|NICK BRIGHT| Some people just seem to see the world a bit differently. For a small but growing group of athletes, every city street becomes a potential playground, every sloping roof, every tree or park bench a jumping-off point for adventure. You're listening to Beyond the Ordinary from Red Bull. And in today's episode, we're looking at the sport of freerunning. What does it mean to freerun? What gives these athletes such a unique sense of adventure? And how did freerunning become a competitive sport?
|NICO WLCEK| Everybody climbed up trees as a little kid, you know, so it is a very relatable sport. And I think that makes it something very basic and a great base of movement in general. And I think that's why our sport is what it is.
|DIDI ALAOUI| It's kind of hard maybe to describe because I'm living the moment when I'm doing it, so I'm just enjoying myself and mostly going with the flow and really living the moment, you know. Every time I'm doing parkour, I'm almost so zoned out and I'm just so focused on that moment. When I'm doing parkour, I don't think about nothing else but the stuff I'm doing.
|HAZAL NEHIR| I think I look to city different to other people because, like, when I'm walking on the street, my eyes are looking for walls, my eyes are looking for jumps and if I come to a really cool spot that I didn't know before, I'm writing it down and taking notes, taking photos and checking all the possibilities around and I'm probably coming back to that spot another day.
|JASON PAUL| It's so funny because I get to be around a bunch of professional athletes nowadays. Being a Red Bull athlete, you go to these events, you have mountain bikers and wakeboarders and skateboarders there, and when you all get to the airport together, they all have, like, 10 huge bags to transport all that stuff and I'm just there with my backpack and I'm like, "I'm good to go. What do you need me to do?"
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|JASON PAUL| When people have kids, a lot of times you hear them talk about that they get to see the world through kids' eyes, they get to walk through places that seem boring to them before and they get to look at the world through their child's perspective and how everything is so interesting and new.
|NICK BRIGHT| That's Jason Paul, a freerunning legend from Germany, who you may know from many crazy backflipping YouTube videos.
|JASON PAUL| And I think that child-like perspective is something that always stays with you when you do parkour. Most people when they grow older, you get so overwhelmed with life, you have things to do, places to go, people to meet, money to earn, you have all these responsibilities that you kind of rush through the day without looking around you much.
|NICK BRIGHT| Freerunning is different from a lot of other sports. If you want to go out and play tennis, there are rackets to buy, courts to book, at some places even certain outfits you need to wear. But for freerunners, they're ready to go any place anytime. Their city is their court, their pitch, their gym.
|JASON PAUL| What I love about parkour is that you don't need anything to do it. It's so funny because I get to be around a bunch of professional athletes nowadays. Being a Red Bull athlete, you go to these events, and you have mountain bikers and wakeboarders and skateboarders there, and when you all get to the airport together, they all have, like, 10 huge bags to transport all that stuff and I'm just there with my backpack and I'm like, "I'm good to go. What do you need me to do?" And I think it really makes me appreciate that, like. For parkour, like, I'm always ready, there's nothing I need. When you watch a parkour athlete walk around the city, they're always looking up and down and left and right and every building or tree or bench is like an opportunity to play. And if you do parkour, you really walk around the world with this sense that there's a new adventure behind every corner. There's a new opportunity, a new challenge for you to face.
|NICK BRIGHT| Spending a lot of time at home is something we've all been doing more of over the past year. Many of us have been desperate to get outside and enjoy the freedom of our surroundings, especially now there's a lot we can learn from the way that freerunners look at their environments.
|JASON PAUL| My daughter is one and a half years old now, and I can really see that the way she looks at the world is kind of similar to how I look at the world. Because when you're a kid, there's no rules yet. You don't know that you're not supposed to sit on the table or jump off the couch. Then as you grow older, all these rules kind of confine the ways you can act around the world. You're not supposed to do this, you can only stand here, you're not allowed to climb here or go up there. And she doesn't know those rules yet. And for someone who does parkour, I also have a very blurry lines of which rules I want to follow and when I decide to kind of break out of the norm and do what I want to do, because it is fun to break the rules and get creative with it. And I think that's something that you can really learn when you look at kids and parkour athletes. We kind of think in the same way. Yeah, why am I not supposed to climb on the tree? And I think that's a good question to ask yourself.
