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As years have passed, the role of social media in influencing our minds only seems to be getting stronger and stronger. The average age of a social media user has decreased while the overall number of social media users continues to increase, ultimately allowing more minds to be influenced by various images found online. Amongst these images are pictures of people doing extreme activities like extreme sports, where lives are put at risk while executing athletic activities. The article “Death by Selfie: 11 Disturbing Stories of Social Media Pics Gone Wrong” captures numerous scenarios, more than half of them being about participants in extreme sports, ultimately resulting in a life or lives lost during an attempt to take a selfie (Lovitt). This idea of social media being a motivator for extreme sports was fascinating because of the potential to ask, “to what extent?” Reading the article alone made it seem like people were willing to do almost anything for a selfie capturing their attempt at an extreme sport, but with this in mind, why hasn’t there been more pushback against extreme sports? Knowing that lives were lost taking a similar picture of an extreme sports activity, how could social media platforms and the overall greater society benefit from having these potentially life-ending pictures online? In addition, even if there were benefits from having extreme sports captured online, do these benefits outweigh the costs of lives being lost through the same activities?

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Despite the apparent dangers of partaking in extreme sports, people often stay hooked on this specific sports culture. Whether it is through potential physiological changes from the adrenaline or the extrinsic motivation through opportunities to gain wealth, there seem to be more benefits that outweigh the need to decrease engagement in extreme sports. Amongst these health benefits, the idea of using extreme sports to cope with life stressors would only add to the overall desire to keep participation in extreme sports up.

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Why hasn’t there been more interference in decreasing engagement in extreme sports?

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1: A Physiological Standpoint of Extreme Sports

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1: A Physiological Standpoint of Extreme Sports

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2: The Psychological Benefits of Extreme Sports

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2: The Psychological Benefits of Extreme Sports

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In our daily lives, adrenaline allows us to respond to stressful situations according to the fight or flight response, and overall is something essential in our blood circulation and breathing processes. Without adrenaline, many of life’s stressors would dominate our bodies simply because of the decreased ability in our fight or flight response. As a result, doing activities for the “adrenaline” rush often motivates people to push their boundaries, including in scenarios relating to extreme sports. The idea of one’s life being on the line stimulates the idea of an adrenaline rush and pushes the body to produce adrenaline, a hormone essential to the human body. Through a journal article published in a Kinesiology Journal giving a broad overview of why people engage in extreme sports from a more physiological perspective, researchers found that adrenaline and its role in the fight or flight response “is able to generate chills reported as “pleasant” in those who frequently seek these kinds of experience” referring to extreme sports participants (Musumeci). This idea of creating pleasant feelings through the fight or flight response not only serves as an example of how extreme sports are used as a coping mechanism but also represents how, despite the apparent dangers of participating in extreme sports, participants often are left feeling more satisfied thanks to the adrenaline and the “chills” that come with it. With extreme sports, the human body is physiologically able to reframe the idea of a hazardous sport into more positive feelings of pleasure and satisfaction with this release of adrenaline, overall representing the powers of participating in extreme sports.

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Building up Muscles and Bones through Extreme Challenges

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Building up Muscles and Bones through Extreme Challenges

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Participation in every sport requires training, and this training process helps build up muscles to support the body during exercise better. With extreme sports specifically, the training process for extreme sports athletes often involves working similar muscle groups to the point of enduring these extreme conditions. In doing so, athletes build up their bodies, benefiting their overall physiological health. Specifically, repeated participation and training in extreme sports increases blood and oxygen circulation, which in turn helps build up one’s VO2 max, or the maximum amount of oxygen someone can use during exercise. In addition, training for extreme sports also puts repeated stress on muscles and bones, causing muscle fibers to thicken and ultimately leading to more muscle mass and denser bones (Kelly). These various physiological changes allow humans to strengthen their bodies and combat the aging process, where their body begins to degrade as they grow older. Increasing one’s VO2 max becomes significant in relation to energy output, where the efficiency of energy conversion processes in the human body can be hindered with lower VO2 max measurements. As a result, individuals with higher VO2 max, achieved through extreme sports, can produce more energy to perform more work in their daily lives. Furthermore, increasing muscle mass and having denser bones help strengthen the body and make people less susceptible to injuries. Ultimately, this repetition in extreme sports training can help with injury prevention and energy output efficiency, which are two important factors in having a healthy physical body.

