The Red Bulletin April 2021 (US)

BEYOND THE ORDINARY THE RED BULLETIN 04/2021
BEYOND THE ORDINARY
THE GAME
CHANGER
Pro cyclist JUSTIN WILLIAMS aspires
to do more than win big races—he’s
out to transform bike racing in America
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FOR
THOSE
THAT
RISE.
To live, To is live, to rise.
to rise.
And whether And whether you like you it or like not, it or adventures not, adventures don’t don’t
fi t conveniently fi t conveniently into a 9 into a 5. 9 to 5.
So you, So yeah you, you, yeah wipe you, that wipe sleep that out sleep of out your of eyes. your eyes.
Wake Wake up. Lace up. up. Lace Gear up. up. Gear Now, up. fl Now, y. fl y.
It’s a new It’s a day, new and day, there’s and there’s daylight daylight to burn. to burn.
It’s time It’s to time rise. to rise.

With the sun setting over Malibu, Joe Pugliese captures Justin Williams in repose.
EDITOR’S NOTE
SEEING
THE
LIGHT
Bicycles are simple tools.
They’re just two wheels
and a frame, a handlebar
and some pedals. And yet
there’s something magical
about them; even today
physicists don’t fully
understand why they’re so
stable in motion. These
machines can multitask as
transportation workhorses,
race vehicles, instruments
of self-expression or toys
for recreation. Bikes can
help people get fit, lose
weight, find grit, express
individuality and otherwise
change their lives for the
better.
Two features in this issue
demonstrate the power of
bikes to truly move people.
04 THE RED BULLETIN

CONTRIBUTORS
THIS ISSUE
JOE PUGLIESE (COVER)
Williams did some hard sprint efforts on
Saddle Peak with Pugliese on his tail.
Our cover story, “Power
Broker” (page 22), profiles
Justin Williams, a pro bike
racer whose life has taken
him from a tough L.A.
neighborhood to become
one of America’s top
criterium racers. And along
the way, he’s transforming
the demographics and
future of his sport.
In a similar vein, “Taking
the Leap” (page 34) explores
the past, present and
future of Formation, a
groundbreaking event that
is changing women’s place
in the freeriding mountain
bike universe. The story
details the history of this
landmark event and offers
some wisdom on how
women want to express
themselves on bicycles.
In short, bikes can take
you where you want to go.
We hope you join the ride.
PARIS
GORE
Already a veteran of shooting
Red Bull Rampage, Gore was
excited to shoot the first
Formation. “I knew many of
the riders prior to Formation,
so it was really exciting to see
them all challenge themselves
in new ways,” says the
Bellingham, Washingtonbased
photographer, who has
shot for National Geographic,
Bike and Outside as well as
brands like BMW, Patagonia
and Arc’teryx. “The way the
women supported each other
brought a unique vibe to the
whole event.” Page 34
JOE
PUGLIESE
The Los Angeles-based
photographer has shot
presidents, Hollywood legends
and moguls but has long had a
personal passion for bike
racing and jumped at the
chance to shoot Justin
Williams. “I’ve known Justin
and his brother, Cory, since
they were junior racers,” says
Pugliese, who has also
photographed Kate Courtney
and Ken Roczen for The Red
Bulletin and shot covers for
The Hollywood Reporter,
Fortune, Variety, Outside and
many other titles. Page 22
EVAN
MAJORS
“After interviewing Blxst, it
was clear to me that he’s an
artist I think we’re going to
hear a lot from in the future,”
says Majors, who profiled the
rising hip-hop star. “I think
he’s going to be one of those
rare artists who is going to
move fluidly between all
genres of music as a producer
and songwriter—he has that
‘it’ factor.” A part-time writer
who has penned features for
Bleu magazine, Majors is a
casting director and talent
executive who resides in Los
Angeles. Page 9
DUSTIN
SNIPES
“I spent months researching
night-sky photography,” says
the Los Angeles-based portrait
and sports photographer, who
after meticulous preparation
was able to capture an
extraordinary shot of the Red
Bull Air Force descending over
Marfa, Texas, on a starlight
night. “I feel very fortunate to
get to work with people who
continue to push the
boundaries of creativity.”
Snipes’ work has appeared in
ESPN The Magazine, Sports
Illustrated and The New York
Times Magazine. Page 44
THE RED BULLETIN 05

CONTENTS
April
FEATURES
22 Power Broker
Champion cyclist and sprinting specialist Justin Williams wants
to do more than win big races. He wants to change his sport.
34 Taking the Leap
How the women of Formation, a groundbreaking event in
Virgin, Utah, transformed freeride mountain biking forever.
44 Bright Lights
In Marfa, Texas, one photographer sets out to capture a
different kind of flying object: the Red Bull Air Force.
58 Raising the Reef
A group of young Polynesians are fighting to protect the
world’s reefs against the effects of global warming.
68 Driving Change
An unlikely alliance between motorsports and eco-activism
spawned a new racing series with a mission to save the planet.
44
SHOOTING STARS
Strange lights have
long attracted
curious visitors to
Marfa, Texas. This
time it was the Red
Bull Air Force.
06 THE RED BULLETIN

26
ANGYIL
Tyler Blevins—known
to his tens of millions
of Fortnite fans as
Ninja—knows how to
balance his fame and
stay grounded at home
and on the road.
22
SPRINTING AHEAD
“I like to win, but I’m
more interested in
pursuing a greater
good,” says Justin
Williams. The gifted
bike racer put on
his Red Bull helmet
for the first time
on January 20.
THE
DEPARTURE
Taking You to New Heights
9 L.A.-grown artist Blxst
carves out his own lane
12 A British curator puts
diversity in the picture
14 Autumnal mountain biking
in the forests of France
16 Ice-cool surfing in Alaska
18 Body-positive surfers share
their fight for recognition
19 Common shares top tracks
with the power of change
GUIDE
Get it. Do it. See it.
81 Urban escapes: How to find
close-to-home adventures
84 Fitness tips from freeride
MTB prodigy Jaxson Riddle
86 Dates for your calendar
88 The best trail-running gear
94 Helmets for all seasons
96 The Red Bulletin worldwide
98 Rallying in Saudi Arabia
JOE PUGLIESE, KELSEY WILLIAMS, DUSTIN SNIPES
58
REEF RESCUE
In the South Pacific,
cultivated coral is
fixed to a dead or
damaged reef with a
few dabs of marine
cement.
THE RED BULLETIN 07

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LIFE & STYLE BEYOND THE ORDINARY
THE
BLXST OFF
The L.A.-grown, multihyphenate
artist carves out his own lane
—and makes no apologies.
KOURY ANGELO/RED BULL CONTENT POOL
Since the release of his
debut EP, No Love Lost,
last September, Blxst
has been busy working
on his forthcoming LP.
THE RED BULLETIN 09

T H E D E P A R T U R E
Living in L.A. can feel
like a vacation—the
sun-soaked days,
towering palm trees, vast
mountain ranges and
beautiful beaches. It’s lovely
for many people, but in South
Los Angeles, there is a
different existence, one that is
distracting and dangerous and
surrounded by gangs. This
was the reality for the multihyphenate
rapper, singer,
songwriter and producer
Blxst, who grew up near 75th
Street and Central Avenue.
“When I was young, living
with my mom, my school was
eight blocks away from my
house,” says Blxst. “It was
literally between two gangs,
where anything could happen
on any street.”
The twentysomething
artist has been singing for as
long as he can remember, but
September 2020 marked the
release of his debut EP, No
Love Lost, on Red Bull Records.
In just a week, the collection,
which seamlessly blends rap
and R&B, picked up 4 million
streams and reached 75
million streams as of January.
The deluxe version, which
dropped in December,
features bonus tracks with Ty
Dolla $ign, Tyga, Dom
Kennedy and Bino Rideaux.
His versatility, DIY ethos and
singsong, melodic funk sound
have been compared to the
“King of Hooks”—the late hiphop
legend Nate Dogg.
Growing up, Blxst dreamed
of playing in the NBA, but he
eventually fell out of love with
basketball. To escape the
trappings of South L.A. street
life, he relocated to the Inland
Empire with his dad.
The Inland Empire—or
“the IE”— is a short drive east
from Los Angeles, but worlds
away from South L.A. Known
for its harsh deserts, mountain
towns and sprawling suburbs,
the IE is where Blxst picked up
a new love—skateboarding.
“I was definitely invested in
skateboarding,” Blxst says
during a phone interview on
MLK Day. “I was skating every
day, like to the point where I
thought it was going to be my
future—until I got a reality
check and broke my ankle.
That led me to picking up a
laptop. I started recording
myself and taught myself how
to make beats when I was
around 16 years old.”
The change of scenery
allowed Blxst to hone his craft
and his sound, but more
importantly, learn how to be
his authentic self. “Living in
the IE was the complete
opposite of South Central,”
says Blxst. “It was more
suburban. The school system
was strict, but it also made me
keep to myself. I didn’t really
know anybody out there, so
that’s how I fell into the pocket
of being home and just
creating music.”
For Blxst, the decision to
lean into his music career
eventually paid off, but it
wasn’t without contention
from some of the people who
were closest to him. After the
release of his first single,
“Who Would’ve Thought,” in
2016, and his 2019 breakout
hit, “Hurt,” Blxst’s rising
success and the amount of
time he spent focused on his
work caused some friction
with friends and family.
“Sometimes people around
you can’t understand,” Blxst
explains. “It takes separation
for elevation. Being away from
everyone gave me a different
perspective, a sense of
discipline. I decided I wanted
to do things for myself and
have a different dedication
towards my music.”
With this newfound focus,
Blxst teamed up with R&B
sensation Eric Bellinger to
produce the 2018 track “By
Now.” In return, the singer
appeared on Blxst’s single
“Can I.” Picking up on this
momentum, Blxst joined
forces with Bino Rideaux for
the collaborative Sixtape in
2019. To date it’s generated
nearly 5 million total streams,
flaunting fan favorites such as
“Selfish” and “Bacc Home.”
“I felt the pressure early
on trying to build my
foundation,” Blxst says of his
career beginnings. “I didn’t
even know where I was going
to lay my head at a certain
point. I was just trying to
follow through with the plan,
just strategizing and executing
and believing in myself.”
It was around this time that
Blxst came to a difficult fork in
the road, where he had to
make a choice between the
people he loved and chasing
his dreams. “That’s what a lot
of No Love Lost is about,” Blxst
says. “It’s saying ‘no hard
feelings’ to my loved ones, to
my friends—that I had to take
time away from them to be
self-sufficient and support
myself. Sorry, not sorry.”
But it’s also that type of
perspective and selfassuredness
that’s led Blxst to
find his own lane in an already
crowded hip-hop space. “I
create music for the soul,” Blxst
says. “No matter what genre it
is, it’s going to be intentional.
I create what’s missing in the
game. I feel like people are
missing that love connection,
that honesty, that soulfulness,
and I want to be that.”
As he wraps up work on his
first full-length album, set to
be released later this summer,
Blxst continues to stand firm
in his own truth as an artist.
“[My music] is about being
authentic and being real with
myself,” he says. “I’m opening
up and giving the listener an
opportunity to know that
they’re not alone, no matter
what emotion they’re feeling.
I just want to be able to show
people that it’s cool to feel, it’s
cool to love. It’s cool to be who
you are.” —Evan Majors
10 THE RED BULLETIN

“I create music for
the soul,” Blxst says.
“No matter what
genre it is, it’s going
to be intentional.”
KOURY ANGELO/RED BULL CONTENT POOL
“IT’S COOL TO FEEL. IT’S
COOL TO LOVE. IT’S COOL
TO BE WHO YOU ARE.”
THE RED BULLETIN 11

T H E D E P A R T U R E
Bolanle Tajudeen
MAKING ART
HISTORY
This U.K.-based creative, activist and entrepreneur is
reinventing the education system with her Black
Blossoms School of Art and Culture.
When Bolanle
Tajudeen began
frequenting
galleries and museums eight
years ago, while studying PR
at the University of the Arts
London (UAL), it changed her
life. She fell in love with art. But it
was the inequality the Nigerianborn
Londoner encountered in
both the education system and
the mainstream art world that
prompted her to become a
curator. “I was around so many
creatives of color, but I didn’t see
their work reflected in the
industry,” she says. At UAL,
Tajudeen began displaying the
work of Black artists for Black
History Month. By 2019, she’d
hosted successful exhibitions and
taught a sell-out course, Art in the
Age of Black Girl Magic, at Tate
Britain. Yet she was struggling: “I
worked in a fried chicken shop to
pay the rent. I was applying for
museum and gallery roles and
not getting them. I grew up in
[public housing], so I had to build
my own network. No one knew I
was broke.”
Fast-forward to 2021 and the
32-year-old has found a way to
bypass traditional institutions
and promote a more diverse
perspective on art. Her Black
Blossoms School of Art and
Culture curates affordable,
accessible online courses that
aim to decolonize, deconstruct
and democratize the education
system. And, Tajudeen says,
that’s just the beginning.
the red bulletin: What does
art mean to you?
bolanle tajudeen: I never
went to galleries growing up—
they didn’t feel like spaces for
me. But art was everywhere.
At Nigerian parties, the way
people would tie their head
scarves was artistic. Even how
the boys would hang around
our [home]—compositionally,
it was an aesthetic. I feel seen
when I see art that speaks to me
or has been made with me in
mind. I’m very political, but I’m
over standing on a soapbox.
I believe art can be a tool for
change. It speaks to me being
a woman, being Black, being
a mother. Art helps me articulate
feelings that I might not be able
to with words.
What hurdles did you face in
becoming a curator?
I’m not from a curatorial
background. I’ve educated
myself. I’ve taken courses and
attended conferences and
artists’ talks to really understand
the history of Black art in this
country. And I’ve got a teaching
qualification. But I didn’t want
to study art history. The courses
don’t talk about the things I
want to discuss. I didn’t want to
spend more money just to learn
about old, dead white guys.
Was that sentiment why your
Tate Britain course sold out?
It was one of the first courses of
its kind at any major institution.
It focused on the historical and
contemporary practices of Black
female and nonbinary artists,
using the Tate collection and
work outside of that, too. I put a
lot about activism in there; how
artists have responded to social
upheaval and political change.
It spoke to people, as there was
nothing else like it.
Is that why you founded your
school, Black Blossoms?
I first thought about it while
working as an education
officer at UAL after my studies.
I wanted to decolonize the
curriculum, get more authors
of color on reading lists,
more [minority] lecturers
teaching courses. Then, when
[COVID] closed museums and
galleries, I decided to teach
online. I realized I knew so
many great experts and this was
our chance to make a change.
For me, the pandemic took away
the power of universities and
other institutions. We can all be
curators now; we’ve got Zoom,
and people are doing courses
at home in a way that felt
unnatural in 2019. Before,
I never had the confidence, the
social clout or the capital to say,
“We don’t need the backing of
an institution—we can do it
ourselves.”
What has been the response?
Amazing. People have said it’s
revolutionary.
What’s next?
I’m working on opening 40 artist
studios, a gallery and a website
where artists and writers of
color can write about the art
world. My ideal would be for
all Black households in Britain
to have a Black Blossoms
subscription. A lot of Black
people don’t feel comfortable in
museums and galleries—this
could be their entry point.
Basically I’m hoping for a mini
Black Blossoms empire!
black-blossoms.online
ALEXIS CHABALA RUTH MCLEOD
HAIR: SHAMARA ROPER, @SHAMARA_ROPER; NAIL TECH AND MAKE-UP: JENELLE ROPER, @JENELLEROPER
12 THE RED BULLETIN

“GROWING UP,
GALLERIES
DIDN’T FEEL
LIKE SPACES
FOR ME.”
THE RED BULLETIN 13

T H E D E P A R T U R E
Brioude, France
FALLING
INTO PLACE
In life, sometimes everything just comes
together. Take Jean-Baptiste Liautard’s
last-minute assignment to shoot mountain
biker Amaury Pierron. Following a flight
from Vancouver, then a long drive, the
photographer arrived in south-central
France, tired and short of ideas. Enter a
sudden snowstorm. “I remember running
in every direction, trying to figure out the
shot I should do and the lighting needed,”
he says, “but I’m glad I had time to set up
everything before it stopped snowing.
We were even lucky with the fall tones of
the trees perfectly matching Amaury’s
gear and bike.” Thank you, Mother Nature.
jbliautard.com

