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The Red Bulletin_0609 IRTRANSCRIPT
AN ALMOST INDEPENDENT MONTHLY MAGAZINE /JUNE 2009
MAYA GABEIRA
THE BIG-SURF WARRIOR PRINCESS WHO’S BREAKING WAVES,
SMASHING PREJUDICE
Roar Power THE ULTIMATE RUGBY LION FOR
THE ULTIMATE RUGBY TOUR
Formula One Speed Kings THE RED BULL RACING
WINNING MACHINE UNSKINNED
James Cracknell TALKS SUCCESS, THE SOUTH POLE, AND APPLE-BOBBING
Plus HOW TO LOOP THE LOOP…
IN A HELICOPTER
AN ALMOST INDEPENDENT MONTHLY MAGAZINE /JUNE 2009
Exclusively with the Belfast Telegraph on the first Tuesday
of every month
The etnies Brunswick features a vulcanized construction for better grip and board feel as well as System G2 for comfort and heel protection. etnies.com
RYAN SHECKLER. 360 FLIP. PHOTO: BARTON
A REFRESHING BOTTLE OF ANTIOXIDANTS.
The refreshing health drink. 100% pure & natural ingredients.
Scientifically proven health benefits.*
For many centuries this herbal tea blend has been used to promote health and wellbeing – already a convincing track record some might say. Today however, Carpe Diem’s Kombucha blend is also supported by some pretty impressive modern day medical research.
Enjoy Carpe Diem Kombucha Refresh any time of day – you could even make it a daily ritual – do and you’d soon feel the positive effects. Refresh from within.
Every so often a journalist and photographer will be sent on an assignment (or on ‘a job’ as we call them in the trade) from which they return so stoked, so buzzing, it’s hard for them to contain their enthusiasm. So it was this month with the Red Bulletin team sent to interview, shoot and film our cover star Maya Gabeira in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Maya’s infectious enthusiasm for her pioneering attempts to crack the testosterone-fuelled, male-dominated domain of big-wave surfing bowled over our guys, to leave them somewhat in awe of her skill, mental strength and sheer physicality. She’s really quite something, as you’ll read from page 40.
With barely so much as a flick of the page, a change of continents – from South America to South Africa, and the down ’n’ dirty thunder promised by this month’s tour by the British and Irish Lions, taking on the world champion Springboks in their own high-altitude, hard-surfaced backyard. The qualities required of a successful Lions player, and side, are unique, and we’ve asked squad members Jamie Roberts of Wales and Ireland’s Keith Earls to craft their own ‘ultimate Lion’. The results may provoke a pub argument or two.
We couldn’t let this issue pass without focusing in detail on the race-winning feats of the Red Bull Racing Formula One team. One-two in China and with significant, performance-enhancing technical developments to come, the boys in blue ’n’ red are in with a shout of a world title. We’ve gained exclusive access to the key players behind the winning package.
There’s much more packed into our 100 pages, of course – a cheeky Q&A with Olympic hero James Cracknell, for instance, or the fascinating life story of Franz Stampfl, whose unique training methods helped Roger Bannister break the four-minute mile running record. So why not sit down, crack open a can, turn the page and enjoy, safe in the knowledge that if this mag alone can’t satisfy your thirst, there’s an online world to savour at www.redbulletin.com.
Your editorial team
MAKING WAVES
AN ALMOST INDEPENDENT MONTHLY MAGAZINE /JUNE 2009
MAYA GABEIRA
AN ALMOST INDEPENDENT MONTHLY MAGAZINE /JUNE 2009
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WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF RED BULL
Bullevard10 GALLERYPhotos you wish you’d taken
14 NOW AND NEXTPresent, past and future moves inthe world of sport and endeavour
17 ME AND MY BODYHow Devin Hester, the NFL’s secret superstar, gets in shape forlife on and off the field of play
18 WINNING FORMULA Free running is a combinationof speed, sneakers and science: here’s one man’s physics-al exercise
21 WHERE’S YOUR HEAD AT?Need someone to do great songs with top artists? Mark Ronson has it covered; we’ve got his raisons d’être
23 KIT EVOLUTIONFifty years of footy boot technology:from hobnail to hammer shots
25 LUCKY NUMBERSGlastonbury-goers take note: we’veworked out the figures to get youthrough the summer’s biggest musicfest. No, no, you’re welcome...
Heroes28 HERO’S HEROMark Webber is enjoying his best results in Formula One, but the man who inspires him is a champ on two wheels, not four, fellow Australian and motorbike legend Mick Doohan
30 FRANZ STAMPFLBehind Roger Bannister’s breaking of the four-minute mile was 20 years of athletic expertise from a former POW who also went on to pioneer interval training. A tribute to the best sports coach you’ve never heard of
32 JAMES CRACKNELLHe can win gold medals, row across oceans and trek to Poles, but can he make dinner when his wife is out and convince the world that five-a-day is only half right? Britain’s action hero reveals all to The Interrogator
Inside your fit-to-burst Bulletin this month...
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FOR MORE LIKE THIS, VISIT: WWW.REDBULLETIN.COM
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Action38 FORMULA ONE INSIGHT In what’s shaping up to be the most competitive and surprising F1 season in years, the Red Bull Racing team is making its mark at the top of the standings. But just how did they get there? Here’s the inside line
46 MAYA GABEIRAShe’s 22, beautiful, Brazilian and she tackles the big waves that were once reserved solely for men. We kicked back in Rio with the new star of surf
66 THE ULTIMATE RUGBY PLAYERIs touring South Africa with the Lions the toughest assignment in team sport? Jamie Roberts and Keith Earls are about to find out: here they pick the component parts of their ideal man for the job
70 DRIVING THE AUDI R10This month sees the 77th running of the Le Mans 24 Hours – to many, the world’s greatest motor race. To mark the occasion, 2008 champ Dindo Capello let us take his winning Audi R10 for a spin
More Body & Mind76 THE HANGAR-7 INTERVIEWOn the rota this month: helicopter stunt pilot Siegfried Schwarz
78 NAS & C-SICKA hip-hop legend helps a rookie MC lay down his first studio track
80 FESTIVALS 2009All you need to know about this year’s music ’n’ more extravaganzas
82 GET THE GEARSurf stuff’s up: boards, clothes and the all-important waterproof sunblock
84 LISTINGSYou’ll never be stuck for somewhere to go with our worldwide events round-up
88 NIGHTLIFEMusic-makers in Manchester, Rome and Jamaica, plus clubbing in Dublin
94 BULL’S EYEAnyone for tennis?
96 SHORT STORYAnton Rehberger’s chilling tale
98 STEPHEN BAYLEYIs it better for your car to look good or perform perfectly, asks our columnist
FOR MORE LIKE THIS, VISIT: WWW.REDBULLETIN.COMPH
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WORD UP!Wisecracks and wisdom from the world of Red Bull and beyond.
Tell us what you think by emailing [email protected]
“CHICKEN AND STUFFING IS BEST, BUT MY MUSIC’S MORE LIKE
TUNA AND SWEETCORN: THE PELLETS YOU CAN’T REPEL!”
Your Letters
“THIS TYPE OF THING KEEPS ME FRESH, IT KEEPS ME EXCITED.
HERE’S SOMEONE WHO WAS PROBABLY A BABY WHEN MY FIRST
ALBUM CAME OUT AND NOW HE WANTS TO WORK WITH ME. YOU NEVER KNOW WHO’S LISTENIN’”
“IF YOU’RE MASSIVELY OVERWEIGHT, THE FIRST FEW KILOS ARE QUITE EASY TO LOSE, BUT THEN IT JUST GETS HARDER AND HARDER. IT’S
THE SAME IN F1 – IF YOU’RE MASSIVELY OFF THE PACE, IT’S EASIER TO FIND
BIG IMPROVEMENTS THAN IF YOU’RE ALREADY QUICK”
“I only started looking at waves when I was 14 years old.
That’s when I first realised there was surfing in the world”
“The difference between 20th- and 21st-century man is most obvious
in the airport. I’ve just seen a woman put her husband’s belt
on for him after security”
“I SAW A CAR FLYING THROUGH THE AIR,
AND MY IMMEDIATE REACTION WAS TO
TRY TO MISS IT”
“My middle name’s Thursday. Just kidding,
it’s Jacqueline. But that would be
funny, though”
“I held the Guinness World Record for apple-bobbing. It’s been beaten
now. They wrote to me to tell me that, about the same time they
wrote to tell me I’d lost my record for swimming the Channel on a surfboard. Tough year”
“I REMEMBER SEEING A TV PRESENTER FLY AS A PASSENGER WITH RAINER WILKE, ONE OF THE
FIRST GUYS TO DO HELICOPTER AEROBATICS IN A BO 105. AS HE
WOBBLED OUT, HE SAID: ‘NO ONE’S EVER MADE ME PUKE SO QUICKLY
BEFORE.’ THAT GOT ME INTERESTED IMMEDIATELY”
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FALL OF THE WILD S O U T H E R N M E X I C O
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Stunning action and endeavour from around the globe
Bullevard
K A M C H AT K A , RU S S I A
FROM RUSSIA WITH LAVA
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EVERY SHOT ON TARGETPICTURES OF THE MONTH
Email your pics with a Red Bull flavour to [email protected]. Every one we print wins a pair of Sennheiser PMX 80 Sport II headphones. These sleek, sporty and rugged stereo ’phones feature an ergonomic neckband and vertical transducer system for optimum fit and comfort. Their sweat- and water-resistant construction also make them ideal for all music-loving sports enthusiasts. www.sennheiser.co.uk
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AIDAN TOASE
YOU REALLY OUGHT TO KNOW SOMETHING ABOUT. . .
Cologne
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Pennsylvania LondonSaarbrücken
WINNING WINGSRed Bull’s Hangar-7 welcomes some new aircraft to its fleet
Paper aeroplanes were once the stock- in-trade of the naughty schoolboy, but for contestants at the Red Bull Paper Wings world finals at Salzburg Airport’s Hangar-7 last month, it was definitely a case of ‘may the best man win’.
The event on 1-2 May was fought by 253 paper pilots, whittled down from more than 37,000 entrants who had filled qualifying rounds at colleges and universities worldwide. This folding flight crew was aiming to make aviation history armed with reams of A4.
Brazil’s Leonard Ang took first place in the Longest Airtime category with a flight of 11.66 seconds, while Japan’s Takeshige Kishlura Kisshii won the Aerobatics competition, in which entrants could show enhanced designs, provided that the craft’s main body was made from paper.
The Longest Distance contest was retained by Jovica Kozlica, winner in 2006, with a throw of 54.43m. The Croat’s effort was 8.76m shy of the world record, but he was nevertheless happy in the knowledge he had done everything possible to ensure a good result.
