01x04 - Very Extreme Sports

[bunniefuu]

[pensive music]

- Did you know that
there was once a time

when golf was dangerous,
and airborne?

- Each time they were
going up in these planes,

they were risking their lives,

maybe even the lives of the
other people on the course.

- Do you remember
when playing hockey

could get you arrested?

- The next day, Boston's
homicide squad informed Shore

that if Bailey
doesn't pull through,

he will be arrested and
charged with manslaughter.

- Or when sh**ting real pigeons

could win you an Olympic medal?

[g*n firing]

- It really shows how slapdash

those early modern
Olympics were.

- It turns out to be
a really messy event.

It literally is a bloody mess.

- These are the things we
used to do for fun, for money,

or maybe out of boredom,

that we'll never see again.

Were they dangerous? Certainly.

Deadly? Occasionally.

But boy, wasn't it exciting.

[dramatic music]

[pensive music]

Americans love to
move fast and compete.

So when cars began to replace
horses as a way to get around,

some folks thought,
"Wait a minute.

What if we replace them
in the sport of polo, too?

What could go wrong?"

- Almost every sport has its
origins in some real danger.

Polo seems pretty dangerous,

with horses flying around

and jockeys with mallets

swinging them as hard
as they can at ba*ls.

But just, like,
imagine this in a car.

- [Announcer] If you're
anxious to risk life and limb,

here's an ideal game: auto polo.

- We're gonna take
this sport from the UK,

which is so prestigious,

and we're just gonna
redneck it down.

We're gonna play
polo out of our cars.

Great idea.

- Auto polo is invented by
Ralph "Pappy" Hankinson in 1911.

He is a Ford dealer
in Topeka, Kansas

looking for a way
to sell more Fords.

- Hankinson comes up
with a promotional idea

modeled along the
lines of horse polo,

but instead of riding a horse,

people will be driving one
of these new Model T Fords.

[crowd cheering]

- This idea really came to Pappy

because other people
were doing it.

They were just playing
around in their farms,

and Pappy is really the one
that comes up with the idea

to make formalized rules around
it and call it auto polo.

- In auto polo, you
have the driver,

and then in the passenger
seat, you have the mallet man.

And that person's job
is to whack a large ball

about the size of a
basketball into a goal

while traveling very fast,

leading to accidents, crashes,
all kinds of mayhem.

- Just think about this, right?

The car's trying to
go as fast as it can

to get to the ball, just
like a horse would in polo,

but what if the driver
slams on the brakes?

The mallet man is going flying,

but they're flying
right into a field

with a bunch of other cars.

- People refer to baseball
as the national pastime,

boxing as the sweet science,

but do you know what
auto polo is known as?

The undertakers' delight.

- If they were doing it today,
I would go and watch it.

A couple of drunk, good old boys

in a couple of pickup trucks

with some mallets,
whacking up ball around,

causing all sorts of
mayhem and destruction.

- [Henry] Almost overnight,

auto polo goes from country
fields to the big city.

- By 1912, just one year after
Hankinson starts the thing,

they're doing auto polo
in Madison Square Garden

in New York City.

- They started drawing
crowds of 5,000 people

because they would show
up for the competition,

but they would stay
for the carnage.

[intense music]

- In the course of a typical
match, cars roll over,

they crash into the stands,

players get ejected
from the cars,

they're suffering
tremendous head injuries,

some cases losing limbs.

- They got so bad that
they started having doctors

and nurses as a
part of the teams.

At one auto polo match
in Buffalo in 1916,

this car kind of bucks and it
throws out both of the players

and then it crosses the street

because it's busted
through one fence

and then goes
through another fence

where eventually the car stops.

- These kinds of crazy outcomes
are what the fans expect.

They wanna see wild things,
they wanna see danger,

they wanna see damage.

- It doesn't take
long for the cars

to start getting modified
to be better competitors,

so they might chop the top

or put like a ramming
bar on the front.

I mean, it became like
a demolition derby,

but some dudes
hanging out the side.

- [Henry] And it's not just
the players in harm's way.

- You get a point for each goal,

but if you run over the referee,
you only lose half a point.

- Can you imagine a sport
that doesn't punish you

for hitting the ref with a car?

- And that's why fans
absolutely love it.

