative that<br />
no one can talk in his<br />
house, the audience<br />
took a vow of silence.<br />
<strong>The</strong>y loved it."<br />
reviews, but nature almost intervened. At<br />
11pm one night, a surprise rainstorm struck.<br />
“Every costume was soaked,” say Kulkarni.<br />
“We had to find a way to clean and dry 600<br />
costumes in 12 hours. We hot-boxed an entire<br />
cabin and put everything in it.”<br />
If Back To <strong>The</strong> Future was a lesson in<br />
untempered ambition, it didn’t shown; the<br />
next year, Secret Cinema took it up another<br />
notch with <strong>The</strong> Empire Strikes Back.<br />
“It took a year of talking to eight<br />
stakeholders, from Lucasfilm to Bad Robot<br />
to Disney to Fox,” says Riggall. “[Lucasfilm<br />
president] Kathy Kennedy supported us. As<br />
exec producer on Back to the Future, she was<br />
impressed with what we did there. But to give<br />
us the rights to do that movie in the year they<br />
were releasing <strong>The</strong> Force Awakens – a $2 billion<br />
franchise – was extraordinary. <strong>The</strong>n, to find<br />
an old newspaper factory to build Star Wars<br />
in… that was an insane ambition.”<br />
“It was an old printing press not fit for<br />
audience members,” says Moccia of the<br />
building that is now the nightclub Printworks<br />
London. “We transformed it and put in three<br />
productions: <strong>The</strong> Empire Strikes Back, Dr<br />
Strangelove and 28 Days Later.”<br />
“I wanted to build a gigantic Secret<br />
Cinema that could stay there for ever,” says<br />
Riggall. “We put a lot of work into it, invested<br />
a great deal, but I know the guys who set up<br />
Printworks, and good on them.” He sees<br />
Secret Cinema’s contribution to the buildings<br />
it inhabits as a positive. “So many are empty,<br />
waiting years for planning permission.<br />
Developers are opening their eyes to what<br />
we do. We can create this ‘meanwhile use’,<br />
filling them with happy people experiencing<br />
something. I like to think that in the depths<br />
of the night, as people are dancing to some<br />
THE RED BULLETIN 49
Secret Cinema<br />
Back to the Future,<br />
Printworks London<br />
(2014)<br />
"<strong>The</strong>re was a piece in the<br />
Evening Standard saying<br />
we’d affected the way<br />
people dressed that summer,<br />
that women were wearing<br />
'50s dresses," says Kulkarni.<br />
"It may be just a coincidence<br />
or something subliminal.<br />
It's extraordinary to think<br />
a cultural event can<br />
influence what people wear."<br />
DJ’s set, they go, ‘Shit, wasn’t this where the<br />
X-wing flew over my head?’”<br />
“<strong>The</strong> X-wing was definitely a challenge,”<br />
says Moccia of the full-size prop that enacted<br />
the finale of Star Wars before the celluloid<br />
sequel rolled. “It was built from MDF and rigged<br />
to an automation system, with projection<br />
mapping to look as if it was flying through<br />
space. Luke Skywalker was in it throughout.<br />
One time, the automation system failed and<br />
he got stuck up there for about an hour.”<br />
“<strong>The</strong> Empire Strikes Back was the zenith,”<br />
says Matt Bennett, a DJ who joined to head up<br />
the music department. “I just needed a change,”<br />
he says. That’s what he got. “I was putting on<br />
club nights for 1,000 people in Glasgow, and<br />
there are more than 400 people working on<br />
Star Wars. <strong>The</strong> production company, Wonder<br />
Works, did the [London 2012] Olympics<br />
Romeo<br />
+ Juliet,<br />
Gunnersbury<br />
Park (2018)<br />
Tied to the theme of<br />
youth violence, the<br />
show worked with the<br />
charity MAC-<strong>UK</strong>. "We<br />
got Loki, a political<br />
rapper, to come and<br />
work on the project<br />
and raise money and<br />
awareness on knife<br />
crime," says Bennett.<br />
opening and closing ceremonies. I had three<br />
months to figure out the music showcase.<br />
It was seat-of-the-pants stuff.”<br />
Bennett’s initiation was made tougher by<br />
a new experiment: alongside the four stages<br />
at Printworks was a warm-up gig at an<br />
undisclosed location. “It was the little secret<br />
behind the big secret. We had all the bands<br />
from the main site and some DJs – everyone<br />
learnt to play the cantina band song.” Actors<br />
mingling with the crowd added a new layer<br />
of immersion. “Fabien wanted to open up allnight<br />
parties in the style of [Berlin nightclub]<br />
Berghain. Thankfully we never got to that<br />
stage, because we were consumed by delivering<br />
100 nights of Star Wars to 100,000 people.<br />
After the runaway success of <strong>The</strong> Empire<br />
Strikes Back, the window of possibility was<br />
thrown wide open. For last year’s Blade<br />
Runner that included building a future Los<br />
Angeles with an indoor rain system for 86<br />
nights. “We had a massive pool under the<br />
floor connected to a closed loop system that<br />
pumped water up to a rain rig on the ceiling,”<br />
says Moccia. “We had to clean the pool daily,<br />
because people dropped chips in it. “But to<br />
see that hero moment, with everybody opening<br />
their umbrellas, drenched in neon light – it<br />
was like being in Shibuya on a rainy night.”<br />
Every member of Secret Cinema has their<br />
favourite moment. For Bennett, it might<br />
have been DJing in that acid rain at Blade<br />
Runner. “It felt important, but it was just<br />
playing techno to people who were totally wet<br />
and having the time of their lives.” Instead, he<br />
has another: “In 2015, we went to the Calais<br />
refugee camp. It was the week that small boy<br />
[Syrian three-year-old Alan Kurdi] washed up<br />
dead on the shore [in Turkey]. Fabien insisted<br />
we stage a cultural protest against the treatment<br />
of the people at the camp. We took Afrikan<br />
Boy, a Nigerian-born London rapper who<br />
sings about global politics and immigration,<br />
and set up a pop-up cinema screen showing a<br />
Bollywood film to all the families in the camp.<br />
“<strong>The</strong>re were thousands of people who had<br />
no home and didn’t think they had a future.<br />
<strong>The</strong>y weren’t sitting eating popcorn. It was a<br />
very immediate moment of having an impact<br />
on people’s lives who maybe really needed to<br />
watch a film. <strong>The</strong> baddies got booed, the girls<br />
got cheered. We raised money afterwards to<br />
keep the project going, then the political<br />
landscape changed when people were killed<br />
in Paris and Manchester. But it reflects Secret<br />
Cinema’s ethos of getting up and doing stuff,<br />
and credit to Fabien for essentially risking his<br />
brand with a very divisive political posture.”<br />
Raising awareness for social issues is<br />
perhaps Secret Cinema’s most hidden quality.<br />
SECRET CINEMA/CAMILLA GREENWELL, © 1996 TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX FILM CORPORATION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED<br />
50 THE RED BULLETIN
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Secret Cinema<br />
Blade Runner, Canning Town (2018)<br />
“We didn't want to break the spell, and playing the Vangelis soundtrack would do that,”<br />
says Bennett. “So we took the music from Taffey’s Bar, because it’s a place in the film.<br />
We stretched 18 seconds of Arabic-style dub into six hours of low-end exotica.”<br />
Broccoli. She listened, asked very astute<br />
questions, then said, ‘Yeah, you can do that.’<br />
Next, I got hold of the film’s director, Martin<br />
Campbell, and said, ‘What were you thinking<br />
when you filmed Casino Royale?’ He said,<br />
‘I looked down the camera lens and asked<br />
myself if it was real. And if it was, I filmed it.’”<br />
Jackson, shrewdly, won’t reveal the<br />
contents of the show. “We’ve got a casino –<br />
that’s not too much of a spoiler,” he laughs.<br />
However, fans of the 1959 Alfred Hitchcock<br />
thriller North by Northwest may find the prescreening<br />
narrative familiar. Jackson also<br />
name-drops Sébastien Foucan, the founder of<br />
freerunning, who played bomber Mollaka in<br />
Casino Royale’s opening chase in Madagascar.<br />
“Seb’s been in and out a few times,” he teases.<br />
What Jackson does promise is an<br />
opportunity for everyone to live out their 007<br />
fantasy in a way that no one, except perhaps<br />
the Bond actors, has had the chance to do.<br />
“Spielberg said we go to films to watch people<br />
making the choices you wouldn’t make in real<br />
life,” he says. “We’re putting these choices in<br />
the hands of the audience. You get to a point<br />
where the audience are the performers. That’s<br />
what a Secret Cinema show is.”<br />
“When we bring films to life, that also means<br />
whatever message those films have,” says<br />
Riggall. “When we did One Flew Over the<br />
Cuckoo’s Nest, we worked with mental-health<br />
charity Mind and integrated fundraising<br />
awareness. This year, with Casino Royale,<br />
we’re working with Calm, a charity that raises<br />
awareness of mental health and male suicide.<br />
<strong>The</strong> film is very honest about what James<br />
Bond goes through, and it’s interesting to<br />
allow that to be part of the story. One gesture<br />
can change your life and sometimes that<br />
thing is cultural. For me, it was cinema. It’s<br />
important to create experiences that can be<br />
a conduit for change.”<br />
Casino Royale is the first Secret Cinema<br />
that Riggall has delegated control of, handing<br />
the reins to veteran theatre director Angus<br />
Jackson. “It’ll be the biggest indoor show<br />
we’ve done – twice the size of Blade Runner,”<br />
says Jackson. “It’s 1,500 people a night, 50<br />
performers. This is closest to when I ran the<br />
entire Rome season at the RSC [in 2017],<br />
when we built a four-show Roman world for<br />
Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, Titus<br />
Andronicus and Coriolanus. That collapsed<br />
in on itself in the space of a year.”<br />
It also heralds a deeper partnership with<br />
the film creators. “I had to pitch to Barbara<br />
Riggall and Luhrmann on stage<br />
at 2017’s Moulin Rouge<br />
“<strong>The</strong>re’s a desire<br />
to escape our<br />
looped existence”<br />
Fabien Riggall may be a master of<br />
secrecy, but he’s quite open about some<br />
of the plans he has for Secret Cinema.<br />
He wants to take it global. “We’ve done<br />
teasers in Berlin, New York, to see how can<br />
that works. Universally, I think people want<br />
experiences that are mysterious, to become<br />
part of a bigger thing. In the US, cinema has<br />
a cultural resonance, and bringing these<br />
experiences to a country where entire towns<br />
transform for Halloween is interesting. And<br />
when we start going to places that don’t speak<br />
English, how do we translate that?”<br />
As for which films he’d like to do next:<br />
“Titanic. <strong>The</strong> richness of that world could<br />
be huge. <strong>The</strong> question is, how are we going<br />
to build it, sink it and then get it back up<br />
every night? I’ve always wanted to do Secret<br />
Cinema on a train. And ET – to have everyone<br />
cycle to a forest on BMXs, strap them onto<br />
wires, then they fly over the screen and we<br />
never see them again.”<br />
Riggall may be joking about ET, but<br />
there’s one idea for the future that he’s<br />
serious about: “Once Upon a Time in America,<br />
set beneath Brooklyn Bridge. Transforming<br />
a district of Brooklyn into prohibition New<br />
York, with Morricone and a live orchestra.<br />
I’m definitely going to propose that to<br />
whichever mayor of Brooklyn we have<br />
to talk to. I think that’s possible.”<br />
Secret Cinema presents Casino Royale<br />
launches on <strong>June</strong> 5; tickets.secretcinema.org<br />
SECRET CINEMA/AL OVERDRIVE/MIKE MASSARO<br />
52 THE RED BULLETIN
Free<br />
Radicals<br />
Bleak, utilitarian city<br />
streets are, for many,<br />
a daily drag. But for an<br />
underground tribe of<br />
mountain bikers, urban<br />
concrete plus gravity<br />
equals a playground<br />
of endless possibilities<br />
Words MATT RAY<br />
Photography DAVID GOLDMAN<br />
54
In Portsmouth, some<br />
local kids got nosy, so<br />
photographer David<br />
Goldman invited them<br />
to take part in one of<br />
Josh Reynolds’ stunts
MTB street<br />
“When you’ve got a big<br />
bike, you’re looking for<br />
things only the craziest<br />
person would ever dream<br />
of doing on a BMX”<br />
T<br />
he British city street is under<br />
pressure. It’s trapped in a<br />
slow-grind crisis where stress<br />
is rife and anxiety is the new<br />
normal. But within its<br />
concrete canyons, beasts are<br />
stirring – and it’s not the rats.<br />
Sitting astride burly, overbuilt<br />
mountain bikes are a row of<br />
riders in full-face helmets and<br />
a patchwork uniform of gloves,<br />
