I used to think I wasn't competitive. It already looked good and it was such a simple concept.
I got the phone call, thought it was mad.
And like they pulled these doors open. You got 20 seconds, let's go. That's the only
reason I'm competing. Why are you competing to come second? You're not. You're competing
to come first, right? You want to win?
Actually, this this is this is wild. How do I even get my head around this? I like there's
this massive warehouse that we never knew was there.
We used to do a lot of tag. Someone had like a GoPro, and we just thought, let's test the
GoPro out and film one of our games of tag, and so we put the helmet on and then we just
started playing tag in the garden. And it just kind of shows how how the sport
has evolved really.
Can you explain to me the basic rules of a chase tag match? Basically, there's two teams
of up to five or six athletes, depending on the tournament.
Each chase last 20 seconds.
One person is chaser and one person is evader, and the chaser has to try and tag the evader,
and the evader has to try and not get caught. Whoever wins stays on is the evader, that's
the most important thing. So the winner always stays on as the evader. And if the evader
can last 20 seconds without getting caught, then they get a point. Each match is basically
the best of sixteen chases.
One of the things that I noticed as a viewer is the sort of array of names that different
obstacles have.
We'll do we do a clockwise, clockwise overview of all the obstalce. You've got the front
line. People can just jump straight from a chase plate over the front line, which is
like a six foot jump about three foot up. Quite impressive. Come across the sisters,
which are two boards that you can take off of the first one and jump the second one,
or you can do a double kong or a dive kong, which is when you like, slap with your hands
and your bum comes up in the air.
After the sisters, you get to the back line and this first obstacle in the back left is
where a lot of the evaders will start. It's called the tilted cube. Again, the tilted
cube providing a lot of protection. It is also one of the highest places for people
to get tagged. Come around the back line, which puts you underneath the mountain, which
is this big structure at the back with two big boards and a big flat board at the front.
Over the back, we've got the loading bay. This is the bac right.
You're going to hit the ridge, which is a really high wall, it's probably the most likely
obstacle to clip your knees on. Do you have a breakdown of what makes a really
good or bad chase?
I think the definition of a good chase is the number of interesting interactions probably.
Chases have a certain kind of dynamic. You kind of look at them as like interactions
and then the chases. So the first four seconds of a chase is just the chaser getting towards
the evader. Then there's interaction and then and then
there's interaction either he gets caught or he moves on to another part of the court.
And then there's another interaction. So there is a kind of dynamic to a chase. There's interaction
pursuit, interaction, pursuit, interaction, pursuit.
But we have a term called EQ, which is evasion quality, and that's like probably the most
important thing to remember to do with the courts. So if it's a low IQ area, there's
not much protection. If it's a high EQ area, there's a lot of protection.
And then we realized the more obstacles we sort of put in the court, we realized it got
more interesting, the more obstacles they were, then we realized actually parkour people
are probably going to be the best athletes to play because there's so many obstacles.
What is going on in this clip? I'm coming up super high so I can reach above the bar,
not just grab it with my fingertips.
I'm actually grabbing with bent arms, then I can load weight onto my lats, transfer underneath
the ball with a swing, up to the other side of the bar for the 180. Grab the bar again.
So I had to let go of it to do the one eighty. And then once I've grabbed it, I'm reengaging
all of my active shoulder movement. So lats, shoulders like pulling in and then being able
to spot where I'm going and further my hips up above the space I'm going to land on and
then land on the balls of my feet, which is like a must with parkour, because if you land
anywhere on the box, you could slip.
If you land on the edge, you've got something to push against and it needs to be the balls
of your feet because if you land on your toes, you'll slip, and if you land in the middle,
it'll hurt.
And if you land on the heels, you could slip.
So it has to be this part of your foot that's strong.
You're reminding me of in those Guy Ritchie Sherlock Holmes movies when Holmes gets in
some sort of situation. "Cross to the right cheek."
The whole point of parkour, like the philosophy behind it is basically like self-control and
understanding of your body and understanding your surroundings and stuff like that.
How is the parkour world organized into these teams?
What are teams? So all these brands came about as, yeah, just groups of young lads who were
training together often, having fun and wanting to try and make a living off of it.