JB LIAUTARD
15

Yakutat, Alaska
CHILL WAVE
Action sports photographer Dom Daher
was working at the Freeride World Tour in
Haines, Alaska, when he received a text
from former freeride medalist Anne-Flore
Marxer. “She said it was pumping in Yakutat
and we should go right after the event,”
recalls the Frenchman. “So the next day
we flew there—in a very small plane.”
Yakutat in southeast Alaska has a
population of just 600—“the town cop
knows everyone’s home phone number by
heart,” reports Daher—and a wave that
local surfers keep a fiercely guarded
secret. Nevertheless, resident teacher
Andrew (pictured) was on hand to add a
human element to this dramatic shot.
domdaher.com

T H E D E P A R T U R E
DOM DAHER
17

The true surfing
community has never
been as tanned and
toned as the marketing lets on.
While brands push the image
of six-packs and supermodels,
anyone who has surfed
California’s breaks will know
that the wisest surfer in the
water is often some crazy old
dude on a longboard. Now,
a new online movement is
giving a platform to a surfing
On board: Social
influencer Elizabeth
Sneed is among
those challenging
outdated surfing
stereotypes.
Body-Positive Surfers
AHEAD OF THE CURVE
The plus-sized women board riders fighting
for recognition in the surf community.
demographic that has too
long been overlooked: plussized
women. A growing
collective of professional
board riders, including
Brazilian Silvana Lima and
American Bo Stanley, as well
as amateurs such as fitness
coach Kanoa Greene and
online influencer Elizabeth
Sneed, are pushing a new
narrative in surfing that has
space for women of every size.
Texas-born Sneed, who
owns the Instagram account
@curvysurfergirl, only began
surfing three and a half years
ago after moving to Honolulu
for work. She quickly fell in
love with the sport and then
looked for role models to
follow. “But there are no
images of curvy female surfers
online,” Sneed explains.
“So I got in touch with surf
photographer Tommy Pierucki
and asked if he wanted to
create some shots.”
Six months later, Pierucki’s
images of Sneed have been
viewed by more than 18,000
followers on her Instagram
and have sparked a global
trend for surfers to post their
own photos with the hashtag
#curvysurfergirl. “We have
to believe that we’re worthy
and belong in the surfing
community,” says Sneed.
“You don’t have to stress out
about your body or your
insecurities. Seeing women
of different body types in the
water is so encouraging.”
The body-positive surf
movement is about more than
self-confidence and good
vibes, though. Sneed says
that in her early days of
surfing she struggled to even
find performance gear that fit
her. She now hopes the world’s
biggest surf brands will finally
pay attention. “This movement
is a direct communication to
them that there are women
in this demographic who have
a demand for surfwear and
activewear [made for] the
water,” she says. “Every single
person who follows my
Instagram is testament that
something needs to be done.
“I hope there are more
photographers who will be
inspired to turn their camera
towards curvy women and
create more images of people
like me, so that in the near
future we have a lot of curvy
surfers out there shredding.
We need to show all women,
of every shape, that there’s a
future for them in surfing.”
TOMMY PIERUCKI LOU BOYD
18 THE RED BULLETIN

T H E D E P A R T U R E
Playlist
SING THE
CHANGES
Rapper, actor and activist
Common shares four songs
that embody the sound of
revolution.
Social activism and
promoting positivity have
long been trademarks of
Lonnie Rashid Lynn Jr., best known
as rapper and actor Common.
The Chicagoan, a regular on the
frontlines of protest in 2020, is the
author of two best-selling books,
has appeared in films including
2014’s Selma—for which he
co-wrote the Academy Awardwinning
song “Glory” and starred
as civil rights leader James Bevel—
and has recorded 13 albums. With
his latest, A Beautiful Revolution Pt.1
(out now), the 49-year-old Oscar,
Emmy and Grammy winner wants
to heal and inspire those affected
by racial and social injustice. Here
he lists four classic tracks with the
power to change the world.
thinkcommon.com
MARK LEIBOWITZ FLORIAN OBKIRCHER
JOHN LENNON
“IMAGINE” (1971)
“This song has always resonated
with me because I’m a dreamer
and I really believe in a better
world, full of love, compassion
and happiness. Imagination is a
powerful tool. So many things
we create start off as an
imagined thought or hopeful
feeling. John’s inspiring words
make me feel like change can
happen. That, to me, is one of
the seeds of revolution.”
QUEEN LATIFAH
“UNITY” (1993)
“The end result of revolution
should be unity. Throughout
history there’s been an
imbalance of male energy and
dominance that has negatively
affected the world. Queen
Latifah is empowering women,
telling them they’re queens and
they should demand respect.
The revolution is nothing without
women in power, in leadership
roles, with respect and honor.”
YASIIN BEY (FKA MOS DEF)
“UMI SAYS” (1999)
“Mos played this to me before
it came out, and I remember
telling him, ‘This is one of the
greatest records I’ve ever
heard.’ It felt so soulful and
uplifting. When I think of this
song—especially the lyric ‘My
Umi [‘mother’ in Arabic] said
shine your light on the world’—
I see it as an act of revolution.
If you’re shining your light on
the world, that’s part of it.”
GIL SCOTT-HERON
“THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT
BE TELEVISED” (1971)
“I was really young when I first
heard this song. It was unique to
me, because I’d never heard
spoken word on a song before.
As I got older, I really took heed
of what he was saying. Gil Scott-
Heron represents the true core,
heart and purity of what
revolution is: being unafraid,
courageous, clever and having
power in what you say.”
THE RED BULLETIN 19

TEAM WORK
7-Eleven employees give back to
a local Feeding America food
bank in 2019.
HUNGER GAINS
How 7-Eleven and its customers are set to fight hunger through
an innovative campaign.
The past year has doled out a lot of harsh
and unexpected adversity and demanded
adaptions that no one could have imagined
before the world turned upside down. Take the
problem of hunger. Already a sweeping systemic
issue in the U.S., things got tougher when the
pandemic brought a steep rise in unemployment
and triggered an increase in demand for food
assistance. Feeding America® has projected that
more than 50 million people, including 17 million
children, could be food insecure due to the ongoing
economic fallout from COVID-19.
There are no easy solutions to a problem of that
enormity, but 7-Eleven is stepping up with a new
campaign, a collaboration between the conveniencestore
giant and Feeding America, the largest domestic
hunger-relief organization in the country, that at once
draws attention to the issue and promises to make
a positive impact. Through an inventive program
that will run from February 24 through April 27,
7-Eleven—the company that invented to-go coffee
and self-service soda fountains—expects to help
provide an estimated 20 million meals* to the
Feeding America network of food banks.
*$1 equals at least 10 meals secured by Feeding America on behalf of member food banks.

PROMOTION
“BRANDS CAN SIMULTANEOUSLY BE A
FORCE FOR GROWTH AND FOR GOOD.”
“I’m a big believer that brands can
simultaneously be a force for growth and for
good,” says Marissa Jarratt, 7-Eleven’s Chief
Marketing Officer. Noting that 7-Eleven has
roughly 10,000 stores in the U.S., while Feeding
America is a nationwide network of 200 food
banks, Jarratt sees an obvious synergy between
the two community-based organizations.
“7-Eleven franchisees are small business owners
who really care about their communities and have
a daily relationship with customers that’s deeper
than just transactions, so this is a great chance to
make a difference.”
Here’s how the program will work. With
every purchase at participating stores and via
the company’s 7NOW delivery app, 7-Eleven
customers will be able to round-up to contribute to
the program—and thanks to zip code analysis, all
the proceeds will be digitally routed to the nearest
Feeding America member food bank. 7-Eleven will
separately be making its own donations—last year
the company helped to provide 1 million meals and
donated more than $1 million in organic juices to
21 food banks in 13 states.
In order to drive engagement, 7-Eleven will be
running a number of customer activations during
the two-month program. Some will be exclusive
to members of the company’s 7Rewards loyalty
program, but others are open to all. Every Friday,
for instance, the company will help provide one
meal to Feeding America with the purchase of
any large fountain, coffee or Slurpee drink. And to
celebrate Pi Day—March 14 if you need help with
the math—every participating store will be selling
large pizzas for (wait for it) $3.14 and providing a
meal with the purchase of each pie, whether it’s
delivered or purchased in-store.
Jarratt is excited how a few of 7-Eleven’s key
partners have stepped up with creative prizes—
what she calls “prizes that money can’t buy”—like
a one-on-one virtual date with NFL Hall of Famer
Emmitt Smith. Or an all-expenses-paid trip to
Iceland (“when travel is back, of course,” says
Jarratt) to see the Northern Lights. Anyone who
rounds-up their change and scans their 7-Eleven
app upon checkout in-store, or orders a delivery
order through 7NOW and opts-in to round-up is
eligible for these and other sweet prizes.
In the end, though, this partnership isn’t about
a fantasy vacation or even a deliciously affordable
pizza—it’s about community engagement to help
fight hunger. “Food insecurity has long been a
problem in America but it’s spiking right now,”
says Jarratt. “At 7-Eleven we talk often about
wanting to activate awesome. Getting 7-Eleven
franchisees and our customer and the company
to work together to help provide millions of
meals—that’s awesome.” —Peter Flax
FEEDING AMERICA, 7-ELEVEN
HELP IS IN STORE
The program will urge
customers to give—and
ensure donations help
provide meals to people in
the same community.

POWER
BROKER
Justin Williams wants to do more than win
big races. He wants to change his sport.
Words PETER FLAX
Photography JOE PUGLIESE
“I like to win, but
I’m more interested
in pursuing a
greater good,” says
Williams, who was
photographed in
Malibu, California,
on January 26.
23

I
It’s true that you can’t really win
important bike races without raw watts,
without unbridled speed. But it’s also
true that you can’t come close to your
full potential as a racer without
something intangible—let’s call it
racecraft. This amorphous term helps
describe one’s ability to master tactics, to
assess the competition and the course
and the moment, to intuit several chess
moves in the future. A bike racer who has
an aptitude for racecraft has a huge
advantage because he fully understands
where to position himself for success.
Justin Williams understands
racecraft. He triumphantly posts up at
a lot of bike races after a turbocharged
sprint in the home stretch, but those
wins are almost always set up through
tactical acumen—knowing how and
when to conserve energy, how to move
fluidly toward the front, how to marshal
teammates or foresee obstacles. In a
similar manner, Williams, 31, has
developed an acumen to chart his own
course to break free from and possibly
transform the often-inflexible sport in
which he competes. “I want to change
the sport of bike racing in America,” he
says without swagger. “It has to be
different, so it’s more vital and appeals
to a broader group of people. It’s a lot of
responsibility to take on that change,
but I stopped letting people control
what my destiny is going to be a long
time ago.”
On his unconventional and ambitious
path, Williams has founded his own
team and a development squad, both
of which seek to win races but also
provide better opportunities for young
Black and Hispanic athletes. He
simultaneously lives the lives of a
professional athlete, a businessman and
a content creator. And Williams is fully
invested to both defend and grow the
distinctive American discipline of
criterium racing. “I obviously like to win
but I’m more interested in pursuing a
greater good,” he says. “I made some
sacrifices—I let go of some other dreams
to get here, but I’ve known for a long
time that I want to be more than just
a great athlete.”
24

Including track and
junior titles,
Williams has won
11 U.S. national
championships and
is the reigning
criterium champ.

On January 20, Williams celebrates his new helmet with (from left) Payson McElveen, Colin
Strickland, Reggie Miller and Kate Courtney.
From the beginning, Justin Williams
was the farthest thing from a typical
American bike racer. He was born in
South Los Angeles and was raised on
39th Street at a time when everyone still
called the neighborhood South Central.
His family was from Belize, which
actually has a pretty crazy bike racing
culture. His father, Calman, had some
success as a racer. But it’s safe to say that
very few kids in South L.A. imagined
themselves racing bikes—it was an
activity that existed in a distant universe.
But sports were important from the
start. “I was lucky enough to grow up
with a massive family,” Williams says,
noting how he was always playing in the
alley behind their apartment building
with his brothers and “like 15 or 20 older
cousins.” Naturally, when many of them
came together to form a Little League
team, they called themselves the Alley
Cats. Williams saw the value in that
community early on.
Williams was into football initially,
but he had issues with injuries and his
mom’s disapproval. That’s how he got
into cycling when he was 13. In an
interview several years ago, he told me
about how his father didn’t exactly make
it easy for him at the start. His dad
insisted that he ride on an indoor trainer
nearly every day for two months and
then took him on a pretty brutal maiden
voyage—a 70-mile loop up to Malibu.
After the young teenager got disabling
cramps, Williams’ dad left him on the
side of the road until an aunt drove up
to get him. Williams expressed more
bemusement than trauma when he
recalled this story. “I understand what my
dad was trying to convey,” he told me in
that 2017 conversation. “Racing bikes is
hard and you need to be serious about it.”
Over time, Williams got pretty damn
serious about it. He won a bunch of
junior national titles on the track and
had success on the road, too. He was on
a professional squad as a teenager and
after a few years was invited to join the
prestigious Trek-Livestrong U23 team in
Europe. For so many promising young
elite racers, competing in big European
events on a legit team is the equivalent to
making the major leagues. But despite
some promising results in races, Williams
“IT’S NOT ENOUGH FOR ME TO JUST
DO SOMETHING ON MY OWN.”
AARON BLATT
26 THE RED BULLETIN

struggled. It can be tough for any young
athlete to adjust to a new culture, but it
was different for a young Black man
from South L.A. with immigrant parents.
“Going over to Europe made me feel
really isolated,” he says now. “It was a
mix of people making me feel like I
didn’t belong and my own odd kind of
experiences with being different.”
There were too many challenges and
not enough support, disappointments
that ultimately would inform and
motivate future career moves in the sport.
“When I was over there I just kept
thinking if there was a way that I could
continue to do the thing that I love doing,”
he says. “I was thinking about Southern
California and criterium racing.”
In the following decade, after a period
of ups and downs and team dramas that
have been described elsewhere as his
“wilderness years,” Williams eventually
carved out his place as one of the top
criterium racers in the U.S. In 2016 and
2017, despite some tension with his
team, he won a combined 30 races. And
in 2018, racing as a sort of privateer with
With three other Red
Bull cyclists (and an
NBA Hall of Famer),
Williams hits the road.
THE RED BULLETIN 27

a sponsorship from Specialized, he
finished in the top 3 in a remarkable 30
out of 35 races, found immediate success
in Red Hook criteriums and won national
championships both on the road and in
the criterium.
For those who don’t know the
criterium discipline well, these races
involve multiple laps on a closed course.
They typically last an hour or two—
significantly shorter than a road race at
the same level—and tend to be flat,
relentlessly fast and full of sharp turns.
“It’s a fast-moving, high-stakes chess
match where if you make a mistake,
you’re sliding across the ground in a
millimeter-thick piece of fiber that does
very little to protect you,” says Williams.
“From the start I loved how the physical
element reminded me of football. You
know, when you’re playing wide receiver
and you have a corner on you trying to
jam you on the line; in a crit you often
have to put a shoulder into somebody to
slightly shift them. It’s a contact sport.”
Colin Strickland has felt that
shoulder. Now a winning gravel racer,
Strickland used to compete against
Williams in criteriums all over the
country. “Justin’s assertive when he
races—he knows what’s his and takes it,
but he’s never a dick,” says Strickland.
“There’s a culture of self-importance in
U.S. racing culture but he’s not like that.”
When asked to assess the strengths of
the newest rider to strap on a Red Bull
helmet, Strickland quickly outlines
Williams’ physical gifts and his racecraft.
“Physiologically, he’s got a knockout
punch,” Strickland says. “He comes out
of the last corner and he can throw on
afterburners and punch it in a worldclass
way. On the intangible side, he’s
a master of navigating, brilliant at
positioning his bike and body. So with
200 meters he’s in the winning position.
He’s just a master of the craft of racing.”
And yet, despite all his racing
success, even with dozens of victories
including two national titles, Williams
ended his 2018 season wanting
something bigger. “Winning all those
races was fun, but I wanted to start a
new chapter and share that experience,”
he says. “It’s not enough for me to just
do something on my own. I need to
create something, to grant opportunities
to people who I love that I know deserve
it, while simultaneously putting
criterium racing on the map.” This is
how L39ion was born.
There is a conventional, well-trod
path for professional bike racers
looking for results, money, fame
and other markers of success: Join the
biggest, best-funded, most prestigious
team you can and leverage its resources
to pursue common interests. It’s a
system that has operated for decades,
but generally speaking it hasn’t exactly
served the interests of athletes like
Justin Williams.
That’s why Williams and his younger
brother Cory—himself a super-talented
crit racer—decided to start their own
team. One that was focused on
criteriums and had roots in their
community and gave opportunities to
people of color and otherwise exploded
the stereotypes of how a racing team
operates. Cory suggested the name
Legion, and it stuck. “It was this perfect
balance of something serious but
unintimidating that I immediately
“JUSTIN IS GIVING A WHOLE
DEMOGRAPHIC AN ASPIRATION
TO GET INTO BIKE RACING.”
wanted to be a part of,” Williams says.
“When we show up to races, it says that
we’re not messing around, but it’s subtle
enough where we can shape our own
identity in using the word.”
Williams has always had an interest
in typography and design and he went
to work to shape the team’s logo and
identity to shape a stronger narrative.
“Legion” became “L39ion” to reflect his
family’s roots on 39th Street in South
L.A. And the image of a lion was
integrated into the branding of the
squad—symbolizing both his childhood
Alley Cats team and an icon of
Rastafarian culture in Belize. The whole
backstory and vibe was light-years away
from the traditional aesthetic of European
teams, where everyone wears a matching
tracksuit to dinner.
Anchored by the Williams brothers,
the L39ion squad has a diversity that
reflects the vitality of a big U.S. city like
Los Angeles, a vitality that has been
nearly absent in American bike racing
culture. They also started a development
squad called CNCPT—which assembles
young Black and Hispanic athletes as
well as some cool creatives into a racing
team. Among many other things,
Williams is making personnel decisions
on both teams, building sponsorship
relationships, managing schedules,
executing content plans—all while trying
to win races at the highest level.
“Justin is literally giving a whole
demographic an aspiration to get into
bike racing,” says Strickland, who
himself turned down a WorldTour
opportunity to chart his own path in the
U.S. domestic scene. “If younger athletes
don’t see someone who looks like them,
they likely don’t consider a sport. Justin
is such a selfless, positive person—and
he’s a winning machine—and he likes to
spread the gospel of cycling. Being a
Black athlete in our sport is a rarity,
and he could help change that.”
Of course, in this game, having good
intentions and a cool story will only take
you so far—the concept only takes flight
28 THE RED BULLETIN

Williams founded
the L39ion team,
lined up sponsors
and created the
team’s branding.

