Discover a different side to Eva Green
| Will your next taxi be a self-driven Jaguar I-PACE?
| What it takes to break a lap record at the Nürburgring Nordschleife
| The petrolheads racing in Jaguar’s new all-electric race series
| Up close with the latest special edition of the XE and XF: the 300 SPORT
INNOVATION “ ALL
INNOVATION “ ALL THE TIME, I GET TO KNOW THE MOUNTAIN. THE MORE I LEARN ABOUT IT, THE MORE I KNOW WHAT I DON’T HAVE TO DO” 62 THEJAGUAR
BERNHARD RUSSI SKI RUN DESIGNER ILLUSTRATIONS: MATHIS REKOWSKI A world-class downhill skier world-class downhill skier can touch 95 mph – faster than the road speed limit in most countries. “But speed isn’t everything,” says Bernhard Russi. “A good run can’t just be straight down; it needs long corners, 50-meter jumps. I want the best racer to win, but I also want viewers to be entertained.” An Olympic and world downhill champion in the 1970s, Russi is now one of the world’s most sought-after ski course designers. Since 1988, the Swiss has shaped every Olympic downhill course bar one. His Face de Bellevarde course at Val d’Isère is credited by many experts as a turning point in downhill skiing, changing the sport from straight-line speed-fests to a more technically challenging and spectatorfriendly event. Former Olympic ski champion and International Olympic Committee member Jean-Claude Killy once dubbed him the ‘Picasso of skiing.’ Russi himself says he had never contemplated course design as a profession, but as a racer he was known for voicing his criticism of pistes he thought not demanding enough. Then, in the early 1980s, not long after he’d retired, Russi was asked by the International Ski Federation to go to Calgary and look at the site for the 1988 Olympic course. “When I came back with my report, I said ‘The mountain is okay, but…’ And that ‘but’ made me a course designer,” he says. Skiing is in Russi’s blood. The son of a ski racer, he grew up in the Swiss mountain town of Andermatt, “where everyone skied as soon as they could walk.” A successful junior, Russi finished his studies in construction design on the insistence of his father before focusing on sport. His fledgling career was dealt an early blow. As a young pro keen to earn some extra money, Russi crashed while skiing as a stuntman for the James Bond film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, breaking a vertebra. The injury kept him out for six months, but he sensationally won the 1970 world championship in his comeback season at just 22. Olympic and world championship gold followed in 1972 and silver in 1976, before Russi retired at 30, concentrating on media work before finding his niche as a course designer. When he is asked to conceptualize a course, the first thing he does is study maps of the area to select a location to explore more closely. “Then I go there and I walk. I take different colored tapes and mark out lines down the mountain. It might take several visits, but eventually, there’ll be one perfect line, a mix of the ones I’ve walked, which we’ll build the course around. All the time, I get to know the mountain. The more I learn about it, the more I know what I don’t have to do. This is nature; I’m not a highway builder. My goal is to change as little as possible.” Once Russi has finalized his design, sketching on paper and screen, construction can begin: a process of several years. He’ll visit a site 10 to 20 times to check on the progress, finetuning if necessary. “When it’s done, I ski the course, but I don’t race it,” he says. “Those days are behind me!” That’s left to his assistant, Didier Défago, a former Olympic champion who retired in 2015. Not that Russi’s taste for thrills has left him. At 70, the Swiss is still a regular free climber in the mountains around Andermatt. “Climbing doesn’t have the same short bursts of intense adrenaline, but it’s still a thrill. There are moments when you are on the limit, just like skiing. It helps to push me.” THEJAGUAR 63
JAGUAR MAGAZINE celebrates creativity in all its forms, with exclusive features that inspire sensory excitement, from seductive design to cutting-edge technology.
The latest issue features a range of inspiring people: from Luke Jennings, creator of Villanelle, one of the most interesting television characters in recent times, to Marcus Du Sautoy, who ponders whether artificial intelligence is on the brink of becoming creative. Out on the road, we visit the US to explore the foodie heaven of Portland in a Jaguar I-PACE, take a Jaguar XE to the south of France to get a photographer’s viewpoint of the charming town of Arles, and much more.
David Gandy and his XK120 charm London’s creative quarter
| How charity In Place Of War channels creativity in conflict zones
| Interior designer Joyce Wang shares the latest trends in luxury
| Panasonic Jaguar Racing’s most successful year in Formula E
| Meet Jaguar’s new design director Julian Thomson
Often provocative, always creative: meet graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister
| The British woodcrafters bringing a new dimension to an age-old skill
| Sample Paul Pairet’s Michelin-starred culinary delights in Shanghai
| See how Iris van Herpen is redefining fashion technology
| Time-travel to the futuristic city of Seoul
Discover a different side to Eva Green
| Will your next taxi be a self-driven Jaguar I-PACE?
| What it takes to break a lap record at the Nürburgring Nordschleife
| The petrolheads racing in Jaguar’s new all-electric race series
| Up close with the latest special edition of the XE and XF: the 300 SPORT
| A charged-up drive of the New All-Electric Jaguar I-PACE in Portugal’s Algarve
| The inside line on the creation of the revolutionary I-PACE
| Reinventing a classic: meet the E-type Concept Zero
| Fifty years of the iconic XJ saloon
| Exclusive interview with tennis star Johanna Konta
| Can supercomputers revolutionise art?
The latest issue of The Jaguar magazine introduces our new ‘cub’, the E-PACE compact practical sports car, which is already turning heads on the street. As we commit to electrifying every new Jaguar by 2020, we explore how pushing boundaries on the track helps develop our sports cars, from writing motorsport history at Le Mans, to taking on the Nürburgring with the extreme XE SV Project 8 and being at the very cutting edge with the FIA Formula E Championship.
In this issue, we introduce a fresh new addition to the Jaguar family with the launch of the E-PACE. F1 racer Romain Grosjean reveals his passion for Jaguar while the Panasonic Jaguar Racing Team gives an insight into their preparations. Plus, we get to grips with the fast-paced sport of drone racing and spend a unique day with the XF Sportbrake.
In this issue we return to top level motorsport but not in a conventional way, and by doing so accelerate the development of our electric powertrains. In tandem, we introduce our Jaguar I-PACE Concept vehicle - a revolutionary new model available to reserve now for delivery in 2018.