His body hangs motionless as an anticipated silence hushes the crowd. For a brief second he draws a breath, and then suddenly every muscle in his body contracts as he lifts himself up so he’s parallel to the ground. With a release of tension his body swings around and then halts upside down in midair. His arms grip two rings while his body stands perfectly straight as he looks down at the mat, 5.75 metres below him.

Federico Molinari performing on the rings (courtesy of Federico Molinari)

Although there is no tackling, dribbling, or fancy footwork, this sport requires just as much strength, passion, and practice. It is the perfect blend of masculine grace and power. It is men’s gymnastics.

“It is a sport of force, resistance, flexibility, and coordination. Here in Argentina a lot of people don’t know about it because we put great importance on team sports like football, hockey, and basketball. However, I think it is an excellent sport that can only add to your ability in other sports. Gymnastics prepares you for everything. It is hard, but a lot of fun” says Argentine gymnast Federico Molinari.

From a young age Molinari has been swinging around bars, tumbling across mats, and hanging from rings. But now for the first time in his career he will get the chance to perform on the world’s biggest stage, the London 2012 Summer Olympics.

“It is a great honour but at the same time a large responsibility as I will be joining all the other athletes who are representing their countries,” says Molinari. “But more than anything it is an honour.”

The 28-year-old gymnast competed at the Pre-Olympic qualifiers back in January of 2012 and ranked high enough to earn a ticket to the Olympics. Molinari says “everything became a blur” as he stepped off the mat knowing he’d accomplished his goal. He remembers only individual scenes, running over to hug his long-time girlfriend Paula and coach Vladimir Makarian. In a state of shock he says it was like watching a movie playing in his head: “It is a life-long dream fulfilled.”

Federico Molinari training on the rings (courtesy of Federico Molinari)

Born in San Jorge, Santa Fe, Molinari was immediately thrown into the world of gymnastics as both his parents are coaches. “Because both my parents are coaches I spent all my time in the local Club Atlético, playing football, basketball, and tennis. When I was nine my father told me I had to choose between gymnastics and the other sports,” he says.

For Molinari the choice was simple. “I left the other sports to focus on gymnastics so I could get to a higher level,” he remembers. “In San Jorge gymnastics is a big sport. We have always had a lot of good gymnasts and there isn’t this stereotype of gymnastics being a girls only sport.”

From then on he focused on gymnastics as he traveled around the world with his father practising and competing. “My dad was a very good coach. Currently he continues to be my coach not here in Buenos Aires, he lives in San Jorge, but he helps me with all the planning. We were like a team, always aware of working together. We had many conflicts also, but things like that I think are normal. He is a very good coach.”

In 1997, Molinari won his first international medal at the South American Championships in Santiago, Chile. He won three bronze medals and picked up a silver in the rings, which would quickly become his strongest event. “I like other apparatuses like the parallel bars, but the rings are perfect for me physically. It is where my body excels the most,” he says.

In 2002, he moved to Buenos Aires to enroll in the National Centre for High Performance Sports where he met his new coach Vladimir Makarian. “He is 74 years old and has plenty of experience but he also understands modern gymnastics. I have learned many things from him. He is a person of few words but what he says means a lot.”

Although the training was much more intense, Molinari quickly adapted and in 2003 attended his first Pan-American Games in the Dominican Republic. Traveling the world allowed him to see and experience many different cultures, but Molinari says there were times when he missed his family. “When I would travel for more than a couple of weeks I found I missed my girlfriend, family, and friends,” says Molinari. However, it wasn’t until 2005 that he would realise just how important the love and support of his family really was.

Federico Molinari in training (courtesy of Federico Molinari)

“I had to have an operation on my shoulder and after three months of rehabilitation it was still not better,” he says. Molinari needed a second operation after the first did not successfully heal a lesion in his right shoulder. But months after the second operation and with hundreds of pesos spent on rehabilitation with no results, Molinari was on the verge of leaving gymnastics forever.

“It was one of the worst moments of my life,” he says. “At that moment I did not have the motivation to keep going. I had tried rehabilitation, training, and nothing worked, I was depressed. I lost my love for gymnastics. It’s funny how lost you can become.”

Then unexpectedly, he met Paula who, along with his parents, helped him recover. “Thanks to her and my parents I recovered and returned to gymnastics. My family has always been there for me, even financially. If it was not for my family I would have had to leave gymnastics a long time ago to find a job which pays more. But they have also been there for me emotionally. My family and Paula are the biggest reason I recovered.”

Paula will soon be his wife after seven years of dating. Although it was not without more injury and difficulty, Molinari worked his way back onto the international scale and slowly chipped away at his goal of someday being an Olympic athlete.

In 2008, Molinari came very close to making it to the Beijing Olympics, but an injury to his leg stopped him just short of his goal. “I hurt a ligament in my knee more or less a month before the Olympics. The doctors told me I couldn’t compete equally with the injured knee so that was the end. Although it still bothers me a bit I knew this year when I went to the qualifications that I had the experience and I could make it.”

