HE IS the all-action pioneer who has captivated the world with his dizzying and death-defying stunts on his astronomical journey from French urban estates to the Hollywood stage.

Sébastien Foucan is the charismatic founder of the exhilarating sport, freerunning, culminating his iconic sky-high chase on soaring cranes with Daniel Craig in the James Bond film Casino Royale.

Now the discipline’s global ambassador has launched a golden opportunity for people to follow in his footsteps by opening a flagship academy in Southampton.

The sportsman and actor is opening his innovative indoor freerunning facility in the city’s Oxygen Freejumping trampoline park in Antelope Retail Park, Thornhill.

The facility – the first of its kind in the world – opens on Tuesday and features a series of soft play obstacles for people to learn his athletic and acrobatic discipline – usually executed in the unforgiving urban world of concrete and bricks.

Sebastian founded freerunning in the 1980s from the French military obstacle course training regime parcours du combattant and is one of the pioneering developers of Parkour.

But while Parkour involves participants moving between buildings, walls, railings and obstacles as efficiently as possible, free-running incorporates other disciplines such as martial arts and capoeira to create freedom of expression with occasional flips and tricks.

The new centre is based on a course set up in Oxygen Freejumping centre in Acton – but the Southampton site is much larger and is purpose-built with padded soft-play equipment including vaults, bars and mats of various sizes and heights.

Daily Echo: Sébastien Foucan at Oxygen Freerunning in Southampton

It has been specially tailored for beginners to more experienced free runners wanting to improve their skills in a safer environment rather than outdoors.

Sébastien, 41, who will run masterclasses himself there, said: “Freerunning is about reconnecting with the environment, it’s about movement and motion, using your body and twisting. There is no machine in a gym that can replicate it. You are overcoming the obstacles you are jumping and the power of it gives you a feeling of achievement.”

“This discipline normally has risk. You are dealing with concrete and height and you could get seriously hurt.

“Here it’s specially made – it is going to be huge because it will bring in people who would not normally practice it.

Jackson Turner, 33, head coach, says the city has a rapidly growing freerunning community and although puritans may frown about the soft play structures compared to the traditional hard edged urban environment, it will encourage the next generation of participants.

He said: “This allows people who are new to try it. We are not saying it is the original way of doing it but it is an evolution of doing things.

“In freerunning, fear becomes your friend and you welcome it in.”

In 2001 Sébastien who is President of Parkour UK – choreographed Jump London and Jump Britain events which include an iconic scene of him running over Millennium Stadium in Cardiff.

See oxygenfreejumping.co.uk for more information and to book both adult.

Daily Echo: The Daily Echo's Maxwell Kusi-Obodum tries his hand at freerunning

It feels like being a kid again, says Maxwell Kusi-Obodum.

Sébastien welcomes us with a huge grin casting arm across a series of brightly coloured padded mats and vaults in what is essentially a cross between a gymnastics centre and a children’s adventure playground.

It feels a huge honour to be shown the ropes by the big man himself as a series of plasma television screens on the wall show clips of some of his amazing feats Fellow class participants form a “dragon” lining up behind Sébastien and excitedly follow him in a snake-like movement winding out way through the series of obstacles.

Leaping onto and over the rectangular and cylindrical pads, waist to shoulder-high vaults and climbing and swinging on metal monkey-bar cages and tall wooden blocks is an exhilarating challenge and I feel happy and free.

My favourite is a blue vault alongside the wall where we are challenged to hurdle over one-sided with our feet kicking out at the wall.

He tells us to pretend the floor is lava and jump from one obstacle to the next without touching the ground - activating imagination normally reserved for children.

We end the session with a game of tag, trying to flee our pursuers without touching the ground and receiving a punishment of having to stand stationary - or “stuck in the mud” - for five seconds, making you easy prey.

I finish feeling incredibly inspired - and very breathless - in what has been a whistle-stop trip back to childhood.

At the end Sébastien says: “In freerunning you can express yourself and in this society you have so much expectation to achieve goals and I tell people to forget about it and just enjoy yourself.”