Fuel Up: Red Bull’s ‘The Art of Motion’ hits the Greek Island of Santorini.
Put a bunch of highly athletic and just a little crazy twenty-somethings together on the Greek island of Santorini on Saturday 8th October 2011 and what do you get? The annual Red Bull Art of Motion of Freerunners Competition, the first and only free running contest in the world – and what a day it proved to be. Red Bull themselves describe the event best:
“In Firostefani, the world’s best urban artists attempted to blend art and sports together in the unique ambience of this immaculate white city perched on the rocky cliffs. Rooftops, domes, terraces and swimming pools were all part of the 200-meter long course with a height differential of 50 meters that the athletes had to master within a two-minute time limit.”
The sport of free running is not normally thought of as a competitive one by its participants – they see it as simply trying to be as fluid and elegant as possible as they flip, leap and spin over, under and around any kind of obstacle and structure imaginable in their path. But the event on the Greek island managed to fuse the free, unstructured nature of the sport with a competition format, with the participant completing the course in the most elegant, fluid and spectacular style within the time limit being crowned the winner.
In the end the Latvian 20-year-old Pavels Petkuns came out top in the event, finishing his run with an elegant dive into the swimming pool at the end of the course. Yoann Leroux of France and Gaetan Bouillet of Belgium finished in second and third, while the UK managed a respectable effort with Kie Willis and Pip Anderson grabbing seventh and eighth spots respectively out of the fifteen competitors.
Jeb Corliss, a Californian ‘wingsuit pilot’, has taken the sport of skydiving to a new level by hurtling through a narrow slit in the side of the Tianmen Mountain in Hunan Province, China. The 35-year old, whose previous stunts have included jumping from Paris’ Eiffel Tower, Seattle’s Space Needle, and the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur, had his 75mph flight through the natural archway broadcast live on Chinese National Television on September 25th.
Corliss says he is aiming to develop a system that allows him to land a wingsuit flight without using a parachute… All we have to say is good luck with that Jeb, we think you might need it – although if he can find a way of doing it then we’ll be first on the scene.
Fuel Up: Thurs, Oct 2011
British Canoe hero Joe Clark has sights set on gold.
Joe Clarke is one of the sporting world’s finest and coolest up-and-coming stars. Joe competes in the K1M (Men’s Single Kayak) category of the Canoe Slalom, and is currently on the UK Olympic Development Programme which hand picks the top young athletes from all over the country as hopefuls for future Olympic Games. Still only 18 years old, Joe balances his hardcore training at Nottingham and at the new London 2012 Olympic course. He is also a familiar face in competition at worldwide, international and domestic events.
The list of achievements already attributed to him is pretty amazing at such a young age. To name just a few, Joe Clarke has been the Junior National Champion every year since 2006, he is the youngest person ever to be promoted to the Premier division and to win a Premier event, he is a 3x gold medalist at the National Premier Races, he holds the record for both the fastest 20m and 100m sprints ever recorded by a junior, he won a gold medal at the British Open Championships 2010 (the youngest person ever to achieve this), he is the overall highest ranked U23 K1M athlete, and he is currently ranked 2nd in the country National Premier Division – the country’s Olympic level. Phew…
Joe would now like to progress from his win at the British Open Championships and achieve a gold medal at the World/European Championships and at the 2012 Olympic Games held in Great Britain. With so many records and achievements under his lifebelt already, Joe is already well on track to achieving his next goal of an Olympic gold medal.
