N E Y M A R AND THE

FORGING OF SOCCER’S WONDER BOY

HOW TO MAKE

GENIUS

T H E N E X T H U R D L E

Dai Greene’s Olympic destiny

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“I’ve always been driven by anger”

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DECEMBER 2011A BEYOND THE ORDINARY MAGAZINE

EUR 3.50 December 2011

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Sometimes the cards just fall right for you. While we were putting together this issue of The Red Bulletin, our cover star, Neymar da Silva Santos Júnior, a relatively unassuming 19-year-old boy-man who just happens to be the most coveted young footballer on the planet, signed a much-improved contract extension that keeps him at the Brazilian club Santos FC until after the World Cup of 2014.

In three summers’ time, that tournament will be held in Brazil, and if Neymar can lead his country to glory on home soil, then even the oligarchs and sheikhs and members’ representatives at Europe’s top clubs will be wincing as they flip the tops off their gold pens and open their chequebooks to try and sign him. Just like we were

wincing when the rumours of him signing for Chelsea or Real Madrid or Manchester City or Barcelona wouldn’t go away, despite our exclusive interview suggesting he would be loyal to his home state team. A young footballer turning down a mega-millions move? It was never in doubt.

If Neymar is driven by a love of the game, then Sean Penn, double Oscar winner and rousing rebel, is mainly powered by anger. “I wouldn’t recommend it as a source of motivation,” he tells The Red Bulletin this month, “but it’s always worked for me.” Elsewhere, there’s Jessica Watson,

who sailed around the world just in time for her 17th birthday, a review of the 2011 season of Red Bull X-Fighters, and a report from Zambia on the remarkable work of a lone woman who, with two-wheeled help from World Bicycle Relief, is a guardian angel for HIV sufferers in remote villages.

If you’d like to make sure that you get a regular copy of The Red Bulletin, you can now order the magazine online to be delivered to your door every month. Simply visit www.getredbulletin.com and follow the instructions.

Your editorial team

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MORE ON thE iPAD Wherever you see this

symbol you’ll find additional images and video in our free iPad

edition of the Red Bulletin. Download it now at the App Store

in four years of cycling around the remote communities of Zambia as a caregiver on a bike supplied by World Bicycle Relief, Susan has pedalled the equivalent of halfway round the world. Read about the lengths that she goes to on page 72

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Bullevard14 HERE IS THE NEWS

17 ME & MY BODYWarning: pro skiing can shred your butt

18 VASILY ARTEMYEVRugby’s Irish-Russian, playing in England

20 KIT BAG: RACING ENGINESHow Renault put the va-va-voom into F1

22 STEVEN SPIELBERGSharks, aliens and serious movie-making

25 YANN TIERSENMaking beautiful music – beyond Amélie

26 WINNING FORMULATopspinning tales of Rafael Nadal

28 LUCKY NUMBERS: NOBEL PRIZEGather ye, for the Oscars of boffindom

Action30 RED BULL X-FIGHTERSA year on tour with world’s finest FMX virtuosos, laughing in the face of gravity

40 THE DARK SIDE OF THE PENNHe’s Hollywood, sure. But there’s another ‘H’ to Mr Penn: humanitarian

44 YOU GOTTA LOVE LINDSEYLindsey Vonn: the belle of the slopes whose beauty is conquering US TV

50 NEYMAR: HOPE OF A NATIONHas a Brazilian footballer ever been so feted by his countrymen? Not since Pelé…

58 JESSICA WATSON: TEEN SPIRITThe teenage sailing sensation

64 STEPS TO HEAVENDai Greene, Britain’s new hurdling world champ, takes it in his stride

72 A BIKE TO CHANGE THE WORLDThis heavy, steel-framed bicycle has the power to transform African communities

THE WORLD OF RED BULL IN DECEMBER

Every month

06 KAINRATH’S CALENDAR08 PICTURES OF THE MONTH98 MIND’S EYE

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84 TRAVEL: ZILLERTALA snow-seeker’s paradise awaits in an Austrian valley

86 FOOD FOR THOUGHTWorld-acclaimed chefs and a dish from Denmark

88 GET THE GEARPro wave-rider Jordy Smith has what it takes to tame big surf

90 PRO TIPSA cross-country skier’s torture

92 WORLD’S BEST CLUBSCape Town’s Café Caprice

92 SETH ROGENThe actor’s only gone and made a comedy about cancer

93 TAKE 5The Phantom Band reveal their spectral inspirations

94 WORLD IN ACTIONOur guide to global essentials

96 SAVE THE DATEInk these in your diary

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IN DECEMBER 30

G r i m s e l , s w it z e r l a n d

CABLE GUY No, this isn’t a scene from new Bond flick Skyfall, pirate-released on YouTube. This is 39-year-old Swiss mountaineer Stephan Siegrist, who, with the help of equipment supplier Mammut, came up with idea of trying something different from his regular challenge of scaling an Alp. He’s also a bit of an extreme photography nut and enjoys being the subject of spectacular images, such as this. Still reckon it looks hairy? Not for Siegrist, who lives for the thrill of peaks such as the Cerro Torre in Patagonia or the north face of the Eiger. After these epics, clambering along a cable-car cable 25m off the ground is “just a bit of fun”.www.stephan-siegrist.ch

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“A journey into the epicentre of the elements” was how extreme climber Stefan Glowacz (in the foreground) described his successful ascent (at the third attempt) of the north pillar

of the Cerro Murallón mountain in Patagonia, with partner Robert Jasper. He wasn’t kidding: this 1,100m climb has a nine-plus difficulty rating, thanks to conditions that forced Glowacz

and Jasper to cut a base camp into an ice face, with a chainsaw, on their upward journey. Their route has been nicknamed ‘Gone

With The Wind’ on account of the ferocious gales that whirl around the peak, but there was nothing ‘Hollywood’ about this

trip – except, perhaps, its capacity to reduce grown men to tears. More high literature: Stefan Glowacz Expeditions, Extreme

Climbing at the End of the World. www.glowacz.de

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rOOm, with A viEwThere’s never a crush on the slopes when you’re skiing on Mount St Elias – the second-highest peak in the US and Canada, that sits on the Alaska-Yukon border. Why so? No pistes and only the bravest of ski-adventurers for company. It’s a challenge that takes the likes of extreme athletes Jon Johnston, Axel Naglich, and Peter Ressmann to tackle. The trio attempted the impossible in 2007: to climb the 5,489m peak and ski down the longest snow-covered plumb line on Earth. Their enemies were Mount St Elias’ characteristically wild climate and their own bodies – and only two of them, Naglich and Ressmann, completed the ascent and descent. Their epic adventure is captured in director Gerald Salmina’s documentary, Mount St Elias. Mount St Elias is available on DVD and Blu-Ray. You can order and learn more about its chill thrills at www.mountstelias.com

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BullevardLittle bits of culture and sport

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EVERY SHOT ON TARGET

PICTURES OF THE MONTH

Every month we print a selection, and our favourite pic is awarded a limited-edition Sigg bottle. Tough, functional and well-suited to sports, it features The Red Bulletin logo.

Taken a picture with a Red Bull flavour?Send it to us via our website:www.redbulletin.com

Santorini It’s not just the debt in Greece that soars: Yoann Leroux freeruns at Red Bull Art of Motion. Daniel Grund

EVERY SHOT

Santorinisoars: Yoann Leroux freeruns at Red Bull Art of Motion. Daniel Grund

WE HAVE A WINNER!

Musical chairsWorld-class performers

and producers in the hot seat for lectures at the Red Bull Music Academy in Madrid

RZAWu-Tang Clan leader on working with Kanye West and the small matter of the future of hip-hop.

PEACHESElectro star sermonised about her one-woman Lloyd-Webber

show, Peaches Christ Superstar.

ERYKAH BADUUnderstanding the power of

the vocal at an audience with the Queen of Neo-Soul.

NILE RODGERSLearning from a master: producer

of Bowie and Madonna; Chic’s pop classics; cancer survivor.

Watch all the lectures now atredbullmusicacademy.com

POLKA ACEArtist Yayoi Kusama tells a poignant, pointy story Trees, screens, people... as far as Yayoi Kusama is concerned, you name it, it looks better with spots on it. The Japanese artist has been enriching the environment with polka-pocked paintings, sculptures and performance pieces for almost 60 years. In 2008, Christies in New York sold her 1959 painting No.2 for US$5.1m, still the record for a living female artist. Now the 82-year-old’s autobiography, Infinity Net, is available in English. It reveals a traumatic childhood in Japan and her experiences of the glamorous New York art scene of the 1970s. www.yayoi-kusama.co.jp

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Flowers That Bloom Tomorrow, a 2011 sculpture by Yayoi Kusama

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Tampa Red Bull Flugtag, Florida style: Team UFO forget the put-pilot-in-plane-first rule. Robert Snow

Belo Horizonte “So, in Brazil, do Red Bull Soapbox cars go dead fast?” “Why, of corpse they do!”Marcus De Simoni

Sharjah Red Bull Quicket: two overs, two-a-side and, in India, always a crowd gathering. Naim Chidiac

Xeni Jardin is one of four editors of Boing Boing, one of the world’s top 20 most viewed blogs, only it’s way more influential than that. Its mix of geek culture, socially aware reportage, book reviews, baked goods, and pictures of cats has made it a touchstone of internet life. Jardin writes on everything from facial hair to the Occupy movement.

Why has Boing Boing become so successful?It was a happy accident, really. It started out as a printed magazine of sorts, about technology and science fiction. We are proof that you can achieve success if you follow your obsessions. What is good blogging?A friend of mine says that it’s like being a DJ. A great DJ knows what people want.

The net powered uprising in some countries...As a culture, we’re catching up with the shock of power and the disruptive balance of power the internet creates. This generation found a tool not seen as a tool that led to tremendous social disruption....yet online bullying rises.The web has to be a secure and joyous environment for innovations and creation to take place. The best antidote for bad speech is more good speech. Do not feed the trolls! Why the obsession with cakes and moustaches?Insane haircuts and beards are also popular. As for cakes, we’ve had Yoda, a DNA strand, a Dalek, the solar system. The perfect cake may be a dulce de leche Nyan Cat, shitting fruity rainbows across a coconut-star-studded night sky.www.boingboing.net

REVOLTING AND TASTY Documenting social upheaval and cakes online

Everest-ful: Chris Davenport says ‘hi’ up high

On the roof of the worldFreestyle skier Chris Davenport and his team prepared for their Himalayan expedition for several weeks. They weren’t merely intending to climb Mount Everest – any tourist can do that these days – but get up there and ski. “I was struck indescribably a number of times during the ascent,” says the 40-year-old American. “It’s magical to see the sun rising over Tibet at 4:30 in the morning and the ‘roof of the world’ bathed in a pink-orange light. It’s a surreal play of colours.” Davenport was overcome by emotion as he reached the summit (8,848m) in glorious sunshine. “To know that you’re standing at the highest point on Earth is a moment you’ll never forget. You just feel very grateful to be there.” And yet danger is never far away. “I had to promise my wife that I’d only get in touch when I was past the notorious Khumbu Icefall and safely back at base camp.” Davenport made another dream come true in the Himalayas too. During “one of the most inspiring descents” on Lhotse, a neighbouring mountain about 400m shorter – the world’s fourth highest – he and his team were able to leave tracks in untouched powdery snow 30cm deep.www.chrisdavenport.com

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What a web she weaves: the internet’s Xeni Jardin

Well played 2011’s best

video gamesThree reasons why that guy’s asleep at his desk again

BATMAN:ARKHAM CITY

Versus The Joker in a vast urban adventure

thick with Bat-lore.

CALL OF DUTY: MW 3War games ranging

from Berlin to Sierra Leone to a Serbian

diamond mine.

L.A. NOIRE1940s detective yarn

fusing games and movies: so cinematic it was shown at the

Tribeca Film Festival.

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Coolest runningsEveryone runs the London Marathon these days, don’t they? All you need is a rhino costume and a bucket, and Bob’s your week off work with ligament damage. Why not tackle the 26.2-mile challenge seriously – and spectacularly – next April by doing the North Pole Marathon? Mencap, the learning disability charity, has guaranteed places for the race, which is run entirely on the frozen ice of the Arctic Ocean. There is no minimum sponsorship target and entrants can claim back 40 per cent of monies raised. Plus, the charity provides shoes, clothing, training support and health services. The race is on April 7.www.mencap.org.uk/get-involved

New Kid on the FreqTheir Hackney studio on Gillett Square is not much bigger than other radio stations’ anterooms, but NTS has generated quite a buzz in London’s already rich radio landscape. Internationally renowned electronic musicians, such as Moodymann or Steve Spacek, are regular guests only a few months after the online radio station’s inception. Its founder, Femi Adeyemi, doesn’t find this at all surprising. “NTS is a platform to give passionate people the chance to get their interests out there,” he says. A schedule of 120 diverse music and talk-based shows is mainly broadcast live from their shoebox of a studio. ntslive.co.uk

forward boundAt the age of just 13, Katie Summerhayes became the youngest-ever British freeskiing champion. Three years later, she’s ready to take on the world

Young runs“i was six when i first started going to the sheffield ski Village, nine when i did my first 360 jump. i was hooked. and now i’m teaching my dad how to do 180s.” National Rails“i compete abroad a lot and everyone’s like, ‘oh she’s from Britain where there’s no snow’, but we’re contenders. our jumps aren’t as big, but our rail scene’s amazing – that’s all we’ve got so we’re best at it.”Scary airs“i definitely get scared before doing huge jumps. you have to think, ‘you can do it Katie’ and then just get on with it.”Golden goal“i’m training hard for the first-ever Winter youth olympics in January: in the snowdome, on the dry slopes, and in the gym. My ultimate goal is the 2014 Winter olympics in sochi.”www.katiesummerhayes.co.uk

Gora Zar Cyclists enjoy their downtime at Red Bull Road Rage in Poland Jakub Konwent

Anglet So which way’s the sea? Surfer Michel Bourez tutors young wave-riders in France Alex Laurel

Zagreb Words not fists, pack a punch in the ring at the Croatian Red Bull MC Battle Tomislav Moze

Ice, ice crazy: 26.2 frozen miles

NTS’s Clair Urbahn and Femi Adeyemi

Snow queen: Freeskier Katie Summerhayes

ME AND MY BODY

AKSEL LUND SVINDALNorway’s Super Giant Slalom Olympic gold medallist has built up some big leg

muscles and thinks nothing of slicing himself open in pursuit of the ultimate run

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MASS ATTACKI weigh around 100kg [15-and-a-half stone]. It’s hard to keep that weight during the winter, as I don’t have time and energy to lift weights, so I usually loose around 2-3kg. Big, strong leg muscles are essential for a speed specialist. I get stamina for an intensive season from running, cycling and windsurfing in summer.

I’M KIND OF A BIG DEALI focus on what I’m good at. I’m a big guy and I’ll never get small. That’s a fact. It could be an advantage for slalom and maybe giant slalom to get lighter. But probably not for the speed events. So I focus on being fit and in good all-round shape and then I take it from there.

THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE

Up until November 2007, give or take the odd

dislocated shoulder or cracked rib, I’d been spared

serious injury. But I came into the Golden Eagle

jump too fast during training for the downhill in

Beaver Creek, Colorado. I was caught off-balance

on take-off, which meant I leant back too much

and landed on the piste on my neck after flying

through the air for 60m. The edge of the ski

slashed open my glute (yep, my arse). The 15cm

gash was so deep the doctors were worried I had

internal injuries, so they opened my abdominal

wall to check. In addition to the abdominal injury,

I had three broken ribs, and six facial fractures.

I spent the next three weeks in hospital in Vail

and Oslo, and that was the end of my season.

TAKING A BREATHERI don’t do much alternative training like yoga, mental training or qigong. My preparation for the start of a race is pretty relaxed: I just take a couple of deep breaths. I don’t make too much fuss about long-haul flights, either, I just approach them in a way that matches my temperament – with peace and quiet. I like to relax, listen

to music and read a good book.

IS IT LOCAL?I don’t follow a strict diet, I prefer to let

my feelings guide me about what’s good

for me and what my body needs. I prefer

fresh food and local’s best. I love sushi,

salad and food that doesn’t contain any

kind of artificial flavourings. And I don’t

really eat much fried food or candy.

FEAR AND SKIING IN AUSTRIAEvery now and then the fear factor does kick in

when I’m about to start off on a run. Especially

if I’m not sure how to deal with the conditions,

the speed or other challenges in the course.

The Kitzbühel event in Tyrol, Austria, is

a typical race where you feel some fear.

GOOSEBUMPSA year after that horror crash I was back at the starting gate on the Birds of Prey

piste – and I was scared! But at the same time I really wanted to win. I could hardly

believe it when I swished to a halt at the end of the downhill and saw first position flash

up on the scoreboard. I won the Super G the next day too. I still get goosebumps now

when I think back to that weekend.

START ’EM YOUNGMy parents gave me my first pair of 1m-long skis for

my third birthday, and later I gave them to my little

brother Simen and my cousins for their first runs.

As a kid I dreamed of being a professional or even

World Champion one day, but that was never a big

focus: I just wanted to ski faster than the other kids.

17

B U L L E V A R D

Norway’s Super Giant Slalom Olympic gold medallist has built up some big legmuscles and thinks nothing of slicing himself open in pursuit of the ultimate run

I weigh around 100kg [15-and-a-half stone]. It’s hard to keep that weight during the winter, as I don’t have time and energy to lift weights, so I usually loose around 2-3kg. Big, strong leg muscles are essential for a speed specialist.

running, cycling and windsurfing in summer.

I focus on what I’m good at. I’m a big guy and I’ll never get small. That’s a fact. It could be an advantage for slalom and maybe giant slalom to get lighter. But probably not for the speed

all-round shape and then I take it from there.

Up until November 2007, give or take the odd

dislocated shoulder or cracked rib, I’d been spared

serious injury. But I came into the Golden Eagle

jump too fast during training for the downhill in

Beaver Creek, Colorado. I was caught off-balance

on take-off, which meant I leant back too much

and landed on the piste on my neck after flying

through the air for 60m. The edge of the ski

slashed open my glute (yep, my arse). The 15cm

gash was so deep the doctors were worried I had

internal injuries, so they opened my abdominal

wall to check. In addition to the abdominal injury,

I had three broken ribs, and six facial fractures.

I spent the next three weeks in hospital in Vail

and Oslo, and that was the end of my season. FEAR AND SKIING IN AUSTRIA

Every now and then the fear factor does kick in

when I’m about to start off on a run. Especially

if I’m not sure how to deal with the conditions,

the speed or other challenges in the course.

believe it when I swished to a halt at the end of the downhill and saw first position flash

up on the scoreboard. I won the Super G the

My parents gave me my first pair of 1m-long skis for

my third birthday, and later I gave them to my little

brother Simen and my cousins for their first runs.

As a kid I dreamed of being a professional or even

World Champion one day, but that was never a big

focus: I just wanted to ski faster than the other kids.

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already a keen player in Zelenograd near Moscow, stipulated that he attend a rugby-playing college.

They chose well and Artemyev was soon established in the junior cup squad at Dublin’s pre-eminent rugby school, Blackrock College, where he played a starring role in Leinster’s Junior Cup success in 2003. With future Ireland star Luke Fitzgerald on the opposite wing, two senior school cup medals followed as ‘Vasya’ became one of the star under-age players of his generation.

A move to University College Dublin to study law led inevitably to a place in the Leinster Academy but, while Fitzgerald’s career blossomed, Artemyev’s progress slowed. The first blow came when, having played for Ireland as an Under-19, the IRB had rejected his place in the squad for the finals because his parents’ primary residence was not in Ireland.

At college, he occasionally missed squad sessions to focus on his law studies and he was ultimately not offered a full contract with Leinster, which could have channelled him into a dual-citizenship application and the Ireland squad.

“Life in the academy was very demanding and sometimes I missed rugby training due to my studies,” he said. “I had to get my degree first.”

Instead, he moved back to Russia where he joined VVA-Podmoskovye, the main national feeder team playing in the Russian Professional Rugby League. He soon emerged as a star of IRB Sevens World Series before making his 15-man international breakthrough at the 2010 Churchill Cup.

A Russian international since 2009, he has already won 29 caps and amassed 50 international points, including a try against Ireland in the recent World Cup. Injuries and form permitting, Artemyev’s star is set to rise even further this season as Saints look to put in another strong showing in the Heineken Cup.www.northamptonsaints.co.uk

RUGBY RUSSKI

VASILY ARTEMYEVHe could have worn the emerald shirt. Instead, this Russian-born, Irish-schooled winger chose to represent the motherland, and now plays his club rugby in England

As debuts go, it helped settle the nerves nicely for the player, but only served to heighten the expectations of the home crowd. A try with his very first touch of the ball in Northampton Saints colours, a hat-trick by the end of the game and the man-of-the-match award to boot, placed Irish-educated Vasily Artemyev squarely on a fast track to crowd-favourite status at Franklin’s Gardens.

