HISTORY OF EXTREME SPORTS

The origin of the divergence of the term "extreme sports" from "sports" may date to the 1950s in the appearance of a phrase usually, but wrongly, attributed to Ernest Hemingway.^[10] The phrase is

"There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games."

The implication of the phrase was that the word "sport" defined an activity in which one might be killed. The other activities being termed "games". The phrase may have been invented by either writer Barnaby Conrad or automotive author Ken Purdy.^[10]

In recent decades the term extreme sport was further promoted by X Games, a multi-sport event created and developed by ESPN.^[11][12] The first X Games (known as 1995 Extreme Games) were held in Newport, Providence, Mount Snow, and Vermont in the United States.^[13][14]

A history of the sports was published in 2004. Amped: How Big Air, Big Dollars and a New Generation Took Sports to the Extreme. The book provided an overview of the history, culture, and business of the sports and included interviews with athletes, company owners, and marketers.

Motivation

A feature of such activities in the view of some is their alleged capacity to induce an adrenaline rush in participants.^[16] However, the medical view is that the rush or high associated with the activity is not due to adrenaline being released as a response to fear, but due to increased levels of dopamine, endorphins and serotonin because of the high level of physical exertion.^{[citation needed]} Furthermore, a recent study suggests that the link to adrenaline and 'true' extreme sports is tentative.^[17] The study defined 'true' extreme sports as a leisure or recreation activity where the most likely outcome of a mismanaged accident or mistake was death. This definition was designed to separate the marketing hype from the activity.

Eric Brymer^[18] also found that the potential of various extraordinary human experiences, many of which parallel those found in activities such as meditation, was an important part of the extreme sport experience.

Some of the sports have existed for decades and their proponents span generations, some going on to become well known personalities. Rock climbing and ice climbing have spawned publicly recognizable names such as Edmund Hillary, Chris Bonington, Wolfgang Gullich and more recently Joe Simpson. Another example is surfing, invented centuries ago by the inhabitants of Hawaii.