Gory Fact: The Most Dangerous Sport
[Children with their kites during Vasanta festival. Picture Source]
Gory Fact: The Most Dangerous Sport
There is a suprise for you. The most dangerous sport is kite flying. Not usual one but Indian or Pakistani type of competitive kite flying that is performed during "Vasanta" (Basante) festival in Pakistan and India. Just within last ten years this sport have killed hundreds of people and injured thousands. The kite owners sharpen their kite's (called "manja") strings by covering them in metal and using powdered glass in order to cut the strings of competitor's kite. This inconsiderate practice turns this toy into potentially lethal tool.
[Thousands of kites fill the sky during Vasanta festival. Picture Source]
The competitors are often killed while chasing the kites, when they fall to death from the rooftops or when being hit by a road vehicle. These kites are also very dangerous to road traffic. In some accidents, two children had their throats slit by the lethal strings when they peeked out of the car's rooftop, and one motocyclist also met similar fate.
This sport is so unsafe that it was banned in regions of Punjab, Maharashtra and Gujarat and the captial Delphi, but the law is seldom enforced as it is extremely hard to track down the kites' owners.
The kitesurfing which is popular in the West is not the safest sport neither. It has higher accident and death rate than diving or windsurfing. Kitesurfing competitions include many participants competing at once, so they are particularly dangerous as there is a high risk of surfers' kite lines getting tangled or cutting someone - during strong winds the fast moving lines can be as sharp as knives.
References:
"Windsurfing vs kitesurfing: Injuries at the North Sea over a 2-year period", World Journal of Orthopedics, 2016.
"Why flying kites in India can be deadly", BBC article, 2016.
"India: Three die as kite string slits their throats", BBC article, 2016.
"Pakistan kite festival 'kills 10", BBC article, 2007.
"Episkyros", Forbes article, 2002.
"Vasanta (Ritu)", Wikipedia article.
-logic
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Kites are a favourite childhood memory of mine. But after reading this, I may never be able to look at them the same way again! :)
Lol don't worry. As long as you don't coat them and their lines in glass powder and metal bits, you should be fine :-)
this is not safe sport activity i saw many incidents during these type of fests but the way you presented it looks nice to see this festivel frankly speaking hehehe , by the way good post for those who dont know about this sport
I have put confusing, cheerful photos on purpose to show contradiction to official view :-)
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Nah, I am a mediocre writer, really. But I am happy to give some hints on how to edit Steemit post if you have any questions.
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"safe or not safe" without numbers for injured or killed (also I, personally, I would count chronic diseases) participants just a words about nothing.
the truth is, everyone professional sportsmen has at least one chronic disease, so I'm considering every sport is dangerous if you seriously involved
What disease?
There is nothing written in this article about any disease...
do you feel it's not dangerous to get a disease as a result of being sportsmen? do you think it's not dangerous to be a disabled after 10-15 years in a big sport?
My teammate died in his 13 while training because his heart stopped. and it was swimming.
Ok, I'm sorry to hear about your teammate but I still don't understand your point.
My point is I use different metrics for defining dangerous
Say, if while Kite festival with 1 million participants 10 thousand (for example) become injured than means probability to be injured or killed "only" 1%
From my own experience - I was kitesurfer 5 years - there are 20-30% kitesurfers become injured, what means a probability to be injured around 20-30%
But when I look on professional sportsmen and everyone at least once has been injured and everyone developed chronic diseases or disability while a sport career, that means probability to be injured and develop chronic disease equal 100% for professional sportsmen.
I measure not absolute quantity excedents in different sports and then compare them. For me it's about nothing without understanding how many people involved, but I always calculate percentage and probability for a risk to be injured
(My sport life: swimming (pro), mountaineering and rock climber (pro), skiing, paragliding, kitesurfing and mountain rescue professional ex team member. So, I'm really aware how dangerous one or another sport)
Not every kite flyer during this festival engages in this sport. Just small number of people. General injury and death toll is very high considering the number of participants and the fact that this sport is mostly performed only few days per year.
Kite surfing toll is very high too considering the number of people practicing it all over the world, all year round.
You are right about the percentages. The number of fyers engaging in this sport would need to be re-examined, and statistics made.