That first time that you tried World Chase Tag, do you remember how that felt or what
you thought? Yeah, I was really tired. It's going to take persistence. Was that a tag,
no Richard's still in pursuit! Richard's going low!
I was like, this is really fucking tiring. As a parkour athlete, you're used to doing
lines that are like really, really short and explosive, right?
And you have a preset route like you don't just run around as people think, like on roofs
and like do anything. You don't do that. Everything's pretty thought out. Everything's tested. Everything
is like, I know what I can do. This is like it's totally like instinctual at first.
Because obviously when you first play you don't think about tactics, you're just like,
OK, just run like, you know? And obviously, you play the first game, you're like, OK,
this the first two, three games. You're like, OK, there's some strategy to
this.
You're familiar with in like any ball sport, you get juking so you'd go like you going
up to a player and you divert. So it looks like you going to go one way and you go the
other way. That's like a really obvious like we use juking.
Idling is a great term, but it's when you you've got an obstacle between you and another
person. So there's an impasse and you look like you're moving, but you're not.
So you're just you're on the balls of your feet. You're almost, it's like an engine is
running and then it explodes. And that's, it's the build up is a crescendo
before the like, great drop in the music. James, wait , you see. Look at that.
Yeah. Goading him on, giving him a little bit of hands.
Proper mental torture almost of like like antagonizing somebody and getting them frustrated.
So you know what they're going to do? You know, like telegraphing something is something
that's really, really important. I think that fighting is a really similar.
What can you tell me about this idea of herding? One of the techniques would be called shepherding,
and I think I'm safe to say that that's quite well known.
Yeah, I've I've been using herding. You just classed it up like 20 percent.
Yeah.
But yeah, I mean, the name says it, it is sort of like you're doing this and doing this
and you're keeping them in a corner. And it's like having control over where they are, because
you're almost like you're at their mercy if you're following them around religiously,
whereas if you are shepherding them and keeping them into a corner, you have control in that
situation.
Haroon herds perfectly.
Reverse herd is really, really tricky to do, and it's basically to keep your eyes on the
opponent as an evader and run them through high IQ obstacles while they're chasing you.
And I know that's something he's worked on because I talk to friends of them and he basically
points. Steps up, goes up to the mountain, drops down, Haroon pointing one way going
the other, a trademark of his.
Being a chaser used to be easier, it's now made a little bit harder because they they
talk about EQ, evasion quality, quite a lot and they're trying to increase that. What
they want to do is they want to keep the EQ at twenty five percent. So I used to love
chasing because I thought it was really, really easy and I could get it done. But for, like,
pure glory, evasions are like how you get points, right. Like evasion is how you get
a point and how you get it done. So I love that the most.
We always used to play in an open garden, and then I remember the day, the first time,
the obstacles kind of came into it.
Christian had cut the hedge and we started to play around the hedge clippings, and that
was the first time we thought, actually, that's pretty, that's pretty good.
So it was running based.
So if you are fast and agile, then you would dominate. Then when we introduce the bench,
it was quite a low bench. You had to go over the bench. So it was a different skill.
We started in the garden, then we started a meetup group. Once it got to winter, people
was sliding. It was muddy and it was raining. And so we moved into a gym that called Parkour
Generations. That was the first parkour gym that opened up in like in London. They had
much better obstacles, so we started to like that, but they were just boxes and bars. We
bought some scaffolding and we basically made our own quad.
And this is the definite watershed moment for us, because we knew it was fun.
This video of you guys, this is maybe my favorite footage that I've ever received from a source
of you guys debating the placement of the bars in your in your back garden.
I reckon the good thing about it is that, again, the EQ, for stop there's going to be
no thing around here.
You help the Chaser to stop Benny Hill. If the bar is here within sort of actually see
the bar there. Yeah, that's the thing.
You actually don't want that body because it might help them come up here.
But what the Chaser would do is if someone flies through from into this hole and you
suppose suppose.
We've had that conversation a million times.
So we just then had to refine the rules and then we've just been refining the quad and
then just refining it, refining it as we go along.
I don't think it's a big priority is going to be a hassle to do it unless, you know,
I think I don't know, I'll have to measure up and do it. But, yeah, it could go on there.
