Aside from Russian acrobats on skates, the Extreme Figure Skating exhibition held in the Chicago area last fall was, well, not so terribly extreme. The ice wasn’t thin or cracked, nor did anyone attempt a triple lutz from a rooftop.
The folks at Extreme Figure Skating Productions, however, can hardly be blamed for trying to capitalize on the nation’s current obsession with the fiery adjective. Once primarily the property of reckless daredevils and adventurous Generation Xers, the notion of being “extreme” has flooded the mainstream.
We can put Extreme Lengths bandages on cuts, ride Extreme scooters, eat microwave popcorn with “extreme” butter and chase it with soda formulated to quench “extreme thirst.” An entire football league debuted Saturday called the XFL, and although the letters are not an acronym, everyone equates it with extreme play. One of the eight teams is named the Los Angeles Xtreme.
Other sports already have embraced extreme, giving us an annual Extreme Triathlon in Lake Geneva (with extreme hills), extreme golf games (72 holes), extreme running (50 miles or more) and even extreme pinball and motorcycle riding. Even books, recruiting seminars, television shows and major corporations seem to be invoking the word whenever possible. Nigel Stokes, CEO of DataMirror Corp., recently noted he was “extremely” pleased to join IBM’s Extreme Team program, which looks for solutions for Extreme Businesses, including “extreme real time data movement.” Whatever that means.
Why the new emphasis?
“`Extreme’ touches that part we want to be and aren’t,” explained David Stewart of the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California. “So we buy `extreme’ products instead.” Added John Antil, a professor of marketing at the University of Delaware: “If you want another word for `extreme,’ it’s `excess.’ And we are into excess.”
But the marketplace is so pitifully saturated that the original extreme athletes–those who believe an element of danger and derring-do must be involved in a sport–want nothing to do with its present popularity.
“For crying out loud, they’ve made a mockery of the word,” said an exasperated Kristin Ulmer, an extreme free skier, ski mountaineer, ice and rock climber, para-glider pilot and mountain biker.
Ulmer, once called “the most adrenalized female athlete in the country,” considers her sports extreme only when her life is truly in jeopardy–about 10 times a year. The word is “so overused,” she said. “Within the realm of people who do extreme, it means risking your life. You’re not risking your life playing 72 holes of golf.”
That no longer matters. Unlike the first extreme sports movement–which occurred in the mid-1990s and inspired the X-Games, snowboarding, sky surfing and ice climbing–the new extremists are older, and belong to the generation that has made a career out of reshaping industries and of taking things a bit too far: Baby Boomers. Unable to go faster, they are going longer and further, propelled by the intoxicating thought of finding new limits, grappling with midlife crises and escaping sedentary desk jobs.
“We’re in prosperous times and that makes people feel comfortable, but there is a primal human drive for risk and that isn’t being satisfied,” said David Nottoli, a strategic planner with advertising agency Widen & Kennedy. His clients include Nike, which recently ran a print ad for an “extreme trail running shoe.” The ad mocked the idea of extreme but was pulled because some people found it, well, extremely offensive.
“Over the last five years, we’ve seen a boom in adventure travel, eco-travel, extreme-type sports, anything that gives someone the opportunity to risk something. We have to make our lives feel like we are missing something to feel like we are alive,” Nottoli said.
It’s that search that keeps many pushing themselves into unexplored territory. The addictive rush that comes from doing something for the first time cannot be replicated, so people search for new ways to get it.
“To me, it’s less about athletics and more about life in general, about trying different things,” said Chicago’s Leesa Weichert, an ultra distance runner and triathlete who is almost halfway to her goal of running a marathon in every state.
“People are bored,” added Tom Seabourne, who holds several 12- and 24-hour cycling records and was a top finisher in the bicycle Race Across America. “There are no new frontiers, no wars and we are all trying to see what we can do that isn’t going to kill us. People are looking to see how much they can endure, how much pain they can take. For a lot of us, it’s not about winning. It’s about the pain and getting to the next level and doing a little better than you’ve done before.”
The slide into extremism in athletics can be subtle and irresistible. For many, it starts innocently, with the goal of running a 5-kilometer road race. The bar then gets raised to a 10K. A half marathon. Soon, marathon training begins.
“We’re finally getting to the point where people have been athletes long enough to do these things,” said C.C. Cunningham, an exercise physiologist at Performenhance in Evanston, which provides sport and adventure training. “It’s only been two or three decades since a large part of the population participated in [fitness activities] on a regular basis.”
With so many graduating from 5K races to marathons–at 26.2 miles, a distance once considered a threat to a woman’s health–coupled with advances in technology, making it easier to train longer and harder, athletes must work harder to stand out in a culture that promotes homogeneity.
But some believe extreme has already run its course and the word may be ruined forever. “It’s the `groovy’ of this age,” said Jim Schmidt, chief creative officer at the advertising agency Euro RSCG Tatham. “It will be looked at derisively in six months to a year because we’re attaching it to so many things.”
Until then, though, Schmidt envisions further abuses along the lines of an Extreme Disney World: “Amusement park rides that haven’t been tested for six years,” he suggested, for hard-core thrill seekers.
