Romain Abeck came to China three years ago when parkour was just a French word pretty much unheard of in the country. Now he is happy that he has found his niche here.

Parkour, sometimes called free running, is an urban sport focusing on surpassing all obstacles in one's path as smoothly and fast as possible using just the body.

Originated in France in the 1980s, the sport is now gaining popularity among young Chinese enthusiasts.

Abeck, the 27-year-old French parkour enthusiast, is now operating a training club in Beijing. He also works there as a parkour coach, teaching members how to move, jump and avoid injuries.

He recalled that there was virtually no parkour training school or club in China when he first arrived in Beijing in 2006.

"Very few people had any knowledge about the sport," he said. "So one of my dreams was to start one myself in China."

Today there are at least 100,000 people participating in the sport in China, according to an estimate by the Chinese Extreme Sports Association.

The popularity of the sport also means new business opportunities for Abeck's club, the Snow Fox Parkour Club, which has recruited more than 20 members.

The club charges 40 yuan per day for indoor training and 220 yuan per month for outdoor training. The club also provides professional stuntman services for film and TV commercial shooting.

But Abeck said parkour will remain a small niche, describing it as more of a personal hobby than a large-scale, revenue-generating sport like soccer.

"I don't like the word 'promote'. It sounds too commercial," Abeck said. "What I want to do here is to spread the word about the sport and, more importantly, its philosophy."

For Abeck, the true spirit of traceurs, the people who practice the sport, is about challenging oneself through maximizing one's physical capacity and self-confidence to overcome physical and mental obstacles.

Earlier this year, parkour was included as a national sporting event by the General Administration of Sports.

The first National Parkour Tournament was held in October in Beijing, attracting more than 150 practitioners from across the country.

Abeck said competition is a good way to give more people a chance to experience parkour and to make it better known, even though the spirit of the sport is not about competition.

"It's about knowing your limit and trying to push that limit. It's a competition with oneself," he said.

Abeck added that one problem with modern people is that they use their bodies less.

"We drive or take the subway to go to work, and we use the elevator," he said. "We are wasting our own body, a nice and complex thing that needs us to build it."

Ding Yimang, a 20-year-old traceur in Beijing, first got to know the sport from the French movie District 13.

"The movements looked so cool in the movie, and I started to learn it after watching it," Ding said. "Whenever I walk on the street, I can't resist the temptation to hang on a pole or jump off a high wall."

The downside for Ding and other parkour practitioners is that they sometimes are mistaken for thieves while they do their outdoor training in community parks, and have been chased by local security guards.

"Hopefully, more people will get to know the sport and understand us," Ding said.

Meanwhile, sportswear companies are trying to capitalize on the growing popularity of parkour.

"We plan to launch our new product of professional parkour shoes within two or three years," said Ding Shaoqing, general manager of Boshiniao, a Fujian-based sportswear producer.

"Parkour is a new phenomenon in China and is attracting more people, usually between ages 20 and 30, to join, so we believe the market potential is huge and the prospect looks bright," Ding of Boshiniao said.

"It is our strategy to maintain a competitive edge and to differentiate us from other sportswear producers in the country," he added.

(China Daily 11/23/2009 page1)