- Here's a deadly sport

in which the cars
are getting destroyed

'cause they're
hitting each other,

they're running over refs,

people are losing body parts
'cause they're getting clipped.

And as fun as that is to watch,

it's a nightmare financially.

- Obviously, the
danger in this sport

is what led to it
going away, right?

No. It was that
people were like,

"Yeah, I really don't
wanna smash up my car.

It's really expensive."

There's the irony.

- Auto polo met its
end by the 1930s,

a victim of high repair costs
and the Great Depression.

But one sport that survived
for centuries is golf.

And there was a time

when some tried to
give the classic game

a highly unusual upgrade
that made it more extreme.

- So it's right after
the First World w*r

and people are just
enjoying themselves again.

People are getting out there
having a little fun with golf.

It's regained some popularity

now that things are
a little more calm.

- They start building
golf courses everywhere,

people are learning
how to play golf,

it becomes a go-to sport.

But, this isn't
great for rich people

who want golf to
still be exclusive.

- That made the kind of
upper class folks feel like,

"Hmm, now it's everyone's game.

How do we do
something different?

How can we make it a
little more dangerous,

a little more difficult?"

- [Henry] In the 1920s,

there is still one thing the
common people don't have.

Private planes.

Enter aerial golf.

- The first iteration
of aerial golf

was invented at a golf course

in Westbury, Long
Island in New York.

This is the golden age
of massive estates.

Yellow Rolls-Royces.

This is the Long
Island of Jay Gatsby.

[tense music]

- This is a weird, weird sport,

and I feel like only
the excessively wealthy

could think this was
anything close to normal.

- Aerial golf and regular golf

are actually incredibly similar.

They're both played on
regulation golf courses.

They both include
keeping track of score,

except for one
critical difference.

Your first shot on the course
is dropped from an airplane

flying at 500 feet above.

- So, one person is
down on the ground,

their partner would
go up in an airplane,

and they're gonna
drop a golf ball

from a minimum of 500 feet.

- Golf ba*ls are
flying out of the air,

and when they finally
hit to the ground,

provided no one's been, you
know, hit in the noggin,

the second player on the team,

then he plays to
the hole with it.

- I'm a big fan of
boneheaded ideas.

They're fun to do, they're
fun to play around with.

I think that when you get
to wasting all that fuel,

wasting all that technology
to just drop a ball down,

I think that that's
ill-conceived.

- [Henry] But the elite love
their new game so much,

they decide to expand the scope
of aerial golf even further.

- Once they got a
little bored with this,

they realized they
had to turn up,

make it a little more exciting,

and that's where they came up

with the nine-hole
course special.

- Rather than flying
over one golf course,

let's have our holes spread out,

except each hole is
a different airport.

Nine hole courses made up
of nine separate air fields

are created.

- They decide to move
and elevate aerial golf,

flying a plane to the next
airport, playing there,

flying to the next
airport, playing there.

You have to think
about it, like,

whose air traffic controlling
all of these planes,

and how many players are playing

and how many planes are flying?

That's insane.

- On paper, this looks stupid,

but in practice, it's
actually really stupid.

Each time they were
going up in these planes,

they were risking their lives,

maybe even the lives of the
other people on the course.

- In the end, safety
concerns are actually

what end up grounding
the game of aerial golf.

You had planes
buzzing at 50 feet,

you had all this increased
air traffic around airports.

So finally, aerial golf
was put to rest in 1930.

[dramatic music]

- Aerial golf might
not have lasted long,

but it was popular enough
for famous figures,

like New York City Mayor
Fiorello La Guardia

and baseball player Ty
Cobb to play a few rounds.

- Today, football is the most
popular sport in America.

The whole family can head
to the stadium on a Sunday,

have wings, a soda, and
feel the rush of excitement.

But in the earliest
days of football,

the atmosphere was a
whole lot different.

- American football
originates in the 1860s

on college campuses,

where young college men
are sort of combining

basically rugby, soccer,

to form what we now
think of as football.

Football in this time period

was very different
from today's game.

There was no forward pass.

It was very much
in the trenches,

people slamming their
bodies into each other.

- They developed
plays with names

like the Princeton V
and the Flying Wedge,

and these plays are essentially
just one team's players

running at full force at
the other team's players.

