A Tender Gaze | Henry Lamine Diagne
Henry Lamine Diagne’s soft and delicate glance transports us into a different realm of sports, where athletes and communities are portrayed in depth. It is a visual space in which the spectacle of athletic performance gives way to the vulnerability of human identity and the attachment to the cultural system to whom it belongs
For this young photographer, born in Switzerland and raised between Paris and Senegal, photographing athletes means, first and foremost, removing them from the merely performative dimension. Through the use of portraiture and his background in the fashion world, Henry humanizes his athletic subjects. They are no longer statuesque, iconic figures, but human beings through whom we can observe a culture and its unique characteristics from a privileged perspective. With their gestures, rituals, the environment surrounding them, and the communities to which they belong, these figures convey something that goes beyond the result, whether victory or defeat.
It is precisely this consciousness that defines much of Henry Lamine Diagne’s photographic practice. Portraiture meets documentary; editorial photography embraces the unpredictability of observation; fashion enters the world of sports without reducing it to a mere aesthetic surface. His method thus proceeds through a constant alternation between construction and observation. What matters to him is that something authentically human remains in the image, something that can be recognized even by those who have never directly experienced sports. His photography thereby becomes an exercise of intimacy and interpretation.
Sport, fashion or campaigns, what first educated your eye? Was it photography itself, cinema, the street, your family, music, or the cities you lived in? And how did photography first enter your life?
“I grew up in Switzerland. My mother is Swiss but my father is from Senegal, and because of his work we travelled a great deal when my brother and I were young. My mother was always very attentive to exposing us to art: she would take us to museums and exhibitions, and she almost invariably carried a small Nikon F100 film camera with her. I think that was probably the first thing that made me curious about photography. I would take her camera and photograph my younger brother, then whatever happened to be around me. I would photograph my neighbourhood, my family and the people around us. I suppose that was where it all began.
I think I got my first personal camera when I was around 13. Later, I attended photography school in Switzerland, which I finished when I was around 19. By then, I already knew that I wanted to explore fashion, so I moved to Paris. In my mind, Paris was almost the Real Madrid of fashion. I thought that If I could make it there, I could make it everywhere. It represented the highest level. I had very little idea of what I was actually entering, but I remember thinking: this sounds difficult, so I am going to do it. I can do it. I began working as a lighting assistant and, very quickly, I was given an extraordinary number of opportunities. In Switzerland, I had been trained in lighting in a very rigorous way. The working culture was extremely disciplined: you arrived on time, you remained focused, you were precise and consistent. That helped me enormously when I arrived in France. I came in with the mentality of wanting to do everything properly. Soon I started travelling with photographers, learning the profession by working in their shadow. That experience also made me understand that photography was a real industry. Until then, many of my teachers had warned me that it was an extremely difficult profession and that there was no guarantee I would ever be able to make a living from it. But when I started working with established photographers and lighting their sets, I could see that many of them made it.
I remember thinking that I wanted that kind of life—not because I ever dreamt of being rich, but because financial stability could provide a certain freedom. It could allow me to travel, to move, to make my own work. Those things are connected. So I began to think that perhaps I could use that freedom to pursue other projects that mattered to me. Then Covid happened. At the time I was still working as a lighting assistant, and afterwards I felt that I needed to challenge myself. The interruption gave me an opportunity to reset, to ask myself what I actually wanted to do and, more importantly, what kind of photographs I wanted to make. After that period, I essentially restarted my career, this time as a photographer.
Fashion was naturally the first field I entered because I already had connections and relationships within that world. But the more interesting question became: now that I am the photographer, what do I actually want to say? I went to Senegal and began photographing friends there. Some of them were wrestlers, and wrestling has an enormous cultural presence there. I started photographing these friends and, through them, I also met several marabouts, who represent the spiritual dimension surrounding the sport. I spent time with them, and I suddenly realized how interesting it was to photograph an athlete not simply as an athlete, but as an entry point into an entire culture. The sport became a way of reaching something deeper. Without initially intending to, I found myself photographing a very significant spiritual dimension of my own culture. I had never really had access to that world before.
Has sport always been part of your life, or did it only become one of your interests later, once you began to consider it as a photographic subject?
“I think I probably inherited my love of football from my father. We used to play a lot, and sport brought with it a very strong competitive mentality. My earliest memories of it are connected to this idea of wanting to be better than I had been the day before, of trying to improve every time I stepped onto the pitch. My father would come and watch me and my brother play. For a long time, it became one of the principal ways in which I expressed myself. But at that stage there was nothing particularly specific or intellectual about my relationship with sport. I simply loved it.
Growing up in Switzerland, we had access to many different sports, so I also played tennis, ran, cycled and tried all kinds of activities. Sports were simply everywhere in my childhood. What is interesting, however, is that none of that was initially connected to photography. When I first began taking pictures, it never occurred to me that I might one day photograph athletes. In that sense, I actually arrived at sport photography through fashion.”
Your work often seems drawn to what feels slightly suspended: a body, a gesture, a moment that exists somewhere between action and stillness. Are you particularly interested in these in-between instants? If so, why?
“From the very beginning, I wanted to avoid the spectacular. I feel that a great deal of sports photography is concerned with spectacular moments and spectacular actions, whereas I have always been much more interested in approaching athletes through portraiture and in revealing their sensitivity, their doubts, their vulnerability and their uncertainty. Those are dimensions of athletes that, in my opinion, remain relatively absent from mainstream sports culture. There is often a tendency to represent them almost as superhuman figures, when in reality they are far more complex than that. I approach athletes first and foremost as human beings. I am always looking for those moments in between. Of course, sometimes you win and sometimes you lose, but there is an enormous emotional territory between those two outcomes. So many things happen before the victory or after the defeat, and I feel that this intermediate space is still not being shown often enough, or at least not always in the way I would like to see it represented.”
At Athleta Magazine, we try to approach sport not only as performance, but as a cultural and artistic language. When did you first begin to look at sport as an image rather than simply as an event or a form of performance?
“When I decided that I wanted to become a photographer, I suddenly had to think about who I was, but also about the way other people perceived me. While photographing wrestlers in Senegal, I realised that athletes could function almost as cultural figures. I think that was probably my first real understanding of sport in that sense. Until then, I had mostly been working on editorials and campaigns.
When I began producing photographs for myself, as personal work rather than for a client, I had to reconsider the entire way I approached image-making. When you work commercially as a creative, you are always conscious of the different elements a brand needs or expects to see within an image. There are certain details, references and requirements that you naturally have to incorporate. When you make something for yourself, however, there is no longer a brand telling you what the image needs to contain. You have to decide what matters, what you want to retain and what you actually want the photograph to communicate. I think that process forced me to think for myself in a much deeper way. Then, through the wrestling project, I realised that sport could become an opening onto something much larger than action itself.”
Sport is often photographed through speed, spectacle and victory. Your visual world feels quieter, more atmospheric, more attentive to the human presence surrounding the action. What do you feel remains under-photographed in sport, and which emotions do you try to evoke through your sports photography?
“Through sport, you can communicate emotion, and emotion is something people can recognise regardless of whether or not they are athletes themselves. When I look at a photograph I have made, I am waiting for it to give me a particular feeling. Whatever that emotion may be, I want someone looking at the image to be able to recognise something of their own experience within it. If the photograph contains sadness, for example, I want the viewer to feel that sadness. They don’t need to be athletes in order to relate to it. For me, it is largely about creating the conditions for an emotion to emerge and then allowing people to receive it in their own way.
When I approach an athlete, for example, I might say: ‘Do you remember a moment when you felt like this? All right, let us try to bring that feeling towards the camera.’ Sometimes it works and sometimes it does not. If it does not, I may simply allow them to continue doing what they are doing, and at that point I will almost become a documentary photographer, observing rather than directing. Then, I might realise that a particular composition is visually very strong and ask them to repeat a step, to stand in a particular way or to move slightly differently. Suddenly, the process becomes closer to a fashion editorial. I enjoy moving between those different modes of image-making—documentary, editorial, portraiture—and understanding what each of them can bring to the photograph. Most of the time, however, is a portrait of an athlete because I want to reveal something about their attitude and character. For that reason, I usually take time to understand the person standing in front of my camera. I try to help them bring something internal into the image, something they have genuinely experienced. Athletes live through these emotions with extraordinary intensity, so they often understand quite quickly what I am asking. It requires a little more time, perhaps, but moving back and forth between the language of editorial photography and that of documentary photography is something I find incredibly enjoyable.”
Having worked in the world of fashion, do you also see the athlete as a performer, as a body in motion, as a character, or as something else entirely?
“I feel that every athlete has their own personality. The way they practise their sport is also, to a certain extent, the way they present themselves to the world. Clothing is only the most immediately visible part of that identity. Whenever you photograph an athlete, you are inevitably photographing fashion, movement and tension at the same time. In my mind, those elements have always been interconnected. I do not really feel the need to place myself within a single photography category. Within one project, for instance, you might encounter a very classical portrait that is simply a portrait, and then suddenly come across an image that feels much more overtly connected to fashion. I find it very stimulating to move between these different territories and to continually reinvent the relationships between them.”
Your work often moves between fashion and sport, two worlds that both use the body to communicate identity. Do you see them as separate languages, or as two expressions of the same visual research?
“I think imagery in general has increasingly moved beyond its traditional categories. Different visual worlds are beginning to overlap and connect with one another, and I find that incredibly exciting. If they remained entirely separate, I think there would eventually be something repetitive about them. I really enjoy seeing those worlds merge. When you look, for example, at someone like Kylian Mbappé becoming an ambassador for Dior, to me that feels significant. It makes complete sense. Athletes today are obviously enormously influential figures, but beyond that, they also embody certain values and cultural meanings. I find this convergence between sport and fashion fascinating because it creates another way of reading the contemporary world. One visual language enters another, and in doing so they can produce something new.”
Your work often seems to move through cities, communities and cultural crossings. How important is geography and local culture to your photography? And how have different places shaped the way you see sport and the way you photograph it?
“For me, travelling means having to reconsider my surroundings every single time, and I find that extremely beautiful. You arrive somewhere, have to learn how to read a new environment, understand how it functions, and then try to translate what you have understood into photography. That process is probably one of the reasons I enjoy travelling so much. If I go to Turkey to photograph an athlete, it may take me a week or two simply to begin understanding why people practise the sport in a particular way, what surrounds it culturally, and what those gestures mean within that specific environment. I find that process incredibly stimulating. Photography forces me to spend time with people whose worlds are completely different from my own.
Growing up in Switzerland and also spending significant periods of my life in Senegal had a profound influence on me. Dakar and Paris, in particular, became part of my creative process; they are places where I learnt how to develop and process ideas. Switzerland is equally important because it is where I grew up. I would say that those three places have deeply shaped my taste and, more broadly, the way I approach photography.”
Sport imagery today is produced in enormous quantities: campaign images, social content, match photography, personal branding. Do you think this abundance has made sports photography more creative, or more repetitive?
“I do see a lot of images that look very similar, to be honest. But overall, when I look at the new generation of brands and at the sports that are becoming increasingly culturally visible, I also see an enormous amount of imagination. The way certain brands and athletes present themselves is often very exciting to me, so I remain quite optimistic. Of course, there are many images that repeat the same ideas and visual formulas. But then you encounter something that feels genuinely different and immediately good. Sometimes the underlying idea is not even radically new; what changes is the way it has been executed. Just a different styling, for example, can completely transform an image. Even within an established visual vocabulary, there is still an enormous amount of room for personality and invention.”
What do you think contemporary sports culture still needs to move beyond?
“I think everyone dreams, in some way, of being free. Sport can represent a way towards that freedom. It gives people an opportunity, however temporary, to step outside their normal lives and express themselves differently. I think that is partly why the wider culture is so interested in sport at the moment. A lot of people spend most of the year working, with perhaps only a few weeks of holiday, following routines in which there is not always much space for personal expression. Sport can become one of the moments in which they are able to express themselves physically and emotionally. It also gives them the opportunity to meet other people and to become part of a community built around a shared practice. In that sense, sport can function almost as a refuge. When I look at contemporary sports culture and the imagery surrounding it, I think it is moving in an interesting direction.”