Since the small
Black community
in cycling helped
him in a big way,
Williams is
determined to pay
it forward.
if the team wins bike races. That box,
fortunately, has been checked. In June
2019, wearing his L39ion kit, Williams
rocketed out of the final corner at the
USA Road National Criterium in
Hagerstown, Maryland, to win with a
big margin. He thus again earned the
Stars & Stripes jersey given to national
champions, a title he still holds since the
race was not contested in 2020.
The last official result that Williams
had before the virus changed everything
was last March at the Tour de Murrieta,
a big weekend race series in California.
There, the team founder played the role
of team player. When the dust settled, the
final omnium standings had Williams
finishing third, with his brother Cory on
the top step and another young
teammate, Tyler Wiliams (no relation), in
second—a L39ion sweep. Justin Williams
was no longer playing by someone else’s
rules, and he was winning.
The pandemic has shut down road
racing in the U.S. for about a year now,
but Williams is hopeful that he and the
team will take up where they left off
when it does. He hopes to defend his
national crit title this summer. He’s
definitely thinking about the 2024
Olympics in Paris, which might have
a finale that suits pure sprinters.
In any case, the downtime has given
him the bandwidth to get control of his
team management role—and to ponder
the future. “Last year I was teetering on
this fine line, like can I be an athlete who
wins a national championship while also
managing the logistics, the management
and the vision of a pro team,” he says.
“And now it’s transitioning to this place
where all I have to do is manage the
vision. I have the people in place to help
me, and I just have to manage the vision
and make sure that we stay true to what
we’re trying to accomplish.”
It’s happening. On a cool, sunny day
in January, Williams went for a ride in
the hills above Malibu—not so far from
where his first training ride went
sideways two decades earlier—with
a small squad of Red Bull cyclists. His
HE’S EYEING THE 2024
PARIS GAMES, WHICH MIGHT
BE SUITED TO SPRINTERS.
buddy Colin Strickland was there, as
were mountain bike powerhouse Kate
Courtney and gravel and XC marathon
racer Payson McElveen. NBA Hall of
Famer turned cycling fanatic Reggie
Miller was there, too. There, up in
a spot known as Saddle Peak, with a
backdrop of big sky and big ocean,
those riders surprised Williams with his
Red Bull helmet and welcomed him to
the family. All of these athletes had
spoken up and written testimonials
about Williams to help make this
moment happen. “Justin is an extremely
talented athlete with great results, but
I’m equally if not more impressed by the
many ways he is working to redefine
what it means to be a professional
athlete,” Courtney says.
“He’s such a nice human,” Strickland
adds. “Red Bull is like an amplifier—you
plug in and whatever you’re doing gets
30 THE RED BULLETIN

ANATOMY OF A CRIT
Defending national champion Justin Williams deconstructs a high-level
criterium bike race in his own words.
In the beginning, it’s chaotic and people have so much
energy. I’m just dodging grenades as people take bad
corners. I’m usually just looking for a space to save
energy, hold momentum and prepare myself for what is
coming later. As a sprinter, I need to be as explosive as
possible at the end of the race. But in the beginning—
man, people are crazy. It’s four guys fighting for an apex
that’s wide enough for two riders. Or riding through it as
fast as they can, wasting energy and then slamming on
the brake, creating this accordion effect.
Fortunately, in the middle of the race it settles down and
you start to see more dominant riders finding their way
to the positions that they want to ride, where they can
kind of manage what they’re doing. If it’s to go up to the
front, they take the front. If it’s to wait for the sprint,
they’re toward the middle. And all the people who early
on rode above the level that they’re supposed to are now
just looking for anywhere to hide and they’re not
thinking anymore. You can see on people’s faces—when
your heart rate gets above 175, it’s hard to think about
your next move.
Then there’s this moment of calm right before everyone
tees up for the finish. If that’s a sprint, that moment of
calm ends pretty quickly and then it goes back to a
chaotic environment like it was in the beginning. But
now you’re doing it with the guys who can actually win
the race. So it becomes a little more intense because
these guys are a bit more skilled.
Usually with about three laps to go, the field starts to
accelerate and the real contenders lock into the
positions that they need to be in. If my team is strong,
I have five guys in front of me. And then with one lap to
go, there’s two scenarios. If my team’s done it right, it’s
strung out and we’re going 35 miles an hour, and my
guys are taking their final pull in their effort to get us the
win. If they do their job perfectly, we’re in a straight line
going 35 and it’s my job to go from 35 to 40 and then to
42 or 45.
In other races, if my team falls short—maybe they did
too much work early, maybe the course is difficult—then
it’s this pinball game to try to find position and be in the
right place. But that can be volatile because we’re
fighting for position on every turn. And when I don’t have
a team around me, that becomes nuts, man. But that’s
one of my specialties, that’s the reason I’m still able to
capture a lot of wins when I race on my own. I can put
out the watts to compete with the best in the world, but
really, navigating through chaos is my real talent.
DANNY MUNSON
Williams, wearing the jersey of the reigning national champion, wins the first criterium at Oklahoma’s Tulsa Tough in June 2019.
THE RED BULLETIN 31

louder. Justin is a super-exciting athlete,
but results are limited. To do something
bigger we need people who will
advocate for change.”
To that end, Williams and Strickland
have spent training rides and other
conversations brainstorming and plotting
how to reimagine and grow the sport of
criterium racing in America. Williams
imagines a format that resembles other
professional leagues, with wellorganized
and well-funded franchises in
big cities competing against each other
in spectator-friendly contests.
Strickland imagines race courses
being built in these cities that can host
these races and weekly community crits.
Both of them imagine a future where
young people of color have a venue to
get involved in the sport. “The culture of
our sport needs a serious shake-up,” says
Strickland. “Justin has the business savvy
to make something happen. He’s not just
looking to make money; he legitimately
wants to change and grow the sport.”
This is the racecraft—having the
foresight when you’re going hard as hell
to think through your next moves.
Williams isn’t satisfied being the Black
kid from South L.A. who struggled in
Europe but came back to be America’s
crit king. He wants to be more than the
guy who bounced around teams and
finally started his own pro squad. He
wants more young people to get the
opportunities that he had to battle for, to
see the sport he loves grow to reach its
full potential.
When asked to explain where this
hunger comes from, Williams takes it
back to 39th Street. “I will always
remember my parents really going out of
their way to help people when I was
growing up,” he says. “Like there were
people who would come live in our
house for a month while they got on
their feet if they were moving to America
from Belize. So I think seeing my parents
sacrifice so much, to go out of their way
to help people even when they would get
nothing in return really shaped me. And
then seeing it happen or feeling it
happen to me when I got into cycling,
the way the small Black community in
cycling really helped me, reinforced that.
So naturally, I knew what needed to be
done, to pay it forward. It’s never seemed
clearer what I’m trying to accomplish—
to attract younger people from different
backgrounds to the sport. This is bigger
than me or the team. This is big.”
WILLIAMS WANTS MORE
YOUNG PEOPLE TO GET THE
OPPORTUNITIES HE HAD TO
BATTLE FOR.
32

If all goes well,
Williams hopes to
defend his
criterium national
championship this
summer.

Taking
the Leap
How the women of Formation transformed
freeride mountain biking forever. Words JEN SEE
PARIS GORE

Hannah Bergemann
drops into the top of
her line at the
inaugural Formation
in October 2019.
35

T
he sun had just begun to rise
near Virgin, Utah, when
Hannah Bergemann began
to climb. Shouldering her
35-pound downhill bike,
Bergemann walked steadily
up a narrow desert ridgeline.
When she reached the top,
she looked down the line that
she and her dig crew had
patiently carved out of the
red desert sand, peeling back
layers of prehistoric stone. If
Bergemann felt any nerves,
she didn’t show them.
Then she began to ride.
With precision, Bergemann
followed the narrow track
unwinding along the canyon
wall as the landscape blurred
beneath her wheels. She hit
her first jump, flying over the
gap. The ground dropped into
wide-open air beneath her.
Then came a series of ledges,
a staircase made for giants
formed out of rock layers,
none of them laid straight.
A steep chute sent her
hurtling down until, at last,
Bergemann arrived at a final
jump. She soared over the gap
cleanly, her bike’s suspension
compressing under the force
of the landing.
Bergemann had come
to Virgin for Formation, a
freeride camp for women.
The groundbreaking October
2019 event brought together
six of the world’s best freeride
mountain bikers and gave
them the opportunity to ride
in the storied Utah terrain
made famous by Red Bull
Rampage. A few of the riders,
like Bergemann, had ridden
there previously. But for
the others it was all new.
Certainly, it was all the riders’
first opportunity to work
collaboratively to push the
boundaries of their sport.
After five days in the
desert, the women of
Formation had transformed
the landscape of women’s
mountain biking. No longer
could anyone say that women
lacked the skills to ride the
intense and unforgiving
terrain of the Utah desert.
They had united to create the
foundations for women’s
freeride to fly. Together, they
had created a new beginning.
“It gave me confidence to
start from a blank slate on the
mountain and make it into
something rideable that
pushed my limits,” says
Bergemann. “There hasn’t
been a lot of space for women
to pursue freeride—I feel like
this is the start.”
While getting down
the canyons near
Virgin requires skill
and verve, the trip up
demands simpler grit.
KATIE LOZANCICH, PARIS GORE
36 THE RED BULLETIN

It was the riders’ first chance
to collaborate to push the
boundaries of their sport.
Veronique (“Vero”)
Sandler throws down
a suicide no-hander
near the bottom of
her line at Formation.

Formation’s roots go
back to 2017, when
Rebecca Rusch traveled
to Rampage as a guest. A
decorated endurance
mountain biker, Rusch had
never seen the iconic event in
person. She stood in awe of
the riding skills on display but
couldn’t help wondering why
no women were competing.
She began to ask questions. “I
was the pot stirrer,” she says.
Rusch learned that
Rampage had never
specifically excluded women.
But none had ever qualified.
“I felt like I had to be the one
to push. I was not a freeride
athlete, so it wasn’t like I was
out for myself,” she says. “I
had no skin in the game; it
was just the right thing to do.”
With that push, the
conversation about where
women fit into the Rampage
picture began in earnest.
“There were some hard
conversations,” Rusch recalls.
The next year, a crew of Red
Bull athletes, female gravity
riders and Rampage veterans
gathered around a table to
discuss the idea of a women’s
event in Virgin. Should
women be added to Rampage?
Should there be a separate
event? No one knew exactly
what equality and inclusion
for women looked like in the
context of Rampage.
“I think people just could
not picture what it would look
like for a woman to ride it,”
recalls Katie Holden, a nowretired
downhill pro who was
at the table that night. “It’s
just this dude environment.
It’s hardcore, and it’s gnarly.”
Holden had her own
history with Rampage. Like
many female riders, Holden
had started her career as a
racer, but it had never felt like
the right fit. When the offer to
partner with women’s brand
Liv came along in 2013, she
jumped at the chance to do
something new. She became
a brand ambassador and built
a portfolio of travel, filming,
clinic events and freeriding.
Holden’s new role also opened
the way to chase her dream of
qualifying for Rampage.
“There wasn’t a path to
Rampage for women, because
it had never been done
before,” she says. “I just tried
to spend a lot of time out there
and be a sponge and learn as
much as I possibly could.”
After spending several
years digging at Rampage and
riding the terrain in Virgin,
Holden put all her chips on
the table. Together with a
filmer and photographer,
Holden went to the desert to
make a movie she hoped
would score her an invite to
Rampage. “I put everything
into it,” she says. Her attempt
ended quickly, though, when
she crashed and tore her calf
muscle. “It was really
emotional,” she says. “I
realized that dream was not
going to come true.” Two
years of injuries followed,
while the level of riding at
Rampage rose exponentially.
Even as Rusch began
asking questions, Holden still
felt the sting of regret. “I had
wanted to be the girl who
made Rampage,” she says. At
the same time, she had begun
to come to terms with what
had gone wrong for her. In
retrospect, she could see that
though she came close to
reaching the heights required
to compete at Rampage, she
didn’t have the perfect skill set
to do it. And she saw that her
approach had isolated her in
crucial ways.
Vero Sandler digs her
line in the desert sun.
PARIS GORE, MICHELLE PARKER
38 THE RED BULLETIN

The first pioneers at
Formation (clockwise
from top left): Vero
Sandler, Tahnée
Seagrave, Vaea
Verbeeck, Micayla
Gatto, Vinny
Armstrong and
Hannah Bergemann.
So when the chance came
to design a women’s event in
Virgin, Holden was all in.
Here was a way to put her
experience to work and build
a space for women to succeed.
“I don’t like to say that I failed,
because I don’t really believe
in failure, but my experience
was a stepping stone for
Formation,” she says. On a
drive to her mom’s house on
Whidbey Island from her
home in Bellingham,
Washington, Holden pulled
over to sketch the outlines of
a women’s freeride camp. By
the time she arrived, she
knew: Formation was on.
When New Zealander
Vinny Armstrong
stepped off the plane
in Las Vegas, she’d never seen
the desert. “It feels like a
different planet,” she says.
Known for her stylish airs, she
stood at a crossroads in her
career at the time. “I was
really tossing up whether
I was going to keep trying to
be a World Cup racer or do
a freeride career,” she says.
The six riders invited to
Formation came from diverse
corners of the mountain
biking world, but most shared
a background in World Cup
downhill racing. As Holden
considered riders, she felt the
experience of learning World
Cup tracks and dealing with
the pressures of racing would
help them navigate the steep
challenges posed by riding in
Virgin. Holden also felt the
need to prove that women
could handle riding the area’s
unforgiving terrain. She
wanted to set them up for
success. “A lot of people didn’t
believe in Formation before
Formation came to be,” she
says. “So I felt like we had to
make it perfect in order for
people to jump on the train.”
The sandstone walls of the
canyons around Virgin are
marked with tracks and jump
lines that riders have built
over time. During its 12-year
history, Rampage has used
several sites in the area, and
the remnants of many features
remain. “It was exciting just to
see all that in front of my
eyes,” says Veronique Sandler,
who is based in the U.K. and
focuses on filming. She
recognized a number of the
jumps from seeing them in
Instagram clips from Utahbased
riders such as Jaxson
Riddle and Ethan Nell.
On the first day, the women
headed to one of the original
Rampage sites to acclimate to
the terrain. “Just getting used
to the exposure—there are
times when your brain just
goes ‘no, that’s just not even
something I’m going to try,’ ”
says Canada’s Vaea Verbeeck,
who won the overall at the
Crankworx series in 2019.
Riding in the desert, some of
them for the first time, the
group tested the traction and
braking points as they began
to uncover the desert’s secrets.
“It takes a bit to get used to it,
because you still get heaps of
grip, even while sliding and
drifting everywhere,” says
Armstrong. “It’s just so sick.”
The first day also let the
women reconnect. All six
riders knew one another from
past events, but typically they
spent their time competing
against each other. From the
start, Holden envisioned
All six riders knew each other
but they typically just
competed against each other.
THE RED BULLETIN 39

