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PARKOUR

Parkour is a gravity-defying sport that involves moving freely through any terrain using only one's body. It has grown in popularity in Britain in recent years due to videos online and pop culture appearances. The UK recently became the first country to recognize parkour as an official sport. While parkour centers have opened to teach the sport, some remain concerned about the risks of free running.

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76 views1 page

PARKOUR

Parkour is a gravity-defying sport that involves moving freely through any terrain using only one's body. It has grown in popularity in Britain in recent years due to videos online and pop culture appearances. The UK recently became the first country to recognize parkour as an official sport. While parkour centers have opened to teach the sport, some remain concerned about the risks of free running.

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PARKOUR, BRITAIN’S NEWEST GRAVITY-DEFYING SPORT

Frazer Meek jumps down from a wooden platform and jogs across the floor of the Fluidity
Freerun Academy, a 7,000 square feet warehouse in an industrial estate on the outskirts of Cardiff. It
is a cold Thursday evening and there are only a few people practising their leaps and swings on the
5 purpose-built equipment, designed to look like the railings and concrete building blocks of the great
urban outdoors.
“It’s funny that recognition has come just after we opened,” he says. “We’ve always been the
underdogs because we’re not a recognized sport, but now that should change.”
Last week, the UK became the first country in the world to recognize parkour as a
10 sport. Defined as the discipline of moving “freely over and through any terrain using only the ability
of the body”, parkour is notable for its participants’ ability to leap to improbable heights while almost
always seeming to land, cat-like, on their feet.
The newly created sport already attracts thousands of mainly young, mainly male
participants across the country, their interest raised by the sport’s high profile on YouTube and in
15 popular culture, from the opening sequence of James Bond’s Casino Royale to advertising and music
videos. “A lot of people from the pedestrian world don’t understand parkour”, says Meek. “It’s not
just about technique, it’s about attitude. It’s about exploring boundaries sensibly, seeing danger and
knowing the risks.”
Meek, 24, who set up Fluidity Freerun with fellow parkour enthusiast Craig Robinson and a
20 £50,000 loan, is almost an archetypical follower of the sport. “I started when I was 12,” he says. “I
really hated conventional sports; I was a nervous kid who liked video games. Then I started to come
across it on internet forums and it seemed to be just a bunch of long-haired nerds, a lot of people
who didn’t fit in with more conventional stuff, shy people. That’s what appealed to me about it.”
Fluidity Freerun, which was opened last October, is one of a handful of purpose-built
25 parkour centres in the UK, offering a daily timetable ranging from “Little Ninjas” for ages two to four,
to adult sessions. It reflects the coming of age of a sport that started in the late 1980s as little more
than some friends playing around after school in a Paris suburb. One of those children, Sebastien
Foucan, is now president of Parkour UK, the sport’s governing body. Foucan was an early ambassador
for parkour in the UK. He also played Mollaka, the bomb-maker chased by Daniel Craig’s Bond in the
30 memorable sequence at the start of the Casino Royale in 2006.
“I love my country but the UK opened the door to us,” he says. “They are more
inclined to embrace the subculture here in the UK, there’s more openness to exploring possibilities.
Nevertheless, there are also those who oppose the new sport because of the apparent risks
associated with free running, although Parkour UK insists that the injury rate is lower than in other
35 sports. Accusations of recklessness were raised especially after 17-year-old Nye Newman had died in
an accident on the Paris Metro on New Year’s Day. Both his family and the parkour group he was
with have denied he was free running when he died.
Film-maker and anthropologist Julie Angel has researched the rise of parkour. It “opens up
the possibilities of a generally mundane urban environment,” she says. “When you walk through a
40 playground rather than a general living environment it really changes your worldview. You return to
this sense of wonder about the world. It becomes a metaphor for overcoming obstacles in life, and
that’s where it becomes a transformative process.”
(source: The Guardian, 15 Jan 2017, adapted)

45 1. Look up the underlined words and try to explain them in your own words.
2. Describe the development of parkour as mentioned in the text.
3. Contrast the advantages and the disadvantages of the new sport.

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