The Red Bulletin June 2019

UK EDITION
JUNE 2019, £3.50
BEYOND THE ORDINARY
SUBSCRIBE: GETREDBULLETIN.COM
14
Pages of
Gear
Urban
Legends
MTB’S NEW BREED
Where the mountains
are concrete, trails
are tarmac, slopes are
stone steps, and you
bring your own ramp

UK EDITION
JUNE 2019, £3.50
BEYOND THE ORDINARY
SUBSCRIBE: GETREDBULLETIN.COM
URBAN
FREESTYLE
Downhill MTB
hits the street
SECRET
CINEMA
All revealed.
No spoilers
ULTRA GOBI
Running the
Silk Road
Singer, songwriter
and pro footballer
CHELCEE
GRIMES
tackles the Women’s
World Cup and the
sounds of summer
“It’s not girl’s
football, it’s
just football”

HELL IS HEREBY OFFICIALLY CONQUERED
THE ALL-NEW ROUBAIX | SPECIALIZED.COM/ROUBAIX

EDITOR’S LETTER
THINKING OUTSIDE
THE BOX
“Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like
an artist,” Pablo Picasso is said to have declared. It’s this
kind of unconventional thinking that The Red Bulletin
celebrates every month. There’s probably no better
example in this issue than Daniela Ryf (page 32), Iron Man
world champion four years running. Rather than simply
building on her moments of triumph, the Swiss triathlete
draws deep from her most painful experiences to find
secret techniques that can provide an edge over her foes.
CONTRIBUTORS
THIS ISSUE
DAVID GOLDMAN
When the British photographer
first saw mountain bikers pulling
off downhill freeriding tricks in
the concrete landscape of UK
coastal towns, he knew he’d found
his next project. “These guys are
pioneering,” says Goldman, who
shares his time between London
and New York. “The same way the
skaters of Dogtown in the ’70s
were, or the surfers of the Endless
Summer in the ’60s.” Page 54
This month’s issue has two amazing covers: Chelcee Grimes, photographed
by Stephanie Sian Smith; and a special MTB edition, shot by David Goldman
to coincide with the UK leg of the UCI Mountain Bike World Cup.
Talking of secrets, in this age of hype Secret Cinema
(page 42) has elevated the allure of the unknown into the
ultimate immersive FOMO experience. Urban rebels turn
bikes built for the mountain into a new sport, MTB street
(page 54), and the ancient Silk Road becomes a race course
for Ultra Gobi’s insane ultrarunners (page 74).
Plus, we have Chelcee Grimes (page 64) on learning the
ropes of two professions – music and football – and actor
Taron Egerton (page 28) on the lessons gleaned from a
great artist who long ago broke all the rules: Elton John.
We hope you find these stories as inspiring as we do.
PIERS MARTIN
The chance to interview a star
whose career spans music and
sport was irresistible to the Londonbased
writer of our feature on
singer-songwriter/pro footballer
Chelcee Grimes. “Her passion for
her professions is infectious,” he
says of the Liverpudlian who’s set
for the summer of her life as a BBC
pundit at the Women’s World Cup.
“And she didn’t laugh when I said I
support Plymouth Argyle.” Page 64
STEPHANIE SIAN SMITH, DAVID GOLDMAN (COVERS)
06 THE RED BULLETIN

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CONTENTS
June 2019
74
Hypothermia and
hallucinations: all
in a day’s running
at the Ultra Gobi
JAMES CARNEGIE
BULLEVARD
10 Break from the norm:
eye-popping B-girl
moves at Tricklandia
14 What a ledge: standing
on the brink in Yosemite
16 Rexpress delivery: the
robot dog goes postal
18 One million spins BC:
breaking news from Red
Bull BC One Cypher UK
20 Deep sleep: the tent
that was made for
subaquatic slumber
22 Silver surfers: the senior
skateboard crew who are
rolling back the years
24 Swede life: culturemelding
Scandi-Somali
R&B star Cherrie
26 Apocalypse wow: the
ultimate playlist, from
Bastille’s Dan Smith
GUIDE
100 Dive with a legend in
the Azores – only with
Destination Red Bull
104 The treadmill that’s
elevating athletes to
another level (literally)
post-injury
106 How Apex Legends will
make you a better teamplayer,
from battle zone
to boardroom
108 YT Industries: putting
the fun back into bikemaking
and riding.
Plus our edit of the
best high-tech gear
116 Essential dates for
your calendar
118 This month’s highlights
on Red Bull TV
122 It’s a hold-up: humanflagging
in Santa Monica
FEATURES
28 Taron Egerton
The Rocket Man actor is set to soar
32 Daniela Ryf
Power is no problem for the top
triathlete: she has a secret back-up
42 Secret Cinema
Making filmgoing an XL experience
54 MTB street-riding
Big air and cracked saddles: mad
bike tricks in the concrete jungle
64 Chelcee Grimes
Meet the goal-scoring, hit-making
Scouser who’s ready to rule 2019
74 Ultra Gobi
The desert race that ravages
your body and blows your mind
88 Rock Steady
Hit the trail in this expert kit
THE RED BULLETIN 09

LIFE & STYLE BEYOND THE ORDINARY
BULLEVARD

Boogie wonderland: street
dancer Dassy Lee performs in
Marcel Valko’s hallucinatory
video, shot at Tricklandia
VLADIMIR LORINC/RED BULL CONTENT POOL
Optical illusion dance
TRICK OF THE EYE
Three of the world’s best street dancers, one mind-bending performance
T here are few worlds
as seemingly unconnected
as New York-born street
dance and traditional Slovak
folktales. It might seem
surprising, then, that Marcel
Valko – aka Miniboj – the
creative director of streetdance
production company
and clothing brand The
Legits, chose to film his
most recent project at
a fairy-tale art experience
in Slovakia.
Tricklandia is a modernart
gallery crossed with
an amusement park – an
imaginary world designed
around the stories and
myths of Slovakian villages
and castles; a game between
artist and audience that’s
11

B U L L E V A R D
Kyoka Yamamoto confounds gravity in the Turned Over Chamber
formulated to deceive you
into seeing things that are
not really there.
A couple of years ago, while
walking around Tricklandia,
an idea struck Valko: “What if
I use this dream-like location
to create a dance video?” He
flew three of the world’s best
freestyle street dancers – Dassy
Lee, Angyil McNeal and Kyoka
Yamamoto – across the world
to perform their outstanding
choreographies amid its optical
illusions and misleading
scenarios. In the performance,
nothing is how it first appears
– it’s all in your head.
The Red Bulletin spoke to
director Valko and dancer Lee
about the process of creating
this magical spectacle and
introducing freestyle street
dance to a wider audience.
the red bulletin: What
inspired you to use
Tricklandia as a location?
valko: I first discovered
the experience with my kids.
There are just so many visual
“ONE ROOM
WAS ALL
MIRRORS. THE
CREW WERE
FALLING OVER”
elements there. My filming
style is to always be as weird
as possible, and I thought,
“There are not many places
in the world like this. I have
to do something with it.”
How was the experience
of shooting in such a unique
and surreal location?
lee: It was awesome. There
are so many rooms that move
around you and look crazy.
It was difficult to dance
through, though; everything
is mirrored, so I was hitting
walls because I couldn’t see
where to go. We got pretty
nauseous dancing in there.
v: The illusions make you
feel dizzy when walking
through them. It feels like
they’re pulling you down,
and they disorientate you.
We used one room that’s
upside down, and one that’s
made entirely of mirrors –
even the crew were falling
about in there. There’s also a
‘never-ending room’; we knew
freestyle popping would look
really good in there, but it was
still hard to show on camera
just how crazy it actually was.
What’s freestyle popping?
l: It’s a street style of dance.
You use all of the muscles in
your body to contract with the
rhythm of the music. It can
look very robotic sometimes.
v: Most people don’t know
the difference between
popping and hip-hop dance.
It’s hard for a mainstream
audience to understand what
Valko’s film makes full use of Tricklandia’s illusionary installations
they are. In my opinion,
popping is way more difficult
than breaking, because it’s a
dance based on contractions.
You can practise popping like
crazy for a whole month and
not really see any progress.
With breakdance, you learn
a basic six-step and at the end
of a month you’ll know it,
even if it’s a bit sloppy. With
popping, you practise and
practise and still see nothing.
How important is the music
to your creative process?
v: It’s always the most
important point. Once I’ve
figured out the music, I can
start with everyone else. It
inspires me for what I’m going
to shoot. With this video, it
was different: I already had
my vision, which came from
the crazy location, so I just
needed to find the right
music to fit it.
l: It’s important to have
timing throughout the track
that is always changing – and
to have a strong beat. It’s all
about being able to use our
bodies to play with sound in
an authentic way.
How important was it to
feature three female dancers
in the video?
v: These girls are the best
poppers we have. They killed
it. They’re better than most
of the male dancers.
l: A lot of street dancing is
dominated by men. There
aren’t that many female
dancers. It was awesome to
see different styles of strong
women dancing in one dope
video. If we can show this
more, maybe we can inspire
more women to come and
give it a go. It will show
people there are lots of
different types of dancer
you can be as a woman.
Watch the full Tricklandia
performance at redbull.com
VLADIMIR LORINC/RED BULL CONTENT POOL LOU BOYD
12 THE RED BULLETIN

Highly
recommended
LYD & BILDE
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December 2017
Kygo A9/600
Kygo Life unites my love of music with modern Scandinavian design.
The aim is to develop top–quality audio equipment that sounds amazing
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continually improve. So, as each product evolves it embraces the latest
technology and focuses on perfecting the details until I’m absolutely
happy the end result is the best it can be.
KYRRE GØRVELL-DAHLL
Creative Director, Kygo Life

Yosemite, USA
EDGE OF
THE WORLD
B U L L E V A R D
Rising almost 1,500m above Yosemite
Valley and 2,700m above sea level, Half
Dome is a California icon. The granite
formation at the eastern end of the valley
is the summit of a legendary hiking route
which, until a couple of years ago, was just
an item on photographer Emilio Maglione-
Fulco’s bucket list. When he finally got the
chance to hike it, he reached its peak at first
light, just as the sun began to illuminate the
valley. The photographer’s gaze was drawn
to this little diving board of a rock – “a small
outcropping far from the classic photo-op”
– where he captured his companion, fellow
snapper Justin Mayers, walking to the edge.
“The way it cantilevered over the void
allowed us to showcase the immensity of
the rock face,” says Maglione-Fulco. “Only
Yosemite is capable of making one feel
such an awe-inspiring sense of scale.”
Instagram: @emiliomag
EMILIO MAGLIONE-FULCO
14 THE RED BULLETIN

THE RED BULLETIN 15

B U L L E V A R D
ANYmal: it won’t chew
the sofa, poo on the
carpet, or try to hump
your leg… unless you
program it to
Robotic courier
POSTMAN’S
BEST FRIEND
The future of home delivery
is going to the dogs
B efore too long, dogs
may be in charge of more than
just bringing you the morning
newspaper. In partnership with
automotive firm Continental,
robotics start-up ANYbotics
has conjured up another view
of the future: one where
packages are delivered by
mechanical canine courier.
ANYmal is a multipurpose
robot with the ability to sense
its surroundings and carry
heavy weights while traversing
complex terrain. “It’s a delivery
robot the size of an average
dog,” says Péter Fankhauser,
co-founder of the Zürich-based
start-up. “Standing 70cm
tall and 80cm long, it has a
camera in its head, flexible
joints, and is able to jump and
move autonomously in an
unfamiliar environment.”
ANYmal is not the only canineinspired
automaton around:
Boston Dynamics’ SpotMini,
unveiled in 2016, was demoed
opening doors. When the
robopocalypse comes, it’s likely
to enter the room on all fours.
In the meantime, we’re
still convinced they’ll serve us.
Visitors to electronics trade
show CES in Las Vegas in
January saw ANYmal step off
a delivery truck with a parcel,
walk up to a front door in a
mocked-up suburban garden,
ring the doorbell, then leave
the package on the porch.
While the reality of these
delivery dogs may be a while
away yet, in the shorter term
ANYbotics is planning to use
them to carry out industrial
inspections or safety work
in conditions that would be
too hazardous for humans.
Or indeed real dogs.
anybotics.com
ANYBOTICS CHRISTINE VITEL
16 THE RED BULLETIN

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B U L L E V A R D
Red Bull
BC One
POINT
BREAK
Winning moves at
the UK qualifiers
B-boy Jackson Watson and
B-girl Vanessa Marina wiped the
(scuffed lino) floor with their
fellow breakdancers at this
year’s Red Bull BC One Cypher
UK. The knock-out competition
at Village Underground in east
London featured the first-ever
B-girl qualifier battle on British
soil, and Marina dropped to her
knees on hearing that all three
judges had named her the
winner. Both dancers will now
represent the UK at the BC One
World Final in Mumbai, India,
on November 9.
redbull.com
Above: B-girl Vanessa beat her rival Rawgina to
take the crown. Below: in his final bout, Watson
triumphed against fellow B-boy Izaak
EVA BERTEN PHOTOGRAPHY LOU BOYD
18 THE RED BULLETIN

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B U L L E V A R D
3 4
Ocean Space
Habitat
1
SLEEPING WITH
THE FISHES
This ocean explorer has made it
possible to sleep underwater –
by creating a subaquatic tent
2
5
1. The inflatable
habitat is attached
to bridles anchored
to the sea floor
2. Interior atmosphere
is maintained by a
replenishable oxygen
source with carbondioxide
extractors
3. A dry chamber
accommodates two
divers in comfort,
three at a push
4. The fabric-embedded
vinyl shell is reinforced
with nylon straps and
has windows
5. The entire habitat
collapses down to
luggage size for
transportation
H umans have always
daydreamed about living in
the ocean; from stories of
mermaids to the lost city
of Atlantis, the deep sea
occupies a vivid place in
our imagination. Now, an
underwater tent that allows
us to breathe, eat and sleep
hundreds of metres below
the surface is bringing that
fantasy closer to reality.
The concept behind the
Ocean Space Habitat is pretty
simple: made from vinyl
and nylon with polyester
strapping, it has internal aircirculating
fans and carbondioxide
scrubbers to provide
a breathable atmosphere for
up to six hours. “It’s much like
placing an inverted glass in
a sink to make an air pocket,”
says its co-creator, ocean
scientist Michael Lombardi.
“It’s essentially a tent filled
with air that displaces the
water inside, creating a void.”
We currently accomplish
very limited and temporary
visits to the undersea world.
Compare the knowledge we
have of the ocean bed with
the exploration of outer space:
whereas 12 humans have
stepped onto the surface of
the Moon, only three have
descended to the deepest part
of the ocean. “For more than
half a century, divers have
gone by the rule that we can
dive to 60ft [18m] for 60
minutes without suffering
from decompression sickness.
Bring an underwater habitat
into the mix, however, and
a researcher can spend six
hours or more working at 60ft
throughout the day.”
The next step for the camp
is to attempt overnight trips.
“The atmosphere has to be
monitored and managed
for both carbon dioxide
and oxygen,” says Lombardi.
“Our goal over the next year
is to develop protocols that
allow for an overnight stay.
An afternoon hike is always
beneficial to learning, but an
overnight or weekend-long
camping trip sheds light on
all sorts of new discoveries
within that environment.
My hope is that we can stray
away from being short-time
visitors to the ocean towards
having a more intertwined
relationship with and within
the sea.”
Atlantis may only be
a fantasy, but this two-man
tent is our first step to a
genuine undersea life.
oceanopportunity.com
MICHAEL LOMBARDI LOU BOYD CHRISTINA LOCK
20 THE RED BULLETIN

You have to be made of stern stuff to live and ride in Fort William year round which makes Joe Barnes’ Hazzard Racing a perfect
match to the no-nonsense DNA of Endura kit. The roots of which are still firmly grounded in Scotland where they have been
engineering and testing their kit for over twenty-five years in some of the harshest conditions imaginable.
On one hand, Joe is a massively accomplished racer having stood on the illustrious podium steps of the Enduro World Series. The other
half is one of hectic pan and zoom videos with plenty of rut slashing and bog bashing, weird and wacky storylines which only their minds
could conjure up. They’ll have you both crying with laughter and have your eyes popping from your skull in disbelief at the riding.
It’s far removed from a clean cut, slow-mo saturated, high budget production, but that’s the beauty of it. A welcome breath of fresh air in
an ever-increasingly commercially monotone cycling world, where a dose of personality and originality certainly goes a long way.
Hazzard Racing isn’t bothered about conforming to the usual expectations of how the majority of top-level athletes and race teams tend to
go about their business, including in their aesthetics. Free of the constraints of a factory race outfit, Joe and Hazzard Racing can realise
their creatively wacky ideas which are developed and brought to life in the kit provided to them by Endura design team.
Hazzard Racing ride and race in the all-new ultra-lightweight MT500 Full Face Helmet coming in at a meagre 580 gms (M/L)
despite being fully downill certified. They also ride Endura’s new MT500 Lite and Hard Shell Knee Pads,
putting them through the rigours both between the race tape and in their hardcore day to day riding.
#ProtectionItsInOurDNA
RENEGADE PROGRESS
endurasport.com

