VIENNA —
Formula One world champion Max Verstappen led the
tributes on Sunday to Red Bull founder Dietrich Mateschitz, who turned the
energy drink into a worldwide success and pumped money into a title-winning F1
team and several football clubs.
اضافة اعلان
Mateschitz died on Saturday at the age of 78 after a
long illness, having amassed a fortune estimated by Forbes at $27.4 billion
(27.8 billion euros), making him Austria’s richest person.
He took a sweet drink that was already popular in
Asia for its apparent energy-giving properties and adapted it to Western
tastes.
Mateschitz was a savvy marketing man who popularized
the Red Bull brand by associating it with sport, investing heavily in Formula
One, football, and extreme pursuits.
Red Bull now employs 13,000 people in 172 countries
with an annual turnover of around eight billion euros. It sells nearly 10
billion cans of the drink a year.
Verstappen, who two weeks ago won his second
consecutive world drivers’ title at the wheel of a Red Bull car, said he was
determined to deliver a strong performance in Sunday’s US Grand Prix as a
tribute to Mateschitz.
“It’s been hard
news for everyone, for Red Bull and for the sport and for me in general, in my
career and in my life,” the Dutchman said.
“It is a very tough day. We missed out in qualifying
by a little bit, but there is a race tomorrow, and we’ll try to do it for him
... we are going to make him proud.”
Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen said
Mateschitz had led a “simply breathtaking life”.
“Dietrich Mateschitz built up a world-famous and
successful company, and we have lost a great supporter of top-class sport and
extreme sports,” the president tweeted.
Success in football and F1
Apart from its substantial
investment in the F1 team, Red Bull bought the football club of the Austrian
city of Salzburg in 2005, then in 2009 acquired Leipzig when the German team
were languishing in the fifth division.
German law bans the use of a company title in a
club’s name, so the Leipzig board of directors called their club RasenBallsport
Leipzig — literally “lawn ball sport” Leipzig — whose initials “RB” mirror
those of Red Bull.
From 2016, the club were promoted to the Bundesliga
top flight and one season later qualified for the Champions League after
finishing second in the table.
The Austrian company also captured the New York
MetroStars franchise in the US in 2006, turning them into the New York Red
Bulls.
Red Bull has also branched out into extreme sports,
sponsoring events such as air acrobatics and cliff diving.
When Austrian daredevil Felix Baumgartner jumped to
earth from a helium balloon in 2012, his suit was plastered with the Red Bull
logo.
But it is in Formula One that the company has really
made its mark in the world of sport.
The head of the Red Bull F1 team, Christian Horner,
said “thankfully” Mateschitz lived to see Verstappen clinch his second title by
winning the Japanese Grand Prix earlier this month.
Horner said Mateschitz was “a great man, one of few
of a kind” who had “proved you can make a difference. He was a passionate
supporter and the backbone of all we do”.
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