Which sport have you not yet had the opportunity to photograph in depth, but would like to explore next?
“I recently started playing golf, and I fell in love with the sport. I have only been playing for around six months, so everything still feels new to me, and I would love to explore photographic opportunities within that world. For the moment, though, tennis is probably my main playground. I find it an incredibly elegant sport, but at the same time it has become deeply connected to contemporary culture.. There is a great deal happening around tennis, and I feel there is still so much visual territory to explore. That process of reinvention is something I find extremely interesting.”
A new unbeaten SCARPA trail
Unknown materials, unconventional geometries, and shapes that break with design conventions have brought something extraordinary, almost extraterrestrial, to Chamonix; yet deeply rooted in SCARPA’s history: the drive to question and explore new dimensions of performance. With Alien Sky and Alien Ultra, the brand from Asolo has brought this distinctive approach to alpine running, pushing toward a horizon that, until then, had remained uncharted territory
For two years, SCARPA deconstructed and reconstructed a new and different concept of footwear, gradually entrusting its design to technological research and the insights of those who would ultimately use it on the trail. Thousands of kilometers, varied terrains and a succession of prototypes emerged through a process where scientific intuition met the perceptions and experiences of various professional alpine runners. From this blend emerged two interpretations of the same exploration: Alien Sky, built around the pursuit of lightness and precision; and Alien Ultra, designed to return energy and preserve efficiency.
Chamonix, both the narrative birthplace of the project and an open-air laboratory for contemporary alpine running, served as the destination where this journey found its most tangible expression in the experience of running in nature. Three complementary voices recount this journey: Francesco Orrico, SCARPA’s Alpine Running Product Manager, and athletes Luca Del Pero and Peter Frano.
Francesco Orrico, SCARPA Alpine Running Product Manager
‘Not From This Planet’ presents Alien as an attempt to understand a technology seemingly originating elsewhere and translate it into something designed for human performance. How did you arrive at this creative intuition, and how did it connect with SCARPA’s entry into the worlds of trail running and ultra-trail?
Francesco Orrico, SCARPA Alpine Running Product Manager: “It might seem like an obvious conclusion, given the name itself, but for us it was actually the result of a much deeper process of reflection that only fully emerged towards the end of development. We found ourselves with two shoes unlike anything we had created before: two models that disrupted the ordinary conventions of product design. Everything about them felt unconventional, almost extraterrestrial. Historically, the name Alien belongs to SCARPA’s roots. It identifies our most advanced products in ski mountaineering: Alien represents what separates itself from the rest, what is designed for competition, where the clock and pure performance become the only real measures of judgement. The connection with trail running therefore came quite naturally. Innovative combinations of materials, entirely new geometries and unprecedented forms began to define an unexplored horizon, one made possible by an extraordinary collective effort.”
Beyond the science-fiction metaphor, what was the initial intuition behind a project that, even for those of you working with product development every day, seemed to belong to territory that was still unexplored—almost alien—for SCARPA? And how much of that original idea survives in the two shoes we see today?
Francesco Orrico, SCARPA Alpine Running Product Manager: “Listening, and the passion for creating. And by listening, I mean a very focused attention to the needs of the athletes who developed these shoes alongside us. It was not simply a matter of listening to what they said, but of interpreting what remained unspoken: the spontaneous gestures of running, the instinctive reactions of elite athletes when they begin pushing beyond their limits. What truly made the difference was the daily synergy within the team. From the very first day, we continually pushed ourselves to do more, refusing to take anything for granted. We did not necessarily choose the most obvious solutions; quite often, we pursued the ones that initially seemed strange, improbable, even impossible. We would look at one another and ask: Will this actually work? The beautiful thing is that we never simply told ourselves no. We always tried. Perhaps I will disappoint people by saying there was no single moment of genius from which everything emerged. The truth is that, from beginning to end, there was a genuine sense of enjoyment throughout the process. And that is precisely the same energy we hope people feel when they open the box and put the Alien on their feet.”
Alien Sky and Alien Ultra emerge from the same research, yet they seem to embody two distinct philosophies of movement: on one side, proximity to the ground, precision and immediacy; on the other, protection, energy return and continuity over many hours. At what point in the development process did a single research language begin to divide into these two different expressions? And what compromises did you have to accept in order to preserve the identity of each shoe?
Francesco Orrico, SCARPA Alpine Running Product Manager: “From the very first day, we were actually working along two different paths, but never opposing ones. The intended use of each shoe was clear from the outset. If anything, what happened was almost the reverse of what one might expect. We began by following two separate directions and, at a certain point, realised that we had developed technological solutions that could be shared across both projects. We studied them and then applied them to each model: the fundamental construction of the upper, the materials, the lacing system, the gaiter, the outsole compound and the midsole architecture. There were no compromises. Whatever was required to achieve maximum performance, we implemented, without being afraid of becoming too specific. We imposed no artificial limitations upon ourselves, and that freedom allowed the strongest ideas to emerge naturally, defining step by step the distinct identities of Alien Ultra and Alien Sky.”
An athlete can communicate an extraordinary range of sensations about a shoe—descriptions that may feel extremely precise to the person running, yet remain difficult to translate into millimetres, geometries and materials. In your dialogue with Luca, Peter and the other testers, how did you transform those subjective bodily sensations into objective design decisions?
Francesco Orrico, SCARPA Alpine Running Product Manager: “That is part of the know-how: the ability to interpret both the words and the gestures of a runner. Once again, it comes back to listening. It helps enormously that those of us within the development team share the same passion for running, and that we have spent countless kilometres alongside the athletes ourselves. We understand, at least in part, what they are feeling while they run. That background allows us to translate something apparently abstract, a sensation, into tangible components, geometries and technical choices. In other cases, the process worked in the opposite direction. An intuition might begin on paper, then be transformed into a prototype, assembled and immediately taken into the field in order to challenge or confirm the original theory. Ultimately, the secret was exactly that: an uninterrupted and completely direct dialogue between the product team and the athletes.”
This year, Chamonix represented one of the first contexts in which Alien could finally exist fully outside the development process—on the feet of athletes and within one of the most emblematic environments in global trail running. For you, having followed the project from its foundations on the product side, what did it mean to see years of research, prototypes, corrections and testing finally enter a real and shared experience?
Francesco Orrico, SCARPA Alpine Running Product Manager: “Childlike euphoria. I think it resembles that mixture of joy and apprehension my son feels when something beautiful happens, but part of him is almost afraid that the magical moment might suddenly end or be interrupted. After two years of development and moments when it seemed as though the entire project might have to be set aside, seeing something we had created together as a group of friends finally working in the real world, visibly distinguishing itself, was almost impossible to describe. We had worked side by side with athletes of the highest level to create something so unexpected, something that at times seemed almost unbelievable. And when we finally had the opportunity to wear the shoes ourselves, for me, Gianluca, Marco and Carlo, it felt like breathing pure air. The kind of breath you take at the summit of a mountain after a long run: the fatigue disappears, the mind empties, and for a moment, all that remains is happiness.”
Luca Del Pero, SCARPA Athlete & Alpine Runner
You first encountered Alien Sky when it was not yet a finished product, but rather a succession of prototypes and possibilities. Can you remember the first version you wore and, above all, the first sensation it gave you? Which of your observations or physical impressions proved most crucial in shaping the final shoe?
Luca Del Pero, SCARPA Athlete & Alpine Runner: “Absolutely. I remember the first prototype, and the first time I wore it, very clearly. I was at a training camp in Tenerife and decided to test it on the trails around Teide, on raw volcanic rock. A kind of terrain that leaves virtually no room for error. I think that first shoe weighed less than 200 grams. The upper was already very similar to the one we have today, almost like a sock, and the initial feeling was excellent. The fit and sensation were immediately very positive. The outsole and midsole, however, came from the old Spin Race, so the construction was extremely minimal. I remember having very good sensations on the climbs, but I cannot say the same about the descents. Those were quite traumatic and very slow because, with so little support and such a low platform, I could feel virtually every single stone beneath my feet. It became clear that those were the two areas we needed to work on. From that point onwards, every version represented a step forward from the one before it, until we arrived at the shoe we know today. And honestly, in its current form, I cannot think of anything about it that I do not like.”
On technical terrain, running fast begins with the ability to read the ground: choosing a line, anticipating a foot placement, understanding how much risk to accept before the foot even touches the surface. Alien Sky was designed to enhance precision and connection with the terrain. During testing, did you feel that the shoe was simply accompanying the way you already ran, or did it gradually allow you to interpret the mountain differently?
Luca Del Pero, SCARPA Athlete & Alpine Runner: “I think the shoe was designed and developed very much around my needs, my way of running, and the way I personally interpret trails and the mountain. With previous models, I had never felt quite as comfortable as I do with Alien Sky. There had always been some form of compromise. With these, however, every time I put them on I feel as though I enter a state of complete flow and connection. They allow me to express my running and my potential at their fullest.”
The more sophisticated a shoe becomes, the more it should arguably disappear from the athlete’s perception. After spending so much time running in the mountains while helping to develop Alien Sky, what does the ideal meeting point between body and technology look like to you? Is the perfect shoe the one you forget you are wearing, or the one that genuinely changes what you thought your body was capable of doing?
Luca Del Pero, SCARPA Athlete & Apline Runner: “I do not think technology should ever alter the true nature of the human body. Personally, I prefer shoes that follow and adapt as closely as possible to our natural running biomechanics, rather than trying to distort or fundamentally reshape them through technologies and constructions that can sometimes become almost incomprehensible. For me, the perfect shoe is the one you forget you are wearing. And I would say that, with Alien Sky on my feet, that is exactly what happens.”
This year, you had the opportunity to wear and test Alien in Chamonix, within one of the most iconic and symbolically charged environments in global trail running. Beyond performance and results, what did it mean to experience that moment in a shoe whose creation you had directly contributed to? And what did you feel when you finally saw it move beyond the world of prototypes and enter the reality of competition, spectators and lived experience?
Luca Del Pero, SCARPA Athlete & Alpine Runner: “Chamonix has, in every sense, become the home and epicentre of mountain and trail running. The atmosphere you experience there exists nowhere else, and only during that particular week. It is, in many ways, the absolute summit of the global trail movement. This year, the fact that UTMB week coincided with the launch of Alien Sky and Alien Ultra made the experience even more special. Knowing that something I had personally contributed to developing and refining was being unveiled there, in those days, in front of that audience, gave me an enormous sense of pride and satisfaction. More than anything, I felt grateful to SCARPA and to the entire team for involving me so directly and for believing in me as part of such an ambitious project.”
Peter Frano, SCARPA Athlete & Alpine Runner
In ultra running, the body is subject to constant transformation: the biomechanics of the opening hours are not the same as those of the eighth or tenth hour, precision gradually begins to deteriorate, and fatigue can alter even the way the foot meets the ground. How do you test a shoe while accounting for that continuous evolution? And what were you able to communicate to the developers of Alien Ultra after many hours of running that no laboratory—and perhaps no other form of testing—could ever fully reveal?
Peter Frano, SCARPA Athlete & Alpine Runner: “Developing a shoe intended for ultra running is extremely complex, and I think that is precisely why athletes should always be directly involved in the development process. You can design extraordinary shoes in a laboratory, but then there is the reality of running. And within that reality, the body changes profoundly as the hours pass and fatigue accumulates. Over the past two years, I have had the opportunity to test the shoes in several races that were less important to me competitively, as well as during a number of long training runs. Those situations allowed me to observe how my body actually responded inside the shoes, and how the behaviour of the shoe itself changed in relation to my biomechanics as fatigue gradually increased. I think that kind of experience is extremely difficult to reproduce anywhere else. Only after many hours of running do you really begin to understand what is happening to the body and, consequently, what a shoe still needs to offer when the precision of movement begins to decline.”
Alien Ultra was developed around ideas such as energy return, continuity, stability and efficiency. And yet, after many hours of racing, the very meaning of ‘performance’ begins to change. When fatigue becomes profound, which sensations do you still want the shoe to provide, and which ones should progressively disappear so that you can simply continue moving forward?
