If you have already played – presumably when you were a child – the game of “cat and mouse”, then you should quickly understand the rules of “Chase tag”, a sporting discipline which is inspired by it. Because these rules are simple: on a field (“quad”) measuring 12 by 12 meters, the cat (“chaser”) has 20 seconds to touch the mouse (“invader”). If the mouse is not touched, it scores a point for its team. The game takes place over 16 rounds and the team with the most points wins the match. Detail, which is not really one: the terrain is full of obstacles, which is why this discipline is very popular with parkour specialists.
In 2012, Christian and Damian Devaux, two English brothers, invented the “Chase tag”. By regularly playing “cat” with his son in the family garden and making the game more difficult by installing makeshift obstacles, Christian Devaux imagines making it a sporting discipline. Then to make it a brand: the “World Chase tag”, which governs the game and the structures but which also organizes the main events, then sees the light of day. Designed to be visual and attractive on social networks, the game also appealed to televisions. Broadcast in “35 countries”, according to Loïc Ascarino, head of World Chase tag for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, the competitions are broadcast on ESPN in the United States and on the Chaîne l’Équipe in France. The latter will thus schedule, at the beginning of December, the French championships (which took place… last July in Paris).
“France is currently the most advanced country for Chase tag, with the United States where there are four rooms,” explains Loïc Ascarino. “In France, there are also four halls with the structure of 12 meters by 12 and three halls with that of 8 m by 8. So France is technically the most advanced in terms of number of structures, athletes who play, events. And we are among the best teams.”
Among these best French teams: Parkour 59, named after an association based in Roubaix (North), was crowned world vice-champion in 2022, beaten in the final by an American team. In their room, the Free’ch, a quad similar to that used in competition was installed for the practitioners. “If we explain that we are playing the game of cat and mouse, extreme version, it makes you smile… But you just need to show a video, because we are lucky that the World Chase Tag is super visual,” underlines Yoann Ferreira, member of Parkour 59. In any case, everyone praises a sport that is more strategic than it seems. Initially scheduled for this fall, the next “World Chase Tag” world championships should finally take place in spring 2024, in England or France.
