I suspect high risk extreme sports are in fact worse, as they seem to require a constant ramp-up of the risk, and there does not seem to be any detox mechanism

I suspect high risk extreme sports are in fact worse, as they seem to require a constant ramp-up of the risk, and there does not seem to be any detox mechanism (other than old age) that would allow one to reset the required risk. There is an appalling number of people in these sports who die young, e.g. Ueli Steck (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ueli_Steck https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ueli_Steck), recently Felix Baumgartner (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Baumgartner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Baumgartner). Many of them had already see friends and family die in these sports (as had Natalia Nagovitsyna), so it's not like they were not aware of the dangers.