Action sports, adventure sports or extreme sports are activities perceived as involving a high degree of risk of injury or death. These activities often involve speed, height, a high level of physical exertion and highly specialized gear. 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.
Snowboarding is a recreational and competitive activity that involves descending a snow-covered surface while standing on a snowboard that is almost always attached to a rider's feet. It features in the Winter Olympic Games and Winter Paralympic Games.
Shaun Roger White is an American former professional snowboarder and skateboarder. He is a five-time Olympian and a three-time Olympic gold medalist in half-pipe snowboarding. He holds the world record for the most X Games gold medals and most Olympic gold medals by a snowboarder. He has also won 10 ESPY Awards throughout his career in various categories.
Terje Håkonsen is a Norwegian professional snowboarder. He is considered one of the most influential snowboarders in the history of the sport. In the book The way of the snowboarder, Rob Reed wrote that "Haakonsen took the young sport of snowboarding and revolutionized nearly every aspect of it".
Gretchen ElisabethBleiler is an American former professional halfpipe snowboarder. She won a silver medal at the 2006 Olympics.
Sole Technology, Inc., known informally as Sole Tech, is an American footwear and apparel company, specializing in skate shoe design, production and distribution. The company is owned and operated by Pierre-André Senizergues, a former professional freestyle skateboarder. The company's headquarters are in Lake Forest, California, United States.
Shaun Palmer is an American professional snowboarder, skier, mountain biker, and motocross rider. Nicknamed "Napalm" and "Palm Daddy", he is known as one of the forefathers of extreme sports. He won the Laureus World Action Sportsperson of the Year in 2000.
Fuel TV is a sports-orientated digital cable and satellite television action sports channel owned by FUEL TV Global, S.A. The channel is focused on the culture of extreme sports such as skateboarding, snowboarding, wakeboarding, motocross, surfing, BMX, FMX and is available in many countries including Portugal, China, North Africa and the Middle East.
Seth Morrison is a professional skier. He has won many competitions and has appeared in a number of ski movies. He is best known for jumping off cliffs from extreme heights.
Johan Olofsson is a snowboarder from Gällivare, Sweden. He is known for being one of the first riders to take freestyle tricks more commonly performed in man-made terrain parks into the big mountain freeriding environments of Alaska. Olofsson originally came from a freestyle background; when he arrived on the Alaskan snowboarding scene, he quickly adapted his spin tricks and jibs to the backcountry environment. Olofsson rapidly gained attention and respect from the freeriding community when he started doing these tricks off natural features such as windlips and cliffs in the midst of terrifyingly steep lines in the Alaskan ranges.
Jeremy Jones is an American professional snowboarder and businessman who is the founder of Jones Snowboards. In addition to creating and improving his line of snowboards, Jones works to create films that record his climbing and snowboarding adventures around the world. In November 2012, Jones was selected by National Geographic as a nominee for Adventurer of the Year, based on his "remarkable achievements in exploration, conservation, humanitarianism, and adventure sports." Jones is also the founder of the non-profit group, Protect Our Winters, which works to reduce the effects of global climate change by means of educational, activist and community-based projects. He is sponsored by: O'Neill, POC, CLIF Bar, Scott, Giro, 661 and Blue Bird Wax.
Jenny Jones is a British professional snowboarder who became the first Briton to win an Olympic medal in a snow event after winning bronze in slopestyle at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.
Backcountry snowboarding is snowboarding in a sparsely inhabited rural region over ungroomed and unmarked slopes or pistes in the backcountry, frequently amongst trees, usually in pursuit of fresh fallen snow, known as powder. Often, the land and the snow pack are not monitored, patrolled, or maintained. Fixed mechanical means of ascent such as ski lifts are typically not present, but alternative means such as splitboarding, hiking, snowshoeing and helicopters ("heliskiing") are sometimes used to reach the mountain's peak.
John Paul Walker, or JP, nicknamed "The Don", is a professional snowboarder from Salt Lake City, Utah. In the late 1990s he was instrumental in reviving the jib movement.
Lynsey Dyer is an American freestyle skier and big mountain skier. She co-founded the non-profit SheJumps.org and founded the movie production and apparel company Unicorn Picnic, encouraging girls and women to participate in the outdoors through mentorship.
Stephen Koch is an American adventurer, extreme snowboarder, mountaineer, and pioneer in the field of snowboard mountaineering, a term he coined. He is best known as the first and only person to snowboard on all Seven Summits, the highest peak on each continent. Koch is also the first to snowboard all the major Teton peaks in Wyoming.
Chris Christenson is an American surfboard shaper, craftsman, and outdoor enthusiast.
Angel Jason Collinson, a former American professional free and big mountain skier, was the first woman to win the "Best Line" award at the Powder Magazine annual industry awards in 2015. That year, she starred in big-time ski film Paradise Waits, by Teton Gravity Research (TGR), in which she became the first woman to appear in a TGR finale. She was sponsored by The North Face as a big mountain skier. In 2021 she retired from skiing to focus on blue water sailing and lifestyle branding.
"Sick" Rick Armstrong is a professional skier, freeskiing pioneer, mountaineer, paraglider, businessman and serial entrepreneur based in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. He was a pioneering guide in the early years of Alaska Heli-skiing while working as a lead guide for Valdez Heli-skiing and Doug Coombs as chronicled in the 2007 feature film Steep. He was a member of the ultra-elite group of skiers called the Jackson Hole Airforce who transformed skiing in the 1990s and 2000s. He is known for having skied unskied lines such as his first and unrepeated massive drop into the left side of the notorious Corbet's Couloir at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort. He was the first person to have both skied and snowboarded the Grand Teton in Teton National Park. He has many first ski descents in China, Alaska, Europe, Antarctica, South America, and South Georgia Island. He was an athlete in the 1998 and 1999 Winter X-Games in Crested Butte. He was Awarded sponsorships by The North Face and Salomon. He also became an athlete talent scout for The North Face building a world-class ski team by discovering soon to be ski stars such as Sage-Cattabriga-Alosa, Ingrid Backstrom, Kitt Deslauries, Griffen Post, and Hillary Nelson. Armstrong was also a co-founder of the Teton Gravity Research film production company. He served on the board of directors for Intrawest from 2012 to 2017.
Edge of the Earth is a 2022 HBO documentary television miniseries that follows four different extreme sports expeditions undertaken by elite athletes. Each episode follows a different group traveling to a remote area. The outdoor sports highlighted are snowboarding, kayaking, rock climbing, and surfing. Everywhere the athletes go, they witness the impact of climate change and industry on the landscape and society. The series was filmed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