Had circumstances been different, and perhaps had his approach to his studies been less conscientious, the former Irish under-age international’s distinctive south Dublin accent might currently be employed calling for the ball from Leinster and Ireland team-mates.

Instead, having helped Saints cruise past Saracens in the first round of the Anglo-Welsh Cup, Artemyev continued his rich vein of form with a try in the next round against Ospreys to confirm his star quality and help establish the Russian international in the squad, with the Heineken Cup and Aviva Premiership battles to come.

His impeccable English will help him settle in Northampton, courtesy of a pragmatic family decision early last decade. Aretmyev’s father, “a banker with a few businesses now”, chose Ireland for an English-language education for his son and Vasily,

NameVasily Artemyev

BornJuly 24, 1987Zelenograd, Russia

NationalityRussian

Club teamNorthampton Saints

Career in numbersSenior International Caps: 29; points: 50

Height 183cm (6ft)

Weight 87kg (13st 9lb)

Artemyev is proving to be a crowd-puller at

Franklin’s Gardens

B U L L E V A R D

“ Life in the academy was very demanding and sometimes I missed rugby due to my studies. I had to get my degree fi rst”

KIT EVOLUTION

VA-VA-VOOM!The unsung heroes of the Red Bull Racing Formula One success story – engine partners Renault – have a long tradition of innovative motorsport success. But things have changed since the 1980s: these days it’s all about excruciating attention to detail

Back in the mid-1980s, the Formula One ‘turbo’ era was approaching a peak of sophistication and Renault were one of the leading exponents of this exciting technology. Their 90-degree V6 motor took advantage of technical regulations that permitted ‘boosted’ engines of 1.5 litres to compete against non-turbo engines of twice the size. Renault’s

EF15 was cutting edge: 24 valves (this was later improved with pneumatic springs for better performance and reliability) and the electromagnetically controlled fuel injection made by Renix generated up to 1,100bhp from the 120kg engine for qualifying sessions. In races, with the wick turned down (to aid reliability) drivers made do

with a ‘mere’ 870bhp – still 70-80bhp more than that produced by today’s 2.4-litre V8s. This technological marvel was made available to Renault’s customer teams, Lotus, Ligier and Tyrrell, as well as the factory entry. Ayrton Senna was the first driver to win using a Renault customer engine, at the1985 Portuguese Grand Prix at Estoril.

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On the 2011 Formula One grid, three teams use identical Renault RS27 engines: Red Bull Racing, Lotus Renault and Team Lotus. Today’s engine manufacturers have minimal freedom when it comes to construction: the technical regulations dictate down to the last half millimetre how the engines must be built: 2.4 litres displacement, eight cylinders

in a V-formation (at a fixed 90 degrees), 32 valves, no mechanical ventilation, no exotic materials, a maximum of 18,000rpm and weighing at least 95kg. This tight spec trims power to around 720bhp, but there is added shove from KERS, a kinetic energy recovery system that provides an extra 82bhp for 6.6 seconds per lap. Now, more than ever, the

differences between engine makers are in the details: fuel consumption, responsiveness, durability, power curve, installation and so on. This is where the Renault, in a Red Bull Racing chassis, comes out on top, to win back-to-back constructors titles in 2010 and 2011, taking its title total to nine.www.redbullracing.com

DEVIL IN THE DETAIL RENAULT RS27, 2011

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where’s your head at?

Steven SpielbergHis Tintin is an Indiana Jones for the Pixar generation, and his

War Horse is galloping into view as yet another Oscar contender. Forty years after his first film, the master moviemaker is living a life less ordinary

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Deep ImpactAfter his TV stint, which included directing the first episode of the Columbo series, Spielberg made his cinema debut with The Sugarland Express, in 1974. The following summer, his film about a killer shark changed movies forever. Widely released, advertised and merchandised, Jaws was the first ‘deliberate’ blockbuster. Not bad for a movie made with a faulty rubber shark, which Spielberg nicknamed Bruce, after his lawyer, Bruce Ramer.

the thIn man An Oscar-less Spielberg was

awarded the honorary body-of-

work statue in 1987, aged 41.

An odd choice for the unofficial

lifetime achievement nod,

but his only ‘serious’ film to

date, The Color Purple, had a

mixed reception – perhaps the

Academy felt he couldn’t do a

Best Director film. Later, two in

six years, for Schindler’s List and

Saving Private Ryan, said otherwise.

FantastIc Four “Before I go off and direct a movie,” Spielberg admitted, “I always look at four films. They tend to be Seven Samurai, Lawrence Of Arabia, It’s A Wonderful Life and The Searchers.” So don’t be surprised to see his name one day on Uncle Revenge-Blade’s Yuletide Adventure, about a sword-swinging freedom-fighter looking for spiritual guidance on Christmas Eve and his missing niece.

an eDucatIon Despite the teenage flicks, Spielberg could not get into film

school at USC, so he studied

at California State University

at Long Beach, mainly to be near Universal Studios. With another short, Amblin’, under his belt, he combined

college with time as an unpaid

intern in the editing department

at Universal and secured a TV

director’s contract just before

his 22nd birthday, in 1968.

Double InDemnIty Tintin and War Horse out together is no mean feat, but Spielberg is a dab hand at doubling up. This

is his sixth time, after 1989 (Indiana Jones And The Last

Crusade, Always), 1993 (Jurassic Park, Schindler’s

List), 1997 (The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Amistad),

2002 (Minority Report, Catch Me If You Can) and 2005 (War Of The Worlds, Munich).

all the presIDent’s men A key reason behind his movie of the play/children’s novel War Horse, Spielberg said, “was to bring families together”. This is not

an unusual aim for one of his films. After War Horse, released worldwide beginning

on Christmas Day in the USA, comes one for the grown-ups: Lincoln, starring

Daniel Day-Lewis, and focusing on the 16th President of the United States’ role in ending civil war and slavery.

super 8 Actually, there are two and a half Spielberg movies in 2011. The kids-and-aliens sci-fi Super 8 was the writer-director JJ Abrams’ tribute to Spielberg’s work. Spielberg himself produced (he has around 60 production credits on other directors’ films) and the duo’s link goes deep: in 1982, Spielberg asked 15-year-old JJ and pals to repair his actual juvenile Super 8 movies. “It was like giving us the Mona Lisa,” Abrams said.

awakenIngs

It all began for Steven Spielberg on December 18,

1946, in Cincinnati, Ohio. Later the family moved

to Scottsdale, Arizona, where aged 12, he made

a Western short, The Last Gun, to earn his Boy

Scout’s photography badge. In March 1964,

he showed Firelight, a sci-fi movie made

with $500 of his father’s money, for one

night only in nearby Phoenix. “I want to write

movie scripts,” the 17-year-old told his local

paper, “but I like directing above all.”

the French connectIonIn 1977, Star Wars replaced Jaws as the most successful

film ever, but Spielberg took back the lead, with ET in 1983, then extended it in 1993 with Jurassic Park (Avatar is the current box-office champ). When the dino movie killed in

France, French cultural types made Spielberg the chief demon of American ‘commercial totalitarianism’. In 2004, he was

awarded the Légion d’honneur, France’s highest civil honour.

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RIGHT ON TARGET Creative dynamo The Bullitts is hard to pigeonhole, but one thing’s clear: he’s got A-list approval

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A constant buzz of thoughts and chatter is what makes Jeymes Samuel’s world go round. As The Bullitts, the Londoner is a musician, songwriter, singer, music producer and filmmaker, but never one at a time. His 2011 experimental album, They Die by Dawn and Other Stories, is a case in point. It’s an ‘audio movie’, linked to Twitter feeds and online footage, telling the story of fictional death-row inmate Amelia Sparks, featuring Lucy Liu, Idris Elba, Tori Amos, Mos Def, Roísín Murphy and Jay-Z protégé Jay Electronica. “It’s like Kevin Costner says in Field of Dreams,” says Samuel, “‘If you build it, they will come.’” Samuel describes his cross-media approach as “action adventure”. He’s been thinking this way since he was 11. “I grew up with a film-buff mum and a house full of instruments,” he

says. “I loved short stories, Roald Dahl stuff. Songs, films, books: all of it’s storytelling, so why separate it? Twitter is another beautiful storytelling canvas.” Recently he worked with Grammy Award-winning producer and musician Syience for The Producers, an online documentary series. Shot at the Red Bull Studio in London, the episode shows the pair working on the score for a short film to be shot in Mumbai. “It’s the first time I’ve seen myself like this,” he says, with a grin. “I look pretty handsome.” The episode also includes the track Run and Hide from Samuel’s EP Mos Eisley, recorded with Jay Electronica and out in the New Year. Next month, he’s off to China to work on a film about a boy who thinks he’s a superhero. Good thing he has energy.Watch The Producers at www.vice.com anddeleted scenes at www.redbullstudio.com

The Bullitts and Syience (right) recording The Producers at Red Bull Studio

The Bullitts: multi-directional

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One-man band

Yann tiersenHe’s not a composer, he’s directionless and hates doing music for movies. So how has the Frenchman made one of the best and most intriguing soundtracks of recent times?

With a shaggy curtain of hair, two-day-old stubble and a round-necked navy-blue jumper, yann tiersen looks every inch the rugged French musician. But, as he’s quick to point out, he’s from Brittany in the far north-west of France, a place, he says, that has more in common with celtic nations than French tradition. “We don’t have cheese and wine, we swig beer!”

tiersen is a classically trained multi-instrumentalist who tore up the rulebook in his teens and hasn’t looked back since. But the 41-year-old knows certain rules have to be obeyed and as he sits for interview in a meeting room at his record label’s London office, his fingers fidget over a packet of marlboro reds.

tiersen has just released Skyline, his seventh studio album, and if you don’t know his name, chances are you’ve heard his music. he made the soundtrack for the 2001 hit film, Amélie, his blend of strings, piano, accordion and even typewriter sounds accompanying the tale of a shy parisian waitress. his stirring chansons in the film earned him new fans outside France and a BaFta nomination in the uk. a decade and four albums on, he’s more than just ‘the Amélie guy’.

“i hate doing soundtracks!” tiersen insists in a heavy accent. “i didn’t make the music specifically for Amélie. it was a mix of tracks taken from my

earlier albums, so it’s strange to be stuck with this ‘soundtrack composer’ tag.” this is odd, given that he went on to do the soundtracks for tragicomedy Good Bye, Lenin! (2003) and sailing documentary Tabarly (2008), but, as seems to be his way with most things, he didn’t approach them conventionally.

“i’m not a composer,” he says. “i can’t make music for a particular scene in a film. For me it’s stupid to try. When i’ve worked on soundtracks, i just made songs as i usually would, not thinking about anything else.”

tiersen started learning the piano aged four and took up the violin at six, receiving classical training at a succession of music schools. aged 13, he smashed his violin, bought a guitar and started a band. When his band broke up in the early 1990s, tiersen mended his violin and returned to the piano, but this time

threw off the straightjacket of classical form, making music with no rules or aim, experimenting with instruments from the accordion and toy piano to the harpsichord, mandolin, flute and ukulele.

“When i make music, i start from nothing,” he says. “it’s just me and a mic. i like not knowing where i’m going, i just let the song build itself, in a way.”

his new album is a collection of atmospheric tracks steeped in a feeling

of brightness, despite being heavy with guitars, it’s a thematic contrast to last year’s darker Dust Lane. it represents the latest step in tiersen’s lifelong love affair with music, a relationship that excites him as much today as it did as a child.

“music is something beyond a language,” he says. “it’s mysterious, something ‘other’. you communicate emotions but it’s on a subconscious, almost physical level. it will always be my focus.” and with a quick “au revoir”, he’s out the door, clutching his cigarettes.

NameYann Tiersen

BornJune 23, 1970 Brest, Brittany

Known forLending his unique sounds to hit film Amélie, in 2001

Life’s workMastering every instrument he gets his hands on – including the typewriter

There are more strings to Yann’s bow than just the Amélie soundtrack

Skyline is out now on Mute Records

www.yanntiersen.com

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the pro“Without topspin, modern tennis wouldn’t be what it is,” says Martin Baldridge, a tennis coach of more than 30 years who also competes in international senior tournaments. “rather than hitting the ball straight off the racquet, topspin is achieved by starting from below and pushing up the back of the ball, imparting a forward rotation to it. the rotation creates air pressure which forces the ball down to the court faster, meaning players can hit harder and still keep the ball within the baseline.

“in the last 10 years, levels of professionalism, training, and physical fitness have gone up so much that players are hitting the ball harder and harder, and the only way to control that consistently is to put a lot of rotation on it. hard hitters like rafael nadal are kings of spin, making the ball rotate at speeds of up to 5,000rpm.”

the prof“to understand how topspin affects the game of tennis,” says dr Martin apolin, from Vienna’s institute of physics, “let’s first look at what happens to a ball hit without it, at a height that just clears the net horizontally (Fig.1). the height of the net at its centre point is 91.4cm. regardless of a ball’s horizontal speed, its vertical speed remains constant. so first you need to know how long the ball takes to reach the floor from the height of the net. the relation between the time (t) and depth (s) of the fall is: t = √ 2s/g . g, where gravitational acceleration (g), is given as 10m/s2. so the time taken for the ball to drop 0.914m to the ground is 0.43s.

“the distance between net and baseline is 11.89m. For the ball to stay in play, it can’t travel further than that in 0.43 seconds. speed is distance over time and if we assume the extreme case, where the ball lands 11.89m from the net, we get a maximum speed of 27.7m/s (100kph/62mph). any faster than that, and the line judge will call the ball out.

“Measurements from hawk-eye, a ball-tracking system used for clarification in disputed line calls, show that hard hitters like nadal can hit the ball at speeds of 180kph (112mph) over the net. Balls hit that hard land in the court because of one thing: spin.

“our estimation above, explicitly referring to non-spinning balls, gives a maximum speed of 100kph (62mph). yet nadal hits the ball so it travels 80 per cent faster than that. the topspin he applies to the ball shortens the flight path – but why?

“nadal and his peers can generate topspin of 5,000rpm, or 80rpm per second, so imagine a ball, hit with topspin, travelling from right to left. the ball encounters a head wind from the left (Fig.3a). as the ball spins, a thin boundary layer of air molecules rotates with the ball.

“this creates a circulating air flow around the ball (Fig.3b). the head wind and circulating air flow combine (Fig.3c) and air is forced behind the ball. total momentum must be maintained, and thus the ball is forced down. this downward force is known as the Magnus effect, and in addition to the downward force of gravity, causes the fast-moving, fast-spinning ball to drop faster than it would without spin.”www.rafaelnadal.com

winning formula

Spin, DoctoreDTennis is faster because the players are fitter and the racquets are better? Partly. It’s also because of topspin

Pulling the strings: Rafael Nadal dominates the play with topspin. No

other stroke in tennis can produce more spin – without it Nadal’s

power would be severely diminished

2The first American to be honoured was Theodore Roosevelt, 26th US President, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1906. The only Vietnamese laureate to date, Le Duc Tho, refused the Peace Prize he was awarded in 1973 as he had not yet been able to reach a peace settlement to the Vietnam conflict. The only other nominee to refuse an award was Jean-Paul Satre, who declined the prize for literature in 1964 because he had consistently declined all official honours.

28

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100,000,000,000,000Since 1991, Harvard University has been

awarding an anti-Nobel Prize, the Ig Nobel Prize, for achievements that make people laugh then

make them think. Their 2011 peace prize went to Arturas Zuokas, mayor of Vilnius, Lithuania, for

demonstrating that the problem of illegally parked luxury cars can be solved by running over them with a tank, while the 2009 prize for

mathematics went to Gideon Gono, Governor of Zimbabwe’s Reserve

Bank, for giving people a simple way to cope with a wide range of

numbers by having his bank print notes with denominations

ranging from one cent to one hundred trillion dollars.

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LUCKY NUMBERS

NOBEL PRIZESAn amalgam of declined awards, crushed limousines and cataclysmic

divorce settlements on the occasion of the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize ceremony

30,000,000Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel had registered 355 patents, including those for dynamite and the more stable gelignite, by the time of his death in 1896. In his will he decreed that the bulk of his enormous fortune – a nine-figure sum in today’s money – should go into a foundation. The interest earned by his fortune was to fund a prize for those “…who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind.” The prize fund was to be divided into five equal parts for physics, chemistry, physiology/medicine, literature and peace.

10In addition to a medal and a certificate, each Nobel laureate also receives 10 million Swedish krona (about £962,000/€1.1 million). American economist Robert Lucas Jr had to share his 1995 prize for economics with his ex-wife Rita, because when they divorced in 1988, she negotiated that she would receive half of any Nobel Prize money her husband might be awarded within the next seven years. There’s another incentive to try to win a Nobel Prize; a study shows Nobel laureates live between one and two years longer than those who are merely nominated.

15On December 10 (the anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s

death), Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Leymah Gbowee (both from Liberia) and Tawakkul Karman (Yemen) will receive

the Nobel Peace Prize for their “peaceful fight for women’s rights and security”. The Nobel Peace Prize category has the highest number of female winners at 15. In contrast,

American political economist Elinor Ostrom, in 2009, remains the only woman to have won the Prize in

Economic Sciences, which was first awarded, alongside the original five-prize line-up, in 1969.

www.nobelprize.org

3The Curie family of scientists are

closely bound up with the Nobel Prize. Marie – the first female prize-winner

and one of only four people to win the honour twice – and husband Pierre jointly

received the 1903 prize for physics and Marie the prize for chemistry in 1911. In

1935, their daughter, Irène Joliot-Curie, also received the prize for

chemistry. Sigmund Freud had less luck when it came to matters Nobel; he was nominated for an honour on 12 occasions, but came away empty-handed every time.

100,000,000,000,000

Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel had registered 355 patents, including those for dynamite and the more stable gelignite, by the time of his death in 1896. In his will he decreed that the bulk of his enormous fortune – a nine-figure sum in today’s money – should go into a foundation. The interest earned by his fortune was to fund a prize for those “…who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind.” The

the Nobel Peace Prize for their “peaceful fight for women’s rights and security”. The Nobel Peace Prize category has the highest number of female winners at 15. In contrast,

American political economist Elinor Ostrom, in 2009, remains the only woman to have won the Prize in

Economic Sciences, which was first awarded, alongside the original five-prize line-up, in 1969.

including those for dynamite and the more stable gelignite, by the time of his death in 1896. In his will he decreed that the bulk

Since 1991, Harvard University has been awarding an anti-Nobel Prize, the Ig Nobel Prize,

for achievements that make people laugh then make them think. Their 2011 peace prize went to Arturas Zuokas, mayor of Vilnius, Lithuania, for

demonstrating that the problem of illegally parked luxury cars can be solved by running over them with a tank, while the 2009 prize for

awarding an anti-Nobel Prize, the Ig Nobel Prize, for achievements that make people laugh then

make them think. Their 2011 peace prize went to Arturas Zuokas, mayor of Vilnius, Lithuania, for

shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind.” The prize fund was to be divided into five equal parts for physics, chemistry, physiology/medicine, literature and peace.

In addition to a medal and a certificate, each Nobel laureate also receives 10 million Swedish krona (about £962,000/€1.1 million). American economist Robert Lucas Jr had to share his 1995 prize for economics with his ex-wife Rita, because when they divorced in 1988, she negotiated that

shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind.” The prize fund was to be divided into five equal parts for physics, chemistry, physiology/medicine, literature and peace.

Prize; a study shows Nobel laureates live

honour twice – and husband Pierre jointly

luck when it came to matters Nobel; he was nominated for an honour on 12 occasions, but came away empty-handed every time.

demonstrating that the problem of illegally parked luxury cars can be solved by running over them with a tank, while the 2009 prize for

demonstrating that the problem of illegally parked

The Curie family

Robert Lucas Jr

Theodore Roosevelt

Tawakkul Karman

… WWW.REDBULLSHOP.COM

THE POLE POSITION FORTRUE FANS …

RBR_merch_AD_Bullentin.indd 2 09.11.11 16:28

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FACTORFACTORFACTOR

From the glittering glamour of Dubai’s b

eachfront,

to a Brazilian battle

in front of 100,000 fans and on

to an island shipyard in Sydney last se

en in X-Men: The

Last Stand, Red Bull X-Fighters 2011 was one wild ride

Words: Justin hynes

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tHe dUeLLIStSThis year’s World Tour was all about the battle between two riders and two distinct styles – the fl amboyant, instinctive showmanship of Spain’s Dany Torres (this page) and the ultra-honed perfectionism of defending double champion Nate Adams (left ). The duel would take them all the way from the opening round in Dubai to a fi nal dramatic competition in Sydney.

