The Red Bulletin December 2019 (UK)

UK EDITION 

WINTER 2019, £3.50 

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EDITOR’S LETTER 

CARVE OUT 

YOUR DESTINY 

In 1999, 11-year-old Sheffield lad Patrick ‘Paddy’ 

Graham went on a school ski trip. Twenty years 

later, here he is on our cover. His journey from 

the dry slopes to the wild backcountry (page 34) 

is one of breaking boundaries and realising the 

potential we all possess. In 2013, Gunner Stahl 

(page 56) picked up a friend’s 35mm camera; today, 

he’s one of rap’s most celebrated photographers. 

For Zambian Sampa Tembo (page 28), being a 

celebrated musician in her adopted home of 

Australia wasn’t enough – she needed people 

to understand where she came from. Adewale 

Akinnuoye-Agbaje (page 30) escaped racism at 

the hands of supremacist skinheads to become 

a director and make a powerful film about his 

life. Vastly different stories, all linked by an 

urge to reach beyond the limits forced upon 

us. Perhaps one day we’ll even see Greenland 

(page 66) – a frozen island nation with a one-week 

football season – playing in the World Cup. 

CONTRIBUTORS 

THIS ISSUE 

BEN READ 

The British photographer 

describes his work as 

storytelling through details, 

portraits and landscapes. He 

delivered exactly that when 

he returned from Greenland 

after covering one of the 

world’s most remote football 

tournaments. “The one thing 

that I’ll always remember is 

half-time death metal played 

through the PA system,” 

Read reveals. Page 66 

TOM WIGGINS 

The London-based former 

editor of Stuff magazine has 

been playing video games 

since before most of the 

competitors at the F1 Esports 

Pro Series were even born. 

But, upon meeting them for 

our story this issue, it was 

clear that these gamers had 

already put in more hours 

of play than him. “They take 

it incredibly seriously,” 

reports Wiggins. Page 46 

Gian Paul Lozza shoots Paddy Graham in Italy, as captured 

by our cover-story writer, Hugh Francis Anderson. Page 34 

GIAN PAUL LOZZA (COVER) 

06 THE RED BULLETIN

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SWISS PRECISION

CONTENTS 

Winter 2019 

66 

“Team coach? What team coach?” Football in Greenland is strictly a grassroots affair 

BEN READ 

10 High water mark: a drone’s-eye 

view of kayaking 

12 Riding high: BMX hits new peaks 

in the mountains of France 

13 Dam risky: slacklining gets dark 

in Tasmania 

14 Deep impact: the aftermath of 

a wipeout in French Polynesia 

16 Sound of speed: US singer/ 

guitarist Brittany Howard’s 

road-trip playlist 

18 Fully loaded: freewheeling with 

the van-life movement 

20 Star mix: meet the astronaut 

who DJed live from the ISS 

23 Mech believe: the exo-skeleton 

that turns you superhuman 

24 Snuffed movies: posters for films 

that were never made 

28 Sampa the Great 

Home truths from Zambia’s 

queen of conscious rap 

30 Adewale 

Akinnuoye-Agbaje 

The British actor/director on 

rewriting his ‘racist’ past 

32 Jordan Belfort 

The Wolf of Wall Street on 

power, prison and penance 

34 Paddy Graham 

The tale of a kid from Sheffield 

who became freeskiing royalty 

46 F1 Esports Pro Series 

How virtual racing is changing 

the real-life world of motorsports 

56 Gunner Stahl 

The man who snaps trap 

66 Greenlandic football 

Inside the Arctic league where 

a ‘winter break’ lasts an eternity 

81 First-grade kit: the best wireless 

headphones, cold-climate boots, 

biking tech and more 

88 Slope style: all the snow gear 

that’s fit to be seen in at ski 

resorts this season 

100 Ice breaker: The Red Bulletin 

joins surfer Kyle Hofseth in 

his search for the perfect wave 

amid the glaciers of Alaska 

105 Get my drift: what Mario Kart 

can teach you about yourself 

106 One part inspiration, nine parts 

perspiration: ultrarunning ace 

Christian Schiester has a secret 

training weapon – the sauna 

109 Events that are not to be missed 

110 Winter highlights on Red Bull TV 

134 Skate of grace: kickflipping 

in the USA 

THE RED BULLETIN 09

LITTLE WHITE SALMON 

RIVER, WASHINGTON 

In full flow 

“Drones have changed the world of photography 

and film by allowing people to document and 

create images from places they could not 

physically get to.” So says Karim Iliya, the 

Hawaii-based filmmaker and photographer 

behind this incredible aerial shot, taken 

in slow exposure by drone as kayakers Knox 

Hammack and Adrian Mattern held their 

place in an eddy. “You now have a threedimensional 

space where the only limitations 

are your imagination and your ability to 

operate the drone,” Iliya adds. 

Instagram: @karimiliya 

11

AIGUILLE ROUGE, 

LES ARCS, FRANCE 

Riding 

high 

BMX star Matthias Dandois steps 

into his skis after completing 

a world first in his sport, riding 

flatland at an altitude of 3,226m 

atop the snow and ice of Aiguille 

Rouge, France. Photographer 

Andy Parant captured not only this 

moment but the entire adventure, 

creating an amazing edit of Dandois’ 

ride above the clouds. “With a 

temperature of -23°C, 62 per cent 

of the oxygen you get at sea level, 

and a slippery, frozen platform, it 

was definitely the most challenging 

shoot of my life,” says Dandois. 

“But we pulled it off and I’m stoked 

about the results!” 

Instagram: @andy_parant

GORDON DAM, 

TASMANIA 

Giant 

steps 

It’s easy to miss Preston Bruce 

Alden in this night-time shot: the 

slackliner is just a small red dot 

against the vast, dark backdrop 

of Tasmania’s Gordon Dam. This 

image of the American walking his 

line 450m above the ground 

earned local adventure filmmaker 

and photographer Simon Bischoff 

a place in the semi-final of Red 

Bull Illume’s monthly Best of 

Instagram competition. 

Instagram: @simonbischoff 

13

TEAHUPO‘O, 

FRENCH POLYNESIA 

Shock 

wave 

We’re used to seeing what happens 

when surfing goes right, but what 

about when it goes wrong? Here, 

photographer Ben Thouard captures 

a terrifying moment in March this 

year when Hawaiian surfer Ryan G 

had to fight against the tide 

underwater following a serious 

wipeout. “Things don’t always 

go as planned,” said Thouard in 

the accompanying caption on 

Instagram. “@bigizlandryan 

escaping the washing machine!” 

Instagram: @benthouard

15

BRITTANY HOWARD 

“As a 

driver, 

I’m 60% 

offensive” 

A drive across the US inspired 

the Alabama Shakes singer’s 

solo debut album. Here, she 

shares four road-trip classics 

Brittany Howard has been the 

lead singer/guitarist of rootsrockers 

Alabama Shakes since 

2009. Formed at high school in 

Athens, Alabama, the band went 

on to record two UK Top 10 

albums and win four Grammys. 

Last year, following severe 

writer’s block, Howard decided 

to move to California and launch 

a solo career. The songs on 

Jaime – her debut album, on 

which she displays a soft spot for 

psychedelic funk and hip-hop 

loops – were conceived during 

a road trip from the Pacific 

Northwest to Los Angeles via 

Nashville. Here are four songs 

that inspire the 31-year-old when 

she’s behind the wheel… 

Brittany Howard’s album Jaime 

is out now; brittanyhoward.com 

Mal Waldron 

All Alone (1966) 

“I really enjoy listening to this 

track by [jazz pianist] Mal 

Waldron when I’m in the car, 

because it’s so dreamy. My 

mind can just kind of float off 

and wonder and think, and 

that’s always nice. When 

driving, I like to listen to music 

that doesn’t have any words – 

it’s nice to focus on just the 

music and the arrangement.” 

Nina Simone 

Lilac Wine (1966) 

“This song is so sad, but really 

beautiful, too. There’s this 

little [tom-tom drum] played 

throughout the track that I’m 

absolutely in love with. It’s 

only a tiny detail, but I’m like, 

‘Wow, I feel like I’m in a jungle 

at dusk somewhere and 

I’m depressed.’ I just love it. 

I wouldn’t put it on in the Los 

Angeles traffic, though.” 

Betty Davis 

They Say I’m Different (1974) 

“I would say that as a driver I’m 

60 per cent offensive, 40 per 

cent defensive. In LA, you’ve 

got to be, right? Sometimes 

you’ve got to be an animal out 

there. And you need something 

kind of upbeat, so that you feel 

better about sitting in traffic. 

In those situations, I would 

listen to this [funk] classic. 

It’s a good one.” 

IDLES 

Danny Nedelko (2018) 

“My moods change and sometimes, 

when I’m feeling like a badass, 

I’ll listen to some metal music. 

I really like AC/DC and that English 

band IDLES. I love Danny Nedelko, 

because it’s perfect for our 

interstates. OK, so [the law] says 

you have to drive at 70 [mph], but 

really you can go 80. It’s like an 

unspoken [agreement], and if we 

do go 80, they can’t stop us all.” 

BRANTLEY GUTIERREZ MARCEL ANDERS 

16 THE RED BULLETIN

this girl who told me she was 

buying a van, turning it into a 

house and spending the entire 

summer rock-climbing, and it 

blew my mind. So I got my own 

used van for around $10,000 

[just over £8,000] that I could 

both lie down and stand up in, 

and I converted it in about five 

months. Most of the conversion 

I did myself with my ex-boyfriend 

by copying YouTube videos.” 

Here, Lindsay shares five 

tips on how to convert your 

own adventure vehicle and live 

the van life, too. 

onechicktravels.com 

Ventilate and seal your 

van properly 

“Rust and mould are the two 

most damaging and difficult 

things to catch and fix in a van. 

Be really careful about how 

you seal your vehicle when 

you ventilate it.” 

VAN LIFE 

The road to 

freedom 

Surf, jam, live in a van – rock climber and 

blogger Kaya Lindsay offers tips on how to 

lead a vagabond adventure lifestyle… 

Would you ever consider 

selling your house, giving away 

your belongings to charity and 

starting a new life on the open 

road? This is the philosophy 

of ‘van life’, a movement in which 

people liberate themselves from 

daily constraints by converting a 

vehicle into a moving home and 

driving into the sunset in search 

of adventure, with the aim of 

living and working off-grid. 

Rock climber and blogger 

Kaya Lindsay has lived the 

majority of the past three years 

in her 2006 Mercedes-Benz 

Dodge Sprinter van after giving 

up her flat in California and 

going freelance. Visitors to her 

YouTube channel will find not 

only van-conversion tips – her 

time-lapse video of a full build 

has had more than 1.6 million 

views – but profiles of fellow 

female van-lifers, too. 

Of her own conversion to the 

lifestyle, Lindsay recalls, “I met 

Read Marie Kondo’s 

book The Life-Changing 

Magic of Tidying Up 

“Get very specific on what 

you want to bring with you. 

I got rid of everything except 

for three drawers of clothes 

and some toiletries.” 

Be flexible 

“You have to be able to absorb 

any catastrophe. Being resilient 

and able to cope with things 

going wrong unexpectedly is 

an essential quality when living 

in a van.” 

Be respectful of the 

space around you 

“I see people dumping coffee 

grounds in parking lots, or 

spitting their toothpaste onto 

the ground. You need to be 

mindful of where you are and 

what’s appropriate.” 

Find something that 

you love to do and make 

that your journey 

“There’s a perception that 

van life is always romantic. 

To be happy, however, you need 

a reason to be on the road; 

something powerful enough 

to keep you there.” 

LOU BOYD 

18 THE RED BULLETIN

PROTEST.EU

INTERSTELLAR TUNES 

Super star DJ 

This summer, 400km above the earth, the International 

Space Station treated partygoers to a historic set 

“Got any Orbital?” Luca Parmitano rocks the boat in Ibiza from 

the International Bass – sorry, Space – Station 

Usually, when a DJ set is 

described as being ‘out of this 

world’, it’s in reference to the 

selection of tunes or the mixing 

skills of the person behind the 

decks. The phrase was given 

new meaning this August, 

however, when Italian 

astronaut Luca Parmitano 

became the first person ever 

to DJ live from space. 

The 43-year-old worked 

with well-known German DJ 

Le Shuuk to create the historic 

set, using specialised software 

loaded onto a tablet in the 

International Space Station. 

Then, on the big day, Parmitano 

was projected live onto a huge 

screen watched by 3,000 

clubbers on board a party ship 

moored in the Balearic Islands. 

“I’d like to welcome you on 

board the Columbus module, 

the European lab on board the 

International Space Station,” 

he said, introducing the set. 

“The most amazing cooperation 

of space agencies in the world.” 

This groundbreaking event 

was a collaboration between 

the European Space Agency 

and German-based nightlife 

brand BigCityBeats, whose 

floating electronic music 

festival in Ibiza – World Club 

Dome Cruise Edition – received 

Parmitano’s broadcast. 

“I had tears in my eyes and 

goosebumps when I saw Luca 

raise the World Club Dome flag 

on the Space Station,” said 

BigCityBeats CEO Bernd Breiter 

after the performance. “When 

the music started to play during 

the broadcast from space, 

I can’t even begin to describe 

my feelings in that moment. 

“This has been my dream 

for many years: to create the 

first club in space and, on a 

much broader scale, to connect 

science and music. I hope it will 

inspire generations to come.” 

bigcitybeats.tv 

BIG CITY BEATS LOU BOYD 

20 THE RED BULLETIN

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Skeleton crew: with 

a pilot at the helm, 

Prosthesis can hit 

speeds of 30kph 

SAM CARTER, JONATHAN TIPPETT LOU BOYD 

This 3.5 tonne, 4m-tall, fourlegged 

monster might look like 

a robotic villain straight out 

of a Michael Bay movie, but in 

reality it’s not a robot at all. 

Prosthesis, created by luxury 

electronics brand Furrion, is an 

entirely human-powered exobionic 

skeleton that amplifies 

the strength and speed of the 

person inside it. “It is an ‘antirobot’,” 

says its creator, Furrion 

CTO Jonathan Tippett. “It is a 

suit – it’s an extension of the 

pilot’s body and relies 100 per 

cent on their movements for 

every move it makes.” 

This innovative machine, 

or ‘mech’, was inspired by 

Tippett’s passion for action 

sports. “Growing up, I derived 

great satisfaction from mountain 

biking, snowboarding, martial 

arts and riding sport bikes,” 

he says. “Much like these sports, 

piloting a mech is a celebration 

of physical mastery and human 

skill. In this case, it takes the 

form of controlling an 8500lb 

FURRION 

Power dresser 

The world’s first exo-skeleton racing machine puts humans in the driving seat 

[3,600kg], 200hp, giant fourlegged 

exo-skeleton.” 

The company is currently 

working on the next generation 

of the mech, and hopes to launch 

its own X1-Mech Racing League 

for a “whole new breed of 

athlete” to compete in trials and 

races inside the machines. “Any 

moderately fit person can pilot 

a mech,” says Tippett. “How 

much power and strength it 

takes depends on how fast and 

hard you want to go. If you can 

ride blue runs or pop an ollie, with 

practice you could strap into one 

of these beasts, tame the power 

and make it do your bidding.” 

furrion.com 

THE RED BULLETIN 23

LOST MOVIE ART 

As not seen 

on screen 

Illustrator Fernando Reza has an unusual passion: 

he designs posters for films that don’t exist 

Tim Burton’s Superman Lives, 

Alfred Hitchcock’s Kaleidoscope, 

Quentin Tarantino’s prequel to 

Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs 

– what do these three films have 

in common? They don’t exist. 

Cast but never made, they’re 

among the forgotten movies that 

didn’t make it to the big screen. 

Illustrator Fernando Reza has 

now created a series of posters 

that imagine what some of these 

lost features would have looked 

like if they’d been released. “I 

recall hearing rumours about all 

these unfinished movies and 

finding it super-intriguing,” he 

says. “It was the early days of the 

internet, so there was very little 

information out there – a quick 

line or maybe just the title – but 

it sparked my imagination. I 

thought it would be cool to delve 

into the production history of the 

films and put an image to them.” 

Reza’s posters are available 

online as numbered art prints, 

each with a historically authentic 

replica cinema ticket, and the 

release of a book is planned. 

“The good thing is that there 

is such an interest in unmade 

films,” Reza says. “There are 

documentaries about Superman 

Lives and Jodorowsky’s Dune, 

and a book about Kubrick’s 

Napoleon. There’s so much 

curiosity about the ‘what ifs’ of 

cinema history. I’m putting an 

image to what could have been.” 

frodesignco.com 

Clockwise from top left: Tarantino’s 

The Vega Brothers (shelved in 

2007); Kaleidoscope (1967); Orson 

Welles’ Heart Of Darkness (1939); 

Superman Lives (1998) 

LOU BOYD 

24 THE RED BULLETIN

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Sampa The Great 

Homecoming 

queen 

Born in Zambia and based in Australia, the 

rising star of conscious rap explains how 

returning home can shape your future 

Words FLORIAN OBKIRCHER Photography BARUN CHATTERJEE 

In March last year, Sampa Tembo, 

better known as Sampa the Great, 

won the Australian Music Prize for 

her mixtape Birds And The BEE9. 

