HE’S BLOND. HE’S BRITISH. HE’S A 20-YEAR-OLD FIVE-TIME WORLD CHAMP.

MEET AARON HADLOW

THE PRODIGY

MOUNTAIN BIKE SUPER- SIBLINGS THE ATHERTONS TAKE US DOWNHILL – FAST!

WHY WORLD CHAMPION AIR RACER HANNES ARCH

IS THE MAN TO BEAT

PLUS STEPHEN BAYLEY ON MADNESS V GENIUS

AND BACKSTAGE WITH LADYHAWKE

AN ALMOST INDEPENDENT MONTHLY MAGAZINE /APRIL 2009

Exclusively with The Independent

on the first Tuesday of every month

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Natural flavours from plant extracts and natural caffeine from coffee beans.

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STRONG NATURAL.

“Youth is wasted on the young”, GB Shaw once felt moved to observe, in a moment of withering misanthropy. Shame that Mr Shaw never had the opportunity to meet this month’s Red Bulletin cover star, kitesurfer Aaron Hadlow, who, at the age of just 20 is already a five-time world champion, pioneer, rule-breaker and role model.

Young, he most certainly is. Wasteful? Hardly. His achievement at such a tender age is truly remarkable, yet beyond his glamorous, wind-blown arena, he remains largely unknown. Unsurprisingly, he’s doing something about it: “I want to be part of the upbringing of kitesurfing,” he tells The Red Bulletin in this month’s exclusive interview on page 44. “That’s what I’m trying to bring to the sport now, just to make it bigger and mainstream.”

Hadlow, then, is this month’s champion on water, but we can bring you, too, a champion of the air, in the form of Hannes Arch, the self-styled ‘fastest air racer in the world’. He won last year’s Red Bull Air Race World Championship, despite, he says, not being the best pilot – merely the fastest. This year he’s determined to be even better, as The Red Bulletin discovered on a visit to his off-season training base in South Africa (p50).

Completing our ‘champions trilogy’ this month are the Atherton family – Rachel, Dan and Gee, who, in their (mostly) earth-bound discipline of downhill mountain biking, reign supreme (p62).

April’s Bulletin also brings you the regular mix of culture (see our Ladyhawke review on p88), nightlife (our listings, p86) and brain-food (columnist Stephen Bayley on p98). And if that little lot’s not enough, check out www.redbulletin.com, where you’ll find a veritable cornucopia of exclusive movie footage, blogs, links and downloads to keep your body and mind fully loaded until next month. Enjoy!

Your editorial team

PS: The Red Bulletin is published on the first Tuesday of every month. The next issue is out on May 5.

MEET THE BEST OF THE BEST

AARON HADLOW

THE PRODIGY

THE ATHERTONS

HANNES ARCH

STEPHEN BAYLEY

LADYHAWKE

AN ALMOST INDEPENDENT MONTHLY MAGAZINE /APRIL 2009

B U L L H O R N

05

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WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF RED BULL

Bullevard10 GALLERYThe month’s best shots in widescreen

16 NOW AND NEXTNews of freerunning’s hottest talent and Scotland’s Cold Water Classic

19 LUCKY NUMBERSSébastien Loeb is the World Rally Championship number one, but there are plenty more stats to go around

20 WINNING FORMULA Eddie Gustafsson, Red Bull Salzburg goalkeeper, talks us through the mind games involved in saving a spot-kick

23 WHERE’S YOUR HEAD AT?We go 12 rounds with Hollywood hard man Jason Statham

24 KIT EVOLUTIONRyan Sheckler’s pro skateboard goes head-to-head with a 1977 classic

26 ME AND MY BODYAustrian climber Angela Eiter talks us through her ascent back to fitness

27 HARD & FASTOur top athlete this month is Lindsey Van… No, that’s not a typo!

Heroes30 DIETMAR KAINRATHYou’ve seen his unique cartoons in this magazine – meet the man behind them

32 HERO’S HEROAustralian stunt rider Robbie Maddison doffs his helmet to the original daredevil, Evel Knievel

34 JUAN PABLO ANGELThe New York Red Bulls striker is showing that American Major League Soccer is more than just summer camp for a certain big-name midfielder

38 SAM CODYThe man who made the first powered flight over Britain was a former Wild West gunslinger who befriended a king and was mourned as a national hero. Sam Cody was the American who carved a special niche in British eccentricity

Dodging the April showers this month…

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Action44 AARON HADLOW He’s the five-time world champion who’s been icon, innovator and insurgent for the sport of kiteboarding, and all this before he even turns 21. A dominant force in world sport, Aaron Hadlow is the sporting pin-up the UK never knew it had

50 RED BULL AIR RACEWe join Red Bull Air Race World Champion Hannes Arch in South Africa, for pre-season training

60 RED BULL AIR RACE GUIDEAll the info you need as this year’s championship gets ready for take-off

62 THE ATHERTONSThese three siblings are a mountain-biking dynasty who keep winning in the family. Dan, Gee and Rachel are world champions pushing themselves, the sport and each other

68 HURLINGThe fastest field sport in existence is as steeped in myth as it is grassroots passion. We get up to speed at the semi-final of the All-Ireland Senior Club Championship

More Body & Mind78 WATCH THIS SPACERed Bull Space in New York is where ideas in art, fashion and music come alive

80 THE HANGAR-7 INTERVIEWMeet South African Giniel de Villiers, the winner of this year’s Dakar Rally

82 RED BULL PAPER WINGSPaper planes – child’s play? Think again

83 GET THE GEARTop mountain-biking buys

84 LISTINGSApril’s entertainment and where to find it

88 NIGHTLIFELadyhawke rocks Paris; fashion label PPQ frock London; hip-hop’s Flying Lotus in LA; inside Abu Dhabi’s top nightspot

94 BULL’S EYEAnimals do the funniest things…

96 A STORY BY OLIVER USCHMANNSometimes finding an excuse not to work is as time consuming as work itself

98 MIND’S EYEStephen Bayley bridges the gap between madness and genius

FOR MORE LIKE THIS, VISIT: WWW.REDBULLETIN.COM

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WORD UP!Wisecracks and wisdom from the world of Red Bull and beyond: and tell us what you think by emailing letters@uk.redbulletin.com

“YEAH, WE’RE BIG ROCK STARS WHO STILL LIVE WITH

OUR MUMS AND DADS”

Your Letters

“YOU’D THINK, HAVING DONE ABOUT 10 ROUND TRIPS TO THE PLANET’S

MAIN SURFING STOPS, I’D HAVE FIGURED OUT WHAT

TO TAKE BY NOW”

“If something happens, then at least it’s from

kiting and because I’m going at full speed and

full power. But, for a 20-year-old, I’m sure

my ankles aren’t in the best condition”

“I am starting the Red Bull wall. I hope to have the entire

wall done by the time we finish the record. We are taking

donations for it now, but just send whatever. An old suitcase,

or a remote that you don’t know what it’s for… Or a shoe”

“I USED A CAN OF RED BULL, AS NONE

OF MY WEIGHTS WAS SMALL ENOUGH”

“What does ‘Mickey Mouse league’ mean? I’m sure

that American soccer teams are at the same level as the

English lower divisions”

“It can happen very quickly – a driver can get sick or he can have

an accident, or decide he’s no bloody good and want to stop”

“We worked out the amount of time it was taking us just saying our band name every day. We’re

getting an extra three hours a year back just by becoming The Cheek”

“Gravity makes us accelerate from zero to 100kph in

three seconds, and the water brings us back to zero within

four metres”

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BullevardThe latest news, breathtaking action and amazing adventures

G O L D C OA ST, AU ST R A L I A

ON THE CREST OF A WAVE

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B R I T I S H C O LU M B I A , C A N A DA

THE BIG FREEZE

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FO N TA N A , C A L I FO R N I A , U S A

MORE SPEED, VICKERS?

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Barcelona Albstadt

EVERY SHOT ON TARGETSend in your snaps of anything to do with Red Bull – and every one we print will win a prize. Email your digital works of art to:

PICTURES OF THE MONTH

YOU REALLY OUGHT TO KNOW SOMETHING ABOUT. . .

RYANDOYLE

B U L L E V A R D

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Salzburg Winterberg Erzberg

COOL RIDERSBrace yourself for the delights of the Cold Water Classic

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MOUSE FOOD

FUTURE MUSICWhere to listen to it, and how to make yours the next big thingRather than a stuffy symposium for physics professors, the Electron Festival, taking place on April 9-12, is in fact one of Europe’s leading electro/dance gatherings.

Over 100 acts, including Squarepusher, 2 Many DJs and Ebony Bones, are playing at seven venues across Geneva, with the city expecting 10,000 visitors over the weekend. This year, the Red Bull Music Academy will be promoting some of its brightest young turks and hosting workshop sessions with some of the biggest names in dance music on the Red Bull Music Academy stages at the Alhambar and Palladium venues.

World-renowned DJs A-Trak and DJ Mehdi (above) will be at Palladium from 9pm on Friday, April 10. A-Trak won the

DMC World DJ Championships aged just 15 in 1997, and since then the Canadian has hit the big time as Kanye West’s tour DJ. Parisian DJ Mehdi, who can boast Daft Punk and Justice as collaborators, will be adding his French disco sound to the mix.

The RBMA stages will also showcase the fresh talents of Radiorifle, Princess P and Breakplus, all ex-attendees of the academy.

Red Bull Music Academy is a travelling school that brings budding musicians closer to the pros who inspire them. Participants could find themselves chatting to Tony Allen about drum techniques or waxing lyrical with Chuck D. Applications for the 2010 sessions in London will be accepted between May 11 and July 27 this year.

Our relaunched websiteis full of good stuff

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0.030

WORLD RALLY CHAMPIONSHIP

LUCKY NUMBERS

One helmet, one co-driver, two seatbelts and one gut-wrenchingly fast car. Those are the basics everyone knows. You need to bone up on the smart stuff

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THE GOALKEEPEREddie Gustafsson is the man between the sticks at Red Bull Salzburg, and he fancies his chances when faced with a spot-kick. “Usually, I just feel that I have the upper hand,” says the 32-year-old, who was born in the United States but went on to earn eight caps for Sweden. “I have to feel like this, because the player should score. The pressure is on the striker. I’m not helpless, but if I stay long enough and don’t dive too early, I have a big chance of saving.

“It’s cat and mouse. I might do a dummy one way and go the other way, or look right at the kicker. Nervous kickers look to the corner in which they want to score, or they tend to.

“I’ve been in penalty shootouts a couple of times, but I’m never nervous because I have nothing to lose – if the player scores, he’s a hero, but I’m not a loser. Even if I go the right way, the striker should score every time if he hits the ball hard enough. No goalkeeper should put pressure on himself.

“In recent years, goalkeeping coaches have had info about the strikers – what they do and don’t do with a penalty, what they’ve done recently, their overall record – but what do you do with that info? Do you stick with it and watch him look in a certain corner? And what if he puts the ball behind the spot when the info says he normally puts it in front?

“In 2004, I was playing for Molde, in Norway, and we were heading for relegation. We were 1-0 up against Bodø/Glimt, and whoever lost the game would go into a relegation play-off. They got a penalty, so there was huge

pressure on the guy to score. I’m thinking he’s not going to dare to go too far into the corners, and I went the right way and saved it. He didn’t place it away from me at all.”

THE SCIENTISTThomas Schrefl, Professor of Functional Materials at the University of Sheffield, says, “The change of angular momentum of leg and foot equals the angular momentum of the ball after impact. Because the total mass of leg and foot is several times that of the ball m, the ball leaves the foot with a higher velocity than that of the foot. If a player kicks the ball at a speed of vBALL = 36m/s, the velocity of the foot before contact with the ball is v1 = 27m/s. Here, v2 is the velocity of the foot after contact, j is the moment of inertia of the leg and foot about the hip, and l is length of the leg. The air time of the ball, which is the distance to the goal divided by the velocity of the ball, is 0.32s.

“The keeper has to decide to move in one direction at the point of the foot-to-ball contact. To reach the ball, he has to jump towards the ball with velocity of 8m/s. Neither knows whether the other will go left or right. The keeper will choose the probability of jumping left, jL, so as to make the kicker’s success probability identical for kicking the ball left and right. This strategy will maximise the keeper’s success rate. pLR is the scoring probability for a kick of the ball to the left and a jump of the keeper to the right.

“Kickers and goalkeepers mix left and right so that their choice is unpredictable. The analysis of many penalty-kicks shows that the success rate of the keeper is 20 per cent.”

SAVING ACCOUNT

WINNING FORMULA

The penalty-kick is one of football’s great dramas, but does science make the keeper favourite or is it his instinct that wins out?It’s prof v pro and it’s sudden death…

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FIVB GO MAD IN BRAZILThe 2009 world volleyball tour begins at the sport’s spiritual home

CAN YOU HACK IT?Wanted: the next Jeremy Paxman, Tom Wolfe, Annie Leibovitz and Michael Moore

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LITTLE BIG MANTHAT’S THE SPIRIT

SPRINGBOARD TO SUCCESS

KELLY LOSES HERO

MODEL BEHAVIOUR

A TALL ORDER

DRIVING AMBITION

GIFT OF THE GAB

PICK-ME-UP

PERFECT DELIVERY

HARD HITTER

JASON STATHAMWHERE’S YOUR HEAD AT?

