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