Fractured Parkour Community Struggles to Unite

(ATR) An established International Federation with "deep pockets" could monopolize the discipline of parkour as two federations stake their claims to become the sole international organizers of the sport.

Parkour Earth was incorporated on July 12 and officially launched on Aug. 4 with six founding members – Australia, France, New Zealand, South Africa, UK and Poland. The goal of Parkour Earth is to "protect the sovereignty and integrity" of parkour, allowing its National Federation members to determine the future of the discipline.

The International Parkour Federation was established in 2014 as a non-profit compliment to the World Freerunning and Parkour Federation. The IPF seeks to give international parkour communities a governing body that allows them to become recognized by their own government or National Olympic Committees. The IPF currently has four National Federations with recent addition Afghanistan joining members Kosovo, Iran and Tajikistan. The IPF expects four more countries to announce their membership in the coming weeks.

While the two groups support similar missions, neither has the requisite 40 NFs to become a member of the Global Association of International Sport Federations – formerly known as SportAccord – which would in turn help the discipline become recognized by the International Olympic Committee.

The IPF has had an application to become an observer of GAISF since 2014 which will likely remain pending until a more united community can be presented to the organization.

Meanwhile, the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) is using this delay to try and incorporate the discipline into its sports program. On May 10, the FIG Executive Committee approved the inclusion of parkour into the fold of FIG disciplines as an obstacle course competition rather than a freestyle event. The FIG has since moved forward with holding a parkour event in France and establishing a World Cup Series scheduled to take place this November in China.

The FIG has the support of the founder of parkour, David Belle of France. Belle and his successor Charles Perriere have held several meetings with FIG president Morinari Watanabe, including attending the FISE event in Montpellier which included the first FIG-coordinated parkour event.

While Around the Rings is told that the IPF and Parkour Earth have had preliminary discussions about joining forces to stop what they insist is an encroachment on the discipline by FIG, cooperation seems highly unlikely at this point in time.

"I can’t stress enough, Parkour Earth is not in competition with anyone else, we are the International Federation and we are made up of National Federations," Parkour Earth chief executive Eugene Minogue tells ATR in an exclusive interview.

"We are not here to compete with IPF or anyone like that," he says. "What we are here to do is to represent our members interests and the interests of practitioners around the globe to protect our sovereignty and integrity."

In conversations with ATR, the IPF seemed open to collaborate with Parkour Earth and present a united front, with executives saying they proposed to merge the two groups to aid in recognition.

"We still need to unite as much of the world community as we can," IPF co-founder Victor Bevine tells ATR in exclusive comments. "The last conversation of Parkour Earth was really basically their proposal to us was in the name of unifying the community which we are all in favor of, but their proposal to us was ‘close your federation and join ours’.

"We said well, no, that’s not how we see it, let’s partner and bring these two organizations together. Let’s partner to find how we work best together and what strengths we can bring to it. And we are three years down the road with our SportAccord application. We never got a response to our counter proposal," says Bevine, noting the counter offer was sent on July 5.

Minogue tells ATR that no conversations with the IPF have been held since Parkour Earth’s formal launch and that if other groups would like to join their organization their lines are open to communication.

As the two organizations dance around collaboration, both recognize the danger of letting an established IF such as FIG gain more access and support for the discipline that Parkour Earth and IPF believe it has no right to organize.

"It’s clear and it’s no coincidence that following formal recognition [of Parkour Earth] that FIG announced they wanted to encroach upon a completely separate sport and activity," says Minogue. "There is a danger if the parkour community does not come together behind a single entity.

"FIG does not have the mandate to do this, even their own statutes prohibit them from doing this," Minogue continues. "By and large they are investing money generated by the sport of gymnastics into a completely unrelated sport.

"They also have a number of people in the gymnastics community promised similar things, like double tramp or acrobatic gymnastics. Now it begs the question, why is FIG proposing a sport that they don’t even govern, that they have no experience in to be included in the Olympic Games but they have existing disciplines within their fold which they haven’t proposed for Olympic inclusion?"

"We feel there are people on our side and Parkour Earth but there also those on the side of FIG," Bevine tells ATR.

"But obviously disunity is going to contribute to the IOC deciding for FIG or some other federation to take over. In the meantime, our commitment is to keep doing what we’re doing, reaching out to communities and kids to create more opportunities for athletes."

Parkour Earth says it will open its formal membership application process in the coming days to grow its international support. IPF co-founders David Thompson and Victor Bevine will also continue to seek countries that would benefit from a governing body and help establish safe places to practice parkour.

Reported and written by Kevin Nutley

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