Interviews

Stephen Gordon: a man with a dog and a boat that he rows in lakes. That’s really all it takes for us to like a guy, but Gordon has a story that obliges further explanation.

Giles Ellis is a man obsessed with details. Though his pet project, Schofield Watch Company, has won high praise from watch connoisseurs, Ellis is still wary of being pigeonholed.

Sasha DiGiulian is the best female climber in the world. In 2012, she became the first American woman (and only the third woman of all time) to climb grade 5.14d, only three steps below where the scale tops out.

Trevor Groth first visited the Sundance Film Festival in 1989 at the age of 17. The experience changed his life, eventually leading him to a job as Director of Programming at Sundance, presiding over the strategic planning and selection process of the now-iconic film festival.

Hugh Acheson is a familiar face by now, with plenty of magazine appearances after his Food & Wine Best New Chef award and a recurring role as a judge on Top Chef. But it’s the Ottawa-born chef’s enthusiasm for Southern cuisine that has buoyed his reputation.

Beats, turntables, peanut butter and extreme conviction have helped fuel Rapha-Focus cyclocross pro Jeremy Powers to a national championship. Through his web video franchise “Behind THE Barriers TV”, Powers has also sought the broader goal of elevating the profile of his sport.

Stories follow Michael Kobold everywhere. The founder of Kobold Watches, which declares that its watches are “conceived, designed, assembled and tested in USA from domestic and imported components”, has turned his immodest passion for timepieces into a successful business and made relationships with great men — Ranulph Fiennes, Gerd-Ruediger Lang, the late James Gandolfini — along the way.

If you’re looking for a lesson in the good life, look no further than Robert August. At 18 he starred in The Endless Summer, the first great surfing film, taking him on a seven-month world tour of uncharted breaks.

On December 3, Parker Liautaud and decorated polar guide Douglas Stoup will depart from the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica on a 397-mile journey to the South Pole — an adventure that, if successful, will make Liautaud the youngest and fastest man to trek from coast-to-pole. Not bad for a 19-year-old college sophomore.

It’s hard to imagine a more accomplished and well-rounded distance runner than Michael Wardian. In 1996 he ran the Marine Corps Marathon, his first, in a swift 3:08.

In 1997, Chris Lieto saw the Hawaii Ironman Triathlon World Championship on TV and decided to start training. Three years later, he became a professional triathlete.

At age 12, Anton Krupicka ran his first marathon. He’s been running ever since.

Growing up in the suburbs of New York City in a large Italian family, Chris Diminno learned the importance of food pretty quickly. After honing his resume and skills at several fine establishments, Diminno moved to Portland — where ever since he’s been a lead chef at the extremely popular Euro-style gastropub Clyde Common.

While his contemporaries were putting on puppet shows and learning to play catch, Aaron Gwin was racing BMX in national competitions. He was eight.

Sometimes an outsider’s perspective is just what’s needed to achieve unique excellence. Frank Muytjens is the Holland-born head of men’s design at J.Crew, a proudly American company.

Irv Gordon looks young for his age. If you were to divide the almost three million miles he’s driven in his 1966 Volvo P1800 by the national average of miles driven per year, he would be 220 years old.

When it comes to household names in cycling, there’s Lance Armstrong and…who else? We’ll make the case for Lennard Zinn, whose bike maintenance books — among them, the best-selling Zinn & The Art of Road Bike Maintenance — have prime real estate on the shelves of anyone who knows a bottom bracket from a Krispy Kreme.

Ask any photographer to pencil a list of dream clients and it might look something like this: Nike, Apple, Microsoft, Columbia Sportswear, REI, Subaru, Polaroid, Lady Gaga and Red Bull. With notches in his grip for all of those and more, Chase Jarvis has one hell of a career trajectory.

Tucked away in the quiet industrial surf town of El Segundo, California, stands a cozy theater that has been around since 1921. Within that theater sits a rare gem, something that most of us no longer associate with movies at all.

We know: you have a recurring dream where you fall off a yacht and can’t swim back to shore. First, drop the extra Champagne.