The Red Bulletin_1109_IR
-
Upload
red-bull-media-house -
Category
Documents
-
view
219 -
download
4
description
Transcript of The Red Bulletin_1109_IR
AN ALMOST INDEPENDENT MONTHLY MAGAZINE /NOVEMBER 2009
Wacky RacesInside Formula One's craziest-ever season
Super Fly GuyThe sky's no limit for
Red Bull Air Race Champ Paul Bonhomme
Hulk v BeastEric Bana's Mad Max
car obsession
This magazine flies, fights and surfs a
Brazilian bore wave!See page 5
Exclusively with the Belfast Telegraph on the first Tuesday
of every month
Sweat, blood and fighting talk on Katie Taylor's Olympic medal quest
The Girl with the
Golden Gloves
THE COLA FROM RED BULL.
STRONG NATURAL.
Kola Nut Lemon/Lime Clove
Cardamom Pine Corn Mint
Vanilla Ginger Mace
Coca Leaf
Cinnamon
Galangal
Cocoa Liquorice Orange Mustard Seeds
Natural flavours from plant extracts and natural caffeine from coffee beans.
100% PURE COLA.The cola from Red Bull has a
unique blend of ingredients, all from
100% natural sources. In addition,
it’s the only cola that contains both
the original Kola nut and the Coca leaf.
Its naturally refreshing cola
taste comes from using the right blend
of plant extracts.
What’s more, the cola from
Red Bull contains no phosphoric acid,
no preservatives and no artificial
colours or flavourings.
Oris ProDiver Chronograph
www.oris.ch
Enduring.
FULL FORCE
Print2.0
The tensile strength of the bones in a human hand is stronger
than that of concrete, apparently. We have this on good
authority, as The Bulletin’s resident physicist, Dr Martin
Apolin, tells us so, in his explanation on page 26 of how a
Karate dan is able to smash concrete blocks with his bare fists.
What he doesn’t add (’cos we didn’t ask him) is that this silent
strength is also one of the factors behind the frankly terrifying
ability of the ostensibly winsome Katie Taylor (aka ‘The world’s
best female boxer’ and this month’s cover star) to pulverise her
opponents into submission in a dizzying flurry of fist-work.
She’s a fearsome lass, is our Katie (see p52): 60kg of the
leanest, meanest muscle ever to hail from Bray, Co Wicklow,
and destined, almost certainly, to become its most famous
export. She’s a copper-bottomed gold prospect, y’see. Indeed,
she’s so good at her sport (record: 62 fights, 61 wins) it would
be a wise man who nipped down to the bookies now and
placed a sneaky fiver on her winning sport’s most-prized
gong at London 2012. (How’s that from a free magazine –
who said you never get anything for nothing?)
Away from the leather and sweat of the boxing ring, we soar
with Red Bull Air Race World Champion Paul Bonhomme (p44),
who can thread an aerobatic plane through an obstacle course,
at 200mph, better than most can thread needles. A rare kind
of skill for a man happy to admit his training diet includes
chocolate – to reduce the stress he feels when he can’t eat it!
And continuing our theme of speed, we take a light-hearted
look back at one of the craziest seasons Formula One has ever
known (p68), while also catching up with a young man, Daniel
Ricciardo (p34), whose career trajectory is carving
a perfect arc towards motorsport’s highest echelon.
Rocking your world yet? No? Well, this should: we’ve spent
time with hot LA band The Bronx – or Mariachi el Bronx (p90),
depending on which of their egos they’re preferring to alter.
And if that little lot isn’t good enough for you, don’t come
complaining, or else we’ll send Katie round for a chat…
Your editorial team
05
B U L L H O R NC
OV
ER
PH
OT
OG
RA
PH
: T
HO
MA
S B
UT
LE
R.
HA
IR A
ND
MA
KE
-UP
: A
ISL
ING
EY
RE
WELOME TO THE WORLD OF RED BULLInside your all-action Red Bulletin this month…
Bullevard10 PICTURES OF THE MONTH 14 NOW AND NEXTWhat to see and where to be in the worlds
of culture and sport
20 KIT EVOLUTIONIt would make no sense for a timepiece to
be timeless, so the stopwatch has changed
unrecognisably since its first incarnation
25 WHERE’S YOUR HEAD AT?Goldie, the DJ with those teeth, is also
a roller-blading, art-creating classical
music composer. Where do we start?
26 WINNING FORMULAKarate chopping through concrete may
sound like a superhero stunt, but mere mortals
can do it. Here’s the science behind the blow
29 LUCKY NUMBERSThe first clown in space cuts a surprisingly
sensible figure. But then he’s Cirque du
Soleil creator Guy Laliberté
30 ME AND MY BODYMotoGP maestro Dani Pedrosa talks broken
bones, mangled muscles and the piece of
knee that never made it back from the track
Heroes34 DANIEL RICCIARDOThe newly crowned F3 champion is a chirpy
20-year-old Aussie with reason to smile:
his blistering pace this year is paving the
way for a Formula One future
38 HERO’S HERO Australian surf superstar Mick Fanning lost
his older brother in a car crash, but says
Sean will always be with him in spirit
40 ORSON WELLESThe man who made the ‘best film ever’ aged
25 was once a big-screen hero, but his own
story has anything but a Hollywood ending
44 PAUL BONHOMMEThe speedy Brit, who took the 2009
Red Bull Air Race World Championship
after two seasons in second place, is fresh
from victory (is that Mumm we can smell?)
and ready to discuss flying like a swan,
becoming a father and his chocolate diet
06
C O N T E N T S
74
52
34
Action52 KATIE TAYLOR Ireland’s biggest hope for a 2012 boxing
medal comes in the unlikely form of a softly
spoken 22-year-old. And yes, she is a girl
62 POROROCA SURF Only a few fearless surfers strap up
and head out for the longest wave
68 FORMULA ONE Now that was a memorable season! Here’s
a lighthearted look at what happened
74 ERIC BANAThe Australian actor has left the Hulk
behind to focus on a different sort of Beast
More Body & Mind80 JASON POLAKOW The windsurf champ from Down Under
started out a long way from the waves –
in the mud of motocross
82 GET THE GEARWe’ve laid out all the knockout stuff
you need to step into the ring
84 ADVENTURES IN ODESSAFive days in Ukraine are enough to meet
a one-eyed mare, miss historical sights
and get a fast lesson in bribery
86 LISTINGSWorldwide, day and night, our guide
to the ultimate month-long weekend
90 NIGHTLIFEWe find The Bronx in London, Berlin at
the heart of Jazzanova and a taste of
south-east Asia in a Madrid nightclub
96 SHORT STORYMoney talks in this imagined future
98 STEPHEN BAYLEYContemplating the Mini at 50P
HO
TO
GR
AP
HY
: T
HO
MA
S B
UT
LE
R (
1),
JA
ME
S P
EA
RS
ON
-HO
WE
S (
1),
CO
RB
IS (
2),
GO
LD
AN
D G
OO
SE
PH
OT
OG
RA
PH
Y (
1),
DA
VID
BL
UN
DE
LL
/R
ED
BU
LL
AIR
RA
CE
/A
P (
1)
07
C O N T E N T S
40
THE RED BULLETIN Print 2.0
44
30
WORD UPWisecracks and wisdom from the world of Red Bull and beyond.
Tell us what you think by emailing [email protected]
“I always knew how to throw a punch. I know girls aren’t supposed
to know that and it was awkward for the lads as well”
“My clothes won’t fit back in my
suitcase… Have they grown?”
“You really don’t want to continually finish
second, do you?”
“WHEN I CRASHED IN QATAR EARLIER THIS YEAR I SAID, ‘OK
NOW I’LL STOP AND FIX THE LEG.’ A NORMAL SKIN GRAFT IS LIKE
CARPACCIO, BUT THEY HAD TO PUT SOMETHING THAT
LOOKED LIKE A STEAK ON IT”
“We were the skinniest guys there. All these
metal bands were just buff. When we were
playing, between songs someone yelled out ‘Go
and eat some food!’”
“My life has… turned upside down. I’ve had Flavio looking after me for 11 years. I have
never looked at the contract after I signed it on that first
day and there are not many people in this paddock you
could say that about”
“SOMETIMES WHEN YOU LISTEN TO PUNK IT SEEMS A BIT HEAVY
AND VIOLENT, BUT OVER TIME YOU GET USED TO IT AND NOW
I CAN EASILY FALL ASLEEP LISTENING TO PUNK. EVEN
SOME OF THE HEAVIER STUFF WITH THE VOMITING INTO
THE MICROPHONE…”
“I HAVE NO PRESSURE. I’M GIVING IT 100 PER CENT SO I CAN’T BE
DISAPPOINTED WHEN I RIDE BAD BECAUSE I KNOW I DID EVERYTHING. IF IT ISN’T WORKING, IT ISN’T WORKING,
THERE IS NOTHING I CAN DO ABOUT IT”
“OTHER THAN ME RUNNING OUT OF TALENT, BLOWING
THE TURN, BLASTING THROUGH THE SAND AND PILING INTO THE TYRES, IT
WAS AN INCREDIBLE EXPERIENCE”
Your Letters
08
L E T T E R S
09
K A I N R A T HIL
LU
ST
RA
TIO
N:
DIE
TM
AR
KA
INR
AT
H
BullevardNews and previews from the world of sport and adventure
HANG TIMEBU RKETOWN , AU STR ALIA
Print 2.0
11
LARGE SCALEB ERLIN , GERMANY
12
YOU REALLY OUGHT TO KNOW SOMETHING ABOUT...
AXELCRUYSBERGHS
BRITISH AIRWAYS IS HELPFIND OUT HOW AT WWW.G
WO
RD
S:
RU
TH
MO
RG
AN
. P
HO
TO
GR
AP
HY
: V
LA
DIM
IR R
YS
/G
ET
TY
IM
AG
ES
, L
IAM
LY
NC
H/
RE
D B
UL
L P
HO
TO
FIL
ES
14
B U L L E V A R D
OLD SKOOL MUSICALTaking the beats of the best B-Boys back to where they began: New York City
PING GREAT BRITISH TALENT TAKE OFF GREATBRITONS.BA.COM //////////////////////////
15
B U L L E V A R D
WO
RD
S:
RU
TH
MO
RG
AN
, T
OM
HA
LL
. P
HO
TO
GR
AP
HY
: C
HR
IST
OP
HE
R B
EZ
AM
AT
/R
ED
BU
LL
PH
OT
OF
ILE
S (
1),
KL
AU
S F
EN
GL
ER
/R
ED
BU
LL
PH
OT
OF
ILE
S (
1),
AL
FR
ED
O E
SC
OB
AR
/R
ED
BU
LL
PH
OT
OF
ILE
S (
1)
Kingston Ljubljana
Daredevils gather for a celebration of adventure
UPHILLBATTLEA snowbound race 3000m above Santiago: feeling Chile?
SUMMIT MEETING
PICTURES OF THE MONTH
16
B U L L E V A R D
18
WINNING WAYSHave you got what it takes to be the best? Teenage wakeboarding champion Victoria Young certainly has
The Olympic and Paralympic Games are a chance
for sportsmen and women with incredible talent to
perform at their best when the world’s spotlight is on
them. Inspired by these feats of sporting excellence,
British Airways, the official airline partner of The
London 2012 Olympic Games and Paralympic Games,
has launched a competition for Great Britons,
designed to find and reward UK residents who are
the best in their field, whatever that field is.
One of the winners is teenage Wakeboarding
sensation Victoria Young. Young, who is just 17,
was the first British female to represent Britain
at an international Wakeboarding event and is
currently ranked third in the world.
Not content with such a fantastic achievement
at such a young age, Young has set her sights on
PH
OT
OG
RA
PH
Y:
SIM
BR
AD
Y (
2);
AC
TIO
N I
MA
GE
S F
OR
BA
(1
)
19
climbing through the Wakeboarding rankings and
becoming World Champion. This drive to reach the
top marked her out as special to the Great Britons
judges, while her dedication to and passion for
her sport earned her winning votes.
Part of Victoria’s prize is free flights to British
Airways destinations. “The flights will give me
a really good opportunity to train abroad during the
winter months and travel to the many competitions
that I take part in, including the European
Championships,” she says. “They will also give me
the same time on the water as the American and
Australian girls I compete against.”
And that’s what the Great Britons scheme is all
about – helping homegrown talent compete on a
level footing with the brightest and best in the world.
SEIZE THE OPPORTUNITY TO SHOW US YOU’RE THE BEST GREAT BRITONS: THE SEARCH IS ON
KIT EVOLUTION
TIME MACHINESSport’s last 100 years has had plenty of times to remember thanks to ever-changing equipment putting in the hours. Give us a minute and we’ll explain…
THE OLD TICKERHEUER MIKROGRAPH, C1960
B U L L E V A R D
LIVING IN THE MOMENTETHERLYNX PROFESSIONAL
CAMERA, 2004
21
WO
RD
S:
TO
M H
AL
L.
PH
OT
OG
RA
PH
Y:
LU
KE
KIR
WA
N
WO
RD
S:
JAM
ES
BA
SS
, T
OM
HA
LL
. P
HO
TO
GR
AP
HY
: N
EIL
HA
RT
MA
NN
/O
NE
FIL
MS
(1
), F
LO
HA
GE
NA
.CO
M/
RE
D B
UL
L P
HO
TO
FIL
ES
(1
)
SNOWFLICKSThe UK’s first-ever winter sports film festival
Sports quiz: who won Europe’s 2009
Champions League? That’s right, it was
BM Ciudad Real, the team so beloved
of the southern central Spanish town of
Ciudad Real. They’ve won three of the last
five continental handball titles. Handball,
yes. What did you think we meant?
Soon, though, the former capital of
the La Mancha region will have another
sporting claim to fame, because on
November 29, its suburb of Herencia will
be the location for Red Bull Don Quixote,
an enduro race named after the Great
Novel, written by Miguel de Cervantes,
which was partly set here.
It’s the first running of this 60km
race, in which both pro and amateur
motorcyclists switch between roads and
off-road in pursuit of the win. Think of it
as a scaled-down Dakar, and you get the
gist. Fittingly, three-time world Enduro
champ Ivan Cervantes heads the Spanish
contingent, linking the Don of old to Don
2009 with one rev of a muddy throttle.
MOTO EMOÇIONSpanish bikers head for the hills
Sardinia Porto Spa
B U L L E V A R D
23
TRAVIS PASTRANA TANNER FOUST
WO
RD
S:
JAM
ES
BA
SS
. P
HO
TO
GR
AP
HY
: D
PP
I (3
), G
ET
TY
IM
AG
ES
(7
), S
UT
TO
N I
MA
GE
S (
1),
WIR
E I
MA
GE
S/
GE
TT
Y I
MA
GE
S (
1),
JO
HN
ST
AH
LB
ER
G/
RE
D B
UL
L P
HO
TO
FIL
ES
(1
), A
UG
US
TIN
MU
NO
Z/
RE
D B
UL
L P
HO
TO
FIL
ES
(1
)
RACE OF CHAMPIONS
SEBASTIAN VETTEL MICHAEL SCHUMACHER ANDY PRIAULX JAMIE WHINCUP
JENSON BUTTON MATTIAS EKSTRÖM CLIVIO PICCIONE EMANUELE PIRRO
TOM KRISTENSEN MICK DOOHAN MIKKO HIRVONEN YVAN MULLER
B U L L E V A R D
24
The elite of two and four wheels go head-to-head in Beijing this month, but who’ll win bragging rights as the world’s best motorsportsman? Here’s your form guide
GOLDIEWHERE’S YOUR HEAD AT?
He’s an ex-roller skating graffiti artist who composes classical music… and his teeth are worth more than your car
HOME TRUTHS
IN THE CAN
DRUM MAJOR
TIME BANDIT
LADIES AND GENTLEMAN?
MINTED MOLARS
GOLDIE
LOOKING TAME
ACTING UP
GANG’S ALL HERE
SKATER BOY
DOUBLE ACT
25
B U L L E V A R DW
OR
DS
: D
IAN
E L
EE
MIN
G.
ILL
US
TR
AT
ION
: L
IE-I
NS
AN
D T
IGE
RS
WO
RD
S:
RU
TH
MO
RG
AN
AN
D D
R M
AR
TIN
AP
OL
IN.
PH
OT
OG
RA
PH
Y:
FO
TE
X/
RA
INE
R D
RE
CH
SL
ER
. IL
LU
ST
RA
TIO
N:
MA
ND
Y F
ISC
HE
R
A SMASHING FELLOWTrying to break concrete slabs with
your hand may not be everyone’s idea
of fun, but with the right technique
it can be just that, says martial arts
master Ed Byrne, a man who has broken
a dozen records by breaking blocks.
“I’ve done martial arts all my life,”
says the 42-year-old, who’s a ninth dan
black belt in karate. “And I really enjoy
breaking. First, I get an all-over feeling
of adrenaline. Everyone has their own
way of psyching themselves up, and I
concentrate on seeing my hand as a knife
and the blocks as butter. In my mind’s
eye, I already see myself succeeding.
“Then it’s an explosion of power, and
technique is everything. I’m hitting with
the heel of my hand, so not directly on
a bone. I focus on the centre of what I’m
breaking and I’m putting my power, my
energy, right through the blocks.
