I got to thinking about this topic last night when my mom, a hard core equestrian, came home with 4 ribs broken near her spine, a hematoma (huge bruise) the size a half basketball, serious shortness of breath, and blood in her pee (no, she did not go to the hospital). She’s always given me a hard time for being a skier, but it’s her, not me, who comes home broken like this on occasion. Twelve years ago, when she came home with a broken nose, cracked skull, and broken arm, I decided I’d look up which was more dangerous, horseback riding or skiing.
What did I find? Nothing great. There really aren’t any good statistics on which sports are the most injury inducing per capita.
What I did find was some serious hype about what sports are considered dangerous.
I also found some great estimates on how many injuries occur per year within each sport.
I love that this “graph” above was put together by Term Life Insurance.org. Hilarious!
The Top Ten Most Dangerous Sports on Earth are generally listed to be:
- Scuba Diving (especially cave diving)
- Horseback Riding (especially racing)
- High Altitude Mountaineering
- BASE Jumping
- Street Luging
- Heli Skiing
- Bull Riding
- Big Wave Surfing
-Cheerleading
- Whitewater Kayaking & Rafting
This is all just peoples perception and has no basis on anything remotely factual.
I did find some real facts, tho, and they are severly interesting:
Estimated Numbers of Injuries and Causes of Injury in 2009 via NEISS:
Bicycles – 544,470
Basketball – 502,251
Football – 451,961
Exercise Equiptment – 349,543
Baseball – 286,708
Skiing/Riding – 100,359
Trampolines – 97,908
Horseback riding – 78,499
BBQs – 18,358
Blankets – 12,655
The US Customer Product Safety Commission has a system called the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS) that collects current injury data related to consumer products from US emergency rooms. The NEISS uses a national probability sample from hospitals of differing sizes and locations and then provides estimates of the number and types of consumer product related injuries. The 2009 NEISS estimates have been produced from a sample of 96 hospitals, including children’s hospitals. All this begs the question: “how accurate are these ‘estimates?’” The answer is based on how much faith you have in mathematical theory.
Another very interesting statistic I stumbled upon was supersport motorbikes. Ya know, like those Kawasaki Ninjas that were rumored to give the owner an average life expectancy of 6 months after purchase. That “statistic” is clearly bullsh#t, but these ones aren’t:
SuperSport Motorcycle Accident Rates:
- 22.5 Deaths per 10,000 registered supersport motorcycles in 2005
- 7.5 deaths per 10,000 for all types of motorcycles in 2005
- 4,050 motorcycle-related fatalities in 2005.
- These numbers are from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety
- Supersport motos have higher horsepower per pound ratios than Nascar vehicles, and can reach speeds of 190 miles per hour.
ATVs are bad, too:
- 833 deaths in 2006
- 146,600 emergency room visits in 2006
- Info above from atvsafety.gov
As always there is a ton of differing information out there. I’m pretty curious what our community thinks. Which sports do you guys think are the most dangerous and why?
the deadliest is definitely freediving, its not on this list but its basically the sport of seeing who can dive the deepest on one breath. 25% of pros apparently die doing it. look it up on you tube, the videos are insane
For what it is, freediving actually has a surprisingly low death rate. One of the big factors is that it takes so much training to push your body close to it’s limits on holding your breath. Your body starts trying to force you to breathe long before you actually near running out of oxygen. By the time that you near your limits you tend to have a pretty good idea of how long you can go. Most sensible freedivers will also have safety divers when attempting serious depths/times etc. If done responsibly, freediving is one of the most relaxing, soulful sports around, almost like yoga in the way you control your body.
lameo
Even with a support team around there are still deaths. Remember the french couple known as the world’s best freedivers? The wife died trying to break her husband’s record, even with safety divers around she blacked out ascending at 300 feet. A safety diver pulled an emergency inflatable to get her back to surface as quickly as possible, but by that time it was too late. Very sad stuff.
I think the issue too is that since it’s not a visually entertaining sport, it’s really well known, except for the amazing YouTube edits…and then I continue with a bunch of other technical crap.
You can suppress your body’s instinct of trying to breathe by hyperventilating before decent to purge a large amount of carbon dioxide out of your body. You get all this wonderful bottom time from reducing the amount of carbon dioxide in your blood. Then you get this wonderfully deadly phenomenon called shallow water blackout which occurs while ascending from a free dive. The partial pressures of gasses return to their atmospheric levels which drops the oxygen below the required pressure to maintain consciousness and you pass out underwater. Based on the most recent DAN (Diver’s Alert Network) Annual report I could find online, there were a total of 40 incidents in 2006 involving breath hold diving, 34 were fatal. 12 were caused by blackouts.
