Why are deadly extreme sports more popular than ever? | Sport | T... https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/aug/20/why-are-deadly-e...

Why are deadly extreme sports more

popular than ever?
Five people died in the French Alps last weekend in sporting incidents from paragliding
to wingsuit flying. What pushes people to test the ultimate limits of their own safety?

There have been a number of wingsuit ying deaths in recent years. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

Leo Benedictus
Saturday 20 August 2016 08.00BST

D
arios ready, says Dario Zanon. Three, two, one, says Graham Dickinson.
Vive la France! they both shout as they leap from the summit of Le Brvent
in the French Alps and spread their wings to begin the Rock Star Line, one of
the most dangerous routes in one of the worlds most dangerous sports.

Zanon and Dickinson are two of the best, however. Using the aps of cloth that join their
arms and legs, they skim expertly past cli edges and between trees at more than
110mph. After less than a minute they release their parachutes and drift down,
whooping, over Chamonix. A day after Zanons footage of the ight was posted last
September, it had been watched a million times. Since then, it has been watched at least
10 million more.

On Wednesday 8 June this year, Zanon returned to Chamonix and climbed the Aiguille

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du Midi on the other side of the valley for a solo ight. On the Sunday his body was
found on the glaciers 5,000ft below. Most likely no one will ever know exactly which
small thing went wrong. Small things become big quickly at 110mph. He was 33.

It does happen to the best. Mark Sutton, the man who parachuted into the London
Olympics stadium dressed as James Bond, was killed wingsuit ying in the Swiss Alps in
2013, while lming for EpicTV. In May 2015, Dean Potter, a famous US climber and
wingsuit yer, died with his friend Graham Hunt. They had jumped from Taft Point in
Yosemite Park, California. In July last year, the record-holding Colombian wingsuit yer
Jhonathan the Birdman Florez died during practice in Switzerland. The Briton David
Reader died two weekends ago. Last weekend ve people died in separate incidents in
the French Alps: two climbers, a paraglider, a hang-glider and a wingsuit yer.
Wednesday brought two more, in separate accidents: an as yet unidentied British man
and Uli Emanuele, Zanons former ying partner. Be a Hero, says the video they made
for the action camera company GoPro in March.

It is hard to nd exact gures on the popularity of extreme sports, but it is even harder to
nd anyone who thinks that they arent booming. In 2006, the British Parachute
Association recorded 39,100 rst jumps. Last year there were 59,679. Numbers of full
members regular skydivers have been rising at a similar rate. The British
Mountaineering Council had about 25,000 individual members in 2000. Last September
there were almost 55,000. The number of people climbing Everest has rocketed since
the 1990s. The proportion of women climbers is increasing too, up from about 16% in
2002 (BMC gures) to 36% now (Sport England gures). Hang-gliding numbers have
suered since the 1990s, according to Michelle Lanman at the British Hang Gliding and
Paragliding Association (The kit is so much heavier). But paragliding and
paramotoring (paragliding with a giant fan) are doing very nicely. SurngGB also reports
that British surng continues to grow rapidly.

You just get into it and then progressively build up, build up says Jess Cox, 27, an
instructor at her fathers business, Fly Sussex Paragliding, near Lewes. Better ights
involve going higher, further, doing debagging or acrobatic stu. Sorry, debagging? She
shows me a video on her phone. It was recorded by a friend shortly after they had both
jumped o a 7,000ft mountain in Turkey. Cox is gliding high above a gleaming body of
water when suddenly she falls from her harness, surely to her death, until a new
paraglider unfurls out of her backpack and she swoops away. Woo-hoo! she squeals,
watching. I love it! That was one of the best days of my life. Its just the most exciting
thing Ive ever done. The high lasts for days. Youre walking around on a cloud when you
have a great ight. You really enjoy what you do. You really love it

Of course, the drawback of discovering something you love this much is having to do
without it sometimes. You cant let the gap be too long or you get itchy feet, Cox says.
Some people become completely obsessed, quit their jobs, live in a van and just travel
round the world with fabric in the back, leaping o stu. It does kind of consume you.
Its completely addictive. When possible, Cox actually ies to work in the morning with
her paramotor. Shes never scared, she says, unless you count nerves before
competitions. Nor should she be. Like most extreme sports these days, paragliding is
much safer than it looks, as long as its done properly.

