From Days of Thunder to A Little Night Music: the NASCAR racer that's a musical instrument HEAVY METAL! Beckham By Numbers NOT JUST 23: HOW DAVID'S SECRET STATS ADD UP Fired Up for The Ashes MYTHS & LEGENDS OF CRICKET'S LONGEST-BURNING RIVALRY Bottle-Top Baseball THE MILLION-DOLLAR STREET KIDS FROM THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC Exclusively with The Irish Independent on the first Tuesday of every month HEAVY METAL! From Days of Thunder to A Little Night Music: the NASCAR racer that's a musical instrument Beckham By Numbers NOT JUST 23: HOW DAVID'S SECRET STATS ADD UP Shore Thing UNCOVERING SURFING’S TRUE HISTORY: GOODBYE HAWAII, ALOHA IRELAND Bottle-Top Baseball THE MILLION-DOLLAR STREET KIDS FROM THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC Exclusively with The Irish Independent on the first Tuesday of every month AN ALMOST INDEPENDENT MONTHLY MAGAZINE/JULY 2009
Transcript
From Days of Thunder to A Little Night Music:
the NASCAR racer that's a musical instrument
HEAVY METAL!
Beckham By Numbers NOT JUST 23: HOW DAVID'S SECRET STATS ADD UP
Fired Up for The Ashes MYTHS & LEGENDS OF CRICKET'S LONGEST-BURNING RIVALRY
Bottle-Top Baseball THE MILLION-DOLLAR STREET KIDS FROM THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
Exclusively with The Irish Independent
on the first Tuesday of every month
HEAVY METAL!From Days of Thunder to
A Little Night Music: the NASCAR racer that's
a musical instrument
Beckham By Numbers NOT JUST 23: HOW DAVID'S SECRET STATS ADD UP
Bottle-Top Baseball THE MILLION-DOLLAR STREET KIDS FROM THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
Exclusively with The Irish Independent
on the first Tuesday of every month
AN ALMOST INDEPENDENT MONTHLY MAGAZINE /JULY 2009
The etnies Brunswick features a vulcanized construction for better grip and board feel as well as System G2 for comfort and heel protection. etnies.com
Bottle tops and broomsticks. Unlikely materials with which to build the foundation of sporting ambition. But armed with these barest of necessities, the street-sport superstars of the Dominican Republic, nurture their dreams of a honeyed life as one of the US’s top hitters in Major League Baseball.
Such are the demands of speed and precision made by vitilla, it has rendered the Dominican Republic the most unlikely talent pool for one of North America’s top-three sports. Scouts from MLB giants, be they Dodgers, Yankees or Red Sox, now routinely scour the impoverished island in the hope of finding a ‘next big thing’. Or maybe two of them. Or three. It’s a remarkable tale of hope springing from adversity. Read our riveting account of the grittier side of sport beginning on page 54.
Overcoming seemingly overwhelming odds such as those faced by the street kids of Santo Domingo is a challenge any sportsman will recognise. Few, however, have offered such stubborn resilience as has Ashley Fiolek, champion of women’s motocross despite being profoundly deaf since birth, and whose rather unconventional all-American girl story we bring you on page 68. Still only 18, she’s a poster girl for her peers, having succeeded in turning her disability to her advantage by being unable to listen to those who might have doubted her.
Doubt? There wasn’t too much of that dubious quality around when two Austrian musical adventurers embarked on a project to turn a NASCAR stock car – a machine originally designed to lap banked concrete oval circuits at more than 200mph – into a musical instrument. Yes, really. The resulting vehicle, which graces this month’s cover, is, you can rest assured, quite unlike anything you have ever seen before, and you can read how it came to exist on page 48.
There’s much more in this issue, of course – delights such as David Beckham by numbers, a peek into the mind of Kevin Spacey and a rather delightful picture of the oldest golf club we could find, alongside its future-tech modern cousin. But we wouldn’t want to give too much away, would we?
Turn over, read on, enjoy.
Your editorial team
HITTING THE TOP
AN ALMOST INDEPENDENT MONTHLY MAGAZINE /JULY 2009
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Heroes30 GREG LEMONDWith Lance Armstrong back for this year’s Tour de France, a reminder of the original American winner34 HERO’S HEROSkateboard prodigy Ryan Sheckler on motorsport madman Travis Pastrana 36 DALLAS FRIDAYHer name may sound Dukes of Hazzard-style ditzy, but the 22-year-old wakeboarder is anything but
40 JAIME ALGUERSUARIThe 19-year-old Spanish champion of British F3, now competing in the World Series by Renault, sets his sights on Formula One
42 OLIVER WILSONWe play caddy to the Ryder Cup pro, revealing the skill that’s put him 11th in golf’s list of European earners
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WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF RED BULL
Bullevard10 GALLERYThe bigger picture exposed
14 NOW AND NEXT Who to see and where to be; the month’s best sport and culture
17 ME AND MY BODYDownhill mountain biker Matti Lehikoinen’s battles, both in and out of the saddle
20 WINNING FORMULA Red Bull Paper Wings is the top flight for paper pilots: our technical breakdown shows you how to take off
23 WHERE’S YOUR HEAD AT?Whether it’s Hollywood thrills or highbrow theatre, Kevin Spacey’s your man. Find out what goes on behind the brow
26 KIT EVOLUTIONOver a century of development has gone into today’s golf clubs, even if the fashion is from in the dark ages
27 LUCKY NUMBERSDavid Beckham’s star-studded football career has a few scores worth remembering
Inside your red-hot Red Bulletin this month...
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42FOR MORE LIKE THIS, VISIT: WWW.REDBULLETIN.COM
Action48 NASCAR TUNE-UPThere’s a new sound resonating from the garages of the USA’s number-one motorsport: Noisia are the musical act dismantling cars and bringing new meaning to the term ‘steel band’
54 STREET BASEBALLThe Dominican Republic is the Caribbean island famous for growing stars of US major league baseball, and it’s vitilla, the game played on the streets, that turns hungry Dominican youths into deadeye big hitters
64 WAVERIDERSJoel Conroy’s new documentary tells the story of surfing in Ireland, with its massive untapped swells on the west coast long overdue for exposure, and its unsung hero – half-Irish, half-Hawaiian father of modern surfing, George Freeth
68 ASHLEY FIOLEK She’s the 18-year-old motocross queen who keeps the rest of pack out of sight at all times, despite being profoundly deaf
More Body & Mind78 THE HANGAR-7 INTERVIEWIrish World Supersport biker Eugene Laverty touches down in Salzburg
80 GET THE GEARRoad cycling’s moved on from dayglo Spandex (well, Spandex anyway)
82 IRISH SURFSPOTSCastlegregory, on the Dingle Peninsula, is the secret surf haven on the west coast, but for how much longer?
84 LISTINGSCheck the global guide for daytime hotspots and cool nights out
88 NIGHTLIFEPartying in Cannes, spinning tunes in Santiago, rocking out in Newcastle and clubbing in Lisbon
94 BULL’S EYECulinary capers
96 SHORT STORYAnthony Peacock describes a holy dilemma
98 STEPHEN BAYLEYIs it possible to dislike all music? The design guru thinks so
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WORD UP!Wisecracks and wisdom from the world of Red Bull and beyond.
“For me, it’s about a minute and a half’s worth of torture. The sensation of doing it
really is indescribable”
“When I had my wrist troubles, my doctor told me he thought my biking
days were over. But I got back on a cross-country bike for the first time
on the quiet. What did my doctor have to say about that? That you
shouldn’t believe everything doctors say”
“WHEN YOU’RE RIDING YOUR HORSE AND TRYING TO PLAY YOUR
SHOT, IT’S A BIT LIKE RIDING A WAVE. YOU MAKE A COMMITMENT,
AND SOMETIMES IT WORKS OUT REALLY GOOD, SOMETIMES
IT DOESN’T – BUT YOU HAVE TO ATTEMPT IT TO FIND OUT”
“THEY’RE PLAYING HARD
TO GET… REALLY HARD TO GET”
“Someone decided it would be fun to steal my identity online, and they’ve done it really well. He or she obviously has some
talent, so if they’re interested in coming forward, then maybe
I can find a way to use that talent in my movie project!”
“So, I’m on this jetski, holding on to Travis Pastrana,
and we’re racing through flooded downtown
Annapolis in the middle of a hurricane…”
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ONE-TWO GLEE SILVERSTON E , EN GLAN D
An unparalleled view of the world’s most exciting athletes and action
Bullevard
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SQUARE ROUTE N EW YORK C IT Y, U SA
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EVERY SHOT ON TARGETPICTURES OF THE MONTH
Email your pics with a Red Bull flavour to [email protected]. Every one we print wins a pair of Sennheiser PMX 80 Sport II headphones. These sleek, sporty and rugged stereo ’phones feature an ergonomic neckband and vertical transducer system for optimum fit and comfort. Their sweat- and water-resistant construction also makes them ideal for all music-loving sports enthusiasts. www.sennheiser.co.uk
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PETE RAY BIGGIN
YOU REALLY OUGHT TO KNOW SOMETHING ABOUT. . .
Dublin
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Le Mans SzegedIstanbul
WAKEY WAKEYNorway gets its wings in grand styleIn the last few weeks, Red Bull has been appearing on the shelves and in the chillers of shops across Norway – the 151st country in which the energy drink has become available.
To mark the occasion, on launch day in the capital, Oslo, French trial biker Julien Dupont made the most unusual performance yet seen at the Oslo Opera House, a spectacular new structure that has won international architecture awards since it opened in April 2008. He turned commuters’ heads with his wheelie circuits of the building’s rooftop.
Later that afternoon, Duncan Zuur, the wakeboarder noted for his urban waveriding in his home town of Amsterdam and in St Mark’s Square, Venice (yes, the actual square; it was flooded), rode the waters in Oslo’s Spikersuppa Park’s fountains before surfing behind a sailboat in the city’s harbour.
The first blue and silver cans made their Norwegian debut on May 27, and within four weeks 3.5 million cans had been sold across the Scandinavian country – that’s one each for over 70 per cent of the population. Last year, Red Bull also made its long-awaited debut in France. It first went on sale in Austria in 1987.
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Dominican Republic SloveniaSzeged
EIRE GUITARRock out and save the planet at Ireland’s best festival
LOVIN’ SUMMERIf the X Games were a marriage – and there are some who say that they’re the perfect partnership of action sports and made-for-TV athletic competition – then this month it would celebrate its crystal anniversary. Crystal clear to all is that a decade and a half of groundbreaking and name-making at the X Games have made them the premier event of their kind.
Devised in 1995 by TV sports network ESPN, the aim was to bring together disparate skate and ride events (with snow sports following two years later in the shape of the Winter X Games). These disciplines have grown so much that the Summer and Winter Olympics now feature the likes of BMX and snowboarding. These sports would not have gained five-ring recognition
X Games turns 15 with the best show everwithout X Games exposure at a time when they were below the radar.
This year’s shebang, from July 30 to August 2, takes place where the previous six have unfolded: at arenas and stadia in Los Angeles. Shaun White (above), Travis Pastrana and Ryan Sheckler (see page 34) are among the big names due to take part. Skate events Big Air Rail Jam and Park Legends make their debut, upping the total number of events to 23. For those who can’t make it to LA, a 3D film showcasing the best of the X Games is set for August release in US cinemas, with a possible UK run to follow. Insert your own X-word that means something positive here.
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MATTI LEHIKOINENME AND MY BODY
Not so much ‘Scarface’ as ‘Scarbody’. Finland’s 25-year-old downhill mountain bike World Cup winner thinks nothing
of overcoming physical injury in pursuit of glory
BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN
IN THE FLESH
GAME OVER DOWN UNDER
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MONTE CARLO
MONT BLANC
MATTERHORN
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NürburgringBrussels
Non-stop for a fortnight through the Alps by foot or paraglider: welcome to the hardest hike in the world
MONTE CARLO OR BUST
Delaware
MONTE CARLOMONACO
RACE GOALAltitude 0m43° 44´ North7° 25´ East
MONT GROSFRANCE
TURNPOINT 7Altitude 723m43° 46´ 2˝ North7° 26´ 20˝ East
MONT BLANCFRANCE
TURNPOINT 6Altitude 4792m45° 49´ 57˝ North6° 51´ 51˝ East
MATTERHORNSWITZERLAND
TURNPOINT 5Altitude 4478m45° 58´ 35˝ North7° 39´ 30˝ East
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TURNPOINT 1Altitude 1288m47° 48´ 20˝ North13° 6´ 45˝ East
GROSSGLOCKNERAUSTRIA
TURNPOINT 3Altitude 3798m47° 4´ 30˝ North12° 41´ 43˝ East
MARMOLADAITALY
TURNPOINT 4Altitude 3343m46° 26´ 2˝ North11° 51´ 2˝ East
WATZMANNGERMANY
TURNPOINT 2Altitude 2713m47° 33´ 19˝ North12° 55´ 24˝ East
SALZBURGAUSTRIA
RACE STARTAltitude 424m47° 48´ North13° 2´ East
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THE FLYING FINN“Many principles for paper planes are the same as for real planes,” says Tuomas Pärnänen (right), 25, an aero engineering student at the Helsinki University of Technology. This shared ground helped Pärnänen win the Red Bull Paper Wings competition in his native Finland, and then represent his country at the world finals at Hangar-7 in Salzburg, Austria.