Stop 1 – dUBaIPerennially tipped as FMX’s ‘one to watch’, Dany Torres’ progress to the very top has been blighted by injury in recent years, but fi t and fresh for round one of the 2011 World Tour in Dubai, the Spaniard was unstoppable. In the build-up, all the headlines had been about Nate Adams vying for a third Red Bull X-Fighters crown, but aft er Saturday night on Jumeirah Beach the story had changed. Now it was all about Torres – and whether the stunning form he displayed in Dubai could be carried across the whole season?

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Levi Sherwood (bottom left) nails a Heelclicker Flip, while

Nate Adams (top left) performs a Superman Double Grab during

round one at Jumeirah Beach in Dubai (main picture)

“It’s disappointing, but I’m still defi nitely aiming for a

third title. This will just have to be my throwaway round”

Nate Adams, Dubai

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Stop 2 – BRaSÍLIaFrustratingly, the answer to the Torres question was no. In the lead-up to round two in Brasilia he injured a foot, and despite battling through qualifying, he was forced to sit out the fi nals. That left the way clear for Adams to ride to a head-to-head showdown with Robbie Maddison in the competition fi nal. While ‘Maddo’ gave his best performance for some time, Adams was in irresistible form, blasting through a fl awless run that saw him storm to the series lead. Perhaps The Destroyer’s near-perfect run had been inspired by the presence of 100,000 fans in Brasilia, the largest crowd ever seen at an FMX competition..

“ It was an incredible night and one I imagine I’ll remember for the rest of my life. Totally spectacular”Robbie Maddison, Brasília

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Robbie Maddison (left) laps up the adulation in Brazil. The stunning Rome setting of Stadio Olimpico (top right), and Josh Sheehan performing a Tsunami Backfl ip in Rome

Stop 3 – RoMeRome made its World Tour debut in 2010, but such was the passion of Italian FMX fans that for the 2011 edition, the event migrated from the compact Stadio Flaminio to the cavernous surrounds of the Stadio Olimpico, home of both Roma and Lazio football clubs. And in front of 45,000 fans, Torres’ woes continued. Aft er blitzing qualifying, he looked genuinely unbeatable, but in the main event he overextended a Saran Wrap Backfl ip to Nac Nac trick and tumbled off the bike and into a wall. The Spaniard was unhurt, but the crash ended his Rome challenge. Adams fl ew to a second consecutive victory, beating Norway’s Andre Villa in the fi nal, while Australian youngster Josh Sheehan came out of nowhere to take third. Adams was looking ominously consistent and sent a further chill down the spine of rivals by announcing: “Now I’m going for the Tour title.” It wouldn’t be quite so straightforward, though, as the next round would show.

36

Stop 4 – MadRIdAft er lucking into his Rome win through Torres’ misfortune, Adams was the victim of payback a month later in the run-up to the Madrid round. Aft er a crash in Rome, and another accident in practice at home in California, and nursing a damaged knee, shoulder and hand, the defending champ was forced to forego the trip to Spain. Torres gleefully took the chance presented and buoyed by a full-house crowd in the historic Plaza de Toros de las Ventas bullring, he rode a spectacular fi nal against Blake Williams, including some huge, brand new trick combinations in his run. It was Norwegian Andre Villa who profi ted most, though. The Norwegian, who had been title runner-up to Adams last year, tricked his way to fi ft h in Madrid, but having notched three podium fi nishes in the opening events, stealthily stole into fi rst place in the Tour standings ahead of both the Destroyer and third-placed Torres.

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“This is really important. Two months ago I had an

injury, but now I can ride in Madrid and this

crowd is the best”Dany Torres, Spain

The crowd at Madrid’s Plaza de Toros de las Ventas (above) was wowed by local hero

Dany Torres (main pic), who unleashed tricks such as this Superman Seat Grab Flip

Stop 5 – poznańRed Bull X-Fighters returned to Poland after a three-year absence, and Poznań’s new state-of-the-art stadium (above) should have been the venue for Andre Villa to stamp his authority on the 2011 Tour. But in qualifying the Norwegian under-rotated a backflip, crashed heavily and broke his left femur – an injury that ended his season. The final then was all about Torres and Adams. The Spaniard unleashed a barrage of huge moves, including a 360 Nac, the one trick Adams had over him earlier in the season. However, Adams, hot of the back of two gold medals at the X Games, was in no mood to be defeated and delivered a big-tricking masterclass to take his third victory of the season. With just one round left, he was back on top of the standings, but only 45 points ahead of Torres.

3939

Stop 6 – Sydney Red Bull X-Fighters’ first-ever visit to

Australia should have been the scene of a thrilling showdown between Torres and

Adams, but once again injury intervened, and it was Adams who lost out, a torn rotator

cuff and cracked humerus sidelining the American before the start of competition.

Torres just needed fourth or better to clinch the title and he sealed the deal by

advancing to the semi-final when he met local hero Josh Sheehan. The Aussie Tour

rookie delivered a torrent of double backflips to dismiss Torres, but with Adams only able to watch from the sidelines, Torres

had done enough to be crowned king of the 2011 World Tour. Sheehan went on to

beat ‘Rubber Kid’ Levi Sherwood in the Sydney final, the Aussie’s first Red Bull

X-Fighters win, confirming the arrival of a new young superstar on the FMX scene.

www.redbullxfighters.com

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His Dark PlacesIf Sean Penn were only an indisputably great movie actor, that would be OK.

But his humanitarian efforts, and struggles with his own humanity, make him

as fascinating off screen as onWords: Rüdiger Sturm Photography: Paolo Pellegrin/Magnum

SEAN PENN (opposite)Driven by his restless demons and a childhood overshadowed

by a stormy relationship with his mother, the actor’s life has been punctuated by inner turmoil and impassioned political gestures

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As Cheyenne in This Must Be The Place

The word ‘statuesque’ is used to describe a certain kind of movie star, but to Sean Penn it applies in a very different way. Thick upper arms, which look as if they have been sculpted, curve out of his T-shirt. Lines of his face like sharp stones. Eyes of marble frozen in a gaze. The only sign of life is the American Spirit cigarette, on which Penn drags repeatedly, in flagrant violation of the smoking ban at the illustrious Carlton Hotel in Cannes.

Every cinemagoer knows what strength lies within. It can take on the most varied of forms: the bitter avenger, as in Mystic River, for which the 51-year-old won his first Oscar; the campaigning liberator, as in Milk, which brought him Oscar number two; or the bizarre, as in his latest film, This Must Be the Place, in which he plays a washed-up former rock star, a mixture of Robert Smith and Ozzy Osbourne, flitting round Ireland and the USA. Ask Penn where this energy comes from, and he won’t say.

“I have no interest in analysing myself,” he says, laconically, in a tone that makes it sound like he’s gurgling pebbles. Penn’s voice and gaze then trail off into the ether, before he decides to give insight after all. “I admit that I’ve always been driven by some sort of anger. An anger which is completely undeserved. I wouldn’t recommend it as a source of motivation, but it’s always worked for me.”

It’s anyone’s guess as to what he means by the word “undeserved”. There is good reason to assume that he might put his existential orientation down to the influence of his mother, Eileen, a former actress who gave up her career for the sake of her family and battled alcoholism for much of her life. She was, as she admitted, provocative and prickly towards her eldest son, who therefore spent his youth battling with her. Her reaction to his first appearance on stage was typical: “You’re awful. Give up now.”

Earlier girlfriends tried to get him to see a psychotherapist for his anger problems, but it came to nothing. His marriage to fellow actor Robin Wright, which ended in divorce in 2010, was a 14-year battle of wills between two partners who each gave as good as they got (as had been the case with Madonna, his first wife). When Wright is asked about Sean Penn now, she says: “I don’t think I need to say anything on the matter.”

How bearable is a life when you’re plagued by inner demons? It is no coincidence that Penn’s fourth and perhaps most personal work as a director, 2007’s Into The Wild, tells the story of the rise and fall of a dropout. The need to give up on, and move away from, the bourgeois way of life is his default existential setting.

“I feel it every day and always have done,” says Penn. “There have been times when I’ve dropped out in my own way and that gave me new strength and energy. I can thoroughly recommend it to everyone because you get a whole new kind of perspective

on your life. And you should do it over and over again. It’s the healthiest of all the addictive behaviours.”

That said, Penn has yet to wander off into the solitude of nature. “The urge to leave everything behind isn’t as strong if you can make yourself useful, regardless of how you do it,” says Penn. “It’s only when you feel you’re counterproductive that there’s nowhere better than the wild.”

And Penn has had a raison d’être during the last two decades: his children with Wright, daughter Dylan Frances and son Hopper Jack, now 20 and 18 respectively. “Nothing in life has given me as much satisfaction as bringing them up,” explains Penn. “It’s thanks to them that I never gave up on civilisation altogether.”

The “dropping out” that he speaks of takes a number of forms; acting is only one of his outlets. Penn is driven on by other, more radical needs, saying: “It’s never been more important for us to pull together as humankind. I love humanity.”

This isn’t just lip service. Penn doesn’t think of himself as a charitable ambassador who, shielded by bodyguards, jets into a crisis zone to shake the hands of photogenic people in need. “You need a greater dose of life if you want something new to

happen inside of you,” is a motto he lives up to. In September 2011, he was out on Tahrir Square with Egyptian demonstrators, protesting against the delay in making reforms. He travelled to Iraq shortly after the US-led invasion, to get a first-hand picture of what was really going on. He had the same motive when he went to the ghettos of Los Angeles convulsed by race riots in 1992, where a supermarket trolley smashed through his car’s windscreen. In 2005, he waded through the

brackish water hours after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans to rescue victims of the flooding. His most spectacular intervention came in 2010, where, soon after the earthquake in Haiti, the charitable organisation he founded, J/P HRO, was running camps for around 55,000 survivors. (By the autumn of 2011, that figure had gone down to around 23,000.)

When he has to, Penn can eloquently put across his point of view and side of the argument, such as in his reports on Iraq for the San Francisco Chronicle, and his articles on meeting Fidel Castro and Venezuelan head of state Hugo Chávez, for The Nation. Ask him face to face about this work, and he plays it all down.

“In Haiti, I have a very good team which I rely on to a large extent, because when I’m working on a film, I concentrate fully on that and only keep myself informed of what’s going on,” explains Penn. “So, I would be filming This Must Be The Place during the day, and then in the evening I would get back to the trailer and check my messages on the answering machines, hoping that nothing disastrous had happened in

Sean’s mother was provocative and prickly

towards her eldest son… Her reaction to his first

appearance on stage was typical: “You’re awful.

Give up now”

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Haiti. We were barely finished when I got the news of the cholera outbreak. As much as I wish it had never happened, it was at the right time for me. It would have been really frustrating if it had happened while we were filming.”

As a highly decorated member of the Hollywood community, Penn is used to an environment where people aren’t necessarily interested in this sort of thing. They would much rather know what kind of feelings he has for Scarlett Johansson, whom he was seen whispering sweet nothings to for a couple of months earlier this year. But is there, as far as he is concerned, a tension between his professional life and everything else?

“I do appreciate that,” says Penn. “Am I confronted with it? I don’t really know. Everyone fights against that. Part of me feels that one of the biggest fights I have to fight has nothing to do with the excessive hype of the illusion of celebrity. I mean, even if we paid teachers the same wage as actors, ie, if we lived in a fair world, you’d still have to wrestle with your performance as an actor. I mean, you’re trapped in your own nature, your body, your own rhythm and weaknesses.”

As confused as the words may sound – and it’s the answer he most stumbled over during our time together – they make sense on closer inspection. Penn doesn’t see himself as part of an industry that defines itself with the word “show”. His hyper-concentration focuses on his internal processes and the “wrestle” is with himself: the person he is trapped inside, yet through which he still has to try to take on the identity of another role. As far as he is concerned, his public image is just “another battle; it’s dead weight. It’s a war on the public’s ability to concentrate”. In other words, forget Sean Penn the person and just embrace the role.

Being Sean Penn, then, is a battle, on two fronts: the roles he chooses to play as an actor and the role he hasn’t chosen for himself as a public figure. Neither we, nor he, can reduce this conflict, this swing between destructive and productive character traits. Take, for example, the subject of Penn’s well-documented admiration for the rock ’n’ roll storytelling of Bruce Springsteen. Ask him to name his favourite song by The Boss and, “I made a film about it,” is his short answer. The song is Highway Patrolman, and its lyrics inspired Penn’s directorial debut, The Indian Runner, which he also wrote, about an upright, happily married policeman called Joe who tries to look after his brother Frank, an aggressive soul, but can’t stop his tendency for self-destruction. At the end, Joes lets Frank wander across the border to evade arrest for murder.

In one interview, Penn confirmed that these two personalities also swirl around inside him, that he is in some ways both Joe

and Frank. He’s better equipped at bringing the two sides into balance now than in his younger days, although in 2010 he was sentenced to 300 hours of community service and ordered to attend anger management classes after an incident involving his kicking right leg and a paparazzi photographer [the community service was completed through Penn’s relief efforts in Haiti]. Channelling that anger in other directions requires commitment, and Penn is not a man for compromises.

“When I go jogging,” he says, “I want to collapse on the ground from exhaustion at the end of it. Otherwise I feel I haven’t pushed myself hard enough, that I haven’t applied all my energy. I want to do the same in every area of my life.”

And he can express it in a more philosophical way, too…“It’s a crappy joke when we say God exists,” he says. “If

we say God doesn’t exist, it’s the same crappy joke. Because, damn, nobody knows if he exists and no one will ever know. But you just accept it and act accordingly in whatever you do. As Edgar Lee Masters put it in his poem, Davis Matlock: “Well, I say to live it out like a god / Sure of immortal life, though you are in doubt / Is the way to live it / If that doesn’t

make God proud of you / Then God is nothing but gravitation / Or sleep is the golden goal.”

“I think I’m optimistic enough to say that we can [accept it and act accordingly],” explains Penn. “But the pessimist in me says we won’t bring ourselves to.”

Penn seems very determined to live a life according to this principle, and he has moments of peace where “something taps me on the shoulder”. When does that happen? “When I can surf for a good 10 minutes on the ocean stretched out before me,”

says Penn, who as a teenager, discovered what he calls the “harmony” and “spirituality” he experiences when surfing.

It seems, therefore, that it is possible for Sean Penn to serenely enjoy the magic of a moment, that he can experience something akin to real happiness. “Yes, I can find a sunset beautiful, for example,” he explains. “But the times when the world shows you its magic are rare. You have to grab them when they come. But the concept of happiness is a little too much for me. I just think to myself, ‘Oh, that’s pretty.’”

A hint of amusement seems to resonate with Penn in this answer, and all of a sudden he appears to be in something of a good mood. But, as he’s already said, it’s all a question of interpretation with these things…

And we’ll never know for sure, for it is then that Sean Penn gets up and trudges out of the hotel suite. A walking monument, his gaze turned inwards to thoughts of his very private, very gruelling universe.Sean Penn helps Haiti: www.jphro.org

“When I go jogging, I want to collapse on the ground from

exhaustion at the end of it. Otherwise I feel I haven’t

pushed myself hard enough. I want to do the same in

every area of my life”

Penn plays an ageing rock star in his latest movie

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IT’SSNOWTIME

Forget the model looks, the dreamy blue eyes and the curvaceous silhouette, Lindsey Vonn is fi rst and foremost a multi-gold-

medal-winning Olympic athlete, right? Thing is,

sport be damned, it looks like America is falling in love with her. And maybe we will too…

Words: Ann Donahue Photography: Emily Shur

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There are many things in this life Lindsey Vonn is well prepared for: bombing down a snowy mountain in the Alps at 70mph (112kph), pulling a ‘Cool Hand Luke’ and eating a dozen hard-boiled eggs in one sitting as part of her training diet; enduring various injuries – from a deep shin bruise to broken bones – and, without hesitation, getting back on her skis.

Catching Bieber Fever, however, was unexpected.“When I met Justin Bieber, he was like, ‘Well, I’ve

been skiing quite a few times, would you ever give me a lesson?’ And I was like, ‘Are you kidding? Of course,’” says the US skier. “It would be pretty sweet.”

It’s been two years since Vonn won the downhill gold medal at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics with an exhortative scream and a jubilant tumble in the snow. But now the 27-year-old finds herself in unfamiliar territory. In a sport that usually only receives the laser-like attention of the American

public and media every four years, she remains in the spotlight as one of the country’s pre-eminent female athletes. She’s won the ESPY (Excellence in Sports Performance Yearly award from US TV channel ESPN) for Best Female Athlete for two years running, she is a regular fixture at Hollywood events and can often be found clowning around with other top pro athletes in adverts.

This is what it means to be an elite female athlete at the dawn of 2012: it’s not enough to be a fierce and successful competitor. You can win enough Olympic medals to make the European Central Bank envious, you can serve a tennis ball at 130mph (209kph), you can throw off your helmet and brawl in the pitlane with the best of NASCAR – but, by God, you’d better also knock ’em dead in a dress…

“Women in sports is still a young profession,” says Los Angeles-based movie publicist Jeff Freedman, SE

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whose recent clients include films that involve both actors and athletes: Moneyball, Real Steel and the yet to be released Haywire. “The notoriety that male athletes get automatically, female athletes have to work to get,” he adds. “And if you’re playing off your notoriety, you have to have something to play off.”

Vonn’s notoriety is quite straightforward: she has helped redefine the title of America’s Sweetheart as someone who can flash a big smile and still maintain a complete and total willingness to kick your ass. And for now, at least, her participation in the celebrity maelstrom is more about enjoyment than obligation.

“It’s really fun – I mean, it’s still part of the job, but I enjoy it,” she says. “I love getting dressed up and feeling feminine and having high heels on. I like being able to meet people – when I was shooting the ESPN promo for the ESPYs, I was hanging out with Carmelo Anthony [US basketball star] talking to

him about what he’s doing with training and how his knee rehab is going. It’s really interesting.”

In that ad, Vonn and Anthony are gussied up and dancing together at a high school prom when ESPYs host Seth Meyers interrupts in chirpy sideline reporter mode for a post-dance interview. Vonn huffily refuses to speculate about whom she’s picked to dance with next and Anthony admits to having a deep-seated fear of bluegrass music being played.

But there’s a limit, of course, to how much time Vonn can spend in front of the camera. It’s all OK as long as playing along with the Hollywood dream factory doesn’t get in the way of winning on the slopes.

Being famous isn’t new to Vonn. What’s new to her is being famous in America. In Europe, the fervour surrounding professional skiing is, actually, more akin to that associated with the teenage girls SE

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“I don’t get people waiting for me outside my hotel room in the US, but I do in Europe”

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following Justin Bieber around. “In Europe, it’s more of an obsession with the sport and you definitely get more fanatical fans,” she says. “Which is awesome – every sport needs that. But I don’t get the people waiting for me outside my hotel room in the US, which is what happens in Europe.”

The competition during the World Cup 2011 season between Vonn and German skier Maria Riesch was intense, and ended with a controversial event in Switzerland when the final deciding race was cancelled due to bad weather, which meant the overall title went to Riesch.

European newspapers had a field day over their feud – The Daily Telegraph described their relationship as, yes, “frosty”. Vonn and Riesch were longtime best friends – they raced against each other on the juniors circuit – and holidayed together during the off season. But there was a public falling out in the early part of the 2011 season, with Vonn eventually writing a lengthy post on her Facebook page about comments Riesch made about her to the press, and decided it would be best if she didn’t attend Riesch’s wedding. “I am very hurt by her actions and I honestly don’t know where our friendship stands at this point,” she wrote.

In the months after the season ended, the matter between herself and Riesch was settled. “We talked things over in New Zealand and I think we both decided that we’re just not going to talk about our friendship in public,” says Vonn. “We obviously have a lot of respect for each other.”

And the current season does have big implications for the sport’s top two competitors. In addition to the US stopover during the Thanksgiving Weekend in Aspen, Colorado, the women’s ski tour will hold races in Sochi, Russia, the site of the 2014 Olympic Games, for the first time. It’s valuable practice for Vonn, who needs just one run on a course to commit it to memory for turn-by-turn visualisation.

“I have a photographic memory,” says Vonn. “When I was 11 or 12, I started training with Ski Club Vail [a Colorado-based not-for-profit skiing school] and as a team we would have these visualisation lessons where we would get in our tuck and visualise the course we had just run in the morning. They always timed it to see how long it took, and I was pretty darn close to my actual time.”