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Jhonathan Florez, seen here competing in the Wingsuit World

Championships in China in 2013, died during practice in
Switzerland last month. Photograph: Long Hongtao/REX
/Shutterstock

For others, theres no denying that danger is part of the attraction. On his website,
Dickinson says that when unexpected events happen (birds, dead tree branches, etc)
I feel like I am operating in pure survival mode. I can feel my heart rate speed up, my
senses heighten, and my focus narrow so that everything seems to almost slow down.
During these moments I try to only focus on the present, the immediate here and now. I
think this purity of thought and mind is one of the many reasons I continue to do what I
do. Being able to escape the noise, clutter and business of daily life is a rare treat in this
world.

Its the bright beginning of a hot day and Tim Cox gathers the amateur paragliders and
explains what they are going to do. I count 16 men and four women. Mark, 28, and
Andrew, 39, are both performers at Glyndebourne. We had this day o and I thought,
Lets go and do something stupid, Andrew says. Hes done a skydive once before and it
terried him. I just remember thinking, Hold it together, hold it together, hold it
together. I was desperate to be on the ground. Hes hoping this will be a bit calmer.
Mark, on the other hand, is a ght director and well up for it. Hes done a bit of
kite-surng, diving and caving, but not yet anything up high. I think its just for people
who dont do very well at a barbecue, he says. So many of our colleagues are happy to
sit with a bottle of prosecco in the sun for four hours, he says. I get fucking bored. Lets
go and jump o a hill! Hes brought his GoPro, mostly to take clips with which to taunt
his partner, who wishes she were here.

Martin, 25, works in advertising in London. He did a tandem paraglide with an instructor
a few years ago, and the experience lingered, so hes back to have a go on his own. He
admits to being a little bit nervous. Among all the joshing of the others, he seems quiet
and attentive. Paul, 59, has been paragliding four times before, twisting his ankle on the
last. He works in insurance and has always enjoyed running, swimming and climbing. He
once had a pilots licence. When he was diagnosed with cancer six years ago, he got more
serious about his tness and nally lost enough weight to try paragliding. He calls his
cancer Nigel and takes pleasure in ignoring its demands. This is one in the eye for
Nigel, he says, as we climb the hill up to the launch site. He postponed some
chemotherapy to be here.

Paragliding looks easy, at least to start with. The equipment is not a parachute but an
inatable wing, which is laid at on the hilltop, then lls with air, takes shape and lifts
iers o the ground. Once the basics of landing and equipment-checking are explained,

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the tandem iers are strapped into a big black seat, hooked up to an instructor, dragged
back by the glider pulling as it rises, then a few quick steps launch them forwards into
the air. The rst ier, Andrew, is up 10 minutes after we arrive. Bloody hell, says
Martin.

The rest take o, and its clear theyre having a good time. Smoothly, gracefully, they
glide back and forth over the hillside until it looks almost dull, this boating around, as
the initiated called it. Drifting down from the tandems come snatches of conversation
that you might well exchange over prosecco. When required, the instructors liven things
up with big swings and spirals, which look very exciting. Their control is so good that
they can come over and hover within touching distance while we talk.

Mark Sutton, the man who parachuted into the London

Olympics stadium dressed as James Bond, was killed wingsuit
ying in the Swiss Alps in 2013. Photograph: CHAMUSSY/SIPA
/REX/Shutterstock

Science teacher Becky, 35, sits next to me, watching her banker boyfriend, John, enjoy
his 39th birthday present. Its like wearing a nappy, he says when rst strapped in.
That was awesome, he says on landing. Becky did a skydive once (crazy at the
beginning) and a bungee jump (much worse, because you have to step o). They
didnt trigger in her the addiction that it did in Jess. She talks about the skydive like it
was a rst taste of marzipan good, yes, not over-rated, no particular need to do it again.
Its trying new things, isnt it? she says. Life would be a bit boring if you dont try new
things.

