Hardest Sport in the World?

[Aquarthur]

I've had this argument with other people before, and I always get frustrated. I believe most people underestimate the difficulty of cycling, which is the sport I think is one of the most physically demanding sport in the world. My friends think it's just people sitting on bikes, but I guess that's just because they're American (no offence, just think most Americans don't really know too much about cycling). Most of them referred to boxing, which, according to ESPN (http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/sportSkills), is the toughest sport in the world. So which sport do you think is the hardest sport? Cycling, Boxing, or another sport?

 

[The Hitch]

As i said. There are a few harder sports than cycling, but this thing of ours is the hardest sport from which one can be a millionare.

Also i would nominate World Strongest man.

 

[Winterfold]

I think there is a difference between 'hard' and 'tough' - offered the option of riding the Marmotte each day for 3 days or taking one punch in the face from the WC welterweight (my weight) I would go for the bike ride every time. Bike suffering is bad and you go to dark places but it is doable.

That said I think eg yesterday's finish in the Vuelta shows which sport has the best overall combination of speed, power, endurance, tactics, psychology, balls and it is clearly cycling.

I also think Rugby Union at eg the semi-final level and above in the World Cup gets similarly epic and those guys go as deep as pro cyclists - but in a very different way.

 

[Merckx index]

I vote boxing, because a broader range of skills is required. A short list of athletic skills should certainly include speed, power, agility, hand-eye coordination, stamina or endurance, awareness, and courage. Boxing requires all of these to a fairly large degree. Very few if any other sports do.

Bike racing is in very large part about endurance. You don't have to be exceptionally fast if you aren't a sprinter, and power is required only in a limited number of leg muscles. Agility and hand-eye coordination are not required to a great degree (see Frank Schleck), nor is awareness. I do think the courage element is fairly high. Riding right on someone's wheel at 30+ mph, or descending narrow winding roads at 60 mph is a prospect about as scary to me as getting knocked out. And you don't stop a race so that someone doesn't get hurt. (Except maybe in the TDF in Belgium).

That said, boxing has a few limitations. Weather is never a factor. There are weight classes, which means not only that you never have to fight someone bigger than you (though maybe someone taller and/or with a greater reach), but that the pool of potential rivals is somewhat limited. And since it's an individual sport, the particular demands of working with teammates are not there.

 

[The Hitch]

I think there is a difference between 'hard' and 'tough' - offered the option of riding the Marmotte each day for 3 days or taking one punch in the face from the WC welterweight (my weight) I would go for the bike ride every time. Bike suffering is bad and you go to dark places but it is doable.

The problem with your comparison is that in the boxing example, the difficulty for you the non pro is the same as the difficulty for the pro (getting punched in the face), whereas for the cycling, you the non pro can ride a stage at your own pace ( whatever that is) whereas the cyclist has to ride it at 60km/ h hence the difficulty is not the same.

The more accurate comparison therefore is - what is more painful, getting punched in the face or riding a stage (every day for 3 weeks) at 60km/h.

Are you sure, you wouldnt, 10 minutes into the first day, just decide to get the punch in the face, fall on the mat and be done with, rather than go through total physical and mental hell, for 20 and a half more days?

 

[Merckx index]

Are you sure, you wouldnt, 10 minutes into the first day, just decide to get the punch in the face, fall on the mat and be done with, rather than go through total physical and mental hell, for 20 and a half more days?

I think the reasonable basis for comparison is elite vs. elite, not amateur vs. elite. Pro racers suffer a lot in a three week GT, but it isn't all suffering. The GC contenders are protected in the flat stages, and spend a lot of time talking and joking. There are only certain key points in the race when there is a real gut check.

A boxing match only lasts 12 rounds, at most, but there is no down-time during that period. You have to be at peak awareness every second of the fight.

Beyond this, the suffering of a bike racer is all one thing--maintaining your pace at a level just below going into the red zone. Boxers not only are at their limits of endurance, but can't just make the same motion with their legs over and over. They have to move in unpredictable ways, continue moving even when they're getting hit, and so on.

I will say, though, that today's boxers strike me in some ways as more pussies than before. The elite guys fight only two or three times a year. They prepare at most two months for a fight, so they have a lot of off time.