- And that's when the
brutality of the game

really starts to come alive.

We're putting all
our weight together,

increasing the power
and the velocity

with which this
collision's gonna happen,

wearing nothing more than a
sweatshirt and some pants.

- These max-momentum plays
weren't just allowed.

They were encouraged.

[crowd cheering]

Because of this, guys
are getting injured,

they're getting d*sfigured,
they're getting crippled,

or worse.

- These players are playing

without, really, any
kind of protection.

What little protection they
have is extremely flimsy.

It's horsehide,

and they're stuffing
textbooks down their uniforms.

They're certainly
not wearing helmets.

- [Henry] The grudge matches
between Harvard and Yale

make national headlines
for their violence.

- So in 1894,

Harvard and Yale go head to head

in what's considered the
Hampton Park Bloodbath.

They would lock arm in arm

and just ram at each
other head first.

- You have a guy that
gets his nose broken,

you have a guy break
his collarbone,

and another guy gets knocked
out during a timeout.

They think he might be dead.

This was what was
not only acceptable,

it was what was required.

- [Henry] The
president of Harvard,

in an editorial titled
"The Evils of Football,"

declares the game more
brutal than c*ck,

bull fighting,
and prizefighting.

- The world heavyweight
boxing champion at the time,

John L. Sullivan, says, quote,

"Football, there's
m*rder in that game."

Imagine how brutal it must be

for a guy who punches people
in the head for a living

to think that sport
is too dangerous.

- At one point,

The Chicago Tribune
publishes a headline,

"Football Year's Death Harvest,"

and in that article,
they list 19 kids

who've been k*lled playing
football that year.

- We're talking
roughly three decades

past the culmination
of the Civil w*r,

and here were young men going
to die not on a b*ttlefield,

but on a football field.

- So at this point in the game,

editorials are calling
for the sport of football

to be abolished.

So think about that.

Decades before the
NFL comes together,

football could be
banned in America.

We wouldn't have the Super Bowl,

we wouldn't have the
Playoffs, none of it.

It could be erased from history.

It actually takes
President Teddy Roosevelt

to save the game.

- There's 18, 19-year-olds
losing their lives,

and you have to have
the president say,

"We have to clean this game up.

We have to get a
hold of this game

or it's gonna have to go away."

- He invites all the
heads of every school

to Washington, D.C. and says,

"You gotta clean up the rules
and get better equipment."

- And of all people, it's
the Rough Rider himself,

Teddy Roosevelt, who finds
ways to modify this sport,

so that young men could play
the game, enjoy the game,

and still go home
at the end of it.

- The dangers in football
have never been in doubt,

but America's pastime, baseball,

is known as a kinder
gentleman's game.

But it wasn't always that way.

- In its early days, baseball
isn't just aggressive,

it's downright dangerous.

- Everything was
done bare-handed.

ba*ls would be coming at
you at enormous speed,

and you were expected to
either catch, deflect,

or bat away the ball
with your bare hands.

- [Jason] Even in the
latter half of the 1800s

when we had
professional baseball,

if someone wanted to wear
a protective piece of gear,

you'd be laughed at.

- People in the
stand would razz them

and say they were
cowardly and unmanly,

but they actually
needed protection.

- These guys were
just getting m*rder*d

by these line drives.

They would have bruises,
broken fingers, broken hands.

- [Henry] The fielders aren't
the only ones in danger

in old-time baseball.

The original rules have a
bit of dodgeball written in.

- You could throw someone out

by actually hitting them
with the baseball itself.

Now, this would be
considered as*ault.

Back then, no, that was
just part of the game.

- They called it
soaking or plugging,

wherein you could hit
the opposing player

before they reached base safe.

- Imagine getting, you know,
banged in the head by a ball.

You're gonna see
blood on the field.

It had to look pretty
rough as the day went on.

- Right now, if you throw
a pitch near somebody,

it ends up in a fight.

I can't imagine in today's
game how many ambulances,

how many fights there would be.

- [Henry] By 1845,

soaking is eliminated
from the game,

though not everyone
loves the rule change.

- Fans aren't all
happy about this.

Some players aren't either.

They think that it takes
away from the manliness

or the rough-and-tumble
nature of the sport,

- [Henry] But fans
don't need to worry.