“I slept with an icepack on my shoulder last night,” said Kozlica after his victory. “Three weeks of intensive training had taken their toll on my throwing arm.” Thus giving a new dimension to the term ‘long-haul flight’.
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Cheshire LondonPitztal
The last time something really striking appeared in Battersea Power Station’s airspace, someone photographed the flying object – a giant pink balloon in the shape of a pig – and the image became a Pink Floyd album cover. Later this summer, 33 years post-porker, events in and around the iconic London landmark will again cause necks to crane and flashbulbs to pop, when it hosts the Red Bull X-Fighters world tour.
The rules of freestyle motocross are simple. Riders hurl themselves at speed towards dirt ramps, perform incredible tricks while getting very big air, and land safely, and this continues until there is a winner. At Battersea, a course that will use both the interior and exterior space
POWER PLAYBattersea Power Station to host summer motocross event
of the Grade II-listed building is being constructed especially for the event.
One to note on the roster is Australian Robbie Maddison, a modern-day Evel Knievel who specialises in spectacular stunts, and who is rumoured to have something remarkable planned for this summer, at a to-remain-secret location.
In the run-up to the big day, a UK tour, featuring local riders such as Chris Birch, will give fans outside London a taste of the action. Events are: Leeds Millennium Square, July 10; Glasgow George Square, July 11; and Bournemouth East Beach Pier, July 18. A further event will take place in Manchester or Birmingham on July 17.
HIGHLAND KINGSThe mountain biking elite head to where the air is clear (rural Scotland, to be precise)
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DEVIN HESTERME AND MY BODY
The 26-year-old Chicago Bears wide receiver is also American football’s deadliest kick returner: that rarest sporting asset, the
two-position pro. Here he tackles collisions, contusions and cookies
TAKING THE SPRAIN
COOL HANDS, WARM WEATHER
GOT GOD ON HIS SIDE
STRONG POINT
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THE FREE RUNNERIt’s a classic story from the ages: boy does decathlon; boy becomes man; man runs up a tree trunk and does a backflip off it. That boy, and that man, is Markus Walzel, a 30-year-old health service manager from St Pölten in Austria, and one of an ever-increasing army of free runners and parkour exponents. (Know the difference between the two, and look super-informed next time you’re out with friends and see someone somersault from a park bench onto a bollard: free running is about the creative journey, parkour is the most efficient urban transfer from A to B. Simple.)
“I started free running in 2007, after watching the film District 13,” says Markus. “It inspired me to do what they did. I had already done a lot of sport – track and field for about 10 years from the age of eight. By the end, I was doing decathlon. Now I’m free running a lot.
“In this picture, I’m in an open area in St Pölten. The trick’s name is obvious: it’s a tree flip. Doing it off a wall is a wall flip. A lot of the tricks have regular names. The only ‘secret’ is to get the trick focused in your mind. You need body and mind to make it happen for real. You have to run very fast and it’s a hard drop, so you have to bend the knees hard and quickly when you land.
“Occasionally I do weights in the gym, but mostly I train by free running: on the one hand, it’s good to be thin, but on the other, it’s not too bad if you have a little natural padding for when you crash-land. I’ve only had one small blowout.
“What I really want to happen is for free running to become part of the X Games within the next five years. There are already some events on a global scale, like Red Bull Art Of Motion in Vienna, and the Barclaycard World Freerun Championships, which are in
London in October. I was injured for Art Of Motion last year, but this year I’m fit and I hope I give the crowd a good show. It’s what I like to do.”
FREE THINKING“How is it possible to run 2m up a tree trunk then do a backflip?” asks Thomas Schrefl, Professor of Functional Materials at the University of Sheffield, who also teaches at the St Pölten University of Applied Sciences. “A simple estimate of the velocity required to reach a certain height h by running up a wall starts with the conservation of energy.
“Let us assume a change in the runner’s centre of mass of 1.5m. Then, the required velocity of 5.4m/s follows from equalising kinetic energy and potential energy. This is a rough estimate. Not all kinetic energy will be converted into potential energy and the runner can gain extra energy by jumping and moving his arms upwards.
“There is another reason why a certain velocity is required when reaching the wall: running is only possible because of friction. The frictional force is proportional to the normal force that is provided by gravity when running on the ground.
“When running up a wall, the normal force FN = mv/t is provided by the horizontal momentum of the runner. Here m is the mass of the runner, v is velocity and t is contact time between running shoe and surface. The frictional force FR, given by the product of the normal force and the static co-efficient of friction μ, has to be larger than gravity. This condition is fulfilled for realistic values for the runner’s horizontal velocity: v = 5.4 m/s, the co-efficient of friction between wall and running shoe μ = 0.5, and the surface contact time t = 0.2s.
FLIP MODEWINNING FORMULA
Some people climb trees – others hug them – this man uses them when free running. To pull this off, he needs nerve, good trainers and a little science
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SUMMER IN THE CITY
Barcelona’s Sónar Festival, on June 18-20, has a festivalgoer’s paradox at its heart: sunshine almost guaranteed, yet nowhere to pitch your tent. This gathering, with its reputation for being at the forefront of new music and digital arts, sets out its stall at two locations at the heart of the Catalonian capital.
This year’s headliners include Grace Jones, Vincent Gallo and the genre-spanning Animal Collective. Over 600 other contributing artists will accompany them, and a crowd about 80,000 strong is expected at Sónar’s two distinct ‘halves’.
Sónar By Day will be based around the city’s Modern Art Museum and the neighbouring Barcelona Centre of Contemporary Culture, with four main music stages alongside several smaller performance spaces. Sónar By Night
takes place a short bus ride away at Fira Gran Via, a large exhibition centre with three further large stages.
The Sónardome stage at Sónar By Day will be curated by the Red Bull Music Academy. Alumni, such as grime-pop MC/producer GoldieLocks, will be playing live, along with sessions from Academy lecturers Hank Shocklee, former producer of Public Enemy, Ethio-jazz maestro Mulatu Astatke, and UK jazz-hip-hop collective the Heliocentrics.
As the summer festival season grows every year, lesser-known international events are providing a welcome choice over the handful of super-fests: check out our guide to the new best-kept secrets in festivals on page 80 for more.
Instead of following the crowds to the country, why not stay urban and head to one of Europe’s top city festivals?
MINE HOW YOU GOEurope’s most spectacular bike race inspires iron awe
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REWIND SELECTORPAVEMENT PIZZA
BEAT IT
FASHION ROCKS
LADY LUCKMAUDE HELP US
LONDON CALLING
RADIO GA-GA
WORK EXPERIENCE
FRIENDSHIP
MARK RONSONWHERE’S YOUR HEAD AT?
When he’s not DJing at fashion shows or celebrity weddings, he’s making multi-platinum music and
keeping his pooch on the straight and narrow
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BOOT ROOTSThere has been half a century’s worth of development, but the goal is still the same
BACK OF THE NET, BACK IN THE DAY SPORTMASTER LEATHER BOOTS, 1950s
WHITE FEET OF TECHNOLOGYPUMA KING V.108 BOOTS, 2009
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HARD & FASTTop performers and winning ways from across the globe
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GLASTONBURYLUCKY NUMBERS
What’s it like camping for the best part of a week at the world’s biggest open-air music and arts festival? In tents! Here’s how the rest of the fest adds up
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28 MARK WEBBER 30 FRANZ STAMPFL 32 JAMES CRACKNELL
HeroesLegends, their heroes, and the unsung heroes behind legends
JAMES WEARS LIGHT BLUE BUTTON-DOWN COLLAR SHIRT, £85, AQUASCUTUM;
NAVY AND WHITE STRIPE SILK TIE WITH CREST, £69, AQUASCUTUM; DARK
BLUE JEANS, £125, DUNHILL; BROWN LOAFERS, £299, NEW AND LINGWOOD
Mick Doohan is someone I’ve always admired. I didn’t want to meet him for a long time, in the way that many people don’t like to meet their heroes, but we came together eventually at the Australian Grand Prix at Melbourne in 1998.
We did a demonstration run together, me in the Mercedes sportscar that I was racing at the time and Mick on his 500cc Honda. The track was damp and there were white lines and concrete walls everywhere, so it was pretty treacherous – particularly on those 500s, which were very difficult to ride in slippery conditions. As I came up behind him, I remember thinking how small and vulnerable he looked on the bike. His waist was tiny, but you could also see that he was solid muscle underneath those leathers.
We did three or four laps together and I obviously had much more grip than him, but he was still waving to the fans and having a good time. It was a pretty special moment for me and since then we’ve stayed in touch and become friends.
Mick was a genius on a bike, but he was also very strong mentally and one of the main bits of advice he gave me when I was starting out in Europe was not to have any weak circuits. He told me that it was my job to be good everywhere, like a golfer needing to be good on par threes as well as par fives. At some tracks the lap times might come a bit easier than at others, but the end result has to be the same everywhere. That was good advice.
To illustrate his point, Mick used to say that when he raced in Japan, some of the European riders would go there believing they couldn’t touch the Japanese riders on their home turf. They were defeated
before they’d even stepped off the plane. Mick thought that attitude was ridiculous and he made it his business to ensure that he was better than the Japanese riders, even at places like Sukuza.
When Mick was racing, the reality of the situation was that he made bikes dead boring. He was just so bloody good: he won five championships on the bounce and he wasn’t a flamboyant figure like Valentino Rossi. As soon as Mick had crossed the finishing line at one track, he was already thinking about the next race and couldn’t wait to get to the airport. He was relentless.
There were years when he was so dominant that he had only himself to beat, yet that was often when he had his worst accidents. He pushed himself beyond the limit just to see how far he could go. Just to see what lap time was possible.
At that time he used to spend his winters in Australia and didn’t go in for
any self-promotion or PR. As a result, he remained a bit of an unsung hero throughout his racing career – even in Australia. Motorbikes aren’t his scene anymore because he’s moved on to other things and a lot of people don’t appreciate the magnitude of what he achieved. They aren’t aware just how good he was, but Mick wasn’t interested in what other people thought of him.
As well as Mick, I idolised various other sportsmen when I was growing up. There were a lot of Rugby League players who you probably haven’t heard of in Europe, but I knew the training regimes that they put themselves through and the competitive spirit that they had. They were heroes.
And Roy Keane was another person who I admired as a player. He was a bit of a loose cannon on the soccer pitch, but the way he went about competing each weekend was absolutely correct. If people were skiving or letting his team down, he’d let them know what he thought.