Was life boring before extreme sports? It was certainly less safe than it is now. (Look up
the violent crime and road accident statistics.) Some say Evel Knievel started the fad by
showing kids that nearly dying could be cool. Some say nonsense, it was Sondre
Norheim. Or Otto Lilienthal. Or Franz Reichelt. Or Leslie Irvin. Or George Freeth. If you
have no idea who those people were, then we havent reached the point yet where the
pioneers of downhill skiing, gliding, parachuting, skydiving and surng are household
names, but it is clear that what they started is no fad. You probably know somebody who
has done all the things these men were considered lunatics for trying. You may have
tried a few yourself.

The Dangerous Sports Club needs a special mention, in part for embodying the crazed
inventiveness and nonconformist ethos of extreme sport. Formed by a group of
well-to-do friends at Oxford University, the DSC liked to think up perilous capers to
perform drunk and in black tie, such as a descent down the ski slopes of St Moritz on a
Louis XIV dining set or a grand piano, or sailing through storms to the remote islet of

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Rockall, then holding a tea party. A younger member of the DSC later built the giant
trebuchet, which red people 100ft into a net, eventually killing a 19-year-old student
called Dino Yankov. The great legacy of the DSC, however, is bungee jumping, which
they performed for the rst time on Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol on April Fools
Day 1979, after a night of drinking, without any preliminary tests.

Sutton with stuntman Gary Connery, in 2012 in Henley-

on-Thames, preparing for a jump. Photograph: Gary Connery
Archive/Getty Images

Safety gets more thought these days, but the spirit of experimentation has never
weakened in extreme sport. A decade ago, plain base jumping was the new frontier.
(Instead of skydiving from a plane, you use a building, antenna, span or Earth span
not bridge because the founders decided that babe jumping might not be taken as
seriously, according to Phil Mayeld, who was one of them.) Today base jumping is
tame without a wingsuit, and wingsuits are tame unless you use them to get close to
things, at times so close like Emanuele ying through a 2.6m hole in the rock that it is
obviously dangerous. But the danger made him famous.

Perhaps next it will be jet-powered surfboards. (They exist.) Or kids everywhere will
imitate the Russian roofers who get themselves photographed hanging precariously
from tall buildings, and often fall. Last month Luke Aikins became the rst person to
skydive without a parachute. After a fall of 25,000ft, he landed in a giant net. It is
awesome, he discovered.

At times the inventiveness is almost comical. Base jumping blindfolded, or with your
dog (that was Potter), or with a parachute attached to piercings in your back: youll nd
all of these online. But then, thanks to rugged cameras, video hosting and social media,
these brief but spectacular moments of extreme sport are as well-suited to 2016 as could
be. No broadcasters pay billions for skydiving or skateboarding rights just yet, but GoPro,
Red Bull and others sponsor some of the best athletes to travel the world making very
marketable clips. If we want a reason why extreme sports have ourished so much this
century, this neat t between the makers and the money looks like a good guess.

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The number of rst-time parachute jumps in Britain has

increased by 50% the past 10 years. Photograph: Ken
Fisher/Getty Images

And these may still be early days. According to a report from the US entertainment
company Delaware North, 100 hours of GoPro video are uploaded on to YouTube every
minute, and sales of action cameras are growing at 50% a year. By 2020, extreme sports
will challenge professional and collegiate team sports for the title of most-watched
category of sports content, the report says. Today theyre a blip on the screen
compared to the big business of professional sports, but participation in action and
adventure sports has surpassed conventional sports at the recreational level.

And where their commercial limits lie, it is hard to say. BMX and snowboarding are
Olympic events now, and climbing, skateboarding and surng will be in 2020. But I
wonder whether sports such as wingsuit ying have already passed the limit of safety.
Perhaps the same goes for freediving, in which people compete to swim as deep as
possible while holding their breath, and where leading proponents, such as Natalia
Molchanova and Nicholas Mevoli have recently died.

Pushing is part of sport, of course, but whats being pushed here is safety. A good
footballer or tennis player always wants to be tested against better opponents, but their
opponents are human, so that can only go so far. In extreme sports, the opponent is
danger. As one of the worlds best known climbers and wingsuit yers, Steph Davis,
wrote in January, the limit comes when you hit the terrain. Instead, she suggested,
Perhaps progression means something very dierent. Perhaps it means rening the
experience, becoming safer, more elegant and more aware. Davis has been married
twice, to Dean Potter and Mario Richard. Both men died in wingsuit accidents (Potter
after their divorce). Maybe the future of extreme sports is learning to be less extreme.

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