SP27 - FIG Debate | Damien Puddle, Parkour Earth CEO & Nicolas Fischer, FIG Parkour head judge

STORROR Podcast

A little backstory: Since February 24th, 2017, Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique (aka FIG) have been engaging in a hostile takeover of parkour’s sovereignty, with the intention of offering our sport to the International Olympic Committee as a new gymnastics event. In doing so, they also make a claim to being our international governing body, which in essence, imbues them with power to govern our sport however suits them. Despite a large kickback from the parkour community and several open letters from national governing bodies around the world, concerns fell upon deaf ears. There have been many international and national competitions held by FIG since 2017 (which initially offered money merely for attending competitions), and although early on, you’d have been viewed as “public enemy number 1”, now more and more cowing to FIG for the chance of winning the highest prize money we’ve seen in our sport’s history.

Parkour Earth is a federation that spawned shortly after FIG’s initial announcements in 2017 in an effort to safeguard the sport’s autonomy against FIG’s unlawful encroachment. Parkour Earth is comprised of several existing national governing bodies and seeks to represent the parkour community through a sound democratic process. But they certainly face an uphill battle waging war with FIG, which is an established, over one-hundred-year-old federation with deep pockets and deep ties to the International Olympic Committee.

The whole situation has become somewhat polarising. The global parkour community seems either vociferously against FIG and its governance along with its poorly representative competitions, for FIG on the basis of believing their resources can be of great use to our professionals and boost funding and participation in our sport, or entirely indifferent – those who don’t care because it doesn’t affect how they train in the street. This includes those who don’t know or care about the risks who are engaging with FIG by attending their competitions for a chance to win some prize money.

Arguing for FIG, we have their head judge, Nicolas Fischer. Arguing against FIG, we have Parkour Earth CEO, Damien Puddle.

Hopefully, this informal discussion helps bring some clarity to the community and allows people to make more informed decisions.

If you’d prefer to watch the video, you can access it by becoming a YouTube join member on Storror’s YouTube.

Instagrams:

Nicolas Fischer - @nicolasfischertf

Damien Puddle - @dpudds