parkour championships

Parkour Championship at Düsseldorf International Airport

If you’re going to get stuck at a German airport, try to make it Düsseldorf International Airport (DUS) on the first Sunday of the month.

That’s when DUS has is its “Airlebnis” (air-experience) events and if you were there yesterday, Sunday, June 6, 2010, you would have seen athletes and visitors literally bouncing off the walls – and everything else  – as DUS became the obstacle course for the  German Parkour Championship.

What’s Parkour?  Take a look at this:

There area oodles of other parkour (freerunning) videos on the web, but you get the picture… this is a really zany, potentially dangerous, but really fun-looking sport. But what kind of sport exactly?

According to Parkour US:

Parkour or l’art du déplacement is NOT an extreme sport, rather it is a physical discipline that allow one to overcome their obstacles to get from point a to point b in the most efficient using the possibility of human body. Such movement may contain running, jumping, climbing, vaulting and other movements that may help the efficiency.”

At DUS, Parkour competitors – traceurs – were tested in two categories: speed and style, including “execution, flow, creativity, level of difficulty, and overall showmanship” and participants included the current world champion, a 15-year old from Germany.

The men and women who perform parkour make it look easy. So for novices who wanted to give it a try, there were professional instructors on hand to give lessons.

I’m waiting for the results of the championship and some photos from the day, so please be sure to check back. But in the meantime, I’m heading outside to practice.