What's so extreme about Extreme Sports?

November 22, 2005 12:40 PM

What's so extreme about Extreme Sports? According to the ads, Extreme Sports are the antidote to our safety-first, shrink-wrapped world. In reality, sports like skateboarding and mountain biking are more about the appearance of risk and marketing-driven terms like 'carving out your own path' rather than any particular danger. The reality of these Extreme Sports? Many are actually safer than traditional sports.
posted by fet (59 comments total)

not to sound snarky, but is this news to anyone? :-/
posted by slater at 12:46 PM on November 22, 2005

ON A SCALE FROM ONE TO TEN, WITH ONE BEING NOT AT ALL EXTREME, AND TEN BEING TOTALLY EXTREME, I GIVE THAT A NINE POINT FIVE!!!!
posted by wakko at 12:46 PM on November 22, 2005

In the 1980s, I used to combat the attitude that skateboarding was more unsafe than other traditional sports. I was the managing editor of Transworld Skateboarding Magazine at the time. It was when the Skateboarding is not a Crime meme started.

Most security guards or police, when questioned why they were kicking us out of a skate spot, would almost always cite our personal safety as the reason. It would have been easier and more honest if they would have said they were protecting the property.
posted by strangeleftydoublethink at 12:47 PM on November 22, 2005

I think this guy is confusing the people who do this stuff because of the marketing around it and are thus piled up with expensive, high tech gear, guides, etc and stick to pre-roped or pre-defined/pre-tested areas and the activities themselves which when done for the sheer hell of it are extremely dangerous. For example, I find it hard to believe that base jumping is inherently safer than rugby, given that you are going to DIE if anything at all goes wrong in base jumping, whereas in rugby at the worst you will break a leg or suffer a concussion. EVERY year people die on Everest. How many die every year in football, rugby, soccer, hockey combined?
posted by spicynuts at 12:53 PM on November 22, 2005

Tell this to skater's balls, will you?
posted by WolfDaddy at 12:57 PM on November 22, 2005

Space Moose! Now I know what I want to spend the rest of the afternoon re-reading.
posted by notmydesk at 12:58 PM on November 22, 2005

The main thing about the term 'Extreme' has been it's inclusion of an 'x' ... of critical importance in marketing terms...
posted by scheptech at 12:58 PM on November 22, 2005

I just went skydiving for the first time last week. It was intense, extreme, what have you. You realized that a miscalculation or malfunction meant death.

That doesn't happen in softball.

There's a reason that such a small percentage of the population will ever skydive or base-jump, while nearly everyone will end up playing baseball or soccer or something at some point in their life. This article is inane.
posted by allkindsoftime at 1:00 PM on November 22, 2005

Shouldn't the author have a cite for the contention that extreme sports are now safer than traditional ones?

4% of first-time snowboarders and skiers get injured. (cite) I also don't have a similar state for softball, but yikes!
posted by smackfu at 1:08 PM on November 22, 2005

The real danger is getting smacked upside the head for using a term like extreme sports in conversation. Go ahead, say extreme again...
posted by 2sheets at 1:12 PM on November 22, 2005

Dude, go big or go home.

Are you saying that base jumping is no more dangerous than kickball? Besides that, we're talking about performing feats of strength and skill while completely stoned, that's got to count for something, no?

Dude?
posted by Pollomacho at 1:20 PM on November 22, 2005

How many die every year in football, rugby, soccer, hockey combined?

Several. Collapsed rugby scrums often result in broken necks. A few people die this way each year, not to mention paralysis. My 30 seconds of Google fu was insufficient to turn up any actual statistics, but I'm sure you can find something if you're genuinely interested.

Also, if anything goes wrong while I'm crossing the road, I could die. Why isn't that thrilling?
posted by Soulfather at 1:25 PM on November 22, 2005

So where are the cites for deaths per hundred thousand numbers?

I'm a rock climber. People that call rock climbing an extreme sport make me want to slap them (climbing is the opposite of an adrenalin rush -- you must learn to be in control, not pumped up on flight-or-flight body chemistry), but people seem to put it in that camp anyway. Rock climbing is much safer than most think it is.

But I guarantee that climbing has a higher death per 100K than any of the team sports that people play. Every year, a handful of people die climbing in just the small population within a hundred miles of my stomping grounds. Injury threads on rockclimbing.com are all too common.