B U L L E V A R D
“THE MOST
REBELLIOUS
THING YOU CAN
DO IS TO STAY
WHO YOU ARE”
Very Old Skateboarders
SKATE OF MIND
In her sixties, Lena Salmi has created
a global skateboarding movement to prove
that the sport isn’t only for teens
I n February last year,
Facebook staged a showcase
on London’s South Bank,
where it exhibited photos
of its most inspiring groups.
Among them was an online
community of skateboarders.
But the group wasn’t chosen
in recognition of its members’
talents or awards. Far from
being teenage wonders, the
average age of the skaters was
closer to 60 than 16, and their
only care was skating for as
long as they could.
The Very Old Skateboarders
and Longboarders group is
a global movement of almost
4,000 skaters, aged largely
between 60 and 99, who are
challenging what the world
of skateboarding looks like.
It was founded in 2013 by
two women, Lena Salmi (now
65) and Elizabeth Stuart
(67), who believed they were
being judged unfairly because
of their age.
“When I met Elizabeth
[at a longboarding camp in
France], we felt like people
were treating us like old
ladies, like we couldn’t do
stuff,” says Salmi. “It made
us realise that no one can
treat us like that, and that we
were as good as anybody else.
We were inspired to make
a space that’s just for older
skateboarders.”
Come 2019 and the group
has snowballed into something
much bigger. Its Facebook
page is updated every day
with videos and photos of its
thousands of ageing skaters,
shot at skate competitions,
skate parks and even group
meet-ups across the world. Its
members have been filmed
for BBC documentaries and
interviewed by global media.
The group’s ethos, however,
has remained the same.
“The only entry
requirement is that at some
point you’ve thought you
were too old to skateboard,”
says Salmi. “Our youngest
member was a 50-year-old
woman. People had asked
her, ‘Why are you doing that
kind of kids’ stuff?’”
According to Salmi, the
important thing to learn from
the Very Old Skateboarders
is to not judge on first sight.
“Open your mind and your
ideas,” she says. “Of course
skateboarding is rebellious
when you are 65, but, in my
opinion, the most rebellious
thing you can do is to always
stay exactly who you are.”
facebook.com/groups/
VeryOldSkateboarders
BEN AWIN/HYPEBAE LOU BOYD
22 THE RED BULLETIN

B U L L E V A R D
B orn in Norway to
Somali parents, and raised in
Finland and Sweden on a diet
of Bollywood and American
R&B, Sherihan ‘Cherrie’
Hersi’s cultural frame of
reference is unsurprisingly
broad. Nowhere is this more
evident than on her second
album, 2018’s Araweelo, on
which she transforms R&B’s
contemporary sound aesthetics
into inspiring anthems sung
in Swedish for third-culture
kids (meaning those raised
in a culture different from
their parents’) like herself.
The album gained the
27-year-old a nomination at
this year’s Swedish Grammy
awards, and having already
worked with Stormzy – the
grime superstar contributed
English lyrics to her 2016
song Aldrig igen [må sådär]
– Cherrie’s global profile was
raised further thanks to props
from the likes of Rihanna,
SZA and Ariana Grande.
the red bulletin: Your
viral hit 163 För Evigt (‘163
Forever’) is an ode to your
home suburb of Rinkeby,
dubbed by conservative
media as a no-go area…
cherrie: As a kid, if someone
asked, “Hey, what part of
Stockholm do you live in?”
you’d lie and name an area
that’s pretty close to Rinkeby,
otherwise people would see
you as someone from the
ghetto. But I wouldn’t say
it’s a no-go area at all.
How would you describe it?
It’s a melting pot. I always
thought it was such a special
place, and that we’re the
coolest people. Growing up
with so many different
influences and cultures makes
you smart at understanding
the world and how you fit in.
To stay independent, you’ve
turned down several offers
from record labels. Why is
that so important to you?
It’s not an obvious thing for
artists to have ownership.
Cherrie
“SOMALI MUMS ARE
SUPERHEROES”
The Swedish-Somalian R&B singer lets
loose on the supposed ghetto she grew up
in, her kick-ass mum, and the importance
of being an independent artist
Most of these huge artists
we see, they don’t own their
music; they create art that
someone else takes from them
and makes money from. So,
for me to be independent
means a lot, because I create
security for myself and my
family. And it shows other
people who come from
nothing that you don’t need
to sign [a label contract]; that
you can just buy a computer
and learn how to make music
and then record yourself.
“WE RINKEBY
PEOPLE ARE
THE COOLEST”
So the desire to inspire
your peers forms part of
your creative drive?
Owning houses or becoming
CEOs… those are not things
that people [who live in
Rinkeby] dare to dream
about. For them, to see
someone like me – a black,
Muslim woman – release
my own music, tour around
the world or work with Vogue
[magazine] instils some hope
in them. And really and truly,
hope is the only thing that is
going to push us all forward
as a society.
Do you think your Somali
heritage has an impact on
your music?
Somalia is called the ‘land of
a thousand poets’, so for me
making music has never been
a weird thing, because music
is something that helps Somali
people cope during the worst
times. Also, Somali mums are
the strongest people I’ve ever
met. They are superheroes.
For me to come from a place
where women are so
dominant, it affirms my whole
essence – like me having my
own label, Araweelo.
What does Araweelo mean?
Araweelo was an ancient
queen who ruled over Somalia
and was super badass. [In
Somalia], even if there is
a dad in the family, women
are the man in the house. And
having that female energy has
given me the drive.
Is your mother a fan of
your music?
She has been to a couple
of my concerts. She’s the
sweetest. She knows Swedish,
but she doesn’t understand
a lot of my lyrics, so she
makes my little brother
play my music for her and
explain every single word.
Fashion brand AlphaTauri
visited Cherrie in Rinkeby
to talk about music and how
growing up there has shaped
her career. Watch the video
at win.gs/AlphaTauriCherrie;
alphatauri.com;
twitter.com/Chxrrie
CYPRIEN CLÉMENT-DELMAS FLORIAN OBKIRCHER
24 THE RED BULLETIN

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B U L L E V A R D
UNDERWORLD
BORN SLIPPY (1995)
“This tune perfectly captures
a woozy, heady party night. It
reminds me of happier, less bleak
times. Britain in the ’90s was
quite a hedonistic place for the
artistic community: there was
Britpop, and you also had so
many new young artists coming
through in modern art and
fashion. It was before my time,
but it’s definitely an interesting
period to rediscover.”
Bastille
“TAKE THE BLUE PILL
AND GET LOST”
REM
IT’S THE END OF THE WORLD
AS WE KNOW IT (AND I FEEL
FINE) (1987)
“I imagine it’d be fun to jump
around singing this song on
our last night on Earth. Music is
about articulating things that
you maybe haven’t thought,
but it’s also about escapism
and distraction. These are the
moments to strive for; they can
offer solace from this bizarrely
fucked-up world we live in. So
take the blue pill and get lost.”
The British indie-pop giants pick their
playlist for an end-of-the-world party
Formed in 2010 by London-born lead singer Dan Smith,
Bastille had their big breakthrough three years later
with the single Pompeii, taken from their debut album, Bad
Blood. By the following year, it had become the UK’s most
streamed single of all time and won the band the title of
British Breakthrough Act at the BRIT Awards. Now, following
the global success of their 2018 single Happier, which featured
US music producer Marshmello, the foursome have upped
the ante with their new album, Doom Days, described by
Smith as “an apocalyptic party”. Which is why he’s chosen
to soundtrack Earth’s big send-off for us…
Bastille’s new album Doom Days is out now; bastillebastille.com
THE BEATLES
BECAUSE (1969)
“For us, a good night out means
being with friends who don’t
work in music, who don’t pop
champagne corks with models
– that’s just not our life. On our
last night on Earth, we’d have
a little dance, then we’d have a
little cry together. Musically
you want something to wind
down to, and this is a great one
to go out on.”
MOBY
PLAY (1999)
“If there’s a perfect soundtrack
for the end-of-the-world afterparty,
it’s this album. Do you know
the podcast Heavyweight [by
Canadian-American humorist
Jonathan Goldstein]? There’s an
episode [Gregor] where the guy
who lent Moby the gospel CDs
he sampled heavily on this album
asks for them back. It’s so good
and really funny – check it out.”
UNIVERSAL MUSIC MARCEL ANDERS
26 THE RED BULLETIN

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TARON
EGERTON
The Dwight
Stuff
Words RÜDIGER STURM
and JULIA ZIMANOFSKY
In his new film, Egerton relates the story of another
man balancing his artistic career with life in the
spotlight. Rocketman sees him play a young Reginald
Dwight – who became better known as Elton John
– as he wrestles with the trials and tribulations of
fame and fortune. “I have a comparatively very
meagre experience,” Egerton says. “I’m an actor from
Wales who has been in five or six films. He is Elton
John.” Here, the 29-year-old talks about portraying
a living legend and how he got to know the real man
behind the performance…
He’s playing one of the world’s
most celebrated icons, but the
actor is all too aware of the
dangers of fame and fortune
Taron Egerton has been on the verge of superstardom
for a few years now. The British actor’s breakthrough
moment came in 2014, when he starred in the bigscreen
spy comedy Kingsman: The Secret Service, a role
that looked as if it would catapult him into squarejawed
leading-man territory. The film franchise
instantly made him a household name, a situation
he found challenging. “You become the focus of
attention,” says Egerton, who was born in Birkenhead,
near Liverpool, but grew up on the island of Anglesey
in north Wales. “It requires you to simultaneously
be very vulnerable and emotionally exposed, but
also incredibly robust and thick-skinned.”
the red bulletin: How old were you when
you first became aware of Elton John?
taron egerton: He’s been ever-present throughout
my life, and I’ve been a fan of his music since I was
very young. I was 12 when his Greatest Hits album
came out in 2002, and my stepdad and I used to sing
along to I Guess That’s Why They Call It The Blues
while driving to school. Then I sang Your Song to
get into drama school when I was 17. He was my
audition piece and now I’m playing him.
How did you go about creating your character
for this film?
This idea of becoming someone else, like, “He
became so-and-so, he was channelling so-and-so”…
you can’t fucking channel someone. I’m an actor and
I created a character with elements that are hopefully
informed by the real person. My performance, while
acknowledging the extremes of Elton’s character and
not hiding the fact he has had difficulties, is also just
my interpretation of him – and my interpretation is
GAVIN BOND
28 THE RED BULLETIN

“My stepdad
and I would sing
along to Elton
songs on the
way to school”
THE RED BULLETIN 29

Taron Egerton
that he is one of the most amazing people I have ever
met. At the forefront of my mind was that I wanted
everyone to fall in love with him all over again.
Was this a nerve-racking role to take on?
I felt it was a part that I could do. There is some
crossover between his personality and mine; I don’t
think I am quite as extreme as Elton, but I do feel
that there are extremes of feeling and emotion in me.
I am someone who is quite ‘heart on the sleeve’, and
I know I can be a very big personality, but I’m also
someone who can be quite vulnerable. I feel that’s
who Elton is as well. Don’t get me wrong, I was
hugely intimidated and scared and I felt a huge
amount of pressure, but I had quite an inherent sense
that it was a part that I could or should play.
How was your relationship with
Elton John while making the film?
I know that for the sake of promotion
I’m required to say we have become
good friends, but we really have.
I really love him and I felt quite lucky
to be let into his life. It meant that
the experience of making the film
felt important, not just in the sense
of the legacy of Elton John, but
because I care about him as a man.
He’s a really beautiful person.
Tantrums, tiaras and Taron: Egerton as Elton John in new biopic Rocketman
Is it true he gave you access to his diaries?
Yes, he let me read his diaries when I went to stay at
his house. He has diaries from 1971 to 1976 that he
thought were lost, and he only reacquired them a few
years ago. They were great and really informative.
One entry that has stuck in my mind is: “Woke up
this morning – went to the laundry – wrote a song
called Honky Cat.” Then the next day it would be
something equally iconic.
The film doesn’t shy away from portraying Elton
John’s problems. Can you understand how
someone who is successful in showbusiness gets
involved with drugs?
Yes. It’s everywhere. There is no escaping from it
in the entertainment industry, and you have a lot
of very expressive, emotional, vulnerable people.
Singers, actors, artists… we all feel the need to
convey something about our experience of the world.
That means you expose yourself. It can be quite
intense and you feel like there is a spotlight on you.
Also, this is fucking Elton John. He was Elton John at
23 and he has been Elton John for the past 50 years.
He has been one of the most famous people alive for
decades. The pressure that comes with that, as well
as the allure of incredibly glitzy, seemingly perfect
party experiences? I can totally understand.
Do you ever feel that kind of
pressure in the public eye?
When I leave these junket days, I’ll
go back to my flat and I can’t sit still.
I have to walk around, I have to call
people, I have to do stuff. Because
although this feels like a conversation,
I’m actually performing. I’m trying to
be genuine and create a true version
of myself, but I am still attempting
to convey that version through the
quality of performance. It’s really hard
to come down from that. When I have
troubles in my life, I call my mum. She
is rational, sane, functional, normal,
and she has wisdom to impart. I don’t
know that Elton had that with his
mother and other people in his life.
How do you protect yourself from the problems
that Elton John went through?
I am not Elton John and I don’t know if he did protect
himself very well. He got very involved in that
lifestyle and ended up going to rehab, where he
saved himself. That’s what our film is about. It’s
about Elton John saving himself.
Rocketman is in cinemas nationwide from May 24;
paramount.com/movies/rocketman
©2018 PARAMOUNT PICTURES. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
30 THE RED BULLETIN

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DANIELA
RYF
The Unfair
Advantage
What’s the secret power source of the
world’s greatest female triathlete?
Problems. Daniela Ryf reveals how
failure can unlock an untapped battery,
fully charged and ready to go
Words ALEX LISETZ
Photography
PHILIPP MUELLER,
AGNIESZKA DOROSZEWICZ

Steep uphill climb: Ryf has
gone from exceptional
Swiss talent to the world’s
top female triathlete
33

Daniela Ryf
Daniela Ryf is amazingly
good at swimming,
cycling and running
fast, and incredibly bad
at swimming, cycling
and running slowly.
“I want to give it my
all every time I train,”
she says. “I only want
Daniela to give it her all in races,” her
Australian trainer Brett Sutton counters.
The search for a compromise has
been going on for five years. Every couple
of weeks, it escalates to shouting and
screaming. Ryf isn’t nicknamed ‘Angry
Bird’ for nothing. “She needs to learn to
focus her strengths,” Sutton has insisted
since 2015. “Nobody would beat her for
years.” But Ryf wants to do things the
hard way. “I can only get better when
I push myself to the limit,” she says.
But what really delivers success?
Strategic training or total commitment?
Maybe it’s the balance that comes from
this quest for a compromise. After all,
Ryf is the best female triathlete in the
world today. The 31-year-old from
the Swiss canton of Solothurn has won
every Ironman World Championship
since 2015. She has picked up four
Ironman 70.3 (half-distance triathlon)
World Championship titles, two Ironman
European Championship crowns, and
at last year’s Ironman World Champs
in Hawaii she set a new course record
of 8:26:18. Her trainer believes that,
given perfect conditions, Ryf could shave
another 15 minutes off her time. That
would place her in the men’s top 10.
And Ryf’s course record in 2018 was
attained in the face of crazy adversity: she
was stung by a jellyfish shortly before
the start, and handicapped by pain and
numbness during the swim (see page 40).
Who knows what time she could have
achieved in optimal conditions?
Is Ryf so successful because she can
put herself through the ringer like no one
else? Is it because she’s more talented,
trains harder and has greater willpower?
Possibly. But the Swiss triathlete has her
own secret for success: she doesn’t solve
problems, she uses them as a source of
energy. Here, Ryf provides six examples
of pain-driven power from her career…
Acts of nature teach
you patience
May 8, 2010, ITU World Championship, Seoul
The biggest win of her career at the
time, this triathlon saw Ryf produce an
explosive sprint finish to beat both the
world number one and the reigning world
champion and finally establish her place
among the global elite. But following
a relaxed victory celebration at a South
Korean club and a short stopover in
Singapore, she then endured the worst
flight of her life, spending most of the
10,300km journey to Zürich in the toilet.
From that day on, for almost two years,
Ryf battled persistent and careerthreatening
intestinal problems.
“I mostly suffered this deadening
fatigue,” she recalls. “But the constant
nausea was almost as bad. As soon as
I exerted myself in training, I had to throw
34 THE RED BULLETIN

“I CAN ONLY
GET BETTER IF
I PUSH MYSELF
TO THE LIMIT”
Ryf doesn’t believe in relaxed
training sessions

CRASH. DISLOCATE
SHOULDER. RECOVER.
RECHARGE. REFOCUS.
RETURN. WIN. TWICE.
CRASH. BREAK HAND.
RECOVER. REPEAT.
IT’S THE ATTITUDE THAT MAKES YOU SECOND TO NONE.

