EXTREME SPORTS:You see a road, an ocean, a mountain - they see their next challenge. Johnny Wattersonon the ultimate risk takers

Hugging the monster. They seek out the uncertain and the unknown and confront it. They don't see buildings as office blocks, but as launch pads for free-base jumping. That's three seconds and pull the chute. They admire mountain ranges, but when they look at Everest they see a dangerous adventure reaching up into the thin air. The most confused oceans are there to be challenged and the roads around Skerries, Dundrod and the Isle of Man a playground for the world's most powerful motorbikes.

All of them are risk takers. All of them are hugging the monster.

There are different views on the "why" of it all and none of them settle around the simplistic idea of a death wish. Synapses in the brain that spark off dopamines and chemically "reward" the individual are among a number of theories that try to explain why people put their lives at risk and call it recreation or sport.

Others say it's a hangover from our evolutionary past, a vestige of the fighting and foraging associated with the hunter gatherer. Then, a risk taker would be of benefit to the entire group in exploring dangerous areas. Doubtless, many would have died.

The fact is nobody knows "why", but a number of people have gone some way toward developing theories about what drives riders like Martin Finnegan to race his Honda at 180mph around the walled roads of Skerries.

Do risk takers suffer boredom at work and low job-satisfaction - and are other environmental factors at work?

Why would Frank Nugent travel to the Antarctic to scale several unclimbed peaks on Elephant Island and then set out in a replica of the tiny lifeboat used by Ernest Shackleton in 1915, over 800 miles of treacherous ocean to South Georgia?

Some, such as psychologist Salvadore Maddi of the University of California, believe risk takers may find it difficult to derive meaning and purpose in everyday life. That reason is one of the theories behind the recent explosion of interest in high-risk sports in the USA and could well be applied to European countries.

The fact is that in poverty-stricken or war-torn countries there is, unsurprisingly, almost a total absence of people looking for additional thrills, while in first-world nations such as the US, UK and Ireland - where safety and control can reach obsessional levels - life is simply too predictable and boring for those individuals who have been programmed to take risks.

The attrition rates don't seem to be a deterrent. There have been over 200 deaths at the TT races, an average of two every year, while on Everest the number of people who have died stands at 189. In 1996, a total of 98 people summited the mountain, with 15 dying during the expedition.

Most of the climbers killed on Everest, especially those on the North Side, simply run out of gas and die on the route or fall a few feet down the mountain and lie there unclaimed, thawing and freezing with the seasons in their own ghostly cycle.

About 62 climbers have died on the North Side, 21 in avalanches, leaving about 41 bodies frozen into the mountain.

In a book called The Dangerous Edge, psychologist Michael Aptor suggests the certainties people strive for in civilised societies, which actually define those societies, could be a reason for people taking more risks in the future. The more controlled and safer the environment, the more likely people will engage in risk activities and seek out intense stimulation. Fear does not seem to be an issue, though the fear factor can sometimes be expressed as a rush, a thrill or a high.

Nugent, who has climbed many of the world's mountains, including Everest, has rarely felt fear, though, on the retracing of Shackleton's voyage nine years ago, he did experience it when the boat he was in capsized for the second time under 40ft waves. His picture of the puny vessel perched on the crest of a wave four stories high looking down into a trough of water describes every sailor's nightmare of a force 10 storm.

"The time I really did feel fear was when the boat was emptied the second time. You're really hoping that it will continue to self right and that you still have the strength to empty it. You get knocked around a lot. It is very frightening falling down into the trough of a wave, but it's a huge adrenalin rush and it's part of the reason you are there," he says.

"There was an element of sitting there fearful that you've lost contact with your back-up. As long as the boat didn't break up we had a chance. We watched one another and supported each other. That was vitally important, to show concern for each other. We ended up with a third capsize and two of the guys were very cold. The feeling was they couldn't survive a fourth. There was also a deep depression coming in from the Falklands so it was an easy decision to abandon the boat."

Joey Dunlop died doing exactly what he wanted to do. Spinning around the roads in Estonia in 2000, the best rider in the history of the sport crashed his 125cc machine into a tree and died instantly.

His brother Robert, also a champion, had several serious crashes and is now retired, but his son William, like Finnegan, is also racing between the hedges and kerbs.

"A lot of people have called me crazy," says Finnegan before adding that most racers are unusually level-headed. That too is the view of climbers and sailors.

The risks are always calculated, while the experiences of doing it greatly heighten and enhance their lives. The last thing they wish to do is kill themselves.

"I'm not religious," says Ciarán Lewis, whose boat was broken in half by a freak wave earlier this week in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. "But I thought this (rowing across the Atlantic with Gearóid Towey) was a very positive thing for human beings to do. It's a good thing for humanity."

Lewis is now on a Spanish tanker, heading home.

He's hugged the monster.

"A risk taker? Not at all. You try not to think about that end of it. I don't think anyone looks at the bad side of racing. You know the dangers are there but

you do try to keep those things out of your head. It's not that you don't care.