With Sandler looking
on, Tahnée Seagrave
drops into an exposed
ridge drop.
Formation as a collaborative
effort to raise the level of the
sport. The women embraced
the concept. “We were legit
standing next to each other,
discussing everything
together, brainstorming
together, trying to make it
work together—for each
other,” says Verbeeck.
The next day, the women
and their crews headed to the
2015 Rampage site and began
digging the lines they planned
to ride. An often underappreciated
element of
Rampage is the skill required
to dig tracks and features into
the walls of the canyons. “One
of the hardest parts is seeing
raw terrain and being able to
visualize how to turn it into
something you want to ride,”
says Bergemann.
Both Bergemann and
Sandler spend hours digging
at home, but working in the
desert was different. “I do
a lot of digging but it’s so
different out there,” says
Sandler. “Casey Brown was
injured unfortunately, but
she’s done digging at
Rampage before, and she had
tons of tips for us.”
After three dig days, the
women had created three very
different lines. Bergemann
and Canadian freerider
Micayla Gatto went big with
exposed, high-consequence
features. Bergemann and her
dig team built a long, steep
track with multiple drops and
gap jumps. With help from
PARIS GORE
40 THE RED BULLETIN

“A lot of people didn’t believe
in Formation until Formation
came to be.” —Katie Holden
Rusch, big-mountain skier
Michelle Parker and motocross
racer Tarah Gieger, Gatto
sculpted a fast chute down the
narrow spine of a ridgeline.
Her line included two blind
step downs.
Across the canyon face,
Sandler, Verbeeck, Armstrong
and British World Cup racer
Tahnée Seagrave collaborated
on a flowing track that they
dubbed the “party line.”
These riders sought space to
show their style and throw a
few tricks into the mix. “At
first, it was like, ‘this looks
crazy!’ ” says Verbeeck. “But by
the time we rode it, we didn’t
know how easy it would feel.”
Their line included a series of
drops, an arcing berm and a
jump line at the end.
“Every line showed each
rider’s personality, and that’s
what I really love about
freeride,” says Brown, who
competed in Proving Grounds,
a Rampage qualifier, in 2019,
and attended Formation in a
supporting role, due to a
broken collarbone. “It’s an art
form rather than just a race.”
As the first of two
riding days began,
Bergemann set an
early standard. Her line was
done; she was ready. “I was
super stoked and eager to
get on my bike after several
days of digging and thinking
about riding,” she says. As the
other women prepped in the
parking lot, Bergemann
soared over the gap of her
final jump. Seeing Bergemann
ride, Parker, who was present
to mentor the riders, recalls
thinking, “Oh, it’s so on now.”
For Holden, the moment
felt like validation. “It gives
me chills just thinking about
it,” she says. “It was the first
riding day and there was so
much tension. All of a sudden,
we all saw Hannah grease the
gnarliest line. It really set the
tone for the whole thing.”
But learning to ride the
steep terrain had its
challenges. Like her peers at
Formation, Gatto had raced
World Cup downhill. In 2014
a severe concussion put her
racing career on hold, and she
redirected her energy to
filming, bikepacking and
hitting big jumps in her spare
time. “I was just feeling like
I want to ride big chutes and
big ridgelines,” she says. “It
was always this pipe dream to
go and see Rampage and ride
out there.” Formation offered
a chance to chase that dream.
Gatto built a vertigoinspiring
line with steep dropoffs
on either side. It included
a heavy double drop. To make
the first drop meant sending
her bike flying off the edge
of the cliff line. As she
committed to the drop, Gatto
could not see the landing,
which sat far below her with
its edges falling away into a
steep canyon. If she missed
her narrow landing patch,
Gatto would plummet into
the canyon below. “It’s just so
scary, that fear of crashing,
because if you crash, you’re
done,” she says. Gatto ended
up skipping the first big drop.
Across the canyon face,
Armstrong wrestled with a
similar dilemma. As she rolled
up to one of the drops on the
party line, all she could see
was sky. “I couldn’t see the
landing until my front wheel
was nearly in the air,” she
says. After nearly missing the
THE RED BULLETIN 41

The athletes, dig crews, organizers and mentors who together made Formation a reality celebrate the breakthrough event.
landing spot on her first run,
Armstrong began setting out
small rocks to guide her like
the lights of a runaway.
Each evening at Formation,
the riders and support crew
gathered for a series of roundtable
discussions. One night
they talked about fear. “I
learned a lot about how the
other girls deal with fear and
the processes they go
through,” says Sandler. The
sessions proved intense. As
she has thought about future
editions of the event, Holden
has wondered how she might
preserve the knowledge
sharing, while giving the
riders more downtime.
The insights into managing
fear have had lasting value.
“All these emotions we feel
pushing boundaries, we’re all
doing similar things,” says
Gatto, who found inspiration
from Parker. When she
prepares to ski a big line in
Alaska, Parker channels the
confident voice in her head.
“I named my confident person
Chad,” says Gatto. “Every time
I went to try something, I
could hear the girls yelling,
‘Go Chad!’ ” Since Formation,
Gatto has continued to hone
the mental side of her game.
Next time, she wants to make
sure she’s ready to hit every
big drop.
For women’s freeride,
Formation was just a
beginning. “I’m super
excited to go back, because we
know we can definitely trust
the terrain more and go a bit
harder,” says Verbeeck. Both
Parker and Rusch are eager to
repeat their roles as diggers
and mentors, too, while
Holden is already jotting ideas
in her notebooks as she drives
around Bellingham.
“I was frickin’ blown away
by the talent and the skill of
In five days, the women had
transformed the landscape of
women’s mountain biking.
these women,” says Rusch.
“Seeing it up close was just
really inspiring for me. I want
to go back so much.”
The riders all say they’re
ready for more chances to lift
their freeride progression.
Brown, for example, values
the pressure that competitive
events put on her to hit new
features, but she’d love to see
more events that share
Formation’s noncompetitive
nature. “I think a lot of women
get out of the sport because
they feel that the only places
to participate at a higher level
are contests and not everyone
is made for that,” says Brown.
She is hoping to see more
space for women in freeride
events such as the Fest Series.
Already Formation has
changed career trajectories for
some of the women. “Even in
the past year, the industry has
invested in women in a way
that they haven’t before,” says
Holden. Shortly after
Formation, Bergemann and
Sandler received invitations to
travel to India with Teton
Gravity Research and ride in
their high-profile film project,
Accomplice. Bergemann now
has sponsorship support from
Red Bull and Transition Bikes
to chase her freeride dream.
Armstrong says new doors
have swung open for her, too,
and she’s shifted her focus
away from racing to freeride.
After the COVID gap year,
planning is underway for
Formation 2021 to happen
this fall. Though she may
tinker with the details,
Holden expects the event to
look similar to the 2019
edition with a combination
of digging, riding and roundtable
discussions. She remains
committed to keeping
Formation a noncompetitive
event. Holden has found a
deep satisfaction in bringing
her own experience with
Rampage full circle and
showing the world just what
women riders can do.
“I just have this full-body
high from knowing that
women can ride there, and
people believe and know that
women can ride there now,”
says Holden. “To see a
collective of women look
good out there—once people
could see that, it just changed
everything.”
PARIS GORE
42 THE RED BULLETIN

Vero Sandler shows
her classic style as
she charges down
the mountain.

Space
Oddities
Those squiggly lines in the
night sky aren’t UFOs, but
four members of the Red
Bull Air Force: Captain Jon
Devore, Amy Chmelecki,
Jeff Provenzano and Sean
MacCormac. The team
was photographed on
November 15, 2020,
near Marfa, Texas.
44 THE RED BULLETIN

Bright
Lights
In the remote town of Marfa, Texas,
strange lights have long attracted curious
visitors from around the world, but one
photographer set out to capture a different
kind of flying object—the Red Bull Air Force.
Words NORA O’DONNELL
Photography DUSTIN SNIPES
THE RED BULLETIN 45

Like many a wild adventure,
it all started with a crazy idea.
In the high desert of West
Texas, the veil of the Milky Way
drapes over a night sky bursting
with stars. Near the small town of Marfa, the high
elevation and lack of light pollution make it the
perfect spot to view such astronomical wonders—
and to examine some of its mysteries. For more than
a century, locals have observed strange, pulsing orbs
of various hues, commonly known as the Marfa
Lights. Maybe they’re UFOs or simply atmosphere
reflections; the fun lies in the speculation.
Which is why photographer Dustin Snipes leapt
at the opportunity to capture the Red Bull Air Force
against this celestial landscape. What if these worldclass
skydivers embodied this phenomenon and
actually became the Marfa Lights? “The crazier the
idea, the better,” Snipes says. “Because that means it
probably hasn’t been done before.”
The L.A.-based photographer spent months
planning out the concept, weighing hundreds of
variables with a team of experts. “More than any
shoot I’ve done, there were so many unknowns,”
Snipes says. After scrutinizing iconic local
attractions as potential backdrops, Snipes and the
Red Bull Air Force settled on the historic Cibolo
Creek Ranch, which spans 30,000 acres and
provides plenty of room to arrange a shot from a
faraway distance. Snipes also consulted with the
International Dark-Sky Association to decipher the
best time to capture the Milky Way as it moved
along the sky.
But even after calculating the perfect nighttime
position, Snipes still had to figure out how to
photograph illuminated bodies falling from more
than 10,000 feet in the air with only a few minutes
on the clock. The entire setup used nine cameras,
including six Canon 1 DX Mark III DSLRs that Snipes
mounted to a custom-built base that allowed him to
shoot a 180-degree view.
The final result is otherworldly, but the following
pages also provide a glimpse into the monumental
effort it took Snipes and the Red Bull Air Force to
pull off this feat.
“Whenever I do shoots like these,” Snipes says,
“I always think of that JFK quote about going to the
moon—that we didn’t do it because it was easy, but
because it was hard. You don’t want to just sit there
and do a cakewalk all day.”
Los Angeles-based photographer Dustin Snipes (pictured) first traveled to Marfa in September 2020 to scout potential locations
for his shoot with the Red Bull Air Force. “It took months of planning,” he says. “There were a lot of moving parts.”
ROSS MORALES
46 THE RED BULLETIN

Wide Angles
Snipes and the Red Bull Air
Force settled on the historic
Cibolo Creek Ranch for their
shooting location. The
rugged, 30,000-acre
property allowed Snipes to
set up his cameras 2 miles
away from where the
skydivers planned to jump.
“The ranch went on forever. We drove all over
the place—there were endless possibilities.”
THE RED BULLETIN 47

The Red Bull Air Force did one daytime practice jump while Snipes set up his equipment on the ground. Here, Captain Jon Devore and
Sean MacCormac capture GoPro footage from the air. Each team member has logged more than 20,000 jumps over the past two decades.
Southwest of Marfa’s town center, the Cibolo Creek Ranch sits nestled in the Chinati Mountains. Starting in the 1850s, Cibolo was a cattle
ranch and trading post, but since the 1950s, Hollywood has occasionally used the location in films such as Giant and There Will Be Blood.
RED BULL AIR FORCE
48 THE RED BULLETIN

“The crazier the idea, the better. Because that
means it probably hasn’t been done before.”
DAN WIX
Gearing Up
Shortly after sunset on
November 15, Snipes readies
his gear for the first of three
evening jumps by the Red Bull
Air Force. Red lights are an
essential tool for night
photography because they
prevent the shooter’s eyes
from readjusting.
THE RED BULLETIN 49

“You’re in the middle of nowhere. And then you
look up and see the most amazing stars ever.”
Under the
Milky Way
The abandoned sign of the
Stardust Motel is one of
Marfa’s most photographed
attractions. At one point,
Snipes considered it as a
potential foreground for the
Red Bull Air Force, but the
nearby landing site was too
unsafe. “And there would be
too many telephone wires in
the shot!” Snipes jokes.
50 THE RED BULLETIN

To make themselves visible in a moonless sky, the Red Bull Air Force wrapped themselves in LED lights, but they also added pyrotechnics
to help show the speed and energy of the team while they are in freefall. The added effect makes the skydivers appear like human comets.
RED BULL AIR FORCE
During the three jumps, Snipes had the skydivers experiment with using just the LED lights in some shots and pyrotechnics in others.
“The LED just looked like squiggly lines,” he says. “But the pyro added so much randomness and gave it more of a mysterious look.”
THE RED BULLETIN 51

“When there are shoots with this many moving
parts, you have to think differently.”
52 THE RED BULLETIN

Made to Order
To capture the Red Bull Air
Force with a panoramic view,
Snipes built a customized
mount for six Canon 1 DX
Mark III DSLR cameras. Each
camera took eight different
long-exposure shots of the
jump from start to finish.
The mount had to be light
enough to travel but sturdy
enough to hold all the
equipment. It took Snipes
five days to build it.
THE RED BULLETIN 53

“We needed more pyro, so we asked the
athletes, ‘Can you be on fire any longer?’ ”
54 THE RED BULLETIN

RED BULL AIR FORCE
Burning Man
To fully achieve a comet-like
effect, Snipes needed the
skydivers to shoot
pyrotechnics for as long as
possible. No one on the team
balked at the request. The
trickier part? Seeing the
landing area when it’s pitch
black outside. Only the
headlights of two pickup
trucks marked the spot.
THE RED BULLETIN 55

Money Shot(s)
This image is actually 48
photos perfectly stitched
together. Six cameras each
took eight long-exposure
shots, following the Red Bull
Air Force as they jump from
the airplane, go into
formation and finally
disappear behind the
mountains. “The result is an
abstract light painting with
an endless night sky,”
Snipes says.
56 THE RED BULLETIN

“There were so many unknowns with this
shoot. But you do it because it’s hard to do.”
THE RED BULLETIN 57

New life: Cultivated
coral is fixed to a dead
or damaged reef
with a few dabs of marine
cement. This is applied
using a form of piping bag.
KELSEY WILLIAMSON

Raising
the Reef
A group of young Polynesians
are fighting to protect
the world’s reefs against the
effects of global warming,
one piece of coral at a time.
Words RUTH McLEOD and CHRISTINE VITEL
Photography RYAN BORNE
59

Deep concerns: 22-year-old Taiano Teiho (left) and one of his fellow Coral Gardeners set off on a restoration mission.
Each time freediver Guillaume
Néry disappears into the
underwater world, he learns
something new. It is this
seemingly limitless potential
for exploration that fuels the
Frenchman’s passion. And
being underwater gives Néry a feeling
he can’t find on land. “It’s this sense of
zero gravity,” he says. “When I’m
descending, there’s a moment when
I’m suspended in space and time, and
it really feels like I’m flying. There’s a
sense of freedom—it’s transformative.
I’m switching from a landbound human
to an aquatic one.”
This desire to learn is what has drawn
Néry to the island paradise of Mo’orea,
around 25 miles from Tahiti in the South
Pacific. That and something else unique
to the underwater world: coral. For the
past seven years, the 38-year-old has
come here with his partner—fellow
freediver Julie Gautier—and daughter
Maï-Lou, whom the couple want to raise
close to nature. “I’m lucky enough to
have been freediving for more than
24 years now,” says Néry, who has four
freediving depth world records and two
world championship titles to his name.
“I’ve traveled the world, had experiences
in every kind of underwater environment,
from oceans to lakes, under ice. But
there’s really something special about
tropical areas. It’s the biodiversity you
witness, especially here in French
Polynesia. The extraordinary examples
of life you find underwater here are
almost all due to the coral reef system.
It’s an entire, complex ecosystem. It’s
really something amazing to witness.”
But when Néry visited in 2019, after
a rise in water temperature caused by
global warming, he found that 30 percent
of the coral had died. “Dead coral is
monochrome,” he says. “There’s no color.
It’s a place with no life at all, like a desert.
Sometimes you’ll see a fish pass by, but it’s
only looking for somewhere else to go. I
knew this global warming episode wasn’t
natural; it was due to human activity. The
scientists say there will be more episodes
like that. The ocean is resilient, but there’s
a limit. If things change too fast, there’s a
big chance most of the world’s coral will
disappear. When I realized that, I was
terrified.” Now his visits here have become
about more than underwater exploration;
he’s fighting for the reef’s survival.
Néry is working with an organization
known as the Coral Gardeners, who, as
the name suggests, tend to and cultivate
coral. They have shown Néry how to
replant broken coral, and in return he has
taught the group breathing techniques
that allow them to remain underwater
for longer periods while they work. This
is a symbiotic relationship that the Coral
Gardeners—a team of young Polynesian
60 THE RED BULLETIN

Coral dilemma:
Freediver Guillaume Néry
became an ambassador for
the Coral Gardeners after
a 2019 visit to French
Polynesia, where he witnessed
the devastating effects
of global warming firsthand.
“The more of us who
are concerned about
this, the bigger
the change can be.”