 

[The Hitch]

I think the reasonable basis for comparison is elite vs. elite, not amateur vs. elite. Pro racers suffer a lot in a three week GT, but it isn't all suffering. The GC contenders are protected in the flat stages, and spend a lot of time talking and joking. There are only certain key points in the race when there is a real gut check.

A boxing match only lasts 12 rounds, at most, but there is no down-time during that period. You have to be at peak awareness every second of the fight.

Beyond this, the suffering of a bike racer is all one thing--maintaining your pace at a level just below going into the red zone. Boxers not only are at their limits of endurance, but can't just make the same motion with their legs over and over. They have to move in unpredictable ways, continue moving even when they're getting hit, and so on.

I will say, though, that today's boxers strike me in some ways as more pussies than before. The elite guys fight only two or three times a year. They prepare at most two months for a fight, so they have a lot of off time.

I dont doubt how hard Boxing is. Extremely tough. I was critiscising the posters analogy which had him riding a stage at his own pace, rather than at the extremely high sprint which one has to do it to be a pro.

 

[zealot66]

Ive done and do both. Apples and oranges

 

[roundabout]

Is rock climbing a sport?

 

[Winterfold]

Hmm Fair point Hitch, particularly on Ventoux last Nov around the Simpson memorial with gales and 3 feet of snow on the ground a smack in the face might have been a pleasant option.

The thing is in bike racing, you can race Elites as a Cat 3 and you will just get beaten by a big amount of time, whereas in boxing you will get killed.

But, as the other poster said, apples and oranges.

For me, as a spectator, elite bike racing and RU are the best to watch, regardless if they are the toughest or hardest.

 

[The Hitch]

Hmm Fair point Hitch, particularly on Ventoux last Nov around the Simpson memorial with gales and 3 feet of snow on the ground a smack in the face might have been a pleasant option.

The thing is in bike racing, you can race Elites as a Cat 3 and you will just get beaten by a big amount of time, whereas in boxing you will get killed.

But, as the other poster said, apples and oranges.

For me, as a spectator, elite bike racing and RU are the best to watch, regardless if they are the toughest or hardest.

Yep. For amatuers and those of us who dont see losing as the end of the world, cycling is a far easier, and healthier sport. Its only on the highest level, and for pschychopaths who actually enjoy pain, and our willing too go through it day after day, just for the feeling of glory, that Cycling becomes a super hard sport.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Though not technically a sport, one might want to consider professional wrestling. Long road tours, a "fight" nearly every night, mistakes can cause damage not just to yourself but to others too - and that's just if you're successful. Those outside of the big companies will find themselves on the road day after day doing long trips to independent contractors, often fighting longer matches than they would ever have to do in the big leagues, or doing more dangerous things in the hope of being noticed. Plus you have the cocktails of drugs, and the fact that you could work all your life, but one high-profile error or breaking of character could destroy your career - but so could just being given the wrong character, so that despite working your hardest every day of your life you'll only ever be seen as a joke. That has to hurt more than anything else.

 

[The Hitch]

Though not technically a sport, one might want to consider professional wrestling. Long road tours, a "fight" nearly every night, mistakes can cause damage not just to yourself but to others too - and that's just if you're successful. Those outside of the big companies will find themselves on the road day after day doing long trips to independent contractors, often fighting longer matches than they would ever have to do in the big leagues, or doing more dangerous things in the hope of being noticed. Plus you have the cocktails of drugs, and the fact that you could work all your life, but one high-profile error or breaking of character could destroy your career - but so could just being given the wrong character, so that despite working your hardest every day of your life you'll only ever be seen as a joke. That has to hurt more than anything else.

I said this on the other " hardest sport in the world thread".http://forum.cyclingnews.com/showthread.php?t=9785&page=6
Also you have to add the fact that you have to be strong enough, not just to pick 300, 400 pound giants up, but to safely be able to do complicate moves on them, without injuring yourself or yout opponent, who is most likely a close friend.
Even the most basic wrestling moves can paralise you for life, if botched by just a few centimeters,

Ill quote myself

Some of the moves they attempt border on madness. Jumps, 500 degree flips, back flips, double back flips, all onto an opponent, all can and do cause injury if landing isnt 100% perfect. And with things like the backflip or the reverse backflip ( I think this one is even illegal in some places) you cant evem see the opponent, while your performing the move. They occasionally do this stuff from ladders. I heard Jeff Hardy (total nutjob) got paid 100 grand to do this one time, doing a flip of a 16 foot ladder onto an opponent (with a table to break the fall)