Winning the accolade – which, 

much like the UK’s Mercury Prize, 

is awarded for creative excellence 

rather than album sales – is a 

prestigious achievement for any 

musician Down Under. The thing is, 

Tembo isn’t Australian; she moved 

there from her home country of 

Zambia in 2014 to study audio 

production. However, when the 

rapper’s first release, 2015’s The 

Great Mixtape, began gaining 

positive attention, many Australian 

magazines conveniently named her 

one of their own. The topic of home 

runs throughout the 19 tracks on 

her official debut album, The Return, 

released on UK label Ninja Tune. 

Here, the 26-year-old explains why 

she shot the video for her single 

Final Form in Zambia, and how she 

overcame her insecurities… 

the red bulletin: What inspired 

you shoot the Final Form video 

in Zambia and feature your friends 

and parents in it? 

sampa the great: I’m based in 

Australia and started my professional 

career there, but at the same time 

I’d never performed at home, never 

had a song on radio [in Zambia]. 

All of a sudden, I’m being played on 

the radio in Australia, doing live 

shows there, and people are calling 

me Australian. And Zambians 

are like, “How come she never 

performed here in front of us?” 

How did it feel going back? 

It was like coming full circle, that the 

place I grew up in could eventually 

experience me as an artist. I have 

no qualms about people saying I’m 

Australia-based, but it’s only half 

the truth. My friends at home are 

like, “We know where you’re from,” 

and I say, “I’m not controlling this!” 

So it felt important for me to tell 

people the story of who I am, rather 

than having other people create this 

narrative for me. 

What does returning home 

mean to you? Does it make you 

feel more grounded? 

The way we were raised, there was 

no space to be big-headed. As soon 

as it happened, my parents were 

like, “Cut that down.” Going home 

reassures your growth. It’s like, this 

is where you came from and this is 

what you’re doing. That’s important, 

because sometimes we forget to look 

back and see how much we’ve grown. 

How have you grown in the 

past few years? 

The assurance within myself has 

grown a lot. I’m doing what I know 

I was born to do. In the beginning 

there was so much doubt, because 

no one in my family had attempted 

a career in music. Now that I’m 

doing it – and enjoying it – there’s 

a bigger sense of assurance. Within 

the process, confidence and self-love 

have grown as well. And also the 

willingness to learn and work on my 

weaknesses, instead of just being 

like, “Yeah, nah!” 

How did you overcome any doubts 

you had? 

Definitely though conversations with 

people. The one thing that creates 

insecurity is the feeling that you’re 

going through something alone. 

Whoever I meet, I always want 

to converse with them about life, 

because it helps you to appreciate 

that we all share many fears and 

insecurities. When you see these 

are common things that people 

struggle with, you know that it’s 

OK to feel that way and to seek 

knowledge to get better. 

You once said a good student 

not only tries to master the things 

they’re good at, but also the things 

they’re really bad at. What have 

you attempted to master while 

working on The Return? 

So many things. For time’s sake, I’d 

say perspective. With The Return, it 

was like, “Oh, I can’t get to go home, 

because of this and that.” I was 

consumed by it, until I met people 

in situations where they couldn’t go 

back home so they had to create 

a new one for themselves. I had to 

step back and see that the small 

discomfort and displacement I was 

feeling was nothing compared with 

theirs. My perspective of how I’m 

blessed was definitely challenged. 

Did you take any action as a result 

of that realisation? 

I asked myself the question: “What 

do you do with this privilege?” For 

me it’s like, if I have an opportunity 

to go home, I’m going to share what 

I know. If I have the opportunity, 

I’d like to teach Zambians who’ve 

never been there about our home 

and culture. It’s that perspective of 

knowing that you have something 

someone else doesn’t, that they 

would [gain] value from. It feels like 

a duty to the diaspora, being able to 

teach these things. 

Sampa The Great’s debut album, 

The Return, is out now on Ninja Tune; 

sampathegreat.com 

28 THE RED BULLETIN

“It felt 

important to 

tell people 

the story of 

who I am” 

THE RED BULLETIN 29

“There’s 

always hope 

if you never 

give up”

Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje 

AUSTIN HARGRAVE/AUGUST 

Second 

skin 

Life was hell for the British actor/director 

as a self-hating teen in a racist gang. But he 

found the strength to rewrite his story 

Words JESS HOLLAND 

How does a black kid growing up in 

1980s Essex become a member of a 

white supremacist skinhead gang? 

Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje provides 

an answer in his big-screen directorial 

debut, Farming. The film tells the 

story of the actor/director’s own 

upbringing as a kid fostered – or 

“farmed out”, hence the title – by 

Nigerian parents to a white family in 

a rough port town where brutal racist 

violence was rife. Ignored and unloved 

at home and targeted on the streets, 

Akinnuoye-Agbaje was forced by his 

foster father to fight back against 

his attackers, and this earned him 

a measure of recognition from his 

oppressors for being unafraid to 

fight. This tiny taste of validation 

was enough reward for him to join 

the gang, who alternated quasitoleration 

with abuse. 

With some luck, hard work, 

and the intervention of educators, 

Akinnuoye-Agbaje escaped the 

hopeless path he was on and earned 

a law degree. He then underwent 

further transformations, moving to 

LA to become an actor and appearing 

on TV shows such as Oz, Lost and 

Game of Thrones while figuring out 

how to tell his own story. Few people 

get the chance to write and direct a 

feature film of their own life, but then, 

as Farming shows, few people are 

like Akinnuoye-Agbaje. Here, he tells 

The Red Bulletin how he overcame 

the self-loathing instilled in him and 

learnt to believe in his own future. 

the red bulletin: Farming 

shows how powerful a sense 

of belonging can be, even when 

it’s found in a dangerous and 

degrading environment… 

adewale akinnuoye-agbaje: In 

this story, young black children 

are placed in an environment that’s 

alien to them, where they are the 

only black children there. Their 

exposure to African culture really 

came through the media, whether 

it was Tarzan, Alf Garnett or Jim 

Davidson – these people regularly 

spewing racial slurs. When you’re 

constantly being exposed to that 

kind of language and then you’re 

physically abused on the street 

as well, and you don’t have any 

positive cultural references or role 

models, you begin to identify with 

the derogatory images. 

When my own father sent me 

out to stand up against the bullies, 

when I took that advice and started 

to fight back, I suddenly started 

to get noticed for something other 

than my colour. And that became 

a lifeline, because all of a sudden 

people were actually calling me 

by my name. It gave me a sense of 

validation. Don’t get me wrong, 

I was by no means accepted in the 

gang: you were always considered 

a tool, an asset that was useful in a 

fight against other gangs, and you 

were quickly made aware of who 

you are and what you were. But, 

still, it allowed you to be able to 

at least walk a little more freely 

on the street. That’s how you end 

up in that situation. 

How did you alter this path? 

The pivotal point was the passing 

of my first exam. It wasn’t a great 

grade – a C or C-minus – but it was 

the fact that when I applied myself 

I could achieve something; I’d always 

been told that I couldn’t do that. It 

was an epiphany for me. But it took 

time, coming out of that environment 

and being in a more multicultural 

environment; having my first 

girlfriend of colour was huge as well. 

It was a torturous and arduous 

process, because there was so much 

self-hatred, self-doubt and low selfesteem. 

Once, I was trying to solve 

this legal problem and I just couldn’t 

do it. I would smash up the furniture 

because it was so frustrating and I 

felt helpless and incapable. A friend 

gave me this pill that he used to take 

to stay up late, so I took it and we 

stayed up all night and solved the 

problem. At the end, I asked what it 

was, and he said it was just a vitamin 

tablet and [the remedy] was all in my 

mind. Little lessons like that started 

to help me see my own ability. 

Do you have advice for anyone 

who feels trapped? 

The only thing I can say is that 

there’s always hope if you never give 

up. You have to believe in yourself 

and trust that if you survive that far 

you can always keep going. 

There are other transitions you’ve 

made since: from lawyer to actor 

to writer and director… 

And from self-hatred to self-love. 

It’s all about empowering yourself 

through your own accomplishments, 

not seeking out validation, but 

validating yourself. 

Your story shows an extraordinary 

ability to adapt and survive… 

My upbringing in Tilbury [Essex] 

has given me a fearlessness about 

life and [the sense] that nothing’s 

impossible. You just get on with it. 

I’d never written a screenplay before, 

but it became award-winning. I’d 

never directed before; it became 

award-winning. The key is just to be 

fearless and go and do it, because 

you never know unless you try. 

Farming is on limited release at 

cinemas across the UK; 

hanwayfilms.com/farming-1 

THE RED BULLETIN 31

Jordan Belfort 

Soul 

trader 

How the Wolf of Wall Street 

realised that an old dog can 

learn new tricks 

Words TOM GUISE 

What changed you? 

The first epiphany was when I got 

sober, in ’97. I’m not saying I’ve never 

done a drug or had a drink since – I’m 

no saint – but I don’t abuse anything 

any more. The next was when I got 

indicted. The biggest epiphany 

wasn’t jail – it was writing my book. 

I had to examine all the things I’d 

done. It allowed me to become the 

man my parents had first sent into 

the world. I was always a good kid – 

I just took a left turn at Albuquerque. 

In September 1998, Jordan Belfort 

was arrested by the FBI for moneylaundering 

and securities fraud. You 

know the story. Maybe you’ve read it 

in his 2007 autobiography, The Wolf 

of Wall Street, adapted into a feature 

film by director Martin Scorsese and 

starring Leonardo DiCaprio as Belfort. 

It’s a vigorous account of the pitfalls of 

excessive greed and vice; a cautionary 

tale or a glorification, depending on 

who you ask. “‘Glamorises’ is a better 

word,” says Belfort himself. “Because 

let’s not mince words: it’s glamorous. 

But that doesn’t make it right.” 

In the early ’90s, Belfort’s New York 

brokerage firm, Stratton Oakmont, 

fleeced investors of hundreds of 

millions of dollars in a penny stocks 

‘pump and dump’ scheme. He spent 

22 months in prison and had to pay 

restitution. “My only regret is that 

I lost people money,” he says today. 

“Everything else, that’s my life.” 

At 57, Belfort is now peddling a 

different stock – motivation – and 

making comparable dough (“$20,000 

for a one-hour speech”). “When 

I was young, I didn’t use that power 

responsibly. As an older – hopefully 

wiser – man, it’s important that my 

message, grounded in ethics and 

integrity, brings value to people. 

Used benignly, it’s a wonderful thing.” 

the red bulletin: You founded 

Stratton Oakmont at 27. What was 

the world like to you at that time? 

jordan belfort: Smaller, a preinternet 

age – you only knew what 

you saw on the news. I wasn’t born 

rich; I thought I should act the way 

characters in movies did. ‘Rich’ was 

Dallas, Dynasty, Gordon Gekko… 

It’s different to what kids value now 

– everything’s Instagram. 

At Stratton Oakmont’s peak, how 

much money were you making? 

A day? About a quarter million 

dollars, $30,000 an hour, $5,000 

a minute. It wasn’t just me, it was 

everybody. I had all these kids that 

had no business earning more than 

minimum wage, all making a million 

dollars a year. It was a free-for-all. 

Moral judgement aside, you clearly 

possess a talent. What is it? 

Not being scared to be wrong. I act 

on my ideas, sometimes to my own 

detriment. When you’re looking for 

niches, you see the world in a 

different way. It’s like a muscle you 

develop. Most people have the ability 

to come up with amazing ideas, but 

they don’t let them blossom, because 

they know they’ll never act on them. 

DiCaprio likened your speeches at 

Stratton Oakmont to Braveheart… 

I was blessed with the ability to be 

a motivator. But if you just say to 

people, “You’re capable of greatness, 

go out there,” it’s probably bullshit. 

Most people don’t have a natural 

ability to do extreme things; I found 

a system that made them master 

communicators. I’d say, “I don’t care 

what you did in the past, or if you’re 

a loser… I’ll show you how to be 

infinitely more effective as humans.” 

Could you have done things 

differently? 

Many times. When I first took 

a bag of money, I rationalised that 

everyone was doing it. The biggest 

mistake was smuggling money into 

Switzerland. I thought, “It’s not 

going to end well.” That’s when the 

drugs started to cloud my judgement. 

I lost control somewhere around ’93. 

You wrote it in prison, right? 

It was more teaching myself. I ripped 

up the pages and rewrote the whole 

thing when I got out. My cellmate was 

Tommy Chong, from [stoner comedy 

duo] Cheech and Chong. I’d never 

have done this if it wasn’t for him. He 

gave me one piece of advice: if you’re 

going to write about your life, choose 

the craziest and the saddest parts – no 

one wants to read about the mundane. 

Now they’ve made an immersive 

show of your story… 

Like when I lost control of Stratton, 

the story has grown beyond me. I’m 

glad people can look at my life and 

find enjoyment and empowerment. 

I’m not involved in the show – I sold 

the rights and I wish them well – but 

I’m doing a deal on Broadway that 

would be a different take, a musical. 

We imagine you’re effective at 

negotiating royalties… 

I’m pretty good. But most important 

is having a great product – if it sucks, 

you’re not going to make any money. 

As a different kind of speaker 

today, give us a pep talk… 

I’ll give you three tidbits. One, delay 

your gratification – good things take 

time. Two, you can’t be half-pregnant 

when it comes to integrity; either 

you’re ethical or not, because your 

line starts to move. And three, learn 

to communicate and influence; it’s 

a skill that will change your life. 

Will you be going to heaven or hell? 

I’m going to heaven. I’m very proud 

of the way I live today. I think I’ve 

paid off my debt, but things probably 

don’t work that way. 

The Wolf of Wall Street immersive 

show is on now; immersivewolf.com 

JULIEN MIGNOT/CONTOUR BY GETTY IMAGES 

32 THE RED BULLETIN

“I was making 

$30,000 an 

hour, $5,000 

a minute” 

THE RED BULLETIN 33

King of the wild frontier 

How a city kid from Britain’s industrial north helped 

shape the future of backcountry skiing 

Words HUGH FRANCIS ANDERSON 

Photography GIAN PAUL LOZZA 

34

Stelvio glacier, Italy, 2019: 

Paddy Graham in his element 

– the mountain air

Paddy Graham 

“I learnt to ski on 

dry slopes, which 

is a lot different 

to growing up on 

snow like most of 

my competition” 

On Japan’s 

north island of 

Hokkaido lies 

Mount Kariba. 

In winter, its 1,520m peak becomes 

blanketed in dense snow. This is 

Shimamaki snowcat country, so-called 

because only these big-tracked 

snowmobiles can take skiers to the peak 

for some of the world’s deepest powder 

skiing. If you had journeyed to the top 

in January, you would have witnessed a 

mesmerising sight: skiers exploding from 

the thick drifts, launching through giant 

balls of pow nested in the trees, and 

blowing cold smoke in their wake as they 

carved, buttered and jumped through this 

untouched backcountry, all sporting the 

same unmistakable blue-and-orange skis. 

These guys are ski-film collective 

Legs of Steel, and you can marvel at 

this majestic moment in their latest 

production, 121, named after the 

revolutionary ski they’re all using. One 

of the film’s stars, Italian Markus Eder, 

wore the ski to become this year’s 

Freeride World Tour champion. It seems 

like destiny – his Red Bull profile page 

reads: “Like every little kid from the 

smallest town in the mountains, he 

learnt to ski right after learning to walk.” 

For another of the film’s protagonists, 

it wasn’t quite so preordained… 

“I learnt to ski on dry slopes, which is 

a lot different from growing up on snow 

like most of my competition,” says Paddy 

Graham in his gentle, fading Sheffield 

accent. “Coming from a nation that 

doesn’t have skiing in the back garden 

was a struggle at first,” the born-and-bred 

Yorkshireman readily admits. But Graham 

has demonstrably proven otherwise. Over 

the past decade, he has ascended to the 

pinnacle of his sport, becoming Britain’s 

number-one freeskier and co-founding 

Legs of Steel. Today, Graham shreds 

mountains with the best of them. 

It’s October and the snow season is still 

months away, but Graham has been 

shooting The Red Bulletin’s cover story at 

Prinoth X Camp, a year-round ski resort 

3,450m up the Stelvio glacier in northern 

Italy. He fires up his old Land Rover 

Defender and, as the afternoon light and 

deep mountain shadows filter through 

the windscreen, we descend the highest 

road in the Eastern Alps, the Stelvio Pass. 

Moustachioed, with tufts of dark hair 

emerging from beneath his sun-faded 

Red Bull cap, Graham’s face wears a 

cheeky, ever-present smirk. 

“My girlfriend gave me that cat,” 

he says, pointing to a small figurine on 

the dashboard. “And that’s Chad,” he 

chuckles, this time pointing to a miniature 

36 THE RED BULLETIN

Snow patrol: Paddy 

Graham, an adrenalinchasing 

multiple 

champion, is Britain's 

top freeskier

Game-changer: Paddy’s 

Revolt 121 skis have been 

developed by the skiers 

with the R&D team at Völkl

Paddy Graham 

plastic lifeguard doing a pull-up on his 

rear-view mirror. “They’re my mascots.” 

Paddy Graham’s life, as we’ll discover, 

has been filled with mascots. 

It wasn’t until the age of 11, and a 

school trip to the USA, that the notion 

of skiing first presented itself to him. “I 

wanted to go because I’d seen pictures of 

my dad skiing when he was younger, but 

obviously I had to go and learn,” Graham 

recalls. “I was always active as a kid, but 

was never into playing football. Every 

summer, my parents would send me and 

my brother to sports camps to keep us off 

the streets, but I never had that one thing 

that I really liked, so my parents took me 

to the dry ski slope to see if I actually 

liked it.” That was the famed Sheffield Ski 

Village, one of Europe’s largest artificial 

ski slopes, which included a freestyle park 

equipped with a half pipe, quarter pipe, 

kicker, hip jump and grind rails before 

it burned down in 2012. “I saw people 

doing airs and tricks and I was like, 

‘This is sick, I want to do this.’” By the 

end of the three-day beginner course, 

he was hooked. 

