In the past, cataloging an extreme sports list was easy — there wasn’t much to work with. A skateboard here and a parachute there. Now, curating a list of extreme sports is much more difficult, what with sports like bossaball, ZORB globe riding, WiSBASE and trampoline bridge jumping. I know, this whole extreme sports thing is getting a tad ridiculous. We love it. Aside from keeping track of the new and zany fringe extreme sports, there’s the matter of opinion. Is skateboarding an extreme sport? What about open-water swimming? I imagine the level of extreme-ness matters, but even that can be arbitrary. Some sports are undoubtedly extreme, but many of them, well, it simply depends. Does hopping on a mountain bike and taking a nicely groomed single-track trail through the woods count as extreme? I’m not sure. But this gut-wrenching and insane video of a Chilean downhill race — THAT IS EXTREME. Don’t get me started with semantics.

Extreme Sports list

Felix Baumgartner Stratosphere Jump

Felix Baumgartner born 20 April 1969 in Salzburg, Austria) is an Austrian skydiver, daredevil and BASE jumper. He set the world record for skydiving an estimated 39 kilometres (24 mi), reaching an estimated speed of 1,342 kilometres per hour (834 mph), or Mach 1.24, on 14 October 2012, and became the first person to break the sound barrier without vehicular power on his descent. He is also renowned for the particularly dangerous nature of the stunts he has performed during his career. Baumgartner spent time in the Austrian military where he practised parachute jumping, including training to land on small target zones. Baumgartner's most recent project was Red Bull Stratos, in which he jumped to Earth from a helium balloon in the stratosphere on 14 October 2012. As part of this project, he set the altitude record for a manned balloon flight, parachute jump from the highest altitude, and greatest free fall velocity.