Extreme Sports and Risk Taking Readings
There are three central articles for our explorations in this unit, but we will also be reading and watching other materials that may spark your thinking or influence your opinions.
Click the links in the table of contents below to take you directly to the article.
Extreme Sports Not About Risk-taking: Study
A Solemn Warning to Wingsuit Flyers
READING SELECTIONS
By John Donvan ABCNews.com, Aug. 31, 2009
1 Consider what it does to the senses when you’re in a kayak on the Colorado River and you hit white water. You can’t hear anything but the water. There’s spray in your face. Violent drops. Wicked turns. And fear—moments when the river seems to be in control, not you. In short, it’s total sensory overload, a total adrenaline rush.
2 But if you have autism—like most kids at the Extreme Sports Camp near Aspen, Colorado—it’s overload times 20, or times 100. And that’s the point: to take kids to their limits, and beyond.
3 “It’s got to be visceral,” said Doug Gilstrap, 47, who has run the camp since it launched in 2001. “It’s stimulating, it’s super-intense. And, actually, the more intense it is, the better they are on the other end.”
4 It’s about taking kids to the extreme, the kids who have difficulties with extremes in everyday life, he said.
5 “Many times our kids, campers have a lot of behavior issues or a lot of sensory issues that they just can’t handle,” Gilstrap said. “It’s too cold, it’s too hot, it’s too bright. All those sorts of things can cause a lot of problems.”
6 The kids here, ages 5 and up, represent the many different ways autism can take shape. Quinn, like several kids at the week-long camp, barely speaks, while Johnny talks and talks. The girls are more physically timid than most of the boys, while a few kids, like Josh, are athletically gifted.
7 One of Josh’s challenges was to take on a steep rock wall.
8 “So, with any person, a new thing can bring about some fear and some apprehension,” Gilstrap said. “It’s even heightened with autism. A situation that forces focus, like here, knowing where to put your feet, figuring out what piece of rock to grab onto—you can see Josh working it through, 50 feet up, and then the rappel back down.
9 “We’ve built the camp around, sort of, not to use the word ‘extreme,’ like ‘extreme games,’” Gilstrap said. “It’s extreme in the sense that all the activities are visceral.”
10 Back on the ground, Josh was asked if it was a hard ascent.
11 “It was hard, yes,” he said, adding that he found all the cracks he needed.
12 “The greater the adrenaline shock that I can put to the system—the brain, the body and the endorphin rush that comes in post-adrenaline rush—is what gets them the most relaxation and calm,” Gilstrap said. “When they are back in a normal situation, they have better capacity to be in control.”
13 Internal struggle is visible on many of the campers’ faces, as they move over ropes high above the ground.
14 The Extreme Sports Camp features ropes that go over a river and back again, and then run up to tree level. While every kid is in a safety harness—they can’t fall to the ground—the kids can still slip off the line as they try to cross it, and do.
15 “Some kids need a little more pushing and some need a little less,” Gilstrap said. “If the kid doesn’t need pushing, I don’t come and push—I just let them do their own thing.”
16 Gilstrap tried to coax a camper named Johnny to try the ropes.
17 “You go first,” Johnny said.
18 “Are you scared?” Gilstrap said. “That’s the way you learn from it.”
19 Johnny moved tentatively along a rope.
20 “You’re doing great—I’m proud of you, Johnny,” Gilstrap said. “Turn your feet upriver. I’m very proud of you—stand up, Johnny. Did your legs stop working?”
21 “I have lousy legs,” the camper said.
22 “No, you don’t have lousy legs,” came Gilstrap’s reply.
Autism Camp: A Taste of the Extreme
24 Gilstrap said he wants the campers to struggle, but only so much. If the campers get
too scared or excited, he said, they can’t move forward.
25 “With that heightened apprehension, if we make it over that hump and on to the other
side,” he said, “then we get what we’re looking for.”
26 They make it as fun as they can. At the end of the treetop rope course is a wonderful
zip-line glide back down to Earth.
27 Gilstrap has also built a special device to help the campers go waterskiing. He described how he learned to work with kids with autism.
28 “I just studied it and watched how they did things,” he said, “and I picked up on a way of interacting with them on whatever they were focused on. It’s just a way of touch. Touch can be a very calming thing. Like, again for Josh, I can just reach over and touch him and he’ll go [exhales slowly]. Just with the touch. I don’t say a single word to him.”
29 Each child is assigned his or her own counselor for the full week. It’s what makes it possible in the first place for a kid to step on that wire or hang onto that wall, or just to get through the bus rides between events.
30 But the real signal that the camp works: Most of the campers come back, year after
year—for another taste of the extreme.
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READING SELECTIONS
Medical News Today, July, 13 2009
1 Those who think extreme sports are all about risk-taking are missing the point, according to a QUT researcher. Eric Brymer, a lecturer from the School of Human Movement Studies in the Faculty of Health, has been researching whether the element of risk was an important factor among participants in “extreme” sports such as waterfall kayakers, mountain climbers, big wave surfers and B.A.S.E. jumpers.
2 He said his research offered a different framework from the traditional understanding of extreme sport.
3 Dr Brymer found that, although the image of those who take part in extreme sports was that of risk-takers and adrenaline junkies, the opposite was true.
