Finn Lee Represents Australia in Parkour Championships

Local Spotlight – The Gap Resident Finn Lee Represents Australia in Parkour Championships

22-year-old The Gap resident Finn Lee boarded a plane recently for Kitakyushu, Japan, ready to compete in the 2nd FIG Parkour World Championships. 

Finn qualified for the championship after he placed 2nd in the Speed Run and 1st in the Freestyle events at the Oceania Parkour Summit Competition Event held in Perth two months ago. 

Parkour or Freerunning is a sport in which athletes attempt to move ‘freely’ from one point to another as fast and as efficient as possible, using running, vaulting, jumping, climbing, rolling, and other acrobatic skills to travers obstacles.  

Finn Lee is senior coach with the FreeG program offered by Mitchelton Youth Club (MYC), having started his coaching career about four years ago. FreeG (freestyle Gymnastics) combines traditional gymnastics with parkour, tricking and free running. Finn was instrumental in the development of the FreeG skill levels. He travels to other Queensland Gymnastics clubs to teach and demonstrate the FreeG program. 

Finn’s love for flipping, jumping and swinging started at an early age. He picked up drills with the help of YouTube, practicing at home and at the local playgrounds. At 13 he joined the Gymnastics program at MYC, and competed at local, state and one national events. In 2019 he travelled with his club to Austria to represent Australia at the World Gymnaestrada, the largest general gymnastics exhibition. 

At the start of the covid pandemic, Finn broke his ankle practising parkour at the local park and had to undergo surgery to install plates and screws fixing shattered bones. The recovery was long and hard for the 18-year-old, who continued exercising wearing a moon boot.   

While parkour is a recognised discipline with the International Gymnastics Federation, Finn had to raise the funds with his community and from a sausage sizzle at the MYC gymnastics club, to cover his adventure, to purchase the Australian uniform and the plane tickets. 

Although the idea of competing on a world stage is daunting for Finn, he takes it in his stride, “I don’t think I’ll win a medal,” he says, “I only want to do Australia proud and perform to the best of my abilities.”         

The 2nd FIG parkour world championships were held at Katsuyama Park in Kitakyushu, Japan in November. Australia had 4 athletes competing, together with 113 other contestants from all over the world. Finn competed in the ‘Senior – Qualification Freestyle Men’, finishing in 36th position from 52 contestants, and was the 1st Australian on the list (2 Australian men participated).  

Here is more information about the event.