Wandering around Rimini’s Turquoise beach club, the weekend of the famous Notte Rosa festival this year, you might have spotted a group of lads somersaulting over packing crates on the beachfront.
Amidst all this, you might have seen a super-hero float by as well! And all in the name of ‘Parkour’, but what the hell is ‘Parkour’?
Parkour is a new sporting discipline, developed out of military obstacle course training, usually practiced in urban areas (hence the packing crates). In Parkour the participant/athlete attempts to go from point a to b in the most efficient way possible, propelling themselves around using whatever the landscape offers to aid jumping, somersaults, climbing etc.
Developed in France by primarily by Raymond Belle, David Belle, and Sébastien Foucan during the late 1980s, Parkour has become a hugely popular sport thanks to various documentaries/articles/films and advertisements.