Welcome to the 224th insertion of DEMUR®, an analytical series highlighting the intricacies of the artistic world and the minutiae lying within. In this episode, we take a leap of faith, looking at the progression, origin and contemporary scope of both comedic and death-defying extreme sports.
The inclination to hurl oneself off a cliff-side, out of a plane, or into an eight-story wave is a rather unexplainable feeling. For some, the mere thought can produce incurable stomach sickness and vertigo, but for others, it entices a euphoric feeling of discomfort and thrill. Rooted at the core of all ‘extreme’ sports, a sub-genre of traditional competition, the general premise surrounding each is quite self-explanatory.
For one, each sport must retain an inconceivable attribute of risk, and two, the action must induce a pulsating shot of adrenaline. Inflicting mental triumph for both the participant and onlookers, activities like BASE jumping, snowboarding and BMX trail riding sit at the core of this reckless pastime. While these activities require an immense amount of training and skill, there are however a few extreme sports frequently left in the dark.
Divided into a category of their own, sports like cheese rolling and extreme ironing are phenomena that crept under the hazard-driven umbrella. While they certainly won’t appear in any future X-GAMES competitions, they do abide by the genre’s fluid conditions. Cheese rolling per se is very similar to China’s log-riding festival, in which participants tumble down a 650ft hill in chase of a 9lbs cheese wheel. Eating dirt and spraining ankles is certainly enough to classify this as an extreme sport, but the wheel’s top speed of 70mph seals the deal.
But it doesn’t stop there. This fad of obscure extreme sports dates to the 90s, with the introduction of ‘extreme ironing’, a sport that intersects any maximal action with ironing clothes. This, among underwater hockey, wife carrying (a true testament of marriage), chess boxing, zorbing, wing-walking and volcano boarding are just a few of the insane feats we humans attempt to cheat death.