Extreme Sports: Faster, Riskier, More Outrageous

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Topic spans: 1965 - 2004

Extreme Sports: Faster, Riskier, More Outrageous

They burst on the scene in the 1990s — brash, risky new sports and older activities done with a high-octane twist. Snowboarding, skateboarding, BMX riding, wakeboarding and similar pursuits became infused with a counterculture credo of making up rules and pushing the limits. But soon big business came courting the outlaw athletes. CBC Archives looks back at the recreation revolution and how savvy marketers helped push the extreme into the mainstream.

14 television clips

2 radio clips

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Extremely dangerous

Broadcast Date: April 3, 1998

Rob Harris made skysurfing — performing acrobatic tricks while plummeting earthward and standing on a board — look simple. But one day, while filming a soft-drink commercial over Vernon, B.C., Harris's parachute failed to open and he plunged to his death. A year after the 1995 tragedy, another daredevil parachutist died when he jumped out of a helicopter at less than half the altitude deemed safe. As we see in this television clip, such deaths have people asking — when is extreme too extreme?

Extremely dangerous

• Rob Harris, the skysurfer in this clip, was raised in California. An all-around athlete and well-known nightclub disc jockey, he won the world skysurfing championship in 1994. In demand for commercials, Harris was dressed in a tuxedo and parachute for the Mountain Dew ad that was a spoof on a James Bond-style getaway.

• PepsiCo, which makes Mountain Dew, eventually aired a commercial using skysurfing footage of Harris from the shoot — though not his final, fatal jump. Harris's parents, feeling their son would have wanted his fans to see his work, agreed to use of the footage.

• Keith Perepelkin, the other parachutist featured in this clip, was being filmed for the 1997 action movie Firestorm when he jumped from a helicopter only 324 metres up. His parachute failed to open properly. The American company that made the movie later pleaded guilty to two counts of unsafe work practices under British Columbia's Workers' Compensation Act and was fined $60,000.

• One of the more perilous extreme sports is freediving. Participants float in the water, take a deep breath and then swim as deep as possible, using special fins, before returning to the surface. Some divers go down with weighted sleds and are brought up by flotation devices. In 2002, one of the sport's biggest stars, Audrey Mestre, drowned while attempting a 171-metre dive. To see a clip about the sport, go to the additional clip "Freediving in B.C."

• Another dangerous extreme sport is BASE jumping, where people jump from mountains, bridges and other fixed objects and then deploy a parachute. BASE stands for building, antenna, span, earth. CBS News reported in 2001 that 40 people had died BASE jumping in the previous two decades.

• In 2001, the Calgary Board of Education banned field trips featuring extreme sports, hot-air balloon rides and mechanical bull riding, and restricted trips involving canoeing, hiking and mountain biking. The policy was triggered by an accident that killed two students and a parent chaperone. They were swept into rough waters and drowned while on a school-sanctioned hike in California.

• On Feb. 1, 2003, seven students from a school near Calgary were killed in avalanche during a backcountry ski trip in the B.C. Rockies. To see a clip about that tragedy and others involving avalanches, go to the topic Avalanche!

• In a 1997 article for the online magazine Slate, Seth Stevenson bemoaned the cult of dangerous sports. "The active outdoor life shouldn't translate to danger, cutthroat attitude and death," Stevenson wrote. "So go race your costly mountain bike off a cliff while gulping soda that tastes like fabric softener. I'll take a barefoot jog on the beach. It's free, nobody loses, and nobody gets hurt — how extremely delightful."

Extremely dangerous

Medium: Television