Action sports, adventure sports or extreme sports are activities perceived as involving a high degree of risk of injury or death. [1] [2] [3] These activities often involve speed, height, a high level of physical exertion and highly specialized gear. [1] Extreme tourism overlaps with extreme sport. The two share the same main attraction, "adrenaline rush" caused by an element of risk, and differ mostly in the degree of engagement and professionalism.
There is no precise definition of an 'extreme sport' and the origin of the term is unclear but it gained popularity in the 1990s when it was picked up by marketing companies to promote the X Games and when the Extreme Sports Channel and Extreme International launched. More recently, the commonly used definition from research is "a competitive (comparison or self-evaluative) activity within which the participant is subjected to natural or unusual physical and mental challenges such as speed, height, depth or natural forces and where fast and accurate cognitive perceptual processing may be required for a successful outcome" by Dr. Rhonda Cohen (2012). [4] [5]
While the use of the term "extreme sport" has spread everywhere to describe a multitude of different activities, exactly which sports are considered 'extreme' is debatable. There are, however, several characteristics common to most extreme sports. [6] While they are not the exclusive domain of youth, extreme sports tend to have a younger-than-average target demographic. Extreme sports are also rarely sanctioned by schools for their physical education curriculum. [7] Extreme sports tend to be more solitary than many of the popular traditional sports [8] (rafting and paintballing are notable exceptions, as they are done in teams).
Activities categorized by media as extreme sports differ from traditional sports due to the higher number of inherently uncontrollable variables. These environmental variables are frequently weather and terrain-related, including wind, snow, water and mountains. Because these natural phenomena cannot be controlled, they inevitably affect the outcome of the given activity or event.
In a traditional sporting event, athletes compete against each other under controlled circumstances. While it is possible to create a controlled sporting event such as X Games, there are environmental variables that cannot be held constant for all athletes. Examples include changing snow conditions for snowboarders, rock and ice quality for climbers, and wave height and shape for surfers.
Whilst traditional sporting judgment criteria may be adopted when assessing performance (distance, time, score, etc.), extreme sports performers are often evaluated on more subjective and aesthetic criteria. [9] This results in a tendency to reject unified judging methods, with different sports employing their own ideals [10] and indeed having the ability to evolve their assessment standards with new trends or developments in the sports.
The origin of the divergence of the term "extreme sports" from "sports" may date to the 1950s in the appearance of a phrase usually, but wrongly, attributed to Ernest Hemingway. [11] The phrase is;
There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games.
The implication of the phrase was that the word "sport" defined an activity in which one might be killed, other activities being termed "games." The phrase may have been invented by either writer Barnaby Conrad or automotive author Ken Purdy. [11]
The Dangerous Sports Club of Oxford University, England was founded by David Kirke, Chris Baker, Ed Hulton and Alan Weston. They first came to wide public attention by inventing modern day bungee jumping, by making the first modern jumps on 1 April 1979, from the Clifton Suspension Bridge, Bristol, England. They followed the Clifton Bridge effort with a jump from the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, California (including the first female bungee jump by Jane Wilmot), and with a televised leap from the Royal Gorge Suspension Bridge in Colorado, sponsored by and televised on the popular American television program That's Incredible! Bungee jumping was treated as a novelty for a few years, then became a craze for young people, and is now an established industry for thrill seekers.
The club also pioneered a surrealist form of skiing, holding three events at St. Moritz, Switzerland, in which competitors were required to devise a sculpture mounted on skis and ride it down a mountain. The event reached its limits when the Club arrived in St. Moritz with a London double-decker bus, wanting to send it down the ski slopes, and the Swiss resort managers refused.
Other Club activities included expedition hang gliding from active volcanoes; the launching of giant (20 m) plastic spheres with pilots suspended in the centre (zorbing); microlight flying; and BASE jumping (in the early days of this sport).
In recent decades the term extreme sport was further promoted after the Extreme Sports Channel, Extremesportscompany.com launched and then the X Games, a multi-sport event was created and developed by ESPN. [12] [13] The first X Games (known as 1995 Extreme Games) were held in Newport, Providence, Mount Snow, and Vermont in the United States. [14] [15]
Certain extreme sports clearly trace back to other extreme sports, or combinations thereof. For example, windsurfing was conceived as a result of efforts to equip a surfboard with a sailing boat's propulsion system (mast and sail). Kitesurfing on the other hand was conceived by combining the propulsion system of kite buggying (a parafoil) with the bi-directional boards used for wakeboarding. Wakeboarding is in turn derived from snowboarding and waterskiing.
