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The World Freerunning Parkour Federation (WFPF) is an international federation or organization that was established in 2007. Its focus is to bring together patrons of Parkour and Freerunning and aims to bring the sport and philosophy to the mainstream audience.
The World Freerunning Parkour Federation (WFPF) was founded in January 2007 as a partnership between Ruff Magic Entertainment, a New Jersey limited liability company, and eight Parkour and Freerunning athletes. The athletes, Daniel Ilabaca, Ryan Doyle, Tim Shieff, Oleg Vorslav, Victor Lopez, Gabriel Nunez, Paul Darnell and Richard King, and the company principals, Victor Bevine, David Thompson and production partner Francis Lyons came together with the stated purpose of bringing the sport of Parkour to mainstream American audiences through television and other media and live formats. Other member athletes of the WFPF include Brian Orosco, Miguel Southee Jr., King David, Michael Turner and Daniel Arroyo from the U.S. Pip Andersen, Philip Doyle, Ben Jenkin from the UK, Marcus Gustafsson and Filip Ljungberg of Sweden, and Justin "Jet" Sheaffer from the U.S. [1]
In 2009, the WFPF partnered with MTV to develop and produce MTV’S ULTIMATE PARKOUR CHALLENGE, a one-hour competitive format special starring WFPF member athletes Daniel Ilabaca, Ryan Doyle, Tim Shieff, Pip Andersen, Brian Orosco, King David, Michael Turner and Daniel Arroyo.
On May 6, 2010, the first of 6 episodes (the first 3 were broadcast live) of ULTIMATE PARKOUR CHALLENGE (or UPC) aired on MTV, with US athlete Brian Orosco replaced by the UK’s Ben Jenkin. Each week the competitors were put in a new environment to compete, with the first episode taking place on the historic Queen Mary Hotel, in Long Beach, California. [2] Other environments included Venice Beach, a Hollywood Western Town, a castle in the Hollywood Hills, a shopping mall and Downtown LA’s Pershing Square. The show garnered 3.5 million viewers in the 12-24 year old male demo and is still the most viewed Parkour event in history.
The WFPF partnered with Athletes for Hope, a charitable organization founded by Tony Hawk, Lance Armstrong and Mia Hamm among others, to facilitate opportunities for athletes to serve as role models for underserved youth around the U.S. WFPF athletes have donated their services to events at the Harlem Children’s Zone as well as at the New York Fresh Air Fund.
The WFPF website is designed for the parkour community and dedicated to its interests and concerns. The site combines parkour news, event promotion, parkour athlete interviews and highlighted bios and affiliate information and videos. The website includes a social-networking site similar to Facebook. The website currently has profiles posted from every U.S. state and over 60 countries worldwide.
Part of the mission of the WFPF is to fill any voids in the parkour community and one example of this is their release of the KO parkour shoe. "KO" is the brand name for WFPF merchandise and is described by the WFPF as their motto saying "to Know Obstacles is to Know freedom." The WFPF roots in charitable work have led to their approach being to focus on helping others overcome any obstacle in their path and the KO motto represents this focus. Using their sister site KnowObstacles.com the WFPF has proven true to their motto to provide for the parkour community as they developed a parkour shoe that many recognize as one of the best shoes out there made specifically for training parkour and free running. The most notable qualities are the lightweight feel, simple design and grip on the sole.
In the weeks leading up to production of the MTV special, there was considerable controversy within the Parkour community both for and against the WFPF over its choice to support a competitive format television show and whether that violated the organization’s mission statement. In the main, judgment was deferred until the airing of the MTV show, due in large measure to the esteem in which the WFPF athletes are held in the worldwide Parkour community.
According to the WFPF website, the Ruff Magic principals, Victor Bevine and David Thompson have over thirty years combined experience working in youth development, having directed and developed arts and intervention programs for at-risk youth. Francis Lyons is the Emmy Award-winning executive producer of MTV’s hit series MADE, and is a partner at One Louder Productions.
In 2018 WFPF launched the World Parkour Championship #WPC series holding their first event in Mardin, Turkey in June in partnership with Case Productions. Future WPC events are in the works around the world.
WFPF launched a Coaching Certification Program in 2012. WFPF has held parkour instructor certifications in USA, Canada, Thailand, Scotland, Wales, England, Portugal. As of the Spring of 2019 over 1000 parkour instructors have been attended and been certified by WFPF. In 2016 WFPF certification was named the official Parkour certification for British Columbia Gymnastics in Canada. WFPF also offers online certifications for Parkour instructor assistants as well as Parkour Competition Judge certifications which are required to judge any WFPF competition. Many WFPF certifications are done in partnership and with the endorsement of IPTC- International Professional Training Certification which was established in 1978.
Parkour is an athletic training discipline or sport in which practitioners attempt to get from one point to another in the fastest and most efficient way possible, without assisting equipment and often while performing feats of acrobatics. With roots in military obstacle course training and martial arts, parkour includes flipping, running, climbing, swinging, vaulting, jumping, plyometrics, rolling, and quadrupedal movement—whatever is suitable for a given situation. Parkour is an activity that can be practiced alone or with others, and is usually carried out in urban spaces, though it can be done anywhere. It involves seeing one's environment in a new way, and envisioning the potential for navigating it by movement around, across, through, over and under its features.