Peter Frano, SCARPA Athlete & Alpine Runner: “First and foremost, I do not want to feel any pain or discomfort. Likewise, I do not want external elements like stones or dust to interfere with the foot inside the shoe. If a shoe can give me the sensation, and more importantly the actual possibility, of continuing to run with less effort, then that is exactly what I am looking for. In ultra running, everything revolves around energy conservation. You have to preserve energy wherever you possibly can.”
You describe yourself as a perfectionist, and the very nature of product testing requires you to observe your own movement with an almost obsessive degree of attention. During the development of Alien Ultra, did you discover anything about the way you run that you had not previously been fully aware of? In other words, beyond what you contributed to the construction of the shoe, did the shoe reveal anything to you about your own running?
Peter Frano, SCARPA Athlete & Alpine Runner: “These shoes reminded me once again that I am a runner who naturally tends to land on the forefoot. In certain situations, that can certainly be an advantage, but on particular terrains or under specific conditions it can also become a limitation. There are shoes that, in some way, are able to compensate for or forgive certain aspects of your running technique. Alien Ultra does not really do that. And precisely because of that, it forces you to remain very conscious of the way you run, of how your foot lands, of how you distribute your weight, and of how your movement changes according to the terrain and the accumulation of fatigue.”
This year, you had the opportunity to wear and test Alien in Chamonix, within one of the most iconic and symbolically charged settings in the entire world of trail running. Beyond performance and the final result, what did it mean to experience that moment in a shoe whose development you had directly contributed to? And what did you feel when you finally saw it leave the realm of prototypes and enter the reality of competition?
Peter Frano, SCARPA Athlete & Alpine Runner: “It was incredibly satisfying to see the shoes finally unveiled officially, not least because from that moment onwards I was free to answer openly all the questions people had been asking about them. Perhaps I contributed in a small way to their development, but there are a great many people behind these shoes and an enormous number of hours of work. There are professionals who deserve far more recognition than I do for everything they contributed throughout the process. At the end of the day, I am only an athlete. And precisely for that reason, being able to wear them during the most important ultra-trail event in the world was a genuine honour.”
A Harmonious Evolution | Virna Toppi
In the life of a Prima Ballerina of La Scala such as Virna Toppi, personal maturation unfolds as the organic convergence of human and artistic identity, alongside a profound exploration of femininity in all its forms, as captured in this special Altavia Studio production
Carla Fracci, ‘Prima Ballerina Assoluta’, once described a career in ballet as a mysterious journey shaped by unpredictability: a demanding path grounded as much in vocation as in tenacity. Listening to Virna Toppi, current Prima Ballerina of La Scala in Milan, one finds those insights not only affirmed, but further developed: transformed into a vital and professional cadence that feels less enigmatic than deeply harmonious.
The equilibrium between body and mind in the life of this artist—at once expressive and powerfully athletic—finds its natural counterpart in a dimension long stigmatized within her sphere of excellence: the emotional. In this light, the principles articulated by Carla Fracci acquire renewed resonance, becoming, in the lived experience of her successor, a natural evolution of the self: liberated from stereotypes and imposed expectations, from the taboos of gender and profession alike.
Prima Ballerina. Mother. Woman. Virna Toppi’s ‘mysterious journey’ is reshaping the very contours of that mystery, infusing it with acceptance and self-attunement, with authenticity and harmony, with an openness to boundless growth rather than fear: even within a new and delicate chapter marked by motherhood. We gathered her precious testimony and traced the outline of a legacy in the making in this special Altavia Studio production.
What were the first sensations, emotions, and impressions that made you fall in love with dance as a child?
“Years later, I understood exactly why I chose ballet as a child: I felt the need to express my emotions. I have always deeply loved music, and in ballet I found the perfect way to interpret it and convey what it made me feel. I also explored other forms connected to music—playing an instrument, singing—but nothing gave me what dance did. It was love at first sight. Unlike many other girls, it wasn’t my parents who led me to dance: I was the one who insisted. They wanted me to practise a sport in the traditional sense: something outdoors. Dance didn’t fit into that idea, and at first they saw it as a whim. I tried different activities, but none of them truly felt like mine. I kept insisting, with determination, until they finally took me to a class. From that moment on, I never stopped.”
What was it like discovering yourself and shaping yourself as an artist? And, at the same time, how did you experience the process of discovering your body and movement within an art form that demands so much physically?
“I see myself as both an athlete and an artist. Dance is an art, but it requires rigorous physical preparation: you have to be strong, ready, and disciplined. The artist I am today was built over time. At the beginning, in the academy, everything starts with technique: the barre, the precision of details. These are very concrete foundations. Only later, when you truly begin to dance and to interpret your first roles, does the real process of artistic formation begin. My artistic path developed alongside my personal growth: not simply as improvement, but as transformation. There were years when I tried to conform to an external idea of the perfect ballerina, one who is not allowed to show fragility. On stage, I wanted to be only the character. Over time, I moved beyond that approach. I began to put myself on the line, to be the one interpreting the role. The story remained the same, but the nuances became mine. Each character allowed me to live different experiences and, at the same time, to enrich both my artistic and personal background.”
You completed a language-focused high school education. Considering this parallel academic path, does dance take on the qualities of a language in your eyes? If so, how do gesture and music become words, stories, narration?
“Dance is, in every sense, a language. There is a precise vocabulary: codified gestures correspond to specific meanings. Certain hand movements, for example, can signify concepts such as death or speaking. It is a true gestural lexicon. In classical repertoire, this form of language is very evident. In other, more narrative works, such as Romeo and Juliet or La Dame aux Camélias, gesture comes closer to real life: a kiss is a kiss, a slap is a slap, exactly as it would be offstage. Dance can therefore be an extremely direct language, but it requires a willingness to listen and a sensitivity to detail. For me, it has always been a way of expressing what words sometimes fail to convey.”
Prima Ballerina at La Scala. How does one reach a role and a status like that? What does it take to sustain it over time? And how does it feel to inherit a legacy while shaping one for those who will come after you?
“It is a great honour, but above all a great responsibility. It means carrying forward a legacy built by those who came before you. For me, it is essential to convey values such as discipline, consistency, and determination. I was a child with a dream and, through commitment and sacrifice, I managed to realize it. I would like to carry that message forward. Having the opportunity to interpret many roles and to live many lives on stage, in different theatres around the world, is a privilege. But it also comes with a responsibility towards those who are watching, especially young people who dream of following this path.”
Has there been a character you felt was particularly your own?
“Perhaps I haven’t fully encountered that character yet. But in many roles I have recognized parts of myself. In some, a sense of groundedness and strength; in others, elegance; in others still, a sensitivity towards those around you, as in La Dame aux Camélias. In every ballet, I have always tried to find something that represented me, pushing myself to make it even more my own.”
Your profession connects the personal sphere with the collective one, represented by the corps de ballet. What are the elements that create a perfect ecosystem on stage? And what kind of relationship do you seek to build with those who share your performances?
“A ballet does not exist without the corps de ballet. Even the strongest individual performance loses its value if it is not supported by a cohesive group. The final result is always the sum of shared energy and commitment. We spend most of the day together, and a second family is formed. The contact is constant, even physical, and this creates a very strong mutual sensitivity. You can perceive even the slightest changes in someone else’s mood. It is a complex condition: on one hand, it is very beautiful; on the other, it requires balance, because you inevitably absorb the energies of those around you. For this reason, it is essential to be open, empathetic, and, above all, present.”
“The most important thing for us dancers is to listen to our bodies. Harmony comes from listening to and respecting oneself.” What does it mean, for you, to listen to your body? And what does the concept of harmony represent?
“For years, I fought against my body. I kept going without listening to it, even through pain, convinced that a ballerina should not stop or show weakness. Over time, I understood that everything is connected. Accepting myself, including my limits, allowed me to find a sense of balance. It does not mean settling: it means giving your best while respecting who you are. Listening to your body means recognising its signals, accepting moments of fragility and fatigue. Since I began to do that, I have found a form of harmony: one that comes from the balance between body, mind, and emotional life.”
Motherhood, which you have described as “magical”, has it further evolved your relationship with your body and your understanding of harmony?
“Since my daughter was born, everything has changed. The body changes, it transforms, but it is also the means through which the most important thing in your life has come into being. I feel more receptive, more attentive to what happens within me. Motherhood shifts your priorities: your perception of time, your way of experiencing reality. It makes you more aware and more ready to adapt. Even now, my body sometimes feels different, not always recognizable. Finding a form that truly feels like mine is a process. Ultimately, harmony becomes an ongoing search.”
What kind of example do you want to be for your daughter?
“I would like to show her that a woman can do everything. She does not have to choose between work and motherhood: she can build her own path without imposed sacrifices. I want to teach her to commit, to pursue her goals with determination, but also to listen to herself, to recognise her limits without experiencing them as an obstacle. Showing fragility does not mean being less strong. I can be a Prima Ballerina through my weaknesses as well. I believe that truth, your own truth, always pays off. Not the one shaped for others, but the authentic one, from which extraordinary results can emerge.”
adidas Hybrid Hub Rome | Go Full Hybrid
Under the timeless gaze of the statues lining the perimeter of the Stadio dei Marmi, within Rome’s Foro Italico monumental complex, adidas brought together athletes, creators, and communities around a new concept of movement. With the adidas Hybrid Hub Rome, for one night the brand transformed one of the most iconic venues of Italian sports into a space dedicated to hybrid training: a discipline, and above all an athletic culture, built on the mix of different athletic qualities and the gradual blurring between running and strength training
An experience that took on a deeper symbolic meaning at the Stadio dei Marmi. There, where artistic expression and athletic excellence have coexisted for nearly a century, adidas has created an experience that aligns perfectly with Pietro Mennea’s own legacy of values, translating those very ideals into what we now call hybrid training. For one evening, the stadium’s solemnity—reimagined by a series of glowing pink light effects and infused with the visual identity of the Three Stripes—was permeated by a radically contemporary athletic current. A temporal and visual short circuit that brought together two distinct representations of physicality: on one hand, the marble-like stillness of the sixty figures surrounding the arena, each frozen in their respective discipline; on the other, moving and ever-changing bodies, called upon to continuously shift from the speed of running to the muscular contraction of strength.
It is precisely in this shift that adidas identifies one of the founding principles of hybrid training. Running. Lifting. Pushing. Enduring. These are actions that, taken individually, have always been part of the vocabulary of sports, but when combined, they outline a different vision of the athlete: one capable of responding to diverse demands and continually adapting its body.
adidas is exploring this sporting territory with increasing focus, not only through initiatives such as the Hybrid Hub Roma—which was preceded by the Hybrid Hotel in Milan—but also by directly supporting the competitive culture of the sport through its official partnership with ATHX, the international format that combines running and strength training within the same competition. The Rome event is thus part of a broader vision aimed at supporting the evolution of hybrid training by designing products, environments, and experiences capable of meeting today’s challenges. It is from this very research that the new Adizero Dropset Pro was born, the star of the Rome event presented in the Solar Turbo and Lucid Pink colorways. This shoe is designed to address the very nature of this discipline, in which the body must transition from the momentum of running to the stability required for weightlifting, often within a matter of seconds. adidas has addressed this dichotomy by merging two distinct design philosophies: on one hand, the lightness and speed-oriented nature of the Adizero family; on the other, the stability and control that define the DNA of the Dropset line.
Thanks to the Go Full Hybrid Experience, the shoe accompanied participants from a personalized try-on, designed to identify the best fit, to an immediate on-field test at the Stadio dei Marmi for a group session where over two hundred athletes, creators, and members of Italy’s leading hybrid training communities tackled a circuit inspired by the format of international competitions. An open-air training hub where adidas successfully reimagined the function of a space historically dedicated to showcasing ancient disciplines, transforming it into a venue capable of hosting a new sport scene and its community. Through the lens of the RiseUp Duo and the words of Camilla Massa and Eugenio Bianchi, adidas coaches and athletes, we relive this special Roman night.
Hybrid training is born from the convergence of athletic qualities that have traditionally belonged to separate worlds. What does this way of training represent to you and, more profoundly, what new idea of the athlete do you think it is helping to define?
