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One Giant Leap: Freerunning Joins Sport Establishment

guardian.co.uk — The sport, in which participants perform balletic leaps and flips using walls, bars and any other street furniture available, was still in its earliest infancy, mushrooming spontaneously across Britain among young people who had seen films of the French urban sport parkour and wanted to adapt it into a freer and more expressive form.

Who dugg this? Made popular Sep 5, 2008

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  • Swipecat, on 09/05/2008, -0/+5Interesting. It's always been the Parkour/Freerunning "ethos" that it should never be turned into a competitive sport by big business. But trying to keep ego and lust for money out of a sport is probably too much to hope for.
  • fatas, on 09/05/2008, -1/+4For Americans it's called free rolling.
  • mudpuddle, on 09/05/2008, -2/+5freestyle walking?
  • namelessXsilent, on 09/05/2008, -0/+3District B13 was a French movie with free running type stuff... its cool to watch
  • pastel7, on 09/05/2008, -1/+3I'm disgusted really. Too bad, that they try to ruin some really "free" form of urban movement.
  • palehorse864, on 09/05/2008, -1/+2For a second, I thought they were talking about this.
    http://www.break.com/index/would-he-run.html
  • Darkaged, on 09/05/2008, -1/+1Komodo dragons.
  • Andx18, on 09/05/2008, -0/+1I think its cool they are having a Championship but I do think it doesn't really represent the sport correctly. I am a free runner myself (for the past four years) and I understand how they came up with the idea of a competition because the group of runners I usually run with in Savanna GA are always trying to out do each other or be cleaner than each other, which is where the gymnastic esque aspect would come in to play in a scoring situation. Its also a plus its sponsored by adidas, due to their more open mind to new sports and creating equipment to facilitate and aid the growth of these new sports.

    Over all I’m glad this sport is becoming more mainstream because it is so athletic and expressive and I hope it does translate to the US well because I’m tired of some of the meat head football players calling themselves the same caliber, if not a higher caliber, athlete as the competitors in more athletic sports such as soccer, rugby, basketball, ect. I do acknowledge their athleticism but I do not believe that some of the “stars” of the NFL are on the same level as the competitors in the aforementioned sports.
  • THX8612, on 09/05/2008, -2/+2Agreed, I did some "freestyle walking" 15 or more years ago. Basically anytime my buddies and I were caught without our boards we would still rock out in our CB's... Yes, I rode my skateboard in combat boots =)

    Please see wiki for more info
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freestyle_walking
  • BadenBall, on 09/05/2008, -1/+1nameless, i saw that movie too, and it was also in the last bond movie, but that doesn't make it a sport. where's the competition? is it based on judges scoring, i'm sorry but i hope this so-called sport stays in the UK.

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