Keane might not have had the raw talent of Cristiano Ronaldo or Thierry Henry, but he was always looking for perfection – even with something that might be perceived as trivial, like a throw-in. He had the ability to work on his consistency and his professionalism, and that was the key to his success.
Mick Doohan, on the other hand, had both: he was an amazing natural talent and he had the application, too. That’s why I always admired him and that’s why he was unbeatable.
MICKDOOHANThe Red Bull Racing Formula One driver might be a four-wheel specialist, but his idol, five-time 500cc world champion and fellow Australian Doohan, was an absolute master on twoInterview: Tom Clarkson
Hero’s Hero: Mark Webber on
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Until May 6, 1954, Franz Stampfl was an unknown Austrian refugee who, in the chaotic months before the outbreak of World War II, ended up in England, before finding himself in internment camps in Canada and Australia, then back in England again.
Stampfl was a former art student, a talented skier, an all-round track-and-field athlete and a gifted trainer. But from May 6,1954, Stampfl would forever be the man who trained Roger Bannister, who, on that day, in Oxford, became the first man to run the mile in under four minutes. And immediately, the method – interval training – became as famous as the man.
As a young skier, Stampfl had grown used to intensive training. When he changed to track-and-field, he was shocked by how little athletes trained and by the poor quality of their work. Their only yardstick was results: the distance jumped or the time run. “There was constant experimentation, but it was mostly geared towards making our movement look rhythmic and rounded,” he recalled. “So we came across as elegant but our performances weren’t up to much.” The fashion of the day put little store in training. “We thought that only someone without much talent had to train, and that it was shameful for someone with talent to do it.”
Early in 1938, drawing on his experience from other sports, Stampfl began to develop a more scientific training method based on physiology and biomechanics. For runners, the concept was based on disciplined interval training: different distances at different speeds, heavy workloads, constant checks of all parameters, an emphasis on stamina and speed. By now in England, he tested his method on a number of athletes – expertise for which they paid around £1.50 a day in today’s money. His jackpot came with Bannister’s record and, a year later, he took his know-how to Australia.
Stampfl’s belief in interval training wasn’t based solely on the fact that it produced better performances; it also made it easier to keep training records: athletes always had an idea of what they were doing
and whether it was enough, so they became pre-conditioned to the stresses and strains of competition.
To succeed with Stampfl’s method, athletes had to be tough on themselves – as he had learned to be on his way to internment in Canada. He was one of 400 to survive after his ship sank in bitter seas, hours away from rescue – 2000 others drowned. Australian Ralph Doubell, guided by Stampfl to 800m gold at the 1968 Olympics, described him as a dictator, who ignored his athletes’ complaints, even if they were injured. “He would say, ‘Just ignore it, it’s only pain.’”
Englishman Christopher Chataway, who, along with his compatriot Chris Brasher, was one of Bannister’s pace-makers and who himself became a world-record holder over three miles in 1955, called Stampfl ‘a genius’. After the exhausting training sessions, Stampfl would often sit down with his protégés, drink a few bottles of wine with them and inspire and motivate them with heated but humorous discussions. Chataway explains: “He gave you the feeling that records and medals weren’t just attainable but that they were also worth all the effort.”
Stampfl never distinguished between body and mind when it came to training as, in his view, both were equally important. He became living proof of his belief in 1980, when a car accident that left him quadriplegic couldn’t stop him coaching. “Sometimes I think my ideal athlete should have the soul of a poet – a man rich in fantasy and imagination who can deal with intense physical, intellectual and spiritual phenomena,” he once observed.
He was always willing to play down his own abilities, as he did on Australian radio show The Sports Factor: “The training methods are not majorly important; it’s how they’re administered. I don’t want to play down my own role as a coach but if you’re badly organised, you can be the Jesus Christ of trainers but you’ll still never deliver a performance that people will speak about.”
FRANZSTAMPFLRoger Bannister’s breaking of the four-minute-mile mark in 1954 is legendary. Less storied are the pioneering training techniques of his coach, into whose arms Bannister collapsed after his featWords: Robert Sperl
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JAMESCRACKNELLFrom rowing to rave music to sporting psychology and the South Pole, the real-life Action Man navigates his highs and lows, and all points in betweenWords: Paul Wilson Portrait: Julian Broad
What springs to mind when, like now, you see a picture of James Cracknell alongside his name in largish letters? Naked, hairy Cracknell in a boat with TV presenter Ben Fogle, crossing the Atlantic? Jubilant Cracknell atop an Olympic rowing podium? Perhaps intercontinental Cracknell travelling from Dover to Africa for Sport Relief, or polar explorer Cracknell, with Fogle again, earlier this year? Regardless, there’s a short shock of blond hair in the mental image, and likely a grin trying to poke through a post-exertion grimace.
The 37-year-old is like the guy at work whose sponsor form you’re always happy to sign. He’s segued rowing success into journalism and TV, with a sideline in almost annual endurance adventures for charity and, it seems, his own peace of mind. He and his wife, TV presenter Beverley Turner, have just had their second child, and so a rare few months of relative quiet are pencilled in the diary. Before the calm, though, comes the storm that is The Interrogator…Are you a living legend? No. Some people are appreciative of some of the things I’ve done, because they’re the things I enjoy doing, and that makes me incredibly lucky. Winning gold at the Olympics gave me the chance to do some amazing stuff, things that a regular full-time athlete can’t do.What’s your greatest rowing memory? Getting into the boat for the Sydney Olympics. Steve Redgrave and Matthew Pinsent were putting their reputations on the line with that change of boat, and the fact that I had their trust at that stage meant a lot. Those two weren’t going to take a gamble, they
Are you any good on the barbecue? Er, yes. Not so good at fish. I’ve tried cooking it, but with no success.Do you like cheese? Yes. Cheddar. Mature.Every ex-sportsman knows how to talk about the game, but what makes you good at writing about it, now you’re a journalist? It’s a very different skill… I’ve got a lot to live up to, not least because my wife got a first in English from the University of Manchester. Writing is the most satisfying thing I do now. When I was writing the book [about the Atlantic crossing with Fogle], I worked from 7.30am until 2.30am for three weeks. The first draft was just over 100,000 words. What was heartbreaking was that half of it would never go in, because Ben was writing his half. I needed something to keep me focused, so some Red Bull was consumed. In the end, the words came quickly because I was writing about a very short time period, I was right in the middle of the action and there wasn’t much research to do. Where’s the best place on Earth? Having been away a lot, I’d say home.What made you different from the other juniors you rowed with who didn’t make it? I enjoyed it because it’s a tough sport and I think that made it easier. I got a real buzz off it, because it’s one of the few sports I’ve tried where the effort you put in is rewarded. Enjoyment, and the feedback on the physical level, made me pretty good, and I was always good at self-coaching, in feeling how the boat moves, and being able to interpret that. Some people can do that, others can’t.
were only going to move if they knew they had a good chance of winning, and that was very flattering.What do you drive? A BMW M6. An old one – 1989, 635CSi.Do you think people appreciate how tough being a professional rower is? I think they do, but I don’t think they appreciate how mind-numbing it is. You’re living in Groundhog Day a lot of the time. On the one hand, having everything planned for years at a time was frustrating, but on the other, it made life very easy. I knew what I was doing. I like a challenge, yes, but I’d be lying if I said the security of knowing what you’re doing in a sport that’s objective rather than subjective wasn’t one of the nice things about it. Which Star Wars character are you? Chewbacca. He’s the first one that came into my head.Would you ever grow a beard for fashion reasons? I have before, but now I wouldn’t. People normally have a goatee when they have a double chin.
What’s the worst pair of shoes you’ve ever worn? I had some cowboy boots when I was younger. Looked great in America, but awful at home
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of tattoos and be cool with it, even if he is ever-so-slightly weird. If regular dads try to make their sons into sportsmen in a vain attempt to live vicariously through them, does that mean you’ll do the opposite? No. I’ll give my kids the opportunity to do what they want. Our boy is very musical, so I definitely want him to follow what he wants to do. Music is also good for languages, and I’d like him and his sister to speak other languages.Who were your heroes when you were a lad, sporting and otherwise? Lawrie Sanchez for scoring the winner against Liverpool, for Wimbledon [in the 1988 FA Cup Final]. Adam Ant was my first hero. I used some Tipp-Ex once when I was a kid, to look like him. My mum didn’t find that so funny.What are your greatest disappointments, sporting and otherwise? Getting tonsillitis the day before I was due to race at the Olympics [at the 1996 Atlanta games]. That was terrible. But there was nothing I could have done about that, so it was more a massive frustration than a disappointment. Matthew Pinsent and I broke the world record one year [2002], and won the world championships, but we didn’t really move on. We didn’t kick on in the winter, everyone else did, and you can’t turn back the clocks. I think for the first time we treated a win as a win,
when we always treated a win as a loss, and then tried to improve. Maybe we thought, ‘We’re four seconds ahead.’ That was a massive disappointment. On a personal level, the one thing throughout my career that I wish I’d been better at was staying in contact with friends, because you’re so busy and you’re knackered a lot of the time, your friendships drop. I was also pretty shit as a boyfriend. I’ve matured a lot now, but I used to take sport home with me a lot. If I’d had a bad day, I was grumpy.What kids’ TV show or film that you watch with your offspring do you secretly like? Finding Nemo. I was quite into that a couple of years ago. I watched it a lot. And we’re very much looking forward to seeing Monsters vs Aliens.Who would star in the film of your life? I got compared to Heath Ledger once, but of course that can’t happen now.
James Bond or Jason Bourne? James Bond. Didn’t see the new one, though, I’ve got a family now…Who were your hardest opponents? The Australians, probably.If you hadn’t gone into rowing, what would have liked to do instead? I’d love to have been a rugby player. It’s a good balance – you get to play at a high level, but you don’t have the footballer’s problem of living in a goldfish bowl. Some of the stuff that rugby players get up to… if footballers did that, they’d be nailed.What would be on your iPod the moment before you start a race? Music For The Jilted Generation by The Prodigy. It came out in 1994 and saw me through a decade. There were others, but that was the one I kept going back to. What was the last dream you had? I do dream, but at the minute I’m only getting about an hour’s sleep between our little girl waking up.How hard is it to return from injury? I’ve never been seriously injured, but I missed two Olympic Games through injury – one of them I dropped out on the day before I was supposed to race. That was really tough.Do the public know what you’re really like? Absolutely. I did what I did, do what I do, a normal guy, enjoying it, nothing too complicated for me.Do you always stop for autographs and pictures? Yes. It’s not like I can’t walk down the street. It’s not a problem, I get asked often enough. I’m also tall, so people notice me anyway. People don’t really abuse me; it’s always nice when they stop to talk… I’m very lucky.Do you have any tattoos, and if not, would you have one? One’s children’s names seem popular at the moment. I’ve got a sun on my back. I’m not going to have any more. I got it done when I was 20. I drew it myself and designed it. Dennis Rodman inspired me. He was the first sportsman to have a lot
How many of your five-a-day do you get? Ten, easy. It’s all about vegetables. I like them, plus I’ve got a five-year-old boy and if I don’t eat them, he’ll nail me. If I’m trying to get him to eat them, it can’t be, ‘Er, Dad, why haven’t you got any?’
