Extreme Sports Deaths – Sponsored Tragedies

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Posted: January 28, 2022

Updated: January 28, 2022

  • Learn about the top 5 most dangerous sports
  • Famous athletes who died while doing extreme sports
  • Check out our article about extreme sports deaths

Some people love extreme sports. For others, it’s a scary idea that never becomes a reality. You can’t stress enough how dangerous extreme sports are besides all the fun and adrenalin. Despite courage and years of experience, many pay with their lives for their passion. Below we listed some shocking deaths which have occurred while pursuing extreme sports. Our list includes well-known athletes, but the number of tragic endings among amateurs is high. In recent years, we have gotten to a point where many extreme athletes would try any kind of craziness. Sadly the audience is so large that it’s an additional encouragement, and there are the companies who fund it all. They want to promote their logos with their help. So if anything goes wrong, they basically sponsor those extreme sports deaths.

Motorsports

The 2013 X Games is memorable for the death of the 25 years old Caleb Moore. During the X Games, after a backflip, the American snowmobiler miscalculated the angle of the maneuver and crashed. He suffered a chest injury and a mild acute brain injury, but he could leave the track on his own. A few days later, he died in the hospital. His brain didn’t get enough oxygen, and according to his doctor, he might have survived if a heart surgeon had arrived sooner. However, we will never know the what-ifs.

One of the most horrible extreme sports deaths happened to Japanese Cloud Toda. He obsessed over motor racing, but he suffered a permanent injury while testing engines in 2008. He became paralyzed from the chest down. However, despite all of this, Toda did not give up sports. He performed his stunts by attaching his legs to the engines with a device. During an exercise, he fell into a foam pit, where his motor caught fire, and he couldn’t escape.

Extreme Sports Death – Surfing

Fans got to know Jay Moriarity when he was on the cover of Surfer magazine at the age of 16, thanks to his stunt at the Mavericks. You can check out the 2022 competitors and their odds there. Jay’s death shocked everybody. He was only 22 years old, but the way he died was even more surprising. Instead of surfing, another extreme sport, free diving, caused his tragic passing. You can also read our articles about other surfers who faced death but survived. Online sportsbook sites in the US like BetVictor offer bets on Mavericks.

If you read our article about other unfortunate surfing deaths, you will see how many extreme sports deaths came from this otherwise fun activity. Malik Joyeux was another victim of the oceans. He was a professional surfer who won many races throughout his life. On December 2, 2005, a two-and-a-half-meter wave by the Hawaiian Islands swept him off the surfboard. Although the first wave presumably did not hurt Malik, as they kept coming, he got buried under them and couldn’t come up for air. He died at the age of 25.

Wingsuit Flying

People usually call wingsuit jumpers bat-men or bird-men, but neither is accurate. If anything, it should be squirrel men because the wingsuit jumpers glide in the air like those little cuties. The point is to fly between large buildings or natural phenomenons, like rock walls, flying with hundreds of kilometers per hour. Jumpers start from the top of those and open their parachutes only the last possible seconds. Wingsuit jumping seems like a dangerous sport even to the average person. It is no coincidence that in many parts of the world, like base jumping, it is either completely banned or takes a complicated procedure to get permission. Sadly, the extreme sports deaths rate is high in wingsuit jumping.

Extreme sports deaths
Picture Source: Flickr

Dario Barrio Dominguez hosted a popular cooking show on a Spanish television channel. In addition to cooking, his other passion was flying in a wingsuit, which caused his death. The Spanish chef and his companions jumped at an international flying festival in the Sierra de Segura Mountains, but his parachute did not open, so he died hitting a mountainside. He was 42 years old. Many consider only the pleasure of freedom they can find in an extreme sport like this but never forget to make an A, B, and C plan either.

At the opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics, the British stuntman Mark Sutton stunned the spectators and the viewers by jumping out of a helicopter to perform a James Bond-like parachute jump. So, you see, he was an experienced professional. However, during wingsuit jumping in the Swiss Alps, he hit a rock wall with 200 km / h speed a year later. They don’t know what exactly caused the accident, but after he jumped out of the helicopter in his aerodynamic suit, he drifted out of sight. He was also 42 years old.

The Most Dangerous Extreme Sports Ranked 

Most sports are beyond doubt dangerous. If you do a more physically demanding sport, there is always a risk of injury. It pushes your body and mind to the limit in every way. Not to mention the pressure the competitors put you through. However, you can surely imagine that with extreme sports, the risk is far greater. There you have to compete with the laws of physics and death itself. We have made a list of the most dangerous activities based on the extreme sports death rates. Bungee jumping has one of the lowest risks as far as extreme sports go. While many things could go wrong when you fall from something high, it still is one of the safest extreme sports in the world. The mortality rates are 1/500,000.

Extreme sports deaths
Picture Source: Pixabay

People consider parachuting among the most dangerous sports in the world. However, in terms of statistics, this is not true. Probably the thought comes from the fact that jumpers drop out of an airplane 13,000 feet above the ground. When it comes to extreme sports, basically anything can go wrong, so the 1/142,857 mortality rate is no insurance. There is an argument around the deaths due to hang gliding. More times than not, it’s the driver’s fault. Although, there were cases where the pilot was too light to control the plane. Failing to attach themselves properly to the frame is another common problem. Therefore, we think that if they made better security measures, there would be fewer issues. The mortality rate is 1/116,000.

Top 5 Most Dangerous Extreme Sports

It’s surprising, but according to statistics, riding ranks as the 5th most dangerous extreme sport. If somehow you get on the wrong side of a 600-700 lb horse, it is not a joke, as statistics prove it. No matter how intelligent they are, horses are beings with instincts. Regardless of the training they receive, they still can act instinctively, which often has devastating consequences. The mortality rate is 1/30,476. By canoeing or kayaking you should never forget that no matter how calm the sea or river seems, water is an unpredictable element. You should never underestimate it. Unfortunately, that is what leads to accidents and deaths. The mortality rate is 1/10,000.

Extreme sports deaths
Picture Source: Wikimedia Commons

Mountain climbing is 3rd on the list. There are various reasons for the tragic endings of climbing. There are far more factors to pay attention to and far less predictable issues than other sports have. Possibly, it results in more extreme sports deaths because climbers don’t know if they are prepared beforehand. The mortality rate is 1/5,872. Cave diving is the 2nd most dangerous extreme sport on the list. As you know, water is a risky thing, so are caves. Mixing the two requires a lot of practice and preparation. According to mortality rates, one person dies from 3,286.

We have reached the most dangerous extreme sport, which is base jumping. Although, it’s similar to wingsuit jumping, and both have bad stats. Base jumping is the spin-off of parachuting, and it happened for the first time in 1972. The sport has been gaining popularity ever since then, and so does the mortality rate. Since 2000, it has taken more than 250 lives, and the mortality rate is 43 times higher than parachuting. People jump off fixed objects, and after some free-falling, they open their parachutes. It is undoubtedly for the bravest people. The mortality rate is 1/2,317.

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