The Dangerous but Exciting Sport of Street Luge
The sport of street luge is an exciting but very dangerous way to get from point A to point B. This extreme sport involves extreme sports people lying down on special skateboards and using gravity to propel them down mountain roads at extremely high speeds. It is an extreme sport like no other; its closest competitor would probably be skateboarding from which it originated, but skateboarding on a heavy mix of drugs and energy drinks.
Street luge is a special type of extreme sport that only the most hardcore of athletes take part in. It is very dangerous to go flying down mountain roads at breakneck speeds. Usually the extreme sportsmen and women go luging down roads that are open to traffic and so they have to weave in and out of traffic and try not to get hit by a car. Riders can hit speeds of up to 40-97 mph going downhill on a luge board. At those types of speeds one wrong move and a luger can crash and get seriously injured or even killed.
It seems street luging started in the 1970s when skateboarders found that if they lay down on their boards, they could go a lot faster than if they stood on them. Even though no concrete evidence can be found as to who the first person ever to street luge was but a lot of legends abound. One of these legends relates the story of a pioneer of street luge who was driving his truck up a mountain road and ran out of petrol. Being an avid skateboarder, he pulled out a skateboard from his truck and lay down on it and luged all the way down the road to get help. No one knows just how much truth there is to this story but it may very well have started just like that by some daredevil who decided to lie down on his skateboard.
The extreme sport of street luge is an extremely dangerous one because of the high speeds reached by the lugers. The safety equipment that they do wear is a helmet and these funky looking body suits. The interesting aspect of street luging is that it often takes the form of a race with many lugers competing against each other. It is during these races that frequent crashes occur, when riders bump into each other and go flying or they are going at such high speeds trying to outrace their opponent that they wipe-out. The cool looking body suits serve a very valuable purpose in protecting the street luger. They are made from heavy duty leather and have extra padding in the elbow and leg areas. The suits have body armour built into them around the spine and neck area of the rider. This is done in order to protect the rider from injuries to the spine and the neck in case of a crash.
The fact that a rider is so close to the road is one of the most dangerous aspects of the sport. Riders frequently scrape their elbows, their legs and their knees. Since the luge has no brakes, the rider's feet act as the only way to stop the luge. Since the speed of the luge is so great, the shoes worn by riders have to be very thick and heavy duty. The final piece of protective equipment that a luger needs to wear is a helmet that has to meet stringent race specifications to protect a riders head and face in a crash.
Many people have been killed over the years taking part in a street luge event. A young man from Canada named Steve Baumgartner, was killed in 2008, when he was practising to take part in an illegal street luge event. He lost control of his luge and hit a tree. At the speed he must have been going, hitting a tree would have been enough to kill him. This tragic story just highlights the dangers of this sport and tells people to think very hard before they try it.
With so much danger involved in this sport, it is not one for the faint of heart. The same people who take part in street luge are the same ones who throw themselves off of buildings, jump motorcycles over buses and generally put their lives in danger in the name of the sport they love. This sport although very exciting should not be tried by novices until they have had professional training and know what they are getting themselves into.
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