Australia native Layne Beachley, 28, started surfing at age 4 and turned pro at 18. Before she started competing, however, the boys at Manly Beach in Sydney made it clear she wasn’t welcome to share their waves and advised her to get out of the water.
“Once I proved myself to them and showed I wasn’t intimidated, they stopped,” she explains. “I never went in [to shore] when they told me to.”
Beachley is the women’s world surfing champion, a title she has held for three years. She also is one of a few women in extreme sports who have begun to get the respect they deserve.
Even when Beachley was ranked second in the world, she had to waitress and work at surf shops to support herself, and she twice considered quitting the sport.
The outgoing Aussie stuck with it, however, and is now “very well-fed” by her sponsors, she says.
And her male colleagues are finally interested too.
“It’s just in the last two or three years, when we started surfing the same conditions as the men, that the male surfers became supportive and encouraging. Now they sit on the beach and watch our heats.”
In mid-January Beachley rode a 25-foot wave, the largest ever by a woman. And she has entered contests and beaten men, who often get psyched out by the women’s world champ.
Not long ago, women were an afterthought in extreme sports. Skateboarding competitions were packed with pierced, tattooed males in baggy shorts, while women served as bikini-clad ornaments to male surfers tackling big waves.
Now, however, women have their own skateboard and surfing competitions, and female mountain bikers and triathletes share race courses with their male counterparts. And a few lucky women at the top are making a living doing what they love.
According to sports industry experts, an extreme sport is a non-traditional sport with an element of danger and where Mother Nature–oceans, rocks, mountains, weather–has an impact on the competition and results. Unlike stadium sports, the boundaries are less fixed and the comfort zone is beyond what most will tolerate.
“An extreme athlete pushes an envelope in some regard, doing things that haven’t been done before,” explains Trish Bosch, manager of the Chicago-area Uncle Dan’s outdoors stores. “Participation is a way for an athlete to make a mark. There’s an attitude that anything’s possible; no one’s limited unless they put a limit on themselves. And adrenaline is a big part of it; that’s often the hook that keeps athletes in the sport.”
Unlike baseball, football and basketball, extreme sports offer a venue that’s ripe for innovation by women, who can bring new skills to the table and often compete at the same level as men.
World champion rock climber Tiffany Campbell, now 34, was a scientist studying nuclear medicine at the University of Missouri in Columbia when the climbing bug hit.
“I was in the lab and overheard some of the researchers talking about climbing. There were cliffs nearby and I asked if I could tag along. We wore sticky shoes and we were hanging up in the air and sticking to rocks like Spiderman. It was such a rush!” she says of that day eight years ago.
Despite the fact that she was “shaking like Elvis,” Campbell, a former gymnast, was hooked. She finished her research, headed to Colorado to interview for a job at the National Center for Atmospheric Research but decided to cancel the interview and go on a climbing road trip instead. For a while she lived in a tent and earned just enough money competing to pay for food.
She has been climbing ever since, traveling to Europe and tackling boulders and peaks throughout the West, becoming the only woman to scale the 14,000-plus-foot Mt. Alice in Colorado in the winter. And because of her flexibility and strength, she has done shorter, more technical climbs that many men haven’t been able to do.
Campbell also has held her own on the short, fast competitive circuit called sport climbing, which takes place on indoor climbing walls. Last year she won the title of female sport climbing champion and now makes a living, along with husband Jason–the male sport climbing champion–climbing and coaching year-round.
While a few women are willing to forgo housing until they make it in their sport, most work their sports around their jobs and families, competing on weekends or planning vacations around races.
Lisa Bourazak, 32, is an Evanston-based physical therapist who just wrapped up her second year of mountain bike racing and her first year of cyclo-cross (cyclo-cross involves riding and then running with the bike over barriers and is strictly a fall/winter sport).
“I’ve always been a pretty competitive person with team sports [volleyball and softball], but once I left school and had less time to play, I went toward sports where you can be on your own schedule.”
That meant mountain biking.
“It’s pretty challenging. I’m not going to overcome it or master it, but I’ll keep improving. It’s always something you can work on and get better at.”
Men and women share the same course at mountain bike races, and often start 30 seconds to a minute apart.
“We don’t compete against them,” Bourazak says of the men, “but some of them get really mad when you pass them on the course. Some of them will cheer you on to catch the other women ahead of you. It depends on their attitude toward women and sports.”
Though cycling hasn’t consumed her life, Bourazak’s training and racing leave little time for her other hobbies like playing guitar and spending time in the darkroom.
“And there are probably some books I don’t have time for. But biking’s an outlet too. At this point I’m physically able to bike–and who knows for how much longer? So you might as well enjoy it while you can. I’m competing against other women but I’m not out for blood–we’ve all got to get up and go to work the next day. I just want to do really well for me, and racing keeps me motivated to work out.”
Dee Ragalie, 48, is a Morton Grove triathlete going into her 17th season of racing. “I’ve noticed a lot more women coming to the sport,” she says. “They’re watching it on television and saying, `I can do that.’ In the beginning I felt like I was breaking ground,” she says. “But the men were always supportive. You pick up some of your competitiveness from the men.”
While the adrenaline rush is addictive, women don’t have to surf 25-footers or do an Ironman triathlon to gain the immense benefits offered by extreme sports. There are short-distance triathlons and beginner mountain bike races, and many health clubs offer safe climbing on indoor walls. The biggest challenge is to get out and give new sports a try.
“All I can do is encourage young girls and women to try a sport,” says Beachley, who is one of seven women in the documentary “Winning Women,” scheduled for airing on March 3 (6 p.m. Central time) on cable’s WE: Women’s Entertainment station, formerly the Romance Classics station, which is available only in limited areas.
“Unless you put yourself on a limb, you’ll never grow,” Beachley says. “If you stay in the comfort zone and remain complacent, you’ll never learn. And the whole objective in life is to learn.”
TESTING YOUR LIMITS
The best way to get involved in a new sport is to check out the back pages of national and local sports magazines, such as Windy City Sports, for their listings under each sport. There you will find groups, clubs and gyms that sponsor activities such as group bike rides, triathlon training and indoor climbing, for example. Check out a group near you to see whether you enjoy the people, the training is helpful and the pace is right for you.Testing your limits
