The most life-threateningly dangerous sporting activity I can think up off the top of my head is Competitive Couch Surfing From The Top of Mount Everest While Throwing Burning Chainsaws At The Other Players And Also There Are Some Bears (CCSFTTOMEWTBCATOPAATASB and my humble apologies to anybody who is using text-to-speech functionality. I’m sure that wasn’t at all pretty).
CCSFTTOMEWTBCATOPAATASB is played, as may be expected, by being dropped from a low Earth orbit to within roughly ten metres of the peak of Everest (in Olympic CCSFTTOMEWTBCATOPAATASB, the run must be restarted if any player is outside the 10m ring or “Bulgeward" but in pickup games this rule is only loosely enforced). The couches are specially designed in Sweden by IKEA under the name “Chëstarfîeyld†and can be purchased fairly inexpensively. This is a blessing as a CombatLounger (as they’re affectionately known) seldom lasts for more than a season.
The object of the game is to make it as far as base station with all one’s body parts intact. The winner is computed based upon first across the line with penalties applied for reduction of body mass by dismemberment. In the very early days of the sport, the chainsaws were hurled manually but this resulted in significantly slower races and the International Board of CCSFTTOMEWTBCATOPAATASB Governors bowed to pressure from ESPN in the US and TSN in Canada to allow the Rocket Propelled Chainsaw, developed by Einard Carlssonsson in 1984 (pictured below).
Carlssonsson created the RPC M1B to win a bet with the then head of the Board of Governors, Douglas Creshnaw, that he (Carlssonsson) couldn’t possibly make the game any more dangerous than it already was. Creshnaw was proved wrong and was heard to admit as much shortly before his death.
PETA has spoken out strongly against CCSFTTOMEWTBCATOPAATASB for many years. The prevailing opinion amongst players is that PETA can “go stick their head [sic] in a sump†and they are generally ignored. The feeling is that the bears “should know better†than to get involved and if they stick around “it is their own lookout.â€
The current world champion hails from Belgium. Edmee De Vos holds the record of 47.04.066 (m.s.ms) having shattered his previous record by some 2 seconds during the 2008 World Pre-qualifications. He faces stiff opposition for the 09/10 season from a recently reborn Austrian squad. Though CCSFTTOMEWTBCATOPAATASB is officially a singles sport, it is not uncommon for players from the same country to band together to make the going difficult for others. This is unofficially condoned although since the 1998 CCSFTTOMEWTBCATOPAATASB Summit Series, a special drop pattern intended to separate country-persons as much as possible has been implemented. The Austrian crew had a difficult time early in the 2000’s. Beset by scandal (the substitution of a non-regulation CombatLounger) and the defection of their finest player in a generation (Astrid Schmidt-Wimmer, holder of 8 world championships and all but one of her fingers) to Eritrea immediately following the 2001 Pan-Euro event, the Austrians have been rebuilding and look to present the stiffest challenge to De Vos’s supremacy.