If I say the words ‘Steve Redgrave’ to you, what would you say in return?Good question. [Long pause.] ‘Mate’
How do you trump the impressive feats you’ve achieved so far? I really enjoy planning things, almost as much as doing them. I loved doing the challenge I did for Sport Relief last year. I’d like to do something like that again, to bring on the concept. Not really sure what, though. Rowing quiz: who are the current men’s coxless four world champions? And Olympic champions? [New Zealand, GB] [In a beat.] New Zealand, us.Have you ever caught a fish, then gutted and cooked it? Yes I have: it was a very agricultural gutting, but yes. In England, in Devon. Can’t remember what kind it was. It didn’t taste very nice – maybe it thought it was going on my barbecue…Do you have a proper hiding place for your medals since they got stolen? The short answer is no, but they never stay in the same place for long. I was lucky to get them back – whoever took them in the break-in [in 2006] dumped them and they were found nearby.
Who was your first famous crush? [Racks brains.] Sam Fox, probably. If I’m being honest, that’s my first recollection of a pair of boobs
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Did you used to read about yourself in the sports reports? Sportsmen say they don’t, but they do really, right? Everybody does. If you’re a name footballer, though, you can’t because it would be thousands of column inches. In a smaller sport like rowing, you know all the journalists, and it’s not
As a famous person, you can blag. What is the cheekiest thing you’ve done on that score? I’m too embarrassed to do it. On the flight back from our honeymoon, we got an upgrade. My wife sorted it, though.What’s the best bit of your favourite film? I like the end of The Godfather. He’s done it all then, hasn’t he? He’s the man. Most painful: childbirth (you may have seen this, not felt it) or your thigh muscles after you’ve just pipped someone on the line to win gold? Childbirth.What was the first dance at your wedding? There May Be Trouble Ahead. We didn’t want to have a first dance, but all the parents ordered us to, so that was our stroppy kid response.What do you think is your most race-winning performance? Hmm... 2002 World Championships probably. Matt was on great form, too, but we were both very intense at that time. It was certainly one of my best; if it was one of his, I’m not sure.What’s your favourite picture of you? There’s one of me and my little boy coming off the podium in Athens. A lot of people like to get their kids in the picture when they win things and I remember Matthew saying, ‘Get him in here,’ and I said, ‘Naah.’ But it worked out naturally.
so bad. I can honestly say that the worst article that anyone could possibly write after losing is not going to be as bad as what’s running through my head anyway. When I’ve underperformed, I know I have, so someone writing about it isn’t going to make me feel better, or make me care about the fact they’re highlighting it. If you do badly, you deserve the crap that goes with it. Then other times you do well and people go overboard with praise, and that can be hard to believe.Mrs Cracknell is out, you’re babysitting, and you have to get your own dinner: what’s cooking? Pesto would feature highly. Pasta. Chicken breast. Very nice.Who do you miss rowing with? Our four for Sydney was great [Cracknell, Pinsent, Redgrave and Tim Foster]. We spent a lot of time in that boat, three and a half years together, and there were really good personalities.Which rower, past or present, do you wish you could have rowed with? A guy called Andy Holmes. He totally walked away from the sport. His last year of rowing was the year before I was in the senior teams. I’ve never met him. He only told his daughter he’d won Olympic gold [1984 and 1988] years later. By all accounts, he was the hardest rower ever. Tell us one thing about you that would surprise people reading this? I held the Guinness World Record for apple-bobbing. It’s been beaten now. They wrote to me to tell me that, about the same time they wrote to tell me I’d lost my record for swimming the Channel on a surfboard. Tough year...What advice would you give to a man trying to win back his girl after being an idiot? I’m not the best person to answer this, as I’m not very good at getting out of the doghouse. My general rule of ‘never apologise’ doesn’t go down very well. Unless you cause a car accident, never apologise. I would say: ride out the storm.What’s the one question you hate being asked? ‘What are you going to do next?’ On a psychological level, as a successful former sportsman, it’s hard to do things that match up to what you’ve already done. It’s not that annoying really, but people ask it a lot.So not the one about what it was like looking at a naked Fogle while you, too, were naked and rowing the Atlantic? No. That wasn’t so bad.
Have you ever worn your MBE and your OBE medals, say, on Christmas Day when you’re sitting at the head of table? Well, I don’t sit at the head of the table. And they take back the MBE when you get an OBE, like a mobile upgrade. I’ve never worn either
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Realising long-held dreams in sports around the world38 THE RISE OF RED BULL RACING 46 MAYA GABEIRA
56 SURFING IN COLD WATER 66 CREATING THE ULTIMATE RUGBY PLAYER 70 DRIVING THE LE MANS AUDI R10
Action
FASTFORWARDAfter a series of sparkling performances in the opening rounds of the 2009 Formula One World Championship, Red Bull Racing have emerged as title contenders. Here’s how they worked out this year’s all-new rules package better than anyone else – by the top team insiders
Words: Justin Hynes
Sebastian VettelDriver, car number 15
Christian Horner
According to Adrian Newey, the design phase of a new car lasts right up until the wheels turn for the first time in testing. It’s a heart-in-the-mouth moment. Months of wind- tunnel tests throw up positive numbers, but it’s only when the drivers steer it onto a test circuit for the first time that the theoretical becomes practical
Part#1A Clean Sheet
Part#2Rollout
For the 2009 season, the biggest change of regulations in over a decade left every team with a new challenge: a clean sheet, fewer boundaries and the scope for some fresh thinking
Christian Horner Team Principal
Adrian Newey Chief Technical Officer
Jonathan WheatleyTeam Manager
Christian Horner
Adrian Newey
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Ian Morgan, Head of Race Engineering
David CoulthardRed Bull Racing Reserve Driver and Red Bull Ambassador
Mark Webber
Ian Morgan
Mark Webber
Christian Horner
Ian Morgan
Adrian Newey
Melbourne, March 27-29, 2009. Testing gives a team a baseline, but with teams disguising the capabilities of their cars in pre-season and running a vast array of strategies, the acid test is the first low-fuel qualifying run at the opening round of the season, where the true pace is revealed
Part#3GoingRacing
Mark Webber Driver, car number 14
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Collisions in Australia, then a 10-place grid penalty in Malaysia for Vettel and a washout for podium-bound Webber. But, in China, everything changed. Despite problems with the car on Saturday, one stunning lap was all Vettel needed to take pole. Sunday brought torrential rain, and despite starting under the safety car, blistering pace in the wet took Vettel and Webber 40 seconds clear and on to a historic 1-2
Part#4VictoryAt Last
Ian Morgan
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If you’re engineering-minded, you’ll love technical illustrator Giorgio Piola’s guide to what what makes the RB5 so fast…
David Coulthard
Get Your Geek OnAdrian Newey
Sebastian Vettel
Christian Horner
Jonathan Wheatley
Mark Webber
Fabrice Lom Renault Principal Engineer Track Support
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They say that the first victory is the hardest; that once you crack the code, winning is easier. More pace in the following races brought more podiums and the RB5 package was refined further for the season’s crucial European leg
Mark Webber’s flying lap of Silverstone
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The Red Bull Racing driver will start the British Grand Prix on June 21 as one of the race favourites. Here, the British-based Aussie reveals the secrets of a super-fast lap of his 3.194-mile (5.14km) ‘home’ track
F1 PREVIEWPart#5The Future
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A new generation of surfer girls is forcing the boys to wake up and take notice. Chief among them, a 22-year-old Carioca named Maya Gabeira, who’s breaking the glass ceiling of big-wave surfingWords: Andreas Tzortzis Photography: Carlos Serrao
FIRST LADY OF
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a warrior. You can tell that.” Not quite. Not at first. If Gabeira’s bronzed skin and sun-streaked hair are typical of the stunning women this area of the world produces with alarming regularity, then her muscular shoulders, toned legs and a body marked by scratches and bruises tell another story. Her voice is thick with a drowsy Carioca drawl, the words coming as if poured into a tall glass on a sweltering Rio afternoon, punctuated frequently by a startling laugh that’s somewhere between a horse’s whinny and a pubescent choirboy.
Underneath the veneer is a young woman driven to pursue a rush that few of us will ever know, punishing her body and testing her resolve as she breaks into a macho and fiercely-territorial boys’ club – all for a few big waves.
“I thought it would be so cool to have a girl who could do it, just like the boys,” she says. “I thought it was an impressive sport, and so radical and intense, and it took so much dedication. And I thought if I ever saw a girl doing it, I’d be impressed… Right now, I can’t even visualise that girl is me.”
Big-wave surfing has been around since the late 1950s, when a handful of surfers first paddled into 6m waves on Oahu’s mythical North Shore in Hawaii. Legends such as Greg Noll paved the way for the discipline’s biggest names, from Ken Bradshaw to Laird Hamilton in the ensuing decades. Massive breaks and barrels, like Maverick’s in California, Teahupoo in Tahiti or Dungeons in South Africa, are as sacred to the surfing community as football cathedrals like the Nou Camp, San Siro and Old Trafford are to football fans.
Better weather prediction technology and the advent of tow-in surfing – where the speed of massive waves too fast for paddling is overcome by hitting them at upwards of 75kph with a tow-line and a jetski – has opened up new spots at the rate of two or three a year. And yet big-wave surfers remain a small group. The physical and psychological strength required to surf big waves is intimidating. Riders must be able to overcome violent wipeouts that break boards and bones, crack ribcages and plunge them underwater for minutes at a time. There have been several women who have joined the men on big waves over the decades. But none have, like Gabeira, made the commitment required to forge a professional career out of it.
“She was the first woman ever to start showing up at other places,” says Bill Sharp, who runs the XXL Big Wave awards, sponsored by Billabong, which has awarded Gabeira the top overall female performance three years running. “She showed up at Maverick’s, Tahiti… I don’t think there’s been another woman who’s chased swells.”
Her ascent is all the more impressive, considering she’s only been surfing for eight years. The daughter of a well-known fashion designer and one of Brazil’s most respected politicians, Gabeira enjoyed a childhood of privilege that spiralled out of control following her parents’ divorce when she was 11. A period of schoolgirl rebellion, of smoking and drinking, came to an end when a boyfriend introduced her to surfing when she was 14.