Second chance:
Fragments of damaged
coral are collected by the
team, then transported
here to the “nursery
table” for assessment.

World of difference: The seabed is home to in excess of a thousand distinct species of coral,
and more than 170 of these can be found in French Polynesia alone.
surfers, freedivers and fishermen—are
keen to foster; after all, it’s a philosophy
they’ve learned from the very coral
they’re trying to save. “A coral is an
animal, a polyp,” explains Taiano Teiho,
a 22-year-old member of the coral
restoration group. “It lives in symbiosis
with a plant-based life form, the
zooxanthella. This is a form of
microalgae found in the coral’s tissue.
The polyps provide shelter for
the microalgae, and in exchange, the
photosynthesis the microalgae perform
will provide 90 percent of the nutrients
the polyps need to create the coral’s
calcareous exoskeleton.
“The one cannot live without the
other. When water temperatures rise,
the zooxanthella creates toxins that
the polyp can’t live with, so it then
rejects the microalgae. This leads to
coral bleaching, as it is the microalgae
that creates the coral’s colorful
pigmentation. All you’re left with is the
calcareous skeleton—a dead coral.”
The breakdown of this relationship
in the world’s coral reefs is a fitting
metaphor for the ruinous effect human
activity is having on the natural world. “In
the worst-case scenario, we’d see the loss
of all marine life, from the smallest fish to
the largest marine mammals, as we would
lose the nutrient input that comes from
the sea,” says Teiho. “We would also lose
more than half of the oxygen we breathe
if all organisms, such as phytoplankton,
which photosynthesize, died. That’s why
we have to act now.”
“The coral reef has
been our playground
and our school. It has
taught us respect.”
One reason why action is happening
now on Mo’orea is local surfer and
freediver Titouan Bernicot, who
founded the Coral Gardeners. “The
Polynesian people have always had a
strong link to Mother Nature,” says the
22-year-old, who has lived on the island
since he was 3. “I’ve grown up surfing,
freediving, spearfishing, diving with
sharks. The coral reef has been our
playground and also our school. It has
taught us humility and respect.”
Bernicot, the son of Tahitian pearl
farmers, has a house on the beach so that
he’s as close as possible to the sea, and to
the coral garden he has created beneath
the surface. “I’ve spent a lot of time
learning how to build up [the coral] and
finding out more about the underwater
ecosystem,” he says. “The coral creates
such varied architecture. It’s like a big
city where coral, every species of fish,
every crab and octopus has an important
THE RED BULLETIN 63

Depth charge: Teiho keeps a watchful—almost paternal—eye on the coral cuttings in his care.
“Our nurseries are
like little gardens
underwater where
the coral will adapt
themselves.”
role to play in managing the balance of
the reef ecosystem. It’s really like a
[conventional] garden, but instead of
birds we have fish, and instead of a dog
there’s the shark and stingray.”
Bernicot has been tending to his
garden since he was 16. It was then that
a day’s surfing changed his path in life.
Bernicot, his younger brother and a
friend had rowed out to the reef break in
his small aluminum boat. “And as we
were waiting for waves, we saw something
really weird under our feet,” he says. “All
the corals were white—they’d bleached.
That was the first time we’d seen this.
“That same afternoon, I googled it
and discovered two things. First, I learned
that corals aren’t simple stones; they’re
living organisms, and they were turning
white due to global warming. This could
be the first ecosystem on our planet to
collapse, even as soon as 2050. And it
wasn’t happening only on my island of
Mo’orea but everywhere in the world—
64 THE RED BULLETIN

at the Great Barrier Reef, at the Florida
Keys, in Indonesia, Egypt, the Maldives.
Second, I learned that the coral, these
little organisms, gave me everything I
need in my life. From the best moments
surfing reef-break waves, freediving and
swimming with sharks, to the fish we
eat—the reef feeds my family and my
community. It also brings tourism and
develops our economy. It protects our
coastline by acting as a coastal protection
barrier, stopping 97 percent of the waves’
energy, preventing erosion. Coral reefs
are also home to a quarter of all the
species we know of in the ocean. Reefs are
like the rainforests of the sea. Scientists
estimate that 70 percent of the oxygen we
breathe comes from a healthy ocean. The
most shocking thing? Almost no one on
our island realized this. That’s why the
Coral Gardeners exist.”
That day, Bernicot decided he would
devote his life to helping protect the
coral around his island. On the beach,
he met a local who was replanting
broken coral and showed him how to
do it. Bernicot set to work on his own
underwater garden. Next, he sought
advice from marine biologists working at
Mo’orea’s two scientific research centers:
the Gump Research Station, administered
by the University of California, Berkeley;
and the preeminent French institution
CRIOBE (Center for Island Research
and Environmental Observatory), which
has facilitated the study of marine life
in Polynesia for more than 30 years and
now works in partnership with the Coral
Gardeners. But what they told Bernicot
wasn’t what he wanted to hear. “I knocked
on the doors of all the scientific and
research institutions,” he says. “Everyone
told me to finish high school, then do a
three-year biology degree, then a master’s
in marine biology and then, ‘If you’re
sharp enough, go and do a Ph.D.’ There’s
a real need for scientists—today, we work
hand-in-hand with them—but that’s just
not me. I’m more of an entrepreneur.
I told them they were crazy, I couldn’t
do that. It killed my motivation.”
It was actually a stint away from his
island home that eventually gave
birth to the Coral Gardeners. Feeling
defeated, an 18-year-old Bernicot
consented to his parents’ wishes that
he study business in the southwest of
France. He lasted two weeks. “I couldn’t
stand it,” he says. “There I was, all alone
in my little apartment in Bordeaux. I’d
left my island family, my dogs, my
friends, my corals. I called my parents
and said, ‘Sorry, but I won’t be going
back to school.’ They told me, ‘Titouan,
we believe in you, but you won’t have
any more money from us now. You have
to support yourself.’ That was a shock.”
Bernicot decided he would somehow
pay back his parents the €7,000 they’d
spent on his business course, then return
to Mo’orea to try to help save the coral
reef. Aptly, it was the South Pacific Ocean
that provided the means: Tahitian pearls.
“I went to the business center of the town
and created a jewelry company the next
day. I went to every hotel, every winery,
every house, to sell my Tahitian pearls.”
With the earnings, he paid his parents,
his rent, then took a surf trip to Morocco.
His remaining money went into founding
the Coral Gardeners in 2017, following
his return to Mo’orea. “I still didn’t know
it could be my life plan or my career,” he
says. “There was no business model to
THE RED BULLETIN 65

“Reefs are like
the rainforests
of the sea.”
International rescue: The Coral
Gardeners plan to expand their
reef relief work from a localized
concern to a global mission.

KELSEY WILLIAMSON
achieve that, except becoming a marine
biologist, and I didn’t want to do that, so
I had to reinvent everything.” But Bernicot
has always had a head for business. At
the age of 11 he started his first company,
selling stickers at school. The proceeds
bought him his little aluminum boat.
“I’ve always had the feeling that nothing
is impossible. If you work hard and
connect with the right people, you can
achieve your dreams. And I’ve never
worked so hard as this. Day and night.”
Bernicot’s team has now grown from
one to 20 full-time staff, who are paid
a fair wage for their long hours, and all
profits are reinvested into the company
to fund the planting of coral, raising
awareness worldwide, and innovation.
Over the past four years, the group have
planted more than 15,000 corals on the
north side of Mo’orea. When they set off
on a restoration mission, they start out
by collecting pieces of coral scattered in
the water. Destroyed chiefly by swells
and human activity, these “fragments of
opportunity”—as the team call them—
are taken to a nursery, where they will
regenerate, stabilize and grow in the best
conditions possible over several months.
These provide cuttings that are then
replanted on damaged or completely dead
reefs. The coral is wedged in a small
crevice where it can survive alone. Marine
cement is dabbed around the coral to
strengthen it and keep it in position.
“We like to say it’s a second chance for
damaged coral,” Teiho says. “Plus it’s
bringing new life to a dead coral head.”
The Coral Gardeners monitor the
replanted coral closely and record their
observations to build a more detailed
picture of how the changing environment
affects them. There have already been
breakthroughs. “People often ask, ‘OK,
global warming is killing corals, so why
are you planting them? They’re going to
die anyway,’ ” says Bernicot. “Well, the
scientists here found something super
exciting this past couple of years:
species of coral they’ve called super
corals. Super corals are genotypes of
coral that [can tolerate] the rise in water
temperature. During a bleaching event,
some of these corals are not dying—
they’re more resilient. Our nurseries are
like little gardens underwater where the
coral will adapt themselves. We monitor
them and let them grow for 12 to 18
months until they’re an ideal size. Then
we’ll put them back onto a damaged reef
in the hope that they’ll grow. If so, a
Local hero: Titouan Bernicot spurned a potential
career in business to save his island’s reef.
couple of years later they could spawn. If
we see this, it’s game on. Then they’ll be
populating the reef around them.”
However, Bernicot and his team
know that replanting alone won’t
be enough to stave off the
potentially catastrophic effects of global
warming. “We have a few little signs of
hope,” says Bernicot, “but planting corals
itself won’t save the reef, which is why
we’re trying to also raise awareness.
Basically, we need more people to give
a shit about coral reefs. If we really want
to help the reef, we need to create a
worldwide movement of collaborative
action at the same time as planting
resilient corals.”
To this end, the Coral Gardeners have
already amassed a following of more than
500,000 on social media and through
their coral adoption program—their
main revenue stream—whereby people
pay to adopt a particular coral, for which
“We want to reach
a figure of a million
super corals planted
back onto reefs
worldwide by 2025.”
they’re sent a picture, GPS coordinates
and regular updates. More than 21,000
people have adopted so far, and that
number is rising daily. There’s also an
innovation center headed by Drew Gray,
a former director of engineering at Uber
and the first hire made by Elon Musk
when developing Tesla’s self-driving car.
The Californian is using his tech acumen
to improve restoration of the reef, better
monitor human impact and bring
adopters closer to their coral—soon
they’ll be able to see it growing online.
“We have big plans,” says Bernicot.
“We want to reach a million super corals
planted back onto reefs worldwide by
2025. That will mean opening 30
international branches in Indonesia, the
Maldives, Seychelles, Philippines, Egypt,
Australia, Hawaii . . . and more in the
islands of Tahiti. We’ll need hundreds of
people planting corals every day. What’s
beautiful is the people planting coral in
our team are local fisherman, freedivers
and surfers, so they’re really comfortable
in the water, and then they learn from
the scientists. They’re doing their ideal
job, restoring the reef. It’s beautiful to
watch as a coral gets bigger and there are
fish and crabs in it—that’s why we started,
and it’s what stimulates us to do more.
Tomorrow we’re talking to 50 kids on
our island. I want them to have the same
feeling I had at 16; to fall in love with the
corals and the ocean and want to help it.”
And then there’s the awareness that
is being spread by ambassadors such as
Néry and other athletes and influencers
who have been moved by the Coral
Gardeners’ ambitions and appreciate
the urgent need to highlight the issue.
“Adopting a coral, especially for kids, is
a very good way for them to understand
how important it is to protect it,” says
Néry. “Change has to happen locally
first, and then, if many people act, it can
grow into a huge wave. I see the Coral
Gardeners as pioneers in this work. The
more of us who are concerned about
this, the bigger the change can be. That’s
why I’m helping.
“I used to be a very optimistic person,
then I had a phase where I was very
pessimistic, and today I think that I have
—that we all have—to give as much
positive energy as possible. We each have
our own way to make an impact, then
we’re connecting, trying to combine our
actions and skills for the same cause. It’s
only together that we can create hope.”
coralgardeners.org
THE RED BULLETIN 67

DRIVING
CHANGE
Motorsports and
eco-activism: two
camps that rarely play
together. But thanks to
an unlikely alliance, here
is the surprising story
of a race—an actual
race, with revolutionary
vehicles—to save our
planet from ecological
destruction.
Words RICHARD FLEURY
JORDY RIEROLA/SPACESUIT MEDIA

The Extreme E teams come
to grips with the Odyssey
21 E-SUV for the first time
on January 15 at MotorLand
in Aragón, Spain.
69

Ordinarily, race cars are heard
long before they are seen. But
not this one. It emerges silently
from the fog like a manta ray
gliding through the ocean, before
melting back into the gloom
with a faint mechanical sound.
Spain’s MotorLand Aragón lies midway
between Barcelona and Madrid. Pre-COVID,
this racing complex drew massive MotoGP
crowds. But today, in the final weeks of
2020, it’s almost deserted, save for these
mysterious vehicles drifting and bouncing
around a makeshift dirt circuit. They resemble
overgrown radio-controlled buggies but sound
unlike anything you’ve heard—quiet at low
speed before accelerating into a Scalextricmeets-Star
Wars-podracer whine. And yet,
these electric-powered SUVs are built for a
race that’s even more outlandish than they are.
Extreme E is billed as “the race for
the planet.” Its bold aim is to reinvent
motorsports as an environmental force for
good, highlighting the world’s ecological
crisis with zero-emission SUVs racing
wheel-to-wheel in far-flung locations
messed up by mankind, from felled
rainforests to beaches littered with ocean
plastic. The series kicks off this April in
the desert sands of Al-Ula, Saudi Arabia,
followed in May by a beach race in Dakar,
Senegal. In August, Kangerlussuaq in
Denmark hosts an Arctic X-Prix, before
Extreme E moves to Santarem, Brazil, in
October, for a competition on soil where
the Amazon once stood. The finale is at
the melting glaciers of Tierra del Fuego,
Argentina, in December.
Carving around ecologically scarred
sites in 4x4s might sound like a counterintuitive
way to save the planet, but
Extreme E’s bumper-sticker motto is:
“We race without a trace.” “We drive on
rocks and sand,” says its mastermind,
Alejandro Agag. “Cars cannot break sand,
cannot break rocks. There’s no damage.”
The series’ founder and CEO promises his
team will leave these “front lines of the
climate crisis” in better shape than they
Left: Sébastien Loeb
sizes up his Team
X44 SUV for the first
time in Aragón. Right:
The ABT Cupra XE
team car in action.
70 THE RED BULLETIN