If anything you are always on the cautious side.

"You are always prepared in the right way although you do know that there are things out of your control, like someone else hitting you. It might not always be your fault.

"The TT is different. You set off one by one, not all at once. Some riders can't cope with that - pacing yourself, riding on your own. You might spend two hours on the bike (average speed 127mph) and the only time you see someone else is in the pits. I've never really been frightened. I've fallen off many times. If it did frighten me I wouldn't do it.

"If you speak to the top road racers what you will find is that they are the most level-headed people in the world. But yeah, it is a drug.

"You do want more and more and it keeps you going. To win is a great high not just for me but for the team, the mechanics and sponsors.

"Because even inside your head if

you think the bike isn't right, even when it is, you won't go well. The Klassi business card says, 'for winners only.' You are always worried about improving each year.

"Sometimes you sit and worry about when that might level off."

"Before we decided to do this we assessed the risks involved. It had been run three previous times and there had been no loss of life. The boat was designed to self-right and usually it does. I had assessed this race as being safer than climbing Mont Blanc and I was confident that it was not an extremely dangerous thing to do.

"I felt that physically and mentally it was an endurance test. In the end it was a freak wave that hit us, a freak wave at an angle to the boat. We had the drogue (a parachute-like device that prevents the boat from falling off the crests of large waves) out, but the wave ripped the stern off the boat.

"It came to me as a huge surprise - that the force of the wave would rupture the boat. The initial reactionwas fear. No. Probably relief that we were both still alive. I've never been in an explosion, but the force of the wave. . . I came up in a pocket of air.

"I don't know if I was under for a couple of minutes or just a minute. 'Oh Jesus, your alive,' Gearóid said. 'I thought I'd lost you.' But we switched into a logical survival mode - waterproof bag with flares, the life raft.

"I thought it was a positive thing for human beings to do, a positive challenge. I'm not a religious person, but I actually think it is a good thing for humanity to do something like this."

"You always try to manage the risk but without taking the adventure out of it. You want it at the highest level so that you can overcome the difficulties thrown at you. It's the uncertainty that makes it. If I was sure about it, I don't think I'd be that interested. The unknown or uncertain outcome is what makes this different from other sports.

"The company you are with is also a very important part of it and it is important to me that each member can care or fend for themselves. You've got to be able to run for it in bad weather, navigate your way down a mountain and you try to work out the worst thing the mountain is going to throw at you.

"Absolutely it's a risk, but you understand what the risks are and you then try to manage those risks.

"On Everest I reached a point where the oxygen equipment wasn't working. I was slowing up Dawson (Stelfox). I was on the second bottle and it wasn't working. I realised the implication. If I prevaricated I'd hold him up. I decided the likelihood of me reaching the summit was reduced.

"During those 10 minutes there was a realisation that this thing was going wrong. The principle was that we go as a team. I'd have been more disappointed if Dawson hadn't got to the top. That's where your realisation of risk comes into it. I decided it was better to go down without oxygen and I know myself that was the right decision to make."

Ellen MacArthur

(Last February the Englishwoman set a solo, non-stop, round-the-world time. Probably the best-known face in sailing, MacArthur spent two and a half months alone on her 75-foot trimaran B&Q)

"You don't think of death. If you go out there thinking you won't come back, you'll not bother setting out. What you learn about yourself is what you are capable of doing but also what you are not capable of doing. Both things. I took myself to my own human limits and learned that I could go no further.

"In the Southern Ocean when we had very big storms, you try to stay on the front side of it and sail as fast as you can to keep out of the worst of it. Obviously if you are in that wind and a sea that is horrifically confused, its not the best place to be. If everything goes well you should be able to stay on the right side of it. If something goes wrong, you're in big trouble.

"You have to prepare for the worst and you spend hours and hours preparing the boat in a way that if you did capsize you could still live on board. Mentally that really helps you so that when things are really tough and there is a huge storm coming you know you couldn't be better prepared. Sure you know it's dangerous. Setting off to sail around the world is dangerous.

"What I do next is not about topping what I have already done. It is about learning and pushing myself and enjoying what I do.

"The one thing I did feel when I got home is how stressed people get about things that are really irrelevant. They get stressed about things that don't matter. It is really quite pathetic and that shocks you when you get back."

Frank Nugent

Part of the first Irish team to scale Everest, Frank (below on a summit of

the Lemon Mountains, East Greenland) had to turn back three hours from the top

because his oxygen was depleted. Dawson Stelfox went on to the summit.

Ciarán Lewis

The transatlantic voyage with Gearóid Towey (below on

January 4th) ended in near disaster this week when a freak wave

broke their rowing boat in half, 1,000 miles from the finish.

Martin Finnegan

The Lusk motorbike rider is Ireland's rising star and the fastest Irishman to have

raced around the notorious Isle of Man course. This summer he will revisit the TT, unusually, as a member of the elite Klassi Honda team.