During months of pre-season training in the Southern Hemisphere skiing meccas of Chile and New Zealand, and three-a-day gym workouts at the US Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista near San Diego, California, Vonn has focused on improving her giant slalom and slalom skiing. These two events have flummoxed Vonn in the past (she’s become known more for crashing than for finishing, let alone winning) but she opened this ski season by winning her first giant slalom, becoming the fifth woman in skiing history to win all five World Cup events. “Those two events have been my big focus and trying to get more consistent, trying just to get to the finish line sometimes,” she laughs. “I want to build on that.”

Which means that for 2014 in Sochi, she’s working towards putting herself in the Michael Phelps-ian position of being a medal contender in every event

her sport offers. “I was thinking about it pretty much since Vancouver was over,” says Vonn. “I always think about it. It’s always in the back of my mind.”

And as Vonn turns her attention to Sochi, so will the press. It is inevitable that alpine skiing will once again take centre stage of Olympics coverage in her homeland and that Vonn will be the public face of the sport – being an athlete from the country that houses the media machine means you announce your pre-Olympics injury via The Today Show’s co-anchor Matt Lauer and joke about your medal collection with Stephen Colbert from Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report after your victories. “It’s always a distraction, but there’s always going to be distractions,” explains Vonn. “At the end of the day you have to be able to perform as an athlete. You have to be able to say for yourself – if I do this interview, is it going to disturb me? Or distract me? Then I’m not going to do it.”

In the off season, however, Vonn can pursue as many extracurricular activities as she wants. In 2010, she made her acting debut in the series finale to her favourite TV show, Law & Order, playing a secretary who slips a vital clue to investigators tracking down a suspect in a school shooting plot. “When they asked me to be on the show, I was hyperventilating. I was just super excited,” she says. “They’re like, ‘OK, Lindsey, you can’t smile in every scene. It’s serious.’”

Out of her ski gear and in glasses – she’s wearing a truly unfortunate, pastel-coloured twinset – Vonn is almost unrecognisable in her cameo. Good, she says. “I thought I looked like a tool. I don’t like watching myself on TV. Skiing is one thing, but I feel like my voice sounds funny. It’s one of those weird self-image things I have about myself. I watched it, but just once. That was all I had to do. That was enough.”

Leaving the slopes behind for acting isn’t in her immediate future, although red carpet appearances will continue. At Nickelodeon’s 2011 Kids’ Choice Awards, which are known for dumping buckets of slime on winners in a televised projection of what everyone really wants to do to the popular kids in high school, Vonn won Favourite Female Athlete over Serena Williams, Venus Williams and Danica Patrick. “Kids are intrigued by Lindsey because she’s beautiful enough to be a model, a champion athlete and a fierce competitor – a rare combination,” says Ellen Rydzewski, vice-president of talent at Nickelodeon.

Vonn was shocked when she won those awards. “I was high-fiving these kids as I walked on stage and they were all slimy and grabbing my hands to get as much slime on me as they could,” she says. “I got up on stage and I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t think I would win and then I was slimy. I kind of thought because the Kids’ Choice Awards are a pretty mainstream event I didn’t really think anybody would know who I was.”

Vonn laughs as her entourage – a make-up artist, two stylists, a reporter and two videographers – roll their eyes. “I don’t know! I guess I’m naive sometimes.”

And with that, Vonn stands up, heads over to a rack of clothes and picks out a gold sequined dress for her next photoshoot.www.lindseyvonn.comC

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Few players have been so feted so young as Santos FC’s Neymar. At the age of 19, he’s already been shortlisted for FIFA’s Ballon d’Or awardWords: Cassio Cortes Photography: Jürgen Skarwan

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its. The face replying to my questions – a reported €6-million-per-year, greatest-hope-of-an-entire-country-to-win-the-next-World-Cup face – is full of zits, of all sizes and colours within the spectrum from pink to red. It’s understandable given that the face’s owner is only 19. And anyway, the zits are seldom noticed by most people, which is also quite understandable given that only a few centimetres above them, arguably the most outrageous haircut in global football draws all eyes to itself. It is a 1980s-style London punk type of mohawk, which has recently been dyed blond.

Which in turn has caused thousands, or perhaps tens of thousands of young Brazilians to bring despair to their parents by emulating said barnet. This country of 190 million, the self-proclaimed ‘Land of Football’, has its first Gen-Z superstar, backed by in excess of 2.6m followers on Twitter and chased through the streets with Beatlemania-like hysteria.

As is tradition in Brazil, Neymar da Silva Santos Júnior goes by the first name appearing on the birth certificate from February 5, 1992, which means he was two years old when Romário almost single-handedly gave his country its fourth FIFA World Cup back in 1994, and 10 when Ronaldo and Rivaldo conspired to bring Brazil its fifth – and so far, most recent – title in football’s be-all, end-all of championships. Most importantly, it means his shoulders will be a mere 22 years of age when asked to carry a colossal burden: the responsibility of being Brazil’s main player and team leader as the country bids for its sixth World Cup title on home soil in 2014.

“Winning a World Cup has to be any player’s ultimate career goal,” concedes Neymar as we chat in the dressing room of Santos FC’s Vila Belmiro stadium, where his own locker sits just three doors down from the one used from 1956 to 1974 by Santos’s – and, arguably, football’s – greatest player of all time, Pelé. “But to win it in front of the Brazilian fans would have a truly incredible taste,” he adds, appearing unfazed by the task ahead.

In Europe, perhaps only the most hardcore football fans know what Santos FC means. Shortly put, it’s where Pelé –

referred to as simply ‘The King’ in Brazil – made many of his club appearances. In total, he scored 1,088 goals of his mind-boggling 1,281 career total for this club. Alone in this coastal city of 420,000 people, with no cross-town rivalry and a rich history, Santos is a club with few haters, almost like a ‘second-favourite’ to most Brazilians, even though its fans are dwarfed by the followers of teams like Flamengo or Corinthians.

Entering the 1916-built Vila Belmiro – known as ‘The World’s Most Famous Vila’ – is like travelling back in time to the 1950s and ’60s, when Pelé was piling up goals here. It’s full of idiosyncratic charm but quite cramped, with space for only 20,120 spectators, justifying its other nickname, the one preferred by most Santos fans: ‘Alçapão’, or ‘The Trapdoor’: where rivals come to disappear.

A Santos player since he was 12 years old, Neymar takes us through every corner of the Vila with obvious familiarity and shows nothing but absolute respect for the club’s glorious past – a legacy that has often been a burden to its other young players. “Santos and the Vila will forever be the House of Pelé,” says Neymar. “To me, he’s like a myth. When we first met a few years ago, he just told me: ‘Have faith in God, because He’s already given you everything else.’”

Neymar’s cool demeanour and his mohawk’s constant alterations perfectly symbolise his own often-repeated motto: “ousadia e alegria”, or “boldness and happiness” in a loose translation from Portuguese. It is a mantra taken so seriously by the athlete that it’s been stitched to his custom-made Nike boots.

It takes boldness, for instance, to say “no, thanks” when Chelsea FC come knocking at your door, as they did in 2010. Similar approaches from almost every European football giant have been rebuffed by Santos, as Brazil’s good economic climate has enabled the club to devise a sponsorship scheme that’s kept Neymar on home shores longer than other rising stars. He has personal contracts with Nike, Nextel, Panasonic and Red Bull, among others, and their combined value generates a world-class income.

They’ve also helped create world-class hero worship – whether intentionally or otherwise – by keeping Neymar at home and making him a larger-than-life figure in a country so used to waving its stars a teary-eyed farewell as they head to Europe in pursuit of glory and riches.

“I’m 53, so I didn’t really see Pelé in his prime,” says Alberto Francisco, who owns

Z“

To win the World Cup in

front of the Brazilian

fans would have a truly

incredible taste

”

Still only 19, Neymar is already a hero at Santos

FC’s Vila Belmiro stadium after helping the club win the Copa Libertadores for

the first time since the days of Pelé. Santos have now

won the Copa three times

Son of Santos: Neymar has been on the Brazilian club’s books since the age of 12, but for the past 18 months the football press has printed stories linking him with a transfer to the likes of Real Madrid

a bar across the street from Vila Belmiro and who’s known as the club’s most loyal fan, as his tattoo of the club’s logo (on his forehead) attests. “But of all I’ve seen he’s the best by far. Much better than Robinho, who always wanted to leave Santos for Europe,” he adds, in reference to the AC Milan playmaker, who Neymar himself has declared as his personal hero. “Neymar proved his love for Santos when he chose to stay.”

In fact, Neymar’s relationship with his country’s ardent football followers has been special from the outset. After he burst onto the national scene in early 2010, the public outcry for his presence at that year’s World Cup in South Africa was widespread and included an online petition that pulled in more than 14,000 signatures. The fact that head coach Dunga didn’t call him up served only to make Neymar an even greater star after Brazil sank in the quarter-finals against the Netherlands, manifestly lacking the creative spark that an out-of-shape Kaká could not provide. Despite not having played a single minute for the Seleção, Neymar’s skilful style became the solution to all of the national team’s problems in the minds of its fans.

“Of course I wanted to go [in 2010] – who doesn’t want to play in a World Cup?” he continues inside the dressing room. “But having so many fans demanding my presence also felt very special.”

Not as special, though, as the greatest achievement of his playing career so far: leading Santos to their third Copa Libertadores (South America’s equivalent of the UEFA Champions League) title last June, the first since the 62/63 double, in which Pelé starred. The Libertadores win also set up the prospect of a tantalizing duel in the FIFA Club World Cup this month in Japan: a battle for global supremacy between the Santos of Neymar and the FC Barcelona of Lionel Messi, the reigning European champions.

“I know that’s the duel everybody wants to see, but we can’t forget what happened to Internacional last year,” he says, serenely. In 2010, South American champions SC Internacional were eliminated in the World Cup semi-finals by Congolese side TP Mazembe, who went on to lose to Inter Milan in the final.

And yet the Libertadores was only one highlight of what’s been a magical 2011 so far: up to October 31, Neymar had played in 62 matches (42 for Santos, 13 for the Brazil national team and another seven for Brazil’s Under-20 side) and found the net on 41 occasions – impressive for a 64kg, 1.74m specimen who routinely

takes a beating from defenders flailing to stop his unpredictable runs and feints.

That light weight – former Real Madrid coach Wanderley Luxemburgo, who coached Santos for five months in 2009, called him a “butterfly fillet” – is nonetheless what makes Neymar almost indestructible, as less energy is dissipated in each fall to the ground.

“People on the street tell me I should beef him up,” reveals Santos FC’s head fitness coach, Ricardo Rosa. “But I would only change his haircut! Neymar has amazing recovery capability. When I try to tell him to take things a little more easily, he laughs me off.”

More than mere teenage enthusiasm, Neymar’s ability to sustain such a marathon of

matches also comes from his DNA. His levels of CK enzymes in post-match blood tests are half the average of other Santos players. CK enzymes are a byproduct of muscle recovery, so the fewer you have the less damage your muscles have suffered from physical effort

“He’s so fast and thinks so quickly that he’s mostly able to keep a safe distance from the defenders,” says journalist Giovane Martineli, who covered Santos for sports newspaper Lance as Neymar was climbing the youth ranks. “If you had to define his playing style in one word, that would be it: ‘quick.’”

Neymar himself agrees: “I’ve always said that dribbling is my strongest point as a player.” What about the weakest? “Several. That’s why I practise every day.”

Practice is also how he got to the stage where he could emulate a characteristic shared by Pelé and Ronaldo – being equally comfortable kicking with his left or his right leg. “Training my left leg is something I’ve worked on hard since I was a kid,” he admits.

That diligence has caused a few members of the Brazilian press to label Neymar as a “laboratory” athlete in the mould of Tiger Woods or Andre Agassi: a precocious star deprived of a childhood by parents projecting their own dreams via their offspring. Neymar senior was a professional footballer who never made it to the Brazilian first division.

“At the age of 11 we could already see he was extraordinary,” Neymar senior recalls in our first meeting, during October’s Red Bull Street Style national final in Rio de Janeiro. His son’s there as a judge – courtesy of a Hollywood-like operation that has him picked up by a helicopter at the Engenhão Stadium minutes after scoring the equalizer in Santos’s 1-1 away

Éric Abidal France, Barcelona

Sergio Agüero Argentina, Manchester City

Xabi Alonso Spain, Real Madrid

Daniel Alves Brazil, Barcelona

Karim Benzema France, Real Madrid

Iker Casillas Spain, Real Madrid

Samuel Eto’o Cameroon, Anzhi Makhachkala

Cesc Fàbregas Spain, Barcelona

Diego Forlán Uruguay, Inter Milan

Andrés Iniesta Spain, Barcelona

Lionel Messi Argentina, Barcelona

Thomas Müller Germany, Bayern Munich

Nani Portugal, Manchester United

Neymar Brazil, Santos

Mesut Özil Germany, Real Madrid

Gerard Piqué Spain, Barcelona

Cristiano Ronaldo Portugal, Real Madrid

Wayne Rooney England, Manchester United

Bastian Germany, Schweinsteiger Bayern Munich

Wesley Sneijder Netherlands, Inter Milan

Luis Suárez Uruguay, Liverpool

David Villa Spain, Barcelona

Xavi Spain, Barcelona

2011 FIFA BALLON D’Or ShOrTLIST

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The FIFA Ballon d’Or shortlist, above, will be whittled down to a just three players at the beginning of December. The Ballon d’Or will be presented to the Player of the Year in Zurich on January 9, 2012.

Neymar’s hairstyle has become de rigueur among the younger fans of Santos FC

The Santos dressing room includes a prayer

area, confirming the notion that in Brazil, football is a religion. And when Neymar is

around this part of the stadium, one of

the club’s bodyguards can be found nearby

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draw with Flamengo, then being delivered at Santos Dumont airport directly into a van which was then escorted by police to the Red Bull Street Style venue, the Circo Voador nightclub, where he was greeted by 1,500 crazed fans.

Backstage after the event, the Red Bull Street Style freestylers swarm over him. “Junior,” as he’s called by family and closest friends, seems to genuinely enjoy posing for pictures and hanging out with the Red Bull Street Style players, all teenagers like him. He’s attentive to all who ask for an autograph, stopping only to attend to his BlackBerry whenever it goes “bling-blong” – which seems to happen every 30 seconds. “He’s got no problem with the attention,” Neymar senior believes. “What would you rather be – successful or anonymous?”

his father is, however, credited as the one holding Junior close to the real world. For his

19th birthday this year, Junior asked for a Ferrari as present. He got one – in 1/18 scale from a toy shop. Nowadays his daily ride is a Mini Cooper, although a Porsche Panamera is also in the garage for the (ever rarer) weekend getaways. On such occasions, he can be found in the company of his baby son, Davi Lucca, whose name is now tattooed on his right forearm. “Becoming a father has matured me a lot,” says Neymar. “It’s an even greater reason to work hard on the field.”

It is clear, however, that the ascendance to superstardom has forced Neymar into a sheltered existence. He’s protected like a jewel by an entourage that includes his father, one or two security guards and Santos’s Eduardo Musa, the man put in charge of raising the sponsorship money to retain him at the club (“The Jewel”, incidentally, is how he’s referred to by the press in the city of Santos).

“When we launched his bobbing head doll last year I realised he’d become like a Beatle,” Musa reveals. “The launch was going to be at a shopping centre, and we warned them to reinforce security and they said, ‘Don’t worry, we did an event with Ronaldo last month and it went smoothly.’ Well, when we got there the next day there were 1,500 frenzied kids inside the toy shop, trying to take a picture, get an autograph, and simply trying to grab him. The store windows started shaking from inside and we had to call the whole thing off – it turned into frickin’ World War III in there.”

“The thing I miss the most is playing football on the beach with my friends,”

Neymar says about fame’s downsides. “I haven’t been to the beach at all here in Santos for well over a year.”

But it’s not like he hadn’t seen it coming. Neymar’s wonderkid status placed him among stars from an early age. In 2005, his agent Wagner Ribeiro took him to visit another one of his clients, Robinho, then playing for Real Madrid. Neymar practised at Real’s training complex and hung out with David Beckham, Zinedine Zidane et al – for a week.

“That week is something I’ll never forget,” he admits. “One day, after Real beat Deportivo La Coruña 4-0 at the Santiago Bernabéu, I went out for dinner with Ronaldo, Robinho, Beckham, Zidane and Roberto Carlos. I just kept my mouth shut, not wanting the dream to end!”

By then, Neymar was already earning a monthly salary in the region of €10,000 from Santos and Ribeiro, and being followed by a psychologist to cope with the upcoming stardom. Last year, a speech therapist was added to the staff to improve his diction, another element in a mix that makes Neymar the best-prepared Brazilian player ever. This preparedness helps explain how he’s achieved another impressive feat: becoming one of the 23 players shortlisted for FIFA’s 2011 Ballon d’Or Player of the Year award, the winner of which will be announced on January 9 – the first time it’s ever happened to a player currently active at a Brazilian club.

Three days after our Vila Belmiro interview and two hours after Neymar scored six times (albeit

twice offside) in Santos’s 4-1 trouncing of Atletico-PR in the Brazilian League, we’re boarding a first-class flight to New York, where he’s been invited by the MLS to present the match ball for the New York Red Bulls versus LA Galaxy play-off game.

The USA may not have as many football fans as England or Brazil, but those who do come to stadiums are well informed. Announced on the PA system as “The Superstar of the Brazilian National Team”, he’s welcomed on the pitch by a round of applause. Minutes earlier, David Beckham of the Galaxy and Thierry Henry of the Red Bulls stopped their pre-match warm-up to come to the sidelines and chat with him. Six years after that magical Madrid dinner, Neymar and Beckham were now shaking hands as fellow superstars.

“For sure Neymar deserves to be among the 23 selected for FIFA Player of the Year in 2011. In fact, he could be the Player of the Year in a few years,” says Beckham.Follow Neymar’s progress at www.twitter.com/njr92

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Sails Like Teen Spirit

Just after Christmas, an 18-year-old will lead a crew of teens into the world’s deadliest boat race. Vicious squalls, choppy seas and injuries are the norm for Jessica Watson,

the youngest person to sail solo around the worldWords: Vanessa Murray portraits: richie hopson

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as treacherous as the 630 nautical miles (724 land miles/1,165km) between sydney and hobart, tasmania, that are raced every year on december 26. gale-force storms known as ‘southerly busters’ hurtle across the Bass strait, making the sea choppy and challenging. in 1998, six sailors lost their lives. six years later, only 59 of the 116 starters completed the race.

“the competition is very close and very competitive,” says 18-year-old sailor Jessica Watson. “on top of the competition, the race is infamous for its challenging weather conditions. it’s going to be tough, and it could be dangerous, but we’re doing it because we want a challenge. We know what we’re taking on.”

Coming as they do from an 18-year-old skippering the youngest crew to compete in the 66-year-old race, those words might be mistaken for youthful hubris. of course, Jessica Watson is no normal youth. on may 15, 2010, at the age of 16, she sailed into sydney harbour after completing a solo circumnavigation of the globe, the youngest person to do so. her feat was lauded by australia’s then-prime minister, Kevin rudd, and this year she was crowned young australian of the year. her 2010 book, True Spirit, was a bestseller and she’s spoken to crowds as large as 10,000.

so what qualifies her and her crew for a race as notoriously tough as this? “We

– another Challenge along with co-coach Chris lewin in the actual race.

not only have they been spending all day every day training together, the crew live together too. “We’re taking this seriously, but the team dynamic is great, and we’re having a lot of fun too!” says Watson. “When we get home at the end of the day, we’re usually pretty shattered, but we always eat together; we pair up and take it in turns to cook for everyone.”

When the first breezes fill the racers’ sails on Boxing day, Watson and her crew will set out from sydney harbour and sail down the south-east coast of australia to Cape howe. they’ll cross the Bass strait, skirt tasmania and enter storm Bay before finishing at Battery point – if they finish.

“at its simplest the sydney to hobart is four incredibly challenging days that you not only have to get through, but also demand that you maximise the boat’s performance with the skills and efforts of nine other people,” says lewin, who’s skippered a boat in four sydney-hobart races, including the notorious 2004 race. “Jessica and her crew are stepping into a very competitive division of one of the premier yacht races in the world.”

he describes Watson as “fantastic” to work with: “she has her strengths and weaknesses, which is good, as it gives me a job to do. But ultimately she is very self-aware, eager to learn, and genuine.”

