DAMIEN DEVAUX DESCRIBES HOW WORLD CHASE TAG WAS FORMED, IT’S CULTURE AND WHAT IT TAKES TO BE A WCT ATHLETE.
Damien alongside his brother Christian are responsible for building and transforming a childhood game into an organised and exciting sport. I recently caught up with him to find out more about the sport and their plans going forward.
What was the inspiration behind your brother Christian and yourself starting WCT?
It all started with a game of Tag between Christian and his son, Orlando. Orlando wanted to know who was better so they came up with a way of using two iPhones to time how long each of them was on Tag during the course of a game and whoever was on for the shortest time was the winner. Things just developed from there — we came up with new competition formats, created our own court and started to put on events.
How does Chase Tag work?
We have quite a few different formats (for more info check out our website — http://worldchasetag.com/rules-and-terminology) but the one we use the most is the Team Chase-Off. Each team has up to four players, each Chase lasts 20 seconds and has one person from each team: one Chaser and one Evader. The Chaser has to try and Tag the Evader and the Evader has to try and not get caught. Whoever wins stays on as the Evader and your team get one point for each Evasion you make. The team with the most Evasions wins.
What type of athletes compete in Chase Tag?
At the moment most of the Chasers come from a Parkour, Freerunning or gymnastics background but occasionally we get people with no Parkour experience doing really well. For example, we know someone that comes from a tennis / kite-surfing background and he does really well against the Parkour athletes. Chasing is actually a pretty good test of all-round athletic ability so it potentially could cater to quite a wide range of athletes.
WCT seems to have a strong and organic community. What have you done to build the WCT brand around the world?
I’m not sure — all we have really done is just release our videos! I think the success that we’ve had so far is all down to the fact that Chasing is such a natural thing for people to do. Pretty much every person we speak to around the world played Chase Tag when they were young (even if they played by different rules and under a different name) so I think its just something that everyone can relate to. Some people have even said they find it very stressful to watch and I think we are just hard-wired that way. For thousands of years, Chasing and Evading would have been a matter of life and death so its easy to see why we still have such a strong reaction to it today.
What parts of the world would you like to bring WCT to?
I would love to see Chase Tag being played everywhere!! It would be really interesting to see how different cultures and movement styles take to the sport. For example, who would win — a Kabaddi player from India or an American Football running-back? A Brazilian Capueira practitioner or a Jamaican sprinter?
What attributes does a great Chase Tag athlete have?
I think there are two basic elements to Chase Tag. Firstly, there is the skill of negotiating obstacles and obviously Parkour athletes are going to be the best at this. Secondly, there is the skill of dealing with an opponent. If you’re the Chaser you need to be able to read their movements and find patterns in their behaviour so you can predict what they are likely to do next. If you’re the Evader, you have to be able to dummy and juke your opponent to send them in the wrong direction which gives you that extra couple seconds to escape. This is second nature for people who play Rugby, American Football or Soccer but its something that Parkour athletes generally don’t do. So I think a combination of traditional sports and Parkour is best.
WCT is an exciting sport to play but it is also exciting to watch and follow. What platforms are you currently using to distribute WCT related content?
We are active on Facebook, Instagram, Youtube and Twitter but we are in talks with a number of different online distributors, TV networks and production companies about what our next steps should be. We haven’t decided a path yet but 2018 is definitely shaping up to be a busy and very exciting year for us!
Does Chase Tag currently have a governing body?
No, I think this is quite a time consuming process and we don’t feel its necessary at this stage. If anything, we would like to set up an independent body to referee the matches. This would really help to maintain the integrity of the sport and make sure there is a total faith that WCT are not able influence the outcome of a match in any way. They are a few people that have expressed an interest in doing this and we’d love to set that up at some point very soon.
Does WCT have any sponsors or backers of the sport currently?
Currently, we don’t have any backers or sponsors sponsors but have just appointed a sponsorship agent based in Denver, called Revel, who will deal with this on our behalf. We’re really excited to be working with them and having sponsors on board will mean we’ll be able to do bigger and better things in 2018.
With World Chase Tag being a sport that has low barriers to entry due to just sneakers being required to compete or participate. Do you think WCT could eventually become an Olympic sport?
We get asked this question quite a lot but its not something we have put much thought into. At the moment, we are the only ones doing what we are doing so it feels like it would be a long away but who knows?