The action hero is a man of many talents: martial arts, market trading and making hit movies. Here’s what makes him tick

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KIT EVOLUTION

NOW BOARDING...It’s all hands on deck to witness the innovation that has taken skateboards from their first golden age in the 1970s to today’s cutting-edge product

PIONEERING IDEAPOWELL QUICKSILVER, 1977

MODERN CLASSICRYAN SHECKLER PLAN B FADER PRO, 2009

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ANGELA EITERME AND MY BODY

The small but perfectly formed Austrian climber, who at 23 has already won two world championships and three overall world cup titles, talks mind over matter and having eyes on her feet

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HARD & FASTThe champions of speed and style on skis, two wheels and four wheels

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030 DIETMAR KAINRATH 32 ROBBIE MADDISON 34 JUAN PABLO ANGEL 38 SAMUEL CODY

HeroesAmazing artists and past pioneers from around the world

A short background on the Kainrath we know from this magazine: he was a highly-respected cartoonist using unmistakable angular lines until, one fine day, a certain drinks can lumbered into his life. The coolness of his harsh lines intertwined with the curving shape of the cylinder and a refreshing new geometry of the absurd was born.

Dietmar Kainrath comes from Innsbruck, in the Austrian Alps, and as such is a Tyrolean. The mountain people of Tyrol have the reputation in their homeland for being very particular and very brave. This is also the year of large-scale celebrations, as Tyroleans mark the 200-year anniversary of their heroic battles against Napoleon’s armies, when the French commander-in-chief ran away with his tail between his legs. When it comes to a brawl, you probably shouldn’t choose a Tyrolean as your opponent.

Going on his weight alone, you can see Kainrath’s no typical Tyrolean; he weighs about half what they normally weigh and he doesn’t show off with his derring-do on the slopes. Being the perfect Tyrolean is not his priority, but he appreciates the perfect view of the landscape he has from his studio, of Mt Patscherkofel and the Olympic downhill course.

A very young Dietmar Kainrath failed to capitalise on his talent; instead he wandered around from place to place and one day ended up at the famous Hagenbeck circus in Germany, looking after the exotic creatures: two camels, an elephant, a zebu (a type of cow), a water buffalo and a zebra. His favourite animal was a female camel called Leila who, one day, broke free and loped off towards central Nuremberg – though, oddly enough, she waited until she saw the green man before crossing the road at junctions. But the talented keeper managed to fetch her and lead her back.

This was one of his first successes in life; until then there hadn’t been much to write home about. Things changed when he fell in love with Verena 40 years ago and started a family. His gentrification as a happy father might well have changed the direction

DIETMAR KAINRATHYou’ll recognise the deceptively simple pen-strokes of the cartoons throughout The Red Bulletin’s pages as the work of Dietmar Kainrath. But who’s the man behind the lines?Words Herbert Völker Photography Jürgen Skarwan

of his life, but what is certainly true is that he became a tamed Bohemian with a licence for occasional exuberance. This two-sided Kainrath played his hand between commercial and more refined art forms with technique and skill. He admired the estimable Saul Steinberg and Tomi Ungerer as pillars of artistry, and cartoon aficionados will see that they are kindred spirits in style and substance. In the grey area between drawing, illustration and painting, Kainrath has no qualms about being described as a cartoonist, and he finds the conventional wisdom that a ‘cartoon-only’ artist might one day run out of ideas preposterous. That is of no concern to Kainrath – he’ll never be lacking the spark which set him off – the only problem being he can’t draw quickly enough to keep up with the ideas running wild in his head.

His old inclination towards the Bohemian would take Kainrath onto Bukowski-like subject matter with the unhealthy desire of addiction. The interaction with musicians – when jazz, literature and graphics set the framework from which they can then break out – excites him. The sensational Austrian trumpeter Franz Hackl (who now lives in America) thus became a close friend of the draftsman and was a competent guide around New York’s watering holes.

Kainrath says his own art is all in the ideas. His execution eventually became a matter of course: the sweep of the ink-pen, the occasional thin brush and the sparing use of watercolours. His main colours, vermilion and ultramarine, help underline his special talent for animals and cans. The bull, the artist explains, is a generous beast as far as drawing possibilities are concerned, and the can is a godsend for the geometry of his world. The catapult of his severe lines has found a meaningful missile to launch with minimalist graphics, spontaneous or odd associations, and quick witticisms.

From pointless oafishness to a relaxed existentialism, from barfly worries to grand prix folklore, there’s a place for everything. And Kainrath always lets the amused beholder make of them what they will.

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H E R O E S

I first became aware of Evel when I was about five years old. I would jump my bicycle and people would say, “Oh, you’re going to be the next Evel Knievel.” Ever since I was a kid I’ve loved to jump my bike. I love the airtime. I snapped the first bike I had in half from jumping it too far. My parents would buy me videos of jumps and I’d watch them. Evel’s son Robbie Knievel jumped at Caesars Palace; I remember we were at a restaurant for my mom’s birthday and it came on the television, and it stuck in my head so much.

I look at anyone who’s making an impact on the sport around the globe, but Evel Knievel was the guy who went big. That whole big-jump thing had gone underground and stopped happening for a while. But in 2005, that whole movement came back again and it was all based around the talk of Evel Knievel and that long-distance record. By that stage – people had been telling me I was like him for years – I was ready to step up to the plate and take it on and try to be that guy.

Everywhere I go, people know I’m that big long-distance guy, and the spectacular shows are what do it for me. I love the fact that people flock from miles away when they hear someone is going to go long on a bike, and they just want to see that feat. Obviously it changes their point of view and perspective. People can come and switch off and put themselves in my shoes. If I can do these jumps, kids and people of all walks of life come up to me, saying it’s the most amazing thing they’ve seen, and I think people need to see stuff like

that. Especially at times like now, when people need inspiration, it’s a good thing.

There’s something inside me that gives me the confidence to go a long way. I know that feeling, and sense of being alive, to face all your demons and take it on. I like the mental clarity it gives me afterwards, because you deal with so much just to bring it to that point.

I want to jump the world record, to prove to myself that’s what I can do. I’m a natural showman. I found a passion and I stuck with it. I’d like to do it as long as I can. I love putting on the big shows; knowing that it’s successful. I’d like to keep doing bigger and better jumps, draw more attention every time. I don’t have a long-term plan. I know Evel made a big thing of it, and I’d be stoked if I could do the same. But right now I’m just happy I did the last jump and I’m here to think about the next one.

I’d love to jump a Harley, like Evel did. But at that point in time, he was

jumping 20 school buses. And now, on the equipment I’m on, I can jump five times what he was doing, so it’s a question of what people want to see. Do they want to see me jump a mediocre-size jump on a Harley or do they want me to jump five times further on a bike that’s more capable? I’m looking for fresh angles and fresh jumps that will blow people’s minds.

I have respect for what Evel did, because if you look at what he did on the equipment he was on, it was so friggin’ crazy; it was so outrageously gnarly. The predicament he put himself in... he was facing the slimmest of margins to make it a successful jump. What he was trying to do was pretty much impossible for the type of machinery he was on. I’m on state-of-the-art bikes and it’s almost impossible to do the things I do on the machinery I’m on. We’re doing the same kind of stuff, I’m just doing it in a new-age way.

The first big jump I did was in Las Vegas on New Year’s Eve 2007, the 40th anniversary of Evel Knievel’s jump [over the fountains at Caesars Palace]. I was jumping in Vegas [soon after he passed away], and obviously he had been a role model to me and many other people. I went to his funeral because I cared and I was genuinely upset that he was gone and I was grieving. And one way to get over it was to dedicate a jump to him. I knew what he meant to a lot of people and I wanted people to know that I was grieving also and that I was here to carry the flame.

EVELKNIEVELThe world’s leading big-jump motorcycle daredevil is full of admiration for the man who made the great leaps forward in his field Words Andreas Tzortzis

HERO’S HERO: ROBBIE MADDISON ON

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JUAN PABLO ANGELThe former Aston Villa striker made his mark in Major League Soccer before David Beckham and has quietly gone about scoring goals, reaching finals and winning plauditsWords Andy Jaros Portrait Jamie-James Medina

A savage mixture of rain and snow is lashing Frank Sinatra Park in Hoboken, New Jersey. The conditions don’t seem to be bothering Juan Pablo Angel, as the New York Red Bulls captain juggles a football impassively on this artificial pitch on the banks of the Hudson River. Into the sky behind him, across the swirling Hudson, reach the tan-coloured apartment blocks and glinting skyscrapers of Manhattan.

In a city of buildings and personalities as grand as its ambitions, the quiet Colombian has carved out a level of fan devotion and on-pitch success that rivals the other international stars who have come in recent years to help America improve its troubled relationship with the beautiful game.

It’s worth mentioning that he has done this quietly, minus the fanfare and hype following a certain Englishman’s tenure in the US, which began just a few months after Angel’s. While David Beckham’s success seems to have been limited to bringing in curious fans and selling shirts, the former fans’ favourite at Aston Villa has established himself as the league’s best striker,

scoring 33 goals in 47 games. When he went on the hunt for new points at the start of the season, his goal tally was just nine behind Giovanni Savarese’s club record for goals scored in regular season games.

Last autumn, Angel helped the Red Bulls to the first championship final in the club’s history (which they lost 3-1 to Columbus Crew). Coming just two seasons after Red Bull took over the former New York/New Jersey Metrostars – a club where players were often forced to change practice fields weekly and a favourite stop for MLS teams in need of a few easy points – the result was a sensation.

Now, with America’s finest purpose-built soccer stadium due for completion in a few months and with the Red Bulls gunning for some first-ever silverware this season, team bosses have done everything to whet Angel’s appetite. Just a few days before he set off for the team’s final training session in Buenos Aires, they extended the 33-year-old’s contract as a ‘designated player’ – where the usual upper salary limit of $415,000 is removed. This was when ‘club loyalty’ was becoming a taboo subject at LA Galaxy, after the latest episode of the Beckham-in-Milan soap opera ended with an unprecedented timeshare agreement between the Galaxy and AC Milan in early March.

Angel must now pay back their faith with goals. He’ll include being an ambassador to improve the reputation of the US league for free, well aware of the smirks and eye-rolling directed across the Atlantic towards the upstarts in Major League Soccer.

“MLS is just 13 years old,” he points out. “In England, football’s a religion. They’ve been playing for generations and the budgets are astronomical. While we have a salary cap, we can’t compensate for the quality problem as regards players. But I’m convinced that MLS teams could compete against English clubs from the lower leagues.”

After getting his start at Atlético Nacional in his hometown of Medellin, in Colombia, and four seasons with Argentinian giants River Plate, Angel’s

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stint in England lasted six years, playing under Graham Taylor and later David O’Leary at Aston Villa from 2001 to 2007. His speed lent itself to goal-poaching, but Angel’s arsenal also includes exquisite curving balls from the tightest of angles – with his left or right foot – as well as cracking shots, headers, footwork and penalties. He had his best season in 2003/04, with 16 goals in Premier League competition and seven in cup ties. By the time he left the club in 2007, only Dwight Yorke had done better than his 74 goals in 205 games.

After considering a move to Spain, Angel signed for the Red Bulls on April 19, 2007, a season after they came into being. Three months before Beckham all but floated into LA on a cloud of irrepressible hype, Angel slipped quietly into a team in search of an identity and continuity.

He made his mark straight away. After his arrival in April, he was MLS player of the month in May and June. On the occasion of Beckham’s first full game for LA Galaxy, Angel stole some of his thunder. In front of 66,237 spectators at Giants Stadium in New Jersey, the Red Bulls beat Goldenballs’ side 5-4, with Angel scoring twice in the match, including the winner.

“The 5-4 against the Galaxy in the summer of 2007 was one the league’s all-time highlights,” says Angel. “There were almost 70,000 supporters, and the stadium was full for the first time.”

The success of a player like Angel is vital for the growth of the league, says Paul Gardner, the US soccer scribe for World Soccer magazine. Gardner considers Angel “the most successful” of the raft of recent top international soccer talent that has included Cuauhtémoc Blanco of Mexico, Denílson and, this year, former Arsenal winger Freddie Ljungberg. “Angel has played well, at times brilliantly, scored goals and helped the team get to the MLS Cup Final last year,” Gardner says. “He’s a popular player and a true professional, and his excellent English has greatly helped him.”

Keen, nevertheless, to keep a low profile, Angel has gone about his work in a quiet manner, helping team-mates on the training pitch and preferring the relative anonymity that is the life of a professional footballer in the US.

“It’s not that I don’t care about my career. I love my career,” he says. “But what I can really do without is being in the spotlight.”

That means no journalists coming to the family man’s house in Saddle River in northern New Jersey for a soft-focus exposé to be splashed across the pages of a glossy magazine. It doesn’t boast a dozen bedrooms with en-suite bathrooms, either, but he’s willing to gush just a little about his new home. “It’s so wonderfully green here, like in the countryside. We look out onto a garden, not a concrete jungle,” he says. “I was surprised at how beautiful New Jersey is if you know the right spots.”

Perhaps that’s why he’s in a hurry to disappear after the team’s practice session is over. Under his arm is a turquoise-coloured gift box from Tiffany. The contents? A crystal award for Angel, who the fans voted the team’s most valuable player.

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After World Cup ’94, American Major League Soccer was born into a nation of sceptics.