She was far from a natural. It took her a month to get up on the board in the bubbling white water of the shorebreak. But Gabeira was hooked. She surfed daily during a student exchange year on Australia’s Gold Coast. Upon her return to Rio, she moved straight into a small hotel on a nearby beach. Gone was the obstinate little girl obsessed with fashion and nightlife, her place taken by a surf-chasing tomboy, out in the waves with the boys. Soon after she finished high school, she left her family and country, and moved to Hawaii. She was 17.
“I moved there for the surfing, but it was difficult to see how I was going to be a pro surfer. I wasn’t competing, and I had no sponsors,” she says. Her meagre English qualified her for
“ I THOUGHT IT WOULD BE SO COOL TO HAVE A GIRL WHO COULD SURF, JUST LIKE THE BOYS”
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“ IT’S A VIOLENT SPORT – I’M GETTING WORKED EVERYWHERE, IT’S NOT LIKE I’M PUSHING THE LIMITS ONCE A YEAR”
a waitress job where she would read the menu to customers while casting covetous glances towards the big waves breaking on Waimea Bay. The spot on the north shore of Oahu has legendary status in big-wave circles, its waves reaching anything up to 18m during the winter and surfed by legends of the sport throughout the years.
“Hawaii was the best and only place to establish a big wave reputation,” says Bruce Jenkins, author of the illuminating big-wave love poem North Shore Chronicles. “You surfed Pipeline for the biggest tubes in the world. You surfed Sunset for bigger waves in a more challenging setting. And you surfed Waimea when it got really big.”
The locals out in the line-ups are notoriously territorial, calling interlopers off waves, breaking off their fins if they don’t obey, or worse. It’s a shark pit where only the proven get access to big waves. And it’s dominated by men.
But there was Gabeira, paddling out on her own on borrowed boards on the worst days, where rain lashed down on waves the size of three-storey buildings and higher, awash in white foam. She’d sit in the channel on her board, watching local riders like Andrew Marr ride massive waves. She’d watch the waves close out and swallow her fear, getting used to the din and the violent motion of the swell. She’d stay out for hours, surfing in only when the sun set or a shift started. “You overcome your fears when you put yourself in uncomfortable situations and you force yourself to live through that,” she says. “You figure, ‘OK, I can survive this.’ So, if you can survive this, then you can surf it, and then you’re through to another level.”
In February 2006, two years after she moved to Hawaii and on a day when the roads near Waimea were washed over with sand, she paddled out in stormy conditions and caught her first big waves, riding four of a set of the biggest as the men looked on.
Soon afterwards, locals and big-wave riders from around the world stopped thinking of the young Brazilian as a puzzling anomaly and began considering her as one of their own. Burle began mentoring the young Gabeira and teaching her the tricks of tow-in surfing. “I had a lot of guys come to me and say, ‘What are you doing? You’re going to kill the girl,’” recalls Burle. “I said, ‘Listen, she wants to do it – if it’s not me, it’s going to be someone else. And the most important thing is that she’s ready – she’s training. She’s training more than you and me!’”
Later that year, she surfed Todos Santos, a reef off of the Mexican coast, and the fearsome, coldwater break of Maverick’s, which in 1994 had claimed the life of big-wave virtuoso Mark Foo and had been surfed by few women. The photo of her on those 10-15m waves won her the XXL Big Wave award for best overall female performance, her first. The big sponsors came soon afterwards, and Gabeira’s impossible dream of getting paid to travel around the world surfing became a reality.
With it came the resentment. Surfers on the women’s pro tour questioned what a relative amateur was doing on massive waves. The men who had been surfing big waves for decades in anonymity, without the benefit of sponsor money and media coverage, were jealous of Gabeira’s rising fame. She’s been chased off waves and received stinging insults in public from surfers she considered role models. ‘Maya is too young,’ ‘Maya isn’t experienced enough,’ ‘Maya shouldn’t be here…’ Over and over again.
“There’s so many barriers to break – it’s something new you know…” she says, her voice trailing off. “It’s a man’s
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world and, once you put yourself out there, you have to take whatever comes your way. And sometimes it’s not nice stuff.”
But recovering from such setbacks seems wired into the Gabeira family DNA. As a young man, Fernando Gabeira was tortured and expelled from Brazil for his involvement with a group that kidnapped the American ambassador in the 1960s. Now a congressman, Fernando has built his reputation on fighting corruption. Last autumn, he came out of nowhere to lose the Rio de Janeiro mayoral race, by a razor-thin margin. It was a campaign Maya worked on, canvassing and setting up microphones at his rallies. “He deals with such high risks, and there’s so many bad people involved, and he goes out and takes them down,” says Gabeira. “I look at my dad’s life and, seriously, it’s not a problem at all to deal with a bad local somewhere.”
A bigger challenge has been to get her body to sustain the level of abuse meted out by big waves. Burle’s jetski has fallen on her head, and she broke her nose in 12 places last year when her board hit her during a wipeout. Her asthma, a nuisance since childhood, regularly leaves her struggling for air after she emerges from a wipeout. The fitness levels required have meant strict diets, early morning paddling and tow-in practice, and evening workouts with a personal trainer, even during these, her few weeks of ‘vacation’ in Brazil.
“It’s a violent sport, and… everywhere, I’m getting worked, so it’s not like I’m pushing the limits once a year – I’m pushing it every day, over and over again,” she says. “But if you don’t train just as hard in your daily life, then how are you going to push it when the day comes?”
The waves have started getting bigger off of Saquarema, and a small crowd has gathered on the shore to check out the group of surfers. Gabeira takes a few more 6m waves, and a few wipeouts, before her asthma and a sore throat that’s been bothering her for a few days make continuing impossible. Camera crews film her as she emerges from the water and some of the locals ask for autographs.
Gabeira’s fame has begun expanding beyond Brazil, where she recently appeared on Globo TV’s Sunday variety show watched by 80 million people, to the greater surfing community and beyond. By Burle’s estimation, Gabeira has more of a chance to push big-wave surfing into the mainstream than anyone else. It’s a prospect both exhilarating and exhausting to the 22-year-old, who still struggles to fathom how she went from travelling the world’s surf meccas on borrowed money and clothes to assuming the mantle of professional women’s big-wave pioneer.
“There’s one Maya who really wants to keep it underground and low profile,” she says. “And there’s another Maya who wants the challenge, wants to make it big, wants to prove to herself and to everyone that it’s possible in this sport.”
For now, the former Maya is content to rest on the terrace of the Maasai, the most upscale of the low-slung surf hotels in this town, sipping coffee and barely touching her breakfast. The distant whine of jetski motors announces the return of Burle and the rest of the group. As five jetskis pull onto the sand, Gabeira leaves the terrace and heads through a small crowd of people to the group. Her left foot is scraped up from a crash against the reef earlier in the morning, the cuts still red with blood. But Maya shoulders up against one of the jetskis and, her hair tucked under a hat, heaves with the rest of the group as they push one ski after another onto a trailer, smiling and joking… Just one of the boys.
CARISSA MOORE SURFS LIKE TEEN SPIRIT
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“THIS IS A MAN’S WORLD AND YOU
HAVE TO TAKE WHATEVER COMES
YOUR WAY, AND SOMETIMES IT’S
NOT NICE STUFF”
COLD The O’Neill Coldwater Classic series exists for hardcore surf mentalists who think nothing of hurling themselves into the North Sea at Thurso, Scotland, in thin wetsuits – all in search of the ultimate ride. Surfer Sam Lamiroy explains its icy appealPhotography: Richie Hopson
A C T I O N
PLAY
SMALL BUT POWERFUL
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WHAT LIES BENEATH
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A C T I O N
THE PERFECT WAVE
A C T I O N
STREET-SMART SAM
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KING OF THE CASTLE PLUS ÇA CHANGE…
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MEXICAN WAVES
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A C T I O N
MUTANT HERO SURFER
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A C T I O N
Highlight of this summer’s sporting calendar is the British and Irish Lions tour of South Africa. We asked Lions squad centres Jamie Roberts of Wales (top left) and Ireland’s Keith Earls (bottom left), who they’d choose to make up the ultimate player for the ultimate tour, while Peter Bills, chief rugby correspondent for Independent Newspapers worldwide, adds a little historical perspective
WHAT MAKES THE PERFECT LION?
PASSING
VISION
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A C T I O N
They take enormous delight in knocking lumps out of each other throughout the Six Nations Championship, yet, a matter of weeks
later, these same combatants are sidling up to one another in the queue for breakfast, swapping changing-room yarns like best mates and even sleeping alongside one another. Such is the ethos of the British and Irish Lions.
Theirs is a tradition steeped in rugby lore, tracing its origins to 1888, when Great Britain and Ireland’s finest toured what were then known as ‘the colonies’.
That first tour, to New Zealand and Australia, revealed as much about the intrinsic charm of the Lions as will this month’s South African adventure.
Back then, gentlemen from the Hawick club in the Scottish borders became the soulmates and pals of working-class lads from northern English clubs such as Swinton and Rochdale Hornets. Therein lay the Lions’ secret. As the years went by, Welsh miners and steelworkers would room with student scientists from Cambridge University and chaps who were ‘something in the City’.
The lure of the Lions leads a special breed of player to do extraordinary things. In 1974, for example, several Welsh players gave up their teaching jobs to go on the tour to South Africa, as their local Labour council so disapproved of tours to the apartheid republic that it refused to grant them prolonged leave.
Willie John McBride (see page 68) – a playing member of the 1962, 1966, 1968, 1971 and 1974 parties, then manager of the 1983 tour – was another remarkable Lion, arguably the greatest.
In 1962, McBride broke his leg in Ireland’s final match of the season against France in mid-April. The Lions were set to leave in early May, and with his selection letter had come a medical form signed by his doctor, confirming McBride’s fitness. McBride, in plaster and on crutches, hobbled into his local doctor’s surgery. “Just sign this form and don’t ask any questions,” he told the doctor, who looked at the form, studied McBride’s plaster… and signed.
Despite this commitment, a series-winning Lions tour is rare. They won only once in New Zealand (in 1971) in the entire 20th century, and they’ve beaten the Springboks in South Africa only twice since World War II – all of which makes success as part of this unique adventure almost as highly prized as a World Cup triumph.
SCRUMMAGING
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TACKLING
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1974
1959
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1977
1971
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1955
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Ten tales of fun and high jinks
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A C T I O N
SILENTASSAS
SINAudi’s Le Mans-winning R10 is one of the quietest
racing cars around, but it packs a heavyweight
punch. Werner Jessner got behind the wheel for a wild – but oddly peaceful – ride
Words: Werner Jessner Photography: Jiri Krenek
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It’s always the quiet ones you have to watch out for: cold-blooded; sinister; unpredictable. Qualities that made, say, Javier Bardem so damn terrifying as Anton Chigurh in the Coen Brothers’ recent noir hit No Country for Old Men.
