Extreme sport
Extreme sport (also called
action sport ,
adventure sport, and
adventurous sport) is a general term for
sports featuring speed, height, danger, a high level of physical exertion, highly specialized gear, or spectacular stunts. A feature of such activities in the view of some is their alleged capacity to induce a so-called
adrenaline rush in participants (a misnomer, since often the rush or high obtained is a product of increased levels of
dopamine endorphins and
serotonin). Another characteristic of activities so labeled is they tend to be individual rather than team sports. Extreme sports can include both competitive and non-competitive activities.
Extreme sports are often associated with young adults wishing to push themselves to the limits of their physical ability and fear, in turn pushing the boundaries of a particular sport. This youthful demographic accounts too for extreme sports' frequent association with
youth culture, including its clothing,
fashions, and
music.
Some contend that the distinction between an extreme sport and a conventional one is as much to do with
marketing as it is to do with perceptions about levels of danger involved or the amount of adrenaline generated.
Snowboarding thus has a more extreme
image than
skiing due to differing marketing strategies and the fact of being a newer sport, even though skiing is a faster and at least equally dangerous activity. Furthermore a sport like
Rugby Union, though dangerous and adrenaline-inducing, would not fall into the category of extreme sports due to its traditional image.
Scuba diving is not often categorized as an extreme sport these days, despite the level of danger and physical exertion, because of its primarily adult demographic. Another example: compare the perception of
demolition derby, not usually thought of as an extreme sport, to that of
BMX racing, which is. Demolition derby has an adult demographic, BMX is a youth sport.
The definition of extreme sports may have shifted over the years due to marketing trends. When the term first surfaced circa the late 1980s/early 1990s, it was used for adult sports such as skydiving, scuba diving, surfing, rock climbing, mountaineering, storm chasing, hang gliding, and bungee jumping, many of which were undergoing an unprecedented growth in popularity at the time.
Outside magazine, not the X Games, epitomized the meaning of the term, and if there was a clothing style associated with extreme sports it was an "ourdoorsy" look favoring brand names associated with mountaineering or backpacking such as The North Face and Patagonia, Teva sandals or hiking boots for footwear, etc. The term nowadays applies more to youth sports like skateboarding, snowboarding, and BMX and is closely associated with marketing efforts aimed at youth (e.g. the ad campaigns of
Mountain Dew), and with their favored styles of clothing and music, especially the kind of urban baggy look associated with skateboarders, and loud, fast alternative rock. This shift in styles may also be partly a generational shift, as
Baby Boomers and
Generation X have aged and marketing efforts associated with extreme sports shifted toward the younger
Generation Y demographic sometime in the mid to late 1990s.
The term gained popularity with the advent of the
X Games, a made-for-television collection of events.
Advertisers were quick to recognise the appeal of the event to the public, as a consequence competitors and organisers are not wanting for sponsorship these days. The high profile of extreme sports and the culture surrounding them has also led people to invent parodies, such as
Extreme ironing,
urban housework,
extreme croquet,
extreme unicycling, house gymnastics, and
extreme wheelbarrow.
Some purists repudiate the
stereotypical "adrenaline junkie" tag. The practitioners would claim they enjoy developing their physical and/or mental skills, seek mastery of inhospitable environments, look to escape from the mundane rigours of day-to-day existence, or simply love the wilderness environment in which many of these sports take place. Bob Drury, a
paraglider pilot says, "We do these things not to escape life, but to prevent life escaping us"—even though accidents in these sports could be fatal. Many participants also don't think of their activities as either
extreme or
sports at all. To the most passionate purists, the
sport label doesn't fit because they aren't competing to win anything. Worse, the
extreme label has frequently been blamed for stereotyping participants in these activities as stupid, reckless, and even suicidal.
Some of the sports have existed for decades and their proponents span generations, some going on to become well known personalities.
Rock climbing and
ice climbing have spawned publicly recognisable names such as
Edmund Hillary,
Chris Bonington and more recently
Joe Simpson. Another example is
surfing, which was originally invented centuries ago by the native inhabitants of
Hawaii.
Several so-called extreme sports, including snowboarding, were included in the
2002 Winter Olympic Games and
2006 Winter Olympic Games, but many contend that these activities are not even sports , and lose much on their essential elements in the mainstream.
The following are sometimes classified as extreme sports:
*
Airsoft*
Aggressive skating*
BASE jumping*
Bodyboarding*
Bouldering*
Brutal Woods*
Buildering*
Bungee jumping*
Caving *
Cave diving *
Climbing*
Drag racing *
Extreme skiing*
Freebording*
Free-diving*
Hang gliding*
Ice climbing*
Whitewater kayaking*
Kitesurfing/Kiteboarding*
Kite Landboarding*
Kneeboarding *
Mountain biking *
Mountain boarding*
Mountaineering*
Noodling*
Paintball *
Paragliding *
Paramotoring*
Parkour*
Pogo sticking*
Poweriser *
Whitewater rafting *
Rock climbing *
Roller derby*
Scuba diving*
Skateboarding*
Skiboarding*
Skydiving *
Skysurfing *
Slamball *
Snakeboarding*
Snowboarding*
Snowskating*
Storm chasing*
Street luge*
Stunt pogo *
Surfing*
Tricking*
Unicycling*
Urban kayaking*
Wakeboarding*
Water skiing *
Windsports *
Windsurfing*
Zorbing*
What's so extreme about extreme sports? Extreme sports as part marketing hype and part individualism.
*
YoungFools.co.uk Extreme sports for young people.
*
CBC Digital Archives - Extreme Sports: Faster, Riskier, More Outrageous*
Extreme Sports Channel - Skate, BMX, Snow, MTB, Moto and more.
*
Extreme Sports Cafe - Global extreme sports advice.
