Wanderings.

I was just made aware of a relatively new sport of French origin called “Parkour” (pronounced:(IPA: /paʁ.’kuʁ/, often abbreviated PK)), and its closely related art, “Freerunning“, by a video Smaug posted to a list I am on. It seems there is a lot of crossover between the two though strictly speaking, they are not the same. A practicer of Parkour is called a Traceur

This video, also available at Google as Russian Climbing, was posted to a list I’m on by Smaug. This is the video:

Urban Freeflow, claims to be the most comprehensive site, however David Belle inspired by his father’s techniques developed in Vietnam as a French soldier, invented Parkour with childhood friends, notably Sebastien Foucan, and has this to say on Parkeur.NET “Powered by Traceurs for Traceurs” :

Paris July 25th 2006

Because of noted abuses and in order to avoid any philosophical and commercial takeover of Parkour, David Belle informs you that he does not guarantee any site, association or company of production pretending they are “official”, where only the name they gave each other is official.

The services which they propose and sell (training courses, images broadcasting…) are only THEIR interpretation of their vision of Parkour.

This kind of activity engages only the responsibility of their authors.

David Belle is neither managed, nor in contract with this type of association.

For all information or contact, you can e-mail David in Parkour.NET, which is currently the only site in charge of the communication of Parkour by David Belle.

From Parkour.NET “Parkour – an art to help you pass any obstacle; to go from point A to point B using only the possibilities of the human body. This art originated with French soldiers in Vietnam and was developed by David Belle, inspired by his father.”

Also from this article at Parkour.NET:

Basically, Parkour is a natural method to train the human body to be able to move forward quickly, making use of the environment that’s around us at any given time. This ‘art of displacement’ requires neither specific structure nor accessory for its practice. The body is the only tool. It’s an athletic discipline accessible to all, because it combines all the natural skills of the human body: running, jumping, climbing… It’s a sport that permits exploration of the potential offered by your body.
It’s about being able to face the obstacles with which you are presented, whether they be in the natural environment or in the urban environment, in a search for movement that combines effectiveness and control.
The necessary equipment is simply a T-shirt, a pair of light jogging-type trousers, and a pair of running shoes.

Le Parkour is also helpful, and has some tutorials.

David has appeared in some movies listed here at imdb, doing stuntwork and acting. The ones I see there today are all French.

I found no mention of Parkour whatsoever on cnn, though I did find some on the BBC.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 29th, 2006 at 5:20 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.