With grim determination he pushed through and has been rewarded today with a spot on the roster of athletes representing Argentina in London, England. “Right now I am trying to keep calm and maintain my confidence,” says Molinari, who is coming off of a gold medal at the 2012 Pan-American Championships in Medellín, Colombia. “It is all very mental so I am concentrating on my confidence. I am not thinking at all about what has happened in the past but instead I am thinking about what I see happening in the future.”

For the past few months he has been training from 9.00am to 12.30pm from Monday to Saturday, using the afternoons to recuperate and rest mentally as well as physically. On the 16th July he flew across the Atlantic Ocean landing in Spain for the final stage of training. Once adjusted to the time difference he hopped on board a quick flight over to England on the 24th July.

Soon he will don the blue and white uniform as he walks into a stadium of thousands of cheering fans, with millions more watching on TV, as part of the parade of athletes in the 27th July opening ceremony. Then, less than 24 hours later, at 11:00 am he will swing onto the rings to compete. “The best eight move onto the finals [on 6th August],” says Molinari. “If I get a medal after that it would be incredible, a very very very important moment for me and everyone who’s ever supported me. It would be just absolutely incredible.”

Acrobatics studio (Photo: Natasha Ali)

Vagabonds no longer own the circus. In recent decades, Latin American performers have made a concerted effort to elevate the social caste of their trade and the circus has succeeded in reinventing itself as a serious art form. Aerial silk acrobatics has emerged as one of the quintessential aesthetic elements of modern circus.

You can’t help but breathe in the subtle yet distinct air of superiority at La Instalacción. It’s the circus equivalent of a Buenos Aires’ member’s only club – no one here has just wandered in off the street. In fact, you’re more likely to do the wandering on the street, as the studio’s venue is unmarked and its address unlisted. Everyone on the inside did their homework.

If it weren’t for the trapeze, rings and jellybean-coloured cascade of silks hanging from the ceiling, La Instalacción would have the feel of a yoga studio. Mate is available in recently washed, non-disposable cups in the waiting room. Outdoor flora hugs the wall-sized windows of the workspace. The macaw-like squawking heard on the way in is almost overkill.

Classes at La Instalacción live up to the studio’s aura. Of the two-hour class, about an hour is dedicated to stretching and challenging the limitations of your muscles, with practice on your chosen skill area in between.

The classes, which range from only five to seven people, begin with an aerobic warm up and are then divided into three groups. In this instance, one man chose the trapeze, a couple worked on the floating ring and two women opted for the silks. Many stuck with the same element throughout the class, which participant Eugenia Di Fiori says helps you to improve by focusing on just one.

The instructor, Veronica Arabetti, releases one royal purple and one dandelion-coloured curtain from the ceiling’s ropes. The violet one spills onto a black cushioned mat, while its sister hangs like twin stirrups resting slightly a foot above the ground.

Acrobatics cloth dancer (Photo: Natasha Ali)

The most basic, fundamental task to learning the ropes is, quite literally, climbing them. The move is, of course, by no means as instinctive as the skilled would lead you to believe. While grasping the fabric of the silk above your head, you use one foot to coil the loose-hanging silk around it, creating a kind of step for your other foot to climb up on to. Using your arms to lift yourself about a foot higher you unravel the silks and repeat the process to climb the silk.

The beginner’s class administers just the right dose of achievement to entice a return visit. It allows you to feel a certain amount of accomplishment, while Veronica serves as a constant reminder of your inadequacies. There’s a nagging sense that even if you’ve completed a task, there was almost certainly an easier, prettier way of getting it done.

Veronica, like all great athletes, makes aerial acrobatics look easy. She knows which muscles to use to extend her energy most efficiently so that each move is deliberate, yet liquid. As she double-stags her legs and spins horizontally, her body rests within the silk’s tangles haphazardly and as if it was only an afterthought. The stiffness of gymnastics gives way to the fluidity of ballet as her slender limbs dance with the air.

Eugenia says La Instalacción’s focus on wellness and body awareness allows its premium status among Buenos Aires’ circus studios. “You learn to listen to everything that your body is telling you,” she says. “It helps you to be more conscious of your centre and equilibrium.”

“The circus used to be a low socioeconomic class,” adds Veronica. “But recently they started using the activities for gymnastics and body expression. It started to give the activity another point of view, an activity that could include everyone.”

Just be sure to call in advance.

Photos courtesy of www.keil.tk

 

For Julian Del Campo, 19, Rosario is not just a place to live and work, sleep and shop. Instead, his city is a playground. Metal barriers are launching pads from which to fly high into the air. Walls act as climbing frames and balance beams. The hidden world high up on the rooftops provides a wealth of opportunities for running, jumping and testing the body’s limits.

