5 . No Guts, No Glory? The Fear and Attraction of Risky Winter Sports

Once I went flying off the side of a mountain on skis. Certainly, I didn’t mean to. Before I _________ the ground, there was a surprising amount of time for reflection—and more on the long painful journey down to the ambulance.

The Winter Olympics are here, and I’ll be astonished with my heart in my mouth, watching ski-jumping and people hurtling downhill at _________ speed one way and another. But why are we so attracted to doing, watching and glamorizing dangerous activity? Is it really the thrill (兴奋) of the adrenaline (肾上腺素) rush? I hate that part when I take a big risk of any kind.

It _________ out I’m not the only one. The popular “thrill-seeker” explanation put forward by Marvin Zuckerman and others that sensation seeking is a basic personality trait has been strongly _________. Thrill-seeking is common in the young, especially young males. Many pay a high _________ for it. But our relationship with fear, courage and risk-taking is _________.

Eric Brymer and Robert Schweitzer asked people who had been doing an extreme sport for many years, to reflect   _________ on the experience. For these people, it wasn’t that they didn’t feel fear, or that they were attracted to the feeling of fear. They saw fear as an important tool to _________ danger—and working through it was a transformative experience. Part of the reward was the sense of one-ness with nature that lay beyond the _________.

For me, reading what the research participants said was __________ and there was a lot that was easy to relate to. __________, it seemed as though they believed they were only taking on risks over which they could prevail (战胜). Presumably, many of the people who are severely injured thought so too. I wonder if many who draw the short __________ regret it?

I have an almost total lack of mastery of winter sports. The contrast between my enthusiasm and lack of skill   __________ the somewhat spectacular accident at the start of this post. But just what kind of risks are we talking about with winter sports more commonly? For example, Brian Chaze and Patrick McDonald gathered published data on head injuries in winter sports. They advocated __________ use for sledding and skating as well. Children who hurt their heads sledding need hospitalization twice as much as for head injuries in other sports. Helmets aren’t used much, though.

Perhaps the best __________ from watching the winter Olympians is not the glamour of their risk-taking, but the way they rock those helmets.