can be explored, however, is the issue of whether or not sports vary in the injury risks
that they pose for participants.
Do sports differ in their levels of “dangerousness”? Intuitively, it seems plausible that
one could place sports along a continuum of riskiness with apparently safe activities at
one end (e.g., endurance events such as marathon running) and high-risk sports at the
other end. Indeed, in motor racing, sixty-nine drivers from Formula One died as a result
of “on course” accidents between 1950 and 1994 (Kujala, 2002). Somewhere in the
middle of this hypothetical injury risk continuum lie popular sports such as basketball
and soccer. Another way of investigating the “danger” of sports is to elicit risk ratings of
them from the performers themselves. Using this approach, D.M.Pedersen (1997) asked
more than 400 people to assess the risks posed by various sporting activities. Results
revealed that motorcycle racing was perceived as the most dangerous sport, followed by
cliff-jumping, hang-gliding, sky-diving, bungee-jumping, rock-climbing, scuba-diving,
and, last of all, skiing. Perhaps not surprisingly, Pedersen (1997) also found that there
was an inverse relationship between the perceived dangerousness of these sports and
people’s willingness to participate in them. Nevertheless, despite such risks, many people
are attracted to dangerous leisure activities (see also Chapter 2 for discussion of people’s
motivation for participating in dangerous sports). Additional research on the riskiness of
sports comes from Grimmer, Jones and Williams (2000) who examined a sample of
Australian adolescents in an effort to identify the seven most common sports which were
associated with elevated risks of injury. In decreasing order of injury potential, these
sports were: martial arts, hockey, Australian Rules Football, roller-blading, netball,
soccer and basketball. Most of these activities are team-games in which there is a high
degree of bodily contact with opponents and a lot of jumping and landing. In summary,
reasonable progress has been made in assessing the riskiness of various sports and in
classifying them according to their perceived level of dangerousness. Having analysed
the nature, types and prevalence of injuries, we should now consider their causes.
Causes of injuries in sportAlthough a detailed analysis of the aetiology of athletic injuries is beyond the scope of
this chapter, certain obvious causes can be pinpointed. In this regard, Kirkby (1995)
compiled a list of precipitating factors which included inadequate physical conditioning
and/or “warm up” procedures (but see Box 9.2), faulty biomechanical techniques used by
athletes, deficient sports equipment, poor-quality protective apparel, dangerous sports
surfaces and, of course, illegal and aggressive physical contact from opponents. In
passing, it is notable that one of these factors—deficient sports equipment—was blamed
recently for a spate of injuries among professional footballers in Britain. To illustrate,
Woods et al. (2002) claimed that modern football boots contribute to the occurrence of
injuries due to their “inadequate heel lift, soft and high heel counter, and rigid sole” (p.
439). But apart from these precipitating factors, there are plenty of other ways in which
athletes can incur injury. Some of these factors are surprising if not bizarre (see Box 9.3)!
Research on the causes of sports injury has identified two broad classes of risk
variables: “extrinsic” and “intrinsic” factors (Kujala, 2002). Among the extrinsic factors
are the type of sport played (with high-risk activities like motorcycle racing standing in
Helping athletes to cope with injury: from theory to practice 249