Extreme sports tend to push the limitations of the human body in order to cope with extraordinary conditions. This requires a high level of physical exertion and the necessity of facing the possibility of death. It would seem at times, that extreme sport appears to defy scientific laws. Extreme sports have become the domain of clever advertising marketers and clothes and equipment designers and is as varied as their imagination.

Extreme sports have formed a sub-culture which has a cult-type following. It is a sport aimed at the wealthy, adrenalin pushing and thrill-seeking dissatisfied younger generation. A sport the marketing gurus quickly predicted as being a Blue Moon Opportunity, (once in a lifetime opportunity).

As extreme sports may involve performing death-defying stunts, they require tremendous discipline and fitness of the body, as well as the mind. This can be clearly seen in the sport of free diving, which is based on the ‘Mammalian Diving reflex’. This was originally witnessed in whales and dolphins. At the extreme depths of free diving, the heart beat of a world champion free diver was recorded as low as 9 beats per minute, in the area known as the ‘baracardia shift’. The deepest free dive was performed by the German Herbet Nitsche, diving with the aid of a weighted sled, to 214 metres (702 feet), in 2007.

Advertising marketers and designers of specialized equipment and clothing make sure that there are costly ‘toys’ that go with freediving, or any other extreme sport, such as low profile masks, skin tight hydrophobic freedive suits, freedive fins etc. Free diving has evolved into underwater team sports of rugby and hockey.

X Games were evolved for the TV audience. It is a variety of extreme action sports which has evolved into a yearly event, with both winter and summer games.

There are a wide variety of accepted sports which were once classed as extreme sport. These include skiing, hang gliding, mountain and rock climbing. New extreme sports continue to evolve including riding the air waves on a board, snocross, ice climbing, and wingsuit flying. Now you can strap a human bodyinside a specially designed wingsuit and the body becomes shaped into an airfoil. Special feet and hand ‘wing’s created in the suit, allows the participant to glide several thousand feet. A conventional parachute is used to ensure the flyer lands safely.

Extreme sport is based on three major factors: the purchase of expensive equipment, the purchase of designer clothing and a heart, will and physical ability to oppose what is the accepted norm. Along with video-music and the ability of advertising giants, there continues to be new frontiers thrust at the experience-hungry adrenalin-pumping, thrill seeking younger generation. Perhaps one day we will see someone like Richard Branson create an extreme sport in the low-gravity of the moon. Maybe it will be an oxygen-free, ‘giant step’ competition.