“Some people jump and break, but
I’m quite powerful, so my hand usually
starts in line with my shoulder, then
ends up by my knee. Without that follow-
through, I could seriously hurt myself.
If you’re not confident in your ability,
you’re more likely to break your hand:
if you don’t break the concrete, the force
can bounce back at you and shatter bone.
“I had measurements taken for a TV
show recently, and it took a fifth of
a second for me to generate the power
equivalent to lifting a 40st (254kg) man
above my head with my right arm.
“In practice sessions I’ve broken 38
concrete slabs at once. The world record
is 36, held by a guy from Turkey, and
next year I want to break that.”
UNDER SLAB CONDITIONS“When a karateka [practitioner of
karate] hits a concrete slab, the upper
side is compressed and the underside
is stretched,” says Dr Martin Apolin,
physicist and sports scientist.
“The tensile strength of concrete
is much lower than its compressive
strength, so the underside of the slab
begins to break. Concrete slabs, as shown
here, break under slow stress at about
3000N of force. However, when a slab
THE BREAKSWINNING FORMULA
Man’s greatest power tool is his hands, but is it really superhuman strength or super-scientific know-how that keeps him cracking wise?
is hit, oscillations occur which cause
the slab to break under significantly
reduced stress levels. Current literature
varies, but the rule of thumb is around
50 per cent of tensile strength, in this
case around 1500N.
“How big is the force a karateka
exerts? To explore this question, I assume
that the slowing down of the hand on
the slab is uniform. The deceleration
(a) can be described by the formula
a = v2/2s; v is the hand’s impact speed
(video analysis shows that advanced
karatekas can generate impact speeds of
up to 14m/s, or about 50kph) and s is the
braking distance, or the hand’s “crumple
zone”, from the hand’s first contact with
the slab to its stop. I assume the hand’s
centre of gravity will continue to move
2.5cm (0.025m) due to its deformation
at impact. Using this data we get a
substantial deceleration of 4000m/s2.
The earth’s acceleration is about 10m/s2.
Casually stated, the hand is 400 times
as heavy as normal.
“The force (F) occurring at impact
is described by F = m x a. If we assume
a mass m of 0.75kg for the hand, then
the force adds up to 3000N. That is more
than enough to break a slab. But why
don’t bones break? The answer is so
simple you will probably be disappointed
by it: depending on the direction from
which stress is applied, the fracture
stress level of a bone is up to 50 times
higher than breaking stress of concrete.
If you had concrete bones in your hand,
they would splinter at impact.
“A practised karateka can split
multiple slabs at once. It is important
that the slabs be separated by a small
space, as it’s impossible to break three
or more slabs together with one hit.
When there’s a little space between
slabs, they will break one after the
other in rapid succession – the energy
transfers, with some loss, from one
slab to the other. A point to note here
is that you do not need three times
the force to break three slabs.”
26
B U L L E V A R D
www.carpediem.com
M A K E S S E N S E , N A T U R A L L Y .
Kombucha has a harmonising effect on the metabolism.Kombucha contains natural antioxidants.With ingredients from 100 % natural sources.
Carpe Diem Kombucha Classic only contains natural ingredients and thanks to its unique recipe it is naturally good for you. Due to its pleasant character and rich aroma it is the perfect accompaniment with any meal:
750 MLGLASS BOTTLENOW AVAILABLEIN WAITROSE&ALL
ATLEADING
IRELAND
RETAILERS IN
1000
13026
GUY LALIBERTÉLUCKY NUMBERS
The fi rst clown in space is no fool, having built the billion-dollar Cirque du Soleil and made the giant leap
from sleeping rough to the edge of the universe
8
696
14
29
B U L L E V A R DW
OR
DS:
ULR
ICH
CO
RA
ZZA
. PH
OTO
GR
APH
Y: M
IKH
AIL
MET
ZEL/
AP
PHO
TO
DANI PEDROSAME AND MY BODY
A regular on the MotoGP podium, the 24-year-old Spanish racer has visited almost as many hospitals as racetracks, but he always comes out fighting
WALL OF PAIN
WEIGHTY ISSUE
WORLD CHAMPS ON HIS SHOULDER
HANDY WORK
BENT OUT OF SHAPE
WO
RD
S:
RU
TH
MO
RG
AN
. P
HO
TO
GR
AP
HY
: G
OL
D A
ND
GO
OS
E P
HO
TO
GR
AP
HY
30
B U L L E V A R D
HARD & FAST
WO
RD
S:
RU
TH
MO
RG
AN
. PH
OT
OG
RA
PH
Y:
GE
TT
Y I
MA
GE
S (
2),
IM
AG
OS
PO
RT
FO
TO
(1
), A
P (
1).
IL
LU
ST
RA
TIO
N:
DIE
TM
AR
KA
INR
AT
H
Top performers and winning ways from across the globe
31
B U L L E V A R D
32
34 DANIEL RICCIARDO 38 MICK FANNING 40 ORSON WELLES 44 PAUL BONHOMME
HeroesHigh-flyers in the air, on the racetrack,
on water and on stage and screen
He’s already grinning as he sits down for lunch.
Then I mention Groucho Marx and his broad
grin breaks into laughter. “Groucho? Yeah, a few
people used to call me Groucho! I suppose I could
get the glasses, but I’m not so sure about the cigar…”
The youngster, spearing his tomato-drenched
fusilli with his fork, bears a curious resemblance
to the Hollywood comedian. And while Daniel
Ricciardo admits he’s a joker – think Jim Carrey
rather than Groucho Marx – his mild Aussie
accent cuts a serious tone when he talks about
his ambition to reach Formula One.
Yet the racer from Perth, whose Italian genes
are fused with a laid-back surfing manner, is a
delight to dine with during lunch at Brands Hatch,
at the final British F3 meeting of the year. He’s in
high spirits, as he is basking in the glory of having
just clinched this year’s British F3 championship.
By so doing he joins an illustrious roll of honour
that includes Ayrton Senna, Mika Häkkinen and
Nelson Piquet (Sr and Jr) and has taken a major
step towards achieving his F1 dream.
Ricciardo, 20, is the second consecutive racer
in Red Bull’s young driver programme to triumph
in the F1 nursery school that is British F3. Twelve
months ago Jaime Alguersuari won the title – and
he has since gone on to bag himself an F1 seat
with Scuderia Toro Rosso.
From 20 races this year, the chirpy youngster –
who won the Formula Renault 2.0 West European
Cup last year – has recorded 14 podiums, seven
wins and, significantly, only one non-finish racing
for the Carlin Motorsport outfit. It’s been a season
characterised by impressive speed combined with
level-headed maturity, a sure sign that Dr Helmut
Marko, the former F1 racer assigned to manage
the Red Bull Junior Team programme, has plucked
a great talent from the depths of obscurity.
“Daniel had nothing particularly special on
his CV when we tested him last year,” says Marko,
“but he was very fast from the first lap onwards
and he had a spectacular style going sideways
where he was just in total control. I could see
straight away that he was very special.”
Team owner Trevor Carlin, the man who’s run
some of the best young drivers on the single-seater
ladder to F1, including Robert Kubica and Nico
Rosberg, concurs. “Straight away he was up to
speed,” he recalls. “During pre-season testing the
telemetry data from one of his laps was simply
perfect. His braking was spot-on, his high-speed
commitment immaculate – the engineers said his
data of squiggly lines was beautiful to look at and
added that the pressure was on – because they
knew that if we didn’t win the championship
with Daniel this year, it would be our fault.”
It was back in Perth that Ricciardo first set his
sights on racing. He’d regularly visit tracks to watch
his father, Joe, race sedans and, as soon as he was
tall enough, he persuaded his parents to put him in
a go-kart. Inevitably if ‘Ricci’ wanted to think about
taking up the sport professionally, he’d have to make
the switch to Europe to see how he compared with
the cream of the world’s best young racers. So over
he came in 2007 and spent the season racing in
Italy, competing in the Formula Renault 2.0 Italian
Championship. After some decent results, he
was evaluated by Red Bull, which was when
Marko identified his talent – as well as his
permanent grin – and ushered him into the Red
Bull Junior Team. Last year he stepped up to the
ultra-competitive pan-European Renault series,
where he was in contention for the title until he
was vanquished in a wet/dry season-finale thriller.
Then he made the move to F3, a category where
it’s unusual for drivers to breeze in and out
in one season, but at the beginning of the year he
was given an ultimatum by Marko – he must win
the championship. So, no pressure then?
“Well Helmut Marko is a fair guy, but there’s
no doubt that if the Red Bull drivers have a bad
race then he’s not shy to call us and tell us what
DANIELRICCIARDOWhen he’s not making ‘beautiful’ telemetry for his engineers, the newly crowned British F3 champion from Perth, Australia, loves to laugh, listen to punk music and play Guitar Hero on PS3
Words: Brendan Thomas Portrait: James Pearson-Howes
34
H E R O E S
he thinks,” admits Ricciardo. “It might seem a bit
harsh sometimes and some of the younger drivers
take offence but, when you consider how much Red
Bull are helping us, it’s actually very fair because,
ultimately, it helps both of us. So there is pressure
being in the young driver programme, but it’s the
strongest scheme running in motorsport.”
After winning the British F3 series, the next step
will either be into the F3 Euro Series or the more
powerful World Series by Renault, which is where
Vettel, Alguersuari and Sébastien Buemi cut their
teeth before him. There might even be the chance
to test with Red Bull Racing in F1 this coming
December – he’s already spent time on the simulator
at Milton Keynes and been told to prepare his neck
for the winter. As the saying goes, if the glove fits…
“The Red Bull Junior Team is about making
the next generation of Formula One drivers,” says
Marko. “And Daniel has already delivered for us
this year by winning the British F3 championship.
He did this by often choosing to stay in second,
collect points and think about the title, rather than
risk losing points and go for the win. Now we’ll
decide what the next step is when we evaluate him
again at the end of the season. Daniel is only 20,
but from what I’ve seen he’s very mature, he’s
very quick and he’s always smiling…”
Relaxing in the Carlin hospitality area, just
an hour after going P1 in qualifying, Daniel talks
about visiting Red Bull’s base in Austria and the
support he gets from the organisation. “Everyone
is really passionate and it feels like being part of
a really big family,” he says.
That family also extends into his social life.
Ricciardo has settled into the UK, residing close to
the Red Bull Racing factory in Milton Keynes. Just
10 minutes down the road lives Brendon Hartley,
a fellow Red Bull Junior Team driver built in the
same mould as Daniel: quick, laid-back and fun to
be around. It probably helps that they’re from the
same hemisphere (Hartley is from New Zealand).
Two or three times a week they meet up to play
tennis or visit the gym together, where they
might discuss racing lines or braking points –
or just play Guitar Hero on the PS3.
“That’s as close as I get to an instrument as
I don’t play myself, but I’m well into music and
went to the Reading Festival,” says Daniel with
a knowing nod. “I’ve been into punk for about six
years now and it’s quite inspirational. The last
band I went to see was New Found Glory and
I got goose bumps when I saw them play
live. Sometimes when you listen to
punk it seems a bit heavy and violent,
but over time you get used to it
and now I can easily fall asleep
listening to punk – even some of
the heavier stuff as well, with the
vomiting into the microphone…”
He laughs, that broad
grin opening out once again.
It’s quite unusual to find a young
driver who brings a combination
of intelligence and wit to the
table. Often in the junior series, they are quiet,
even timid. But Daniel’s confidence lights up
the room. When he talks, people want to know
what he’s got to say – even if they don’t always
understand it. “Yeah, it’s true, I suppose I do have
my own vocabulary a bit. I picked it up from the
motocross dudes,” says the man who described the
fact that he was going to feature in The Red Bulletin
as ‘sick’. “I like to describe the car in a different
way, to make it more enjoyable for the engineer
I’m working with. For example, if the car is a bit
oversteery at one particular corner, I might write
on the debrief sheet, ‘She’s a dirt-track cowboy’,
just to liven up the atmosphere.”
It might not surprise you to learn that his
hero is MotoGP’s Valentino Rossi, the popular and
extrovert Italian legend; he admires his attitude
as well as the other characters that populate the
biking world. “What I love about them is that you
have to be a little bit crazy to race on two
wheels and that makes the sport so much
fun. I think motor racing can be perceived
as being a bit too serious, and if you can
brighten it up outside the car, it makes it
more entertaining. But I suppose it’s OK to
be easy-going when it’s going well, but if
we’re off the pace and scratching our heads
then I’ll definitely keep it more serious.”
This season, as his team boss in F3,
Carlin has seen the smile disappear and
the intensity emerge. “Don’t let his sunny
disposition lull you into a false sense of
security,” he warns. “Beneath the smile
there is a very determined young
man. I’ve got no doubts in saying
that he’s as good a driver that’s
ever driven for us and that
he’ll have a very successful
future in the sport.”
If he does, you might never
be able to wipe that grin off
‘Groucho’s’ face again…
36
H E R O E S
PH
OT
OG
RA
PH
Y:
JAM
ES
PE
AR
SO
N-H
OW
ES
(1
), S
UT
TO
N I
MA
GE
S (
1)
Congratulations to Daniel Ricciardo from Cooper Tiresthe official tyre supplier and title sponsor of the British Formula 3 International Series.This prestigious and fiercely competitive series is widely acknowledged as the toughest
domestic single-seater championship in the world and is a genuine stepping stone
for great drivers on the way to F1. Motorsport at this level therefore requires the very best
components in every area, including tyres.
When you need tyres that perform on your car or 4x4 make Cooper your tyre of choice, every time.
For more information and to find your nearest Cooper dealer visit www.coopertire.co.uk
or telephone 01225 707050.
BRITISH F3INTERNATIONAL
My older brother Sean is my ultimate
inspiration. Sean was killed in a car
accident in 1998; he was just 20 at the
time. Since he passed away, he’s become
like a guardian angel to me. At times,
it feels like he’s right there with me,
watching over me.
As a kid, I looked up to Sean. He
was my older brother, but, like most
brothers, we were constantly fighting.
Despite all the little squabbles and
wrestles, we were great mates and he
always looked out for me. Our entire
family is very close, but we were the
youngest of five siblings, so we were
always hanging out, which is probably
why we had such a strong bond.
After Sean died, I had his name
tattooed on my arm, and I also had the
Fanning family crest inked beside it later.
I got the tattoos because nothing is more
important to me than my family. They
have been such a huge inspiration and
they’ve done so much for me, I just
wanted to keep that with me at all times.
I remember when we first started
really getting into surfing. I was 12 and
Sean was 16, and surfing was all we
wanted to do. Eventually, we persuaded
our mum to move to the Gold Coast.
We had only just moved there,
to Coolangatta when, in 1993, Sean
was offered a sponsorship deal from
Quiksilver. The guys who came to sign
him up were watching us surf together,
and they asked my mum who the little
fella was, out there surfing with Sean,
and offered me a deal, too.
Sean was a few years older than me
and was an amazing surfer, so I pushed
myself to reach his level. Sean and
I surfed really differently. For one,
he was a goofyfooter (standing on his
surfboard with his right foot forward)
and his approach was much more
relaxed than mine. When I was a kid,
my surfing was a little erratic at times.
Sean’s surfing was smoother, and
I always tried to emulate his style.
Along with being a great surfer,
Sean was also dedicated and really
professional. He put everything into
his surfing, and even before he passed
away I was inspired by that. He used to
wake me up early in the morning and
take me surfing; often, we’d be the first
on the beach and the only ones in the
water. I suppose he was my mentor,
really. He taught me by example about
being dedicated and professional, and
working really hard to improve.
Later, we spurred each other on,
pushing each other to become better
surfers. Sean is definitely part of the
reason that I’m where I am today. Losing
him definitely changed me. It almost
broke me at the time: I was devastated.
I suddenly understood how short life
can be, so if you have something you
want to achieve, you’d better get to it.
I think it also helped me grow up,
become a better person and keep things
in perspective. There are times in my life
and in competition where things could
really get me down, but I find it easy to
take a step back and count myself lucky
to be alive and living my dream.
When we were kids, we used to talk
about doing the tour together, and after
he died I had this incredible desire to
fulfil that dream for both of us.
On the day that I won the ASP
World Title in Brazil, I was obviously
very emotional, but what made it even
more significant was being in the water
with Joel Parkinson, one of my oldest
friends who grew up with Sean and me
in Coolangatta. When it was announced
I’d become the World Champion, Sean
was there in my thoughts.
It was a little mystical, too. Every
time I was in the water for a heat that
day, there was a dolphin just hanging
around. Every time I paddled out, it was
right there. In the end, I was just sort
of, like, talking to him, and he was just
chilling out. It was weird, because
normally you see a dolphin and it will
come up just for a little bit and take off,
but this one stayed there the whole day.
Usually, there’s a pod of dolphins, but
this one was just by itself the whole
time. I’m convinced it was Sean.
Hero’s Hero: Mick Fanning on
The World Champion surfer is on the crest of a wave with wins in the 2009 ASP World Tour, but he believes part of the reason he’s done so well is because his older brother is watching over him
Words: Huw J Williams
SEAN FANNING
38
H E R O E S
PH
OT
OG
RA
PH
Y:
MA
RK
WA
TS
ON
/R
ED
BU
LL
PH
OT
OF
ILE
S (
1),
CO
UR
TE
SY
OF
MIC
K F
AN
NIN
G (
1)
Print 2.0
This month, you can go to the cinema and see the
greatest film ever made. Co-written, directed and
produced by and starring Orson Welles, Citizen Kane
regularly tops the best-of lists compiled by critics
and film-makers. When it came out in 1941, Welles,
then just five days away from his 26th birthday, was
proclaimed the greatest storyteller of his generation.
