Dr. Sian Allen, from the Auckland University of Technology and head of innovation at Lululemon, published on Twitter the Ranking of the “toughest sports in the world”. A ranking created by ESPN in 2018 that has been updated, the last time in November 2022.
To configure it, they asked eight experts to rate the sports from 1 to 10 according to strength, speed, agility, flexibility or resistance, among other criteria. From this they obtained an average and determined that the hardest sport in the world is boxing, followed by ice hockey and American football. Basketball and wrestling complete the Top5.
Action and/or extreme sports, which have always had a reputation for being tough, are not in the best of places. The first on the list is surfing, at number 23. It is followed by freeskiing at number 25, diving at number 35, skateboarding at number 37, water skiing at number 46 and kayaking at number 49. With some ratings In some of the criteria, to say the least, curious.
The Doctor asked her followers if they agree with this ranking, to which a few people have already responded. Some, for example, noticing that cheerleading or rodeo also appear in the ranking, for which reason it is still very “Americanized”. Others missing ultrarunning, among others.
Kilian Jornet, one of the most authoritative people to talk about “hard sports”, has also answered. And it has been to say that “it depends on how it is analyzed, whether from the training and lifestyle needs (most of the endurance sports), the long-term consequences (boxing) or from the risk-consequence assessment (mountaineering , free climbing).
In any case, he concludes that “cycling would be a good mix of all these assessments. “Regardless of the talent, it demands a strict long-term lifestyle, a large amount of training, falls with injuries are recurrent and there are fatal accidents in which training and racing.
Source: ESPN