Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct answer to each of the following questions from 44 to 50. In 1902, a volcano in the Caribbean island of Martinique blew up. A French naval officer was on the scene, Lt. George Hébert managed to coordinate the rescue of over 700 people, both indigenous and European. He noticed, as he did so, how people moved, some well, some badly, around the obstacles in their path, and how this affected ...

Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct answer to each of the following questions from 44 to 50.

In 1902, a volcano in the Caribbean island of Martinique blew up. A French naval officer was on the scene, Lt. George Hébert managed to coordinate the rescue of over 700 people, both indigenous and European. He noticed, as he did so, how people moved, some well, some badly, around the obstacles in their path, and how this affected their chances of survival. Hébert had travelled widely and was well aware of skills many indigenous people exhibited in being able to traverse the natural environment. From these experiences, Hébert developed a training discipline which he called ‘the natural method' in which climbing, jumping and running techniques were used to negotiate obstacles. His method was adopted by the French military and became the basis for all their training. In time, it became known as parcours du combattant - the path of the warrior.

Raymond Belle was a practitioner of parkour in Vietnam in the 1950s. He had great athletic ability, and the skills and agility he had learnt through parkour earned him a reputation as an agile and elite soldier. In later life, he returned to France and passed on his skills to his son, David (David Belle), who combined what he had learnt from his father with his own knowledge of martial arts and gymnastics, and in time, the sport of parkour was born.

Parkour involves a range of ‘moves', although none are official. They involve vaulting, jumping and landing accurately on small and narrow features, catching ledges, traversing high walls and landing with a rolling impact to absorb impacts.

Belle formed a group of traceurs called the Yamikasi, meaning strong man, strong spirit, that included his friend, Sebastian Foucan. In time, the two of them started to follow different paths. Belle concentrated on the art of getting from place to place in the most efficient way possible, while Foucan developed his own style which involved more self-expression. This he termed free running.

From the late 1990s, the art and sport of parkour spread worldwide. Both Belle and Foucan gave interviews and appeared on television. In 2003, filmmaker Mike Christie made the film Jump London, and urban freerunning, or freeflow, began to dominate the London scene. But it was the arrival of YouTube in 2005 that really brought freerunning to a global audience. People around the world began to post their videos online, making freerunning a mainstream sport, and in 2007, the first major freerunning and parkour competition was held in Vienna.

Since parkour values freedom, there are few facilities dedicated to the practice. Traceurs use both rural and urban areas, typically parks, offices and abandoned buildings. Traceurs generally respect the environment they practice in, and since part of their philosophy is 'leave no trace', there have been few concerns over damage to property. However, law enforcement and fire and rescue teams argue that free runners are risking their lives needlessly, especially when they practice at height. However, practitioners argue that injuries are rare, because they rely on their own hands and feet rather than things out of their immediate control, such as ice and wheels, as is the case with skiing and race-driving.

(Source: https://www.examenglish.com)