Eugenio Bianchi: “From the very first day I began practising it, hybrid training represented, for me, the very idea of athletic completeness. Athletes across many disciplines have long trained by developing different physical qualities because, although strength and power may appear closely related, for instance, they are built through very different methods. To those, you add endurance and an entire range of other capacities that ultimately determine how effectively an athlete can perform within a given discipline. What we are trying to do is find a balance between all of these components. In that sense, the hybrid athlete occupies a genuinely new position within the sporting landscape. And I think that is precisely the essence of being ‘hybrid’: not becoming excessively specialised in one single quality, but attempting to develop the highest possible degree of completeness. Naturally, that takes time. And that time has to be distributed intelligently throughout training, because developing different physical capacities requires consistency, planning and attention.”
Camilla Massa: “This question resonates with me particularly strongly because my own journey has been rather unconventional. I became a professional athlete after turning thirty and having three daughters, so in many ways I think my story encapsulates perfectly what hybrid training can represent. To me, it is a discipline that is helping to redefine athletic longevity. Compared with many other sports, you see professionals reaching extremely high levels at a later stage in life, and that also allows people who begin later to feel that competitive fire, the desire to test themselves, still burning. But I think there is another equally important aspect. Hybrid training and hybrid competitions can offer people who may have gradually lost contact with fitness or sport over the years a way back in: a way to return to training and rediscover a competitive dimension, not only against others but, perhaps more importantly, against themselves. So yes, I think we are seeing the emergence of an athlete who is more long-lasting, but also more inclusive. And, more broadly, a sport that is far more open to everyone.”
The Stadio dei Marmi is a profoundly symbolic place. What did it feel like to know that you would be taking on a hybrid training circuit here, placing such a contemporary practice in dialogue with one of the most monumental settings in Italian sporting culture?
Eugenio Bianchi: “For me, being here today is a genuine source of pride. This stadium is deeply connected to the figure of Pietro Mennea, who once said something that has always stayed with me: if he could look back at the thousands of hours he had spent training and begin again, he would try to train even more. To me, that sentence expresses dedication perfectly. It is almost as if he were saying: ‘I did an enormous amount, and yet I still feel it was not enough.’ That is something I recognise in myself. I am forty years old, and I still ask myself every day: have I done enough with my life? Could I have done more? Even now, I continue to question myself constantly. In a certain sense, today I try to do more than I did when I was younger, when perhaps I had more physical potential and far more time ahead of me. As the years pass, you realise how profoundly your relationship with sport changes. If you continue practising it into a more mature stage of life, you begin to understand how much that relationship evolves within you. That is why being here today, in this place, and thinking again about Mennea’s words makes me feel that I am in the right place, at the right moment, and within the right context. Hybrid training reflects that philosophy perfectly. You have to train, but you also have to be willing to train a great deal. It requires time precisely because you need to develop different disciplines and different capacities. Naturally, everyone does that at their own level, but you have to understand one thing clearly: if you want to train seriously for this sport, it requires both time and dedication.”
Camilla Massa: “In some way, this setting speaks about evolution and about what we are experiencing not only in sport, but within contemporary culture more broadly. I think it is a very powerful image of change: something rooted in a more classical, historical tradition can enter into dialogue with what is new without losing its own value. A more traditional visual and cultural language can coexist with a contemporary practice such as hybrid training. And I think it is precisely through the meeting of those two dimensions that something beautiful, new and, above all, accessible to everyone can emerge.”
Being part of adidas Hybrid Hub also means participating in a project through which adidas is choosing to support and contribute to the growth of hybrid training. How important is it, for you, that a brand with this history invests so significantly in building a culture, a series of events and a community around this movement?
Eugenio Bianchi: “It is extremely important to see organisations such as adidas approach this world with such a structured vision behind them. Especially at the beginning, a sport like this was often regarded almost as a trend. And trends can certainly generate large numbers, but numbers alone are not enough to build something that lasts. You can be incredibly strong today and disappear tomorrow. When, by contrast, you begin to see established organisations entering the movement, ones that are not simply sportswear brands, but structures made up of experienced people, different areas of expertise and a broader vision, you begin to perceive something entirely different. A community starts to form. And ultimately, what allows a sport or an entire movement to endure over time is precisely the community that develops around it. I can feel a very strong one taking shape now, supported both by hybrid events and competitions and by brands such as adidas, which are creating tangible opportunities for people to come together. People enjoy training together and sharing not only the result, but also the process required to reach it. That is fundamental, even if it is often taken for granted. Because sport is, above all, training. Competition is a more individual moment: everyone approaches it for themselves. But preparing within a community is something entirely different from doing everything alone. You genuinely feel part of something. And that is a very powerful sensation. One that, particularly within the adidas universe, you can feel very clearly.”
Camilla Massa: “This movement has existed for several years now, but the fact that major brands such as adidas are no longer simply observing it from the outside and are instead choosing to invest directly in the sport, in people and in athletes is, for me, a very strong confirmation that hybrid training has developed an identity of its own. I have been part of this world for five years, essentially since its early stages, and I have had the opportunity to witness its evolution first-hand. At the beginning, there were mainly events. Today, we can genuinely speak about a sport. And the fact that it has become relevant enough to attract the attention and investment of brands of this scale means that it has built a culture and a community strong enough to endure over time. Personally, I am deeply grateful to adidas because its support allows me to travel, to compete in different parts of the world and to have beside me a partner that genuinely believes in its athletes. That is something I would never take for granted.”
Beyond performance and individual results, experiences such as adidas Hybrid Hub are also conceived as collective moments. What feeling, message or sense of awareness would you like people to carry with them after moving through this circuit and sharing an evening like this?
Eugenio Bianchi: “I think the most important thing to communicate to anyone taking part in an event like this is the awareness that behind it all there is a very deliberate intention to build a community made, first and foremost, of people. A brand such as adidas would not necessarily need to organise events of this scale. It could rely on marketing, social media or countless other tools. Instead, it has chosen to invest directly in people. And that, to me, is what makes the experience particularly meaningful. Today I am here as an athlete and, in a sense, I represent someone who will inevitably go through a transition at some point because sporting careers have cycles. And yet, within the same space and the same event, I can share this experience with people practising sport at completely different levels. From someone who has only just started, to someone with more experience, to the semi-professional and the professional athlete. They all coexist here. And that is by no means something to take for granted. I have practised other sports and I know how difficult it can be for a beginner to find themselves in the same environment as a professional. Here, something different happens. Distances are reduced, levels intersect, and very different people end up sharing the same space and the same training experience. For me, that is precisely what makes a day like today genuinely special.”
Camilla Massa: “I think community constitutes an enormous part of this sport. There is not only the event itself, or the training that comes before it. Above all, there is a community of people sharing a journey. I have always believed that sport is one of the few moments in which you can genuinely dedicate time to yourself without necessarily having to think about everybody else. That is why I hope the people moving through this circuit and taking part in tonight’s event are able to rediscover that fire. Not simply the desire to compete with others, but also the willingness to confront themselves. And, above all, I hope they rediscover the value of dedicating time to their own bodies and their own wellbeing. As the years go by, particularly in adult life, between work, family, children and everyday responsibilities, it becomes very easy to lose that personal space little by little. Sport, by contrast, is fundamental. It forces you, in a way, to turn your attention back towards yourself, your body, your health and your wellbeing. And I think that today, perhaps more than ever, that is essential.”
A LINE THAT CONNECTS | OFFTRAIL EXPEDITION
The North Face and the new OFFTRAIL ULTRA took us to Alpe di Fellaria, where a journey through unpredictable terrain brought the historical resonance and human dimension of the Trans-Antarctica Expedition into dialogue with a present shaped by shared exploration and, above all, the need to find a line: both individual and collective. Through Marco Del Vecchio's voice and the reflections of Alberto Gagno, The North Face Senior Category Manager - Footwear, Equipment, Accessories, we retrace an experience built around movement, trust and the search for a common direction
01 | The Trans-Antarctica Expedition
“We wanted to create a shoe that gives runners the confidence to embrace unpredictable terrain rather than avoid it. The goal was to help athletes move naturally and intuitively through the mountains, whether they’re on trail, rock, or somewhere in between. Adaptation was central to the project. Mountain terrain is constantly changing, so we focused on delivering a balance of traction, stability, protection, and comfort. Every key feature was designed to help runners stay confident as conditions evolve throughout an adventure.” Alberto Gagno, The North Face Senior Category Manager – Footwear, Equipment, Accessories
In 1989, at a moment in history still profoundly marked by political divisions and the tensions of the Cold War, six explorers from six different nations set out on one of the most ambitious expeditions ever attempted in Antarctica: to cross more than 6,000 kilometres of the continent on foot and with the aid of sleds, on a journey that would span 220 days and expose them to temperatures as low as -50°C and sustained winds reaching 70 km/h.
The Trans-Antarctica Expedition was a physical undertaking of extraordinary proportions, yet its significance extended far beyond the distance covered or the extreme conditions the group endured. What made it truly remarkable was the decision of six people from different countries, cultures and backgrounds to bring their knowledge and abilities together in pursuit of a single objective, at precisely a time when the world appeared to be moving in the opposite direction.
Differences that elsewhere could carry political or cultural weight suddenly became secondary to the necessity of working together, because in an environment so extreme, no one could afford to confront uncertainty by relying solely on their own abilities.
More than the idea of crossing unexplored territory itself, it is this principle that forms the point of departure for OFFTRAIL EXPEDITION, the experience The North Face brought to Alpe di Fellaria more than three decades later. If the Trans-Antarctica Expedition confronted six explorers with the necessity of finding a common direction through one of the planet’s most hostile environments, at the foot of the Fellaria Glacier that challenge is recast on a different, more accessible scale, while remaining grounded in the same idea: there is no predetermined line. To find your own way, you must learn to read the terrain, adapt to the conditions and, above all, place your trust in those sharing the journey.
02 | The Fellaria Experience
“Places absolutely influence product design. Environments like the Alps helped us understand the challenges athletes face, from loose rock to steep technical terrain. Those real-world conditions directly shaped the shoe’s performance and protection features”.Alberto Gagno, The North Face Senior Category Manager – Footwear, Equipment, Accessories
Alpe di Fellaria is particularly suited to this kind of experience, because its landscape is constantly changing, demanding continual adjustments in the way we move through it. At the foot of the glacier, the mountain shifts between technical scree, where every foothold requires attention, and expanses of green crossed by streams and waterways, creating a succession of surfaces and situations that makes it impossible to rely on a single strategy. It is an environment where the most obvious line is not necessarily the right one: a place where reading what lies ahead becomes as important as the physical ability to negotiate it.
The experience begins with our approach into the mountains and the construction of Base Camp, which becomes our point of reference for the next two days. We are given tents and sleeping bags and, before the exploration begins in earnest, Davide Barone introduces us to the new OFFTRAIL ULTRA, taking us through the philosophy and characteristics of a shoe conceived precisely for those environments where the trail gives way to more irregular and unpredictable terrain.
In the evening, as the camp draws together and daylight gradually gives way to darkness, the mountain takes on another form. After a day spent outdoors, fatigue begins to settle into the body and the cold of altitude makes itself increasingly felt, while inside the tents space contracts and people inevitably begin to share something beyond the activity that brought them there. We talk, retrace moments from the day, joke and prepare for what awaits us the following morning. More importantly, a familiarity begins to emerge that under ordinary circumstances would have taken far longer to develop. Sleeping in a tent in the mountains means sharing something elemental: a space in which the differences between people who, only hours earlier, were strangers gradually begin to matter less.
The following morning, accompanied by a mountain guide, we begin exploring the terrain through a team activity devised by Crusher Running, confronting a route with no predetermined line. The direction has to be chosen, discussed and reconsidered according to the terrain, and that very freedom compels the group to communicate continuously. It is not enough for one person to find their own solution: that solution has to work for everyone.
It is in these moments that the speed with which a team can take shape becomes apparent. Someone identifies an easier passage; someone else notices that a particular direction may prove less effective; those moving more slowly are instinctively supported by the others. Not because a hierarchy exists within the group, but because reaching the objective depends on everyone being able to arrive together.
The mountain renders tangible a dynamic that can remain abstract in everyday life: collaboration also means, when necessary, relinquishing your own pace so that someone else can maintain theirs. In this sense, The North Face experience reprises, on a different scale, what the Trans-Antarctica Expedition had made necessary more than three decades earlier. Here too, people with different experiences must learn to trust one another, recognise each other’s abilities and accept that the best solution may emerge through exchange rather than individual decision-making. We are not facing a months-long expedition across an entire continent, yet the human mechanism remains strikingly similar.