“I saw Red Bull Paper Wings advertised at university, so a friend and I went along. We didn’t treat it seriously at first, but when I got to the Finland final, I was treating it a lot more seriously. And the more I practised, the more I realised that the dimensions were crucial.”
So size matters – more than weight, according to Pärnänen – but so does a little luck. Flying conditions inside the hangar that day were ideal, and so the reasons one plane flew further than another are lost on the paper pilots. “I’m not sure why mine flew so well,” says Pärnänen. “The competition was very even. We had a day of practice, followed by a day of competition. I finished 17th in the category for longest airtime [with 8.90 seconds; the winner clocked 11.66 seconds]. It was great fun.”
Indeed, this meeting of minds on the forefront of folding was about more than the work. Away from the heat of competition, which also took in categories for longest flight length and aerobatics, numbers and emails were swapped, along with blueprints and flight tips.
“A girl from the Swiss team is coming to see me,” says Pärnänen, making it clear that she is merely taking a slight detour on a planned tour and there’s nothing romantic about it. That’s a shame: how fantastic for there to have been love in the air that day, alongside the world’s leading light aircraft.
THE FLYING DOCTOR“The recently broken world record for paper aeroplane flight time is an unbelievable 27.9 seconds,” notes physicist and sports scientist Dr Martin Apolin, “but what determines how long a plane stays in the air?
“A plane glides best if the so-called glide ratio, E, is as large as possible. Glide ratio is flight distance, l, divided by the occurring height loss, h: thus E = l/h. A hang-glider has a glide ratio of 10-15. This means it can fly 10-15m and lose only 1m in height over this distance. A top paper plane’s gliding ability is on the same scale. Since a paper plane falls, as a rule of thumb, at a rate of 1m/s, you have to throw it very high to reach world-record levels. (You also need a high ceiling!)
“Three forces are balanced in stationary glide flight: weight, FG; lift, FL; and drag, FD. The glide ratio can be described using two of these forces, namely E = FL/FD. The bigger the lift while the drag decreases, the further the plane will glide. The lift force depends on the lift coefficient cL, and the drag force depends on the drag coefficient cD. So we can calculate the throwing range: l = hcL/cD.
“Thus the throwing range gets bigger the higher the plane is initially thrown, because the phase of stationary flight is increased. If you throw 10 per cent higher than your competitors, your plane will glide 10 per cent further and longer. Besides, it is important to construct your plane so that your lift coefficient is as high as possible and your drag coefficient is as low as possible. Unfortunately, these two values are not completely independent of one another.
“The practical details of your flight are up to your own unique construction capabilities!”
WING MENWINNING FORMULA
To fly world-beating paper planes requires endeavour, engineering and no end of good fortune. These folding fellows are blessed with all three
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NIGHT RIDERSCycling in the city for bikers who never sleep
If you think that Cristiano Ronaldo has the right idea when he shows off the slick stuff, Red Bull Street Style wants you. Entrants must dazzle with innovative tricks and deft ball control, outsmarting opponents in one-on-one keepy-up face-offs set to music.
Last year saw more than 200 qualifiers from 44 countries battle it out to reach the finals, a 16-man freestyle-for-all event in the spiritual home of tricksy football, Brazil. Professional freestyler John Whetton was England’s representative, while kicking it for Ireland was Nam ‘The Man’ Nguyen from Co Sligo. The winner was Frenchman Arnaud ‘Séan’ Garnier, who impressed judges, including
YOU CAN KICK ITThe world’s best freestyle football comp is back in play
former Dutch international Edgar Davids, by spinning the ball on the tip of a pen he held between his teeth.
With national qualifiers already underway in Japan, Australia and Spain, next comes India, in Delhi, on August 1.
The UK will join the fray with qualifiers in London on September 26, Newcastle on October 10, Nottingham on October 24 and Bristol on November 7. The winners will head to the London final on November 21. Irish tricksters keen to follow Nam ‘The Man’ can try out in October/November. National winners then head to the world finals in South Africa in April 2010, in the run-up to the FIFA World Cup.
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PAINTER MAN ACTING OUT
OH, BROTHER!
IMPRESSED MUCH?
FIRESTARTER
POLITICAL HUNGER
KEVIN SPACEYWHERE’S YOUR HEAD AT?
He marks his 50th birthday this month by voicing a robot in the sci-fi film Moon – how very space-y. Here’s what else orbits inside his mind
PRODUCTION VALUES
A MINI ADVENTURE
FOWL PLAY
LECTURE THEATREPLANE CRAZY
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OLD STICKWM PARK DRIVING PUTTER, 1875
B U L L E V A R D
KIT EVOLUTION
SWING SHIFTFrom own-brand craftsmanship to
the appliance of science, discover the driving forces behind the development
of golf clubs in the last 135 years
HEAD MUSICCALLAWAY FT-9 TOUR DRIVER, 2009
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HARD & FASTTop performers and winning ways from across the globe
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DAVID BECKHAMLUCKY NUMBERS
Entering the last stage of a stellar career, the world’s most famous footballer has produced impressive stats, no matter where he has chosen to bend it like himself
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30 GREG LEMOND 34 RYAN SHECKLER 36 DALLAS FRIDAY 40 JAIME ALGUERSUARI 42 OLIVER WILSON
HeroesBoarders, riders, a hero driver and a hero with a driver
I packed my bags and left for Europe in the spring of 1986. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was about to take part in the American assault on European professional cycling that would change the face and language of bike racing for generations to come. We were a group of adventurers, dreamers and non-conformists, mostly. We might have had a passing interest in traditional American sports, such as American football and baseball, but somewhere along the way, all of that became sidetracked when we discovered road bicycles and began racing them. We left our homes and families in search of real bike racing – racing that could only be found on the ancient cobblestone Belgian roads, the windswept Dutch dyke paths, and the torturous Pyrenean, Dolomite and Alpine climbs. We had no idea if there was fame and fortune to be had, but we knew we wanted to compete against the legendary European cyclists in their playground – and we all dreamed of racing in the Tour de France.
The two most notable early pioneers were Northern Californians Mike Neel and George Mount. In 1976, Neel, a large man by road cycling standards, became the first American to break into the European professional peloton. Mount soon followed. In 1981, Jonathan ‘Jock’ Boyer planted the Stars and Stripes firmly on the Tour de France, becoming the first American to finish the three-week-long event. He continued the charge towards Paris, and in 1983 finished in a career-best 12th place in le Grand Boucle. But it was the following year that another young Californian, Greg LeMond, put the United States on the podium, finishing third.
LeMond was the perfect candidate to lead the US charge. With a combination of youthful enthusiasm and boyish good looks, he won the hearts and minds of continental cycling fans. Riding with Greg in top racing form, you got the sense that he didn’t know how strong he was – that he was simply trying to ride the wheels off his bike, and in so doing, he was also riding the legs out from under everyone else.
After third in ’84, he climbed one step closer to the top of the podium in 1985, helping his La Vie Claire team-mate and cycling legend, Frenchman Bernard Hinault, win his fifth Tour de France in the process. Hinault vowed to help LeMond win in 1986. But all’s fair in love and war, and it seems bike racing is both love and war simultaneously. Instead of assisting his team-mate, Hinault, one of the most competitive pro cyclists ever, rode an aggressive race, waiting for LeMond to show any sign of weakness. (LeMond prevailed in a dramatic 13th stage mountain showdown and went on to outright victory.)
Unlike other great champions, LeMond didn’t possess a frowning, down-to-business, field-general demeanour, but actually seemed to be enjoying himself in races. While other grand tour winners rode through the countryside almost emotionless, talking only to team-mates or other podium hopefuls, Greg would often be seen laughing his way through the group, slapping lesser-known professionals on the back. In the peloton, this afforded him a fairly wide berth, since such behaviour was alien to the class-divided professional ranks.
But he was all business when he needed to be, and this side of his character was almost as unorthodox as the rest. On the morning of important time trials, Greg could be seen testing the entry and exit speeds of each corner. More like a racing driver than a bicycle racer, he’d run through each corner repeatedly, sometimes even crashing in the process, until he had every bend mastered. When his body was more prepared than his mind, Greg would warm up for the event by tying fishing flies until shortly before the start.
If LeMond’s 1986 Tour win marked a breakthrough for American cycling, it was also the first year an all-American team, 7-Eleven, entered the race, with America’s first European pro, Mike Neel, as its director. That first 7-Eleven Tour team consisted of eight of America’s absolute best cyclists, one Canadian and one Mexican. In North America,
GREG LEMONDWith the Tour de France in full swing, a former US rider reflects on the man who first blazed a trail for American cyclists in Europe – and the return of Lance ArmstrongWords: Joe Parkin
Pioneer
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the 7-Eleven team were legendary, winning races whenever and however they wanted. They had the best riders, best support and best equipment. 7-Eleven was the rock star programme, the absolute top of the North American cycling food chain, and the team were later immortalised in the film American Flyers. In Europe, that all changed. Team director Neel was better known than any of his riders and they struggled to finish races, let alone get results.
The immense motivating power of the Tour nevertheless took the young American team to the starting line, hoping to parade their colours in front of the world. It also drove them to some remarkable early feats. Canadian Alex Stieda threw down the gauntlet on the first stage, breaking away and riding solo for most of the day. He collected enough time bonuses to take the leader’s yellow jersey despite not actually winning the stage. The very next day, American team-mate Davis Phinney won the 214km stage into Liévin. Just three days into the Tour, the 7-Eleven team were officially on the map.
An American would be in yellow, too, three weeks later when the Tour peloton arrived on the Champs-Élysées. LeMond was that man, while Ron Kiefel, Jeff Pierce, Bob Roll, Raul Alcala and Stieda were the five members of the 7-Eleven team who also made it to Paris. Each one of them, LeMond included, arrived at the finish line lighter than when they started, and with their eyes sunken and their faces wrinkled and weathered.
The Tour is a race like no other: three weeks worth of racing designed to destroy all but the fittest and best-prepared cyclists in the world. Getting
through the torture is often simply a matter of surrendering to it after the realisation that, for the race’s duration at least, you’ll only feel normal while on the bike – every other waking moment being a struggle with both the body’s and mind’s desire to completely shut down.
Despite all of that, the American invasion of the Tour de France was well underway and European cycling embraced riders from the United States with open arms during this period. Team managers looked at us like dollar signs with legs. Though we helped clear the roads for future generations of American cyclists, we were, by and large, a novelty that didn’t pose much of a threat to professional cycling’s status quo. While the financial rewards for our efforts were minimal, comparatively speaking, we looked at each race as new territory to be discovered, considering ourselves lucky for the experience. Americans who have followed have become specialists, contesting only certain races, and being subjected to a much higher level of public scrutiny.
LeMond would win the Tour again in 1989 and 1990, having recovered from a near-fatal hunting accident in 1987 that threatened to end his career.
But, by 1991, there were already rumours circulating in the pro peloton of a new American rider who seemed poised to take LeMond’s throne. Texan Lance Armstrong joined the pro ranks in 1992 with the cockiness of a fighter pilot and the speed to back it up. Everything’s bigger in Texas, right down to the amount of effort Armstrong put into his cycling career. When I met Lance for the first time, I already knew I was in the presence of greatness – at least future greatness – but Lance knew about me. While it’s true that I was a bit of an enigma in American cycling, having spent my career racing exclusively for European trade teams, I was no future Tour winner. But for Lance, cycling was more than just a sport, it was war, and he would learn as much as he could about the history of the sport and every one of his opponents.
In 1999, after surviving his near-death fight with cancer, a completely resculpted Lance Armstrong rode into Paris wearing the leader’s yellow jersey, just as LeMond had done 13 years earlier, to begin his historic string of seven consecutive wins – two more than anyone else. During his seven-year reign, the roadsides of the Tour route became ever more populated with American fans. In fewer than 30 years, a bicycle race, once mostly unknown to the American consciousness, has become front-page news. Once something just a few guys dreamed of finishing, today’s generation of US cyclists are expected to win. In the next couple of weeks, Mike, George, Jock, the 1986 7-Eleven team and I will all be proudly watching Lance go for number eight.Joe Parkin has represented the US in the World Professional Road, Cyclocross and Mountain Bike Championships. He’s author of the acclaimed A Dog in a Hat, his cycling memoirs.
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I first met Travis Pastrana in LA at the 2003 X Games. I’d known of him long before that because I was a fan. But I really started to get to know him when he made a $500 bet against the guy who’s now my agent that I would win the skateboarding competition. My agent had told him: “No way.”
So I ended up winning Travis the money and I just remember him coming up and being like: “Yeah, thanks dude, I just won 500 bucks!” I was psyched. It was Pastrana. Sick!
From then on we just seemed to have very similar personalities. We like having fun. Whenever he came to California, he’d come stay at the house and we’d borrow my dad’s truck and go racing around or whatever. From day one I just felt like he was a loyal friend, you know? And I’ve been chilling with him all the time since.
He’s bred to be a motocross guy, just like I’m sitting here to be a skateboarder. No matter if you’re religious or not, that’s clearly his gift to ride bikes and do other ridiculous stunts like jumping out of a plane without a parachute or flipping a rally car eight times. I like to jump off big things and do crazy stuff too, so it’s brought our friendship closer.
When I was about 13 or 14, I visited Pastrana’s house in Maryland. I had no idea what to expect, but I was getting jumped into what these guys’ lifestyle is like. We’d go and practise backflips on bikes in his foam pit. He’d be like: “If I come back and you’re not doing the backflip, you’re going on the boat.” Next thing we’re on this boat going 40mph, and he just pushes me off with no warning! I was like, ‘OK, this is how
they roll’, but I was still a little kid, and he was pushing me off huge bridges with the rest of the Nitro Circus guys.