skinny jeans, unbuttoned shirts and freeride jerseys.<br />
<strong>The</strong>y stare down from a 6m-high asphalt overpass,<br />
gazes locked onto a double set of red-brick stairs<br />
bordered by concrete slopes, studded with rocks, and<br />
scattered with the usual urban debris: broken glass,<br />
cigarette ends… Breaking their focus, the riders split,<br />
peeling off back up the road and out of sight.<br />
Stop and stare in a city and eventually the street<br />
will notice you. Here in Portsmouth, pedestrians<br />
have begun to crowd along the top of the overpass,<br />
looking down at the stairs and the small portable<br />
ramp that has been set up at the top. <strong>The</strong> rising<br />
whoosh of fat rubber tyres accelerated by pedal<br />
power reaches their ears as a rider rounds the<br />
corner, launches off the ramp and hurtles down<br />
the stairs, whipping his back wheel in the air. But<br />
he doesn’t quite clear the platform between the<br />
flights of stairs, clipping his back wheel and, with<br />
a tortured crunch, smacking the underside of his<br />
bike’s frame into the edge of a step. Only strength<br />
and experience prevent him from being catapulted<br />
face-first into the pavement.<br />
<strong>The</strong> rider swears into the city air. “That ramp really<br />
launches you,” reports Simon Brettle, the 31-yearold<br />
carpenter and mountain biker. “My landing zone<br />
is exactly the same size as my bike – there is literally<br />
no room for error.”<br />
<strong>The</strong> street is built from intersecting concrete<br />
blades. <strong>The</strong>re are harsh, unyielding angles everywhere<br />
you look. It’s a far cry from the rounded, flowing<br />
lines and loose dirt of an off-road mountain-bike trail.<br />
“I find that terrifying, to be honest,” says another<br />
of the riders, Josh Reynolds, who is sponsored by<br />
Sick Bikes and works as a fitness equipment engineer.<br />
“Stair sets and bricks are a lot harsher. When you<br />
start pushing it, everything becomes more highconsequence.”<br />
Consequences leave scars, and<br />
Reynolds’ injuries from both MTB and BMX include<br />
a dented skull, blown ankles, a shattered collarbone<br />
and smashed back teeth. He’s 24 years old.<br />
“If you’re riding off-road, you’ll have a nice big<br />
jump with a long landing to hit, which will slope<br />
off into the flat,” he continues. “It’s not angular;<br />
it doesn’t go from 45° to flat within an inch.” Street<br />
geometry and the arithmetic of impact is violent and<br />
uncompromising, but Reynolds isn’t complaining.<br />
<strong>The</strong> riders all wear adversity like a badge of honour<br />
– it shows they belong. At one point, Brettle and<br />
local rider Ben Matthews compete to gross us out by<br />
flexing their injured wrist joints – bones clunk and<br />
push against the skin, unanchored by any ligaments<br />
that may have survived previous crashes.<br />
<strong>The</strong> bravado isn’t just a front, and you don’t<br />
ride a mountain bike in the street to be subtle; it’s<br />
a statement of intent. Reynolds grew up riding<br />
56 THE RED BULLETIN
Left: Reynolds in his<br />
Chainbreakers Cycling<br />
Club jacket. Below:<br />
at Brighton Marina
MTB street<br />
a BMX, but ‘mountain-bike street’ has remoulded him<br />
– he doesn’t even think in the same way. “BMXs are<br />
brakeless, small wheels, no suspension, so you can<br />
look at something small on the street, like a ledge,<br />
and think, ‘I can grind that, I can 360° hop off that,’”<br />
he says. “But when you’ve got a big bike, you’d walk<br />
straight past it – you’re looking for things only the<br />
craziest person would ever dream of doing on a BMX.”<br />
<strong>The</strong> thing about street furniture is that it’s literally<br />
set in stone. Jumping a long double – or triple –<br />
stair set will write your name into legend. Once, on<br />
London’s Pall Mall, with an audience of 50 riders,<br />
Brettle landed an almost 7m drop off a high, rounded<br />
wall to the bottom steps of a triple set. “That was<br />
the biggest drop I’ve ever done,” he reveals. “I got<br />
a ticket for that one.”<br />
Each of these guys says the same thing: riding the<br />
street fundamentally changes how you see it for ever.<br />
“Other people go down a road and all they see is the<br />
road and a pavement,” says Reynolds. “I’ll go down<br />
the same street and be looking at that bank and that<br />
stair set and that drop. You can never switch it off.”<br />
Ben Matthews races enduro events, but takes a<br />
different approach to mountain-bike street. “It’s about<br />
being able to take the hard hits, but also knowing how<br />
to look at a wall or a bank and think, ‘Oh, I can jump<br />
up onto that and 180° off,’” says the 29-year-old, who<br />
works in carbon-fibre engineering. “You need to be<br />
able to have great imagination. It’s not like trail-riding,<br />
where you’re just following the path in front of you.”<br />
<strong>The</strong> street has always been there, and mountain<br />
bikes aren’t news, so why is the underground<br />
bubbling again now? Why do we have outriders on<br />
our thoroughfares? For these guys, there’s a practical<br />
reason: new tech has been developed. Portable<br />
‘pack-a-ramps’ such as those made by MTB Hopper<br />
can be carried from spot to spot as backpacks. <strong>The</strong>se<br />
flatpack ramps take minutes to set up and act as<br />
a force multiplier for potential tricks and jumps,<br />
easing take-off angles between floors and banks<br />
(which rob you of speed) and allowing for launches<br />
over obstacles. “Some of the ramps feel literally like<br />
getting sent to the moon,” says Matthews.<br />
One ramp has been used to turn a grassy bank into<br />
the landing zone for a high-speed big-air jump on<br />
Portsmouth seafront. Spotters are deployed to watch<br />
out for pedestrians, then the riders, unsure if they are<br />
going to be moved on, throw themselves into jumping<br />
it. “You’ve got to be quick,” says Matthews. “Get in<br />
there, set it up, go. It’s all or nothing, basically. You<br />
try and get as much out of it as you can, and as soon<br />
as you see security coming you just grab your bags<br />
and run. I’ve never been arrested, but it has been<br />
very close – you try not to be an idiot and actually<br />
respect the area, and you avoid doing any damage.”<br />
Matthews races up to the ramp. It strains to absorb<br />
his charge, emitting a disconcerting ker-klunk, then<br />
he’s in the air, soaring against the sky as it sits grey and<br />
heavy above the waves. He’s reaching for a mid-air<br />
trick when it all goes wrong. <strong>The</strong> riders’ landings all<br />
Simon Brettle – known to his fellow riders as ‘Kettle’ – unloads his bikes from his van at an estate at the top of a hill in Brighton<br />
58 THE RED BULLETIN
“Some of the<br />
ramps feel literally<br />
like getting sent<br />
to the moon”<br />
XX EDITOR ILLUSTRATOR<br />
Reynolds sends it to<br />
the sky mid-whip with<br />
the help of a mobile<br />
ramp, the MTB Hopper
“You’ve got to be<br />
quick. Get in there,<br />
set it up, go… and<br />
as soon as you see<br />
security coming,<br />
you just grab your<br />
bags and run”<br />
Kettle launches himself<br />
down a double set of steps<br />
near the Magistrates’<br />
Court in Portsmouth
Henry Durman,<br />
Ben Matthews and<br />
Reynolds get geared<br />
up for the session<br />
at Brighton Marina<br />
61
Reynolds sends a<br />
one-footed euro table<br />
(what he calls a “dogpisser”)<br />
over a hip at<br />
Portsmouth Pyramids
MTB street<br />
sound violent, but this is like scrap metal crashing<br />
down a mineshaft. <strong>The</strong>y rush to his aid, but he’s OK –<br />
kind of. “He slipped a foot and broke his saddle with<br />
his balls,” says Brettle, incredulously. It’s no joke – the<br />
saddle’s metal rails are both neatly sheared in half.<br />
It’s suddenly obvious why the riders favour a<br />
distinctly old-school set-up of overbuilt aluminium<br />
frames, 26in (66cm) wheels and downhill tyres,<br />
running at 40psi, rather than trail pressures of 25psi,<br />
with extra spacers in their suspension. “<strong>The</strong> bikes<br />
take a beating,” says Matthews. “You need something<br />
that’s super-burly to take the impacts, because it isn’t<br />
like riding dirt – you’re landing on solid concrete.”<br />
Brettle is getting a new frame custom-built for<br />
his style – by Frome-based bespoke bike-makers<br />
BTR Fabrications – because the modern trend for<br />
low, slack and long wheelbase bikes is unsuited to<br />
the short, brutal landings of the street. “I ride an<br />
aluminium bike, 26in wheels, old-school – just has<br />
to be hardcore.” Even within the world of mountain<br />
biking, these guys are iconoclasts. As it turns out,<br />
they all have very practical day jobs, from carpenter<br />
to carbon-fibre engineer, so they’re familiar with<br />
breaking points. <strong>The</strong>y know what it is to push metal,<br />
bone, carbon fibre and sinew to the limit – and past it.<br />
“That’s the end of my day,” grimaces Matthews,<br />
who walks like John Wayne for the next few hours.<br />
If they’re shaken by his crash, the other riders don’t<br />
show it. <strong>The</strong>y’re focused on the finale: another ramp<br />
jump, this time off a 3m wall, over a pavement and<br />
onto a banking in the car park below. <strong>The</strong> run-up is<br />
along tarmac to a gravel path and then grass. <strong>The</strong><br />
ramp makes it possible, but the run-in is “sub-optimal<br />
enough” for Henry Durman to have a high-speed<br />
wash-out on the lumpy grass, just before the ramp.<br />
Picking himself up, the 23-year-old marine engineer<br />
and rigger shouts down from the top of the wall,<br />
“Aah! I’m shaking like a sick dog!”<br />
It’s another high-consequence jump with a tiny<br />
landing zone. Get it wrong and you could land flat on<br />
unyielding tarmac and detonate your knees, or go nose<br />
in and be ejected straight off the bike into something<br />
pitilessly solid. You can’t see the landing from the<br />
top, so the riders are having to line themselves up<br />
by looking at a distant lamppost as they jump.<br />
As Reynolds launches off the ramp, he doesn’t<br />
seem phased – he whips his hands off the bar to<br />
throw his arms behind him and land a ‘suicide nohander’.<br />
<strong>The</strong> landing is the hardest of the day: every<br />
millimetre of his downhill bike’s 180mm suspension<br />
is called upon as his arms and legs fight to absorb<br />
the rest of the impact. After a flurry of fist bumps,<br />
he dismounts and demonstrates his commitment<br />
by taking off his shoe to adjust the brace he’s<br />
wearing, following recent surgery on both ankles.<br />
Despite his scare, Durman sends the next jump,<br />
landing with a whoop. He also races downhill, but<br />
for him the buzz you get from a street jump can’t be<br />
beaten off-road. “With street, you’ve only got one<br />
chance to get it right, which is so exhilarating. <strong>The</strong>re’s<br />
so much adrenalin coursing through your system,<br />
you’re up there just shaking, waiting to drop in.”<br />
What makes MTB street so liberating for these<br />
riders is the very fact that it hasn’t been built for them.<br />
“With street [riding],<br />
you’ve only got one<br />
chance to get it right“<br />
Durman scopes out steps as he sets up near Portsmouth Magistrates’ Court<br />
Downhill and enduro tracks have big jumps, but they<br />
are designed to be predictable and safe. “<strong>The</strong> distance<br />
between where you take off and land is a nice smooth<br />
arc,” says Reynolds. “But with street, if you’re jumping<br />
off a wall, you go up but there’s still 10-15ft [3-5m]<br />
to drop – the arc is lopsided.” <strong>The</strong> consequences of<br />
getting it wrong are greater, but so too are the rewards.<br />
It’s this process of overcoming obstacles from<br />
dramatic new angles that seems to define how MTB<br />
street riders interact with their environment. Urban<br />
worlds can seem compressed, buckling under external<br />
strains and internal angst. Normally, in a world under<br />
siege from itself, options narrow, possibilities are<br />
blocked, and self-expression is stifled. For minds<br />
under pressure, streets are recast as prisons. But for<br />
the street rider, stairs become launch pads, walls<br />
become roads, and obstacles become old friends.<br />
Perhaps being able to see your street from a radically<br />
new perspective does a hard reset on your relationship<br />
to it. Who knows, it could even set you free.<br />
THE RED BULLETIN 63
LEAGUE OF<br />
HER OWN<br />
One dream job would be enough<br />
for most people, but 27-year-old<br />
CHELCEE GRIMES has scored<br />
success as a rising music star<br />
and a pro footballer. Welcome<br />
to her life of two halves<br />
Words PIERS MARTIN<br />
Photography STEPHANIE SIAN SMITH<br />
