Daniel first noticed Parkour after seeing a man on the street perform a wall flip and wanted to be able to do the same. He later took up the Brazilian martial art Capoeira, but was disappointed with its limitations. He then took up parkour and freerunning.[3] He has since won first place in MTV's inaugural Ultimate Parkour Challenge, and is one of the most watched free runners with over 30 million views on YouTube.[citation needed]
Philosophy
Ilabaca believes parkour is a global movement that will change the way people interact with their environment. To him all ways of being free and expressing yourself are parkour.[4] Furthermore, he emphasizes the power of choices in one's training. He states that falling is the result of choosing to fall: "Thinking you’re going to fail at something gives you a higher risk of doing just that. Committing to something you’re thinking or knowing you will land gives you a higher chance of landing or completing the task."[5]
In episode 7 of the 8th season of Top Gear, Daniel and Kerbie took part in a challenge to race a Peugeot 207 through the busy city centre of Liverpool.[6][7] In the episode, the traceurs won.
Daniel performed parkour, stunts and other various action moves while dressed in a school uniform which promoted the theme of saving the environment.[8][9]
Parkour Journeys (2006)
Daniel featured in the Parkour Journeys DVD documentary, in a section called "Daniel Ilabaca in Profile", which featured an interview and footage of him training.[10]
Along with several members of 3RUN, Daniel performed several parkour moves around Elephant & Castle.[11]
UEFA Champions' League Advert (advert, 2008)
Daniel Ilabaca and Ryan Doyle were among the free runners appearing in a commercial shown regularly on Sky Sports to promote the Champions' League, in which they performed various tricks and martial artskicks on a computer-generated football around central London's South Bank.[12]
The video is set in a back alley and warehouse in London, United Kingdom. It begins with a Daniel playing a goblin, who jumps out of a dumpster, and starts dancing. His dancing takes him out of the alley and up onto the nearby rooftops, then into a theatre. The goblin begins breakdancing on the stage. He exits, jumps onto a police car, and rides it back to the dumpster, when he jumps in moments before a man walks into the alley and dumps a bag of trash into the dumpster.
Daniel Ilabaca traveled across 4,000 miles to eight major cities to meet some of Europe's best free runners. From each city, short films and interviews with the local freerunning community were made. He visited London, Amsterdam, Cologne, Copenhagen, Vienna, Milan, Barcelona and Paris – all in three weeks.[13]
In the first series, Daniel played "Superhoodie", a recurring character who monitors and plays a guardian role outside the circle of already established characters. He is an onlooker and an outsider, with traits such as athletic ability and care being amplified since the storm in episode 1.
Kolpingtag: Mut (Courage) (2015)
Trailer for the "Kolpingtag" a German Christian society.[14]