This guy seems to be talking out his ass. Yes, extreme sports have a lot of hype. Yes rugby or American football or horse riding are probably a lot more dangerous than many realize. Skateboarding and mountain biking might be less or similarly dangerous to football or rugby, but where the hell is is data? The author does not mention his source's data: I strongly suspect that he is either using non-scaled numbers, and not breaking out injury and death. Also, what sports are included in the list that horse riding is the most dangerous of? I doubt it includes climbing. Where are the numbers from?

But I would be very surprised if the statistical measure used was anything more than: how many people went to the emergency room playing sport X? It would skew the data to give exactly the conclusion that this author comes to. Maybe I'm wrong, but either way he has not backed up his contention with anything other than hand-waving.

(And trust me: the first time you find yourself on the side of a cliff a hundred feet off the ground, you'll realize very quickly that there is nothing hyped up about the risk of death. Yes, the guys that did it 50 years ago make today's climbers look like extreme wimps. But the risk of death is still very, very real. Every year people die in the Colorado Rockies in avalanches and rider-on-tree accidents. I sure don't hear about the yearly deaths on the football field).
posted by teece at 1:28 PM on November 22, 2005

for what it's worth, strapping yourself to a 7-foot-tall, 1500-lb easily-spooked and unpredictable animal, and riding over uneven terrain or jumps at 30 mph seems just as extreme (if not more so) than skateboarding. lumping equestrian in there with softball is a little disingenuous, i think.
posted by sergeant sandwich at 1:34 PM on November 22, 2005

Perhaps we should learn to differentiate between extreme sports that actually require masses of skill / endurance - like rock climbing and mountaineering. And really stupid "extreme sports" like bungee jumps which are not really sports at all in the traditional sense and are just adrenaline rushes.
posted by rhymer at 1:36 PM on November 22, 2005

Base jumping takes masses of skill.
posted by Pollomacho at 1:38 PM on November 22, 2005

Yeah - I've rock climbed, scuba dived, mountain biked, caved, snorboarded, kayaked, surfed.. But there's no way you'd get me on a damn horse.
posted by dickasso at 1:40 PM on November 22, 2005

Yeah - I've rock climbed, scuba dived, mountain biked, caved, snorboarded, kayaked, surfed.. But there's no way you'd get me on a damn horse.

Aw, that's just the booze talking.
posted by Pollomacho at 1:45 PM on November 22, 2005

Bungee jumping doesn't though.
posted by rhymer at 1:46 PM on November 22, 2005

you guys totally don't do the dew.
posted by thanatogenous at 1:46 PM on November 22, 2005

Extreme kayak!

Thank you come again!
posted by wakko at 1:52 PM on November 22, 2005

extreme ironing (inexplicably) involves ironing mid-skydive, up a mountain or under water.

Huh?
posted by kableh at 1:53 PM on November 22, 2005

Extreme ironing is a British joke. People take an ironing board and an iron to the side of a mountain or on a tightrope or suspended upside-down over a tank full of piranha, and, you know...
posted by iron chef morimoto at 1:59 PM on November 22, 2005

Bungee jumping doesn't though.

If I ever decide to go bungee jumping, they guy that ties me off had better have an exceptional level of skill.
posted by Pollomacho at 2:04 PM on November 22, 2005

... strapping yourself to a 7-foot-tall, 1500-lb easily-spooked and unpredictable animal, and riding over uneven terrain or jumps at 30 mph ...

Shit, just standing next to the damn things is intimidating enough. My friend's sister has a Hanoverian mare -- it's five and a half feet tall at the withers, built like the equine equivalent of a linebacker (and can move like one, too). If it does't want to do what she wants it to, it doesn't have to.

Most of the people I've known who ride across country have hurt themselves pretty badly at one time or another. Bridges and jaw reconstruction are really common. Broken necks and backs and spiral fractures and cracked skulls -- all come with the territory.

No wonder bicycles became so popular, so fast, back in the early 20th century.
posted by lodurr at 2:06 PM on November 22, 2005

My knee popped out briefly when I fell while cross country skiiing, and I screamed like a prepubescent schoolgirl under a city bus. That felt pretty extreme.
posted by CynicalKnight at 2:06 PM on November 22, 2005

I wouldn't be surprised in the least if horseback riding had more injuries than a sport like rock climbing. But I suspect climbing has more deaths. In climbing, a day is usually divided pretty starkly into two categories: everything went very well, or you died.

The number of days climbing where you don't die but do get injured are pretty small. I've never hurt myself rock climbing. But I have broken bones on inline skates and bike, and sprained joints skiing and hiking.