CHELCEE WEARS CHAMPION CROPPED TANK TOP; ADIDAS TEAM SPORTS TRACKSUIT TOP; PICKLE & POLISH ‘CHELCEE’ CHAIN; HAIRCLIPS, STYLIST’S OWN<br />
64
Chelcee Grimes<br />
a Jekyll and Hyde – there are two sides<br />
of me, but both are important,” explains the<br />
softly spoken Liverpudlian as the lighting and<br />
backdrops from her <strong>Red</strong> <strong>Bulletin</strong> photoshoot<br />
“I’m<br />
are dismantled. Sitting on a sofa in the corner<br />
of a sunny canalside studio in east London, the chatty, easygoing<br />
27-year-old wears a bright orange top, off-white jeans<br />
and New Balance trainers. Around her neck hangs a silver chain<br />
sporting her name: Chelcee.<br />
Chelcee Grimes is a songwriter in demand. In addition to<br />
composing hits for the likes of Dua Lipa, Kylie Minogue, Kesha<br />
and Tom Walker, she has worked in LA with Calvin Harris and<br />
producer <strong>Red</strong>One (Lady Gaga, Nicki Minaj). She launched her<br />
own singing career in 2018 with the upbeat R&B-laced pop<br />
tracks Just Like That and I Need a Night Out, and she has a debut<br />
album scheduled for release next year. But that’s only the half<br />
of it: Chelcee is also a professional footballer.<br />
Playing up front for Fulham FC Women, Chelcee scored<br />
three goals in this season’s FA Cup, and she brings together her<br />
two big passions as the presenter of Chelcee Away, her online<br />
show for BBC Sport. Chelcee will also be part of the BBC team<br />
covering the Women’s World Cup in France this <strong>June</strong> and July;<br />
and in between all this, she still finds time to contribute to the<br />
popular football fan site COPA90. “I’m very busy at the minute,”<br />
she understates. “It’s gone a bit mental, but I’m excited.”<br />
Chelcee has barely paused for breath over the past few years.<br />
Yesterday, she visited Anfield to meet Liverpool FC manager<br />
Jurgen Klopp for a forthcoming branding venture; being a<br />
lifelong fan of the club, this was a dream come true. After our<br />
interview, she’ll head to a studio in London’s Shoreditch to finish<br />
the vocals for her upcoming single, Girls, which she hopes will<br />
be the unofficial anthem of the Women’s World Cup. Tomorrow,<br />
“Kids would have my<br />
lyrics as tattoos…<br />
I’d say, ‘Don’t get it<br />
done, your mother<br />
will kill you’”<br />
66 THE RED BULLETIN
Northern<br />
powerhouse:<br />
Chelcee is an<br />
unstoppable<br />
force in music<br />
and football<br />
CHELCEE WEARS ELLESSE JASMINE CROPPED HOODY; WEEKDAY ROW JEANS; ADIDAS FALCON SHOES<br />
THE RED BULLETIN 67
68 THE RED BULLETIN
Chelcee Grimes<br />
Chelcee’s World Cup<br />
women to watch<br />
Nikita Parris, England<br />
“She’s an attacking player who<br />
played for the Everton youth team,<br />
one age group below me. Nikita is<br />
a speedster – you don’t want her<br />
running at you with the ball. When<br />
she signed for Man City, I knew she’d<br />
become one of England’s best.”<br />
GETTY IMAGES. CHELCEE WEARS NIKE ACG RELAXED-FIT WOVEN JOGGING BOTTOMS; NIKE STRIKE FOOTBALL; TANK TOP AND CHAIN, AS BEFORE<br />
Fran Kirby, England<br />
“<strong>The</strong> female Messi. Fran scored<br />
a few goals in the SheBelieves Cup<br />
[an annual international women’s<br />
tournament in the US]. She’s small,<br />
quick and as skilful as anyone.<br />
Definitely one to watch.”<br />
Megan Rapinoe, USA<br />
“<strong>The</strong> American national squad<br />
are always strong. Megan is<br />
a great player technically, and<br />
someone who will always give<br />
her team a big advantage.”<br />
Ji So-Yun, South Korea<br />
“Chelsea’s number 10. She scores<br />
and creates goals – you can’t<br />
give her space for a shot. Ji is a team<br />
player, and she makes chances<br />
out of nothing – you have to be<br />
switched on when she’s around.”<br />
Formiga, Brazil<br />
“<strong>The</strong> first woman to play in seven<br />
World Cups. Formiga will be 41<br />
at this year’s tournament, and the<br />
stage is set for her to score the<br />
winner in a big game. That’s what<br />
competitions like this are set up<br />
for – anything can happen.”<br />
Megan Rapinoe<br />
Nikita Parris<br />
“When I went for<br />
trials at Liverpool,<br />
I didn’t even own<br />
a pair of boots”<br />
she’ll take part in a songwriting session in Ealing with producer<br />
and fellow hit machine Naughty Boy (“I met him last week and<br />
we started working together”), and at the end of the week she’ll<br />
attend the FIFA eWorld Cup video-game championships. “I’m<br />
living my dream,” beams Chelcee, a keen gamer.<br />
Excelling at two high-profile careers is turning Chelcee into<br />
something of a celebrity, as well as an ambassador for women’s<br />
football. She handles the attention well, not least because of her<br />
easy-going nature and her genuine love for what she does, and<br />
Chelcee is always ready to share her experiences with young<br />
fans who see her as a role model. But she has also been through<br />
enough to know how fickle these industries can be.<br />
Once upon a time, Chelcee quit football. She was 17<br />
and on the precipice of turning professional, but there<br />
wasn’t enough money in the women’s game to support<br />
a viable career. This tricky decision was assuaged by the<br />
lucrative offer of a major record deal. “Someone was dangling<br />
a cheque in front of me, and football hadn’t paid in eight years,<br />
so what could I do?” she says. “I obviously chose music and<br />
dropped out of football.” If that sounds like a no-brainer, a better<br />
appreciation of Grimes’ deep commitment to the game is needed.<br />
Having grown up in Aigburth, Liverpool, the city’s legendary<br />
football club has always been a massive part of her life: “If your<br />
family are Liverpool supporters, it’s in your blood.” Her father<br />
chose her name. “Chelsea weren’t a big team back then, so it<br />
wasn’t like they were going to call me Tottenham or something,”<br />
she smiles. “My mum was like, ‘OK, we like the name, but we’ll<br />
have to spell it differently,’ so that’s how it’s spelt in my passport.<br />
When people don’t believe me, I have to get it out to show them.”<br />
With no siblings, Chelcee realised that if she wanted to get<br />
on with her male cousins and hang out with the boys on her<br />
street, she’d have to learn to play football. “It was that or stay<br />
in and do homework. At first I wasn’t very good, but I quickly<br />
improved – I’d be the first one they chose for the team.” After<br />
her grandad spotted an ad in the local paper, Chelcee’s mum<br />
enrolled her at the Ian Rush Soccer School; she was the only girl<br />
to attend. Her skills were soon recognised by Liverpool Ladies<br />
(now Liverpool FC Women), who trained at the same ground.<br />
“I was asked to come to their trials. I didn’t even own a pair of<br />
football boots, but I turned up and got through. I played for<br />
Liverpool Under-10s, then signed up for another five years.”<br />
Her passion for making music, however, didn’t bloom until<br />
her mid-teens. A huge pop fan, Chelcee grew up listening to<br />
J-Lo, Beyoncé, Pink and Kanye. Her mum would play dance<br />
music at home, while her stepdad listened to Sting and Simon<br />
& Garfunkel. Having chosen music as one of her GSCE options<br />
– mainly because she thought it would be easy – Chelcee was<br />
THE RED BULLETIN 69
Chelcee Grimes<br />
“I’ve fought my<br />
way to be where<br />
I am, so I feel<br />
like I deserve it”<br />
Now at Fulham,<br />
Chelcee has also<br />
played for Liverpool,<br />
Everton, Tranmere<br />
Rovers and Spurs<br />
encouraged by a teacher who noticed her aptitude for<br />
songwriting. At 16, she won a six-month recording arrangement<br />
through a competition on local radio station Juice FM. <strong>The</strong><br />
studio belonged to Liverpool winger Ryan Babel, which meant<br />
Chelcee went to all the team’s games and learnt her way around<br />
a studio with the help of Babel’s engineer. She was hooked.<br />
At the same time, Chelcee began gigging. “I’d play every openmic<br />
night in Liverpool,” she recalls. “More people would turn<br />
up and a buzz developed. Kids would have my lyrics as tattoos<br />
– I can’t even remember the songs. I think one was called <strong>The</strong><br />
Truth, and someone had that written on themselves. I’d say,<br />
‘Don’t get it done, your mother will kill you.’ But when people<br />
started to do that, I could tell a movement was happening.”<br />
This led to the agonising choice between football and music<br />
that culminated in Chelcee signing a contract with record label<br />
RCA. “<strong>The</strong>y wanted to make me into an English Alicia Keys,”<br />
she reveals. Not long after Chelcee signed up, however, her<br />
contact at the label was sacked, and two years later she was<br />
unceremoniously dropped. Deflated and running out of money,<br />
Chelcee moved to London to pursue her songwriting dream,<br />
recording in bedrooms, basements, wherever she could.<br />
She looks back on that time with frankness: “At 18 I hadn’t<br />
really lived, I’d just played football. I had a bit of a gap for a year,<br />
wrote four songs, got a record deal really early. I don’t think<br />
I deserved it, if I’m honest.” Instead, she threw herself into new<br />
challenges. “It made me travel, learn about myself, and I gave<br />
writing a go. <strong>The</strong>n someone called and said, ‘We think you’re<br />
a good songwriter, we’ll give you a publishing deal.’ It’s not what<br />
I really wanted – I still wanted to be on stage – but I did it.”<br />
She found herself at a songwriting session in Copenhagen with<br />
veteran Danish producer Cutfather. Feeling homesick, Chelcee<br />
wrote the lyrics “I feel like I’m a million miles away”, which evolved<br />
into Kylie Minogue’s 2014 song Million Miles. <strong>The</strong>n she began<br />
working with Steve Mac, one of the most successful producers<br />
in modern pop, responsible for huge hits by the likes of Ed<br />
Sheeran (Shape Of You), Clean Bandit (Symphony) and Pink<br />
(What About Us). “If you have better players around you, you<br />
automatically grow and thrive,” she says, drawing a connection<br />
between songwriting and football. “I don’t get intimidated.<br />
If I put my mind to something, I usually go on to do it.”<br />
Chelcee is in no doubt where this self-belief comes from:<br />
“It’s because I’m a Scouser. <strong>The</strong>re’s something in the Liverpool<br />
water where we think we can do anything we put our mind to.<br />
It’s in the heart of our football team, too. I remember the 2005<br />
Champions League final [the now-legendary match against<br />
AC Milan in Istanbul] where we were 3-0 down. To come back<br />
and fight and win it in 45 minutes – that embodies everything<br />
I believe as a person. It was the first time I saw that magic can<br />
happen if you fight for it.”<br />
Looking back, Chelcee believes the whole journey has<br />
been a valuable lesson: “I’ve only been [working in music]<br />
professionally for four years, but I’ve developed massively<br />
from when I was writing songs at 17 in my bedroom with<br />
no one saying, ‘Do this or change that.’” After signing to the<br />
management agency that represents Dua Lipa, Lana Del Ray<br />
and Ellie Goulding, Chelcee’s talent for composing a killer<br />
melody and a catchy hook emerged. “It’s a running industry<br />
joke how fast I am at writing,” she says. “Yesterday, I went<br />
outside the studio and saw a sign that read, ‘Please don’t play<br />
ball games,’ and I thought, ‘That’s a dope title,’ so we wrote<br />
a song called Please. <strong>The</strong>re’s no yellow brick road to making<br />
a hit record. You’ve just got to feel it as you go.”<br />
When you write a song a day, as Chelcee strives to, some<br />
are bound to resonate. One she wrote about her father, titled<br />
11:11, was covered in 2016 by South Korean artist Taeyeon and<br />
became a huge hit, racking up more than 52 million YouTube<br />
views. “Sometimes you don’t remember writing songs, but that’s<br />
a special one,” she says. “[<strong>The</strong> song’s co-writer] Christian Vinten<br />
said, ‘What have you never written about?’ and I said, ‘It’s really<br />
weird but I’ve never written about my dad.’ He passed away<br />
when I was a kid, and I feel like I’ve never wanted to open that<br />
box. My mum would say, ‘When it gets to 11:11, make a wish,’<br />
so I used to wish for my dad to come and speak to me. When<br />
I hear the opening chord, it takes me right back to writing it.”<br />
Much as Chelcee enjoyed her songwriting success, she never<br />
lost the longing to perform, and last year her perseverance paid<br />
off when she finally released her own music. “It’s been six years<br />
CHELCEE WEARS ELLESSE PINZO TRACK TOP; KAPPA AUTHENTIC BALIC JOGGERS; NEW BALANCE 997H SHOES; TANK TOP AND FOOTBALL, AS BEFORE<br />
70 THE RED BULLETIN
Chelcee Grimes<br />
“<strong>The</strong>re’s no<br />
yellow brick road<br />