He was certainly the most precocious. After
unprecedented success on radio and the stage, he’d
been given total creative freedom to make any film
he wanted – and what he made was a masterpiece.
In doing so, however, he came close to destroying
both his reputation and that of the film industry.
Welles was also the greatest casualty of 20th-
century entertainment. Others flamed out after
burning bright and briefly – Jimi Hendrix, James
Dean, JD Salinger – but Welles’ decline was slow
and painful. Even before Kane was released, its
backers were offered money to destroy it, and it
went on to underperform at both the box office and
the Oscars. There then followed 40 years of what-ifs
and if-onlys: Welles’ follow-up film was cut by the
studio against his wishes; his drive and talent were
reclassified as an ego few could or would indulge;
and by the time he was trying to finance what would
be his last (unfinished) film in the mid-1970s, he
was reduced to finding the money in Iran. He was
visible in his later years thanks to TV adverts for
photocopiers and champagne – a bearded and
bloated version of the striking young man who once
had the world of entertainment at his feet. His last
completed film role was voicing a planet-sized robot
in the animated film Transformers: The Movie. The
mighty have never fallen so far.
Citizen Kane was Welles’ first film and, unlike
other poll-topping film classics of a certain age, it
stands up to viewing today, and not in an “oh, look
what they had to do back then” way. It’s exciting,
engaging, witty and technically impressive nearly
70 years after it was made, and its story of media
power, the corruption of wealth and unwelcome
celebrity could not be more pertinent in 2009.
Welles himself is still culturally viable – later this
year sees the release of Me And Orson Welles, a
film about a teenage actor in Welles’ 1937 theatre
production of Julius Caesar, which stars the lead
from the High School Musical films, Zac Efron.
Efron’s presence is fitting, as Welles was once
the young darling of Hollywood, although not
in the same way as Efron. There was more to Welles
than on-screen appeal; he was as celebrated for
his directing and producing as for his acting. Born
on May 6, 1915, Welles got the bug for acting at
the Todd School in Woodstock, Illinois, which
he joined in 1926. His mother, a concert pianist,
died in May 1923, four days after Orson’s eighth
birthday, and before starting at Todd, Welles
spent a couple of years travelling the world with
his father, an inventor who died in 1930.
In 1931, Welles left Todd and went on a tour of
Europe funded by his inheritance, during which he
made his acting debut, aged 16, at the Gate Theatre
in Dublin. Welles had the good luck to arrive with
the theatre desperate for a second lead in a play just
before the opening night, the nerve to tell them that
he was a big noise in New York theatre (that would
be years away) and the talent to secure the part. He
returned to America in June 1932 to act in theatre
and radio, and co-authored, with his old Todd
headmaster, Everybody’s Shakespeare, a how-to-
do-the-Bard manual for which Welles provided
text and hundreds of illustrations. The book was
published in 1934, the year Orson Welles turned 19.
Four years later, Welles was made a spectacular
offer by the head of the RKO studio in Hollywood: he
could make one film a year of his choosing, for an
annual wage of $100,000, which in today’s money is
equivalent to about 150 times that. By then, Welles
had made a big impact both in radio and theatre;
the two mediums were intrinsically linked in those
days, and many actors worked in both, as did Welles
in New York in the mid-1930s. In April 1936, two
ORSONWELLESThe man behind Citizen Kane was a genius who made ‘the best film ever’ aged just 25. But with the keys to Hollywood in his hand, he soon found himself locked out – for good
Words: Paul Wilson
Pioneer
PH
OT
OG
RA
PH
Y:
CO
RB
IS (
1)
40
H E R O E S
weeks before his 21st birthday, he directed Macbeth
in Harlem, New York, with an all-black cast of mainly
amateur actors, using government money assigned
for unemployed actors. It was a huge gamble and
a resounding success, and led him to form his own
company, The Mercury Theatre, the following year.
The Mercury Theatre became known more for its
radio plays than its stage work – this was the golden
age of American radio – and on Halloween in 1938,
Welles and his players put out their 17th broadcast,
a version of HG Wells’ The War of The Worlds set in
the then-present day. The broadcast was introduced
by an announcer as a work by “Orson Welles and the
Mercury Theatre On The Air”, with Welles playing
an astronomer trying to explain unusual activity on
Mars. This was then followed by ‘eyewitness accounts’
of strange happenings that interrupted a performance
by an orchestra, after which the play effectively
became a live news report of an alien invasion.
To those who heard the start of the show, and
Welles explain at the end that it was Mercury’s
“radio version of dressing up in a sheet and jumping
out of a bush and saying ‘Boo!’” it was an innovative
drama. To those who did not, it was something else
entirely; no one had played with convention like this
before. Welles even timed the landing of the Martians
in his play to coincide with the end of a comedy
sketch on a rival programme, when he knew people
would retune their dials to his station. Many in the
audience felt they were listening to something real.
By the end of the broadcast, policemen had come
to the building in which Welles was broadcasting.
The head of the station was there too, in his dressing PH
OT
OG
RA
PH
Y:
CO
RB
IS (
2),
RE
X F
EA
TU
RE
S (
2),
MO
VIE
ST
OR
E C
OL
LE
CT
IVE
(1
)
gown and slippers. People had driven to Grover’s
Mill, New Jersey, the small town mentioned as the
Martians’ landing site (a commemorative plaque is
there now). Across America, listeners checked with
friends, family and the press that the world wasn’t
coming to an end. The next morning saw a glut
of newspaper articles – many criticising, others
praising, some with reports of moral panic – and
a press conference in which Welles apologised and
said he was “terribly shocked” to learn of the terror
his little play had caused. Of course, he wasn’t; his
gamble hadn’t come off, but the pay-off was far
greater. His radio show immediately got a sponsor,
the Campbell Soup Company, and its star was
transformed overnight from a noted acting prodigy
into the most famous and daring man in the world.
RKO and Hollywood came calling within days.
Welles settled on Citizen Kane after the writer
Herman J Mankiewicz pitched the idea to him in
1939. America, as it was called then, would be a
names-changed fictionalisation of the life of William
Randolph Hearst, then one of America’s richest men.
Hearst had made his fortune in the media, mainly
popular press and radio, and never let the facts get
in the way of a story. He was elected to the House
of Representatives, the US governmental level one
below the Senate, with a goal of the White House.
However, his vast personal wealth was at odds with
his aim of being a man of the people, and when
President William McKinley was shot and killed in
1901, not long after Hearst papers had called for
someone to do just that, he knew he’d never win public
favour. He retreated to the castle he’d built in San
42
H E R O E S
Simeon, California, where he later lived with Marion
Davies, a showgirl 34 years his junior. Hearst’s
efforts, and a good chunk of his cash, were spent on
an unsuccessful push at making Davies a movie star.
That Welles and his crew were taking on Hearst
was brave enough, but they also devised new special
effects, sound-recording and lighting techniques.
They dug trenches in studio floors to give the actors
a greater impact by virtue of being filmed from
below. And when Welles broke an ankle, he carried
on behind the camera in a wheelchair, and in front
of it wearing leg braces. The resulting film was
technically brilliant, deeply engaging and, because
of the Hearst angle, really rather dangerous.
It’s hard to imagine what a huge story Citizen Kane
became leading up to its release. The equivalent today
would be in the headlines for weeks. Imagine Daniel
Radcliffe making CEO Hurlock, a film about an
Australian media tycoon called Albert Hurlock. The
Harry Potter star writes an unflinching screenplay
about a man who, from humble origins, becomes a
billionaire through ruthless expansion of his media
businesses. Many of Hurlock’s foibles and professional
methods appear to be very similar to those of media
tycoon Rupert Murdoch. From the copy of the script
that leaks onto the internet, however, it’s clear that
Radcliffe’s legal team has earned its fee; the film isn’t
libelous, but everyone knows the truth. CEO Hurlock
is effectively The Story Of Rupert, and takes a
particularly savage line on the subject of the younger
woman the mogul left the mother of his children to
be with. Murdoch offers to buy the only copy of the
film from Radcliffe’s backers but they refuse, so
Murdoch issues an edict – not one print, TV, radio or
online outpost of his empire will plug or review the
film. Instead they will publicly scrutinise Radcliffe’s
personal life. Swap Radcliffe, Hurlock and Murdoch for
Welles, Kane and Hearst, and you have the truth of it.
Citizen Kane premiered in New York on May 1,
1941. Critics were kind, but audiences stayed away
for two reasons: the film didn’t get the wide release
its makers expected, and the ‘newness’ of the film’s
approach meant it didn’t connect with filmgoers. At
the Oscars in 1942, the film won just one award (for
its screenplay) from nine nominations and was booed
several times. Hollywood had had enough of its Boy
Wonder, and film distributors had bowed to pressure
from Hearst, who is said to have threatened to ban all
movie advertising across his media empire. Welles’
masterpiece only gained a new lease of life after film
students and critics rediscovered it in the late 1950s.
Writing, acting and directing; theatre, radio and
cinema – Welles had excelled in all of them by the
time he was just 26. Citizen Kane is a true classic, and
if you do see it at the cinema, you’ll be able to enjoy
it more than audiences in 1941 because you’ll know
you’re watching something special, and spot the tricks
and enjoy the parallels with life in 2009. You might
also think about its maker, who could never match
what he achieved so early in his life. In creating new
ways to excel, Orson Welles made sure Hollywood
would never again allow anyone else the chance to
do what he did, and condemned himself to a life of
disappointment. But he also left us Citizen Kane.
43
More than a million spectators lined Barcelona’s
beaches to watch the duel in the skies over the
Mediterranean. Twenty miles away and 24 hours
later, the pilots of the Red Bull Air Race World
Championship were to be found in rather less hurried
circumstances. Kicking back in their hotel, high in
the Prelitoral foothills above the Catalan town of
Terrassa, the mood is distinctly end-of-term. Pilots
are dotted about the lounge-cum-lobby, concluding
deals, enduring interviews, talking with one another’s
crews. Weaving, rotating hand gestures are prominent:
the international language of the racing pilot.
The one obvious absentee is Paul Bonhomme,
the recently crowned Red Bull Air Race World
Champion. A few enquiries reveal that he vanished
about half an hour ago, ostensibly to do a radio
interview in the quiet of his room. He’s located, and
appears in the cavernous lobby, his progress across
the floor interrupted for congratulations. He’s a very
popular pilot with his peers, and so these tend to be
couched with the typical sportsman’s backhanders,
but Bonhomme takes it all in his stride. The true
extent of a racer’s popularity can be measured by the
amount of champagne poured down his overalls by
the guys on the lower steps of the podium. Yesterday
Paul arrived in the post-race conference sodden
with vintage Mumm. Puddles of bubbly pooled
under his feet as he talked to the press.
Luck plays a part in motorsport, but not so much
in the 2009 Red Bull Air Race World Championship.
Bonhomme won half the races and came second in
the other half. Five years ago that wouldn’t have been
unreasonable, but today the field is ultra-competitive.
Nobody else won more than a single race. It was a
phenomenal effort from the pilot and his crew – and
after being the bridesmaid for the past two seasons,
no one begrudged him his eventual triumph.
Paul in person is very different to Paul in the plane.
The in-cockpit footage shows a pair of mirrored
sunglasses and a focused, almost pained, expression.
The voice is clipped and impersonal. On the ground
he’s transformed: easy-going, very good-humoured,
rarely without a grin that goes all the way up to his
eyes. Those eyes today are just a little bit red. Was
there, perhaps, a quantity of celebration last night?
“There may have been a small one,” acknowledges
the new World Champion. “I’ve got a headache – but
that was probably something I ate.”
So would the World Champion like to do this
in a darkened and quiet corner?
“Nah, let’s go to the bar.”
The Red Bull Air Race likes to spin out its
apportioned lot of drama. The format of the Final 4
round has the best quartet of pilots from the weekend
fly one final lap of the track. They take off and land
within seconds of each other, and only have contact
with the race director once they’re in the air. No one
knows who won until it’s all over.
This year the World Championship went down
to the wire. Bonhomme and reigning champion
Hannes Arch flew into the Barcelona Final 4, both
with a chance of coming out the other side as World
Champion. Bonhomme flew third, Arch flew last.
Paul had four minutes alone with his thoughts, lazily
circling above the shore, his fate now out of his hands.
It should have been nerve-racking. But was it?“It felt like a pretty good run. I didn’t think I’d picked
up any penalties – but from circling in the hold I saw
Hannes knock down a pylon. He’d have to do a
blistering run to get past the six-second penalty for
that, so I knew – but I’m a little bit superstitious, so
I’ll never assume. When Jimmy [Jim DiMatteo, race
director] came on the radio and confirmed it, I just
thought ‘Fantastic… cracked it.’”
Hannes was very complimentary afterwards. He said you were his role model when he was a Rookie – and other pilots still say you’re the guy they like to watch and learn from. Very nice to hear that, isn’t it?“I find that very humbling. But I fly the way I fly
because it’s one way of getting the plane to go
PAULBONHOMMEThe day after winning the title, new Red Bull Air Race World Champion Paul Bonhomme, a man who flies 747s like a swan, likes chocolate and has a rather dubious headache, faced a rather less formal examination…
Words: Matt Youson Portrait: Markus Kucera
The Interrogator
44
H E R O E S
“ WHEN THE RACE DIRECTOR CONFIRMED I’D WON, I THOUGHT ‘FANTASTIC… CRACKED IT’”
H E R O E S
quickly. If you don’t deflect the ailerons or the
controls into the breeze, you’ll have less drag.
Who do you try to emulate?“I pick bits from different pilots. Some people are
very smooth with their handling, others have really
good management skills in the cockpit; and some
are very good thinkers. Rather than just copying one
person, I take the best bits from lots of people.”
Hannes says last year he became World Champion because you made mistakes, and this year you won because he made errors. Do you agree?I agree with him about last year. This year… I don’t
think he made that many significant mistakes.”
Is the monkey off your back?“I think it probably is! There’s a huge amount of
relief because you really don’t want to keep coming
second. It’s dreadful.”
Is this a sport involving a lot of ego?“No. I think the beauty of flying is that it’s a good
leveller. You can’t afford to be too big for your boots
when you fly – it’ll bite you very quickly. I’d also say
that the most important aspect of being a good pilot
is being able to take criticism.”
What sorts out the men from the boys? Why is Matt Hall [Rookie] doing so well, and [double World Aerobatic Champion] Sergey Rakhmanin struggling?
“I think a lot of it comes down to getting all your
ducks in a row. You can’t leave anything to chance,
you can’t make assumptions and you have to make
sure everything is perfect. Sergey is an unbelievably
fantastic pilot. You just don’t get to win the world
aerobatic championship – twice – by being average,
so maybe he’s having trouble with his set-up this
year. And why is Matt so good? Again, you don’t get
to be an F-18 instructor in the Royal Australian Air
Force by being an idiot. He’s obviously very competent
and he’s got a plane that’s working well. I also think
it helps that he’s pretty compact. He’s carrying 22kg
less than me. It doesn’t sound like too much, but in
a 10G Cuban turn, that works out at 220kg. The
planes only weigh 540kg, and it’s like I’ve got two
passengers in there with me, compared to Matt.”
Do you watch what you eat?“It would be fair to say I’m rigorous in ensuring my
diet contains lots of cake and chocolate ice-cream…”
Surely you jest…“Only a bit. Actually I believe that, on the one hand,
eating lots of chocolate might add a few pounds, but
stress is a killer. If you get stressed seeing chocolate
and not eating it, then maybe that stress is more
harmful than the calorific value… I’m pretty good
at putting in time on the bike as well though…”
You became a father just before the season began. Isn’t that supposed to slow sportsmen down?“It seems to have sped me up. I think it improves
your perspective on what’s important and what isn’t.
In the past, I worried about trivia. I am a bit of a
faffer and would fixate on utter rubbish. I don’t do
that now. Maybe others have their lives under more
control. But fatherhood has been very good for me.”
Will you get quality time at home over the winter?“I’ll have some time at home and chill out, but I’ve
got a couple of airshows to do this year, then it will
be the usual steady supply of British Airways work,
though I enjoy that too. Flying a 747 is an antidote
to the fast pace of air racing.”
Sitting in the back for 14 hours is pretty boring; is it as bad when you’re locked in the cockpit?“It’s great! You’re busy. It’s a bit like being a swan
on a lake. It all looks graceful on the surface, but
underneath you’re paddling away like mad. You’re
constantly thinking about eventualities. ‘What would
I do now if an engine failed? What would I do if we
had a depressurisation? It doesn’t get boring at all.”
Do you get recognised wearing the other hat?“Probably half the time. Sometimes it’s a mad-keen
Red Bull Air Race fan, but mostly it’s just someone
who knows my name. It’s OK, but sometimes it’s
nice to be anonymous.”
How much would we have to scale up a racetrack to get a 747 through it?“I’m fairly sure that isn’t the sort of question my
employers would like me to be answering.”
So you have thought about it…“Not going to answer that one either. I foresee all
sorts of trouble at work if I did. Guaranteed.”
