Are Weird Sports Extreme Sports?
It’s Friday and I can’t wait for the weekend to begin. I am hung over after a fun Thursday night and all I can think about is a conversation we were having in the pub last night. The hot question was Are Weird Sports Extreme Sports? By this I am talking about those rather random (and normally British) sports like Tough Guy, Nettle Warrior and Wife Carrying.
Pro Weird Being Extreme Argument
People jump out of airplanes because there is a chance that the parachute wont open or it will get tangled, people bungie jump because there is a thrill that comes with the risk of the rope being too long or not being tied on properly and people take part in the Cheese rolling festival because there is a risk that they will fall and break their neck, they take part in Tough Guy because there is a risk again of death and serious injury, they push their body to the limit in order to get through.
Cons Weird Being Extreme Argument
Okay this could turn into a rant (like it did last night) so here goes – weird sports aren’t extreme in the sense that sky diving, B.A.S.E jumping and free climbing are extreme. With these sports when you are committed, you are fully committed and you need to be both brave and skilled to survive.
Cheese rolling is more of a race than an extreme actvity, granted that by being a race it falls into the category of being a sport but it is not extreme.
I might be being an extreme sports snob here but once there is an aspect of mass organisation involved this seems to take away part of the risk so what you are left with is a kind of synthetic version of an extreme sport. When I started snowboarding it was pretty new, you were different when you were on the slopes with a board rather than skis. There were no lessons – you just had to kind of learn yourself.
Another example is bungee jumping; and I will admit I didn’t try this until a couple of years ago but there is no sense of death, you know that you are safe, that you will be 6 feet from the ground and everything is rather safe. The thrill is only from the jump where you leap out which goes against everything our body stands for.
I think that weird sports are just that – they are sports that are weird and because most have an element of competition involved in them then they are sports.