To be fair, things in 1996 could only have been better than the first attempt in the 1970s, when the North American Soccer League (NASL) arrived with a bang and left with a whimper. Sprightly veterans such as Pelé, George Best, Franz Beckenbauer and Johan Cruyff failed to sustain the long-term interest of a US sporting public already saturated with major sports, from baseball and American football to basketball and ice hockey.

“The mistake the NASL made was expanding from 14 to 28 teams too quickly,” says Jeff Agoos, who won 134 caps for the US national team and is now sporting director at the New York Red Bulls. “You have to grow slowly, with the right people in the right place. What’s clear is that it takes more than just famous player names.”

Today, MLS is on a solid footing and the infrastructure is getting better and better. By 2008, half of the teams had their own stadiums instead of tenancies at ill-suited American football or concert venues. But the restrictive budget policy and salary cap get in the way of financial ventures and big-money transfers.

Critics will say that even when MLS has managed to attract superstars, their frequent tendency to flee to greener pastures at the first opportunity has been counterproductive to development. MLS needs high-quality players who aren’t only interested in making a fast buck but also want to help the US game in the long term. Latin

players have helped bring style and technique to the US. Ageing foreign players, on the other hand, have sometimes been astounded by the fitness levels required by the teams.

“The Americans place no value on stamina, only speed. I was seeing stars during training when I’d just arrived in California,” Andreas Herzog, the former Austrian international, has said. “I just hung there like a complete idiot when it came to chin-ups. And I can remember the club’s programme, too: ‘Second week –

double everything!’ At one point, my pulse-rate was up to 203bpm.”

Herzog’s former coach Sigi Schmid guided Columbus Crew to the championship last year. The German is now the head

coach at Seattle Sounders, who have signed former Arsenal star Freddie Ljungberg. They are new to the league: the 2009 championship, which has just got underway, is now made up of 15 teams. The Eastern Conference consists of Red Bull New York, Chicago Fire, Columbus Crew, DC United, Kansas City Wizards, New England Revolution and Toronto FC. In the Western Conference are Chivas USA, Colorado Rapids, FC Dallas, Houston Dynamo, LA Galaxy, Real Salt Lake, San Jose Earthquakes and Seattle Sounders FC. After 30 matches, the top two from each conference plus four wildcards qualify for the play-offs, which start on October 29. The final to decide the overall champions will be held on November 22.

The MLS pulse is racing as it enters its 14th season

COMING ON STRONG

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SAMUEL CODYWild West gunslinger, aviation pioneer, celebrity and friend of royalty: he was a true innovator and one of Britain’s greatest eccentric nearly-men… to have come from AmericaWords Alexander Frater

Sam Cody was an American-born, poorly educated ex-cowboy and sometime actor who wore his hair long and specialised in staging bad melodramas. Yet his funeral, back in 1913 when he was just 46 years old, was so big it has even been compared to Princess Diana’s. An estimated 100,000 people lined the route (some claim it was twice that number) from his modest home in Frimley Road, Farnborough, to Aldershot’s military cemetery, where a further 50,000 waited. King George V himself ordered that the coffin be placed on a gun carriage and escorted by the pipes and muffled drums of The Black Watch. Behind it, politicians, generals, admirals, stars of the London stage, friends, family and admirers formed a procession more than a mile long. Several weeks later, to raise money for Cody’s widow, Winston Churchill and David Lloyd George organised a celebrity matinee at the London Hippodrome, in which stars such as Sarah Bernhardt, Gladys Cooper and George Robey (accepting no fee) staged 45 different acts between them. The paying public turned up in such numbers that many had to stand.

Photographs of Samuel Franklin Cody – often confused with Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody) – show a handsome man with a trimmed goatee beard and waxed moustache, which, twirled constantly, made him look rather like a long-whiskered cat. Despite his immense physical strength (he could tie knots in steel bracing wire with his bare hands) he was said, in manner and appearance, to have resembled ‘a large-sized Peter Pan’. And he shared with his friend and fellow aviator Wilbur Wright an odd characteristic: neither of them could whistle.

Cody spent his early years chasing buffalo herds on horseback, supplying meat to the gangs laying Texas’s railways. Then, tiring of the slaughter – “Cody shoots ’em faster ’n we can skin ’em,” said one contracted butcher – he drifted east to join the Wild West shows that had become all the rage. He married Maud Lee, a pretty young actress, brought her to England, found work in Wild West Burlesque at London’s Olympia (Sam shot at glass balls strung

about Maud’s person) then met Lela Davis, wife of a Chelsea licensed victualler. Mother-of-four Lela was 15 years older than Cody, yet for both it was love at first sight. He remained in the UK while poor Maud, returned to the US, became a cocaine addict and a resident of the Norristown Hospital for the Insane.

Though Lela and Cody never married, her children adored him. In his new act, ‘SF Cody and Family, Champion Shooters of America’, Lela wore the glass balls while the boys, who affected Cody’s long, tangled hair, buckskins and sombrero, became variety stars in their own right (Vivien in particular being known for his trick shooting at London’s Alhambra Music Hall). They also travelled to Paris, where Cody called himself ‘Le Roi des Cowboys’.

He enjoyed theatre, and in 1896 devised ‘The Klondike Nugget’ show, which, opening in Walsall, featured blazing bridges, leaping horses, ferocious duels and a beautiful heroine (Lela) being snatched from the jaws of death by the dashing hero (Cody). It was during this period that Cody somehow grew interested in kites, and built and flew them during every spare minute: between matinees and evening performances, on the beach at Blackpool and from the roof of the Metropole, Glasgow, where, down in the streets, people kept walking into each other as they gazed distractedly upwards. It was in Glasgow he told a well-wisher: “It is my intention, sir, to build a kite that will carry a man.”

The development of this kite involved Cody being involved in several painful crashes, but by the turn of the century, the world’s first successful man-lifting kite took Cody into the skies over Plumstead. Next he fashioned a canoe, which, towed by a 15ft kite, left Calais at dusk and brought him to Dover in time for breakfast. By now, the whole family had become kite-mad. The boys flew regularly, and even Lela, feet planted in flower baskets, made frequent ascents.

Finally, the War Office started taking an interest in Cody’s efforts. In 1906, he was appointed Chief Kiting Instructor to the British Army. Clad in his usual buckskins and spurs, with a sombrero planted

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on his head, he supervised the ascents from a white horse named Vichy and, to entertain the soldiers, periodically drew his pearl-handled Colt 45s and blasted sixpences from the sky. His kites worked. Heights of 2,000ft were routinely achieved, while a breathless Captain PW Broke-Smith once got to 3,000ft, a new world record for a kite pilot.

A cathedral-sized structure overlooking Farnborough Common, known as The Balloon Factory, was the home of flying in Britain. In 1907, a full four years after the Wright Brothers had first flown, its commandant, Colonel John Capper, finally got permission from the War Office to begin work on a project known as British Army Aeroplane No 1. And he knew just the man to build it.

Cody bagged a corner of The Balloon Factory and, helped by Edward Leroy, an actor pal from his Wild West shows, laid out the machine. It had a forward elevator, wings cross-braced with piano wire and surfaced in brown Holland silk by a Farnborough

milliner named Miss Copeland, and a borrowed French motorboat engine. Early on the morning of September 30, 1908, horses towed the finished aircraft to a stretch where the army did its morning gallops. Cody, lurching across the turf, seemed to rise a few inches. Though it was established that, for 78yd, there were no wheel-tracks in the dew, Cody chose to discount it. “It was only a jump,” he said.

On October 16, he tried again. “The machine,” reported the Morning Post, “was set full speed up the slopes of Farnborough Hill, from the top of which it took a rise into the air.’ It then flew for 27 seconds before crashing. Cody had just become the first person in Britain to fly an aeroplane and, though badly cut, scrambled from the wreckage grinning broadly. Uppermost in Capper’s mind, however, was the undeniable fact that Cody couldn’t really fly; and, but for trial and error, had no means of learning. Early in 1909, at least 40 Britons were building aeroplanes, and they all watched Cody. He

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was coming along, in his fashion. He crashed on January 9; again on January 21. Colonel Capper wrote to the War Office anticipating “a good many more smashes before Mr Cody has learned to manipulate the controls”. In time, however, he discovered the secret of setting down: “You must imitate the squatting posture of a crow.” That directive went rippling out across the country and young aeronauts everywhere began applying that principle to their own turbulent touchdowns.

In April, Cody managed to complete a circuit of Laffan’s Plain (where Farnborough’s airport is now located), the longest flight, as it happened, ever made in Britain. The Prince of Wales, in residence at Farnborough’s Government House, rode over to offer his congratulations. The two men got talking, and a friendship developed. Indeed, when the prince became George V, he said, “If I were ever to go up in an aeroplane, Mr Cody, I would choose to go with you. Sadly, however, my Ministers forbid me to fly.”

Then, without warning, Cody was sacked. The British government had decreed (five years before the outbreak of World War I) that aeroplanes were “useless” for military purposes; from now on the nation’s defence would rely on airships. He was, however, allowed to build a shed under the pines of Laffan’s Plain – and to keep Army Aeroplane No 1. He fitted it with a pair of tractor seats and began

giving rides, the first to Colonel Capper (making him Britain’s premier air passenger). Soon after that, he achieved a new world altitude record of 800ft and began attracting such crowds that Aldershot’s Military Police were needed to control them.

In October 1909, at an aero meeting on Doncaster Racecourse, Cody became a British subject. Having recited the Oath of Allegiance to Doncaster’s town clerk, he signed his naturalisation papers on the town clerk’s back, then, as the Yorkshire Dragoons band played the National Anthem he threw a quivering Brigade of Guards salute. Three deafening cheers echoed from the packed grandstand. “Good old Cody!” yelled the crowd.

At the time, the owner of an Aintree jam factory was offering a prize of £1,000 for the first flight from Liverpool to Manchester. Cody’s attempt ended after only 12 miles, when his old aeroplane flew into a hedge. It was time, he decided, to build a new one. Big and fast, named the Cody Flyer, and driven by a giant single propeller, it was the machine he took to Bournemouth the day Charles Rolls was killed. Cody saw the accident happen and, racing to the crash site, wept as Rolls, the first Briton to lose his life while flying, died in his arms.

But the Flyer served him well, winning him the coveted British Empire Michelin Cup, presented to the pilot who, in the course of a calendar year, made the longest trip within the British Isles. On the last day of 1910, in weather so bitter he had to insulate his clothing with brown paper, Cody began circling Laffan’s Plain. Teeth chattering, seriously hypothermic, he was aloft for four hours, 47 minutes, and only stopped when, after 186 miles, his tank ran dry. Beard and clothing coated in ice, he was welcomed by a crowd singing See the Conquering Hero Comes. The trophy was his. The following year he won it again.

Then, in 1912, he won the British Military Trials. Whitehall, realising that the coming war might, after all, require aeroplanes, offered a £5,000 prize for the most suitable. Cody intended entering his latest, but a heavy landing sent it spinning into trees, so, starting from scratch, he built a sleek monoplane. Three weeks before the Trials began, however, it hit a cow. Now, working day and night, he constructed a biplane so advanced it beat the best that any rival could offer. The King, delighted, began addressing him as ‘Colonel Cody’, so everyone else did, too.

When, in 1913, the Daily Mail announced a ‘water plane’ race around Britain, Cody used his prize money to create a giant hydroplane with pontoons and 60ft wings. The most elegant, aesthetically pleasing machine he’d ever made was also, ironically, the one that would kill him.

On Thursday, August 7, he was due to fly to Calshot, the starting point for the Coastal Britain race. First, though, he took a friend, the famous ex-cricketer WHB Evans, for a spin. But, over Laffan’s Plain, the plane suddenly buckled and broke, throwing its occupants clear. Stunned observers saw Cody falling with arms spread wide, as if trying to test certain notions of balance and control: as if, actually, trying to fly.

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62 THE ATHERTONS 68 HURLING

ActionThe world’s best athletes of land, air and sea

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THE PRODIGY

Aaron Hadlow is kitesurfing’s most successful competitor ever. His contributions to the sport are often

so new and inventive he has to shelve them until the pack catches up. The Red Bulletin met with the

five-time world champion to find out what it’s like to be innovator, maverick, pin-up and veteran all at once

Words Tom Hall and Jim Gaunt Photography Rick Guest

Aaron Hadlow was just 15 when he won his first world championship. Fifteen. Four years on from dipping a toe in the Atlantic waters off Cornwall, where he grew up, hand-held by a kiteboard-crazy dad, he had taken on all-comers in this fast-growing, fast-flowing arena, and won.

Almost without noticing what he had achieved, Hadlow had become the first superstar and poster-boy for of kiteboarding, a sport that was scooting from the extreme sports heartland into the recreational mainstream. Exactly the right person in exactly the right place at exactly the right time, he’d caught a break he had no intention of letting slip. Over the next four seasons, he became champ

again. And again. And again. And again.‘Dominance’ barely does justice to the Rottweiler-grip Hadlow – a friendly, tousle-haired 20-year-old – has exerted on his chosen sport, and he continues to reframe the parameters by which it is judged. Over the past five years, as ‘new’ became ‘norm’, Hadlow hit the reset button, forcing kiteboarding’s governing body, the PKRA (Professional Kiteboard Riders Association), to recalibrate its judging criteria, as the levels of skill, finesse and technique he displayed in his routines went beyond their marking scale. In 2008, for example, he battled as much against the PKRA judges’ verdict of what constitutes the most difficult and

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demanding moves, as he did against his rivals. Remarkably, then, for one of such tender years, he’s already a victim of his own success – forced to dumb down his tricks to ensure they’re understood and correctly marked, while knowing he can ride faster, higher, better.