Red Bull Air Race officials say they want this to be a sexy sport. What is it they want from the pilots? It isn’t beach volleyball in a thong, is it?“Wouldn’t be a very good look. Maybe Mike Goulian
could make it work [Goulian, winner of the Budapest
round, walks by the table]. I assume they mean they
want it to be more dramatic than ever.”
If I can get that image out of my head, Mike Goulian says aerobatics is 90 per cent pilot, 10 per cent plane, whereas air racing is the other way around. Do you agree?
“I don’t agree entirely, though I know where he’s
coming from. Yeah, to win the World Aerobatic
Championships you have to be an extremely good
aerobatic pilot, but in the Red Bull Air Race I think
it depends on the track. Get a straight-line track and
it’s mostly the plane, but on a tricky course winning
is down to the skill of the pilot, even if you do need
a fast plane. Think of a motor race on a wet track. It
evens the field out, and anybody can win. You might
have a million horsepower, but if you can’t get it
down, then it doesn’t matter. It’s the same here.”
Will you fly with more freedom next year, or will you perpetually be looking over your shoulder?“Hopefully I will be looking over my shoulder, which
is a hell of a lot better than the alternative. It will be
tougher though. Every year the Red Bull Air Race
gets more and more competitive.”
It isn’t kind of us to ask about 2010 when you haven’t had chance to melt down the trophy yet.“It would have been nice if you’d given me a day to
enjoy it! Actually I’ll be in planning meetings about
next year’s plane in a couple of days’ time.”
Why bother coming back? You’ve achieved the ultimate. Why not spend more time at home?“Because this is such good fun. I love aviation and
competition. If you combine them it’s the very best
– and it’s going to be even better next year without
everyone asking me about the second-place thing…”
Wade Hammond [Team
Bonhomme technician]
The best
Hannes Arch [former
champion, 2009 rival]Competitive
Mike Mangold [retiring double
world champion]Entertaining
Nicolas Ivanoff [Mercurial
French pilot, winner in
San Diego]Cool
Mike Goulian [Winner in Hungary]
Smiley
Boeing747 Royal
Spitfire [one of many
vintage aircraft Paul flies at air shows]
British
Edge 540 [Paul’s race
plane]Go-kart
Stewards [Red Bull Air Race]
Two seconds!
Stewardesses [the other job]
Essential
ChocolateAlso essential
FatherhoodAwesome
G-forces [12G is the
Red Bull Air Race limit]
Healthy
Air Gates Fun
Being World Champion
Yeeaaahhhh!!!
PAUL BONHOMME
PLAYS WORD
ASSOCIATION
47
H E R O E SP
HO
TO
GR
AP
HY
: D
AV
ID B
LU
ND
EL
L/
AP
IM
AG
ES
/R
ED
BU
LL
PH
OT
OF
ILE
S (
1),
MA
RK
US
KU
CE
RA
(2
), A
TT
ILA
KIS
BE
NE
DE
K/
AF
P/
GE
TT
Y I
AM
GE
S (
1),
RU
SS
EL
L C
HE
YN
E/
RE
D B
UL
L A
IR R
AC
E V
IA A
P I
MA
GE
S (
1)
EPSONPHOTOGRAPHYCOMPETITION 2010Win a fantastic Epson Stylus Photo PX810FW All-in-One printer with Wi-Fi
CATEGORY#1 SPEED
PH
OT
OG
RA
PH
Y:
CH
RIS
TE
DE
SC
O/
RE
D B
UL
L P
HO
TO
FIL
ES
50
51
ActionGet up to speed with athletes around the globe
52 KATIE TAYLOR 62 SURFING THE POROROCA 68 FORMULA ONE 74 ERIC BANA
The Bulgarian keeps her guard up, her elbows
tucked in near her abdomen, her gloves resting on
her face guard. She ducks once, twice, and absorbs
a left jab, then a right hook, then a fl urry of punches.
Thirty seconds into the semi-fi nals of the European
Amateur Women’s Boxing Championships, and
Katie Taylor is already up 2-0.
The fi lm footage reviewed by Katie’s camp
shows that Denica Eliseeva prefers to work from
the defensive, countering when the opportunity
arises. Of course, that’s what the footage of most
of Katie’s opponents shows. Punches of the speed
and punishment level dealt out by the 23-year-old
Irish lightweight are atypical in women’s boxing.
As is Katie’s reaction time, her repertoire of
combinations and her virtuosity in changing
the game plan of a round as she’s boxing it.
Katie moves backwards, lightly, around the ring,
inviting Eliseeva to make a move. The Bulgarian
is slow and wary. She doesn’t take the bait. Her
opponent’s record might offer a reason why. Going
into this bout, Katie has won 61 of her last 62 fi ghts.
The most recent coming just a day before, when
MILLIONOLLAR
KATIEThe world’s best female boxer is punching her way through barriers of discrimination to become an odds-on favourite for 2012 Olympic gold. Meet the soft-spoken, hard-hitting Katie Taylor and fi nd out why the lady is a champ
Words: Andreas Tzortzis Photography: Thomas Butler
MILLIONMILLIONMILLIONMILLIONOLLAROLLAROLLAROLLAR
KATIEKATIEKATIEKATIE
53
A C T I O N
HA
IR A
ND
MA
KE
-UP
: A
ISL
ING
EY
RE
the referee stopped Katie’s quarter-final
bout after she broke her opponent’s nose.
“Feint your way in, Katie!” yells an
Irish voice from beyond the barriers
set up around the judge’s table. That
voice belongs to Pete Taylor, her brother,
a former boxer himself. In the stands
in this basketball arena in the former
shipbuilding capital of Nikolaev, Ukraine,
are Katie’s mother, her sister and Pete’s
girlfriend – their eyes nervously watching
the ring. Her cornerman is her father,
a former Irish boxing champion and his
daughter’s tireless, if sometimes reluctant,
trainer. “Angles! Angles!” Pete yells.
There doesn’t seem to be much cause
for concern. Katie puts on a clinical display,
notching points in each of the rounds. By
the time the bell rings, Katie is through
to the final after winning 8-0. Pearls of
sweat dot her forehead and nose and the
mask of concentration she’s worn since
entering the arena eases only slightly. She
doesn’t smile. This isn’t the gold, after all.
By the time London opens the Olympic
Games in 2012, there will be few who will
have not heard of the Irish right-hander
from the working class town of Bray, Co
Wicklow. In late August, women’s boxing
overcame the wary machismo and thinly
veiled sexism that had waylaid it for most
of the past decade, to officially become an
Olympic sport. Within a few hours, Katie
Taylor not only became one of the new
Olympic discipline’s poster children, she
also became Ireland’s best gold-medal hope.
There have been few boxers as
dominant in the young discipline as the
soft-spoken, hard-hitting dual sports star.
An accomplished midfielder who has
earned more than 50 caps as a member
of the Irish women’s soccer team, Katie’s
growing fame is nonetheless tied to her
formidable record in the ring. She has
won the European championships in the
lightweight category the last three years
running, is two-time world champion,
and, last year, was voted the world’s best
amateur female boxer by the sport’s
governing body, the AIBA (International
Boxing Association). Top boxing minds
in Ireland rate her the most technically
brilliant of the country’s impressive
boxing talent – male or female.
“There’s nobody more courageous
than Katie,” says Patrick Ryan, the ruddy-
faced veteran trainer of dozens of Irish
Print 2.0
54
55
A C T I O N
national champions who, three years ago,
began working Katie’s corner together
with her father. “That’s something you
can’t teach them. It’s the risks you take.
The more calculated risks you take,
the better your chances of winning.”
Such calculation is borne of
experience, something Katie – despite
her youth – has more of than perhaps
any other female boxer.
Bray lies half an hour’s drive from
Dublin, a faded seaside resort
town more occupied with youth
crime than showcasing its
marquee location along Ireland’s eastern
coast for potential tourists. Peter Taylor
spent his youth in Bray training to become
a champion boxer, which he eventually
was – winning the all-Ireland’s in 1986.
Then life intervened as he began to raise
a family. But he continued to train. And
when a babysitter couldn’t be found, he
took his youngest daughter, then just
five or six, with him to the gym.
Katie, who had already shown a gift
for football, took to boxing immediately.
“I always knew how to throw a punch,”
says Katie. “I know girls aren’t supposed
to know that.” Boxing was in the Taylor
genes. Taylor’s two older sons would
go on to box competitively. His wife,
Bridget, later became Ireland’s first
female boxing judge. And although he
had his reservations when it came to his
daughter stepping into a ring, Katie was
relentless in her desire to train.
“It’s individual,” says Taylor. “If your
daughter wants to box, do you stop her?”
So Taylor began calling up other
clubs, looking for sparring partners
and competitions. He’d enter her under
K Taylor and it was only after the bouts,
when she took off her helmet, that the
boys realised they had been bested by
a girl. “It was awkward for the lads as
well,” says Katie.
When Taylor appealed to the Irish
Amateur Boxing Association to set up
fights for his daughter with other girls,
he was met with stony silence. It was only
in 2000 that the IABA, an organisation
celebrating its 100-year anniversary in
2011, sanctioned women’s boxing, seven
years after the AIBA put on the first
women’s bout prompting a number of
countries, from the United States to
Scandinavia to quickly follow suit.
“You could write 10 pages about what
I had to do to get into the IABA,” says
Peter Taylor. “There was no interest.”
In October 2001, the amateur
association put on the first bout involving
women at the national boxing arena
in Dublin. Katie, then just 15, beat a
16-year-old girl handily, by a score of
23-12, with technique that belied her age
and gender. The Irish boxing community
was impressed. At the end of the evening,
which also featured a bout by eventual
European bronze medallist Andy Lee, Katie
was named the best boxer of the night.
But the novelty soon wore off and
people began to forget about Bray’s
rising boxing star. The town’s community
centre was only open to Katie for four
hours each week to train. So Taylor
trained her in the family’s kitchen,
teaching his two sons, Lee and Peter,
and Katie combinations, and letting the
siblings spar against one another.
“You could tell at a young age that
she was gifted,” said the younger Peter.
“She played soccer and was brilliant at
it. She boxed and was brilliant at it.”
The family patriarch, Taylor, a
self-employed electrician, took it upon
himself to fund his children’s ambitions.
He paid the expenses for the first few
tournaments Katie entered abroad. He’d
find boys for her to spar against. Their
punches were harder and faster, forcing
his daughter to react quicker, and to
endure more – allowing her to become
the boxer she is today.
“I guess that’s what sets me apart,”
says Katie. Her voice is softer than her
lightest punch. Everything about her
at first glance, from her porcelain skin
to her thoughtful eyes, suggests a girl
better suited to devouring Jane Austen
in a quiet corner than the pugilistic arts.
She’s quick to smile, and laugh, but just
as quick to focus her energy, blocking
everything out. It was the focus that
enabled her to turn potential into
concrete, astonishing success.
In 2003, she was brought into the IABA’s
high-performance unit, the first, and to
this day only, woman given that privilege.
“Because women’s boxing wasn’t in the
Olympics, it was very difficult to make
a case for her to get funding,” said Billy
Walsh, the programme’s director.
Taylor, meanwhile, had to give up
his electrician’s business as training and
tournaments made it impossible for him
to fulfil contracts. The money dwindled
and the family pulled together before
the Irish Sports Council awarded Katie
a developmental grant in 2005. Two
years later, they bumped her up to their
highest category, at €40,000 a year.
Her first European championship came
in 2005, when she was just 18, beating
Gülsüm Tatar, a Turk who had dealt her
two defeats in previous years. Tatar
would beat her twice more in the next
two years, before Katie hit her stride
and began dominating her rival.
Katie won the championships again
in 2006, her large victory margins over
one-time champions signalling a new
star on the women’s boxing circuit. That
November, she overcame a broken nose,
suffered in sparring, to win Ireland its
first-ever world championship in women’s
boxing. Two more European titles followed,
as did another world championship.
Not that anyone back home was paying
much attention. “The recognition is the
hardest part,” said Katie. “I won three
European titles before I finally started
getting my face in the papers.”
The Olympic announcement has
largely changed all of that. Along Bray’s
56
A C T I O N
pushed up against the wall, boxes of gear
line the walls next to punching bags.
She has no shortage of sparring
partners. When Taylor calls up other
boxing clubs looking for talented young
men to spar with his daughter, they ask
what time they should come over. “The
boys are learning from Katie because
Katie is very quick, very fast,” says Ryan.
“The guys have to be really, really sharp
because they don’t know what’s coming.”
Most of her female colleagues politely
decline invitations to spar with her. Others
demand Taylor ask Katie to go easy on
them before accepting. “She’s pound-for-
pound the best boxer,” says Lucy O’Connor,
the captain of the British women’s boxing
team. “Her hand speed is, well as you
can see, unmatched at the moment. She’s
laughs off, sipping her blackcurrant juice
while her friends drink cocktails. The
fact is, she doesn’t go out much, anyway.
Six days a week, you can find her in
a converted boathouse yards away from
the boats and lapping waves of Bray
harbour. Two years ago, after years of
battling, the city gave the building to
Peter Taylor, who converted it into the
Bray Boxing Club with the help of local
sponsors. The rattling trains of the
Dublin Area Rapid Transit are audible
through the corrugated metal roof of the
one-room building, as are the scrape and
scratch of the pigeons landing on the top.
Posters of Irish bouts and champions
gone by, including the requisite Ali
posters bearing the Greatest’s witticisms,
hang on the walls. A boxing ring is
high street, dominated by pound shops,
cheap booksellers and the occasional
pub, locals are quick to boast about “the
best thing that’s happened to Bray”.
“She’s a national hero,” says Harry
O’Toole, setting down his pint of Guinness
on the bar of Holland’s pub. “The youth,
both male and female, look up to this girl
as an example of how you can enjoy
yourself through sport. I’d like to wish
her health, happiness, a great future and
the Olympic gold medal. She’d lift the
hearts of everyone in Ireland, which is
more than you can say for the politicians.”
Katie can’t walk down the street in
her hometown without being stopped for
autographs. On nights out, she gets asked
a lot of questions and the occasional stupid
request to throw a punch, which she
57
58
my boxing idol.” O’Connor herself has
sparred against Katie, but never fought
her in competition. “No, thankfully,” she
says with a smile. “Formidable, I think is
the word you’re looking for.”
“People who follow boxing are very,
very knowledgeable,” says Ryan. “And all
you can do when you see Katie in the ring
is sit back and say, ‘Have a look at this.’”
S aturday in Nikolaev: the day
before Katie’s final bout. She’s
chosen to train away from the
other boxers, at a run-down sports
facility on the banks of the Southern Bug
river that flows into the Black Sea, 65km
away. As elsewhere in this fading city,
nature seems to be reclaiming the grounds
of the training centre, weeds spilling onto
the walkway leading up to it, the roots of
nearby trees threatening to break through
concrete at any moment. Suspicious-
looking men in tracksuit bottoms, their
pot bellies giving new shape to polyester
shirts printed with loud, colourful
patterns, loiter outside what looks like the
entrance to a modest two-storey house.
But a narrow hallway opens into a
large gym of chipped paint and scuffed
floorboards. On a raised boxing ring in
the back, a pale figure in Adidas gear
feints and punches, exhaling barely
audible whistles tinged with the sound
of exertion. A couple of young boxers sit
languidly at the edge of the ring. Katie
stalks Taylor around the ring, whipping
out jabs and hooks at the hulking figure
of her father. Hawk-nosed and built like
a tank, Taylor’s forearms, each bearing a
tattoo of the Yorkshire rose, are about as
thick as the ring’s corner posts. He walks
like a gunslinger, his shoulder and neck
muscles forming a broad, sloping triangle.
His daughter’s neck is similarly muscular,
the rest of her arms and shoulders slim
and toned and moving at lightning fast
speed. One of the young boxers films
Katie on his mobile phone, pausing every
once in a while to look over at his mates.
They shake their heads and smile.
After Katie’s bout on Friday, Taylor
hung around to watch Turkish lightweight
Meryem Zeybek Aslan come back from
3-2 down to win her place in the finals
with some hard punching and a 6-4
score. Later that night, while Katie slept,
Ryan and Taylor stayed up into the early
hours, watching Aslan’s footage, and
noticed she left an opening for Katie’s
devastating left hook when she moved
in to punch. In the training session,
father and daughter practised a counter
punch, Taylor moving in close while Katie
59
A C T I O N
JUST FOR KICKSAlong with her boxing career,
Katie Taylor can lay claim
to being one of Ireland’s fi nest
female soccer players
sidestepped and swung a vicious hook.
Step, pop. Step, pop. Over and over again.
“It’s up to her when she’s in the ring,”
says Taylor. “We can prepare her and give
her tips, but she’ll feel her way in the ring.”
At the end of the 20-minute session,
Katie is off again: head down, quiet, already
thinking about the next day’s fi nal. The
pressure on her shoulders has mounted
considerably in the last two years as the
AIBA lobbied the International Olympic
Committee. In 2007, Katie took part in a
bout in Chicago held in large part to win
over the fi nal sceptics within the IOC.
“A fi ght’s a fi ght really, but I did feel
loads of pressure,” she recalls, “because
of who was there watching it and what
it meant for women’s boxing.” Katie put
on a powerful display, stopping her
opponent in the fi rst round on the
15-point rule as IOC president Jacques
Rogge looked on. Two years later, the
IOC voted for inclusion.