|DIDI ALAOUI| I feel like a lot of the parkour community progressed a lot during this Covid the past year or since it started. We don't need a gym. You can just go outside and train. And I've seen a lot of people just... they made huge progress just because they had nothing to do but train outside.
|NICK BRIGHT| 2019 Art of Motion winner Didi Alaoui. But what do freerunners actually do when they go outside? Do they look for particular courses or designated freerunning areas? Growing up in Ankara, Turkey, there wasn't much of a scene. So no one's better at knowing exactly what to look for in a new environment than Hazal Nehir.
|HAZAL NEHIR| I think I look to city different to other people because when I'm walking on the street, my eyes are looking for walls, my eyes are looking for jumps and, like, if I come to a really cool spot that I didn't know before, I'm writing it down and taking notes, taking photos and checking all the possibilities around, and I'm probably coming back to that spot another day.
|NICK BRIGHT| So, if every wall is an opportunity, how do you know when you're in a good spot?
|HAZAL NEHIR| So, if there are, for example, grass is good for some flips, or some sand it is good for flips, but I think for me the best spot is when there are some different highs at walls. For example, if there are higher walls and lower walls at the same time, like, other trees, branches, I think this is what a good spot is. In England, in the UK, the bricks are absolutely lovely. It's just because if the walls are not slippery, it means that it's a good spot. And the bricks in England are so solid, so grippy, so... which is good for us.
|NICK BRIGHT| But freerunners don't just go outside and start moving. The sport of freerunning tends to be discovered through social media and viral clips. Or, in the case of Jason Paul, an old VHS tape.
|JASON PAUL| When I was 14, the first thing I saw was, we saw a TV piece and we recorded it back on VHS because that was before YouTube. The internet was really new. So yeah, there was really not any info on parkour. So we had this little clip where they explained it's about people jumping around. And we just took that and we went with it. We didn't have any tutorials, no instructors, no anything. We just went and we're like, "All right, we're allowed to jump on everything now." And the world just became a playground all of a sudden. And back in the day when I started parkour, when I was 14, it was really the focus wasn't on what trick to learn or how difficult your moves were, it was just about going out and using your body to reclaim the urban environment. And that's what we did. We just ran up walls and jumped over fences and in people's backyards and back out again. And it was really a big adventure.
|NICK BRIGHT| Not long after Jason Paul was hitting the streets of Frankfurt, Hazal Nehir started seeing things happen in her hometown of Ankara, Turkey.
|HAZAL NEHIR| I discovered parkour when I was 15, thanks to my best friend. [She] showed me a movie called District 13, and then she came to me and she told me, like, "Hey, I watched a movie and I discovered a sport called parkour. Do you want to try?" And then we watched the movie together and I was like, "No way! That looks so scary." Because in the movie, basically, people were jumping on the rooftops and like doing crazy stuff, and I was like, "Oh my God, it looks really scary and really dangerous." And then I started uni when I was 18 and then I was doing breakdancing back then. And then one day when I was going for breakdancing training, I've seen a couple of people doing parkour and I was like, "Oh wait, I've seen this before. I know this." I just straight away went to the guys and, like, I just asked if I can join their trainings. The community in parkour is the best thing ever about the sport. For example, me, when I started first training, I met a couple of people on Instagram, they were doing parkour as well. And then I just text them and then I decided to visit them in Europe. And they were so welcome and like they hosted me. We trained together, they showed me the spot. An, like,d you can just write a parkour person on Instagram and then you can just be a friend with them and you can visit them. And if they come to your city, you show them around, you show the spots. I think this is really good. This is the best thing ever.
