Parkour is a way of life, both a physical and mental state, it’s more like meditation or spirituality.
“Jumping and running across rooftops in the high-flying sport of parkour…”
“The sport of parkour, in which teenagers run and somersault across roofs…”
“The group of fit, athletic students are practitioners of the extreme sport of parkour…”
News stories with phrases like this crop up all the time. Reporters and journalists call parkour a sport because they just don’t know how else to classify it.
Parkour is not a sport.
“But Alan,” you may say, “It doesn’t matter if parkour is called a sport! That’s just nitpicking points of semantics!”
It does matter. Ideas have power. Words give form to ideas. The way an idea is framed and presented is a critical part of how it’s received by those who hear it. The way we reference parkour is no different. Terminology matters.
