Troy pointed wildly and excitedly at a video showing his new favorite sport: Le Parkour. The video appeared on a site normally devoted to the fun of Macromedia’s Flash Communications Server:
I recently saw the film film ‘Jump Britain’ on Channel4 and was impressed by what I consider is an art form. It’s like skateboarding without skateboards, brilliant.
Le Parkour consists of finding new and often dangerous ways through the city landscape — scaling walls, roof-running and leaping from building to building. David Belle is the acknowledged guru of the urban sport known as Le Parkour — or sometimes called Free Walking.
David Belle’s site explains:
(David’s first language isn’t English, so give him some slack. It’s not like we could make better sense of this in French)
This art is a new way of apprehending the environment which surrounds us, with, for only things, the human body. To be able to face all the obstacles which are presented, whether they are in natural environment, or on various structures, all that things in the research for a movement combining estetic and control. It’s in an other hand, the self-knowledge, the challenge against your own fears, because obstacles are not all the times the things we imagine. People who practice this sport are called Traceurs, Training is physical but also reflects a moral philosophy with its own values. More than a sport, it’s an art, an everyday philosophy!
There’s more videos and photos at David Belle‘s site, but this one (at right) from FlashComGuru is enough to make me understand Troy‘s excitement.