I had my doubts when I heard about the first world free-run contest which was hosted in the U.K.
How would they “judge” parkour / free running?
Evaluate street acrobatics?
Here’s how. …
Click PLAY or watch the first “world champion” Gabriel ‘Jaywalker’ Nunez on YouTube.
Pretty lame, in my opinion.
… According to the youtube channel for the event, the other competitors actually judged the competition.
†Each athlete performed to his own individual soundtrack and was judged on his athletic skill, creativity and technical ability by his fellow competitors. “
(via shergymrag)
Sher liked the runs of Ben ‘Jenx’ Jenkins (great gainer 1/1) and Tim ‘Livewire’ Shieff better.
UPDATE: The vibe seems a lot more fun and authentic at the 5-10 free-running convention in Salt Lake City — see video. No judges. No “champion”. Only bragging rights and street cred.
6 comments ↓
OMG that was soooo crap. i hate to put down something cool like parkour like this, but this seemed really weak. Its a shame. However i have to say that it is super cool that it has grown to such an extent
I hope that the event organizers learn from this and make it better next year/time
Valentin Uzunov
TheGymPress
http://www.thegympress.net
“OMG that was soooo crap.” Just the champ or the others as well. I thought Tim and Ben were really good.
Some folks recap the event:
http://urbanfreeflow.yuku.com/topic/8725/t/A-champion-is-crowned.html?page=1
Changes for next year:
Only 20 competitors in a bigger venue?
http://urbanfreeflow.yuku.com/topic/8851/t/World-s-Open-Callout-s.html
Why is it that we have this need to make everything into a competitive sport? It’s almost like a compulsive desire to validate the activity for the general public. It blows!
It feels to me like this competitive aspect of the sport takes away the entire essence of what free running is supposed to be about. It becomes nothing more than a glorified monkey cage without the bananas as a reward. And just like in snowboarding and mountain biking, wild outdoor footage is what’s cool, not a pre-arranged course or a halfpipe where everybody does the same repertoire of skills ad nauseum run after run. I’d rather see handheld footage of Shawn White on youtube than seeing a high def feed of his Olympic halfpipe any day. Guys like Terje Haakonsen seem to have figured it out years ago and yet he’s still considered to be the best snowboarder on the planet even though you’ll never see him at the Olympic Games.
Yeah, that was pretty lame, I expected more. I bet it’ll improve though, as parkour is huge with the boys at our gym.
“Why is it that we have this need to make everything into a competitive sport? It’s almost like a compulsive desire to validate the activity for the general public. It blows!”
Some people just like to compete. I don’t think it’s about validating for the general public, it’s about people being competitive. Even ballet has competitions.
Is that serious? There’s way betterstuff out there! One of the best thing about freerunning is the fluidity of tricks. This had none.
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