I was getting ready to come home and had told my mum all the stories. I was like: “I’ve gotta come home, I’m gonna die out here!” But then a hurricane came through and flooded the whole of downtown Annapolis. Travis was like: “We’re gonna go ride jet-skis downtown.” I was like: “What? It’s fully storming a hurricane out there!” So I’m on this jet-ski holding onto Pastrana and we’re racing through. Then all of a sudden we hit a parking meter and fly off because the water was so high we just didn’t see it, and I’m swimming in the middle of a parking lot in a hurricane. Since then, every time we see each other we go balls to the wall. It’s amazing.
But as dangerous as his whole situation is, I actually feel really safe around him. I don’t feel like he’s trying
to put me in harm’s way. So if I chose to do a skydive or something, I can’t think of a better guy to have around while I did it. He’s broken every bone in his body and still doesn’t stop: that really says something about his character.
I’ve broken my elbow six times and I’ve had a lot of concussions. But I always feel like an idiot when I do it. I’m not bummed at the result, I’m just bummed at how the hell did I manage to fall? I want to get better so I can get back to the basics and improve. I think it’s the motivation to get back on the board that drives me.
I’d like to switch sports at some point, like Pastrana did to rally driving. But I have so much practice to do. I’d even race Formula One, because the 320kph-plus really appeals, but I’ve got to get into the right circles to start learning how. I’ve set up Sheckler Racing, which is just basically me and my dad, but we want to help motocross riders so we’ve started our own team. I won’t be riding, though!
I get amped when I see other successes. I like learning and surrounding myself with smarter people. Seeing all the fame Pastrana has and comparing it to whatever sort of fame I have, that’s great, but I think it can be used in a different way besides all the glitz and glamour. I use my career to be a role model and be a good example for those kids growing up and trying to figure their lives out.
Travis, he’s a freak of nature. He inspires me all the time. I have his back forever.
TRAVISPASTRANASheckler has been hailed as a skateboarding phenomenon since he won the X Games at 13. But it’s a motocross daredevil, rally driver and all-round mentalist who inspires him to get on his board every day Interview: Tom Hall
Hero’s Hero: Ryan Sheckler on
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DALLASFRIDAYWhen she was just 13 years old, she was tipped to be the first girl to make a million dollars from wakeboarding. Now 22, she hasn’t disappointedWords: Ruth Morgan Portrait: Karen Fuchs/Red Bull Photofiles
The world of extreme sports is chock-full of unusually named athletes: Heath Frisby, Parks Bonifay, Boaz Arrow Aquino, Austin Horse, to name just a few. So when, 22 years ago, a couple in Orlando, Florida, named their baby daughter Dallas Friday, perhaps they unwittingly prompted the sporting gods to bless Li’l’ D with a career of athletic achievement.
A couple of decades on, Dallas is riding the very crest of the wave in the boom sport of women’s wakeboarding. Imagine waterskiing on a snowboard and you’ll be halfway to understanding what she does (but dismiss visions of ’60s American holiday camps and group pyramid formations: wakeboarding is one of the toughest watersports going). Wakeboarders use the wake from a speedboat as a ramp to launch into mid-air flips, spins and twists. And it’s super-tight: one wrong move can transform even the best into a spectator.
Nevertheless, Dallas has been at the top since day one. As a 14-year-old, in her first year of competition, she won the America’s Cup Championship; she was World Cup Champion in her second, winning almost every tournament she entered. Since then, she’s cemented her top spot with three X Games gold medals, World Championship titles and wins at nearly every major contest in existence. She was also the first wakeboarder to win the much-coveted gong from American sports TV channel ESPN for Best Female Action Sports Athlete, as they branded her ‘the winningest female wakeboarder in history’.
Rarely, though, has the phrase ‘no pain, no gain’ been more appropriate than when applied to Dallas. At an age when fresh-faced graduates may be tiptoeing into the big, wide world, she has endured injuries that have threatened not only her career, but her life. After crashing out of one world cup contest, she was left in a coma in a Singapore hospital, unable to breathe unaided.
Only a stubborn determination as rare as her name got her back on a board and back to the top of her game. That, and a competitive instinct running deep in her veins: before discovering wakeboarding,
Dallas was a promising gymnast, training every day after school and competing at a high level. But when, at the tender age of 12, she began to complain of burnout, her older brothers suggested she try wakeboarding instead – a sport they already enjoyed just for kicks on the lake next to the family home.
Initially, Dallas was unsure: “I didn’t even know wakeboarding was a sport,” she says, “but I always wanted to do what my brothers did, so I tried it and instantly loved it.”
Dallas’s gymnastic background made her a natural in the air, and she caught the eye of one local professional who advised her mother, Darla, to seek out the help of top trainer Mike Ferraro.
Mike’s name is renowned in the wakeboarding world; his training diaries read like a Who’s Who of the sport. As such, the $200-per-hour trainer only had time to personally take on already high-level riders and was turning away the merely gifted. Darla, however, was determined to get him to work with her then-13-year-old daughter, despite Dallas only having a couple of months’ experience.
“I told Darla I wouldn’t take on someone at Dallas’s stage,” says Mike, “but she’s gone ‘no, no, I was told I had to get you’. I eventually said, ‘Fine, I’ll do you a favour, bring her up and I’ll see how she does.’ So I watched her, and I saw her take a hard fall and get up like it wasn’t a problem. So I agreed to watch her for a week.” At the end of the week, Mike invited Dallas’s parents out for dinner to discuss his observations. There, he told them that their daughter would be the first girl to make a million dollars from wakeboarding.
“It was great to hear that coming from somebody who knows what they’re talking about,” says Darla. “It was very exciting for us as parents to think that Dallas could be doing something she loved so much.” But it didn’t come cheap. To get Dallas the training and equipment she needed, the Fridays had to take out a second mortgage on their home. Dallas matched their commitment, pouring every spare second into wakeboarding. “I’ve always had
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be inserted into her thigh. Then, during surgery, there were severe complications and Dallas’s lungs collapsed, leaving her unable to breathe on her own. When she regained consciousness after a angst-ridden week for her family, she first had to learn to walk again before she could even contemplate riding.
“I ended up in hospital in Singapore for about a month,” says Dallas. “It was all really tough. It was frustrating and I didn’t understand why any of it had happened. There were a lot of setbacks and frustrating moments with doctors and physios. Wakeboarding is my life. When you get used to doing something you love so much and have it taken away, it’s just… it’s everything.” After returning to the US, she was determined to get back on the water.
“She was in bad shape, I mean she’d been on life-support,” says Mike. “If that had been me, I’d be like ‘that’s it, I’m done’. She’s the only one I’ve ever seen with this much drive. I told her to take two years off. But she said, ‘I think in two or three months I could be riding.’ I said, ‘Dallas, you are out of your mind.’ But this is how it is with Dallas. I still have to call the local training centres when I tell her to take a day off and have to get them to promise me they’re not letting her in the door.”
After undergoing daily physiotherapy, Dallas returned less than a year later to win the IWSF World Cup Championship, the Pro-AM Wakeboarding Championship, the Wakeboard World Cup event in Qatar and, in a result fit for Hollywood, she won the event in Singapore where her career was so nearly terminated the year before.
“People ask me if I was scared of doing that same trick after my injury and, honestly, no,” says Dallas. “I told myself, ‘Just go out and do it – what’s the worst that could happen?’ People are like, ‘Are you serious?’ But you have to go out there and just do it like nothing’s going to happen, with that confidence and positivity.” She followed up with a 2008 season that saw her claim the Masters Championship, the IWSF World Cup Championship, the Malibu Open and the Singapore World Cup once more for good measure. But for the ‘winningest female’ wakeboarder, both years were disappointing, as her performance was still hampered by her past knee injury and further surgery.
This year, she believes, will be her first with full form and health since her accident in Singapore. She started it as she means to go on, taking her first-ever Wake Games title and finishing on the podium in her next two events. And her trademark determination is stronger than ever.
“I don’t care about second or third place,” she says. “I’m always going for that number-one spot. I just want to look back one day and know that I was the best that I could be and didn’t hold back; that I made an impact on the sport for the better. I just got home late from travelling last night and Mike’s already calling me to go work on something new, so there’s no break, but this is my job and I love it. There’s plenty more to come from me. This is only the beginning.”
that competitiveness,” she says. “I always wanted to show that I could do whatever the challenge was and surpass it and be the best at it. Growing up with my brothers, I just wanted to be like them; to hang out with the boys.” It may have been the influence of her brothers that gave Dallas the edge that Mike had spotted in her. “When you find a unique personality like Dallas who deals with risk different to most girls, that’s when you know you’ve got something,” he says. “She’s willing to put her body on the line more than any other girl. I’ve seen her learning stuff where even the guys will say, ‘I’m just not going to do that.’”
And Dallas’s willingness to take risks immediately began to pay off. In her rookie year, she finished on the podium at several high-profile events and won the America’s Cup Championship. She quickly built a name as a fearless rider who could land tricks never before seen in her class, and seemed almost unbeatable. But with risk comes almost inevitable injury, as she first learned just over a year into her career. In 2001 she underwent knee surgery for a torn meniscus, and in 2002, aged 15, she broke her back after being slammed into the water during a competition.
Worse was to come. In October 2006, during the final world cup event in Singapore, she broke her left femur after wiping out, suffering nine spiral fractures, which required a titanium rod to PH
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Spanish, precocious, intelligent and ferociously focused. Sounds like a certain double Formula One world champion… But whatever you do, don’t go calling him the next Fernando AlonsoWords: Michael Curtis Photography: Thomas Butler
Drive down through the tiny Belgian village of Francorchamps and you’ll come to a racing circuit that makes heroes of mortals and legends of heroes. Here, in 2000, the youngest driver to race that year in Formula 3000 announced himself on the world stage. All season, Fernando Alonso had been improving, but at Spa-Francorchamps he pulled it all together: pole position; fastest race lap; winner. It was the start of something big.
Nine years later, on the kind of balmy, sun-kissed day that this corner of the normally sodden Ardennes so rarely sees, another young Spaniard is attempting to make a similar mark, though he resists comparison with Alonso.
“Obviously, we’re both Spanish, so that tends to happen a lot,” says 19-year-old Jaime Alguersuari. “But my story is completely different.”
In just four years, the kid from Barcelona has come from being the kart-racing son of a former motorcycle racer to finishing second in the Italian Formula Renault championship, then last year springing a massive surprise by claiming the prestigious British F3 International series at his first attempt, the youngest ever driver to take the title.
“I’ve been with Red Bull since 2006 and the progression has been good,” he says. “There’s a really good training centre in Austria. I used to go there three or four times a year to learn how to perform as a racing driver and as a person.
“It’s not all physical work: you need to learn and you need to think,” he adds, placing heavy emphasis on the final word. “It gives you an advantage over the guys who just do the physical stuff.” Last year, that edge showed in the final round of the F3 championship. Twelve points down on leader and team-mate Oliver Turvey going into the final round at Donington Park, Alguersuari dug deep, won both the weekend’s races and took the title.
“I had more to win than to lose,” he says now. “I took a lot of risks in qualifying, but it went well and I took both pole positions. Donington was
the consequence of all the work we had all done throughout the whole year. It all came together.”
The result was the most publicity ever in Spain for the series and its star driver. At an end-of-year sports awards ceremony, Alguersuari was chosen as Spain’s ‘rising star’. “No driver had done it before,” he says. “The other awards were for Rafael Nadal, the best tennis player in the world, and for the Spanish national football team.”
Now, here at Spa, other imperatives are calling: another ladder to climb; another waypoint on the road to Formula One. This time it’s World Series by Renault, a step up in power and difficulty from F3, and a series that Alonso also contested on his way to the big league. Casting aside the obvious reference, is there any driver he does want to emulate?
“Maybe Sebastian Vettel,” he says simply. “Mainly because he’s the most recent to come out of the Red Bull Team Junior programme – where I am – and succeed. He’s won two Grands Prix already and he’s a good driver. He did Formula 3 for two years and he raced in this series, so his progression looks like mine. His route to the top is a target to aim for, and makes me think that I can do it too.”
It isn’t so long ago that drivers graduated to F1 straight from British F3 – 2009 F1 title contender Jenson Button being just one. However, Alguersuari is convinced it’s not his time – yet. “I only did one year of F3 and, unfortunately, I won it, so I couldn’t do that any more! Now I’ve stepped up to World Series and I think this is my consolidation year before F1. I think this car gives you much more of an idea of what you can expect when you get there.”
You wouldn’t bet on him not fulfilling that ambition. Here is a kid who spent a year at boarding school in Ipswich because racing drivers need perfect English, and who has no hesitation in tagging this year as the year before the big one.
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So this chap called Steve, a Kent-based businessman and weekend hacker, is striding down the 13th fairway of the Jack Nicklaus-designed course at the London Golf Club with a spring in his step. The 15-handicapper has just creamed a drive straight down the middle; a simple wedge into the heart of the green, surely no problem for a man riding high on confidence, is almost certain to set him up for an easy birdie.
The majority of golf, however, is played in the head, and a player’s mental equilibrium can be easily unbalanced by the least little thing. And as Steve bounds down the hole after his booming drive, your faithful Red Bulletin reporter decides to engage him in a spot of small talk.
“So, I overheard you telling your caddy that you support Liverpool?” is Red Bulletin’s opening gambit.
