toughest sport in the world?

[young]

Certain professors in our Kinesiology depatment here at McMaster were approached to be a part of this poll by espn - to see which sport is the toughest in the world? You will note in the link (to espn) that they have used mutlidimensional ratings and although it is probably not the most rigorous scientific process, the results make for good discussion...

We distance types will be disappointed....ranked 40th in the sporting world....and behind the sprinters...yeesh. Apparently pole vault is damn tough. I wouldn't know, scared of heights..

Enjoy.

Brad

The Grid:
sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/sportSkills


All --

Thought you might be interested to know that we finally got the Degree of Difficulty Grid posted this afternoon. (Links below.) Early returns: It received 110,000 hits in the first hour it was on the site. That's a phenomenal number, indicative of just how passionate sports fans are about the subject.

I can't tell you how much I appreciate your timely and thoughtful responses to my requests for help. You've made this a wonderful package.

The Grid:
sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/sportSkills

Page 2 Index:
sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/index

ESPN.com front page:
msn.espn.go.com/

Thanks to one and all!

Michael Knisley
Senior Editor
Page 2
ESPN.com
[e-mail]

[gtown]

I especially like the rankings of baseball and badminton. I suppose the people doing this didn't really weight the criteria in accordance with absolute difficulty, but rather mostly the difficulty relative to the sport. As well, they may have been measuring the sport in competition as opposed to the difficulty of the work that resulted in the competition. But that still doesn't make up for baseball and badminton, that's just weird.
But you know, at least they ranked hockey up their - I mean, that's still gratifying; not as runners, but as hockey fans.

[coldneck]

I couldn't get the link to work so I don't know the criteria... If they are basing the toughest sport on how tough it is just to participate, or play, then running is actually really easy. Even finishing a marathon is easy, look at the numbers from NY, Chicago, London etc. Tons of people are finishing and many are not even that talented or fit. If the top-end competition is a large criteria then I'll say (biased) that running should be ranked much higher.