With this rule change, something
lost is something gained.

- Because you can no longer
suffer the possibility

of being hit with a ball,

the type of ball that's used
moves to a much harder ball,

which is the hard ball
that we now know today.

- As ba*ls become
more tightly wound,

the velocities
imbued in these ba*ls

create legit danger
to the catcher.

Originally, catchers
defended behind the plate

without padding, without
gloves, without masks.

- They're suffering broken
fingers, broken fingernails,

bruises all over their hands.

They would be hit kind
of all over their bodies.

If catchers are wearing
any kind of padding,

they're using things like
sponges, or raw meat, or hay

to kind of protect themselves
from being hit with the ball.

- In 1870, a catcher
named Doug Allison

cites he's had enough of it.

He is sick of the injuries he
has incurred behind the plate.

So Allison takes to the
field for the first time

with the first glove,
a buckskin mitten,

to protect his hand while
he's behind the plate.

- Allison's so-called glove

looks less like a piece
of sporting equipment

and more like something you
might wear to go sledding.

And it gets an interesting
nickname around the league,

the sissy mitten.

- So brutal and
relentless are the taunts.

Rather than continue to
utilize his sissy mitten,

Doug Allison continues
the season without it.

- [Henry] Baseball continues
to be played without gloves

until one man takes
a stand In 1877.

- Ultimately, it
took Albert Spalding,

one of the best pitchers
to ever do it, to say,

"No, I'm gonna protect my hand."

And because he was
a hero of the game,

a lights out pitcher for
the Chicago White Stockings,

no one says anything.

No one's gonna mock the king.

- He was the guy who made
it cool for everyone else.

Like, "If Spalding's
gonna wear a mitt,

well then, I'll
wear a mitt, too."

- [Henry] Over the next decade,
gloves become commonplace,

and the equipment in
the game keeps evolving,

except for one position

that still has no
protection whatsoever.

- ba*ls got harder, ba*ls got
tighter, pitchers got faster.

So catchers are starting
to develop mitts, pads,

and face masks,

but the batter is
developing nothing.

- And in August of 1920,

the Yankees are playing
Cleveland at the polo grounds.

And shortstop Ray
Chapman comes to bat

against Yankees
pitcher Carl Mays.

Mays hurls a
spitball at Chapman.

It hits him square in the head.

- People watching
thought it hit his bat.

So much so that the
pitcher fielded the ball

and threw it to first base.

While Ray Chapman laid there

with blood coming
out of his ears,

and the next day, he dies in
the hospital at 29 years old.

- [Kavitha] Unfortunately,
after Ray Chapman dies,

we don't see players wearing
any kind of protective headgear

for many, many years.

- Consider this; players start
wearing cups in about 1904,

yet helmets don't find their
way into the game until 1940.

Says a lot about the
priorities of men.

- Helmets themselves
were not mandated

by Major League
Baseball until 1971,

which is crazy to think about.

[bat cracking]
[audience cheering]

- Once helmets were a must,

baseball's wilder days

were permanently taken
out of the rotation.

- Americans have a long
history with extreme sports,

testing boundaries and pushing
our bodies to the limit.

But long before
snowboarding, kite surfing,

or mountain biking,

one of the most hardcore sports
around was extreme walking.

- In the 19th century,

competitive walking
takes off in America,

and it's pretty much
exactly what it sounds like.

It's people walking for
a set amount of time

over a set distance.

These are obviously
not casual strolls.

The challenges could
be something like

walking 1,000 miles
in 1,000 hours,

or walking 100 miles in
the course of 24 hours.

- [Announcer] It's a test not
only of endurance, but speed.

And only the hardiest hoofers

will make punishing journey
from start to finish.

- The events are
drawing large audiences.

Watching people walk

becomes America's
favorite spectator sport.

- Even celebrities attend.

Future President
Chester Arthur is there.

Famous circus
performer, Tom Thumb.

This is the place to be
seen, like prize fights today.

- Watching competitive walking

sounds like t*rture in itself,
but not as much t*rture

as these competitors
put their bodies through

to walk days and days at a time.

- These races are insane
and they're very intense.

You're walking for hours
on end, days on end,

you're getting very
minimal breaks.

