So Guest, where would you draw the line on "stupidity"?

For an example, my family sails - my mum's been sailing all her life, and my dad started when he was at uni. With about 20 years of experience in dinghies, and 10 years experience in cruisers, they got caught in a storm halfway back across the Irish Sea to Liverpool. Normally this'd be nothing more than an annoyance - reef down, roll up your collar and carry on. They'd got masses of experience sailing the boat in those sort of conditions with both of them (and in fact it only takes one person to crew it in a pinch). But my mum happened to stick her head up at the wrong time as the wind switched and the boom came across, which left her semi-conscious, concussed and with a busted eye socket. And the wind switched to leave Liverpool dead into wind, which made it harder. Dad got them both into Liverpool OK, but the RNLI sent out a lifeboat just to be on the safe side.

So does that count as stupidity? Yes, they were out in a storm. But they'd been through literally hundreds of storms before. Both had (and still have) top-notch sailing skills, and they *never* leave safety to chance (if it's only them on the boat, they live in harnesses in anything above a force 4).

Re rowing across the Atlantic, there were a whole bunch of them along with Ben Fogle and James Cracknell, doing that race. Several needed rescuing after things went wrong. Stupidity?

Or if it comes to that, look at all the runners who've damaged knees/ankles by pushing too hard to win. Stupidity?

Graham.