to making a hit.<br />
You’ve just got to<br />
feel it as you go”<br />
of slog,” she says. “And it hasn’t been given to me. If it had, I’d<br />
be like, ‘Whoa, what’s happening?’ But I’ve literally fought my<br />
way to be where I am, so I feel like I deserve it.”<br />
Another pursuit Chelcee missed was playing football. When<br />
watching the 2015 Women’s World Cup, she realised a number<br />
of girls she used to play with were now wearing an England<br />
shirt. “I thought, ‘I need to get back into it.’ So I googled a few<br />
teams and got trials with Wimbledon, Spurs and West Ham.<br />
<strong>The</strong>y all offered me a contract – it was crazy.” Chelcee is now<br />
settled at Fulham – she also lives nearby – though the relegation<br />
of the men’s team from the Premier League and its knock-on<br />
effect on revenue has created uncertainty for the women.<br />
Chelcee’s top festival<br />
picks for <strong>2019</strong><br />
Billie Eilish<br />
“She’s 17 and smashing it right<br />
now. [<strong>The</strong> California-born singersongwriter]<br />
makes all her music with<br />
her brother, so it’s not manufactured.<br />
Billie’s breaking boundaries, and the<br />
whole industry is talking about her.<br />
She’s different and I appreciate that.”<br />
King Princess<br />
“She’s a new singer signed to Mark<br />
Ronson’s label. King Princess [aka<br />
Mikaela Straus] is big in the LGBTQ<br />
community and she’s not selling any<br />
part of herself, just being authentic.<br />
She’s also super talented and plays<br />
all the instruments on her songs.”<br />
Michael Kiwanuka<br />
“I already knew Michael through<br />
the industry, but then his song Cold<br />
Little Heart was used as the title<br />
track of [US drama] Big Little Lies<br />
and I became a fan. It’s an amazing<br />
record. <strong>The</strong> show is really good, too.”<br />
Tom Grennan<br />
“Tom was my first-ever guest on<br />
Chelcee Away. I became a fan after<br />
hearing his song Found What I’ve<br />
Been Looking For on the FIFA 18<br />
soundtrack. We became friends<br />
and wrote two songs together.<br />
<strong>The</strong>y might be on his next record.”<br />
Girlpool<br />
“I don’t know anything about the<br />
[LA indie-rock duo], but I saw the<br />
name Girlpool on a festival line-up<br />
and wanted to know more. So you<br />
should definitely go to see them.”<br />
King Princess<br />
Much has changed in women’s football over the past<br />
five years, and Chelcee believes the sport is healthier<br />
and wealthier than ever. In March this year, Barclays<br />
announced a £10 million three-year sponsorship of<br />
the FA’s Women’s Super League – the biggest investment by a<br />
brand in <strong>UK</strong> women’s sports. In Spain that same month, more<br />
than 60,000 fans watched a match between Atlético Madrid and<br />
Barcelona in the Primera División Femenina – a world record<br />
attendance for a club game in women’s football – and in Italy<br />
around 39,000 people saw Juventus Women beat Fiorentina.<br />
“My little sister is nine now and she plays football,” says<br />
Chelcee. “When I was playing, I was the only girl, but she’s one<br />
of six in the team. That growth from a grassroots level is all you<br />
need. And to turn on the TV now and see [former England and<br />
Arsenal Women right-back] Alex Scott as a BBC pundit… that<br />
would never have happened when I was a kid. It’s awesome.”<br />
In terms of investment and profile, the women’s game in the<br />
<strong>UK</strong> still lags behind that of the European continent and the US,<br />
but <strong>2019</strong> promises to be its biggest year yet. Chelcee believes<br />
that change is gradually coming, but a lot of the problem is<br />
down to the perception and presentation of the sport.<br />
“It’s like having the best song in the world but the video is shot<br />
on an old Nokia phone: it won’t look good,” she says. “No part of<br />
the women’s game is as well-publicised or up-to-date as the men’s.<br />
You’ve got to give it equal leeway. Hopefully, with this injection<br />
of money, everything will become a lot more professional.” She<br />
hopes her reporting of the Women’s World Cup in France for the<br />
BBC and COPA90 will inspire yet more girls to get involved. “I’ll<br />
show it’s not women’s football, it’s just football,” she says.<br />
<strong>The</strong> multitalented Liverpudlian is, in her own way, redefining<br />
what it means to be a woman in <strong>2019</strong>. “I’m showing you don’t<br />
have to be just one thing now. I go in the studio and write songs<br />
with some of the biggest acts in the world. I’m playing for Fulham,<br />
making my own album. I’m standing up for that, 100 per cent.”<br />
Chelcee Grimes, in her life as in her career, is far more than<br />
the sum of the parts.<br />
Chelcee’s latest single, Girls, is out now on TaP Records;<br />
chelceegrimes.com<br />
STYLING: EMILY ROSE MOLONEY; HAIR & MAKE-UP: ALICE HOWLETT USING KAT VON D BEAUTY AND BUMBLE AND BUMBLE;<br />
PHOTOGRAPHY ASSISTANTS: PAOLINA STADLER, MARIA MONFORT PLANACHELCEE WEARS PRETTY LITTLE THING HIGH-NECK,<br />
RIBBED LONG-SLEEVE CROP TOP<br />
72 THE RED BULLETIN
<strong>The</strong> Gobi Desert, September 2018. British runner<br />
James Poole, having passed the 4,000m-high<br />
summit that marks the highest point in the Ultra<br />
Gobi, descends into a valley devoid of colour or life,<br />
with nothing but a biting wind and a dusty trail<br />
to keep him company. Two days and more than<br />
200km into the race, this is the halfway point. <strong>The</strong><br />
approaching night and altitude will see numerous<br />
runners succumb to hypothermic conditions.
<strong>The</strong> Silk Road:<br />
the route<br />
of China‘s<br />
most famous<br />
pilgrimage –<br />
and now one<br />
of the planet’s<br />
most brutal<br />
ultramarathons.<br />
This is the<br />
400km<br />
Ultra Gobi<br />
Words JAMES POOLE and JAMES CARNEGIE<br />
Photography JAMES CARNEGIE<br />
75
Ultra Gobi<br />
During his seventh-century pilgrimage along the route<br />
that would become known as the Silk Road, Chinese<br />
Buddhist monk Xuanzang described the Gobi Desert as<br />
“nothing but barren sand and dry river beds; at night,<br />
stars shine like fires lit by devils… <strong>The</strong>re is not enough<br />
water to nourish even a single blade of grass; one looks<br />
for birds in the sky and beasts on land, but finds none”.<br />
Xuanzang’s quest to obtain sacred Buddhist scriptures<br />
was adapted into one of China’s most famous novels,<br />
Journey to the West, better known outside the country in its abridged<br />
form, titled Monkey. Today, the terrain remains remarkably unchanged<br />
and the monk’s route draws a different kind of pilgrim: the ultrarunner.<br />
Launched in 2015, the Ultra Gobi is a self-navigating, self-supporting<br />
race that follows Xuanzang’s trail along the northern edge of the Tibetan<br />
Plateau in western China. Once known as the Gansu Corridor, this was the<br />
only path for caravans passing between the sands of the Gobi proper to the<br />
north and the mountains of Tibet to the south. “<strong>The</strong> heat goes through you<br />
like a flame and the wind cuts your flesh like a knife,” wrote Xuanzang of<br />
this route. <strong>The</strong> Chinese name for the race translates as ‘Xuanzang’s Route:<br />
800li of Flowing Sands’, and 800li (or Chinese miles) converts to 400km,<br />
making Ultra Gobi a ‘super-ultra’ marathon that exceeds the world’s most<br />
famous desert race – the Marathon des Sables – by 150km, with a soulcrushing<br />
4,000m mountain-pass ascent to the midway checkpoint.<br />
It took the legendary monk 17 years to complete his journey; Ultra Gobi<br />
contestants – of whom there are only 50 invited each year – have just<br />
149 hours to finish the course. In 2017, British runner Daniel Lawson, then<br />
aged 43, did it in less than 71 hours. For the 2018 race, the organisers laid<br />
down a $10,000 (around £7,500) prize for anyone who could top that.<br />
Fellow Brit James Poole was one of those who took up the challenge.<br />
Photographer James Carnegie joined Poole to document his race, and here<br />
they take us through their photo diary. It’s a study of attrition, of human<br />
determination, and of the toll that harsh conditions and exhaustion can take<br />
on the mind and body. “It wasn’t until I was editing the images that I noticed<br />
much of what James was going through,” says Carnegie. “<strong>The</strong> glazed eyes<br />
behind his sunglasses as we climbed out of the canyon and onto the 4,000mhigh<br />
plateau will always remind me of how far gone he was at that point.”<br />
At the stroke of midnight on September 25,<br />
2018, the 50 entrants set off into the vast<br />
desert expanse as the clock starts ticking<br />
towards the 149-hour completion deadline.<br />
This year, there’s an additional £7,500 prize<br />
for whoever manages to beat 70 hours and<br />
52 minutes, the record-breaking time set<br />
by 2017 winner Daniel Lawson.<br />
76 THE RED BULLETIN
Poole at the start line. Festivities at<br />
the opening ceremony – a firework<br />
show, a few dozen dancers dressed<br />
in Mongolian attire, and a makeshift<br />
bar lined with cups of rice beer<br />
– belie the gruelling race to come.
Ultra Gobi<br />
“This race comes down<br />
to how little sleep you<br />
can take while retaining<br />
the function and ability<br />
to plough on”<br />
Sunrise brings respite from<br />
the merciless cold and the<br />
loneliness of a night spent<br />
beneath a canopy of stars.<br />
Much of the route is raced<br />
at above 2,000m, at the<br />
edge of the Tibetan plateau.<br />
78 THE RED BULLETIN
In an attempt to stave off swelling, blisters, infection, trench foot and the loss of toenails, many competitors stashed<br />
fresh socks and medical supplies in drop boxes, which were delivered to checkpoints. “What the Gobi Desert lacks in<br />
endless dusty dunes, it makes up for with perpetually uneven rocks that threaten to macerate feet and eat through trail<br />
shoes," says Poole. "<strong>The</strong> luxury of a clean pair of socks and some adeptly applied tape can be the difference between<br />
just stepping out the door or climbing onto the bus to the finish.”<br />
With an army of Chinese and international volunteers<br />
manning each of the checkpoints, runners are able to<br />
receive physio and medical treatment to sufficiently<br />
repair injury and any other wear to their bodies. However,<br />
staff are encouraged to turn runners around as quickly<br />
as possible – they have to continue on or succumb to<br />
the threat of DNF (Did Not Finish).<br />
Mandatory survival equipment includes a sleeping bag,<br />
GPS, head torch and medical kit. Runners must carry<br />
sufficient hydration, nutrition and clothing between<br />
checkpoints to endure successive nights in sub-zero<br />
temperatures. “Each night I was wearing everything I had<br />
and until the sun rose I was still freezing,” says Poole.<br />
THE RED BULLETIN 79
Ultra Gobi<br />
“For all its epic views<br />
and endless emptiness,<br />
the Gobi offers no help<br />
to the wayward runner”<br />
“Forward progress was dictated by one’s ability to follow<br />
a thin line on a small digital display,” says Poole. “Flat<br />
batteries or a broken GPS handset would be disastrous.”<br />
As would severe sleep deprivation and the decline in<br />
cognition that comes with it. Britain’s Nathan Montague<br />
followed a broken arrow on his device for several hours,<br />
ending up lost. His error was costly: at one point, he was<br />
chasing second place; he finally crossed the line in sixth.<br />
Carnegie: “More than 100km in and approaching dawn<br />
on day two. Three hours into running through dried<br />
river beds and canyons with James, I discovered how<br />
useless fingers become in this cold. Trying to capture<br />
the mood of utter isolation was challenging. James<br />
went from incoherence amid the cold dark of night to<br />
wildly hallucinating as the horizon turned to gold,<br />
claiming there’d been a dog running alongside me for<br />
hours and that the hills were full of apartments with<br />
people looking down on us. His mind was mush.”<br />
Checkpoints range from tents manned by a lone person<br />
huddled around a fire, to small villages in the middle of<br />
nowhere. Each runner has six drop boxes – meticulously<br />
packed and checked before race start – from which they<br />
can retrieve nutrition, luxuries and changes of clothing<br />
en route. <strong>The</strong> logistics of calculating what they'll need at<br />
each checkpoint is immense, especially with a minimum<br />
required daily calorie intake of 25,000kcal.<br />
Poole: “<strong>The</strong> lowest point occurred shortly after<br />
crossing the 4,000m peak at halfway. With little more<br />
than two hours’ sleep in two days, I’d seen gnomes,<br />
imps and goblins hiding in the scrub. Cliff-sides looked<br />