When she completed her solo circumnavigation after 210 days at sea, Watson was three days shy of her 17th birthday. it made her the youngest person to sail solo, non-stop and unassisted around the world – although she doesn’t hold an official record, as the World sailing speed record Council (WssrCd), don’t acknowledge records set by sailors under the age of 18; they think it’s dangerous.

so is the crew’s average age of 19 an advantage or a liability? “their youth is a strength,” says Bannister. “We’ve got a group of fit, enthusiastic people who have gone through a structured training plan that’s left them as prepared, if not more prepared, than anyone else in the race.”

like many eager sailors, Watson grew up watching the start of the sydney-hobart race with her family on tV. Julie and roger Watson weren’t typical parents to Jessica and her siblings: elder sister emily, younger brother tom and younger sister hannah. she was eight years old the first time she sailed. and after attending a sailing camp on australia’s gold Coast, her and her siblings moved on to weekend classes and club racing.

But it wasn’t love at first tack. “i was frightened to be out on the water and so

a c t i o n

There are few stretches

Above: A plane welcomes Australian Jessica Watson into Sydney Harbour on May 15, 2010, as she becomes the youngest sailor to circumnavigate non-stop and unassisted around the world. Then only 16, she took 210 days to complete her mission, having set off on October 18, 2009. Opposite: Still just 18, Watson has already released her own book charting her adventures. She’s now a national celebrity and this year she was named Young Australian Of The Year

might be young, but we’re very experienced,” says Watson. “on the crew are two solo round-the-world sailors, four rolex Fastnet competitors [the european equivalent of the rolex sydney hobart yacht race], two sailors who crewed in the 2010 sydney-hobart and a multitude of smaller races – and that’s just in the past 12 months.”

since the beginning of october, Watson and her crew of nine, who come from all over australia and the UK, and have an average age of 19, have been working on team building and leadership, problem solving, emergency planning, media and brand management training. they have also spent more than 300 hours at sea.

the crew first set sail in the relatively calm conditions around pittwater on australia’s east coast, honing their sailing, manoeuvring, boat speed and offshore skills in their boat, a maxi yacht [100ft] christened ella Baché – another Challenge. off-shore sessions geared to prepare them for the shifting wind and weather conditions followed that. in november, they sailed from sydney to hobart and back, and spent a week sailing in the storm Bay and derwent areas, where, as the crew’s coach, Jonno Bannister, explains, “the race can be won or lost”.

“they’ve spent a solid month out in the conditions, which has helped them with strategy and navigation, and it has given them experience as a team on that boat, in those waters,” says Bannister, who will compete against ella Baché

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“Sailing iSn’t about Strength, it’S about knowledge”

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Having already sailed her 34ft yacht, Pink Lady, around the world in record time on her own, Jessica Watson is now set to skipper the youngest crew ever to take part in the notoriously difficult Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race. With an average age of just 19, Watson and her crew of nine will set off in a 100ft maxi yacht from Australia’s east coast on December 26. Some say they are too young for such a demanding voyage, but the crew’s coach, Jonno Bannister, disagrees. “Their youth is a strength,” he says. “We’ve got a group of fit, enthusiastic people who are as prepared, if not more prepared, than anyone else in the race” a

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far from shore,” recalls Watson in her book. “But i didn’t want to be left on the beach, waiting for everyone to come back bragging about a race. i wanted to be in the thick of it.”

as she got better at sailing, her confidence increased and she began enjoying it more. her family enjoyed it too – so much so, that in 2004, her parents sold their real estate business and brought a 52ft motorboat called home abroad that became just that: home.

For the next five-and-a-half years, the Watsons cruised up and down the east coast of australia. the children were home schooled and all had chores on the boat. “this new life gave us kids amazing freedom,” says Watson. “We’d stop at islands where we’d be the only boat in the anchorage. We’d swim, snorkel, collect shells and explore beaches and islands.”

reading solo sailor Jesse martin’s memoir, Lionheart: A Journey Of The Human Spirit, at the age of 11 inspired Watson to pursue her own solo navigation of the world. “it wasn’t so much the action-packed nature of it that appealed to me. it wasn’t the thought of knockdowns and big waves; it was all about putting a plan in place and getting the details right.

“to me,” she continues, reflecting on her many years of meticulous preparation for her journey, “sailing isn’t about strength, it’s all about knowledge.”

Watson’s remarkable teenage odyssey went ahead with the support of her parents, adventurer don mcintyre, other solo sailors like tom mowbray and high-profile figures such as sir richard Branson. “she’s 16, she’s not a baby anymore,” quipped the entrepreneur on a visit to Brisbane in september 2009, when Watson and her parents were being heavily criticised for her plans. (around the same time a dutch court had forbid 15-year-old laura dekker from her own solo circumnavigation attempt.)

“i left school at 15 and started my own business, and at 16 you’re pretty grown up,” said Branson. “she should go for it. and you know it’s risky – it’s risky walking over the road, it’s risky in cars, risky on motorbikes, risky on bicycles. it’s far safer sailing around the world. she’ll have the adventure of a lifetime.”

Watson’s 210 days on ella’s pink lady were both an unparalleled adventure and a gruelling test. “there were some tough days out at sea,” she admits, “like the storm in the atlantic where ella’s pink lady was rolled upside down four times.”

she survived with just minor damage to her boat and the conviction that she could cope with anything – which is just

as well, as the sydney to hobart race is one of the world’s toughest.

this year, around 100 teams from around the world are expected to enter, including the current race record holder, the australian-owned and skippered Wild oats xi, which crossed the line after one day, 18 hours, 40 minutes and 10 seconds in 2005. “the length of the race will vary depending on weather conditions, but it’ll most likely take around four days,” says Watson. “it might not sound like a lot compared to the 210 days i spent at sea on the around the world voyage, but they are going to be four very intense days.”

Watson is passionate about inspiring and empowering young people to achieve their potential and become active participants in their own futures, even going so far as to kick-start an online debate about lowering australia’s parliamentary voting age from 18 to 16.

she has acted as an ambassador for the australian youth Climate Change Coalition, helping give young people a voice on climate change. “it bugs me that climate change is something that is going to affect our future,” says Watson. “yet it’s the older generation that chooses how the issue is tackled or not tackled.”

in June 2011, Watson was named as a youth representative for the Un’s World Food programme. “this is a wonderful opportunity for me to help young people in countries not as well off as us,” said Watson at the time. “i want to help them achieve their dreams by ensuring they get the basic necessity of a meal every day.”

Come race day, the crew’s biggest challenge is going to be refining their boat speed, reckons Bannister. “When they get tired, they need to have that last five per cent of reserve energy to optimise the boat and everything they can do on it. that’s a challenge for every boat.”

Bannister and lewin admit that after the first three weeks of training, they went back to their own crew and told them they’d better step it up. “these guys are going to be pretty competitive; we need to be on our game to be in with a chance of beating them,” says Bannister.

Watson herself is feeling positive about the race – whatever the outcome. “i’d rather be sailing than anywhere else,” she says. “i love the challenge of making decisions and overcoming problems. it will be great fun – the crew are such a dynamic and likeable bunch. nothing inspires me more than people who stand up and say, ‘yes, we can do anything!’ you don’t have to be anyone special to achieve incredible things.” www.jessicawatson.com.aua

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Zac Sunderland, 20 (uSa) Port of departure: Marina del Rey, California June 14, 2008-July 16, 2009 Spending most of his childhood on a boat was enough preparation for Zac Sunderland. He set off just after his 16th birthday on The Intrepid. He went on to become the youngest person to solo circumnavigate the globe (with stops), sailing 27,500 nautical miles (31,646 land miles/50,929km) in 13 months. Mike Perham beat his record a month later.

Mike PerhaM, 19 (GBr) Port of departure: Portsmouth, UK November 18, 2008-August 27, 2009 Two months after Zac Sunderland finished in California, Mike Perham – younger by a few months – arrived in Portsmouth to claim bragging rights back from the Californian. Perham had a brutal journey aboard the 40ft Totallymoney.com, travelling 28,000 nautical miles (32,221 land miles/51,855km) in his nine months aboard, with a stop or two for repairs. On one of those stops, in Cape Town, he briefly met Sunderland, who was sailing the other direction. At the moment, Perham is the youngest person to sail around the world.

aBBy Sunderland, 18 (uSa) Port of departure: Marina del Rey, California January 23, 2010-June 12, 2010 (broken off) Sibling rivalry might be one explanation for Abby Sunderland’s solo attempt. But it might have also been beating her brother’s record that spurred on Abby, 16. She made it as far as the Indian Ocean, where her boat rolled 360 degrees and she lost radio and satellite phone contact. She was discovered by an Australian search plane and rescued by a French commercial boat two days later. She’s since written a book about the experience.

laura dekker, 16 (nl) Port of departure: Gibraltar August 21 2010-still at sea The Dutch teen’s attempt has been defined not by open water but by courtrooms. Dutch youth welfare officials tried to stop the voyage, even limiting her parents’ custody of their daughter, claiming that she was too young to attempt such a thing. Despondent, Dekker attempted suicide. The courts eventually relented, however, and she set sail in the 38ft Guppy, vowing to never return to Holland. Her voyage has been plagued by repair issues, but she’s currently undertaking her final, and most treacherous, passage across the Indian Ocean.

out on their own These sailors’ records might be disputed by international sailing bodies, but there’s no denying the bravery of their attempts. We profile the four teenagers who have joined Watson in making headlines for their around-the-world solo attempts

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Welshman dai greene is the world champion of athletics’ toughest track event, the 400m hurdles,

and a favourite to win gold at London 2012, where he’ll channel 10 years’ work into the most

important three quarters of a minute of his lifeWords: ruth morgan photography: alan mahon

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(seconds) Dai’s winning time at the 2011 World

Championships in Daegu, Korea

Dai Greene was in fourth place with three hurdles to go in 400m hurdles final at the 2011 World Championships. Just 15 seconds later he’d overtaken Félix Sánchez of The Dominican Republic, South African Louis Jacob van Zyl and Javier Coulson of Puerto Rico to win a gold medal (left)

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ai Greene is sitting on a bench outside the King Baudouin Stadium in Brussels on a still September evening, gulping down water and catching his breath. Just a few minutes ago he was in the floodlit stadium, competing in the 400m hurdles. He came second, but in doing so won the 2011 Diamond Race in his event – for the best overall set of results at the 14 Diamond League meetings, world athletics’ season-long competition – and the $40,000 prize that comes with it. Now he sits listening to the muted roar of the 50,000-strong crowd inside, a grin spreading across his face.

At one time, winning the Diamond League, not least defeating former world champions Kerron Clement and Bershawn Jackson of the USA in the process, would have been the highlight of Greene’s season, but his incredible recent results have relegated it to ‘cherry on the cake’ status. His smile has far more to do with the fact this is the last race of the year, ending a 14-month period that has seen him make his mark as one of the world’s best track athletes over any distance.

In 2010, Greene became both European and Commonwealth champion and then, just two weeks before coming to Brussels, he took the title he had been working towards all his professional life when he became world champion in Daegu, Korea. The fortnight since has been a whirlwind of media appointments and appearances back in the UK, and his first taste of life as a celebrity sportsman.

“A few days after I got back from Daegu I was on the M5 and thought, ‘Oh I’ll stop and get a McDonald’s,’” he says in strong Welsh tones. “I never usually eat there, but after winning the World Champs I felt like I deserved it. Then just as I’d sat down with a Quarter Pounder, McChicken Sandwich, fries, the whole lot, a guy came up to me and said ‘Are you…?’ and I thought, ‘Oh you’re kidding me!’ I said shamefully, ‘Yeah I’m Dai Greene and I don’t always do this.’ I mean, God, why

A c t i o n

(seconds) The gap between Greene’s fastest time and the British 400m

hurdles record

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can’t people recognise me when I’m soaked from training in the rain? It has to be when I’m stuffing a Big Mac down my face!”

He’s laughing now, well aware that the pitfalls of his new-found fame are outweighed by monumental pluses. Aged 25, he’s in a prime position to take an Olympic gold medal in 2012, now the big prize missing from his collection, with the once-in-a-lifetime benefit of racing in front of a home crowd. And before even thinking about the challenges to come next year, he has six weeks off to let this season’s achievements sink in, enjoy a few rare drinks with mates and a holiday in The Maldives with his girlfriend, Sian. But rewind to a blustery day in August at Bath University’s performance centre that’s Greene’s second home and he’s a different man. There are three weeks to go before he travels to Korea for the World Championships and the happy ending to the year is far from guaranteed.

His trademark crop is visible through a window as he warms up trackside, quiet and focused. He and training partner Jack Green, himself a World Championship contender, are in the midst of two weeks of high-intensity training. They know this session will leave them face down on the floor, but that’s how Greene likes it. Under the watchful eye of veteran coach Malcolm Arnold, Greene trains relentlessly year-round on Bath’s hills and here on track. His mantra is: ‘When you’ve trained yourself into the ground, train some more.’

Even the pros can’t make the 400m hurdles look easy. When faced with an event so tough (it’s commonly referred to as ‘the man killer’ because of the physical and mental strain the distance puts on competitors) Greene gets his confidence from these hours of preparatory punishment. “Racing’s the easy bit,” he says as he sits on the ground, legs outstretched. “I never feel as bad after racing as training because it’s a third of the distance we’re about to cover. Some people lose it on the start line of a race thinking, ‘It’s a long way to go’, and if you start to think like that you’re buggered. The amount of training we do means I always know I’m ready.”

In a sport where the smallest error can spell defeat, consistency is the mark of a winner and Greene is as steady as they go. His four most competitive times this year have been within just two 10ths of each other, testimony to how well he knows his race.

In his racing Lycra, Greene’s 1.85m frame is further proof of the hours he puts in. He’s strong, solid, built for endurance over speed. There’s not an ounce of spare

fat on his body, each part of him honed over years for the sole purpose of winning hurdles races. This single-mindedness leads him to spend most of his life here with his coach and his training partner; it’s why he actually looks forward to being, as he puts it, “scraped up off the floor” after a session.

“C’mon then,” says coach Arnold, who starts his stopwatch as Greene and Jack Green set off on the first of three 400m full-speed runs with only short breaks between. They cut very different figures as they reach the far straight of the tree-lined track, Jack taller and more willowy than Greene and just slightly off the Welshman’s pace. Five years Greene’s junior, his youthful, chatty demeanour is in stark contrast to Greene’s more experienced reserve. “Dai is a very quiet, laid-back character,” says Arnold, his eyes never leaving his athletes. “He doesn’t speak much to anyone. But he’s an athlete with many strengths. One of his biggest strengths is his ability to turn it up a notch when he competes – you either have that or you don’t. Just talking to either of these two about competing is like lighting the blue touch paper.”

Now 71, Arnold is a sporting great in his own right, having coached 400m hurdler and Olympic gold medallist John Akii-Bua in Uganda and British former world champion hurdler Colin Jackson, among countless others. He’s a no-nonsense Northerner from Northwich in Cheshire who has one rule about his athletes: “If they’re not dedicated, driven and hard-working, I don’t want ’em.”

The pair finish their first 400m and now lie on their backs in the sun, panting. “They’re definitely not sunbathing,” Arnold chuckles. “I would have retired 10 years ago if I had any sense, but it’s the sheer joy of working with these two keeps me at it, isn’t it boys?”

“It’s a pleasure coming to work every day, isn’t it Malcolm,” Greene laughs weakly from the floor.

“Actually,” Arnold grins, “it’s seeing the both of you in a distressed state during a session like this.”

Jack Green pipes up in mock protest: “This man is stealing our youth!”

After training and a session with his physiotherapist, Greene’s ready to rest up at the home he shares with Sian, five minutes’ drive from the track. He has to be ready to do it all again tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that. But Greene’s not complaining. He’s passionate about his sport. He’s a student of the discipline in the truest sense, having written a 10,000-word dissertation on

hurdling while at university in Cardiff. He’s watched hours of footage of 400m hurdling greats such as Félix Sánchez and Ed Moses, studying their techniques, constantly learning. “There’s no margin for error in our sport,” he says. “There are around 150 strides in a race that you have to get spot on. Six 10ths of a second means the difference between first and last place, so you have to analyse what works. The technical side of things is so interesting, how it’s not just the fastest person or the strongest person who wins – there are so many ways to run the race.”

Talk to Greene about his home life and he’s a laid-back 25-year-old lad,

The average number of strides in a 400m

hurdles race

A c t i o n

69

happy to chat about his PlayStation, the woes of his girlfriend making him watch The X Factor and the colour they’re considering for the dining room walls. But let Greene loose on the topic of the 400m hurdles and he’s off, his eyes steady and focused as he dizzies your mind with various tactical options and statistical probabilities, his usually calm and measured speech picking up speed as if he’s verbally running the race he’s describing.

But Greene’s aptitude for hurdling actually owes a debt to another sport, football. At one time it looked more likely Greene would make his mark on the pitch

when he played for the Swansea City youth team in his teens, once scoring a penalty against a Real Madrid youth side. Looking to emulate his idol and fellow Welshman Ryan Giggs, right-footed Greene trained himself to play as a left winger. When, aged 17, he decided to turn down the offer of a contract to focus on athletics, hurdling came naturally to him as he could lead with either foot. Though he showed promise, at college he was, as he recalls, “only training twice a week, out at the weekend drinking with my mates”. Then, after suffering a fit, Greene was diagnosed with mild epilepsy, partly triggered by

alcohol. That discovery, combined with a move to university, changed everything.

“At uni I went the other way,” he says. “I found people who wanted to train every day. I hadn’t really realised people did that until then. I stopped drinking and I hardly ever went out at all. As a result I just got better and better.”

After just one year of hard training under Swedish coach Benke Blomqvist, in 2005 Greene became European junior silver medallist, giving him his first taste of racing in front of a stadium crowd. But his new-found dedication was tested early on as the next two years were dogged by a series of foot injuries. “Those years

A true student of the sport, Dai Greene (above) wrote a 10,000-word dissertation on hurdling while at university in Cardiff. He pores over pictures of his races like this one (below), which shows how he powered through the last 50m to take gold in Daegu

Number of British 400m hurdles Olympic

gold medallists

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were tough,” says Greene. “I struggle when I’m not running well. It’s hard to cope with mentally as much as anything. You have to try and use the experience to make you stronger.”

On top of that, money was tight. Greene had flipped burgers at McDonald’s for three years to support his early career and got by with a student loan. But his injuries, and graduating from university, meant 2008 was a make-or-break year. Greene had a very small income from competition prize money and low-level funding from UK Athletics, but he knew that would be cut at the end of the year if he didn’t improve. Then, halfway through winter training, Blomqvist moved back to Sweden at short notice for family reasons.

“It was by no means a smooth year!” says Greene. “I had to really make sure that what little money I had stretched as far as it could, then I had to face losing an excellent coach.” But before he left, Blomqvist introduced Greene to Malcolm Arnold, and their coming-together sparked a turnaround. “I’d just managed to get rid of my foot injuries by that time,” says Greene. “And, though you’d expect it to take a while to settle with a new coach, Malcolm and I worked well together immediately. Then over the next six months I knocked more than a second off my best time.”

In 2009 Greene managed what had been out of reach just a year before, when he qualified for the World Championship final, finishing seventh. “Then not only was I back on funding, I started to get sponsorship,” he says. “I had a contract with Nike, and supplement sponsors, and

next thing you know I had far more money than I’d ever had in my life. I didn’t have to worry about rent, I could buy whatever food

I wanted. And I was finally reaching the potential I always knew I had.”

The 2010 season cemented his status as a contender on the world stage with wins in both the European

Championships in Barcelona and the Commonwealth Games in Delhi, culminating this year with his career-changing win at the World Championships in Daegu. With a confidence borne of endless training and proven results, Greene went to the World Championships not hoping, but expecting to

Edwin Moses (below), 56, is the undoubted godfather of 400m hurdles racing. The 1.88m tall American is a double Olympic gold medallist (1976, 1984), double world champion (1983, 1987) and, from September 1977, he remained undefeated for a quite incredible nine years, nine months and nine days, winning 122 consecutive races and breaking his own world record four times. He tells The Red Bulletin about the secrets of his success and why his money’s on Dai Greene for Olympic gold.

When did you first become aware of Dai Greene?“I’ve been watching Dai since early last year. I predicted he’d win the World Championships at the start of this year when I saw him run the series of races he was running. You can’t afford to make mistakes in this event and he doesn’t. That was my forte too – being incredibly consistent.”

When you met Dai Greene what advice did you offer him?“I’ve forgotten more than most people ever know about the 400m hurdles, and I did give Dai some tips about training. His coach, Malcolm, is old-school and has the knowledge. His is the school of thought that I grew up on – no tricks, just hard work. Dai is in good hands.”

Do you see similarities between you and Dai?“Dai seems very low-key, he seems very much like me. In the 100m you see these guys talking… a lot of shit quite frankly, but in the 400m hurdles you’re going to die at the end of the race, you physically pay a price, so there’s no time for that. He said that when he

gets to the meets he doesn’t talk to those guys. He’s getting his game together.”