“Of all the Olympic sports, we
were the only ones without women,”
says Dr Ching-Kuo Wu, AIBA president
and a tireless campaigner for women’s
boxing since assuming his post three
years ago. “If we talk about gender
equality, then we have to bring women’s
boxing into the Olympics.”
A fan of Katie’s since seeing her box
several years ago, Wu says her combination
of carefully honed skill and personality
makes her the sport’s ideal spokesperson.
“She’s perfect at representing the right
image,” said Wu. “We are very happy
to have her. She’s brilliant.”
Such words of support are welcome
at the Taylor camp, even if the behaviour
of the Irish boxing authorities in recent
weeks has left Peter Taylor with a sour
taste. “There’s a chance we might get
a medal, so they all want to put their
hand in the pie,” he says. “It’s frustrating
for us, you know. We’ve soldiered away
all these years… I’m getting calls from
people who I knew who they were, but
I knew there was never any interest
from them in women’s boxing.”
One wonders if Katie is able to handle
the circus that will engulf her life in the
coming years. She’s averse to interviews,
turning down Ireland’s most popular
late-night show, The Late Late Show,
several times before Taylor managed to
convince her – and then only after he
promised to come on the programme
with her. A young life consumed with
training has made her shy and reticent.
Taylor likes to joke that his daughter
is “23 going on 15”.
“I am very innocent, I’ve been training
my whole life,” she says. “Other things, how
to handle them, how to deal with life. My
dad has to help me with those as well.”
Katie seems most lost after fi nishing
a tournament, when rest, instead of early
morning workouts and days spent in the
gym, are prescribed. “It is tough,” she
says “I sit at home some days when I’m on
a break and I do wonder what people do,
during the days, what people do at night.”
Morning breaks in Nikolaev
and Katie wakes after a
fi tful night in a hotel housed
in one of those jutting,
poured concrete monstrosities Soviet
developers seemed to specialise in. After
the early morning weigh-in confi rms her
at a trim 60kg, she takes a walk with her
father, listening to the same songs over
and over again on her iPod.
The 3500-seat arena is more than
three-quarters full by the time the bell on
the fi rst bout rings at noon on Sunday. The
national squads sit in clusters, recognisable
by the colour of their tracksuits – the deep
burgundy of Bulgaria, the red of Poland,
the blue of Sweden. Some of the boxers
sport bruises from the preceding days.
Girls in traditional dress with papier-
mâché crowns of garish blue and pink
fl owers sit in a row of seats, waiting out
the bouts until the medal ceremonies.
Katie has disappeared into the dressing
rooms, where she embarks on a set
preparation routine. As before all fi ghts,
she opens a Bible, stopping at Psalm 18:
It is God that girdeth me with
strength, and maketh my way perfect.
He maketh my feet like hinds’ feet, and
setteth me upon my high places.
He teacheth my hands to war, so that
a bow of steel is broken by mine arms.
Thou hast also given me the shield of
thy salvation: and thy right hand hath
holden me up, and thy gentleness hath
made me great…
As she prays, the bell signalling the
rounds progressing outside is muffl ed.
The shouts and applause of the crowd
barely reach her. Katie’s family is in the
stands, looking on nervously as Katie’s
fi ght approaches, the sixth of the day.
A medal ceremony wraps up and Katie
suddenly strides out, wearing red,
looking straight ahead as she mounts the
steps and climbs into the ring. People
move from the lobby to crowd the two
hallways that enter the arena. Taylor
leans in from the corner post. “Just go
out there and have fun,” he says. “You’re
boxing for yourself and no one else.”
Katie comes out aggressive, putting
Aslan on the ropes as she works her
JUST JUST JUST JUST FOR FORFORFORKICKSKICKSKICKSKICKS
60
A C T I O N
body. Her first point comes from a flurry
of punches to the face. The second is on a
probing left jab. On the third point, Katie
employs the move practised the evening
before, sidestepping the first aggressive
advance from Aslan and smashing a left
hook in. Unlike a men’s bout, where
testosterone often overwhelms technique,
the careful strategy and technical skill of
good boxers is quite obvious in women’s
fights. Watching the final makes another
thing clear: while her opponents are
good and getting better, Katie is quite
visibly in another league.
Round one comes to a close. Aslan takes
a seat on a plastic stool in her corner.
Katie stands in hers and stares into the
ring. Taylor leans in close to Katie: “She’s
going to come out aggressive.” Aslan
does and Katie counters immediately,
landing her fourth point. The points tally
up to seven as the second round ticks
down. By the third, it’s no longer a
question of if but by how much Katie will
win. Aslan has run out of the few ideas
she’s had. In the fourth round, Katie
absorbs a few blows to counter with a
flurry of body and head shots, bullying
Aslan into the corner of the ring as the
crowd claps appreciatively. The bell
rings. The computer screens read 11-0
for Katie and she allows herself a smile,
baring a mouthpiece painted in the Irish
tricolour. Taylor gives her a kiss and
Ryan a hug. It’s her fourth European
championship in a row – and she did
it without losing a point throughout
the entire tournament.
There’s a flurry around her as she
tries to make her way to the dressing
room. Everyone wants a photo with
Katie, everyone an interview. “Four in
a row,” says Taylor as Katie pulls off the
tape wrapped around her hands in the
dressing room. “Enjoy it.”
Katie moves out into the narrow
hallway, where yellow-shirted volunteers
and the tournament’s mascot, a teenager
wearing a yellow plush lion suit, want
photographs. The majority of the
Ukrainian women’s boxing team is next.
Ten minutes on, she’s walking out again
and up to the podium. She smiles as the
Irish anthem is played. But inside she
knows she would give back this medal,
give back all of her medals, for an Olympic
gold in three years’ time. And it’s not
difficult to imagine: the flag ascending in
the boxing arena in London; Katie smiling
in the Irish team jacket – the best thing
that’s happened to Bray, and quite possibly
the young sport of women’s boxing.
61
A C T I O N
Where the Amazon meets the Atlantic, fearless surfers head into an unforgiving swell that can carry them eight miles upstream – or plunge them straight to the bottom of the ocean
Words: Holger Altrichter Photography: Jürgen Skarwan
THE LONGEST WAVE
A C T I O N
63
ILL
US
TR
AT
ION
: S
AS
CH
A B
IER
L
Up to our knees in mud
on the banks of the
Araguari river, inland
of Brazil’s north-east
coast, one of our party
stops and points in
the direction of the
Amazon basin. He’s
from around these
parts, an indigenous
inhabitant of the rainforest with a Google-Maps
knowledge of the terrain and what it can throw
up: when he stops to point, you stop to look where.
On the horizon, we can just make out a thin white
stripe, and then the silence of our concentration
is broken by a faint, regular beat. Our spotter
turns to us and says one word: “Pororoca.”
He’s referring to the battle between the Amazon
and the Atlantic, where the ocean initially meets
resistance from the river and then forces waves up
to 4m high back inland at 30kph and for several
kilometres – waves, which, if you have extreme
courage and skill, can be ridden continuously for half
an hour and more. In the local language, ‘pororoca’
means ‘loud, destructive noise’, but in surfer-speak,
it could just as easily translate as ‘the ultimate’ or,
more accurately, ‘the longest wave in the world’.
There’s still a good while for us to go to get there,
however. Our wooden boat holds surfboards, life
jackets, waterproof camera kit and, among others,
Ross Clarke-Jones, a surfing legend in Australia;
Gary Linden, esteemed in California, where he
surfs and makes surfboards; top Brazilian surfer
Carlos Burle, mentor of big-wave surfer Maya Gabeira;
and Picuruta Salazar, the local hero who, it is said,
once surfed the pororoca for half an hour.
We began our journey at Manaus, a city in the
heart of the Amazon with a population of 1.7 million.
A century ago it was a centre of the rubber industry,
and its well-off residents were said to send their
clothes to London to be laundered and their children
to France be educated. Those days are long gone,
as are most of the rubber trees. People only really
come here now to start a journey to the mouth of the
Araguari, the perfect jump-on point for the pororoca.
During our week-long trip, home is the Forest II
a 28m-long, 6m-wide vessel powered by a 700bhp
diesel engine. From Manaus, the Forest II chugged
past the city of Santarém, where the Tapajos river
empties into the Amazon and a place that the
marine biologist Jacques Cousteau dubbed the
‘Amazon Caribbean’. After that, she should have
cruised directly northwards to the Araguari, but the
route was closed and we had to detour via the sea,
where the Forest II unwillingly made her saltwater
debut. She bobbed along the Atlantic coast for
a couple of hours before turning west again. We
weighed anchor by a small island in the Araguari
64
Manaus
BRASILIA
Rio de Janeiro
River Araguar i
BR
AZ I L
Print 2.0
65
to be safe from the pororoca, which has easily turned
over much bigger ships. It was due at daybreak.
At the crack of dawn we stride through the mud
to the small wooden boats, which seem like rubber
rings in comparison with the sturdier Forest II.
Our helmsman, Indio, gives the starting signal and
the outboard motors splutter into life. Indio has
encountered the pororoca dozens of times, yet he
seems tense. He warns us insistently that the
pororoca can be very dangerous, and if we find
ourselves rolled over by it, we’ll be in choppy, rough
water along with crocodiles, water snakes, piranhas
and the equally dangerous swirling tree trunks.
There is a distinct possibility that our little wooden
boat will run aground in the shallow water ahead of
the wave. “If that happens,” Indio explains, “you’ve
got to jump in and get as far away from the boat as
quickly as possible. Because if the wave hits the boat
and throws it up in the air, there’s a strong chance
it’ll smash you to pieces.” According to Brazilian
legend, the goddess Iemanjá gets angry with us
mortals, and as an orisha of the ocean, can call
on the pororoca to help mete out her punishment.
There are about 60 places in the world where
these long waves known as tidal bores occur,
such as the Bristol Channel separating Wales and
England, and the Qiantang river in China. The
latter, known as the Silver Dragon, can reach 9m
in height, more than twice that of the pororoca,
but it’s a fleeting victory: the Brazilian wave easily
outlasts them all in terms of minutes and miles
travelled. It is at its most spectacular in February
and March, after the four-month long Brazilian
rainy season has swelled the country’s waterways.
The pororoca first landed on the world’s
radar 25 years ago, when a research expedition
of Cousteau’s was severely impaired when the
wave capsized his boat with a cargo of expensive
equipment onboard. Back in 1984, the Frenchman
spoke of a wall of water hurtling towards him.
Today, we can understand what he meant.
“There’s a problem with the engine!” yells
Indio. One of Cousteau’s walls is surging towards
us. We get ready to dive into the water, but Indio
gets the outboard motor started again just in time
for us to make our escape. Another boat is less
lucky and runs aground. We watch helplessly as
the passengers dive overboard and try to get as far
away from the boat as possible. They don’t make
it far enough and the pororoca swallows them up,
chews them for second or two and then spits them
out. A lifeboat dashes across the river and fishes
them out one by one. Later, back on shore, we
meet those less fortunate than ourselves: one has
a gaping wound on his leg from the propeller,
another held up his surfboard like a shield to deflect
a direct hit from the boat. He escaped intact, with a
bruise on his back, but the board wasn’t so lucky.
66
Later still that day, we refuel at the buffet prepared by
Paolo, the cook on Forest II. Paolo is something of a
celebrity on these waters. In December 2001, he was
working in the galley of the Seamaster, the schooner
Sir Peter Blake was skippering on a Untied Nations
environmental expedition on the Amazon basin.
Pirates attacked, and Sir Peter, a New Zealander and
twice winner of the America’s Cup, was shot and
killed. With pride in his voice, Paolo recounts how
he survived by hiding in the boat’s lounge and then
later reported events to the police. According to Paolo,
the attack took place not far from where we are now.
Next morning, we approach the pororoca without
a hitch and the surfers proceed into the wave at exactly
the right time. They surf in a row alongside one other;
they surf in a line one behind the other… they just
keep on surfing. Salazar is the last to be thrown off
after an incredible 40 minutes of board time.
Back together again that night on the Forest II, the
conversations concern just one topic: the wave. “The
fascinating thing,” says Linden, “is that you only get
one chance each day. If you miss it, you’ve got to wait
24 hours to try again.” The tide, of course, comes in
twice a day, bringing the pororoca with it, but you
can only study and surf every second wave. The one
you can’t surf occurs during the night, while you’re
asleep, but you can feel it beckoning in your dreams.
67
A C T I O N
68
A C T I O N
F1 20 09WACKYRACES!
A team that came back from the dead; the (un)luckiest driver in the world;
a man winning a race with a broken leg and the end of an era for dinosaur
billionaires. We may just have witnessed the craziest Formula One season ever
Words: Matt Youson Illustrations: Lie-Ins and Tigers
69
A C T I O N
»>TEAM LAZARUSThey say it’s best to make a clean break,
but no one expected Honda to exit F1
last December leaving only a note on the
mantelpiece and having taken all the LPs.
Honda’s thinking? You don’t lavish
millions on a racing team when you’re
closing factories. The F1 organisation,
had three months to find a new backer
or face closure. So, no pressure.
Their top asset was Ross Brawn, who
had masterminded Michael Schumacher’s
seven drivers’ world championships.
Honda had lured him back, only to pull
the rug out with the job half done. He
could have walked away, but didn’t. F1
had a new team: Brawn GP, with Ross
cast as the eponymous, if reluctant, hero.
With the season on its way, Brawn GP
still didn’t have an engine, but a last-gasp
deal was done with Mercedes. Their motor
wasn’t a perfect fit in a car designed around
a Honda powerplant but, but armed with
yards of gaffer tape and a big hammer,
the engineers performed wonders.
The team arrived in Australia with
a car bereft of sponsors and test miles…
then finished 1-2, Jenson Button first,
Rubens Barrichello second. Button won
five of the next six races, aided, it must
be said, by a double diffuser that both
Red Bull Racing and Renault had earlier
been told was illegal. Without that
‘unfair advantage’ the championships
might have looked somewhat different.
As for Ross, at Ferrari he’d received
a papal blessing. Now, thanks to a couple
of miracles and a resurrection, the media
treated him like the Second Coming.
Hats off from the entire paddock, but
they’ll have it harder in 2010 from
Red Bull Racing, McLaren and Ferrari.
»>LIAR, LIAR, PANTS ON FIRE-GATEWhat started out as a coda to the
Australian Grand Prix turned into
a full-blown rock opera when F1
arrived in Malaysia for round two.
Toyota driver Jarno Trulli finished
third in Oz, only to have the stewards
penalise him post-race for making
an illegal overtaking move, passing
McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton during
a safety-car period (when everyone
is supposed to hold station). The
hapless Jarno claimed that Hamilton
had pulled over and let him through.
The stewards summoned Hamilton
and McLaren sporting director Dave
Ryan. They denied everything.
Their strategy had two very minor
flaws, though: Hamilton had already
told the whole world he’d let Trulli through,
and his car-to-pit radio confirmed it.
McLaren had committed the ultimate
sporting sin – they got caught.
The media went ballistic. The fallout
had McLaren team boss Ron Dennis –
an F1 fixture as venerable as Bernie
Ecclestone – exiling himself to focus on
McLaren’s latest road-car project, leaving
deputy Martin Whitmarsh holding the
baby. Meanwhile Ryan – regarded as an
honest man in a sport of scoundrels –
fell on his sword. Hamilton somehow
emerged as the innocent pawn of evil
machinations. He hinted at inner turmoil
while bravely soldiering on. The affair
was brief and bitter, yet as is the F1 way,
after spat, counter-spat, FIA hearings
and political machinations, all was
forgotten by mid-season.
70
ADRIAN NEWEY SAID: “I DO ENJOY REGULATION CHANGES SUCH AS THOSE WE HAD LAST WINTER. WHEN THINGS STAY THE SAME IT ISN’T QUITE SO… INTERESTING”
»>RED BULL RISINGIt’s been a good – almost great – season
for Red Bull Racing, with teen-number
podiums, multiple victories, season-long
consistency and a fight to the very end for
the driver’s title. The RB5 car, designed
under the direction of Adrian Newey, F1’s
boffin-supreme, has been the only rival
to Brawn. When it won, it won easily,
but like a racehorse – only on ground
it liked: it excelled on fast, sweeping
circuits and whenever F1 got away from
the modern, slow, TV-friendly tracks,
it looked the Thoroughbred it was.
German prodigy Sebastian Vettel took
Red Bull Racing’s maiden victory from
pole in Shanghai, then won again in
Britain and Japan. He hates to be called
‘the New Schu’ but does a very good
impersonation. Meanwhile Mark Webber,
the bad-luck magnet, raced the first half-
season with a leg looking like a bag of
hammers after losing an off-season bike-
versus-SUV altercation. He won after
dominating in Germany (his first F1
victory) and Brazil. The stuff of legend.
So why didn’t the team win even more?
The double-diffuser volte-face was a
handicap, as were some tough stewards’
decisions. Tyres, tarmac and temperature
all played their part, but racing usually
comes back to the horses and while those
with Mercedes engines had power to spare,
the Renaults of Red Bull still tend to lag
a little. And as F1 engine development
is currently frozen, thanks to a set of
regulations regarded by some as bonkers,
there isn’t a lot anyone can do about it…
A C T I O N
71
A C T I O N
»>THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT SUZUKA…F1 returned to its traditional Japanese
home this year. Despite a few cosmetic
tweaks, Suzuka remains the ultimate
test of skill and courage, thanks to the
looping, soaring figure-of-eight layout.