If I ever screw up climbing, I will die, barring some kind of a miracle. That's why measuring what sport is more dangerous can be quite tricky. The other thing that makes it hard is accounting for the fact that millions upon millions of people play football, while considerably less climb, so you must scale the data.

If you die riding a horse or playing football, it will generally just be a freak accident. While a freak accident can kill you climbing, too, more than likely it will be directly or indirectly due to you making a bad decision. That's why it's a more dangerous sport. You are, quite literally, making life and death decisions with every move climbing (and I'm talking about outdoor climbing on real cliffs, not indoor wall climbing. Climbing indoors is great training, but it's just training, and is remarkably safe. Way safer than most sports, probably). It's the same with back-country skiing. It's similar in lift skiing, but to a smaller degree.

That's why I think this author's premise is bunk. What he really wanted to do was gripe about a lack of team play, but he seems to have trumped up imaginary statistics to support that opinion. "Foul!"
posted by teece at 2:19 PM on November 22, 2005

The trick is to not have the horse fall ON you. Seriously.
posted by WolfDaddy at 2:22 PM on November 22, 2005

Horse back riding is easily the most dangerous sport I've ever been involved in. I've ridden my whole life (jumpers, eventing, dressage), done a lot of snowboarding and some climbing and used to date a pro boarder. I know way, way, way more people who've been killed, or badly injured riding than at any of the other sports. Major injury is pretty much a given if you spend any time riding at all. Concussions, broken bones, ACL tears etc, are incredibly commonplace. I can't think of a single rider I know who hasn't suffered at least a few of these. The sport used to really downplay injuries to the riders and has a very "suck it up" attitude- until recently you could get injured to the point of needing a hospital trip and return to compete the same day and it happened a lot. People still compete in casts and with broken ribs or hands/ feet all the time. One of the US Olympic Show Jumping team members did the entire trials with a badly shattered collarbone a few years ago, that he got falling off another horse.

I often wonder how people survived the horse transportation era of history.
posted by fshgrl at 2:23 PM on November 22, 2005

That doesn't happen in softball.

"There were 28 deaths associated with these team sports in 2000, with softball related deaths being the most frequently reported at eight deaths."

See, that's what happens when you let your guard down.
posted by queen zixi at 2:28 PM on November 22, 2005

Please don't call Mountain Climbing "extreme".
posted by signal at 2:39 PM on November 22, 2005

Extreme ironing.
posted by bumpkin at 2:39 PM on November 22, 2005

Some miscellaneous numbers:

Units of deaths per billion with one hour of risk exposure:

* Giving This lecture: < 1 * being vaccinated: 1.3 * living in an area where snakes are present: 3.8 * radiation exposure of world population to a local nuclear conflict: 5.0 * rail or bus travel in usa: 10.0 * rail or bus travel in britain: 50 * child asleep in crib: 140 * being struck by lightning: 200 * amateur boxing: 450 * climbing stairs: 550 * coal mining: 910 * hunting: 950 * automobile travel: 1200 * air travel: 1450 * cigarette smoking: 2600 * small boat boating: 3000 * swimming: 3650 * motorcycle riding: 6280 * serving in vietnam: 7935 * canoeing: 10000 * motorcycle racing: 35000 * alpine mountaineering: 40000 * professional boxing: 70000 * birth: 80000 in a million risk of death from the following: * 1.5 cigarettes * driving 50 files * flying 250 miles * 1.5 minutes of rock climbing * 6 minutes of canoeing * 20 minutes being a man aged 60 * 1-2 weeks of typical factory work /em>

(Source)
posted by bumpkin at 2:44 PM on November 22, 2005

If you die riding a horse or playing football, it will generally just be a freak accident.

[American] Football, sure, but not horseback riding. It's really the same as climbing: What you're doing is dangerous, and when you stop paying attention, you stand a really good chance of dying. The difference is that there are more moderately-bad scenarios in riding than in climbing. But it's real easy to get hurt really badly, as fshgrl notes.

Most of the stuff that gets called "extreme" isn't all that dangerous -- I agree with that, completely. If you really want to talk about edgy sports, you should be talking about things like climbing, cafe racing, F1, eventing and jumping, cliff diving, that kind of thing -- even competetive bicycle racing is fairly dangerous -- and it's all pretty traditional stuff, but for the most part not really stuff that generates a lot of merchandise sales.

"Extreme" doesn't mean "dangerous" -- it means "transgressive". It's not about danger -- it's about people feeling intimidated by the participants in the sport.
posted by lodurr at 2:49 PM on November 22, 2005

Found this here:

Baseball and softball - In 1998, more than 91,000 children and adolescents ages 5 to 14 were treated in hospital emergency rooms for baseball-related injuries, and nearly 26,000 children and adolescents ages 5 to 14 were treated for softball-related injuries.