Daniela Ryf
“THE PAIN GAVE
MY BODY
EXTRA ENERGY”
Ryf on being stung by a
jellyfish at Ironman Hawaii
up. It wasn’t long before I felt like not
giving it my all. I felt bad all the time.”
Ryf suffered for almost a year and
a half before doctors finally diagnosed
small intestinal bacterial overgrowth,
or SIBO (excessive bacteria in the small
intestine). With the right diagnosis, she
was back to form within a matter of
months. “In that year and a half, I had
to learn that I couldn’t just crowbar my
way through everything. The patience
I learnt at that time now helps both in
training and in the races themselves.”
She continues, “I enjoy training really
hard a lot more now, because I remember
how bad it was not being able to put my
foot to the floor the way I wanted.”
Being behind gives
you control
October 15, 2017, Ironman Hawaii
For the world’s top endurance athletes,
the Ironman World Championship isn’t
just an opportunity to go head to head
in a show of power, but also a chance to
demonstrate their mental strength. Lucy
Charles, Ryf’s fiercest rival that year, knew
that. The young Brit set an incredible time
in the 3.86km swim – Ryf’s weakest area
– missing the 18-year-old record of 48m
43s by just five seconds. Furthermore,
Charles went on to extend her lead in the
cycling – Ryf’s strongest area. At halfway,
the Swiss triathlete was six minutes
behind. She needed to turn up the heat.
“Your position at the split time doesn’t
matter – the important thing is crossing
the finish line first,” Ryf explains. This
applies to any long-distance exercise,
but it’s especially true in Ironman where,
she says, “the race only really gets going
five or six hours in”. But how to stay cool
when you’ve lost ground to your rival?
“It’s easier for the hunter to stay cool
than the hunted,” Ryf opines. “After all,
it’s the hunter who’s in control of the
situation. The hunted is threatened from
behind, whereas the hunter has a carrot
dangling on a stick in front of them. The
hunter can calmly observe, study and
take aim at the hunted ahead of them.
The hunted has to maintain their pace
and hope they don’t suffer a slump in
form. So the hunter can decide when they
want to give it their all and overtake.”
And that’s exactly what Ryf did in
Hawaii in 2017. Over the course of the
final 40km of the cycle, she turned up
the heat and went into the lead, then
she proceeded to extend her advantage
during the run. She crossed the finish
line with tears in her eyes, almost nine
minutes ahead of Lucy Charles.
What slows you down
now will make you
faster in the future
March 2017, training session, Gran Canaria
Ryf was preparing for a season in which
she hoped to surpass herself. It was still
early in the year, but she already sensed
that feeling she loved so much: the
relaxedness of perfectly honed muscles
and concentrated energy in her arms and
legs. That morning, swim training was
on the agenda. Regardless of the tempo
of her swimming, Ryf barrelled her way
through rough water. Suddenly, a twinge
between her shoulders shattered her
concentration. She’d torn a muscle. She
could barely turn her head the next
morning and had to take a complete
break for 10 days. How the hell would
she be ready for her first challenge of
the season, Ironman South Africa?
“The injury completely ruined my
preparations,” Ryf recalls. Instead of
being able to train harder every day,
she was condemned to immobility.
“I didn’t even feel I was an athlete any
more,” she explains. But as the days
passed, her thinking changed: she would
no longer set her targets by the stopwatch
or through clocking up kilometres;
instead, she would do it by marking her
THE RED BULLETIN 37

Daniela Ryf
“YOUR POSITION AT
THE SPLIT TIME
DOESN’T MATTER.
YOU’VE GOT TO
CROSS THE FINISH
LINE FIRST”
Ryf says she’d rather be the
hunter than the hunted
stages of recovery. When she could turn
her head a centimetre more than the
week before, she celebrated.
On the eve of the year’s first Ironman,
it was still unclear whether Ryf would
be able to complete the swim at all;
she was still receiving treatment from
a chiropractor shortly before the event
got underway. But still she threw herself
into it, completing the swim, giving
everything on the bike and eventually
winning the race. A happy ending, then?
No. This was just the salutary opening
gambit of a powerful, secret mental
weapon. Anything that slows you down
is a dead weight that you can throw off
next time.
“I’ve started every race since South
Africa with less weight on my shoulders,”
explains Ryf. “I think of the extent to
which that injury put limitations on me
and yet it couldn’t stop me winning. And
then I’m happy that there’s absolutely
nothing putting limitations on me right
now. I imagine myself throwing off the
dead weight from back then, and I think
of how I can do even better now. That
thought is like an extra ace up my sleeve.”
Mistakes bring
wisdom
July 3, 2016, Ironman European
Championship, Frankfurt
This was an important race for Ryf. She
wanted to win it, as she had done the year
before, both to assert her position and to
gain greater confidence for the next race.
She was also aiming to qualify for the
season highlight in Kona, Hawaii.
But there were already signs of things
not going to plan during the swim. It was
a cool day, the water wasn’t warm, and
Ryf couldn’t get into her rhythm. She
placed all her hopes on her specialist
field – the cycling – but her problems just
seemed to get bigger. Travelling at speeds
of 40kph with a cold wind to contend
with, Ryf’s skinny frame – she’s 1.75m
tall and weighed 57kg – cooled down
ever further, then went on strike. Her
pedalling had no more power and she was
dropping down through the field. For the
first time in her life, she ended up retiring,
bitterly disappointed and humiliated.
“That was an abject day for me,” Ryf
says. “But I learnt a lot.” She took away
two valuable lessons from Frankfurt. The
first: “I’d always thought I could achieve
whatever I wanted as long as I trained
hard enough and got the most out of my
body. But I also have to pay attention to
the small details of what my body needs
to be able to work perfectly.” In this case,
it might have been enough to put on an
extra layer of clothing when she got on the
bike, maybe just a pair of arm-warmers.
The second lesson? “It doesn’t matter how
good I am when I’m good, it matters how
good I am when I’m bad. Ever since that
day, I’ve known I’m only really seriously
prepared when I can win a race on a bad
day.” The most important realisation was
that while mistakes may drive you mad,
it’s better to learn from them.
Defeat focuses
your senses
October 11, 2014, Ironman Hawaii
A month after winning the Ironman 70.3
World Championship in Canada, Ryf
lined up at the start in Kona for her first
Iron Man Hawaii. She’d already had an
extremely successful season, winning
more World Triathlon Corporation (WTC)
prize money than any other female
38 THE RED BULLETIN

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Daniela Ryf
In 2018, Ryf won
her fourth Ironman
World Championship
in Hawaii in a row –
and set a new course
record in the process
triathlete, and now she was in the World
Championship. Ryf demonstrated her
superiority on the bike to the full – eightand-a-half
hours in, she was way out in
front, about to take the title – but 5km
from the finish, the fire inside went out.
Australia’s Mirinda Carfrae had made up
the 10 minutes between them. She closed
in on Ryf, overtook and set a pace that the
Swiss athlete couldn’t keep up with.
“After the race, I might well have been
proud to have given it my best,” Ryf says.
“But when I crossed the finish line, I was
already thinking about the next year. After
all, I now knew how close I’d come to
victory.” Since then, she has woken every
morning with the same thought, playing
and replaying the moment Carfrae closed
in, then passed her at an irresistible pace.
Ryf promptly started the following season
with a string of wins. “The fact I couldn’t
keep pace with Mirinda still motivates me
“I IMAGINE
THROWING OFF
DEAD WEIGHT”
in every training session,” she says, even
though younger athletes are now more of
a threat than Carfrae. “If I imagine Mirinda
drawing up beside me, I immediately
pedal harder or run 1kph faster.” Ryf has
transformed a defeat into the perfect
mental stimulation to give purpose to her
exertions, and it’s been the basis for dozens
of subsequent victories. A pretty good deal.
Bad luck mobilises
your energy reserves
October 13, 2018, Ironman Hawaii
As she prepared for the start of the year’s
most important race, the defending
champion felt unbeatable. Ryf was in
fantastic form and had done all of her
homework. But with just two minutes
to go before the swim began, a jellyfish
stung the underside of both her upper
arms. The pain shot through her entire
body, right to the tips of her fingers. The
previous year, a competitor was forced to
retire from the race for the same reason
and was rushed straight to hospital. Ryf
didn’t let anything show and set off into
the maelstrom with the others.
But the pain soon grew worse and she
began falling metre upon metre further
behind. Then her arms went numb and
she began to doubt whether she would
be able to complete the 3.86km swim.
Ryf had already given up hope of a finish
near the top of the leaderboard, but she
was determined to carry on out of respect
for the race itself. She now thought of
finishing the race in 14, maybe 15 hours,
way down in last place. But when she
climbed onto her bike, Ryf realised she
was only 10 minutes off the pace. Maybe
this wasn’t over after all.
“In the water, I went through all the
emotions you can imagine,” she says.
“But once I was on the bike, I could think
clearly again.” Ryf decided to ascribe
new meaning to the jellyfish sting: “I
imagined how an extra dash of anger and
additional energy had entered my body
with the pain, and that I’d only be able to
get both out of my body the harder and
more relentlessly I pedalled.” She rode
faster than she’d ever ridden in her life.
Ryf picked off her rivals one by one,
and by the time she started the run, she’d
notched up the fastest-ever bike ride by
a female athlete at Kona. She finished the
race in 8:26:18, which made her not only
world champion but the holder of a new
course record. In doing so, Ryf proved that
our inner transformer can turn negative
energy into something productive. Pain
can give you extra power.
danielaryf.ch
40 THE RED BULLETIN

In an age of spoilers,
how can you create
a cultural phenomenon
built around the art
of revealing nothing?
SECRET CINEMA
spills the beans...
Words TOM GUISE

The Empire Strikes Back,
Printworks London (2015)
“We didn’t want the audience
to know the X-wing was there,”
says producer Andrea Moccia.
“So it flew out of a hidden parking
space, shot a pyro into the
huge computer structure, landed,
and Luke Skywalker jumped out.
I’ve never seen so many
50-year-old men filled with joy.”
SECRET CINEMA/MIKE MASSARO
SECRET
POWER
43

Secret Cinema
At an undisclosed location in
London, the bustle of activity
is afoot. Inside a cavernous
warehouse spanning 6,000m 2 ,
contractors feverishly put
the finishing touches to a
ginormous set that resembles…
well, we’d best not say.
Performers rehearse routines in a startling
recreation of the backstreets of… actually,
never mind. A man who looks suspiciously like
Daniel Craig walks among them, broodingly
scanning his surroundings. Studying him is
Barbara Broccoli, producer of the James Bond
movies. This scene may or may not have
happened; we can’t really tell you, because
the first rule of Secret Cinema is: tell no one.
The second rule is: immerse yourself. This is
what hundreds of thousands of people have
done during Secret Cinema’s 12-year run.
It’s a commitment delivered on a promise –
you pay more than the regular cinema price
to see an old film. You’re told what to wear
and where to meet at a certain time on a
certain day. You’re forbidden to bring your
smartphone inside, or take pictures. And by
the time you leave, you’ve had one of the most
incredible experiences of your life. If that
sounds like a religion, it’s not far off. There
are two types of people in this world: those
who know the secret and those who don’t.
In 2012, Andrea Moccia attended Secret
Cinema presents The Shawshank Redemption.
The ticket directed him to an east London
library, where he was ushered into a makeshift
courtroom. “The judge sentenced you for
a crime you hadn’t committed,” he recalls.
“Policemen loaded you into a blacked-out van
that took you to a school transformed into a
prison, where other audience members were
shouting at you. You were stripped, put in a
prison uniform and locked in a cell. I left that
night thinking, ‘These people are insane and
I have to work with them.’” Today, he’s one
of lead producers for Secret Cinema.
“The first production I worked on was
Brazil,” says Moccia. “Day one, I walked into
the 12-floor building they’d transformed
into this dystopian world and got stuck in
a lift with [the film’s director] Terry Gilliam.
That was a baptism of fire.”
This is an apt phrase for anyone experiencing
their first Secret Cinema – a six-hour adventure
where you enter a sandbox recreation of a
movie’s universe with a narrative that unfolds
until it reaches a crescendo at the exact moment
the film begins. Last year, when Secret
Cinema adapted Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 movie
Romeo + Juliet – recreating the landscape of
Verona Beach for an audience of 5,000 a
night, with choirs, police cars, and a masked
ball at the Capulet mansion – the film director
described it as “a whole new art form”.
That art involves what Secret Cinema calls
‘mirror moments’, where performers reenact
scenes in perfect synchronisation with the
on-screen action. Before that, audiences
might encounter these characters on their
adventure. “One of my friends at Romeo +
Juliet texted to say girls were chasing the
actor playing Leonardo DiCaprio and crying
because he looked so real,” says Susan
Kulkarni, head of costume at Secret Cinema.
“I was like, ‘We nailed it,’ because that’s the
feeling I had as a teenager watching the film.”
For an event the size of Romeo + Juliet,
Kulkarni had a team of more than 30 working
on as many as 700 outfits on rotation. “The
actors have two or three changes throughout
the evening, then we costume the bar staff,
security, even the cleaners, because one
person wearing the wrong thing pulls you out
of the world.” Her team has to consider every
eventuality. “We create a capsule wardrobe
for each character, because if it’s raining you
have to imagine what else Juliet would wear.”
Kulkarni also has to consider the look of
the general public: “We use the audience to
Brazil, Croydon
“The main character
had to jump off a
tower block and abseil
wearing huge wings,
but seem to be flying,”
says Kulkarni. “We
only had a couple of
days to create the
wings. You figure it
out as you go.”
SECRET CINEMA/HANSON LEATHERBY
44 THE RED BULLETIN

The first rule of
Secret Cinema is: tell
no one. The second:
immerse yourself
Dr Strangelove, Printworks London (2016)
Following The Empire Strikes Back, this adaptation of
Stanley Kubrick's 1964 satire brought back the concept of
not revealing the film's identity. The audience had to dress
in military uniforms, and the screening took place in the
War Room. “The idea was to create a summit,” says Riggall.
“To make the audience feel like world leaders.”

Secret Cinema
create the world.” After a guest buys a ticket,
they’re assigned a character and given outfit
suggestions. “For The Shawshank Redemption
we asked everyone to come in a suit, but once
they were stripped we needed 1,200 prison
uniforms. I found a guy with some original
’40s Norwegian prison uniforms in his garage.
That made the audience feel part of the world,
because they were wearing something real.”
It was very different in 2009 when Kulkarni
first joined Secret Cinema for a one-day popup
of the Marx Brothers’ A Night at the Opera.
“That was the first that had costumes. It’s just
me with a rack of clothes and two days to
outfit 40 people,” she recalls. “A tall man
came in asking for costume. I put an outfit
together and because I didn’t panic I got a call
to join the company.” The man turned out to be
Fabien Riggall, the founder of Secret Cinema.
The idea came to Riggall as a child living
in Morocco in the ’80s. “I was 11 and I
went to this fleapit cinema in Casablanca
without knowing what the film was,”
he recalls. “It turned out to be Sergio Leone’s
Once Upon A Time In America – an insane film
with an epic [Ennio]Morricone soundtrack.
The protagonist was this boy a bit older
than me – Noodles – who was in love with
Deborah, played by Jennifer Connelly.
I transported myself and became Noodles.”
Seventeen years later, in 2003, Riggall
launched a short-film festival called Future
Shorts. “A friend of mine had this venue,
an underground bunker in Shepherd’s Bush
Green [in west London] called Ginglik, which
was one of those lavish toilets from the old
days. I put on a night – 12 short films, a DJ,
people chatting, drinking, in those days when
you could smoke inside. The idea evolved into
the feature-length Future Cinema with 1922
horror Nosferatu at London club SeOne.
“We didn’t reveal the film or location, and I
thought, ‘It’s not going to sell,’ but 400 people
came.” He experimented with an immersive
adaptation of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. “The
concept was, ‘How can we make this more
real?’ We wanted to play with mystery.”
In 2007, this became Secret Cinema.
“The first [Secret Cinema] was [Gus Van
Sant’s] Paranoid Park, about a skater accused
“People want
experiences that are
mysterious [and]
part of a bigger thing”
46 THE RED BULLETIN

SECRET CINEMA/HANSON LEATHERBY
28 Days Later,
Printworks London (2016)
Participants had to arrive at the 'hospital'
in scrubs for a routine vaccination,
only to 'awaken’ in a detailed recreation
of Danny Boyle's 2002 zombie horror,
except with food, cocktails and
a blood-soaked rave. The ‘patients’
watched the film from hospital beds.
THE RED BULLETIN 47

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Secret Cinema
SECRET CINEMA/LUKE DYSON/FRASER GILLESPIE
of murder. We did it in some tunnels beneath
London Bridge, filled with ramps and
halfpipes, and the audience became part of
the skateboard community in this hideout,
with staged police investigations.”
With each year, the events grew
in scale and ingenuity: Alien, Lawrence of
Arabia, Ghostbusters. Word-of-mouth built
hype, but attendees kept the secret. “I think
there’s a real desire to escape the looped
existence we have, where everything is
revealed and predictable, and everyone knows
where everyone is on social media,” says
Riggall. “In a world addicted to information,
that idea of secrecy is critical, as is a physical,
social thing you have to invest in – one you
can’t just click and download.”
Getting the audience invested has become
a science for Secret Cinema. “Lawrence Of
Arabia [2010] was the first time the audience
was really asked to participate,” says
Kulkarni. “At Alexandra Palace, we made a
huge souk [marketplace]. They had to bring
things to barter with, and exchanges were
happening on the Tube before they arrived.
We had Bedouin tents, and camels and horses
wandering out of Ally Pally.”
This attention to detail is even brought
to smaller events. “Secret Cinema X is an
underground format where we show films
that haven’t been released,” says Moccia.
“In 2017, we did a ‘Tell No One’ production,
where we don’t tell people what they’re going
to see.” It was The Handmaiden by Korean
director Park Chan-wook. “The performance
was done with silhouettes and you couldn’t
speak throughout the night. Walking into
a room with 1,000-plus people, all completely
silent. And at the bar you had to order on
a piece of paper. It was beautiful.”
In 2014, Secret Cinema delivered its most
ambitious project to date: Back To The
Future – a recreation of Hill Valley near
London’s Olympic Village. “People could
write letters to each other and postal workers
would deliver them within the venue,” says
Kulkarni. “Each house had a telephone you
could call the other houses with.”
The sheer scale proved too staggering; the
show wasn’t ready in time for launch. “It was
devastating not to be able to open on that
first night,” recalls Moccia. “But it’s a learning
process.” The show finally opened to rave
“You get to a point
where the audience
are the performers”
Moulin Rouge,
Printworks London (2017)
"The cast and team were like
family, much like the Moulin Rouge
in 1900," says Moccia. "During
the run, the Manchester bombings
and the Westminster terror attack
happened. We got the audience to
sing along to The Show Must Go
On. I'm tearing up as I speak about
it. It was a really moving moment."
The Handmaiden,
Troxy (2017)
"We got the venue
at 5am and had
to produce the show
that night," recalls
Bennett. "Following
the film's repressiveuncle
narrative that
no one can talk in his
house, the audience
took a vow of silence.
They loved it."
reviews, but nature almost intervened. At
11pm one night, a surprise rainstorm struck.
“Every costume was soaked,” say Kulkarni.
“We had to find a way to clean and dry 600
costumes in 12 hours. We hot-boxed an entire
cabin and put everything in it.”
If Back To The Future was a lesson in
untempered ambition, it didn’t shown; the
next year, Secret Cinema took it up another
notch with The Empire Strikes Back.
“It took a year of talking to eight
stakeholders, from Lucasfilm to Bad Robot
to Disney to Fox,” says Riggall. “[Lucasfilm
president] Kathy Kennedy supported us. As
exec producer on Back to the Future, she was
impressed with what we did there. But to give
us the rights to do that movie in the year they
were releasing The Force Awakens – a $2 billion
franchise – was extraordinary. Then, to find
an old newspaper factory to build Star Wars
in… that was an insane ambition.”
“It was an old printing press not fit for
audience members,” says Moccia of the
building that is now the nightclub Printworks
London. “We transformed it and put in three
productions: The Empire Strikes Back, Dr
Strangelove and 28 Days Later.”
“I wanted to build a gigantic Secret
Cinema that could stay there for ever,” says
Riggall. “We put a lot of work into it, invested
a great deal, but I know the guys who set up
Printworks, and good on them.” He sees
Secret Cinema’s contribution to the buildings
it inhabits as a positive. “So many are empty,
waiting years for planning permission.
Developers are opening their eyes to what
we do. We can create this ‘meanwhile use’,
filling them with happy people experiencing
something. I like to think that in the depths
of the night, as people are dancing to some
THE RED BULLETIN 49

