BERAT MAVRICI
Kosovo
President/Founder- FPK-KPF the national governing body for parkour/freerunning in Kosovo, approved by Kosovo’s National Olympic Committee
Berat Mavriçi, born and raised in Pristina, the capital city of Republic of Kosovo. At age 13, due to lack of any other athletic facilities because of Kosovo’s War (1998-1999) he started his early parkour journey training in a local youth facility for tumbling. He self taught and explored until 2009 when he discovered parkour on the internet and realized that was what he was already doing. He has built Kosovo’s parkour infrastructure ever since then. He founded the parkour group ATOM3Run, and continued to cooperate with the NGO – Young Initiative from Brave Hills (YIBH) in Kosovo to supplement his training. In 2011 with the help of YIBH, Mr Mavrici developed camps for youth and introduced parkour to the campers via a big parkour show, which was a huge success. The following year YIBH gave Mr Mavrici half of the camp to create a parkour program for the campers.
In cooperation with Municipality of Pristina and organization “YIBH” he created the first ever large parkour show in Kosovo which had hundreds of parkour athletes participating. Because of the exposure and interest from the show, he was able in 2013, to organize the first official 5 day parkour camp (named The Game of Life). Officials from the Kosovo Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport, and Municipality of Pristina, and others all visited the camp.
In 2014, Mr Mavrici took things one step further. Because athletes from Kosovo could not get visas to travel, Mr Mavrici organized an international parkour festival in Kosovo where world renowned parkour athletes from around the world came to compete and participate in Kosovo. They called it the ATOM Challenge and there were participants from 11 countries.
In 2014, Mr Mavrici reached out to IPF to help set up the national governing body for parkour in Kosovo- KPF. Kosova’s Olympic Committee (KOC) accepts Kosovo’s Parkour Federation as an active member on October 13, 2016. At that time, Thomas Bach (President of the IOC) was on a visit to Kosovo and was informed about the Kosovo Parkour Federation and Mr Mavrici and his team did a parkour performance in his honor. The federation continues with performances and seminars from 2015 until present day.