Baseball also has the highest fatality rate among sports for children and adolescents ages 5 to 14, with three to four persons dying from baseball injuries each year.

-emphasis added.
posted by Crosius at 2:54 PM on November 22, 2005

I know way, way, way more people who've been killed, or badly injured riding than at any of the other sports.

Agreement here. I've had three concussions (two serious, all while wearing a helmet), degenerative disc disease and a herniated disc in my neck and a variety of more minor injuries in my years of riding, and I wouldn't consider my own injury history to be at all unusual (I know very, very few people who've ridden for any length of time who have never injured themselves). Yes, many of the serious injuries from equestrian sports are directly related to poor safety practices (not wearing a helmet, ignorance of safe behaviour around horses, riding an inappropriate horse, or over-estimating your own abilities, or the horse's), but most are simply a direct result of the intrinsic danger of the sport itself. I don't think you can accurately call the majority of serious injuries from equestrian sports "freak accidents" by any means, unless the entire sport is a freak accident waiting to happen.
posted by biscotti at 3:02 PM on November 22, 2005

Units of deaths per billion with one hour of risk exposure:

being struck by lightning: 200

So if a billion people were being struck by lightning for an hour, only 200 would die from it?
posted by PurplePorpoise at 3:08 PM on November 22, 2005

As you guys have shown, I don't know much about riding horses.
posted by teece at 3:14 PM on November 22, 2005

Yes, but nobody's arguing with your core ideas or your experiences, just that example.
posted by lodurr at 3:22 PM on November 22, 2005

You want horror stories? I nominate cheerleading.
posted by srboisvert at 3:37 PM on November 22, 2005

Units of deaths per billion with one hour of risk exposure:

being struck by lightning: 200

So if a billion people were being struck by lightning for an hour, only 200 would die from it?

One hour of "risk exposure", which I guess means wandering around outside in a thunderstorm. But what do I know, I just copied and pasted (badly, too, I might add) from some random website...
posted by bumpkin at 4:04 PM on November 22, 2005

'Course then you can get into the whole discussion about what IS a "sport"... and what is not. Base jumping, while certainly extreme, is not an extreme sport. It's not any kind of sport in my opinion. It's just base jumping, something you do. There's no way to compete (as it stands now anyway). Wanna add target shooting on the way down, for points, then we might have a sport.
posted by Necker at 4:33 PM on November 22, 2005

Necker, so only competitive activities can be sports? Don't know if I agree with that.

Most dangerous sporty thing I know of? Cave diving. Literally anything that goes wrong will probably kill you. Expert cave diving instructors die with depressing regularity.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 4:50 PM on November 22, 2005

Yeah, I don't know about that link, bumpkin. Especially as regards this discussion, since I suspect the swimming listed there is not swimming the sprt but swimming in general, and the latter is way more likely to kill you. Or maybe I have a new way to argue with my coaches.
posted by dame at 5:04 PM on November 22, 2005

Yep, I've had at least 5 concussions, dislocated shoulder, seperated my tibias, busted ribs, collarbone, fingers, toes, nose, sternum, tailbone and I was considered very injury free for the level I rode at. Never had to be carted off to the hospital once. OTOH I know jump jockeys who've broken the same bone 8 or 10 times. Which would suck. Yoga, joint supplements and sports massage has been popular with riders for a lot longer than the general population for a reason!

FWIW I don't really think of things like cave diving as a sport, more sort of a really technical expressed skill/ nerves-of-steel sustained mental exercise. I fully admit that I couldn't do it but I don't think it's a "sport".
posted by fshgrl at 6:08 PM on November 22, 2005

it looks like it may be safe to smoke cigarettes again.
posted by brandz at 6:30 PM on November 22, 2005

Going by Injuries, does MMA count as a X-treme sports?

No doubt it's a sports, and people get injuries from it alllllll the time. Any serious practioner usually won't practice/compete at their 100%, just becuase of injuries during training.

Or how about Ultra-Endurance Marathons? No adrenaline, just days and days of mile and miles of running. Imagine what happens to a person when do this:

The longest certified ultramarathon in the world is The Ultimate Ultra, the annual Sri Chinmoy 1300-Miler (2092 kilometers) which is held each fall in New York. There is also the annual Trans America Footrace, which is run in 64 consecutive daily stages from Los Angeles to New York. Runners cover almost 3,000 miles (more than 4800 kilometers) at a rate of about 45 miles (72 kilometers) a day.
posted by countzen at 6:45 PM on November 22, 2005

You know what's really extreme? Like....the most extreme sport? Mountain climbing.