What is your name and what is your primary occupation in the world of sports commentary?
Well, I'm Dan Dawson, I've ridiculously accidentally ended up with this sort of moniker of Dan
Darts Dawson. International Darts Open.
The final European tour event of the year has just played out.
It's been won by this man, the rock star Joe Cullin. And it is a heart breaker. Andy Hamilton
with a nine darter!
And so you're sort of put in this interesting position because you have all this knowledge
about darts and the darts world. But then suddenly you have to become obsessed with
World Chase Tag in a very short period of time.
As somebody I'd worked with on the darts had got in touch, just bummed me a speculative
email saying I'm doing a doing this thing.
It's like it's like a sport, but it's like like tag, you know, like the playground game.
And then as soon as I, I Googled it and had a look like I was I was blown away.
I was aware of parkour, but only like when I was a teenager, I think when it all sort
of started happening, there were these impossibly cool French guys going, of parkour is it's
a philosophy it is not a sport. It is a way of life. And I remember people just running
around as a teenager, like jumping on walls and stuff a bit like this. The American office
geezer who just runs around shouting parkour. Parkour! And then to see this turned into
an actual competitive sport was was cool. But I was I still wasn't prepared for when
I actually got down there on the day.
He cannot get hold of it back on the loading bay!.
I mean, look at me. I walked into that place and they all look like Greek gods. I was like
I was like Jabba the Hutt being surrounded by like three dozen Luke Skywalkers somersaulting
all over the place. Like that is not my natural habitat. But to go in there and just try and
learn. Speaking to Damien and Christian about how they came up with the game and the concept,
Connor was invaluable when I was working with him just to try, I've got him to just walk
me around the quad.
Over the sisters ran towards his front line, looking to cut down the angle and does so.
And lands on tops. He lands on top of him, that is crazy play, he had to make up for
lost time from a small slip up early on his massive run chasing down across the front
line and get down on top of the other player.
I'm learning as much as anybody else about this. It's a new sport for everybody to get
their head around. What makes you, the people who are in the
rain, assembling the scaffolding, debating the placement of a bar? What drives this obsession
for you? I wanted to see the best people chase. And
I really hope there's a day where people are, you know, at the age of eight, they get into
chase tag and they just train the whole time. And I'd love to see them when they're twenty
five or twenty eight at the peak of their physical condition, training against other
people who have also trained since they were eight.
I would go to sleep at night some nights. Like what I'm really like preparing for a
competition, like thinking about routes and lines and things. I go like down a rabbit
hole. You think in your head your your little vision
of yourself, you go, yeah, I can do I can do all of that.
Absolutely. All of it. And then you realize that you can't even carry your washing upstairs
without tripping over the cat or something. When we do parkour, we say we're training.
We're training like what are we training for. And I suppose you could say it was a situation
in which you're chasing or evading someone. So it's almost like, World Chase TAg is like
the thing that we are preparing ourselves for.
I start describing how the sport works. And as I'm describing it, I get like a feedback
loop of , man, this sounds really good, I'd love to watch this.
You just see how similar like we all are, regardless of actually where we're from. And
this is this is a really interesting element for me that that all humans could be united
by this one activity that they all do.
That's a giant skull in the background.
Do you want skull or no skull? Skull's fine.
At the time when lockdown first happened, we were sort of tentatively talking about
having quite a few events. I think we had a European Championships sort of penciled
in. We had a potential event in Saudi Arabia, penciled in. We also had an of what was going
to be the world championships in America. And then as soon as lockdown came up, we just
realized that none of that was going to happen. Our final decision, which is sort of encouraged
by the investors that we have at the moment, they said, OK, let's do a US national event.
And that's what we ended up doing in October in Atlanta.
Another thing that like that came positive out of the lockdown, what happened in the
U.K. was we got really good weather and normally when we have the quad up, we only put the
quad up for events. So we have to book a space we put the quota. And that's the only time
me and Damien get to sort of set it up, and we can never use it because all the athletes
want to train on it. So during lockdown and we had the good weather, we decided to put
the quad up. First time we've done that. And so for us, we had more time on the quad than
we've ever had before.