Sport is generally considered to be beneficial to health. Fitness and health are key motivators for athletes. However, mountain biking exposes people's bodies to all kinds of potential dangers. Falls, pain, emotional lows and broken bones are the unpleasant side of cycling. So why do we always look for risk on our bikes in the next steep descent, in the extreme endurance experience or far away from civilisation in the wilderness? Author Jan Timmermann also asked himself this question. The educationalist came to BIKE as a career changer: "A model has been circulating in sociology for a long time that could explain why risk sports of all things enjoy such popularity." Anyone who listens to the following popular scientific explanations will possibly gain a better understanding of their own risk-taking behaviour when mountain biking.
Mountain biking between safety and risk
Risk is generally understood as the probability of occurrence of damage multiplied by its extent. Skateboarders rolling around in an empty space carry a lower risk than free climbers on a high alpine wall, for example. On a mountain bike trail, the risk increases with speed, gradient, obstacles and dangerous fall zones. Every biker assesses the risk differently. Threat and safety perceptions are subjective and situation-dependent social constructs. The decisive factors are the voluntariness of taking the risk, the controllability and the responsibility for the risk. In sociology, the need for safety and the need for risk are considered complementary parts of the basic human configuration. Individuals have to deal with a wide variety of risks on a daily basis and therefore develop routine and safety measures. The increased perception of uncertainties, for example through unlimited access to news reports and the globalisation of challenges such as trade or climate, leads to an increased need for security.
Nevertheless, humans are not monocausal security beings. Absolute, abstract security is considered hostile to pleasure. Routines are often responsible for the boredom feared in the adventure society. Risk sports offer an attractive opportunity to deal with uncertainty in a pleasurable way by dealing with fear in a fun-oriented way. By definition, risk sports involve a deviation from certain norms. The inherent deviations from the norm are often perceived as attractive, especially by young people. Sports science often uses terms such as daring, fun, trend and risk sports synonymously. In sociological terms, risk sports can be defined as consciously taking risks in sporting situations with the aim of proving oneself by actively utilising one's own abilities. Studies have shown that risky sportspeople do not seek out risk per se, but only a calculable form. Risk sports and common sense are therefore not contradictory. Most mountain bikers, for example, regularly check their equipment and protect themselves with a helmet and other protectors.
Professional bikers as modern gladiators
Prominent representatives of phenomenology understand the human body as a unity of body and self. Like a possession, the body is an individual representation of identity and a medium of self-awareness. It is relevant for human self-worth to know the limits of the body's capacity to perform and cope with stress. Voluntarily reaching and exceeding such limits in turn leads to risk sports. As an individual sport, mountain biking places a strong emphasis on the individuality of the subject. In desire, pain and effort, the individual realises their own physicality. The victory or defeat of one's own will over one's physicality can have positive or negative effects on one's self-image. Successfully surviving dangerous situations in sport can have great biographical significance and risky physical culture can be understood sociologically as a self-technological practice of subjectivation.
Today, the body is more publicised than ever. Since the end of the 19th century, athletes have been increasingly publicised. In modern media portrayals, however, high-risk athletes, such as celebrity bikers, are more than just athletes. They are role models, characterise a lifestyle, deliver spectacular images of superhuman performance and sporty styled eroticism. Of course, the role of celebrities in mountain biking also has an economic aspect. In the service of their sponsors, they fight as modern gladiators for the attention of the masses. The sport of mountain biking has long since left its existence on the fringes of public perception behind and is one of the figureheads of many an advertising campaign for major brands.
Attractiveness of risk sports
Modernisation and the trend towards prosperity have led to an increase in social and material security in industrialised countries. Fortunately, only a few people in Germany still have to fear acute existential problems. In fact, the multi-option and adventure society has now reached a level of tension poverty in which fewer and fewer depths of experience arise. In the physical hostility of the working world, people are increasingly embarking on a pleasurable search for profound physical experiences and excitement. Sport offers them a particularly attractive space for worlds of experience they thought they had lost. The German sociologist Ulrich Beck coined the term "risk society". He assumed that social, ecological, political and individual risks are increasingly produced by social decisions, technology, industry and science. These systematically produced uncertainties cannot be limited locally and are difficult to control. Mountain biking risks, on the other hand, can be limited and controlled. This could also offer an explanation as to why so many people want to satisfy their need for uncertainty within this self-defined framework.
In a society that is increasingly administered, regulated, ritualised, romanticised and insured, risk sports have a firm place in the everyday lives of many people. In hardly any other activity is the ability to self-produce experiences emphasised more strongly. Sports scientist Dr Arne Göring summarises: "With its development logic from risk to second-order dangers and the resulting increased construction of safety, society creates the actual basis for seeking out risky sporting activities. People who satisfy their need for safety in ability-dependent risk sports are therefore endeavouring to actively create safety themselves under emergency conditions."
Assessment by Jan Timmermann, BIKE editor, educational scientist (MA), social pedagogue (BA)
The mountain bike is an excellent tool for breaking through the lack of experience and safety-orientation of everyday life. We bikers love calculable risk. As a risk sport, mountain biking offers attractive inscription mechanisms for self-technologies. The discourse surrounding sport has spread widely in the adventure, result and risk society. Anyone who wants to understand why events such as the Red Bull Rampage and the like attract so much attention will find illuminating explanations in the social sciences.
Jan Timmermann
Editor
