Extreme Like a Girl

Book excerpt: Filled with breathtaking photographs and inspirational personal texts, these profiles of extraordinary women athletes in action are definitive proof that extreme sports are not male only territory. Whether it’s diving off a cliff, cross-country skiing in Antarctica, or free climbing the Picos de Europe in Northern Spain, women in extreme sports are proving every bit as strong, determined and ambitious as their male peers. As in her extremely popular previous books, Surf Like a Girl and Skate Like a Girl, Carolina Amell has compiled spectacular photography that evokes the thrill and beauty of female nontraditional sports in every corner of the world. There’s Lynn Jung tackling a parkour course with exquisite grace; Anna von Boetticher skimming the ocean floor hundreds of feet below the surface; Heather Larsen slacklining across a canyon wall; Ashley Fiolek, the world’s only deaf professional motocross racer, kicking up dirt on her BMX bike; and other female wakeboarders, Pro-Base jumpers, aerobatic pilots, wingsuit pilots, and, ironically, Ironman champions. Each of the athletes contributes her own motivating words of encouragement that will inspire girls of every age and from every culture to chase their dreams, shatter every glass ceiling, kick down the men’s clubhouse door—and have fun doing it all.