“Yep,” smiles Steve.“Did pretty well last season to come second in
the league,” opines Red Bulletin.Steve nods. “Shame about all those dropped points at home,”
adds your faithful reporter. “Cost you the title.”Steve emits a low grunt. His pace slows a tad as
his shoulders tense up slightly. He is not smiling now.“Yeah, those games against Stoke, Wigan, Hull,
Fulham, West Ham,” continues Red Bulletin. “You’ve gotta be winning those matches.”
Steve reflects on this theory, furrows his brow, pulls his wedge from his bag with some force – and duffs his attempted chip to the green. The ball, which should have travelled approximately 80yds, rolls apologetically along the ground for less than eight.
“You wonder whether that’s their best chance of the title gone for good, because Chelsea aren’t going to be as bad again next year,” continues Red Bulletin blithely, before spotting that this most genial of men now has knots in his shoulders the size of Titleist Pro V1s.
Red Bulletin decides it might be best to leave it. But it’s too late: the damage has already been done. Agitated, Steve duffs another chip a few yards up the road, then thins a third straight through the
green into the deep rough behind. In between those two particular efforts, Red Bulletin is shot a glance. If looks could kill… in fact they sort of do, a little piece within Red Bulletin quietly dying of shame.
Still, luckily for Steve, this is a team game today: he’s playing in a fourball, the best score going on the card. And among his group is none other than Oliver Wilson: at 28 one of England’s most promising professionals, fifth on the European money list, and the man who beat world number two Phil Mickelson in last year’s Ryder Cup. So while Steve has been forced to embark on a harrowing journey into the dark heart of the soul, Wilson has been efficiently carding a no-fuss birdie for the team. “All’s well that ends well,” chirps Red Bulletin, trotting after them both as they make their way to the next tee.
Steve shoots Red Bulletin that look again.
The world of golf can be easily represented by a basic two-set Venn diagram: in one set are the professionals, neatly turned-out, fit men crashing 300yd-plus drives down fairways and raking 30ft putts into holes; in the other, the rest of us, out-of-condition amateurs and Sunday hackers, snap-hooking drives straight out of bounds, topping irons into thickets, and taking five putts from 6ft.
These two sets – the pros and the hackers – exist almost totally independently of each other. Once a week, however, there’s a small overlap in the middle as two worlds collide: the pro-am. Every event on the professional circuit hosts one, a curtain-raiser allowing the hoi polloi to rub shoulders with the great and the good. And thanks to the handicap system, all players from Tiger Woods to the dyspraxic first-timer can – theoretically at least – compete with each other on a level playing surface.
The competing ams come from all walks of life, from local club members and business clients of the tournament’s sponsors, to celebrities. For example, this particular event, ahead of the 2009 European PH
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driver as a hobby horse, quickly became the home-crowd favourite, every shot greeted with screams of “BOOOOO” or “BOO. S.A.!” Yet Wilson never once buckled. “I played good in my singles game against Boo,” reminisces Wilson with a wry smile, “but he was about eight-under, so what can you do? It was great, though. Obviously the crowd were against me, but there wasn’t any nastiness, they were just cheering for their man.”
Since then, it’s been more of the same for Wilson in 2009, with another two second places so far this season, along with two more top 10s. “His focus and determination are second to none,” says his friend and manager Robert Duck, a former professional himself. “He’s got the desire, guts and mental aptitude to be a world-class golfer. He’s a lovely guy, but when he goes out on the course and gets down to work, he has what it takes to get the job done.”
Wilson himself has stated his desire to “get to the very top”, starting with this month’s Open Championship at Turnberry. “I’m ready to put in a good challenge at the Open,” he says. “I’ve struggled in that particular tournament so far, partly because the weather has been shocking over the last couple of years. I wasn’t used to it, and was never able to get into it. But I played in the recent Irish Open, which gave me more experience in dreadful wind and rain, and that’s given me a lot of confidence.”
Confidence is burgeoning back at the pro-am, too. Steve has got over his minor nervous breakdown and is finishing strongly with a birdie on 16 – no doubt helped by a new approach from your man from The Red Bulletin, who makes sure he’s positioned at all times on the very opposite side of the fairway. And the other two amateurs in Wilson’s group are also enjoying themselves. Dermot, a 12-handicapper, pars the last four holes, which is one shot better over that run than Wilson, although admittedly the pro uses his drive at the 18th as a pre-tournament experiment to see if he can steal an extra few yards with a risky route over water – only to find the drink and decide better of it.
Meanwhile at the par-three 17th, the 19-handicapper Stuart finds a deep greenside bunker – then splashes out brilliantly to 4ft. “Great shot,” exclaims Wilson, a kind but genuine response that plasters a wide grin across Stuart’s face for the rest of the day.
The team end their round a collective six- under-par. It’s not quite enough to trouble the leaders of the pro-am, but then nobody really cares; the experience was the main thing for all concerned. Hands are warmly shaken and photographs taken, before pro and ams withdraw to their separate circles: Wilson to make his final preparations for yet another tournament; Steve, Dermot and Stuart to regale friends and family with tales about their shots of the day. And perhaps a choice word or two about that eejit who wouldn’t shut up about the football.
Open, features boxing legend Henry Cooper, former England footballer David Platt, the Sky Sports golf presenter Di Stewart, and cantankerous Strictly Come Dancing judge Len Goodman. Oh, and Formula One world champion Lewis Hamilton, who doesn’t drive like he, er, drives: the fastest man in the world sends a shot pootling slowly up the first, his ball sadly affected by levels of downforce that would surely get him disqualified in a Grand Prix.
There are no big names in Wilson’s group, not that he cares. “Pro-ams are good fun,” he says. “Professional golf can be a bit of a bubble sometimes. You only ever meet other golfers. So this way you get to meet a lot of really cool and interesting people from many different walks of life.”
And while the amateurs get their buzz from playing with a world-class player, Wilson gets something out of the arrangement too. “I get a good practice round; normally you can’t play the course the day before the tournament starts, unless you’re in the pro-am. It forces me to concentrate properly; I treat it like a proper tournament, so you get good preparation for the main event.
“My goal out here is to see the course, try and entertain the guys and make it as enjoyable for them as possible. If they’re struggling, I’ll go and try to help them; offer them a couple of tips. Usually I’ll be able to sort something out for them, getting them airborne if they’re nervous and having a shocker, or fixing a minor problem with their swing if they’re playing well but looking to hone their game. Then they’ll hit a decent shot and they’re happy.
“Every now and then you’ll get someone who hasn’t played for a year, and they find it tricky for a couple of holes, but usually they have some ability, so they pick it up and settle into it after a while. But there’s no real pressure. There’s four of us: if they have a bad hole they just pick up and move on to the next hole. It works out alright usually.”
The laid-back Wilson is getting used to things working out alright. After spending his formative years learning his trade at Augusta State University, the Mansfield-born golfer turned professional in 2003, shortly after playing in Great Britain & Ireland’s victorious Walker Cup team (the amateur equivalent of the Ryder Cup). After a few seasons getting accustomed to life on tour, Wilson stepped up a gear last year, four runner-up spots and three more top-10 finishes helping him end the season 11th on the European money list. He also led last year’s US Open at one point, then ended the season by qualifying for the Ryder Cup at Valhalla, where he slayed US poster boy Phil Mickelson in his first-ever Ryder rubber.
“Beating Mickelson was massive,” he recalls. “It gave me a lot of confidence. It was a really positive experience for me, even though the team lost.” In the pressure-cooker environment of the final day’s singles, Wilson played brilliantly, carding four birdies and dropping no shots whatsoever – yet still lost 4&2, his opponent Boo Weekley enjoying the mother of all hot streaks by making six birdies and an eagle. Weekley, a back-to-basics Southerner taken to galloping down the fairways using his
THE GREATEST- EVER OPEN
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Living the dream and daring to dream…
48 FROM NASCAR TO NOISIA 54 STREET BASEBALL 64 WAVERIDERS 68 ASHLEY FIOLEK
Action47
THEDELICATESOUNDOFTHUNDERBehold a NASCAR racer like none you’ve ever imagined: a stormy brute of a track machine converted into a musical instrument… And it’s making its debut at the spiritual home of American racing: IndianapolisWords: Herbert Völker Photography: Jürgen Skarwan
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a racing car as work of art, which can make music. And it’s great if you’ve got the right people on throttle-pedal and spoiler.
When first conceived, this musical monster was quietly dubbed ‘steel band’ – appropriate enough with so much steel and iron in its form, but ultimately misleading. A steel band makes music using everyday items: bin lids, old metal pipes and the like – scrap anyone could use to bang out a rhythm.
Sound modelling of the kind you can see here, however, requires a rather different approach. At first glance, it’s a metallic work of art: a self-contained car-part sculpture. But it’s one with hidden musical talents; one that contains six, seven or even eight instruments capable of creating subtleties that extend deep into the science of sound.
Which brings us to the two musicians, Gernot Ursin and Wolfgang Krsek, who, as well as creating this unique musical object, also keep themselves busy working out how whales talk to, insult and flirt with each other.
The two 43-year-olds, who live near Vienna, call themselves Noisia and have been making music together since they were teenagers. Self-confessed iconoclasts, they revel in setting their
his is a stock car. Well, it was once, anyway. This car – if we can call it that – was originally designed to lap US oval circuits at more than 220mph in an immensely popular racing series that inspires loyalty and devotion in fans akin to
what we’re used to in the Premier League. But not any more: this reworked racer produces unimaginable frequencies that can unblock any train of thought. It can work magic – like dope without the side-effects or blood trickling into a new part of the brain. It creates sounds that are as new and wonderful for the ears as a never-before-seen colour is for the eyes.
Only its tyres sound dull: drumming away on the rubber produces only a joyless echo. But the suspension arms, to take but one example, make for surprisingly good musical instruments. They are huge lumps of iron – at least compared to the delicate carbon-fibre equivalents used on F1 cars.
When former F1 driver Gerhard Berger visited the Red Bull Racing factory in America two years ago, he playfully knocked into one of these metal components hanging from the ceiling and, lo, a sound rang out and an idea was born, resulting in
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1 THE HI-END
2 THE BULL’S NECK
3 SCULPTURE INSTEAD OF POWER
4 POWER TUBES
5 COCKPIT SEPARATOR
6 CONSOLE, FRONT PLATFORM
7 REAR PLATFORM
8 SUSPENSION ARMS
9 THE STRING WING
NOTES ON THE BEAT CAR
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own trends, refusing to bow to the music industry, shunning CD releases and ignoring marketing to sell their success.
Their live performances, therefore, are rare and unique, although they venture commercially into film scores, documentary soundtracks and kitsch-free mood music. Where conventional tunes end, Noisia have experimented further, against standard tastes, yet their music isn’t hard on the brain. It’s captivating, and full of surprising nuances and overtones.
But however determinedly radical Gernot and Wolfgang like to believe themselves, nothing had prepared them for their NASCAR adventure. It began with the delivery to Europe, from the Charlotte-based Red Bull Racing NASCAR team, of a chassis – Brian Vickers’ No 83 car. It was fully operational. Well, almost: only the engine was missing, but that would be sent along later. The trick would be to make a sculpture from real, original NASCAR racing-car parts, and express the car’s Red Bull Racing soul artistically. At the same time, it had to be a mobile stage capable of creating the most amazing sounds. The brief defied all engineering logic, as any racing car has to be rigid. Getting it to resonate required the combined
imaginative power of an artist, a workman, a sound researcher and a musician. Step forward Messrs Ursin and Krsek.
Now, all that remains of a once-handsome racing car is the cockpit separator and front-wheel suspension; everything else has been hacked away and rearranged. The manipulation of obscure metal parts to create harmonious sound is one of Noisia’s greatest skills; their dark arts lie in extreme welding and high tension in their materials. The powerful thick ‘neck’ above the cockpit, made from fender sheeting, is the hub of the sculpture and also its most important soundbox, along with the driver’s area. Music is made by ‘playing’ the sculpture, with the sounds being picked up by microphones and wired to a keyboard.
But what of the one obviously absent noise-creating component, the throbbing heart of any NASCAR car – its engine? The more our tuneful twins reshaped the original, the more they came to realise its motor would be irrelevant. Without the V8 lump, the front of the sculpture, made from exhaust pipes and manifolds, leaves everything open. In this dramatic new context, the engine could only ever have been the hunk of metal it really is. Besides, an early plan to use the exhaust to create the ultimate trombone
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TH E AM ERIC A YOU C AN ’T H ELP LOVIN G
THE NASCAR EXPERIENCEand organ sounds would have left the rest of the structure having to deal with phenomenal vibrations (certainly nothing as lovely as those The Beach Boys once eulogised).
Engine-free and horsepower-decoupled, however, it creates a sound the Noisia boys swear by. (And it can still move, albeit much more slowly than it once did, thanks to two electric engines with rechargeable batteries stored under the cockpit.)