Frustrating? He’s phlegmatic. “There’s a weird mentality towards winners,” he notes, casually, at ease with his success. “When you start winning, people feel the need to knock you; not all people, but sometimes it feels like that. We’ve got top judges and it’s a really difficult job, but obviously they’re not riding at the same level as us competitors because then they’d be competing as well!” he explains. “About halfway through last season I was trying to push my riding in a different style. Just making it a bit smoother. But it wasn’t scoring as much as the really technical tricks, so I just changed my tack and did what they wanted for the competition.”

That change of approach, a decision he now makes sound like a mild shift in routine, actually won him his fifth consecutive world title. But Hadlow is mature enough to know when and where to spend his creative energy. He even toyed with the idea of not competing in 2009, in order to pursue his love of innovation more freely.

“This year I thought I would wait for the dates to come out and check how it goes. I wanted to go and do some video projects instead (Hadlow’s movie Calibrate was released in March). But I’ve seen the calendar and it doesn’t take up so much time, so this year I’m just gonna follow the criteria and push my technical riding that way. Then with the time I have off, maybe I’ll do some other projects which can show off my freeriding.”

If he sounds like an image-savvy veteran of the sports-leisure battlefield, that’s because he is – however strongly his boy-band blond looks tempt you to think otherwise. Like others who excel young, travelling far and fast, he’s a curious mix of the world-weary and the wide-eyed.

“I think I’ve changed as a person,” he says, “but not from when I wasn’t winning. I look at some people and I just think, ‘What an idiot, why would you be doing that?’ I’ve had it before, though, where you can feel yourself starting to get a bit cocky and I’m like, ‘What am I doing?’ I just focus on my friends around me when that happens and think about how I was brought up.”

Mention of home takes Hadlow straight to his father Ian and his life-determining guidance at an early age:

the initial introduction to the sport in 2000 and the decision to move the family to South Africa two years later to give Aaron the best possible environment in which to learn, then hone his skills.

“My dad has guided me through everything,” he confesses. “He started kiteboarding before me and got me into the whole thing. I used to come back from school on the bus and I’d see him out, and I’d watch. Then we went on holiday to the Dominican Republic for two weeks and I was up and going because of the great conditions. He’s still there for me now. If I’m ever in trouble, I just call him and more than likely he’s been in a similar situation in one way or another. Eventually he turns from a dad into a friend, I think as you get older that just happens for most people.”

Ian has sent his protégé out solo for the past three seasons, with Hadlow junior mature enough to handle the pressures of international competition alone. Those fixed, familial points of reference ground Hadlow as he dances across a global stage. Check out that

2009 schedule: from April to November the freestylers jet from France to Mexico, through the Dominican Republic, Spain, Germany, Brazil, before the finale in New Caledonia, in the south Pacific. Heady stuff for a gifted young man with a surf-buff athlete’s physique, global corporations as backers, and occasional wind-slack days when there’s time to burn…

How easy would it be to sway, go giddy in the sun, and be suckered in by the easy charms of simpering bikini-clad beauties? Very… but there’s steel in the Hadlow genes, a wary (though not hostile) suspicion of newcomers, a sense that he understands his gift is a rare one to be nurtured.

Hadlow senior was cute enough to recognise within weeks of Aaron being kitted up that he had an explosive talent on his hands, one whose native ability had the potential to upset the established order and routines of an older generation of professional riders. And he was wise enough to instil in Aaron a precious confidence, allowing

“ MY DAD HAD GUIDED THROUGH EVERYTHING. HE STARTED KITEBOARDING BEFORE ME AND GOT ME INTO THE WHOLE THING. HE’S THERE FOR ME NOW”

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a young boy the freedom to express himself through athletic endeavour and bust convention without fear of failure or ridicule. From the beginning, Hadlow innovated rather than aped. To those who understood, the signals were clear, very early, that freestyle kiteboarding was about to become the domain of a certain, powerful young man from the south coast of England.

Aaron Hadlow, prodigy and pioneer, has crested the wave of dynamic change in kiteboarding, since it erupted in the late ’90s as ‘the fastest growing water sport in the world’. The once winning moves from those early days a decade or so ago, when riders carved huge, dangling, spinning, paragliding-like airs, have been replaced with powered choreography. The height and speed are developed from the kite being always in the critical position in the centre of the ‘window’ (continually developing forward power like wakeboarding rather than upwards lift) and using board speed for ‘pop’ (good air). The competing riders’ ages, meantime, have dropped to a late teen average in the PKRA world tour, ludicrously making Hadlow, 20, something of a grand old man.

But the thrill hasn’t gone. No way. Ten years on, he still gets the buzz that sucked him in first time around: “It’s still a sport of pure adrenaline,” he grins, “and just having the ability to be able to, like, travel and get paid to do what you love and meet people, to see the world… it’s just the feeling you get… and for me, to be able to innovate in the sport and bring new stuff and create new tricks and stuff like that is really appealing.”

Spend any time with Hadlow, and it’s quickly apparent that his globetrotting, self-reliant years on the circuit have instilled an uncommon maturity. Today, for example, we’re chatting in the dim, surroundings of a back-street south London photo studio – almost as far removed from the blissful beaches of the PKRA world tour as it’s possible to be. He’s relaxed in spite of the time demands being made, amenable despite being hung from guy ropes and doused in cold water for the sake of The Shot.

These are, he understands, the demands made of a professional sportsman; the price of a gilded life: “I don’t really enjoy having to answer loads of questions and check my emails all the time, but it’s work and I’ve just learned how to cope with it. Whatever comes along I’ll do it and it’s all good, but the fun bit is still being with your friends and going kiting. I started off in England doing the tour

because I just wanted to compete and, you know, loads of us all got on really well and just met up with each other. Now I meet everyone at each event and loads of my friends are from abroad. Just being social is one of the good things about it.”

Those close to Hadlow reckon his essential ‘sameness’, his sanity, is rooted in self-belief and professionalism: self-belief to experiment; professionalism that keeps him ahead of the chasing pack. And he’s smart. Despite kiteboarding’s burgeoning popularity, there’s less money in the professional pot than in 2002, when American Mark Shinn was main man. Still, the cream rises and Hadlow employs an agent to handle business affairs and maximise exposure, while still keeping schedule space for training and travel.

“Yeah, I don’t have a training regime as such,” he laughs. “I just kite as much as possible because it’s the best practice. But you always have to stay on top of things, stay fit and just be ready for each competition. On the circuit there’s quite a few guys who are pretty good, always pushing, so you’ve always got to stay on

up their kites, the duo would have to negotiate a trail of autograph-hunters.

With a simple, shy reluctance, he admits: “There was a real big change in the sport where a younger generation came into it. I started off thinking, yeah, I could probably do pretty well at this and for it to happen so soon is really, really amazing. And the sport’s starting to get way bigger. The media’s getting behind it now and I’m doing more photo shoots and studio shoots and things like that. It’s definitely growing. We can feel it happening around us.”

Think of Hadlow’s as a cult rock-star’s lifestyle: within touching distance of kitchen-sink familiarity, yet still far from being a household name. It’s coming, though. In 2007 he was nominated for the prestigious Laureus World Sports Awards, a nod that included a trip to Barcelona for the glitzy black-tie ceremony. It felt big, particularly so for a sportsman more used to eyeing his fans from a comfortable distance – on the beach while he’s on water: “There were so many people there,” he recalls. “I remember stepping onto the red carpet with all these photographers everywhere. Imagine a grandstand of photographers, it was mad. I just stood there with all these flashes going crazy and all these people shouting my name to look here or there. I was just freaking out, laughing at what I was doing. I had to do these interviews and I’d look a little further down the carpet and there were famous footballers doing the same thing.”

He gushes now and in that there’s still a hint of youth, a reminder that he is just 20 years old. But it’s deceptive: there’s no doubt his eye remains firmly on the prize. Push him, and he’ll admit – quietly, no pomp – that he’s a pioneer; that for those who care, he’s taking a young sport into realms where the possibilities remain unknown. “I really want to help steer the sport in the right direction,” he reflects, calmly. “I know I’ve made up quite a few tricks in the past, but those were more for competitions. Now I’m trying to bring a style that’s nicer to watch. I look to sports like snowboarding and motocross and the styles are really defined. I’m trying to bring that to our sport now, so people look at that and are really amazed by it. I want to be part of the upbringing of kitesurfing. That’s what I’m trying to bring to the sport now, just to make it bigger and mainstream.”

He is. He will.Jim Gaunt is editor of Kiteworld magazine

top of the game. If I’m stuck in the UK for a week and I see there’s going to be no wind before the event I’ll go somewhere else to practise. I’m very competitive.”

With practice and competition, come injuries – “I was out a few years back for a couple of months with an ankle injury. Last year I was having to wear a knee-brace. There’s lots of repetitive impact coming down on your knees and ankles, it’s quite strenuous” – and danger, such as the very real threat of being garrotted by a cable: “Oh yeah, for sure, that’s a risk.” Hadlow’s grimacing, dead serious now. “These lines are really taut when you’re up with the kite, but luckily nothing serious has happened. It’s just the person flying it needs to be totally in control. It’s all about kite control.”

Bit by bit, the profile grows: Hadlow is recognised everywhere he goes on the PKRA tour. Just over a year ago, during a week spent in Tenerife, Hadlow and travel partner Ruben Lenten would draw crowds to watch their impromptu displays, and before they could pack

“ FOR ME, TO BE ABLE TO INNOVATE IN THE SPORT, BRING NEW STUFF, CREATE NEW TRICKS AND STUFF LIKE THAT IS REALLY APPEALING”

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As Red Bull Air Race World Champion pilot Hannes Arch prepares to defend his title, The Red Bulletin visited him in his off-season training base – a lonely airstrip located on the South African HighveldWords Matt Youson

Photography Julian Broad

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annes Arch is scaring the wildlife. The Kikuyu Game Lodge, in Gauteng Province, South Africa, has been his home for the off-season, and every couple of minutes the reigning Red Bull Air Race World Champion leaps from his chair on the veranda to stalk the garden, barking into the mobile phone clamped to his ear. Antelope and ostriches look on warily. Arch isn’t the typical predator, but, here on the Highveld, it pays to be cautious.

Arch is in Gauteng in preparation for his title defence in the ‘premier league’ of air racing. Although, it’s more comparable to Formula One racing from the 1960s than today’s F1, lacking the polished, professional team’s modern structures. Arch is very much his own boss, acting as team manager, sponsorship director, press officer and a thousand other jobs all rolled into one. Fielding phone calls and answering email is his day job; flying the plane, he insists wryly, is just a hobby.

But not much of a hobby at the moment. Arch is grounded, his customised aerobatics aircraft in pieces in a hangar at the local airfield. Under the care of a race technician, its carbon-fibre fuselage is being modified for the new season; a touch of streamlining here, a gram of weight-saving there. It’s taking longer than expected, and time the Austrian pilot planned to spend airborne is slipping

away. Instead of getting reacquainted with his race plane and building up essential G-tolerance, the days are filled with physical and mental exercises, hanging out with the local flying fraternity, dutifully blogging on www.hannesarch.com, and repeated, sometimes irate, phone conferences with sluggish suppliers and technical partners.

It’s a change of pace for a man who, now in his 40s, has spent most of his career far from the madding crowd. Once the youngest mountain guide in Austria at 19, his interests spread to hang-gliding, paragliding and BASE jumping. He was the first to jump from the north face of the Eiger. Chasing up aviation spares is a new experience.

It’s irritating, but Arch values a positive mental attitude above almost anything else, hence, after yet another agitated phone conversation, he looks to the sky, breathes in and delves deep to find a smile. “This is something we have to live with,” he offers. “Getting the plane right is the priority. Maybe I won’t get as much flight-training as I wanted, but that would only give me an advantage for the first race; having a better plane will be an advantage all season. The timescale we set to get the plane ready was ambitious; the time it’s taking is more realistic.”

Arch wants a faster, more powerful aircraft, but also one that gives him the feelgood factor. “It should

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feel like two wings attached to my body, y’know? I have to feel it, like an extension of myself. If there has to be a compromise, then I would rather have the plane a little slower, but a perfect fit. Air racing is like a downhill ski race: it’s all about finding the right line, not going too wide or not making sharp edges, and just gliding through the gates with smooth, energy-conserving lines.”

Arch gives an impression of a balletic, graceful sport. The picture presented by the in-cockpit cameras is rather different however. Air racing is a brutal assault on the body. With speeds of up to 230mph, it is one of the most rapid motorsports around, but the real metric setting it apart is G-force. Today’s rules limit the pilots to 12G, with instant disqualification for transgressors. Some commentators have suggested it lessens the spirit of this most extreme of sports – pilots disagree.

“More than 12G just hurts your body. It’s dangerous, too: we have limits and so do the aeroplanes,” says Arch. “I think the 12G limit is good for the sport because it adds another element to the competition. We need to get as close as we can to the limit without going over. It requires a sensitive pilot to make sharp decisions while in those high-G conditions. It isn’t like the sport’s gone soft!”