I agree that when practiced responsibly it is a very relaxing, yet physically demanding sport, but the problem with the activity is that few people actually have some kind of support network , or follow the one-up-one-down buddy rule.
Man, basketball is so freakin dangerous and I’m not even kidding. Btw cheerleading is not a sport.
bull…. cheerleading is a competive sport.
Cheerleading is a sport!!!! Did you notice the title of the webpage??
in cheerleading you use muscles you dont even know you have! people on my squad who play basketball and other sports say its the hardest, but as a horse back rider i say its 2nd horse riding is hard……. it takes a good rider to make it look like they arent doing anything beileve me!
hey dude cheerleading is infact a sport i have hundreds of details proving it…….GET UR FACTS STRAIGHT!
Perhaps we should say that PROFESSIONAL cheerleader is a sport but not that Junior and High School bullshit thats just for whores…
It’s actually more like the other way around. Not that professional cheerleaders are whores, but high school and college cheer squads actually compete other squads. Do professional cheerleaders even do stunts?
If you think cheerleading isn’t a sport, sit in on a National Championship title holding cheer squad. We give up blood, time, sweat, and tears for two and a half minutes to shine and show that we know what the hell we’re going! I would LOVE to see a full basketball team try to do a twist basket toss and multiple back handsprings and tucks in a row
I feel like cheerleading is just team gymnastics. which is cheating in gymnastic terms.
personally i think cheerleading is just like gymnastics but with a team. both cheerleading and gymnastics are dangerous but so is basketball so dont try to make it sound like what you do is so much more risky and dangerous than what a basketball team does.i dont know if you have heard or not but a basketball player just broke his leg and the bone was literally popping out of his leg just because he landed the wrong way….and im sure the same can happen in cheerleading. Im a horseback rider i risk my life as well. every time i sit upon the back of a horse im putting my life on the line because i work with an animal that has a mind of its own and can do whatever he/she wants if im not focused. i had a friend that was in a coma for days because a 4,000 pound horse fell on top of her. my grandmother rode and her best friend died cause she was crushed between the jumps… so you see all sports are dangerous no matter how easy they look or how dumb they may seem to you
Bull! Cheer is most definately a sport! Try going up 10 to 15 feet up in the air and expecting the three girls on the ground to catch you! I would love to see your stupid basketball team try and do full twists and back tucks and landing on your feet correctly. And basetball isn’t dangerous! What’s the worst that can happen? You break your nose because of a ball? Big deal. We get broken necks and collarbones from our sport. Next time you diss cheer, get your facts first before you make us seem weak.
Had no idea that many cheerleaders read unofficial
Wow! the world is overpopulated anyway… right?
Heliskiing, really? I mean, if you are filming for a Teton Stick Gravity Productions movie, that is one thing…….but thousands of people heli ski every year with very little risk.
Canada ops, really low……on 30 degree pow.
AK, more risk, but still not something I avoid doing because I felt I might die.
Really it’s when the helis crash or when people fall in crevasses or end up in avalanches. It’s generally not from skiing.
This is bull shit. More people die bc skiing then heli skiing.
I’m not sure if all of you know how statistics work:
- the fact that more people die from BC riding has nothing to do with it. More people die from playing soccer or golf for that sake! Deadly in statistics like these refer to a percentage.
The Concord was the safest plane on earth for 27 years, until the day one plane crashed. Then the statistics backfired, and it became the most dangerous plane, because of the low number of total flights and passengers.
One highly overlooked sport is pole vaulting. Pole vaulting consistently has the highest death rates/ capita of any high school or college sport. Most injuries are caused from head and neck injuries from not landing on the pit. Other injuries can also occur due to poles snapping mid jump.
They get high on fiberglass…and adrenaline.
Hi,is gymnastics dangerous i am a completive gymnast and it seems that there is always someone getting hurt.
um… where is lacrosse? rubber balls flying at you at over 100 mph? getting wacked by 6ft metal poles? oh and by the way, cheerleading is gay…
Cheerleading is gay. It shouldn’t be on the list GAY where is lacrosse,too. Exposed kneck with hard balls flying at you at over 100mph and metal sticks flying around. Not to mention the crazy defenders trying to attack you.
EXCUSE ME?!?! Fu** you. Y’all have helmets and pads, but you know what we have? A uniform and shoes. You have an exposed neck with metal sticks? We are being tossed in the air with our lives at stake. Hate to yourself.
all we have is a helmet. We have A 1400 pound animal
I think we’re all here because we know skiing is the best.
No, women can do one than more sport….. the core abdominal muscles used in skiing and some forms of horseback riding involved in having good balance and working with, and not against, your equine sports partner are the same.
