There are many ways to travel within a city. We can walk, cycle or take a bus. But no matter which way we travel, we have to follow the route the city planners made for us.
Parkour(跑酷) practitioners, however, see the city in a completely different way. To them, there are no fixed routes. There are no walls and no stairs—since they jump, climb, roll and crawl to move across, through, over and under anything that they find in their path. The city is their playground.
The International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) has noticed that this activity is attracting more and more people to it—there are 100,000 people taking part in parkour today in the UK alone, according to The Guardian—and how it is helpful for people to be much stronger: It trains coordination and balance. So, the organisation is thinking about recognising parkour as a new sport and adding it to the 2024 Olympics.
However, parkour practitioners themselves don't seem to be happy with the idea. They see parkour as "a lifestyle", wrote the website Next Sport Star. "It's a competition against the conditions rather than just a sport."
Indeed, many do parkour just to "escape the daily routine and experience the city in different ways", wrote reporter Oli Mould on The Conversation. They see parkour as a way to express themselves through relaxing moves and creative routes while freeing themselves from the pressure.
It's great that the FIG wants to develop a new sport and stay close to a new cultural form. But it would be greater if they knew that not everything in life is a competition.
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