And the injuries, and risk, madone. The chances of horrifying injury are odds on. All wrestlers have to accept they will get many of them. Broken arms, broken legs, head injuries, torn biceps, broken necks, often takes a year of rehab. Thats part of the job. Many get paralysed from it. Many are consigned to wheel chairs or get brain damage. Even the steel chair, while the impact is exaggerated on the shows, can cause concussions if used wrong. While wrestling builds itself on huge exaggerations on the seriousness of the events to the viewers, we should not underestimate how serious the events actually are to the wrestlers, once they get behind the scenes. I can only assume they are all masochists of a sort. Not to mention the sick perverted s**t they did on places like ecw where they use real barbed wire, and real fire, which the wrestler gets paid a sum to put himself through, to astonish the viewers, and is then forced to spend months in hospital recovering from.

I guess 1 testament to the injuries is the Chris Benoit story. They found that by the end ( he did a murder suicide on his wife and kid) his brain was so damaged from years of wrestling, that he had the mental capacity of a child. His was the most violent death, but every now and again I see in the papers this and that wrestler has died. Since they are in the papers, I assume these are people who make it in the wwf. Now in our thing and other sports, we do get sudden deaths, but with the exception of pantani and one or 2 others, they are usually from the lower leagues. But in wrestling, all these deaths are coming from the wwf, their equivalent of our tdf peloton. I can only imagine how many deaths there are at the lower developmental levels.

 

[flicker]

Pro bowling and billiards it's a toss-up!

 

[Merckx index]

I think all this emphasis on the “toughness” of cycling vs. boxing shows the limited nature of the demands that cycling makes. The possibility of getting the sh-t beaten out of you is only one aspect of boxing. Perhaps that was what the original poster intended—a comparison purely in terms of the possible suffering--but I look at the comparison in terms of all the skills one has to master in order to do well. Sometimes boxers go twelve rounds without getting hurt at all, but still embarrass themselves (think Joshua Clottey vs. Manny Pacquiao).

Boxing well involves moving your body in a variety of ways in split-second response to the way your opponent is moving. It’s not just about knocking him out, but appearing more skillful in landing and defending against punches. If you are relatively poor in speed, power, agility, or hand-eye coordination, you will be at a disadvantage. Cycling is moving your legs in a way highly constrained by the bike, with the only response to what others are doing to go faster or slower. If you don’t have enough gas in the tank, you don’t have it, and you lose, but you don’t have to pay a lot of attention to anything else.

 

[Polyarmour]

I was watching a stage of the TdF this year, forget which one, when the little Basque rider Txurruka has a bad crash at the 30km mark of a 180km race. He's shredded his lycra to bits, he's bleeding from bad road rash, he's wandering around clearly concussed, when the Euskaltel guy comes along and literally lifts him back onto the bike, points the bike in the right direction and gives him a push. Last thing I saw was Txurruka wobbling away on his bike.

The next day I wondered what had happened to him so I looked up his result, only 4 or so minutes behind the race winner Petacchi, pretty impressive I thought. Then I read he'd withdrawn from the TdF due to a broken collarbone. Yep, he'd done the 150km shredded to bits with a broken collarbone and came in only 4 minutes behind Petacchi!

The thing is we all know this is not that unusual in pro cycling, happens all the time.

I don't know who is the toughest, who cares, I only know that these guys are as... TOUGH-AS-NAILS!!!

 

[Martin318is]

a lot of the comparisons above are getting off to one side a bit. I mean references to getting killed as a boxer are hardly relevant. If they were then how would you compare cycling or boxing to Formula One motor racing in the 60's? Where roughly 1 in 6 drivers ended their career in a fatal accident?

I don't think the outright risk should be a measure of hardness of a sport. Its just a matter or courage whereas what we are really talking about is efforts like Txurruka's. What other sport would that be seen as fairly normal?

In rugby and most other team sports, someone may injure themselves and then come back into play after treatment (and a lot of drugs) but what other sport sees someone have a big accident like that and then be forced to catch up by themselves and the only treatment they get is some patchup work and bandages and MAYBE a paracetamol or two?