There is another element that gives the experience particular significance: the place itself. The Fellaria Glacier is more than the spectacular backdrop to the expedition. It is a fragile ecosystem, one that makes it impossible to speak about exploration without also confronting the question of responsibility. Moving at its foot, crossing the streams descending from the mountain and observing such a delicate environment at close range inevitably raises a question: how can we continue to experience and move through these territories without compromising their balance?
Protecting the glacier and its surrounding environment therefore becomes part of the same conversation running through the entire experience. Just as undertaking an expedition requires learning to consider the needs of the other members of the group, exploring a territory means recognising that it does not belong to us, and that our presence must necessarily reckon with its fragility. Our ability to run, walk through and discover these places also depends on our capacity to protect them: reducing our impact and developing a relationship with the mountain that goes beyond simply passing through it, towards recognising its value and the responsibility of preserving it.
03 | Finding Your Own Line
“Athlete feedback becomes valuable when we consistently hear the same message across different testers and environments. For Offtrail Ultra, athletes reinforced the desire for greater confidence and precision on technical terrain, which became a key focus throughout development. We’re seeing more athletes blur the lines between running, mountaineering, and exploration. Offtrail Ultra reflects that evolution. It was built for people who want to move beyond traditional trails, and we believe this mindset should continue to influence the future of The North Face footwear.”Alberto Gagno, The North Face Senior Category Manager – Footwear, Equipment, Accessories
The North Face OFFTRAIL ULTRA accompanied us through technical, untamed terrain, from rock to softer, more irregular surfaces, allowing us to experience the landscape without ever losing contact with the ground beneath us. Yet the true value of the experience lay in discovering how profoundly our way of approaching a challenge can change when we stop thinking as individuals and begin thinking as a group. This is the thread connecting Fellaria to the 1989 Trans-Antarctica Expedition: different people, a common objective, and the necessity of finding a direction together.
Perhaps this is where the deeper meaning of OFFTRAIL ultimately lies: finding a line of your own without forgetting that, more often than not, the best direction is one that can accommodate everyone, while leaving the place we have crossed as intact as possible.
Credits
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II Sebago Rowing Cup | On Rowing and Future Legacy
In Turin, we portrayed a celebration of rowing: its layered cultural inheritance, its enduring codes and what it might yet become. An ode composed by student-athletes from prestigious international universities, bringing their athletic art into dialogue with Sebago on the waters of the Po
A flow. Bodies driving in unison. Muscle yielding to rhythm and gesture. Colours bearing traditions more than a century old while, at the same time, giving form to the future of an enduring discipline. Rowing has an abiding capacity to astonish. In the heart of Turin, it becomes all the more magnetic. The Sebago Rowing Cup returned to the waters of the Po, translating the ethos of a brand deeply rooted in life on the water into an expression of athletic intensity, while bringing together rowing talent from some of the world’s foremost universities. From Oxford to the Basque Country. From Rome to Hamburg.
Competition, as rowing’s very nature demands: mixed crews, eight minds entrusted to a single motion. More profoundly, a celebration of the spirit embedded in this noble athletic art, whether encountered through its aesthetic, communal or formative dimensions. Each belongs to a discipline founded upon the delicate reciprocity between collective exertion and individual responsibility, while carrying an unmistakable visual code that has become part of its identity across the world.
Theodore Siri | University of Oxford, Matilde Paoletti | LUISS and Oscar Krause | University of Hamburg (winner of the event alongside his crew) give voice to these different dimensions. Student-athletes able to recognise, embody and extend the manifold meanings accumulated by rowing across generations, while carrying them towards whatever the discipline might become next.
Theodore Siri | University of Oxford
“I came to rowing recently. I wasn’t particularly sporty when I was younger. I didn’t have much hand-eye coordination, I wasn’t very good at football or anything like that. Then I arrived at Oxford University, where rowing is everywhere. Everyone rows, from the lowest level to the very top, and we are fortunate to have coaches who can take you from knowing absolutely nothing about the sport to competing at a very high level.
I fell in love with it because rowing has this complete linearity. The more you practise, the better you get. There is technique, of course, but technique can be learned. In the end, so much of it comes down to committing yourself to it. And no one is a star. There are eight people in the boat and you are simply trying to become part of the machine. Nobody can carry everyone else. Nobody can decide to go solo. You have to be doing the same thing, together. I don’t think there is another team sport quite like it.
Maybe that is also why the friendships become so strong. You have to be incredibly close to the people you row with. At Oxford they come from everywhere — America, Australia, Italy, Germany, all over Europe — and eventually these become friendships for life. You have all woken up at five in the morning, six days a week, driven out together in minibuses and rowed through the dark. In winter, we often come off the water as the sun rises. The entire session has happened before daylight, with icicles hanging from the boats, freezing cold, sometimes unable to see anything except a light in front of you and another behind. You just row. When you have gone through that together, it forms a bond. There is nothing quite like it.
Rowing also gives shape to everything outside the boat. You wake up at five or five-thirty, train, and then you know you will train again in the evening. That becomes the beginning and the end of your day. Everything else has to exist in between. For me, that middle is political philosophy. Most evenings I’m asleep by eight-thirty.
There is something from endurance sport that transfers into academic life. You work hard and, more importantly, you learn how to work hard. Rowing gives you a purpose every day. You know what you are building towards. You have a goal and you have to work towards it. I think the relationship between rowing and university is very symbiotic in that sense. You work hard for university and you work hard for rowing, and somehow each makes the other possible. Any stress you have can go into the sport.
Fitness is what we spend so much time developing on the machine, but the art of rowing is technique, spirit and, above all, mentality. Against Cambridge we race for 6.8 kilometres. You can begin feeling the pain after 500 metres, and then you have to find a way through everything that remains. That is where the team becomes essential. You keep going because you know the guy behind you will keep going, and he keeps going because he knows the guy behind him will do the same. It becomes trust. Confidence. A mentality shared across the boat.
Rowing is made of units. One stroke after another. Every two or three seconds, there is another decision to make. You have enough time to sit there and think: right, I have to do this again. Just one more. And then one more. If I keep doing that, eventually we will reach the end. And again, all of this creates human connections. At Oxford, you feel connected to the people who were recently in the club, but also to those who rowed there fifty or sixty years ago. They come back. They stand behind us. Eventually we will become part of that same heritage.
There is a visual culture attached to all of this too. In Britain, you see it particularly at Henley Royal Regatta. Style is a huge part of rowing, and I think there is something inherently stylish about the sport. There is something special happening when the style and tradition that come with rowing can coexist with opening the sport to more people. That visual identity is another way generations recognise one another. You see someone wearing your blazer somewhere in the world and immediately there is a connection. You belong to a community with a visual identity as well as a culture.
That community can become much larger than Oxford. Being in Turin, racing crews from across Europe, gives us something we rarely experience because normally we compete against British crews. Here, thanks to the support of Sebago, we can see rowing culture beyond Britain, meet people from elsewhere, exchange with them, then race them. Even rowing in mixed crews is unusual for us. At Oxford, the men and women are one club but normally train and race separately. Here, being in the same boat brings the club together differently.
And then there is simply the Po river. It is beautiful. We train near Oxford and spend a lot of time in London because the Boat Race is there. London is busy. There are boats everywhere, waves, all that movement. Here there is greenery running along the sides of the water. You notice the difference.”
Matilde Paoletti | LUISS
“I first took up rowing through the Remare a Scuola programme. I was in middle school when my coaches recruited me: they had us try the rowing ergometer, selected the students who showed the most potential, and that was how I encountered the sport for the first time. Otherwise, I probably would never have had the chance to discover it. I immediately loved being outdoors, constantly surrounded by people my own age, and having the opportunity to keep testing myself. Then, day by day, I learned to appreciate it more and more. Now, essentially, my entire life revolves around it: I train twice a day, every day. On Sundays, only once.
My goal, ever since I was little, has been to reach the Olympics. I’m already part of the Italian Under-23 national team. At LUISS, we follow different paths: some athletes row directly with the university team, while I continue to train with my own club. My preparation is different because, during the summer, the goal is to earn a place on the national team and represent Italy in the Azzurri colours.
I believe every sport has its own form of art. Rowing perhaps even more so, because it takes place in such beautiful surroundings, outdoors and on the water, whether that means a lake, a river or the sea. But above all, it is a form of movement, of synchrony, and that in itself can become an artistic expression. Unlike many modern sports, rowing also has a tradition stretching back centuries. In Italy, it may not be as widespread as it is in countries such as the United States or England, where there is a strong collegiate culture, particularly around the larger boats such as the eight. But we have an important history of our own, especially in the smaller boats, and today we are also working to develop women’s rowing more and more.
I’m very proud to be a student-athlete. LUISS gives me a great deal of support along this path, particularly because I moved to northern Italy precisely so that I could devote myself fully to rowing. Finding a balance between these two dimensions is fundamental, and I believe sport is also an excellent way to learn how to organise yourself better academically and pursue a dual career at the same time.
A lot of people my age who don’t row tell me that exercising for an hour, perhaps two or three times a week, helps them switch off from the intensity of university life. That always makes me smile, because for me it is exactly the opposite. Since I train twice a day, studying has become the moment when I switch off from rowing. I’ve always enjoyed studying, so I also see the time I dedicate to law as a form of mental concentration, a way of keeping my mind trained. Having a day full of commitments actually helps me reconcile the two sides of my life.
Of course, there are sacrifices to be made. I wouldn’t call them things I have to give up, because this is something I choose to do willingly, but you can’t go to bed at eleven every night. I usually go to sleep around nine or nine-thirty and wake up early. I still manage to have a social life and, in fact, one of the most beautiful aspects of rowing is precisely the friendships it allows you to build. We rowers spend a lot of time together: we train alongside one another all day and, ultimately, most of my circle of friends belongs to this world.
For me, the perfect balance lies between mind and body. Talent matters, but it isn’t enough. What you need above all is consistency and training. Results may not come immediately, and you have to be willing to build towards them through a much longer process. International competitions are concentrated mainly in spring and summer, but most of the work happens during the winter. When someone watches a race, they see the two thousand metres, they see the effort and, if everything goes well, they see the victory. What they don’t see are all the kilometres behind it — sometimes as many as forty a day — together with the work in the gym and on the rowing ergometer. That is why, beyond the physical side, the mind is fundamental.
And then you have to feel the boat. In the larger boats, like the eight, you need an extraordinary degree of synchrony with the entire crew. During the year, however, I’m primarily a single sculler, and I believe you have to develop a genuine feeling for the boat, to the point where you can almost correct yourself instinctively. First and foremost, I have to be my own toughest judge. Of course, I then speak to my coach, who can give me an external perspective, but by now I’ve learned to understand my body and to feel when something is working and when it isn’t.
Over the past few years, I’ve also started racing in mixed boats. It’s a discipline I really enjoy. Finding a common rhythm isn’t always easy: the men have longer levers than we do and are stronger, so synchronising the drive and the length of the stroke can be complicated. But there is a great atmosphere in the boat. This year I won bronze at the Under-23 European Championships in the mixed eight, and I hope this discipline continues to find a place in competition.
That is also why I enjoy being here in Turin. I discovered the city through rowing itself, competing over the years at various events. Here, I recognise so much of the historical tradition of our sport. There are different crews, people who row solely at university level and others who compete at an elite level, teams coming from very different backgrounds. There is an international atmosphere and, above all, a shared desire to test ourselves. I’m proud to represent LUISS here, particularly because the university enables me to continue along this path through the LUISS Top Athlete programme.
I’m equally happy that an event organised by Sebago has chosen to shine a light on rowing, because ours is a sport that has yet to achieve its full visibility among a wider audience. I also really appreciate its aesthetic dimension: seeing all the crews training in the same kit creates an elegant image, one that feels closely connected to the style that belongs to this world. I hope there will be more events like this, capable of bringing greater visibility to our sport.”
