Jules Bianchi died today. He was in a horrible accident last October in the Japan Grand Prix at Suzuka racetrack, and never woke up. In private email this afternoon, Wonderduck said, "It'll happen again. It may be 20 more years but it'll happen."

And he's right. They do the best they can to make racing safe, and perhaps that's why this is the first driver death since Senna died 21 years ago. But he's right: it'll happen again.

Thinking about that, it occurred to me that for some sports the risk is part of the attraction. We're not Romans attending the Gladitorial Games expecting to see men butchered; it's not like that. But the knowledge of the risk adds tension and interest. It's part of what makes us human. And as a result a lot of sports do in fact have an element of risk, in some cases quite a lot.

And this doesn't just attract the audience. It attracts the participants, too. Indeed some sports do not have audiences, such as "free climbing". That refers to people who climb rock faces without the benefit of any safety equipment: no ropes, no pitons, no nothing. If they make a mistake they fall and are crippled or killed. The degree of danger is entirely a function of what you're climbing, and some cases are preposterously perilous.

Traditionally Motocross is considered the most dangerous sport for participants, not so much because of the risk of dying as because of the amount of cumulative damage it does to the riders over the course of a career. They're doing things to their body routinely that we are not designed to have done to us. (At least it was traditional when I was younger. Now I'd have to vote for bull-riding.)

High speed motorcycle racing on a track give me the willies. If a race car driver loses it in a corner, well, he's inside a safety cage and has lots of equipment in there for purposes of keeping him alive in the resulting crash. But if a motorcycle rider loses it, he's right there out in the open. The only thing between him and the ground is his suit, and that won't keep him from breaking his neck if he starts to roll.

And it does happen. Not every race, not necessarily even every year. But it does happen. The people participating know this -- and for a lot of them it's (a small) part of the attraction.

Don't ask me to explain it because I can't. Maybe it's the same thing that makes people ride roller coasters and watch horror movies. (Neither of which I do.) It's a danger rush, and for those actively risking life and health it's probably an even bigger rush.

But it's real, and it's part of the sport. If car racing was perfectly safe it probably wouldn't be as popular, either with the audience or with the drivers. No one wants to watch a driver die, but part of the attraction is the knowledge that it could happen.

Which doesn't change the fact that it's a tragedy when someone finally dies.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Weird World at 06:03 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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