A study by Stanford university revealed that in the US alone 3.5 million children and teenagers
are injured playing sports each year.
But that figure is far greater in other parts of the world, where things are a little less
"regulated", and sports tend to get a lot more messy.
Here's the world's top 10 most dangerous sports.
First up is bull running.
Known as The Running of the Bulls or encierro.
This insane sport usually takes place down the quaint, peaceful, and extremely narrow
backstreets of towns and cities all across Spain.
Before the bull run commences a large crowd of people gathers along a narrow backstreet,
then an angry herd of stampeding bulls is let loose at one end of the street and charges
down it, mowing down any adrenaline pumped Spaniard with a death wish who happens to
get in their way.
The participants run in front of the bulls and the goal of this sport is to basically
avoid receiving a nasty bludgeoning of bull's horn where the sun don't shine.
The most popular bull run happens every year in Pamplona, in northern Spain.
Every year around 300 brave amigos are injured at the event, mostly due to contusions from
being knocked over.
Since 1910, 14 people have been killed during Pamplona's running of the bulls.
Imagine if someone told you that they like to lie flat on a wooden board with wheels
on it and go hurtling down a steep road with only their feet to use as brakes.
You would probably think they're two trucks short of a skateboard.
Well a surprising amount of people actually enjoy risking their lives, and doing just
that.
It's a sport known as Street Luge and it's similar to skateboarding except the board
is slightly longer and the rider is required to be in a supine position on their luge board,
which basically means lying down, face up.
Oh and to top it all off, participants of this sport sometimes go down public roads,
with actual cars on them.
When you consider that the rider's visual profile is only a few inches from the road's
surface, you can probably imagine the enormous risks involved.
If you think that's scary, it gets worse, street lugers can reach speed of up to 97
mph.
That's considerably faster than a car travelling on a freeway or motorway.
Because the rider's own legs and feet are the only thing that they can use as breaks,
broken legs or torn ligaments are common in street luging as well as other, more serious
injuries.
One can only imagine the surprise and horror of the first ever person to partake in street
luging, when they realised half way down their descent that their only brakes were their
own feet.
Needless to say, they probably had a bad time.
Next up is the Vietnamese sport of Hoi Phet.
It's a tradition in the village of Hien Quan, north of Hanoi.
Each year thousands of villagers gather on a sand dune and fight over a painted red ball
using sticks.
If it sounds primitively violent, that's because it is.
The villagers believe that the ball will bring them good luck in the new year, if they don't
get their front teeth knocked out trying to retrieve it.
At first glance it may seem awfully similar to hockey, but there are two major differences.
The sticks are considerably cruder and more substantial and it's a hell of a lot more
violent.
The participants are allowed to swing their huge lumps of curved wood at anything or anyone
that gets in the way of the ball.
Needless to say, injuries are common and blood is frequently spilt.
Funny how hitting people with sticks is not okay, but add a ball and hey!
Suddenly it's a sport.
If you thought hitting people with sticks sounds violent, how about hitting people with
sticks whilst hurling balls at them?
That's pretty much the idea behind Lacrosse.
Lacrosse is similar to football or basketball but with long sticks with nets on the end,
oh and there's an awful lot more contact and general violent tendencies between players.
Lacrosse isn't a commonly played sport because it takes tough and fearless individuals to
play it at a competitive level.
When it comes to rough contact the rules are more relaxed with Lacrosse than other sports.
Players are permitted to hit and tackle the opponents with some considerable force that
would be illegal in most other contact sports.
Broken bones, punctured lungs and other serious injuries are highly common in Lacrosse.
Very similar to Lacrosse is a sport called Irish hurling, which is like lacrosse, but
with axe-shaped wooden sticks, minimal padding for the players, and it's considerably faster,
in fact is officially the world's fastest field sport, enough to make a lacrosse player
shake in their shin guards.
Now this next sport involves a bunch of eccentric cheese lovers who've all had a bit too much
feta for their own good, hurling themselves down a nearly vertical hill in pursuit of
a wheel of cheese.
It may sound a bit Emmental but it's a real sport, and it's called cheese rolling.
It take's place every year in Gloucester, England.
So what's the point of all this, surely there's enough cheese in Gloucester to go around.
Well apparently not, the lucky winner, that's the person that can chuck their limp bodies
down the hill the fastest, get's to the keep the wheel of cheese.
But you can have too much of a Gouda thing.
Okay that's enough of the cheese jokes, but in all seriousness, broken arms and legs are
extremely commonplace during the cheese rolling event.
It may look like fun, but next time you're thinking of throwing your body down a hill
after a wheel of cheese, remember, it's a good deal safer to just go out and buy one.
For a long time people would look up to skydivers, calling them daredevils or brave pioneers.
But then in 1978 some daring psychopath went and jumped straight off a cliff wearing nothing
but a track suit and a small parachute on their back, and made all the other daredevils
look a bit silly.