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Challenging the Biological Side of Human History

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Challenging the Biological Side of Human History

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As the human body ages and experiences more stressors and life events, our bodies often degrade with time. Our bones become weaker, and our organ performance decreases as a part of a natural process. In other words, aging is an inevitable process for everyone. However, some extreme sports participants embody the idea that age is truly just a number and push the physiological limits of human bodies. A prime example of this expansion of human body abilities with older ages is Rebecca Rusch, a 55-year-old extreme sports athlete. Whereas typical extreme sports athletes are in the 30-year-old range as this age group typically is associated with peak bone mass (figure 1), Rusch defies this average age by being a 7x world champion at the age where bone loss is relatively standard. Although she participates in various extreme sports, Rusch's primary sport is mountain biking, where she participates in various races like the Iditarod Trail Invitational 350 or the ITI 350 (Rusch). This race is a 350-mile journey through the Alaskan wilderness, testing athletes' physical ability and endurance in nature with temperatures sub-zero.

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Extreme Sports for Veterans in their Rehabilitation Process

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Extreme Sports for Veterans in their Rehabilitation Process

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Many military veterans face post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD, a mental health condition that strongly impacts people to varying degrees in their daily lives. As a result of PTSD, these veterans struggle with integration back into civilian life due to living in a heightened state during their service. This integration process often negatively impacts the veteran's mental health, as well as their relationships with others and their ability to socialize. A qualitative study conducted through interviews with 14 male British military veterans bases itself on this idea of difficulty with integration back into civilian life and intertwines the concept of extreme sports as an intermediate between the warzone and civilian life. Knowing that military veterans are often motivated by the idea of physical activity or high levels of achievement, the study uses military veteran participation in competitive motorsport to see how veterans with PTSD benefit from the "high" of extreme sports that resembles a less extreme version of the "high" from warzones. In doing so, researchers found that with the team nature of competitive motorsport, veterans gained comfort and felt safe socializing with fellow veterans outside their typical therapist's office. In addition, this comfortability with socializing also helped veterans feel more confident and accomplished in their own skin, which correlates with greater body image satisfaction and healthier eating habits outside of their past military lifestyle (Serfioti). For veterans who struggle with socializing outside of this clinical and, most often, obligatory setting inside a therapist's office, connecting with others in a more natural environment helps progress their integration into civilian life. In these situations, veterans do not have to rely on their therapist to help guide them in social settings; instead, they can simply use the dynamics of competitive motorsport to connect on a deeper level with other veterans. This can also help with affordability and access, as some veterans might not have the means and financial resources to pay for consistent therapy.

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Extreme sports are a common coping mechanism for individuals with past traumas, often because of the idea that extreme sports are an escape from reality. This concept of escapism refers to using another situation to distract from reality, and similar to edgework, is a common motivator for participation in extreme sports. When it comes to distractions from reality, people often turn to extreme sports because of their high-risk nature, which allows one to step out of whatever issues are present in the current moment. For Luke Tyburski, a former soccer player from Australia who had to retire in his twenties due to injuries, extreme sports became a distraction from reality. During an interview on the “Feel your Feelings” podcast, Tyburski shares how he felt as if he had lost his entire identity after retiring from soccer. In this transition period, he also was battling with depression and later expressed, “Instead of stopping and feeling the discomfort, I’m gonna run away from it.” As a result, Tyburski turned to extreme sports, pushing the limits of his body by only giving him six months between his retirement and the day he ran 250 kilometers through the Sahara Desert (HappiGuru, and Luke Tyburski). Tyburski’s journey of coping with his loss of identity relied heavily on embodying the “extreme” side of extreme sports. By doing what others would deem almost impossible, Tyburski represents the idea of escapism through extreme sports, specifically by using extreme sports as a distraction from something discomforting in reality.