|NICK BRIGHT| So from Frankfurt to Ankara to Morocco where 2019 Art of Motion winner Didi Alaoui discovered freerunning in the late 2000s.
|DIDI ALAOUI| Growing up in Morocco, I grew up in Oujda city. It's on the border with Algeria, very far from everything else. I'm happy and fortunate enough I had my dad who was working as a mechanic. My mom never worked. She was just taking care of us. My dad always provided me with whatever I want, you know. It was very challenging for him but I-- you know, I grew up, let's say, poor but I never felt like I was poor. And since a young age, my dad, I remember, he put me to do taekwondo when I was four years old. In 2008, I watched a movie called Yamakasi. I'm sure you heard of it maybe. If not, you guys should check it out, it's a French movie. These guys did parkour to save this guy's life and all that. And I think that was life-changing for me. Right after the movie I tried to do like them, I put my bag and I started jumping around the house. And I think few months after that, I was riding my rollerblades to this park and then I saw some people actually doing parkour and I was like, "Wow, actually this is real!" And the rest was history. Back then, I think 2008, 2009, I didn't have a computer, so I didn't have access to internet. And I was just doing it because I love it.
|NICK BRIGHT| There's something so pure about freerunning. These athletes head out into their cities and find those communities. But, how is this sport taken to a professional level?
|JASON PAUL| I think initially I definitely didn't support competitions until I got invited… Until I got invited to one, which, of course, first of all, is very flattering when they're like, "We're hosting a World Championship, would you like to come and represent your country?" And I was still unsure about it. The reason I got invited is because my best friend Ennis [ph] got invited and he didn't want to compete. He was more of a parkour purist than me, I guess, back then or he just wasn't interested in it. And he asked me, like, "Hey, would you like to go instead of me?" So I was the second choice and I mainly saw it as an opportunity to go and meet all these athletes that I've been looking up to. That was really the great thing about my first contest I went to... is I got to meet all these people that I only knew from the internet. And that was the reason I wanted to go, yeah.
|NICO WLCEK| Yeah, back in 2007 I helped create the first freerunning event of the world back in Vienna with a lot of friends and it has grown into, like, basically more than just a competition. It has become a springboard for our sport and made it more mainstream accessible or more accessible for people to see and understand. I think the competition has started off as totally a community event, like even down to the judging back then, it was an athlete's choice. This sense of community still lives on to this day. But, of course, our competition has grown into something prestigious, I would say, over the years, and people are coming to compete now. Not to only meet their friends, but also to win and to progress the sport and to show what they are made of. And I think it is a great platform for young athletes to show their level of dedication and the work they put into.
|JASON PAUL| The first time I heard about Red Bull Art of Motion was through a video that got posted online. They would hold the event and then they would do this highlight reel that would show the best moments and who won. And, as you know, back then parkour contests were very controversial, so I was like, "I'm not supposed to like this, but still it's very interesting to see what people were doing." I was like, "Oh, this looks kind of fun. This looks exciting." And you could clearly tell that people were pushing themselves and trying to do something that hadn't been done before. And getting that energy of all these athletes in one spot seemed like something that I would love to be there. Like, that was definitely a thought that popped up even though I was still-- my parkour purist inside me said "No, this is dangerous. You shouldn't be-- you should watch out." But I could tell, like, "Okay, this could be fun. This could be interesting." If you look at Art of Motion athletes today, they are so consistent in their movement and they do their tricks so clean every single time. And that level, that performance level was not there before you had these contests. So, actually I think in a way it's pushed people to be more clean in their movement, to be more consistent. The other thing people were worried about is that it would kind of destroy this community feeling. They would think if people would start to see each other as rivals, parkour would lose that very heartwarming community where everybody's trying to support each other and everybody wants the best for the sport, not for themselves. Did that happen? I don't think that happened at all. I think parkour today is as community-driven, as community-centred as it ever was. And if you ever go to an Art of Motion behind the scenes, you will see that that is still true between the competitors. Everybody will be hanging out on the course giving each other tips, trying to figure out their runs together.