4 “I wanted to do this research because in my masters studies I was hearing about sensation seeking, risk-taking behaviour in extreme sports people, and it just didn’t match what I knew from my background in kayaking and canoeing,” he said.
5 “The people I knew were very careful, disciplined, determined and focussed, not at all reckless or risk-taking; for some people to get to a certain level of a sport, it takes 15 years dedicated training, which is not something you would associate with a thrill- seeker.”
6 In his study, Mr Brymer conducted interviews with extreme sports people aged from 30 to 73, to find out how they felt when they did the activity, and what their motivations were.
7 “What I found was that these people have a real love for these activities, and talk about a realisation about the power of nature, a sense of humility, and a real sense of peace,” he said.
8 “They also said they felt a sense of relaxation and freedom, not in the socio-cultural sense but in the sense that they were so focussed and aware, it was like clearing the mind in meditation.”
9 Dr Brymer said the participants, while unable to control nature, were educated about conditions, and were very careful to minimise potential risks.
10 “One thing that came up was that they realise people see them as risk-takers, but they do not see themselves that way at all, and they cited the road as a comparison, saying that crossing the road or driving was more risky,” said Dr Brymer.
11 “On the road, you have no control of other factors such as other drivers, but in the natural world you are at a level doing these activities where your depth of knowledge is so vast that you can be in control, you understand the weather and the clouds, and what will happen as a result, so you can plan for that.”
12 Dr Brymer said while he was not denying some people in extreme sports may have become involved because they were attracted by the risk-taking aspect, most of the people he had come across did not see that as a positive thing.
13 “Risk is about uncertainty, about not having control, and these people see themselves as in control,” he said.
14 “Some did mention times when they did feel the adrenalin and were in a risky position, but generally it is more about how lucky they were to survive it, and seeing it as a negative experience rather than something they are seeking.”
15 He said the perception people had of extreme sports participants was brought about by not knowing enough about the sports.
16 “It is about not really understanding something. I compare it to looking for love—you are not searching for the risk of not being loved, but you are aware that there is risk involved: the risk of rejection, of not finding what you are looking for,” he said.
17 “It is the same in extreme sports: while there is an awareness of risk it is not the reason most people are involved, but rather something they accept because they are looking for something deeper and more meaningful.”
Queensland University of Technology
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I think the purpose of this article is to ____ |
by Lola Jones
April 28, 2010
xtremesport4u.com
1 Geoffrey Robson was a qualified mechanical engineer and mathematician who happened to love to wingsuit fly.
2 The fantastic video below (fmalan1) taken in early April, shows Robson opening a new route from the Groot Drakenstein mountains above Boschendal, near Stellenbosch, South Africa.
It was recorded on his helmet-mounted video camera and shows graphically why this is such a seriously extreme sport:
3 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 wingsuit flying. He considered himself lucky enough to be able to combine his interests in one study: aerodynamics and wingsuit flying and aimed to combine maths and science to improve wingsuit flying.
4 He had been studying wingsuit flight to unprecedented accuracy by using a highly sensitive instrument which measured 3D location by GPS and inertial measurement, flyer attitude and heading, altitude, and air pressure during many wingsuit Base jumps.
5 Robson was said to be the only person in the world who combined the scientific capacity for this kind of research with the ability to test it himself in the air.
6 Thank you to zurichminds for this fascinating video.
7 Today Geoffrey Robson is dead.
8 Early in the morning of Monday, 12th April, he tried the same route, but this time he wanted to cross the ridge between Devil’s Tooth (the peak to the front, right) and the mountain. His calculations were wrong, and he failed to clear the ridge, resulting in his death at the age of 31.
9 “If he were two metres higher, he would have survived” said his jumping companions, and that is the name of the game with wingsuit flying. It is an inherently dangerous sport, but a sport participated in by people with huge skydiving experience and a deep love of adventure, of setting themselves new challenges and of taking on the ultimate challenge – wingsuit flying or ‘proximity flying’ as it is also known.
10 All extreme sports are dangerous, some more than others, and wingsuit flying and BASEjumping probably the most dangerous of all. We found this little list of statistics on fatalities in extreme sports over the past 5 years per 1,000 participants. Anyone with an ambition to climb K2 might take note of these figures too!
Skydiving: 3.3
Base Jumping: 44
Hang Gliding/Paragliding: 3.8
Summiting K2: 104
ATV Riding: 0.5
Scuba Diving: .06
Snowboarding: .05
11 Although wingsuit flying is not on the list (there is probably not enough data to work with yet) it is probably somewhere between skydiving and BASEjumping. It is an interesting aside, though, that fatality rates were very high during the developmental period for this extreme sport. Between 1930 and 1961, 71 out of 75 people died trying to perfect a wingsuit.
12 But it is immensely popular with a small handful of hardcore adventurists. ‘To fly like a bird’ has always been man’s ambition, and with wingsuit flying you are nearly there…
13 “Wingsuit flying was his life” said his friend and jump companion Leander Lacey. Robson’s father, Bill, described his eldest son as a “brilliant mathematician” who was most comfortable in the outdoors. “He came here for a Base-jumping holiday. There is an element of danger, but this is just so tragic,” he said.
14 Our commiserations go to Geoffrey Robson’s family and friends.
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