I suspected as much! During the Super Bowl halftime show my neighbour and I got into an argument over sports injuries.
It isn’t that we dislike Madonna but when you’ve seen one glitzy, over-the-top, mega-musical, song and dance, laser light extravaganza . . . well, you know. I’d just as soon watch Leonard Cohen croak out a handful of ballads.
Anyway, my neighbour convinced me to turn the channel to watch a snowboard competition and that’s when the argument started.
He maintained that the number of extreme sports injuries was decimating the ranks of the young and I said that there was no danger of that since the vast majority of the young stayed safely indoors engaged in life or death struggles with aliens on their Xboxes.
I could see where he might get the idea of impending sports doom. The media is full of pictures and stories of spectacular crashes involving extreme sports activity, despite the fact that the number of adventurous young people who actually attempt high amplitude jumps, spins, and flips is actually very small.
Oh, sure, every town has a skateboard park and every ski hill a half pipe, but only a few kids can accomplish even basic tricks.
Most of the participants’ time is spent watching others do tricks and then trying to copy them, or in the case of skateboarding, falling down repeatedly on concrete surfaces while trying to copy them.
I maintained that the old, traditional sports were responsible for the most injuries and after the game I did a little research. Sure enough, according to statistics compiled by American pediatricians, the greatest number of injuries requiring hospital attention occurred to the young while they were playing basketball – over 500,000.
Skateboarding was down the list with 112,000, after football, hockey, soccer and baseball.
Snowboarding, skiing and motorcycle racing didn’t even make the Top 15; golf was more dangerous, injuring 47,000
Of course, the statistics are skewed a little because pediatricians don’t classify those injuries that occur while people are doing the most extreme activities – things like jumping snowmobiles over garages or riding mountain bikes off rock ledges – as “sports injuries.” They use a variety of other descriptive terms, along with head shaking and eye rolling.
I am glad that the statistics favoured my side of the argument but more than that, I am pleased to note that many parents are not content to let their children remain couch potatoes.
No, instead they continue to enroll their children in those traditional sporting activities that most effectively teach young people life’s most valuable lessons: Don’t be a baby; suck it up; it could be worse; no pain, no gain; in a couple months you’ll be as good as new! Extreme sports have a long way to go to match that.