|NICK BRIGHT| So Jason Paul went from competition skeptic to winning Red Bull Art of Motion. What was that like?
|JASON PAUL| It felt unreal. Back then it was like, "Really? They're doing this all for us?" Like that. It felt so special to be part of such a huge event. Yeah, it felt like a dream really. I was like, "How could I be the one who would get the first place?" So, on one side you're really looking forward to it and expecting it, and the other side you're in disbelief that it could ever happen, that when it happens it's this huge release of emotions in a way and you feel so surprised and excited.
|NICK BRIGHT| And for Didi, who had to give everything up, winning Red Bull Art of Motion was about more than a personal victory. He was doing it for his home country.
|DIDI ALAOUI| I had some hard times because, you know, I was new to LA, I had no car, no nothing, I had only a bike. You know, I was really broke. I was working at this gym. And then I had to quit because I just want to focus on training. I had some drama going on with that. So it was some hard time leading to Art of Motion. But I think all that just creates a fire inside of me, and I went to Italy and I could feel it, honestly, I'm not being cocky or anything, I just could feel it, I was like, "Yeah, this is it, this is the year. This is me this year." And yeah, again, it went exactly as I was imagining. Honestly, it's crazy, you know. It was my biggest dream to win Art of Motion, especially from Morocco. I'm not only representing myself, I'm representing the whole country, I'm representing a lot of people with hopes and dreams, you know, because I faced so many obstacles in my life and I know a lot of people out there have the same and a lot of them have stopped. But, you know, so winning it wasn't only about me, it was about my family, about my country, about all the people I represent. I remember before going to there, I was imagining myself winning and I could see myself winning. But when it actually happened, when, like, we saw the score, I kind of stopped for like a few seconds, I was like, "Wait a second, did I actually just win?" I couldn't believe it, you know, it was crazy. I think there is video of that with me just standing there for few seconds trying to accept what happened and just see what-- it was an unbelievable feeling, you know. I can't describe it, honestly. It was just awesome.
|HAZAL NEHIR| And for me, what's next, I think I still want to push my physical and mental ability and I just really want to see how much further I can go. I just don't want to stop. I just want to push myself.
|NICO WLCEK| Most of them are not in it for the fame. There is no big fame in freerunning yet. Yes, you are going to be a community star, but it is still a community. So, the driving force is always going to be the love of the movement. Over the times we did not lose this pure thought. Even though a part of the community was scared we are going to lose this purism, why we are here to do it, but we haven't yet.
|JASON PAUL| I definitely wonder what is the sport of parkour going to look like in 10 years, 20, 30 years, where does the… is there a limit? Where does the progression stop, or even slow down? So far it's been accelerating. Where's it going to go? Is there a limit? Is there a point where that's just what humans can do or is there going to be more and more difficult tricks, things I can't even imagine? And I do think there's really unlimited potential. And I especially feel that when I look, when I compare parkour to dancing and breakdancing because those guys and girls, they only have flat ground and they're still coming up with more difficult tricks and moves and different ways of doing breaking and they only have flat ground, where we have literally the entire world to play with. And they're probably building new buildings quicker than we can jump on them, so I think there's unlimited things for us to do. Parkour is going to stay interesting.
|NICK BRIGHT| Some of the interviews heard in this episode are taken from the freerunning episode of the series Pushing Progression, where you can watch Jason Paul, among others, talk more on the story of freerunning. And if you're curious to see how Red Bull Art of Motion unfolds, Didi will be competing on July 10th in Greece, competing on traditional sailboats forming a unique water playground. If you haven't already, then do leave a review wherever you listen to your podcasts. And if you're new to the show, then do check out Series One which is packed with amazing stories from people who push themselves beyond the ordinary.