Secret Cinema
Back to the Future,
Printworks London
(2014)
"There was a piece in the
Evening Standard saying
we’d affected the way
people dressed that summer,
that women were wearing
'50s dresses," says Kulkarni.
"It may be just a coincidence
or something subliminal.
It's extraordinary to think
a cultural event can
influence what people wear."
DJ’s set, they go, ‘Shit, wasn’t this where the
X-wing flew over my head?’”
“The X-wing was definitely a challenge,”
says Moccia of the full-size prop that enacted
the finale of Star Wars before the celluloid
sequel rolled. “It was built from MDF and rigged
to an automation system, with projection
mapping to look as if it was flying through
space. Luke Skywalker was in it throughout.
One time, the automation system failed and
he got stuck up there for about an hour.”
“The Empire Strikes Back was the zenith,”
says Matt Bennett, a DJ who joined to head up
the music department. “I just needed a change,”
he says. That’s what he got. “I was putting on
club nights for 1,000 people in Glasgow, and
there are more than 400 people working on
Star Wars. The production company, Wonder
Works, did the [London 2012] Olympics
Romeo
+ Juliet,
Gunnersbury
Park (2018)
Tied to the theme of
youth violence, the
show worked with the
charity MAC-UK. "We
got Loki, a political
rapper, to come and
work on the project
and raise money and
awareness on knife
crime," says Bennett.
opening and closing ceremonies. I had three
months to figure out the music showcase.
It was seat-of-the-pants stuff.”
Bennett’s initiation was made tougher by
a new experiment: alongside the four stages
at Printworks was a warm-up gig at an
undisclosed location. “It was the little secret
behind the big secret. We had all the bands
from the main site and some DJs – everyone
learnt to play the cantina band song.” Actors
mingling with the crowd added a new layer
of immersion. “Fabien wanted to open up allnight
parties in the style of [Berlin nightclub]
Berghain. Thankfully we never got to that
stage, because we were consumed by delivering
100 nights of Star Wars to 100,000 people.
After the runaway success of The Empire
Strikes Back, the window of possibility was
thrown wide open. For last year’s Blade
Runner that included building a future Los
Angeles with an indoor rain system for 86
nights. “We had a massive pool under the
floor connected to a closed loop system that
pumped water up to a rain rig on the ceiling,”
says Moccia. “We had to clean the pool daily,
because people dropped chips in it. “But to
see that hero moment, with everybody opening
their umbrellas, drenched in neon light – it
was like being in Shibuya on a rainy night.”
Every member of Secret Cinema has their
favourite moment. For Bennett, it might
have been DJing in that acid rain at Blade
Runner. “It felt important, but it was just
playing techno to people who were totally wet
and having the time of their lives.” Instead, he
has another: “In 2015, we went to the Calais
refugee camp. It was the week that small boy
[Syrian three-year-old Alan Kurdi] washed up
dead on the shore [in Turkey]. Fabien insisted
we stage a cultural protest against the treatment
of the people at the camp. We took Afrikan
Boy, a Nigerian-born London rapper who
sings about global politics and immigration,
and set up a pop-up cinema screen showing a
Bollywood film to all the families in the camp.
“There were thousands of people who had
no home and didn’t think they had a future.
They weren’t sitting eating popcorn. It was a
very immediate moment of having an impact
on people’s lives who maybe really needed to
watch a film. The baddies got booed, the girls
got cheered. We raised money afterwards to
keep the project going, then the political
landscape changed when people were killed
in Paris and Manchester. But it reflects Secret
Cinema’s ethos of getting up and doing stuff,
and credit to Fabien for essentially risking his
brand with a very divisive political posture.”
Raising awareness for social issues is
perhaps Secret Cinema’s most hidden quality.
SECRET CINEMA/CAMILLA GREENWELL, © 1996 TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX FILM CORPORATION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
50 THE RED BULLETIN

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Secret Cinema
Blade Runner, Canning Town (2018)
“We didn't want to break the spell, and playing the Vangelis soundtrack would do that,”
says Bennett. “So we took the music from Taffey’s Bar, because it’s a place in the film.
We stretched 18 seconds of Arabic-style dub into six hours of low-end exotica.”
Broccoli. She listened, asked very astute
questions, then said, ‘Yeah, you can do that.’
Next, I got hold of the film’s director, Martin
Campbell, and said, ‘What were you thinking
when you filmed Casino Royale?’ He said,
‘I looked down the camera lens and asked
myself if it was real. And if it was, I filmed it.’”
Jackson, shrewdly, won’t reveal the
contents of the show. “We’ve got a casino –
that’s not too much of a spoiler,” he laughs.
However, fans of the 1959 Alfred Hitchcock
thriller North by Northwest may find the prescreening
narrative familiar. Jackson also
name-drops Sébastien Foucan, the founder of
freerunning, who played bomber Mollaka in
Casino Royale’s opening chase in Madagascar.
“Seb’s been in and out a few times,” he teases.
What Jackson does promise is an
opportunity for everyone to live out their 007
fantasy in a way that no one, except perhaps
the Bond actors, has had the chance to do.
“Spielberg said we go to films to watch people
making the choices you wouldn’t make in real
life,” he says. “We’re putting these choices in
the hands of the audience. You get to a point
where the audience are the performers. That’s
what a Secret Cinema show is.”
“When we bring films to life, that also means
whatever message those films have,” says
Riggall. “When we did One Flew Over the
Cuckoo’s Nest, we worked with mental-health
charity Mind and integrated fundraising
awareness. This year, with Casino Royale,
we’re working with Calm, a charity that raises
awareness of mental health and male suicide.
The film is very honest about what James
Bond goes through, and it’s interesting to
allow that to be part of the story. One gesture
can change your life and sometimes that
thing is cultural. For me, it was cinema. It’s
important to create experiences that can be
a conduit for change.”
Casino Royale is the first Secret Cinema
that Riggall has delegated control of, handing
the reins to veteran theatre director Angus
Jackson. “It’ll be the biggest indoor show
we’ve done – twice the size of Blade Runner,”
says Jackson. “It’s 1,500 people a night, 50
performers. This is closest to when I ran the
entire Rome season at the RSC [in 2017],
when we built a four-show Roman world for
Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, Titus
Andronicus and Coriolanus. That collapsed
in on itself in the space of a year.”
It also heralds a deeper partnership with
the film creators. “I had to pitch to Barbara
Riggall and Luhrmann on stage
at 2017’s Moulin Rouge
“There’s a desire
to escape our
looped existence”
Fabien Riggall may be a master of
secrecy, but he’s quite open about some
of the plans he has for Secret Cinema.
He wants to take it global. “We’ve done
teasers in Berlin, New York, to see how can
that works. Universally, I think people want
experiences that are mysterious, to become
part of a bigger thing. In the US, cinema has
a cultural resonance, and bringing these
experiences to a country where entire towns
transform for Halloween is interesting. And
when we start going to places that don’t speak
English, how do we translate that?”
As for which films he’d like to do next:
“Titanic. The richness of that world could
be huge. The question is, how are we going
to build it, sink it and then get it back up
every night? I’ve always wanted to do Secret
Cinema on a train. And ET – to have everyone
cycle to a forest on BMXs, strap them onto
wires, then they fly over the screen and we
never see them again.”
Riggall may be joking about ET, but
there’s one idea for the future that he’s
serious about: “Once Upon a Time in America,
set beneath Brooklyn Bridge. Transforming
a district of Brooklyn into prohibition New
York, with Morricone and a live orchestra.
I’m definitely going to propose that to
whichever mayor of Brooklyn we have
to talk to. I think that’s possible.”
Secret Cinema presents Casino Royale
launches on June 5; tickets.secretcinema.org
SECRET CINEMA/AL OVERDRIVE/MIKE MASSARO
52 THE RED BULLETIN

Free
Radicals
Bleak, utilitarian city
streets are, for many,
a daily drag. But for an
underground tribe of
mountain bikers, urban
concrete plus gravity
equals a playground
of endless possibilities
Words MATT RAY
Photography DAVID GOLDMAN
54

In Portsmouth, some
local kids got nosy, so
photographer David
Goldman invited them
to take part in one of
Josh Reynolds’ stunts

MTB street
“When you’ve got a big
bike, you’re looking for
things only the craziest
person would ever dream
of doing on a BMX”
T
he British city street is under
pressure. It’s trapped in a
slow-grind crisis where stress
is rife and anxiety is the new
normal. But within its
concrete canyons, beasts are
stirring – and it’s not the rats.
Sitting astride burly, overbuilt
mountain bikes are a row of
riders in full-face helmets and
a patchwork uniform of gloves,
skinny jeans, unbuttoned shirts and freeride jerseys.
They stare down from a 6m-high asphalt overpass,
gazes locked onto a double set of red-brick stairs
bordered by concrete slopes, studded with rocks, and
scattered with the usual urban debris: broken glass,
cigarette ends… Breaking their focus, the riders split,
peeling off back up the road and out of sight.
Stop and stare in a city and eventually the street
will notice you. Here in Portsmouth, pedestrians
have begun to crowd along the top of the overpass,
looking down at the stairs and the small portable
ramp that has been set up at the top. The rising
whoosh of fat rubber tyres accelerated by pedal
power reaches their ears as a rider rounds the
corner, launches off the ramp and hurtles down
the stairs, whipping his back wheel in the air. But
he doesn’t quite clear the platform between the
flights of stairs, clipping his back wheel and, with
a tortured crunch, smacking the underside of his
bike’s frame into the edge of a step. Only strength
and experience prevent him from being catapulted
face-first into the pavement.
The rider swears into the city air. “That ramp really
launches you,” reports Simon Brettle, the 31-yearold
carpenter and mountain biker. “My landing zone
is exactly the same size as my bike – there is literally
no room for error.”
The street is built from intersecting concrete
blades. There are harsh, unyielding angles everywhere
you look. It’s a far cry from the rounded, flowing
lines and loose dirt of an off-road mountain-bike trail.
“I find that terrifying, to be honest,” says another
of the riders, Josh Reynolds, who is sponsored by
Sick Bikes and works as a fitness equipment engineer.
“Stair sets and bricks are a lot harsher. When you
start pushing it, everything becomes more highconsequence.”
Consequences leave scars, and
Reynolds’ injuries from both MTB and BMX include
a dented skull, blown ankles, a shattered collarbone
and smashed back teeth. He’s 24 years old.
“If you’re riding off-road, you’ll have a nice big
jump with a long landing to hit, which will slope
off into the flat,” he continues. “It’s not angular;
it doesn’t go from 45° to flat within an inch.” Street
geometry and the arithmetic of impact is violent and
uncompromising, but Reynolds isn’t complaining.
The riders all wear adversity like a badge of honour
– it shows they belong. At one point, Brettle and
local rider Ben Matthews compete to gross us out by
flexing their injured wrist joints – bones clunk and
push against the skin, unanchored by any ligaments
that may have survived previous crashes.
The bravado isn’t just a front, and you don’t
ride a mountain bike in the street to be subtle; it’s
a statement of intent. Reynolds grew up riding
56 THE RED BULLETIN

Left: Reynolds in his
Chainbreakers Cycling
Club jacket. Below:
at Brighton Marina

MTB street
a BMX, but ‘mountain-bike street’ has remoulded him
– he doesn’t even think in the same way. “BMXs are
brakeless, small wheels, no suspension, so you can
look at something small on the street, like a ledge,
and think, ‘I can grind that, I can 360° hop off that,’”
he says. “But when you’ve got a big bike, you’d walk
straight past it – you’re looking for things only the
craziest person would ever dream of doing on a BMX.”
The thing about street furniture is that it’s literally
set in stone. Jumping a long double – or triple –
stair set will write your name into legend. Once, on
London’s Pall Mall, with an audience of 50 riders,
Brettle landed an almost 7m drop off a high, rounded
wall to the bottom steps of a triple set. “That was
the biggest drop I’ve ever done,” he reveals. “I got
a ticket for that one.”
Each of these guys says the same thing: riding the
street fundamentally changes how you see it for ever.
“Other people go down a road and all they see is the
road and a pavement,” says Reynolds. “I’ll go down
the same street and be looking at that bank and that
stair set and that drop. You can never switch it off.”
Ben Matthews races enduro events, but takes a
different approach to mountain-bike street. “It’s about
being able to take the hard hits, but also knowing how
to look at a wall or a bank and think, ‘Oh, I can jump
up onto that and 180° off,’” says the 29-year-old, who
works in carbon-fibre engineering. “You need to be
able to have great imagination. It’s not like trail-riding,
where you’re just following the path in front of you.”
The street has always been there, and mountain
bikes aren’t news, so why is the underground
bubbling again now? Why do we have outriders on
our thoroughfares? For these guys, there’s a practical
reason: new tech has been developed. Portable
‘pack-a-ramps’ such as those made by MTB Hopper
can be carried from spot to spot as backpacks. These
flatpack ramps take minutes to set up and act as
a force multiplier for potential tricks and jumps,
easing take-off angles between floors and banks
(which rob you of speed) and allowing for launches
over obstacles. “Some of the ramps feel literally like
getting sent to the moon,” says Matthews.
One ramp has been used to turn a grassy bank into
the landing zone for a high-speed big-air jump on
Portsmouth seafront. Spotters are deployed to watch
out for pedestrians, then the riders, unsure if they are
going to be moved on, throw themselves into jumping
it. “You’ve got to be quick,” says Matthews. “Get in
there, set it up, go. It’s all or nothing, basically. You
try and get as much out of it as you can, and as soon
as you see security coming you just grab your bags
and run. I’ve never been arrested, but it has been
very close – you try not to be an idiot and actually
respect the area, and you avoid doing any damage.”
Matthews races up to the ramp. It strains to absorb
his charge, emitting a disconcerting ker-klunk, then
he’s in the air, soaring against the sky as it sits grey and
heavy above the waves. He’s reaching for a mid-air
trick when it all goes wrong. The riders’ landings all
Simon Brettle – known to his fellow riders as ‘Kettle’ – unloads his bikes from his van at an estate at the top of a hill in Brighton
58 THE RED BULLETIN

“Some of the
ramps feel literally
like getting sent
to the moon”
XX EDITOR ILLUSTRATOR
Reynolds sends it to
the sky mid-whip with
the help of a mobile
ramp, the MTB Hopper

“You’ve got to be
quick. Get in there,
set it up, go… and
as soon as you see
security coming,
you just grab your
bags and run”
Kettle launches himself
down a double set of steps
near the Magistrates’
Court in Portsmouth

Henry Durman,
Ben Matthews and
Reynolds get geared
up for the session
at Brighton Marina
61

Reynolds sends a
one-footed euro table
(what he calls a “dogpisser”)
over a hip at
Portsmouth Pyramids