And so it is with this quietly menacing racing car. If it could talk, it would mumble; if it could dress it would be in a dark, perfectly-cut suit that accentuated its physique, like a nightclub bouncer.
You might see, but won’t hear, this machine coming; then it’s there and whizzes past in a flash, with barely a quiet hum. But the air helps you understand the speed: it’s a lethal 12-cylinder hurricane. It heightens the atmospheric tension.
Not good, because I’m next up in the Audi R10 TDI. It’s the first diesel-
powered car to have won the Le Mans 24 Hours. That fact alone deserves respect, although those who work with it prefer to call it ‘the mad farming machine’.
Some tractor: engine power is more than 650bhp; torque is in excess of 1,100Nm. Blimey. That last number in particular is a big one, but pretty abstract, so here’s some context: a 170bhp Audi A4 TDI is a lively sporting saloon because of the 350Nm it has tucked beneath its bonnet. Meanwhile, the Audi R8 mid-engined speedster comes with 430Nm – an accelerative force few people will have felt on their bodies. Even more bonkers is the latest version of the most powerful Lamborghini, the Murciélago LP 640, which heaves out 660Nm. But the R10 dwarfs them all. It churns
out the kind of figures normally only associated with HGVs. And its engine sits in a car that weighs only 900kg without a driver. (Driver? Or maybe that should be ‘victim’, because that’s how it feels, approaching this menacing machine.)
Good job there’s an instruction manual with the car. Yep, just like the Audis you can buy at your friendly neighbourhood dealer, this, the most ferocious of the family, comes with a handbook. It focuses on the steering wheel, which is basically a computer linked directly to the steering column. Its myriad commands allow you to do pretty much everything bar putting on the seatbelt, accelerating and braking. But, as you’ve also got to steer with the thing and it’s only the size of an A5 piece of paper, it can be a little overwhelming,
THE TECH STUFF
72
stuffed as it is with switches and controls. At least there’s traction control. The bad news is that it isn’t there to idiot-proof things for beginners as it does in a road car. Instead, it helps racers go easy on their tyres and nerves at critical moments. The R10 has a deserved reputation as a difficult car to drive, due to its large, heavy engine and the resulting weight at the back of the car.
Constant radio contact with engineers in the garage is a boon when you’re trying to learn how to tame this beast, but the flip side is that those self-same engineers can see every indiscretion through their pit-to-car telemetry: every steering-wheel movement, every bit of pressure on the brakes, every turn, every slight hesitation and every single balls-up. And all in real time.
I console myself with the thought that at least I fit this racing car, despite being well over six-feet tall. Only just, though: there’s a carbon traverse just above my knee, my elbows jut out at the sides and my head sticks way out of the top.
The starting procedure isn’t hard and I move off without a hitch, in spite of the tiny clutch pedal and the complicated operating systems. Just keep the engine ticking over at 1,400rpm and leg-press the pedals like in the gym. Piece of cake.
Out of the garage and into the wilds: Try to enjoy it, I say to myself – you won’t have another chance any time soon. A gentle stroke with my right foot…
There are no ordinary words to describe what happens next. It’s as if your eyes have focused on something far ahead, but it’s already far behind you. A glitch in the space-time continuum is the only explanation. The effect of the actual acceleration – and the side-effects, such as your eyeballs being squashed flat and your lungs being compressed – only really register on the body’s own data-processing centre afterwards. Move up a gear and it’s more of the same. How cool is that? No squealing or yelling or drama – just the acceleration pain, exactly as it’s described as a side-effect of teleportation in the best science-fiction writing.
So much for the straight stuff. I’m ill-prepared for what the R10 TDI does when turning. Experience says that it will feel like a tight carving turn on a very smooth racing-board on a good day on an empty ski-slope. The reality is more like a quarter-turn on a merry-go-round. You turn in and you’re through – as simple as that. The telemetry shows maximal lateral acceleration of 2.44G for factory driver Dindo Capello at our test at the Misano circuit in Italy. That
figure betrays the purpose of the fat tyres, flat underside, huge wings and aerodynamic flaps. They generate an awful lot of grip – though as a first-timer you’re a long way off understanding how best to use it. It’s hard to drive a consistent lap in this car. Perceptions of reality constantly pant along behind you or whisper vague foreboding ahead of you. How to assess Dindo Capello’s assertion that you can take turn 11 at full pelt (you enter the turn at 140mph and come out of it at 175mph)? Do I just put my blind faith in him and try to do the same? If I miss the turn-in point by so much as a metre because I’m still mesmerised by being in science-fiction mode, I and the R10 will go hurtling towards the coast before, at a guess, ramming into the deckchairs somewhere near Cattolica. As a non-racer, I can’t hope to impress in this type of beginners’ course; instead I find myself saying, in merry disbelief, “No bloody way!”
Best bet is to be professional and do exactly what I’m told. I won’t make any friends by trying to be quick – that’s just a mark of disrespect for the pros.
With that in mind, I try simply to put my time to the best possible use. Nothing on four wheels can provoke the blissful state of your brain dimly struggling to keep up quite so well (only MotoGP is worse). It must be a racing driver’s dream to experience it over and over for three hours non-stop as they do at Le Mans: above you is the summer night sky; under you a bit of the most legendary road in France; behind you an engine you can’t hear. And you’re in charge. The forces are under your control. It’s a frightening image.
Time for the moment of truth. And the telemetry doesn’t lie: I was 25 seconds slower per lap than three-time Le Mans winner Dindo Capello; my top speed was 25mph off his; and I took my foot off the accelerator for no reason in the quick sections. But I wasn’t bad on the slow turns. And I was actually really good on the brakes, Capello says in praise. It’s cold comfort: it seemed to me that my braking was just as bad as my accelerating. Things just weren’t where I expected, and that makes turning a quick lap more than a little tricky.
Still, as I turn into the garage, fun and games over, I suddenly realise how cosy it’s become in the cockpit. I could, maybe, somewhere on the space-time continuum, get used to this.
“ WHEN YOU ACCELERATE IT’S AS IF YOUR EYES HAVE FOCUSED ON SOMETHING FAR AHEAD, BUT IT’S ALREADY FAR BEHIND”
A C T I O N
Free advertisement.
Your contribution makes a difference. Donate on www.wingsforlife.com
Progress and ongoing development are a feature of our times. We live in an era of visionary thinking. The recent history of humankind is strewn with new milestones of technical and medical achievements.For the longest time, it was thought impossible to repair the injured spinal cord. But damaged neural cells have been regenerated in laboratory experiments. So new medical and scientifi c evidence shows that progress is possible even in this complex fi eld. Doctors and scientists now agree that it will one day be possible to cure spinal cord injuries.This is what the Wings for Life Spinal Cord Research Foundation is aiming for. By selecting and supporting research projects of the highest quality, Wings for Life invests in progress – for a future in which spinal paralysis can be cured.
“Nothing is as relative as the ‘impossible’.”Felix Baumgartner.BASE jumper, helicopter pilot and Wings for Life Supporter.
76 HANGAR-7 INTERVIEW 78 C-SICK MEETS NAS 80 BEST FESTIVALS 82 GET THE GEAR 84 LISTINGS 88 NIGHTLIFE
94 BULL’S EYE 96 SHORT STORY 98 MIND’S EYE
Flying, festivals, fashion, fiction, and further fun and frolics
More Body & Mind
We’ve just watched you doing a loop-the-loop in a helicopter. Thanks for not taking us along for the ride.You’re welcome. But you missed out on a few things – for example, looking down at the ground through the rotorblades.So it’s not like aerobatics in a plane?If you try to do aerobatics in a helicopter using ordinary techniques – not much steering – you’ll have problems.Such as?You’ll crash.Looks like anything could go wrong at any second.Well… not if you know what you’re doing. But a helicopter is a particular design. Obviously, it doesn’t have wings like a conventional aircraft, which means you can’t make any mistakes. An aeroplane more or less rights itself at the end of a loop-the-loop. A helicopter doesn’t do that.So, choppers don’t like aerobatics?They don’t like flying, full stop, let alone aerobatics! Although there is one helicopter you can do the funny stuff with: the Bo 105CB. It’s the only civilian helicopter in the world that’s really up to it.Why’s that, then?It has two engines and a hingeless rotor system. The rotor blades are made of glass-reinforced plastic. If they were connected to the turbine via hinges, like in a normal helicopter, you wouldn’t be able to loop the loop. They would snap at the hinges and crash into the cabin. Surely it must depend on what you’re used to?You really have to understand that you handle a helicopter differently from how you’d handle an aeroplane in aerobatics. For example, as G-force increases, the joystick’s neutral point shifts towards the rotors turning. One of my old
students could do some aerobatics in a plane and wanted to test his abilities in a helicopter, but didn’t know these niceties. It was his last flight. And I mean his very last flight…OK. How about we talk about a first flight instead? Yours, for example.That was in 1977. But it was never my great dream to fly helicopters. It just sort of happened that I’m now in my dream job. When I was young, I was a mechanic with the army. Then I wanted to learn how to fly, but I didn’t do that with the army, I did it as a civilian; I trained simultaneously, and in so doing became
SiegfriedSchwarzOnly three civilian pilots in the world can make a helicopter loop the loop. This man is one of them
The Hangar-7 Interview
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the first civilian helicopter student in Austria. Before that, there had been only military pilots and people who had received their licences abroad. Then I spent a long time in the US and flew Santa Claus around and did whatever else I had to do to earn money. With that many flying hours, you can always get a job. It’s pretty difficult for the young guys today. Later, I bought a Robinson 22 on credit. I’d been out of work for a while and then had the idea of opening a flying school.So, you managed to get a loan, despite being unemployed and
with an… unusual business plan?It might not work today. But they loaned me almost 70 grand. I guess your idea really flew…It worked out, I’m glad to say. Over the years, I’ve bought more and more helicopters and a few years ago I sold the school. Apart from my main profession as a pilot for the Christophorus Air Ambulance I operated the flight school. So when did aerobatics come into it?I remember seeing a TV presenter fly as a passenger with Rainer Wilke, one of the first guys to do helicopter aerobatics in a Bo 105. As he wobbled out, he
said: “No one’s ever made me puke so quickly before.” That got me interested immediately. I flew to see Wilke and asked him to show me what he did. I didn’t throw up and I realised straight away that I wanted to do the same thing. So, Rainer taught me everything. He taught Chuck Aaron too, who flies for Red Bull in America. Rainer and I are now part of the Flying Bulls helicopter fleet, and we alternate our displays at airshows. We always do it separately. It’s hard enough as it is.So, why only three of you?You have to know your way around a helicopter very, very well for it all to look spectacular. Then spectators
can share in the perfection, and they’re very close to the action, which makes it even more attractive. The dangers stem from the fact that a helicopter doesn’t fly itself. If you come out of a manoeuvre and you’re just 50m above the ground, you’ll fall to the earth like a stone. Especially when you’re banking or flying upside down. That can only last for a short time, otherwise you lose the oil supply to the turbine. And If you’re not in a normal position, you don’t get autorotation. Autorotation means you can land a helicopter safely even if the turbine fails; it will just float to the ground and the blades rotating in the airstream slow it down a lot.What manoeuvres can you fly in a helicopter?In theory, the same ones you can do in an aeroplane. It’s just all a bit slower and you don’t get the same G-forces – a maximum of 3G, meaning you weigh three times what you normally do. Plus, you can also do manoeuvres that you can’t do in a plane, such as being still in the air and then tipping forwards out of the blue. That’s really nasty, especially if you’ve got passengers on board. And helicopters have such great mobility; the only thing you can compare them to is a dragonfly.