‘MORE THAN 12G JUST HURTS YOUR

BODY. WE HAVE LIMITS AND SO DO THE AEROPLANES’

or the non-flyer, G-force-induced blackouts begin at around the 5G or 6G mark. Not being gifted with superhuman powers, race pilots gradually build up their tolerance by regularly performing high-G manoeuvres. Much of their winter training, therefore, is dedicated to rebuilding G-tolerance – the key fitness ingredient in the make-up of a Red Bull Air Race pilot. “You can only get there by flying,” says Arch. “During the season, it’s simple to maintain because we’re flying every weekend, either racing or training, or at an airshow, but before the season begins it’s important to tune yourself up to race level, which is high. I’ll be starting late, but if I’m flying constantly it will be enough time. You can’t do it in one day, but it only takes a few weeks of steadily increasing the number of Gs you pull. I’ll have time enough to ensure I’m ready and feeling good for the first race.”

With his race plane temporarily grounded, Arch immerses himself in physical training. Back home in Austria, he defaults to climbing, his first love; in South Africa, it’s a high-protein, low-carb diet, daily trips to the local gym and jogging at dawn or dusk. He talks the talk but also manages to convey the impression that purely physical training isn’t much of a hardship, an impression reinforced by the occasional cigarette spotted dangling guiltily

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between his fingers. Most Air Racers come from an easier life in commercial aviation and find the fitness requirements of racing a challenge. Arch’s background gives him a rather different perspective: “Air racing is more comfortable,” he admits. “There’s plenty of recovery time, good hotels, soft beds, room service… Compare it to mountaineering in Alaska where you’re hiking for days with all your food and survival gear, just to get to the mountain you want to climb. You’re tired and under a great deal of stress because you have to make good decisions or you die. And there are no excuses.”

hose very G-forces that pilots spend so much time training to resist actually gifted Arch his title victory last year. Paul Bonhomme, his rival in the overall standings, exceeded the G-limit in the penultimate race, ensuring Arch went into the final round with a dominant lead. He was an unexpected champion: when the Red Bull Air Race World Championship began in 2005, he was Race Director. He made the unlikely transition to Rookie pilot for the 2007 season, but rarely troubled the scorers.

‘Rookie’ sells Arch short, however. Glen Dell, a fellow competitor who was a Rookie himself last season, notes that their respective learning curves aren’t really comparable: “Hannes did really well last year – he couldn’t have done much better, but I think he had a few advantages.

“I didn’t really see him as one of the 2007 Rookies because, [as the former Race Director] he’s been around the Red Bull Air Race probably for longer than anybody, and, as I found out last year, to succeed in the series, it’s not only the flying that counts. You also need to be aware of the procedures and processes, and generally how things happen over the race weekend. Hannes had that experience when he started and, without wishing to diminish his achievement, he was one of the more experienced Red Bull Air Race pilots even when he was a Rookie.”

But experience alone wasn’t enough to prevent Arch’s first season being a disappointment – a chastening episode that was, he claims, a decisive factor in his current pre-eminence: “This isn’t like racing cars. The first year is only about learning. At the start, you don’t know anything. You think you do, but you don’t. I came into the series with high hopes. I was European Aerobatics Champion and I entered the championship thinking, ‘Watch out, here I come.’ Then, in that first race, I couldn’t even fly in a straight line. It made me change my mindset – totally. I told myself to forget about winning and forget about the rankings. Instead, I spent the year simply observing. I watched everyone

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‘ I WASN’T THE BEST PILOT LAST YEAR… BUT I WAS THE FASTEST’

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else, probably more than they knew. I watched how they treated their technicians, and how they worked on their aeroplanes and on their tactics.”

Arch also needed to discover his will to compete. “Until I started racing, I didn’t know if I was a good competitor… I didn’t know if I could compete against other people, rather than compete against nature. My other sports have an element of togetherness; it’s never me versus the other guy. In climbing, if the other guy needs help, you help. Equally, if he felt he needed to be first to the top, I’d let him. In extreme sports, you’re there for each other. There’s competition, but usually it’s to do something no one else has done; to succeed where others have failed. The Red Bull Air Race is totally different. It’s like running the 100m: you line up alongside the other guy and simply have to be faster than him. Until I raced, I never knew if I had that in me.

“I learned that I could compete. And at the end of the year I was able to put that and everything else I’d learned into the pot, then add a few ingredients of my own. I think, for some of the other guys, mental preparation is about thinking, ‘I’m a good pilot.’ For me, it’s the opposite: my attitude is always to think, ‘I’m not good – I have to improve.’ I used the 2007-08 off-season to prepare mentally as well as physically and technically. I have a mental trainer, but I also needed to get my environment right. That included little things like having team clothes that felt good, but also big things like hiring an excellent, young technician who approaches the aeroplane with an open mind. Obviously, the plane must be fast, but there’s more to it. I’m only strong in my mind if I get a good feeling about the aircraft from my technician. At a race, I don’t care about the aeroplane. It’s his responsibility and I have to trust him to prepare it perfectly. Having a technician I get along with was a crucial part of last year’s success.”

That technician is Swiss Vito Wyprächtiger. “I’ve got pretty good at judging Hannes’s mood,” he says. “I know when I can talk to him and when I can’t – because sometimes it’s not a good idea to crowd the pilot’s head. Thankfully, he trusts me to deal with the aeroplane. It helps that I fly aerobatics myself: I know what’s going on inside the cockpit and what’s going on inside his mind – and he knows I know. So, when Hannes is preparing to race, he doesn’t need to think about the aeroplane at all.”

Arch won the 2008 championship by virtue of a consistency that took him to at least the semi-finals in every round, taking victories towards the end of the season in Budapest and Porto.

“He was getting better all the time,” says Wyprächtiger. “In the first half of the year, he was coping with a new plane, and when he did well at the first race [finishing second], we thought that maybe it was luck, or maybe us simply having a very good day. By the end of the year, he was flying with much more consistency; his style had improved a lot.” Arch offers a slightly different explanation. “At the start of the year, I just wasn’t ready to win. My

aspirations were to break into the midfield. Ending the season in the middle of the pack would have been great. Of course I intended to get to the top, but I really thought it would take longer. This is a serious business and success doesn’t come cheaply. I definitely didn’t expect to qualify for the final at the first round of the year – that’s why I screwed it up.”

This was a trait that would continue throughout the first half of the season. Arch was never out of the top four, but never able to stand on the top step of the podium either. His own evaluation is that he risked too much in the latter stages of each event, lacking the discipline required to fly well. “I was getting ready to win in the first half of the season, but mentally I wasn’t quite there,” he says.

Success finally arrived in August, Arch beating Steve Jones in a Budapest duel above the Danube watched by over a million spectators. “Before the race, I felt it could be my mine. But that sort of confidence isn’t something I was entirely happy with, because it felt like I was concentrating on the wrong thing. Afterwards, I altered my opinion a little; it convinced me that the difference between winning and losing really was all in my head.”

In his head and against the clock: one way in which Arch made the leap from runner-up to winner is his preference to race the stopwatch, rather than the other pilots. “I look at the numbers, not the people,” he says. “If you’re trying to beat the man rather than the time, then you’re racing for pride. If you’re too proud, you can’t learn: you become caged. If you want to get better, you need to look around and see the qualities in the people around you. I don’t see myself flying against enemies. I’m surrounded by pilots I can look up to. I know I’m not the best, most skilful pilot out there. There are plenty who have been flying far longer than me and have skills and experience that I can learn from.”

There’s no harm in modesty – and Arch seems particularly well-grounded in that respect – but self-deprecation rings a little hollow from the reigning champ. Arch counters, claiming that speed between the pylons isn’t what wins a championship. “Really, it isn’t all about flying. There’s tactics and preparation and attitude and teamwork. I think I won last year because I did my homework better than anyone else – basically, I think my advantage was that I’m a workaholic. I wasn’t the best pilot last year… but I was the fastest.” This is said with a brief, predatory smile. With the new season approaching, it’s not only the antelope that should be wary of Hannes Arch.

THE FIRST 15 THIS YEAR’S MAGNIFICENT MEN

TAKE-OFFThe 2009 Red Bull Air Race World Championship in all-you-need stats form

SERGEY RAKHMANINYOSHIHIDE MUROYAPETE MCLEODMIKE MANGOLDALEJANDRO MACLEAN

NICOLAS IVANOFF NIGEL LAMBMATT HALLMICHAEL GOULIANMATTHIAS DOLDERER

PAUL BONHOMMEHANNES ARCH GLEN DELLKIRBY CHAMBLISSPETER BESENYEI

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ITV4

QUALIFYING DAY

RACE DAY

POINTS SYSTEM

WHAT THE PILOTS SAY…

NEW FOR 2009 ONE CHAMPIONSHIP POINT FOR THE FASTEST ON QUALIFYING DAY, THE WILD CARD SESSION, AND THE FINAL 4 WHERE THE FASTEST TIME COUNTS

ARRIVALS AND DEPARTURESTHE 2009 SCHEDULE

TOOLS OF THE TRADETHIS YEAR’S WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP PLANES ALL THE RIGHT MOVES

DO’S & DON’TSALL THE WRONG MOVES

LEVEL FLYING DANGEROUS FLYING

KNIFE FLYING TOUCHING A GATE

CHICANE INCORRECT LEVEL FLYING

THE QUADRO

INCORRECT KNIFE FLYING

VERTICAL TURNING MANOEUVRE

FLYING TOO HIGH

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WATCH THE SKIESRED BULL AIR RACE WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP ON ITV

ITV1

Meet the Athertons: two brothers and one sister who bring a new meaning to the phrase ‘keeping it in the family’ – all of them down-to-earth world champions in every sense Words Huw Williams

WE ARE FAMILY

RACHEL DAN

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Deep in the Welsh countryside, nestling under the purple scree slopes and amber bracken of the steep-sided mountains, sits an old stone cottage, gently breathing woodsmoke into the misty morning. The cottage is picturesque, but the garden isn’t: it’s been dug up, all the earth thrown into the air in a series of huge man-sized mounds. Push open the back door, peer in and you will see a small room stacked floor-to-ceiling with muddy coats, shoes, body armour, knee pads, elbow pads, goggles and rows of helmets. Near the door that leads deeper into the house sits something that seems slightly out of place: a pair of stylish, bottle-green, high-heeled

shoes. They belong to Rachel, the long-haired blonde who lives in the cottage along with her two elder brothers, Dan and Gee. A third of the body armour, protection pads and helmets is hers, too, and five of the 15 bikes in the workshop.

If you aren’t into downhill mountain biking, you won’t know this family. But you should. These three are the greatest sporting siblings in Britain today. Two are reigning world champions; all three have won world cups.

These three siblings should be feted and adored, their faces across the front of glossy magazines and their smiles on mid-morning chat shows. But they are

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RIDING WITH THE PROSWhat it’s really like trying to keep up with the Athertons down a hill? Huw Williams grabs the body armour and finds out

that can snatch at wheels and hurl riders from their mounts in arcing flight towards trees and the unforgiving earth. It’s in downhill that Rachel and Gee excel. Rachel is world champion, the first British woman to claim the crown. Gee is the reigning men’s world champ. The World Championship is a single event and this year it will be held in Canberra, Australia. In 2008, 24,600 spectators turned up to watch the Australian races and even bigger crowds are expected this time around.

Here are three siblings at the top of the same sport at the same time, and it’s all down to Dan.

“We lived in a tiny village. It was 30 miles to the big town and there was nothing much to do except ride BMX. Gee wasn’t interested. He was running around with his mates playing army and building dens. But I thought, ‘Sod it,’ and bought him his first BMX. Then he got into it and loved it.”

First it was BMX, then mountain bikes, but the pattern was always thus: Dan started and Gee followed. Rachel refused to be left out, so she joined in. A significant chapter opened when Dan was 16 and Gee was 13, and they entered their first mountain bike race.

“We went flat-out, crashed, got up… went flat-out, crashed… We had no idea about strategy. But even after that first race, we knew we could be competitive, because people were saying we did certain sections faster than anyone else.”

Gee looks up from a concentrated study of his beans on toast to concur with his brother. “Yeah, we knew. We were watching everyone else go down and we knew we could do it. We just lacked the knowledge and experience.”

Rachel grins. “Everyone I knew was into bikes, my brothers and all their friends. At lunchtimes in school I would go out to the trails with all the boys and hang out there and ride. I was never into hanging out with the girls, going shopping. I tried it, but I didn’t like it. But when I first started riding, I didn’t like the riding, I just liked the racing.”

But what’s the difference? Gee breaks away from his food again. “I know! Riding was hard work and you had to get muddy and push your heavy downhill bike up the hills. But racing… she pretty much won from her first race. She was always doing well and she was loving the glory; that was what she was all about, right from the start.”

Dan is slouching sage-like against the wood-burning range in the corner of the kitchen, listening to our

not. Despite its growing popularity, their sport is not on the Olympic favoured list and is not found on the back pages of national newspapers. If they had been part of the Olympics, the chances are that all three would have added to Britain’s gold haul, and you, along with every housewife, schoolkid and van driver in the land, would know their names. But they didn’t and you don’t. So, for everyone who doesn’t know them, let me introduce the Athertons.