That daring man was called Carl Boenish and he was the catalyst for a new breed of sport
known as BASE jumping, a sport which is growing rapidly in popularity and involves parachuting
from any fixed structure.
The name, BASE jumping is an acronym that stands for the four categories of fixed objects
which BASE jumping regularly throw themselves off: Building, antenna, span, and earth.
That last one doesn't literally involve hurling one's self off the face of the Earth, in BASE
jumping, Earth refers to cliffs.
As you can probably imagine the sport is fraught with danger and fatalities are common.
Since the sport started there have been over 250 recorded deaths from BASE jumping.
When BASE jumping, technical precision and solid planning is essential to staying alive,
the slightest mistake, such as steering in the wrong direction for a second, or even
a strong gust of wind, or if you simply pull your parachute open a second too late you
will die.
This is not for the faint hearted.
Next up is Buzkashi, literally meaning "goat grabbing".
This sport is played in Central Asia, particularly in Afghanistan where it as actually the national
sport.
It was brought to Afghanistan by Genghis Khan's Mongol hordes 800 years ago.
Buzkashi is quite simple, all you need to play is a pony and a dead goat, oh and twenty
fearless Afghanis who aren't afraid to get seriously hurt.
The goal of Buzkashi is to fight over the goat carcass, called a buz, and drag it towards
a goal.
Games are long and can sometimes last for several days.
But they are also as brutal as they are long.
There are few rules and players hit opponents often and hard, to try and dismount them or
get the goat carcass from them.
Players are usually equipped with whips, which they not only use on their own horse, but
the opponent's horses and the opponents themselves.
It's an extremely brutal sport but it's not just the players that get injured on a regular
basis.
Bukashi games often attract crowds in the thousands and spectators are at much risk
as the players are themselves.
Several times a game you can expect players to be flown from their horses and their horses
to go careering to the ground, often into the crowd.
Spectators therefore have to be constantly on their guard to avoid being flattened or
trampled on by a horse.
Or knocked out by a flying player.
There's no denying that American Football is a dangerous sport.
Any sport where you have to wear a helmet is sure to end in catastrophe.
Since 1931 there have been 1,027 recorded deaths from American Football, mostly due
to catastrophic brain injuries from players smacking their helmets into one another.
But American Football is not quite as dangerous as the sport which is came from - Rugby.
Imagine American Football without the hard helmets, face masks, shoulder pads, and basically
every other form of protection.
Rugby player typically wear little or no padding, and any form of hard protective gear is banned.
Rugby is a rough contact sport and to participate you pretty much have to be built like a tank,
so if you're no wider than a plank of wood expect to get knocked into the dirt often
and painfully, especially when you're up against this lot.
The two leading causes of death in rugby are concussion and drowning, no it's not played
underwater, but unfortunately players can sometimes drown in the mud if they're trapped
face down at the bottom of a pile up, which in rugby is called a ruck.
Next up is boxing, there's no prize for guessing why boxing is dangerous.
Boxing basically consists of 50% getting hit in the face by a well trained killing machine
and the other 50% trying not to get hit in the face.
Obviously it's a brutal sport, but just how dangerous is it?
Well a professional boxer can punch with up to 1,400 pounds per square inch of pressure.
That's enough power to accelerate their opponents head at a rate of 53g, that's 53 times the
force of gravity.
A punch with that much force can cause all sorts of issues, such as detached retinas,
brain haemorrhages, fractured skulls and permanent neurological disorders such as dementia.
Between 1918 and 1997 there were at least 650 recorded deaths from professional boxing.
And finally is Horseback riding.
But surely beating people with sticks or jumping off buildings is more dangerous than horseback
riding?
Well no, it may come as a surprise, but riding a horse is probably the most dangerous sport
you can possibly do.
Horseback riding is not just about little men jumping over wooden blocks and occasionally
going flying into a muddy puddle.
There's a lot more to equestrianism than meets the eye.
Just staying on top of a horse is a difficult task in itself, contrary to popular belief
you can't use your hands or legs to balance on a horse because the rider uses those to
communicate with the horse, so you have to balance on top of a 550 kg animal traveling
at speeds of up to 70 km/h using only your buttocks to balance.
Statistics say that every horse rider can expect a serious injury for every 350 hours
of riding.
But it's not just the high frequency of injuries that makes it dangerous, it's the seriousness
of these injuries which is truly shocking.
Horseback riders can their spinal cords snapped cleanly in two from a fall or their skulls
crushed under a horses hoof, and that's just whilst riding the horse.
Horses can be unpredictable and whilst they're not riding them, riders face the constant
threat of being kicked by a horse without warning.
A horse's kick can exert up to 2,000 pounds of pressure per square inch.
In fact horses have been known to kick holes in stable walls with minimal effort.
Horseback riding can be dangerous for the horses too, if a horse sustains an injury
whilst racing, such as a broken leg, because horses are extremely expensive animals to
maintain, the injured horse is usually euthanised.