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Marketing Strategies of Brands through Extreme Sports

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Marketing Strategies of Brands through Extreme Sports

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Athletic brands play a significant role in making athletes and everyday people trying to get into sports more comfortable and enable them to perform athletic activities. Brands often market themselves in varying ways to attract a specific type of consumer. By showing advertisements of both brands highlighting extreme sports and other brands highlighting traditional sports to former and current extreme sports athletes, a study found that brands marketing themselves on ideas of "risk" and "challenge" concerning extreme sports visualizations were received better by the public. Using words or images that allude to ideas of "risk" and "challenge" when discussing more traditional sports often sparked feelings of threat and competition in viewers. In contrast, the same allusions, but in extreme sports advertisements, ended up captivating and keeping viewers engaged in the advertisement. In this interview-based study, an excerpt of an interview was published alongside results, where an extreme mountain biker mentions he looked mostly only for brands that reflected and seemed to share his emotions about using extreme sports to experience some challenge and thrill. He explains feeling more willing to invest in brands that market themselves on a personally relatable scale (Raggiotto). From this, we can see how brands market themselves in ways that reach out to extreme sports enthusiasts and unify them with the consumer, and as a result, the brand becomes more attractive in the consumer's eye. Trust is built between a consumer and a brand through the brand acknowledging the risks and challenges of extreme sports and focusing on those two aspects to provide consumers with a sense of security and safety in their products. If these two aspects are checked off through advertisements, consumers like Ronald feel more trust in investing in these brands, keeping the profits of larger companies growing while keeping athletes engaged in investing in extreme sports equipment.

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Extreme Sports Athletes and their use of Social Media

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Extreme Sports Athletes and their use of Social Media

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With the growing use of social media, extreme sports athletes are able to use and build up their platforms for monetary gain through endorsements or sponsorships of larger companies. This helps them expand their reach to different viewers and increase their personal exposure to a wider audience while gaining monetary benefits through these partnerships with companies. Extreme skier JT Holmes embodies this idea of marketing for other companies while gaining a personal monetary benefit through his Instagram page. Holmes has numerous posts promoting brands like Embody Green, a drink brand (figure 3), and Peakskis. These posts for Holmes’s social media account with around 40,000 followers on average earn Holmes anywhere from $100 to $5,000 per post (Kiely).By doing something as small as promoting another brand through a singular Instagram post, Holmes is able to make personal profit, which adds to his financial position and reputation. Through more posts for reputable brands, extreme sports athletes like Holmes can get their names out to potentially further their careers in terms of partnerships and deals with larger companies. In other words, after expanding their overall platform, extreme sports athletes can often produce their own brands or partner up with major brands to further their individual profits and name.

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Social Media Influencer: Jess Kimura and her use of platform

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Social Media Influencer: Jess Kimura and her use of platform

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Jess Kimura, an extreme freestyle snowboarder, follows this marketing trajectory by partnering up with relatively minor brands like SmithOptics in 2023 and then creating her own line of The North Face products in 2024. Figure 5 shows one of the sponsored posts on Kimura’s Instagram account, which promotes a pair of SmithOptic snow goggles to viewers. Years later, on Kimura’s Instagram feed, she releases a post explaining her side-by-side partnership with The North Face, where she personally designed a few clothing pieces along with a fellow extreme sports athlete, Erik Leon (figure 4). This progression of partnerships with companies reflects the influence of social media on extreme sports athletes from a business perspective. Within years, Kimura moved from advertising for other companies like SmithOptics to producing her own clothing line with a major clothing company such as The North Face. With the power of social media, athletes like Kimura are given more opportunities to promote brands and themselves, ultimately working towards expanding their network and influence while gaining monetary benefits.

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Extreme sports travel destinations capture another audience, where people who can afford these programs can engage in extreme sports with less stress. Because of the structure of these various programs and companies for extreme sports destinations, participants do not have to worry about the planning process- whether it is about making sure the right equipment is brought or finding a place to stay during an extreme sports adventure. Specifically, these extreme sports destinations and company programs provide a mutualistic relationship between the participant and company, where companies profit from registration and participation fees, and the participant experiences extreme sports with a “safety net.”  Various companies provide this experience to consumers, Adventure Consultants being one of these companies. Adventure Consultants allows consumers to embark on a 63-day journey 29,000 feet up Mount Everest. For $73,000 (in 2024), extreme sports athletes are provided with a personal sherpa guide on summit day, food, shelter, and other necessities on their adventure towards up the mountain (“Everest Expedition”). By paying companies like Adventure Consultants to provide them with the necessary training, equipment, and guidance, athletes can experience extreme sports without worrying about the minor details. This creates a mutualistic relationship between a company like Adventure Consultants and a consumer, where the consumer has less on their plate while planning their adventure, and the company profits off of participants. From the perspective of increasing opportunities, these companies make participating in extreme sports more desirable by decreasing stress about planning and preparing for these trips, and can ultimately use their profits to expand their company further and provide more opportunities for more people.