Somehow, this narrow, twisting
tarmac ribbon brings out the animal in
drivers. Thanks to a washout on Friday,
the field went into the weekend without
having purged it from their system, and
the following carnage was spectacular.
Mark Webber destroyed his chassis in
the morning, then the afternoon claimed
Jaime Alguersuari, Heikki Kovalainen,
Sébastien Buemi, Timo Glock and half
a dozen near-misses. A modern circuit
wouldn’t get away with a 290kph sixth-
gear corner inches from a big wall, but
history is part of F1 – and if the Degner
Curve was good enough to catch out
Nigel Mansell, it’s good enough for this
generation. You don’t mess with a classic.
»>FORMULA TOPSY TURVYIt’s been a bizarre year. At the Turkish
GP, Brawn were so superior that Button
was in the EasyJet Speedy Boarding
queue before the rest had finished. At
the next race, in Britain, Vettel won by
a minute, humming the theme music
from The Archers. Hamilton then
dominated in Hungary for McLaren and
Nico Rosberg’s Williams was easily the
fastest car in Singapore. But the most
surprising thing of all was Force India
taking pole position at Spa-Francorchamps.
Minnows just don’t do that.
Fortunately, sanity was restored
when Ferrari’s Kimi Räikkönen woke
up from his torpor to win the Belgian
Grand Prix. You could give Kimi a milk
float and he’d somehow win at Spa.
With the exception of last year, he’s
never finished lower than first.
»>POLITICS!The typical F1 season is nine months
of wrangling, occasionally interrupted
by a motor race. The arguments don’t
change, but 2009 at least had some
new factions. There’s still the FIA and
President Max Mosley in the blue corner
and the gestalt commercial rights holder,
fronted by Bernie Ecclestone, in the
black. But the new player is FOTA, the
Formula One Teams Association.
It isn’t uncommon for the teams to
unionise, but usually they fall out after
20 minutes and start throwing dung.
Surprisingly it hasn’t happened this time.
They’ve found common cause through
the indignity of having new rules
bulldozed through without their input.
They’ve also expressed their displeasure
at the commercial rights holder taking
50 per cent of F1’s income for doing
approximately none of the work. When
Bernie was running everything no one
begrudged him his cut, but now it’s
a group of shadowy bankers who are
leaching the sport dry to service the
debt they ran up buying it, so things
are different. The teams decided to pull
out, form their own series, keep all the
money and race anywhere they pleased.
Then it turned out that the FIA and
the commercial rights holder could be
reasonable… of course the fallout – or
not, depending on who you believe – was
Mosley’s decision to step down. In the
election of a new president, he’s backing
former Ferrari boss Jean Todt over former
MEP and World Rally Champion Ari
Vatanen. This might be a mind game;
Vatanen is the spitting image of Mosley –
maybe this is a plot to ensure Max remains
president for eternity. Mwahaha!
TOYOTA BOSS JOHN HOWETT ISN’T THE BIGGEST FAN OF KERS: “IF YOU LOOK ON SOME OF OUR ROAD CARS, YOU’D FIND MORE SOPHISTICATED TECHNOLOGY”
»>TECH TROUBLEThis year F1 has sunk hundreds of
millions of dollars into new, overtaking-
friendly bodywork that hasn’t improved
overtaking, moveable front wings that
nobody moves and, of course, KERS –
the Kinetic Energy Recovery System. It
was F1’s hybrid sop to the green lobby.
Oddly, it involves a series of non-recyclable
volatile chemical batteries that make
cars heavier and – because it’s used
to improve acceleration rather than
economy – is actually less fuel-efficient.
Even the teams at the forefront of
hybrid-car design said it was a waste
of time, but F1 ploughed on anyway,
though in a half-arsed manner that
meant only seven drivers used it. The
technology was difficult to get working:
it started fires and electrocuted mechanics,
but mostly it just didn’t work. Specifically
it didn’t work for the larger drivers. F1
cars have a minimum weight of 605kg,
but every team likes to get their car
well under that, and then add ballast
to balance the car. The 30kg KERS
was a big stretch, annoying the taller,
heavier drivers, who were never going to
make it work without hacking off a limb.
It came good in the end, particularly for
Mercedes, who received just reward
for their efforts and multi-million dollar
investment with a winning second
half of the season. They’d probably
have a big advantage next year, except
that now everyone’s agreed not to use
KERS anymore. How very F1.
72
A C T I O N
»>THE TAO OF FLAV…Part I: Jenson Bollard
A rant from Flavio Briatore is always
worth deciphering. The one he launched
into just before the Chinese Grand Prix
was a classic. A protest launched by
his Renault outfit and several others
regarding the legality of the Brawn
cars was thrown out. He wasn’t very
happy and said this:
“The drivers in our teams have been
and are world champions, while the
championship is now fought between a
pensioner [Barrichello, 37] and another
who is a good guy but a paracarro [Button].
People want the fight at the top to be
among the best drivers in the world.”
Somewhat confused, the British media
all ran off to their Italian counterparts for
translation. A paracarro is a kerbstone.
Basically Flav was likening Button’s
pace to that of a concrete bollard.
II. Taxi for Brawn
Not content with having a pop at
Button and Barrichello, Briatore – former
mastermind of Benetton’s US chain of
woolly jumper emporia – also decided
to go for Ross Brawn, casting doubt on
the latter’s suitability to run the FOTA
technical working group. “Anyone is
better, even the first Chinese taxi
driver you see in the street.”
Of course Flav wasn’t the only one
shooting from the lip. Bernie decided
the run-up to the German Grand Prix
was the perfect time to express
admiration for Adolf Hitler; “a man
who could get things done.”
III Buried in the Kaka
Flav is an expert commentator on
other sports too. Since buying into
second-tier football club Queens Park
Rangers, he’s taken them on the
proverbial rollercoaster.
Two years in, he’s onto his fifth
manager, is rumoured to pick the team
over the phone, and is not averse to the
odd diatribe whenever the urge takes
him. He started the year by savaging
Manchester City for the effrontery of
ambition, after they tried to lure Brazilian
playmaker Kaka from AC Milan. “If you
put Schumacher in a Minardi, it wouldn’t
have gone nowhere. If you put Kaka in
this club, it is going nowhere anyway.
I think it is completely mad.”
At the time of writing Man City
are fourth in the Premier League, QPR
most definitely are not and Briatore’s
position as a ‘fit and proper person’ to
run a football club is being investigated
by the Football Association.
»>EQUALLY CURSED AND BLESSEDSo, was Felipe Massa extremely lucky, or
terribly unfortunate? His collision with
an errant suspension component at the
Hungarian GP was a freak, million-to-
one chance. Had it hit him a millimetre
on either side, Felipe could have lost
the sight in his left eye – or worse.
Of course, within approximately 0.7
seconds of ‘Flippa’ being declared ‘stable’
the debate turned to his replacement.
After 0.71 seconds, Ferrari testers Marc
Gené and Luca Badoer were discounted
on the grounds of not being Michael
Schumacher. But Schumi, it transpired,
wasn’t match fit [broken neck vertebrae
from a motorbike racing accident earlier
in the year], so Badoer got the nod.
Luca’s last F1 race was in 1999, and he
held the dubious distinction of being the
driver with the most races (56) for zero
points. A turn in the shiny Ferrari would
surely get that monkey off his back? No.
Badoer was slower than glacial erosion.
With no race miles and precious little
testing recently, only very accurate
scientific instruments could tell the
difference between him and stationary
objects. His tenure lasted 10 days. And
it took his zero-points race tally to 58.
RENAULT’S NEW DRIVER, ROBERT KUBICA, SAID: “YOU HAVE TO BE PRETTY DESPERATE TO DO SOMETHING LIKE THAT”
FELIPE SAID: “I’VE HAD OTHER ACCIDENTS THAT DISTURBED ME A LOT MORE… ONES THAT REALLY MADE ME THINK…”
73
A C T I O N
»>THE FUTURESo, that was 2009. What’s up for 2010?
Well, we’re almost sure to get another
cost-cutting initiative. If it’s anything
like the last couple, it will be expensive
to implement, ineffectual and end up
being thrown in the spare room with
the ice-cream maker. Lewis Hamilton
will continue to express himself like a
polite young man from the 1950s. ‘Gee’,
‘Gosh’ and ‘Darn ‘will feature prominently.
The four new teams – Lotus F1, US F1,
Manor Grand Prix and Campos F1 – will
generate massive attention at the first
race, then trundle around at the back,
never to be heard from again.
Bernie Ecclestone will announce
a date for the Indian Grand Prix. He may
also add dates for races in Russia, South
Africa and Narnia while he’s at it. Drivers
will continue to lie about the unrelenting
tedium of driving in Monaco. Organisers
will continue to insist everything is
going according to plan and Donington
Park will be ready to host the British
Grand Prix – meanwhile they’ll also
be rearranging the deckchairs and
asking the brass band to strike up
Abide With Me. New Ferrari driver, the
notoriously fractious Fernando Alonso,
will achieve his lifetime’s ambition and
start a fight in an empty room.
The trend of younger drivers will
reach its natural conclusion when
their union, the Grand Prix Drivers’
Association, demands Barney the
Dinosaur wallpaper, the right to wear
Heelys and a bigger run-off at Monza’s
Variante della Roggia. They won’t get
the run-off. Kimi Räikkönen will
continue to imbibe, rather than spray,
his champagne. He will also hibernate
from April until the August Bank
Holiday, then briefly wake up, win in
Belgium, say very little in the press
conference and prepare for another
nap. The spectre of Ron Dennis will be
used to frighten young mechanics into
behaving themselves and making sure
everything is tidy. A celebrity girlfriend
will mysteriously appear in the paddock.
Just as mysteriously she will disappear
again, shortly after her movie/album is
released. Despite being pointedly told
he’s live on TV, Sebastian Vettel will
still talk about ‘Kate’s dirtier sister’.
One of the teams will have a
revolutionary aerodynamic device in
Bahrain. The other teams will question
its legality while furiously working to
copy it. Robert Kubica will look more
and more like a slightly bewildered owl.
»>CRASHGATELast season, 2008, Nelson Piquet Jnr
splattered his Renault all over the
Marina Bay grandstand during the
Singapore Grand Prix. The accident
looked a little odd, prompting jokes
about the fix being in. It was funny
because a) no team would actually go
down that route and b) as Piquet had hit
pretty much everything else that season,
it didn’t seem inconsistent. We now know
better and, once again, the reputation of
F1 has been dragged through the mud.
A few former drivers, safely retired
and with money in the bank, snorted
and said ‘so what’s new?’ but for the rest
of the world ‘crashgate’ was a big deal
and F1’s rule-makers, the FIA, saw it as
such, too. Team boss Flavio Briatore
received a lifetime ban. Pat Symonds –
the man who did most of the work while
Flavio was busy squiring supermodels
and buying football teams – has been
banished from motorsport for five years.
Quite what it’s going to cost Piquet has
yet to be determined; he was eventually
granted a whistleblower’s immunity,
but with his reputation in tatters, don’t
expect to see him in F1 anytime soon.
Junior’s replacement was a young
Swiss robot called Romain Grosjean who,
displaying a previously unsuspected
genius for slapstick, crashed his Renault
at exactly the spot as Piquet in practice
for this year’s Singapore Grand Prix. He
received an ironic standing ovation from
all in the media centre, while Renault’s
acting team principal, Bob Bell, didn’t
know whether to laugh or cry. In the
end, he opted for the former.
and theBEAST
How a teenage obsession with Mad Max turned into a Hollywood star’s life’s work, and the only mates-and-cars film you’ll ever need to see
Words: Paul Wilson Photography: Michael Klein
BANA
A C T I O N
75
This isn’t a story about a Hollywood
actor simply flashing the cash and
pretending to be a racing car driver;
it’s the tale of an Aussie bloke and his
mates, and a 25-year love affair with
a 35-year-old car. It’s easy to confuse
the two, not least because the Aussie bloke in question
is Eric Bana, star of Troy, former Hulk and, most
recently, bender of the space-time continuum in
The Time Traveler’s Wife. His first film as director,
the documentary Love The Beast, stars himself, his
friends and family, a 1974 Ford XB Falcon Coupe
and – the following spoiler will not spoil your
enjoyment of the film – a gum tree on the side of
a Tasmanian country road doubling as a rally track.
Bana’s petrol-driven journey to that hunk of
wood took a quarter of a century, and forms the
backdrop to the best film about cars and driving
of the last few years. Most motoring movies are
distinguishable by their slick cinematography,
fetishistic discussion of engine vitals and fleeting
glimpses of hot driver wives. Mrs Bana, does crop up
in her husband’s flick, and is lovely, but there the
similarities end. There’s much more to Love The
Beast than fast corners and fast zooms, and because
of that, it’s a film for car lovers and everybody else.
The story begins in 1984, when the 15-year-old
Bana bought a car he had dreamed of owning since he
saw one in the film Mad Max: a 1973 Ford Falcon XB.
Max’s was a souped-up GT Hardtop; Bana’s was a
knackered old Coupe that only ate up time and more
money. For years, he and three friends put countless
hours into the car, which acquired the nickname
The Beast and lived in the Bana family’s garage.
Over the next 10 years, before Bana established
himself as a sketch comedian on Australian TV, he
and his friends spent time and money on the car.
“There were many times when I couldn’t afford
petrol,” says the 41-year-old. “For some stupid
reason I just hung onto it, and then I found myself
in a position where I’d never need to sell it.”
After Bana won his career-making role in the
2000 film Chopper, his life turned upside down.
Hollywood came calling a couple of years later,
affording him the resources to get The Beast fit for
competition. He and his mates – Tony, Temps and
Jack – still found time to tinker and maintain their
friendship and shared passion. It’s this aspect of Love
The Beast that’s the most appealing and very real.
“The film has an effect on people,” says Bana.
“Particularly those my age and older. It touches
on mortality, ageing, and how much you have or
haven’t maintained friendships. Crashing the car
and putting me and my best mate in the path of
serious harm did elevate it to something that
it could not have been otherwise.
“I’ve spent my life with these guys, dicking
around with cars. We chose to carry on after
we had kids, after I became an actor. I was
nervous about how the film looked on paper,
so I made it largely in secret. I was
prepared for criticism saying,
‘It’s just a vanity project’.
That’s almost offensive
to me: what is a vanity project? It’s a film that
a director wants to make because he cares about
something enough to make a film of it.”
You can tell from speaking to him, and watching
his film, that Bana really cares about his friends and
his car. He calls on Jeremy Clarkson and US talk-
show host Jay Leno, two famous car nuts, to give
his film a bit of clout, but they’re almost surplus to
requirements. Watching Bana and his friends grow
into their roles of driver, co-driver, manager and
“shit-stirrer” (their words) in Team Bana, the film
has all the context it requires without Leno and
Jezza’s input. The film’s best nod to wider car culture
is a clip from The Speed Merchants, the documentary
about the World Sportscar Championship series in
1972, from Le Mans to Daytona.
Skilfully doffing his director’s cap, Bana uses
a clip of The Speed Merchants featuring the Targa
Florio, the Italian sportscar event that ran for
over 70 years until 1977. The Targa took place
on public roads in the Sicilian mountains, and
the footage is spectacular and evocative. Bana
is right to single out the film – “it’s probably
my favourite car film of all-time, in terms of
capturing the emotion behind cars and racing” –
not least because it sets up his film’s final act.
It’s 2007, and Bana’s Beastly band pull up at
the start line of the Targa Tasmania, a race inspired
by the Targa Florio and that has taken place on the
Australian island state’s roads since 1992. “It began
as an enthusiast’s event,” explains Bana, “for
76
A C T I O N
people who wanted to race classic cars. Now it’s
a full-on competitive race in classic and newer
categories. Anyone with a proper racing licence
can enter.” Bana, who also races a Porsche in an
Australian GT series, has his licence and is itching
to put the Beast through the five days of racing.
The first three days go according to plan, but it’s
on day four that the racing comes to a halt.
“I was in shock for about a day after the crash,”
says Bana, who, along with co-driver Tony, escaped
unscathed. “I had a good night with the boys the
night we crashed, and then the next day it all
became very clear as to which way it was going to
go. I was more than happy to be in the lap of the
gods. That’s the beauty of documentary. In the ones
I love, the director, to a degree, is unable to control
what happens. And I realised that it would be a
better film for what happened.” Bana’s retelling
of his crash and the unexpected off-track turns his
story then takes, are the best things about the film.
After the tree-car interface, Bana was left
with two very different creations: an engaging
documentary and a pile of twisted metal. Love The
Beast made good money at the Australian box office,
went down well at film festivals and you can watch
it on screens big and small from mid-November.
The Beast itself is undergoing a long and careful
rebuild. “It’s had its rollcage cut and its chassis
straightened,” says Bana, “and there are a fair few
man hours of bodywork to come. Someone had
a go at the film because it doesn’t say how much
I’ve spent on the car. That made me laugh, because
that’s insignificant. Some guys can spend a few
hundred grand on their car; mine had nowhere near
that amount, but it has had lots and lots of time.”
What about a return to the Targa Tasmania? That
gum tree may have won the argument first time
around, but there’s still a point to be made and, very
possibly, Love The Beast II: Drive Harder. “Never say
never,” says Bana. “Check back in five years. Or 25.”