Some contend [16] that the distinction between an extreme sport and a conventional one has as much to do with marketing as with the level of danger involved or the adrenaline generated. For example, rugby union is both dangerous and adrenaline-inducing but is not considered an extreme sport due to its traditional image, and because it does not involve high speed or an intention to perform stunts (the aesthetic criteria mentioned above) and also it does not have changing environmental variables for the athletes.
A feature of such activities in the view of some is their alleged capacity to induce an adrenaline rush in participants. [17] However, the medical view is that the rush or high associated with the activity is not due to adrenaline being released as a response to fear, but due to increased levels of dopamine, endorphins and serotonin because of the high level of physical exertion. [18] Furthermore, recent studies suggest that the link to adrenaline and 'true' extreme sports is tentative. [19] [20] Brymer and Gray's study defined 'true' extreme sports as a leisure or recreation activity where the most likely outcome of a mismanaged accident or mistake was death. This definition was designed to separate the marketing hype from the activity.
Eric Brymer [21] also found that the potential of various extraordinary human experiences, many of which parallel those found in activities such as meditation, was an important part of the extreme sport experience. Those experiences put the participants outside their comfort zone and are often done in conjunction with adventure travel.
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 recognizable names such as Edmund Hillary, Chris Bonington, Wolfgang Güllich and more recently Joe Simpson. Another example is surfing, invented centuries ago by the inhabitants of Polynesia, it will become national sport of Hawaii. [22]
Disabled people participate in extreme sports. Nonprofit organizations such as Adaptive Action Sports seek to increase awareness of the participation in action sports by members of the disabled community, as well as increase access to the adaptive technologies that make participation possible and to competitions such as The X Games.[ promotion? ] [23] [24]
Extreme sports may be perceived as extremely dangerous, conducive to fatalities, near-fatalities and other serious injuries. The perceived risk in an extreme sport has been considered a somewhat necessary part of its appeal, [25] which is partially a result of pressure for athletes to make more money and provide maximum entertainment. [26]
Extreme sports is a sub-category of sports that are described as any kind of sport "of a character or kind farthest removed from the ordinary or average". [27] These kinds of sports often carry out the potential risk of serious and permanent physical injury and even death. [28] However, these sports also have the potential to produce drastic benefits on mental and physical health and provide opportunity for individuals to engage fully with life. [20]
Extreme sports trigger the release of the hormone adrenaline, which can facilitate performance of stunts. [29] It is believed that the implementation of extreme sports on mental health patients improves their perspective and recognition of aspects of life. [28]
In outdoor adventure sports, participants get to experience the emotion of intense thrill, usually associated with the extreme sports. [30] Even though some extreme sports present a higher level of risk, people still choose to embark in the experience of extreme sports for the sake of the adrenaline. According to Sigmund Freud, we have an instinctual 'death wish', which is a subconscious inbuilt desire to destroy ourselves, proving that in the seek for the thrill, danger is considered pleasurable. [31]
Wakeboarding is a water sport in which the rider, standing on a wakeboard, is towed behind a motorboat across its wake and especially up off the crest in order to perform aerial maneuvers. A hallmark of wakeboarding is the attempted performance of midair tricks. Wakeboarding was developed from a combination of water skiing, snowboarding and surfing techniques.
Winter sports or winter activities are competitive sports or non-competitive recreational activities which are played on snow or ice. Most are variations of skiing, ice skating and sledding. Traditionally, such games were only played in cold areas during winter, but artificial snow and artificial ice allow more flexibility. Playing areas and fields consist of either snow or ice.
Boardsports are active outdoor sports that are played with any sort of board as the primary equipment. These sports take place on a variety of terrains, from paved flat-ground and snow-covered hills to water and air. Most boardsports are considered action sports or extreme sports, and thus often appeal to youth. Some board sports were marginalized in the past. However, many board sports are gaining mainstream recognition, and with this recognition, they have gotten wider broadcasting, sponsorship and inclusion in institutional sporting events, including the Olympic Games.
Bungee jumping, also spelled bungy jumping, is an activity that involves a person jumping from a great height while connected to a large elastic cord. The launching pad is usually erected on a tall structure such as a building or crane, a bridge across a deep ravine, or on a natural geographic feature such as a cliff. It is also possible to jump from a type of aircraft that has the ability to hover above the ground, such as a hot-air-balloon or helicopter. The thrill comes from the free-falling and the rebound. When the person jumps, the cord stretches and the jumper flies upwards again as the cord recoils, and continues to oscillate up and down until all the kinetic energy is dissipated.
