USA Todays Top Ten "Hardest Things to do in Sports"

[rkmsuf]

Top notch...Top notch!!!

[mrushh]

Actually, bending a soccer ball is not that hard. Perfect spotting is, obviously, much harder, but bending around a wall is pretty easy.

[Leonidas]

I knew my comment on driving a car 12o MPH would draw some comments. Yes, I agree driving a car on a quiet highway full out is not he same as racing a car, but the basic skills are the same.

Also, there are racing camps average people can pay good money to go to and learn how to drive a racing car. I know people who have done it. Average people like any of us with no particular skills or qualifications. At the end of a camp they go out on a real race track in real race cars and piddle around at about 180 mph or so. Granted, this isn't racing Dale Earnhart, but it's basically the same task.

Also, none of these were qualified with statements like "racing in the Indy 500" or "hitting a Randy Johnson fastball." The task was simply race car driving. With training and experience I think this is doable for a lot more people than completing the Tour de France.

[TLK]

mega-bump

Liked this article and it fits in well here......

What? me worry?
Thursday, May 13, 2004
There is a panic button in front of me.

It is red.


And if I push it, my teeth will stop vibrating, my stomach will drop from its new home near my tonsils and the people standing around the race track will stop melting into the concrete wall.

I am in the back seat of a turbo-charged Champ Car.

And I will not push that button.

I was invited to the Portland International Raceway on Wednesday to take a ride with driver Sebastien Bourdais in a two-seat rocket ship.

I was fitted in gloves, a racing helmet and a Nomex fire suit and strapped to a 750-horsepower machine.

Let me say this -- at 177 mph, your chest caves in. You forget to breathe. Your eyes water. Your nose runs. And, also, the G-force rips your helmet toward the moon, making the chin strap feel like piano wire.

Which, of course, is why technicians installed the red panic button. Push the button and a message scrolls across the driver's steering column, reading, "Your passenger has just (bleeped) his pants."

The message began as a joke, but crew members liked it so much, they kept it. Incidentally, dozens of people have taken this ride before, including Tom Cruise, and also, a woman in a white dress who, one crew member tells you, lost control of her bodily functions during the ride.

The woman urinated, but she didn't push the panic button. Nobody has. And I will not be the first to push it.

Even if, say, a low-flying seagull hits me square in the helmet. Or if Bourdais and I end up buried in the wall, flames everywhere, and me still strapped into my rabbit-hole of a seat.

I have never been to an automobile race at PIR. Nor do I regularly watch motorsports on television. But someone explained to me that Bourdais, a wiry 25-year-old who wears prescription glasses, was 2003 Champ Car rookie of the year.

Also, he grew up in Le Mans, France.

That seems like a good thing.

"Nice to meet you," Bourdais said.

"You're my favorite driver," I answered.

My seat is directly behind Bourdais, slightly elevated. I see what he sees. I hear what he hears. I feel what he feels.

I am blown away by the velocity at which the car moves. The acceleration is breathtaking. More remarkable is the braking.

Being in this machine is more sensational than any amusement park ride and more exhilarating than bungy jumping. In part because there is pavement and wall and spectator and sky, and all of those usual reference points are whipped into something that looks like a rainbow thrown in a blender.

I heard a parent the other day in the grocery store tell her child, "If you keep crossing your eyes, they'll stick that way."

Kids, that's nonsense.

The only way your eyes will get stuck crossed is if you end up here like me, riding with Bourdais in this 1,600-pound paint-shaker, trying to look around at the scenery while he's diving in and out of turns and rocketing down the straightaways.

According to Bourdais, "after 20 or 30 laps, you'd get used to it."

I could never get used to this.

When I exit the vehicle, I am soaked with sweat. My pulse is 150. The muscles in my body are exhausted from four minutes of constant contraction. I did not push the panic button.

We did three laps. In a race they do 90. Also, in a race, there are other drivers to contend with.

"Of course, this is a sport," Bourdais said. "Of course, I'm an athlete."

I agree.

[bhlloy]

Playing keeper is all about experience and practise - played for 8 years but haven't played competitively now for about 4 years and whenever I play in a rec match or whatever my timing and positioning is completely off. It gets a lot easier the more you do it (like most things I would imagine) but I'm always amazed just how long it takes me to get back into the swing of it after a long layoff.

The penalty kick thing like everything else in there is pretty subjective - who is taking the penalty? Although I'd say it doesn't belong on the list because even against a great penalty taker a complete amateur might save 1 in 50 just by going the right way whereas I'd say my chances of getting a hit against Randy Johnson might be 1 in 500,000.

Anyway it's a lame list... too many different categories of task and way too subjective... hard to believe this shit passes as journalism

[bhlloy]

Originally Posted by mrushh

Actually, bending a soccer ball is not that hard. Perfect spotting is, obviously, much harder, but bending around a wall is pretty easy.

