And the Toughest Sport is..........

inactionman · May 2, 2004 10:58AM

ESPN has taken it upon themselves to rank the world of sports to conclude once and for all which sport is the toughest. And much like a Rolling Stone article ranking the 50 greatest guitar players ever it is sure to inspire debate.

Employing a ranking system covering different attributes like endurance and hand-eye co-ordination ESPN's experts have declared that Boxing is numero uno.

Here is the top ten:

Boxing

Ice Hockey

Football

Basketball

Wrestling

Martial Arts

Tennis

Gymnastics

Baseball/Softball

Soccer

Skiing: Alpine

Full list is here

Agree? Disagree? Don't Care?

ast3r3x · May 2, 2004 11:45AM

Toughest as in how? Most likley to hurt or hardest to do?

ericg · May 2, 2004 11:52AM

Toughest sport... Australian Football

norfa · May 2, 2004 12:06PM

A number of years ago the Toronto Star ran a story on 3 sport athletes. They were all pretty much in agreement, basketball takes the most skill. Now if by toughest, you mean more physically demanding, that would be easy. Take the various sports and see which has the most injuries per man/hour of competition, and boxing might well come in first. I have a feeling the ranking above is just designed to spark debate.

formerlurker · May 2, 2004 12:11PM

In terms of sports I know well and have personally participated in competitively, I would select Water Polo, which comes up as #11 in their rankings.

I also enjoyed seeing what made the bottom 10:

Golf

Cheerleading

Roller Skating

Equestrian

Archery

Curling

Bowling

Shooting

Billiards

Fishing

superkarate monkeydeathcar · May 2, 2004 12:13PM

what, no rugby?

i agree with boxing, wrestling should be in there too.

after about 3 rounds of boxing, just holding your hands up is death. but letting them down is worse.

shawnj · May 2, 2004 12:13PM

Quote:

Originally posted by ast3r3x

Toughest as in how? Most likley to hurt or hardest to do?

I would argue most professional athletes are comparatively "tough." Their respective sports require different kinds of toughness. Still, I don't think a survey that attempts to account for different factors really matters anyway. If you're a 400lb football player, the Alpe D'Huez would be nearly impossible to complete under any condition- nevermind Tour de France race conditions. Similarly, Lance Armstrong isn't about to don pads and a helmet for his favorite pro football team. He'd be literally crushed. Yeah, I allow that certain sports are "tougher" than others. But I'd be hard-pressed to tell you why.

greggwsmith · May 2, 2004 12:13PM

What about Lacrosse? Hockey and Lacrosse are the toughest team sports.

wrong robot · May 2, 2004 12:15PM

I dislike lists like these.

dmband0026 · May 2, 2004 12:34PM

Y'all forgot about swimming.

Hardest sport in the world, hands down. Most people can't do 25 meters without almost having a heart attack.

Water polo is up there on the list too, for those of you who've never seen it, it's a mixture between swimming, soccer, rugby, wrestling, and football, all in the water. Although it's a ton of fun, that's why I don't consider it as hard as swimming.

formerlurker · May 2, 2004 12:55PM

Quote:

Originally posted by DMBand0026

Y'all forgot about swimming.

Hardest sport in the world, hands down. Most people can't do 25 meters without almost having a heart attack.

Water polo is up there on the list too, for those of you who've never seen it, it's a mixture between swimming, soccer, rugby, wrestling, and football, all in the water. Although it's a ton of fun, that's why I don't consider it as hard as swimming.

Big surprise, I had some of the same thoughts.

And I was amazed and disgusted to see Distance Swimming coming at a ranking of #36.

They more or less arbitrarily included things like Durability, Nerve steadiness, Hand-eye coordination, and Analytical Aptitude - elements obviously not present in every sport.

I think the Hand-Eye Coordination scores are the biggest reason why water polo (6.25) did so much better overall than swimming (2.75), although it also scored twice as high for Nerves. On Endurance, distance swimming (9.25) was #3 behind distance track and distance cycling.

Perhaps this should be called "Sport requiring the widest range of skills" instead of "Toughest".

messiahtosh · May 2, 2004 1:19PM

Football (American Style).

rageous · May 2, 2004 3:56PM

Baseball has absolutely no place in any list containing the word "tough".

stoo · May 2, 2004 6:11PM

Quote:

Most people can't do 25 meters without almost having a heart attack.

Or, in my case, treading water and coughing up water (I'm bad at breathing while swimming).

The biathlon must be hard, as its alpine skiing, but with rest intervals of target shooting. I'd quite like to give it a go, but Scotland hasn't had much snow recently.

