Extreme sport

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This article is about various Extreme Sports. For the TV channel, see Extreme Sports Channel.

Ice climbing is considered an extreme sport.

An extreme sport (also called action sport, adventure sport, and adventurous sport) is any sport 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). Furthermore, a recent study suggests that the link to adrenaline and 'true' extreme sports is tentative.^[1] The 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. 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 rarely seen 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.

Hang glider launching from Mount Tamalpais

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 "outdoorsy" 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, and house gymnastics.

The difference between the serious extreme sports and imitation or parody is not always obvious. For example, extreme wheelbarrow is often thought of as a parody, while this is not actually the case. It is a growing discipline, especially in the UK, on par with Freerunning in terms of trick difficulty. But to a Freerunner, extreme wheelbarrow would be considered a pale imitation of their art.

== ==Reasons== Some purists repudiate the [[stereotype|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 rigors of day-to-day existence, or simply love the wilderness environment in which many of these sports take place. Bob Drury, a [[paragliding|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. Eric Brymer PhD (2005) .<ref> Brymer, Eric PHD, ''Extreme Dude: A Phenomenological Perspective on the Extreme sports experience ''. University of Wollongong, Australia, 2005 </ref> 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. 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 (mountaineer)|Joe Simpson]]. Another example is [[surfing]], which was originally invented centuries ago by the native inhabitants of [[Hawaii]]. Several 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 {{Fact|date=February 2007}}, and lose much on their essential elements in the mainstream. {{Fact|date=February 2007}} ==