PHOENIX – It takes 4.3 seconds from start to finish. The pursuer in yellow and black has the man in gray in his sights. He gets a run from the edge of the “Quad”, eyes on his cornered prey. The pursuer overcomes the front line, hops to the base of the mountain, then rushes to the right on an elevated platform and stretches his arm in full extension through the side of the cargo bay to catch his fleeing enemy. World Chase Tag is a competitive set of rules for that Catching is a breeze and features matches that consist of 16 car chases in a 12 x 12 m quad with creatively named obstacles where one member of one team earns a point by tagging the other team’s tagger for 20 seconds. The teams go through six athletes. The tagger here, in Team Ollo’s playoff win against No Cap at World Chase Tag USA 2020, was Fernando Arce from Phoenix, a parkour athlete. Arce is nicknamed “the Velociraptor” and labeled the lightning-fast game “Return of the Raptor” on his Instagram. As team captain, Arce led Ollo to a spot in the quarterfinals of the Atlanta Inaugural Tournament in October, beating the Ultimate Champions, Apex of Colorado.RELATED STORYFrom ‘Average Joe’ to ‘Ninja Warrior’: The TV Show’s Popularity Is Boosting Growth in Ninja – Gyms at We are all, like at home, unable to work out or go to the gym outside because the gyms are closed, “said Arce. “When we got the chance to travel and meet a bunch of other athletes from the US, it was so much fun.” The 2020 tournament was the first major US event for World Chase Day. Arce completed five out of six days in an average of 10 seconds, but did not dodge on four attempts. For the upcoming tournament in Akron, Ohio in August 2021, where organizers will discuss welcoming an audience, Arce will bring his talents to the air booth. “It’s just another way of expressing who I am,” he said, “to express and explain our sport”. to people who are not familiar with it and want to know more about it. ”The 2021 competition is another important step in the rapid growth of a game that began in 2011 with Christian Devaux and his son in their garden in England and chased each other’s tables and benches and “general garden waste”. The young sport grew into a group at the online organizing service Meetup in Hyde Park, London before hosting its first official event in 2016. Then came the meteoric rise. “Said Devaux. “People started to watch and as soon as it got caught on a couple of channels like LADbible, Unilad, Bleacher Report, all of these big Facebook and Instagram channels started asking for footage.” World Chase Tag now has 896,000 YouTube subscribers and 160,000 Instagram Pendant. Devaux, who co-founded the competition with his brother Damien, said the mass appeal of the sport stems from its universality. A popular children’s game, he said, it transcends the “cultural boundaries” of traditional sports. “Hunting and being hunted is one of the most natural states of our mind,” he said. “We are here on the planet. Humans are successful because of their ability to hunt and not be hunted. ”In his so-called“ Pepsi Challenge of the Sport, ”Devaux argues that ignoring all prejudices about what a legitimate sport is or what a legitimate sport could win Chase Day not the most entertaining for the audience. And he said that was mainly due to his talented athletes. “When we first started the idea of doing tag as a sport was absolutely ridiculous,” he said. “But because we were lucky enough to have really good parkour professionals with us, they legitimized the sport because they looked so good at overcoming obstacles in acrobatics as parkour and freerunning athletes in Phoenix. “It’s always hot, but we can train outside for hours and there are a lot of places – universities, city centers,” he said. “There in Arizona there is never a shortage of jumpable obstacles.” In some states, parkour gyms run their own chase tag teams, whose athletes often train together. This is not the case in Arizona. “Our team structure in a broader sense is not that formal,” said Chip Howes, CEO of Ollo, the company that makes shoes for parkour. “We really support athletes with products who have always been interested in Ollo shoes.” Howes said Arce agreed to Ollo’s Kickstarter when he started the company and has been involved ever since. While Team Ollo featured other Arizona athletes, including Luke Anderson (who trains with Arce and is part of Cirque du Soleil) and Seth Jung (who Arce said will play at WCT USA 2021), it also includes players from countries as far away as South Carolina. Although physically aloof, they share a passion for tags and an enthusiasm for Ollo shoes. (In many cases they also share a shoe size, which was handy for Howes when Ollo was working on a new prototype that he wanted to show in the competition and was only available in size 10). proximity was a disadvantage, but the team also benefited from being able to effectively select athletes from across the country. Arce said the team exceeded expectations at last year’s tournament. “We were an underdog last year because nobody knew about us … we really turned some heads and made some quite a splash,” said Arce. He is excited to see how the team performs in August, although despite best efforts to find a compromise between commenting and competition, he won’t be able to join them. He received word that the Devaux brothers wanted him to join the show just days after training with Anderson on a newly built quad at Apex in Colorado. “A week later, they asked me to comment,” he said. “I thought, ‘I’ve just trained so much on it and I’ve downloaded all this inside info and tactics.’” But Arce said he was keeping this strategy knowledge for his teammates, his comments, and future competitions. Despite his upcoming ESPN gig, he’s eager to play Tag again. “Sometimes when you compete, it’s like just having fun with your friends,” he said. “You’re not even really competitive, you just say, ‘Oh, I’m just going to tag you, uh-huh!'” Copyright 2021 Cronkite News / Arizona Board of Regents. All rights reserved.
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