CHARLY LOPEZ/SPACESUIT MEDIA
“Cars cannot
break sand,
cannot break
rocks. There’s
no damage.”
THE RED BULLETIN 71

found them, investing in environmental
projects at each destination. And it aims
to be totally carbon neutral by the end
of 2021. The concept is seen by sponsors
and host countries as a win-win;
governments have welcomed it with
open arms. “It’s green, you promote their
country for tourism, and it also gives a
good image,” says Agag. “For a politician,
it’s a no-brainer.”
He’s speaking from experience: The
suave and savvy 50-year-old Spanish
businessman enjoyed a promising career
in politics before becoming a major
player in motor racing. It’s an unlikely
backstory for an environmental champion,
but, as the founder of electric streetracing
series Formula E, Agag has done
plenty to wean motorsports off fossil
fuels and into eco-rehab. This commitment
to leaving no damage in its wake means
Extreme E will have no ticket-buying
spectators, but its impact will be felt.
Media buzz was already growing when,
in September, Formula One megastar
Lewis Hamilton announced his own team
and it went stratospheric.
Make no mistake, Extreme E will be
very big indeed.
If you’re serious about making a splash
as a green A-lister, you need your
own boat. Jacques Cousteau had the
Calypso. Greta Thunberg has her zerocarbon
yacht. Conservation organizations
Greenpeace and Sea Shepherd boast
entire fleets. Agag has a 30-year-old
former Royal Mail ship upcycled into
a “floating paddock.” Cars aren’t
airfreighted to races but transported
inside the 6,767-ton RMS St. Helena.
Agag scrolls through his phone to
show The Red Bulletin a picture of the
vessel after her multimillion-pound
refurb, sporting a new black, white
and green paint job. He’s particularly
pleased with the slogan across the hull:
When Lewis
Hamilton
announced
his own team,
the buzz went
stratospheric.
“Not electric … yet!” The engines have
been converted to run on low-sulfur
marine diesel, cleaner than the heavy
diesel (basically crude oil) commonly used
in shipping. RMS St. Helena can cruise on
one engine to lower fuel consumption and
emissions and, says Agag, will one day
run on biofuel. Traveling by sea rather
than air generates a third of the carbon
emissions, but what happens as this ship
sails is more amazing still.
In steel shipping containers onboard
are hydrogen fuel-cell generators—
portable emission-free power sources
that can charge the cars either at sea
or at the race site. “Green hydrogen is
produced by solar panels or wind,
depending on location,” explains Agag.
“We’ll prove you can power remote areas
with clean energy.” He hopes this offgrid
technology might one day supply
emergency power to disaster zones.
RMS St. Helena sleeps 110 in 62
cabins, and her 20-meter swimming pool
has been stripped out to make space for a
science lab inspired by Cousteau’s Calypso.
This is not just for show—Extreme E has
also employed a committee of climate
experts to provide education and research.
Since her 18-month refit in Liverpool,
the ship has been in strict quarantine.
After virus outbreaks obliterated the
cruise industry, Agag is not taking any
chances—a stowaway microbe could
scuttle the entire adventure.
Organizing a global racing series of
this magnitude was never going to be
easy, but doing it during a pandemic was
a huge undertaking—an ever-changing
obstacle course of travel restrictions,
border closures and COVID testing. “It’s
been challenging,” admits Agag. “Like
walking with a [200-pound] backpack.
But soon the backpack will drop.”
And yet, even as the world ground to
a standstill, his big idea gained traction.
Motorsports aristocracy wanted in.
Alongside seven-time champion Lewis
Hamilton, F1’s Nico Rosberg and Jenson
Button also have their own teams, while
Red Bull Racing’s engineering guru Adrian
Newey leads another. From rallying, the
roster includes two-time world champion
Carlos Sainz and Sébastien Loeb, the
sport’s most-successful-ever driver.
“They were waiting for this
opportunity, hoping for off-road to
become an actor in the climate action
we need,” says Agag. That opportunity
has finally arrived at MotorLand as they
get to test their cars for the first time:
“Today, we see an idea become reality.”
All 10 teams have the same car: the
Odyssey 21, built by French firm Spark
Racing Technology and powered by dual
Formula E motors. This is the teams’ first
test at full power—400 kW (536 hp). “I’m
happy with their reliability,” says Agag,
smiling. “Normally with new technology
and so many cars, a lot of things go wrong.
But the only thing that has is the fog.”
The morning sun is already burning
that fog away, revealing cars being flung
around by some of the most skilled
72 THE RED BULLETIN

CHARLY LOPEZ/SPACESUIT MEDIA
drivers on the planet as drones hum
around them like mosquitoes. These will
capture the action during the spectatorless
races, streaming it live around the
world. Away in the distance stands a lone
figure. “Oh look, a nine-time world
champion peeing,” deadpans Agag.
Sébastien Loeb has done and won
it all. After dominating the World Rally
Championship for a decade, winning
the Race of Champions three times and
finishing second in the 24 Hours of
Le Mans, the Frenchman retired in 2012
but then went on to smash the Pikes
Peak record in his first try, and come
runner-up in the Dakar Rally. But driving
for Lewis Hamilton’s X44 team will take
him to places, such as Patagonia, where
he’s never raced before. “It’s something
completely new and I wanted to discover
that from inside,” says rallying’s serial
achiever. “If we want motorsports to
continue in the long term, it’s good to
take new directions. This is one.”
The Ganassi Racing
car goes through its
paces. It’s since had a
redesign to resemble
Team Ganassi’s GMC
Hummer supertruck.
THE RED BULLETIN 73

Extreme E’s CEO
Alejandro Agag (left)
takes a break at the
Aragón test circuit to
chat with race legend
Sébastien Loeb.
At 3,600 pounds, the Odyssey feels
heavier than the highly developed,
astonishingly quick WRC cars Loeb is
used to. “It’s quite technical to drive,” he
says. Usually reserved, rarely smiling,
he’s nonetheless clearly thrilled. “We
have to fight with the car sometimes. But
that makes it exciting. I think in the
desert it will be really fun.”
From those who’ve left an indelible
mark to those just beginning to make
theirs, Extreme E’s drivers are diverse by
design. The youngest is 22-year-old Brit
Jamie Chadwick; the oldest, Spaniard
Carlos Sainz, is 58. This is also the first
motorsport to feature a 50/50 gender
split. Male and female racers compete on
equal terms, inspired by the mixeddoubles
format in pro tennis. “I liked the
format because the men and the women
are equally decisive for victory,” Agag
says. “So I thought we should play this
championship as teams—one man and
one woman doing two laps, one each.”
One of the championship’s youngest
drivers, 23-year-old Catie Munnings,
describes Extreme E as “inspirational. It’s
going to encourage girls to have a serious
career in motorsports at the right age.
And for young drivers, it’s the future.”
Munnings got her career off to a
flying start, winning the European Rally
Championship Ladies Trophy in 2016 in
her first season, the first British driver to
claim a European title in almost 50 years.
But, after a tough first year in Junior
WRC in 2020, she’s joined the Andretti
United Extreme E team with World
Rallycross champion and fellow Red Bull
driver Timmy Hansen. “Women aren’t in
the teams just for the media,” she says.
“Everyone’s been picked on merit. All
that money, that development, the hours
—it’s pointless unless you’ve chosen
someone because you think they’re fast.”
Temperamentally, Munnings couldn’t
be more different from the low-key Loeb.
While the taciturn rally deity is unlikely
to get his own talk show anytime soon,
the chatty Munnings has already hosted
her own children’s TV series: Catie’s
Amazing Machines. While she’s clearly
thrilled to be in such company, and
confesses to having done double-takes
while hanging out with some of her
sport’s greatest names, the Brit isn’t fazed
by the caliber of the competition: “We’re
all just drivers learning a new car.” But
then, this is a woman who won her first
“If we want
motorsports to
continue long term,
it’s good to take
new directions.”
international rally after surviving a
massive crash, and took her Biology
finals the day before qualifying.
Today’s test is a data-logging exercise,
but one pair seem to be having more fun
than is necessary: the American team
owned by NASCAR’s Chip Ganassi.
Drivers Sara Price (a former dirt-bike
champion) and off-road racer Kyle LeDuc
are going all-out with big jumps and
gravel-pinging tail slides. A camera crew
is showered with grit as the car careens
around a bend. They’re finally ordered out
of the way by an anxious marshal, who
warns that the Ganassi car spun out of
control earlier after “popping a tire off.”
It takes up to two hours to charge
Odyssey 21’s batteries for 20 minutes of
testing. Range remains a perennial
problem for electric cars, so races are
short at just two 16-kilometer (10-mile)
laps. On X Prix weekends, each team is
allowed one full charge for the day’s two
races. After a few spirited test laps, a
plasticky electrical whiff emanates from
the Ganassi car. They all seem to do it, but
it’s not a smell anyone would want coming
from their fuse box at home. Most electric
cars today are powered by lithium-ion
batteries, which, on rare occasions, have
caught fire, even exploded, in a reaction
known as “thermal runaway.” But safety is
a priority in any motorsport, and Extreme
E has a team trained to extract drivers
from electric vehicles. Agag insists the
CHARLY LOPEZ/SPACESUIT MEDIA, EDER FERNANDEZ/SPACESUIT MEDIA
74 THE RED BULLETIN

“Women aren’t
in the teams just
for the media.
Everyone’s been
picked on merit.”
British driver
Catie Munnings
wraps up a test.

With Odyssey 21’s
plant-fiber shell
lifted, its tubular
frame is revealed.
“We’re not
in this for
commercial
gain—we
believe in it.”
Odyssey 21’s batteries, made by the British
company Williams Advanced Engineering,
are extremely safe, explaining that Spark’s
own test driver rolled his car earlier and
experienced “no problem at all.”
Lithium ion presents another concern.
Mining for “white gold,” as lithium is
known, has a devastating impact on
ecosystems around the world. Agag is
fully aware of the issue but takes a
pragmatic view that climate change is
the more pressing threat. “The most
urgent thing is not pollution caused by
minerals, it’s CO 2
in the atmosphere,”
he says. “We have to make a choice,
and that is to try to cut the CO 2
in the
atmosphere and the toxic particles
coming from cars. For that, batteries
are the solution. Are they perfect? No.
Are they better than a diesel car in the
city? Definitely.”
Adrian Newey has been converted to
the cause. His cars have won more than
150 Grands Prix and secured four
consecutive F1 drivers’ and constructors’
championships for Red Bull Racing
between 2010 and 2013. The 62-year-old
engineer and designer (left) has stood at
the pinnacle of racing since the 1980s,
when F1 teams ran, in his words, “on a
diet of cigarettes, coffee and beige
polyester.” Fossil fuels have been the
lifeblood of his exceptional career. Now,
as “lead visionary” of the Veloce Racing
team, Newey has been presented with
a new challenge. “[Extreme E] is an
interesting concept to combine
technology with conservation,” he says.
“We know we’re damaging the planet.
Everybody is grappling with how we
reverse that process.”
For Newey, climate change is a
complex engineering problem, but he’s
skeptical about battery technology as
a long-term solution: “It’s not quite the
panacea that governments make it out to
be.” He believes the automotive industry
has been “press-ganged” into embracing
it. “But it will grow and mature, just as
the combustion engine did,” adds
Newey. “And other sources will creep in
—hydrogen being the most obvious.”
He’s a big advocate of hydrogen and
would like to see it fueling Extreme E
as soon as season three: “Hopefully, by
then, the boat will be converted to
hydrogen and become very sustainable.”
Newey was introduced to Extreme E
by his racing-driver son Harrison, who
helps run Formula E champion Jean-Éric
Vergne’s Veloce team and its esports
sister company. “A huge number of
people watch gamers competing and
audience figures are massive,” says
Newey Sr. “Hopefully, Extreme E will
appeal to the same demographic.”
Agag, a gamer himself, definitely had
Gen Z’s digital natives in mind when
brainstorming both Formula E and his
new venture; he even lifted a few tricks
from video games. Take “Hyperdrive,”
where the Extreme E team that performs
the longest jump on the first jump of
each race gets a speed boost to deploy at
will. “That’s from Mario Kart,” he admits.
“Alejandro has shown tremendous
vision,” says Newey. “I wouldn’t be
involved if I didn’t think it had something
to offer. We’re not in it for commercial
gain—we believe in it.”
But how did a career politician
metamorphose into a planet-saving
motorsports visionary? Intelligent,
charismatic and ambitious, by the age
of 25 Agag was a rising star in Spain’s
center-right People’s Party and had
been appointed as political aide to Prime
Minister José María Aznar. He was
elected an MEP three years later and
married the PM’s daughter Ana Aznar
—after reportedly proposing in her
father’s offices—in 2002. The nuptials
were attended by Spain’s king and queen
as well as its celebrated crooner Julio
Iglesias, Rupert Murdoch and members
of the world’s political elite. Tony Blair
and Silvio Berlusconi were witnesses.
Though strongly tipped as a future party
mover-and-shaker, Agag had, by then,
already quit politics. He never returned.
Decamping to London, armed with his
book of stellar contacts, he moved into
motorsports, thriving in the notorious
EDER FERNANDEZ/SPACESUIT MEDIA, EXTREME E, ISAAC FORCELLA-BURTON/VELOCE RACING
76 THE RED BULLETIN

For Agag, the
climate fight should
be “above politics.”
Everyone has a role
to play.
shark pool of F1 and forging a reputation
as a formidable dealmaker. In 2002,
alongside Flavio Briatore (then managing
director of Renault), Agag snapped up
Spanish TV rights for F1; in 2007, as part
of a consortium with Briatore, F1 chief
executive Bernie Ecclestone and steel
magnate Lakshmi Mittal, he acquired
EFL Championship soccer team Queens
Park Rangers; and the following year
he bought an FGP2 racing team. “Being
a politician never leaves you completely.
It helps you create agreements and
places where people can meet,” says the
man with the golden SIM card.
The next chapter was Formula E,
which he started with FIA president
Jean Todt in 2014, partly in response to
motorsports’ growing image problem.
In the 2019 Formula E documentary
And We Go Green, Agag is seen reclining
on a sofa, puffing on a fat cigar as he
recalls, “I tried to convince a company to
become a sponsor for Formula One. And
in every email they said, ‘We cannot be
involved, because it’s polluting.’ I thought,
‘We have a problem.’ ”
As Greta Thunberg’s generation
approaches the age that Agag was
when he entered politics, the
environment continues to climb the
world’s political agenda. For Agag, the
climate fight should now be “above
politics.” From Extinction Rebellion to
ExxonMobil, everyone has a role to play.
Sports, he believes, can be an agent of
change. “Out of the 25 most-watched
TV programs in history, 24 have been
sporting events,” he says. “It has the
possibility to spread the message in
a much wider way.”
Imaginative, driven, seriously wealthy
—he dug into his own, evidently very
deep, pockets to fund Extreme E—and
not so much well connected as plugged
directly into the international power
grid, Agag is clearly a man who can
sense which way the wind is blowing.
And right now, it’s blowing very much
in his favor.
Ripping across the sand in an
elderly open-top Land Rover,
Extreme E’s sporting manager,
Guy Nicholls, shouts directions
to his driver over a roaring sea wind:
“Turn right at the porpoise.” To the
vehicle’s left is the Atlantic Ocean;
on the beach to the right a badly
decomposed dolphin carcass. The
sorry cetacean’s final resting place is
an ugly tide mark of plastic detritus
that stretches into the hazy distance.
“It’s tough to see this,” says Nicholls
as the driver steers inland.
Senegal’s coastline—more than 430
miles long, including estuaries—is
drowning in plastic waste. The whole of
Africa is choking on the stuff. It clogs
roads, pollutes soil and contaminates
animal feed. Rain washes it into
waterways and eventually the sea, where
it’s ingested by marine life or spat back
onshore by the tide. According to an
industry report in 2019, almost 360
million tons of plastic were produced the
previous year—more than the combined
weight of every human on Earth at the last
estimate. Plastic can take up to 1,000 years
to biodegrade, and it doesn’t only harm
dolphins; it breaks down into tiny shreds
that can affect human development,
reproduction and health. A 2019 study by
the University of Newcastle, Australia,
found that the average adult consumes the
equivalent of a credit card every week, and
microplastic particles have been found in
the placentas of unborn babies.
Nicholls and his team are at Senegal’s
Lac Rose beach for their first site survey.
In May, they will be followed by the
whole traveling circus. The Ocean X-Prix
will transform this sprawling sand pit
into a buzzing techno-village. Container
trucks will shuttle race cars, service
vehicles and equipment from RMS St.
Helena, docked at the capital, Dakar, an
hour’s drive away. And 70 air shelters—
those giant inflatable tents used by relief
organizations and murder investigation
teams—will house the race command
center, driver change area and garages.
As sporting manager, Nicholls’ first job
is to sketch a circuit onto this “huge
canvas” that’s practical, televisually
appealing, exciting and safe. Mapped out
by pairs of flags—“rather like downhill
skiing”—each five-minute lap will send
drivers out along the beach, returning
on bumpier, jumpier inland terrain. “It
allows them to go one route or another,”
explains Nicholls, who will return in a few
weeks with racing driver Timo Scheider
and a fast dune buggy to fine-tune the
course. “It’s up to them—the shortest
distance between two points is not always
the quickest.”
At Lac Rose, Senegal, a
volunteer collects plastic
waste to make an “ecobrick,”
which can then be used in
building construction.
THE RED BULLETIN 77