There's something called
the heel-to-toe rule,

where one foot can't
fully come off the ground

unless the other foot
is on the ground.

- [Announcer] The rules are,
at no time can your feet

leave the pavement.

- Judges are gonna sit and watch
so that you never get to stop.

Just imagine how bad
this could have been.

Would we have seen people
actually fall out and die

in the middle of competition?

They're pushing
themselves to win,

and stopping is
something they can't do,

so they just keep
going and going.

- You're walking for
literally six days.

I feel like this is the
first version of "Survivor,"

the mindset that somebody
would have to have.

When you get to that fifth
day and your leg is cramping,

your foot is flaring up,

everything is going
on within your body,

that's too hard for me.

That's why drag
racing is my thing.

Five seconds, let's
roll, we are out of here.

- Now, at the time,
trainers thought,

"What could I give my walker
to really give them an edge

to kind of lift
their spirits up?"

And the beverage that
they reached for the most

was champagne.

But now, you've got a
bunch of half-drunk walkers

trying to go faster
than the next one.

I mean, what a brilliant idea.

Champagne, instead of like
your normal sports drink.

- [Henry] The demand
from spectators

leads to the sport being moved
indoors for six-day races,

just in time for
its first scandal.

- The first official
six-day race

is held in March of


and was actually won by
Edward Payson Weston.

He would find himself
mired in some controversy

a few years later

when it was found that he
was chewing coca leaves,

which, obviously, is the leaf
that we derive cocaine from.

- And he is obviously getting
a little bit of extra energy

for these walks.

To think this has kinda
always been our nature, right?

Whatever it takes to win,

there is always those athletes

that are willing to
push those boundaries.

- Despite its popularity,

the sports heyday
were short-lived

because something even
more exciting came along

on two wheels.

[g*n firing]

- Bicycles come on to the scene,

the increased speed and
the drama of crashes,

and even multi-bike pileups,

that's what's drawing
the crowds in now.

- The infrastructure
already exists,

the tracks and the
arenas and everything.

So, six-day indoor bicycle
racing becomes the new sport.

- The events operate under
the same formula as walking,

people going around in circles
endlessly for six whole days.

[bell clanging]

- These races are
grueling events.

If you think about how
difficult the Tour de France is,

they get breaks every day.

These riders have to go for
as long as they possibly can,

as far as they possibly
can over six days.

- After one day of no rest,
you're not quite yourself.

Two days, three days,
and now, add to that,

you are physically
exerting yourself

at the highest level possible.

- This is a mental
game, for sure.

The mental wear and tear

that comes from that
endurance factor is extreme.

- Now, these riders are not
on the track by themselves.

They employ people
who are called seconds

who act like corner men

who are giving them
encouragement and motivation,

and screaming them along.

- Like, in a boxing match,

they're there to
speak life into them.

Like, "You can do this,
you can keep going,

you can push further
than you think."

- And they also give them
stimulants and other substances

to keep them awake and
pedaling along the way.

- So these guys are hauling
a*s, flying for days at a time,

while doped up trying
to sort of keep going.

It's kind of like the
bicycle baton death march.

- [Henry] Despite
the popularity,

it isn't lost on everyone,

but the riders are pushing
themselves to the edge.

- In 1897, The New York Times
coverage of a six-day race

compares it to t*rture,

and says it is not
sport, it is brutality.

- So the next year,

the state governments
of Illinois and New York

prohibit cyclists from being
on the bike more than 12 hours

in a 24-hour period.

Somehow, they rationalized
that keeping cyclists on a bike

for half a day is
somehow more humane.

Go figure.

- Promoters started
trying to brainstorm

about how could we keep
the race at 24 hours.

So they said, "What
if we made the seconds

eligible to race also?"

[bell clanging]
And it works.

- [Announcer] The return of an
old familiar sporting event,

the six-day bicycle race.

- I mean, speeds increased,

distance increased,
the crowds increased,

which means the
money is increased

for the whole operation.

- [Announcer] Five more days,

and the first man home becomes
one of the instant rich.

- Famously, in 1920,

an Australian rider by
the name of Alf Goullet

makes $20,000.

Now, that may not
sound like a lot,

but in today's money, that's
the equivalent of $300,000.

