Boy head over heels with top five parkour place

A BOY has made the top five in an international parkour competition.

Hugo Hemani, 12, placed fourth at the Nova Project Underground 13 2026 last weekend.

The competition, which was held in Rotherham, is the equivalent of the British Championships.

Hugo lives in Ruscombe with his parents, Debra and Paul, and trains as part of the competitive parkour squad at Virtue Movement sports club in Reading.

He started gymnastics when he was three and then parkour when he was six. He “started taking it seriously” when he turned eight.

Parkour is an athletic training discipline in which practitioners interact with their environment by moving through it efficiently or creatively, often while performing feats of acrobatics.

Hugo said: “When I was growing up, I didn’t love any sport the same way that I loved parkour. There’s so many things to it.

“With football, for example, you can get really good, but you run out of new things to try.

“With parkour, there’s endless amounts of tricks you can try and you can invent new moves. The adrenaline that comes with it, it’s just absolutely amazing. I can’t even describe it.”

He added that his favourite trick to do is a “swing double”, which is where the athlete gains enough momentum to swing themselves off a bar while completing a double backflip at the same time.

Hugo started training with Virtue Movement six years ago, in 2020.

He said: “I started at tumbling first and we had to always use hand sanitiser before we went in and they would take our temperature. Then I started at parkour and they took our temperature and we had to social distance.

“Even though we had to do that and there were still restrictions, that was so much more fun than anything I had done in the past.”

Hugo trains twice a week, on Mondays and Wednesdays, from 5.30pm to 8.30pm and then he will have optional training on Saturdays before he goes to competition.

His mother, is also “slowly” converting the garden into a parkour park for Hugo, using blocks, pallets and scaffolding bars.

Hugo said: “Parkour is such a big part of my life and I make time for it. School does come first in our house but maybe I’ll have to take a few days to compete at a really cool competition or travel to a different country. It is either school or parkour, I don’t really have space or time for anything else.” Hugo said the biggest challenge he faces with parkour is the “mental barrier”.

He said: “Getting over that mental block is by far, the hardest part because you can be strong in terms of ability.

“If your head isn’t in the right place, then it won’t go well, and you won’t be able to do it.”

Hugo competed in the under-12 category in 2025 at Nova Project, taking second place, before he moved into the under-16 category for 2026, which is “much harder”.

He said: “I was very scared this year. I didn’t think I was going to do well at all. My goal was to qualify and I ended up placing third out of 32 athletes in the qualifier round, before being selected to compete against seven other athletes in the final. I got fourth out of eight, with 231 points in total, but the person who was in first place received 235 points and he was 15.

“Everyone in the parkour community is really nice. Just having a conversation with someone at a competition can be beneficial.

“This past weekend was very hard. It involved some of the hardest tricks that I’ve ever done, and the competition was really tough.

“Training and competing in parkour has taught me that you can do anything as long as you put some effort into it.

“You need to stay focused, train hard and you can do it. I want to go abroad to more competitions, and I want to set myself some goals and stick to them.” Mrs Hemani said that Hugo will set himself five goals this week in order to stay “focused” on his progress.

She said: “Hugo has had to sacrifice doing other sports in order to be on the squad.

“A lot of my friends get quite scared because whenever we go out, wherever we are, Hugo will look for somewhere he can practice and do a flip.

“We could be on the beach, we could be at the airport. It doesn’t matter. Parkour is very calculated though, it’s not a careless sport.

“I think people just assume that parkour guys are crazy but there’s so much work that goes into a trick before they do it on a hard floor outside.

“There’s a lot of work and a lot of preparation that goes into what you see.”

Mrs Hemani told of how the parkour community is “like nothing she’s experienced before”.

She said: “Everyone is so friendly, no matter how old they are. The adults are so supportive of the children.

“It’s such a friendly, supportive group to be a part of, and it’s quite a beautiful thing to experience.

“My husband and I are incredibly proud of my son and I’m very thankful to the parkour community for being so supportive of him.

“Hugo has such an admirable attitude to the sport and to helping others as well. As much as he pushes himself and works on his own skills, he is always willing to help out younger squad members in different age categories.

“I am so thankful that Hugo has parkour, because it has been such a positive influence on his life. He’s so passionate about it, and it’s such a safe space for him and he is so supported.

“It is such a beautiful thing to be part of and it will always remain something that is so positive for him and for us. I’m thankful for him, I’m thankful for the sport. It is something that is so great to be part of.”