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Conclusion: What is the cost of allowing participation in extreme sports to continue as-is?

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Conclusion: What is the cost of allowing participation in extreme sports to continue as-is?

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Participating in extreme sports benefits the human body and mind, including materialistic benefits through opportunities of gaining money and widening platforms. However, amongst these benefits, the question about the cost-benefit relationship of extreme sports to humans still exists. While there are these various benefits to individuals or individual companies, it is important to realize the parties being harmed in the process.

First off, with younger audiences joining social media platforms with more easily persuaded minds, seeing posts about people doing back flips or extreme sports of that sort can influence their minds into thinking they need to do the same thing. This can be dangerous for younger people from the mental health perspective and the idea of upward comparison, where they are comparing themselves to extreme sports athletes. In addition, younger audiences may not be aware of all the training required to go into extreme sports or have the means to obtain the necessary equipment in order to safely execute these extreme sports. Younger audiences might just engage in extreme sports because they think it is “cool” and do not actually realize the danger until they have already jumped.

The point of extreme sport destinations is also put up into the air, as, despite the monetary benefits for companies and the availability for a more stress-free preparation process for extreme sport participants. With extreme sport tourism in play, many destinations like Mount Everest end up being more polluted and harmed from a nature perspective. Mount Everest is seen primarily as a bucket-list destination for extreme sports athletes, but this attraction causes a build up of more than 250 tons of waste by tourists yearly, where this pollution also negatively impacts Everest Base Camp and the historically settled communities in the Khumbu Valley of Mount Everest (Recchi). With pollution, conditions for extreme sports athletes as well as habitants and sherpas of the area worsen, where sherpas like the individual captured in figure 6 have no choice but to pick up after tourists. The lack of regulation over extreme sports participants in these tourist destinations only further magnifies the issue of tourism and pollution, harming nature as well as the people relying on this nature for their homes.

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Figure 2. Redbull advertisement featuring base jumper Valery Rozov appealing to people with interest in extreme sports. Ideas of "risk" and "challenge" are alluded to through the vastness below Rozov as well as the freezing temperatures present in the photo (RedBull Advertisement Featuring Base Jumper Valery Rozov).

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Figure 3. Instagram post from JT Holmes promoting EmbodyGreen (Holmes).

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Figure 4. Extreme sports athlete Jess Kimura promoting her new line with The North Face. Kimura explains her part in designing a new theme for clothing products available to consumers (Kimura).

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Figure 5. Jess Kimura promoting Smithoptics goggles in 2022 on her Instagram feed (Kimura). 

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Figure 6. Sherpa picking up trash during a 2018 exhibition of clearing up pollution on Mount Everest. During this exhibition, a totall of 1800 kilograms of trash was cleared from the mountain (Sherpa).

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Primary Source

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Secondary Source

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Scholarly Article

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Figure 1. Graph showing the changes in bone mass over a span of 80 years, separating by gender. The peak bone mass is estimated to be around 30 years old, and the decline in bone mass begins after the age of 40 (McDonnell).

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In fact, XSports4Vets is an organization for veterans who served during Operation Iraqi Freedom, Enduring Freedom eras, or the Global War on Terrorism. As a member of the organization, veterans can take courses that provide transportation, rental equipment, and instruction in various extreme sports ("X Sports 4 Vets: The National Veterans Outdoors Resource Hub"). This organization solely focuses on allowing veterans a free way to cope with returning to a civilian lifestyle, which gives them the support to grow their social circle with fellow veterans and gain confidence in their reintegration process. Apart from the social benefits, veterans also gain confidence in their bodies, an essential aspect of reintegration. Veterans often struggle with having consistent and healthy eating habits due to the harsh and highly structured meal patterns in the military, which often leads to a negative mindset about food and their body image. Without the strict eating habits and exercise structure from the military, veterans coming out of these restrictive structures could be subject to a higher risk of eating disorders, so using extreme sports as a way to gain confidence and fight against these potential risks can be highly beneficial to veterans.