And you’ve both turned to academia to help you on the track…“Most athletes don’t approach the sport from a perspective of learning, so Dai is rare in that regard. I didn’t have a coach so I had no choice but to break everything down myself. I was the only one-man track club in the world. I studied science physics and biology, chemistry, engineering, all that, which helped no end. I started out as a guy who went to a college with no facilities and became an Olympic champion in three years because of sheer will.”

What made you so much better at this event than anyone before or since?“My secret was willpower. Taking it very personal because it was a very personal thing for me. And you’ve got to be able to race. You’re training 10 or 11 months a year, but only racing for around 16 minutes a year. That’s all you’ve got. So it’s a matter of taking everything you do over a period of time and mentally compressing it for that 48 seconds. All the training in the world won’t help if you can’t bring it together on race day.”

As a double Olympic gold medallist, what advice do you have for Dai going into 2012?“He just has to stay calm and do his thing – forget about who else is running. On a consistency basis alone, my money’s on him.”www.edwinmoses.com

win. This despite going up against a field that included five athletes with faster season times than him, among them two world champions and a double Olympic gold medallist. “I went there with a job to do,” he says. “There was a time in the race I thought it might not happen. I’ve seen a picture of us at hurdle nine and there’s really nothing between us. But it’s all won or lost in the last 75m. Coming off the last hurdle I knew it was mine. I could feel my momentum and I knew I was stronger.” The hours of pain with Arnold paid off as Greene powered through the last 50m to beat leader Javier Coulson, to roars from the crowd and commentators alike.

“When I crossed the line I looked up to Malcolm in the stands, looking for his approval, almost like a father figure,” says Greene. “My eyes went to him and inside I thought ‘Yes!’ I felt really proud.” When Greene finally spoke to Malcolm, it was two hours later. “He gave me a handshake and said ‘Well done,’” laughs Greene. “Typical Malcolm, understated as ever.”

Now, with the 2011 season behind him, and in the midst of a West Country winter, Greene is a long way from the heat of Daegu. He’s already back tackling the hills of Bath in the dark of early morning, getting in the prep for his next task: the Olympics. He’s part of a British athletics team determined to build on what was a bitterly disappointing performance in Beijing 2008, where they took home only one gold medal and four medals overall. And for Greene the key is the no-nonsense approach that’s got him and Malcolm this far.

“As a team we have a professional attitude,” says Greene. “British athletics reached an all-time low in 2008 and everyone said the golden era was over, but now athletes I was juniors with some four or five years ago are coming through and starting to blossom. And we want to let the British public know that we’re not weak, we’re tough characters, we’re not full of excuses. In London we’ll be there to win.”

Ever the fan of a statistic, Greene has worked out that the average age of an Olympic gold medallist in his discipline is 26½, exactly the age he’ll be next July. And that’s not all his 2012 competitors should be worried about. Dai Greene is still far from satisfied. “As quickly as you achieve these titles like European or world champion, you forget about them and you set the next target,” he says. “That’s what keeps me going. I’m just so hungry for success. I want more, I always want more.”Follow his progress at Twitter.com/daigreeneA

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sponsorship,” he says. “I had a contract with Nike, and supplement sponsors, and

next thing you know I had far more money than I’d ever had in my life. I didn’t have to worry about rent, I could buy whatever food

I wanted. And I was finally reaching the potential I always knew I had.”

The 2010 season cemented his status as a contender on the world stage with wins in both the European

Championships in Barcelona and the Commonwealth Games in Delhi, culminating this year with his career-changing win at the World Championships in Daegu. With a confidence borne of endless training and proven results, Greene went to the World Championships not hoping, but expecting to

Do you see similarities

“Dai seems very low-key, he seems very much like me. In the 100m you see

but in the 400m hurdles

physically pay a price, so there’s no time for that.

a year. That’s all you’ve got. So it’s a matter of taking everything you do over a period of time and mentally compressing it for that 48 seconds. All the training in the world won’t help if you can’t bring it together on race day.”

As a double Olympic gold medallist, what advice do you have for Dai going into 2012?“He just has to stay calm and do his thing – forget about who else is running. On a consistency basis alone, my money’s on him.”www.edwinmoses.com

72

HIV, illness, poverty. When the nearest hospital is 25 miles (40km) away, the bicycle becomes a means of survival. We accompany caregiver Susan on her journey and learn the secrets of her smileWords: Werner Jessner Photography: Philipp Horak

POSITIVE LIVING

A c t i o n

This is Susan, 39. She lives in a hut with her mother in Chibundi, 60 miles (100km) north of the Zambian capital of Lusaka. With the help of her bicycle, she visits and cares for HIV-positive patients in her area

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ambia may be knee-deep in catastrophe, but it’s a country that hasn’t lost its smile. Its people are fond of saying, “I live positive.” And it’s a philosophy that applies to the country as a whole, despite the USA’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) estimating that the average life expectancy in Zambia is just 52 years and four months. That’s 207th out of the world’s 221 states. Women give birth to an average of six children; half of Zambia’s population is under 16. Almost one million Zambians – out of an estimated population of 14 million – are HIV-positive.

But “I live positive,” they say as they’re making their way along on the Great North Road out of the capital, Lusaka, heading for Chibombo, thus quickly taking the sting out of the joke they’ve just made. “Living positive” means being happy, come what may. Two thirds of the country’s population live below the poverty line and eight out of 10 Zambians are farmers, which means they wrest as much as they can from the rock-hard earth during the rainy season, so as not to go hungry during the dry months. Out in the villages, an inflation rate of

more than eight per cent doesn’t particularly attract anyone’s attention. A chicken is a much more reliable unit of currency.

Susan lives some way west of Chibombo, where the tarmacked road network is nothing but a memory and the bombed-out gravel tracks have given way to pure savannah. Susan is 39 years old. For the purposes of this article, we will call her – and all other protagonists – by first name only. Many of the people who we will come across here are severely ill. Some are much closer to death than they are to life.

Susan is a gentle little woman with a clear voice. She lost her husband many years ago. He is buried in South Province. She is not particularly sentimental in remembrance of him. By Western standards, her two sons have already come of age.

She and her mother – also a widower – farm a couple of fields that only the initiated would recognise as such during the dry season. Maize, peanuts, sweet potato, okra. Susan shares a plough with her aunt who lives with her family in the neighbouring mud hut, but they no longer have any working animals. Their two cows are dead, one died when calving, the other choked after eating a plastic bag. Nameless dogs have been the biggest animals on the farm ever since.

Susan’s most valuable possession is a Buffalo bike; it has a lugged steel frame, no gears and weighs 20kg. World Bicycle Relief, an aid organisation that provides bikes to community home-based care volunteers, originally loaned her the bike for two years, and after that it became her property. As a caregiver, Susan looks after the sick people in her area, takes them medicine, speaks to them and gets them to the hospital

ZFor her clients, Susan is an angel on a bike. She provides medicine and, just as importantly, she also provides comfort and someone to talk to

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– some 25 miles (40km) from the village – on the bike rack. Africa brings every bike to its knees: it’s all the sand, mud, bad roads and heavy loads. None of the 74 languages spoken in Zambia has a word for “maintenance”.

The black paint on the top tube of Susan’s bike is worn away, evidence of innumerable mounts and dismounts in her kitenge (a traditional wrap-around skirt). It no longer has brakes and there isn’t much left of the saddle, which is held together with old shoelaces. The steering has a centimetre of play and the crank arms, with the bare pedal axes sticking out, scrape both sides of the frame when she pedals. In four years, Susan has been the equivalent of halfway round the world on her bike. At temperatures of 40°C in the dust of the dry season; at 30°C in the sticky closeness of the rainy season. When tracks, paths and roads have been clogged with mud.

Once her work on the farm is done, Susan goes to see people mortally threatened by HIV. Her job title is caregiver and she’s a guardian angel for the sick. Susan’s clients are people who can no longer manage the walk to the nearest medical facility; it takes around four hours to get there and another four hours to get back, not to mention the waiting time on arrival. Providing medicine is actually the easiest part of her job.

Much more important is the contact she makes with the breaking, the broken and the struggling. On foot, Susan would be able to visit one HIV-positive person a day. Maybe two. Ten kilometres there and 10 back would be feasible. Incidents and emergencies would make things more difficult.

Distance is the factor to consider for those who live in the Zambian savannah. In an age where instant information is available at any time from the worldwide web, where visits to the bookshop or newsagent are no longer vital, we are gradually losing our sense of distance. In Zambia, the bicycle is the fibreglass cable and Susan is the message. Sometimes it’s good news. More often it’s bad. Three of her clients have died in recent years; Susan has buried all three. You wouldn’t recognise cemeteries as such when you go past them. To the untrained eye they just look like untended fields.

PetersenSusan’s first client of the day is Petersen. There is not much left of this former Zambian Army soldier. His cheeks are gaunt and the grey stubble hidden among his protruding bones is difficult to shave. His collarbone and shoulders stick out of his 56-year-old skin; there’s hardly any meat on them. He was released from military serviced in 1989 and returned to his village. He married and went on to have six children with his wife. The youngest is now 11, the oldest 23. The round, clay granary, approximately a metre in diameter and standing on stilts 50cm above the ground, is well stocked with maize. Petersen insists he is “very happy” as he squints out over his yard of compacted clay where his kids and the neighbours’ kids play Nsolo (a game played with four rows of six scooped-out holes in the ground and two nuts per hole used as playing pieces). “Very happy.” If you didn’t know better, you might almost think he was a happy pensioner. His wife hugs him gently. He seems fragile. You can only imagine the kind of pain he is in. Petersen is Susan’s client; he knows that he is HIV-positive. His wife has never been tested. It's a common story with the diagnosis of HIV in Zambia. Tuberculosis, then persistent illness, a lost referral slip, a voluntary self-test, then certainty.

You wouldn’t even guess that Petersen is the same person as the strong man depicted in the pictures in his hut, wearing a funny hat at the wheel of his truck, with his weapon in firing

position, arms round his comrades. Those memories aren’t important now. Susan is important. Susan, who listens to him. Susan, who brings him medicine. Susan, who he can give messages to. Occasionally she helps him cook. She lights the fire, wets the pots and rubs ash onto them so that they don’t go black in the flames, then fills them with water, heats it until the germs are dead, stirs in maize flour, peanut butter, a pinch of salt and carries on stirring until the whole thing solidifies into nshima, Zambian bread. You roll balls of it by hand. It’s served with vegetables and sometimes chicken or fish.

When Susan leaves, Petersen stresses again that he is “very happy”. He’s a man with a full life, a winner when it comes to average life expectancy by his country’s standards.

MildredHow did she contract HIV? The elegant lady in a jaunty little hat says she has her suspicions, but her prime suspect died back in 1999. Then, as now, it was not uncommon for Zambian men to have other partners in addition to their primary wife. Primary wife Mildred is mother to two surviving children; she has regular contact with her son who has given her three grandchildren. She has more ducks than grandchildren; unusually, she has plenty of them. “A lot of people don’t like my ducks,” the feisty woman explains. “But I do.”

These exotic animals are kept as a source of food, plus she can boil their eggs or stir them into nshima. Her second luxury is a vegetable garden; Mildred is proud to showcase her almost sophisticated life, full of culture, interests and attentiveness. Mildred cultivates her treasured tomatoes, cabbage and a type of spinach, all protected by a high fence made of woven grass. She can sell a bunch of spinach for 1,000 kwacha, equivalent to about 20p or 25¢. A small fish, the size of a couple of fingers, from the brackish water of a nearby brook, will set you back 5,000 kwacha. Every now and then Mildred splashes out on one.

She’s careful about what she eats and has never drunk alcohol. As the sun goes down, she retains her dignity. She stands straight and upright, as if she still might carry things on her head. She speaks clearly and thoughtfully. Susan tells us about the pain Mildred experiences, once she’s back on her bike. Mildred didn’t identify her illness for far too long. (She must have gone through six rainy and six dry seasons with headaches, diarrhoea, fevers and haemorrhoids, but who would dare demand this kind of detail from a woman like Mildred?)

Susan sets off for the next set of people awaiting her attention around six miles (10km) away. Her pace is quick, the sand tracks clogged. She sits up straight on what remains of her saddle, her

In four years, Susan has been the equivalent of halfway round the world on her bike. It no longer has brakes and there’s not much left of the saddle

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Top: Thick sand on the Zambian tracks makes progress arduous work in the summer months. Mud during the rainy season makes it even harder. Bottom: The World Bicycle Relief bikes are called ‘Buffaloes’ and they’re built like them: made of steel, they have no gears and their racks can carry up to 100kg. But the harsh conditions of Africa can still break them

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Top: The vegetables Mildred cultivates by hand in her garden (which are protected against intruders by a wall made of grass) provide both a livelihood and means of payment. Bottom: Susan demonstrates how to use a femidom, the female version of the condom. All of the people in the room are due to become parents; one of the 15 couples present is HIV-positive but doesn’t know it. Susan will have to tell them

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back extended, holding the handlebars as far back as possible so that the front wheel doesn’t sink into the road surface. It’s an efficient, dignified riding style. It also means Susan feels the sharp pain in her chest, unexplained by doctors, somewhat less.

Hildah and IreeneTolex, 36, has known he’s HIV-positive for six months. His 32-year-old wife, Hildah, is also HIV-positive. No one knows how many of the children kicking a tattered ball around between the kitchen hut and the latrine are also infected. The kids with a white mark on their heads have worms. Tolex watches them run about as they play in their shabby football shirts. Eto’o – Samuel, the former Barcelona striker from Cameroon – is on the back of one of them. None of these children has ever seen him play – how could they when they don’t have electricity, TVs or newspapers?

Tolex has been in a state of shock ever since discovering he was HIV-positive. Susan’s trying to get him back on his feet. Tolex and Hildah’s youngest child was named Ireene at birth, but now her mother likes to call the two-month-old lethargic bundle of joy by the name of Priscilla too. It still isn’t clear which name will prevail. Father HIV-positive, mother HIV-positive, and yet there’s still a good chance the child might be born HIV-negative. If you act quickly enough, antiretroviral combination therapy can lower the likelihood of the mother passing the virus onto her unborn child. But you can only tell if it has worked once the child is born.

Ireene, who weighs well under 3kg at the age of eight weeks, is unaware of her fate. Today it will be determined, a two-hour bike-ride away from her hut. Susan has organised a DNA test for baby Ireene at the hospital in Shimukuni to screen for HIV and other conditions. The word ‘hospital’ makes you think of medical equipment and the application of science. Actually, this is just three sparse rooms. Still, the one doctor and two nurses manage to see 10,000 patients a year.

The first room stinks of varnish and is being used for junk. “Sorry, we’re renovating,” explains head physician Justin with a shrug of the shoulders. He can just about make a living as he tries to manage this chaos. The second room is used as both a delivery ward and the holding area for new under-age mothers; there are 10 teenagers and six new-born babies in this small room that is about 15m2. The youngest person here is just six hours old.

The third room is for examinations. This is where Susan will carry out the DNA test on Ireene. The little one looks pretty anaemic – pale almost – after the long journey. You might notice her lethargy, too, but she was already tired during the

home visit. The first world would probably classify Susan’s work as that of a certified nurse. This, a woman who lives in a mud hut with her mother, a woman who can quickly wring the neck of a chicken or a dog neck if need be; a woman who draws water from the domestic well in an old, torn, plastic jerrycan, a woman who balances bundles of firewood on her head. But at the clinic, she’s transformed into a respected figure, a sage, a saint almost. You can see the respect in the way her patients look at her. Susan personifies comfort assistance and knowledge.

Susan set off on her bike at 5am, an hour before sunrise, to be at the clinic for 7am sharp. If she wanted to do the same job without a bike, she’d have to set off on foot no later than 2am. In contrast to her outreach work as a caregiver, she is paid for her job at the hospital, earning the equivalent of 26p/30¢ an hour. Were it not for the bike, the sum would be laughable.

There are cards stored in a lockable cabinet, the only piece of premium technical equipment in the hospital. The cards are white and have five coin-sized circles printed at the top. Underneath is a name field. First Susan enters the details of the person being examined. Then she has to fill the circles with droplets of blood. With an anaemic little thing like Ireene, it is an excruciating procedure. Susan has to prick Ireene in the heel four times to get the five drops of blood from her. The little one only cries at the first two jabs.

Hildah will be back here in two months. By then, the Ministry of Health transporter truck, which sets off from Lusaka for the provinces once a month and returns the month after, will have brought the results.

Purity and IsaacOne afternoon, 15 couples expecting a child jostle their way on to the narrow benches of the empty village mortuary, which also serves as a meeting place. This is the enlightened elite of the area. These couples are modern people, the husbands in particular. They hold hands. They touch their bumps, some of which are already noticeable, while others are still hidden. At the front is a girl, aged around 13, with a small child in her arms. The child calls the girl mama, not sister. The 13-year-old is the only person in the room who doesn’t have a partner and her belly is already swollen again.

There is a lecturer who advises on how HIV can be transmitted, on diseases that can accelerate its progress – such as malaria – and on ways to give a foetus, even if inside an infected body, the best chance of a life without infection, both at the point of birth and when being breast-fed. The people listen to him. They are young, virile, life-affirming. The talk itself is dry and does what it has to do.

Then it is Susan’s turn. She sweeps through the mortuary like a dervish of the heart, enthralling the boys and men just as much as she does the girls and the women. Susan has her audience spellbound in under two minutes. She demonstrates how to use a femidom, the female version of the condom. Grab the end, twist it out, leg up and pop it in. Alternatively, you can crouch down. Dear gentlemen, please make sure you enter the femidom, and don’t miss the target. Ladies, please also make sure. There is giggling among the audience.

Safe sex is vital and it takes a person with Susan’s charisma to get the message across, especially as illness and suffering have a powerful ally in some of the teachings of the Catholic Church. Susan always goes to Mass on Sundays, even though its stance on contraception contradicts her own advice to patients.

At the end of the young parents event there is the quick HIV test. Two drops of blood, a half-hour wait and then a

“ Very happy.” Petersen is a man with a full life, a winner when it comes to average life expectancy by his country’s standards

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Top: In emergency situations Susan lends her bicycle to reliable people like Simon, whose nephew broke his arm while we were there. Bottom: One of the three rooms that makes up the hospital in Shimukuni. This is where Susan carries out DNA tests. She needs five drops of blood to do so; it took two hours to get that much blood from baby Ireene

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Top: Edith’s livelihood is the village tavern. Her customers are all men, as the well-being of Zambian society tends to rest on women’s shoulders in the main. Bottom: Susan lives with her mother in the house her bike is leant up against. It is brought into the house at night. In the background is the kitchen where she prepares nshima and vegetables. Sometimes there’s meat or fish too

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diagnosis. One of the 15 courting couples taking the blood test consists of a 17-year-old girl – we’ll call her Purity – and her boyfriend, 10 years her senior, called Isaac. Isaac already has children, which isn’t surprising for a 27-year-old in Zambia. It’s highly exceptional that Purity has waited until 17 to have her first child. She attended school till Grade Seven; from then on her education would have cost her money. Isaac is the man of her dreams. He is “…handsome, intelligent and he looks after me”. But Isaac is also HIV-positive. Seventeen-year-old Purity is too, only she didn’t know till now. With one sentence, Susan transforms the life of an optimistic teenager into a “fate”, a “case”. Susan wishes she didn’t have to do what she does next, but says, “I have to tell you this. It’s my duty.” She explains to the couple that they can no longer have unprotected sex under any circumstances due to the risk of re-infection. She prescribes them both medicines, including ones that should prevent their unborn child becoming infected. All in a day’s work for Susan. Purity doesn’t quite understand what is happening to her. Isaac doesn’t say anything.

Back on the road, Susan is happy she has her bike. She can never become inured to days like this, but the bike ride does her good. The bike increases Susan’s operating range by a factor of five. She can see five times as many people as she would be able to visit on foot. But she hasn’t become five times stronger. Susan’s mother says she is concerned about the pain in her chest that her daughter talks about with increasing frequency.

EdithIt looks like Edith now has to contend with cancer too, as if being HIV-positive and having lost her husband recently wasn’t enough already. An examination next week will say for sure and finally establish the cause of the terrible pain she feels when urinating. Her oldest child, just 15 and still going through puberty, is already pregnant. However, the youngest child has been entrusted to the care of the NGO World Vision.