Graham dedicated himself to 

practising on the dry slopes; slight 

and sure-footed, he took to park 

skiing quickly. By 13, he’d attracted his 

first sponsor, US manufacturer Line Skis, 

and joined a local team of fellow British 

skiers – a feat made more impressive by 

the fact that at this point Graham had 

only ever skied snow on that US school 

trip and a summer holiday at France’s 

Tignes glacier. “I was tiny and just skiing 

around. I didn’t have any race training. 

The others, who’d all done racing, were 

like, ‘Oh God, we need to teach you how 

to ski.’ We called ourselves the Kneesall 

Massive, after the [Nottinghamshire] 

town that one of the guys, Andy Bennett, 

now a coach on the British team, came 

from,” Graham laughs. “My coaching 

came from skiing with these guys.” 

“I was tiny and 

just skiing around. 

I didn’t have any 

race training” 

Airs and graces: Graham 

caught the skiing bug early 

THE RED BULLETIN 39

Up in the air: 

“Freeskiing is all about 

enjoying the mountain,” 

says Graham 

40 THE RED BULLETIN

Paddy Graham 

“There are no rules 

and no one can tell 

you what to do or 

how to do it” 

With these comrades, who Graham 

affectionately names Bungle, Noddy and 

Slave Monkey, a community was born. 

Another trip to Tignes ensued and, once 

he hit 16 and his GCSEs were done and 

dusted, a season in the French ski resort 

of Serre Chevalier beckoned. “My 

learning curve accelerated, since snow’s 

easier and more forgiving than plastic 

matting. I learnt how to jump on 20m 

kickers rather than 5m ones, doing cork 

720s, 900s and the half pipe,” he says. 

“As I got older, I started powder skiing 

rather than cheeky runs next to the slope, 

so I had to really concentrate on my style 

and technique.” Meanwhile, back home 

during summers, he was making ends 

meet collecting trolleys at Asda and 

landscape gardening in a local caravan 

park. “I strived to outgrow the UK scene. 

People took me more seriously when I 

came second in slopestyle at the Austrian 

Open – it was one of the biggest events at 

the time and the whole scene was there 

watching, so that made some noise.” 

At this time, Graham appeared on 

Christian Stevenson’s Channel 5 

show RAD and Discovery’s Snow 

Patrol; it was the perfect moment for him 

to start making films himself. “When I 

started spending more time on snow, my 

friends and I would always go filming. To 

get standout shots, you have to venture 

further than the terrain park,” he says. 

“We’d always ski powder, small lines, in 

the streets and urban spots. I realised the 

park had boundaries that the rest of the 

mountain did not – taking tricks into 

powder and hitting natural features 

created a new challenge.” 

He wasn’t the only one coming to 

this realisation; it was a moment of huge 

change in the skiing community. With 

the development of powder skis – wider 

and more capable of tackling deep 

backcountry snow – a new discipline was 

born. “Freeskiing is all about enjoying the 

mountain,” says Graham. “There are no 

rules and no one can tell you what to do 

or how to do it.” 

Graham’s newfound freedom on the 

slopes demanded a lifestyle to match – he 

THE RED BULLETIN 41

Paddy Graham 

REVOLT 121 

SKIS 

“When you see 

the ski being 

made, it’s like 

a big puzzle: 

all these layers 

of material go 

into a big press 

that bakes 

them together” 

Paddy Graham 

MULTILAYER 

WOOD CORE 

Durable, hard beech 

at boot area; lighter 

poplar surround 

TIGHT RADIUS 

AT CENTRE 

For short, 

aggressive turns 

ARCHED FOR 

POP AND GRIP 

Underfoot camber 

adds edge-hold 

when carving 

TOUGH CASING 

Core is wrapped in 

a composite and 

fibreglass sheath 

WIDE-RADIUS 

TIP AND TAIL 

For long arching 

turns at high speed 

needed to find bigger sponsorship to go 

full-time. “We always had a photographer 

with us on trips; brands liked this as we 

could create content for them,” he says. 

“When I was 18, I got picked up by Völkl 

and never looked back.” 

With the German ski manufacturer’s 

support, in 2009 Graham moved to the 

Austrian town of Innsbruck and, with 

fellow skiers Bene Mayr, Thomas 

Hlawitschka and Tobi Reindl, co-founded 

Legs of Steel. “We were filming for 

another European movie at the time, but 

wanted to do our own thing so we could 

go on the trips we wanted and have the 

music we wanted.” Their first film, The 

Pilot, was released in time for the 2010- 

2011 season. “There was a lot of powder 

skiing and backcountry, then we 

organised our own crazy park jump to do 

something special, which has become our 

trademark,” says Graham. Numerous films 

followed, including 2015’s multi-awardwinning 

Passenger. But it was 2017’s Same 

Difference that left a particular impact on 

Graham. “I just wanted to make a jump 

where I was in the air for longer than four 

seconds,” he says, matter-of-factly, of his 

attempt to achieve the longest-ever air 

time off a freestyle jump. 

It’s May 12, 2017, and Graham is 

staring down the face of his creation. 

First conceived on a piece of paper the 

year before, the monolithic mountain of 

snow before him in Livigno, Italy, is twice 

the size he originally envisioned – the 

largest freestyle ski jump ever built. 

Working 24/7 over four weeks, a fleet 

of diggers and snowcats moved some 

100,000 cubic metres of snow into 

position; so much snow, in fact, that the 

locals called the police, fearing it would 

slide down and destroy the village. 

With conditions perfect and speed 

checks complete, Graham rockets towards 

the jump at a blistering 117kph, landing a 

tantalising 3.8 seconds later. He attempts 

it again, this time launching too fast. 

After 4.5 seconds of air, he falls almost 

30m to the ground. “I ruptured my ACL 

and meniscus, and broke my ankle on the 

other foot,” he recalls. 

ROCKERS FOR 

DEEP SNOW 

Tip and tail contact 

points float 

through powder 

“We organised our own 

crazy park jump to do 

something special. It’s 

become our trademark” 

42 THE RED BULLETIN

FEELING 

GREAT 

FROM 

THE 

INSIDE 

OUT 

#ZEROEXCUSES 

odlo.com

Paddy Graham 

It puts Graham out for the rest of the 

season. “I’m going to get back up and I’m 

going to get back out there, no matter 

what,” he said at the time. “With skiing 

and everything in life, you want to do it 

the biggest and best you can.” 

Today, Graham is at the peak of physical 

fitness. His 1.85m frame is slight, save for 

robust tattooed thighs, primed for the 

upcoming season – the result of a summer 

spent cycling through the Tyrol mountains 

that surround his home. “You’re always 

your fittest at the beginning of the season,” 

he says as we cross the border into 

Switzerland. The scent of winter lingers in 

the air, the chime from a cow’s bell drifts 

on the crisp breeze and the setting sun 

paints the mountains mauve. Graham 

smiles. “Just look at these mountains. 

I’ve never seen them like this before.” 

Still on the rise: 

at 31, Graham 

believes he’s at 

his physical peak 

“I hope I’ll still be 

skiing when I’m 80, 

but I’ve got a lot more 

to do before then” 

A short while later, Graham’s Land Rover 

pulls up outside the house of Jean-Claude 

Pedrolini, product and team manager 

of Völkl and a man Graham fondly calls 

Schinkä (Swiss German for ham). 

Graham is here to collect a van to drive 

the team to 121’s premiere at the Leo 

Kino Cinematograph in Innsbruck. The 

two immediately embrace and Schinkä 

welcomes him into his home, where 

Graham hugs his wife and children. 

Paddy is almost part of the family – 

for 13 years, since he was a teenager, he’s 

been with this team. They’ve grown up 

together, and now they’ve created a child. 

This season, Graham and his teammates 

have produced a revolutionary new ski 

with Völkl: the Revolt 121. 

“Schinkä said, ‘What we want to do 

is make a new powder ski for the riders, 

and who’s going to design it? The riders 

themselves,’” recalls Graham. The idea 

was to build a single ski that would work 

across multiple disciplines; the result (see 

explanation on page 42) is the evolution 

of a mode of human transportation that’s 

existed for about 6,000 years. “It handles 

big mountain freeride, deep powder, 

backcountry freestyle jumps, ski touring 

and also slope skiing,” he explains. “It’s 

a game-changer.” 

With teammates Markus Eder, 

Fabio Studer, Colter Hinchliffe, 

Ahmet Dadali, Tanner Rainville, 

Sam Smoothy, Tom Ritsch and Völkl’s 

lead engineer Lucas Romain, Graham 

rode numerous iterations of the ski last 

season before the final version was 

perfected. “We tested it in so many 

different conditions, we knew it was going 

to be good,” he says. “These skis make me 

feel happy when I look down at them.” 

The film is more than merely a 

celebration of a product. At its premiere, 

hordes of ecstatic beanie-wearing 

freeskiers watch on as Graham and his 

teammates traverse the globe finding the 

best lines, all with Revolt 121s affixed to 

their boots. The movie, like the ski, like 

Paddy Graham himself, is the culmination 

of not just one person’s passion, but the 

dedication and continual refinement of a 

brilliantly talented team. Graham would 

humbly agree. “At the premiere of Same 

Difference, my parents came over to watch 

and got all dressed up. They could see 

where I’d come from – the little kid who 

they took to the ski slope, now hosting 

this big event. That was really nice.” 

While filming 121, Graham turned 31, 

something he ruminates on. “Everyone’s 

saying, ‘Oh, it’s downhill from here.’ I was 

like, ‘No way.’ I went out with a chip on 

my shoulder to show people that I’m still 

an athlete. The performance I was able 

to put down this year was one of the best 

feelings. I hope I’ll still be skiing when 

I’m 80, but I’ve got a lot more to do before 

then. Skiing has let me see the world 

while doing something I love, 

accompanied by my best friends. 

“There’s so much more exploration 

to be done.” 

121 is available to stream for free from 

November 18 at voelkl.com/watchtogether 

44 THE RED BULLETIN

RIDER: PADDY GRAHAM 

PHOTO: GRANT GUNDERSON 

BUILT 

TOGETHER 

THE NEW REVOLT 121 - INCREDIBLY VERSATILE 

LENGTH (RADIUS): 177 (17.4), 184 (19.2), 191 (21.7) SIDECUT: 143_121_135 

VOELKL.COM/EN/BUILTTOGETHER 

»BUILT TOGETHER« results from the impassioned 

teamwork of our best athletes, skilled engineers, 

renowned artists and product management team. 

»Incredibly versatile« - that‘s one of the most 

often heard comments from people riding the 

Revolt 121. This is made possible due to the 3 

radius construction and a specially shaped tip that 

works great for nose butters and drift turns in soft 

snow. The Multi Layer Woodcore makes the ski 

strong enough to go where dedicated freeskiers 

dare to go.

Two-time F1 Esports world 

champion Brendon Leigh at this 

year’s first event in London 

CHASING 

DREAMS 

Welcome to the Formula One of 

esports: actual racing teams going 

head-to-head in state-of-the-art 

simulations. The prize money may 

be only a fraction of the $30 

million won at the Fortnite World 

Cup, but for these competitors 

the stakes are higher: the chance 

to shape the motorsport itself 

and realise their goal of becoming 

a real-life racing car driver 

Words TOM WIGGINS 

Photography JANE STOCKDALE 

47

F1 Esports Pro Series 

“The link between 

sim racing and 

real life is without 

question” 

he Baku City Circuit is renowned in 

the world of Formula One for a number 

of reasons. It takes an F1 car roughly 

one minute, 41 seconds to traverse 

its length – a 6km loop around the 

Azerbaijan capital’s most famous sights 

– at a top speed of 360kph, making the 

street circuit one of the world’s fastest 

and most chaotic. It was here, in 2017, 

that Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel infamously 

side-swiped Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton 

for brake-checking him. The following 

year, Red Bull Racing teammates Daniel 

Ricciardo and Max Verstappen collided, 

eliminating themselves from the race. 

Then, this year, Haas F1 Team driver 

Floris Wijers locked his brakes on turn 15, 

losing his rear end and launching off a 

high kerb, flying into a wall. 

If this last story seems unfamiliar, it’s 

because the crash didn’t take place on the 

actual streets of Baku, but on a computer 

simulation, streamed live to the world. 

Wijers is very much a driver for Haas, 

however, competing against human 

counterparts from the other F1 teams, 

strapped into racing rigs and battling it 

out for a shared bounty of $500,000. This 

was a heat in the F1 Esports Pro Series – 

the motorsport digitally recreated in all 

its drama, heartbreak and triumph. And 

it all took place at the Fulham Broadway 

Retail Centre in southwest London. 

The shopping mall might not look or 

sound like a place where dreams come 

true, although it can boast branches 

of Nando’s and Boots, and it’s located 

above a Tube station. Sharing space with 

the cinema on the upper levels of the 

building is the Gfinity Arena, the UK’s 

first dedicated esports venue, where, 

this July, 18-year-old Lucas Blakeley is 

struggling to hold back tears as his dream 

of driving for an Formula One team 

comes true. Tonight is the series’ Pro 

Draft. By the end of the day, 30 finalists 

will be whittled down to 10, each 

representing a proper F1 team. 

48 THE RED BULLETIN

Clockwise from above: the wheel and pedals used – the Fanatec CSL Elite F1 

Set – allow the driver to adjust their car set-up on the fly, and some did this 

on almost every corner of every lap; Haas F1 Team’s Floris Wijers; Gfinity 

Arena’s aesthetic is The X Factor meets Sky Sports News 

THE RED BULLETIN 49

Anyone can apply for a place in the 

draft: all you need is a copy of F1 2018 

– the video game by Codemasters – and 

a PlayStation 4, Xbox One or PC to play 

it on. More than 100,000 entrants 

attempted to qualify online for this year’s 

competition by firing up the game at 

home and driving lap after lap on the 

designated tracks. Two months later, the 

fastest have assembled in a studio that 

comes across like an ambitious hybrid of 

The X Factor and Sky Sports News – all 

illuminated perspex, giant touchscreens 

and a trio of pundits, including current 

McLaren driver and esports advocate 

Lando Norris, perched behind a desk, 

ready to break the news to the lucky few. 

The domino effect 

This year’s Pro Draft wasn’t Blakeley’s 

first attempt to make it into the F1 

Esports Pro Series – he qualified 

in 2018, too, but was left disappointed. 

“Being in the draft last year was the 

50 THE RED BULLETIN


Anyone can 

apply: all you 

need is a copy 

of F1 2018 and 

a console or PC 

teammates online, only meeting up at 

headquarters a few days before each 

Pro Series event. All are supplied with 

kit from official F1 Esports hardware 

supplier Fanatec: a steering wheel with 

realistic feedback that allows the drivers 

to feel how the car’s behaving, and a set 

of pedals with a pressure-sensitive loadcell 

brake – these are so precise, the drivers 

race in their socks. 

Just as in actual Formula One itself, 

Mercedes has dominated the Esports Pro 

Series in recent years – its 20-year-old 

British driver Brendon Leigh won both 

the 2017 and 2018 championships – but 

this has nothing to do with any technical 

superiority. Teams are allowed to tweak 

elements such as suspension set-up, brake 

bias and aerodynamic settings, but 

performance-wise the cars are identical. 

All that sets them apart are the liveries. 

“People who love Formula One as a 

sport are crying out for something that’s 

a bit more even, and that’s exactly where 

F1 Esports fits in,” says Paul Jeal, F1 

franchise director for Codemasters. “We 

can make sure that all the equipment 

and machinery is exactly the same, so 

it’s literally a ‘Who is the best driver?’ 

competition.” The use of advanced 

simulator controls doesn’t only deliver 

a higher degree of precision, it makes 

the sport instantly relatable, even to 

those unfamiliar with esports. 

And that’s what sets the F1 Esports 

Pro Series – and racing esports in general 

– apart from games such as Fortnite or 

FIFA. Those two may offer larger prize 

funds and draw the biggest crowds – 

both in arenas and online – but watch 

someone play FIFA competitively and 

you won’t see the same patterns or 

rhythms as the football you experience 

with the Premier League. Likewise, 

only the chemically enhanced would 

recognise Fortnite’s technicolour world 

as being anything like real life. But 

watching these guys play F1 2018 is 

remarkably close to the authentic 

motor-racing experience, albeit with 

only 25 per cent of the race distance 

and none of the danger. 

“You can’t compare MsDossary, the 

world's best FIFA player, with Lionel 

Messi,” says Matt Huxley, a former 

professional Counter-Strike player and 

Gfinity esports manager, and now a 

lecturer at Staffordshire University's 

Digital Institute London. “One is using 

a controller, the other’s actually kicking 

the ball. The advantage with racing 

catalyst for getting to this point,” he 

explains a few weeks later as he prepares 

for Pro Series 1, the first event in the F1 

Esports calendar. “I know it sounds weird 

to most people, but I was treating esports 

like a proper job – always practising and 

doing league races at the highest level.” 

Life has changed significantly for the 

young Scot since his selection by the 

SportPesa Racing Point team. Blakeley 

has left home for a start, so rather than 

spending five hours on the game every 

night after school, his days are devoted to 

practising with his two teammates. “You 

wake up and it’s straight on the sim,” he 

says. “Everything is about improving as 

much as we can. We bounce off each 

other like a domino effect of progress.” 

