Raymond Belle

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Raymond Belle (born October 3, 1939 in Vietnam , † December 1999 ) was a French soldier and firefighter. He is considered to be one of the founding fathers of parkour as a form of locomotion .

Life

Raymond Belle was born in what was then French Indochina , now Vietnam. During his childhood his father died in the First Indochina War and in 1954 he was separated from his mother because of the partition of Vietnam. Belle was accepted by the French army in Đà Lạt and received military education and training there while still at school. At the age of 12 he tried out efficient escape techniques with his friends in order to improve his chances of survival during the war in his homeland.

From the book Méthode Naturelle by Georges Hébert , Belle learned how to overcome natural obstacles effectively and quickly. Based on Hébert's method, he developed le parcours , a type of movement to effectively get from one point to another. His son David Belle further developed this method of locomotion for urban areas.

With the end of the Battle of Điện Biên Phủ , Belle was sent back to France , where he completed his military training in 1958. His physical fitness and willingness to help led him to join a unit of the Sapeurs-pompiers de Paris at the age of 19 . Because of his athletic ability and outstanding performance, Belle joined an elite unit in the fire department. The members of this regiment are able to carry out the most difficult and dangerous rescue missions. During his service with the brigade, Belle performed several exceptional feats. In 1962 he was honored for outstanding achievements in fighting a garage fire and in 1969 for his dangerous aerial work, where he removed a Viet Cong flag from the top of the Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral . Since Raymond Belle repeatedly showed courage and self-sacrifice, he was awarded a bronze medal of honor in 1969. " Sergeant Belle" left the brigade in 1975 and died in December 1999.

literature

  • Jan Witfeld, Ilona E. Gerling, Alexander Pach: Parkour and Freerunning: discover your possibilities! Meyer & Meyer Verlag, Aachen 2010, ISBN 978-3-89899-541-2 .
  • Reinhard Johler , Max Matter, Sabine Zinn-Thomas: Mobilities: Europe on the move as a challenge for cultural analysis research. Waxmann, Münster 2011, ISBN 978-3-8309-2495-1 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Jan Witfeld, Ilona E. Gerling, Alexander Pach: Parkour and Freerunning: discover your possibilities! Meyer & Meyer Verlag, Aachen 2010, ISBN 978-3-89899-541-2 .
  2. ↑ a b c Raymond Belle on parkour.org, accessed December 17, 2016.
  3. ↑ Reinhard Johler , Max Matter, Sabine Zinn-Thomas: Mobilities: Europe in Motion as a Challenge for Cultural Analysis Research.
personal data
SURNAME Belle, Raymond
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French soldier and firefighter
DATE OF BIRTH October 3, 1939
PLACE OF BIRTH Vietnam
DATE OF DEATH December 1999