Fans of extreme sports play a dangerous game

Leaping, running and flying into the unknown are attracting a growing band of followers ready to risk life and limb for the ultimate adrenaline rush.

In events that include base jumping, in which devotees jump off a cliff or tower with a parachute, the sky has become the limit for extreme sports.

The death toll has also taken off.

About 20 people a year are now killed while base jumping or gliding while using winged jumpsuits. The United States and Switzerland have had the highest casualties, with each recording more than 50 deaths since specialist groups started keeping statistics in the 1990s.

In France, four jumpers have lost their lives since the start of August.

Numbers have gone up along with the popularity of the daredevil pursuits. And both followers and victims have become increasingly high-profile.

In August 2013, British stuntman Mark Sutton, who parachuted into the London Olympics opening ceremony dressed as James Bond, died in a wingsuit accident in Switzerland after jumping from a helicopter.

US citizen Brian Drake, one of the leading international wingsuit fliers, died in April along with well-known jumpers Dan Vicary of New Zealand and Ludovic Woerth of France.

The three leapt from a helicopter thinking they were jumping into a gorge, but fell onto an Alpine pasture before they could open their parachutes.

Once limited to a small club, extreme sports have taken off as technology develops and restrictions or security constraints in everyday life become ever tighter.

Bungee jumping and delta plane gliding were the frontiers until the 2000s, when the rise of social media brought the really extreme sports out of the shadows.

"Today a lot of the people in these sports put themselves in videos, and that changes everything," said Nicolas Cazenove, a specialist in clinical psychology and health at the University of Toulouse-Jean Jaures in France.

Now videos of wingsuit jumps down mountainsides are all over the Internet.

Risk seekers

"There is a narcissistic side that did not exist in the past when the practices were more closed," Cazenove added.

"The risks are being increased because once everyone has done something spectacular, you have to move on to something even riskier."

The technology and the equipment for extreme sports are now widely available.

A wingsuit jumper leaps from a plane or off a mountain in a suit that adds surface area to the body, enabling the jumper to glide like a bird before opening a parachute to complete the jump safely.

A wingsuit can be bought for as little as $500, and a beginner's course for $1,950. It can take years to master the art safely, however.

Austrian daredevil Felix Baumgartner went up 39 km into space to jump to Earth in a pressurized wingsuit, making global headlines in October 2012.

One year later, Alexander Polli, an Italian-Norwegian daredevil, leapt from a helicopter and reached speeds of up to 250 km an hour as he hurtled toward and through a cave opening in Spain barely wider than he is tall.

"There is an unbridled inventiveness," Cazenove said.

"Also, our society is imposing more and more physical protection and speed limits on everyday life and in sport. Extreme sport followers are looking for niches" in the rules, he said.

Overwhelmingly male

Cecile Martha, a researcher in social psychology at the Institute of Movement Sciences, Aix-Marseille University, monitored about 40 base jump followers - out of about 200 registered in France - for 18 months.

Martha, a specialist on risk-taking in sports, said that nearly all are males "who feel the need for powerful, higher-than-average sensations".

"They are not impulsive, however," the researcher added. "They go about it in a very meticulous way, and those who have the most accidents are the impulsive ones."

Cazenove also said that base jumpers and wingsuit fliers "do not get enough highs from daily life".

"More than seeking a confrontation with death, they have a desire to feel extremely alive," the psychologist said.