7 Extreme Urban Sports Videos: From Biking and Blading to Building Jumping

It is one thing to watch amazing tricks or stunts performed in a closed venue for a captive audience. It is quite another to see unusual sports practiced in a busy and unpredictable urban setting. Here are some extreme city sports you aren’t likely to see in a sports stadium, starting with an incredible urban parachute landing under a bridge to a Paris city street-surfer in a full body suit covered in 31 roller wheels.

Extreme Urban Parachuting: the initial camera shots are a little disorienting, but once this parachuter swoops under a bridge at a high landing speed the scene becomes frighteningly clear. And to prove it’s not a fake: watch for the follow-up shot from a above trailing his progress on the way down.

Extreme Street Rollerblading: watch as Paris resident Jean-Yves Blondeau takes on the streets, sidewalks and tunnels of Paris. Armed with 31 rollerballs and an armored body suit, Blondeau flips between riding on his feet, back and front as he passs shocked pedestrians and cruises at speeds up to 50 miles per hour.

Extreme City Cycling: check out this guy as he sneaks his way into the incredibly packed Holland Tunnel in New York City. He not only evades detection and passes cars in the tunnel, but he even manages to flaunt his success at the end by asking a cop a question as he exits.

Extreme Bike Tricking: every object in the urban environment seems to be an obstacle-in-waiting for these industrious bikers. Their ability to trick and balance is almost as impressive as the variety of benches, stairs and other street furniture they adapt to their own purposes.

Extreme Building Jumping: this best-of video features parkour and free running experts and novices from around the world, doing tricks and jumps off of everything imaginable. Of course, they make these incredible tricks look a great deal easier than they are.

Extreme Freestyle Motorcycling: Julian Dupont seems to feel comfortable biking up, down and around just about anything. Impressive as his work is on a predefined stunt course, it is all the more amazing when seen in the city streets and on high-flying bridge supports hundreds of feet in the air.

Mass City Skateboarding: it would have been too easy to include another skateboard tricking video. Instead, take an inside look as hordes of skateboards take to the streets on Go Skateboarding Day in New York City. As you can see, the police aren’t entirely pleased.


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Comments

Comment from giL
Time: September 25, 2007, 3:19 am

Nothing is better than a new post from my favorite urban culturist, especially when it is a hotterthanhot somewhatfunny-somewhatcute topic such as Extreme Urban Sports! Jean-Yves Blondeau rocks.

Comment from Tom Taylor
Time: September 25, 2007, 6:04 am

“Extreme Building Jumping: this best-of video features parkour and free running experts and novices from around the world, doing tricks and jumps off of everything imaginable. Of course, they make these incredible tricks look a great deal easier than they are.”

This video is the latter end of one of David Belles videos. This is one person (David) and most of the things are in france or england. Parkour is not about building jumping, it is a discipline of efficient, fast and safe movement, he founded this discipline and has been following it for 18 years.

http://www.parkour.net

Comment from mtbTV
Time: September 25, 2007, 8:30 am

Awesome vids, I’ll have to try some of these!

p.s. the bike and motorcycle tricks are usually referred to as “trials”

Comment from Traverse Davies
Time: September 25, 2007, 1:53 pm

Parkour and Free Running are two different things. Parkour is actually as far from “EXTREME” as you can get, focusing on gradual progression and safe but constant improvement. For more information on Parkour go to http://www.parkour.net
For the record: I have been a practitioner for about a year now.

Comment from WebUrbanist
Time: September 25, 2007, 7:12 pm

Hmmm, while your sentiments about parkour as gradual progression are true, the adjective ‘extreme’ does seem to apply to people jumping between buildings at dizzying heights! Regardless, thanks for the source link for more information.

Comment from Baby Milo
Time: September 25, 2007, 10:44 pm

I love the videos you posted - they sure are extreme :).

Comment from oyunlar
Time: September 26, 2007, 3:14 pm

my favorite urban culturist. good article thanx.

Comment from clumsy fergie
Time: September 30, 2007, 2:36 pm

I just used my procrastination time on your post, looking at great videos you gathered here. Rollerblade guy really is something special, I’m gonna steal the link.

Comment from G|oS|co
Time: December 5, 2007, 8:29 pm

How about 30,000 people rollerblading in Berlin … or 2000 on average in Paris? :)

Comment from FrenchKiss
Time: February 25, 2008, 3:36 am

Hi guys, just noticed recently a parkour spot commercial for Panasonic toughbooks. looks like underground goes business:-)

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ThOAJXhMkaA

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