MTB street
sound violent, but this is like scrap metal crashing
down a mineshaft. They rush to his aid, but he’s OK –
kind of. “He slipped a foot and broke his saddle with
his balls,” says Brettle, incredulously. It’s no joke – the
saddle’s metal rails are both neatly sheared in half.
It’s suddenly obvious why the riders favour a
distinctly old-school set-up of overbuilt aluminium
frames, 26in (66cm) wheels and downhill tyres,
running at 40psi, rather than trail pressures of 25psi,
with extra spacers in their suspension. “The bikes
take a beating,” says Matthews. “You need something
that’s super-burly to take the impacts, because it isn’t
like riding dirt – you’re landing on solid concrete.”
Brettle is getting a new frame custom-built for
his style – by Frome-based bespoke bike-makers
BTR Fabrications – because the modern trend for
low, slack and long wheelbase bikes is unsuited to
the short, brutal landings of the street. “I ride an
aluminium bike, 26in wheels, old-school – just has
to be hardcore.” Even within the world of mountain
biking, these guys are iconoclasts. As it turns out,
they all have very practical day jobs, from carpenter
to carbon-fibre engineer, so they’re familiar with
breaking points. They know what it is to push metal,
bone, carbon fibre and sinew to the limit – and past it.
“That’s the end of my day,” grimaces Matthews,
who walks like John Wayne for the next few hours.
If they’re shaken by his crash, the other riders don’t
show it. They’re focused on the finale: another ramp
jump, this time off a 3m wall, over a pavement and
onto a banking in the car park below. The run-up is
along tarmac to a gravel path and then grass. The
ramp makes it possible, but the run-in is “sub-optimal
enough” for Henry Durman to have a high-speed
wash-out on the lumpy grass, just before the ramp.
Picking himself up, the 23-year-old marine engineer
and rigger shouts down from the top of the wall,
“Aah! I’m shaking like a sick dog!”
It’s another high-consequence jump with a tiny
landing zone. Get it wrong and you could land flat on
unyielding tarmac and detonate your knees, or go nose
in and be ejected straight off the bike into something
pitilessly solid. You can’t see the landing from the
top, so the riders are having to line themselves up
by looking at a distant lamppost as they jump.
As Reynolds launches off the ramp, he doesn’t
seem phased – he whips his hands off the bar to
throw his arms behind him and land a ‘suicide nohander’.
The landing is the hardest of the day: every
millimetre of his downhill bike’s 180mm suspension
is called upon as his arms and legs fight to absorb
the rest of the impact. After a flurry of fist bumps,
he dismounts and demonstrates his commitment
by taking off his shoe to adjust the brace he’s
wearing, following recent surgery on both ankles.
Despite his scare, Durman sends the next jump,
landing with a whoop. He also races downhill, but
for him the buzz you get from a street jump can’t be
beaten off-road. “With street, you’ve only got one
chance to get it right, which is so exhilarating. There’s
so much adrenalin coursing through your system,
you’re up there just shaking, waiting to drop in.”
What makes MTB street so liberating for these
riders is the very fact that it hasn’t been built for them.
“With street [riding],
you’ve only got one
chance to get it right“
Durman scopes out steps as he sets up near Portsmouth Magistrates’ Court
Downhill and enduro tracks have big jumps, but they
are designed to be predictable and safe. “The distance
between where you take off and land is a nice smooth
arc,” says Reynolds. “But with street, if you’re jumping
off a wall, you go up but there’s still 10-15ft [3-5m]
to drop – the arc is lopsided.” The consequences of
getting it wrong are greater, but so too are the rewards.
It’s this process of overcoming obstacles from
dramatic new angles that seems to define how MTB
street riders interact with their environment. Urban
worlds can seem compressed, buckling under external
strains and internal angst. Normally, in a world under
siege from itself, options narrow, possibilities are
blocked, and self-expression is stifled. For minds
under pressure, streets are recast as prisons. But for
the street rider, stairs become launch pads, walls
become roads, and obstacles become old friends.
Perhaps being able to see your street from a radically
new perspective does a hard reset on your relationship
to it. Who knows, it could even set you free.
THE RED BULLETIN 63

LEAGUE OF
HER OWN
One dream job would be enough
for most people, but 27-year-old
CHELCEE GRIMES has scored
success as a rising music star
and a pro footballer. Welcome
to her life of two halves
Words PIERS MARTIN
Photography STEPHANIE SIAN SMITH
CHELCEE WEARS CHAMPION CROPPED TANK TOP; ADIDAS TEAM SPORTS TRACKSUIT TOP; PICKLE & POLISH ‘CHELCEE’ CHAIN; HAIRCLIPS, STYLIST’S OWN
64

Chelcee Grimes
a Jekyll and Hyde – there are two sides
of me, but both are important,” explains the
softly spoken Liverpudlian as the lighting and
backdrops from her Red Bulletin photoshoot
“I’m
are dismantled. Sitting on a sofa in the corner
of a sunny canalside studio in east London, the chatty, easygoing
27-year-old wears a bright orange top, off-white jeans
and New Balance trainers. Around her neck hangs a silver chain
sporting her name: Chelcee.
Chelcee Grimes is a songwriter in demand. In addition to
composing hits for the likes of Dua Lipa, Kylie Minogue, Kesha
and Tom Walker, she has worked in LA with Calvin Harris and
producer RedOne (Lady Gaga, Nicki Minaj). She launched her
own singing career in 2018 with the upbeat R&B-laced pop
tracks Just Like That and I Need a Night Out, and she has a debut
album scheduled for release next year. But that’s only the half
of it: Chelcee is also a professional footballer.
Playing up front for Fulham FC Women, Chelcee scored
three goals in this season’s FA Cup, and she brings together her
two big passions as the presenter of Chelcee Away, her online
show for BBC Sport. Chelcee will also be part of the BBC team
covering the Women’s World Cup in France this June and July;
and in between all this, she still finds time to contribute to the
popular football fan site COPA90. “I’m very busy at the minute,”
she understates. “It’s gone a bit mental, but I’m excited.”
Chelcee has barely paused for breath over the past few years.
Yesterday, she visited Anfield to meet Liverpool FC manager
Jurgen Klopp for a forthcoming branding venture; being a
lifelong fan of the club, this was a dream come true. After our
interview, she’ll head to a studio in London’s Shoreditch to finish
the vocals for her upcoming single, Girls, which she hopes will
be the unofficial anthem of the Women’s World Cup. Tomorrow,
“Kids would have my
lyrics as tattoos…
I’d say, ‘Don’t get it
done, your mother
will kill you’”
66 THE RED BULLETIN

Northern
powerhouse:
Chelcee is an
unstoppable
force in music
and football
CHELCEE WEARS ELLESSE JASMINE CROPPED HOODY; WEEKDAY ROW JEANS; ADIDAS FALCON SHOES
THE RED BULLETIN 67

68 THE RED BULLETIN

Chelcee Grimes
Chelcee’s World Cup
women to watch
Nikita Parris, England
“She’s an attacking player who
played for the Everton youth team,
one age group below me. Nikita is
a speedster – you don’t want her
running at you with the ball. When
she signed for Man City, I knew she’d
become one of England’s best.”
GETTY IMAGES. CHELCEE WEARS NIKE ACG RELAXED-FIT WOVEN JOGGING BOTTOMS; NIKE STRIKE FOOTBALL; TANK TOP AND CHAIN, AS BEFORE
Fran Kirby, England
“The female Messi. Fran scored
a few goals in the SheBelieves Cup
[an annual international women’s
tournament in the US]. She’s small,
quick and as skilful as anyone.
Definitely one to watch.”
Megan Rapinoe, USA
“The American national squad
are always strong. Megan is
a great player technically, and
someone who will always give
her team a big advantage.”
Ji So-Yun, South Korea
“Chelsea’s number 10. She scores
and creates goals – you can’t
give her space for a shot. Ji is a team
player, and she makes chances
out of nothing – you have to be
switched on when she’s around.”
Formiga, Brazil
“The first woman to play in seven
World Cups. Formiga will be 41
at this year’s tournament, and the
stage is set for her to score the
winner in a big game. That’s what
competitions like this are set up
for – anything can happen.”
Megan Rapinoe
Nikita Parris
“When I went for
trials at Liverpool,
I didn’t even own
a pair of boots”
she’ll take part in a songwriting session in Ealing with producer
and fellow hit machine Naughty Boy (“I met him last week and
we started working together”), and at the end of the week she’ll
attend the FIFA eWorld Cup video-game championships. “I’m
living my dream,” beams Chelcee, a keen gamer.
Excelling at two high-profile careers is turning Chelcee into
something of a celebrity, as well as an ambassador for women’s
football. She handles the attention well, not least because of her
easy-going nature and her genuine love for what she does, and
Chelcee is always ready to share her experiences with young
fans who see her as a role model. But she has also been through
enough to know how fickle these industries can be.
Once upon a time, Chelcee quit football. She was 17
and on the precipice of turning professional, but there
wasn’t enough money in the women’s game to support
a viable career. This tricky decision was assuaged by the
lucrative offer of a major record deal. “Someone was dangling
a cheque in front of me, and football hadn’t paid in eight years,
so what could I do?” she says. “I obviously chose music and
dropped out of football.” If that sounds like a no-brainer, a better
appreciation of Grimes’ deep commitment to the game is needed.
Having grown up in Aigburth, Liverpool, the city’s legendary
football club has always been a massive part of her life: “If your
family are Liverpool supporters, it’s in your blood.” Her father
chose her name. “Chelsea weren’t a big team back then, so it
wasn’t like they were going to call me Tottenham or something,”
she smiles. “My mum was like, ‘OK, we like the name, but we’ll
have to spell it differently,’ so that’s how it’s spelt in my passport.
When people don’t believe me, I have to get it out to show them.”
With no siblings, Chelcee realised that if she wanted to get
on with her male cousins and hang out with the boys on her
street, she’d have to learn to play football. “It was that or stay
in and do homework. At first I wasn’t very good, but I quickly
improved – I’d be the first one they chose for the team.” After
her grandad spotted an ad in the local paper, Chelcee’s mum
enrolled her at the Ian Rush Soccer School; she was the only girl
to attend. Her skills were soon recognised by Liverpool Ladies
(now Liverpool FC Women), who trained at the same ground.
“I was asked to come to their trials. I didn’t even own a pair of
football boots, but I turned up and got through. I played for
Liverpool Under-10s, then signed up for another five years.”
Her passion for making music, however, didn’t bloom until
her mid-teens. A huge pop fan, Chelcee grew up listening to
J-Lo, Beyoncé, Pink and Kanye. Her mum would play dance
music at home, while her stepdad listened to Sting and Simon
& Garfunkel. Having chosen music as one of her GSCE options
– mainly because she thought it would be easy – Chelcee was
THE RED BULLETIN 69

Chelcee Grimes
“I’ve fought my
way to be where
I am, so I feel
like I deserve it”
Now at Fulham,
Chelcee has also
played for Liverpool,
Everton, Tranmere
Rovers and Spurs
encouraged by a teacher who noticed her aptitude for
songwriting. At 16, she won a six-month recording arrangement
through a competition on local radio station Juice FM. The
studio belonged to Liverpool winger Ryan Babel, which meant
Chelcee went to all the team’s games and learnt her way around
a studio with the help of Babel’s engineer. She was hooked.
At the same time, Chelcee began gigging. “I’d play every openmic
night in Liverpool,” she recalls. “More people would turn
up and a buzz developed. Kids would have my lyrics as tattoos
– I can’t even remember the songs. I think one was called The
Truth, and someone had that written on themselves. I’d say,
‘Don’t get it done, your mother will kill you.’ But when people
started to do that, I could tell a movement was happening.”
This led to the agonising choice between football and music
that culminated in Chelcee signing a contract with record label
RCA. “They wanted to make me into an English Alicia Keys,”
she reveals. Not long after Chelcee signed up, however, her
contact at the label was sacked, and two years later she was
unceremoniously dropped. Deflated and running out of money,
Chelcee moved to London to pursue her songwriting dream,
recording in bedrooms, basements, wherever she could.
She looks back on that time with frankness: “At 18 I hadn’t
really lived, I’d just played football. I had a bit of a gap for a year,
wrote four songs, got a record deal really early. I don’t think
I deserved it, if I’m honest.” Instead, she threw herself into new
challenges. “It made me travel, learn about myself, and I gave
writing a go. Then someone called and said, ‘We think you’re
a good songwriter, we’ll give you a publishing deal.’ It’s not what
I really wanted – I still wanted to be on stage – but I did it.”
She found herself at a songwriting session in Copenhagen with
veteran Danish producer Cutfather. Feeling homesick, Chelcee
wrote the lyrics “I feel like I’m a million miles away”, which evolved
into Kylie Minogue’s 2014 song Million Miles. Then she began
working with Steve Mac, one of the most successful producers
in modern pop, responsible for huge hits by the likes of Ed
Sheeran (Shape Of You), Clean Bandit (Symphony) and Pink
(What About Us). “If you have better players around you, you
automatically grow and thrive,” she says, drawing a connection
between songwriting and football. “I don’t get intimidated.
If I put my mind to something, I usually go on to do it.”
Chelcee is in no doubt where this self-belief comes from:
“It’s because I’m a Scouser. There’s something in the Liverpool
water where we think we can do anything we put our mind to.
It’s in the heart of our football team, too. I remember the 2005
Champions League final [the now-legendary match against
AC Milan in Istanbul] where we were 3-0 down. To come back
and fight and win it in 45 minutes – that embodies everything
I believe as a person. It was the first time I saw that magic can
happen if you fight for it.”
Looking back, Chelcee believes the whole journey has
been a valuable lesson: “I’ve only been [working in music]
professionally for four years, but I’ve developed massively
from when I was writing songs at 17 in my bedroom with
no one saying, ‘Do this or change that.’” After signing to the
management agency that represents Dua Lipa, Lana Del Ray
and Ellie Goulding, Chelcee’s talent for composing a killer
melody and a catchy hook emerged. “It’s a running industry
joke how fast I am at writing,” she says. “Yesterday, I went
outside the studio and saw a sign that read, ‘Please don’t play
ball games,’ and I thought, ‘That’s a dope title,’ so we wrote
a song called Please. There’s no yellow brick road to making
a hit record. You’ve just got to feel it as you go.”
When you write a song a day, as Chelcee strives to, some
are bound to resonate. One she wrote about her father, titled
11:11, was covered in 2016 by South Korean artist Taeyeon and
became a huge hit, racking up more than 52 million YouTube
views. “Sometimes you don’t remember writing songs, but that’s
a special one,” she says. “[The song’s co-writer] Christian Vinten
said, ‘What have you never written about?’ and I said, ‘It’s really
weird but I’ve never written about my dad.’ He passed away
when I was a kid, and I feel like I’ve never wanted to open that
box. My mum would say, ‘When it gets to 11:11, make a wish,’
so I used to wish for my dad to come and speak to me. When
I hear the opening chord, it takes me right back to writing it.”
Much as Chelcee enjoyed her songwriting success, she never
lost the longing to perform, and last year her perseverance paid
off when she finally released her own music. “It’s been six years
CHELCEE WEARS ELLESSE PINZO TRACK TOP; KAPPA AUTHENTIC BALIC JOGGERS; NEW BALANCE 997H SHOES; TANK TOP AND FOOTBALL, AS BEFORE
70 THE RED BULLETIN

Chelcee Grimes
“There’s no
yellow brick road
to making a hit.
You’ve just got to
feel it as you go”
of slog,” she says. “And it hasn’t been given to me. If it had, I’d
be like, ‘Whoa, what’s happening?’ But I’ve literally fought my
way to be where I am, so I feel like I deserve it.”
Another pursuit Chelcee missed was playing football. When
watching the 2015 Women’s World Cup, she realised a number
of girls she used to play with were now wearing an England
shirt. “I thought, ‘I need to get back into it.’ So I googled a few
teams and got trials with Wimbledon, Spurs and West Ham.
They all offered me a contract – it was crazy.” Chelcee is now
settled at Fulham – she also lives nearby – though the relegation
of the men’s team from the Premier League and its knock-on
effect on revenue has created uncertainty for the women.
Chelcee’s top festival
picks for 2019
Billie Eilish
“She’s 17 and smashing it right
now. [The California-born singersongwriter]
makes all her music with
her brother, so it’s not manufactured.
Billie’s breaking boundaries, and the
whole industry is talking about her.
She’s different and I appreciate that.”
King Princess
“She’s a new singer signed to Mark
Ronson’s label. King Princess [aka
Mikaela Straus] is big in the LGBTQ
community and she’s not selling any
part of herself, just being authentic.
She’s also super talented and plays
all the instruments on her songs.”
Michael Kiwanuka
“I already knew Michael through
the industry, but then his song Cold
Little Heart was used as the title
track of [US drama] Big Little Lies
and I became a fan. It’s an amazing
record. The show is really good, too.”
Tom Grennan
“Tom was my first-ever guest on
Chelcee Away. I became a fan after
hearing his song Found What I’ve
Been Looking For on the FIFA 18
soundtrack. We became friends
and wrote two songs together.
They might be on his next record.”
Girlpool
“I don’t know anything about the
[LA indie-rock duo], but I saw the
name Girlpool on a festival line-up
and wanted to know more. So you
should definitely go to see them.”
King Princess
Much has changed in women’s football over the past
five years, and Chelcee believes the sport is healthier
and wealthier than ever. In March this year, Barclays
announced a £10 million three-year sponsorship of
the FA’s Women’s Super League – the biggest investment by a
brand in UK women’s sports. In Spain that same month, more
than 60,000 fans watched a match between Atlético Madrid and
Barcelona in the Primera División Femenina – a world record
attendance for a club game in women’s football – and in Italy
around 39,000 people saw Juventus Women beat Fiorentina.
“My little sister is nine now and she plays football,” says
Chelcee. “When I was playing, I was the only girl, but she’s one
of six in the team. That growth from a grassroots level is all you
need. And to turn on the TV now and see [former England and
Arsenal Women right-back] Alex Scott as a BBC pundit… that
would never have happened when I was a kid. It’s awesome.”
In terms of investment and profile, the women’s game in the
UK still lags behind that of the European continent and the US,
but 2019 promises to be its biggest year yet. Chelcee believes
that change is gradually coming, but a lot of the problem is
down to the perception and presentation of the sport.
“It’s like having the best song in the world but the video is shot
on an old Nokia phone: it won’t look good,” she says. “No part of
the women’s game is as well-publicised or up-to-date as the men’s.
You’ve got to give it equal leeway. Hopefully, with this injection
of money, everything will become a lot more professional.” She
hopes her reporting of the Women’s World Cup in France for the
BBC and COPA90 will inspire yet more girls to get involved. “I’ll
show it’s not women’s football, it’s just football,” she says.
The multitalented Liverpudlian is, in her own way, redefining
what it means to be a woman in 2019. “I’m showing you don’t
have to be just one thing now. I go in the studio and write songs
with some of the biggest acts in the world. I’m playing for Fulham,
making my own album. I’m standing up for that, 100 per cent.”
Chelcee Grimes, in her life as in her career, is far more than
the sum of the parts.
Chelcee’s latest single, Girls, is out now on TaP Records;
chelceegrimes.com
STYLING: EMILY ROSE MOLONEY; HAIR & MAKE-UP: ALICE HOWLETT USING KAT VON D BEAUTY AND BUMBLE AND BUMBLE;
PHOTOGRAPHY ASSISTANTS: PAOLINA STADLER, MARIA MONFORT PLANACHELCEE WEARS PRETTY LITTLE THING HIGH-NECK,
RIBBED LONG-SLEEVE CROP TOP
72 THE RED BULLETIN

The Gobi Desert, September 2018. British runner
James Poole, having passed the 4,000m-high
summit that marks the highest point in the Ultra
Gobi, descends into a valley devoid of colour or life,
with nothing but a biting wind and a dusty trail
to keep him company. Two days and more than
200km into the race, this is the halfway point. The
approaching night and altitude will see numerous
runners succumb to hypothermic conditions.