Like Brian Vickers’s No 83 car that roars around racetracks in search of NASCAR glory, the BEAT CAR is truly an object that has to be seen – and heard – to be believed. Its premiere as musical and visual entertainment on the NASCAR stage is pencilled in for July 26, at Indianapolis. It will appear both in the fan area and on the revered Indy racetrack. After all the technical and artistic challenges, all that’s left to do now is give a public that’s truly spoiled when it comes to shows and winning performances an experience they weren’t expecting. The two-man, 10-instrument orchestra could also give a rendition of The Star-Spangled Banner. (In fact, rumour has it, there’s every chance this might actually happen…)
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Despite being one of the world’s poorest countries, the Dominican Republic is a talent-cradle for some
of the hottest talents in US Major League Baseball – all thanks to a street-craze sport known as vitilla
Words: Drew B Glazer Photography: Tara Darby
MORE THAN JUST A GAME
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hroughout this sprawl of tenements, tangled power lines hang like vines. Most residents here, in one of the capital Santo Domingo’s
poorest barrios, can’t afford electricity. They grab what they can by splicing into the mains lines – the resulting citywide blackouts are legendary and frequent in the Dominican Republic.
When I visit Villa Francia one night in May, a DJ has found enough power for his massive speakers to fill the area with pulsing reggaetón. Several hundred people are out and dancing – from noodly little girls in tank tops to old men whose wrinkled faces are hidden in the shade of low-pulled baseball hats. But this isn’t a dance party. The main event is a fiercely competitive and uniquely Dominican version of street baseball called vitilla, and it’s about to begin. This asphalt pitch is normally a busy junction, but tonight it’s blocked to traffic with rocks and tyres.
The vitilla itself is the discarded plastic top of a gallon watercooler bottle. Good pitchers, like the trash-talking hurler in tight jeans here, can fling the plastic puck at great speeds, and when they do, it buzzes towards the batter like skeet. Some put such spin on the vitilla that it drops over the plate like it’s suddenly taken on water, or hooks to the left as if pulled by a string.
The pitcher lifts his leg high, and with a flick of the wrist, sidearms the vitilla toward the batter – a man with rosary beads, wielding a broomstick. The vitilla soars on a level. But it hangs over the plate just long enough for the batter, a 27-year-old named Carlos Sierra, to make good contact.
The sound of the wood striking plastic is the clipped snap of a wishbone. By the
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way Sierra runs hard to first base, the head-down charge of a bull, it’s clear that this is anything but fun and games.
“This Carlos – he’s one of the best,” a man wearing a tracksuit tells me as he jabs an elbow into my ribs. He should know. His name is Nelson Gerónimo, and he’s one of the neighbourhood’s dozen or so buscónes, or scouts. They’re constantly looking to help elevate local talent to lucrative Major League contracts, for a cut, and are often the first contact for professional scouts and agents. “Did you see how hard he hit that? Did you see how fast he swings?”
Exactly when this type of baseball got started, and how it became a de facto training programme for dozens of penniless future stars, is hard to pin down. But street folklorists I talked to seem to agree it was sometime in the 1970s, when these plastic caps suddenly started popping up in the rubbish. They made great baseballs for the thousands of kids who couldn’t afford hundred-dollar leather gloves and bats, or even balls. “Up to then, we used to decapitate one of our friend’s sister’s dolls, pull the hair out, stuff the hollow head with a cloth, and use that as a ball,” Gerónimo tells me. The 47-year-old former player is leaning with his hands on his knees, never taking his eyes off the action.
Dominicans have played pelota, or ball, for more than a century. Cuban immigrants drawn to the Dominican sugar industry brought the game with them after learning it from American sailors a few decades earlier. Baseball has become by far the most dominant sport in both Cuba and the Dominican Republic. Unlike most places in Latin America, Dominicans wouldn’t know what to do with a football if it rolled up and hit them on the foot.
“Everyone here put a ball and glove in their crib instead of a baby doll,” Gerónimo tells me.
Obsession has led to success. The Dominican Republic has become the go-to place for teams to find and sign young talent. Nearly half of American Minor League players are Dominican, and some 90 players are playing at an elite level in the Major League, including some of America’s biggest names (many of whom are now, sadly, tainted by the seemingly neverending steroid scandal): the hulking Red Sox power-hitter David Ortiz; the swinging savant Manny Ramirez, now on suspension from the Dodgers; and ace pitcher Pedro Martinez, whose rocketing
fastball has turned some of the best batters in the Majors into human windmills.
Poor American kids spend hours honing their skills on the basketball court, hoping it will lead to a professional contract. Their chances are about as good as getting chosen to fly the Space Shuttle. But everyone here seems to know someone who ascended from vitilla to the Major Leagues.Like dozens of other street ball players I talked to, Carlos really expected to be one of them. But now, here he is, showing me a trophy from 1997 in his tiny but immaculate apartment. It’s just upstairs from the vitilla game. He lives there with his wife, two young daughters and three nieces and nephews, whom he supports.
“As long as I could walk, I played vitilla and baseball,” says Carlos. “Everyone wants to arrive at the day when all the other kids see you on television and see you as a hero. Everyone hopes to play in the US.”
Hunger cut short Carlos’s dream 10 years ago. The way he tells the story, he was one of the best hitters in Villa Francia. But his family, like most others, needed extra income. He quit school – and baseball – to work at a corner shop and sell empanadas on the street.
“People everywhere in the country are trying to find a way to leave their
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economic problems behind,” he says. And for many, vitilla at the very least serves as an emotional escape from nagging hunger and poverty. Still, last year, Carlos and his neighbourhood team managed to make some money from the game by beating hundreds of other players in the first national vitilla tournament, and walked away with 50,000 pesos, or about US$1,400 – not to mention a little bit of glory.
“Wherever I go now, they call out my name,” he says, scooping up his daughter, who had her arms around his legs. “I was at a mall far from here a few months ago. And I heard someone say, ‘Is that the vitilla champion?’”
For some perspective, I rang an expert on Dominican baseball – Professor Allan M Klein of Northeastern University in
Boston, USA, who is working on his fourth book on the subject.
“The Dominican Republic is the only country I’ve run into where there’s zero correlation between education and opportunity, so baseball becomes a very legitimate resource,” Klein says. “You don’t go to school, because there’s no point in going to school. I’ll tell a black kid in a rough US neighbourhood, ‘I know you want to go in the NBA, but you’d be better served getting a bachelor’s degree’, because we live in a country with a relationship between education and opportunity. But here, for a good reason, baseball becomes a rational response to an irrational problem.”
Beyond players, there’s an entire baseball ecosystem that pervades the Dominican Republic. It includes trainers,
scouts, agents, managers, coaches, predators and parasites – all of whom hope to win the lottery of latching onto a successful prospect. Every Major League team has an academy here now: promising teenage prospects are plucked from ghettos like Villa Francia, put in dormitories, fed well, and trained into moneymaking, wiry baseball machines. It’s a rare opportunity, though maybe the best, to climb out of poverty here.
My new friend Nelson, by many accounts, is a benign force. He’s someone who has channelled his love of the game, not lust for money, into coaching neighbourhood players and organising vitilla tournaments, maybe helping one of his kids become a millionaire – and making a little scratch himself. Like many people I spoke to, he swears that
“ FOR MANY, VITILLA SERVES AS AN EMOTIONAL ESCAPE FROM HUNGER AND POVERTY”
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LIVING THE DREAMFrom the Dominican streets to the green grass of America
vitilla helps develop Major League skills. He spends most afternoons and evenings hunting around the city for good games.
“The vitilla is lateral, so it’s harder to hit. It’s the best training for hand-eye co-ordination. If you can hit a vitilla, you can really hit a baseball,” he says.
In vitilla, like in the hard streets of Santo Domingo, you adapt to the tough terrain – or lose. So kids who move up are masters on a tight lawn, deep green and flat, where it’s easy to spot the ball. And the gloves they are given make the ball stick like Velcro, compared to the bare hands they’ve used to stop a speeding ball. And imagine the power behind a solid maple bat, compared to the splintered and skinny broomsticks…
I want to see the next level of play – young teenage players with promise who
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“ IN VITILLA, LIKE IN THE HARD STREETS OF SANTO DOMINGO, YOU ADAPT TO THE TOUGH TERRAIN”
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were plucked from street games and informal neighbourhood leagues to train in elite academies. So the next day, I tag along with Luis Scheker, a baseball scout based in Santo Domingo for the Seattle Mariners. We’re driving east to San Pedro de Macoris, a city about an hour away, nicknamed the ‘cradle of shortstops’ because it has produced a fleet of players who have excelled at baseball’s most athletic position. Along the coast road, windswept coconut palms are framed by a choppy grey sea.
“We’re getting more and more interest from the Major Leagues to find better talent,” he says chewing a wad of tobacco, a habit he picked up while playing for a Minor League team in the US more than a decade ago. “We prefer 16- and 17-year-olds, before they develop their style. Sometimes we visit as many as seven baseball academies each day.”
oday, we’re headed to what is called, in Spanglish, ‘un showcase’. Dozens of pro scouts like Scheker were called by the manager of
a respected baseball academy to see his new crop of players. Like a swarm of mosquitoes, they buzz from showcase to game, looking for fresh young blood.
By the time we arrive at the crumbling arena, the sun is high and hot, but players from Los Rookies baseball academy, in immaculate white uniforms, are showing the skills that they’ve spent their young lives honing.
The owner of Los Rookies hands each scout a roster listing prospects’ height, weight, where they were raised, and best attributes. The scouts pore over every statistic. They wield stopwatches and radar guns, measuring milliseconds that, literally, could determine whether a 15-year-old will become a millionaire.
“The time it takes for a Major League player to field the ball, scoop it from his glove and throw it is 2.1 seconds,” Scheker tells me, looking up from his clipboard. “I will only consider someone who can do it faster.” Scheker doesn’t seem all that interested in today’s showcase. With a wad of tobacco bulging his cheek, he’s looking everywhere but at the players. It’s hard to tell if he’s unimpressed or attempting a poker face to avoid tipping off competing scouts. He won’t say.
One player caught my eye. He was well over 6ft tall, with the taut posture of a bamboo shoot. But while most of the other players were darting around
in a manic fury, he relaxed placidly on a bench in the shade. The stakes were so high, but this young man, Deion Sanders Herreria, was so calm. “There’s no pressure here,” he assures me. “God is watching me today.”
Maybe it’s the confidence that comes with being named after fleet-footed Major Leaguer Deion Sanders – who also, incidentally, was an even better professional American football player.
The Dominican Deion Sanders plays baseball five hours a day, seven days a week (more, probably, than the American one ever did). To unwind on most afternoons, he’ll play a pick-up game of vitilla until dark. It’s clear that he’s one of those who has gone all-in for a shot at the Majors: he dropped out of school years ago and refuses even to consider the possibility that he might not sign a Major League contract.
“You have to fight to get into the Majors,” Deion says, allowing his mouth to stretch into a smile for just a fleeting moment. “Look at how many players there are here.”
The director of Los Rookies calls Deion’s name, and he sprints to his place on top of the gently sloping pitcher’s mound, hoping it’s just his first stop to the top of the world.
As he stands on the sidelines taking notes, I ask Scheker if he runs into many kids like Deion – those who don’t have a back-up plan. He spits and shakes his head. “Most people are like that,” he says. And he blames his entire country for expecting too much from baseball for too long. “Honestly, I think it’s a sacrifice to society. More than anything, these kids are identifying with distant heroes – the successful ones. And now, we Dominicans don’t have anything else that we’re good at.”
But for now, all that matters is striking the plastic vitilla with the broomstick bat. Carlos’s team are vying for another chance at glory in the Red Bull Classico de Vitilla tournament that runs from September 1-October 14. Tonight, they want to prove they’re still up to the task.
Carlos is up to bat again. He takes a few practice swings and blows a quick kiss to his pudgy one-year-old daughter, who’s in the crowd, dressed in pink. The pitcher looks behind him, checking the player on second base. He winds up, and releases the vitilla.
Carlos swings hard. And when the wishbone cracks again, he runs like hell, as if he’s fleeing something.
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Joel Conroy’s genre-breaking Waveriders is a ‘surf film’ in name only – it’s a fine documentary following the sport’s evolution in Ireland, and the forgotten story of a Hawaiian (and Irish) surf pioneer Words: Andreas Tzortzis
RIDING GREEN GIANTS
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here are many captivating minutes of slow-motion surfing, with eight-time world champ Kelly Slater and ‘soul surfers’ Chris and Keith Malloy dancing across cold, green waves off the Irish coast. There is also great archive footage of the sport’s growth in the sunny climes of California and Hawaii.
But it’s the stunning west coast of Ireland, with its sheer cliffs and vivid green patchwork of fields, that will forever be etched into the minds of viewers of Joel Conroy’s Waveriders. Conroy’s first feature documentary can be counted alongside classics like Bruce Brown’s Endless Summer or Stacy Peralta’s Dog Town and Z-Boys as a film that transcends the ‘sport’ genre.
At its heart is an attempt by Conroy to educate his countrymen to the beauty of their own shoreline, and the need to save it before it suffers from climate change or overdevelopment. “People here don’t eat a lot of fish,” says Conroy. “People don’t go to the coastline, and I thought if people look out and see what’s there and all the natural resources within, maybe they’ll stop wrecking it.”
It has taken centuries for the Irish to come to think of the sea at their shores as anything but something to be feared and avoided and no one spent much time in the water voluntarily. The economic boom of the past 15 years has changed much of that, with grand developments along the west coast offering commanding views of the Atlantic, and the wide availability of high-quality wetsuits contributing to a growth in watersports.
But the surfers predated the later wave of sea-seekers, making initial forays on self-shaped, heavy boards. The early days are on display in Waveriders, in photos of Irish surfer Richard Fitzgerald, and Gabe Davies, his longtime friend and pro surfer from Newcastle, packed into boxy wetsuits and taped-on gloves in front of frigid waves.