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Overall, Sergeant Steve Damron, who served in the 2nd Battalion, 12th Field Artillery Regiment, shares the perspective that extreme sports "[is] a chance to calm our brothers down," he said, "to push that adrenaline out" ("Army Uses Extreme Sports to Help Veterans"). Extreme sports allow for easier integration and transition back into civilian life for veterans who did not have a typical calm everyday environment, ultimately benefiting veterans psychologically and socially.

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“Army Uses Extreme Sports to Help Veterans.” CBS News, CBS Interactive, 29 July 2009, www.cbsnews.com/news/army-uses-extreme-sports-to-help-veterans/. Accessed 11 Mar. 2024.

Bahrampour, Tara. “Americans over 50 Are Doing Extreme Sports Their Grandparents Never Imagined.” The Washington Post, 22 Feb. 2023, www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/02/22/extreme-sports/. Accessed 11 Mar. 2024.

“Everest Expedition.” Adventure Consultants, www.adventureconsultants.com/expeditions/seven-summits/everest/. Accessed 11 Mar. 2024.

HappiGuru, and Luke Tyburski. “How Extreme Challenges Satisfied His Escapism.” Feel Your Feelings, lnns.co/TEP6dgxWAM2. Accessed 11 Mar. 2024.

Holmes, JT [@jtholmesjr]. “The harder the work, the more important the recovery.” Instagram, 9 August 2023, https://www.instagram.com/p/Cvv-I-Qrq4s/.

Kelly, Jayson. “Pushing the Boundaries: Extreme Sports and the Physiology of Human Potential.” Joinpd Now, 22 Oct. 2023, joinpdnow.com/pushing-the-boundaries-extreme-sports-and-the-physiology-of-human-potential/. Accessed 11 Mar. 2024.

Kiely, TJ. “Influencer Marketing Costs 2024: Influencer Rates per Channel.” Meltwater, 6 Feb. 2024, www.meltwater.com/en/blog/influencer-marketing-costs-rates-pricing. Accessed 11 Mar. 2024.

Lovitt, Bryn. “Death by Selfie: 11 Disturbing Stories of Social Media Pics Gone Wrong.” Rolling Stone, 14 July 2016, www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-lists/death-by-selfie-11-disturbing-stories-of-social-media-pics-gone-wrong-15091/accidental-cliff-dive-28608/. Accessed 02 Feb. 2024.

Kimura, Jess [@jess.kimura]. “Accessibility is key and community is everything!” Instagram, 16 November 2023, https://www.instagram.com/p/CzuMVjCxkN1/?img_index=1.

Kimura, Jess [@jess.kimura]. “Brought this pair of @smithoptics goggles in 2018 and never looked back.” Instagram, 7 October 2022, https://www.instagram.com/p/CjbIbjNA5yo/.

McDonnell, Pat. “Age-Related Changes in Bone Mass in Men and Women.” ResearchGate, ResearchGate, 15 Dec. 2006, www.researchgate.net/figure/Age-related-changes-in-bone-mass-in-men-and-women-reproduced-with-permission-from_fig2_6627575. Accessed 11 Mar. 2024.

Musumeci, Giuseppe. “Why Would You Choose to Do an Extreme Sport?” National Library of Medicine, US Government, 26 July 2021, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8395983/. Accessed 11 Mar. 2024.

Poulson, Stephen C. Why Would Anyone Do That? : Lifestyle Sport in the Twenty-First Century  / Stephen C. Poulson. Rutgers University Press, 2016.

Raggiotto, Francesco. Consuming Extreme Sports : Psychological Drivers and Consumer Behaviours of Extreme Athletes. 1st ed. 2020., Springer International Publishing, 2020, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40127-6.

Recchi, Lou. “The Hidden Face of Everest: The Consequences of Excessive Tourism on the Roof of the World.” CSactu, 2 Aug. 2023, www.csactu.fr/the-hidden-face-of-everest-the-consequences-of-excessive-tourism-on-the-roof-of-the-world/#:~:text=Tourism%20generates%20over%20250%20tons,the%20arrival%20of%20mass%20tourism. Accessed 11 Mar. 2024.

RedBull Advertisement Featuring Base Jumper Valery Rozov. Pinterest, www.pinterest.com/pin/59109813839295286/. Accessed 11 Mar. 2024.

