At a fundamental level, parkour is not a competitive sport - at least, not in the traditional sense.
There are no teams or points tallies; there aren't necessarily strict or formalised rules. The head coach of the local Parkour chapter and leading instructor training with the Australian Parkour Association thinks of it more like an art.
"The moves are the colours," Alex Rzechowicz says. "The obstacles are the canvas, and you are the paintbrush - you are able to create these artworks that are temporary and fleeting. There's no competitiveness in that."
Newcastle hosted the first formalised national gathering for the sport on Saturday, October 5, continuing a 17-year tradition of athletes and trainers coming together in a different city annually to share their skills, collaborate and test the boundaries of the various disciplines of parkour.
Mr Rzechowicz has been training and coaching students for about 12 years and said the philosophy of the sport was less about achieving athletic brilliance but learning how to "fail well" on the path to it.
"I think Western society is very focused on winning, and we're quite focused on learning how to fail well because if you can fail well, you can accomplish anything," he said, adding that the emphasis on training and incremental challenges had the redoubled effect the sport has an injury rate less than half that of some other mainstream pursuits.
"We are really strict on learning to fail first," he said. "You need to learn how to fail first and fail well. You cannot be at a height that you cannot fall off ... that is the level of safety that we want, and because of that, parkour has an injury rating of about three per 1000 hours. Sports like netball and soccer sit at around six."
The city's debut as a National Gathering host city was a special milestone for the sport at the weekend as the first to attract local funding support; the City of Newcastle pitched in $5000 for the event that was held at South Newcastle skate park with an estimated head count well above the anticipated 200 runners in attendance.
Mr Rzechowicz said the funding was the affirmation that the local club has been working towards for years, building trust and support in the community.
"We've put in a hell of a lot of work to make sure that wherever we go, we respect the community as much as we possibly can and keep the community safe," he said. "That way, we develop and grow this perspective that 'those parkour people make our city better'."
The training discipline which involves negotiating and traversing obstacles in the urban and natural environment at running speed through jumps, vaulting and rolling. The practice emerged in France and was popularised in the internet age, particularly after it appeared in the 2006 film in the James Bond franchise Casino Royale.
"What brings people together for a national gathering is finding others that are very close to their skill level that enjoy training the same style of training," Mr Rzechowicz said. "Because parkour is so varied, it's always such a delight to find someone else with new ideas on how to paint, and the different colours they use and the different ways that they use their canvas."