Dan is the eldest at 26, intelligent and serious, yet with a sharp sardonic humour and a naughty, boyish grin. Rachel is 21, fearless but feminine, svelte, funny and fiercely independent. The man in the middle is Gee, three years younger than Dan. He is a tall action hero with a hidden sensitivity and perception that belie his playboy façade.

All three ride mountain bikes. Dan’s speciality, four-cross (also called 4X), is an event where four body-armour-clad mountain bikers race each other down a prepared track of steeply-banked turns and huge ramp jumps. The fitness, speed, skills, nerve, tactics and strength required are significant. So are crashes.

‘ IF MOUNTAIN BIKING WERE AN OLYMPIC SPORT, EVERY HOUSEWIFE, SCHOOLKID AND VAN DRIVER IN THE LAND WOULD KNOW THEIR NAMES’

Dan finished third in the 2008 world rankings. He also races downhill.

World Cup downhill racing takes place in the most mountainous and rugged regions of the world. It’s a points-series competition and for 2009 the races will be held in eight countries, one more than last year. The whole circus of competitors and support crews will travel to Canada, Australia, South Africa, Scotland, France, Slovenia, Austria and Andorra.

Imagine a cross between the World Rally Championship and ski racing, then put the competitors on full suspension bicycles that look like motorbikes without an engine and hurl them down a hill. It’s a race against the clock down steep rutted tracks that would be difficult to walk, let alone scream along at breakneck speed with a bicycle between your legs. Sometimes the trails are slick with mud; at other times they are dusty, dry and loose. Whatever the conditions, they are littered with boulders, three-at-a-stride rock staircases and exposed gnarled roots

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THE CHAMPIONS’ BIKEFancy yourself as the next mountain bike star? This is the ride you’ll need

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holy trinity, but it does get on their nerves. After all, as Rachel points out, when you are each at the top in your own right, to be constantly lumped together wears a bit thin. “We are quite focused on keeping our individuality. Whatever we do, at races or when we are with the media, we like to make it known that we are different people.”

Dan looks up from making a round of teas. “We are definitely supportive of each other. We would do anything to help the other two if needed. But at the same time, we all want to be top dog.”

But if you are that competitive, and that good, isn’t it frustrating to be in a sport that isn’t even on the radar for anyone other than the aficionados?

All three are up for this one. It’s their personal crusade to make mountain biking more widely appreciated. They believe that people are missing out by not watching it. Gee is the first to answer. “There’s the technology, the training, the emotion and the excitement of watching a rider rattling down through the woods at high speed between rocks and trees, jumping huge gaps. It’s amazing to watch. It’s just getting it shown to the right people in the right way.”

Then Dan joins in. “It’s not just the races, either. There are events like Red Bull Rampage. That grabs their attention. Show people pictures of someone jumping a 60ft gap in the blue sky on a bike and it captures them.”

So, mountain biking has untapped televisual potential; it’s got excitement, danger, good-looking competitors and exotic locations. Isn’t that even more reason to be bitter that they aren’t adored?

This time it’s Rachel’s turn to be philosophical. “We didn’t get into it to be household names around the world; we got into it because we loved it. You can’t be bitter about it. Mum gets frustrated a lot, especially during the Olympics, seeing the coverage and all the attention they get. She feels that we should be getting similar acclaim for what we have achieved. But you just have to do what you can to help the sport along and build that exposure.”

We’ve been here several hours and many sporting stars would have been clock-watching ages ago, keen for the interlopers to leave. Not the Athertons. As we draw things to a close, they are more concerned that the drive from their remote home will be long. As goodbyes are said, Rachel extends her hand holding a can. “Red Bull for the road?”

conversation around the big wooden table, interjecting where necessary.

“Rachel is full of energy. She always has been ever since she was young. She does occasionally have moments when her temper kicks in or she is as low as you can go, depressed, but then straight away she’s back up again. Rachel is also the best racer. When it comes to all-out, flat-out racing, she’s the best. She’s a good rider, but sometimes she will be struggling with something on the course during practice and she will be really worried about it, but then in the race she will nail it. That ability to just give 100 per cent to the race is excellent.”

Gee nods in agreement; Rachel looks humbled but pleased. “I think I have learned that from watching these two race. I have two of the best coaches. Oh boys! I can’t thank you enough!”

But her competitiveness and commitment come at a cost: she was knocked off her road bike during winter training, resulting in a shoulder injury that will force her to miss the season-opener in South Africa later this month.

Gee, by contrast, is more level-headed, according to Dan: “He’s focused on what has to be done, and doesn’t care about what he has to do to achieve it. That’s what he’s going to do and everyone else just has to deal with it. I think that’s how you have to be if you want to be a professional athlete. There’s no point running around trying to look after other people if you’re trying to be the best in the world.”

There’s no disagreement from the other two; the comments and criticisms

seem to have been taken as fair. Now Gee takes his turn as the family analyst. “Dan is a very dedicated person.”

Then Rachel butts in using that sharp disappointed tone that can only be made by the youngest. “I was going to say dedicated!” Gee flashes a wry big-brother smile and continues.

“He’s always been like it. That carries him through, the amount of effort he puts in and what he is willing to do in order to make it to wherever he needs to be. That will get you a long way in life.”

Rachel jumps in again as the three-way compliments and critiques between the brothers and their sister continue. “If Dan decides to do something, he will put 110 per cent into it.”

Gee nods. “He’s also very smart. At races, he always thinks things through. You can see it when he’s on the track with three other people, anticipating what they might do, seeing potential moves to get ahead. That fast, smart thinking is essential when you are racing ‘four-man’ on a mountain bike.”

Supportive yet challenging, humorous but honest. Spend time with them and you soon witness their triple act. They’re three distinct characters who interact seamlessly, like a synchronised sibling team. Not surprisingly, that’s how the media often portray them: not as three individual sporting gods but as a conjoined

‘ THE ATHERTONS ARE THREE DISTINCT CHARACTERS WHO INTERACT SEAMLESSLY, LIKE A SYNCHRONISED SIBLING TEAM’

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Steeped in myth and legend, the brutal-but-beautiful game of hurling is much more than a pastime – it’s part of the very fabric of Irish society. This is sport as living cultureWords Justin Hynes Photography Neil Massey

THE FASTEST FIELD SPORT IN THE WORLD

A C T I O N

Steeped in myth and legend, the brutal-but-beautiful pastime of hurling is more than a mere game – it’s part of the very fabric of Irish society. This is sport as living culture

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Just an hour to go before the start of the match and in the corner of the stadium, a small boy, no more than seven or eight years old, is hitting a thickly-ridged ball back and forth to his father. As he swings his half-size hurley, he keeps having to shove the sleeves of his shirt up his arms. His small frame is swamped by the outsize blue and yellow team jersey, the colours of Portumna’s hurling club. The back is covered with scrawls from a variety of marker pens. Black and blue, green and red, each one the mark of a hero.

In just under 60 minutes the owners of most of those names will take to the pitch here in Thurles’ Semple Stadium – Gaelic Games’ self-styled ‘Field of Legends’ – to contest the semi-final of the All-Ireland Senior Club Championship. For now though, the dull smack of the ball hitting the end of the boy’s hurley is the only sound in the empty stadium.

“He got that shirt after last year’s All-Ireland,” says his father. “He got everyone at the club to sign it. All the players. And the management too, and the selectors. Great day.”

The boy is the son of Oisín O’Neill, physio for Portumna. The Galway side are defending club champions, have played countless matches to get to this semi-final, have won two of the last three finals, but today are underdogs. Their opposition, Ballyhale Shamrocks, hail from Kilkenny, hurling’s heartland, the county that currently defines the standard in this ancient sport. On the Ballyhale team are some of the finest players currently gracing the game.

Ballyhale centre half-forward Henry Shefflin is reckoned by many to be the greatest player in the sport’s recent history, the 29-year-old poised to eclipse his own predecessor DJ Carey

surface it’s a crude stereotype, a bad joke to be used to define the backward ways of the ‘Fightin’ Oirish’. It’s a lazy cliché, one that bypasses the significance of sport as a function of culture, of a game that has been played here since the history of the land was first written, since the rules which governed these fields were first codified.

The fifth-century Brehon Laws, the orally transmitted code of Celtic Ireland, mention the sport as an approved method of settling disputes between villages. By the seventh century, when the country’s mythology was first written down, the game features in the stories of this land’s heroes. The boy warrior Setanta, invited to attend a feast held by the blacksmith Culann, arrives late and is prevented from entering by a monstrous wolfhound. The beast is slain by a young hurler, who hits a ball down the dog’s throat.

That though is myth, a hoary old reminder that hurling is a sport built in mists of antiquity. Good for the tourists. The modern reality is that, against the odds, hurling still represents some kind of spirited identity and a kind of unshowy individualism. You grow up representing school and parish club and then one day, if you’re lucky, your county. And if you are very, very lucky, it could take you from a small town in Galway to Croke Park, a shining 80,000-capacity concrete and steel cathedral of the sport in Dublin, the home of the Gaelic Athletic Association. Here, you might play in an All-Ireland final and write your name in the history books of your county, club, parish, all the way back to the family who first shoved a stick in your tiny fist and intoned the words “keep, hook, block” in your ear.

In a homogenised, commercially calculating world, where children everywhere are brought up to idolise untouchable perma-tanned Premier League celebrities, to dream of Ferraris, tabloid notoriety and a sprawling mock-Tudor ‘crib’ in Cheshire, a game like this has no right to survive.

Yet it does. And thrives. Portumna is a tiny town on the borders of Galway and Tipperary. There is no major industry here beyond farming and the tourism that comes from being located on the banks of the Shannon, on the shores of Lough Derg. It has a population of just 2,000 people. Here, the idea of anyone getting paid a hundred thousand a week to play sport is simply ludicrous.

In towns and villages like this, you are handed a hurley as soon as you can stand, you turn out for your parish club

and perhaps even the storied Christy Ring, a Corkman so revered that disputing his pre-eminent status is akin to heresy. But that is the weight Shefflin carries into this game. If he’s on form, he could win this single-handedly for Ballyhale. Lining out against that kind of reputation means that, today, for Portumna, it’s an uphill battle.

“This is huge,” says O’Neill. “For club players this is the biggest day of their lives. This is like the FA Cup final. It’s D-Day.”

There’s nothing flippant in the statement. In fact, there’s something almost maniacal in the intensity with which it’s delivered. “How important is this for the club?” O’Neill adds flatly. “Today, they have to die out there.”

This is what it means to be involved in hurling in rural Ireland. From the outside, it’s easy to see the sport as almost comic. Take 30 grown men, arm them with 40in lengths of solid ash and throw them into combat on a muddy field in a small town buried in countryside that still largely owes any prosperity it enjoys to farming. On the

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for the love of playing a game that is woven into the fabric of society. In towns like this, heroes are real, tangible. They fix your car when it breaks down, manage your bank account when you deposit your wages, grow the food that eventually winds up on your plate. Hurling, the fastest field sport on the planet, a game that marries almost balletic grace to the speed and aggression of an international rugby three-quarter and the hand-eye co-ordination of the fighter pilot, is a sport grounded in a reality and in community. So much so that it is still resolutely amateur.

Today, in Thurles, the mirror for Ballyhale’s Henry Shefflin is a Portumna kid called Joe Canning. Twenty years old and he’s already being called the future of hurling, the one who will take on the Kilkenny player’s mantle. It’s easy to see why. Midway through the game, he intercepts a loose pass, shoulders aside a challenge and, twisting his almost-too-large frame with incongruous speed, spins to unleash an almost-blind hook shot that arcs some 60m to land between the posts for a point. It’s an astonishing display of skill, and one he repeats numerous times during the furious 60 minutes of play. The sort of skills that get rewarded with contracts, sponsorship deals, celebrity. Not here though. Tomorrow, on Monday, nursing bruises the colour of egg yolks, he’ll go back to college in Limerick to continue his business and marketing degree. That’s the job. Hurling is simply the passion. An unavoidable one.

“People say that because it’s an amateur sport and you’re not getting money, you might tire of it,” he said recently. “I think, if anything, that drives you on a bit more. Because you’re standing for something, you’re representing something. You’re part of a parish, a small-knit community. And you’re even prouder to be part of that. You’ve a sense of identity. That’s something I never get sick of.”

That much is clear from the moment Canning and his team-mates take to the field. Ballyhale appear blinking into the low winter sun as if emerging from hibernation. There’s something almost lethargic about the way they settle onto the bench set up in the middle of the park for the team pictures. By contrast, Portumna burst from the tunnel like cartoon animals, frenzied, fidgety, itching to get to it. Damien Hayes, the team’s right corner forward, has the word ‘energy’ scrawled down his forearm. It’s a motivational foible

A ROUGH GUIDE TO HURLING

repeated throughout the team. Across the backs of hands, on the inside of wrists are penned a variety of phrases: ‘work like a dog’; ‘inspiration’; ‘teamwork’. When the team photo is done and the squad briefly huddle for a last thought before the 2.30pm throw-in, the words of their physio come echoing back and, indeed, they do look ready to die for this.

The game has been over for 40 minutes. The pale sun is beginning to drift towards the horizon, but there’s no sign of anyone leaving the pitch. No one from Portumna at least. Ballyhale have been demolished. The scoreline is emphatic: 5-11 to 1-16. Canning has scored the lion’s share of those five goals and 11 points, racking up an individual tally of 2-5. In the morning, the papers will be full of ‘the king is dead, long live the king’ eulogies to the arrival of Canning as a superstar and the (temporary?) passing of Shefflin. Just at this moment, however, the superstar is busy chatting with the mother of a team-mate.