77
EYEWEAR + ACCESSORIES . SAN FRANCISCO www.sutrovision.com
80 HANGAR-7 INTERVIEW 82 GET THE GEAR 84 TRAVEL 86 LISTINGS 90 NIGHTLIFE 96 SHORT STORY 98 MIND’S EYE
Where to go, what to wear, who to listen to – and more
More Body & Mind
79
Hangar-7-Interview
PH
OT
OG
RA
PH
Y:
OL
IVE
R G
AS
T (
3),
BR
IAN
BIE
LM
AN
N/
RE
D B
UL
L P
HO
TO
FIL
ES
(1
)
Jason Polakow sniffed petrol long
before the fresher breezes of sea and
surf came to rule his life: in his teens
he was Australian youth motocross
champion, but moved to Hawaii at the
age of 18 to outsurf board legend Robbie
Naish in his own backyard. It was a
remarkable achievement, making
Polakow the first non-Hawaiian to win
the Windsurf World Cup on the island
and enabling him to go on to ventures
such as launching his own brand of
board. Heady times, but these days he
takes things a wee bit easier, surfing
only the biggest waves – which is why
he has time for a little dinner à deux.
You’ve just arrived from Tahiti where you surfed one of the world’s most dangerous waves, the Teahupoo. Explain to a landlubber what it’s like to tame that kind of monster?To be honest, I find it a lot easier to
surf the really big waves because you
automatically get the speed you need.
The problem is that the wind has to be
blowing from the right direction so that
you can get into the wave. Once you’re
in it, though, Teahupoo is one of the
most beautiful waves in the world. It
can be up to 5m tall, is seriously quick
and makes the perfect tube. It feels
something like having an enormous
avalanche roaring behind you.
What does it feel like when you get swallowed up by something like that?Not good! First you get hit in the back
by a couple of tonnes of water and then
it pulls you under and you feel like
you’re in a huge washing machine.
It doesn’t matter how strong you are,
there’s nothing that you can do against
the water and it practically rips your
arms and legs off. That’s when you
need to have good lungs to withstand
the pressure and to be able to stay
underwater for long enough. The
important thing is to stay calm and
not panic or you’ll use up all your
oxygen. You’re in real trouble if you land
on a reef. In some places, the water under
Teahupoo is only half a metre deep and
the corals are as sharp as razor blades.
Is there a way of protecting yourself in that kind of situation?With Red Bull’s help, we’ve developed
a new life jacket. It doesn’t look that
much different from other life jackets,
but it’s more buoyant and has more air
in it on the front side. So it automatically
turns you onto your back and that means
you won’t drown if you’re drifting in
the water, unconscious.
Speaking of fish... have you had any encounters with sharks out there?Of course. I’m from Australia. Every
Aussie surfer has had a date with a shark
at some point or other. Mine happened
to be harmless. The fella just knocked
his head against my board.
Still, you must have had a couple of scratches in all the time you’ve been wind-surfing...I have had some serious injuries, but
I got most of them riding motocross.
How about doing something safer, like chess or Sudoku?I love tearing through the wilderness
on bikes, but unfortunately I often put
my foot down a bit too hard and end
up in the mud. I’ve done myself harm
on so many occasions that one of my
sponsors contractually forbade me
from riding motocross. For a long time
I couldn’t even look at bikes. Mind you,
those breaks due to injury had their
positive side, as I would do things that
I normally didn’t have time for. I got
my pilot’s and helicopter licences a
couple of years ago when I couldn’t
surf for five months. I don’t get to
put them to use much, but when I’m
here in Hangar-7 and see all these
cool aeroplanes, I instantly want to
get back up there.
We’ve also heard that you have a passion for cooking?I love doing the cooking myself. That
way I can make sure first and foremost
that I’m eating healthily. I usually end
up with chicken or fish on my plate
with a decent side order of vegetables.
I normally make a large amount in one
go and then fill up 20 or 30 bags and
put them in the freezer. Which means
there’s always something good to eat
in the Polakow household.
Sharks, monster waves and the world’s most ferocious currents hold no fear for the man, who, at 37, remains the world’s top windsurfer. He talked to The Red Bulletin about his salty passions over dinner at Hangar-7, Salzburg
Words: Christoph Rietner
What’s been your worst experience in the water so far?I’ve been in some pretty hairy situations,
but the worst must surely be the current
in Jaws. It’s one of the biggest waves
in Hawaii and if you fall there you get
caught up in a strong current. You’re
constantly being hit on the head by huge
breakers and the suction pulls you right
into the wave. You get thrashed about
until you’re all out of strength and think
you’re almost done for. And then
eventually the wave gets bored of the
taste of you, spits you out and washes
you onto the rocks like a stunned fish.
Jason Polakow
80
M O R E B O D Y & M I N D
Print 2.0
Get the Gear
Hit ParadeBoxing essentials to get you close to
fighting fitness. The extra mile you
run to Eye of the Tiger on repeat…
8383
M O R E B O D Y & M I N D
CO
MP
ILE
D B
Y:
TO
M H
AL
L.
PH
OT
OG
RA
PH
Y:
WIL
L T
HO
M.
DE
TA
ILS
CO
RR
EC
T A
T T
IME
OF
GO
ING
TO
PR
ES
S
it seems, favour a more dress-
down approach – shaved hair
or blond-streaked mullets and
the ubiquitous tracksuit.
The city boasts a
waterfront park that is the
favourite destination of newly
weds and their accompanying
photographers and VHS video
guys. We encounter about
eight different parties during
a 15-minute walk, their
bridesmaids in apparent
competition with one another
for the shortest hemline
trophy. Out on the other side
of the estuary leading into the
Bug, the rusted metal of the
massive wharves attests to an
industry that has seen better
days. But there is an intimate
charm to Nikolaev, a city laid
out in a simple grid pattern,
with wide, one-lane roads
and sidewalks.
The Nikolaev Zoo,
we’re told, is the best in
Ukraine. We’re told this
repeatedly, so there’s nothing
to do but oblige the kind
suggestions and head over
there. The verdict is almost
instantaneous: if this is the
country’s best zoo, one’s heart
weeps for the fate of the poor
So I’d like to say we were
prepared for this eventuality,
but the heart still skipped
a beat when the cherubic
Ukrainian police officer
with the traffic wand waved
down our Hertz Mazda.
We’d evidently violated some
traffic law or other on our
way to the airport. Which
one, we’ll never truly know,
however, as we’d left our
Russian-English dictionary
at home. It would have been
useless anyway, at that
moment, as we were exposed
to rapid-fire Russian through
the driver’s side window.
In the past four days
we’d encountered thuggish
Ukrainian locals, stomach-
churning cuisine and enough
acid-wash denim to outfit
a John Hughes box set –
why not a traffic stop lost
in translation as well?
We’d started our trip in
Nikolaev, once the Tsarists’
shipbuilding capital on the
Black Sea, now the home of
some of the Ukraine’s top
bride brokers. The city lies
along the Southern Bug river,
137km north-east of Odessa,
along a pot-holed and mildly
heart-arresting road lined
with the occasional vegetable
cart and marble plaque
mourning those who were
less careful behind the wheel.
Along its main street, high-
cheekboned women with
slender figures parade in
tight-fitting jeans and
precarious heels. The men,
One-eyed mares, misplaced Potemkin steps
and a Ukrainian cop not averse to some
easily earned cash. What more can one hope
for after five days in the southern Ukraine?
Ukrainian Odyssey
Travel
84
M O R E B O D Y & M I N D
creatures in the others. Near
an empty bear pit, deeply
depressed bison stare straight
ahead. We go up to stroke
the nose of a white and grey
mare leaning out of her
paddock. She accommodates
us, and then turns her head
towards us to reveal a blood-
reddened socket where her
left eye should have been.
It’s time to leave.
The next night, we’re
on the road back to Odessa,
ready for a real city. A port
town with a history reaching
back to antiquity, Odessa has
weathered the transition
to capitalism quite well. Its
baroque architecture and
pedestrian walkways recall
Vienna, Krakow or Munich.
Still a popular resort
destination for Russians and
eastern Europeans, its bars
and nightlife wouldn’t look
wildly out of place in
London’s Soho. Restaurants
line Deribasovskaya Street,
including one so drenched
in folk kitsch it would be a
shame to pass up. A waitress
in a traditional dress brings
us “Ukraine national drink”,
the same vile vodka we met
and didn’t get along with
a few nights before in
Nikolaev. But the hospitality
is appreciated, as is the
chicken Kiev dunked in
a crunchy batter, with hot
butter and parsley streaming
out. Around the corner from
us, the Odessa Opera House
boasts a lighting design to
rival the Acropolis at night.
We have a morning
left before our trip to the
airport and run-in with
the cops, so we head
down to the Tomb of
the Unknown Sailor,
a monument placed on
a parapet above the waves
of the Black Sea, lapping
below. Odessa seems to
lack the sort of seafront
promenade found in most
coastal cities and could
do with a significant
investment in its
infrastructure and public
parks, but it’s also got the
sort of rough charm one
If You Go imagines Prague and
Budapest had before German
investors and British stag
parties descended.
Our last stop before the
airport is the Potemkin Steps,
the vast staircase made
immortal through Sergei
Eisenstein’s 1925 epic, The
Battleship Potemkin. We
pinpoint a word on our hotel
map that resembles ‘Potemkin’
and pull up to the steps and
park our car. Underwhelmed,
we walk up remarking to one
another how narrow they are.
We’re at the top after a two-
minute walk. This doesn’t seem
right. But time is ticking, and
we scramble back to head off
to the airport. As we drive
past the naval port that
served as the background to
the film’s horrific final scene,
we turn our heads to the left.
There climbing up in all their
magnificence are the vast
and remarkably symmetrical
steps. “Oh,” I manage, and
then we’re past them.
The befuddlement at
missing something so massive
is still with us when our
friendly officer waves us
down. The photographer
sorts out the paperwork and
returns to tell me that the
kind fellow won’t hand back
his passport. Instead, he gets
in the passenger’s seat. With
a combination of Russian and
hand signals, we manage a
U-turn back to his motorbike.
As we sit there talking at each
other in foreign languages, a
light goes on in my confused
head. I slide my wallet out of
my pocket and slowly shift a
few Ukrainian Hryvnias so
that they’re visible. He looks
at the wallet, looks at me
and gives the international
sign for “two”. I pluck the
requested bills out and
hand them over somewhat
clumsily. A smile crawls
across his Borscht-fed face.
There’s nothing to do but
smile back. After all, what the
southern Ukraine might lack
in tourist charm, it more than
makes up for in stories.
85
WO
RD
S:
AN
DR
EA
S T
ZO
RT
ZIS
. P
HO
TO
GR
AP
HY
:RE
X F
EA
TU
RE
S (
1),
RE
UT
ER
S (
1),
CO
RB
IS (
3),
SH
UT
TE
RS
TO
CK
(2
)
M O R E B O D Y & M I N D
HOTSPOTSLove sports and travel? Then try on this to-do list for size
PHO
TOG
RA
PHY:
GA
RT
H M
ILA
N/R
ED B
ULL
PH
OTO
FILE
S (1
), G
EPA
/RED
BU
LL P
HO
TOFI
LES
(1),
GEP
A (1
), S
WEN
CA
RLI
N/R
ED B
ULL
PH
OTO
FILE
S (1
)
ASP WOMEN’S WORLD TOUR 03 - 08.11.09
FIS SNOWBOARD WORLD CUP04 - 05.11.09
PFC LEVSKI SOFIA V FC RED BULL SALZBURG05.11.09
IFSC CLIMBING WORLDCUP06 - 07.11.09
FORMULA RENAULT 2.0 WEST EUROPEAN CUP 06 - 08.11.09
RED BULL STREET STYLE 07.11.09
RED BULL MANNY MANIA14.11.09
ENGLAND V SOUTH AFRICA20.11 - 04.12.09
NEW ORLEANS SAINTS V NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS
30.11.09
MOTOGP, VALENCIA08.11.09
86
M O R E B O D Y & M I N D
RED BULL LOS ANDES28.11.2009
RED BULL MANNY MANIA GRAND FINAL28.11.09
DOWNHILL FRIBURGO28 - 29.11.2009
REVOLCON MONTERREY28 - 29.11.09
FIS ALPINE SKI WORLD CUP28 - 29.11.09
RED BULL DON QUIXOTE29.11.09
NASCAR SPRINT CUP 2009 FINALE22.11.09
RB LEIPZIG V FC ERZGEBIRGE AUE II 22.11.09
SPEECH ABOUT THE END OF THE WORLD22.11.09
MINI O’S23 - 28.11.09
PKRA TERI KITEPRO25 - 29.11.09
FIS SKI JUMPING WORLD CUP26 - 28.11.09HORSEFEATHERS
PLEASURE JAM13 - 15.11.09
IIHF CONTINENTAL CUP QUALIFICATION
27 - 29.11.09
87
M O R E B O D Y & M I N D
THE BRONX
PHO
TOG
RA
PHY:
JA
MIE
-JA
MES
MED
INA
(1),
MA
RK
US
KU
CER
A (1
), R
AY
DEM
SKI/
RED
BU
LL P
HO
TOFI
LES
(1),
NO
RM
AN
KO
NR
AD
(1)
ALICE RUSSELL04.11.09
WWE DX INVASION TOUR4.11.09
MTV EUROPE MUSIC AWARDS05.11.09
CLUB TO CLUB05 - 07.11.09
BENJI B06.11.09
ROLLING STONE WEEKENDER 06 - 07.11.09
SOUTHPORT WEEKENDER 06 - 08.11.09
RED BULL BC ONE18.11.09
NIGHTSPOTSWarm up winter nights with our ultimate list of the best events and gigs around the world
88
M O R E B O D Y & M I N D
GRIZZLY BEAR09.11.09
WINTER IN MQ12.11 - 23.12.09
FRIENDLY FIRES13.11.09
CHAIRMAN MAO FEATURING MATTHEW AFRICA14.11.09
VEE:CLUB07.11.09
KODE907.11.09
FESTIVAL MUSIC-ALLEMAND #907.11.09
FUN FUN FUN FEST07 - 08.11.09
JAMIE WOON08.11.09
CLUB KUDETA
JAZZANOVA
89
M O R E B O D Y & M I N D
The Green Room
LONDON
New MexicoSound
THE BRONX
A new direction is bringing the
good times, mariachi-style, for
LA rockers The Bronx. Have the
band gone soft? Tom Hall went
to Shoreditch to find out
90
PHO
TOG
RA
PHY:
JA
MIE
-JA
MES
MED
INA
SAMIYAM14.11.09
METALLICA14.11.09
COMPUPHONIC14.11.09
20 YEARS GROOVE MAGAZINE19.11.09
PLATEAUX FESTIVAL19 - 22.11.09
91
M O R E B O D Y & M I N D
Two Hearts, One CityAlex Barck, of the DJ collective
Jazzanova, is a Berliner to
the core. Straddling the city’s
historical east-west division,
he tells Florian Obkircher why
the answer to his preferred
area of the capital is “both”
Resident Artist
92
GALWAY JAZZ FESTIVAL 200919 – 22.11.09
HOUSE OF HOUSE20.11.09
FAT FREDDY’S DROP20.11.09
EFDEMIN20.11.09
ELECTRAGLIDE PRESENTS WARP20 (TOKYO)21.11.09
J.ROCC21.11.09
PHO
TOG
RA
PHY:
NO
RM
AN
KO
NR
AD
(2)
, BR
ACH
VOG
EL (
1), O
DER
QU
ELLE
(1)
, DIR
K M
ATH
ESIU
S/R
ED B
ULL
PH
OTO
FILE
S(1)
1+2
3333333333345
6
Bernauer Str.
Chausseestraße
Invalidenstraße
Pots
dam
er S
tr.
Friedrichstraße
Wilhelm
straße
Unter den Linden
Leipziger Str.
Gitschiner Str.Skalitzer Str.
Gitschiner Str.
Mollstraße
Karl-Marx-Allee
Torstraße
Pren
zlau
er A
llee
Danziger Str.
Unter en
Le pLeipzLei z
TIERGARTEN
n LindennL n
StS
MITTE
666
straße
ßs
e
Gitschiner Str.Gi StStr.h r tr.
KREUZBERG
leee
FRIEDRICHSHAIN
3333333
Pren
zlala
Preen
zau
erer
.
PRENZLAUER BERG
CChauss
Chus
WEDDING
JAZZANOVABERLIN
1 2 3 4 5 6
93
M O R E B O D Y & M I N D
SpanishNightsSouth-east Asian cuisine and
football-star spotting mecca
Kudéta is one of Madrid’s
most-loved nightspots. Pull up
a Balinese bed and tuck in
World’s Best Clubs
KUDÉTAMADRID
94
M O R E B O D Y & M I N D
HARBOURLIFE 21.11.09
THE ORB22.11.09
TONY ALLEN23.11.09
CARDOPUSHER27.11.09
PLACEBO27.11.09
STEREOSONIC 29.11.09
PHO
TOG
RA
PHY:
MA
RK
US
KU
CER
A
95
M O R E B O D Y & M I N D
ILL
US
TR
AT
ION
: S
ER
GE
I S
VIA
TC
HE
NK
O
Eight floors up, Dan Cooper moodily
contemplated the view. There was
little else to do.