Last May, Edith sold her maize crop at the end of the rainy season. It was a good harvest. The proceeds, a million kwacha, formed her start-up capital for a shop with a ‘beer-shack’ attached. By shop, we mean she bought a couple of bars of soap, some candles and ribbon. And the ‘beer-shack’? An open-fronted hut where she serves munkoyo, a cloudy, viscous, alcoholic brew made of maize and munkoyo roots, which ferments behind the bar and smells disgusting to a Western nose. (Every now and then, a consumer is taken to hospital when the munkoyo brewer has made a poor root selection.) For the group of men hanging out in front of Edith’s shebeen, drinking

munkoyo is the pastime they’re best at. And whenever the atmosphere threatens to turn a little sour under the mulberry bush, Edith clears away the goods from her supermarket into the hut she lives in. Which means that at short notice she no longer has a shop. And customers are rare as it is.

Edith can’t allow herself to close up her shop and bar to go to hospital, and doesn’t want to go any more in any case. She lets the world wash over her. She doesn’t want to go on fighting. She has written her silent cry for salvation in big letters on the ochre clay walls of her house: “Let people talk. They too will tire.”

Susan has just one message left for Edith, which she tries to drum into her doggedly and insistently on every visit. When her daughter gives birth, she should send her back to school; that is the only way out of poverty. If her daughter did go back to school, she might even qualify for a World Bicycle Relief bike one day. There are specific programmes for women who want to. Edith half-heartedly promises she will, while her daughter stands bored at the munkoyo bar and flirts with the customers.

Simon Simon received 12 years of school education, but then decided to stay at home in Chibundi and work as a farmer. He attended courses in the city and teaches the other farmers about crop rotation and fertilisation. He also earns money by burning charcoal and selling it in the city. He borrows Susan’s bike to do so. Simon writes a lot. His handwriting is clear. His notes are detailed. Simon can speak almost 10 languages, including a lovely, soft English that he communicates with a gentle sing-song accent. His lungs are already beginning to fail.

Simon has five children aged between six and 18, the oldest two of whom help him financially. His two youngest live with his sister and go to school. One small miracle is that his wife and all five children are HIV-negative. Even though his wife helps him out in the fields, Simon can feel that his strength is failing him. Susan implies that he is really very weak. He has frequent diarrhoea and suffers with constant headaches. Some days he can’t get out of bed. Those days are becoming increasingly common. But he would never complain, typical man that he is. Susan adds, “Our men only let on when it’s already too late. That’s probably the main reason why infected women in Zambia live longer than infected men.”

What Simon originally mistook for a plain bout of cholera turned out to be HIV infection; his neighbours took him to the hospital and had him tested. There was medicine at the hospital. That was his good fortune.

Many in Simon’s situation would have placed themselves in the hands of witch doctors. They have considerable power and form part of the established culture. Drinks, tinctures and ribbons will supposedly help against HIV. Only their hut or their yard is safe, they tell their patients. All others are possessed. People like Susan then have to try, gently, to free the victims from the clutches of these charlatans. Often it is too late.

Simon is a clear-thinking, rational man. Where does he see himself in five years’ time? “I wish I still had another five years,” he says in a whisper and laughs.

Susan says the earlier the disease is detected, the better the medical treatment you get, the healthier your life and the greater your chances of a second life. Being HIV-positive and having AIDS are two different things. You have to remain alert, be cheerful and set yourself goals. Getting up every day, saddling her bike and facing the world is a start.

Susan lives positive. She has done so for more than 10 years.www.worldbicyclerelief.org

Many in Simon’s situation put themselves in the hands of witch doctors. People like Susan have to free them from these charlatans

Breaking news: South African surfing superstar Jordy Smith reveals the things he needs to compete on the ASP tour on page 88 PH

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Contents

84 TRAVEL IDEAS Skiing in Austria’s

Zillertal valley

86 GLOBAL FOOD

88 GET THE GEAROn board with

surfer Jordy Smith

90 TRAININGTips from the pros

92 BEST CLUBSCafé Caprice,

Cape Town

92 MUST SEESeth Rogen’s new movie, a comedy

about cancer

93 TAKE 5The Phantom

Band’s go-to LPs

94 WORLD IN ACTION

96 SAVE THE DATE

98 MIND’S EYE

M O R E B O D Y & M I N D

December and January in the Alps mean just one thing: winter sports – and there’s nowhere more favoured for snowboarding than the valley of Zillertal in Austria.

Pro board-shaper Wolfgang ‘Wolle’ Nyvelt has been carving these slopes since he was 18, and he rates Zillertal among the hottest of winter sport spots – though ‘spot’ hardly does justice to the broadest and southernmost tributary valley of the Inn Valley in the state of Tyrol.

Situated 25 miles (40km) east of Innsbruck, winter sports-getters can revel here in 415 miles (668km) of slopes in Austria’s only year-round skiing region, blessed as it is by the 3,250m Hintertux glacier that guarantees snow.

Zillertal’s six million annual overnight stays aren’t just about snow, though. The area is also popular for the annual Zillertal Wängl Tängl at the Vans Penken Park in the town of Mayrhofen. This snow ’n’ skate team event will be celebrating its 10th anniversary from March 17-24, 2012, and will be backed by all kinds of street art, parties and live bands.

Nyvelt describes some of Zillertal’s best spots and shows us around the valley.For more information go to www.aesthetiker.com

Go with the snow ZILLERTAL With season-long powder and unspoilt slopes, there are very few snowsports destinations that compare with this huge Austrian valley

WOLFGANG NYVELT, 34, was born in Salzburg, Austria, and has been a snowboarder since the age of 18. In 2008, ‘Wolle’ won the TransWorld Rider of the Year title. A pro board-shaper, he lives in the Zillertal town of Mayrhofen and has been making films about snowboarding, for Absinthe Films, for the past 12 years.

SLOPE OFF

THIS MONTH’S TRAVEL TIPS

Alongside the Saas-Fee in Switzerland, Hintertux is one of the best glaciers for snowboarding in Europe. And this park has a double combo, a 120m super-pipe and a series of kickers. Hintertux 794, 6293 Tux

Betterpark Hintertux This four-star family owned and run hotel boasts a beautiful spa area. The whole snowboarding elite come here to chill out and prepare for the forthcoming season.Lanersbach 483, 6293 Tux

Hotel Bergfried

The skiing regions of Kaltenbach and Hochfügen are linked and for much of the season they have perfect snow conditions. If the weather turns bad, then head for the fantastic tree runs.6272 Kaltenbach

Kaltenbach This 30,000m2 park gets sun all day long and has its own permanent boardercross course. There’s also a half-pipe and a snake-run with banked curves, waves and jumps. 6281 Gerlos 141

Hotzone Park Gerlos

Affordable: A two-day adult pass for all 172 ski lifts in the Zillertal area costs from around €83 (£70)

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At 2,147m above sea level, the view is stunning from up here. This luxury chalet plays host to exhibitions, DJs, jazz brunches and charity events featuring some top international chefs.6272 Kaltenbach

KristallhütteMy local mountain of Penken, is where the Wängl Tängl takes place each year. This snowboarding and skateboarding contest celebrates its 10th birthday in March of next year.Vans Penken Park, 6290 Mayrhofen

Wängl Tängl

In Hainzenberg, there’s a 4.4-mile (7km) natural toboggan run which is lit up in the evenings. A day pass costs around €7 (£6). Stop for a bite to eat halfway down at Schlittenstadl. 6283 Hippach

Toboggan runThe entrance to this marble cave can be found right under the mountain hut. Take a guided tour here and be amazed by stalagmites, stalactites, silica formations and crystals.Spannagel 779, 6293 Tux

Spannagel Cave

Zum Griena is the place to go for regional delicacies. This traditional farmer’s house offers a rustic atmosphere and the best Zillertaler Krapfen (cheese-filled pasty).Dorf Haus 678, 6290 Mayrhofen

Zum GrienaThe ‘Scotty’ is where the boarder scene gets together in the evening. Peter Krenslehner makes the best Mojitos in the valley in his small, cosy pub. There’s often a live band, too.Scheulingstraße 372, 6290 Mayrhofen

Scotland Yard Pub

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ZILLERTALTyrol, Austria

InnsbruckKaltenbach

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Gerlos

The snowboarding professionals show off their skills at the annual

Wängl Tängl contest in Mayrhofen

5km 3 miles

ManíRua Joaquim Antunes, 210 Jardim PaulistanoSão Paulo www.manimanioca.com.br

When you go to Maní it’s like entering a mixture of a library, a club, a pub, a youth club and a Michelin-starred restaurant – and an amazingly stylish mixture at that. That could well have something to do with Helena Rizzo’s past as both a model and architecture student.

OUR RESTAURANT

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With four very different temperate zones and a kaleidoscope population drawn from each of the world’s continents, Brazil should be too big and too diverse to have just the one national dish.

But there is still a meal that seems to unite all Brazilians: feijoada, a stew of beans, vegetables and meat off-cuts, that’s traditional cheap bellytimber.

And despite its humble origins, this national treasure is one of the dishes – along with a virtuoso take on the Waldorf Salad – that Helena Rizzo and Daniel Redondo have chosen to express their culinary philosophy. An aromatic jellied stock of beans and pork is the spicy centrepiece, shaped into small balls using molecular ingredients and served with bacon and roast cassava flour. Hey presto: feijoada 2.0!

Helena Rizzo and Daniel Redondo are both only 33, but the couple’s cheeky take on tradition has made them shining lights of the São Paulo food scene. Opened in 2006, their restaurant, Maní, is unconventional: where else would the bosses – a former model and a dedicated weightlifter – arrange yoga sessions three times a week for their staff?

M O R E B O D Y & M I N D

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Every month, a guest chef comes to the Ikarus Restaurant in Hangar-7, at Salzburg airport, and teams up with the permanent in-house kitchen staff to create two special one-off menus. The guest chefs for December are Daniel Redondo and Helena Rizzo of Maní in São Paulo. Find more information about their menus and other forthcoming guest chefs at Ikarus at www.hangar-7.com. Culinary Highflyers 2011, the Hangar-7cookbook, is available now. Order onlineat shop.hangar-7.com

Hangar-7’s Guest Chefs

THE WORLD’S BEST CHEFS

WHAT’S ON THE MENU AT HANGAR-7

Nature and technologyRizzo and Redondo use a lot of local ingredients, but also like to mix it up with avant-garde molecular cooking.

Home and abroadRizzo, who hails from the south

of Brazil, has spread her wings to embrace the world when it comes to

advanced cooking and has been heavily influenced by double Michelin-starred Milan restaurant Sadler and El Celler

de Can Roca in Girona, Spain, where she first met Redondo.

Private and professionalRizzo and Redondo are a couple both in their private and professional lives.

Tricky? “No,” they say. “Couldn’t be easier.” One does the day shift; the other works evenings. And when anyone asks to see the boss, Helena points to Daniel

and Daniel points to Helena.

OUR PHILOSOPHY

The couple’s innovative Waldorf Salad

Double visionHELENA RIZZO & DANIEL REDONDO The origins of the recipes may be traditional, but the food created by this couple who run Maní, in Sao Paulo, is far from ordinary

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Hangar-7’s Guest ChefsHangar-7’s Guest Chefs

Nature and technologyRizzo and Redondo use a lot of local ingredients, but also like to mix it up with avant-garde molecular cooking.

Home and abroadRizzo, who hails from the south

of Brazil, has spread her wings to embrace the world when it comes to

advanced cooking and has been heavily influenced by double Michelin-starred Milan restaurant Sadler and El Celler

de Can Roca in Girona, Spain,

OUR PHILOSOPHY

The couple’s innovative Waldorf Salad

Danish baconflaeskesteg No need to worry about a dish that’ll keep a Dane happy – just feed ’em pork

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r Denmark has been home to the world’s best restaurant for a couple of years now: Noma, in Copenhagen. It’s a place where René Redzepi pursues a strictly regional concept – nothing that doesn’t grow and thrive in the north will make it onto the table. And the Michelin-starred chef knows he’s always onto a winner with pork. The Danes love a slice of pig-flesh served every way possible, but nothing pleases them more than a roast. Before ovens were common in private homes, hungry Danes would have their cuts braised by the local baker once he was done with that day’s bake. Flæskesteg, with its obligatory crispy crust, still makes a winter’s feast and is served with ingredients that make its large amounts of fat easier to digest. In Danish cuisine, these side-dishes are often sour, but at Noma they’re sweet: caramelised potatoes. It’s often also served with red cabbage seasoned with vinegar, sugar and Christmas spices. A mouthwatering way to get your winter vitamin C.

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the recipe

Serves fourA long, 1.5-2kg pork loin SaltPepper3tsp whole caraway seeds1tsp mustard powder

8-10 bay leaves1kg small, waxy potatoes80g sugar50g butter1/4tsp ground nutmegWater

Cut across the pork rind every 1.5cm until you get to the layer of fat (but no deeper). Rub in salt, pepper, mustard powder and 2tsp of the caraway seeds, working as much as possible into the incisions in the pork. Place the bay leaves cut in half lengthways into the incisions at regular intervals. Fill a large roasting tray with 2cm of water. Place the joint in the tin with the layer of fat on the bottom, leave to stand. In the meantime, pre-heat the oven to 220°C. When it’s up to temperature, roast the joint until the rind turns white. Reduce the heat to 160°C, turn the joint and cook for approximately 2 hours; do not baste. Next, increase the temperature to 240°C and cook the joint until a brown, crispy crust has formed. Turn off the oven, open the oven door slightly and leave to stand for 10 minutes. For the caramelised potatoes: boil the potatoes in salted water, leave until cool enough to handle, then peel. Slowly melt the sugar in a pan. Stir in the butter and 1-2tbsp of water, season with nutmeg and glaze the potatoes, then sprinkle over the remaining caraway seeds and more salt. Steamed red cabbage makes a perfect accompaniment to the dish.

m o r e b o d y & m i n d

cook global let the world be

your kitchen

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All aboard!JORDY SMITH South Africa’s surfi ng superstar chills out at his home in Camps Bay, Cape Town, and runs us through the kit he uses on the ASP tour

GET THE GEAR

ESSENTIAL PRO KIT

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1 Foam RollerAlong with paddling fitness and core strength, flexibility and mobility are a key part of a pro surfer’s physical conditioning. This foam roller is for my back and spine alignment.

2 Nikon D7000 cameraI’m always travelling and seeing great places. I try to take as many photos as I can and this bombproof Nikon with its 12.1 mega-pixel sensor never misses a beat.

3 Mr Zogs Sex Wax There are some things you just can’t improve on. Mr Zogs Sex Wax has been around for ever, but without the wax you can’t stick to the board, and without this traction, you can’t control it.

4 Channel Island Surfboard Made by shaping legend Al Merrick, this 6ft 3in stick is my all-rounder. It’s 19in wide and 2.5in thick. I like a bit of volume in a board, especially in the nose, which helps me turn it in the air.

5 O’Neill Shirt I’ve been with O’Neill since the end of 2007. It’s a cool brand and one of the pioneers in the sport. This is one of my Jordy Smith Signature Shirts – there’s a whole range coming out soon.

6 Oakley Eyewear If there’s one sport that demands a good pair of sunnies, it’s surfing, and I wear them all the time. I signed with Oakley last year and these are my new Jordy Smith Signature Jupiter Squareds. They’ll be out next year.

7 On A Mission traction gripThe grip is a key piece of equipment. It not only allows me snap the board into direction-changing turns, but it keeps me connected to it in big airs. This is my signature model.

Board meeting: Jordy Smith lines up his equipment outside his house in Camps Bay

M O R E B O D Y & M I N D

8 & 11 Channel Island Surfboard (6’2)These are my “grovel” boards for small, less powerful surf. They’re half an inch wider than my 6’3 and obviously shorter. They have the same thick rails, but they’re lighter, faster and looserthan my bigger boards.

9 On A Mission leashIt’s not cool to be swimming around after your board all the time, so a good leash is important to keep it close. I’ll use a thinner, lightweight leash for smaller waves and a meatier one for bigger boards and waves.

10 Billabong Pro 2011 TrophyI’m very proud of this! It’s my Billabong Pro trophy I first won at Jeffrey’s Bay in the Eastern Cape. It was my first-ever ASP World Tour win and I defended my title there again in 2011.

12 O’Neill Wetsuit Psycho 4/3mmI love Cape Town, It’s where I live when I’m not travelling. The surf’s great, but the water is freezing cold. A quality wetsuit is a no-brainer.

13 DHD surfboard (6’2)Another small wave board, this one was designed by Aussie shaper Darren Handley. It’s a great point break board and goes really well at Jeffreys Bay.

14 Future FinsAnother one of my sponsors – they’re always working on shapes for me. Without a good set of fins, your board is not going to function. These are from my signature series.

15 On A Mission Boardbag My boards and I spend a lot of time on planes, and while I can’t guarantee they’ll arrive when I do, at least I know they’re well protected. This 6’6 bag is perfect for all my travels around South Africa.www.jordysmith.com

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Training camps at altitude are an indispensable part of seven-time World Champion Petter Northug’s regime. In summer, he often trains higher than 2,000m above sea level. “Training at such altitude increases red blood cell development and, therefore, your stamina,” explains Northug (right). “Maximum red blood cell production occurs after around 15 days. Then I return to sea level to work on speed. My recipe for success is to set myself goals and to always think ahead. During a race I know very specifically what I need to concentrate on. I make precise plans as to what, when and where I’m going to eat and what stage I need to be at during training or competition. Some people say I’m selfish. But actually I’m just very focused on my job.”

Higher, better, faster, strongerThe 2010/11 Tour de Ski winner leaves nothing to chance when it comes to training and the key to his success comes from on high

Petter Northug continued his ascent of the cross-country skiing ladder earlier this year with three gold and two silver medals at the Nordic Skiing World Championships. What’s more impressive is the double Olympic champion from the 2010 Vancouver games (team sprint and 50km classic cross-country) is world class over short and long distances. But competing in everything from the 50km freestyle mass start to the 1.2km classical sprint in the FIS Cross-Country World Cup requires a lot of energy. That’s why Northug, 25,

eats four to six times a day: carbs before and while training, protein after. As he explains: “I try to be three to four kilos heavier when I’m building up. But by the end of winter, I weigh 10 kilos less than I did at the start.” www.teamnorthug.no

Everyday tortureThe cross-country superstar spends in the region of 25 hours a week on skis, preferably going uphill

MondayMorning: 30-minute warm-up, then 6 x 8 minutes interval skating (pulse rate between 160 and 185bpm).Lunch: 4 to 5-hour breakAfternoon: 2-hour session of cross-country skiing

TuesdayMorning: 30-minute warm-up, 6 x 8 minutes of interval training (pulse rate between 160 and 185bpm), then 2 hours of endurance cross-country skiing and a relaxed cool-down ski (pulse rate of 130bpm). Afternoon: 1.5 hours of gentle skiing/cross-country skiing

WednesdayMorning: 2 hours of cross-country skiing with 8 x 10 seconds of top-speed interval training. Afternoon: 30-minute warm-up, then 2 hours of speed, explosive strength and strength exercises at the gym to stabilise the legs and upper body.

Thursday Morning: 3 hours of low-intensity skiing/cross-country skiing (pulse rate of 130bpm) Rest of the day: Recovery

FridayMorning: 1.5 hours of warm-up skiing; 1.5 hours of interval skiing (5 x 6 minutes uphill) Afternoon: 1.5 hours of gentle skiing/cross-country skiing

Saturday Morning: 2.5 hours of skating-style cross-country skiing Afternoon: 2 hours of classic cross-country skiing

Sunday 1 hour and 45 minutes of interval training (5 x 5 minutes uphill) at full pelt (pulse rate of 185bpm), then 1 hour of cool-down skiing (pulse rate of 130bpm).

(Basically, as much training as possible is done uphill.)

WORKOUT

TRAINING WITH THE PROS

Gold digger: Petter Northug

Medals of hungerPETTER NORTHUG This Norwegian cross-country skier starred at the World Championships in Oslo, winning fi ve medals – but his appetite for success (and carbs) is far from sated

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M O R E B O D Y & M I N D

For more information visit

www.concernchallenge.org

or email: info.challenge@concern.net

WE ARE HEADING BACK TO TANZANIA TO CLIMB THE HIGHEST

FREE STANDING MOUNTAIN IN THE WORLD!

This challenging trek takes us along the beautiful Machame route which is the most

scenic route to the snow capped summit at 5896m. With an additional day of

acclimatisation it is a tough but spectacularly rewarding route.