Shipping plastic
waste to Africa
is cheaper than
recycling it. Out of
sight, out of mind.
Below: The Team
Andretti United race
car. Opposite page:
Senegalese fisherman
Abdou Karim Sall
surveys the mangrove
swamps in his
pirogue.
Behind the dunes lies Lac Rose, or
the Pink Lake. Today its salty water
is rusty gray, but pigmented algae
sometimes turns the lagoon a shocking
cotton-candy hue. For many years it
marked the finish line of another
famous—or, more accurately, infamous—
off-road race. If Extreme E promises
a greener future for motorsports, the
bad old days of the Paris-Dakar Rally
embodied its grubby excesses. The
spectacle of wealthy westerners speeding
through impoverished African countries,
leaving dust, destruction and deaths in
their wake, did little for the sport’s
environmental reputation. But it
brought visitors and international
attention. Since the Paris-Dakar left
Africa in 2009, the local community
has felt its loss.
“It was one of the biggest events
showcasing Senegal, but when it left
people didn’t reinvent the destination,”
says Senegalese eco-entrepreneur
Stephan Senghor. Pink Lake is no longer
a tourist hot spot, and the neighboring
village of Niaga faces “a cocktail of
challenges—people are living with the
bare minimum here.”
Niaga’s dusty main street is alive with
activity and color, its shops and stalls
trading everything from truck parts to
traditional dresses, but plastic trash is
everywhere; scruffy goats and bony
cows graze on it as they wander the
roadside. Africa leads the world in its
ban on plastic—last year, Senegal
prohibited all water sachets and plastic
cups—so why is it still so ubiquitous?
One reason is that the continent remains
among the developed world’s favorite
dumping grounds. Shipping plastic
waste to Africa is cheaper than recycling
it. Out of sight, out of mind.
Senghor has devoted much of his adult
life to cleaning up his homeland. After
studying and working in Canada, he came
back with an idea to turn plastic waste
into building materials. His fix is simple,
ingenious and low-tech: filling soft-drink
bottles with compacted plastic waste.
Cemented into walls, these “ecobricks”
make strong, long-lasting structures.
Now, with Extreme E’s support,
Senghor’s organization is helping Niaga
reinvent itself as a sustainable community
or “EcoZone”—a living lab showcasing
environmental initiatives while improving
lives. Working with schools, Senghor
incentivizes children by gamifying litter
picking. Every ecobrick made can be
redeemed for money for community
schemes. If successful at the Pink Lake,
the project will expand, perhaps into
CHARLY LOPEZ/SPACESUIT MEDIA, RICHARD FLEURY
78 THE RED BULLETIN

“The mangrove
is good for the
community and
for the Earth.”
other African countries. “This is the first
time they have a race where a project
comes with it,” he says. “It’s about how we
can be side by side, doing stuff together.
Everything is possible if we want it to be.”
Abdou Karim Sall was “born
a fisherman” in Senegal’s Saloum
Delta, a four-hour drive from
Dakar. A physically imposing
man with a piratey past, the 55-year-old
once kidnapped a Chinese sea captain.
For decades, foreign commercial fishing
vessels have looted West African waters.
Each one can sweep 250 tons of fish into
its nets daily—50 times what a local boat
catches in a year. So Sall boarded one of
these mega-trawlers and abducted the
captain. He was jailed the next day, but
a mob of angry fishermen persuaded
police to let him go. The episode made
national headlines, forcing the
government to negotiate a solution.
“To solve problems, you have to create
other problems,” Sall says, matter-offactly.
That was 30 years ago. Today, he
insists, his swashbuckling days are over:
“Sometimes it’s necessary to do bad
things. But I was younger; I wouldn’t do
it again.” However, he’s still banned from
China. “They will never give me a visa,”
he laughs, looking distinctly unconcerned.
Sall grew up in Joal, a fishing port
responsible for more than a quarter of
Senegal’s entire annual catch. From the
town’s plastic-strewn beach, he launches
a long wooden boat called a pirogue.
According to one origin story, this
traditional Senegalese fishing vessel
gave the country its name (“sunu gaal”
means “our pirogue” in the West African
language Wolof). Its shallow draft is
perfect for navigating the estuarine
backwaters where the mangroves grow.
It’s hard to overstate the importance of
the mangrove ecosystem to both fishing
and the environment. The mangrove is
the only tree that can grow in salt water.
Its tangled roots are a habitat for crabs
and shellfish, and a vital nursery for
young fish. Mangrove forests create a
buffer zone, protecting the land from the
sea while sucking up 10 times as much
carbon dioxide as the rainforests. “The
mangrove is good for the community
and for the Earth,” says Octavio Fleury,
scientific director of Oceanium, the nonprofit
reforesting Senegal’s swamps with
help from Extreme E.
When a decade-long drought raised
salt levels in the 1970s, large swaths of
West Africa’s mangroves died. Senegal
alone lost more than 100 million, replaced
by lifeless salt flats, empty apart from the
tire tracks of smugglers driving across
the delta at low tide from neighboring
Gambia. “It was terrible,” says the
Frenchman. “A little change like salinity
and all the mangroves can disappear.”
Oceanium pays schoolchildren to
collect “propagules”—the mangrove
tree’s spearlike buds—and plant them in
neat rows across the delta mud at low
tide. “The idea is to make restoration
easy,” explains Fleury, “but we need
the population to be involved, to
understand the importance of a
healthy environment.” Led by Senegal’s
environment minister, Haidar el Ali,
Oceanium enlisted 150,000 people from
500 villages, planting 173,000 acres
across Senegal. Last year, for the
Extreme E project, they planted another
156 acres—roughly 120,000 trees.
While growing up, Sall saw the
mangrove forests disappear, but he knew
little about their importance. When asked
if he’d help plant a million, he replied,
“What’s the point?” A decade on, his
commitment to the cause is total. Thanks
to Sall, more than 500,000 new mangrove
trees are growing in the Saloum Delta.
The kids call him Mister Propagule.
But Mister Propagule was not
always Mister Popular. When Sall
established the waters around Joal as a
government-backed Marine Protected
Area in 2004, local fishermen hated him.
“I was everyone’s enemy,” he says. But
now, as president of the Fishermen’s
Association of Joal and the Committee
of Marine Reserves in West Africa, he’s a
formidable champion of both the fishing
industry and the environment. “To
manage local communities here, you
need two sides to your character,” he
says. “One that is a fighter, and the
other with the knowledge to help
them understand.”
Sall benefits from Oceanium’s
finances and resources, but his local
influence is invaluable. “And his
mystical support,” says Fleury with a
smile, as the bow of Sall’s pirogue noses
through overhanging branches. Senegal
is predominantly a Muslim country, but
the supernatural poetry of voodoo and
gris-gris, spirits and sacrifices remains
very much alive. Deep in the mangroves
are sacred sites. Sall believes the forest
genies who live there have always
protected his home. Now is his time to
return the favor.
If Extreme E is an attempt to
“greenwash” motorsports, it is an
extraordinarily elaborate and expensive
one. And does it really matter? As its
founder will tell you, politics is the art of
the possible. It’s quite possible that
Extreme E will make a real difference in
the fight against climate change. After
all, how many sports can claim to get
motorsports magnates, climate scientists
and mystical eco-pirates all working
together to save the planet?
extreme-e.com
THE RED BULLETIN 79

guide
Get it. Do it. See it.
GETTY IMAGES
URBAN
ESCAPES
To put it mildly, traveling to find
genuine adventure in the past
year has been understandably
tough. These close-to-home
adventures from six big cities are
wild without being irresponsible.
Words DAVID HOWARD
Now’s the time to
cross the Grand
Canyon off your
bucket list.
THE RED BULLETIN 81

Do it
G U I D E
Hang gliding in
northwestern
Georgia is a fun way
to raise your game.
New York City:
Off-road immersion
The idea of plunging a fourwheel-drive
monster down
rutted trails and barely-there
roads into the wilderness
holds a certain timeless
allure. But if you don’t know
a butt-scratcher (a trail
obstacle that scrapes a truck’s
rear end) from a brake fade
(what you really don’t want
to happen heading straight
down a mountain), you might
want to bone up before
heading into the great
unknown. And even people
with some experience
behind the wheel of a 4x4
will find something useful
in the weekend-long
Overland Fundamentals
course run by Northeast
Off-Road Adventures.
driving-centric classes, like
wilderness survival, first aid
and something called antikidnapping
and hostage
survival. No prior experience
needed. From $700;
nyoffroaddriving.com
Atlanta:
Hang gliding 101
Think of a weekend at hanggliding
school as a socially
distanced way to get all
doped up on adrenaline. It’s
a sport with a high learning
curve, but Lookout Mountain
Flight Park delivers the goods
during an action-packed twoday
tutorial (we won’t call it a
crash course). Sign up for the
weekend package and you’ll
spend daytime hours in
Ground School, learning the
fundamentals of winged
Offered monthly on select
weekends in the Catskills, the
course includes outdoor chalk
talk, workshops and behindthe-wheel
instruction in the
outfitter’s park, which
features an obstacle course.
This last part of the
curriculum—referred to as
“woodland driving skills”—is
the fun part. But you’ll also
learn basic maintenance, trip
planning and how to recover
a vehicle from various sticky
situations. Socially distanced
primitive camping and
vehicle rentals are available.
If you get hooked, you can
next sign up for an immersive
course on overland travel,
which involves a vehicle
equipped for multi-night
expeditions (usually a tent on
the roof). There are also nonflight,
and on the bunny hills,
working your way skyward
on training flights. In the
evenings you’ll join the
teachers on instructional
tandem flights, when the
opportunity to defy the laws
of physics crystallizes in
dramatic fashion. The goal,
if you’re game, is to get good
enough to go thermalhunting—soaring
up to cloud
bases as many as 10,000 feet
above the surface of the
Earth. Located 30 miles from
Chattanooga, the 41-year-old
flight park is centrally located
between Atlanta, Knoxville,
Nashville and Birmingham.
The park is outfitted with
COVID-friendly cabins and
a campground where it’s easy
to pitch a tent far from
others. $399; flylookout.com
DEAN FUNK, GETTY IMAGES
82 THE RED BULLETIN

Urban Escapes
Los Angeles:
Climbing in J-Tree
The story goes that Joshua
trees got their names from the
18th-century Mormons—who,
on their westward journey,
found themselves in the
Mojave Desert. The pioneers,
possibly hallucinating by then,
saw the gnarled limbs as
reaching out in supplication,
guiding them toward the
promised land. Climbers feel a
fervor for the granite that dots
expanses in the national park.
Joshua Tree is all about lowercase-d
democratic climbing—
meaning there’s something
for everyone, from sport and
trad climbs of almost every
difficulty to legendary
bouldering options. If you’re
looking for an entry-level
experience, the outfitter Cliff
Hanger can get you oriented
and safely on the rock. A fullday
session spans nine hours
and is customized to whatever
kind of climbing you seek.
Shoes, harnesses and helmets
(and a gourmet lunch) are
provided. To ensure pandemic
safety, Cliff Hanger keeps trips
small and never mixes groups,
while keeping everything
distanced and sanitized. $395
per person or $500 for two;
cliffhangerguides.com
Miami:
Float the Everglades
Summer is no time to be out
in the open sun in Everglades
National Park. But in
springtime, meandering
among the crocodiles and
dolphins in a kayak or canoe
makes for an idyllic day trip or
overnight escape. Temps hover
in the mid 80s and drop into
the comfortable 60s at night
throughout March and April.
The optimal choice is the
Hell’s Bay Trail, a 13.5-mile
odyssey through a magical but
disorienting mangrove estuary
and a collection of diminutive
bays. You’ll follow 160 PVCpipe
trail markers to keep
your bow pointed in the right
direction amidst a maze of
islands and creeks with
wishbone intersections. Just
leave plenty of time to snap
photos of crocs, blacktop
sharks and roosting pelicans.
Overnight, crash in one of
the park’s chickees, essentially
a dock on stilts with a roof.
Stow a cooler of beer, some
food and a tent and crash at
one of the two sites on the
trail. Each site has two
chickees (outfitted with
portable restrooms) that hold
parties of up to six. (Reserve a
spot at reservation.gov.) You
Otherworldly climbing abounds in Joshua Tree—less than three hours from Los Angeles.
can look forward to shaking
off sleep to the sounds of
dolphins breaching for air.
Rent boats from Flamingo
Adventures, which will also
deliver them to and from the
put-in and takeout. Two-day
rentals start at $92;
flamingoeverglades.com
Phoenix:
Bag the Grand Canyon
There are weekend adventures,
and then there are tell-yourgrandkids
epics. As one of the
world’s most iconic geographic
features, the Grand Canyon
plainly falls into the latter
category. Fortunately, the
national park has carefully
thought-out pandemic
strategies that have kept it
open to hikers and campers,
allowing for some astonishing
beauty and mind-boggling
perspective during this
otherwise challenging time.
There are two approaches
for experiencing the canyon in
a quick turnaround time: One
is to drive up to the canyon
the night before, get an early
start and do an epic dayhike.
From the North Rim, the
North Kaibab trail to Roaring
Springs is a full-day, 9.4-mile
excursion to an idyll 3,050
feet below your starting point.
At the springs, cross the creek
and soak in one of the many
pools of cold, glass-clear
water. Or, for an overnight,
head all the way to the
Colorado River on the South
Kaibab (7 miles) or Bright
Angel (9.5 miles) trails to
Bright Angel Campground,
which is limited to half
capacity during the pandemic
(you’ll need a permit in
advance). The park has made
things easier for hikers by
installing drinking-water
filling stations in high-traffic
areas, but you should still
bring plenty of water as well as
something to treat water from
other sources, just in case.
nps.gov/grca
Chicago:
Jump out of a plane
What better way to celebrate
being alive than by doing
something that feels like a
near-death experience—but
is actually totally safe? Toast
the arrival of spring—and the
looming end-game of the
pandemic—by plunging out
of an aircraft via Skydive
Midwest’s “Learn to Skydive”
package. After a brief training
class, you’ll pair up with an
instructor, climb aboard a
small plane and head for the
heavens above Lake Michigan.
First up is the mad adrenaline
rush of free fall, where gravity
asserts itself at speeds of up
to 120 mph. Once the chute
opens, just settle in with vistas
of the suddenly nearbylooking
skylines of Chicago
and Milwaukee. For those
who find this sort of thing
addictive, Skydive Midwest
offers classes in which you can
become a licensed skydiver in
as few as 25 jumps. The
outfitter, located in Sturtevant,
Wisconsin, is 60 miles north of
Chicago and 30 miles south of
Milwaukee—and is accessible
via public transit. Skydive
Midwest has a set of carefully
thought-out COVID policies.
$239; skydivemidwest.com
THE RED BULLETIN 83

Do it
G U I D E
TRAIN LIKE A PRO
“I CAN ALWAYS
GET BETTER”
Freeride mountain bike prodigy
Jaxson Riddle shares how he trains
to send big lines.
The first time Jaxson Riddle went out to Virgin,
Utah, to ride the terrain made famous by Red Bull
Rampage, he was 15 and took his BMX bike—the
only bike he had. Riddle promptly sold it and
bought his first downhill rig. In freeride mountain
biking he had found his sport. Now 20, Riddle has
turned the challenging Virgin terrain into his
playground and dreams of one day competing at
Rampage. A typical day for Riddle might include
hitting jumps at the Snake Hollow Bike Park in
Saint George, Utah, where he lives; building a
new line in Virgin; mastering a high-consequence
aerial maneuver; or maybe offering friendly
advice to kids at the local skatepark. “I take a lot
of inspiration from freestyle motocross,” says
Riddle. “I just try to bring those tricks to
mountain bikes.”
“There really isn’t a
right or wrong way to
do this sport,” Riddle
says. “With freeride,
you can be as creative
as you want and build
whatever you want.”
84 THE RED BULLETIN

Fitness
ON THE BIKE
“I don’t really have
a set program.”
“I have a lot of respect for people
who have a routine and can stick to
it, but for me it’s different every
day. I try to ride every day, but
I don’t have a set amount of time
that I spend on the bike. Either I go
out to Virgin or go to the skatepark.
Then I go ride dirt bikes or go skate.
I just got into skating, and it’s been
awesome, because it keeps
everything fresh. You expect to be
good at something new, because
you’re good at riding bikes, but it’s
not how it works. There’s always
something you can learn.”
NEW TRICKS
“I do it in little
steps.”
“I’ll just watch a video, like a
hundred times. Then I’ll visualize it
when I’m out there. I do it in little
steps. If it’s a Superman, I’ll do
a no-footer. Then I inch my way
to the Superman. I ride the jump
a couple of times and envision
myself doing the trick. I try to work
it out in my head at the top of the
run-in. Then I’ll go to the jump and
try to do what I just visualized. If
I keep trying, and I’m making the
same mistake without progress, I’ll
take a break until I can come back
with a different mindset.”
“FOR RECOVERY, I TRY
TO KEEP IT SIMPLE.”
“There’s a sick river spot
in Virgin—it’s basically
freezing, so it’s like cold
therapy. I also get regular
massages and do stretching
as well. I don’t do yoga as
much as I should. I need to
get more consistent with it,
because I need a lot of hip
mobility to do tricks. I do
foam rolling and I try to stay
on top of stretching.”
DIG DAYS
“Digging is like strength
training—and a rest day.”
PREPARING TO CRASH
“I have to be as good
at crashing as riding.”
PETER JAMISON/RED BULL CONTENT POOL JEN SEE
I go out to Virgin with an open mind
and find features that draw from
motocross and BMX. I try to
imagine how to bring ideas from
those sports to mountain bikes. It
usually takes three or four days to
build a new line, depending on if it
rains or is super dry. We attack a
line for three days in a row, from
sunup to sundown. In the
summertime, when it can hit 110
degrees in the middle of the day,
we go out there at 4 in the morning.
That’s super draining.”
“With repetition, you learn how to
crash and what not to do. Learning
how to push your bike away, so
there’s no chance of it landing on
you, is helpful. You don’t want that
thing hitting you. I try to be
calculated and not try things that
I don’t know will work. I try to think
of the things that could go wrong,
so I’m ready. And then I’ll breathe
three times, in and out, and just try
it. Usually it works out. I try to have
it pretty dialed. I’m not going from
square one to square five.”
THE RED BULLETIN 85

