"The body shuts down. It's a protective mechanism of the body." The confident and pedantic tone of the sportscaster belied the utter ignorance of the statement, made after a competitor fell on a bicycle jump in a competition called the ProBMX and was knocked unconscious. This was not a protective event like a circuit breaker or a computer turning itself off, this was evidence of severe damage to a young man's brain. But insight is not what is on display here.
BMX competition is a bike competition involving racing and tricks. It is very popular among young people and anyone can sign up. It is part of a growing number of sports that one might call "nontraditional." Hang gliding. BASE jumping (an acronym standing for Building, Antennae, Span and Earth). Skydiving. Snowboarding. Bungee jumping. Snowmobiling. They call it "Extreme," as if that were good. While these are diverse pursuits, the single common thread is danger, physical risk to the participant.
And there is a lot. Over the past five years, for every 1,000 participants, skydiving has claimed 3.3 lives and BASE jumping kills 44. The figures for hang gliding show 3.8 fatalities for every 1,000 attempts. The most deadly extreme sporting pursuit, however, is mountain climbing; for every 1,000 attempts to scale K2 (located between China and Pakistan), 104 have ended in death.
Organized sport tells a lot about us. While the original Olympics was Initially a single sprinting event, the Olympics gradually expanded to include several footraces, (run in the nude or in armor), boxing, wrestling, pankration (remarkably similar to mixed martial arts), chariot racing, long jump, javelin throw, and discus throw--the resemblance to military acts was not coincidental. But even games in the shadow of military acts were games. They might recall violence but, like a drama, they were play. Games.
Things have changed. The violence of American football is legendary; in European football the violence has moved into the stands. And when business gets involved a new element is added. But nothing quite explains the rise of extreme sports better than our horror of dead T.V. time. Mixed martial arts pits violent men against each other in what looks exactly like a bar fight. Skateboards--a technology waiting for a sport, snow mountain-bike racing, ice climbing, and snowmobile racing with tricks have all become available to sell Miller Light after football as America awaits baseball season.
At the Winter X Games, Caleb Moore crashed after under-rotating a standard back flip on a snowmobile, a maneuver his competitor Cory Davis said Moore had landed "hundreds of times." Moore tumbled over the handlebars and the 450-pound machine slammed into him, briefly knocking him unconscious. He was able to walk away from the accident to an ambulance. While the doctors in Aspen were treating Moore for a concussion, they found bleeding in his chest. He was airlifted to Grand Junction. Moore had heart surgery the next morning, and over the weekend he developed what his family called "a brain complication." He died.
Moore's brother Colten dislocated his pelvis on the same jump less an 30 minutes after Caleb's crash. New Zealand snowboarder Rose Battersby sustained a lumbar spinal fracture during a practice session. The previous year skier Sarah Burke was killed two weeks before the event during a training session in the superpipe in Park City, Utah. On the alpine racing World Cup circuit there have been three deaths since 1991. Austrian Gernot Reinstadler died during a training run in 1991. Austrian Ulrike Maier during a crash in a 1994 downhill race. The dynamic Régine Cavagnoud of France who became a world champion in February at St Anton in Austria, winning the super-G, was killed at practice.
Paul Thacker and eight-time X Games snowcross medalist Blair Morgan were constant rivals. Thacker was training for the 2011 X Games when he said he "landed funny" and the handlebars hit him in his chest. The impact dislocated vertebrae in his back, bruised his spinal cord and left him a paraplegic. Morgan, too, is paralyzed from a crash in a 2008 motor cross race which severed his spinal cord.
Geoffrey Robson completed his Master's degree at the University of Stellenbosch, and was a PhD student at the ETH in Switzerland, where he conducted research on the wingsuit. Wingsuit flying is the sport of flying with an airfoil which creates lift, enabling BASE jumpers to fly down more horizontally, before opening their parachutes for a safe landing. It is absolutely hair-raising to watch. He flew a new route from the Groot Drakenstein mountains above Boschendal, near Stellenbosch, South Africa, and recorded it on his helmet-mounted camera. One week later he tried the same route, but tried to cross a different ridge, failed to clear the ridge and was killed.
People climb a mountain because it is there; they do Extreme sports for fame and money. No one would deny the adventurer the right to climb his mountain nor the wingsuit flyer the right to do with his body what he will. But at some point the broken bodies of brave young people should trigger some reflection on the part of a thoughtful society. What is their passive entertainment worth? How many people must be killed to fill a Saturday afternoon? And what is next? Will our search for adrenalin demand more and more? Will we set up a chainsaw juggling league? Tightrope walking, the Wallendas vs. Team Boise?
Sport is a noble pursuit. Wise societies have recognized its value for both participants and observers. But there is--and should be--a difference between athletics and the circus. Athletics, like drama, should contain the promise of ennobling the participant and the audience. It is the modern substitute for theater. But theater should be more than risk and spectacle.
We should know that.
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