That's more than Babe Ruth made,

and he knocked in 54 dingers

for the New York
Yankees that year.

These guys were true
celebrities and true superstars.

- [Henry] But just
as endurance cycling

moves competitive walking
off the major tracks,

a new technology

puts the brakes on bike
racing's popularity.

- By the mid-'30s,
automobile racing was faster,

it was more dangerous,
it was more thrilling.

- As the audience dwindled,

so did the heyday of
the brutal bike race.

- Americans love to compete.

So when the Olympic Games were
revived in Greece in 1896,

the United States was there,

winning more gold medals
than any other country.

Four years later,

Americans headed to
France for the next games,

where a dozen
sports were added,

but one of them was created
with an ulterior motive.

- So, in the 1900
Paris Olympics,

there's a new sport
introduced into the games.

It's called pigeon sh**ting.

- Usually, when you
hear pigeon sh**ting,

you imagine clay pigeons.

That's that little orange
painted, upside down saucer

that can be released by a device
so you can sh**t them in midair.

But we're talking about
real, live pigeons.

[g*n firing]

- Now, how did this come about?

Well, Paris, at that time,
had a histoplasmosis problem.

This was a bird-borne disease,

and so the Parisians realized,

we could k*ll two
birds with one stone:

diminish the population
of pigeons in Paris

and also to create
this fun new game.

- Here's how it works.

They release six pigeons


Once a sh**ter misses two
birds, they're eliminated.

The person who wins, of course,

is the person who
kills the most birds.

That gets you a gold medal.

- So apparently, anticipation
had been building for this

because on the first day,


participate in the sport.

[g*n firing]

- It really shows how slapdash

those early modern Olympics were

that it wasn't this like
perfectly-organized,

corporate-funded event,

and Olympic athletes were
not the global celebrities

that they are today.

- And it turns out to
be a really messy event.

[g*ns firing]

It literally is a bloody mess.

- You can imagine
a group of people

just massacring
a bunch of birds.

There's blood, there's feathers,

there's everything going on.

- [Henry] The Gold Medal goes
to Leon de Lunden of Belgium,

who shoots 21 pigeons.

- By the end of the competition,
nearly 300 birds are dead

and it has made a
mess of the field.

- The event ended up being
too gory for the audience,

for the organizers.

Nobody enjoyed it, and so
they never did it again.

[g*n firing]

- Pigeon sh**ting

is the first and only
time in Olympic history

that animals are intentionally
injured or k*lled.

It ends up being such a
black mark in Olympic history

that their archives
barely even mention it.

- Pigeons are hardly
the only birds

that we've ever used for sport,

including the birds
that were caught up

in one popular, even
beloved, competition

that would be
unimaginable today.

- It's called goose pulling
and it's pure blood sport.

- Goose pulling becomes
popular in the United States

in the late 1700s, early


but it goes all the way
back to 12th-century Spain.

- So, look, it goes like this.

A goose is hung by its feet
from a pole above a road.

And making this
more complicated,

the goose's head
has been greased up,

making it hard to grab hold of.

It's flapping its wings,
it's shaking all about.

- And then a cowboy's
gonna hop on a horse

and go full throttle,

and try to see if he can
rip the goose's head off.

- Obviously, it's not easy
to pull the head off a goose

that's been greased up

while you're riding on
a horse at full gallop.

So typically, you're taking
multiple attempts to do this.

Other riders are trying the
same thing with the same goose.

- It just sounds like, "We
had nothing else to do,

and I wasn't very good at
figuring out another game.

So we're gonna try and see

if we can rip the
head off of a bird."

- The person that yanks
the head off the goose,

they are kind of the hero
of the day for doing so.

They often will get the goose,
maybe a little bit of money,

maybe a little bit of alcohol,

and then they get to take
the goose home and eat it.

One would see goose pulling
at things like county fairs.

So it's running
races, it's wrestling,

and a little bit
of goose pulling.

It was seen by people on the
East Coast as a barbaric sport,

sort of suggested these
people were barbarians.

[tense music]

- Goose pulling was made ill*gal

in the United States in 1920,

but it's still practiced
in parts of Europe today.

Well, kind of.

The live goose is now replaced
by an already dead one

or a fake goose.

- How exciting is ice
hockey, with players

slamming into each other
at 20 miles per hour

and pucks flying at
five times that speed?