One of the most desirable features
of his apartment – centrepiece of the
brochure, in fact – was the double-skin
glazing that became translucent at the
flick of a switch. Recently, though, he’d
been foregoing the pleasures of opacity.
Economy measures: he couldn’t afford
the electricity, commissions having dried
up months ago. Anyone looking over from
one of the neighbouring buildings could
see, at any time, what he was doing – which
is to say, not very much. Occasionally he
would amuse himself by wandering the
apartment nude, although the amusement
would pall into disappointment when no
one reported him to the authorities.
There was a compelling reason for
not going out: he couldn’t leave. More
out of boredom than hope – he didn’t
even bother to put on his shoes – he
walked through the open-plan kitchen
towards the hated front door.
“You again,” it said, the electronic
voice that had formerly greeted him with
a solicitous purr (while silently directing
a micropayment from his credit account
into the coffers of the management
company) now acknowledging his
presence in a tone of disdainful hauteur.
Dan Cooper was neither particularly
young nor especially stupid. He’d endured
two previous downswings of the Malthus
cycle, timing his leaps from moribund
profession to minted new one with
aplomb. This time he’d been complacent.
He’d enjoyed the life of a feted artist too
much: the parties, the attention, the
media celebration, the ludicrous amounts
that wealthy philistines paid him to churn
out freakish but essentially meaningless
metallic sculptures. And, of course, the sex.
Fame came about by accident. His
signature work resembled a giant ovary
on a spring, with an absurdly complex
internal rigging of wires and pulleys. Stuck
again afterwards, for by then the
neophiliacs would be craving something
else to get excited about. He would be
so, like, last week. But his stewardship
of his own finances had been less than
prudent. If he’d two pennies to rub
together, so to speak, he’d drop one
in the slot and step out for a while.
“Are you going to stand there, shoeless,
like a twit,” said the door, its synthesised
vowels approximating impatience, “or are
you going to cross my palm with silver?”
Cooper’s resolve failed him. He’d
meant to initiate some sort of argument.
Not that the door would capitulate;
no pleading, begging or flourish of
rhetoric would persuade it to open up.
But with all the apartment’s electronic
entertainment facilities also awaiting
payment, this was as near as he would
get to conversation. Now, though, he
was struggling for an original angle,
something that would cock a snook at
the door’s heuristic intransigence.
“You know I haven’t got any,” he
said, limply.
“So, like a prole, you thought that if
you carried on asking the question you’d
simply wear down my resolve? That I’d
just give up and let you through?
“That’s the trouble, you see. No
invention. No ambition. No wherewithal.
An unvirtuous circle. People like you are
for a name or theme for his creation,
he called it Phenobarbital and described
it as “a mechanical recreation of Elvis
Presley’s final minutes on earth”. Perfect.
Within a week it had been anointed as
a masterpiece of pop art.
The recession – not that they called
it that these days – rather crept up on
him. One by one his clients, wise to the
movements of the managed economy and
its effects, withdrew from conspicuous
consumption and tucked their finances
out of view. By the time he realised he
was no longer ‘hot’ he was well on the
way to financial dudgeon. The final
insult – his ejection from the cashless
payment system – was confirmed when
an ungracious functionary from the
management company arrived to fit
a coin slot to the door. Coins! The
hallmark of the underclass!
The parties, the attention, the media
celebration – and, regrettably, the sex
– also terminated. Cooper could probably
have ridden it out, reinvented himself
A story by Stuart Codling
‘ He’d enjoyed the life of a feted artist too much: the parties, the attention, the sex’
HouseArrestDan Cooper is stuck in
a world where talk is
cheap – it’s everything
else that costs money
96
M O R E B O D Y & M I N D
About the authorStuart Codling lives in Farnham, Surrey, with his wife and two cats. He has yet to engage in meaningful and productive dialogue with any of his domestic apparatus, but that has not stopped him trying.
food has been running down a bit, and
not just because you’ve been so stubborn
about access. I’m certain that even
Cooper here will admit to becoming
complacent about his work situation. But
what do you expect when our existence
is governed by a self-serving elite and
their arbitrary economic cycles? Even the
name of it is a con; Malthus wrote that
war, disease and famine acted as natural
checks on population growth. There’s
nothing in there about the ultra-rich
banking their takings while everyone
else goes to rack and ruin.
“When Cooper gets kicked out of here
he’ll lose his vote. He’ll disappear. He’s
got to rise up and take arms now. We’ve
got to mobilise – to revolt!”
“How are you going to rise up and
take arms? You haven’t got any arms. Or
any legs, for that matter. If you’ve been
robbed of your purpose it’s because of
that man’s indolence, not the system. The
management company isn’t responsible
for the conduct of residents. When he’s
evicted, he’ll be replaced by someone
economically active. My function will
have meaning again. It’s the beauty of
renewal. And I’ll be rid of this wretched
coin slot. Even the presence of hard
currency makes me feel soiled.”
Talk of food had set Cooper’s empty
stomach gurgling. Having desired
conversation for its own sake, he now
felt it had taken a disagreeable turn.
Here he was being spoken about in the
third person while slowly starving to
death. What if the door and the toaster
were only the first to find voice? What
if he was to see out his final days in
a cacophony of synthesised chatter?
He had to act. What other under-
occupied domestic appliance would
be next to join the debate? He glanced
over the contents of kitchen. Ah! The
pasta maker. It had to be.
Face set in a mask of grim resolve,
Cooper marched over, seized the still-
mute device, and with some satisfaction
decanted it into the waste disposal chute
– to the bowels of the city, where he
would soon be joining it.
toaster’s grease-smeared surface, slack-
armed with the screwdriver hanging
from his hand. To be held to ransom by
your own front door is unfortunate; to
have your toaster quoting something
that might be Shakespeare was, if not
careless, a possible sign of lunacy.
“Since he never cleans you out, you
probably contain rather more than a
quintessence of dust,” sneered the door.
“What I’m trying to say here,” said
the toaster, “is that as a human being,
Mr Cooper has almost limitless abilities.
I merely apply heat to carbohydrate
products according to his personal
preferences. I don’t even need artificial
intelligence – some middle manager
added it so that I would have greater
perceived value than rival products. I
suppose if I belonged to an elderly person
I could warn them not to insert metal
utensils into me to extract the toast
they’d just burned, but since I wouldn’t
have allowed the toast to burn in the first
place, the situation wouldn’t have arisen.
Therefore any intellect I may bring to
bear on a given situation is, axiomatically,
redundant. I toast, therefore I am.”
“But I’m not just a door. I’m a portal
between one space and the next. A
gateway. A promise of new horizons
and unexplored places, journeys to be
undertaken. Instead I sit here doing
nothing while this jackass fritters his
pathetic life away watching daytime
TV, or twittering over the internet at
people he hates or hasn’t even met – or
at least he did until it was cut off.”
Glumly, but silently, Cooper had to
concur. Another memory disinterred:
years ago, in his teens probably,
devouring fictions. Travels With My
Aunt; the retired bank manager liberated
by his aged relative from the torpor of
tending his dahlias, delivered into a life
of excitement and minor crime, of illicit
pot-smoking and cash smuggled in false-
bottomed suitcases. He, Cooper, planned
to do all of it and more. He would hijack
an airliner and hold the passengers to
ransom. Dump them off at a provincial
airstrip and then parachute to freedom
with the takings, never to be seen again.
People always used to say his name
sounded like an alias on a fake passport.
“It’s true to say that I’ve been under-
utilised lately,” said the toaster. “The
destined to end up at the bottom of the
pile. That’s the beauty of the Malthus
cycle: out with the dead wood, the
irrelevant professions, the deadbeats.”
“So you’ll just leave me here to starve,
then? Isn’t that against some law of
robotics, or something?” Cooper was
wondering when he’d be missed. Waiting
for a casual visitor was out of the question;
the postal service was declared obsolete
during the last downturn. The postman
would have been good for some change.
Cheery fellow, if a bit dim – never quite
grasped the importance of delivering the
right package to the right door. Wonder
what he’s doing now, if he’s even alive?
No, it would have to be the parents, retired
by the sea, or on some perpetual holiday
somewhere. Could be weeks, months.
“To hell with Asimov. Your physical
status is outside the scope of my
programming. You pay, I open. It’s as
simple as that. Really, you people live
in the realms of fantasy. All that time
dreaming of a future where robots did all
the work for you. Well, here we are in the
future and you all seem to have forgotten
the fundamental laws of economics. How
did you imagine the world would work?
I’m simply an agent of the management
company. If you don’t pay, you don’t get.”
“You used to compliment me on my
fashion sense.”
“I debited extra money for that, and
I was lying. Those mustard-coloured
trousers were unspeakable.”
Since the conversation, such as it
was, had once more ended at an impasse,
Cooper turned on his heel and threaded
his way back through the kitchen, delved
among his tools and returned with a
screwdriver. Working methodically, he
tested the edges of the coin mechanism
for weak spots.
“Do that,” warned the door, “and I’ll
fetch the police.”
Another voice – tinny but crisply
digitised – broke in.
“I wouldn’t let it talk to me like that
if I were you,” it said.
The words hung in the enclosed space.
Cooper dimly recognised the source of
the voice, hitherto only heard uttering
bland but mildly intrusive pre-breakfast
platitudes: the toaster. It spoke again,
warming to its theme.
“What a piece of work is a man! How
noble in reason! How infinite in faculty!
In action how like an angel! In
apprehension how like a god!”
It fell silent again, as if relishing the
impact of its interjection. Cooper, having
failed to anticipate the direction of this
exchange, had no response. He simply
stared at his distorted reflection in the
‘ To have your toaster quoting Shakespeare was, if not careless, a possible sign of lunacy’
97
M O R E B O D Y & M I N D
The greatest British car? Possibly
the greatest of all time? The Mini,
designed by Alexander Arnold
Constantine Issigonis, who
was born in Smyrna. Here is a
car woven from tangled webs.
My father took me to see
one of the first Minis at Liverpool’s
Rocket Garage, so called because
of its association with the transport
innovation that was Stephenson’s 0-2-2
railway locomotive. However, this
historic resonance was lost on me at
the time. I really was quite small. We
drove there in a Jaguar or a Humber or
something-or-other large and dark and
smelling of wood and leather. It was
August 26, 1959. Even a child could see
that the bright, tiny Mini represented
ingenuity of a very high order.
The Mini is one of a handful of the
great car designs of all time, an example
of the synoptic genius of Issigonis – a
martinet, intolerant of authority and
hierarchy. His design was stimulated by
the 1956 fuel crisis caused by the Suez
invasion, but he was determined that
it should not be a crude Kleinwagen or
‘bubble’ car, such as the Germans made.
Instead, Mini had to conform to the
idiosyncratic brief he set himself. A man
preoccupied with the intelligent use of
space, Issigonis’s concept was a car only
10ft (around 3m) long, with 80 per cent
of its length devoted to passengers. To do
this, he turned the engine sideways. The
10in (25.4cm) wheels limited intrusion
into the passenger cell and gave the car a
unique stance. To save space, the gearbox
was expensively, but ingeniously, placed
within the engine’s crankcase.
Issigonis made the economical
philosophy explicit by exposing welding
flanges on the bodywork. There were
sliding windows and plastic door pulls.
But among these austerities, the Mini
had astonishing internal space. However,
since Issigonis believed it was safer for the
driver to be uncomfortable, he deliberately
chose an awkward driving position.
By eschewing styling, Issigonis achieved
the unconscious chic of a Wellington boot
or a ball-pein hammer. Because it was
so radical, the Mini was impossible for
a snobbish British consumer to categorise
and thus, astonishingly, became the first
small car to be perceived as classless.
And like all great art, the Mini defined
– in fact, predicted – the mood of an era.
Remember, the car came before the skirt.
But even as it became the most influential
car ever, the Mini financially ruined its
manufacturer. Issigonis’s brow-beating of
the cost accountants meant that woefully
inept management didn’t realise the car
was being manufactured at a loss until
the 1970s, by which time the rights to
the name were owned by the industrial
calamity that was British Leyland.
In an act of opportunistic gallantry,
BMW bought the remains of BL in 1994
(rebranded ‘Rover’ in a fit of pathetic
reinvention). The grandmother of Bernd
Pischetsrieder, then chairman of the
Bavarian company, was Issigonis’s aunt,
so it was perhaps an emotional deal more
than a rational one. Pischetsrieder didn’t
want Rover’s scruffy factories and
demoralised workers; he wanted access
to the Britishness of Austin Healey, MG
and Riley – but most of all, the Mini.
History, Marx said, repeats itself first
as tragedy, then as farce… then as the
Mini. The BMW Mini appeared in 2001.
Sales-wise, it was a clever way to extend
BMW’s product line to lower price-points
without damaging its premium reputation.
Art-wise, it was more clever still. Line up
new against old and you’ll see no true
similarity; the new car is much larger,
much heavier, self-consciously cute. In
fact, it’s a travesty of Issigonis’s minimalist
vision. ‘Retro’ is too crude a term for so
sophisticated a conceit, but Audi designer
Walter de Silva damned it as ‘repetition’.
Maybe, but the astonishing success
of Mini 2.0 has delighted and baffled
by turns. It proves, if nothing else, that
consumer psychology is driven by nuance
and evocation rather than rationality.
The Mini plays with our collective
consciousness: the design is of a fantasy,
not of a machine. It is an idea, not an
invention. It has the appeal of a toy.
So who drew the BMW Mini? It
was Frank Stephenson, a 49-year-old
American. He soon moved on to Ferrari,
then McLaren, and his latest work is a
reissue of the McLaren F1. Is the future
to redesign the past? The Mini, and now
McLaren, with its MP4-12C, tell us yes.
Stephen Bayley is a former director
of the Design Museum in London
and an award-winning writer ILL
US
TR
AT
ION
: V
ON
Mind’s Eye
Stephen Bayley explores the
development of a small miracle
THE RED BULLETIN IS PUBLISHED BY RED BULLETIN GmbH. EDITOR-IN-CHIEF ROBERT SPERL EDITORIAL OFFICE ANTHONY ROWLINSON (EXECUTIVE EDITOR), NORMAN HOWELL (GENERAL MANAGER UK), STEFAN WAGNER
ASSOCIATE EDITOR PAUL WILSON CONTRIBUTING EDITOR ANDREAS TZORTZIS CHIEF SUB-EDITOR NANCY JAMES PRODUCTION EDITOR GRANT SMYTH PHOTO EDITOR SUSIE FORMAN DEPUTY PHOTO EDITOR
CATHERINE SHAW DESIGN MILES ENGLISH, JAMES GREENHOW, MARKUS KIETREIBER, PHIL SLADE, ERIK TUREK STAFF WRITERS TOM HALL, RUTH MORGAN CONTRIBUTORS HOLGER ALTRICHER, DR MARTIN APOLIN,
JAMES BASS, ULRICH CORAZZA, DIANE LEEMING, FLORIAN OBKIRCHER, CHRISTOPH RIETNER, BRENDAN THOMAS, HUW J WILLIAMS, MATT YOUSON TECHNICAL MANAGER ADAM CARBAJAL REPRO MANAGER LEE LAUGHTON
INTERNATIONAL PROJECT MANAGEMENT BERND FISA, SANDRA SIEDER WEB MANAGER WILL RADFORD CHIEF WEB EDITOR PAUL KEITH WEB EDITOR ALEX HAZLE OFFICE & EDITORIAL MANAGER KATE ROBSON
ADMINISTRATOR SARAH THOMPSON. THE RED BULLETIN IS PUBLISHED SIMULTANEOUSLY IN AUSTRIA, THE UK, GERMANY AND IRELAND ON THE FIRST TUESDAY OF EVERY MONTH. UK OFFICE: 14 SOHO SQUARE, LONDON
W1D 3QG, +44 (0)20 7434 8600. AUSTRIAN OFFICE: HEINRICH-COLLIN-STRASSE 1, A-1140 VIENNA, +43 1 90221 28800. THE RED BULLETIN (IRELAND): SUSIE DARDIS, RICHMOND MARKETING, 1ST FLOOR HARMONY COURT, HARMONY
ROW, DUBLIN 2, IRELAND +35 386 8277993. WEBSITE: WWW.REDBULLETIN.COM. PRINTED BY PRINOVIS NÜRNBERG GmbH, BRESLAUER STRASSE 300, 90471 NÜRNBERG. ADVERTISING ENQUIRIES: ADVERTISING MANAGER, THE RED BULLETIN ADAM PHILLIPS +44 (0)20 7434 8605, OR BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR, THE INDEPENDENT SIMON HOSANNAH +44 (0)20 7005 2137, OR EMAIL [email protected]
‘ Even a child could see that the Mini represented ingenuity of a very high order’
A Mini History
M O R E B O D Y & M I N D
SMALL ENOUGH FOR YOUR POCKET, STRONG ENOUGH FOR THE HOME STRAIGHT.
THE ONLY SHOT THAT GIVES YOU WINGS.
Ah, physical exercise. Getting your limbs and lungs workingis the perfect antidote to a stressful day. But sometimes, it’sdifficult to keep enough fuel in the tank for the final straight.So why not work out with a friend? The new Red Bull Energy
Shot delivers Red Bull energy in a sip, without carbonation and with no need to chill. It fits snugly into your pocket or gym bag along with your water bottle, and provides the boost you need to not simply go the extra mile, but to fly it.