Monday, March 29, 2021

The inspiration of parkour in an unusual location

The sport of Mohammed Kassem and Ahmad Sawaz is parkour, running around, over, and through urban obstacles at top speed. They run to the walls of buildings and clamber up them to the roofs; if they lose their grip on the way up, they fall and roll back gracefully; between obstacles, they do somersaults, cartwheels, hand springs, and forward flips. They have a team with friends, "The Jumpers", with uniforms to wear while working out. This is like parkour anywhere else, but the Jumpers also leap through bombed-out windows and holes in walls, because they live in Iblib in Syria, and the neighborhood where they train is crowded with abandoned ruins. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 29 March 2021)

 

All credit to the SRF team that filmed this report on parkour in Idlib.

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