“ I asked Rainer Wilke to show me what he did. I didn’t throw up and realised I wanted to do the same”
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At just 18 years old, Charles ‘C-Sick’ Dumazer finds himself in a remarkable predicament on a cool, April night in Santa Monica, California. For his first major recording session, the rookie beatmaker is about to lay down a track with a true legend of hip-hop, the MC and rapper Nas.
C-Sick is enjoying this break from his regular teenager’s life on Chicago’s South Side, but this past year hasn’t been entirely ordinary for a humble hip-hop head who began making beats in his grandma’s basement. In August 2008, C-Sick entered
the Chicago leg of the Red Bull Big Tune beat battle at Metro, the city’s venue famous for showcasing on-the-verge talent. He shouldn’t have done, really, because he was only 17, a year shy of the required age for entry. As he said at the time: “I didn’t know for sure if I could be part of this competition or even enter the doors at the Metro. But at the end of the day, it didn’t really matter. It was more about the creativity of [the] music.”
What C-Sick brought to the Metro was a balance of sample-based mid-tempo
beats – some bouncy soul-backed joints, some heavy-hitting backdrops – that won over the crowd and the organisers. In December, at the finals at New York City’s Highline Ballroom, C-Sick did it again.
On the video from the final battle, one of C-Sick’s competitors, Frank Dukes, is seen prior to the competition admiring how far along the Chicagoan already was with his craft. “It’s crazy how young you are,” says Dukes to C-Sick, and that sentiment seems to be echoed by everyone.
Now sitting poolside at his hotel in Santa Monica, four months after Big Tune, C-Sick is preparing to finally enjoy his victory prize: recording a single with Nas. The producer says he has been a fan of Nas “since the beginning”. And that means before he moved to the USA from France aged 10, he was already absorbing tracks like If I Ruled the World.
Still, his familiarity with Nas’s output hasn’t entirely prepared him for the W
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SLionel Messi in your five-a-side team? Jamie Oliver helping you with Sunday lunch? Imagine doing what you love with the best of the best. One lucky producer did just that
Rapped Gift
78
collaboration. “It’s hard ’cause I don’t have any experience and it’s a huge step for me to work with such a big artist,” he admits. “We’re talking about Nas here, so I just try to come with the best.”
The next morning, and C-Sick is sitting in Red Bull Studios, preparing for his session. He may be a fish out of water having never used any physical production gear, but he’s clearly enjoying the atmosphere. With his laptop connected to the first-class sound system, he sits with his fitted cap pulled low, playing beats, enjoying how his work sounds.
Like many music-makers his age, C-Sick’s expertise is in computer software production applications. His self-taught education began when he started making Chicago juke beats on the demo version of Fruity Loops Studios (now known as FL Studios) on an old Compaq PC without much guidance. “Instead of people teaching me, I used YouTube and Google,” he explains, while keeping one eye on his laptop screen.
Now playing bigger and better beats via FL Studios 7, he unveils a neo soul version of One Love, the 1994 track by Nas that perhaps best defines its maker. Very quickly, those in earshot, including Big Tune co-founders Jonathan Moore, Jake One and Vitamin D, are nodding their heads in approval.
Just past nine o’clock, Nas rolls up as promised. Wearing a New York Mets cap, T-shirt, and jeans, he doesn’t appear to have changed much appearance-wise since he emerged in the early 1990s. And in contrast to the controversy Nas has caused with his album and song titles, his beefs with other rappers and his willingness to speak his mind, he is noticeably at ease; slouching back in his chair, approachable.
After having selected the beat with C-Sick, Nas shares his thoughts about working with the young beatmaker. “This type of thing keeps me fresh,” he says. “It keeps me excited ’cause you see someone who was probably a baby when my first album came out wanna work with me.”
The beat that Nas and C-Sick choose isn’t the catchiest or the hardest out of the younger man’s cache. Yet with its subtle string and guitar samples, the crisp and emotive instrumental turns out to be perfect for Nas’s raspy resonance. “His flow is a melody,” says C-Sick. “When I made the beat, I thought of Nas: I needed that extra melody.”
The two men have quickly found a professional rapport: Nas is laying down verses in the booth, rapping about losing innocence and dining with made men; C-Sick is sitting at the control board with the engineer. There’s something slightly surreal about the situation, but for the 18-year-old in particular, this is really happening. While chilling in the lounge during a food break later on, C-Sick can’t hide his delight with the evening’s work. “It’s amazing, exactly what I expected,” he says, through a grin.
The next day, at the airport, C-Sick explains that he and Nas didn’t quite manage to put the finishing touches to their track, but he’s not let down because the MC assured him they’d be working together in the future, beyond their initial collaboration. For most people in his position, this provides C-Sick with bigger bragging rights than he could have imagined. However, back in Chicago, you’ll be more likely to find him crafting beats on his laptop rather than gloating.
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Over Oxegen, bored with Bestival, Glasto too big? Here are the best festivals you’ve never heard of
Staying Out for the Summer
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The Red Bull Tourbus brings the party to the masses all around Europe
Tour de Force
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Whether in chilly Euro waters or basking in hotter climes, here’s what you should pack
Surf StyleGet the Gear
82
HOTSPOTSWe go looking for the world’s best action, just for you
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MAX NAGL & FRIENDS GP CAMP
19 – 21.06.09
RED BULL SKATE DEMO WITH SANDRO DIAS
06.06.09
RED BULL STREET STYLE05.06.09
IFSC CLIMBING WORLD CUP05 – 06.06.09
RED BULL ELITE YOUTH CUP/PRO NATIONALS06 – 07.06.09
RED BULL BACKYARD DIGGER11 – 13.06.09
WRC ACROPOLIS RALLY12 – 14.06.09
RED BULL AIR RACE13 – 14.06.09
MAXXIS BRITISH MOTOCROSS CHAMPIONSHIP14.06.09
RED BULL HARE SCRAMBLE14.06.09
MOTOGP GRAN PREMI DE CATALUNYA 14.06.09
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IRISH MOTOCROSS CHAMPIONSHIP21.06.09
DANCITY FESTIVAL 25.06.09
FIVB WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP25.06 – 04.07.09
AIRPOWER 0926 – 27.06.09
FIM SPEEDWAY GP 26.06.09 – 28.06.09
VESPA CANNONBALL RACE27.06.09
COLUMBUS CREW V RED BULL NEW YORK27.06.09
US OPEN15 – 21.06.09
RED BULL ONE TRUCK WONDERS18 – 19.06.09
OUT OF BOUNDS18 – 21.06.09
RED BULL TRAILFOX19 – 21.06.09
RED BULL CLIFF DIVING SERIES 200920.06.09
FORMULA ONE BRITISH GRAND PRIX 21.06.09
KGB DRIFT12.06.09
UCI MOUNTAIN BIKE WORLD CUP20 – 21.06.09
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APPLEBLIM05.06.09
SELECTOR FESTIVAL 05 – 06.06.09
CONTRE-TEMPS FESTIVAL 05 – 14.06.09
PRINS THOMAS06.06.09
PLANETLOVE FESTIVAL 06.06.09
All the latest gigs and events: if it’s on, find out about it here
NIGHTSPOTS
RED BULL BIG TUNE11 & 19.06.09
TERRY LYNN
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MANIC STREET PREACHERS06.06.09
ART’S OWN KIND: AFROBEAT & THE ART OF LEMI GHARIOKWU08.06.09 – 06.07.09
BRIAN ENO PRESENTS LEE ‘SCRATCH’ PERRY WITH ADRIAN SHERWOOD11.06.09
RED BULL MUSIC ACADEMY & KAREN P’S BROAD CASTING PRESENTS JAMES PANTS & JOE BATAAN11.06.09
CRISTIAN VOGEL12.06.09
ISLE OF WIGHT FESTIVAL12 – 14.06.09
MARCO PASSERANI
HOGANS BAR
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La DJ VitaFlorian Obkircher joins Italy’s foremost techno pioneer for an evening of cutting-edge electronica, fancy confectionery and the odd opportunistic catnap
Nightcrawler
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WILSONIC FESTIVAL11 – 13.06.09
12.06.09
RED BULL MUSIC ACADEMY SESSION & PARTY 13.06.09
TIËSTO LIVE13.06.09
COMPOST BLACK LABEL NIGHT13.06.09
SNOWBOY18.06.09
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SÓNAR FESTIVAL18 – 20.06.09
GUILTY SIMPSON19.06.09
ALEX SMOKE & RORY D19.06.09
TAYO’S TRACKSUIT PARTY19.06.09
SEA SESSIONS SURF AND MUSIC FESTIVAL26 – 28.06.09
GLASTONBURY FESTIVAL26 – 28.06.09
There’s nothing like a Kingston party for dancehall artist Terry Lynn, as she takes John McDonnell on an aural and culinary tour of her hometown
Jamaican Spice
Resident Artist
TERRY LYNN
KINGSTON
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In ever-reliable Dublin, Edel Coffey takes it upon herself to investigate one of the Irish capital’s newest top-quality night-time destinations
Hogans Fun
World’s Top Clubs
HOGANS BAR
DUBLIN
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TERRY LYNN
Have Drum, Will Travel South Africa’s hottest new band are going planet-wide – but this is not the world-music beat you’ve tapped out before. Tom Hall went to meet them
The Green Room
BLK JKS
MANCHESTER
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RED BULL X-FIGHTERS27.06.09
EWAN PEARSON28.06.09
YEAH YEAH YEAHS30.06.09
B’ESTFEST FESTIVAL 01 – 05.07.09
GILLES PETERSON’S WORLDWIDE FESTIVAL WITH LAURENT GARNIER, CARL CRAIG, THEO PARRISH02 – 05.07.09
MONTREUX JAZZ FESTIVAL03 – 18.07.09
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Bull’sEyeIt’s Wimbledon this month, so we thought we’d serve up a slice of tennis humour. Just don’t make a racket laughing
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We’ve had two non-winters, but this year winter hit back hard. In Moscow, Putin was already getting impatient for Europe to be gripped by an icy cold. At last he’d be able to play his little game. He wants to put up the price of gas. No one really believes the ostensible causes of the dispute with Ukraine. I don’t care; my heating runs on oil and electricity. My room is warm and cosy and the self-deceit works.
