ABSTRACT
Fear, or, more accurately, 'no fear' or fearlessness has, like risk-taking and death, been evoked to explain the extreme sports experience. This chapter builds upon our critique of the 'risk hypothesis' and the 'death-wish hypothesis' by examining the role of fear in understanding extreme sport participation. It provides a basis for the phenomenological investigation of the extreme sport experience. The chapter defines fear or fearlessness and reflects upon how these constructs might relate to extreme sports. An approach that has been used to investigate extreme sports has drawn upon psychoanalytic concepts. Stress is most commonly understood as both a psychological and biological response to some kind of threat, real or imagined. Research on anxiety in extreme sport people may help shed some light on their relationship to fear. Contrary to the 'no fear' hypothesis, the extreme sport experience involves intense fear.
