Three years ago I set out to write a 12 part article series titled “The Top 10 Parkour Stories of the Decade.” I wanted to detail the 10 biggest Parkour stories, changes, and events that took place worldwide from 2010-2019. I wrote an intro article as well as story #10, #9, #8, and #7. But that’s where I stopped, and I never completed the series. I’ve finally decided to pick it back up and finish it. Here is story #6.
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The #6 story of the decade is about a paradigm-shattering jump that not only changed how the Parkour world saw the most famous jump in Parkour history, it also changed how we saw the limits of movement. It was when Kevin Fluri front flipped Manpower.
The most famous jump in Parkour history is the Manpower Gap. It’s a vertical drop of 4+ meters (more than 15 feet) that sits 6 stories above the ground and rests between two buildings in the center of Evry, France. The first person to ever do the jump? David Belle.
Since before even I started doing Parkour (2006) the Manpower Gap has been revered as the jump to conquer, and perhaps it even conveyed some level of mastery for those who did it.
I once asked David about the first time he did the jump. He told me that he was walking around town one day with a news crew. Someone spotted the jump and asked him if he could do it. “Sure,” he said. He went up there in jeans, with no warm up, and did it. He also told me once that he believed his father, Raymond Belle, was so adept that he could have done the jump in his 60s.
…most Traceurs have never and will never reach anywhere close to the level needed to make [the Manpower] jump achievable…
Even though Manpower wasn’t difficult for the Belle’s, most Traceurs have never and will never reach anywhere close to the level needed to make this jump achievable, much less the level needed to make it routine like it was for David and Raymond. In fact in the 2006-2009 time frame, I can remember finding evidence of only a few people ever doing the jump! Kazuma did it. Chau Belle Dinh and Yann Hnautra did it. Maybe one other person did it? But that was all I knew of, and that added to the legend and the seeming, almost, impossibility of it.
But that was the 2000’s. Then came the 2010’s and Traceurs were primed to push new limits, challenge the paradigm, and put their mark on the sport. And then in strolled the Swedish Traceur Kevin Fluri.
On June 26, 2013, seemingly out of nowhere, this video dropped from WPF. In it, Fluri did something that I don’t think most Traceurs ever even thought was possible. He front flipped Manpower.
The jump reverberated through the Parkour community in a way I hadn’t seen before and possibly haven’t seen since. Not only did it change the perception of Manpower, it basically blew the hinges off what I, and I imagine many of us, thought was humanly possible there. It forced many of us to recalibrate our ideas and beliefs not only of Manpower but of other limits as well. As I watch the video now in December 2020, the front flip almost seems routine, but that’s only because Traceurs took Fluri’s front flip and raised it. Welcome to progress.
The 2010’s was undoubtedly a decade were physical and mental limits in Parkour were smashed, and the physical prowess needed to be considered world class was taken to a whole new level.
Since Fluri front flipped Manpower, countless Traceurs have followed suit by both front flipping it and by taking it to new heights – Phosky, Loe Urban, Dom Tomato, Teddy Ponceau, Leonardo Roof, and Choukaye just to name a few. And just this year, 2022, Lilo Ruel became the first woman to ever jump the gap.
Here is a great documentary from Jimmy the Giant that shows the history and progression of the Manpower Gap.
As much as this #6 story is about specifically front flipping Manpower, from my perspective, this single jump by Kevin Fluri stands for much more: it’s the epitome and summation of a much larger story, one of progress. The 2010’s was undoubtedly a decade were physical and mental limits in Parkour were smashed, and the physical prowess needed to be considered world class was taken to a whole new level. I can think of no other jump in that decade that summed it up more than this one.
Writing this at the end of 2022, I find myself asking, “What now is the limit?” And, “Where will movement be at the end of this decade in 2029?” I truly have no idea. But with any luck we’ll continue to have moments that leave us in shock and awe like when Fluri front flipped Manpower.
My personal hope is to see someone break the BBC jump. Any takers?
