Oregon Public Broadcasting

An unusual sport is finding a lot of interest from young Oregonians. It's called parkour, and you don't need any special equipment to play.

To put it simply, parkour is about overcoming obstacles in your everyday environment. We have this report from visiting German journalist, Christina Neuhaus.

Eight young men stand in front of a college bookstore in downtown Portland.

They're staring at a brick wall, about twelve feet high.

Then, all at once, they try to run up the wall.

Only one in the group manages to do it.  The others are very impressed.

This is parkour. Those who do it refer to themselves as traceurs.

Some people call parkour an "extreme sport."

21-year-old Julian Ridley is a veteran members of this Portland group.  He has a different definition.

Julian Ridley: "It's going from point A to B in a straight line and as quickly as possible."

Mark Toorock: "One of the ways to look at the origins of parkour are that it started as early as man did."

Mark Toorock manages what he says is the biggest parkour website.

It's called americanparkour.com.

Mark Toorock: "It's really just man's basic movement -- running, jumping, climbing, crawling, the way we move around."

But how parkour become an urban sport begins with a French naval officer in the early 1900s.

Mark Toorock: "Kind of recent history goes through Georges Hebert, who saw indigenous tribes in Africa, saw that they were very fit, and invented a fitness method called 'methode natural'. So, he saw this, passed it on to the French military, David Belle's father was a firefighter, which in France is a division of the military, and passed these things on to David Belle."

David Belle's father served in the Vietnam era and eventually taught his son the "methode natural." Belle developed parkour into an urban sport in the 1990s.

Young people in France have been doing parkour ever since.

And it seems to be catching on in the U.S.

In Oregon, people are doing parkour all over the state.

In the Portland group, Tom Lechner is the oldest traceur.

He is 35 and started parkour a year and a half ago.

Tom Lechner: "I noticed, as I was getting older, I was just getting so out of shape, something had to change, and so I started looking around for things to do, and jogging is exceptionally boring, so -- I stumbled across parkour on the internet and it's, whoah, that's pretty cool, like, there's all this play involved, running around, jumping around, figuring out how to overcome obstacles."

A lot of the moves in parkour look pretty dangerous.

At the Keller Fountain in downtown Portland, the eight group members jump over deep gaps and pull themselves up on high walls.

Scratches, scrapes and bruises are common, because parkour is done without any safety gear. The average traceur doesn't even wear gloves, let alone a helmet.

But Lechner and other members in the group say they've never had any serious injuries.

They say safety is an important part of their hobby.

Tom Lechner: "The group aspect is great, especially for beginners, because you can see what other people are doing, they can tell you what's safe and what's not. That's very useful. You don't wanna screw up your knees or your ankles."

To the traceurs in the Portland group, parkour is more than just a sport. Member Julian Ridley says it's a whole different way of moving.

Julian Ridley: "If I'm ever walking somewhere and something looks fun or there is an obstacle then definitely go for it. I just randomly do it every other day at least and then we have a whole bunch of people coming out just to do it at least once a week."

Whenever the group meets up, they get a lot of attention.

Ridley says most people are simply curious.

Julian Ridley: "Most of the time, people, they just watch us. Some of them will come a long, and they'll stop walking and watch us for a couple of minutes, and then, and a lot of our members we actually get that way. A random person will just walk along and see us and start talking and then learn about and then wanna join us next time."

The traceurs in Oregon mostly organize through the internet.

Websites like oregonparkour.com list group events and give a general introduction to the sport.

And the Portland traceurs say they're always open to new members.