She breaks off the conversation to greet a friend, enquiring after her

How it started, the rules of play and what the scoreline means

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kids. Canning waits patiently for the exchange to be over before continuing. It’s the same all over the pitch.

These players have laboured through to a great victory. On Sunday morning, pundits had reckoned this to be the ‘real’ final. What will take place at Croke Park on St Patrick’s Day will be a formality. You wouldn’t know it. The atmosphere on the pitch is like a church social. Kids skitter between the legs of adults, half-sized hurls flashing past their ankles. Others dutifully line up to be introduced to the players to get their programmes signed, while the grown-ups chat. The players ruffle the hair of kids who are their neighbours. One kid makes a smart remark to a player and receives a playful kick in the pants as reward.

If it seems strange that sports stars, men whose faces are plastered across the sides of buses and on billboards in the capital, do this, that they linger for close to an hour on a pitch invaded by the faithful, then that’s because it is. But this is the special quality of hurling. Its inextricable link to community.

There is a sense of something being passed on. When kids are still able to walk up to their heroes and congratulate them for making their own dreams come true, when a seven-year-old boy can practise his skills on the pitch on which those idols will later play, then there is a real feeling of connectivity, of a sport being handed down from generation to generation in a way that seems organic, real and inspired by the place in which the players grow up. There is nothing Hollywood about the passion it inspires, about the essential quality of the game as a cultural touchstone. It simply is.

On his way back to the dressing room, right half-forward Niall Hayes, still fizzing with adrenaline, is intercepted by reporters and delivers the message – family, town ,county. “This is a great day for Portumna and a great Galway day,” he says. “A great day for the county. I have no problem saying it: I’m from Galway and I’m proud of it. We are the best team in the country.”

Back out on the pitch, Portumna’s veteran fullback Eugene McEntee, making his way through the crowd to the dressing room, is slapped on the back by a supporter.

“Good man, Eugene,” he roars, a rough hand smacking the former captain hard around the shoulders. “That’s hurling, boy! That’s f***ing hurling!”

It certainly is.

NO ORDINARY JOEHe’s tipped to take over the crown of hurling hero Henry Shefflin, but what is it that makes Portumna’s Joe Canning (above) tick?

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96 SHORT STORY 98 MIND’S EYE

Excite your senses with our hot picks to see, hear and savour

More Body & Mind

From hosting star-studded parties to fashion shows and groundbreaking art installations, Red Bull Space is fast becoming the coolest – and most adventurous – venue in New YorkWords Siobhan O’Connor

Watch this Space

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Picture a space where Tony Hawk can rub shoulders with his skate buddies in a low-lit, intimate setting big enough for a few hundred, but with a well-edited guestlist and a tight door. Then picture one where hip-hop’s rising star Kid Cudi might pop bottles with Kanye West. Finally, picture a runway at New York Fashion Week, where an avant-garde designer wows editors with her clever use of space as much as with her collection. All worlds apart, and yet Red Bull Space in New York has hosted all three.

“The beauty of the space is that it can be whatever you want it to be,” says Lindsey Guerrera, events manager for the 3,000sq ft SoHo loft. The space boasts a few white leather ottomans, two white support columns and huge floor-to-ceiling windows. The look is industrial chic meets downtown cool.

Five days a week, from 10am until 8 or 9pm, you will find Guerrera, hauling around couches, poking away at her BlackBerry and meeting clients. She collaborates closely on every event the space hosts and attends them all, too. “These are unique collaborations, where we all have input,” she says, “I hate to miss even one!”

Most recently, Red Bull Space teamed up with Laura Dawson, an emerging designer, for Dawson’s Fashion Week show. Shirking the conventions of the Bryant Park fashion show stages, Dawson wanted a space where she could pull off the kind of show she’d spent a lifetime thinking about. So with the help of Guerrera and her team, and the Buckminster Fuller institute, Dawson commissioned a huge geodesic dome to be erected inside the space; come show night, the models would emerge from the dome and onto the runway – a perfect synergy between interior space, fashion, and design.

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ever seen,” says Lawrence Marazzi, a businessman and Dawson’s fiancé. “This was nothing like Bryant Park; at Bryant Park you end up with cookie-cutter shows.” At Bryant Park, it can also cost up to $50,000 just to lease a tent; another $50,000 or so for production. Red Bull Space, meanwhile, provides its partners with a cost-effective way to create premium events.

While the Dawson show took six months to produce, others can be whipped up in weeks, or even days. Thanks to the AV room – the ‘guts’ of the place – with its intimidating piles of sound, light and video equipment, the space transforms depending on the nature of the event. That means glow-in-the-dark stickers and clever projections for the nascent hip-hop artist Izza Kizza’s upcoming mixtape release party, which has an outer-space theme. At the NBA 2K9 party, projectors descended from the ceiling so that basketball star Kevin Garnett could challenge himself to a live game on the big screen.

“We love crazy ideas, and we always try to find a solution no matter what,” says Guerrera. “I don’t think in the time I have worked here we’ve had to say, ‘No we can’t pull that off.’” But only a year and a half ago, the loft was mostly unused. Long ago, it was a brewery; then an ill-fated hotspot called Chaos. But by the end of 2008, Red Bull Space had hosted 70 events, and is on pace to better that this year.

Since the Laura Dawson show, the phone’s been ringing more than usual. “We’ve gotten lots of calls from the fashion world,” says Guerrera. And though the genius of the geodesic dome might never again be replicated, that’s sort of the point. “We kept it,” says Guerrera. “We can always find something new to do with what we have.”

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He was the first African to win the Paris-Dakar rally – in the first year it wasn’t held in Africa. But part of the great continent will always be with the Red Bull VW driver, as he likes eating springboks…

The Red Bulletin met De Villiers at Hangar-7, in Salzburg, Austria, Red Bull’s unofficial headquarters.The Dakar has a fearsome reputation as an endurance test. How do you eat on those long desert stages?The stages last six or seven hours, and you won’t get far on normal food, so the car is full of power-bars; they’re easy to eat and they give you energy over a long period.

Many drivers reward themselves with a treat at the end of a stage. Did you?Absolutely. A little treat works wonders for your morale. I always have some biltong with me. It’s strips of dried, very salty beef – a South African delicacy. It tastes lovely, and after a day in the VW Touareg rally car you need salt anyway.

What do you drink?Isotonic drinks; up to 6 litres per stage. The temperature in the car can get up to between 60 and 70ºC and there’s a constant risk of dehydration. The drinks are cooled, which makes them taste better. At the end of the stage, there’s always diluted Red Bull for the drivers.

And how good does your first beer taste after two weeks in the sand?The best beer you’ve ever had! Actually, that’s not true. The second one is the best, especially if you’ve won. You knock back the first one just to get rid of the dust, but you enjoy the second one.

So if you had to choose, beer or wine?It depends. There’s something to be said for an ice-cold beer or a cool white wine on hot days. Or a glass of good red. There’s a time for everything.

You come from the wine-growing Cape, so what are your favourites?Cabernet and Shiraz are the best. And Merlot after them.

How do you explain the boom in South African wines?South Africa has phenomenal wine-growers. And that’s to do with history. My ancestors, for example, came to South Africa from France three centuries ago and brought their culture with them. South African wine would never have got so big on good marketing alone.

Have you tried wine-growing yourself?No, I’ve preferred to whizz around the vineyards in a car.

What’s your favourite place for dinner?All over South Africa there are vineyards where you can eat, too. It’s so peaceful there, so with a beautiful landscape and nice company, it’s perfect.

And what do you choose to eat?Meat! And without much fuss. Meat can be so good on its own that I don’t need much with it. I don’t like fussy food.

What meat?A great steak. Argentinian beef is phenomenal. I’ve been to Brazil and they know what to do with meat, too. The food I ate really brought home to me that the Dakar had been relocated to South America. Good beef is as good as game. South African springbok is a real delicacy. I’ve eaten alligator, too; it tastes like rabbit.

What about sweet things?They’re not really my thing. What are we eating now?

Kaiserschmarrn.What’s in it?

Eggs, flour, sugar, a bit of milk…It’s good. And the fruity thing?

Stewed plums… How often do you cook for yourself?Not often. I might invite friends over who cook. Otherwise I eat out.

What would have to happen for you to cook dinner for your co-driver, Dirk von Zitzewitz?I can’t imagine it ever happening. I’d rather tell him to find a restaurant and I’d invite him to it. Why else do I have a navigator in the car?

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Giniel de Villiers

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Before you get folding, a couple of tricks from the physics treasure chest:

How to Make a World-beating AeroplaneFollow our easy tips for constructing a Paper Wings-eligible aircraft that will conquer the skies of your living room

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For your morning commute or a weekend at altitude, this is how to trick out your wheels in style

Get the Gear: Mountain Biking

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HOTSPOTSNo April Fools here this month, just top stars

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O’NEILL HIGHLAND OPEN 23.04.09 – 30.04.09

FIVB WORLD TOUR20.04.09 – 25.04.09

US MASTERS GOLF 06.04.09 – 12.04.09

RED BULL LOCAL HERO TOUR 10.04.09 – 17.04.09

IFSC CLIMBING WORLD CUP 11.04.09 – 12.04.09

QUIKSILVER PRO WQS 11.04.09 – 20.04.09

FIM MX1/MX2 WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP 12.04.09

FIM MX3 WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP12.04.09

RED BULL EYE IN THE SKY12.04.09

WORLD ROOKIE FEST 15.04.09 – 19.04.09

RED BULL AIR RACE WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP 17.04.09 – 18.04.09

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UCI MOUNTAIN BIKE WORLD CUP 25.04.09 – 26.04.09

FLORA LONDON MARATHON 26.04.09

NEW YORK RED BULLS VS DC UNITED 26.04.09

FORMULA ONE BAHRAIN GRAND PRIX26.04.09

AARON’S 499 26.04.09

RED BULL PAPER WINGS WORLD FINALS01.05.09 – 02.05.09

RED BULL ELITE YOUTH CUP18.04.09 – 19.04.09

NATIONAL SKATING CHAMPIONSHIP 18.04.09 – 19.04.09

RED BULL PRO NATIONALS19.04.09

RED BULL BREAK DA RULES24.04.09

WRC RALLY ARGENTINA 24.04.09 – 26.04.09

RED BULL FREEDOM 25.04.09 – 26.04.09

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

BONN MARATHON 19.04.09

LONGBOARD CLASSIC 18.04.09

RED BULL BEDROOM JAM2./6./9./16./20./23./30.3.2009

JEREMY JAY5.3.2009

CLARA MOTO5.3.2009

DORIAN CONCEPT6.3.2009

FIS SKISPRUNG WELTCUP7.3.2009

EVENTD. M. 2009

EVENTD. M. 2009

DIE MACHT DER NACHTMehr als einmal um die Welt für alle, die nie müde werden.

ELECTRON FESTIVAL09.04.09 – 12.04.09

HELIOCENTRICS & MULATU ASTATKE09.04.09

FABRICLIVE10.04.09

DJ MUJAVA11.04.09

RADIO SLAVE11.04.09

The days may be getting longer, but there’s still plenty of fun after dark

NIGHTSPOTS

FLYING LOTUS & KODE 917.04.09

MAD PROFESSOR07.04.09

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EVENTD. M. 2009

FIS SNOWBOARD BIG AIR7.3.2009

I LOVE IBIZA7.3.2009

PETER FOX FEAT. COLD STEEL9.3.2009

AFTER WORK – RED BULL MUSIC ACADEMY SHOWCASE12. – 15.3. 2009

SCHOOL OF SEVEN BELLS12.3.2009

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

ALL CITY EASTER JAM11.04.09

MOTOGP GRAND PRIX OF QATAR 12.04.09

DAY & NIGHT ON STORE STREET12.04.09

PRESSURE12.04.09

DJ MEHDI & A-TRAK12.04.09

SINDEN, FAKE BLOOD & TRENTEMØLLER12.04.09

LADYHAWKE01.05.09-03.05.09

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FrenchClassLadyhawke is packing venues at home and abroad. Tom Hall catches up with the reluctant pop pin-up in France’s capital

LADYHAWKEPARIS

The Green Room

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DERRICK MAY14.04.09

ROBERT OWENS17.04.09

DIPLO17.04.09

YOU ME AT SIX17.04.09

NIGHT OF THE JUMPS17.04.09 – 18.04.09

COACHELLA FESTIVAL17.04.09 – 19.04.09

New Runway in London

Nightcrawler

Backstage at London Fashion Week doesn’t have to be a chaotic affair. Paul Wilson follows cool operators PPQ from catwalk to a giant double bed

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TIGA18.04.09

DOVES19.04.09

WHITEST BOY ALIVE21.04.09

FOUR TET23.04.09

HANNIBAL24.04.09

RED BULL SOUND CLASH24.04.09

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BANG FACE WEEKENDER 224.04.09 – 26.04.09

TOM MIDDLETON25.04.09

DAVID GUETTA & FRIENDS25.04.09

RED BULL BEDROOM JAM X-CRAWL25.04.09

GROOVIN THE MOO FESTIVAL02.05.09

BREAK ON STAGE02.05.09

There won’t be any doubt as to the after-party location for the first Red Bull Air Race on April 17-18. In a region brimming with opulence, says Uschi Korda, it’s hard to top Etoiles

Arabian Nights

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Cultural void? Not this Los Angeles. Flying Lotus, AKA experimental hip-hop producer Steven Ellison, proves as much, as he takes John McDonnell on a tour of his hometown favourites

The Lotus Position

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Bull’sEyeAlthough we’re always trying to domesticate our furry friends, we just can’t stop them behaving like animals

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Hannes Arch.„Boundaries solely exist in our minds.“

Even as a young boy he was convinced that it was important to believe in goals in order to achieve them. He dreamt of fl ying – and today the cockpit is his second home.About 2.7 million people around the globe have one goal in common. Accidents have left them confi ned to a wheelchair. Their dream is one day being able to walk again.

