Le Parkour- strange French sport
Image from WikipediaI recently made contact with someone I went to school with on Facebook. I didn’t really know this person but they looked like they had lived an interesting life in the 20 years that have almost passed since high school. He told me about a “sport” in France called Le Parkour. I thought I was all up to date with the tecktonik but it turns out this sport is also all the rage now. There are many videos and websites about it. I would be very worried if I saw someone come flying across the way like some of these people. This is a version called free running but there are other varieties of it. How many times do they miss before they do the trick and does anyone die?
I’ve seen a lot of videos on this. There is an interesting piece on it at Wikipedia click here. I don’t know if anyone has ever been killed trying it, but here is a video of some guys who aren’t quite ready for prime time click here
Checking Google for Parkour accidents, I found this click here
Bob, thanks for the links. I edited them to show. if you want to make a link you must use full html i.e.
< *a href="yourlinkaddresshere.com" rel="nofollow">click here or some phrase like that
Be my guest to post links but this little trick cuts down on the spam. Don’t put the star on the inside of the opening tags. I had to in order to get it to not show like a link.
Wow…I’m speechless…really…
Meilleurs voeux!!
I’ve been following Parkour for a while. I find it extremely sexy. Have you seen the move B13 with David Belle. You can find a clip of the chase scene on youtube here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2_p8JJHRTA
Damn. Now that’s hot.
I remember wanting to be able to do something like that when I was about seven in the playground so that I could impress the hell out of the playground bullies! Amazing! Nothing like that going on around my way. L
It’s not like I am walking down the street and ducking out of the way of these people. I have seen a few people doing things that looked odd to me, now after seeing these videos I think they were doing le parkour. I see a lot more tecktonik than this. It reminds of of when I was young and would see Bruce Lee movies and think that is not possible, it turns out that it is possible.
It’s amazing what one can accomplish with just a bit of practice and determination. Athletic ability doesn’t hurt, either.
How do they get started? Do they think to themselves, Hmmm I’d real like to jump over that car, slide under the next car, and skip over that puddle? Then they try it? How many times does it take? It’s interesting to watch. I asked abut it in my French class and my teacher seemed to think it sounded like a complete waste of time, which may be true, but then she started talking about Rugby, and I thought the only difference is that Rugby is an officially sanctioned waste of time. No offense to rugby fans.
I’ve seen stuff like it before (the BBC had a 30 second internal ad with some impressive examples).
It’s a pretty good display of athletic prowess, but I guess those attempting it without the necessary ability will be fuelling the next crop of painful faceplant videos for YouTube.
Survival of the fittest! But seriously, you can’t always protect humans against themselves. If we continue to glorify daredevils then we have to accept the copycats.
The first people who started Parkour (david Belle., ..) were doing Gymnastic, so they basically were Athletes, they applied it on the street, jumping over stuffs, flipping, etc.. called it “Le Parkour”.. then other copied not nessecary athletes.. I guess a lot of them got injured, knees and ankles. Thanks France for free healthcare
The first time I saw it I thought it looked like he vaulted over the trash can etc. I used to do gymnastics so I remember the vault and the basic move. It is clear that there is athletic ability involved. Maybe that explains why it is popular here, great health care. Someone just told me recently they thought it would be hard for the French to give up smoking because they don’t pay for smoking related illnesses with their own money. Never underestimate the effects of health care.
Hmmm — should the French government being looking at forbidding this as a way to lower the Sécu deficit?
Why not because we all know that when a government forbids, the people listen. Just like EF Hutton.
they have it in england to its called free running it pretty amazing, there is a top gear episode where they race through paris against a car
@ben, of course now as I do more research about it and learn more I find plenty of videos from England and other countries. I find it fascinating.