Extreme Sports

So-called "extreme" sports often seem unified more by the level of risk faced by participants than by any other factor. Extreme sports are contested on land, on water, and in the air. Some are winter sports, others summer, and still others are unaffected by weather. More alternatives are added almost every year.

Also called "alternative," "adventurous," or "action" sports, extreme sports place a premium on an image of independence. The explicit aim of many of the competitions and participants is to be unlike "mainstream" sports in every possible way. Celebrated for the amount of adrenaline they generate in competitors and audiences alike, extreme sports are noteworthy for the subculture they encourage and embrace. The goal is to remain outside the mainstream of team sports. The culture is highly youth-oriented, with a premium placed on creative self-expression through athleticism, irrespective of risk. A high value is also placed on the outsider attitude. England’s Extreme Sports Company describes this world:

• Extreme Sports are just not like mainstream sports. Past and present they are crawling with rebels, riders, drivers and rock stars. It’s not about uniforms, coaches or scripts. Expressing yourself through action is the key. It’s an attitude, a way of life, even a religion. Once you’re in, you’re in for life. (para. 1)

Extreme sports are expressive, unique, counter-cultural, and extraordinarily athletic. Competitors are willing to take exceptional risks, and in many cases make almost unbelievable demands on their bodies and minds. This all combines to make for great television.

Origins and History

Extreme sports began as a television show, an effort by cable network ESPN to increase its younger viewership with edgy, counter-cultural competitions. The name "extreme sports" derives from the made-for-TV sports event called the X Games that ESPN created in 1995. With the television success of the X Games festival, extreme sports became both well-known and lucrative.

However, the marketing-driven rise of extreme sports may have its origins in the Dangerous Sports Club of Oxford University. This group invented modern bungee jumping in 1979 by leaping from an English bridge on April Fools’ Day. They followed this with a jump from the Golden Gate Bridge and helped monetize the sport with a televised jump from the Royal Gorge Bridge in Colorado, which was broadcast on a show called That’s Incredible! The Dangerous Sports Club also tried hang-gliding from active volcanoes and an early form of BASE jumping.

Following the first X Games, the rise of extreme sports popularity was rapid. Two extreme sports were almost immediately included in the Olympics: mountain biking was added to the Summer Games in 1996, and snowboarding made its debut at the Winter Games in 1998.

Some of the original extreme sports are considered tame by current standards. For example, marathon running, rock climbing, and hang gliding were (and generally still are) considered extreme sports because of the extreme amounts of endurance and courage they require. But whereas marathons are still run and still require extreme endurance and mental toughness, the hard-core extreme-sports world has shifted its attention to obstacle-course racing, races of ten miles or more that include such obstacles as pits of fire, mud-filled trenches, and pools of water containing live electrical wires.

Some have compared the current varieties of high-risk extreme sports to gladiatorial contests from the Roman Empire—high-risk competitions put on to entertain an audience. In pursuit of an audience, organizers and athletes alike have constantly upped the ante, increasing the telegenic risks and drama of the activities.

Extreme sports have been driven mainly by televised events. Growth is also supported by sponsors, such as the Red Bull energy drink company, that want to be associated with the sports in order to create a relationship with their youthful audiences. Red Bull and other companies sponsor events such as the Red Bull Stratos, an extreme skydiving event that involves parachuting from an astonishing altitude. In 2012, one skydiver leaped from above 125,000 feet.

This example underscores the origins of most extreme sports: they develop as more-extreme version of current sports, which may be considered tamely "mainstream" by comparison. In other cases, extreme sports were inserted into known sports in order to add new interest in the variation. For example, a typical full triathlon involves swimming, distance bicycling, and running a standard marathon. The Red Bull Caveman triathlon involves running, kayaking, and mountain biking.

The obstacle-course endurance races are relatively new extreme sports and offer a good example of how quickly such events can become popular. Founded in 2010, Tough Mudder, one of the promoters of obstacle-course races, held three races that year. About 4,500 contestants took part in the first race, which was held in Pennsylvania. In 2015, Tough Mudder had scheduled fifty events in seven countries on three different continents. The company grew to a valuation above $70 million in less than five years and continued to find increased popularity into the next decade.

There are dozens of different activities that are now called "extreme sports." Some are centuries old, and others were invented within the last three years. Extreme Sports Company categorizes them by the medium—land, air, ice, or water—in or on which the competition takes place (para. 3–6):

Earth (on land) includes "Skateboarding, Longboarding, Mountain Boarding, Sandboarding, BMX, Motocross, FMX, Aggressive Inline Skating, Mountain Biking, Caving, Slacklining, Absailing, Rock Climbing, Free Climbing, Bouldering, Mountaineering, Parkour, Sand kiting, Zorbing."

Water includes "Surfing, Long/short, Body boarding, Waterskiing, Wakeboarding, Kitesurfing, Windsurfing, Cave diving, Flowboarding, Paddle surfing/Stand up paddle, Kayaking, Cliff Jumping, Coasteering, Scuba Diving, Knee Boarding, White Water Rafting, Skim Boarding, Jet Skiing."

Snow and ice includes "Snowboarding, Snow Skiing, Ice Climbing, Snowmobiling, Snow Kiting."

