Introduction

My own academic interest in what I have termed lifestyle sports began back in the mid-1990s when I embarked on a Ph.D. based on the culture of windsurfing. As one of only a handful of scholars worldwide who shared this interest, I remember vividly my excitement when, during the research, Becky Beal’s paper on skateboarding in Colorado was published (Beal, 1995). This was the first in-depth empirical study to emerge in English publications, and it was thrilling to learn that I was not the only person who thought there was something interesting and potentially different about lifestyle sports that needed articulating. Since then, there has been an explosion of academic interest in what has been variously labelled alternative, new, extreme, adventure, panic, action, whiz and lifestyle sport (see Midol, 1993; Midol and Broyer, 1995; Rinehart, 2000; Rinehart and Sydor, 2003; Wheaton, 2004c; Booth and Thorpe, 2007c). These labels encompass a wide range of participatory and made-for-television sporting activities, including residual cultural forms such as climbing and emergent activities such as kite-surfing. ¹ While commentators have differed in their use of nomenclature, many are agreed in seeing such activities as having presented an alternative and potential challenge to traditional ways of ‘seeing’, ‘doing’ and understanding sport (cf. Wheaton, 2004a). A steady stream of exciting work has emerged over the past two decades, research that has contributed to comprehending the significance of these sporting activities, their cultures and identities. It has also provided valuable insights into understanding the complexities of social relations in late modernity and the role sports can, and have, played in reconfiguring individual and collective identities.