Need for speed: how sport’s risk takers recognise deadly danger and do it anyway | Emma John

In a stable and affluent society, it is possible to declare that ‘life is for living’ through pursuits that shorten your odds of dyingLast year I visited St Moritz’s infamous Cresta Run. You know the one – the vertiginous skeleton course that has killed a number of its participants and maimed many more. I was with a group of friends who were attempting it for the first time, and who quickly became addicted to the adrenaline fix. I stubbornly refused to even contemplate it.It’s not just that my mates are braver than me – they are – but they’re all decent athletes, cricketers, hockey players, marathon runners and Channel swimmers. They have rapid reflexes and hand-eye coordination: I barely have a sense of where my arms and legs end. There are endless ways to hurt yourself on a crushingly heavy toboggan with razor-sharp runners that’s hurtling at 50mph between sheer walls of solid ice, and if anyone was going to slice off a finger or break their head landing upside down, it was me. Continue reading...

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