The Silk Road:
the route
of China‘s
most famous
pilgrimage –
and now one
of the planet’s
most brutal
ultramarathons.
This is the
400km
Ultra Gobi
Words JAMES POOLE and JAMES CARNEGIE
Photography JAMES CARNEGIE
75

Ultra Gobi
During his seventh-century pilgrimage along the route
that would become known as the Silk Road, Chinese
Buddhist monk Xuanzang described the Gobi Desert as
“nothing but barren sand and dry river beds; at night,
stars shine like fires lit by devils… There is not enough
water to nourish even a single blade of grass; one looks
for birds in the sky and beasts on land, but finds none”.
Xuanzang’s quest to obtain sacred Buddhist scriptures
was adapted into one of China’s most famous novels,
Journey to the West, better known outside the country in its abridged
form, titled Monkey. Today, the terrain remains remarkably unchanged
and the monk’s route draws a different kind of pilgrim: the ultrarunner.
Launched in 2015, the Ultra Gobi is a self-navigating, self-supporting
race that follows Xuanzang’s trail along the northern edge of the Tibetan
Plateau in western China. Once known as the Gansu Corridor, this was the
only path for caravans passing between the sands of the Gobi proper to the
north and the mountains of Tibet to the south. “The heat goes through you
like a flame and the wind cuts your flesh like a knife,” wrote Xuanzang of
this route. The Chinese name for the race translates as ‘Xuanzang’s Route:
800li of Flowing Sands’, and 800li (or Chinese miles) converts to 400km,
making Ultra Gobi a ‘super-ultra’ marathon that exceeds the world’s most
famous desert race – the Marathon des Sables – by 150km, with a soulcrushing
4,000m mountain-pass ascent to the midway checkpoint.
It took the legendary monk 17 years to complete his journey; Ultra Gobi
contestants – of whom there are only 50 invited each year – have just
149 hours to finish the course. In 2017, British runner Daniel Lawson, then
aged 43, did it in less than 71 hours. For the 2018 race, the organisers laid
down a $10,000 (around £7,500) prize for anyone who could top that.
Fellow Brit James Poole was one of those who took up the challenge.
Photographer James Carnegie joined Poole to document his race, and here
they take us through their photo diary. It’s a study of attrition, of human
determination, and of the toll that harsh conditions and exhaustion can take
on the mind and body. “It wasn’t until I was editing the images that I noticed
much of what James was going through,” says Carnegie. “The glazed eyes
behind his sunglasses as we climbed out of the canyon and onto the 4,000mhigh
plateau will always remind me of how far gone he was at that point.”
At the stroke of midnight on September 25,
2018, the 50 entrants set off into the vast
desert expanse as the clock starts ticking
towards the 149-hour completion deadline.
This year, there’s an additional £7,500 prize
for whoever manages to beat 70 hours and
52 minutes, the record-breaking time set
by 2017 winner Daniel Lawson.
76 THE RED BULLETIN

Poole at the start line. Festivities at
the opening ceremony – a firework
show, a few dozen dancers dressed
in Mongolian attire, and a makeshift
bar lined with cups of rice beer
– belie the gruelling race to come.

Ultra Gobi
“This race comes down
to how little sleep you
can take while retaining
the function and ability
to plough on”
Sunrise brings respite from
the merciless cold and the
loneliness of a night spent
beneath a canopy of stars.
Much of the route is raced
at above 2,000m, at the
edge of the Tibetan plateau.
78 THE RED BULLETIN

In an attempt to stave off swelling, blisters, infection, trench foot and the loss of toenails, many competitors stashed
fresh socks and medical supplies in drop boxes, which were delivered to checkpoints. “What the Gobi Desert lacks in
endless dusty dunes, it makes up for with perpetually uneven rocks that threaten to macerate feet and eat through trail
shoes," says Poole. "The luxury of a clean pair of socks and some adeptly applied tape can be the difference between
just stepping out the door or climbing onto the bus to the finish.”
With an army of Chinese and international volunteers
manning each of the checkpoints, runners are able to
receive physio and medical treatment to sufficiently
repair injury and any other wear to their bodies. However,
staff are encouraged to turn runners around as quickly
as possible – they have to continue on or succumb to
the threat of DNF (Did Not Finish).
Mandatory survival equipment includes a sleeping bag,
GPS, head torch and medical kit. Runners must carry
sufficient hydration, nutrition and clothing between
checkpoints to endure successive nights in sub-zero
temperatures. “Each night I was wearing everything I had
and until the sun rose I was still freezing,” says Poole.
THE RED BULLETIN 79

Ultra Gobi
“For all its epic views
and endless emptiness,
the Gobi offers no help
to the wayward runner”
“Forward progress was dictated by one’s ability to follow
a thin line on a small digital display,” says Poole. “Flat
batteries or a broken GPS handset would be disastrous.”
As would severe sleep deprivation and the decline in
cognition that comes with it. Britain’s Nathan Montague
followed a broken arrow on his device for several hours,
ending up lost. His error was costly: at one point, he was
chasing second place; he finally crossed the line in sixth.
Carnegie: “More than 100km in and approaching dawn
on day two. Three hours into running through dried
river beds and canyons with James, I discovered how
useless fingers become in this cold. Trying to capture
the mood of utter isolation was challenging. James
went from incoherence amid the cold dark of night to
wildly hallucinating as the horizon turned to gold,
claiming there’d been a dog running alongside me for
hours and that the hills were full of apartments with
people looking down on us. His mind was mush.”
Checkpoints range from tents manned by a lone person
huddled around a fire, to small villages in the middle of
nowhere. Each runner has six drop boxes – meticulously
packed and checked before race start – from which they
can retrieve nutrition, luxuries and changes of clothing
en route. The logistics of calculating what they'll need at
each checkpoint is immense, especially with a minimum
required daily calorie intake of 25,000kcal.
Poole: “The lowest point occurred shortly after
crossing the 4,000m peak at halfway. With little more
than two hours’ sleep in two days, I’d seen gnomes,
imps and goblins hiding in the scrub. Cliff-sides looked
like trains with endless lines of carriages. Shadows in
the dying sunlight resembled dogs’ jaws leaning in to
nip at my ankles. With less than 3km to one of the lifesaving
bases, I was confronted by a frozen lake lined
with boats, pontoons and jetties. Listening out for
any cracks in the ice, I climbed gingerly between the
obstacles. More than an hour later, I staggered into
the checkpoint, hypothermic and in serious difficulty.
Seven hours on, I hobbled out of the tent. To my
surprise, there was no lake. It had all been in my mind.”
80

Ultra Gobi
Poole: “The night-time temperatures brought debilitating cold and
hypothermia for many, so runners would leave checkpoints with
sleeping bags wrapped around their bodies. Ironically, wind – or
feng – plays a notable part in Chinese medicine and is regarded as
a ‘pernicious influence’ that can cause disease, but not hypothermia.
So, while Western competitors battled the cold with every item they
owned, it wasn’t uncommon for Chinese runners, under the guidance
of doctors, to head out in little more than shorts and a T-shirt.”
Carnegie: “On the second night of sub-zero temperatures, James was
close to hypothermia when he stumbled into the rest-point. Medical
staff monitor the runners, and cola bottles filled with hot water were
placed around him, but it soon became clear the Chinese definition of
hypothermic is different to that of UK medics. Hypothermia is defined
as a core body temperature below 35°C, with symptoms including
uncontrollable shivering and mental confusion. Both were present.”
82 THE RED BULLETIN

Left: a lone spectator
stares at Ultra Gobi’s
racetrack – a seemingly
endless valley with
the Tibetan Plateau
in the distance. Right:
although the race draws
entrants from across
the world, the majority
are Chinese, reflecting
the country’s growing
interest in running and
endurance sports. (The
eventual winner was
China’s Liang Jing in 85
hours and 46 minutes.)
“Crumpled mountains
look thousands of
feet high, but are only
a couple of hundred”
Carnegie: “I learnt to track James using his footprints in the sand.
Locating him and the other runners was a mission in itself. With such
vast distances and inaccessibility, I’d encounter him, at best, once
a day. Our 4x4 guide was familiar with this part of the Gobi, seemingly
able to remember routes across river beds and between the valleys
that intersected the course. Whether there was actually anyone there
was another matter – our satellite tracker often indicated runners
had taken inexplicable detours over dunes and gone off-course.”
THE RED BULLETIN 83

Carnegie: “I’ve never seen
someone so close to the edge,
yet able to continue regardless.
I know from my own experience
of running ultramarathons that
after 20-plus hours on the go
I don’t have the patience for
photos, chat or anything much
beyond head down, gritting
things out. James, however,
never failed to respond whenever
I asked for a portrait. I suspect
that when I popped up in equally
bizarre and random places along
the route to document him, the
company brought much-needed
relief from the silence and
confinement of the desert.
“To help me evaluate James’
mental cognition throughout the
race, I’d sought the opinion of
PhD researcher Chris Howe from
Kingston University, who is
heavily involved in​ investigating
the physiological, nutritional
and psychological responses
to ultramarathon running. On
his advice, I attempted to test
James at checkpoints, using
a series of relatively simple
cognition tasks. After 200km,
he no longer had the mental
energy to face this, nor me the
temerity to put him through it.”
“Coming into the last
50km on day four,
lips were blistered
and sun-cracked”

Ultra Gobi
Carnegie: “I have a voicemail from James saved on my phone. He was less than 500m from the finish, could hear the music blaring and see the
lights projecting into the sky, but was aimlessly running around a quarry. It’s one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard.”
Poole: “The Ultra Gobi runners receive an unusual gift
before the start: one half of a small statuette of a tiger – a
‘tiger tally’. The other half is awarded after the successful
completion of the race. These tallies were used by military
officers in ancient China as a representation of authority.
A commander in a frontier region such as the Gobi might
leave half of his tally behind in a fortress, then provide the
matching half as ID when sending back orders. Leaving
half of your tally behind is a pledge you’ll return.”
Carnegie: “After 93 hours and 25 minutes in the desert,
James crosses the finish line in Dunhuang. The Ultra Gobi
ends at a ‘centuries-old’ fort, which is actually a museum
that was built recently to give tourists ‘the Silk Road
experience’, complete with staff in warrior suits. It’s
completely bizarre and I can’t imagine what it must have
felt like emerging to this after four days in a desert.”
THE RED BULLETIN 85

Ultra Gobi
“This is what running
non-stop for that
length of time in such
hostile conditions
does to you”
The photographer’s
perspective: James Carnegie
“I struggled with a conflict of
compassion over commitment
during this assignment. I was
here, several thousand miles
from home, for the singular
purpose of capturing James’
story. But when your good friend
lurches in from the cold, dark
desert, shivering uncontrollably
and repeatedly muttering ‘I just
need to sleep’ you’re torn
between helping them into their
sleeping bag and getting the
shot. I kept telling myself that if
I came away with just one good
shot, it would all be worth it.
“I knew that I needed to see
James outside the checkpoints,
the safety of medics and the
race staff; I needed to see him
in the darkness and loneliness
of the race. I heard his shuffled,
slowing and stumbling footsteps
alongside me, and also his
incoherent, nonsensical speech
and hallucinations as we
traversed riverbed and gorge.
I could see – and briefly share
– the deep, deep cold he was
victim to as he drew the hood
tight around his face, clenching
his numb and useless fingers
into a ball in his gloves. This is
where he was. This is where the
story was. I would have liked to
have experienced more of that.
Without actually running this
thing in its entirety, that wasn’t
possible. I probably pushed as
far as I could in my capacity as
a photographer on this kind of
remote adventure, but I’m left
with utter respect for James
and all the runners who saw
this through.
“A face can tell a thousand
words. I hope that in my images
I captured some of what James
was experiencing. The raw
fatigue, the worn exterior and
the rollercoaster of emotions
were clear to see, but how does
one capture that?”
86 THE RED BULLETIN

GEAR UP
THETHRILL
THETHRILL
THRILL
FOR
2019 BICYCLE GEAR
Leatt’s pursuit of rider safety starts at layer one.
Tougher… resilient… more durable. With
improved ventilation and abrasion resistance,
Leatt’s new apparel is First Line Protection that
redefines the aesthetics of Thrill.
Leatt.com

Rock
Steady
When running on slate or
grass or gravel, lightweight
and breathable alone won’t
cut it – you need kit that’s
been engineered to endure
the trials of the trail
Photography BEN READ
Styling SARAH ANN MURRAY
ADIDAS TERREX Stockhorn
hooded jacket, Agravic
backpack and Trailcross
tee, adidas.co.uk/terrex;
ADIDAS Supernova running
shorts, adidas.co.uk;
SKINS A400 men’s long
compression tights,
skins.net; ON RUNNING
Cloud X trainers and high
socks, on-running.com;
SUNNTO D5 smartwatch,
suunto.com
88

Trail running
HELLY HANSEN Lifa Crew
base layer, hellyhansen.com;
CAMELBAK Circuit vest,
camelbak.com;
2XU Mid-Rise Reflect
compression tights, 2xu.com;
HUMMEL Fundamental
socks, hummel.co.uk;
ON RUNNING Cloudventure
trail-running shoes,
on-running.com; SUNNTO D5
smartwatch, suunto.com
90

ADIDAS TERREX Trailcross
tee and Free Hiker shoes,
adidas.co.uk/terrex;
ADIDAS Supernova running
shorts, adidas.co.uk;
SKINS A400 men’s long
compression tights,
skins.net; SUNNTO D5
smartwatch, suunto.com

MONTANE Icarus Flight
jacket, montane.co.uk;
ADIDAS Supernova running
shorts, adidas.co.uk;
STANCE Peaks Crew socks,
stance.eu.com; ADIDAS
TERREX Free Hiker shoes,
adidas.co.uk/terrex
92

COLUMBIA OutDry Ex
Featherweight Shell jacket,
columbiasportswear.co.uk;
2XU Mid-Rise Reflect
compression tights, 2xu.com
Trail running

Trail running
ADIDAS TERREX Agravic Windweave
jacket, adidas.co.uk/terrex;
ADIDAS Run tee and Supernova
running shorts, adidas.co.uk; SUNNTO
D5 smartwatch, suunto.com
94 THE RED BULLETIN

MOUNT
VISION
RULE
THE
RIDE
• ALL MOUNTAIN TRAIL BLISS
• TRAIL POPPING, PLAYFUL FUN
• UP, DOWN, AND EVERYTHING IN BETWEEN

Trail running
ADIDAS TERREX
Agravic Alpha Hooded
Shield jacket and
Free Hiker shoes,
adidas.co.uk/terrex;
2XU Mid-Rise Reflect
compression tights,
2xu.com; HUMMEL
Fundamental socks,
hummel.com
Hair and make-up:
Jess Kordecki
Styling assistant:
Rosie Farnworth
Fashion assistant:
Allegra Bartoli
Models:
Christian Lambelin
@ Select,
Sophie Hellyer
@ W Model Management
Thanks to Visit Wales
for its location support;
visitwales.com
96 THE RED BULLETIN

ADDIX SPEEDGRIP & SOFT COMPOUND The two compounds offer
the widest possible range of applications and can be combined perfectly. Go to your limit and
demand the maximum from your tires. schwalbe.com/addix-compound

RX-7V
The Arai RX-7V.
Born, not made.
The best of the best. Handcrafted for elite riders.
Designed for the track. Loved on the road. The RX-7V represents the pinnacle of our
expertise in helmet technology. Trusted by professional and elite riders, it’s the only helmet
available with SNELL and ECE 22-05 accreditations*. Its strong outer shell is engineered
to its fully adjustable anti-microbial liner. No distractions. No compromises. Just precision
performance from a brand committed to relentlessly pursuing gains in protection.
PB SNC Outer Shell
VAS V MV Visor
Antimicrobial
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THE
CONSISTENT
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* To the best of our knowledge and at the moment of writing.
Find your nearest Arai stockist at whyarai.co.uk
whyarai.co.uk

guide
Get it. Do it. See it.
TAKE THE PLUNGE
Bin the beach holiday –
go beyond the ordinary
on a cliff-diving trip
to the Azores with the
legendary Orlando Duque
and Destination Red Bull
PAGE 100
SAMO VIDIC/RED BULL CONTENT POOL
WALKING ON AIR
AlterG: the anti-gravity
treadmill developed for
space but tailor-made
for recovering athletes
PAGE 104
TEAM PLAYER
There’s more to gaming
hit Apex Legends than
shooting and looting. A
leadership pro explains
PAGE 106
FULLY EQUIPPED
The best gear around,
plus a look inside YT
Industries, the firm
reinventing bike-making
PAGE 108
THE RED BULLETIN 99

G U I D E
Do it
Raw nature: the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series makes its annual stop at the Ilhéu de Vila Franca
SÃO MIGUEL, THE AZORES
HOW TO BE
A CLIFF DIVER
With Destination Red Bull, you can book top athletes as
your tour guide. Cliff diver Orlando Duque teaches guests
to overcome their fear of heights and take the plunge
As a professional cliff diver
for more than 20 years, I’ve
travelled to competitions
all over the world. There have
been some legendary locations,
from the jungles of Yucatán to the
Antarctic and Easter Island. But
I always like returning to the
island of São Miguel in the Azores
– first and foremost for its
fascinating nature – and that’s
where we’re going on this
Destination Red Bull trip.
The nine islands that make up
the Azores sit in a remote area
of the Atlantic Ocean, around
Your guide: world-class cliff diver Orlando Duque
100 THE RED BULLETIN