like trains with endless lines of carriages. Shadows in<br />
the dying sunlight resembled dogs’ jaws leaning in to<br />
nip at my ankles. With less than 3km to one of the lifesaving<br />
bases, I was confronted by a frozen lake lined<br />
with boats, pontoons and jetties. Listening out for<br />
any cracks in the ice, I climbed gingerly between the<br />
obstacles. More than an hour later, I staggered into<br />
the checkpoint, hypothermic and in serious difficulty.<br />
Seven hours on, I hobbled out of the tent. To my<br />
surprise, there was no lake. It had all been in my mind.”<br />
80
Ultra Gobi<br />
Poole: “<strong>The</strong> night-time temperatures brought debilitating cold and<br />
hypothermia for many, so runners would leave checkpoints with<br />
sleeping bags wrapped around their bodies. Ironically, wind – or<br />
feng – plays a notable part in Chinese medicine and is regarded as<br />
a ‘pernicious influence’ that can cause disease, but not hypothermia.<br />
So, while Western competitors battled the cold with every item they<br />
owned, it wasn’t uncommon for Chinese runners, under the guidance<br />
of doctors, to head out in little more than shorts and a T-shirt.”<br />
Carnegie: “On the second night of sub-zero temperatures, James was<br />
close to hypothermia when he stumbled into the rest-point. Medical<br />
staff monitor the runners, and cola bottles filled with hot water were<br />
placed around him, but it soon became clear the Chinese definition of<br />
hypothermic is different to that of <strong>UK</strong> medics. Hypothermia is defined<br />
as a core body temperature below 35°C, with symptoms including<br />
uncontrollable shivering and mental confusion. Both were present.”<br />
82 THE RED BULLETIN
Left: a lone spectator<br />
stares at Ultra Gobi’s<br />
racetrack – a seemingly<br />
endless valley with<br />
the Tibetan Plateau<br />
in the distance. Right:<br />
although the race draws<br />
entrants from across<br />
the world, the majority<br />
are Chinese, reflecting<br />
the country’s growing<br />
interest in running and<br />
endurance sports. (<strong>The</strong><br />
eventual winner was<br />
China’s Liang Jing in 85<br />
hours and 46 minutes.)<br />
“Crumpled mountains<br />
look thousands of<br />
feet high, but are only<br />
a couple of hundred”<br />
Carnegie: “I learnt to track James using his footprints in the sand.<br />
Locating him and the other runners was a mission in itself. With such<br />
vast distances and inaccessibility, I’d encounter him, at best, once<br />
a day. Our 4x4 guide was familiar with this part of the Gobi, seemingly<br />
able to remember routes across river beds and between the valleys<br />
that intersected the course. Whether there was actually anyone there<br />
was another matter – our satellite tracker often indicated runners<br />
had taken inexplicable detours over dunes and gone off-course.”<br />
THE RED BULLETIN 83
Carnegie: “I’ve never seen<br />
someone so close to the edge,<br />
yet able to continue regardless.<br />
I know from my own experience<br />
of running ultramarathons that<br />
after 20-plus hours on the go<br />
I don’t have the patience for<br />
photos, chat or anything much<br />
beyond head down, gritting<br />
things out. James, however,<br />
never failed to respond whenever<br />
I asked for a portrait. I suspect<br />
that when I popped up in equally<br />
bizarre and random places along<br />
the route to document him, the<br />
company brought much-needed<br />
relief from the silence and<br />
confinement of the desert.<br />
“To help me evaluate James’<br />
mental cognition throughout the<br />
race, I’d sought the opinion of<br />
PhD researcher Chris Howe from<br />
Kingston University, who is<br />
heavily involved in investigating<br />
the physiological, nutritional<br />
and psychological responses<br />
to ultramarathon running. On<br />
his advice, I attempted to test<br />
James at checkpoints, using<br />
a series of relatively simple<br />
cognition tasks. After 200km,<br />
he no longer had the mental<br />
energy to face this, nor me the<br />
temerity to put him through it.”<br />
“Coming into the last<br />
50km on day four,<br />
lips were blistered<br />
and sun-cracked”
Ultra Gobi<br />
Carnegie: “I have a voicemail from James saved on my phone. He was less than 500m from the finish, could hear the music blaring and see the<br />
lights projecting into the sky, but was aimlessly running around a quarry. It’s one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard.”<br />
Poole: “<strong>The</strong> Ultra Gobi runners receive an unusual gift<br />
before the start: one half of a small statuette of a tiger – a<br />
‘tiger tally’. <strong>The</strong> other half is awarded after the successful<br />
completion of the race. <strong>The</strong>se tallies were used by military<br />
officers in ancient China as a representation of authority.<br />
A commander in a frontier region such as the Gobi might<br />
leave half of his tally behind in a fortress, then provide the<br />
matching half as ID when sending back orders. Leaving<br />
half of your tally behind is a pledge you’ll return.”<br />
Carnegie: “After 93 hours and 25 minutes in the desert,<br />
James crosses the finish line in Dunhuang. <strong>The</strong> Ultra Gobi<br />
ends at a ‘centuries-old’ fort, which is actually a museum<br />
that was built recently to give tourists ‘the Silk Road<br />
experience’, complete with staff in warrior suits. It’s<br />
completely bizarre and I can’t imagine what it must have<br />
felt like emerging to this after four days in a desert.”<br />
THE RED BULLETIN 85
Ultra Gobi<br />
“This is what running<br />
non-stop for that<br />
length of time in such<br />
hostile conditions<br />
does to you”<br />
<strong>The</strong> photographer’s<br />
perspective: James Carnegie<br />
“I struggled with a conflict of<br />
compassion over commitment<br />
during this assignment. I was<br />
here, several thousand miles<br />
from home, for the singular<br />
purpose of capturing James’<br />
story. But when your good friend<br />
lurches in from the cold, dark<br />
desert, shivering uncontrollably<br />
and repeatedly muttering ‘I just<br />
need to sleep’ you’re torn<br />
between helping them into their<br />
sleeping bag and getting the<br />
shot. I kept telling myself that if<br />
I came away with just one good<br />
shot, it would all be worth it.<br />
“I knew that I needed to see<br />
James outside the checkpoints,<br />
the safety of medics and the<br />
race staff; I needed to see him<br />
in the darkness and loneliness<br />
of the race. I heard his shuffled,<br />
slowing and stumbling footsteps<br />
alongside me, and also his<br />
incoherent, nonsensical speech<br />
and hallucinations as we<br />
traversed riverbed and gorge.<br />
I could see – and briefly share<br />
– the deep, deep cold he was<br />
victim to as he drew the hood<br />
tight around his face, clenching<br />
his numb and useless fingers<br />
into a ball in his gloves. This is<br />
where he was. This is where the<br />
story was. I would have liked to<br />
have experienced more of that.<br />
Without actually running this<br />
thing in its entirety, that wasn’t<br />
possible. I probably pushed as<br />
far as I could in my capacity as<br />
a photographer on this kind of<br />
remote adventure, but I’m left<br />
with utter respect for James<br />
and all the runners who saw<br />
this through.<br />
“A face can tell a thousand<br />
words. I hope that in my images<br />
I captured some of what James<br />
was experiencing. <strong>The</strong> raw<br />
fatigue, the worn exterior and<br />
the rollercoaster of emotions<br />
were clear to see, but how does<br />
one capture that?”<br />
86 THE RED BULLETIN
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92
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94 THE RED BULLETIN
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Fashion assistant:<br />
Allegra Bartoli<br />
Models:<br />
Christian Lambelin<br />
@ Select,<br />
Sophie Hellyer<br />
@ W Model Management<br />
Thanks to Visit Wales<br />
for its location support;<br />
visitwales.com<br />
96 THE RED BULLETIN
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guide<br />
Get it. Do it. See it.<br />
TAKE THE PLUNGE<br />
Bin the beach holiday –<br />
go beyond the ordinary<br />
on a cliff-diving trip<br />
to the Azores with the<br />
legendary Orlando Duque<br />
and Destination <strong>Red</strong> Bull<br />
PAGE 100<br />
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PAGE 106<br />
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PAGE 108<br />
THE RED BULLETIN 99
G U I D E<br />
Do it<br />
Raw nature: the <strong>Red</strong> Bull Cliff Diving World Series makes its annual stop at the Ilhéu de Vila Franca<br />
SÃO MIGUEL, THE AZORES<br />
HOW TO BE<br />
A CLIFF DIVER<br />
With Destination <strong>Red</strong> Bull, you can book top athletes as<br />
your tour guide. Cliff diver Orlando Duque teaches guests<br />
to overcome their fear of heights and take the plunge<br />
As a professional cliff diver<br />
for more than 20 years, I’ve<br />
travelled to competitions<br />
all over the world. <strong>The</strong>re have<br />
been some legendary locations,<br />
from the jungles of Yucatán to the<br />
Antarctic and Easter Island. But<br />
I always like returning to the<br />
island of São Miguel in the Azores<br />
– first and foremost for its<br />
fascinating nature – and that’s<br />
where we’re going on this<br />
Destination <strong>Red</strong> Bull trip.<br />
<strong>The</strong> nine islands that make up<br />
the Azores sit in a remote area<br />
of the Atlantic Ocean, around<br />
Your guide: world-class cliff diver Orlando Duque<br />
100 THE RED BULLETIN
<strong>The</strong> Azores<br />
TRAVEL INFO<br />
BAD BIRD CALLS<br />
AND HOT ROCKS<br />
Where the Azores are, why they were<br />
misnamed, and what you should eat<br />
– here’s some island knowledge to<br />
flaunt in the hotel lobby<br />
Leap of faith: “I’ll teach you how to enjoy cliff-diving,” says Duque, pictured in fight<br />
<strong>The</strong> Azores sit in the Atlantic<br />
Ocean, around 1,400km west of<br />
Portugal and 1,950km southeast<br />
of Newfoundland, Canada. <strong>The</strong><br />
main island of São Miguel has<br />
an area of 744.7km 2 , making it<br />
a little larger than Singapore<br />
Corvo<br />
Flores<br />
Graciosa<br />
Faial<br />
Pico<br />
São Jorge<br />
Azores<br />
Terceira<br />
São Miguel<br />
Santa Maria<br />
Ribeira Grande<br />
São Miguel<br />
Ponta Delgada<br />
Ilhéu de Vila Franca<br />
ROMINA AMATO/RED BULL CONTENT POOL, DEAN TREML/RED BULL CONTENT POOL, RED BULL MEDIA HOUSE GMBH/<br />
RED BULL CONTENT POOL, GETTY IMAGES ANDREAS ROTTENSCHLAGER<br />
<strong>The</strong> Ilhéu de Vila Franca and its crater lake, with São Miguel in the background<br />
1,400km west of Portugal, and<br />
are famous for their volcanic<br />
coastlines and green cliffs. It’s not<br />
at all rare to find yourself in the<br />
company of dolphins or sperm<br />
whales when swimming there.<br />
In other words, the Azores are<br />
a great place to get to know the<br />
Atlantic in all its variety. And<br />
that’s what we have in store.<br />
Santa Bárbara Eco-Beach<br />
Resort on São Miguel’s north<br />
coast is our accommodation<br />
for the five-day trip, during<br />
which guests will immerse<br />
themselves in the Azorean waters<br />
and, at certain times, go pretty<br />
deep – naturally, the correct<br />
technique for diving off cliffs<br />
forms part of the programme.<br />
“I’ll adapt to your<br />
level. <strong>The</strong>re are<br />
about 100 diving<br />
spots on the island”<br />
For our workshop on the second<br />
day, we will transfer to the tiny<br />
Ilhéu de Vila Franca, just off the<br />
south coast of São Miguel.<br />
Anyone viewing bird’s-eye photos<br />
of the islet will immediately be<br />
struck by the round lagoon that<br />
has formed in the crater of the<br />
extinct volcano – it’s a natural<br />
wonder, and the journey there<br />
is magical in itself. Even though<br />
HISTORY<br />
ALL IN A NAME<br />
Portuguese sailors named their discovery the llhas dos<br />
Açores, or Goshawk Islands. Shame that the goshawks<br />
were actually buzzards<br />
SPREADING OUT<br />
In 1752, 60 Azorean couples left for Brazil and founded<br />
what became Porto Alegre, now a city of 1.5 million<br />
STAGING POST<br />
Early submarine cables between Europe and America<br />
went via the Azores, as did the first-ever transatlantic<br />
flight, which included two stops on the islands<br />
FOOD<br />
COZIDO<br />
<strong>The</strong> volcanic ground underfoot serves as a natural hob<br />
for this stew of meat and vegetables<br />
BOLO LÊVEDO<br />
A sweet, leavened dough roll that looks like a muffin<br />
and is eaten throughout the day<br />
PINEAPPLE CHUTNEY<br />
<strong>The</strong> Azorean pineapple has been grown in greenhouses<br />
since being introduced in the 19th century. This chutney<br />
goes perfectly with the islands’ cheeses<br />