Oscar Krause | University of Hamburg
“I think I fell in love with rowing more than once. The first time was when I was twelve. I wasn’t particularly good at football or the other sports that everyone seemed to play, and rowing simply became a place where I could be. Everyone was new to it at that age, and I happened to be good at it. It gave me somewhere I could test myself.
Then I fell in love with rowing for a second time, after taking a break from high-intensity training. That was when I realised that progress doesn’t always move forward. It isn’t a straight line upwards. If you want to improve, you really have to commit yourself to it. That changed what rowing meant to me. It was no longer simply a place where I could win medals. It became a place where I had to work hard and learn discipline.
I’ve always found rowing incredibly aesthetic. I used to watch rowing videos, and there is such a strong culture around rowing clubs: the clubhouses themselves, the people, everything surrounding them. Somehow, it gives you a kind of home. That aesthetic dimension makes you feel comfortable, appreciated, part of something larger than yourself. And, of course, when you are rowing in a boat with other people, you literally are part of something larger. From the outside, there is something extremely pleasing about watching a crew move together. But you can feel that same aesthetic quality from inside the boat as well: in the rhythm, in the stroke, in the length of the movement.
Rowing has definitely shaped my academic life. I wasn’t always the best student. I used to run away from my father when he wanted me to do my homework and go to the rowing club instead. Then I realised that if I wanted to become successful in rowing, I needed to attend a sports school… and to get there, I needed good grades. One began to push the other upwards. Without rowing, I don’t think I would have developed the same discipline academically. Rowing taught me patience. It taught me how to work towards something over a long period of time. Without the sport, and without the sports school I attended in northern Germany, I don’t think I would have come as far as I have.
It also keeps me grounded. There are moments when you simply cannot perform at your best, and having to confront that can be very grounding. Rowing is an incredibly demanding sport. During the hardest sessions, sometimes you simply have to bulldog your way through them. That mental strength eventually finds its way into everything else you do. Rowers have this reputation for being able to get through difficult periods, whether at work or while studying. As a student-athlete, of course, you don’t have as much free time as everyone else. But rowing is also what we consider our free time. It doesn’t feel like a job. It is simply part of the way our lives work.
For me, the individual side of rowing is just as important as the collective one. Even though it is a team sport, I think an individual rower can actually help the crew by being a little selfish. You have to want to become better than everyone else. Training is always, in some way, a race against the people around you. When everyone brings that mentality into the same environment, a dynamic develops in which everybody progresses. Of course, you cannot become too selfish. You need respect. You need to care about the people around you. But that balance is part of what makes a good rower.
Representing my university is different in Germany from what I imagine it might be like at a university in the United States. Rowing isn’t particularly popular, and many people at the university probably don’t even know that these competitions are taking place. But when you come to a race like this and compete alongside Oxford and other major universities, there is a certain sense of tradition to it. You represent where you come from, and that is a great honour. It makes you want to give your best. It is like having the wind at your back.
There is something about places like Turin that belongs naturally to rowing. I also row at a club in Switzerland that is very traditional and very old. There is this large clubhouse, with wood everywhere, medals and trophies accumulated over time. History seems to come together in places like that. Like rowing itself, there is something about them that is simply beautiful to look at.
I really enjoy seeing a major brand like Sebago become involved in rowing because it gives another dimension to the sport. Rowing has always been quite niche. It has never really existed in the full spotlight. Sebago, as I’ve come to understand it, already belongs to a world connected to water, lakes, boats and the culture surrounding them, so I think there is something important about bringing that into the sporting dimension as well.
I have many friends in northern Germany who dress very well and carry that same kind of spirit with them. It becomes something larger than the sport itself. It becomes a lifestyle. I didn’t grow up in that kind of environment. I come from an area near Switzerland where rowing isn’t particularly big. But through rowing, sports school and university, I’ve gradually entered this world. Little by little, it has become more than a sport for me. It has become a culture.”
Fette | The Tour and Cycling as a Human Act
From the colours of Ecuador to the legendary summits of France, Fette’s illustrated world moves to a rhythm entirely its own: one dictated less by sport than by the profoundly human art of cycling and the riders who give it life. It’s a visual kaleidoscope, woven from fleeting details and unexpected echoes, through which we mark the conclusion of the 2026 Tour de France
Antoine Blondin, L’Équipe’s legendary correspondent on the roads of the Grande Boucle, once confessed that he wrote under the Tour de France’s own dictation. It is a striking image, one that dissolves the distance between narrator and subject until the two become inseparable. Few sporting events possess such power. Fewer still can so completely absorb those who attempt to tell their story.
Looking at Fette’s illustrations, one senses much the same phenomenon at work. The visual universe of the Ecuadorian architect, who has lived on two wheels since childhood, feels like a natural extension of the narrative unfolding in every stage, every breakaway, every tactical decision, and every emotional and physical journey undertaken by the very human superheroes who animate this legendary race.
As the 2026 Tour reaches its traditional finale beneath the light of the Champs-Élysées, we slip into the wheel of one of cycling’s most distinctive artistic voices. What follows is a journey shaped by intuition, inspiration, singular creative instincts and, above all, a profound understanding: that every moment of the Grande Boucle, like every unassuming hour spent in the saddle, contains something of life itself, in all its irony as much as its grandeur.
How did cycling first enter your life? What made you fall in love with the sport, and what are your earliest memories of encountering it?
“The bicycle was always part of my home. My brother and I grew up surrounded by BMX and mountain bikes, so it never felt like anything extraordinary: it was simply how we had fun. The funny thing is that I never sat down to watch the Tour de France or kept track of who had won a race. My relationship with the bicycle came long before my relationship with professional cycling. I only got into road cycling later in life, and I loved it from the very first ride. Not because I wanted to race, but because I genuinely enjoyed riding. In fact, I’ve only entered two races… and I finished last in both (he laughs ed.). That’s when I realized I definitely wasn’t born to compete.
What I did discover was that I love everything that surrounds the bicycle. Going out without a destination, getting lost on quiet roads, stopping for a coffee, chatting during a ride, or simply enjoying the silence while pedaling. It’s a sport that demands a lot from you, but at the same time gives you a kind of peace that’s hard to explain. I think that’s why I connected so deeply with cycling. Never through competition, but through the stories that happen on a bicycle. And in the end, that’s exactly what I try to capture in my illustrations today.”
What about drawing and illustration? When did they first become part of your imagination, and later, your creative expression?
“I think I’ve been drawing for as long as I can remember. I was always doodling on anything I could find. I never really thought, “I want to become an illustrator.” It was simply something I loved doing. Over the years, I realized that drawing is the most natural way for me to communicate. There are things I struggle to put into words, but they come out effortlessly in an illustration. It also allows me to bring together everything I love: design, architecture, painting, music, film… and now, cycling.
When I started Fette, I wasn’t trying to make drawings about bicycles. What I really wanted was to tell stories. Cycling just happened to become the perfect stage because it’s a sport full of emotion, unforgettable characters, and incredible moments. A race can be epic, funny, absurd, or deeply human: and that’s what inspires me. I think that’s why my illustrations almost always have a touch of humor or irony. I love it when someone looks at one of them, smiles or laughs, and then starts discovering the little hidden details. If an illustration makes someone stop and look at it for a few minutes instead of just scrolling past, then I feel like it has done its job.”
You’re originally from Ecuador (where, if I’m not mistaken, you’re still based) and have a professional background in architecture. How have these two elements—your cultural roots and your academic training—shaped the way you understand both cycling and illustration?
“A lot, although probably not in the most obvious way. Architecture didn’t teach me how to draw better: it taught me how to think. It’s a discipline deeply connected to art and design, and I think the biggest lesson it gave me was the ability to abstract ideas, simplify them, and pay attention to the smallest details. Before I start an illustration, I always try to understand the essence of the story and figure out the simplest way to tell it. That way of thinking comes directly from architecture. And Ecuador shaped the way I see the world. It’s an incredible country, full of contrasts, where sport was always part of my childhood. I grew up practicing and enjoying many different sports, although road cycling came into my life much later. Maybe that’s why I never approached it through the traditional lens of someone who grew up watching the great European races. I discovered it through curiosity and pure enjoyment.
I also think Ecuador makes you see life a little differently. We don’t really have the dramatic changes between seasons that many other countries experience. Life here feels much more constant, and I think that influences the way you observe the world and the way you experience time. I had never really thought about it before, but looking back, I think that perspective has naturally found its way into my work. In the end, Fette is the result of those two worlds. On one hand, a way of thinking shaped by architecture: always trying to simplify without losing depth. On the other, a perspective shaped by Ecuador, which often allows me to notice stories and details that someone who has spent their whole life immersed in European cycling culture might overlook.”
Let’s talk about the Fette phenomenon. Where did this kaleidoscope of cycling-inspired imagery come from? As you’ve mentioned in previous interviews, is it true that Richard Carapaz’s Giro d’Italia victory and your triathlete partner both played a role in the early development of this artistic project?
“Fette was born during the pandemic as a response to the need to keep creating. Like so many people, lockdown pushed me to find new ways to stay active, and drawing became that space for me. Everything happened at the same time: cycling experienced a huge boom during the pandemic, Richard Carapaz won the Giro d’Italia, and, thanks to my former partner, I started watching races with a completely different perspective. I had always been passionate about bicycles, but more from the point of view of riding them than following professional racing. It was during that period that I began to discover everything happening behind a race: the stories, the tactics, the personalities, and the emotions.
From the very beginning, I knew I didn’t want to create technical illustrations or simply depict race results. What I wanted was to show the human side of sport. At the end of the day, a race isn’t just about who wins; it’s full of decisions, mistakes, sacrifices, humor, frustration, and joy. I think that’s the essence of Fette: using cycling as a language to tell human stories. Because in the end, those emotions don’t belong only to cycling: they belong to sport itself, and they’re what allow us to connect with it.”
From across the ocean, people often underestimate the cultural significance of cycling in a country like Ecuador, which has become one of the sport’s emerging heartlands. Could you tell us what cycling represents for your country? What images or metaphors would you use to best describe that relationship?
“Cycling has always existed in Ecuador, but I think we’re only now beginning to build a true cycling identity. The change over the last few years has been remarkable. You see more people training, more people riding simply because they love it, and, above all, more Ecuadorian riders making their mark in the ProTour. It’s no longer about having just one standout rider: Ecuador is becoming a country that the cycling world genuinely respects. That has naturally helped grow the fanbase as well. More people are following the races, understanding the sport, and feeling part of it. I think we’re still in a period of growth, especially at the amateur level, where there’s still a long way to go. But when I compare what it was like ten years ago to what I see today, the difference is huge.
Ecuador is still a football country, and I don’t think that’s going to change anytime soon. But I would love to see people open up to other sports as well. We have athletes achieving incredible things on the world stage—not only in cycling, but in many disciplines—and I think they deserve the same attention and support. Hopefully, little by little, we’ll become a country that celebrates sport in a broader way. I like to think that Ecuador is just beginning to write its first great chapters in the history of cycling. And that’s what makes this moment feel so exciting.”
Over the years, what kind of artistic philosophy have you developed? How do you choose your subjects, and what guides the way you compose the sequences and narrative details in your illustrations?
“Almost every illustration starts the same way: by watching a race. As I’m watching, I begin connecting what’s happening on the road with other things that inspire me. It could be a movie, a song, a famous painting, a design campaign, a meme, or even something completely unrelated to cycling that’s happening at that moment. That’s usually where the idea appears. From there, I try to build a story. I like my illustrations to have humor, irony, emotion, and small hidden details. Yes, we often make fun of riders or situations that happen during races, but always from a good place. Never to ridicule anyone, but to celebrate the human side of the sport. One of the nicest surprises has been discovering that many of the riders themselves have exactly the same sense of humor and genuinely enjoy seeing themselves portrayed that way. That’s been incredible.
What probably guides my work the most is the constant search to do something different. I try not to repeat myself or create the illustration that everyone expects. I’m always asking myself if there’s another way to tell the same story, or if there’s a perspective that no one has explored yet. I also like to hide little messages and details inside my illustrations. Some are references, some are inside jokes, and others have a very personal meaning. The funny thing is that, over time, I often look back at an illustration and rediscover details I had completely forgotten about. It’s almost as if each piece preserves a small fragment of the moment in which it was created. And when someone takes the time to really look at it and uncovers one of those hidden messages, I feel like the illustration comes to life again. In the end, I like an illustration to evoke several emotions at once. I want it to surprise you first, then make you smile, and if you come back to it later, hopefully you’ll discover something new. I think that sense of discovery—and that little conversation between the illustration and the viewer—is a big part of Fette’s identity.”