But no way would I take a dobbin over any damned jump. Why the heck do we put gates between outdoor places, for pete’s sake, so we don’t have to jump crap to get anywhere, like the British did 300 years ago.
Shadap and go make me a sammich!
You barely see any 35 year and over gymnasts so what does that tell you? Most gymnasts don’t make it in the sport past the age of 25 because of injuries. Wanna try something hard? How about a full twisting backflip on a 4 inch beam.
No it tells me that everyone losses interest after 35.
cheerleading is definately a sport. even JH, JV, and Varsity cheerleading is dangerous, on my team we had 2 concussions, and a lot of broken bones.
horseback riding is also very dangerous because horses are often nervous and very unpredictable.
high school cheer isnt a sport. allstar is and sometimes college. and for all you haters, show me your standing full and hitch kick double. if you bitches dont know what it is look it up. Yes lacrosse and football and stuff like that is a sport but it isn’t dangerous, you cant die from that unless your an idiot.
Football is very dangerous, bad head injuries happen out of the blue. I almost broke my knock due to an unusual hit, and not meaning to gloat but I am not an idiot. I agree with what ya said about cheer leading though
hi those are some weird sports some of them are
Im surprised that there are martial arts on here. I think that in Muay Thai or MMA almost 100% of people that compete get injuries.
I expecting to see boxing up there
no clue why boxing isn’t up there – that’s the most dangerous sport there is. Getting punched in the face and body 1000 times a fight… I couldn’t take a single punch from a boxer without serious injury much less 1000… Brain trauma… see Mohammad Ali
How about free soloing? Rockclimbing without rope. This is not like most other sports, other sports if you screw up you get hurt. If you are onehundred feet and the air and oops you slip. That’s it your dead. If you fall in cheerleading you will get hurt badly, maybe even die but free soloing you DIE! Same with lacrosse you will get hurt and ocassionally get a fatal injury. So I say free soloing all the way.
And I totally repect cheerleading and horseback riding and they are very dangerous
Ok i cheer for ECCATS and my middle school trust me it is the most dangerous sport because you can get really hurt and people say its just for fun but there not a cheerleader like some people so i have been cheering all my life and im only 12 so its very dangerous.
school cheer isn’t a sport.
allstar is
yeah allstar cheer or competitive cheer is really dangerous but cheering for a school is NOT a sport! trust me I used to cheer for a school its not hard. going to competitions every weekend is hard.
Cheerleading is about as much of a sport as racing. Name one pro cheerleader that everyone has heard of. Exactly. There’s a reason it’s not an olympic sport. Now snowboarding can be EXTREMELY dangerous, along with skiing. One wrong turn down a slope and you’ll be eating a tree. There’s also the risk of the ski poles going through your skull in a wreck, or the snowboard catching too much snow on one side and you being thrown onto your back or face. Atleast heli-skiing is on this list.
Paula Abdul…Lakers. Ever hear of her?
Cheer leading is a sport. I don’t do it but I have seen girls get broken necks because of the tossing up in the air thing. Horseback riding is even more dangerous than that though. My cousin went into a coma falling from a horse.
It bucked him off and threw him 10 feet, he smacked his head on the fence and cracked it open.
President of our ski club in DC was injured badly. Not from skiing but practicing
show jumping on her horse. The horse fell and landed on top of her. If she hadn’t
seen the animal crashing down quickly rolled sideways she would be dead.
The hit broke a number of ribs. She’s fully recovered now.
I just don’t understand where all these cheerleaders have all come from on unofficial? Where have you been hiding?
do i smell an Unofficial Cheerleading squad in the making? hmmm,hmmm?
here are some cheerleaders skiing….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kODORHQUIZI
Why isn’t Curling on here?? Have you seen the statistics? Maynard Tragedy, 1996, look it up. 23 dead, 4 wounded, at least 7 pregnant.
These comments are really making me realize how many people do a sport because it makes them feel important, whereas (hopefully) most of us ski basically because it feels cool to slide around on hills.
I pretty much only ski so other people can see how rad I am
My vote, not that anyone is taking notes or cares is Free Soloing. The consequence for one extremely small mistake, physical or mental is simply death. No margin for error here.
Climbing rocks a sport? No- that is dumb shit I did when I was 10. I do not understand why people would do such stupid activities into their adult life.
Not a sport- just a hobbie
I equestrian free cheer, constantly throwing down switch basket grabs with a Screamin Semen. No rope and no one to catch me. The fact that I do it on my trusty horse’s back with crampons on makes me all the more core. I don’t have to say that I’m better than you, but I will.