 

[Archibald]

Ive done and do both. Apples and oranges

just thinking the same.

the most intense sport cardio-wise, though, is cross country skiing. second is XC mountain biking...

I've done xc mtb and i've also thai boxed - both are intense, both are physically demanding, and both are very different in their skill sets/muscle groups used.

for those not familiar with the physicality of boxing, there is a reason that the rounds are only 2-3minutes in length - it is extremely demanding physically.
I'm not knocking the intensity of cycling, but you can maintain your efforts for longer...

 

[Machu Picchu]

I think the suffering in cycling is one of the worst, if you have a bad day on the tour for example you have to struggle on or it's over, there is no substitutions which can be made.

However other sports such as American football should not be overlooked, a very physically tough sport which like boxing can have serious health implications which last (& shorten) a lifetime.

 

[Leopejo]

the most intense sport cardio-wise, though, is cross country skiing. second is XC mountain biking...

Cardio alone is not such a good indicator. All of us probably get higher cardios while running, but can still suffer more while cycling.

What makes cycling unique in my opinion is the vast range of demands during one single typical 5 h pro race. Duration is longer than most endurance sports (compare marathon running and 50 km cross country skiing in the 2 - 3 h range, Ironman triathlon being the exception), requiring a very good endurance base, but it is only a small part of what is required.

Anaerobic threshold or however you call it is probably the most important factor for cycling, especially stage races or hilly courses, and it is often not even reached in marathon or Ironman.

But apart from a few stage race general classification contenders, success is determined by anaerobic qualities that let you get into that breakaway or resist on that short climb.

Finally, I can't think of any other endurance sport, not even XC skiing, requiring the same continuing variation in speed, accelerating at every corner and needing very good recovery skills. Even XC MTB, with all those course variations, is basically a "constant" effort time trial.

 

[Tim_sleepless]

Cycling? Hardest game in the world, done it myself you see. 30 years man and boy.

 

[dolophonic]

Darts, easy. You got to drink and throw those arrows ! that is a tall order.
Just look at the pro's its obvious their dedication to the sport.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Df8408FY_X4

 

[galaxy1]

cycling is overrated as a hard sport. hard efforts are limited by human cardio physiology, even in a grand tour - you can't go 100% all day (or even 80%). of course the standard at the top level is high and the lifestyle is tough.

i personally think one-on-one confrontation is necessary to make a sport genuinely hard - any team or tactical sport allows a certain amount of individual slacking off.

boxing probably is the hardest mainstream sport. try going twelve 3-minute rounds against a bag - without having to concentrate 100% on your opponent, parry or take any blows. if you're like me you may find it difficult to stand there with your guard up by the end.
other fighting sports are variations on the theme - sumo training is pretty demanding on the body even if the fights are quick and easy.

rugby is an interesting one - they reckon playing an international match places similar strains on the body to being involved in a serious car crash.

 

[Tim_sleepless]

To continue the related comedy theme....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clv0S--z4p0

 

[The Hitch]

To continue the related comedy theme....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clv0S--z4p0

Damn. You beat me to it.

And to the boxing crowd, yeah i have to admit 12 x 3 minutes hasgot to be hard. I remember playing fight night at a friends house, and after 10 of those 3 minute rounds, my finger were hurting badly. I cant imagine how bad it is with all those punches hitting you for real.

But I dont think that totally defeats cycling for the title of hardest sport. Look at the pictures of Rasmussen and the extremes they have to go with their bodies. I think a cyclist in challenging for a grand tour, still has to overcome more. I cant help but think back to what was said during this years tour, that if after a time trial, you arent in so much pain that you are falling off your bike, then you have failed. TO think that they have to put this 1 hr effort after 20 days of efforts that take you to your limit, and that ultimately it is not even the most painful day of a gt. It is a rest day compared to the mountain stages.

A boxer gets to train many things and spread out his training regime.

A cyclists is training pain endurance all year round. I was a good distance runner as a child and i got through the pain by telling myself that it only lasts a while, and that then comes the reward. A cyclist can not tell himself this. He knows the next day, the next mountain stage, will be another 1 hr + of total pain, and the next and the next. And that after he has finished the gt, he can have a week off, and then back to putting yourself on the limit day after day in training. Its all about the pain.