Cycling is quite tough, due to the strain the athletes place themselves under. In an article on the British cyclist Graham Obree, one of his musings on the hour distance record (at 38 ) was that it might place him too near the "death zone". The possibility of non-accidental, real and possibly life shortening damage must count towards "toughness".

edit: pesky smilies...

splinemodel · May 2, 2004 6:20PM

Here's my top 4

1) Hurling

2) Ice Hockey

3) Various distance running events. . . the steeplechase is a tough one.

4) Rugby

Of these, I've done them all except hurling, but I've seen enough on TV to never want to think about doing it. I'd also like to say that any endurance sport is tough. Running a 10k in under thirty minutes. . . takes a few days to recover. Boxing might be the toughest in that respect, but I don't know much about it, so I can't really comment.

How basketball got in there is a big question mark for me. I think it's fun, but it's much less physically demanding than ice hockey, good soccer, or most other running sports, plus there's really no hitting. When basketball player moan all over the court and go down with cramps. . . it makes me really question if they are men at all.

rok · May 2, 2004 7:21PM

water polo, easy. take the physical endurance of swimming, the skill/rules of soccer, and throw in the possibility of drowning.

ice hockey is damn close, simply due to the speed at which it occurs, but i have never been a fan of sports that require more than person-object-goal or less. i just can't get into a sport where the quality of your stick, wicket, racket, bat, or club can turn a competition. maybe that's just me...

i might say triatheletes or decatheletes, but those areas are really just separate sports glommed together to make events. i'm not saying they're not tough areas to excel in, but they seem to be an exception.

splinemodel · May 2, 2004 7:37PM

Quote:

Originally posted by rok

ice hockey is damn close, simply due to the speed at which it occurs, but i have never been a fan of sports that require more than person-object-goal or less. i just can't get into a sport where the quality of your stick, wicket, racket, bat, or club can turn a competition. maybe that's just me...

While there is equipment in hockey, it's all pretty much the same. That is, unless you're playing with rusty skates and a broken stick, if you're good, your skill will still come out. I think there's actually more equipment variability in tennis, since two different racquets can be so much different. Two hockey sticks may have different stiffnesses and curves, but a good player can usually compensate to a pretty good degree.

Anything played in the water is going to be difficult for sure, but watersports seem so silly to me. . . somehow even more silly than strapping on skates and blasting around on an ice sheet.

wrong robot · May 2, 2004 7:42PM

Yeah, hockey is great, I played it most of my youth, mostly street hockey though, just sticks and a roller ball, sometimes we'd have goals, sometimes we'd have skates, either way, we had a lot of fun!!

I barely played ice hockey, maybe twice, but I used to go to kings games all the time.

moogs · May 2, 2004 8:00PM

Basketball is a much easier sport to master than Hockey; have no idea what the Toronto Star people were thinking. If I had to rank North American team sports, it would be something like this:

Sport Requiring the Most Phyiscal Toughness

1) Football

1a) Hockey

3) Basketball

4) Soccer

5) Baseball

Sport Whose Skills are Most Difficult to Master

1) Hockey

2) Baseball

3) Soccer

4) Basketball

5) Football

Toughest Sport to Excel at Overall

1)Hockey (by a LONG way)

2)Baseball

3)Soccer

4)Basketball

5)Football

artman @_@ · May 2, 2004 8:15PM

Toughest...boxing definately and rugby. Plus others listed of course.

Surprised NASCAR or other racing sports weren't even mentioned. The most typical problems for a race car driver are muscle fatigue, dehydration and cramps. But also the physical wear from g forces and crashes (of course). Hearing, brain melt and foot/neck/back injuries...even the vibration effects the eyes it's a damn tough sport and should have been mentioned. Dangerous sport yes, but tough too.

Russian motorcycle ice rink racing too. Damn scary sport. Two inch nails in the tires...

ipodandimac · May 2, 2004 8:23PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Moogs

Basketball is a much easier sport to master than Hockey; have no idea what the Toronto Star people were thinking. If I had to rank North American team sports, it would be something like this:

Sport Requiring the Most Phyiscal Toughness

1) Football

1a) Hockey

3) Basketball

4) Soccer

5) Baseball

Sport Whose Skills are Most Difficult to Master

1) Hockey

2) Baseball

3) Soccer

4) Basketball

5) Football

Toughest Sport to Excel at Overall

1)Hockey (by a LONG way)

2)Baseball

3)Soccer

4)Basketball

5)Football

have you ever played golf???? that should be near the top of your hardest to master. theres a huge difference between being able to go out and shoot a decent score with your friends every couple of weekends, but getting to the level of the PGA guys takes way more than a lot of those on your lists.

I say toughest physically, rugby hands down. Toughest to master, golf is near the top, with hockey.

And the Toughest Sport is..........

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