Once a week, a group of Egyptian women gather at a forgotten park outside of Cairo. There, they begin to run, jump and climb over walls and objects. The women are enjoying the sport of parkour. But the activity is very unusual for women in the socially conservative country.

The sport of parkour started in France in the 1980s. Its name comes from the French word ‘parcours’ (course or route). It involves moving through a city setting as fast as possible by running, climbing and jumping over, around or under any barrier in a path. The women have met every week for the past six months. Together, they hope to form Egypt’s first professional parkour team.

Ten women took part in a recent training that centered on building upper body strength. They also learned different methods of dealing with surroundings.

A crowd often forms to watch the women train. Egyptians are not used to seeing women playing sports in such an open, public area. Sometimes people take pictures or videos.

Zayneb Helal is one of the parkour players. She told the Reuters news agency, “It is natural that people did not accept it because they were not used to it. They did not accept the idea that girls could play sports, let alone on the street.”

İt is not common for women to play such sports on the streets in Egypt. A 2017 Thomson Reuters Foundation study on how women are treated in the world’s biggest cities rated Cairo as the world’s most dangerous “megacity” for women.

“Women are now training and more women are starting to come,” Omran said. “As the sport spreads, the acceptance of women training increases and it is not unusual for women to have a team and train,” he added.

Aliqismet BADALOV,
“Khalq qazeti”