The Azores
TRAVEL INFO
BAD BIRD CALLS
AND HOT ROCKS
Where the Azores are, why they were
misnamed, and what you should eat
– here’s some island knowledge to
flaunt in the hotel lobby
Leap of faith: “I’ll teach you how to enjoy cliff-diving,” says Duque, pictured in fight
The Azores sit in the Atlantic
Ocean, around 1,400km west of
Portugal and 1,950km southeast
of Newfoundland, Canada. The
main island of São Miguel has
an area of 744.7km 2 , making it
a little larger than Singapore
Corvo
Flores
Graciosa
Faial
Pico
São Jorge
Azores
Terceira
São Miguel
Santa Maria
Ribeira Grande
São Miguel
Ponta Delgada
Ilhéu de Vila Franca
ROMINA AMATO/RED BULL CONTENT POOL, DEAN TREML/RED BULL CONTENT POOL, RED BULL MEDIA HOUSE GMBH/
RED BULL CONTENT POOL, GETTY IMAGES ANDREAS ROTTENSCHLAGER
The Ilhéu de Vila Franca and its crater lake, with São Miguel in the background
1,400km west of Portugal, and
are famous for their volcanic
coastlines and green cliffs. It’s not
at all rare to find yourself in the
company of dolphins or sperm
whales when swimming there.
In other words, the Azores are
a great place to get to know the
Atlantic in all its variety. And
that’s what we have in store.
Santa Bárbara Eco-Beach
Resort on São Miguel’s north
coast is our accommodation
for the five-day trip, during
which guests will immerse
themselves in the Azorean waters
and, at certain times, go pretty
deep – naturally, the correct
technique for diving off cliffs
forms part of the programme.
“I’ll adapt to your
level. There are
about 100 diving
spots on the island”
For our workshop on the second
day, we will transfer to the tiny
Ilhéu de Vila Franca, just off the
south coast of São Miguel.
Anyone viewing bird’s-eye photos
of the islet will immediately be
struck by the round lagoon that
has formed in the crater of the
extinct volcano – it’s a natural
wonder, and the journey there
is magical in itself. Even though
HISTORY
ALL IN A NAME
Portuguese sailors named their discovery the llhas dos
Açores, or Goshawk Islands. Shame that the goshawks
were actually buzzards
SPREADING OUT
In 1752, 60 Azorean couples left for Brazil and founded
what became Porto Alegre, now a city of 1.5 million
STAGING POST
Early submarine cables between Europe and America
went via the Azores, as did the first-ever transatlantic
flight, which included two stops on the islands
FOOD
COZIDO
The volcanic ground underfoot serves as a natural hob
for this stew of meat and vegetables
BOLO LÊVEDO
A sweet, leavened dough roll that looks like a muffin
and is eaten throughout the day
PINEAPPLE CHUTNEY
The Azorean pineapple has been grown in greenhouses
since being introduced in the 19th century. This chutney
goes perfectly with the islands’ cheeses
THE RED BULLETIN 101

G U I D E
Do it
The Azores
DESTINATION RED BULL
YOUR ADVENTURE
WITH TOP ATHLETES
Fancy some off-road training in the desert
with a five-time Dakar Rally winner, or sailing
in the South Pacific with a champion
ultrarunner turned yachtsman? Here are
some other options awaiting you…
LESOTHO
WITH ALFIE COX
Spend a week with the South African enduro
expert, exploring stunning motorbike tracks along
the route of the legendary Roof of Africa rally
“The feeling when you resurface is sensational,” says Duque. We believe him
SOLOMON ISLANDS
WITH CHRISTIAN SCHIESTER
Absolute paradise: the former ultrarunner, now
a round-the-world yachtsman, takes you on the trip
of a lifetime on his 18m vessel El Toro
MUMBAI
WITH THE STARS OF RED BULL BC ONE
Meet the B-boy and B-girl elite at the Red Bull BC One
World Final, learn their moves in practice sessions, and
immerse yourself in Mumbai’s mesmerising nightlife
BARCELONA
WITH SETE GIBERNAU AND DANI PEDROSA
Get motorbike training on Sete Gibernau’s
exclusive private racetrack, plus a VIP package
for the Gran Premi de Catalunya
there are limits on visitor numbers
– for conservation reasons – we’ll
get to stay there for the whole day
and climb the picturesque crater
walls or snorkel the rock tunnels
at the foot of the island.
The thing that leaps out at you
when you first see the Ilhéu de Vila
Franca is its steep, rocky cliffs
– and, of course, these haven’t
escaped the attention of the
world’s cliff-diving community.
Let’s get one thing clear from
the start: nobody has to dive 27m
from the cliff edge as the top
athletes do. There are more than
100 places to dive – from various
heights – around the island. At the
workshop, I’ll work individually
with each guest according to
their fitness level and wishes. Of
course, the trip is about getting
the most out of yourself, but the
main aim is always to have fun.
Cliff diving is a mental
challenge. The crux of the matter
is to take a leap of faith, literally.
Many people dive and then seize
up. To counter this, what helps is
knowing that you can adjust your
position mid-air. I’ll show my
guests the correct technique for
the flight phase and entering the
water, and gradually take them
as high as they’d like to go. On
our workshop day, we can go
anywhere up to 14m. Ideally
you’ll also be learning something
about yourself – ie, that you’re
only afraid of things you don’t
know enough about. It’s normal
to be afraid when you’re standing
on the edge of a cliff and are
about to dive for the first time.
But you’re overcome by feelings
of happiness when you return
to the surface.
And while we’re on the subject
of diving, there will be two
professional divers with us, who’ll
check out every water entry point
in advance. These are the same
guys the world-class divers of the
Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series
trust, and we’ll watch that
competition from the comfort of
a 14m catamaran on day four.
Then, that evening, we’ll meet the
competitors for dinner and talk
shop about the sport.
We’ll all know how cliff-diving
works by then, after all.
For further information on the trips and how to book, go to:
destination.redbull.com or call +43/664/88 11 07 06
PREDRAG VUCKOVIC/RED BULL CONTENT POOL
102 THE RED BULLETIN

All weathers.
All seasons.
All conquering.
NEW
Best-in-class
Wet Grip
EU label Grade ‘A’ – the
highest rank for wet grip
Certified Snow
Performance
3 Peak Mountain Snow
Flake marking (3PMSF)
Superior Wear Life
Same mileage as
Bridgestone premium
summer tyres
Bridgestone UK Ltd.
For your nearest Bridgestone Authorised Dealer,
visit our website www.bridgestone.co.uk

G U I D E
Do it
ALTER G ANTI-GRAVITY TREADMILL
TAKE THE WEIGHT
OFF YOUR FEET
All of it. Using technology
devised for astronaut
training, this treadmill
allows you to run in almost
zero-g… on Earth
Fitness
KNOW-HOW
FIT FOR
SPACE
These fitness
machines were
designed by, with
and for astronauts
Keep on running:
air pressure
supports your
weight while
training
ADVANCED
RESISTIVE EXERCISE
DEVICE (ARED)
Zero-g dumbbell
exercises? Won’t work.
The ARED generates its
own resistance and thus
cancels out the crux of
weightlessness. It was
first used on the
International Space
Station in 2009.
The treadmill is an
essential tool for athletes
following an operation
or injury. But when is the right
time to begin rehab, and how
much strain can the body take?
Get the timing wrong and you
could do more harm than good;
start too late and you could
miss the crucial window for
recovery. A solution was needed
and it came from space.
During his time as a NASA
engineer, Dr Robert Whalen
was tasked with devising a way
for astronauts to exercise in zero
gravity. His idea was to place
the person inside a pressurised
bubble and push them down
onto the treadmill using air
pressure. NASA didn’t adopt the
concept, but Robert’s son Sean
saw its potential as a rehab
device. By flipping the concept
on its head, using air pressure
“Using this
treadmill
means I can
train and avoid
injury at the
same time”
Nicola Spirig, Olympic
triathlon champion
to lift users off the treadmill,
it could reduce bodyweight by
up to 80 per cent, placing less
stress on bones and joints.
Together, they released the
AlterG in 2005 and it’s since
been used by many professional
athletes, including NBA legends
Kobe Bryant and LeBron James,
and Swiss triathlete Nicola
Spirig. “I’ve been using it ever
since my preparations for Rio
2016,” explains the 2012
Olympic gold medallist and sixtime
European champion. “It
also means I can start training
again much earlier.” alterg.com
MINIATURE
EXERCISE DEVICE
(MED-2)
This machine works on
the same principle as the
ARED. It looks like a
vacuum cleaner, but you
use it for squats, arm
and leg exercises, or for
a total body workout.
The MED-2 was given its
space debut in 2016.
OYO FITNESS
DOUBLEFLEX
PERSONAL GYM
Used to maintain muscle
mass during endless
months onboard the
ISS, the OYO Fitness
DoubleFlex’s resistance
technology works for
Earthbound athletes,
too. It delivers 11kg of
weight from a 1kg device.
oyofitness.com
PAUL ANDREWS FLORIAN STURM
104 THE RED BULLETIN

Grip
Wide
Concave
Serviceable
It's Funndamental

G U I D E
Do it
Gaming
Power of three: AL characters Bloodhound, Wraith and Gibraltar
TEAM TACTICS
STRENGTH
IN NUMBERS
Battle royale mega-game Apex Legends
has one simple rule: play as a team or die.
There are a few life lessons in there…
No person is an island. Throughout history,
humans have depended on each other to
survive, and nowhere is this truer than in
smash-hit online squad-based shooter Apex Legends,
which notched up a million players within eight
hours of its unannounced launch in February, and
more than 50 million by the end of its first month.
This popularity is, in large part, due to its deeply
satisfying team gameplay, built around a fast-andeasy
communication system that pings vital info to
your allies. One press sends a basic ‘go’ sign or tags
in-game objects, a double tap pings enemy locations,
and holding down brings up a menu with quick
predictive messages. No need to voice chat with
strangers or guess the intentions of a mic-less team
member who has sprinted into an enemy’s kill zone.
“The best teams happen when you have a mutual
dependency but trust one another,” says leadership
expert Jo Owen, who has travelled from high-powered
boardrooms to remote jungle tribes, seeking out what
makes teams tick. Here, he decodes the Apex Legends
(AL) squad skills and applies them to reality…
TRUST IS KEY
AL teams you up with strangers, so
how can you build trust? In business,
as in life, trust is gained in two ways:
by talking about shared experiences
to establish commonality, and by
achieving credibility through your
actions. The ping system satisfies
the second of these, keeping your
team informed of developments
(including real-life dashes to the loo),
while neatly sidestepping the first.
“That you don’t have to talk to, text
or see your teammates is genius,”
says Owen. “You could be blue with
two heads, and no one would care as
long as you can ping and shoot.
CLARITY IS CORE
Players of voice-mic’d multiplayer
shooters invariably hear something
like this: “There’s an enemy by that
tree.” The inevitable response in a
landscape dotted with identical trees
is, “Which one?” “Trust needs good
communication,” says Owen. “What
AL does is allow communication that
isn’t only frequent but clear – a ping
[tagging a specific tree] can’t be
misunderstood. In business, people
will say, ‘Will you fix that report?’
‘Which report? What do you mean
‘fix it’?’ Never assume your team
knows what you mean – spell it out.”
LEADING EDGE
AL randomly chooses a ‘Jumpmaster’,
the team member who decides where
to drop into the map. After being
nominated, you continue to lead on
the ground by pinging destinations
for your squad to move to – if they
agree, that is. “Leadership has to be
earned, and you have to keep on
earning it,” says Owen. In business,
people assume that a grand title
makes them a leader. “But they’re
wrong. The title has nothing to do
with leading; it’s about what you do
and how you do it. In the game, if you
don’t behave as a leader, within 30
seconds you’ll no longer be leading.”
The game’s world is distinctly post-apocalyptic
EXPERT
PROFILE
JO
OWEN
Team wrangler
An entrepreneur and
author, Owen has
launched eight not-for
profit organisations
with a combined annual
turnover of more than
£100 million, delivers
keynote speeches on
leadership and teamwork,
and has lived with tribal
peoples. His latest book,
Myths of Leadership, is
available now on Amazon.
Apex Legends is out on
PC, PS4 and Xbox One
LOYALTY CARD
“In business, leaders tolerate
incompetent followers much longer
than they do disloyal ones,” explains
Owen. Loyalty, he says, comes from
the realisation you’ll do far better as
a loyal member of the team than if
you’re alone. This is a key reason for
the success of AL: unlike in other
team shooters, roaming as a lone
wolf is not a viable strategy. “Apex
Legends is ultimately tribal warfare,
which is pretty brutal. As I’ve seen
when studying tribes, people are 100
per cent loyal because they know
they won’t survive outside the tribe.”
ROLE PLAYING
“You can have mutual dependency
and trust but still lack a team,” says
Owen. “Everyone has to have some
idea of their role. Am I the one taking
a risk (a salesperson) or am I a safe
pair of hands (an accountant)?” The
player characters in Apex Legends
fall into the standard video-game
archetypes of defensive, offensive
and support, but you also need to
know how your teammates’ roles
interact with yours. “There’s no point
in picking a medic role, then running
ahead to be first in contact with the
enemy,” Owen says. “Likewise, you
don’t want your legal advisor betting
their houses on roulette.”
ELECTRONIC ARTS MATT RAY
106 THE RED BULLETIN

HABIT
* Comes with technology. And we
could tell you more about it. But that’s
what everyone does. So we’d rather
skip the hype and stick to the facts:
The all-new Habit is an all-new mountain
bike that wants whatever you can throw
at it. A mountain bike that feels planted
and predictable, light and nimble, solid
and unwavering. A mountain bike that
feels right at home where a mountain
bike should. Slashing, boosting, sending
and delivering. On the trail, in the dirt,
through the air, and on its edge.
New mountain
bike available.*
cannondale.com

G U I D E
Get it
YT INDUSTRIES
SERIOUSLY
FUN
With humorous ads featuring Hollywood
stars, YT is a company that likes to enjoy
itself. But its bikes are no laughing matter
SEATPOST:
FOX Transfer
Factory
FRAME:
Decoy
Carbon
When YT (Young Talent)
Industries launched in
2007, it had a lot to prove;
a late-to-the-game entry in the
bike manufacturing market, the
German firm was mocked by
the bigger players. But today YT
is a global force, catering to pros
and amateurs alike. Much of this
is down to company founder and
CEO Markus Flossmann, now 43,
who prioritised fun from the
off, and who enlisted the likes of
Christopher Walken and Vinnie
Jones – unlikely advocates for
biking – to advertise his products.
The flash of inspiration that
spawned YT came to Flossmann
during a trip to a dirt-jump park
where the local scene was out in
force but riding around on rubbish
bikes. What if someone could offer
them quality, great design and
a dash of cool at a low price? He
believed there were enough people
out there whose talent would
awaken if they did things right.
For the last decade, YT has
filled that gap, providing bikes at
a reasonable price thanks to direct
marketing. On the way, it has
“We want the
average rider
to have fun
on our bikes”
YT Industries founder
Markus Flossmann
MOTOR:
Shimano
STEPS E8000
BATTERY:
SMP YT Custom,
540Wh
WERNER JESSNER
108 THE RED BULLETIN

Equipment
GEARS:
Shimano
XT DI2
DISPLAY:
Shimano
STEPS E7000
BRAKES:
SRAM Code
RSC
KNOW-HOW
THE YT
DECOY
The best electric
mountain bike that
(a reasonable sum
of) money can buy
SHOCK:
FOX Float
X2 Factory
FORK:
FOX 36 Float
Factory E
CEO MARKUS
FLOSSMANN
ON THE DECOY
“The three salient
features are its geometry,
weight and frame.
Whether you’re going
uphill, downhill or on the
flat, the handling and
broad range of options
make the Decoy unique.”
“A lot of electric
mountain bikes feel more
like motorbikes than
mountain bikes, due to
their weight, the long
chainstay and the
unbalanced geometry.
Our Decoy is different.”
“The geometry is
downhill-oriented,
supports a playful riding
style, and means the bike
can still climb uphill with
panache. It’s just a
helluva lot of fun to ride.”
“What’s special about the
Decoy? The fact that it
doesn’t feel like a normal
electric mountain bike!”
WHEELSET:
E*Thirteen E*Spec
Race – front 29in,
rear 27.5in
WEIGHT: 21.9kg
SIZES AVAILABLE:
S/M/L/XL/XXL
PRICE: £5,999
plus shipping
THE RED BULLETIN 109