THE RED BULLETIN 101
G U I D E<br />
Do it<br />
<strong>The</strong> Azores<br />
DESTINATION RED BULL<br />
YOUR ADVENTURE<br />
WITH TOP ATHLETES<br />
Fancy some off-road training in the desert<br />
with a five-time Dakar Rally winner, or sailing<br />
in the South Pacific with a champion<br />
ultrarunner turned yachtsman? Here are<br />
some other options awaiting you…<br />
LESOTHO<br />
WITH ALFIE COX<br />
Spend a week with the South African enduro<br />
expert, exploring stunning motorbike tracks along<br />
the route of the legendary Roof of Africa rally<br />
“<strong>The</strong> feeling when you resurface is sensational,” says Duque. We believe him<br />
SOLOMON ISLANDS<br />
WITH CHRISTIAN SCHIESTER<br />
Absolute paradise: the former ultrarunner, now<br />
a round-the-world yachtsman, takes you on the trip<br />
of a lifetime on his 18m vessel El Toro<br />
MUMBAI<br />
WITH THE STARS OF RED BULL BC ONE<br />
Meet the B-boy and B-girl elite at the <strong>Red</strong> Bull BC One<br />
World Final, learn their moves in practice sessions, and<br />
immerse yourself in Mumbai’s mesmerising nightlife<br />
BARCELONA<br />
WITH SETE GIBERNAU AND DANI PEDROSA<br />
Get motorbike training on Sete Gibernau’s<br />
exclusive private racetrack, plus a VIP package<br />
for the Gran Premi de Catalunya<br />
there are limits on visitor numbers<br />
– for conservation reasons – we’ll<br />
get to stay there for the whole day<br />
and climb the picturesque crater<br />
walls or snorkel the rock tunnels<br />
at the foot of the island.<br />
<strong>The</strong> thing that leaps out at you<br />
when you first see the Ilhéu de Vila<br />
Franca is its steep, rocky cliffs<br />
– and, of course, these haven’t<br />
escaped the attention of the<br />
world’s cliff-diving community.<br />
Let’s get one thing clear from<br />
the start: nobody has to dive 27m<br />
from the cliff edge as the top<br />
athletes do. <strong>The</strong>re are more than<br />
100 places to dive – from various<br />
heights – around the island. At the<br />
workshop, I’ll work individually<br />
with each guest according to<br />
their fitness level and wishes. Of<br />
course, the trip is about getting<br />
the most out of yourself, but the<br />
main aim is always to have fun.<br />
Cliff diving is a mental<br />
challenge. <strong>The</strong> crux of the matter<br />
is to take a leap of faith, literally.<br />
Many people dive and then seize<br />
up. To counter this, what helps is<br />
knowing that you can adjust your<br />
position mid-air. I’ll show my<br />
guests the correct technique for<br />
the flight phase and entering the<br />
water, and gradually take them<br />
as high as they’d like to go. On<br />
our workshop day, we can go<br />
anywhere up to 14m. Ideally<br />
you’ll also be learning something<br />
about yourself – ie, that you’re<br />
only afraid of things you don’t<br />
know enough about. It’s normal<br />
to be afraid when you’re standing<br />
on the edge of a cliff and are<br />
about to dive for the first time.<br />
But you’re overcome by feelings<br />
of happiness when you return<br />
to the surface.<br />
And while we’re on the subject<br />
of diving, there will be two<br />
professional divers with us, who’ll<br />
check out every water entry point<br />
in advance. <strong>The</strong>se are the same<br />
guys the world-class divers of the<br />
<strong>Red</strong> Bull Cliff Diving World Series<br />
trust, and we’ll watch that<br />
competition from the comfort of<br />
a 14m catamaran on day four.<br />
<strong>The</strong>n, that evening, we’ll meet the<br />
competitors for dinner and talk<br />
shop about the sport.<br />
We’ll all know how cliff-diving<br />
works by then, after all.<br />
For further information on the trips and how to book, go to:<br />
destination.redbull.com or call +43/664/88 11 07 06<br />
PREDRAG VUCKOVIC/RED BULL CONTENT POOL<br />
102 THE RED BULLETIN
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G U I D E<br />
Do it<br />
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OFF YOUR FEET<br />
All of it. Using technology<br />
devised for astronaut<br />
training, this treadmill<br />
allows you to run in almost<br />
zero-g… on Earth<br />
Fitness<br />
KNOW-HOW<br />
FIT FOR<br />
SPACE<br />
<strong>The</strong>se fitness<br />
machines were<br />
designed by, with<br />
and for astronauts<br />
Keep on running:<br />
air pressure<br />
supports your<br />
weight while<br />
training<br />
ADVANCED<br />
RESISTIVE EXERCISE<br />
DEVICE (ARED)<br />
Zero-g dumbbell<br />
exercises? Won’t work.<br />
<strong>The</strong> ARED generates its<br />
own resistance and thus<br />
cancels out the crux of<br />
weightlessness. It was<br />
first used on the<br />
International Space<br />
Station in 2009.<br />
<strong>The</strong> treadmill is an<br />
essential tool for athletes<br />
following an operation<br />
or injury. But when is the right<br />
time to begin rehab, and how<br />
much strain can the body take?<br />
Get the timing wrong and you<br />
could do more harm than good;<br />
start too late and you could<br />
miss the crucial window for<br />
recovery. A solution was needed<br />
and it came from space.<br />
During his time as a NASA<br />
engineer, Dr Robert Whalen<br />
was tasked with devising a way<br />
for astronauts to exercise in zero<br />
gravity. His idea was to place<br />
the person inside a pressurised<br />
bubble and push them down<br />
onto the treadmill using air<br />
pressure. NASA didn’t adopt the<br />
concept, but Robert’s son Sean<br />
saw its potential as a rehab<br />
device. By flipping the concept<br />
on its head, using air pressure<br />
“Using this<br />
treadmill<br />
means I can<br />
train and avoid<br />
injury at the<br />
same time”<br />
Nicola Spirig, Olympic<br />
triathlon champion<br />
to lift users off the treadmill,<br />
it could reduce bodyweight by<br />
up to 80 per cent, placing less<br />
stress on bones and joints.<br />
Together, they released the<br />
AlterG in 2005 and it’s since<br />
been used by many professional<br />
athletes, including NBA legends<br />
Kobe Bryant and LeBron James,<br />
and Swiss triathlete Nicola<br />
Spirig. “I’ve been using it ever<br />
since my preparations for Rio<br />
2016,” explains the 2012<br />
Olympic gold medallist and sixtime<br />
European champion. “It<br />
also means I can start training<br />
again much earlier.” alterg.com<br />
MINIATURE<br />
EXERCISE DEVICE<br />
(MED-2)<br />
This machine works on<br />
the same principle as the<br />
ARED. It looks like a<br />
vacuum cleaner, but you<br />
use it for squats, arm<br />
and leg exercises, or for<br />
a total body workout.<br />
<strong>The</strong> MED-2 was given its<br />
space debut in 2016.<br />
OYO FITNESS<br />
DOUBLEFLEX<br />
PERSONAL GYM<br />
Used to maintain muscle<br />
mass during endless<br />
months onboard the<br />
ISS, the OYO Fitness<br />
DoubleFlex’s resistance<br />
technology works for<br />
Earthbound athletes,<br />
too. It delivers 11kg of<br />
weight from a 1kg device.<br />
oyofitness.com<br />
PAUL ANDREWS FLORIAN STURM<br />
104 THE RED BULLETIN
Grip<br />
Wide<br />
Concave<br />
Serviceable<br />
It's Funndamental
G U I D E<br />
Do it<br />
Gaming<br />
Power of three: AL characters Bloodhound, Wraith and Gibraltar<br />
TEAM TACTICS<br />
STRENGTH<br />
IN NUMBERS<br />
Battle royale mega-game Apex Legends<br />
has one simple rule: play as a team or die.<br />
<strong>The</strong>re are a few life lessons in there…<br />
No person is an island. Throughout history,<br />
humans have depended on each other to<br />
survive, and nowhere is this truer than in<br />
smash-hit online squad-based shooter Apex Legends,<br />
which notched up a million players within eight<br />
hours of its unannounced launch in February, and<br />
more than 50 million by the end of its first month.<br />
This popularity is, in large part, due to its deeply<br />
satisfying team gameplay, built around a fast-andeasy<br />
communication system that pings vital info to<br />
your allies. One press sends a basic ‘go’ sign or tags<br />
in-game objects, a double tap pings enemy locations,<br />
and holding down brings up a menu with quick<br />
predictive messages. No need to voice chat with<br />
strangers or guess the intentions of a mic-less team<br />
member who has sprinted into an enemy’s kill zone.<br />
“<strong>The</strong> best teams happen when you have a mutual<br />
dependency but trust one another,” says leadership<br />
expert Jo Owen, who has travelled from high-powered<br />
boardrooms to remote jungle tribes, seeking out what<br />
makes teams tick. Here, he decodes the Apex Legends<br />
(AL) squad skills and applies them to reality…<br />
TRUST IS KEY<br />
AL teams you up with strangers, so<br />
how can you build trust? In business,<br />
as in life, trust is gained in two ways:<br />
by talking about shared experiences<br />
to establish commonality, and by<br />
achieving credibility through your<br />
actions. <strong>The</strong> ping system satisfies<br />
the second of these, keeping your<br />
team informed of developments<br />
(including real-life dashes to the loo),<br />
while neatly sidestepping the first.<br />
“That you don’t have to talk to, text<br />
or see your teammates is genius,”<br />
says Owen. “You could be blue with<br />
two heads, and no one would care as<br />
long as you can ping and shoot.<br />
CLARITY IS CORE<br />
Players of voice-mic’d multiplayer<br />
shooters invariably hear something<br />
like this: “<strong>The</strong>re’s an enemy by that<br />
tree.” <strong>The</strong> inevitable response in a<br />
landscape dotted with identical trees<br />
is, “Which one?” “Trust needs good<br />
communication,” says Owen. “What<br />
AL does is allow communication that<br />
isn’t only frequent but clear – a ping<br />
[tagging a specific tree] can’t be<br />
misunderstood. In business, people<br />
will say, ‘Will you fix that report?’<br />
‘Which report? What do you mean<br />
‘fix it’?’ Never assume your team<br />
knows what you mean – spell it out.”<br />
LEADING EDGE<br />
AL randomly chooses a ‘Jumpmaster’,<br />
the team member who decides where<br />
to drop into the map. After being<br />
nominated, you continue to lead on<br />
the ground by pinging destinations<br />
for your squad to move to – if they<br />
agree, that is. “Leadership has to be<br />
earned, and you have to keep on<br />
earning it,” says Owen. In business,<br />
people assume that a grand title<br />
makes them a leader. “But they’re<br />
wrong. <strong>The</strong> title has nothing to do<br />
with leading; it’s about what you do<br />
and how you do it. In the game, if you<br />
don’t behave as a leader, within 30<br />
seconds you’ll no longer be leading.”<br />
<strong>The</strong> game’s world is distinctly post-apocalyptic<br />
EXPERT<br />
PROFILE<br />
JO<br />
OWEN<br />
Team wrangler<br />
An entrepreneur and<br />
author, Owen has<br />
launched eight not-for<br />
profit organisations<br />
with a combined annual<br />
turnover of more than<br />
£100 million, delivers<br />
keynote speeches on<br />
leadership and teamwork,<br />
and has lived with tribal<br />
peoples. His latest book,<br />
Myths of Leadership, is<br />
available now on Amazon.<br />
Apex Legends is out on<br />
PC, PS4 and Xbox One<br />
LOYALTY CARD<br />
“In business, leaders tolerate<br />
incompetent followers much longer<br />
than they do disloyal ones,” explains<br />
Owen. Loyalty, he says, comes from<br />
the realisation you’ll do far better as<br />
a loyal member of the team than if<br />
you’re alone. This is a key reason for<br />
the success of AL: unlike in other<br />
team shooters, roaming as a lone<br />
wolf is not a viable strategy. “Apex<br />
Legends is ultimately tribal warfare,<br />
which is pretty brutal. As I’ve seen<br />
when studying tribes, people are 100<br />
per cent loyal because they know<br />
they won’t survive outside the tribe.”<br />
ROLE PLAYING<br />
“You can have mutual dependency<br />
and trust but still lack a team,” says<br />
Owen. “Everyone has to have some<br />
idea of their role. Am I the one taking<br />
a risk (a salesperson) or am I a safe<br />
pair of hands (an accountant)?” <strong>The</strong><br />
player characters in Apex Legends<br />
fall into the standard video-game<br />
archetypes of defensive, offensive<br />
and support, but you also need to<br />
know how your teammates’ roles<br />
interact with yours. “<strong>The</strong>re’s no point<br />
in picking a medic role, then running<br />
ahead to be first in contact with the<br />
enemy,” Owen says. “Likewise, you<br />
don’t want your legal advisor betting<br />
their houses on roulette.”<br />
ELECTRONIC ARTS MATT RAY<br />
106 THE RED BULLETIN
HABIT<br />
* Comes with technology. And we<br />
could tell you more about it. But that’s<br />
what everyone does. So we’d rather<br />
skip the hype and stick to the facts:<br />
<strong>The</strong> all-new Habit is an all-new mountain<br />
bike that wants whatever you can throw<br />
