Top Most Dangerous Sports in the World

Sports can prove to be a time for merriment and a great source of entertainment for everyone involved from the players to the fans but every now and then, injuries and even death can cast a shadow. Involving a lot of physical contact, it hardly comes as a surprise that every sport entails an element of danger. But which would you consider the most dangerous in this lot? From extreme sports like Base jumping to well-known ones like football, here are 10 of the most dangerous sports in the world.

 Base Jumping

If you thought jumping off an airplane with 15,000 feet to go dangerous, think again. For many, this isn’t challenging enough apparently and hence they choose cliffs and man-made objects like towers. Jumping from such heights may sound safer while in reality they tend to be trickier due to virtually no time available to deploy the parachutes or deal with any problems. BASE is actually an acronym for the type of objects people jump off. It stands for Buildings, Antennas (tower), Spans (or bridges) and Earth (natural formations like cliffs, canyons, gorges, etc.). First developed by Carl Boenish in 1978 it has grown in popularity since.

Scuba diving

Scuba diving is an underwater sport fast gaining popularity across the planet. This recreational sport involves using SCUBA – Self Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus to stay underwater long enough to savor the serene beauty of marine life. While for some the allure of scuba diving lies in the charm of underwater life for others it’s the thrill of exploring a wreck or a cave. The danger in this sport chiefly lies in the changes in pressure. These changes in pressure could potentially rupture a lung, ear-drums or damage the sinuses. Prolonged exposure to high pressure gases can result in the build-up of nitrogen and helium in our blood stream which may lead to damage to tissues, blocking of small blood vessels or even shut down of blood supply! Other casualties could be due to failure of diving equipment.

Jallikattu

Jallikattu also known as bull-taming is another sport that involves bulls though it occurs on a different continent with a different set of rules. Taking place in villages across Tamil Nadu during the Pongal (thanksgiving for plentiful harvests) festival, this is a sport in which only one emerges the winner – man or bull. In one form of this sport a person has to hold on to the bull for a specified time or distance to win while a variant to this game involves releasing the bull into an open field with the participants trying to subdue the bull. The dangers as can be anticipated are many and as many as 200 have died in this sport over the last two decades. Also due to protests by animal activists against the cruelty meted out to the beasts the sport has been banned in the country.

Bull riding

This is a rodeo sport that involves staying mounted on a bull for as long as possible while the bull tries to buck off the rider. The very mention of mounting a 1000kg bull invokes jitters among  us; so I guess much needn’t be said about the perils entailed in the actual sport. It has been considered as one of the most dangerous sports in the world with damage to the neck, head and face besides concussions accounting for most of the injuries. In 1989 after a bull gored and punctured the heart of cowboy Lane Frost it was made compulsory to wear protective vests made of ballistic material. This and a slew of other protective measures have brought down the accidents in the sport but despite this it still continues to be the “most dangerous 8 seconds in sports”.