On the 2/4/09 Daniel, his mother Maxine, father Max and fiance Lauren attended the Lee Jones private Art Exhibition in london to celebrate the release of Lee Jones newest collection. A series of hyper-real paintings in which elite athletes are portrayed as machines so perfectly engineered they are 'Beyond Human'.

The collectable series includes:

Usain Bolt

Christine Ohuruogu

Chris Hoy

Ricky Hatton

Victoria Pendleton

and of course our own Daniel Ilabaca

The exhibition was fantastic, just hours before it opened to the guests Lee Jones started work on a large graffiti piece featuring Danny, the 9 x 9ft canvas piece was inspired by movements from Daniels newest video that was played for the guests at the event.

Keep your eyes peeled for the sale of the one off canvas wall picture of Daniel in action at:

High quality lithographic prints along with limited edition and signed prints of the 'Beyond Human' series are now available to buy from the 2050 sports website: www.2050sports.com

We have been working hard to develop parkour communities across the uk and are very happy to announce that we now have regular parkour training sessions in:

Lincoln, Lincolnshire

Rochford, Essex

Moreton, Wirral

Crawley, West sussex

Edgware, London

Canterbury, Kent

Click here to find your nearest parkour training session.

Although the Traceur bag was a fantastic success and has sold far better than any of our expectations, we feel that we can do even better and are currently in the design phase of a new and substantially upgraded bag.

Over the past few years we have plaid an important role in developing many parkour communities across the uk. We are now looking at expanding some of our communities and have a variety of positions available for qualified coaches.

If you are interested please contact our community development team:

cd(at)tracehq.com

We also have a coach development program for practitioners interested in coaching. click here for more info

From the beginning of the year we have been running a series of workshops for the young people of Anfield and Everton in Liverpool, uk. The workshops are aimed at encouraging the participants to get into activities that are a positive and constructive use of their time as a first step to re-engaging with education and training.

The Traceur Gathering 08 saw over 350 practitioners from the Uk, Australia, Ireland, Germany, Thailand, Holland, Latvia and the US come together for five days in the uk's peak district.

Despite problems with the camp site, some bad weather and a few people who didn't understand what the event was about, we had tons of positive feedback from our attendees. The general consensus is that the event was fun, people had a good time and many were able to take away important lessons and great memories.

As far as the future of the 'Traceur Gathering' event goes, we all feel that it must not continue without its key problems being solved. We are currently debating what are going to do with it, taking in to account all of the issues that have emerged from the previous events. More on this soon

It can be very hard to show people the true spirit behind the physical movements of parkour and especially difficult to guide them to the point where they start to understand it and can apply its spirit to other parts of their life. We have successfully introduced many people to parkour through previous workshops lasting only a couple of hours. However we feel that the less time we have to show participants the bigger picture the more potential there is to harm both the participants and parkour in the long term. For these reasons we recently decided to change all of our one off introductory workshops to a minimum of four hours training spread over the course of one day, creating more space for group discussion and one to one attention.

The first opportunity for us to use to (EPSSPA) Ellesmere Port Specialist School for Performing Arts in the uk.

Jason Matten, Daniel Ilabaca and Martin Tucker lead the workshop and as usual received fantastic feed back from the students and teachers throughout the day. Several days after the we aim to achieve and confirmed that we are on to a winner with our new format.

Feed back from EPSSPA:

"I think it incredibly important to point out a few factors that struck me as a teacher in a school where young people face challenging situations on a daily basis"

Many of the students that Trace worked with come from economically and socially deprived backgrounds. The need for positive male role models is absolutely essential to these students and the three trainers who attended our school were exactly that. Their standard of professionalism was exceptional. All three trainers were prepared, passionate and immensely talented. Trace placed commitment and self discipline. Process rather than product being the main lesson of the day and all of the students took this with them and were able to transfer this lesson to other areas of their studies and lives. The students enjoyed the practical aspects of the day greatly but were also willing particpants when it came to whole group discussions due to the positive and safe learning environment that Trace provided for them. The environment allowed the usually "silent" pupils to find their voice and feel supported throughout the group enough to shock everyone by being the most vocal of the day!

The pupils loved the fact that the three Trace Coaches were really different characters and benefitted from seeing the differences. The Coaches all shone as incredible young men who had taken control of their own destinies and inspired the different characters in the room to feel that they too could take charge and make something of their lives.

"This was truly the best workshop I have ever had the chance to make available to the pupils of our school and I would recommend Trace to anyone who wanted to provide a physical workshop that would impact and inspire self-esteem, self-discipline, healthy minds and Healthy bodies."

"The school will most definitely be inviting Trace back as soon as we possibly can"

Lucy Ainscow

and

Rosie Griffiths Head of Dance

on behalf of EPSSPA school

If you are interested in a parkour workshop please contact us at:

services(at)tracehq.com

Artist Lee Jones, (www.leejonesart.co.uk) well know for his style of urban design and graffiti based imagery recently embarked on his latest project entitled 'Beyond Human' A series of hyper-real paintings in which elite athletes are portrayed as machines so perfectly engineered they are 'Beyond Human'.

Lee Jones decided to work with following elite athletes:

Usain Bolt

Christine Ohuruogu

Chris Hoy

Ricky Hatton

Victoria Pendleton

and of course Daniel Ilabaca

The paintings are now complete and will be officially unveiled at the 'Beyond Human' exhibition on the 2/4/09

High quality lithographic prints along with limited edition and signed prints are now available to buy from the 2050 sports website:

www.2050sports.com