at it. A mountain bike that feels planted<br />
and predictable, light and nimble, solid<br />
and unwavering. A mountain bike that<br />
feels right at home where a mountain<br />
bike should. Slashing, boosting, sending<br />
and delivering. On the trail, in the dirt,<br />
through the air, and on its edge.<br />
New mountain<br />
bike available.*<br />
cannondale.com
G U I D E<br />
Get it<br />
YT INDUSTRIES<br />
SERIOUSLY<br />
FUN<br />
With humorous ads featuring Hollywood<br />
stars, YT is a company that likes to enjoy<br />
itself. But its bikes are no laughing matter<br />
SEATPOST:<br />
FOX Transfer<br />
Factory<br />
FRAME:<br />
Decoy<br />
Carbon<br />
When YT (Young Talent)<br />
Industries launched in<br />
2007, it had a lot to prove;<br />
a late-to-the-game entry in the<br />
bike manufacturing market, the<br />
German firm was mocked by<br />
the bigger players. But today YT<br />
is a global force, catering to pros<br />
and amateurs alike. Much of this<br />
is down to company founder and<br />
CEO Markus Flossmann, now 43,<br />
who prioritised fun from the<br />
off, and who enlisted the likes of<br />
Christopher Walken and Vinnie<br />
Jones – unlikely advocates for<br />
biking – to advertise his products.<br />
<strong>The</strong> flash of inspiration that<br />
spawned YT came to Flossmann<br />
during a trip to a dirt-jump park<br />
where the local scene was out in<br />
force but riding around on rubbish<br />
bikes. What if someone could offer<br />
them quality, great design and<br />
a dash of cool at a low price? He<br />
believed there were enough people<br />
out there whose talent would<br />
awaken if they did things right.<br />
For the last decade, YT has<br />
filled that gap, providing bikes at<br />
a reasonable price thanks to direct<br />
marketing. On the way, it has<br />
“We want the<br />
average rider<br />
to have fun<br />
on our bikes”<br />
YT Industries founder<br />
Markus Flossmann<br />
MOTOR:<br />
Shimano<br />
STEPS E8000<br />
BATTERY:<br />
SMP YT Custom,<br />
540Wh<br />
WERNER JESSNER<br />
108 THE RED BULLETIN
Equipment<br />
GEARS:<br />
Shimano<br />
XT DI2<br />
DISPLAY:<br />
Shimano<br />
STEPS E7000<br />
BRAKES:<br />
SRAM Code<br />
RSC<br />
KNOW-HOW<br />
THE YT<br />
DECOY<br />
<strong>The</strong> best electric<br />
mountain bike that<br />
(a reasonable sum<br />
of) money can buy<br />
SHOCK:<br />
FOX Float<br />
X2 Factory<br />
FORK:<br />
FOX 36 Float<br />
Factory E<br />
CEO MARKUS<br />
FLOSSMANN<br />
ON THE DECOY<br />
“<strong>The</strong> three salient<br />
features are its geometry,<br />
weight and frame.<br />
Whether you’re going<br />
uphill, downhill or on the<br />
flat, the handling and<br />
broad range of options<br />
make the Decoy unique.”<br />
“A lot of electric<br />
mountain bikes feel more<br />
like motorbikes than<br />
mountain bikes, due to<br />
their weight, the long<br />
chainstay and the<br />
unbalanced geometry.<br />
Our Decoy is different.”<br />
“<strong>The</strong> geometry is<br />
downhill-oriented,<br />
supports a playful riding<br />
style, and means the bike<br />
can still climb uphill with<br />
panache. It’s just a<br />
helluva lot of fun to ride.”<br />
“What’s special about the<br />
Decoy? <strong>The</strong> fact that it<br />
doesn’t feel like a normal<br />
electric mountain bike!”<br />
WHEELSET:<br />
E*Thirteen E*Spec<br />
Race – front 29in,<br />
rear 27.5in<br />
WEIGHT: 21.9kg<br />
SIZES AVAILABLE:<br />
S/M/L/XL/XXL<br />
PRICE: £5,999<br />
plus shipping<br />
THE RED BULLETIN 109
G U I D E<br />
Get it<br />
Equipment<br />
convinced that they achieve the<br />
best results when they start out<br />
with no pressure, feeling relaxed.<br />
Passion is the best motivation.<br />
Still going strong: Flossmann took up riding after injury halted his bodybuilding career<br />
helped pros Andreu Lacondeguy<br />
and Aaron Gwin triumph – at <strong>Red</strong><br />
Bull Rampage and in downhill<br />
at the UCI MTB World Cup<br />
respectively – all without letting<br />
seriousness get in the way. <strong>The</strong><br />
strategy clearly appeals: 17-yearold<br />
downhill prodigy Vali Höli is<br />
now signed to the YT family, too.<br />
Flossmann himself is a man<br />
who would never let normality<br />
get in the way of his vision, having<br />
started out as a bodybuilder<br />
before deciding to reinvent the<br />
mountain bike. He now sits at<br />
the helm of one of the most<br />
innovative bike firms in Europe.<br />
the red bulletin: How does<br />
a bodybuilder wind up making<br />
mountain bikes?<br />
markus flossman: Bodybuilding<br />
is a mindset you live 24/7; a sport<br />
that demands a lot of willpower.<br />
Preparation for a competition lasts<br />
five months and feels like a boot<br />
camp. You need a will of iron to<br />
come through. That mindset has<br />
“I started<br />
riding to<br />
have fun<br />
and relax.<br />
That’s still<br />
the main<br />
philosophy<br />
behind YT”<br />
Markus<br />
Flossmann<br />
left its mark on me. When I had to<br />
give up competitive bodybuilding<br />
due to injury, I learnt to love the<br />
relaxed world of mountain biking.<br />
Before I founded YT, I’d already<br />
been a committed mountain biker<br />
for 11 years and was very into<br />
technology. I’ve long thought of<br />
myself as a hardcore biker.<br />
Did you ever race?<br />
No. I didn’t start mountain biking<br />
[in the mid-’90s] for the sake of<br />
racing at the weekends, or to prove<br />
how good I was in competition.<br />
I wanted to create steep turns and<br />
ramps with my mates after work<br />
and go hard at it, then drink a beer.<br />
In other words, I wanted to have<br />
fun and relax. That remains the<br />
main philosophy behind our brand.<br />
How do you channel that into<br />
riders winning races on YT bikes?<br />
We never pressure our sportsmen<br />
and women into taking part in<br />
specific competitions or delivering<br />
results, and we never will. We’re<br />
What input do your pro riders<br />
give on the regular bikes?<br />
We hoover up their feedback. But<br />
the trick is filtering and analysing<br />
their comments so that ultimately<br />
an average rider can have fun on<br />
our bikes. It’s like fine-tuning an<br />
F1 car so that a new driver could<br />
handle one. <strong>The</strong> bike Aaron Gwin<br />
used to win downhill at the UCI<br />
MTB World Cup twice was<br />
standard except for the suspension<br />
set-up. Anyone can buy one.<br />
For how long does one count<br />
as a ‘young talent’?<br />
I’m sure everyone is harbouring<br />
hidden talents, no matter how<br />
old they are. <strong>The</strong> important thing<br />
is not to be limited by convention.<br />
Take me, for example. I only<br />
started motocross three years<br />
ago, aged 40, even though all<br />
my friends told me I was too old<br />
and that it was a sport you had to<br />
start young. As long as you enjoy<br />
it and feel comfortable, it’s never<br />
too late to discover a new talent<br />
or passion within yourself.<br />
Where did you get the idea of<br />
producing quirky ads starring<br />
non-bikers like Walken or Jones?<br />
YT is different. I found bike ads<br />
very one-dimensional – it was<br />
always just about the product.<br />
No one did anything original.<br />
But mountain biking is about<br />
lifestyle. We want to get our values<br />
across without putting a specific<br />
product in the forefront. If we<br />
break a few rules, have fun and<br />
encourage people in a way that<br />
pushes the bike industry in a new<br />
direction, it’s all good.<br />
yt-industries.com<br />
110 THE RED BULLETIN
COPYRIGHT © <strong>2019</strong> MNA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.<br />
DON’T ASK THE WORLD FOR ADVENTURE. FIND IT.<br />
WHAT ARE YOU BUILDING FOR?<br />
BFGOODRICHTIRES.COM
G U I D E<br />
Get it<br />
Equipment<br />
1<br />
2<br />
4<br />
3<br />
PATH<br />
FINDERS<br />
Wherever you lose<br />
yourself, trust<br />
these trackers to<br />
find you again<br />
HUAWEI P30 PRO<br />
FOUR-EYED<br />
MONSTER<br />
This quad-camera phone is a<br />
photographic beast with more<br />
tricks than meets the eye<br />
It says something when the fact that this<br />
phone’s four cameras are co-engineered by<br />
industry pros Leica is their least impressive<br />
boast. <strong>The</strong> 40MP SuperSpectrum sensor<br />
can take flash-free shots in near-total<br />
darkness, the ultra-wide lens captures<br />
dewdrop-close macro, and a ‘periscope’<br />
arrangement of the telephoto lens gives 5x<br />
optical zoom (10x hybrid, 50x digital) that<br />
can record craters on the Moon. Plus, the<br />
depth-sensing lens works with AI for perfect<br />
bokeh portraits, and there’s a fifth camera<br />
for 32MP selfies on the front. huawei.com<br />
1. Ultra-wide 20MP lens for<br />
landscape and macro shots<br />
2. 40MP SuperSpectrum<br />
sensor lets in more light<br />
3. Depth sensor for bokeh<br />
portraits and AR apps<br />
4. Telephoto lens fitted in a<br />
periscope arrangement<br />
SPOT X<br />
A tracker and two-way<br />
satellite messenger that<br />
works beyond cell range<br />
– to friends, SOS services<br />
and social media.<br />
findmespot.com<br />
CASIO PRO-TREK<br />
<strong>The</strong> WSD-F30 has<br />
full-colour GPS map<br />
navigation, a compass,<br />
barometer, altimeter,<br />
Android apps and fivebar<br />
water resistance.<br />
wsd.casio.com<br />
BEATS BY DRE<br />
POWERBEATS PRO<br />
SPORTS STAR<br />
At last, earpods that let you work hard<br />
at the gym while looking good, too<br />
Apple’s Airpods are good, but their loose fit makes<br />
them poor for sport. Here’s a practical, stylishly<br />
superior alternative. Featuring the same H1 chip<br />
that smart-switches between Apple devices and<br />
responds to ‘Hey Siri’, they fit securely, are waterresistant,<br />
work independently of each other, have<br />
fuss-free physical buttons and a nine-hour battery,<br />
and come in four stylish hues. beatsbydre.com<br />
CAMMENGA TRITIUM<br />
<strong>The</strong> Compass 3H is<br />
resistant to grit, shocks<br />
and water; works in<br />
temperatures from -45°C<br />
to 65°C, and won’t run out<br />
of juice. cammenga.com<br />
112 THE RED BULLETIN
THE RED BULLETIN PROMOTION<br />
NATHAN HUGHES<br />
S<br />
urrounded by the lush<br />
green slopes of the<br />
Pinzgauer Grass Mountains<br />
and the picturesque peaks<br />
of the Kitzbühel Alps and<br />
the Hohen Tauern mountain<br />
range, you will find, at an<br />
altitude of 1,003m, Saalbach<br />
Hinterglemm – the coolest<br />
mountain resort in Austria.<br />
In the province of Salzburg,<br />
you will find a holiday resort<br />
that couldn’t be more diverse.<br />
<strong>The</strong> most “lässig” of Austria’s<br />
mountain villages is no longer<br />
exclusively known as a top<br />
skiing destination, but is also<br />
an Eldorado for mountainbiking<br />
and hiking.<br />
Wake up in the early<br />
morning hours with the sun<br />
shining through the windows,<br />
to a wonderful view of the<br />
surrounding mountains.<br />
A paradise with more than<br />
400km of biking trails is<br />
waiting to be discovered.<br />
Are you looking for pleasant<br />
cycling routes, enjoyable<br />
e-biking tours and winding<br />
trails? Or are you after more<br />
challenging enduro and<br />
downhill tracks? No matter<br />
which exact mountain-biking<br />
discipline gets your heart<br />
beating faster, Saalbach<br />
Hinterglemm provides the<br />
perfect blend of fun and<br />
adventure for everyone.<br />
Endless mountains with<br />
varying terrains, six cableways<br />
with bike transport, and all<br />
of that amid a mesmerising<br />
mountain scenery, make<br />
the region a truly unique<br />
experience for cycling fans.<br />
Your mountain-bike holiday<br />
in Saalbach Hinterglemm will<br />
be an unforgettable journey.<br />
GlemmRide Bike Festival<br />
03-07.07.<strong>2019</strong><br />
You are invited to the GlemmRide<br />
Bike Festival, an international<br />
bike and party gathering in<br />
SalzburgerLand. From July 3,<br />
the mountain-bike hotspot of the<br />
Alps will be transformed. With the<br />
FMB Gold Slopestyle, Specialized<br />
Rookies Cup, 50 exhibitors, and<br />
parties à la Masters of Dirt,<br />
you’ll be served with good times<br />
during your Saalbach holiday.<br />
saalbach.com<br />
AUSTRIA’S COOLEST BIKE RESORT<br />
SAALBACH<br />
HINTERGLEMM<br />
Welcome to the “Home of Lässig”*<br />
*Cool and laid-back – or “lässig” as the Austrians say<br />
THE RED BULLETIN 113
G U I D E<br />
Get it<br />
DOUCHEBAGS SAVAGE BIKE BAG<br />
ROLL WITH IT<br />
Protect your bike wherever you take it – in this<br />
lightweight luggage with a built-in roll cage<br />
Equipment<br />
WHERE’S<br />
YOUR<br />
HEAD AT?<br />
A safer place if<br />
it’s inside a multidirectional<br />
impact<br />
protection helmet<br />
D3 CARBON MIPS<br />
Is it the bike that wins<br />
the race, or the rider?<br />
Turns out it might be the<br />