Even those well versed in surf lore will be surprised that the pair, indeed all modern surfers, were predated by another Irishman. The son of a 19th-century Northern Irish immigrant and
a Hawaiian mother, George Freeth has been credited with popularising surfing in Hawaii and, later, Southern California.
Conroy came across Freeth’s story by chance, reading a ‘Letter to the Editor’ on the Irishman in The Times of London in 2005, while waiting for a connecting flight. Once he began to dig, he found information and photos of Freeth hard to come by. A chance query led him to the home of a Southern California family with unseen photos of the
broad-shouldered, earnest-looking young man. Interviews with lifeguard and historian Arthur Verge, and Freeth’s great-niece, fill out the remarkable story that drives the early part of Waveriders.
His heritage isn’t the only thing tying Freeth to surfing in Ireland. His pioneering work in creating an understanding and love for the sea among the residents of a Los Angeles rapidly growing towards the shoreline has parallels with Ireland’s own slow
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Conroy. “I think, certainly in Ireland, the climate lends itself to film. It’s overcast and shite the whole time, and film gives you that sense of feeling.”
The cast of characters expands to include pioneering surf travel writer and photographer Kevin Naughton and Craig Peterson, as well as Slater, local legends Andy Hill and Joe McCarthy, and big-wave riding female Easkey Britton – who becomes the first woman to surf a massive set of waves off Ireland’s coast, an event captured for the first time on film. But stunning backdrops – a manor home on the edge of the coastline in Portballintrae, the 700ft Cliffs of Moher in Clare – are the film’s true stars.
The return of the Malloy brothers – Chris, Keith and Dan – globetrotting soul surfers from California, to the country of their ancestors, offers a sort of spiritual climax to Waveriders.
The brothers, who make their own surf films as well as designing gear for outerwear company Patagonia, have surfed Ireland in the past, lending their considerable credibility to the spots lining the western coast and helping the sport’s popularity in Ireland. They return in Waveriders to surf massive 20-30ft waves below the Cliffs of Moher. It’s a top tourist destination, but the slow evolution of surfing in Ireland means it has only emerged as a surfspot in the last two years.
Shot from three perspectives, we are treated to not only the wave-side views of the exquisite lines carved by Davies, Fitzgerald and Chris and Keith Malloy, but the majestic backdrop of the cliffs, and the weak-kneed view from their tops as the group of surfers peer down to the perfect sets arriving at the coast below.
That would have been the end of the movie, had Conroy and his co-producer Margo Larkin not been patient enough to wait for a reported monster swell, due to hit the Irish coast on the day of their final deadline at the end of 2007. The footage of the 50ft waves crashing along the Irish coast needs no soundtrack or commentary, nor do the nervous looks on the faces of Davies and Fitzgerald as they prepare for the stormy conditions.
The subsequent footage serves as a fitting, if slightly hurried, climax to Conroy’s film. But the suggestion from the closing scene is clear: Irish surfing, like its waves, will only get bigger.
embrace of its coasts. Freeth founded the first lifeguard corps in Southern California, teaching Angelenos search and rescue, leading by his own heroic example before meeting an untimely end.
The historical material dug up by Conroy and his crew impresses, but can’t compete with beautiful cinematography in the latter parts of the film.
“It’s why we shot Waveriders on 35mm film. We wanted to go back to the old days and make it a timeless film,” says
‘ IRISHMAN GEORGE FREETH HAS BEEN CREDITED WITH POPULARISING SURFING IN HAWAII AND SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA’
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Meet Ashley Fiolek, unassuming inspiration to millions and mischievous new poster child of a traditionally male sport. And she’s profoundly deafWords: Gretel C Kovach
Photography: Valerie Phillips
The Lady is a Champ
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hey should know better, but even major sportswriters do a double-take when they see the life-size blow-up of Transworld Motocross magazine propped in Ashley Fiolek’s training room. No, the reigning US women’s champion, the first female motorcycle racer to grace the cover of the
States’ MX bible, is not the blonde babe in the Santa Claus bikini adorning the masthead of the December 2008 issue. Fiolek is the other blonde, in the large action shot, tearing it up on the 250cc Honda with the number one between the handlebars, mud flying off her boots from deep in a turn as she stares intently from behind her goggles at the path ahead.
A spray of long flaxen hair escaping from the rider’s helmet and hot pink accents on her gear are the only hints that an 18-year-old wünderkind from Florida who took the Women’s Motocross Association title in her rookie year as a pro is the new feminine face of this oh-so-macho sport. What’s more, Fiolek earned the highest compliment in US motocross, the title of Fastest Female, without being able to hear the roar of her engine or the approach of her competitors on the track. Despite the added challenge of being born profoundly deaf, winning the 2008 national championship appears to be just the beginning for Fiolek, and women’s motocross, as she races ahead.
In the last year, Fiolek was one of the first group of women invited to participate in the Summer X Games motocross competition, and she became the first woman to be hired by a factory team, the Honda Red Bull riders. With a lucrative salary and sponsors from other major companies like T-Mobile, Fiolek’s years of hard work are paying off into a viable career – a feat matched in the US by only a handful of elite racers.
Fiolek shot out of the 2009 WMA racing season in the lead and held her position through the early rounds. She took first overall in round one, on May 23, at Glen Helen Raceway in San Bernadino, California, and followed with three more wins, including a perfect sweep of the day’s races at High Point Raceway, Pennsylvania, on June 13. Miki Keller, who founded the WMA in 2004, says that the current season will most likely be the most competitive in the short history of women’s motocross. “The stakes are higher. The women want it,” he says.
Their audience is getting bigger as well, thanks in no small part to Fiolek, who has earned the respect of motocross racers and fans by using the spotlight to promote the sport. But that hasn’t tempered her passion for making competitors eat her dirt on the track. She took to motocross because it offered her the opportunity “to be able to ride, to feel free”, she says in sign language as her mother, Roni Fiolek, interprets. Winning helped too. “I just kept advancing since I was a little girl, and I fell in love with it. I’m very competitive,” she adds, smiling sweetly.
Even when there’s no trophy at stake and no adrenaline-tinged taste of a potential win on her lips, Fiolek is clearly savouring every minute. On a sunny afternoon, she took a spin on a small pit bike around her family’s backyard track, at their spread near St Augustine, Florida. Dressed in jeans and a T-shirt without helmet, the motorcycle appears to be an extension of her body. She commands it with a slight shift of weight or tilt of her head, her thighs absorbing the shock of each return to earth in synchronicity with the machine’s suspension. Fiolek knows this track so well, she could probably run it blindfolded.
She launches off a tabletop jump, sand spitting from her back wheel, and then throttles out of a deeply rutted turn. She chugs around, standing on the footpegs, then circles around
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and around in the sand, digging deeper under a cloud of exhaust until she grows dizzy, laughs at herself, and pops a wheelie on the way back to the front porch.
Later, the Fiolek family’s live-in mechanic, Cody Wolf, summed up the secret of her success. “She rides it just like a boy,” he says. “No offence, but some girls just don’t look comfortable.” He signs the words to her as he speaks, explaining what he means: “You ride the motorcycle; the motorcycle doesn’t ride you.” She nods. But with Ashley Fiolek on the bike, riding like a girl in women’s professional motocross has taken on a whole new meaning.
iolek’s natural form is a reflection of experience – she started riding motorcycles at about the same time as she learned to walk. At first, she was propped near the handlebars while her father, Jim Fiolek, steered, and mum followed on a four-wheeler. She got her own motorcycle at the age of three, complete with training wheels, and began racing at seven, competing against the boys until they outgrew her petite 5ft 2in (159cm), 50kg frame.
The Fioleks could tell Ashley was different from other children, but that never stopped them from encouraging her to become a motorcycle racer. As a baby, Ashley wouldn’t flinch at loud noises, but they soon realised that she wasn’t mentally disabled like the doctors first suggested. In fact, Ashley is so profoundly deaf that she would hardly hear a jet engine if she were standing next to it.
The Fioleks moved to Florida in 1998, when Ashley was still in her early years of schooling, so that she could attend
the Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind, but refused to treat her as if she had a disability. When other parents wouldn’t let their deaf children have driver’s licences, Roni Fiolek rolled her eyes. She loved seeing her once-clingy little girl find her stride. “She was always real shy at first. But when she started riding she became a different person. You could see her confidence grow,” she says.
She learned to shift gears by the crescendo of vibration from the engine. To this day, she occasionally slams it into neutral by accident, an error that has sent her flying over the handlebars. On the track, she must hold her line until she is certain that no one is in her path, looking for their shadows or messages from her mechanic flashed on a board from the pit. Fiolek makes it look easy, but Sarah Whitmore, her close friend and fellow pro racer, knows better.
“She’s an inspiration,” Whitmore says. “I don’t know how she does it. It’s amazing that she feels her bike and knows when to shift instead of listening for it like everyone else does.”
Astonishingly, her disability has only once caused a crash she might otherwise have avoided, when she lost sight of a boy she was racing and started to exit the track. She found him when he came crashing down on her after a jump, bending her handlebars and battering her arm. But the advantages of being deaf have outweighed the drawbacks during competition. “They can’t come up behind her and rev their engines to scare her, because she doesn’t hear it. And she doesn’t hear other people say, ‘You can’t do this or you can’t do that because you’re a girl,’” her father says. “We make sure she doesn’t hear that.”
Fiolek was just 13 years old in 2004 when she won the most prestigious US amateur motocross championship, at country singer Loretta Lynn’s Tennessee Ranch, and was named America
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“I THOUGHT IT WOULD BE SO COOL
TO HAVE A GIRL WHO COULD SURF,
JUST LIKE THE BOYS”
“SHE WAS REAL SHY AT FIRST. BUT WHEN
SHE STARTED RIDING SHE BECAME A
DIFFERENT PERSON”
Motorcycle Association (AMA) Youth Motocrosser of the Year. She went on to win 12 more amateur titles before turning pro.
She’s found mischievous ways of dealing with the pressure that comes after years at the top of her discipline, settling her nerves with pranks before a race, like stealing a rival’s helmet. During last year’s national series, Fiolek, or ‘Rude Pea’ as she’s been known since childhood, grabbed her five-year-old brother Kicker’s bicycle and rode it down a 30m jump, her knees knocking against the handlebars as the tiny wheels spun out of control and she crash-landed in a bleeding heap at the bottom, laughing. “I’m always doing something stupid before the race, trying to stay calm,” she says. Two days later, still wounded from gravel embedded in her skin, she won the national cup, beating five-time champion Jessica Patterson.
Under the stewardship of MX Sports, which acquired the WMA National Championship earlier this year, the women’s motocross series finally ended its hand-to-mouth existence when it was fully integrated into the AMA Pro Motocross Championship. “The girls worked harder all the time to prove that it’s not all just for fun, to show the sponsors we were serious,” Fiolek says. “It’s a man’s sport” – but, at last, it’s paying off for women.
Miki Keller says that Fiolek was a major force in expanding those opportunities. “Her dedication to racing, her work ethic and her results, combined with her tremendous PR, knocked down that wall. She broke down that barrier where there hadn’t been a woman on a factory team. Now, we’re hoping that it opens doors for the rest of the riders.”
Fiolek remains a woman in perpetual motion. Her fitness trainer is helping her get stronger so that one day she might become the first woman to qualify to race against the men in the pros. Meanwhile, an international posse of women racers
is keeping her busy. In the opening round of the FIM Women’s World Championship, in Bulgaria in April, Fiolek took third, despite competing on a borrowed bike and coping with the effects of a seven-hour time difference between the United States and Europe. It was a result that left her “pumped”.
hen we meet, Fiolek is back in the States for the first US race of the 2009 season for the Honda Red Bull Racing team in the AMA Pro Motocross Championship, on May 23 at the Glen Helen track in San Bernardino, California. Last year, she was the class of the field, but Fiolek isn’t looking back to last year’s championship win – she’s too busy getting faster. Fiolek is known for shooting first out of the gate to seize the holeshot. But she is always looking ahead to the next bend in the road, because it’s the turns where you win or lose, she says.
As for her career, there seems to be no stopping her. Fiolek suited up and hit a private track near her Florida home one morning for a pre-season workout that went like this: launch 15m off a jump, circle around the track past a haunted old motorcycle shack, gun it in a turn and pivot around a pond, body leaning almost horizontally, narrowly missing a stand of pine trees. Repeat without stopping, lap after lap.
Twenty minutes later, Fiolek pulled over to catch her breath as heat radiated from the burning engine. “I feel fast; good,” she told Wolf, signing the words. “I think this is the fastest I’ve ever ridden.” Given her track record, probably not for long.
“I’M ALWAYS DOING SOMETHING STUPID
BEFORE THE RACE, TRYING TO
STAY CALM”
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The refreshing health drink. 100% pure & natural ingredients.