You’re also an active cyclist yourself. What have riding and life on two wheels taught you? How much has cycling shaped your identity? And since we believe every sport is an art form in its own right, do you see the act of cycling itself as a form of art?
“Everything! That’s probably the easiest question in the whole interview. The bicycle has taught me patience, discipline, how to make decisions, how to deal with failure, how to enjoy the journey, and that many of the best things in life only come after you’ve suffered a little. Those are lessons that help you on the bike, but they also help you in life. More than influencing my art, I think the bicycle has shaped my life. Today, almost everything revolves around it. I ride every day, there are more bikes than furniture in my house, and many of the most important people I’ve met came into my life because of cycling. Even many of my architecture and illustration projects were born through connections I made while riding. It’s hard to think of an important part of my life where the bicycle hasn’t been present.
And yes, I do think riding a bike is a form of art. Everyone has their own way of experiencing it. Some people race, some explore, some ride to clear their minds, and others simply use it to get to work. We’re all doing the same thing, but each of us is telling a different story. But there’s one thing I’m completely sure about: everyone who has ever ridden a bike has imagined, even if only for a few seconds, crossing the finish line first and raising their arms after winning a stage of the Tour de France. I think that ability to make us dream—even when we’re riding alone on an empty road—is one of the most beautiful things about cycling.”
How does it feel to have become such a respected voice within the cycling world, with a global community of people who appreciate your work and share your vision of the sport’s greatest races and most iconic riders? At the same time, how have you experienced—and how are you experiencing—your collaborations with brands and institutions?
“I still find it hard to see it that way. In fact, answering this interview already feels pretty surreal to me. I’m sitting here in Ecuador, talking to someone on the other side of the world who wants to hear my story because of a few drawings about cycling. If someone had told me a few years ago that this would happen, I probably wouldn’t have believed them. I think the most valuable thing Fette has given me is the community. Beyond the work—which has already been incredible because I now get to do this for a living—the thing that truly changed my life has been the people. I’ve met riders, designers, photographers, journalists, brands… but above all, I’ve made friends. People I probably never would have met if I hadn’t started drawing during the pandemic.
It also made me realize that an illustration can be much more than just a beautiful image. It can start a conversation, create a friendship, or make someone on the other side of the world connect with an idea. I think that was always the real purpose of Fette: telling stories in my own way and discovering that other people felt the same. And working with brands and teams has been incredible. The best part is that no one has ever asked me to stop being Fette. If anything, they usually come to me because they want that different way of telling stories. That makes me believe there’s still room to do things in a more human and creative way. And if any brands happen to be reading this interview… first of all, thank you. And secondly… feel free to call me more often. I promise I’ll answer.”
Let’s talk about the Tour de France. What does the Grand Boucle evoke in you emotionally and intellectually? And what has particularly stood out to you about the 2026 edition?
“The Tour de France is, without a doubt, my favorite time of the year. During those three weeks, everything switches into Tour mode. I’m watching every stage, thinking of new ideas, drawing, and wondering what’s going to happen the next day. It’s impossible not to get caught up in that energy. What I love most is that every stage tells a different story. Sometimes it comes from an incredible victory, and other times from a small gesture that almost nobody noticed. That’s where many of my illustrations begin.
This year’s Tour really impressed me with the level of racing and the incredible speed. It feels like cycling keeps evolving every single season. I also loved seeing new faces and new names challenging the established stars: that’s a great sign that the sport continues to grow. And yes, I was a little disappointed that we didn’t get to see Jonas and Pogi battle all the way to Paris. I think everyone was looking forward to that rivalry playing out until the end. But that’s also the magic of the Tour: you never really know what’s going to happen, and somehow it always ends up giving you a story you weren’t expecting.”
Which Tour de France-inspired works, both past and present, hold a special place in your heart and why?
“There are so many that it’s impossible to choose just one, but a few of them marked important moments for Fette. The illustration of Chris Froome running up the mountain was one of the first pieces that really introduced my work to a wider audience, so it will always have a special place for me. I also have a lot of affection for the illustrations of Wout van Aert during the 2022 Tour, when Jumbo-Visma managed to put Pogačar under real pressure. Those were incredible days to draw. The same goes for all the battles between Jonas and Pogi. I truly believe we’re witnessing one of the great rivalries in cycling history, and being able to tell that story as it’s happening feels like a privilege. Another one I’ll always remember is Mathieu van der Poel finally wearing the yellow jersey. It was one of those moments everyone had been waiting for.
But some of the stories I enjoy illustrating the most aren’t necessarily the victories. They’re the ones that reveal who the riders really are: a bad day, a teammate sacrificing everything for another rider, or someone finally winning a prize or jersey that seemed impossible just a few days before. I love those moments because they remind us that, behind the athletes, there are people. And I think that’s the side of cycling that deserves to be celebrated just as much. In the end, my favorite illustrations are usually the ones filled with small details. I like hiding little references and messages that aren’t obvious at first glance. The funny thing is that when I come back to those illustrations later, already knowing how the story ended or how that rider’s journey evolved, I see them differently. It’s like rewatching a stage you already know: you always notice something new. And I think that’s my favorite kind of illustration: the one that makes you come back for a second look.”
Which current riders stimulate your imagination the most? And which legends remain your eternal muses?
“I think the riders who appear most often in my work are Pogačar, Wout van Aert, Mathieu van der Poel, Jonas Vingegaard, Remco Evenepoel, Primož Roglič, Egan Bernal, Isaac del Toro, and on the women’s side, Demi Vollering, Marianne Vos, Elisa Longo Borghini, Pauline Ferrand-Prévot, and Katarzyna ‘Kasia’ Niewiadoma. Each of them has such a distinct personality that it’s easy to build stories around them.
Pogačar rides like he doesn’t know what limits are. Van der Poel and Wout are pure entertainment: whenever they’re in a race, something memorable is bound to happen. Jonas has this incredible calmness that suddenly turns into explosive attacks when you least expect it. Remco has a strong personality and races in a way that always gets people talking. Roglič has an incredible ability to come back, no matter what happens. Egan means so much to Latin America and will always be special because of everything he’s overcome. And Isaac del Toro gives you the feeling that you’re witnessing the beginning of something very special.
On the women’s side, I love illustrating Demi Vollering, Marianne Vos, Elisa Longo Borghini, Pauline Ferrand-Prévot, and Kasia Niewiadoma. Each of them has a completely different way of racing and expressing emotion, which means there’s always an interesting story waiting to be told. And when it comes to legends, Marco Pantani will always be at the top of my list. Beyond his results, he had a way of racing that felt like it belonged to another era. It was impossible to take your eyes off him.”
This Is a Song of the Valleys | The Mecca of Welsh Rugby
The gaze of RiseUp Duo moves across the gentle yet austere landscapes of the Welsh Valleys. Guided by the voices of Dai Richards, a master collector of rugby history, and Ralph Waldin, spokesperson for the 140-year-old Treorchy RFC, they portray the cultural and social significance of the oval ball within a geography long shaped by mines and tries
“This is a song of the Valleys | Of rivalries, communities and tries | Where rugby breathes and never dies,” read the pages of Athleta Magazine Issue 13: more precisely, those of the ‘Up and Under’ reportage. The words draw inspiration from the verses of the brilliant comedian and singer-songwriter Max Boyce. Rising to the upper reaches of the British charts in the 1970s by singing the rugby myths of the Welsh Valleys—a land that has never ceased to produce and pass them down—his career stands as a testament to what the oval ball has represented, and continues to represent, within this distinctive corner of the world.
Cultural heritage. Social dynamo. Familial identity. Natural structure. Interconnected definitions that together render something tangible of the significance rugby has assumed, since the mid-nineteenth century, within small communities enclosed by undulating hills. Villages and towns populated largely by miners who, between the posts, composed an unforgettable—and still unforgotten—sporting melody: one that continues to produce international talent and fiercely contested local derbies even today, despite profound socio-economic change and ongoing depopulation.
This is the song of the Valleys. A song with rugby at its very centre. So attest the voices of collector Dai Richards and Treorchy RFC Vice Chairman Ralph Waldin. Their lives and testimonies, accompanied by a series of exclusive photographs, reveal why rugby continues to breathe and endure in a part of Wales that made a religion of the Game.
Dai Richards – Rugby Relics
“My first real encounter with rugby as something material came almost by accident. Every November, for Guy Fawkes Night, our neighbours and my family would build a bonfire together, and as kids we would go around collecting old newspapers and anything people were willing to give us to burn. One day, somebody handed me a programme from Wales against England in 1965. I looked at it and thought, I can’t burn that. It’s too good. In many ways, that was where everything began.
My father had probably taken me to local rugby matches before then, but I wasn’t particularly interested in watching. I would spend most of the time exploring whatever was around the pitch. But in the Welsh Valleys, rugby eventually becomes part of your life whether you consciously choose it or not. We played it at school. I scored my first try when I was nine. My teachers were rugby players; my PE teacher played for Aberavon, one of the leading sides, and so did my physics teacher. Rugby was simply everywhere. It was social, cultural, part of the fabric of the place. You couldn’t really avoid it.
During my adolescence, another relationship with the game was developing. I had started collecting football programmes, but gradually football gave way to Neath rugby club programmes and then to rugby memorabilia more broadly. When I was seventeen, I went to a dealer looking for some programmes I wanted and discovered that he had already sold them. I remember thinking: How do I get to these things first? The answer was to become a dealer myself.
Initially, buying and selling was simply a way of reaching material for my own collection before anybody else could. Then it grew and grew. That was around 1978, so I have now spent almost half a century accumulating rugby history. There is so much of it that I’ve had to hire twenty-foot containers simply to store everything. Since 1991, it has been my full-time profession. At a certain point I realised that what had begun as wheeling and dealing to sustain my own collecting could actually become a living. Today there are really two sides to what I do. There is Rugby Relics, which buys and sells, and there is the museum collection.
They are connected, but there is a very clear line between them. The museum material is not there to be traded. There is one exception that matters to me. If somebody has a deeper connection to an object than I do, I will consider returning it to them. If I own a cap and the son of the man who originally wore it comes to me wanting it back, then his relationship with that object is greater than mine. That matters. I need to know that the object is going somewhere it belongs, rather than to somebody who simply wants to buy it and sell it again. Because although this is a business, I still see the beauty in these things. Certain objects possess something beyond their physical form. There is an aesthetic value, certainly, but also something spiritual. And I think there has to be an integrity in the way you handle them, because ultimately you are dealing with people’s histories.
My favourite object probably explains that better than anything else. It is a small book called a Thumbograph, which belonged to a young woman in 1905. Originally, there was an ink pad inside: people would press their thumb into it, leave their thumbprint on the page and sign their name beside it. When I first bought the book from somebody in the north of England, I knew almost nothing about her. Then I appeared on a British antiques programme with it, and her granddaughter contacted me. Incredibly, she lived less than a kilometre away from me. I discovered that the house mentioned in the book was actually in Swansea and that its owner was the daughter of the Lord Mayor of Swansea. Suddenly, this object I had found hundreds of miles away had returned to its own geography.
Because of her family’s position, she moved among some of the most important rugby figures in Swansea and Wales. She met members of the famous 1905 All Blacks and, the following year, the Welsh team. Ten of the Welsh players associated with that extraordinary 1905 victory over New Zealand appear in the book. Among the names is Gwyn Nicholls, the captain of that Welsh side, and then there is Arthur Gould, generally regarded as the first Welsh rugby superstar. And the book is still alive. Where blank spaces remained, I began inviting more recent players to add their own thumbprints and signatures. So an object that began with one young woman meeting rugby players more than a century ago continues to accumulate the game across generations. That is what fascinates me. The object carries time.