Extreme ironing is an extreme sport in which people take ironing boards to remote locations and iron items of clothing. According to the Extreme Ironing Bureau, extreme ironing is "the latest dangerous sport that combines the thrills of an extreme outdoor activity with the satisfaction of a well-pressed shirt."
Kiteboarding or kitesurfing is a sport that involves using wind power with a large power kite to pull a rider across a water, land, snow, sand, or other surface. It combines the aspects of paragliding, surfing, windsurfing, skateboarding, snowboarding, and wakeboarding. Kiteboarding is among the less expensive and more convenient sailing sports.
A trampoline is a device consisting of a piece of taut, strong fabric stretched between a steel frame often using many coiled springs. People bounce on trampolines for recreational and competitive purposes.
X-Treme Sports was a Canadian English language category 2 television channel owned by Canwest Media Inc., a division of Canwest Global Communications. X-Treme Sports aired a variety of programming primarily related to extreme sports.
Adventure travel is a type of tourism, involving exploration or travel with a certain degree of risk, and which may require special skills and physical exertion. In the United States, adventure tourism has seen growth in late 20th and early 21st century as tourists seek out-of-the-ordinary or "roads less traveled" vacations, but lack of a clear operational definition has hampered measurement of market size and growth. According to the U.S.-based Adventure Travel Trade Association, adventure travel may be any tourist activity that includes physical activity, a cultural exchange, and connection with outdoor activities and nature.
The Dangerous Sports Club was a group of adventurers and extreme sports pioneers based in Oxford and London, England. They were active from the late 1970s for about ten years, during which they developed modern bungee jumping and experimented with a variety of other innovative sporting activities.
A contact sport is any sport where physical contact between competitors, or their environment, is an integral part of the game. For example, gridiron football. Contact may come about as the result of intentional or incidental actions by the players in the course of play. This is in contrast to noncontact sports where players often have no opportunity to make contact with each other and the laws of the game may expressly forbid contact. In contact sports some forms of contact are encouraged as a critical aspect of the game such as tackling, while others are incidental such as when shielding the ball or contesting an aerial challenge. As the types of contact between players is not equal between all sports they define the types of contact that is deemed acceptable and fall within the laws of the game, while outlawing other types of physical contact that might be considered expressly dangerous or risky such as a high tackle or spear tackle, or against the spirit of the game such as striking below the belt or other unsportsmanlike conduct. Where there is a limit as to how much contact is acceptable most sports have a mechanism to call a foul by the referee, umpire or similar official when an offence is deemed to have occurred.
Jack Osbourne: Adrenaline Junkie is a British reality television series on ITV2, series 1 focused on Jack Osbourne's globe-trekking six-month quest to get in physical and mental shape to climb the rockface of California's El Capitan mountain, the show documents Osbourne running with the bulls in Pamplona, Spain, following a strict exercise regimen, Muay Thai training in Thailand, and "an overall 180-degree mental make-over".
Extreme tourism, also often referred to as danger tourism or shock tourism is a niche in the tourism industry involving travel to dangerous places or participation in dangerous events. Extreme tourism overlaps with extreme sport. The two share the main attraction, "adrenaline rush" caused by an element of risk, and differ mostly in the degree of engagement and professionalism.
BBC Earth is a Canadian discretionary service channel owned by Blue Ant Media. It is a localized version of the international BBC Earth brand, which is licensed from BBC Studios, a subsidiary of the BBC. The channel broadcasts factual programming related to natural history and wildlife.
Wakesurfing is a water sport in which a rider trails behind a boat, riding the boat's wake without being directly pulled by the boat. After getting up on the wake, typically by use of a tow rope, the wakesurfers will drop the rope, and ride the steep face below the wave's peak in a fashion reminiscent of surfing. Wakesurfers generally use special boards, designed specifically for wakes.
Outdoor recreation or outdoor activity refers to recreation done outside, most commonly in natural settings. The activities that encompass outdoor recreation vary depending on the physical environment they are being carried out in. These activities can include fishing, hunting, backpacking, walking and horseback riding — and can be completed individually or collectively. Outdoor recreation is a broad concept that encompasses a varying range of activities and landscapes.
David Antony Christopher Potter, known as David Kirke, was a British sportsperson.
Extreme sports feature a combination of speed, height, danger and spectacular stunts.
6. Sports: a. Very dangerous or difficult: extreme rafting. b. Participating or tending to participate in a very dangerous or difficult sport: an extreme skier.
Denoting or relating to a sport performed in a hazardous environment and involving great physical risk, such as parachuting or white-water rafting.
The dictionary definition of extreme sport at Wiktionary| Authority control databases: National |
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