This year’s F1 Esports Pro Series is the 

first to feature all 10 Formula One teams 

– débutantes Ferrari Driver Academy were 

the last to join – but not all of them set up 

their drivers under one roof; others 

remain at home and practise with their 

Clockwise from far left: the 

Williams Esports team hang 

out; the drivers rev their 

engines in the shiny-floored 

Gfinity Arena; Williams Esports’ 

Isaac Price in race mode 

THE RED BULLETIN 51

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titles is that they emulate the inputs that 

a professional driver is giving.” 

It’s for this reason that a high 

proportion of drivers on the esports grid 

have a background in racing karts. Like 

many others, Blakeley had to quit karting 

due to spiralling costs, but he credits his 

experience on the track for his success 

in esports. “It has absolutely helped me,” 

he says, citing general racecraft and a 

knowledge of how to drive in wet weather 

as two advantages he has over those 

without a real-life racing background. 

“The link between sim racing and real 

life is without question. Every F1 team 

has a simulator – how much further do 

you need to look than that?” 

Game-changers 

Isaac Price was 15 when he had his 

accident. A successful kart racer at 

national level, the Brit would spend his 

summer holidays travelling the country 

to race. Then, one day, during a practice 

lap, the steering column of his kart 

shattered, pinning the throttle open 

and sending him hurtling helplessly into 

the wall at high speed. “It took 10-15 

minutes to untangle me, because my 

ankle got wrapped on the spring of the 

brake,” he recalls. “I was airlifted to 

hospital and they took a few hours to 

put me back together.” 

During his recovery from a broken 

ankle, Price passed the time by taking 

part in online races on the PC game 

Live for Speed. That was 10 years ago, 

and after competing at a high level 

on leading motorsports simulation 

iRacing and winning the game’s GT 

World Championship in 2017, Price went 

full-time, existing on savings from a job 

in data entry and any winnings he could 

bank from his victories online. 

That same year saw the launch of 

the F1 Esports Pro Series – a real gamechanger 

for Price. “I wasn’t really playing 

the [Codemasters] games at the time, 

but if Formula One was getting behind 

esports, it was inevitable that it would 

become the pinnacle of sim racing,” 

explains the 25-year-old. “That made my 

decision for me.” 

After making it to the finals of 

McLaren’s World’s Fastest Gamer 

competition in 2017, then a failed Pro 

Draft appearance the following year, 

Price raced at other events for Williams 

Esports, putting himself in the driving 

seat for a place in the team’s F1 Esports 

line-up. “I’ve shown what I can do and 

This could be the 

first step to a 

career in actual 

motorsports 

I fit into the dynamic that they already 

had, so in that way it all made sense,” 

he says after being selected. “As a team 

I think we can be confident; we’ve got the 

potential to do really well.” 

Fast friends 

Not all esports drivers have a karting 

background to draw on, however: Floris 

Wijers from the Netherlands has no 

For Scottish 18-year-old Lucas Blakeley, the F1 Esports Pro Series 

transformed an after-school gaming hobby into a full-blown career 

experience in actual motorsports, but 

began playing racing games when he 

was just four years old. 

Wijers bought his first proper steering 

wheel in 2017 and, along with Blakeley, 

failed to be drafted by an F1 Esports 

team the following year, but the pair 

quickly became friends and spent the 

next 12 months racing together to 

prepare for this July’s Pro Draft. 

Balancing esports with college and an 

internship in media broadcast operations, 

20-year-old Wijers dedicates between 

four and eight hours a day to sim racing 

at home in Soest, near Utrecht. “Luckily 

I don’t need a lot of sleep, so I practise 

until midnight or 1am and just get up 

late,” he says. Having performed well in 

the qualifying events, beating first-pick 

THE RED BULLETIN 53


In Baku, Rasmussen takes the chequered 

flag for Red Bull Racing, with Naukkarinen 

just three seconds behind. A thrilling 

finish sees Tonizza’s Ferrari cross the line 

neck-and-neck with Williams Esports’ 

Álvaro Carretón, only to have third place 

gifted to him after the Spanish driver is 

served a five-second penalty for speeding 

in the pit lane. 

A bird’s-eye view of the drivers in their cockpits. Note their shoeless feet. 

You wouldn’t catch Max Verstappen doing that… 

David ‘Tonzilla’ Tonizza in his heat, 

Wijers was drafted by Haas. When the 

season starts, though, he and Blakeley 

will be rivals, not teammates. 

Race night 

On the day of Pro Series 1, Blakeley isn’t 

where you’d expect him to be. Each event 

consists of three races and he hasn’t been 

picked by his team to compete in any of 

them. “I was told a couple of days ago,” 

he reveals as he watches his teammates 

practise from the cinema-style seats at 

the Gfinity Arena. “Obviously, as a driver, 

it hits you hard: if you’re not disappointed 

about not racing, you’re really not doing 

it right. But I understand the decision, 

and I know that I’ll be driving at some 

point. I will get my time.” 

At Williams Esports, Price is given the 

go-ahead for the first two races, but his 

teammate, 19-year-old Finnish driver Tino 

Naukkarinen, will take over for the livestreamed 

event that evening: 13 laps 

of the Baku Street Circuit. This allows 

Naukkarinen to focus on the one track. 

Price only manages 17th on the Bahrain 

circuit and 14th in China, attributing his 

dearth of points to a poor qualifying 

performance, a lack of confidence with 

his rig, and bad luck – but he doesn’t feel 

far off the pace. “There are drivers who 

aren’t racing here, because they haven’t 

outpaced other drivers in their team, so 

in that sense it’s an achievement,” he 

explains. “Last season, I was racing in 

online leagues and competing with the 

“People who love 

F1 as a sport are 

crying out for 

something that’s 

a bit more even” 

guys who are winning races here, so there 

is no reason why I can’t [win] as well.” 

Unlike Price and Blakeley, Wijers starts 

in all three Pro Series 1 races. But after 

solid performances in both Bahrain and 

China, finishing ninth in the former and 

seventh in the latter, the Dutchman 

experiences disappointment in Baku. 

As Naukkarinen and Red Bull Racing’s 

Frederik Rasmussen attempt to stop the 

Italian Tonzilla from winning his third 

race of the day, Wijers struggles to get 

to grips with his medium tyres and 

fights it out at the back of the pack with 

Blakeley’s SportPesa Racing Point 

teammate Daniele Haddad. 

It’s on lap six that Wijers misjudges 

turn 15, his contact with the wall forcing 

an unscheduled early pit stop that costs 

him dearly – he eventually finishes 18th. 

It’s a disappointing end to Pro Series 1 

for the Dutch driver. “I was happy with 

those [earlier] results, but I could have 

finished sixth or maybe even fifth in 

China,” he says. “Hopefully this is the 

only bad race we have.” 

Eyes on the prize 

With nine races left, including the grand 

final on December 4, Blakeley, Price and 

Wijers all have plenty of chances to put 

aside their disappointment. (There’s also 

the small matter of the inaugural Chinese 

edition of F1 Esports Pro Series next year.) 

For some of these drivers, this could 

be just the first step to a career in actual 

motorsports. Three members of the 

current line-up – Brendon Leigh, McLaren 

Shadow’s Enzo Bonito and Cem Bolukbasi 

of Toro Rosso – have been handed the 

keys to real-life racing cars off the back 

of their esports performances. Bonito 

even beat 2016/17 Formula E winner 

Lucas di Grassi and 2012 IndyCar victor 

Ryan Hunter-Reay at the Race of 

Champions in January. 

Current Toro Rosso Formula One 

driver Pierre Gasly, who was also racing 

that day, admits that he plays F1 games 

between races to get into the rhythm 

of the next track on the calendar. “One 

of my friends, Jann Mardenborough, 

who took part in the Gran Turismo [GT 

Academy] programme with Nissan, 

actually participated at Le Mans,” he says. 

“It’s clearly possible to go from gaming 

to real life, but it takes a lot of practice to 

get on top of driving proper cars.” 

They’re not the only ones who have 

had a taste of the real thing: former 

McLaren development driver Rudy van 

Buren won the job through World’s 

Fastest Gamer, while the winner of this 

year’s competition will get a seat racing 

Aston Martins for R-Motorsport at some 

of the world’s most famous circuits. 

But the ultimate reward for many of 

the drivers is putting themselves in the 

shop window. “Sim racing is fantastic, 

don’t get me wrong,” says Blakeley. “But 

if there was an opportunity in the future 

to go from esports to real life, I’d take it 

in a heartbeat.” You can only imagine the 

tears he’d shed on hearing that news. 

The F1 Esports Pro Series final will be 

streamed live on December 4 from Gfinity 

Arena to Facebook, YouTube and Twitch; 

f1esports.com 

54 THE RED BULLETIN

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When trap shook off its 

illicit origins, becoming 

the dominant force 

in rap music, it needed 

an aesthetic to match. 

Meet the fresh young 

photographer who takes 

unfiltered images of the 

scene’s biggest stars 

Gunner Stahl 

Shooting 

from the hip

YOUNG THUG 

The Atlantan is one of Stahl’s 

“all-time favourite rappers”, 

a pioneer for the new wave 

of trap artists. Following six 

acclaimed mixtapes, his 

debut studio album So Much 

Fun topped the US Billboard 

200 chart this August 

57

Jonathan Simmons earned the name by 

which he’s best known – Gunner Stahl – 

from a character in the classic ice-hockey 

comedy movie The Mighty Ducks, released 

in 1992, the year he was born. Eighteen 

years later, he bought his first camera from 

a friend at a party. Despite having failed 

in his photography class, the Atlantan felt 

compelled to capture his lifestyle on 

camera at school, parties, concerts, and 

in his local park. This would shape both 

his life and the trap music scene rapidly 

emerging in his US hometown at the time. 

Trap – the strand of hip hop comprising 

lyrics and melodies quickly sketched-out 

over a canvas of rattling snares, hi-hats 

and sub-bass 808 drums, then uploaded 

immediately for streaming – has become 

a dominant force in music. And 27-yearold 

Stahl’s intimate portraits channel that 

raw energy. From hanging out with rapper 

Future and superproducer Metro Boomin 

at Paris Fashion Week to shooting cult 

icon Gucci Mane on tour, Stahl has carved 

his niche capturing unfiltered snapshots 

of trap’s biggest stars, his reputation 

growing as their own stories evolve. 

Stahl’s devotion to shooting on 35mm 

film brings another dimension to his 

sought-after aesthetic, making his work 

even more unpredictable and of-themoment 

in an ever-digitised world. But it’s 

a medium he stumbled upon by accident: 

while preparing to document Kanye West’s 

Yeezus tour in Atlanta in 2013, Stahl’s 

camera broke, and the replacement 

provided by a friend turned out not to be 

digital, necessitating a visit to the drugstore 

to buy film. Stahl has since dismissed the 

photos as “trash”, but he continued to 

shoot with the camera and soon fell in 

love with the rawness of the process. 

It wasn’t until around 2014 that Stahl 

stumbled into music portraiture. Many 

of his friends were musicians, and he’d 

even been made a member of local rap 

collective Two-9 for just hanging out 

with them in the studio. Stahl began 

documenting their recording sessions and 

collaborators: early shots on his Instagram 

feed include one of Two-9’s DJ Osh Kosh 

alongside fashion designer Virgil Abloh, 

“If I’m not passionate 

about the person, 

I’m not shooting it” 

as well as photos of a purple-haired Wiz 

Khalifa when he dropped in to record 

with the collective. 

Stahl’s familiarity with the studio 

setting, along with his relaxed, confident 

persona, helps create an incredibly candid 

view of rap culture. He isn’t intrusive of 

the creative processes of those around 

him, meaning that in return he’s afforded 

the respect and freedom to do his thing. 

Where celebrities are used to magazines 

and album covers depicting them styled, 

posed and retouched like dolls, Stahl’s 

pictures provide a necessary disruption. 

They feel closer to reality, offering fans 

a glimpse of their favourite artists in 

their natural habitats. “I only work off 

relationships to get this look,” says Stahl. 

“If I’m not passionate about the person, 

I’m not shooting it.” But the credibility 

of his work has inevitably transcended 

his hometown heroes, granting him an 

audience with global megastars including 

Ed Sheeran, Drake, Kanye West, Kylie 

Jenner, Post Malone, Miley Cyrus, Lana 

Del Rey and even Adam Sandler. 

Stahl’s habitat today tends to be hotels: 

he lives the majority of his life moving 

from place to place in search of the best 

picture. This also gives him a deeper 

empathy for his subjects and their lives on 

the road. His portraits are shot between 

studios, backstage areas, and temporary 

accommodation, yet the images feel livedin. 

One of his most iconic photos, the 

cover of Playboi Carti’s self-titled 2017 

mixtape, sees the fellow Atlanta native 

slumped comfortably between two models 

at a Los Angeles Airbnb. 

Through his work, Stahl shares with 

his viewers the access-all-areas pass he 

has earned for himself, building his own 

fanbase in the process. In 2017 he created 

a capsule clothing collection for Puma, 

and a gallery show entitled For You, Mom 

– a tribute to his mother, who passed away 

from breast cancer. Last month, Stahl 

released Gunner Stahl: Portraits, a new 

book packed with his favourite unseen 

photos from the past three years, with 

contributions from Swae Lee of trap duo 

Rae Sremmurd, and celebrated ’90s rap 

photographer Chi Modu. The book has 

been showcased at galleries in three cities: 

New York, Los Angeles and, of course, 

Atlanta. But as his star has grown, Stahl, 

like his photography, remains grounded. 

“Be yourself,” he says. “People gravitate 

more towards you being yourself.” 

Gunner Stahl: Portraits (Abrams) is out 

now; Instagram: @gunnerstahl.us 

58 THE RED BULLETIN

PLAYBOI CARTI 

“I love the eyes. Eyes tell the 

whole picture,” says Stahl. 

With this image, however, 

the photographer proves 

his ability to create an 

intriguing moment by doing 

the exact opposite. The eyes 

of his subjects – rapper 

Playboi Carti and model 

Justine Mae Biticon – are 

out of shot, which arouses 

curiosity and stimulates 

the imagination. 

Gunner Stahl

LIL UZI VERT 

Photographed at Rolling 

Loud festival in New York 

in 2016, the Philadelphia 

native is best known for his 

massive viral hit XO Tour 

Llif3. “I’m in the backstage 

area, waiting,” said Stahl of 

the moment. “Next thing I 

know, he’s walking through 

security, We’ve hung out, so 

I’m used to his personality.”

Gunner Stahl 

AMINÉ 

The Portland rapper 

expresses himself as much 

through the surreal humour 

of his visuals and brightly 

coloured aesthetic as he does 

the reflective lyrics and selfdeprecating 

punchlines in his 

music. It’s unsurprising that 

he’s developed a relationship 

with Stahl, a self-confessed 

fan of mumblecore comedies. 

61

LIL BABY 

AND GUNNA 

The fastest growing artists 

to emerge from Atlanta in 

the past few years, the pair 

maintain a strong work 

ethic, individually releasing 

multiple mixtapes each year, 

as well as channelling their 

natural chemistry into last 

year’s mixtape Drip Harder. 

62

LIL YACHTY 

A recurring subject in 

Stahl’s work. Atlanta’s selfdeclared 

‘King Of Teens’ 

was a polarising figure 

when he first emerged with 

his bubblegum melodies 

and whimsical lyrics, but 

he’s doubled down on 

pleasing his cult fanbase 

and become a fashion icon 

in the process. 

Gunner Stahl

NIPSEY HUSSLE 

The Los Angeles rapper, 

entrepreneur and activist was 

murdered outside his store, 

The Marathon Clothing, in March 

this year – a huge loss to his 

family, friends and the global 

hip-hop community. Stahl pays 

tribute with some unseen 

photographs from his archive. 

64 THE RED BULLETIN

Gunner Stahl 

PLAYBOI CARTI 

After shooting the iconic 

cover of his debut mixtape, 

Stahl has continued to 

document Playboi Carti’s 

rise to prominence. Here, 

the Magnolia rapper grabs 

a moment backstage with 

his mentor, A$AP Rocky. 

65

The Arctic Cup

A housing estate looms 

over fans on the 

cliff overlooking the 

Sisimiut pitch 

Greenland’s one-week football season 

Words TOM WARD 

Photography BEN READ 

67

Greenland has ambitions of stepping onto football’s 

world stage, but with only three snow-free months 

of play per year, the odds are stacked against it. 

For one week, however, the players capable of making 

that dream a reality gather in remote Sisimiut 

to compete in the country’s only annual tournament. 

Above: B-67 players gather in their customary pre-match huddle. Opposite: G-44 superfan Helga cheers on her beloved team from Qeqertarsuaq 

68 THE RED BULLETIN

Greenlandic football 

Forty kilometres above the Arctic Circle, 

an important football match is taking 

place. On a three-quarter-sized pitch in 

the town of Sisimiut on the west coast of 

Greenland, two teams – B-67 and N-48 

– are competing for a place in the final 

of the country’s national tournament, 

Grønlandsbanken Final 6, held every year 

since 1971 in the narrow snow-free window 

between mid-June and late August. 

The synthetic-grass pitch is horseshoed 

by the 784m-high Nasaasaaq mountain 

range and the town’s traditional brightly 

coloured wooden houses that perch 

haphazardly on outcrops of Greenlandic 

bedrock. Fans watch from the Craggy 

cliff overlooking the pitch, blasting air 

horns. There are families with fold-out 

chairs, drunken older fans chanting in 

Greenlandic and Danish, a television 

camera balanced precariously. Sled dogs, 

chained to rocky outcrops outside nearby 

houses, lend howls of support. To the 

west, the waters of the Davis Strait can be 

glimpsed. On a clear day, you’ll see the 

spume of bowhead whales hunting for fish. 