The growing number of people across the world who practise the discipline of parkour, or ‘freerunning’, are reclaiming the streets, buildings and rooftops of cities everywhere, asserting their urban freedom. Del Campo estimates that Argentina alone is home to around 400 parkour enthusiasts, with more joining in every day.

Parkour, which is derived from the French word parcours, meaning ‘course’ (as in ‘obstacle course’), was introduced to the world by the Frenchman David Belle. For most practitioners, who are known as ‘traceurs’ after the French for ‘tracer bullets’, parkour is personified by Belle, who developed the art as a means of overcoming any obstacle directly and efficiently.

My first glimpse of parkour was in 2001, when Belle ran, jumped and rolled his way across the rooftops and my TV screen in an advert for the BBC in the UK.

“He must have used stunt wires,” the chorus went. But there were no wires, just the human body pushed to its limits. Other global brands to use Belle’s superhuman abilities in their advertising include Nissan and Nike, but his big break came when Luc Besson offered him the chance to star alongside Cyril Raffaeli in the French action movie ‘Banlieue 13’. This film has become a parkour cult classic and is a must-see for any newcomer to the sport.

This year will see parkour’s profile raised further still as it features in a number of films. These include Anthony Minghella’s ‘Breaking and Entering’; ‘Blood and Chocolate’, starring Olivier Martinez; and the next Bond film ‘Casino Royale’. Parkour has also entered the music world, with veteran French traceur Sebastien Foucan appearing on Madonna’s recent video for her hit single ‘Hung Up’.

Growing media interest in this hip new ‘extreme sport’ has lured increasing numbers of young men with physical coordination, time on their hands and access to a broadband connection. Chat forums are the traceur’s communication method of choice when it comes to meeting up with others in different towns, cities or even countries to practise parkour or, as the terminology goes, to ‘jam’.

Photos courtesy of www.keil.tk

 

The Argentine parkour scene is thriving. Del Campo explains why:

“People are getting interested in parkour because it looks and feels great. Parkour is not a sport, a philosophy or an art, it’s a way of life. After just a few weeks of training and learning the concept behind parkour you begin to understand that obstacles aren’t a hindrance; you just deal with them and move on. It’s about overcoming limitations, not only those set by others, but those you set for yourself.”

For Belle, practising parkour was not about monetary gain or glory, although both have come his way. It was instead developed out of a love for adventures and a desire for freedom. His is often seen as the most ‘pure’ parkour, full of grace and fluidity. Although Belle has training in gymnastics, these somersaults and acrobatic ‘tricks’ are seen as inhibiting the natural flow of movement.

“Gymnastics tricks are fun to do and great for training your body and teaching your brain to overcome fear,” says London traceur Chris Scott, 22, who started parkour on the same day as me, in January 2005. He adds: “Somersaults are rarely the most efficient means of hurdling obstacles, so they are not really part of parkour.”

Photos courtesy of www.keil.tk

 

Photos courtesy of www.keil.tk

 

It was my background in gymnastics that led to my own involvement in parkour. I loved the idea that physical movement was not limited to a gymnasium and that the possibilities presented by an urban environment are endless.

In women’s gymnastics, athletes are confined to four pieces of apparatus: asymmetric bars, balance beam, vaulting horse and floor. The specification for each discipline is standardised and the moves you perform must correspond to those in the official Code of Points. Competition is at the heart of modern gymnastics, with skills ranked according to general standards of difficulty. Not so with parkour, which allows individuals to choose the ‘best’ way of traversing obstacles, and the only person you are competing with is yourself.

Despite grazed knees, blisters and chipped nails I’ve been hooked on parkour since I plucked up the courage to attend my first jam, in London. I quickly learned from the assembly of scruffily-dressed youths that parkour does not have to be done at roof level and that a simple vault done cleanly and quickly is ‘better’ than a risky drop from height. Del Campo, a strong advocate of mastering the basic moves before even considering anything more risky, agrees. “It’s not really necessary to hit the rooftops; there’s plenty of parkour at ground-level.”

Photos courtesy of www.keil.tk

 

Parkour’s global appeal was brought home to me in December when the Brazilian television show ‘Fantastic’, which is watched by a terrifying 50m people, sent their presenter to London to film and interview a few of us who train in the city.

And of course the burgeoning Argentine scene offers you the chance to get out onto the streets and learn the parkour moves and philosophy. According to Del Campo, the urban centres of Rosario, Buenos Aires, Mar Del Plata and Córdoba are the hottest spots for parkour in the country. But, he says, there are traceurs in small towns everywhere.

“We’re all one community in Argentina. The most experienced ones help the new guys and I think that’s great. Our mission is to let Argentina know that we’re free from limitations – and that anyone can join us and experience that freedom too.”

Emily Rogers is the only sponsored female traceur in England. She has appeared in films and television commercials, and she has also written on the subject of parkour for several international publications.

For more information on parkour, visit www.pka.com.ar

Photos courtesy of www.keil.tk and Julian Del Campo