Air includes "BASE Jumping, Skydiving, Wing Suiting, Bungee Jumping, High-lining, Hang Gliding, Paragliding."

Omitted from the Extreme Sports Company list are many other well-known sports that may also be considered "extreme," such as Formula One racing, paintball, or roller derby. But these lack the key ingredient of creative self-expression.

Rules and Regulations

Extreme sports are not well-defined beyond their younger-than-average target market. Many of the sports are solitary, although some require teams, and many involve acrobatics that must be subjectively judged, like a figure skating or gymnastics competition. Moreover, many extreme sports, as categorized by the media, are subject to wide environmental variables.

These factors combine to make setting consistent rules and regulations difficult for many extreme sports. For example, a snowboarding competition is subject to changing terrain conditions. Even in a half-pipe—the U-shaped concrete structure used for some acrobatic snowboarding events—weather conditions cannot be guaranteed to be the same for all of the competitors.

The result is that unlike a traditional sport, where athletes compete against one another in controlled circumstances, many extreme sports are judged according to subjective and aesthetic measures. Others have traditional criteria that can be applied, such as speed or distance, for example in a BMX race or in ski jumping.

Thus the rules and regulations of extreme sports are impossible to generalize. Each sport has its own set of rules and regulations. The rules may be quite clear, but they apply to nothing else. And even the rules for a particular extreme sport may have several variations. BASE jumping is a good example. It began as a more-dangerous form of skydiving. The name BASE is an acronym for the four fixed objects from which a BASE jumper may leap: a building, an antenna, a span (bridge), or earth (a cliff).

Different sports have their own specifications regarding equipment. Most of the sports require certain safety equipment, such as helmets for skiers or pads and helmets for skateboarders.

To the extent that the sports fall into categories, they separate into three broad types of competitions. Some are scored subjectively, with points increased for more-difficult skills and points deducted for falls or other mistakes and typically aggregate multiple scores to determine places in the competition. This is the case for such sports as half-pipe snowboarding, kayak playboarding, skateboarding, surfing, water-skiing, and so on. Sports that are judged according to distance, height, speed, or other traditional criteria, including those where point deductions for form breaks or other style-oriented criteria apply, include freestyle skiing, freestyle skydiving, ski-jumping, and acrobatic motorcycling or snowmobiling, among others. Sports that involve head-to-head competition, with the winner being whoever finishes first, flies the longest distance, lands the closest to a target, and so on include skydiving, downhill skiing, snowboard racing, motocross, mountain biking, rock climbing, and on and on.

Strategy and Tactics

As is the case for rules and regulations that apply to extreme sports, there are almost as many different tactics and strategies as there are competitions. In many extreme sports, the goal is simply to perform stunts as perfectly as the competitor can. No other competitor can affect another’s performance. In this case, strategy plays no real role. Even though order of performance can affect judges’ reactions, the order is either drawn by lot or in order of point ranking. In either case, the competitor cannot do anything to change it except perform at their best.

In competitions with objective outcomes, such as snowboard racing or ice climbing, tactics and strategy are often determined by the changing environmental conditions of the racecourse.

Professional Leagues and Series

There is no single professional organization that oversees all extreme sports. The closest thing to an umbrella organization is the Extreme Sports Network on cable television. All of the sports have their own organizers who stage the competitions. Sometimes these organizations are in competition with one another. For example, three different companies organize obstacle-course races. The International Olympic Committee oversees the extreme sports that are part of the Summer and Winter Olympics. Kayaking, whitewater rafting, surfing, snowmobiling, and most other extreme sports all have their competitions organized and staged by their own professional organizations, each with its own set of championships. The goal in every case is to have the competitions or championships televised.

Given the outsider image cultivated by extreme sports competitors and marketing organizations alike, it might be supposed that there is little room for a professional extreme sports competitor. To a degree, this is true. It is difficult for an extreme sports athlete to make a career in the sport. Only snowboarding, skiing, surfing, and skateboarding have received international attention and recognition, although other sports also appear on television with some regularity. With a few exceptions, most of the athletes who manage to earn a living through their chosen sports do so through sponsorships. The prize money from competitions is sometimes impressive, but it is not a reliable income source.

Popularity

As with everything else in the extraordinarily varied world of extreme sports, the popularity of any given sport depends on the sport. But it is safe to say that nonstandard sports, or extreme sports, have rapidly gained popularity since the first X Games in 1995. This applies almost equally to participation and audience.

For example, participation in baseball dropped by twenty-eight percent between 1987 and 2008, according to XtremeSport (Jones para. 2). During the same period, skateboarding grew by forty-nine percent. The difference is not because skateboarding started from a low base. In absolute numbers, there were fourteen million skateboarders in the United States in 2008, as opposed to fewer than ten million baseball players.

A large part of the appeal for extreme sports participants is the excitement and adrenaline. This probably explains why extreme sports become more extreme over time. If the element of risk is a major draw, then the risks need to increase over time.

Similarly, the rising popularity of extreme sports on television—and in such traditional organizations as the Olympics—is attributable to the risks the athletes take. But perhaps just as important to the audience are the incredible feats of fearless athleticism that extreme athletes routinely perform.

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