But today all attention is on the pitch. 

B-67 – a team from the capital, Nuuk – are 

seen as Greenland’s answer to Real Madrid, 

having won the week-long national 

championship 13 times. (Like many 

teams in Greenland, B-67 are known by 

an abbreviation of their full name, which 

references the year they were formed: 

Boldklubben af 1967.) With 10 victories, 

N-48 (Nagdlunguak 1948), from the 

western town of Ilulissat, are their nearest 

rivals. Today’s match, then, is fraught 

with historic bad blood. Should B-67 lose, 

it’ll be the first time they have failed to 

reach the final since 2009. 

However, competing more than 320km 

from home with a team of players mostly 

Qeqertarsuaq 

Qaqortoq 

GREENLAND 

Sisimiut 

Nuuk 

Ilulissat 

Greenland is the world’s largest island 

– at 2,166km 2 , it’s the size of the British 

Isles, France, Germany, Spain, Italy and 

Austria combined – with a population 

of around 56,000. Eighty per cent of the 

country is covered in the Greenland 

Ice Sheet, and its northernmost point is 

just 740km south of the North Pole. 

THE RED BULLETIN 69


brought up from the under-19 team, B-67 

are not expecting this match to be a 

pushover; a local Facebook poll puts their 

chances of winning at just 30 per cent. If 

they crash out now, barring the thirdand 

fourth-place play-off, their one-week 

football season is over for another 365 

days. When you inhabit the world’s least 

densely populated landmass – one that’s 

80 per cent covered in ice and gets 

snowfall seven-and-a-half months a year 

– footballing opportunities are slim. 

For B-67, there are no snow-capped 

mountains, no whales hunting in the 

just-glimpsed sea, no howling sled dogs. 

Nothing exists but the pitch, the ball 

and the next 90 minutes. 

Four days earlier, B-67 coach Jimmy 

Holm Jensen gives The Red Bulletin the 

official tour of the team’s makeshift HQ 

in Sisimiut: a requisitioned elderly people’s 

social club. “It smells like death,” he quips. 

It’s hard to argue that there isn’t a certain 

worn-in aroma of comfortable chairs, tea 

and biscuits. For the next week, however, 

this compact collection of rooms will be 

home to 20 young players, plus Jensen 

and assistant coach David Janussen. 

Sleeping bodies still litter mattresses 

in the makeshift dormitory as early risers 

take part in a game of Olsen, a Nordic 

card game also known as Crazy Eights. 

Rap music plays in the background. The 

hallway is littered with trainers and 

football boots, the backyard strung with 

drying football shirts, and the kitchen 

transformed into an industrial-scale 

pasta-making operation. Elsewhere in 

this, Greenland’s second-largest city 

(population: 5,524), other teams are 

sequestered in sports halls that have the 

look, if not the aura, of disaster relief 

centres with mattresses and makeshift 

beds crammed against the walls. 

“We have fun, try to keep the energy 

high,” explains 25-year-old team captain 

Patrick Frederiksen as he moves between 

the card players and those just beginning 

to wake up, checking in with everyone. 

“The music is always on. People are 

having a lot of fun, singing and dancing.” 

Arsenal supporter Frederiksen became 

B-67 captain in 2018 and this tournament 

is his first opportunity to prove himself. 

“It’s really important – it’s like the World 

Cup,” he says. “It’s our chance to show 

Greenland that we have the best team 

and work hard to reach our goals.” 

Until recently, football was never the 

main focus in Greenland. Thanks to the 

all-encompassing winter season, the 

window for outdoor matches is limited – 

it’s difficult to play on a pitch covered in 

a metre of snow, after all. Indoor sports 

such as table tennis, badminton and 

handball are popular alternatives, the 

latter on a par with football in terms of 

appeal. But the success of one particular 

Nordic neighbour encouraged 

Greenlandic footballers to dream big. 

In 2014, Iceland reached the World 

Cup playoffs for the first time (before 

losing to Croatia). Two years later, the 

Icelandic team reached its first major 

tournament, UEFA Euro 2016, defeating 

England 2-1 in the knockout phase and 

When B-67’s 

registered number 

3 was injured, 

his replacement 

used tape to 

change the shirt 

number to 31 

so he could play 

70 THE RED BULLETIN

“Football connects 

everybody 

in Greenland” 

Spectators watch the 

match from their 

high perch on the cliff 

in Sisimiut

Greenlandic football

The B-67 players get pumped 

up before a match by listening 

to Greenlandic rock music. 

Their makeshift headquarters 

is normally used as a social 

club for elderly people 

73


B-67 players negotiate stubborn onlookers and children on bikes during their pre-match warm-up 

“We have fun, 

try to keep the 

energy high” 

facing France in the quarter-finals (then 

losing by a respectable score of 5-2). And 

in 2018 they became the smallest nation 

ever to qualify for a World Cup tournament 

(though they went out at the group stage). 

Theirs isn’t a track record to worry the 

majority of European teams, but Iceland’s 

efforts showed Greenland’s players it was 

possible for small, ice-besieged island 

nations to compete on the world stage. 

Greenland’s international football 

dreams date back further – to at least 

1999, when then national team manager 

and former West Germany squad member 

Sepp Piontek says he applied for UEFA 

membership (the Danish Football 

Association disputes this ever being done 

officially). One barrier to Greenland’s 

international recognition is its status 

as an autonomous territory within the 

Kingdom of Denmark. Another is its lack 

of FIFA-compliant playing surfaces and 

stadiums. But times are changing: in 2010, 

FIFA president Sepp Blatter approved 

Greenland’s first artificial-grass pitch, in 

the town of Qaqortoq. Nuuk got one in 

2015, and B-67 now share this full-sized 

outdoor pitch with three local teams. 

There are no stands – again, fans watch 

matches from a rocky outcrop, and the 

changing rooms are little more than 

wooden shacks – but it’s a step-up from 

the dirt pitch they previously played on. 

Then, in 2016, Nuuk’s national stadium 

was treated to some FIFA two-star 

artificial turf – the highest-rated synthetic 

surface for UEFA competitions. 

Frederiksen is certain Greenland could 

one day play in the World Cup. “It would 

take some years, but I think we could 

reach it,” he says. “Iceland inspired us.” 

But while Iceland can boast new covered 

pitches heated by geothermal currents 

that facilitate year-round training, 

Greenland has few warm geothermal 

vents and no budget for covered pitches. 

“Money is hard to find. FIFA has come to 

Greenland a few times, and we also have 

some companies that are helping.” 

“There is a problem with funding,” 

agrees Jensen, who played for B-67 

as a kid before joining his family’s cardealership 

business, and who this year 

took over as the team’s new coach, 

following the exit of his extremely 

successful predecessor, Tekle Ghebrelul. 

“We use 95 per cent of our funds for 

travelling,” Jensen says. “It’s so expensive 

to travel in Greenland. Right now, we’re 

on a limited budget for food. We don’t get 

paid, it’s just pure interest at heart.” 

A lack of funds hampers Greenlandic 

football at almost every turn. En route to 

the tournament from east Greenland, one 

74 THE RED BULLETIN

Former B-67 player 

Hans Brummerstedt 

before leaving 

the sports hall that 

has been his home 

for a week

“We use 95 per 

cent of our funds 

on travelling”


Above, clockwise from top left: 

the diminutive Man of the 

Match trophy; an Ek’aluk-54 

training top with the logo 

of sponsor Faxe Kondi – a very 

popular soft drink in Greenland; 

the official corner flags failed 

to arrive, so replacements were 

made from yellow cloths and 

metal broom handles bought in 

a local hardware store; assistant 

coach Janussen talks tactics 

at B-67 HQ. Opposite: The 

Sisimiut pitch, surrounded by 

the rocky terrain that is almost 

symbolic of Greenlandic towns 

of B-67’s star players was stuck at an 

airport without his ticket. With no money 

to buy a replacement – and no roads 

linking remote towns – the team had to 

send him back home. Even when finally 

assembled, B-67 became stranded at 

Kangerlussuaq airport, the remote stopoff 

between Nuuk and Sisimiut. After 

calling all his contacts, including members 

of the Greenlandic FA, Jensen eventually 

secured passage for the team on a boat. 

Six hours later, they arrived in Sisimiut 

– had it been in service, the plane would 

have had them there in 30 minutes. To 

avoid extortionately priced internal flights, 

another team, G-44 from Qeqertarsuaq – 

an island town to the west – had to book 

passage on a weekly ship circumnavigating 

Greenland, which got them to Sisimiut 

a gruelling 22 hours later. 

Until Greenland earns the significant 

investment needed to capture the attention 

of the global football community, the 

Grønlandsbanken Final 6 tournament is 

the most important – and only – event on 

the football calendar. “Outdoor football is 

difficult as we don’t have more matches, 

but there’s a lot of raw talent,” Jensen 

says. “We had the Pan-American handball 

tournament recently and it brought the 

whole country together. We’re not used to 

that; it’s always been this town against 

this town. Sports can really unite us.” 

Later, Lars Petersen, head secretary 

of the Greenlandic Football Association, 

offers his analysis via email. He believes 

that despite the sport’s economic troubles, 

Greenlandic football is on the up. “It’s 

important to have this tournament,” he 

says. “We’re working on [getting more 

funding] but, in the meantime, this 

tournament helps show football is 

important and that there’s an audience 

for it. We have ambitions to further 

develop our tournament, and a proper 

league with a first and second division.” 

At 42, Jensen, youthful with just a streak 

of grey in his hair, also has to contend 

with a depleted team. When previous 

coach Ghebrelul left, many of the older 

players departed for greener pastures in 

Denmark. “I don’t think it’s a problem 

that people want to go to Denmark,” says 

Jensen. “When we started the youth 

department, one of our goals was that in 

10-15 years we’d like a Greenlandic player 

to be playing for one of the best Danish 

clubs. If someone was successful there, it 

would shine a light back on football here.” 

Mikki Brønlund, B-67’s 25-year-old 

left-winger, has first-hand experience of 

Danish football. “A lot of us study there 

and compare ourselves to Danish players,” 

he says. “We are far better than them 

technically, but it’s the football IQ that is 

lacking, because we can only play inside 

for the majority of the year.” 

Faced with a depleted squad, Jensen 

and assistant coach Janussen were forced 

to dip into the under-19s. In many cases, 

Jensen had to write to the school 

principal to ask for special dispensation 

so the teenagers could play in the 

tournament. Yet he’s hopeful that some 

of these newcomers will make their mark. 

Before the match against N-48, Jensen, 

THE RED BULLETIN 77


“We could reach 

the World Cup. 

Iceland inspired us” 

Frederiksen and Janussen huddle around 

a picnic bench in the garden. Beneath an 

unexpectedly warm sun, they plan the 

starting 11. Jensen enthuses about an 

offensive midfielder, Kristian Evaldsen, 

who is just 18. “He’s one solid muscle,” 

says Jensen, grinning. “He kayaks in the 

old Greenlandic way, and he’s very small 

so he has this amazing centre of balance. 

He’s so fast, he looks like a cartoon 

character when he runs.” 

Another player also earns a special 

mention: a short, stocky figure with a 

shaved head permanently ringed with 

a Nike sweatband, 16-year-old Henning 

Bajare has earned the nickname ‘Fat 

Mbappé’ for his resemblance to the Paris 

Saint-Germain striker. “He’s like a 

bulldog,” Jensen laughs. “We put him on 

in our first match and he was charging 

around, then running over shouting for 

‘Water! Water!’. He was exhausted, 

because he isn’t used to playing matches 

of this length.” 

Despite the minuscule football season 

and their relatively young years, none of 

these players is a novice when it comes 

to competitions: B-67 are renowned as 

champions of futsal, the five-a-side 

variant of football that was popularised 

in South America and has become one 

of Greenland’s most popular games 

during winter. Played indoors, futsal is 

more frantic and kinetic than ‘outdoor’ 

football; the fast, skilful passes of the 

Brazilians and Argentinians owe a lot 

to its influence. 

“Futsal helps because it teaches us to 

use faster passes, instead of dribbling,” 

says Frederiksen. “A lot of younger 

players aren’t so strong – they can’t 

control the ball in the air without getting 

pushed around by other players – so we 

try to keep it on the ground.” 

Planning completed, it’s time to head to 

the pitch. There’s no bus, so B-67 walk, 

Frederiksen hoisting a boombox onto his 

shoulder as the team march past the 

town’s ancient church and houses that 

proudly display reindeer antlers outside – 

mementos of last year’s hunting season. 

The majority of B-67’s tournament 

matches kick off at 5pm. In summer, it 

doesn’t get dark in Greenland until after 

11pm, but the games end in a strange 

permanent semi-twilight. As we wait for 

the match to start, an older man wanders 

over and offers that “Greenlandic football 

is better than English football. It is like a 

community: everyone knows everyone”. 

78 THE RED BULLETIN

He talks about his favourite UK teams, 

Liverpool and Manchester United, before 

offering the parting prediction that 

“[Greenlandic players] could come to 

Europe and win games”. 

The B-67 players warm up outside the 

caged pitch as another match takes place, 

then pile into the changing room – two 

goalposts pushed together with a tarp 

over the top – at the final whistle and 

await the start of their game. “I like 

football, but I only watch it during the 

tournament,” says a fan in his early 

twenties as the players line up. “Football 

is really popular in Greenland right now, 

and more support means maybe our teams 

Players from the triumphant 

N-48 rush onto the pitch to 

celebrate becoming the 2019 

Greenlandic football champions. 

Left: ‘Fat Mbappé’, aka 16-yearold 

Henning Bajare, in action 

will get better and we’ll get a chance at 

some international tournament.” 

The semi-final match is not one B-67 

will want to remember. Five minutes in, 

their keeper parries a free kick, but in the 

resulting scramble N-48 score the first 

goal. Later in the first half, the goalie is 

forced into action again, charging down 

a shot from an N-48 player who has 

stormed into the B-67 box. 

In the second half, B-67 make a 

triple substitution. A short while later, 

Frederiksen comes off with his arm 

bleeding, having opened up an old 

wound. He bandages it and runs back 

on. With less than 30 minutes to go, it’s 

clear B-67 aren’t dictating the game. 

A third N-48 goal in the 88th minute and 

a fourth in injury time seal B-67’s fate. 

For the first time in a decade, they have 

failed to qualify for the final. 

The next day, N-48 go on to beat G-44 

in the final by the only goal of the match. 

For their final game, B-67 play IT-79 

in the play-off, but, disheartened by 

yesterday’s defeat, suffer an ignoble 2-0 

defeat. Frustrated or victorious, for 

the Greenlandic players the season is 

over for another year. 

Back in Nuuk two days after the final, 

Jensen invites The Red Bulletin to his 

home overlooking the fjord, where 

icebergs float against the broken-tooth 

backdrop of the 1,210m Sermitsiaq 

mountain. As he cooks up reindeer steaks 

on his barbecue, Jensen offers a balanced 

analysis of the team’s performance. 

“These younger players are good, but it 

will take two to three years to get them 

to where we want to be, playing the final 

and hopefully dominating outdoor 

football again,” he says. “It takes time.” 

For now, the hunting season has just 

begun, and coach and players alike are 

looking forward to getting out into the 

wilderness. The futsal season will follow, 

then training for outdoor football will 

start up once again in the spring. While 

this young B-67 team have suffered shortterm 

disappointment, the standard of 

play in the Grønlandsbanken Final 6 

tournament suggests that Greenlandic 

football could hold its own on the 

international stage, and maybe even 

equal Iceland’s success one day. 

Patrik Frederiksen has seen his fair 

share of victories and defeats. While 

the younger players lament what must 

feel like a stolen opportunity, he offers 

a more optimistic approach. Losing that 

tournament may sting, but ultimately 

Greenlandic football has been the victor; 

with more eyes on the sport, it just might 

receive more funding, and maybe the 

fabled covered pitches that would allow 

them to play year-round and raise a team 

to rival anything Europe has to offer. 

“Football is in development in 

Greenland,” Frederiksen says. “It connects 

everybody. The audience appreciates it 

and encourages us to do better. We want 

to show that even though we’re a little 

nation with so few inhabitants, we can 

play football at a high level.” 

Thanks to Visit Greenland for its help; 

visitgreenland.com 

THE RED BULLETIN 79

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F R E E A S S E S S M E N T

Equipment 

Your guide to gear born with purpose, engineered 

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PERFORM 

Goggles of the 

snow giants 

Red Bull Spect Magnetron 

The Red Bull logo is usually 

reserved only for pros, but, like 

Prometheus stealing fire from 

the gods, this expert eyewear is 

now within the grasp of mere 

mortals. It’s named not after one 

of the Transformers, but after 

the magnetic interchangeable 

lens system, which allows users 

to quickly swap between a highcontrast 

visor for bad weather 

and a mirrored lens using one 

hand, without even removing 

the goggles. The visor provides 

increased peripheral vision and 

features anti-fog, anti-scratch 

and guaranteed awesomeness. 

redbullspecteyewear.com 

Photography TIM KENT 

THE RED BULLETIN 81

Equipment 

REVIVE 

Hammer your pain 

Hypervolt Plus 

In 2011, a year after founding 

his sports therapy business, 

Hyperice owner Anthony Katz 

embarked on a unique publicity 

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technique that has earned him 

the endorsement of some of 

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Chelsea striker Olivier Giroud 

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Mjölnir of massage guns. 

hyperice.com 

82 THE RED BULLETIN

Equipment 

IMMERSE 

Lost in music 

Wireless on-ear headphones 

Sound quality uncompromised by 

portable convenience. From top: 

Momentum Wireless by Sennheiser 

(sennheiser.com) feature active 

noise-cancelling (ANC) and 

ambient hearing for listening to 

your surroundings; Wireless 

Concert One by Vonmählen 

(vonmaehlen.com) take inspiration 

from the superior sound of the 

Elbphilharmonie concert hall in 

Hamburg; Crusher ANC by 

Skullcandy (skullcandy.co.uk) let 

you customise sensory bass, and 

come with ANC and personalised 

set-up from the smartphone app; 

TOUCHit by Danish design 

company Sackit (sackit.eu) bring 

ANC and a 22-hour battery to an 

award-winning design; and the 

A9/600 from Kygo (kygolife.com) 

build on a reputation in sound that 

has earned the Norwegian DJ 

3.7 million Instagram followers. 

