Jump Britain...

Dumb boys acting like monkeys jumping around could be one point of view taken from this new outdoor activity 'Free Running' recently broadcast by channel four. I prefer to take the opinion of graceful street acrobat, performing incredulous feats of the physical only possible by control of the mental.

In this programme the athletes (the respectable title they deserve) perform acts that can only be described my mind over matter, heart stopping stunts such as jumping over the gap in the roof of the millennium stadium, a 150ft drop, no ropes, no safety, nothing to rest the mind from those 'what if's' we human too often struggle with.

This activity rewinds back to more primitive times, the way in which the free runners leap over objects with very little sense of danger is reminiscent of the way monkeys and tarzan leap from vine to vine through the jungle. It is an instinct not necessarily understood in logical or practical means but it is the same instinct that possesses a child to climb a tree and jump off the highest branch possible or see how many stairs they can jump down to the bottom.

As the programme goes on it becomes almost impossible to blink as the performers take risk after risk, scaling multi-storey car parks, bridges, roof tops, castles and skyscrapers. The adrenaline is palatable even from the safe comfort of the living room. It doesn't take long to realise this sport could be loved by a lot of people, those people that stand at the train station wondering if they could jump from the platform to the other side of the tracks.

The only negative factor of this programme was the obvious lack of women participating in free running, as in too many extreme sports it's as if the pursuit of freedom through risk taking is tightly restricted to the Y chromosome.

The truth about free running is that anybody can do it. It isn't like surfing where it takes months of practice to be able to even stand up on the thing, anyone can jump from one object to another, it just takes a bit of mental practice (and maybe pumping a bit of iron at the gym) when it comes to the more riskier stunts.

There will no doubt be a massive political correctness backlash with tons of stupid kids jumping off buildings with no prior practise or training, but this is true of every extreme sport which has come out of the underground in the past 15 years. Eventually it will make its way into the acceptable mainstream, only in a matter of lawsuits and years.