It's wild to think

how little protection there
was in the early days.

- The first organized
hockey games

take place in Montreal in 1875.

The players wear football
pants, knee-high socks,

wool turtlenecks, and
no protective gear.

- No helmets, nothing
on their legs.

The purpose of anything
that they're wearing

is to keep them warm
more than anything else.

- By the mid-1880s,

players begin wearing
homemade shin guards

constructed of strips of
leather reinforced with wood.

- [Henry] In hockey,

goalies have the most
dangerous position.

They defend shots

that often reach speeds of


And for decades, masks
are non-existent.

- Their faces kind of wore
the scars of the game:

cuts, missing teeth.

- There's a goalie by the
name of Terry Sawchuk,

and that man, he is a tough SOB.

- He picks up more than


including three that are
to his right eyeball.

- And then there's
Montreal Canadiens goalie,

Jacques Plante, who,
in November of 1959,

takes a puck to the face.

And he decides he's not
gonna take it anymore.

- He said, "I'm done
with this. This is it.

How many times I've been hit
in the face with a puck?"

- They actually stitch
him up on the ice,

which sounds crazy, but
was normal for back then.

- So after the doctors
finished tending to him,

he goes to the locker
room and he grabs a mask.

Now, this mask is very
primitive for the time,

and it's actually kind of
grotesque, but he's had enough.

- He gets back on the
ice and his coach says,

"You can't wear that, you're
making us look soft.

You're supposed to
be the tough guy."

- But at the time,

there were no backup
goaltenders in the NHL.

- So he says, "Hey, I'm
not going back out there

if you don't let
me wear this mask."

So the coach says, "He's
the only goalie I got.

We've gotta let him play."

So he goes back out

and he becomes the first
goalie to ever wear a mask.

- [Henry] Even though goalies
start wearing protection,

the rest of the players
aren't interested.

- The players resist helmets

simply because it's not a
macho masculine thing to do.

- The only reason that hockey
players start to wear a helmet

is because of one
really nasty incident.

- During the 1933 season,

a game between the Bruins
and the Maple Leafs

gets particularly violent.

- [Announcer] And another player
was thrown flat on his face!

- Bruin's defenseman,
Eddie Shore, gets checked,

and in retaliation,

he immediately charges toward
Leaf's player Ace Bailey.

- [Edward] Shore uses his stick

to flip him up in the
air like a ragdoll.

- [Announcer] They're
mixing it up,

and now they're going
down into a heap!

- Bailey lands on the ice,
boom, square on his head.

- [Henry] Bailey is
knocked out cold.

When he finally comes to, Shore
tries to apologize to him.

Bailey's fine with it, saying,
"It's all part of the game,"

before blacking out again.

- Bailey is rushed
to the hospital.

He has a significant
skull fracture

and a massive,
massive brain injury.

- [Announcer] What a fight!

They even had to
call in the police.

- The next day, Boston's
homicide squad informed Shore

that if Bailey
doesn't pull through,

he will be arrested and
charged with manslaughter.

- Bailey comes out of
his coma 10 days later,

but he never plays again.

Shore, one of the
toughest guys in the game,

he's convinced
from this incident

to wear a helmet for
the rest of his career.

- [Henry] Despite that incident,

it takes until 1979 for the NHL

to make helmets mandatory
for all the players,

and fighting remains a vital
part of the game for decades.

- If you fight in other sports,

you're probably kicked
out of the game.

If you're fighting in real
life, you might be arrested.

But in hockey,

[audience cheering]

it's accepted, maybe
sometimes encouraged.

- [Announcer] These
boys are just settling

a little good-natured argument.

- Hockey is unique among
professional sports

because it's the only one

where two, four, six
players can get in a brawl

and they're all allowed
to stay in the game.

- [Henry] At the time,

hockey is far more
brutal than it is today.

- The reason that
fighting exists

is because the sheer
momentum and the sheer speed

at which these guys
are moving on the ice

creates contact that is, in
itself, inherently dangerous.

And because of that, it does
create heightened emotions.

- We forget that these athletes,

this is how they put food
on the table for themselves.

So sometimes,

those emotions are gonna
roll over into a fight.