THE RED BULLETIN 83

Equipment 

GLIDE 

Drivetrain 

deconstructed 

SRAM XX1 Eagle AXS 

If the greatest invention was 

the wheel, the drivetrain is a 

close second – the mechanical 

organs that deliver power from 

your legs to said wheels. Now 

that has been reinvented. The 

12-speed XX1 Eagle AXS uses 

electronic shifting, wirelessly 

connecting the handlebars to 

the drivetrain flawlessly. After 

micro-adjusting the chainline 

trim on first set-up and waking 

up the moment you grab your 

bike, just a tap of the handlebar 

paddles shifts gears; keeping 

your thumb pressed cycles 

effortlessly through the gears. 

It’s all the work of an 80,000 

RPM motor coupled to 

a miniature gearbox inside the 

derailleur, plus two clutches: 

one for regular shifting and 

another that reacts on impact 

– disengaging the gearbox to 

let the derailleur move freely 

and intelligently re-engaging 

it afterwards. This isn’t a 

drivetrain, it’s a goddamn gearshifting 

robot. sram.com 

84 THE RED BULLETIN

Equipment 

WEAR 

Walking on 

thick ice 

Danner Arctic 600 

Side-Zip 

Charles Danner first made 

footwear for loggers in the 

wilds of America’s Pacific 

Northwest almost a century 

ago, when durability, comfort 

and warmth weren’t just 

a requirement, they were a 

survival necessity. These boots 

are overkill even by those 

standards. Made from durable 

suede, they’re 100 per cent 

waterproof with a Vibram 

rubber sole moulded from an 

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traction on ice and frost. 

Heavily insulated with Primaloft 

Gold thermal microfibre and 

comfort-lined with a removable 

Ortholite insole, there’s also a 

side zip for easy removal 

without unlacing. Something US 

pioneers Lewis and Clark never 

had in their day. danner.com 

THE RED BULLETIN 85

Equipment 

CAPTURE 

Camera evolved 

iPhone 11 Pro 

In 1822, French inventor Nicéphore 

Niépce captured the world’s first 

permanent photograph on glass 

coated with bitumen. Things have 

come a long way. This, the most 

powerful smartphone yet, shoots 

nine images each time, using three 

12MP lenses (wide, ultra-wide and 

telephoto). Eight are taken before 

you even press the shutter button, 

followed by one long exposure. 

The iPhone 11 Pro then fuses the 

photos, sifting through 24 million 

pixels for an optimal image. It is, in 

effect, the first machine-learning 

camera in a phone. apple.com 

86 THE RED BULLETIN

THE RED BULLETIN PROMOTION 

SKULLCANDY CRUSHER ANC 

BEYOND 

THE BASS 

Three premium features combine 

to create more immersive – 

and personalised – audio than 

you’ve ever heard before 

I 

n 1910, an engineer in 

Utah named Nathaniel 

Baldwin invented 

headphones to help him 

better hear Mormon 

sermons. More than a 

century later, Skullcandy 

is reinventing headphones 

in Utah, but the only religion 

is Supreme Sound. 

Skullcandy’s flagship 

Crusher ANC headphones 

are the first in the world to 

mix adjustable haptic bass 

with active noise cancellation 

and personalised sound 

calibration, delivering the 

most immersive audio 

experience yet. 

It all starts with the 

Skullcandy app, which allows 

Crusher ANC owners to take 

a three-minute audio test. 

The immediate results create 

a unique Personal Sound 

profile that is stored in the 

headphones so that music 

or other audio from any 

device is custom-tuned to 

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“Time and volume take 

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product development at 

Skullcandy. “And it doesn’t 

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Skullcandy’s Personal Sound 

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Skullcandy also improved its 

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In other words, the sound 

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£249.99; available now at 

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The headphones are 

available in black and 

deep red (pictured) 

THE RED BULLETIN 87

Snow wear 

Deep 

cover 

Chopped up or chokable, 

packed or pow-pow fresh – 

however you like your snow, 

here’s the essential gear 

you need to cruise or carve 

through it. Winter really 

is coming. Meet it head-on 

Photography DAVID CLERIHEW

Snow wear 

HELLY HANSEN North 

Sea Ridgeline beanie, 

hellyhansen.com; 

OAKLEY Clifden 

sunglasses, oakley.com; 

BURTON Frostner 

jacket and Backtrack 

gloves, burton.com; 

OAKLEY Alpine Shell 

3L Gore-Tex pants, 

oakley.com; HAGLÖFS 

Skrå 27 backpack, 

haglofs.com; RIDE 

Warpig snowboard 

and Revolt bindings, 

ridesnowboards.com 

89

Snow wear

Snow wear 

Opposite page: 

MARKER Convoy+ 

helmet, marker.net; 

OAKLEY Fall Line 

XM Factory Pilot 

Whiteout snow 

goggles, oakley.com; 

VOLCOM Fern 

insulated Gore-Tex 

Pullover jacket, 

volcom.co.uk; DAKINE 

Jamie Anderson 

Women’s Team Heli 

Pro 20L backpack, 

dakine.com 

This page: 

HELLY HANSEN 

Ridgeline beanie, 


ZEAL OPTICS Portal 

XL goggles, zealoptics. 

com; FRISKI The Flo 

2.0 technical riding 

hoodie, friskiwear. 

com; THE NORTH FACE 

Purist Futurelight 

jacket, thenorthface. 

co.uk; JACK 

WOLFSKIN Exolight 

Mountain pants, jackwolfskin.com; 

SCOTT 

Celeste III boots, 

scott-sports.com; 

BURTON Free Range 


VÖLKL Secret Flat 

skis, voelkl.com 

THE RED BULLETIN 91

Snow wear 

This page: 

OAKLEY MOD1 helmet 

and Fall Line XL snow 

goggles, oakley.com; 

SKULLCANDY Vert 

Clip-Anywhere 

wireless earbuds, 

skullcandy.co.uk; 

PROTEST Gutter Camo 

jacket, protest.eu; 

VOLCOM Guch Stretch 

Gore-Tex pants, 

volcom.co.uk; THE 

NORTH FACE Patrol 

Steep Series gloves, 

thenorthface.co.uk; 

SCOTT Scrapper 105 

skis, scott-sports.com 


MARKER Convoy+ 

helmet, marker.net; 

SWEET PROTECTION 

Interstellar goggles, 

sweetprotection.com; 

HAGLÖFS Edge Evo 

Kurbits unisex anorak, 

haglofs.com; SCOTT 

Explorair 3L pants, 


THE NORTH FACE 

Thermoball mitts, 

thenorthface.co.uk; 

OSPREY Kamber 

16 backpack, 

ospreyeurope.com; 

LINE Pin ski poles, 

lineskis.com; 

K2 Mindbender 

88 Ti Alliance skis, 

k2snow.com 

92 THE RED BULLETIN

Snow wear

Snow wear

Snow wear 


SCOTT Track 

Plus helmet and 

Vapor goggles, 


WEARCOLOUR 

Wear anorak, 

wearcolour.com; 

HELLY HANSEN 

Sogn cargo pants, 


QUIKSILVER Travis 

Rice Natural 

Gore-Tex gloves, 

quiksilver.co.uk; 

VÖLKL Revolt 121 

skis, voelkl.com 

This page: 

PROTEST Girlfriend 

beanie, protest.eu; 

FRISKI The Flo 

2.0 technical riding 

hoodie, friskiwear.com; 

JACK WOLFSKIN 

Exolight pants, 

jack-wolfskin.com; 

SCOTT Celeste III boots, 


BURTON Free Range 


VÖLKL Secret Flat skis, 

voelkl.com 

Hair and make-up: 

SUSANA MOTA 

Models: CONNAGH 

HOWARD, ANNA 

SALOMAA @ W Model 

Management 

Photographer’s 

assistants: CHRIS 

PARSONS, 

LISA BENNETT 

THE RED BULLETIN 95

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guide 

Get it. Do it. See it. 

RACE FOR LIFE 

You may view it as 

merely a video game, 

but Mario Kart is 

deeper than that 

PAGE 105 

FITNESS COALS 

Ultrarunner Christian 

Schiester has a unique 

way of sweating it out 

during training 

PAGE 106 

DATE OVERLOAD 

Unmissable events, 

from Spartan racing to 

an immersive Stranger 

Things experience 

PAGE 109 

SCOTT DICKERSON 

CHILL WAVE 

Crumbling icebergs 

hold no fear for surfer 

Kyle Hofseth – they're 

all part of the thrill of 

catching waves in the 

frozen waters of Alaska 

PAGE 100 

THE RED BULLETIN 99

G U I D E 

Do it 

Watching icebergs is essential for glacier surfing – it’s how you predict the size of the resulting waves 

GLACIER SURFING 

BREAKING THE 

ICE IN ALASKA 

Most people take shelter when they witness a massive 

glacier calving – but surfers in Alaska approach them. 

Kyle Hofseth explores the last frontier of the surf world 

Adeafening growl, an 

explosion of raw energy. 

I’ve got to catch this one 

wave. Nothing else matters. I’ve 

been fighting hypothermia all 

day, but none of the ice lingers in 

me now – I’ve never moved faster. 

Deep in the throat of this fjord is 

a massive, groaning glacier. Many 

metres of flaking ice rise vertically 

above the seawater, and a frozen, 

house-sized monolith has just 

broken free, creating the moment 

I’ve been waiting for. 

I frantically paddle on what 

feels like a kamikaze mission to 

Passionate surfer and travel writer Kyle Hofseth 

100 THE RED BULLETIN

Alaska 

TRAVEL TIPS 

THE LAST FRONTIER 

Kyle Hofseth reveals why Alaska is the 

ultimate hotspot for adventurous surfers, 

and why the place requires a slightly 

different packing list 

Alaska has almost 

55,000km of tidal 

shoreline. The best surf 

occurs during spring (April) 

and autumn (September) 

As the glacier calves, ice drops into the water and waves form below the frozen cliff 

ALASKA 

USA 

Canada 

Anchorage 

Homer 

Kenai Fjords 

SCOTT DICKERSON, GETTY IMAGES (MAP) 

On their trip on the M/V Milo in 2017, Hofseth and Dickerson explored the Kenai Fjords 

meet the result of this explosion: 

a perfectly shaped, ice-filled wave. 

Turning my board as it crests, 

I feel my fins catch on chunks 

of ice, and I pull hard through 

golfball-sized shrapnel as the 

wave picks me up for the ride of 

my life. Nothing about this wave 

is normal – and the adrenalin it 

creates is off the charts. I surf it 

for 100m as it peels down a gravel 

bar before surging onto shore. 

My mind is blown. 

This monster of a glacier in 

Alaska’s Kenai Fjords is so large 

it creates its own weather, and 

it straddles the Kenai mountain 

range. But in this isolated place 

the glacier’s silent majesty seems 

reserved for me alone. Except I’m 

I’m given a helmet 

and told, “Bring 

a board you don’t 

mind destroying” 

not here on my own. I pull down 

my wetsuit hood and hear Scott 

Dickerson shouting to me from 

the nearby skiff, saying he got 

a great shot of my ride. 

Dickerson runs Surf Alaska 

and captains the M/V Milo, an 

exploration vessel converted from 

an almost 18m fishing boat. 

Operating out of the coastal city 

of Homer, centrally located in the 

EXPLORE 

HOME BASE 

Scott Dickerson’s travel agency, Ocean Swell Ventures, 

has its base in Homer, a picturesque fishing town with 

around 5,700 residents. From the harbour, glaciers can 

be seen clinging to the Kenai Mountains across the bay. 

THE TRIP 

From its dock in the bay, the M/V Milo has access to the 

Gulf of Alaska, the Kenai Fjords and the Aleutian Islands, 

which stretch out towards Russia. The coastline is 

rugged; the shorelines are home to bears and moose. 

Orcas, humpback whales and otters are frequently 

spotted among the islands and channels. 

SURFING GLACIERS 

FOUR TIPS FOR TAKING ON THE ICE WAVES 

1. Bring a deep coffinstyle 

board bag. You will 

need it on the beach. Climb 

inside with a thermos of 

coffee and a warm water 

bottle to warm up 

between waves. 

2. A motorcycle 

helmet isn’t a bad idea. 

Bring something to protect 

your head – there’s a lot 

of ice in the water. 

3. Speaking of ice in the 

water, I dinged all of my 

boards. Consider bringing 

something older that’s 

seen some wear and tear. 

4. Get a wetsuit that’s 

at least 5mm. I’d highly 

recommend 7mm booties 

and 7mm mittens, too. 

The water was 1°C, and the 

icy wind chill coming off 

the glacier was brutal. 

THE RED BULLETIN 101

G U I D E 

Do it 

Alaska 

SHIP AHOY 

WAVE HUNTING 

ON THE MILO 

The M/V Milo, a retired 1966 

commercial salmon-fishing boat with 

a diesel engine, was converted into 

an exploration vessel by a couple of 

surf-crazed Alaskans in 2009 

Length 

17.68m 

Main engine 

380hp 

Crew 

Five or six passengers, 

one skipper 

SPECIFICATIONS 

Staterooms 

Two 

Equipment 

4m RIB (inflatable boat), 

fishing gear 

Cruising speed 

Eight knots 

Catch of the day: on the M/V Milo, you source your own dinner – Alaskan halibut 

ROCK THE BOAT 

BELOW DECK 

Dedicated wetsuit removal and drying room in the 

converted fish-hold. Sleep in surf-themed state rooms 

below the water line in the hull. Join the captain or crew 

for a midnight wheel watch in the top house, and watch 

a summer sunset become a sunrise in just 30 minutes. 

ON DECK 

Enjoy the outdoor hot shower. Place the handheld shower 

head in your wetsuit, lay on the deck and fill up. Soon you 

will have a personal hot tub – perfect for recovering from 

a surf session in icy waters. And bring a fishing rod with 

heavy line – it’s not uncommon to catch 50kg halibut. 

Trips are often a week long, so the M/V Milo’s chest 

freezers are stocked with local game and vegetables 

crook of the Gulf of Alaska, 

Dickerson has spent more time 

exploring, documenting, guiding 

and photographing the vastly 

uncharted surf potential of North 

America’s largest coastline than 

anyone else on earth. I’ve seen 

his photos of adventurers surfing 

all manner of waves against a 

backdrop of stunning mountains, 

crystalline blue ice and epic 

Alaskan ruggedness. 

His trips have an element of 

raw exploration that it’s simply 

impossible to find in crowded, 

established surf spots. And today’s 

more than most: it’s Dickerson’s 

first with the sole intention of 

paddle-surfing glacier waves; that 

is, waves created solely by the 

ice fall from this glacier. This is 

no joke, as became clear on the 

very first night I showed up in 

Alaska, when Dickerson handed 

me an old motorcycle helmet 

as protection against flying ice 

chunks. His instructions? “Bring 

a board you don’t mind destroying 

– this trip is going to have icebergs 

in the line-up.” 

If there are waves, we’re going 

to surf them, whether or not 

body-sized chunks of glacier are 

flying overhead in a barrel or have 

to be dodged with a carefully 

timed duck-dive. To add to the 

uncertainty of this expedition, 

there’s no mobile phone reception 

out in the wilds of Alaska, often 

no villages for hundreds of 

kilometres, and so not much in 

terms of a safety net. 

It becomes critical to predict 

when and where along the glacier 

face the ice will fall, and how much 

will be falling at once: a housesized 

mass of ice can create a 2m 

surfable wave. But we must keep 

an eye out for signs of larger 

sections readying themselves to 

fall… and be ready to make a 

swift exit. Our week on the M/V 

Milo consists of these unique surf 

sessions and plenty of fat and 

protein-heavy meals (butter, 

bacon, freshly caught fish) to 

replace what our bodies are 

tearing through in the 1°C water. 

Sleep is short; the Alaskan 

summer light beckons us to 

explore, paddle the fjord and all 

it has to offer. We surf through 

ice-filled grey waves on the back 

of the release of ancient energy 

from this frozen giant, and it fills 

us with a true sense of adventure, 

and of survival. 

To explore the wild coastline of 

Alaska aboard the M/V Milo, go to 

oceanswellventures.com 

SCOTT DICKERSON 


ALPHATAURI.COM

G U I D E 

Do it 

Gaming 

NINTENDO TOM GUISE 

Nintendo’s Shigeru 

Miyamoto, creator of 

legendary games series 

such as Mario and The Legend 

of Zelda, employs a philosophy 

when making games, known in 

his homeland of Japan as kyokan 

– an empathic experience 

between the developer and the 

player that translates as ‘feelone’. 