25TH OCTOBER – 4TH NOVEMBER 2012

CLIMB MOUNTKILIMANJARO

RBIR_XX_11_Kilimanjaro_Concern:Layout 1 14/11/2011 16:22 Page 1

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Cosmopolitan cocktailCAFÉ CAPRICE, CAPE TOWN It’s the perfect summer’s day: an afternoon on Camps Bay’s beautiful beach, then across the road for sundowners and a rocking party

We love running a venue in this town because…You can’t compare Cape Town and Camps Bay to anywhere else in South Africa. It’s just so cosmopolitan. It has the most incredible energy, especially in the summer months. When we started our cafe in 2001, our idea was to bring a beach bar to Cape Town. There weren’t really any true beach bars in South Africa and Camps Bay was ready for it.From outside our club looks… Like an old Greek building – the old arches are very prominent. As are the tables outside – we were the first to put tables on the pavement. We really get going at… It’s an all-day venue – some people come in at nine in the morning and stay all day. The best time is obviously around sunset, especially in the summertime.

Café Caprice37 Victoria Road, Camps Bay Cape Town, South Africa+27 21 438 8315www.cafecaprice.co.za

Our regulars are…Creative, edgy, trendy – the typical Cape Town guy and girl, trying hard not to try too hard. Some of our regulars are Jordy Smith, Herschelle Gibbs, Lyndall Jarvis. When Leonardo Di Caprio was shooting in SA, this was his base – I think they feel like normal ‘guys at the bar’ here.I’d consider it packed if…There’s 300 people in here, that’s pretty much capacity.The craziest night was…Too many memorable ones! But one that comes to mind ended up with two European models asking me if they could take my barman home.Dave Raad, club owner

Café Caprice was first to go alfresco in the Cape Town resort

There’s a rocking vibe here all day and night

Did the subject matter mean you could joke about anything?If it felt right for something to be said, then we said it. We’re not out to offend… well, we definitely are out to offend some people.

Is everything funny to you?I don’t try to find humour in situations, it just happens. I can’t tell you how many times people are telling me the idea for a movie, and I think it’s a comedy and it’s not. ‘OK, so this guy gets hit by a car and has his leg cut off,’ and I tell them it sounds hilarious and they say it’s not funny at all [laughs].

Seth Rogen’s latest film sees him playing the best friend of a guy (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) diagnosed with cancer. 50/50 is very funny, not at all sentimental, and was written by Will Reiser, Rogen’s friend and former colleague, who was diagnosed with cancer in 2005 and has since fully recovered. As well as scripting him the most rounded role of his career thus far, Rogen also has Reiser to thank introducing him to Laura Miller, his long-term girlfriend, who became his wife in October. : Did you woo your wife by supporting your friend when he was ill? : I’m not saying I specifically used it, but it didn’t hurt. It made me look like a compassionate friend, which I’m not [laughs]. How close is your part in 50/50 to the ‘real you’?I don’t talk to women like my character does. He’s ridiculous and in the movie that’s entertaining. I have never lied to a woman to get her into bed, which he does a lot. That’s why I never got laid [laughs].

Funny like cancerSETH ROGEN After making us believe nerds could make it with hot chicks (Knocked Up), the funnyman is making the impossible possible once again with a comedy about cancer

Rogen stars alongside Joseph

Gordon-Levitt

50/50 is out now across Europe. Watch the trailer at: www.50-50themovie.com

Everything’s hilarious to Seth Rogen

BEST CLUBS

PARTY ALL OVER THE WORLD

OUTNOW

ESSENTIAL VIEWING

Eddie Cochran – Greatest HitsIn the 1980s I remember listening to this and being massively influenced by what it said about teenage rebellion – in particular that moment on C’Mon Everybody where he says, “Who Cares?” You know he’s been talking about having this party at his parents’ place and he knows he’s going to be made to pay, but he says, “Who Cares?” What a great moment. Magic. Eddie Cochran’s music had a massive connection to punk – it was the punk of its day.

Captain Beefheart And His Magic Band – Safe As MilkWe have quite a wide-ranging set of influences in The Phantom Band, but all of us like things like Captain Beefheart and, if I had to pick one out, I’d nominate his first album, Safe As Milk. There’s a brilliant groove in there, quite repetitive, with a country element. That’s reminded me of something contemporary: Psychic Psummer by Cave. On record, Cave are very Kraut-y and hard, but watch them live and they’re a totally different band. I really like bands like that. It’s kind of like The Phantom Band: some people prefer you live, others prefer the studio sound.

Led Zeppelin IIIAnother band who had a completely different thing going on live, compared to their studio sound. With Led Zeppelin III, I remember my brother bought it for me from the newsagent as a birthday gift – even though I didn’t even own a record player at the time. So I think he took it straight back off me as soon as I’d opened it. But anyway, I ended up making a casette copy of it so I could listen to it on my Hitachi super-woofer (and I eventually got back most of the other records he ‘bought’ for me). As for the record… Immigrant Song – it’s still unbelievable even now.

AC/DC – Who Made Who This was the first album I bought with my own money, so it has to go in my top five. When I was a kid, Angus and Malcolm Young made me want to play the guitar desperately. Between me and a mate we had every AC/DC record, but I was talentless even though I loved music. I guess that’s why I ended up messing around with synths and making sounds.

Kraftwerk – Computer WorldThis was an amazing record and you can hear its influence on The Phantom Band. We have a Kraut rock element that’s straight from Kraftwerk. Computer World maybe isn’t quite so acclaimed as Trans-Europe Express or Autobahn, but there’s an amazing quality to the production. It’s a kind of pure, expensive sound.

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It’s a fair old schlep from Glasgow to England’s sunny South Coast (Google Maps reckons 462 miles/744km down the spine of Britain), but for a band surprised, nay, mystified, by the word-of-mouth buzz and critical rapture that has met their first two albums, a jaunt to Brighton – even on a night chilly enough to make beanies essential more than fashion accessories – to meet a vociferously welcoming crowd, feels like a deserved step into the bubble of success. Aware it may burst at any moment, given the non-commercial, yet brilliantly energised and diverse nature of their sound, The Phantom Band play live with the lunatic abandon of a band who were never interested in learning the rules and who know this trip could stop at a split-second’s notice. Theirs is a vibe of the here-and-now, a loose ’n’ loud blast of sonic fun that’s nevertheless sufficiently crafted to make multiple return listens not just appealing, but essential. If it sounds an uncommon mixture, that’s because it is, and a squint at their influences reveals why: Cochran via Kraftwerk, Led Zeppelin, Beefheart and AC/DC. And did we mention the sea shanties? Can’t forget the sea shanties…

The Phantom Band host Phestive Phantomine festival on December 16 and 17 at Stereo in Glasgow: www.phantomband.co.uk

Take Five

The albums ThaT influenced

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“ Eddie Cochran’s music was the punk of its day”Andy WAke Glasgow’s The Phantom Band are the brilliantly unclassifiable prog-electro-rock-indie five-piece, currently lapping up the critical rave for their second album, The Wants. Keyboard maestro Andy Wake (centre) talks us through five of the key albums that influenced their unique sound

FROM BURNING RUBBER TO BREAKING BEATS, WE ROUND UP SOME OF OUR FAVOURITE THINGS TAKING PLACE OVER THE NEXT FEW WEEKS

World in ActionDecember & January

08-20.12.11, OAHU, HAWAII, USA

ASP World Tour

01-15.01.2012, MAR DEL PLATA (ARG) TO LIMA (PER)

Dakar RallyThe 33rd running of the world’s toughest off-road rally is taking place

in South America for the fourth time, with the final four stages in Peru. Participants will cross the finish line in the Peruvian capital of Lima on January 15 after racing their way through Argentina and Chile, and it remains to be seen which car will follow in the tyre marks of VW, which won for last three consecutive events, but has now pulled out. Team KTM is a safe bet when it comes to the bikes: riders Cyril Despres (France) and Marc Coma (Spain) have been swapping crowns for the past six years.

08-11.12.11, JUMEIRAH GOLF ESTATES, DUBAI

Dubai World Championship, UAE

This event has marked the end of the PGA European Tour since 2009.

With a total prize fund of US$7.5m, it’s the highest paid single golf tournament of the year (the FedEx Cup, awarded to the best-performing player from four play-off events after the PGA Tour, offers more, with a huge prize total of $35m). Only the season’s 60 top-ranked golfers are invited to take part in Dubai and last year, Sweden’s Robert Karlsson received the winner’s prize of $1.25m on the course that’s co-designed by Greg Norman.

Hawaii is the spiritual home of surfing, so it’s a fitting setting for this year’s

ASP World Tour finale. Surfing superstar Kelly Slater is the record-holder here at the Billabong Pipe Masters with six wins, and he has already secured an unprecedented 11th ASP World Tour title in San Francisco on the 2011 tour. But despite his dominance, the competition is still fierce here. Concentration will be essential as the huge waves have been the downfall of many a surfer.

2010 winner: Robert Karlsson

The one to beat: Kelly Slater

Dakar demon:Cyril Despres

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12-17.12.11, VANCOUVER, CANADA

Red Bull Thre3style World Finals

The tools of the trade: two decks, a mixer and a bag of tempting tracks. The challenge: DJs

are tasked with covering three music genres in one 15-minute set. Anything goes as long as the genres flow together elegantly and keep the dancefloor packed. At the Red Bull Thre3style World Finals, national champions from around the globe go head to head to see who can get the party rocking the most, much to the delight of the beat-loving crowd.

If you happen to live far away from South-East Asia, you might as well skip reading the next

few lines… or quickly go and buy yourself a plane ticket to Singapore. With summer temperatures and up to 26,000 people dancing on a beach, ZoukOut is the hottest dance music festival in this part of the world. Premier league DJs in attendance include Gui Boratto, Roger Sanchez, Simon Dunmore and Shovell.

Celebrating New Year’s Eve is all well and good, but anyone who’s anyone will be partying the

day after in 2012, too. Or, for the real hard nuts, two days running. Field Day is the world’s best New Year dance party, and at the 2012 event the likes of Moby, Justice, Tiga, Crystal Castles, Skream & Benga are just some of the acts who’ll be getting tens of thousands of hipsters in the dancing mood under the Sydney sky.

01.01.2012, THE DOMAIN, SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA

Field Day

10.12.11, SILOSO BEACH, SINGAPORE

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Watch Now!EXCLUSIVE EVENTS, SHOWS, INTERVIEWS AND DOCUMENTARIES ONLINE AT WWW.REDBULL.TV

THE WINGMAN MEETS ......Red Bull Crashed Ice! In this episode, ‘Wingman’ Ed Leigh gives us the history and background to this youthful world championship, with some frenetic action guaranteed.

HERO’S JOURNEYWe follow Formula One driver Mark Webber (above, middle) and many other sports stars, giving close-up insights into our sportsmen and women as they prepare for competition.

IBA BODYBOARDING WORLD TOUR – GRAN CANARIALIVE FROM DECEMBER 7One of the most spectacular stops on the IBA Bodyboarding World Tour and the final of the Grand Slam Series at El Frontón on the island of Gran Canaria. Battle will commence just as soon as the waves are perfect for competition. Until December 17, live at www.redbull.tv.

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LIVE STREAMS

All the very best in sport, music and culture from the world of Red Bull

LIVE STREAMS

NEW YEAR NO LIMITSJANUARY 1, FROM 5AM (CET)Robbie Maddison (motorbike, above) and Levi LaVallee (snowmobile) will line up side by side to attempt a 122m jump over water in San Diego, California. Watch this double world record attempt live at www.redbull.tv.

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YOUNG GUNS RISINGA reality documentary series on the world’s best motorbike-racing youngsters and the dream that unites them: winning the Red Bull MotoGP Rookies Cup to guarantee their entry into the fascinating world of MotoGP.

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There’s NBA on Christmas Day in the USA, but across the Atlantic we like our sport to cut through the food coma 24 hours later. National Hunt racing is big this time of year – in the last week of 2011 you can back the jumping ponies trackside in all five British Isles countries. Leading the pack is the four-day Leopardstown Christmas Festival, beginning on St Stephen’s Day, with a Grade 1 race each day, culminating in the December Festival Hurdle, which for many years has been a Champion

Hurdle trial. Indeed, last year’s winner, Hurricane Fly, trained by Irish trainer Willie Mullins, went on to win at Cheltenham in March. www.leopardstown.com

Things To waTch, win money on and parTy down To This monTh

Save the DateDecember 2011

December 31

Primal countdownDecember 26-29

Feast of Stephen’s

December 4

Wales of a timePedestrians in Swansea this month should look both ways and back again before crossing the road. During Red Bull Downforce, amateur mountain bikers will be let loose in a downhill battle that starts high above the city and continues through its maze of streets. Riders will tackle a 1,600m, highly technical, obstacle-laden course that takes in major thoroughfares and backstreets, and finishes at the foot of Swansea Castle. Straight knockout rounds will separate the speedy from the sluggish, until one lightning-quick biker is crowned champion. The ante will be upped by the participation of former world champion riders Gee and Rachel Atherton. www.redbull.co.uk/downforce

As the end of the year approaches, party plans are put in place, and for over 100,000 people that means one word: Edinburgh. The city is the centre of celebration for New Year, or Hogmanay as it’s known in Scotland, and, befitting the country that gave us Auld Lang Syne, Scots don’t do things by halves. Edinburgh will be flooded with revellers for a giant street party featuring traditional folk music and céilidh dancing. But if you like your music a bit more modern, you can see in 2012 with alt rockers Primal Scream as they perform tracks from their seminal album Screamadelica, on home soil and against the stunning backdrop of Edinburgh castle. www.edinburghshogmanay.com

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AntipantoIf you don’t give a dame about traditional panto, and the idea of a glittery Jedward (Dublin) or a hook-handed Hoff (Bristol) leaves you cold, it’s still possible to go to the theatre at this time of year without having to shout “He’s behind you!”:Hansel and Gretel, the Citizens theatre, GlasgowAlan McHugh has worked on BAFTA-nominated films and now brings this classic Brothers Grimm fairytale up to date with original music and an imaginative set. tHe MorpetH Carol, Bristol old VicSet in a darkened room, an incredible array of sound effects creates an adult-themed seasonal story, complete with crippled reindeer and joy-riders. tHe IMproVIsed panto, Cork opera HouseThe opposite of a tried-and-tested tale – no one knows what will happen here, actors included. www.citz.co.uk www.bristololdvic.org.uk www.corkoperahouse.ie

enduring objective for the curious, but real progress is always stymied because intelligence is notoriously difficult to measure, still more so to classify. All measuring methodologies have their built-in biases. With the classical IQ test, for example, it is always said that it merely measures the candidate’s aptitude at taking the classical IQ test.

The philosophical problem with intelligent machines has been made everybody’s practical business during the financial crisis as computers have been trained to make trades. Using complex algorithms, as soon as certain market conditions are detected, trades are automatically triggered. These computers learn from their mistakes as well as from their successes and they acquire more knowledge as they acquire experience, but if humans had Darwinian reasons for developing morality on their own evolutionary journey, computers did not.

This is the subject of Robert Harris’s fine, new, mordant thriller, The Fear Index, about ambitious trading software that gets dangerously and destructively out of control. In machines, as in people, IL

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Time pitilessly makes fools of most of us. But some fortunate folk have history on their side. In 1832 Sir

David Brewster published his Letters On Natural Magic. He stated: “Before another century is completed, a talking and singing machine will be numbered among the conquests of science.” This was a recklessly bold proposition – he would have been thought a hallucinating whack-job by his Regency readers. It’s true that automata and robotic curios had fascinated Swiss watchmakers and French philosophers the century before. Indeed, a clockwork defecating duck was one of the French Revolution’s several symbols of man’s triumph over God, but real talking and singing machines were a distant proposition. Then came Thomas Edison. Oh, excuse me while I tell my iPhone 4S to turn itself off. Today, we don’t just have talking and singing machines, we have listening ones too.

This is all a part of the curious story of artificial intelligence. The manual tells me that my car has “intelligent headlights”. They monitor the style of driving (usually, in my case, reckless, or distracted, or both) and, judging whether we are all wiggling about in town or on a fast, straight road, adjust the angle, intensity, direction and brightness of the lights accordingly. Clever stuff, but surely not all that intelligent?

Let’s see. The conventional definition of intelligence is “behaviour that is adaptively variable”. So, my headlights qualify, even if I do not, but if you accept this definition, you have to accept that consistency and principles must therefore not be reliable indicators of intelligence. But that idea, in turn, suggests morality is not necessarily a component of intelligence. As Margaret Thatcher once said, the way to prove you have a mind is to change it. Woody Allen said, more funnily: “These are my principles and if you don’t like them, I’ll get some others.” That’s smart.

Replicating human intelligence in machines has for centuries been an

high intelligence is, alas, no guarantee of good behaviour. Significantly, in what is, I think, a moral tale, Harris prefers the term “autonomous machine reasoning” since this suggests behaviour that is less scarily humanoid than “artificial intelligence”. It is fine to have machines that can deduce and understand language. We just don’t want them to think for themselves. Harris has form in this area. His 1995 novel, Enigma, told the story of the Bletchley Park codebreakers and their epic number-crunching. Chief magician was Alan Turing, whose own algorithms made modern computing possible. In 1950 Turing wrote a paper called Computing Machinery and Intelligence and it is still an authoritative source.

So it’s good to know there is something called The Turing Test. It goes like this: if a machine convinces observers it might be human, then it is fair to describe it as intelligent. So, my headlights barely make the cut, but my iPhone 4S does. Turing was aware that we are messing with the Divine. But he argued that manufacturing intelligent machines was, in terms of pre-empting God, no more blasphemous than having children. “We are instruments of His will providing mansions for the souls he creates,” he wrote

But, while I am not yet frightened of my headlights, machines with soul excite our most primitive and uncomfortable fears. The ancient Jewish myth of The Golem is about a clay statue that acquires life and goes on the rampage. I’d like to ask Alan Turing whether he thinks the new iPhone is a mansion for the soul or an act of sacrilege. Alas, I cannot. Turing died, aged 41, of cyanide poisoning in 1954. That one of the most intelligent men of his generation killed himself is a curious tribute to intelligence. But then, true intelligence always is curious.

Stephen Bayley is an award-winning writer and a former director of the Design Museum in London

Mind’s Eye

Stephen Bayley has no doubts modern tech is clever. But is it,

he questions, intelligent?

I Thinkergo iPhone

THE NEXT ISSUE OF THE RED BULLETIN IS OUT ON JANUARY 3 & 13

A product of the

THE RED BULLETIN United Kingdom: The Red Bulletin is published by Red Bulletin GmbH Editor-in-Chief Robert Sperl Deputy Editor-in-Chief Alexander Macheck General Managers Alexander Koppel, Rudolf Theierl Executive Editor Anthony Rowlinson Associate Editor Paul Wilson Contributing Editors Andreas Tzortzis, Stefan Wagner Chief Sub-editor Nancy James Deputy Chief Sub-editor Joe Curran Production Editor Marion Wildmann Chief Photo Editor Fritz Schuster Creative Photo Director Susie Forman Deputy Photo Editors Valerie Rosenburg, Catherine Shaw, Rudolf Übelhör Design Erik Turek (Art Director), Patrick Anthofer, Martina de Carvalho-Hutter, Miles English, Judit Fortelny, Markus Kietreiber, Esther Straganz Staff Writers Ulrich Corazza, Werner Jessner, Ruth Morgan, Florian Obkircher, Andreas Rottenschlager Corporate Publishing Boro Petric (head), Christoph Rietner, Nadja Zele (chief-editors); Dominik Uhl (art director); Markus Kucera (photo director); Lisa Blazek (editor) Head of Production Michael Bergmeister Production Wolfgang Stecher (mgr), Walter Omar Sádaba Repro Managers Clemens Ragotzky (head), Claudia Heis, Nenad Isailovic, Karsten Lehmann, Josef Mühlbacher, Thomas Posvanc Finance Siegmar Hofstetter, Simone Mihalits Marketing & Country Management Barbara Kaiser (head), Stefan Ebner, Lukas Scharmbacher, Johanna Troger; Birgit Lohmann (design); Klaus Pleninger (sales); Peter Schiffer (subscriptions); Nicole Glaser (subscriptions and sales marketing) Advertising enquiries Deirdre Hughes +35 (0) 3 86 2488504. The Red Bulletin is published simultaneously in Austria, France, Germany, Ireland, Kuwait, Mexico, New Zealand, Poland, South Africa, the UK and the USA. Website www.redbulletin.com. Head office: Red Bulletin GmbH, Am Brunnen 1, A-5330 Fuschl am See, FN 287869m, ATU63087028. UK office: 155-171 Tooley Street, London SE1 2JP, +44 (0) 20 3117 2100. Austrian office: Heinrich-Collin-Strasse 1, A-1140 Vienna, +43 (1) 90221 28800.The Red Bulletin (Ireland): Susie Dardis, Richmond Marketing, 1st Floor Harmony Court, Harmony Row, Dublin 2, Ireland +35 386 8277993. Printed by Prinovis Liverpool Ltd, www.prinovis.com Write to us: email letters@redbulletin.com

M O R E B O D Y & M I N D

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