Russian Parkour Fans Damage Athens' Acropolis

Two Siberian sportsmen have walked away from a Greek court with little less than a suspended sentence between them after damaging the Acropolis of Athens during a workout, a news report said.

The men, who hail from Chelyabinsk, used the ancient Greek citadel as a setting to practice parkour — a discipline whose followers, called traceurs, use urban territories as obstacle courses, the state-run RIA Novosti news agency reported Monday.

Konstantin Shamshura and Dmitry Koltso, both 23, ignored a guard's demand to stop and continued to exercise on the walls of the Acropolis until a chunk of the wall comprising a dozen stones collapsed, the report said.

Greek media initially claimed that the wall was a medieval addition to the Parthenon, but local police said it was a wall on the opposite side of the 2,500-year-old citadel, the report said.

Luckily for the men, a local court on Monday cleared one of the defendants and slapped another with a suspended 30-day sentence that he will only have to serve if he commits another violation in Greece.

The Acropolis, built in the fifth century BC, has been registered as a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1987.

The two men had been facing several criminal charges over their actions, including one of damaging an archeological monument, RIA reported.

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