“As long as I can enjoy 

something, other people can 

enjoy it,” he says. 

When Miyamoto created 

Super Mario Kart for the Super 

Nintendo Entertainment System 

in 1992, the kyokan was strong. 

Putting the moustachioed mascot 

(and his friends and frenemies) 

into go-karts spawned the kartracing 

genre – franchise 

characters speeding across 

cartoon landscapes collecting 

and unleashing power-ups. Much 

copied, but never bettered (see 

Crash Team Racing or the 

horrendous Garfield Kart), the 

Mario Kart series has remained 

among the most popular games 

in the 27 years since its inception, 

with its latest iteration, Mario 

Kart Tour, released on mobile 

recently. But what is it about the 

game that resonates so strongly 

with players? We asked gaming 

psychologist Jamie Madigan… 

CHARACTER BUILDING 

What does your Mario Kart character of 

choice say about you? In a 2016 article 

in Portland newspaper Willamette Week, 

therapist and psychology professor 

Dr Karen Chenier postulated that players 

chose characters based on relatable 

traits: Luigi is shy and neurotic, 

Yoshi the dinosaur a clown, Bowser 

a narcissist. Miyamoto has said he 

considers Mario a “blue-collar hero”. 

For Madigan, it’s simpler: “People 

likely pick the character that offers 

the mechanics they want, or the one 

whose design is most appealing.” 

POWER-UPS ARE TOTEMS 

Likewise, could the power-ups have 

deeper significance than mere in-game 

artefacts? Perhaps a banana skin 

symbolises bad luck, the homing red 

shell maliciousness, a speed-boosting 

mushroom vigour, and the invincibilitygranting 

star confidence. This is 

somewhat borne out by Mario Kart 8 

director Kosuke Yabuki’s philosophy 

on the controversial blue shell, which 

Pushing buttons: your 

Mario Kart character of 

choice could say a lot 

about your personality 

MARIO KART ZEN 

THE CIRCUIT OF LIFE 

Playing Mario Kart might make you a better driver. And a better person, too… 

only takes out the player in first place. 

“Sometimes life isn’t fair and that’s 

frustrating,” he said on the game’s 

Switch release in 2017. “But when we 

tried the game without the blue shell, 

it felt like something was missing.” 

OPTIMISM BOOST 

Good video games encourage a player 

to keep going with the feeling that they 

always stand a chance. With Mario Kart, 

that incentive system is called rubberbanding. 

Power-ups are graded to help 

players in different positions: those at 

the back get speed boosts, in the middle 

they get weapons, and the person at the 

front gets a measly banana skin to drop. 

“Games such as Mario Kart encourage 

feelings of competence and mastery,” 

EXPERT 

PROFILE 

JAMIE 

MADIGAN 

GAMES PSYCHOLOGIST 

The author of Getting 

Gamers: The Psychology 

of Video Games and 

Their Impact on the 

People Who Play 

Them also has a podcast 

series and blog at 

psychologyofgames.com 

that examine the 

motives behind player 

behaviour and why 

games are made. 

says Madigan. “Rubber-banding ensures 

victory – or at least improvement – is 

always within grasp.” 

IMPROVED MOTOR SKILLS 

Perhaps literally, as in driving capability. 

In 2016, university researchers in 

Shanghai and Hong Kong subjected 

players to sessions of Mario Kart and 

Roller Coaster Tycoon (an amusementpark 

creation game) and found that the 

former group demonstrated “improved 

visuomotor skills” (the coordination 

between the eyes and hand movements). 

Madigan is cautiously optimistic: 

“Playing Mario Kart might help you on 

a driving simulation, but I’m not aware 

that it’s shown to improve ability in 

driving an actual car.” 

EVERYTHING IS AWESOME 

At least if you play Mario Kart regularly. 

A study by researchers at the University 

of Queensland found that participants 

forced to take maths tests until they 

failed, followed by two rounds of Mario 

Kart, demonstrated lower comparable 

stress levels and increased happiness 

after the latter, more so than if they’d 

won the race. “Any enjoyable activity can 

reduce stress and elevate mood, but 

video games have an edge because they 

give a sense of progression, mastery and 

control,” says Madigan. “They satisfy 

basic psychological needs that other 

parts of life typically don’t.” 


G U I D E 

Do it 

Fitness 

At the age of 20, Schiester was a heavy smoker and drinker, but on his doctor’s advice 

he turned his life around. Within two years, he had run the New York Marathon 

MENTAL TRAINING 

FULL STEAM 

AHEAD 

Christian Schiester is one of the world’s top ultrarunners. 

His secret to beating the Sahara Desert? A trip to the sauna 

Heading to the sauna after 

working out is wonderful: 

muscles relax, the circulation 

gets going, thoughts melt away. 

But what if the sauna becomes 

the gym? That’s the reality for 

Christian Schiester. Whenever the 

Austrian ultrarunner was training 

for his desert runs, he would put 

a treadmill or exercise bike in the 

wooden shack, heat it to 60°C, 

then reel off the kilometres for the 

next three hours. “I’d drink up to 

15 litres of water and make sure I 

was never in the sauna alone – you 

never know what might happen,” 

the 52-year-old explains. But 

then, he was already supremely 

fit thanks to a disciplined training 

schedule. “I trained in the sauna to 

simulate in my mind the conditions 

in the desert,” he reveals. 

And it worked: as he ran over 

the dunes in the 2003 Marathon 

des Sables – a six-day race across 

the Sahara – the thermometer on 

his watch showed 60°C. “I felt 

absolutely awful,” he recalls. But 

suddenly he heard his inner voice 

saying to him, “Don’t be like that, 

Schiester. You can do it. It was this 

hot in the sauna, too, remember?” 

The dip in motivation was 

suddenly behind him and he 

crossed the finishing line in 12th 

place, having run more than 

250km through the desert. 

christian-schiester.com 

“I would drink 

up to 15 litres 

of water and 

make sure I was 

never in the 

sauna alone” 

Christian Schiester, 

Red Bull ultrarunner 

KNOW-HOW 

MIND OVER 

MATTER 

Faster, higher, 

further? Here’s how 

your mind can help 

urge your body on 

to high-level 

performance 

TALK TO YOURSELF 

Organise and control your 

thoughts both before and 

during crunch time. Anyone 

who puts their inner voice to 

good use – by, for example, 

deploying positive key words 

– has a better chance of 

achieving peak performance. 

SET GOALS 

Forget the bigger picture for 

a moment. Focus instead 

on important individual 

elements that you’ve already 

mastered. This will boost 

your confidence. 

VISUALISE 

Picture – in the most vivid 

way possible – completing 

each individual part of the 

challenge ahead. The more 

authentically you can 

visualise it, the better 

prepared you’ll be if 

the going gets tough. 

Schiester’s motto: “Punish your body before it punishes you!” 

PHILIP PLATZER/RED BULL CONTENT POOL, HARALD TAUDERER/RED BULL CONTENT POOL FLORIAN STURM 



URBANISTA ATHENS 

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from the pain involved in smashing 

that new personal record. It’s the 

ultimate workout companion. 

With its new Athens headphones, 

Urbanista has ensured you can 

train without limits – these true 

wireless sport headphones were 

created for those looking to hit 

the gym, track or trails, and take 

their workout to the next level. 

Wireless freedom 

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take full advantage of whatever 

wet conditions you put yourself in, 

without interruption to the music 

that keeps you focused. 

Sound that pushes 

you that extra mile 

Athens headphones’ in-ear bud 

design provides maximum comfort 

and sound isolation. With a bassorientated 

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an audio experience that will drive 

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Convenient and stylish 

The headphones come with a stylish 

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The case itself can be quickly and 

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€129, urbanista.com 


1 YEAR 

getredbulletin.com 

£20 

BEYOND THE ORDINARY 

The next issue is out on Tuesday 12th November with London Evening Standard. 

Also available across the UK at airports, gyms, hotels, universities and selected retail stores. 

Read more at theredbulletin.com 

AARON BLATT / RED BULL CONTENT POOL

G U I D E 

Do it 

13 

November 

SECRET CINEMA PRESENTS STRANGER THINGS 

Didn’t get enough horror at Hallowe’en? The best is yet to come. What 

better subject for Secret Cinema – the immersive theatre company 

that has transformed blockbusters including Alien, Back to the Future, 

Ghostbusters and The Empire Strikes Back into real-world experiences 

– than the hit Netflix supernatural sci-fi drama that pays homage to the 

movies of the ’80s? Details are top secret, as is the exact location, but 

expect a trip to the US Midwestern town of Hawkins; encounters with 

characters such as Hopper, Joyce, Dustin, Mike, Lucas and Eleven; and 

a trip to the alternate dimension of the Upside Down. November tickets 

are already sold out, so you’ll need to move faster than the Demogorgon 

to get your fix. Until February; secret location, London; secretcinema.org 

Flayers gonna flay: 

join Eleven, Max 

and co in Hawkins 

Nov/Dec/Jan 

11 

January 

Hatsune Miku 

Expo 2020 

Hatsune Miku, who kicks off her European tour with 

this London gig, is a music sensation in her native 

Japan. Which is impressive when you consider she’s 

not real. This virtual teen pop star (her name means 

‘future sound’) is actually a voice bank of Japanese 

phonemes (phonetic word parts) spoken by actress 

Saki Fujita and channelled though a Vocaloid voice 

synthesiser. Anyone with the software can play her 

utterances through a music keyboard – Lady Gaga 

chose Miku as the opening act on her 2014 artRAVE: 

the ARTPOP Ball tour, and Pharrell remixed Last 

Night, Good Night, her song with Japanese electro 

band Livetune. Miku will be appearing on stage as 

a 3D anime projection, accompanied by a live band. 

O2 Academy Brixton, London; mikuexpo.com 

Virtual insanity: 

Hatsune Miku live 

ALAMY 

12 8 

November 

Touching the 

Void 

In 1985, Brits Joe Simpson and 

Simon Yates survived a near-fatal 

climb of the 6,344m-high Siula 

Grande in the Peruvian Andes. 

Simpson detailed the ordeal in 

his 1988 book Touching the Void, 

which became a documentary in 

2003. And now it’s a play, directed 

by War Horse’s Tom Morris and 

using an ingenious moving stage 

to simulate the mountain faces. 

Simpson recounts his experiences 

in our next issue. Until 29 Feb; 

Duke of York’s Theatre, London; 

thedukeofyorks.com 

23 

November 

Spartan Stadion 

the only event was the Stadion, a 

sprint so epic that the arena was 

named after it (this later became 

then, that the Spartan – the 

present-day race inspired by the 

strongest of the Ancient Greeks – 

At the very first Olympics in 776AD, 

the Latin ‘stadium’). It’s only fitting, 

should honour this competition at a 

series of modern ‘stadions’. This 

5km race at Twickenham features 

20 obstacles including winding 

corridors and a clamber up the 

stadium’s stairs. Twickenham 

Stadium, London; spartanrace.uk 

December 

UVA: Other 

Spaces 

The art collective United Visual 

Artists merges traditional media 

such as painting and sculpture with 

audio-visual technology to challenge 

perceptions. In other words, get 

ready for some mad shit. This 

installation in an iconic Brutalist 

building delivers such dizzying 

delights as mechanical lights 

dancing to the music of Mira Calix, 

and the animal recordings of 

‘bioacoustician’ Bernie Krause as 

spectrograms. 180 The Strand, 

London; 180thestrand.com 


G U I D E 

See it 

November/December 

Off the rails: Finnish 

freeskier Antti Ollila 

A WORLD 

WITHOUT 

LIMITS 

Skiing as a state of mind; 

the wildest of mountain 

bike rides; all-areas access 

to the stars of enduro – 

you’ll find all this and more 

on Red Bull TV this winter… 

WATCH 

RED BULL TV 

ANYWHERE 

Red Bull TV is a global digital 

entertainment destination 

featuring programming that 

is beyond the ordinary and is 

available anytime, anywhere. 

Go online at redbull.tv, 

download the app, or 

connect via your Smart TV. 

To find out more, 

visit redbull.tv 

25 

November FILM 

THE COLLECTIVE 

Shot on location across the world, this film transports the 

viewer from the peaks of the Bernese Alps to the deep snow 

of Hakuba, Japan, to the winding Powder Highway of British 

Columbia, Canada. Filmmakers and top freeskiers including 

Will Berman, Cody Cirillo, Caroline Claire, Mac Forehand, 

Mathilde Gremaud, Alex Hall and Sarah Höfflin join forces to 

explore the individual goals – but common purpose – of this 

diverse group. The message: skiing is collective. 

12 

November ON DEMAND 

ROB WARNER’S 

WILD RIDES 

Former MTB World Cup winner and commentator 

Rob Warner joins the world’s best riders in search 

of virgin terrain where they can test their limits. 

Be warned: mountain biking is about to get wild. 

4December ON DEMAND 

WESS DIARIES: 

SEASON FINALE 

This year’s World Enduro Super Series came to a 

close at the famous Getzenrodeo. Go behind the 

scenes in Drebach, Germany, and meet the elite 

riders who made the 2019 season so unmissable. 

STEPHAN SUTTO, LUKAS PILZ/RED BULL CONTENT POOL, FUTURE7MEDIA/RED BULL CONTENT POOL 


Our exclusive seamless liner 

makes the S/PRO the most 

comfortable boot ever.

Ski 

Switzerland 

Where adventure 

is a lifestyle 

DAVID BIRRI


Slope and glory: 

the picturesque ski 

resort of Adelboden-Lenk 

has more than 200km of 

pistes and hosts the 

annual FIS Ski World Cup 

113

01 Arosa 

Lenzerheide 

The ski area of Arosa Lenzerheide comprises two 

resorts linked by the Urdenbahn – a cable car that was 

installed in 2014, creating a whole new world of winter 

opportunities. Skiers can now get from the Hörnli in 

Arosa to the Urdenfürggli in Lenzerheide via a fiveminute 

ride over the Urdental valley. Together, the 

resorts offer 225km of stunning ski runs. The views 

from the Weisshorn peak in Arosa are remarkable, 

while the 360° panoramas from the top of the 

Parpaner Rothorn in Lenzerheide look out over more 

than 1,000 Alpine summits. Arosa Lenzerheide boasts 

an enviable number of sunny days, too, and Swiss 

tennis ace Roger Federer even has a chalet in the 

hamlet of Valbella on the outskirts of Lenzerheide. 

Switzerland is a country 

covered in mountains. 

The Swiss Alps make up 

a remarkable 65 per cent 

(26,835 sq km) of the 

nation. Not the worst 

ratio for adventure, we 

think you’ll agree. 

Skiing and snowboarding 

Where steep means steep 

Thanks to Arosa Lenzerheide’s 

225km of pistes, there’s a little 

bit of everything here. For 

beginners, there are wide pistes 

and rolling hills aplenty; for 

those who prefer to spend their 

holiday up in the air, or jibbing 

boxes and rails, there are four 

terrain parks spread across the 

resort; and experts can enjoy an 

impressive 28km of pisted black 

terrain. The crown jewel of all 

this is the Silvano Beltrametti 

World Cup slope. Starting at the 

Mottahütte and ending in the 

village of Parpan, it measures 

2.45km, dropping 727m in the 

process. With an average 

gradient of 31 per cent – and 

slanting by as much as 65 per 

cent at points – the thigh-burner 

is one of the steepest courses on 

the downhill World Cup circuit, 

and one of the toughest pisted 

runs on the planet. For the less 

vertically inclined, special nighttime 

skiing options give the 

resort a starry-eyed edge. On 

nights when there’s a full moon, 

skiers can get a sundowner and 

dinner at well above 2,500m 

before skiing down beneath the 

Alpine moonlight – watching out 

for snow werewolves, of course... 

STUART KENNY 


Ski Switzerland 

Light show: an aerial 

view of the Lenzerheide 

valley from the Rothorn 


Winter hiking 

Sun, serenity and 

crackling snow 

Crunch. Silence. Crunch. 

Silence. Crunch. Silence. This 

is the sound of hiking in Arosa 

Lenzerheide: pure serenity, 

where the only noise is your feet 

crossing the prepared tracks in 

the snow. If you want silence in 

your hike, there are more than 

140km of marked and prepared 

trails for winter hiking here. 

Some run almost alongside the 

resort’s pistes, while others go 

right through the snow-covered 

woods and countryside, away 

from the hustle and bustle of the 

ski slopes. The Heidi & Gigi Trail 

is a particularly popular 9km 

option, connecting Arosa and 

Lenzerheide and affording 

endless panoramas. 

On the trail: visit Innerosa’s old houses and the Arosa Bergkirchli chapel, circa 1493 

Curl power: it’s not all about the skiing in Arosa Lenzerheide 

Mountain 

adventures 

The day doesn’t 

end when the 

lifts shut 

There’s a mix of emotions at the end 

of a day’s skiing. On the one hand, 

there’s disappointment that the ski 

day is over; on the other, if all has 

gone to plan, you’ve had a damn 

good day on the mountain and now 

you get to take off your ski boots. In 

Arosa Lenzerheide, the adventures 

don’t end when you step back into 

your regular shoes. Grab dinner, 

then head to the Scharmoin halfway 

station and restaurant and you’ll be 

able to spend the evening eating 

Swiss cheese fondue, drinking 

mulled wine and sledging speedy 

downhill runs. If getting out of the 

snow but still gazing at the views is 

more your style, you have plenty of 

options, too. You can even jump in a 

snow groomer and head around the 

mountains, looking back on Arosa 

and Lenzerheide lit up in the dark. 