G U I D E
Get it
Equipment
convinced that they achieve the
best results when they start out
with no pressure, feeling relaxed.
Passion is the best motivation.
Still going strong: Flossmann took up riding after injury halted his bodybuilding career
helped pros Andreu Lacondeguy
and Aaron Gwin triumph – at Red
Bull Rampage and in downhill
at the UCI MTB World Cup
respectively – all without letting
seriousness get in the way. The
strategy clearly appeals: 17-yearold
downhill prodigy Vali Höli is
now signed to the YT family, too.
Flossmann himself is a man
who would never let normality
get in the way of his vision, having
started out as a bodybuilder
before deciding to reinvent the
mountain bike. He now sits at
the helm of one of the most
innovative bike firms in Europe.
the red bulletin: How does
a bodybuilder wind up making
mountain bikes?
markus flossman: Bodybuilding
is a mindset you live 24/7; a sport
that demands a lot of willpower.
Preparation for a competition lasts
five months and feels like a boot
camp. You need a will of iron to
come through. That mindset has
“I started
riding to
have fun
and relax.
That’s still
the main
philosophy
behind YT”
Markus
Flossmann
left its mark on me. When I had to
give up competitive bodybuilding
due to injury, I learnt to love the
relaxed world of mountain biking.
Before I founded YT, I’d already
been a committed mountain biker
for 11 years and was very into
technology. I’ve long thought of
myself as a hardcore biker.
Did you ever race?
No. I didn’t start mountain biking
[in the mid-’90s] for the sake of
racing at the weekends, or to prove
how good I was in competition.
I wanted to create steep turns and
ramps with my mates after work
and go hard at it, then drink a beer.
In other words, I wanted to have
fun and relax. That remains the
main philosophy behind our brand.
How do you channel that into
riders winning races on YT bikes?
We never pressure our sportsmen
and women into taking part in
specific competitions or delivering
results, and we never will. We’re
What input do your pro riders
give on the regular bikes?
We hoover up their feedback. But
the trick is filtering and analysing
their comments so that ultimately
an average rider can have fun on
our bikes. It’s like fine-tuning an
F1 car so that a new driver could
handle one. The bike Aaron Gwin
used to win downhill at the UCI
MTB World Cup twice was
standard except for the suspension
set-up. Anyone can buy one.
For how long does one count
as a ‘young talent’?
I’m sure everyone is harbouring
hidden talents, no matter how
old they are. The important thing
is not to be limited by convention.
Take me, for example. I only
started motocross three years
ago, aged 40, even though all
my friends told me I was too old
and that it was a sport you had to
start young. As long as you enjoy
it and feel comfortable, it’s never
too late to discover a new talent
or passion within yourself.
Where did you get the idea of
producing quirky ads starring
non-bikers like Walken or Jones?
YT is different. I found bike ads
very one-dimensional – it was
always just about the product.
No one did anything original.
But mountain biking is about
lifestyle. We want to get our values
across without putting a specific
product in the forefront. If we
break a few rules, have fun and
encourage people in a way that
pushes the bike industry in a new
direction, it’s all good.
yt-industries.com
110 THE RED BULLETIN

COPYRIGHT © 2019 MNA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
DON’T ASK THE WORLD FOR ADVENTURE. FIND IT.
WHAT ARE YOU BUILDING FOR?
BFGOODRICHTIRES.COM

G U I D E
Get it
Equipment
1
2
4
3
PATH
FINDERS
Wherever you lose
yourself, trust
these trackers to
find you again
HUAWEI P30 PRO
FOUR-EYED
MONSTER
This quad-camera phone is a
photographic beast with more
tricks than meets the eye
It says something when the fact that this
phone’s four cameras are co-engineered by
industry pros Leica is their least impressive
boast. The 40MP SuperSpectrum sensor
can take flash-free shots in near-total
darkness, the ultra-wide lens captures
dewdrop-close macro, and a ‘periscope’
arrangement of the telephoto lens gives 5x
optical zoom (10x hybrid, 50x digital) that
can record craters on the Moon. Plus, the
depth-sensing lens works with AI for perfect
bokeh portraits, and there’s a fifth camera
for 32MP selfies on the front. huawei.com
1. Ultra-wide 20MP lens for
landscape and macro shots
2. 40MP SuperSpectrum
sensor lets in more light
3. Depth sensor for bokeh
portraits and AR apps
4. Telephoto lens fitted in a
periscope arrangement
SPOT X
A tracker and two-way
satellite messenger that
works beyond cell range
– to friends, SOS services
and social media.
findmespot.com
CASIO PRO-TREK
The WSD-F30 has
full-colour GPS map
navigation, a compass,
barometer, altimeter,
Android apps and fivebar
water resistance.
wsd.casio.com
BEATS BY DRE
POWERBEATS PRO
SPORTS STAR
At last, earpods that let you work hard
at the gym while looking good, too
Apple’s Airpods are good, but their loose fit makes
them poor for sport. Here’s a practical, stylishly
superior alternative. Featuring the same H1 chip
that smart-switches between Apple devices and
responds to ‘Hey Siri’, they fit securely, are waterresistant,
work independently of each other, have
fuss-free physical buttons and a nine-hour battery,
and come in four stylish hues. beatsbydre.com
CAMMENGA TRITIUM
The Compass 3H is
resistant to grit, shocks
and water; works in
temperatures from -45°C
to 65°C, and won’t run out
of juice. cammenga.com
112 THE RED BULLETIN

THE RED BULLETIN PROMOTION
NATHAN HUGHES
S
urrounded by the lush
green slopes of the
Pinzgauer Grass Mountains
and the picturesque peaks
of the Kitzbühel Alps and
the Hohen Tauern mountain
range, you will find, at an
altitude of 1,003m, Saalbach
Hinterglemm – the coolest
mountain resort in Austria.
In the province of Salzburg,
you will find a holiday resort
that couldn’t be more diverse.
The most “lässig” of Austria’s
mountain villages is no longer
exclusively known as a top
skiing destination, but is also
an Eldorado for mountainbiking
and hiking.
Wake up in the early
morning hours with the sun
shining through the windows,
to a wonderful view of the
surrounding mountains.
A paradise with more than
400km of biking trails is
waiting to be discovered.
Are you looking for pleasant
cycling routes, enjoyable
e-biking tours and winding
trails? Or are you after more
challenging enduro and
downhill tracks? No matter
which exact mountain-biking
discipline gets your heart
beating faster, Saalbach
Hinterglemm provides the
perfect blend of fun and
adventure for everyone.
Endless mountains with
varying terrains, six cableways
with bike transport, and all
of that amid a mesmerising
mountain scenery, make
the region a truly unique
experience for cycling fans.
Your mountain-bike holiday
in Saalbach Hinterglemm will
be an unforgettable journey.
GlemmRide Bike Festival
03-07.07.2019
You are invited to the GlemmRide
Bike Festival, an international
bike and party gathering in
SalzburgerLand. From July 3,
the mountain-bike hotspot of the
Alps will be transformed. With the
FMB Gold Slopestyle, Specialized
Rookies Cup, 50 exhibitors, and
parties à la Masters of Dirt,
you’ll be served with good times
during your Saalbach holiday.
saalbach.com
AUSTRIA’S COOLEST BIKE RESORT
SAALBACH
HINTERGLEMM
Welcome to the “Home of Lässig”*
*Cool and laid-back – or “lässig” as the Austrians say
THE RED BULLETIN 113

G U I D E
Get it
DOUCHEBAGS SAVAGE BIKE BAG
ROLL WITH IT
Protect your bike wherever you take it – in this
lightweight luggage with a built-in roll cage
Equipment
WHERE’S
YOUR
HEAD AT?
A safer place if
it’s inside a multidirectional
impact
protection helmet
D3 CARBON MIPS
Is it the bike that wins
the race, or the rider?
Turns out it might be the
helmet – the Troy Lee
D3 has won more DH
World Cups, Red Bull
Rampages and Olympic
medals than any other.
troyleedesigns.com
When British saloon-car racer John Aley devised the roll bar in 1964 to save drivers’ lives in serious crashes, he probably never
imagined it being used to protect mountain bikes in long-haul transit – but that’s exactly what inspired the patented Db Roll
Cage in this bike bag. Capable of accommodating any size of mountain bike, the aluminium frame combined with an otherwise
soft-bag structure makes it surprisingly light, and, when not in use, it folds up to 35 per cent of its full size. douchebags.com
FULL-9 FUSION MIPS
Bell Helmets may have
a slightly amusing name,
but the brand takes its
work seriously. This fullface
fibreglass cranium
case is the MTB variant
of its award-winning
Moto-9 motocross shell.
bellhelmets.com
TRUST PERFORMANCE
MESSAGE FORK
FORK TO THE FUTURE
Suspension so smooth you can ride
the mountain drinking a cup of tea
Dave Weagle is kind of a big deal in mountainbiking
circles. He’s the mad professor behind
the most successful rear suspension in downhill
competition history – the DW-link – and now
he has done the same for front forks, replacing
telescopic suspension with a trailing multi-link
(that’s the arm you can see behind the fork) that
delivers insane stability and cushioning. The only
shock is the price: £2,500. trustperformance.com
100% AIRCRAFT
CARBON MIPS
A fancy name that
describes exactly what
it is: a tough shell built
from an aerospace mix
of carbon and Kevlar,
with 25 airflow channels
to keep your noggin cool.
ride100percent.com
114 THE RED BULLETIN

OFFICIAL SPONSOR & RACEWEAR SUPPLIER
In 2011 the Madison Saracen Factory Race Team was created
to develop British mountain biking talent to perform at the
highest level on a British bike – now into its eighth season,
few would have anticipated national champions, multiple
world cup wins and two world championship victories!
We are proud to continue supporting the team and we benefit from
the hard work, technical feedback, development and in-race testing
which in turn we pass onto you. Here’s to another great season!
WWW.MADISON.CC

G U I D E
Do it
May / June
1
to 2 June
UCI DOWNHILL
WORLD CUP
The Scottish Highlands have
seen many battles throughout
history, and that’s set to continue
this June as the top downhill
mountain-bikers meet on Fort
William’s 2.8km track for the UK
leg of the World Cup. Can Tahnee
Seagrave successfully defend
her victory here last year?
Or will Rachel Atherton, who
came third after a snapped chain,
claim the throne on her newly
built and tested Atherton bike?
Fort William, Scotland;
fortwilliamworldcup.co.uk
16
May to 26 Aug
AI: More
Than Human
This art exploration into our
obsession with thinking
machines includes a sound
installation by Hyperdub label
boss Kode9, based on the
legend of the golem; MIT’s
robotic fish, which can swim in
the ocean, and Massive Attack
encoding their 1998 album
Mezzanine into synthetic DNA
strands. Barbican, London;
barbican.org.uk
23
5
May to 26 Aug
Manga
The comic-book art form
known as Manga is loved by
adults and children alike in
Japan, and has influenced
Western culture through video
games, cosplay, and movies
such as Alita: Battle Angel.
Witness the largest exhibit of
Manga outside Japan, with
examples from its origins in
12th-century scrolls through
to modern anime films.
British Museum, London;
britishmuseum.org
to 19 June
David Blaine:
Real or Magic
If that’s a question, the answer
would seem to be ‘illusion’.
The US magician forever blurs
the line between trickery and
endurance feat; in 2010, Blaine
held his breath for a recordbreaking
17m 4.5s. Judge his
authenticity for yourself as
he embarks on this nationwide
tour. Various locations, UK;
livenation.co.uk
to 8 June
Field Day
This three-day party is back for a 13th year,
shifting roots from its 2018 site – Brockwell Park
in south London – to an epic location in the north
of the city: four gigantic interlinked warehouses
and 10 acres of outdoor space near Tottenham
Marshes. Does that still qualify as a ‘field’ day?
Few will complain with a bill that includes Diplo,
Octavian, The Black Madonna, Jorja Smith and
Skepta (in his only London summer festival show),
with after-parties at Printworks London.
The Drumsheds, Meridian Water, London;
fielddayfestivals.com
NATHAN HUGHES/ RED BULL CONTENT POOL, STEVE TURVEY
7116 THE RED BULLETIN

G U I D E
See it
June
Hear handpicked
music and
interviews with
influential artists.
This month’s
pick is…
ALL THE
RIGHT
MOVES
Whether on a Japanese
dancefloor, off the
cliffs of the Azores or
on the trails of Austria,
it’s all about freedom
of expression on Red
Bull TV this month…
WATCH
RED BULL TV
ANYWHERE
Red Bull TV is a global digital
entertainment destination
featuring programming that
is beyond the ordinary and is
available anytime, anywhere.
Go online at redbull.tv,
download the app, or
connect via your Smart TV.
To find out more,
visit redbull.tv
1
Hip-hop dancer
Leo gets busy at
the 2018 qualifiers
June LIVE
RED BULL DANCE YOUR
STYLE: JAPAN FINAL
Red Bull Dance Your Style inspires and cultivates creativity
by providing a premier location for expression in dance
and introducing new scenes and communities. Following
the 2019 qualifiers in Osaka, Fukuoka and Tokyo this
winter, it’s time for Japan’s national final, staged at the
capital’s Warp Shinjuku venue. Don’t miss it.
22
June LIVE
RED BULL CLIFF
DIVING, PORTUGAL
You’ve read our travel feature on
Destination Red Bull’s exclusive Azores
cliff-diving trip with Orlando Duque, now
see all the leaps from the main event.
9June LIVE
UCI MTB WORLD
CUP, LEOGANG
This year, the mountain-biking World
Cup is bigger and better, with eight
locations for downhillers. We bring you
the action from this Austrian stop.
THIS
SIDE OF
NOWHERE
17
June
ON AIR
On her monthly
Red Bull Radio show
(every third Monday,
7pm BST), Veronica
Vasicka explores the
artists who have
shaped the electronic
underground. The
NYC electro queen
and Minimal Wave
label founder looks at
the maverick spirit of
DIY non-conformists,
as well as the legacies
of particular drum
machines and the
roots of synthesiser
music, from Japanese
synth tracks and
Australian postpunk
to the history
of the Fairlight.
LISTEN AT
REDBULLRADIO.COM
JASON HALAYKO/RED BULL CONTENT POOL, DEAN TREML/RED BULL CONTENT POOL, BARTEK WOLINSKI/RED BULL CONTENT POOL
118 THE RED BULLETIN

WWW.INNSBRUCK.INFO
#MYINNSBRUCK
IKING
unlimited
12.6.–16.6.19
HOME OF CRANKWORX INNSBRUCK
Foto: Innsbruck Tourismus / Voitl
CRANKWORX INNSBRUCK
June is when the magic happens at Bikepark Innsbruck! From 12 to 16 June, bike heroes pull their best tricks at Crankworx Innsbruck -
world tour‘s only stop in Europe. Just watching the action will be enough to give you an adrenaline rush!
www.innsbruck.info/biking

THE RED
BULLETIN
WORLDWIDE
The Red
Bulletin is
published in seven
countries. This is
the cover of June’s
French edition,
featuring hip-hop
dancer Diablo
For more stories
beyond the ordinary,
go to: redbulletin.com
The Red Bulletin UK.
ABC certified distribution
154,346 (Jan-Dec 2018)
GLOBAL TEAM
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THE RED BULLETIN
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marcel.bannwart@redbull.com
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THE RED BULLETIN
USA, ISSN 2308-586X
Editor-in-Chief
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Tanya Foster, tanya.foster@redbull.com
120 THE RED BULLETIN

THE RED BULLETIN PROMOTION
Dimitri Tordo
getting
sideways
BORIS BEYER MARKUS GEBHARD
H
ow do you get your
kicks? Ripping downhill
tracks at the bike park?
Clocking up hang time on
dirt-jump lines? Nailing that
perfect line on your local
enduro trails? No matter
what drives you and no matter
where you ride, the next
descent, the next big kicker,
the next nail-biting landing
– that’s all that counts.
Shred City means something
different for every rider
out there, and it isn’t just
the place where you send
it. It’s much more: it’s a
worldwide community and
everyone’s invited.
For Dimitri Tordo of the
Canyon Factory Enduro Team,
Shred City means competing
at the most demanding races
on the calendar and pitting
himself against the world’s
best riders. The season could
hardly have begun better for
Tordo, with the Frenchman
bringing home the win at NZ
Enduro in New Zealand in
spite of torrential rain and
treacherous conditions. But,
in racing, world-class skills
are just one part of the puzzle:
you can only beat the best
if your bike can match your
ambition. And when it
comes to getting the job
done, Tordo and the Canyon
Factory Enduro Team turn
to the Strive CFR.
The Strive is an enduro-racing
weapon ready for the toughest
stages around – and for your
backyard trails. Thanks to the
game-changing Shapeshifter
tech, it’s possible to alter the
geometry and suspension setup
while riding, simply by
flicking a handlebar-mounted
switch. Developed and tested
in Koblenz, Germany, this
bike is built for the biggest
challenges, from Fort William
to wherever you call your
local Shred City.
canyon.com/strive
BECOME A PART OF IT
SHRED CITY
Canyon
Strive CFR
9.0 Team
Canyon is uniting
riders all over the world
THE RED BULLETIN 121

Action highlight
Flying the flag
While visiting the famous Muscle Beach in Santa Monica, California, Alexander Megos
spotted the ideal photo opportunity. Being one of the world’s top rock climbers, the
25-year-old German couldn’t resist putting his own highly developed delts, lats and
obliques to the test with a human flag. For more Megos, go to redbull.com
The next
issue of
THE RED BULLETIN
is out on
June 11
KEN ETZEL/RED BULL CONTENT POOL DAVID MAYER
122 THE RED BULLETIN

FAST, LIGHT, STRONG:
YOU CAN HAVE IT ALL
CUBE REACTION TM Pro
The Reaction TM Pro is the heart of the Reaction range. To our
designers, that means one thing: they can really go to town.
The combination of RockShox‘s new 130mm Sektor fork and
2.6in Kenda Hellkat and Nevegal 2 tyres serves up a serious
dose of technical trail-taming ability, backed up by the Kind
Shock LEV dropper post - so you can tackle steeps with ease
- and a Newmen cockpit with 760mm handlebar for superb
control. With powerful hydraulic disc brakes to keep your speed
in check and Sram‘s 1x11 NX transmission with a Race Face
Ride crankset, you‘ve everything you need to take the fight to
the mountain... and come out on top.
FRAME Aluminium Lite, Trail Motion Geometry
FORK RockShox Sektor, 130mm
GROUPSET Sram NX , 11-Speed
BRAKES Magura MT Thirty, (180/180)
WEIGHT 13,6 KG
PRICE £ 1.299,-
FOR MORE INFORMATION ON CUBE BIKES, AND TO LOCATE YOUR
NEAREST CUBE DEALER, PLEASE VISIT WWW.CUBE.EU
CUBEBIKESUK CUBEBIKESUK CUBEBIKESUK