My collection has always been revolving. It is a business, so things inevitably come and go, but the purpose has never really been to possess everything. What matters to me is recording the history of rugby through its memorabilia, using objects to explain the story of the game. That is why I am interested in everything, not simply the great names. I have boots here from the 1880s or 1890s, the kind of boots some of those early Welsh players would have worn. And when you look at them, you have to remember that many of these men were miners. Those might have been the same boots they worked in during the week before putting them on again to play rugby on a Saturday.
That relationship between mining and rugby is fundamental to understanding the Valleys. I grew up in Port Talbot, which was a steelworks town rather than a mining community, and I think there was a difference between the mentality of men working in steel and those going underground. Mining was harder, more dangerous. When I played in the very early 1980s, I played alongside men who had been miners, and they were hard men. Very hard men. The rugby reflected that. The team I played for never really went out to play rugby. We went to war. And that is what rugby had been like here through the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s: almost a war between mining villages, between one community and another. That mentality wasn’t naturally mine, but once you were on the field you had to enter it because everybody around you was fighting in the same way.
The mines created communities in a very particular way. People lived close to where they worked. You might walk half a mile to the mine or five miles, perhaps even climb towards one at the top of a mountain, but your work, your home and your community all belonged to the same geography. Even the coal itself was part of that intimacy with the land. In the valley opposite here, all seven layers of the geological strata come to the surface. Every seam had its own name, and they used to say that a miner could identify which seam a piece of coal had come from simply by looking at it. That world has largely disappeared. People now travel in from elsewhere to work. They are no longer necessarily born, employed and socially rooted within the same few miles. So inevitably there has been a disconnection between the communities and the mines, and rugby has been affected by that too.
The game is still deeply present in parts of Wales, particularly when you move through the Heads of the Valleys. Those remain rugby strongholds. The coastal towns are different. Historically, rugby belongs much more intimately to the mining communities and the Valleys. But even here the balance is changing. I would say rugby is dying in terms of participation. My old club is struggling to field one senior side now. At one time, it ran two. Part of the problem is simply the nature of the game. Rugby is a contact sport, and people have jobs and lives outside it. It is difficult to put your body through a match and then return to physical work. When I played, it could take me two or three days to recover, and I wasn’t even a forward. Society has changed as well. I think we are moving away from that kind of contact sport. Perhaps that is one reason I have become increasingly interested in going backwards, towards the origins of the game itself.”
Ralph Waldin – Treorchy RFC
“We are in our 140th year now, and we are very proud of that. Treorchy has a rich rugby heritage, particularly for a village of this size. We have always produced players who have gone on to play at a very high level, including internationally, and I think a lot of that comes from the strength of our mini and youth rugby. Our latest example is Tomos Williams, who played for the British & Irish Lions last year. He is a Treorchy boy. He came through our mini rugby system, just as so many others have done before him. I know his parents very well and his best friend is my son. There are photographs of the two of them together here from ten or fifteen years ago. That is what makes it special. You see somebody as a child playing rugby here, within the village, and years later he is playing for the Lions.
This is a pattern shared across the Valleys, a true breeding ground for Welsh internationals thanks to the remarkable standard of rugby found throughout the region. And it is a process driven not only by its best-known or highest-level clubs, but by the smaller ones too. But rugby in the Valleys is not as strong numerically as it was thirty or forty years ago. When I was playing, we had two senior teams. There might be forty-five or fifty players training twice a week. We don’t have that anymore. We no longer run a second senior side, and very few clubs around here do because there simply aren’t enough players.
Our strength is that we still have mini rugby and a strong youth system, so there is a flow of young players coming through. Other clubs are not so fortunate. There are teams only a few miles from here struggling every week simply to put a side on the field. Some clubs may eventually have to fold. Part of the problem is that there are so many of them. Around here you can find a rugby club every two or three miles. In purely practical terms, perhaps there are too many clubs for the population we have today. But try telling a village that its rugby club has to disappear. You can’t. The identity is still too strong. Rugby here remains tribal. When you play the club down the road, it becomes a real local derby, something much larger than an ordinary league match. Every community has its own identity and its own club, and people remain deeply attached to both.
Last season we played a local side and there were thousands of people around the field. For a normal senior home game, we might get around five hundred spectators. For a bigger match it can be more. And when Treorchy plays away, people travel. We take a proper crowd with us. That tells you what the club still means to the community. We couldn’t survive without them. We have an initiative called Friends of Treorchy, where supporters, members and friends of the club contribute fifteen pounds a month. We have around a hundred people doing that. That money keeps the club going. If those people stopped contributing, there would be occasions when we would struggle simply to open the doors. But they don’t stop. They have been doing it for years. Every month, they give their fifteen pounds without question because that is their way of supporting the club.
And the significance of this place has never ended at the touchline. Max Boyce played here before anybody really knew who he was. His first live album was recorded in this club, Live at Treorchy. At the time, they were struggling to fill the hall. It was a weeknight, he was still relatively unknown, and initially they could barely sell a hundred or a hundred and fifty tickets. Eventually they filled the place, it became a great night, and the record went out into the world. That album helped launch his career. He came back recently, fifty years after that performance, because he still has such fond memories of Treorchy. There is something special about the fact that a record which travelled so far began inside a village rugby club like this one. But that is what these clubs have always been.
The clubhouse is not simply somewhere players come after a match. People have weddings here. They celebrate birthdays here. There is live music, parties, family gatherings. For generations, places like this have provided a space in which the community can come together. And that role has probably become even more important as other gathering places have disappeared. We used to have so many churches and chapels along the high street. Most of them are closed now. Many of the pubs and social clubs have disappeared as well because there simply wasn’t enough trade to sustain them. Every time one of those places closes, the community loses another space where people used to meet.
The rugby club is still here. In that sense, we have become something of a stronghold for the community. Rugby gives the building its identity, but what happens inside it extends far beyond the game. Perhaps that is why preserving these clubs matters even when playing numbers decline. If a rugby club disappears from a place like Treorchy, you don’t simply lose a team or a pitch. You lose one of the remaining spaces in which the community can recognise itself. The match may be what happens on Saturday afternoon. The club belongs to the rest of the week as well.”
The Poetics of Instinct | Mark Gonzales
Y-3’s latest collection offers a rare opportunity to enter the creative universe of Mark Gonzales, a cult figure whose influence extends far beyond skateboarding, and to explore the ever-evolving philosophy that has shaped his work across disciplines
You watch Mark Gonzales moving across the monumental staircases of Paris’ Palais d’Iéna and immediately feel the presence of a legend. ‘The Godfather’ says almost everything about the place he occupies within skateboarding’s collective imagination. Since the golden years of 1980s Los Angeles, the Californian has both redefined the possibilities of a skateboard and reshaped the way generations have looked at the urban landscape.
Then he starts riding. Verses begin to unfold beneath his feet. Rhapsodic intuitions. Every concrete surface becomes something to be read. Suddenly, you find yourself at the centre of the creative vision of one of street skateboarding’s defining figures. An artist whose practice has never been confined to a board, but has continuously expanded into illustration and painting, handwritten words, fanzines passed from hand to hand, design and, ultimately, every possible form of personal expression.
It seems only fitting that Gonzales should front adidas Y-3’s Fall/Winter collection. Their relationship stretches back years, shaped by a philosophy they have long shared: one driven by inimitable presence and continual experimentation. Above all, it is a philosophy grounded in instinct and poetry. Time inevitably reshapes one’s perspective, bringing a deeper understanding without ever disturbing the impulse from which everything else grows. That enduring thread is precisely what the collection shaped by Y-3 in collaboration with artist Chito captures: ‘Legacy in motion. Future in flow.’
The best way to understand it is to hear it from Mark Gonzales himself.
At Athleta Mag, we see sport as synonymous with art and culture. Let’s begin with the cultural side of that equation. What does it feel like to know that your influence runs through the entire history of skateboarding: that you’re widely regarded not just as one of its greatest skaters, but as someone who fundamentally changed what skateboarding could be? How do you relate to that legacy?
“There were ones before me like Tony Alva, and even ones before him, but Tony Alva with the way he rode pools and got air: that was rad… That changed things! It’s hard to see myself in that role. My influence historically is connected to a small collective: Natas Kaupas, Tommy Guerrero, Mike Vallely (the lead vocalist of the hardcore punk band Black Flag)… We sort of all propelled each other. Street skating is something that I don’t think any of us knew we were actually consciously doing.”
What do you remember feeling the first time you stepped onto a board? And what about the first time you started drawing? Did skating and art naturally become part of the same language for you from the very start, or did they find each other over time?
“My brother, my Dad and I used to draw Hot Rods. It was Hot Rods, surfing and long hair. Emulating surfing and drawing the Hot Rods that we would want to have was all happening at the same time: dreaming about cruising the boulevard in a nice car… Drawing it was second best!”
Spike Jonze once said that you skate the way you think, that your mind has no limits, and neither does your skateboarding. Have you ever encountered the idea of a limit, on a skateboard or elsewhere?
“There are limits and it can be depressing imagining something, and not being able to complete it: it’s rough.”
You’ve said, “My life is poetic.” What does it mean to live a poetic life?
“Maybe a better quote is “my life was poetic.” Living without plans, doing things on the spur of a moment is poetic; but now these days my days are pretty structured. Which in some ways I feel is better… Logic and poetry do not go together in my opinion.”
Your life has always been driven by personal expression: whether through skateboarding, drawing, painting, writing, or simply the way you move through the world. Within that creative vocabulary, what role have design and clothing played over the years? And where does your relationship with Y-3 fit into that story?
“My expression and art on clothes happened accidentally, by chance. It’s not something calculated: it’s mostly a natural thing that I’m hardly aware of.”
You’re the face of the Y-3 Fall/Winter collection, photographed by Jet Swan in Palais d’Iéna. Photography has also been part of your artistic universe for decades. How did it feel to become the visual embodiment of this collection?
“It’s hard to believe that’s me… And I think Jet Sawn did a great job.”
The broader campaign was shot in Paris’ streets by Reece Leung. As someone who has redefined the relationship between a skateboard and the built environment, what do cities, and Paris in particular, communicate to you? And after a lifetime of street skateboarding, how has your way of exploring cities evolved?
“It’s always new. Being older, now I feel like my time out in the street is limited. I can’t say it has evolved, but maybe it’s sort of just reduced to less adventure. But in Paris, I was skating and shooting on the street with Reece Leung and that was pretty amazing, I hardly knew he was there, in the sense I was able to do my thing without feeling like we were acting to get ‘the shot’. I was having fun, being myself after it was over I was like: that’s it? I wanted to go more.”
You once said, “It’s strange not to have a reason for doing something, but to follow an instinct.” Do you think instinct changes as we move through life, or is there a deeper essence that remains constant beneath it all?
“A reason for doing something sounds very logical and not poetic. But I don’t think instincts change much. Being older, jumping down fifteen flights of stairs, your instincts are going to tell you that is not a good idea. But as a kid, doing it to impress someone or some people, your instincts say do it and you do it. Yes I trust my instincts, they are still there, the same instincts: call it wisdom, call it carelessness, it’s all the same. Instincts are a kind of intuition.”
The Bridge | Movement Connects
An exegesis of ‘The Bridge’, the experiential event conceived by adidas and Cisalfa that, in Rome, celebrated movement as a universal language through which different sports, people and cultures can connect
From motion, the ancients believed, all other things arise. An intuition that perhaps finds its fullest correspondence in the cadence of the contemporary world. In motion understood as a bridge: between disciplines and different realms; above all, between human beings. It was around this principle that ‘The Bridge’ took shape, an experiential event conceived by adidas and Cisalfa that transformed Rome into a crucible of different physical notes and interpretations: a composite yet coherent language, inspired by sport and its inexhaustible points of intersection.
Across two days in Rome, football governed by avant-garde rules unfolded through the new Predator and F50; community-minded Pilates sessions accompanied the launch of the new adidas Originals Sport collection; while hybrid training classes and challenges found their expression through the latest adidas Adizero Dropset Pro. Surrounding this entire vortex of movement was a cultural dimension: the narrative embedded within an object of cult such as the LA Trainer, celebrated on the threshold between past and future.
An experience that began, then, with motion, and found its fullest, most tangible meaning in motion’s capacity to bring all other things into being, to connect individual passions and emotions and allow them to become a collective symphony. Our exclusive photographic gallery traces this process, and the weekend through which it unfolded.
