Lilou Ruel
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| Born | 9 May 2003 Mont-Saint-Aignan, Normandy, France | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Country | France | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Medal record
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Lilou Ruel (born 9 May 2003) is a French freerunner and parkour competitor.[1]
Early life and education
Ruel was born in Mont-Saint-Aignan, Normandy. As a young child, she lived in Turkey for two years. Upon returning to France, the family settled in Plaisance-du-Touch, a suburb of Toulouse.[2]
Ruel's first foray into sports was tennis and speed skating.[1][3]
Ruel completed her Baccalaureate in Economics and Social studies at Lycée de Tournefeuille in 2021.[2][4] After taking a gap year, she began studying to become a stuntwoman at Campus Univers Cascade in Northern France.[2]
Sports career
Ruel became interested in parkour at age nine,[1] and began training later that year.[2] At age 11, one of her parkour videos went viral.[2] She began competing at age 14, coming third at the 2017 Air Wipp competition in Sweden.[2][3] In 2018, she took five months off from the sport following an injury.[2] At age 16, she competed at the 2019 Red Bull Art of Motion.[1]
During the COVID-19 lockdown, Ruel continued to train in her family's garden, and began to consider pursuing free running and parkour as a career.[3] In September 2020, she competed in the virtual E-FISE competition, winning silver in the parkour freestyle event.[5]
At the 2021 Red Bull Al-Andalus, Ruel won the women's event.[6] Later that year, she won gold in the women's freestyle event and silver in women's speed at the 2021 Freerunning and Parkour World Cup in Sofia, Bulgaria.[2][7][8]
In May 2022, Ruel became the first woman to try and complete the 4.5m gap/15m tall 'Manpower' jump in Évry, France.[9][10] That year she also won three medals: bronze in the women's category at the Parkour World Championships, bronze in women's speed[11] and bronze in women's freestyle at the Parkour World Cup.[12]
In July 2024, Ruel performed in the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics, being one of nine people to portray a masked torchbearer. She reprised the role for the Olympic Champions Parade in September 2024.[13]
References
- ^ a b c d "Lilou Ruel". Red Bull. Retrieved 2025-01-31.
- ^ a b c d e f g h Camy, PH (2023-10-12). "Lilou Ruel : la voie de Lilou". Red Bull (in French). Retrieved 2025-01-31.
- ^ a b c Bernard, Marion (2022-04-07). "Lilou Ruel, une Toulousaine sur le toit du monde". L'Opinion Indépendante (in French). Retrieved 2025-01-31.
- ^ "Lilou Ruel, le vertige du bitume". Conseil départemental de la Haute-Garonne. 2018-11-29.
- ^ "Parkour Freestyle - E-FISE 2020 - Finale - Déclarations de Lilou Ruel". www.ffgym.fr. Retrieved 2025-01-31.
- ^ "El mexicano Xavia Rodríguez y la francesa Lilou Ruel, ganadores en Granada". Diario de México (in Spanish). 2021-04-24. Retrieved 2025-01-31.
- ^ "Sofia Parkour World Cup from 2021 to be Birmingham 2022 World Games qualifier". Inside the Games. 2022-03-02. Archived from the original on 2024-06-16. Retrieved 2025-01-31.
- ^ "PK - Lilou Ruel remporte les deux premières médailles françaises en coupe du monde FIG". www.ffgym.fr. 2021-09-13. Retrieved 2025-01-31.
- ^ "Incroyable exploit dans le monde du parkour : Lilou Ruel, première femme à réaliser le mythique saut Manpower". France 3 Occitanie (in French). 2022-01-06. Retrieved 2025-01-31.
- ^ Nguyen, William Minh Hào (2022-07-23). "Parkour : pour Lilou Ruel, première femme à avoir «sauté le Manpower», «aucune marge d'erreur possible»". leparisien.fr (in French). Retrieved 2025-01-31.
- ^ https://static.usagym.org/PDFs/Results/2022/p_22sofia_wsp.pdf.
{{cite web}}: Missing or empty|title=(help) - ^ "FIG Parkour World Cup Sofia Sofia (BUL), 9-11 September 2022 Women's Freestyle Final" (PDF).
- ^ "Masked Olympic torchbearer 'frustrated' after everyone thought it was a man". Metro. 2024-09-21. Retrieved 2025-01-31.