For a long time, paraplegia was considered to be incurable. But scientists have managed to overcome this medical-scientific boundary. Today there is proof that it is possible to regenerate the injured spinal cord.To guarantee and accelerate progress in this complex scientifi c domain,the Wings for Life Foundation subsidizes top level research projects worldwide to cure spinal cord injuries.

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Your contribution makes a difference. Donate on www.wingsforlife.com

Red Bull Air Race World Champion 2008 and Wings for Life Ambassador.

The snow is melting slowly this year. Just like us.

You can hardly tell if he has pulled a dirty grey sheet over his body or whether the filth that’s swimming in his stomach is showing through his thinned skin. Both would apply to us in any case. To Hartmut, lying there on the sofa as limply as if someone had laid him there like a towel. To me, crouching on the Flokati rug and listlessly playing on his PlayStation as if it was a minimum requirement beyond breathing. Our cat Yannick is the only lively one; he wanders around us purring. It’s not a satisfied purr; it’s a purr that’s trying to rouse us. Rouse us from the numbness that we’ve fallen into since the New Year and that we can’t overcome.

On New Year’s Eve, everything was as it had always been. Twinkling stars, fireworks, the prospects of a long night ahead, New Year’s Day in your dressing-gown, then a new beginning by January 5 at the very latest! But now it’s the 21st and there’s no beginning in sight.

“Who finished the coffee?” asks Susanne from the kitchen in a rasping voice. She is the only one moving at all at the moment. Hartmut and I try to, but always instantly find reasons to stop again. The coffee’s all gone. And it didn’t help. There’s a row of 21 empty, shiny, silver-and-blue cans on the windowsill. We got up after every can, wanting to start the year at last. But we were back where we started after two hours at the most, every time.

“It’s all gone,” Hartmut calls out to the kitchen, languidly, and Susanne shuffles into the living room to join us, hurling herself into the swing chair, a hemisphere suspended from a heavy steel column. She looks casually at the screen, showing the console version of Civilization II. I don’t know why I’m playing this life-simulation game instead of a run-of-the-mill shoot-’em-up that would better suit this kind of day. Maybe I want to show us what we’re doing in real life on the screen. My civilisation is collapsing definitively. I’m not making any decisions; I’m letting it slide. Yannick walks over my legs, his tail held high.

“We need to get the year started,” I say.“We’re sick,” says Hartmut. A fly

lands in his sideburns and cleans its feet on them. Susanne looks around in the hanging chair, finds a cracker amid the cushions, holds it up in front of her eyes and bites into it.

The illness Hartmut is speaking about is a pretext. Granted, all three of us have got a bit of a cold; that much we can say. But what we can also say is that on the

A Bad Start to the Year

A story by Oliver Uschmann

Can you really have the Monday morning blues for a whole month?

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About the authorWhen German writer Oliver Uschmann (born 1977) was in kindergarten, he got his head stuck in a chair and had to be cut free. In Wesel, he wrote his first stories, worked as a packer and staged wrestling shows in the playground. In Bochum, he studied literature, worked as an events organiser, for a fanzine, as a singer, an activist and plotted a revolution. In Berlin, he studied reality and worked as a successful advertising writer. He now lives in Münsterland and alongside Sylvia Witt creates the ‘Hui World’ of his Hartmut and I novels. He also now makes chairs. www.hartmut-und-ich.de

seventh day of the year, with the cold abating and the ability to work threatening to return completely, Hartmut stormed out of the house in a panic and began to ring neighbouring doorbells with some excuse or other, until someone with the flu and swollen eyes appeared at the door. He then breathed in strong and deep, held the air, dashed back into the house, closed the door and breathed out wetly in every room. Our colds were back and we had won a few more days. On the 10th day, my holiday came to an end and UPS was expecting me back on the assembly line. It took me three hours to find a puddle down on Prince Regent Street that was frozen enough for me to slip on and sprain my ankle.

“What the hell’s wrong with us?” I ask while Susanne swings quietly and squeakily and Hartmut’s eyes goggle at the TV as if stuck on a sofa-cover from a joke shop. A cover with eyes.

“An existential crisis,” says the cover. “We’ve somehow understood that everything always starts over again. I answer a client and, as soon as I send the email, three new ones come. You fixed up a motorbike, Susanne, and then there were two neighbouring kids with their mopeds at the door…”

“And the flow of parcels on the conveyor belt never stops…” I sigh.

“Exactly,” says Hartmut. “We’ve never accepted it before. We steadfastly do the washing-up in the hope that this might be the last time and the crockery will stay clean forever now.”

“It’s awful,” I say.“Yeah,” says Susanne as she chews

on the rest of the weeks-old cracker. Yannick jumps onto the windowsill, lumbers around the empty cans and knocks one of them onto the floor.

“He wants us to at least give it a shot,” I say.

“The daily attempt,” says Susanne. “I’m going to do it,” says Hartmut.

He unfolds himself from the sofa. The cover body gradually gains in volume. Hartmut goes into the kitchen, takes another can out of the fridge, cracks it open and drinks it in such huge gulps that starting the year really seems possible. Susanne and I hear him clap his hands. “So, now we can get things going. I think I’ll start with the washing.”

His steps fade away in the direction of the bathroom. But as soon as he crosses the threshold, they fall silent because there is no more bathroom floor for all the dirty washing. We hear him arranging and rearranging the items. Twenty minutes later, the first load is

finally on. He comes back to the living room. And says, “You can’t see it. You can’t see it at all. A whole machine’s worth of dirty clothes has been put on but you can’t see the difference.” The fact overwhelms him. His eyes plead for salvation, but the energy drink is still working. “I’ll go and check the mail now,” he says. Susanne looks at me as if to say, “You go with him. I can’t get out of this chair now.”

I put the controller down, leave my civilisation – which I’d neglected anyway – to its own devices and follow Hartmut through the hallway to the entrance. He opens the front door and sticks his key in the mailbox, which is already overflowing. “Wait!” I say. But it’s already too late. The mail, compressed to the density of a black hole, expands to its original volume within a millisecond and the flood of paper throws Hartmut over the banister and onto the weathered ground. He falls nastily on his back. “Ow!” he groans.

The last few letters flutter their way down to the gravel.

Nothing but bills. So I’m standing on the stairs and

he’s lying in front of me, felled by his own postal procrastination. A neighbour comes past. His dog greets us. Hartmut works his way out of the paper. “Gimme your phone,” he says. I take my mobile out of my trouser pocket and hand it to him. He coughs. Yannick stands excitedly in the doorway. He wags his tail like the neighbour’s dog. The chimes on the door opposite ring. Hartmut dials a number, waits a couple of seconds till someone answers and says, “Yeah, hi Mum! Look, this may seem a little strange, but Manfred from Merseburg is my… what is it again?”

Hartmut’s mother answers on the other end of the line.

“Second cousin once removed? Yeah, that’s what I thought. Didn’t something happen to his grandfather recently?”

An answer.“Really?” Hartmut makes an

indefinable face. His mother confirms.“Good, Mum. Thanks. I just wanted

to… yeah, otherwise everything’s fine. Yeah, I will. OK, Mum. Yeah. Bye.”

He hangs up, gives me the phone, snatches up a third of the letters and goes back indoors. I take another third and follow him in. Yannick dashes into the flat and runs to his dish. He’s still full, but he’s got used to taking up the food distribution position as soon as someone enters the flat as a matter of principle. He has a discerning supply mentality. Hartmut says, “Hello from my mother.” He ignores the cat.

Back in the living room, Susanne is still sitting in her chair, but appears to have found the strength to change the game in the console. She is now guiding Bruce Willis through the apocalypse and casually shooting anything that moves.

“And?” she asks.Hartmut walks over to the sofa, turns his

back to it, darts a glance over his shoulder at his bum as if aiming and folds himself back onto the sofa like a cover as if he’d never got up. I crouch in front of the chair.

Hartmut says, “There’s been a death in the family. No one can expect me to work now.”

Susanne opens her eyes wide and leans forward slightly. I make my lips mouth, “the second cousin in Merseburg’s grandfather”, which isn’t as easy as it sounds. Susanne leans back.

“No,” she says. “No one could expect that of you.”

“Oh yeah,” I say, and sink deeper into the rug. Yannick meows mournfully, even though his dish is full.

We should get the year started.But there’s still time.

“On the 10th day my holiday came to an end. It took me three hours to find a puddle frozen enough for me to slip and sprain my ankle”

97

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

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

How useful is it to be mad? Before I answer that question, consider the history of the word. This is a history that is not very long. The Oxford English Dictionary has no citation earlier than 1538. So while that certainly predates DVD and MP3, in one sense this means madness is, at least as an idea, rather modern.

The sense of ‘mad’ that we use today is a part of the contemporary idea of personality that is an invention of the past few hundred years. Medieval people did not, perhaps, have personalities. Or if they did, these personalities were defined by God, not by their own will. The cost of having your own personality is… someone might very possibly decide you are mad.

And what does mad mean? Clearly, there is in some sad cases massive impairment of the higher cerebral functions, which means people cannot perform ordinary tasks. But that’s, in fact, rather rare. Instead, the dictionary offers us: insane, lunatic, maniacal, frenzied, foolish, unwise, wildly excited. If we are honest, not all bad, then. Like the word ‘idiot’, mad has got itself a bad name. Idiot did not originally mean someone with compromised intellectual faculties. It meant ‘outsider’; the word ‘idiosyncrasy’ retains something of this meaning.

So, being mad suggests a sort of originality in behaviour. Because if a mad person’s behaviour were normal, then, it follows, it would not be mad. As the great contrarian psychologist RD Laing explained during a moment of lucidity in his drug-fuelled 1960s, there is a sense in which sanity is statistical. That is to say, if more than 50 per cent of the population is behaving in a certain way, can it

dormant, neglected, idle. And it has to be remembered there are some alarmingly negative aspects to originality. After all, the clinically diagnosed schizophrenic has an ‘original’ view of the world. Some medical researchers believe there may be a gene that is shared between the schizophrenic and the genius.

So here is the root of the old question about genius and madness. Or, as Alexander Pope had it: “Great wits to madness nearly are allied.” But great wits are by no means always mad. It is, for example, almost impossible to imagine Shakespeare as mad. On the other hand, another great wit, the playwright August Strindberg, who suffered from severe bouts of distinctly odd behaviour, was able to keep his ‘madness’ under control. He thought this madness was a creative tool that he was lucky to possess. “Not many have the courage for it,” he wrote.

Edgar Allen Poe (who suffered from what we would call bipolar disorder) thought madness might, in fact, be “the loftiest intelligence”. Certainly, madness and originality are linked. The madman talks to himself, but it is this access to the inner self that is, perhaps, also the source of original creative inspiration. Wagner’s greatest work came only after he realised that his best musical ideas came from within himself, not the world outside.

So to get back to the question about the thin partitions between genius and madness: yes, madness is useful for the creative, but needs to be kept in check. Against all the benefits of mania and excitement and originality enjoyed by the mad have to be weighed the advantages of judgement and control. Maybe that denies the possibility of madness.

Perhaps, after all, the true test of greatness is a sense of realism, a self-deprecating assessment of one’s own position in the world. Why be a manic original? Better a dull, rich lawyer than an inspired and impoverished madman. Very possibly. But better still, what about an absolutely original assessment of one’s calling? Muhammad Ali explained himself: “It’s just a job. Grass grows, birds fly, waves pound the sand, I beat people up.” Now there’s something truly original: a great athlete with a sense of humour. And no one ever said Ali was mad. IL

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Stephen Bayley considers the age-old question about the relationship between genius and insanity

Mind’s Eye be mad? If only slightly more than half of us dressed like Napoleon Bonaparte and believed we could fly, then that would be normal. Or is it mad to argue thus?

Mad means standing out from the norm. Therefore it is mad not to watch X Factor. Yet, this is a form of madness to which many would dutifully aspire. Mad, it thus follows, means originality. And originality is one of the tests of creativity. You don’t call people creative if their work is predictable or repetitive. Or if they watch X Factor.

What then is the urge to be original? Is there a Darwinian explanation? Originality has a curious relationship with intelligence or ability. For example, a lawyer might be highly intelligent, extremely well educated and have consummate skill in drafting clear, precise prose. But he may be entirely happy to use these attributes in pursuit of property conveyancing for clients. He may have no interest in doing original work.

Psychologists have long wondered if the possession of creative ability means that you always want to find something interesting to do with it. And the answer appears to be: no, not necessarily. It seems very likely that many individuals possessing the wherewithal to be creative are entirely happy to leave this talent

Is it Crazy to be Mad?

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