G U I D E
See it
Calendar
10
April
WRESTLEMANIA 37
Like this year’s Super Bowl, the premier event in pro wrestling is happening at Raymond James
Stadium in Tampa, Florida. So yes, there will be spectators, but the venue will be at limited
capacity—with it likely that empty seats will be filled by cardboard cutouts. But after that, the WWE
will not return to its regular touring schedule of ticketed events until at least the second half of
2021. One noticeable absence from this year’s WrestleMania will be John Cena, who recently told
reporters he couldn’t attend due to his commitment filming Peacemaker for HBO Max in Vancouver.
Way to powerslam us right in the heart, Mr. Cena. wwe.com
25
April
ACADEMY
AWARDS
The smell of buttered
popcorn, trailers, a
laughing audience—
remember those things?
The theater industry has
been hit hard this past
year, but thank heavens
for streaming services
and innovative virtual
film festivals to keep our
eyeballs occupied. The
Academy Awards will
look very different this
year, with reports that
Oscar-winning director
Steven Soderbergh has
been hired to reenvision
the ceremony, which will
air on ABC. oscars.org
Happening now
RED BULL
CAPTURE POINT
Move over, National Geographic.
Indoor kids, this new photo contest
is your turn to shine. (And let’s face
it, a lot of us are indoor kids right
now.) Now through May 2, you can
submit in-game photos from
some of PlayStation’s most visually
epic titles, including God of War,
Demon’s Souls and more. Just
upload them to Twitter using the
hashtags #RedBullCapturePoint
and #Contest for a chance to win
some sweet cash prizes.
redbull.com/capturepoint
Available
now
DESIGN AND
CONQUER
Matt Jones has really
embraced the WFH
life. The 26-year-old
mountain biker spent
last summer turning
his garden into an epic
dirt track. Now, in this
four-part series, he
seeks the help of fellow
pro bike legends Kriss
Kyle, Gee Atherton and
Kye Forte, in a quest to
master three neverbefore-achieved
tricks.
redbull.com
GETTY IMAGES(2)
86 THE RED BULLETIN

The 11th iteration
of the Saucony
Perigrine adds some
sweet updates to a
classic shoe.
WILDLY
CAPABLE
As spring finally arrives, we round up the best new trail
running gear so you can head for the hills in comfort and style.
Words MICHELLE HAMILTON

G U I D E
SHOES
HOKA ONE ONE SPEEDGOAT
Named for the winningest 100-mile runner on
earth—Karl “Speedgoat” Meltzer—the fourth
iteration of this popular shoe delivers a stable,
cushioned ride with good traction. It boasts
Hoka’s trademark pillowy cushioning, 3Dprinted
overlays for midfoot support and a wider
toe box for increased comfort. An updated mesh
upper improves breathability. Count on the
Vibram outsole and 5 mm lugs for grippy ascents
and confident descents. $145; hokaoneone.com
SALOMON SENSE RIDE 4
The updates to Salomon’s classic trainer offer a
cushier, more breathable and responsive ride for
long-distance terrain. The retooled heel collar is
more secure and adds padding in the heel for
comfort. An anti-debris mesh upper provides
ventilation, while the Optivibe foam absorbs
impact and decreases muscle fatigue. And with
decoupled rock plates to guard against sharp
objects and a grippy outsole, it’s ideal for daily
dirt and epic adventures. $120; salomon.com
LA SPORTIVA KARACAL
The just-launched Karacal is a zippy shoe with
long-mile comfort and best-in-class grip. Built on
a roomier last, the wider shoe increases comfort,
as does the dua-density compressed EVA in the
midsole and a cushioned tongue. While not the
lightest trail option, a hardened EVA rock guard
that runs the full length of the shoe and medial
and lateral counters provide stability, while
varied-length lugs let you barrel over rocky
terrain and sloppy trails. $130; sportiva.com
ADIDAS TERREX
TWO PRIMEBLUE
These shoes offer a responsive ride for long
distances. Comfort comes from a wide toe box
and the sock-like, seamless Primeknit upper
(made from upcycled ocean waste). The midsole
contains Boost beads, a polymer that increases
shock absorption without sacrificing energy
return. The Continental rubber outsole has a
grippy lug profile that’s optimal for routes with
a road and trail mix. $180; adidas.com
SAUCONY PEREGRINE 11
It’s hard to go wrong with the 11th iteration of this
consistently popular trail shoe. Devoted fans love
its claw-like grip (thanks to aggressive lugs and
tacky rubber), just-right midsole cushioning and
the 4 mm offset that yields an uninhibited, fast
ride. This version adds a breathable, ultralight
mesh layer that acts like a gaiter, keeping trail
debris out. Runners in climates with sloppy
conditions should consider the Peregrine 11 ST
(soft terrain). $150; saucony.com
ALTRA LONE PEAK 5
Newly updated, Altra’s most popular trail shoe
(now in its 10th year) offers a compelling mix
of features: The zero-drop, wide toe box and a
25 mm stack Lone Peak devotees love, paired
with a revamped Altra Ego foam midsole that
allows for max energy return and a responsive
ride without an overly cushioned feel. The
MaxTrac outsole provides a reliably toothy grip,
letting you feel grounded and protected, with
the freedom to fly. $130; altrarunning.com
The Two Primeblue has a sock-like, seamless
upper that’s made from upcycled ocean waste.
THE RED BULLETIN 89

APPAREL
BUFF TRUCKER CAP
Iconic style has technical cred with a low-profile,
moisture-wicking headband that keeps sweat
out of your eyes and a dark underbill designed to
help protect your eyes from sun reflecting off
snow. The 100 percent polyester front panel is
breathable and quick-drying and the mesh back
allows for air circulation. Choose from modern
mountain to retro-style graphics. Plus, Buff is
donating 2 percent of sales to UNICEF projects
combating COVID-19. $28; buffusa.com
PATAGONIA NINE TRAILS SHORTS
Performance meets sustainability in these
lightweight shorts. Made from 91 percent
recycled polyester and 9 percent spandex, they
wick away moisture and breathe, thanks to
quick-drying fabric and a relaxed fit. Both men’s
and women’s models feature a lightweight liner
and elastic-and-drawstring waist. Three zippered
pockets offer ample space for phone and keys
(men’s; women’s has one zipper pocket). A DWR
finish fends off light rain. $65; patagonia.com
INJINJI MIDWEIGHT
TRAIL MINI-CREW
Toe socks may seem gimmicky, but fabric
between toes helps prevent hot spots and
blisters. The toe sleeves keep your toes drier—
and therefore less prone to blisters—and also
splay your digits into a more anatomical
position, providing better stability and comfort.
These socks include a snug double cuff that
blocks out dirt and grit, and a mesh top for
breathability. Woven with a blend of Coolmax,
nylon and Lycra fibers, they prove to be both
flexible and durable. $16; injinji.com
OISELLE FLYOUT TRAIL TANK
This just-released piece offers women who run
something new: a tank specifically designed to
pair with a hydration pack. The wider cut in the
shoulders and back (vs. racerback) provide chafe
protection and moisture management in a
stylish muscle tank. Made with a proprietary
blend of polyester, tencel and spandex, the
durable technical fabric is designed to withstand
variable weather and high use, yet is also
lightweight, soft and comfy. $48; oiselle.com
ORTOVOX MERINO WINDBREAKER
This lightweight windbreaker is an ideal outer
layer for spring’s changing mountain weather.
The mix of merino wool and nylon provides solid
wind protection and temperature regulation for
warm and chilly days. An adjustable hood keeps
wind out without blocking your view, and long
cuffs offer hand protection. Pocket lovers be
warned: There’s only one zippered breast pouch.
But the jacket stuffs into said pocket for easy
carrying when not in use. $228; ortovox.com
90 THE RED BULLETIN

G U I D E
APPAREL
The stylish ease
of the Tracksmith
Harrier belies a
layer with technical
credentials.
TRACKSMITH HARRIER
LONG SLEEVE
The beauty of this top for the shoulder season—
besides its clean, classic look—is the 89 percent
merino wool. The soft wool fabric is a
temperature regulator; it’ll keep you toasty on
cool spring days and prevent overheating if
things warm up. The merino-nylon blend guards
against stink, so you can wear it to brunch postrun.
New colors for spring include stonewash,
melon and tamarind. $82; tracksmith.com
Merino wool is a temperature
regulator, keeping you comfortable
when it’s cool and when it’s warm.
THE RED BULLETIN 91

ACCESSORIES
The Petzl Iko Core
is the headlamp
reimagined.
PETZL IKO CORE
Petzl has managed to squeeze a ton of light out
of a reimagined lightweight lamp body. The Iko
Core weighs a mere 79 grams, and the thin strap
is more like a crown, sitting low and snug (no
bounce!) thanks to a tiny bungee in the back.
Fewer contact points improve air circulation and
reduce pressure points. Seven LEDs produce up
to 500 lumens of light and the rechargeable
battery lasts 2.5 to 100 hours, depending which
of the three levels you use. $89.95; petzl.com
92 THE RED BULLETIN

G U I D E
ACCESSORIES
COROS APEX 42MM
This watch delivers the must-haves without
sticker shock. Count on accurate GPS, long
battery life (25 hours), crack-resistant sapphire
glass and a customizable trail-running mode
with time, distance, elevation gain and loss,
cadence and calories. If you upload a route,
arrows provide direction—or head out without a
plan and when you turn around it plots a route to
the trailhead. Bonus: New updates include track
and strength training modes. $300; coros.com
TAIGA TERRA
Taiga began as a quest by two outdoorsmen for
a durable adventure cooler that could keep food
fresh and drinks cold for days. Now they’ve
released the first sustainably built, highperformance,
hard-sided cooler, made with
hemp (rather than oil-based polymers) to
reduce carbon emissions during manufacturing.
The 27-quart Terra holds ice for up to 10 days—
ideal for weeklong camp-and-runs. It’s bearsafe,
too. $199; taigacoolers.com
CAMELBAK ZEPHYR
This vest may feel light and airy, but it’s a
workhorse. It features 11L of gear capacity,
including the main pouch and stretch pocket in
the back and six pockets in the front for quick
access to phone, fuel and shades. Poles attach
easily, and you can add a 2-liter bladder to boost
the 1-liter fluid capacity to 3. Mesh body paneling
aids ventilation and adjustable straps allow for a
custom, stable fit. Unisex and women’s versions.
$150; camelbak.com
SALOMON SENSE PRO 5 W
Women eager to return to trail racing will
welcome this new hydration vest. The no-fuss,
minimalist pack hugs the body without
restricting movement, thanks to stretchy,
durable fabric and just-right cut. More elastic
and space around the chest eliminates pressure
points and sealed seams help prevent chafing. It
features a whopping 10 pockets. Two 500 ml soft
flasks fit securely up front. Also in a larger size
and two men’s models. $160; salomon.com
BLACK DIAMOND DISTANCE
CARBON Z RUNNING POLES
Runners wanting the energy-saving benefits of
poles without excess weight will appreciate the
lightest choice in BD’s collection. The carbonfiber
shafts weigh in at a mere 5 ounces each (for
110 cm). They assemble quickly and break down
into a packable 13 to 17 inches (depending on full
length; seven sizes are available). If you want
adjustability, opt for the Distance Carbon FLZ
poles. $169.95; blackdiamondequipment.com
The lightest running poles from Black Diamond
are carbon fiber and weigh a mere 5 ounces.
THE RED BULLETIN 93

Peace of Mind
These innovative helmets—for biking and snow adventures—all have
cool tech to keep your brain safer if things go south.
Words PETER FLAX
S-WORKS PREVAIL II VENT
This update to the Prevail, long beloved by
roadies for its comfort and performance, has
upgraded ventilation and impressive safety
features. The helmet can accept an ANGi crash
sensor (sold separately) that will detect a crash
and (when used with an iOS or Android app) text
specified contacts with your location. The
minimalist MIPS SL system, exclusive to
Specialized, integrates MIPS crash protection
into the helmet padding. $250; specialized.com
The Prevail II Vent’s
add-on sensor can
detect crashes and
alert contacts in
your phone.
94 THE RED BULLETIN

G U I D E
BIKE
BERN HUDSON
Helmets for commuters tend to be heavier on
style than safety-driven innovation—and just
kind of heavy—but the Hudson includes the
MIPS protection system as well as integrated
LED lights, which are water resistant, USBrechargeable
and can flash or pulse. The
Hudson also has 13 strategically placed vents,
including two clever U-lock-compatible vents in
the rear that make it easier to secure your lid
when you’re not riding. $120; bernhelmets.com
SNOW
POC TECTAL RACE SPIN
This striking half-shell mountain bike helmet
features a tech called SPIN—Shearing Pad
Inside, if you must know—that uses proprietary
silicon-infused pads that absorb rotational
impacts. The Tectal, which is shaped to cover
your temples and the back of your head, also
includes an integrated RECCO reflector that
search-and-rescue teams can use if they’re
looking for you in the wild. All this and a pretty
cool goggle clip. $220; pocsports.com
SMITH TRACE
Using and elevating the MIPS System, the Trace
contains Smith’s innovative Koroyd honeycomb
lining, which improves how impacts are
absorbed. The helmet—good for road or gravel
riding or bikepacking—also has a proprietary
antimicrobial lining with sweat-activated odor
control. The VaporFit retention system allows
you to micro-adjust the fit with a dial. The Koroyd
system tends to run a bit hot, so 18 fixed vents
help keep things cool. $250; smithoptics.com
GIRO GRID MIPS
This helmet debuts Giro’s proprietary Spherical
technology—which allows the inner and outer
liners to rotate separately to redirect impact
forces away from the brain and means the Grid
can combine dense foam (for high-speed
crashes) and less dense foam for slower
tumbles. This protection is tucked in a helmet
that’s got backcountry cred—it’s lightweight,
well vented and comfy thanks to a Polartec liner.
Available for women as the Envi. $280; giro.com
RUROC RG1-DX
This isn’t a helmet to fly under the radar in. But
don’t let the postmodern storm trooper vibe fool
you; the RG1 is full of tech to bolster safety and
performance. Inside the surprisingly light ABS
shell is an integrated Rheon gel liner—a liquid
that hardens on impact—and a RECCO reflector
for search-and-rescue ops. The helmet comes
with an integrated Italian-made goggle unit with
magnetic, anti-fog lenses so you can see as well
as be seen. From $350; ruroc.com
ANON MERAK WAVECEL
Two new helmets from Anon, including the highend
Merak, are the first in the snow category to
utilize WaveCel technology, a system that has a
cell-like layer between the shell and lining that
can flex, crumple or slide to minimize impacts.
The Merak also has clever features like the
Fidlock magnetic strap buckle, which can be
easily used with one gloved hand, and niceties
like a cozy Polartec liner and 19 vents, eight of
which are adjustable. $320; burton.com
Don’t let the postmodern storm trooper vibe fool you—
the RG1 is full of safety and performance technology.
THE RED BULLETIN 95

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BEYOND THE ORDINARY

Action highlight
Done and dusted
After his 14th overall victory in the world’s most iconic rally raid, French driver Stéphane
Peterhansel (pictured here in Saudi Arabia during stage three on January 5) could
officially change his name to “Mr Dakar.” But it’s probably not worth the passport hassle,
given all the global travel he has to do. Africa, South America, the Arabian Peninsula—the
55-year-old has conquered them all at Dakar. See him in action at redbull.com.
The next
issue of
THE RED BULLETIN
is out on
April 20.
MARCELO MARAGNI/RED BULL CONTENT POOL
98 THE RED BULLETIN

CHOOSE
YOUR
WIIINGS.