Rusch, Rebecca. “Rebecca Rusch: Career Highlights.” Rebecca Rusch, www.rebeccarusch.com/career-highlights. Accessed 11 Mar. 2024.

Sherpa, Namgyal. “Un Sherpa Népalais Ramasse Des Déchets à 8 000 Mètres d’altitude Le 23 Mai 2018, Pendant Une Expédition de Nettoyage Sur Le Mont Everest Par 20 Alpinistes Qui Ont Redescendu 1 800 Kg de Déchets. .” Franceinfo, 17 June 2018, www.francetvinfo.fr/en-image/en-images-l-everest-poubelle-d-altitude_2806307.html. Accessed 11 Mar. 2024.

Serfioti, Danai, and Nigel Hunt. “Extreme Sport as an Intervention for Physically Injured Military Veterans: The Example of Competitive Motorsport.” Disability and Rehabilitation, vol. 44, no. 24, 2022, pp. 7566–74, https://doi.org/10.1080/09638288.2021.1985630.

“X Sports 4 Vets: The National Veterans Outdoors Resource Hub.” US Vet Connect.Com, US Vet Connect, www.usvetconnect.com/xsports4vets. Accessed 11 Mar. 2024.

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Dear Chisako,

Overall, I really enjoyed this project because of the structure of the project development process. The very beginning assignments about developing and finding sources for our potential research question helped me the most since they made me keep an open mind on my research question. I went into the project relatively set on my research question about social media platforms and their role in extreme sports. Still, those few beginning assignments made me realize early on that it would be extremely difficult to find enough reliable sources (specifically scholarly articles) about that topic. In addition, I realized that my strategy of having many more sources as preliminary notes and then eliminating sources as I continued with the project was super helpful. While developing my category topics, I found myself switching back and forth between various ideas, so having multiple sources already listed helped refine my categories into topics I truly wanted to include in my final project. However, I struggled to find reliable primary sources since I used the UC Berkeley Library Database for my initial research, meaning many of my initial preliminary sources and notes came from scholarly articles or books. In future projects, I think using websites like the UC Berkeley Library Database is helpful, but also expanding out into websites where I can find more personal accounts of stories or multimedia sources towards the beginning of the research process can make the overall research process more straightforward. Moving forward, I think I need to refine my research process by starting off broader in terms of my types of sources (for example including more visual sources or secondary/primary websites), then finding more of the specific details through scholarly articles. However, I overall found this project engaging and extremely educational in learning how to research a topic I’m not super familiar with.

Denise Masli

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However, despite these rough conditions in the ITI 350 race, in recent years, the average participant age has increased from the mid-30s in the 1990s to 46 years old in 2023 (Bahrampour). By participating in these extreme sports events, older athletes like Rusch are pushing their biologically defined health limits. By training for and participating in races like the ITI 350, these older athletes are conditioning themselves to accomplish adventures despite the biological makeup of the human body telling them it is much more difficult physiologically. However, by accomplishing these things that are not biologically expected of them, older athletes like Rusch are able to feel satisfied with their accomplishments and truly "see what [their] [bodies] are capable of" (Bahrampour).

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Building on the idea of harming the settled habitants of these areas, many tour guides of extreme sports and sherpas are forced to endure difficult mental situations. Having already settled and adapted to these extreme sport environments like in the Khumbu Valley of Mount Everest, the addition of extreme sport participants as tourists in the area often put an additional stressor on these sheraps or tour guides. Especially with the idea of paying for a company to guide an individual through an extreme sport, people pay for these excursions often with high expectations because of the expensive cost. As a result, these expectations transfer onto sherpas and tour guides as almost a requirement to meet the expectations of others, ultimately negatively affecting their mental health. In an observation of river guides, researchers note, “From their point of view, there is usually very little adventure in shepherding people down a river. In fact, the river guides found it often an exhausting and contradictory enterprise. It was sometimes hard to manufacture adventure for clients while also routinely informing them, ‘The most dangerous part of your trip is over now that you are off the highway’” (Poulson). In this exploration for the other perspective in extreme sport adventures, the tour guide or sherpa is found to not have the same adrenaline or coping mechanism benefits as extreme sport participants. Instead, extreme sports seems to take more of a toll on their mental health, cycling back once again to the hidden implications behind the superficial appearance of extreme sport engagement.