After the untimely death of extreme snowmobile athlete, Caleb Moore, due to complications from an accident suffered during the ESPN 2013 Winter X Games. We must ask ourselves if we have hit the bar where it is no longer physically safe to push the creativity any more.
Moore was one of the best riders and his accident couldn’t be chalked up to inexperience…but did ESPN dodge a bullet?
After news about Moore’s death came out, an ESPN representative said on “Outside the Lines” that all X Games athletes have extensive practice in their field and this is the safest games to date. Yet, before the X Games, extreme motorcycle athlete, Jackson Strong, was on ESPN promoting the fact he had only four hours of practice on a snowmobile. The video below is what happened during Strong’s snowmobile attempt at this year’s X Games. He crashes, throttle gets stuck on his snowmobile, it goes into the crowd and clips a fan. Should we second guess calling this a “sport” if they let anyone just jump on a snowmobile and compete?