In news which is likely to take most of us by surprise, it turns out there's such a thing as a professional tag tournament, and it looks like something we'd all like to try. Check it out:
World Chase Tag isn't just like playing in the school playground when you were younger, of course. It's actually an international championship for competitive parkour and it was created by two brothers in 2011.
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Christian and Damien Devaux came up with the idea, following a game of tag between Christian and his son Orlando.
The pair wanted to work out a way of nailing on who was better, so they came up with a plan that meant using two iPhones to time how long each of them would be 'it' during a game. Whoever was on for the shortest time was declared the winner.
From there, Christian and Damien came up with more developments. Competition formats were created and a specially designed court evolved. They then went on to put on events.
The rules for the most played game format, Team Chase-Off, involve two teams with up to four players each.
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A 'chase' lasts 20 seconds, consisting of one person from each team: a Chaser and an Evader. The Chaser then has to try to tag the Evader, meaning the Evader - unsurprisingly - has to try to not get caught.
Whoever stays on as the Evader in the team gets one point for each Evasion. The team with the most Evasions wins.
Seems simple enough.
As you can see from the video above, it's not a game where you can take it easy and many Chasers are experienced in other sports.
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Damien told The Sweat Experience: "At the moment most of the Chasers come from a parkour, free running or gymnastics background but occasionally we get people with no parkour experience doing really well.
"For example, we know someone that comes from a tennis/kite-surfing background and he does really well against the Parkour athletes.
"Chasing is actually a pretty good test of all-round athletic ability so it potentially could cater to quite a wide range of athletes."
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The official website for the sport reads: "The organisation was responsible for creating a standardised competitive playing arena and set of rules formats which has allowed athletes from around the world to train and compete in international competitions.
"The most recent of these competitions was WCT USA October 2020, and previous to that, WCT held WCT4 (the World Championships) in August 2019 in London featuring teams from Japan, Spain, France, USA and the UK."
Currently, both male and female athletes compete together in a single unified league.
Who wants to try this?
Featured Image Credit: World Chase TagTopics: SPORT, Interesting