I've had Apple Watches since the beginning and while I swim and hike, I don't do either at any "extreme" level. But the Apple Watch is a pretty fragile piece of technology due to a glass surface that has no protection at all from impact. My second Apple Watch's glass completely cracked simply because it fell out of my locker room locker onto a tiled floor. While my Apple Watch 4 avoided damage, my AW 6 has some pretty deep scratches on its surface - and I have no clue how they got there. I - or it - never fell and I didn't participate in any high-contact activities at all.
While scratches are alright with me, I wish Apple would find a better material for its watch glass. At one point, early on, Apple was going house sapphire glass, but the company it contracted with couldn't produce the material in large enough quantities (and, to my investment dismay, subsequently went bankrupt). I understand that a 'lip' isn't desirable on a touch-sensitive watch, but surely Apple could find a better substitute for Gorilla glass - I'd pay extra for something like sapphire. The frame of the watch almost never got scratched for me.