Ha! Take that you nay-sayers and say-notters! In your face!
posted by graventy at 7:11 PM on November 22, 2005

When the term first appeared on the scene, I thought that "extreme" sports essentially meant "activities that aren't really sports that are done by people who aren't good at real sports and want to do something fun."

I don't claim to have that same defition now, but it is probably worth noting that there are probably a lot of people who still have some version of the above definition.

Now my definition of a sport would probably include having an opponent that you are trying to beat through a scoring system or by timing. Any activity's main purpose which is to try not to die does not qualify as a sport for me.
posted by flarbuse at 7:16 PM on November 22, 2005

Extreme! means getting up off the couch, anymore.
I met my wife climbing a 14 thousand foot peak in Colorado in December.
I've gone snowboarding on the backcountry in fresh powder.
Kayaking down Class 5's
Some of my group as parachuted. (not me yet)\We were thinking of base jumping next.

Otherwise we are working fools\couch potatoes.

Lone live the Extreme! Couch Potato(e)!
posted by Balisong at 8:09 PM on November 22, 2005

Ultra marathons are definitely extreme- a friend of mine was a pacer for one and said that at the 74 mile mark there was a sign that said "congratulations you only have one marathon left to go!". It wasn't flat either, they ran over a mountain range pretty much (Tevis).
posted by fshgrl at 8:46 PM on November 22, 2005

In the 1960s, skydiving was done by penniless daredevils using surplus US airforce chutes. One veteran recalls: 'It hurt like hell and you drifted mercilessly at the will of the wind until you crashed to the ground and it hurt like hell again.' (3) Now, he says, there are 'high-income jumpers who not only make eight jumps a day, but pay someone to pack their parachutes'.

And there are low-income jumpers who make 10 jumps a day and pack their own chutes. Todays DZ parking lots will have some BMW's and some clapped-out beaters. So what? Yeah, the old surplus chutes dropped you rather gracelessly in a heap while newer canopies can flare and land gently like aircraft. But if something goes wrong, the ground has not gotten any softer.

I jump with some of those '60s veterans, and none of them opt to use their old surplus equipment anymore, nor would they advise that the rest of us try. The new gear is safer -- and that seems okay with anyone who might actually use it.

I didn't quite understand the point of this article until I poked around the rest of the site. It's full of Andy-Rooney-meets-the Lone-Gunmen style screeds and exposés. Meh.
posted by Tubes at 9:25 PM on November 22, 2005

A few years ago it was widely reported that, in terms of deaths per 1000 adult participants, fishing was the most dangerous sport in Australia. IIRC, golf was 2nd, horse riding was 3rd, marathon / distance running was 4th, and BASE jumping was 5th or 6th.

Forgetting the "per 1000" bit, lawn bowls apparently has the highest total number of deaths per year...
posted by Pinback at 9:32 PM on November 22, 2005

Extreme horse riding killed superman. Eventually.
posted by The Monkey at 10:11 PM on November 22, 2005

Please don't call Mountain Climbing "extreme".

Most moutain climbing isn't. Anything over 8000m/26240ft - however, rates as such.

Hint: They call that the Death Zone. When you are there, you are dying. The trick is to get to the top, and back down, before you do.
posted by eriko at 5:33 AM on November 23, 2005

You know what's really extreme? Extreme Doritos. Man, wow.

(From my experience, skydiving is safer than horseback riding, but the "sport" I got the worst injury from? Sledding, and even that barely counts. I stepped in a snowcovered hole and wrenched my ankle to the point of being laid up for almost a month. It's still weak and sore, a year later. EXTREME WALKING! Past that, I'd figure boxing or kickboxing. While I managed to get hurt doing judo, I wasn't getting my brains beaten in...)
posted by klangklangston at 8:55 AM on November 23, 2005

risk of death from the following: [...] * driving 50 files

That's why our software department has so many empty cubicles.
posted by CynicalKnight at 12:11 PM on November 23, 2005

Superman was competing at Beginner Novice level if I remember correctly, two levels below the lowest recognized amateur level of eventing. That WAS a freak accident.
posted by fshgrl at 12:24 PM on November 23, 2005

Lois Lane lived in a woodpile. Now that's extreme.
posted by CynicalKnight at 10:25 AM on November 24, 2005