DOLA - now put a top flight keeper in net, 4 or 5 six foot two plus players in the wall and try get enough velocity on the ball and enough accuracy to hit the target, let alone beat the keeper. I'd say it's probably the hardest thing to do consistently in soccer, although again I reckon I could probably score 1 in 100. But look at Beckham who is expected to score every time he takes one and it's very hard

[vex]

I've done 135 before, it can't be THAT much different than 177, right?

[Surtt]

Originally Posted by QuikSand

How about "run a 3 minute mile" or "pole vault 500 feet" - both of those are pretty tough, too, right?

Considering the current world record is just over 20 feet,
pole vaulting 500 feet would be pretty tough.

[Huckleberry]

Huckleberry's definition of a sport:

A competitive activity between two or more people wherein the participants do the physical work and each participant actively attempts to prevent his opponents from performing the tasks they need to perform in order to win.

I made it up as I went.

Golf - not a sport
NASCAR - not a sport
Skating - not a sport
Track and field - not a sport (quite the athletic event, though)
Marathon - not a sport
Horse racing - not a sport
Diving - not a sport
Billiards - not a sport (players passively attempt to prevent their opponent from succeeding, not actively by my definition)

Football - sport
Basketball - sport
Baseball - sport
Tennis - sport
Table Tennis - sport
Cricket - sport
Soccer - sport
Boxing - sport

Basically, my feeling, regardless of dictionary definitions, is that the above list meets my definition of what are and are not "sports". Of course, my opinion is always right.

[rkmsuf]

"Sports" in this case I think refers to the whole spectrum of athletic endevors.

[Huckleberry]

Then they have violated my rule and should be reprimanded appropriately.

[rkmsuf]

Hiking could be a sport then if you placed mines along the way to prevent your opponent from completing the course.

[Huckleberry]

No, see, I define that as passively preventing your opponent from succeeding. Actively would be if you were out on the course with him throwing grenades at him or something. Perhaps I should add a facet that all participants are attempting to achieve the same goals. The hiker and grenade thrower would seem to have different goals in that event.

[rkmsuf]

Originally Posted by Huckleberry

No, see, I define that as passively preventing your opponent from succeeding. Actively would be if you were out on the course with him throwing grenades at him or something. Perhaps I should add a facet that all participants are attempting to achieve the same goals. The hiker and grenade thrower would seem to have different goals in that event.

Mines are not passive my friend. Ever step on one of those things?

How about the hikers carry knives and try to savage each other while hiking toward a finish point?

[Huckleberry]

Mines = active.
Preplacement of mines = passive.

The hiking with knives idea intrigues me. We shall deem it a sport.

[rdo]

I was a goalkeeper in my HS days and I had a decent success rate saving penalties. You can get a good idea about were the penalty taker is trying to place the shot from their run-up, the angle of the ankle on their kicking leg, the angle of their knee and most importantly the orientation of their hips. It's not just blind luck.

Also the Tour de France has to be the hardest event in sports. I read somewhere (did a quick google search and couldn't find it unfortunately) that the Tour cyclists have the highest recorded ratio of total expended energy over resting energy (energy expended to keep the bodys processes going) of any animal.

[RendeR]

Originally Posted by Blackadar

2.) Race car driving
Please. I have driven a car in the 120 mph range and lived to tell about it. Matter of fact, one of the dumber things I've ever done, therefore it really doesn't belong on the list.

Just because you've driven at 120 MPH once doesn't have anything to do with race car driving. That's like going to the batting cage, hitting a 40 MPH softball and equating it to staring down the barrel of a Roger Clemens fastball.

Trust me, bucky, driving a car at 150MPH when it feels like you're sliding all over the track because the car is loose and you're less than a foot from 2-3 other cars is not easy. Frankly, most people freak out. I did this for a year or so when I was younger and I'll tell you, it's incredibly tough. Not to mention that the car is 100 degrees and you feel like you're breathing pure exhaust. I'm not sure it should be #2, but it should be pretty high on the list.

Nuff said =)

[mordhiem]

Hitting the stumps for a run out in cricket, from say cover, is damn difficult to do. Even the very best fielders in the world can only hit them maybe 1/3 of the time.

All those saying that race driving isn't difficult should go for a few laps in an F1 car. That is if you can stay on the track first.

[Galaril]

My top 6:

1)Marathon Des Sables is a 6 day / 151 mile (243km) endurance race across the Sahara Desert in Morocco, normally taking place at the end of March / beginning of April and is considered the toughest footrace on earth.
2)Ironman Triathlon in Hawaii
3)Kilauea Volcano Marathon(1000 ' elevation climb)
4)Mt. Everest marathon (all downhill from base camp at 5'345 meters)
5)Tour De france
6)Qualifying for the Boston Marathon(30 years old=3 hours10min.) and completing it in that time.

[mordhiem]

Originally Posted by Galaril

6)Qualifying for the Boston Marathon(30 years old=3 hours10min.) and completing it in that time.

For a professional marathon runner, that is not all that difficult.

[vex]

Originally Posted by mordhiem

Hitting the stumps for a run out in cricket, from say cover, is damn difficult to do. Even the very best fielders in the world can only hit them maybe 1/3 of the time.

What in the world did you just say?