1st - 3rd October
It might have a silly name but
Parcouring is quickly becoming a respectable competition to be part of.
For those of you unfamiliar with the Parcouring Championships, it started back in 2007 with the Parcouring World Championships in Munich. The event was simply an obstacle course with the fastest athlete to complete the course being crowned champion.
Team UK were on fire, with Chima Akenzua winning Silver Medal.
In 2008 the Parcouring World Championships were held outdoors in Hamburg with more teams, more athletes and a whole new category of competition. The two categories were now ‘Speed’ & ‘Style’. The Speed contest was once again the fastest athlete wins, but this year they introduced strict rules on the route you can take with hefty time penalties for mistakes.
The style contest was held separately to the speed and allowed the athletes to use the obstacles however they like to include FreeRun tricks and flips. The winner was judged by a panel on their style, flow and safety. Athletes were encouraged to take part in both contests by offering prizes to the winners of speed, style and overall highest score.
The style contest was a hit with the crowds, after all, who doesn’t like a backflip or two?!
In 2009 the Parcouring World Championships were once again bigger and better. This year held in Berlin as part of the youth ‘YOU’ festival. The course was bigger, the athletes were better and an energy drink sponsor made for some caffeine-fuelled night missions that ended up on the roof of the Berlin Olympic Stadium.
Once again the competition was tight and the style contest was popular with the crowds.
This year the organisers decided to have a German Masters event in the summer as well as a German-only qualifier round. In theory this should have resulted in a very strong German team, in reality they ended up with a lot of pissed off Germans with some strong talent on the sidelines.
The Parcouring European Cup was held from the 1st to the 3rd of October 2010 in Berlin once again as part of the ‘YOU’ festival.
The event was by far the biggest and best Parcouring Championship to date with some insane talent present.
Once again the course was bigger and better with new obstacles and no rules for the speed contest, simply get to the end as fast as possible using every obstacle.
The Parcouring European Cup was held on Saturday & Sunday after the German qualifiers were held on the Friday.
Saturday was the preliminary rounds for speed and style, as well as a lot of free training time for the athletes.
Sunday was the big day with the finals of both contests.
We arrived in Germany the day before the contest started and decided to explore Berlin and hit up the city for some pre-Parcouring training.
Almost immediately we found a sick spot that had been tagged with the words Parkour Freaks – Berlin was looking pretty good so far!
After a day exploring the city and training we headed to the hostel that was going to be home to over 60 athletes from 13 countries.
In 2008 all the athletes bunked down in a gym, this was great for training, not so great for sleeping. In 2009 the athletes had one floor of a hostel, with communal dining area and kitchen. This was superb for bringing everyone together and promoting the feeling that we’re all part of one international Parkour / FreeRun family.
Sadly this was lacking in 2010 and, in my opinion, was one of the major flaws in the event this year. Athletes were in dorms with their own team-mates, and not all rooms were adjacent or even on the same floor. This had a massive impact on segregating the athletes outside the event itself. Only once did the UK team head out on a night mission with the Bulgarian team and the night was pretty tame in comparison with previous years.
We had one foreign athlete in our room, Sami Perala from Finland. As Sami was the only athlete from Finland he bunked in with us.
At the event we were greeted by old friends from previous Parcouring Championships, it didn’t feel like a whole year since the last event.
After some catching up and gentle warming up it was time to get in the zone and hit the course.
Looking around it’s easy to tell who’s going for speed and who’s focussed on the style contest.
As most of the UK team this year were in for the speed contest we were drilling each section of the course then gradually linking the obstacles together.
In the UK team this year were twins Liam & Nathan Pilcher from Essex -
Team Kinetix Sponsored Athletes. At 14 years old they’re the youngest competitors to have competed at a Parcouring event to date.
The course this year was very fast, made faster by the lack of rules. I estimated a good competitive time to be around the 30 seconds mark. After the preliminary speed rounds the fastest runners were getting 22 – 25 seconds.
The Parcouring European Cup 2010 was sponsored by Relentless, so we had as many energy drinks and energy shots as we liked throughout the day.
The first round of style was impressive to say the least, but there was a definite feeling that some athletes were holding back before the final. The level of talent in Berlin was off the scale!
At the end of Saturday the scores were posted and we knew who was in the final and in which positions the athletes currently stood.
There was only 0.01 of a second between the two fastest runners in the speed contest!
I was in the final of the speed contest and at 27 years old was the oldest athlete by a good few years.
Saturday night the athletes and the organisers sat down to discuss ways to improve the event in the future. Issues such as athlete integration, obstacles and course layout were all raised and the reps were in complete agreement with all the athlete suggestions. This meeting really made us all feel listened to and made the athletes feel like it was as much our event as the organisers.
Sunday morning the UK team got to the event early to train before the main bulk of athletes arrived. I’m glad we did as the obstacles had been moved around and the direction of the course had been changed. The final of the speed contest would be run on a course that none of us had practiced on – Adapt To Overcome!
The new course was tougher, but a much more well-rounded course with some huge jumps.
Sadly during the speed final Marek Kus of Austria slipped mid-vault and fell over 2 meters onto his wrist. He was taken to hospital immediately and is due to make a full recovery.
After Marek’s accident everyone was more focussed and some of the athletes looked seriously fast around this new and unfamiliar course.
As with every Parkour /FreeRun event, all the athletes from every country were right there cheering each other on. Say what you like about Parkour, but we really are one big family.
After lunch was the final of the style contest. I was done for the day so I got in the arena ready to take some pictures of what was due to be an epic final.
The 12 finalists each had 90 seconds on the course to show the judges what they’re made of.
Notable mentions have to go to Georgi Karadzhov of Bulgaria for landing a double backflip and a clean double cork in his run and Delyan ‘Dido’ Dimitrov also of Bulgaria who landed a stunning 720 backflip in his run.
Last year’s Parcouring World Champion and current German Parcouring Master, Waldemar Müller didn’t appear to be on form at all this time round, his run was good, but nowhere near good enough to win in this contest.
German athlete Amadei Weiland was on form this year showing off very technical tricks in his graceful elegant style.
But after all of the athletes had shown their best tricks, out came the relatively unknown Sami Perala from Finland.
Sami absolutely killed it, starting his run with a huge gainer precision from a platform 3 meters high, he then backflipped onto a higher platform and pulled off a perfect kong gainer from 3 meters up. When Sami finished his run all the athletes stormed the arena to shake his hand, hug him, congratulate him and express how amazing his performance had been. Even without the judges, it was clear that Sami was pulling off some next-level moves.
After some down time the results were announce at the awards ceremony.
I came in 9th out of the 12 athletes in the speed final and I achieved my own personal goal of completing the course in 30 seconds.
Winner of the speed contest was Gaëtan Bouillet of Beligium at 22.02 seconds, well deserved after seeing the speed he went around the course.
Luis Alkmim of Portugal came in second place with a time of 24.79 seconds.
Winner of the style contest was Sami Perala, who also won Sickest Trick for his gainer precision.
Amadei Weiland came in well-deserved second place in the style contest.
Another award won by all the athletes came from the Relentless Rep who told us that we drank more cans of Relentless than any other event they’d sponsored this year.
Once again a very successful event and I’m already looking forward to the Parcouring event in 2011.
For more information on the Parcouring Championships and for videos of the finalists, visit
www.parcouring.com
If you’re from the UK and interested in taking part in the event next year contact Brad Wendes
info@teamkinetix.co.uk
There’s also talk of a women’s only Parcouring competition at the 2011 event, so ladies get training!
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