The TV is on and I’m almost asleep. The old and the young have so much in common. No teeth, not much hair and they can fall asleep in an instant. Ads break mercilessly into my semi-slumber, promising to give you wings...
I drift off again. Now I’m flying; back to the early 1970s, flying to Norman Wells in Canada’s Northwest Territories, just beneath the Arctic Circle. I must be mad because it’s winter and I’ve signed a contract as a chef until the end of March. Endless night for months on end, temperatures of -40ºC and nothing but ice, snow and wind. Sure, the income’s pretty good, but not good enough to counter all the downsides. It’s just curiosity, plain and simple.
We’re on the approach to the airport. The captain is a fiend. Yesterday he tried to land his plane in Edmonton, where my fiancée is waiting, but he didn’t manage it. Here in Norman Wells, he makes a perfect landing. He can only make two attempts, and if he hadn’t managed either he’d have had to fly on to Inuvik. A third attempt would take fuel levels too low to risk flying on.
But the freezing fog hasn’t been enough to prevent a smooth touchdown. Pacific Western Airlines (PWA) – Piggly Wiggly Airlines as the locals prefer to call it, derisively – know they’re lucky to have this accomplished pilot. We get off the plane. We’re greeted by Arctic air: -47ºC. To my astonishment, it feels OK. It’s dry and cold, but the down in our jackets protects us brilliantly.
The first weeks fly by. There is no day, only night; there’s a constant starry sky and the Northern Lights are so beautiful you forget how quickly you could freeze
A story by Anton M Rehberger
If cannibalism is too much to stomach, turn away now
MeetingHartwell
About the authorAnton M Rehberger was born on April 21, 1944, in Vienna, Austria. He was a voluntary teacher in the Black Forest, before becoming a chef and spending two winters in the Canadian Arctic. Rehberger started writing by supplying recipes to local Canadian papers, and later wrote about history and politics. He’s now retired.
as you look at them. Oil-rig workers sit in the canteen and gorge themselves. They can have almost anything they desire. Standard Oil pays for it all: Nova Scotia lobster, Ristigouche salmon, Alberta beef. Everything is flown in; nothing is too expensive. The food is a daily feast – only no alcohol. It has already taken too many lives in the NWT. So there’s lobster without champagne… and the chef is the most popular man in town. What else could these guys do with their time?
Once my shift in the canteen is over, I sit with the boys and listen to them spin yarns. Cock-and-bull stories abound and the northerners tell southern novices like me stories so full of fantasy that the walls sag and the ice cap melts.
Every now and again the bush pilots drop in. One – tall and with a head of fuzzy grey hair – is a regular visitor. He has an air-taxi business of three old four-seater planes. He flies one of them himself. The business is called, rather grandly, Fort Norman Airlines. If he can’t find a table to himself, he does without the warming coffee and doesn’t say a word.
A strange man, a loner, I think, and say as much. The guy sitting next to me laughs. “That’s Martin Hartwell, aka Eatwell, of Cannibal Airlines.”
“Who?” I ask.“Hartwell. It wasn’t all that long ago.”Then I remember one of the stories I’ve
heard: Hartwell survived for 31 days in winter without emergency supplies after crashing near Hottah Lake. He was on his way from Cambridge Bay to Yellowknife with an Inuit boy, a nurse and a pregnant woman. The boy had appendicitis and needed an operation in Yellowknife.
The nurse was killed on impact, the woman died soon afterwards. The boy and Hartwell survived, though both the latter’s legs were broken. The search for the missing plane was called off when it met with no success. They were given up for dead. The boy drew on generations of knowledge of how to survive in ice, but he eventually succumbed to his appendicitis.
In winter, crude oil gets flown out in barrels. A pipeline was planned but it never got built. So the oil is flown south when the ground is frozen and as hard
“ Hartwell was alive! He had no rations and no equipment. However some ‘parts’ of the nurse were missing”
as rock, huge Hercules planes fly oil to Edmonton around the clock. One of the Hercs picked up a signal and remained at the location until a helicopter arrived. What they found astonished them. Hartwell was alive! He had no rations and no equipment. However, some ‘parts’ of the nurse were missing. Which is how he became Martin Eatwell. White people no longer wanted to fly with him, but all that mattered to the Dene and Inuit were that his prices were low.
I often tried to talk to him, but he was rather monosyllabic. But I did learn this much: his name was originally Hartwig, he was born in Hamburg, and he’d been a German navy pilot in World War II. He was one of the scouts who was launched from astern on a rocket sled and, having landed on floats, had to be dragged back aboard by crane.
After 1945, Germans weren’t allowed to fly for some time, but flying was Hartwig’s life. So he went to Canada and became a bush pilot. His name was anglicised. And he was able to sustain himself until, well, until the accident.
I didn’t want to fly with him either; the thought of flying with a cannibal in the cockpit made me feel queasy. So I flew to Williams Lake to go hunting for the Christmas holidays with the competition. A trapper invited us. Christmas in a log cabin in an icy desert. That had its appeal, I thought, and we set off with turkey, tinned sweetcorn and a case of whiskey.
Randy Andy, the Inuit girls’ heartthrob, flew us, in spite of the freezing fog, and crash-landed. The snow cover on the frozen Lake Williams was unusually deep and Andy landed the plane with the nose stuck in it. There was no other damage, but also no hope of us flying back out. They radioed Norman Wells, but everyone was celebrating Christmas and no one was sober. Only one person was in a fit state to fly. Martin Hartwell. He flew us out on St Stephen’s Day, Boxing Day. I sat behind him and didn’t feel queasy. I just let my mind wander off.
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Mind’s Eye
The first beautiful thing I ever saw was a racing car, although at the time I did not have a concept of beauty available. I was a child in the back of my father’s car and we were driving past the Aintree circuit, just outside Liverpool. Then on a trailer going to the races I saw this extraordinary shape: dramatic, pure and original. I think it was dark blue, but memory plays tricks.
At the time I did not know this shape was a Lotus Mark XI. Later I learned that it was one of the most successful sports-racers ever, although that was much less interesting to me than its appearance. The Lotus’ aluminium body, I read, had been drawn by aerodynamicist Frank Costin. Whether he had beauty in mind I cannot say, but his quest for efficient penetration (downforce and other aero-subtleties were not understood in those days) created a ravishing shape I found fascinating. This was – long before I read any books on the subject, went to university and architecture school – my introduction to ‘design’.
The idea that ‘form follows function’ preoccupied architects and designers in the middle of the last century. Costin was more of a garagiste than a sophisticated studio-intellectual on the Euro-model, so had perhaps not read the polemical books by Gropius and Le Corbusier, which argued that anything that works well will necessarily be beautiful. This argument became known as Functionalist Theory. Never mind that it is, after only a cursory examination, no more than a half truth, perhaps not even that, but Functionalist Theory became one of the most persuasive belief systems of the 20th century.
And, interestingly, the racing car proves that it’s wrong. Function, it turns out, is not a strict science. There are variables and anyway, design is interpretation. In fact, even though a successful racing car is a complex reconciliation of the laws of physics, many elements of its design are wilful and idiosyncratic. Yes, it has to be ‘functional’, in that no one designs a car that functions badly in any parameter,
but the size of the functionalist envelope is rather large and shifting; it allows for a considerable amount of interpretation, or what you might call ‘art’.
It is the same with other vehicles. When naval architects were working on the design of the old Royal Yacht Britannia in the late 1940s, they hired a marine artist to propose the most pleasing profile for the sheerline and the deckhouse. And when Boeing worked on the 707, New York design consultants Walter Dorwin Teague Associates were asked to advise on the nose contour and the shape of the engine nacelles. Yes, of course, the 707 had to be aerodynamic, but there was still plenty of scope for artistic expression.
Formula One aesthetics are in this same strange territory between science and art. The 1957 Vanwall, also designed by Costin, was the ultimate expression of the front-engined Grand Prix car. And few would disagree that it’s a very fine-looking machine. Additionally, its success indicates that, within the constraints of its day, it functioned better than its rivals. But it was based on vehicle architecture that in two years time would be obsolete.
The rear-engined Coopers suddenly changed the proportions and stance of the F1 car. Within another 10 years, radically different tyre technologies and a new interpretation of aerodynamics changed everything else. The Vanwall, like the Lotus XI, was designed for low drag. Hence its smooth, sheer shape. But although Costin was an authentic aerodynamicist, the Vanwall was determined as much by intuition as technology. It’s a work of art.
But soon, time spent in wind-tunnels taught designers that low drag was only one aerodynamic factor affecting a racing car’s performance. Low drag might have benefits in terms of speed, but it often meant cars were inclined to lift. So downforce became a factor and that, again, had an effect on F1 aesthetics. At some circuits, contemporary Grand Prix cars
are actually slower on the straights than their primitive predecessors of 50 years ago. Drag today is not a priority. But their lap times are much faster, because the current aerodynamic orthodoxy allows them to carry more speed into and through the corners.
And, boy, do they look different. It’s all a trade-off, but whether a prognathous and seductively smooth Vanwall with its exposed wrestling hero-driver or a Red Bull with its baroque appurtenances and its occult technocrat pilot, each is the ultimate expression of contemporary possibilities. Thing is, those possibilities change and with them, the aesthetics. Form follows function. And function tends to follow technological fashion.
And which is the more beautiful? When experts cannot agree on something as straightforward as aerodynamic criteria, how could they possibly decide on a question that has disturbed philosophers since Plato? I’d only add that, as soon as I could afford it, I bought a copy of Michael (Frank’s brother) Costin’s and David Phipps’ Racing and Sportscar Chassis Design (1965) which taught me as much about aesthetics as Le Corbusier.Stephen Bayley is a former director of the Design Museum in London and an award-winning writer
Stephen Bayley considers the aesthetics of Grand Prix cars
The Lotus Position
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