- [Henry] Fighting begins
declining significantly

starting in 2008,

with rule changes that
emphasize skill and speed.

- Each successive generation

gets less and less
tolerant of fighting.

- People came to appreciate
a brand of hockey

that wasn't based upon
fighting and brutality,

but on speed and finesse.

- [Announcer] Scores!

- Rodney Dangerfield once
joked that he went to a fight

and a hockey game broke out.

An apt description, but
fans ate up that old time,

hard knocks hockey.

- The roar of the engines, the
smell of the burning rubber.

Americans love a good car race,

and our need for speed
didn't take long at all.

In the 1880s, the arrival
of the first automobile

started our competitive
juices immediately.

- It's hard to imagine
the newness of a car.

They come out of nowhere,

and people want to see them.

Almost as soon as we have
cars, we have car races.

- Back in the day,
it was very lawless.

You did not have sanctioning
bodies, you did not have rules.

- [Henry] By 1900, cars
are able to reach a speed

up to 70 miles an hour,

and that's when the
craziness of auto racing

really takes off.

- This is still new
technology that now,

people are pushing
to the limits.

[tires screeching]

- Auto racing becomes
extremely dangerous.

[dramatic music]

[audience cheering]

So we're talking cars

[car crashing]

weighing about 1,500 pounds.

- Keep in mind, there's
no safety regulations.

There's no seat belts.

There's definitely no helmet.

So a lot of times
during the races,

these drivers were
just getting thrown out

if they didn't catch
on fire beforehand.

- [Henry] By the 1920s, the
sport becomes so popular,

promoters roll out
a new invention,

a type of racetrack
called the motordrome.

- [Announcer] At
Altoona, Pennsylvania,

they got rid of the dust

by building a wondrous
wooden saucer,

which became more
oil-soaked and slippery.

- Essentially, these were
hastily-constructed cheap tracks

that were made of planking,

but to make it the
spectacle more exciting,

they began making banked tracks.

- It was pretty cool 'cause
you could see all the action

that would be sort of contained

and the track could travel,

but it was still
just as dangerous

as any racing was before it.

- [Henry] Because the wooden
planks of a board track

can be disassembled
and reassembled,

it moves around frequently
to different venues,

which also makes
it very unstable.

- You have relatively
inexperienced drivers

on relatively unproven
pieces of machinery,

hurdling around a
hastily-made track that would

sometimes disintegrate
while driving on it.

And if it sounds scary,

it's because it was
freaking terrifying.

- So you also have to worry
about the actual track,

the boards coming up
and disintegrating

either by accidents
or just by themselves.

So suddenly, you've
got shards of wood

popping in your radiator
or maybe in your shoulder.

- When you're there
as a spectator,

you'll have to keep
your head on a swivel

of whether or not you're gonna
catch a stake in the throat

sh**ting off this racetrack.

[audience screaming]

- These races are
pure pandemonium.

And in fact, as the speed
and danger increase,

[car crashing]

fans started referring to the
board tracks as m*rder-dromes.

- Famously, crashes would claim
multiple vehicles at a time,

and it wasn't
uncommon for a driver

to be ejected out of the car


or even worse,

run over by his own
car or another vehicle

right there on the track.

- To get some context
to the danger,

in the 1920s,

four drivers who
had won the Indy 500

were k*lled racing
on board tracks.

- [Henry] These risks
make board track racing

a huge draw,

even more popular than races
like the Indianapolis 500.

- Because of how
dangerous the sport was,

[tires screeching]
[cars crashing]

board track racing
was a phenomenon.

Famously, one year in Chicago,


see a board track race

when only 60,000 had showed up

to the Indianapolis


- You would assume
that safety concerns

is really what ultimately
ended board track racing.

But that's not it,
nobody cared about that.

The Great Depression sunk in,

and then suddenly it
just wasn't feasible

to take these tracks
apart and move them around

and try to have whole
races with them.

- I am glad that I was
not alive in that era

because I would not step foot
on a board track or racetrack.

It's insanity, honestly.

- Looking back at our
original extreme sports,

whether it was playing
golf from an airplane,

or barehanded baseball,

or playing polo
in speeding cars,

we didn't always
play by the rules,

and sometimes there
were no rules.

And that's what made
our hazardous history

a full contact sport.