helmet – the Troy Lee<br />
D3 has won more DH<br />
World Cups, <strong>Red</strong> Bull<br />
Rampages and Olympic<br />
medals than any other.<br />
troyleedesigns.com<br />
When British saloon-car racer John Aley devised the roll bar in 1964 to save drivers’ lives in serious crashes, he probably never<br />
imagined it being used to protect mountain bikes in long-haul transit – but that’s exactly what inspired the patented Db Roll<br />
Cage in this bike bag. Capable of accommodating any size of mountain bike, the aluminium frame combined with an otherwise<br />
soft-bag structure makes it surprisingly light, and, when not in use, it folds up to 35 per cent of its full size. douchebags.com<br />
FULL-9 FUSION MIPS<br />
Bell Helmets may have<br />
a slightly amusing name,<br />
but the brand takes its<br />
work seriously. This fullface<br />
fibreglass cranium<br />
case is the MTB variant<br />
of its award-winning<br />
Moto-9 motocross shell.<br />
bellhelmets.com<br />
TRUST PERFORMANCE<br />
MESSAGE FORK<br />
FORK TO THE FUTURE<br />
Suspension so smooth you can ride<br />
the mountain drinking a cup of tea<br />
Dave Weagle is kind of a big deal in mountainbiking<br />
circles. He’s the mad professor behind<br />
the most successful rear suspension in downhill<br />
competition history – the DW-link – and now<br />
he has done the same for front forks, replacing<br />
telescopic suspension with a trailing multi-link<br />
(that’s the arm you can see behind the fork) that<br />
delivers insane stability and cushioning. <strong>The</strong> only<br />
shock is the price: £2,500. trustperformance.com<br />
100% AIRCRAFT<br />
CARBON MIPS<br />
A fancy name that<br />
describes exactly what<br />
it is: a tough shell built<br />
from an aerospace mix<br />
of carbon and Kevlar,<br />
with 25 airflow channels<br />
to keep your noggin cool.<br />
ride100percent.com<br />
114 THE RED BULLETIN
OFFICIAL SPONSOR & RACEWEAR SUPPLIER<br />
In 2011 the Madison Saracen Factory Race Team was created<br />
to develop British mountain biking talent to perform at the<br />
highest level on a British bike – now into its eighth season,<br />
few would have anticipated national champions, multiple<br />
world cup wins and two world championship victories!<br />
We are proud to continue supporting the team and we benefit from<br />
the hard work, technical feedback, development and in-race testing<br />
which in turn we pass onto you. Here’s to another great season!<br />
WWW.MADISON.CC
G U I D E<br />
Do it<br />
May / <strong>June</strong><br />
1<br />
to 2 <strong>June</strong><br />
UCI DOWNHILL<br />
WORLD CUP<br />
<strong>The</strong> Scottish Highlands have<br />
seen many battles throughout<br />
history, and that’s set to continue<br />
this <strong>June</strong> as the top downhill<br />
mountain-bikers meet on Fort<br />
William’s 2.8km track for the <strong>UK</strong><br />
leg of the World Cup. Can Tahnee<br />
Seagrave successfully defend<br />
her victory here last year?<br />
Or will Rachel Atherton, who<br />
came third after a snapped chain,<br />
claim the throne on her newly<br />
built and tested Atherton bike?<br />
Fort William, Scotland;<br />
fortwilliamworldcup.co.uk<br />
16<br />
May to 26 Aug<br />
AI: More<br />
Than Human<br />
This art exploration into our<br />
obsession with thinking<br />
machines includes a sound<br />
installation by Hyperdub label<br />
boss Kode9, based on the<br />
legend of the golem; MIT’s<br />
robotic fish, which can swim in<br />
the ocean, and Massive Attack<br />
encoding their 1998 album<br />
Mezzanine into synthetic DNA<br />
strands. Barbican, London;<br />
barbican.org.uk<br />
23<br />
5<br />
May to 26 Aug<br />
Manga<br />
<strong>The</strong> comic-book art form<br />
known as Manga is loved by<br />
adults and children alike in<br />
Japan, and has influenced<br />
Western culture through video<br />
games, cosplay, and movies<br />
such as Alita: Battle Angel.<br />
Witness the largest exhibit of<br />
Manga outside Japan, with<br />
examples from its origins in<br />
12th-century scrolls through<br />
to modern anime films.<br />
British Museum, London;<br />
britishmuseum.org<br />
to 19 <strong>June</strong><br />
David Blaine:<br />
Real or Magic<br />
If that’s a question, the answer<br />
would seem to be ‘illusion’.<br />
<strong>The</strong> US magician forever blurs<br />
the line between trickery and<br />
endurance feat; in 2010, Blaine<br />
held his breath for a recordbreaking<br />
17m 4.5s. Judge his<br />
authenticity for yourself as<br />
he embarks on this nationwide<br />
tour. Various locations, <strong>UK</strong>;<br />
livenation.co.uk<br />
to 8 <strong>June</strong><br />
Field Day<br />
This three-day party is back for a 13th year,<br />
shifting roots from its 2018 site – Brockwell Park<br />
in south London – to an epic location in the north<br />
of the city: four gigantic interlinked warehouses<br />
and 10 acres of outdoor space near Tottenham<br />
Marshes. Does that still qualify as a ‘field’ day?<br />
Few will complain with a bill that includes Diplo,<br />
Octavian, <strong>The</strong> Black Madonna, Jorja Smith and<br />
Skepta (in his only London summer festival show),<br />
with after-parties at Printworks London.<br />
<strong>The</strong> Drumsheds, Meridian Water, London;<br />
fielddayfestivals.com<br />
NATHAN HUGHES/ RED BULL CONTENT POOL, STEVE TURVEY<br />
7116 THE RED BULLETIN
G U I D E<br />
See it<br />
<strong>June</strong><br />
Hear handpicked<br />
music and<br />
interviews with<br />
influential artists.<br />
This month’s<br />
pick is…<br />
ALL THE<br />
RIGHT<br />
MOVES<br />
Whether on a Japanese<br />
dancefloor, off the<br />
cliffs of the Azores or<br />
on the trails of Austria,<br />
it’s all about freedom<br />
of expression on <strong>Red</strong><br />
Bull TV this month…<br />
WATCH<br />
RED BULL TV<br />
ANYWHERE<br />
<strong>Red</strong> Bull TV is a global digital<br />
entertainment destination<br />
featuring programming that<br />
is beyond the ordinary and is<br />
available anytime, anywhere.<br />
Go online at redbull.tv,<br />
download the app, or<br />
connect via your Smart TV.<br />
To find out more,<br />
visit redbull.tv<br />
1<br />
Hip-hop dancer<br />
Leo gets busy at<br />
the 2018 qualifiers<br />
<strong>June</strong> LIVE<br />
RED BULL DANCE YOUR<br />
STYLE: JAPAN FINAL<br />
<strong>Red</strong> Bull Dance Your Style inspires and cultivates creativity<br />
by providing a premier location for expression in dance<br />
and introducing new scenes and communities. Following<br />
the <strong>2019</strong> qualifiers in Osaka, Fukuoka and Tokyo this<br />
winter, it’s time for Japan’s national final, staged at the<br />
capital’s Warp Shinjuku venue. Don’t miss it.<br />
22<br />
<strong>June</strong> LIVE<br />
RED BULL CLIFF<br />
DIVING, PORTUGAL<br />
You’ve read our travel feature on<br />
Destination <strong>Red</strong> Bull’s exclusive Azores<br />
cliff-diving trip with Orlando Duque, now<br />
see all the leaps from the main event.<br />
9<strong>June</strong> LIVE<br />
UCI MTB WORLD<br />
CUP, LEOGANG<br />
This year, the mountain-biking World<br />
Cup is bigger and better, with eight<br />
locations for downhillers. We bring you<br />
the action from this Austrian stop.<br />
THIS<br />
SIDE OF<br />
NOWHERE<br />
17<br />
<strong>June</strong><br />
ON AIR<br />
On her monthly<br />
<strong>Red</strong> Bull Radio show<br />
(every third Monday,<br />
7pm BST), Veronica<br />
Vasicka explores the<br />
artists who have<br />
shaped the electronic<br />
underground. <strong>The</strong><br />
NYC electro queen<br />
and Minimal Wave<br />
label founder looks at<br />
the maverick spirit of<br />
DIY non-conformists,<br />
as well as the legacies<br />
of particular drum<br />
machines and the<br />
roots of synthesiser<br />
music, from Japanese<br />
synth tracks and<br />
Australian postpunk<br />
to the history<br />
of the Fairlight.<br />
LISTEN AT<br />
REDBULLRADIO.COM<br />
JASON HALAYKO/RED BULL CONTENT POOL, DEAN TREML/RED BULL CONTENT POOL, BARTEK WOLINSKI/RED BULL CONTENT POOL<br />
118 THE RED BULLETIN
WWW.INNSBRUCK.INFO<br />
#MYINNSBRUCK<br />
IKING<br />
unlimited<br />
12.6.–16.6.19<br />
HOME OF CRANKWORX INNSBRUCK<br />
Foto: Innsbruck Tourismus / Voitl<br />
CRANKWORX INNSBRUCK<br />
<strong>June</strong> is when the magic happens at Bikepark Innsbruck! From 12 to 16 <strong>June</strong>, bike heroes pull their best tricks at Crankworx Innsbruck -<br />
world tour‘s only stop in Europe. Just watching the action will be enough to give you an adrenaline rush!<br />
www.innsbruck.info/biking
THE RED<br />
BULLETIN<br />
WORLDWIDE<br />
<strong>The</strong> <strong>Red</strong><br />
<strong>Bulletin</strong> is<br />
published in seven<br />
countries. This is<br />
the cover of <strong>June</strong>’s<br />
French edition,<br />
featuring hip-hop<br />
dancer Diablo<br />
For more stories<br />
beyond the ordinary,<br />
go to: redbulletin.com<br />
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THE RED BULLETIN<br />
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120 THE RED BULLETIN
THE RED BULLETIN PROMOTION<br />
Dimitri Tordo<br />
getting<br />
sideways<br />
BORIS BEYER MARKUS GEBHARD<br />
H<br />
ow do you get your<br />
kicks? Ripping downhill<br />
tracks at the bike park?<br />
Clocking up hang time on<br />
dirt-jump lines? Nailing that<br />
perfect line on your local<br />
enduro trails? No matter<br />
what drives you and no matter<br />
where you ride, the next<br />
descent, the next big kicker,<br />
the next nail-biting landing<br />
– that’s all that counts.<br />
Shred City means something<br />
different for every rider<br />
out there, and it isn’t just<br />
the place where you send<br />
it. It’s much more: it’s a<br />
worldwide community and<br />
everyone’s invited.<br />
For Dimitri Tordo of the<br />
Canyon Factory Enduro Team,<br />
Shred City means competing<br />
at the most demanding races<br />
on the calendar and pitting<br />
himself against the world’s<br />
best riders. <strong>The</strong> season could<br />
hardly have begun better for<br />
Tordo, with the Frenchman<br />
bringing home the win at NZ<br />
Enduro in New Zealand in<br />
spite of torrential rain and<br />
treacherous conditions. But,<br />
in racing, world-class skills<br />
are just one part of the puzzle:<br />
you can only beat the best<br />
if your bike can match your<br />
ambition. And when it<br />
comes to getting the job<br />
done, Tordo and the Canyon<br />
Factory Enduro Team turn<br />
to the Strive CFR.<br />
<strong>The</strong> Strive is an enduro-racing<br />
weapon ready for the toughest<br />
stages around – and for your<br />
backyard trails. Thanks to the<br />
game-changing Shapeshifter<br />
tech, it’s possible to alter the<br />
geometry and suspension setup<br />
while riding, simply by<br />
flicking a handlebar-mounted<br />
switch. Developed and tested<br />
in Koblenz, Germany, this<br />
bike is built for the biggest<br />
challenges, from Fort William<br />
to wherever you call your<br />
local Shred City.<br />
canyon.com/strive<br />
BECOME A PART OF IT<br />
SHRED CITY<br />
Canyon<br />
Strive CFR<br />
9.0 Team<br />
Canyon is uniting<br />
riders all over the world<br />
THE RED BULLETIN 121
Action highlight<br />
Flying the flag<br />
While visiting the famous Muscle Beach in Santa Monica, California, Alexander Megos<br />
spotted the ideal photo opportunity. Being one of the world’s top rock climbers, the<br />
25-year-old German couldn’t resist putting his own highly developed delts, lats and<br />
obliques to the test with a human flag. For more Megos, go to redbull.com<br />
<strong>The</strong> next<br />
issue of<br />
THE RED BULLETIN<br />
is out on<br />
<strong>June</strong> 11<br />
KEN ETZEL/RED BULL CONTENT POOL DAVID MAYER<br />
122 THE RED BULLETIN
FAST, LIGHT, STRONG:<br />
YOU CAN HAVE IT ALL<br />
CUBE REACTION TM Pro<br />
<strong>The</strong> Reaction TM Pro is the heart of the Reaction range. To our<br />
designers, that means one thing: they can really go to town.<br />
<strong>The</strong> combination of RockShox‘s new 130mm Sektor fork and<br />
2.6in Kenda Hellkat and Nevegal 2 tyres serves up a serious<br />
dose of technical trail-taming ability, backed up by the Kind<br />
Shock LEV dropper post - so you can tackle steeps with ease<br />
- and a Newmen cockpit with 760mm handlebar for superb<br />
control. With powerful hydraulic disc brakes to keep your speed<br />
in check and Sram‘s 1x11 NX transmission with a Race Face<br />
Ride crankset, you‘ve everything you need to take the fight to<br />
the mountain... and come out on top.<br />
FRAME Aluminium Lite, Trail Motion Geometry<br />
FORK RockShox Sektor, 130mm<br />
GROUPSET Sram NX , 11-Speed<br />
BRAKES Magura MT Thirty, (180/180)<br />
WEIGHT 13,6 KG<br />
PRICE £ 1.299,-<br />
FOR MORE INFORMATION ON CUBE BIKES, AND TO LOCATE YOUR<br />
NEAREST CUBE DEALER, PLEASE VISIT WWW.CUBE.EU<br />
CUBEBIKES<strong>UK</strong> CUBEBIKES<strong>UK</strong> CUBEBIKES<strong>UK</strong>