LinuxTag was an annual Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) conference and exposition with an emphasis on Linux but also BSD descendants located in Germany. The name is a compound with the German Tag meaning "Day", as it was initially a single day conference, but soon extended to multiple days, then always including a weekend. LinuxTag was the world's largest FLOSS conference and exhibition for years and aimed to provide a comprehensive overview of the Linux and Free Software market as well to promote contacts between users and developers. With this broad approach LinuxTag was one of the most important events of this kind.
King of Fools is a studio album by British Christian rock band Delirious?, initially released in June 1997. The full-length project showcased a new mainstream sound, whilst retaining many of the core themes found in their Cutting Edge EPs. Stylistically, the album epitomises the band's similarity to U2, an influence which was highlighted by several critics on its release. King of Fools reached No. 13 on the UK album chart, a career-high for the band, and produced four singles. The second, "Deeper", peaked at No. 20 on the UK singles chart on 11 May 1997. It also includes what is possibly the best known Delirious? song, "History Maker", which the band regularly played live throughout their whole career. The album was listed at No. 85 in the 2001 book, CCM Presents: The 100 Greatest Albums in Christian Music. The album was nominated for a Grammy.
Maxwell Lander ("Maxie") Parks is an American former athlete from Fresno, California.
Georges Hébert was a pioneering physical educator in the French military who developed a system of physical education and training known as "la méthode naturelle" and a more wide training program known as Hebertism. Hébert combined the training of a variety of physical capacities with the training of courage and ethics.
British Knights is an American brand founded in 1983 by Jack Schwartz Shoes Inc., based in New York City. In the 1980s, British Knights distinguished themselves as an inner-city and music-driven brand, appealing to the predominantly male youth in urban communities.
The Royal Chicano Air Force (RCAF) is a Sacramento, California-based art collective, founded in 1970 by Ricardo Favela, José Montoya and Esteban Villa. It was one of the "most important collective artist groups" in the Chicano art movement in California during the 1970s and the 1980s and continues to be influential into the 21st century.
Dániel Kiss is a Hungarian hurdler. He holds the national record in the indoor sprint hurdle event.
Video Volunteers is an international NGO founded in 2003 that promotes community media to amplify citizen voice around the world. Video Volunteers is a registered non-profit in the state of New York in the US.
Duncan McCue is a Canadian television and radio journalist for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. He is Anishinaabe (Ojibway), from Ontario, a member of the Chippewas of Georgina Island First Nation. A longtime reporter for CBC Television's The National, he was the host of CBC Radio One's radio call-in show Cross Country Checkup from 2016 to 2020, and the first Indigenous person to host a mainstream show at the public broadcaster. He lives in Toronto.
The Morgridge Institute for Research is a private, nonprofit biomedical research institute in Madison, Wisconsin, U.S., affiliated with the University of Wisconsin–Madison. The institute works to improve human health by conducting, enabling and translating interdisciplinary biomedical research. Research areas include regenerative biology, virology, metabolism, and computational biology.
Chattanooga State Community College is a public community college in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The college is a member of the Tennessee Board of Regents System and is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS). Athletically, Chattanooga State is a member of Region VII of the NJCAA.
Bishop Westcott Girls' School is a school located in Namkum, Ranchi, Jharkhand. It was founded by Foss Westcott in 1921. Formerly an Anglican school, it now belongs to the Church of North India. An English-medium school affiliated to the Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE), the school boasts over 2,000 students from various communities, as boarders and day-scholars. It is situated 7 kilometers from Ranchi on the Chota Nagpur Plateau, at an altitude of 2,000 ft in Namkum.
Ryan Doyle is a freerunner, martial artist, coach, and actor from Liverpool, England, and is a founding athlete of the World Freerunning and Parkour Federation.
Brooks Johnson was a former sprinter and an American track coach.
The Vernacular Music Center at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas, is a center for in-depth and comparative research, study, teaching and advocacy on behalf of the world's vernacular musics and dance. The Center was founded at Texas Tech in the Fall of 2000 under Executive Director Dr Christopher J Smith. The VMC states that it "engages with folk music, traditional music and dance from around the world: vernacular idioms that are learned, taught, shared, and passed-on by ear and in the memory." The term "vernacular" is employed in its title in order to allude to "vernacular languages"—those languages used for commonplace communication—and in order to avoid potentially limiting terms such as "folk," "traditional," or "non-Western."
Daniel Marcus Ilabaca is a freerunner and traceur from Moreton, Merseyside, England. He along with Ryan Doyle, are the founders of the World Freerunning and Parkour Federation.
The 2022 World Games were an international multi-sport event held from July 7 to 17, 2022, in Birmingham, Alabama, United States. They were the 11th World Games, a multi-sport event featuring disciplines of Olympic sports and other competitions that are not currently contested at the Olympic Games; the Games featured 3,457 athletes competing in 223 medal events over 34 total sports.
Storror is a group of seven parkour and freerunning athletes from the United Kingdom. They run a YouTube channel. Storror was established in 2010 by brothers Max Cave and Benj Cave, as well as Drew Taylor. They were later joined by Toby Segar, Callum Powell, Sacha Powell, and Josh Burnett-Blake. Storror have made the documentaries SuperTramps: Thailand (2015) and Roof Culture Asia (2017). They made their feature film debut in Netflix's 6 Underground (2019).
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