Fear not, the melted cheese will 

still be there when you return. 

NINA MATTLI (2), FREDHEIN FOTOS 



Nearest airport: 

Zürich (154km) 

Elevation: 

1,229m–2,865m 

Total piste 

distance: 

225km 

Longest run: 

4.5km 

Difficulty: 

49% blue (110km); 

39% red (87km); 

12% black (28km) 

Number of lifts: 

43 

More info: 

arosalenzerheide. 

swiss/en 

Perfect pistes: Arosa Lenzerheide has something for everyone, from beginners to black-run addicts 



02 Bern 

region 

The colossal peaks of Eiger, Mönch and 

Jungfrau dominate the Interlaken-Jungfrau 

region, which has been at the centre of skiing 

and mountaineering for more than 200 years. 

The 4,158m-high Jungfrau was first climbed in 

1811, which kick-started tourism in the Swiss 

Alps. Almost 150 years on, Heinrich Harrer 

released The White Spider, his legendary book 

describing the first successful ascent, in 1938, 

of the North Face of the Eiger – nicknamed 

‘Mordwand’ or ‘death wall’. Sir Arnold Lunn 

organised the first ski slalom race in the village 

of Mürren in 1922, while the first men’s World 

Cup downhill took place in Wengen in 1967. The 

region now draws 30,000 spectators every 

year for the FIS World Cup’s Lauberhorn races, 

one of the best-attended events on snow. 

Winter sports 

in Interlaken 

Viewpoints 

from the top 

of the world 

There are some ski resorts you 

visit where the add-ons – the 

extra stuff you can do when not 

on skis – are a bit half-baked. 

This is not the case in Interlaken. 

The region boasts an abundance 

of temptations to draw you off 

the slopes for the day, or at least 

a few hours. Top of Europe ICE 

MAGIC is a little winter paradise 

sandwiched between mountains 

and lakes, which consists of six 

icefields connected by winding 

paths. There’s skating ahoy, and 

you can try curling and ice hockey 

on the fields. For an adrenalin 

hit, the paragliding and skydiving 

options are extensive, too. But 

perhaps the pick in Interlaken is 

the winter kayaking on Lake 

Brienz. Think air as crisp as it 

can get, and reflections of snowcovered 

mountains on the water. 



Elevation: 

800m–3,454m 

Total piste 

distance: 

266km 

Longest run: 

14.9km 

Difficulty: 

38% blue (101km); 

48% red (128km); 



54 

More info: 

jungfrau.ch/en; 

interlaken.ch/en 

Skiing in the Jungfrau region 

In the shadow of legendary mountains 

Don’t let the history scare you. 

The Jungfrau region may have 

seen some of the most gnarly 

mountaineering since humans 

began climbing, but the ski slopes 

offer something for everyone. 

The resorts of Grindelwald and 

Wengen are linked and great for 

beginners and intermediates, 

but Wengen also has the 4.5km 

Lauberhorn – the pick of the 

expert pistes and the longest 

downhill World Cup race on the 

circuit. There’s tough skiing in 

Mürren, too, including the 14.9km 

Schilthorn to Lauterbrunnen run. 

It hosts the annual ‘Inferno’ event, 

the world’s biggest amateur ski 

race, with downhill racing, giant 

slalom and cross country. 

Float on: take a break from the slopes and paddle across Lake Brienz 

Forty-eight of the Alps’ 

82 four-thousander 

peaks (higher than 

4,000m) are in 

Switzerland, as well 

as many of the most 

famous summits in 

the world, from the 

Matterhorn and the 

Dufourspitze to the 

legendary Eiger. 


Ticket to ride: the 

train from Wengen to 

Lauterbrunnen cuts 

through picturepostcard 

scenery

Icing on the cake: 

a thick covering of snow 

is guaranteed in the 

Bernese Oberland region


Adelboden-Lenk- 

Kandersteg 

More drama than 

you can dream of 

More than 200km of pistes make 

the resorts of Adelboden-Lenk 

and Kandersteg a joy. But it’s 

the niche activities that stand out. 

In Kandersteg, the 14km crosscountry 

Höh panorama trail is 

a beauty, and some of the crosscountry 

routes are floodlit at 

night. The brave can even try the 

exciting 3.5km downhill sled run. 

Meanwhile, the Gran Masta Park 

in Adelboden is a winter base 

camp with more than 30 kickers, 

rails and obstacles, making it one 

of the Alps’ best parks. Lenk hosts 

the Europa Cup Ski and Snowboard 

Cross, while in January thousands 

of people attend the FIS Ski World 

Cup at Adelboden’s Chunisbärgli. 

And if you take a winter hike to 

the UNESCO-listed Oeschinen 

Lake, you might just fall in love 

with the entire region. 



Elevation: 

1,072m–2,200m 

Total piste 

distance: 

210km 

Longest run: 

7.5km 

Difficulty: 

46% blue (93km); 

47% red (98km); 



55 

More info: 

be-welcome.ch; 

adelboden-lenk. 

ch/en; kandersteg. 

ch/en 

Big air: Gran Masta Park is a highlight in Adelboden-Lenk 

Glacial in Gstaad 

Snow-sure skiing 

through the winter 

DAVID BIRRI, RUEDI FLÜCK 

Peak Walk by Tissot in Gstaad: the world’s only suspension bridge that connects two peaks 

The only glacier ski area in the 

Bernese Oberland region, the 

Glacier 3000 has 30km of varied 

slopes (14.5km blue; 5.5km red; 

10km black) as well as stunning 

freeride options with descents 

of around 2,000 vertical metres. 

There are Freeride Days every 

spring to show skiers the ropes 

and the options available. 

There’s more to Gstaad than just 

the glacier, though. Nearly 40km 

of black runs are accessible on 

a ski pass, and the largest resort, 

Rinderberg/Saanerslochgrat/ 

Horneggli (try saying that after a 

few glühweins), is a 90km dream 

for beginners and intermediates. 

The Eggli/La Videmanette resort, 

meanwhile, is home to a 7.5km 

stretch that drops 1,160m 

through the valley. 


Bern (80km) 

Elevation: 

1,000m–3,000m 

Total piste 

distance: 

200km 

Longest run: 

7.5km 

Difficulty: 

60% blue (120km); 

28% red (56km); 



47 

More info: 

gstaad.ch/en 



03 Engelberg 

A 30-minute drive from the city of Lucerne 

is the freeriding heaven of Engelberg-Titlis, 

based around the mighty 3,238m-high Titlis 

mountain. Sticking strictly to the pistes, 

Engelberg is a resort more accommodating to 

intermediate and advanced skiers than it is 

beginners, even though there are plenty of 

routes for all, and the little circle of blue runs at 

the top of the Jochpass chairlift is a veritable 

playground for skiers of all levels. What really 

brings powder fiends – and international 

freeride teams – to Engelberg, though, are the 

vast opportunities beyond the boundaries... 

Switzerland’s 

powder 

playground 

World-famous 

freeriding without 

the crowds 

Walk this way: hire a mountain guide to get the most out of Engelberg 



Elevation: 

1,000m–3,020m 

Total piste 

distance: 

66km 

Longest run: 

12km 

Difficulty: 

29% blue (19km); 

57% red (37.5km); 

14% black (9.5km) 


19 

More info: 

engelberg.ch 

You can reach Engelberg’s 

recommended powder runs, 

known as the ‘Big 5’, without 

ever removing your skis. The 

most famous of these, the Laub 

– a huge mountain face visible 

from Engelberg village – is 

steep, fierce and an absolute 

blast to ski. Also one of the Big 

5, the Galtiberg run consists of 

a huge descent from 3,020m to 

1,020m, via cliff-edge traverses. 

Needless to say, hiring a 

mountain guide in Engelberg is 

near-enough a must if you’re 

a powder hound, but you’ll be 

rewarded for the expense as 

you lay new tracks all day. Once 

you feel the legs begin to tire, 

it’s worth one last trip up the 

mountain to traverse the Titlis 

Cliff Walk, which is the highest 

suspension bridge in Europe at 

3,020m and has panoramas 

of mountaintops on every side. 

Come for the powder lines, 

stay for the views. 

JOHAN AXELSSON 


Field of dreams: 

Engelberg is a 

powdery playground 

for local freeskier 

Olof Larsson


Land of the giant: 

skiing in the shadow 

of the Matterhorn 

in Valais 

VALAIS/WALLIS PROMOTION – PASCAL GERTSCHEN

04 Valais 

This is a stunning region of more than 40 ski areas and 2,500km of slopes; 

of 45 mighty summits above 4,000m, including the famous, pyramid-shaped 

Matterhorn; of glorious panoramic views; of 50 grape varieties (best enjoyed 

chilled in a glass on one of the region’s many sun terraces) and one UNESCO 

World Heritage Site. When the first thing you say about a Swiss ski region 

isn’t the fact that it’s probably the most snow-sure in a country pretty reliable 

for its snow, you know it’s got a whole lot more going for it. Valais is one of 

the most spectacular ski regions in all of Europe. visitvalais.ch/ski 

125


Région Dents du Midi 

The gateway to Les Portes du Soleil, 

where Switzerland meets France 

The Région Dents du Midi 

comprises six charming 

villages – Champéry, Morgins, 

Troistorrents, Les Crosets, 

Champoussin and Val-d‘Illiez 

– nestled at the foot of 

the iconic Dents du Midi 

mountains, and makes up 

the Swiss side of Les Portes 

du Soleil, one of the largest 

ski networks in the world. It 

encompasses 12 resorts 

between Mont Blanc in France 

and Lake Geneva in Switzerland 

and covers more than 600km 

of pistes, offering a huge variety 

of skiing. This vast skiing 

paradise has some demanding 

slopes, not least the 2km-long 

Didier Défago run, named after 

the 2010 Olympic Downhill gold 

medallist and world champion, 

who hails from the area. The 

runs can get marvellously tricky 

in Les Crosets as well. 

Some pistes are so steep 

they’re graded black. Others 

are so steep they’re just plain 

scary. One goes beyond all 

that to ‘legendary’ status. 

The infamous mogul field at 

Chavanette fits that moniker 

comfortably – but that’s the 

only comfortable thing about 

it. The run, known as the 

‘Swiss Wall’ because it starts 

on the Swiss-French border, 

is reachable from Avoriaz in 

France, Champéry or Les 

Crosets, and then plummets 

back into the latter. The slope 

not only has continuous 

moguls but starts on a narrow 

passage with a 40-degree 

gradient. It opens up a little 

after the first 50m, but this 

is one strictly for expert skiers 

or snowboarders. It lasts 

a whole kilometre, dropping 

331m on the way, and has 

been judged so challenging 

in the Swiss/French grading 

system that it surpassed 

a black grading and received 

the notorious orange rank. 

Did you even know there 

was an orange rank? Yup, 

it’s that hard. 


Geneva (90km) 

Elevation: 

767m–2,276m 

Total piste 

distance: 

600km 

Longest run: 

10km 

Difficulty: 

12% green 

(38 slopes); 

44% blue (131); 

34% red (105); 

10% black (32) 


195 

More info: 

regiondentsdumidi. 

ch/en 

LITESCAPE MEDIA 


Big fun: Les Portes 

du Soleil is one of 

the world’s largest 

ski networks 



High point: view 

from the top of 

the gondola of 

the Mont-Fort 


Nendaz 4 Vallées 

The ski resort 

in the heart of 

the enormous 

4 Vallées 

AROLLE 


Sion (15km) 

Elevation: 

1,350m–3,330m 

Total piste 

distance: 

410km 

Longest run: 

10km 

Difficulty: 

33% blue (24 

slopes); 52% red 

(39); 14% black 

(10); plus seven 

yellow slopes 

(freetracks) 


80 

More info: 

nendaz.ch 

Nendaz is the lesser-known 

neighbour of the snow sports 

powerhouse Verbier – the cliffdropping, 

powder-puffing venue 

of the Freeride World Cup. 

Nendaz is linked with Verbier, 

Veysonnaz and Thyon, making 

4 Vallées the biggest ski resort 

that’s solely in Switzerland, with 

more than 400km of pistes. You 

can easily hop between resorts 

whenever you like. The terrain 

in Nendaz is similar to its 

neighbour – sublime. It caters 

to all abilities, sure, but where 

Nendaz really excels is in the offpiste, 

freeriding fun. It has seven 

free tracks: secured, unprepared 

routes. And the fact that Verbier 

is so close by means that when 

the fresh stuff does fall, you’ll 

be a lot more likely to ride fresh 

tracks all day in Nendaz, because 

the crowds are in Verbier. All the 

snow, all the terrain, but without 

the queues. 

The seven freeriding areas 

in Nendaz are the big pull for 

expert riders. The runs on Mont- 

Fort, in particular, attract a lot 

of attention from accomplished 

skiers and snowboarders. On the 

front face you’ll find steep riding, 

while on the backside you’ll find 

a far-flung valley run made for 

adventurous backcountry 

dreamers. Gentianes is a 3.5km 

freeride run which is incredibly 

physically demanding, and if you 

make it out to the challenging 

freetrack L’Eteygeon, further 

from the lifts than many of the 

other options, you’ll be staring 

into a great white wilderness. 

Beware, though, this is expert 

skiing. Book yourself a mountain 

guide and they’ll no doubt show 

you the best of the mountain. 

There are 300 days of sunshine 

a year here, so you should be 

able to top up your goggle tan 

as you float along the powder. 


One of the world’s 

most beautiful 

ski destinations, 

Zermatt offers 

endless runs for 

all grades of skier 

130


Time to chill: aprés-ski drinks at Cervo Mountain Boutique Resort in Zermatt 

Zermatt 

Powder lines beneath one of the 

planet’s most remarkable mountains 

PASCAL GERTSCHEN 

The resort in the shadow of the 

mighty Matterhorn mountain, 

one of the most distinctive rock 

formations in the world, Zermatt 

is often rightly lauded as among 

the planet’s most beautiful ski 

destinations. And it’s safe to 

say the piste map matches the 

scenery. Connecting to Breuil- 

Cervinia, a resort on the Italian 

side of the Matterhorn (or 

‘Cervino’, as it’s called across 

the border), the combined 

360km of pistes – 200km in 

Zermatt and 160km in Italy – 

offer endless runs of all grades, 

and nearly always look on to 

either the north, east or south 

face of the Matterhorn. As a 

result, Zermatt is incredibly 

photogenic. The views from the 

top of the Monte Rosa glacier are 

particularly special, with frozen 

mountain lakes visible beneath 

the peaks. Just make sure you 

don’t miss the last lift home if 

you do go to Italy, as it’s a three- 

and-a-half-hour drive round the 

mountain to get back once the 

lifts stop for the day. 

The option of heading into 

Italy for an espresso and a bowl 

of pasta for lunch isn’t the worst 

add-on for a ski resort, but 

what’s great about Zermatt is 

that the hefty 200km of pistes 

situated in the resort itself are 

enough to keep you comfortably 

entertained for a week-long stay. 

There are three main areas in 

Zermatt: Rothorn, Gornergrat 

and Matterhorn glacier paradise. 

The glacier delivers what it says 

on the tin: it’s a paradise. And 

the cable car trip to get you 

there will sit nicely on your 

Instagram. It reaches the highest 

cable car station in Europe at 

3,883m. If you want something 

a bit more off the beaten track, 

then Zermatt also has a full 

36km of freeride slopes, denoted 

with yellow markings, just 

waiting for your tracks. 


Sion (80km) 

Elevation: 

1,620m–3,899m 

Total piste 

distance: 360km 

Longest run: 

25km 

Difficulty: 

20% blue (76km); 

62% red (220km); 

18% black/yellow 

(64km) 


54 

More info: 

zermatt.ch 

131

THE RED 

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SWISS 

THE SKIERS’ AIRLINE 

Jet to the Alps with the specialist airline and your ski and snowboard equipment flies free 

Every skier or snowboarder knows the pain of checking in 

their favourite equipment with all the other luggage at the 

airport as they embark on their snow holiday. Having gear 

that’s in good working order can make or break a week in the 

mountains, so it’s vital to travel with an airline that you can 

trust with those all-important boards, skis and boots. 

Being the skiers’ airline of choice, SWISS transports your 

first set of skis/snowboard and boots free of charge, in addition 

to your standard free baggage allowance of 23kg in Economy 

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UK and Switzerland with more than 160 weekly flights 

from London Heathrow, London Gatwick**, London City, 

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SWISS’s classic fare from London Heathrow to Geneva – 

gateway to the Alps – starts from £82 in one direction and 

includes free ski and snowboard equipment carriage. 

swiss.com 

*Free ski carriage is not applicable for travel on our Economy 

Light fares. **Seasonal flights only 


Action highlight 

Flipping the script 

Brazilian Felipe Gustavo originally wanted to follow in the footsteps of his country’s 

footballing heroes – players such as Pelé and Neymar. But then he swapped the ball 

for a board, and the rest was street skateboarding history. In the video All On Me, 

the 28-year-old journeys through New York, musing on his life in the US and the 

decisions that took him to the top of his sport. Watch All On Me at redbull.com 

The next 

issue of 


is out on 

January 14 

JONATHAN MEHRING/RED BULL CONTENT POOL 


GIVES YOU 

WIIINGS. 

ALSO WITH THE TASTE OF COCONUT & BERRY. 

NEW

C.C. FILSON CO. | UNFAILING GOODS 

9 & 13 NEWBURGH STREET, LONDON, W1F | FILSON.COM

The Red Bulletin December 2019 (UK)

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