Pro video gaming! Huge risk in sitting on your ass all day. Getting fat, heart problems, blood clotting.
But really- ski racing seemes sketchy. 80+ mph with a helmet and skin suit to protect you from a very slick/ firm surface, trees and lift towers.
Me- I snowboard for smiles
Horseback riding is absolutly the most dangerous and motorcross is too. try controling a 200 pound motorcyclr and a 1300pound HORSE and then having it fall on you… check the olympics crosscountry horsebackriding and i think u will get the idea
i cant believe freestyle moto isnt on the top. i dont know a lot about it particularly but theres a shitton of deaths from young sponsered guys. tragic. i couldnt believe it when i read about it.
Polo. That is all.
my mother my dad and my fucking brother dyed sucking there small little peckers
Cheer is nothing all you do is run around in circles all day screaming its only a sport if you play for cheer extream try one day of horseback riding and/or lacross and then you can say how athletic you princes are pathedic beotches
allstar cheer is a sport. school is not.
Hahaha who in the right mind will say cheerleading is a sport ?? Om my shit !! You are gay for just thinking about it !! Rugby is one of the most dangerous sports just think about it !!
I’ve seen a couple rugby games and I’m pretty sure they hug each other more in their short game than cheerleaders do on their off time.
15 broken bones, one knee reconstruction, one compressed vertebrae, at least 2 concussions, and lots of stiches in 10 years of racing moto in the southeast. The only real injury in 300-400 days of snowboarding is a sprained ankle. Though, I am limping right now from a bout with on Aspen tree haha.
Horseback riding is definetly #1 on most dangerous list. Try controlling a 1,000+ pound horse with your legs. They can kill you at any second but choose not too. I have been kicked, bitten, stepped on, broke bones, and bruised ribs.
WOW! Never new so many cheerleaders ski and board…. feisty lil dudes….
What handball??
Anyone here know about isle of man tt?its a road racing event..just check on youtube..it will sure shock you..
Its the oldest motorsport event.since 1907.a very few years have passed since then without any deaths.and the list of serious injuries cant be even compared to any other sports on the planet.amazed that it has not been listed here..just check it out.
How about chess??
There are many factors that make horse-back riding an extremely dangerous sport. A horse’s neck itself is stronger than the entire human body– now try and control the entire horse with only your WEIGHT, LEGS, and ARMS. Yeah, not that easy. Riders use their ankles, calves, knees, a lot of inner thigh, hips, abs, back, shoulders, triceps and biceps, and wrists just to get a horse to go over ONE jump, execute ONE dressage movement, or listen in basically any other way.
I have had more injuries to count– and now my bone structure and joints will always be a problem for me.
I think that all of the sports mentioned above are worthy of being called dangerous sports, and I’m glad that everyone has pride in his own sport.
KPEACE
Everyone here is under the illusion that cheer leading is a sport just because people get hurt doing it. Granted it is dangerous but just barely a sport, in my opinion in a sport u have to a. Run or move somewhere b. compete. If your only argument is that cheerleaders get hurt so it is a sport then parkour should be considered as well (but parkour isn’t really a sport as there are almost no compitetions)
Competitive cheerleading qualifies as a sport.
Sideline cheerleading doesn’t. If you don’t know what that is, it’s cheering at games and such.
Since high school and college cheer do both competitive and sideline, they aren’t considered sports. As my (cheer) coach says, “They are athletes without a sport.”
Allstar cheer is definitely a sport, bar-none.
Professional cheerleading, like the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders, isn’t a sport. I don’t even know why it’s called “cheerleading” in the first place; it’s poms/dancing, not cheer.
Competitive cheerleading qualifies as a sport.
Sideline cheerleading does not. If you don’t know what that is, it’s cheering at games and such.
Since high school and college cheer do both competitive and sideline, most of the time, they aren’t considered sports. As my (cheer) coach says, “They are athletes without a sport.”
Allstar cheer is definitely a sport, bar-none.
Professional cheerleading (i.e.- Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders) is definitely not a sport. I don’t even know why they call it cheerleading; it’s poms not cheer.
Cheerleading is NOT a sport. it really is just lifting people up and putting them down and also just dancing. cheerleading used to be good. Girls standing on the SIDELINE cheering saying woo hoo and yay boys. but not now. now they have to do a whole routine on the sideline and distract people from the game. and most importantly, they distract the players which obviously isn’t good. I dont hate cheerleaders, but some of them can pretty bratty. BUT NOT ALL! some of my best friends are cheerleaders. so i dont generally hate cheerleaders.
surfing has to be the second most dangerous, just 3m under that wave is a razor sharp reef, that WILL kill you if you come off. base jumping has to be the most dangerous.