78 HANGAR-7 INTERVIEW 80 GET THE GEAR 82 TOP IRISH SURFSPOTS 84 LISTINGS 88 NIGHTLIFE 94 BULL’S EYE 96 SHORT STORY 98 MIND’S EYE
Everything you can’t afford to miss this month
More Body & Mind
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The Hangar-7 Interview
A wizard on two wheels talks speed, power and revenge among one of the world’s best collections of dream machines
Eugene Laverty looks like the proverbial kid in a sweet shop. He strolls around Hangar-7, at Salzburg airport, in silent admiration, gazing at the jets, biplanes and supercars with the look of that sweet-toothed child left to contemplate a counter of sugary bonbons. Not that the 23-year-old from Toomebridge in Antrim is a stranger to speedy technology as a rising star of motorcycle racing and a contender for this year’s World Supersport title. But when he spots the Toro Rosso Formula One car that Sebastian Vettel piloted to victory in last year’s Italian Grand Prix, he lets out a low whistle. “I’d love to take that out right now,” he says with a mischievous grin, “and drive it down the runway a few times.” He looks up hopefully. “Just open the gate and let me go.” Maybe later, young man. But, first, some questions…So, the F1 cars caught your attention…Every time I see a Formula One car, it takes my breath away. They have a big impact on what we do. F1 technology – the electronics in particular – always drips down into bike racing.You’re pretty fast yourself – and in the hunt for the World Supersport title…Well, I’ve won three of the first seven races this season. It’s between me and one other rider, Cal Crutchlow. [Pauses] We’ll see. It will be tight.You come from a motorcycling family. Your dad was a road racer, and your two elder brothers are in the sport…I was three when [brothers] Michael and John put me on a motorbike, a little motocross thing. I was still riding a bicycle with stabilisers at the time. They paved my way, really. They went into racing before me. By the time I got on a bike, they’d done three seasons. That helped. When I started, people kept an eye on me. I got opportunities early.You’ve rather jumped ahead of your brothers since. Is there much rivalry?None at all. Michael is actually joining me in World Supersport for the second half of the season. That’s great. He could be standing on the rostrum next to me. And he’ll be on a similar level of bike, so I’ll use him almost like a team-mate, as someone to bounce ideas off.
both down. My right boot got caught under my footrest with the weight of both bikes and the other guy on top. We slid into the gravel. When I got up, blood was spurting out of my foot and up past my waist, like a scene in Kill Bill.What was the damage? I’d ground away the top of two toes. They repaired pretty well.Crikey. Have you ever thought you were going to die on the track?In my second year of racing when I didn’t have a good understanding of the bike and lost it into the first corner at Brands Hatch. I hit the lip of the gravel trap with both ankles. That flipped me and sent me cartwheeling. As I was bouncing from head to feet, I was thinking, ‘Something’s going to go wrong here.’But you walked away…Not really. I could have broken my neck. As it was, I damaged ligaments in both ankles. I couldn’t walk for two weeks. That was OK. It meant I was off school.Do you need fear to be a good rider?Definitely, although it’s more about having a wise head. There are guys I race with who have no fear. And with that comes a lack of common sense.Talking of wise heads, your sporting hero is Lance Armstrong…An exceptional character. His dedication and determination are second to none.How about heroes in your own sport?It’s impossible not to admire Valentino Rossi. He’s been at the top for so long that it’s hard to see what motivates him – yet he keeps winning.Presumably you’d like a crack at MotoGP yourself…Of course, but only on a competitive ride. If, in five years, I’ve been in MotoGP for a while but I’m not getting a chance on a top bike, I’ll move on. Winning is what counts. If I win the World Supersport, I could be in World Superbike next year. I think that’s realistic.Lastly – you’re 23, you travel the globe and you ride bikes for a living. Do you have the best job in the world? Yeah. It definitely beats nine-to-five.
Eugene Laverty
You could have used a track friend in June at the American round of the championship. You had a last-lap clash with another rider that could have been nasty, didn’t you?Yeah. I’d led all race and there were only a couple of corners left. It wasn’t a passing place. He [Ten Kate Honda rider Kenan Sofuoglu] was out of control. There’s no way he’d have stayed on if he hadn’t hit me. It wasn’t a fair manoeuvre. I’ll get him back…Really? How?Well, nothing outside the rules. More of a warning – if you try something like that, I’ll hit you back twice as hard.Sounds like things get fraught. Can you leave these battles on the track?I’m fine after a race. The main thing in America was that I finished second, and the championship leader third, so I closed on him. I take the positives.You managed to stay on the bike that time. What’s your worst crash?I had a bad one pre-season in 2004. An inexperienced rider took my line into a corner. I hit him and took us
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Get the Gear
Smooth RideIt’s Tour de France time: here’s how to ape your two-wheel heroes, with a little more style
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81
Waves Out West
It’s early on a Tuesday evening in the surfing hamlet of Castlegregory, located on a spit of land in Kerry, and Gerard Mulligan is holding court at Ned’s. It’s the local hangout for the growing surf scene on this stretch of shore break, but there are no surfers here. A look outside at the placid conditions on this stretch of the Atlantic could explain why.
Instead, Mulligan, a local carpenter and leader of the two-piece, unironically named G-Team band (“Traditional music, but a bit reggae and rock, and modern”) is standing pints of lager at the bar and offering a modest assessment of his home patch. “It’s the best place,” he says, “in all of Ireland.”
It’s been a hot week. Radio Kerry is fielding calls from listeners struggling with the 22-degree temperatures and the sun. Inside every enclosed space, the sickly-sweet smell of suntan lotion – one assumes the highest factor – is inescapable, and the patches of red on smiling faces reveal occasional sloth in the application of it.
And the Atlantic waters on Brandon Bay, on the west side of Castlegregory’s small peninsula, are about as turbulent as those in the dog bowl outside Philip Fitzgibbons’s surf shop. Less so after a drink by one of the exhausted-looking mutts that parade along the narrow roads of this town like respected members
The steady swell and stunning scenery of the west coast have earned it a growing surfing reputation in recent years. Among the gems are the windswept beaches of Castlegregory
wetsuits against the 10-degree water lying in the boots of their cars. Portballintrae, in the north, is beloved among experienced surfers, and Portrush West Strand and White Rocks on the Northern Irish coast are popular with beginners and intermediates.
The Dingle Peninsula, on which Castlegregory is located, has its own sterling, if less-publicised, reputation. The Slieve Mish Mountains, rising black against the impossibly green patchwork of farmland at its foothills, block most of the wind and cloud cover – creating a separate, favourable weather system for Castlegregory. The peninsula can pick up swells in every direction, meaning a steady serving of waves
of the local gentry. “It’s so rare that we don’t have a swell,” says Fitzgibbons.
The lack of waves, rest assured, is an infrequent occurrence. The west coast has been on the radar of the international surfing community for quite some time. Spots like Lahinch in Clare have turned into proper surf towns, stuffed with shops and idle, board-shorted French and English surfers waiting for sets to roll in,
‘A steady serving of waves up to 2m is perfect for beginners and intermediates’
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up to 2m that are perfect for beginners and intermediate surfers. And there are enough across the beaches for all of them. “If there are 100 people on a wave, walk 100m, and there’s another great break,” says Fitzgibbons.
The area was untouched until the American surf craze of the 1960s and ’70s began making its way over to Ireland. Fitzgibbons, now 35, remembers borrowing his brother’s self-made plywood board to surf the shorebreak in the mid-1980s. He was mostly alone. The birth of the Celtic Tiger and the growing availability of good wetsuits in northern Europe contributed to a surfing craze that began in the mid-1990s and continues today. Well, not this exact day.
Today, as we’ve mentioned, is quiet, much to the chagrin of two Finnish surfers perusing boards in Fitzgibbons’s cramped shop. There would be no surf
for the Finns, and, just as likely, no board sales for Fitzgibbons, either. But his shop is doing fine. There is enough business, in fact, to support two such shops in Castlegregory. A broad-shouldered, slightly paunchy former professional windsurfer by the name of Jamie Knox owns the other, and their advertising boards compete for attention on the narrow road leading from the town to the tip of Maharee.
Knox has been here for 20 years, his shop serving first a trickle of surfers, then a steady stream. The way Knox sees it, from behind his wraparound shades, surfing will only get bigger, “especially now that everyone’s unemployed”.
Not that anyone is predicting that Castlegregory will evolve into an emerald Malibu beach or Waimea Bay. There are more than a few ‘for sale’ signs in the gardens of the low-slung, tiled-roof properties built just a couple of years ago by wealthy city folk as second homes. A move to build a car park that would accommodate the vans stacked with boards and equipment, arriving from as far away as Spain and southern France, was quashed by local farmers.
A “reluctant surf town”, Fitzgibbons calls it. And a quiet one, as well. But for how much longer?
‘Castlegregory is a reluctant surf town, and a quiet one, as well’
Going coastal
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The best spots and where to find them
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HOTSPOTSIt’s the height of summer, and this month is really cooking
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SUMMER X GAMES30.07 – 02.08.09
RIDE WITH ROCZEN15.07 – 31.08.09
26 TRIX10 – 11.07.09
BKSA FREESTYLE KITESURF10 – 12.07.09
BRITISH ENDURO CHAMPIONSHIP11 – 12.07.09
ADAC MX MASTERS11 – 12.07.09
FORMULA ONE GERMAN GRAND PRIX12.07.09
ENNSTAL CLASSIC15 – 18.07.09
FIA FORMULA 2 CHAMPIONSHIP17 – 19.07.09
RED BULL PRO NATIONALS 18 – 19.07.09
PIKES PEAK HILLCLIMB18 – 20.07.09
US OPEN OF SURFING18 – 26.07.09
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COS CUP SERIES31.07 – 02.08.09
WRC RALLY FINLAND31.07 – 02.08.09
RED BULL STREET STYLE DELHI01.08.09
MAZDA LONDON TRIATHLON
1 – 02.08.09
RED BULL SK8 MISSION03 – 06.08.09
RED BULL X-ALPS19.07 – 10.08.09
RED BULL MOTOGP ROOKIES CUP25.07.09
UCI MOUNTAIN BIKE WORLD CUP25 – 26.07.09
RED BULL CITY BEACH JAM26.07.09
NASCAR SPRINT CUP26.07.09
RED BULL LORD OF THE STREET31.07.09
SECOND ASHES TEST16 – 20.07.09
CHRIS PFEIFFER IN KOSOVO26.07.09
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THE GARDEN FESTIVAL03 – 12.07.09
MONTREUX JAZZ FESTIVAL 200903 – 18.07.09
KILLA KELA08.07.09
RED BULL MUSIC ACADEMY WEEK08 - 12.07.09
TRÆNA FESTIVAL WITH WHITEST BOY ALIVE09 – 11.07.09
EXIT FESTIVAL09 – 12.07.09
LUX
SANTIAGO
NIGHTSPOTSSummer’s not just about sunshine: it’s one big party from sunset to sunrise
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CANNES
MYSTERY JETS
SPLASH! FESTIVAL10.07.09
LEON WARE10.07.09
SINDEN10.07.09
GRANDMASTER FLASH @ POOLBAR FESTIVAL10.07.09
DISCONAUTICA FESTIVAL10 - 11.07.09
LOOP 3.010 – 12.07.09
RED BULL MUSIC ACADEMY STAGE @ OXEGEN 200910 – 12.07.09
DAEDALUS11.07.09
BONOBO12.07.09
FEST VAN CLEEF12.07.09
SANTIGOLD13.07.09
FILM FESTIVAL
CANNESCinema ParadiseFor 12 days every year, the Cannes Film Festival is the world’s party centre: the benchmark for the French Riviera. Our man in Cannes, Chris Sullivan, had AAA passes
Party time
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RED BULL X-FIGHTERS MADRID16 – 17.07.09
DOUR FESTIVAL16 – 19.07.09
BENICÀSSIM INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL16 – 19.07.09
RED BULL BC ONE CLUB TOUR INDIA16.07 – 01.08.09
NUKE FESTIVAL17 – 18.07.09
MELT! FESTIVAL17 – 19.07.09
MOVE D18.07.09
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HUMAN ELEMENTS19.07.09
RADIO SLAVE20.07.09
SATURN NEVER SLEEPS22.07.09
FÊTE BLANCHE24.07.09
JUNIOR BOYS24.07.09
BEAT PATROL FESTIVAL24 – 25.07.09
CAMP BESTIVAL24 – 26.07.09
As it rapidly approaches its 10th birthday, this temple of nightlife has yet to lose its sheen
Let There Be Light
World’s Top Clubs
LUXLISBON
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Smog, sea-urchin innards and tailors: Chile’s capital is a city of extremes, as Señor Coconut, a Latin electronic musician and Santiagan by choice, explains to Florian Obkircher
Coco LocoResident Artist
Autopista Vespucio Norte Express
Costanera Norte
Costanera Norte
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NEWCASTLE
The Magical Mystery TourLondon-based band Mystery Jets have shaken off stereotypes, record label trouble and fashion faux pas to be in Newcastle for Evolution Weekender festival. Tom Hall went to meet them
The Green Room
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FUJI ROCKS24 – 26.07.09
THE NOVA JAZZ & BLUES NIGHT25.07.09
MICHAEL MAYER25.07.09
JAMES PANTS26.07.09
ALEXANDER ROBOTNICK27.07.09
RED BULL SOUNDCLASH29.07.09
SUNDAY BEST WITH MAURICE FULTON02.08.09
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We like to offer food for thought in The Red Bulletin, so we hope this month’s cartoons are to your taste
Bull’sEye
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“Forgive me, Father…” Father Damian Humphris reluctantly
drifted out of his reverie about playing rugby at school in Ireland and shifted his not inconsiderable bulk into a more comfortable position – if ‘comfortable’ were ever a word that could be used to describe the oaken confines of a confessional, particularly one that had been installed in St Joseph’s Catholic Oratory when it was built in 1723 and never touched since. It was as if, Humphris reflected, the man of the cloth on the inside was the one actually doing the penance, rather than the absolution.
