Giving the Extreme a Sporting Chance

When the major national and international sporting competitions get underway, entire populations are glued to the television in support of their home sides. Sport enthusiasts travel for miles at great expense across borders and continents, to personally witness their sporting heroes in their favourite games. The competitive edge of bookies’ favourites dominate discussions in the media whilst myths are propagated about the moral and physical prowess of the players and their coaches.

Today, the globalisation of sporting spectacles benefits from a different type of Empire, massive financial sponsorship. The huge economic associations that they entail and the grandiose scales at which they operate are difficult to take in. The World Cups of football or rugby, the Ashes, Masters, Opens and Olympic Games are indeed as internationally known, standardised and systematically broadcast as are some of the world religions.







In that sense, ethnographic participant observation comes close to an extreme sport with the added dimension of academic analysis and reflection. Certainly, I have myself examined issues of embodiment, identity, narrative, risk and the materiality of the elements in relation to coastal extreme practices like caving, rock climbing and cliff jumping. Despite participating actively in these activities, I’m still alive to tell the tale. I of course never took my participation so far as to cause more than a few bruises and near misses. I have come to know my own limitations and respect the abilities of those who excel at these activities. By taking things only so far as skills allow, it is often possible to mitigate the worst dangers.