Inwardly chuckling at his bon mot, Humphris turned his attention to the job in hand, or, as novice Father Timothy would have called it, his ‘punter’. This was just another indication that the Catholic Church, along with the rest of the world, was in the grip of a dumbing-down of culture that had no respect for tradition or eloquence. Give it a few more years, reflected Humphris dogmatically, and the novitiate won’t even include Latin. However, the 72-year-old priest had long since given up making long-term forecasts as far as his own continued earthly existence was concerned.
There was at least nothing wrong with his eyesight. The traditional wooden grille separating confessor from confessed had been broken at the bottom left-hand corner for years, normally allowing those granting absolution to have a glimpse
A story by Anthony Peacock
The ginger beard was twitching rhythmically – the man was sobbing
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of part of the bottom jaw of the forgiven. “As far as peep shows go,” Father Timothy had remarked breezily last month after his first morning on confessional duty, “I’ve definitely seen better.” No doubt he had! And this was part of the problem that the Catholic Church, and particularly St Joseph’s Oratory, faced as a whole.
But what faced Father Damian through the hole in the grille was part of a dirty, stubbly, ginger beard. Not one of the regular homeless men that he recognised, but, in this area of London, they came and went all the time.
“...for I have sinned.”The visitor was well-drilled,
enunciating the ancient formula easily enough, despite having obviously taken onboard enough liquor to make the first of his sins self-evident. Maybe there was something in Timothy’s idea to install an anti-halitosis filter over the grille after all. But, enough about wretched Timothy. Concentrate, Damian. Father Humphris studied the patch of beard more closely, for it was obvious to him now why this man was so proficient in the act of contrition. He spoke with the trace of an Irish accent that was not dissimilar to
his own. And what was taught in austere Irish Catholic schools was never forgotten. Even rugby, as Father Humphris had been reflecting just moments earlier.
“Tell me how you have sinned,” intoned Humphris, feeling like an orchestral conductor summoning up the opening bars of a distinctly over-played symphony.
“I have been drinking,” said the man. This was hardly something out of the Book of Revelation as far as Father Damian was concerned, and he mentally opened the penance account at 10 ‘Hail Marys’. Actually, make that 15: the man had clearly been drinking a lot.
“I have to drink,” added the visitor. “I cannot face my sin without drink, for I’m a sinner; an impure man unworthy of God’s forgiveness; unworthy of God’s love.”
“Are you truly sorry?” asked Humphris. “Will you try not to drink again?”
“I shall try not to,” replied the penitent. “For I am a slave to God. And all I ask for is forgiveness.”
Humphris discreetly looked at the glowing phosphorescent hands of his watch in the gloom. It was 10 past seven. In 20 minutes, the Fathers of the Oratory would be gathering around the refectory table for their evening meal. It was roast lamb tonight – his favourite. There would be roast potatoes and creamed spinach too, with some claret and lively conversation. Father Augustine had a guest up – a visiting Benedictine monk from Italy named Teodoro, who loved to make jokes about the British and their choirboys. It was never as ascetic a lifestyle as people always believed, and, for the portly Humphris, dinner was as solemn a ritual as Vespers. He needed to get the Slave to God absolved and on his way again as quickly as possible. The past two hours in the confessional, during which Humphris had dealt variously with an adulterer, a drug-user, a liar, a blasphemer and an onanist were beginning to result in a fiercely localised cabin fever – not to mention a painful cramp in his left buttock.
“Have you any other sins to confess?”“I have many more sins Father. This
is why I drink. I have stolen – lots of things. I have been fighting. I have hurt people. I have no money of my own, no house and no job – this is why I steal. I am a failure, Father. I have failed God.”
To his alarm, Humphris noted that the patch of ginger beard had started twitching rhythmically. Quietly but unmistakably, the man was sobbing. With the sinking feeling that this could take far longer than expected – why did the complicated ones always come in last? – the priest patiently asked his
When someone is searching for absolution, complacency can be a cardinal sin
Ultimate Sacrifice
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ginger beard twitching uncontrollably. “I’m trying to make amends for my sins! I have so many! I need to be cleansed!”
“Tomorrow,” said Humphris firmly, relieved that he could finally legitimately conclude the interview and scurry across the road to the light and warmth of the refectory, where the lamb would be waiting and Teodoro the monk would no doubt be in the middle of some mildly ribald joke about the sins of the flesh. “We will talk about your sins tomorrow. In the meantime, go to the police. And get some rest,” he added, in a more kindly tone. “I think you need it.”
“But you can’t just send me away,” sobbed the man. “I have other things to tell you. I have seen the devil walk through my body. I have killed a man and tortured a soul. Do you remember the last Pope Pius, Father?” pleaded the man, his hands now scratching the grille. “He said that the mistake people always made was thinking that the devil was a deficiency, not an efficiency. It’s true!” The rest was indistinguishable as he broke down once more, sobbing, “Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa...”
Had this chap really killed a man? And was he actually possessed?
more sinister. Had this chap really killed a man? And was he actually possessed?
Father Damian realised with an unaccustomed shock that he was afraid, or at least disturbed. While never the most gregarious individual, he suddenly felt the urgent need for human company, to talk with Father Augustine – even, Heaven forbid, with young Timothy. He manoeuvred his bulk out of the cramped confessional and shuffled quickly across to the church door, his familiar walking stick for once hardly touching the ground.
When he got to the door, he stopped abruptly. What if the lunatic was still out there? What if he came back? Nonsense, he thought to himself, and pushed it open angrily. Outside, everything was calm. A light rain began to fall and a couple giggled as they walked past on the pavement. Across the road Father Damian could clearly see the cheerful light of the refectory. It was a typical city street scene. With a relieved smile, the priest headed beatifically towards his eagerly anticipated dinner...
The couple, who just minutes earlier had been giggling, were now leaden-faced with shock. She was the one who saw most of it, as he had been leaning forwards to open their umbrella. The car was definitely a Renault Clio – she was sure, as she owned one herself – and it drove straight at the old man, who flew a sickening distance through the air before landing violently on the church steps.
She told the police that she ran over to the car and said to the driver something like: “You’ve just killed him.” But she couldn’t remember anything about what the man looked like, apart from the fact that he had ginger hair.
One thing she recalled perfectly, however, was his reply, perhaps because it simply didn’t make sense. “I didn’t just kill him,” said the man, before putting the crumpled car into gear and driving off. “I killed him 10 minutes ago. I even tried to tell him, but he wouldn’t listen. All I asked for was forgiveness. That’s all.”
About the authorAnthony Peacock spent his early life travelling between England and Italy, and has never really stopped travelling since. A creative individual, he is nonetheless stymied by his inability to write a decent autobiography. Even in three sentences.
lachrymose visitor exactly what he had stolen. There was something about the man’s patent distress, maybe also the fact that he was a fellow countryman – that diverted Father Damian’s thoughts briefly away from roast lamb.
“Some money, from a handbag,” said the man, his crying more audible now, “some credit cards from the same handbag; some china from a house, which I sold – Crown Derby, they said it was; and, this morning, I stole a car – a Renault, I think it was.”
The guidelines in this instance were very clear. While confession was a direct discourse between man and God, if there was still a chance to remedy the sin, then absolution could not be granted – although, admittedly, the man on the other side of the grille seemed to be getting more and more emotional, and God seemed to have little to say to Father Damian at the moment.
Probably drugs as well as drink, thought Humphris. Very sad. Clearly an intelligent man with a good Catholic education, now reduced to addiction and theft.
“You must return the car to its owner, if you know who that person is,” said Humphris in a patrician manner. “If you do not know who that person is, then you must go to the police.”
“But do you forgive me, Father?” said the penitent, with a note of what sounded suspiciously like hysteria in his voice.
“Not until you have returned the items you have stolen, if you still have them,” said Humphris sternly, wondering exactly where this conversation was going. “I cannot forgive you now. Come back tomorrow once you have done that. If you are truly sorry, then you must do something about it, rather than just say it.”
“But Jesus forgives, doesn’t he?” cried the man in the confessional, almost petulantly. “Jesus always forgives.”
With the relieved air of a maths student whose favourite equation has just popped up in an exam, Father Humphris realised he was back on safe ground. At theological college, he had written a paper on the notion of universal forgiveness, so he explained patiently (although some would have called it patronisingly): “Of course God will always forgive. But universal forgiveness is based on suffering and sacrifice. Just as God sacrificed his only son on the cross to pay for the sins of man, you too must make a sacrifice to atone for your sins. This is where we get the idea of penance. But I cannot give you your penance until you have made practical amends for your sins.”
“That’s why I’m here, though!” shouted the man to the unseeing confessional,
Ever the pedant, Humphris briefly contemplated informing his interlocutor that it was actually Pope Paul VI rather than Pope Pius XII who had spoken of the devil’s efficiency, in order to break the silence if nothing else. But then he thought better of it. What he needed to do instead was go and speak to Father Augustine and the others urgently. They would have to call an ambulance or social services for the poor fellow, and the lamb would just have to wait awhile. Yet as he was wondering exactly how to broach this delicate manoeuvre, there was the unmistakable groan of creaking wood as the man got up and the ancient structure of the confessional rearranged its shape into single occupancy. “Thank you, Father,” he said indistinctly, before his footsteps echoed across the church’s old flagstones and the massive door banged shut.
Humphris sat for five minutes in the darkness, not sure what to do next. The encounter had shaken him, in particular the way that it had turned from simply being the drunken confessions of a homeless man involving drinking and car theft – a more or less everyday occurrence – into something altogether
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I know a good way to start an argument. I tell people the truth and say, “I don’t like music.” This reliably causes an incredulous hick-blink, and they respond, “Don’t be ridiculous! You must mean you don’t like certain types of music. There must be something you like.” There isn’t, and I say so. Then we are off.
Music gets on my nerves. I seriously dislike all forms of it. ‘Pop’ is no longer a meaningful term, but contemporary music, in any style, I find depressing – far from energising, I find it enervating. Whatever it is, I have an immediate response: “Please turn it off. Now.” The idea of going home and listening to music – still more of going to a concert – is, to me, incomprehensible.
I have three unused iPods. I have never used the CD player in my car, although I admit to having Radio 3 on permanently while driving and when I’m in my office. But this is nothing to do with listening to music – it’s just that I enjoy the occult civilising effect of Radio 3’s intellect permeating the dross and clutter of modern life. The writer Jan Morris thinks similarly: when she leaves the house, she leaves the radio playing classical music, since her belief is that a little Bedrich Smetana has a purifying effect on the environment. It would certainly get rid of me.
But I don’t find classical music any more pleasing than whatever it is you call non-classical music nowadays. And, for the sake of argument, I should explain that this is not a statement made from a position of invincible brute philistinism and feral ignorance: my knowledge is actually above average. I can tell you the BWV number of obscure Bach cantatas and know all the words to the famous Bimba, Dagli Occhi Pieni di Malia aria from Madame Butterfly. There’s that
Wesendonck Lieder by Wagner, which is an amazing sonic diagram of sex. Hildegard of Bingen? My kind of girl.
All this I know, and still I couldn’t care less. If I never heard any music again, it wouldn’t bother me. I mentioned this to Paul Robertson, the violinist leader of the Medici String Quartet and a specialist in the relationship between psychiatric therapy and music. He was unflustered by my outburst and looked at me calmly, but concernedly, as you might an axe-murderer in the brief moment of quietude after the event. He said to me: “It’s not that you don’t care about music. It’s quite the opposite. You clearly care rather a lot.”
Music and the mind is a subject that has exercised imaginative therapists for years. How exactly is it that something abstract conveys so much meaningful emotion? Why does one sort of molecular vibration evoke grief; or another, happiness? What is it about hertz that, quite literally, moves us to tears? In my case, tears of frustration. Answer this and you are on the way to the absolute fundamentals of aesthetics.
Inevitably, creative artists provide a rich source of case study material. The painter J A M Whistler called his moody Thames-scapes Nocturnes in a direct reference to the musical form.
Wassily Kandinsky, who was perhaps the very first ‘abstract’ painter, lived with a condition called synaesthesia. This meant that when he heard a sound, he saw a colour or a shape. Such things hint at the strange mechanism of the brain. The novelist Anthony Burgess was a virtuoso pianist: he used to do a party piece where you showed him a painting and he would then play it on
the piano. This was somewhere between utter bollocks and completely amazing.
Something in music reflects the architecture of the brain, perhaps even of the soul. The terms we use to describe emotional states find a ready crossover into musical types: a fugue is a mood and we all know what harmony and discord mean. I, for one, often improvise. Who has not struck a wrong note? The significance of music may be based on some fundamental physiology: we hear in the womb, but our other senses are less engaged during foetal development. We can shut our eyes, but not our ears.
Mendelsohn said, “Music is too precise to be expressed in words.” Certainly, something about its mechanical patterns and mathematical structures seems to engage directly with the mind. Maybe Jan Morris’s leaving the music on in her cottage is justified by recent research by Gordon Shaw of the University of California, which seemed to suggest that listening to Mozart makes you more intelligent. I’m not certain what listening to Flo Rida Ft Kesha does to you.
The Music of the Spheres is one of the most beautiful concepts in that strange area that links science and philosophy with literature. Dante used it as a graphic of all creation; the astronomer Kepler thought the intervals and proportions of planetary movement were a reflection of life. And me? Still doggedly unmoved, but I do have something surprising in common with Manfred Eicher of ECM Records. He says the most beautiful sound in the world is… silence. Stephen Bayley is a former director of the Design Museum in London and an award-winning writer
Stephen Bayley asks a fundamental question: just what is wrong with not liking music
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