10 Hardest Things To Do In Sports

[quote]Luv2Run wrote:I would say there is some luck involved in being able to run a 4 min mile: you have to have the genetics for it. Face it, Maurice Green just does not have the genetics to do.quote]

No Luv, genetics is not luck, it's life. Maurice Green won't break the 4 minute mile because he does not have the desire to do so.

I believe that any normal, healthy human being on this earth, genetics aside, has the ability to break 4 minutes in the mile.

Less time waiting for letsrun.com to download means more time for planning the next war! I think Greenland is coming on board today!

Today's article was #8 - Completing the Tour de France.

That would be pretty tough. They have cutoff times, and I'm sure they're a lot tougher than the cutoffs for finishing any marathon.

I'll take a different tack here:

Even though I'm not impressed with golfers in any way, I will include them in this discussion (even though I do also feel that golf is a game and not necessarily a sport).

Most of the most amazing things accomplished in sports have to do with a group of achievements and not one simple thing - in that vein, here are my nominations:

10) Grand Slam in Men's tennis

9) 29+ foot long jump

8) Baseball's Triple crown (HR, RBI, Batting Average Titles)

7) 2000 rushing yards in a season in NFL

6) 700 homeruns in MLB

5) sub 3:50 mile

4) winning 2 distance Golds in any one Olympics

3) 4000 hits in MLB

2) undefeated Div I wrestling for career

1) Grand Slam on PGA tour (that means men)

You guys are all slightly retarded.

First of all, those of you who are saying things like "hitting off of a major league pitcher" or "hittinga hole-in-one", you are really retarded. All of these types of things can be done with one stroke of luck. I could get lucky and hit off of a ML pitcher and I have hit a hole-in-one.

A sub 4 mile requires years of conditioning your body and your mind. Therefore, it is much harder than any other one thing in sports.

Those of you who are comparing winning the PGA to running a 4 minute mile are also retarded. Winning on the PGA tour is something done over a long period of time. If that is what you are comparing it to then you should say which is harder: PGA or running a sub 4 minute mile once a week for two monthes.

Once again, sub 4 harder.

My opinion.

Ears2Yoo wrote:

[quote]Luv2Run wrote:I would say there is some luck involved in being able to run a 4 min mile: you have to have the genetics for it. Face it, Maurice Green just does not have the genetics to do.quote]

No Luv, genetics is not luck, it's life. Maurice Green won't break the 4 minute mile because he does not have the desire to do so.

I believe that any normal, healthy human being on this earth, genetics aside, has the ability to break 4 minutes in the mile.

It must be so easy to wave genetics aside. I would say genetics are luck. No one (at this time) has control over them. I did not pick my parents and they could not choose what traits I get (although many aspects of VO2max do come from the mother).

Nice little list Flag. I stand by my vote for undefeated Div 1 wrestling career as #1. Winning Tour de France, winning all-around gymnastics Gold (men & women) and men's and women's track multi-events Oly or World Champs Gold are somewhere in my Top 10.

Just because only a certian number of people have done some thing does not make it hard, it makes it rare. High jumpers dont barf, they dont pass out and they dont usually get stress fractures. A high jumper can probably, in peak form, acheive their PR twice in a short span, say one day. I would like to see a person run two PR miles in one day, or how about 2x2:05 Marathon, 10 hours rest, that is hard. Only racing (running, swimming, tri, biking, cc skiing) and fighting (wresteling, boxing, ultimate fighting) sports can even make a case. No downhill or race walking.

Scotth,

Thanks man. I put the PGA Grand Slam as #1 only because it pretty much never happens.

Certainly I have much more respect for a sub 4 minute miler as an athlete than I do any golfer regardless of his prowess, but the parameters were the 10 hardest things to do in sports, and since tons of people have broken a 4 minute mile but hardly anyone has won the PGA Grand Slam (golf fans will have to tell me how many - I just know that Tiger hasn't yet done it - even though he thinks he has - you have to win all 4 majors in the same season).

And, as ridiculous as it may be to accomplish, there is a PGA Grand Slam, and it is the hardest (reasonable) thing to attain in sports that I can think of.

I agree 100% with you. Check out my post on the 2nd page of this thread...

How about winning world cross country three times in a row: Lynn Jennings.

A lot of posters are missing the point that was brought up earlier about setting the mile difficulty at 4:00 being arbitrary. It's not really a skill, it's just a level of performance within a sport. You could draw a line in just about any sport and say, "only 30 guys in the world performed this feat this year, therefore it is the equivalent of a 4:00 mile", eg hitting .320, getting 10 sacks, averaging 20 points per game in the NBA, shooting below 65 in golf, and countless other analogies from other sports. It is really just a statistic. You might as well say, the hardest thing to do in sport is to have a .367 lifetime batting average, since only one person has ever done it. There are lots of counterarguments against it, too. For instance, a 4:00 minute mile may be out of reach for most, but on the other hand, an average athlete who is not even a runner can run somewhere betwee 5:00 and 6:00. But the same average athlete could not show up in MLB and hit .200. When I think of the hardest things to do in sports, I think if it's something a non-talented klutz such as myself can get relatively close to, it can't be that impressive.

Also, why a 4:00 mile and not, say, a 28:00 10k or a 2:12 marathon? Or a 10.00 100 or 45 second 400 or whatever the equivalent is in every other distance?

My vote would be winning the Olympic Trials Marathon despite puking several times during the race.

The winner: Bob Kempainen.

Some other notables:

1) long jumping 29 feet

2) pole vaulting 20 feet

3) rolling 300 in three consecutive rounds of bowling (if bowling is a sport)

4) batting .400

5) the NBA quadruple-double (double figures in at least four categories: points, rebounds, assists, steals, and blocked shots)

6) repeating as gold medalist in any Olympic distance event

I thought about your statement, but I'm going to say that running sub 4 minutes for the mile is the hardest.

Why?

Because there is no luck in running. Many, if not all of the aforementioned sports contain some element of luck. If someone hits a hole-in-one, it is not necessarily because they were aiming for the pin, it may have very well been because they were lucky. Someone who is not a professional baseball player could conceivably hit a ball off of a major league pitcher. Again, that could be luck. The same can be said about hitting a return ball from Pete Sampras. Winning a world championship title in boxing could contain some luck because you are competing directly against someone else. If he is having an off night, you could take advantage of that and pummel him into the ground. With football and basketball, I could write volumes about how much luck is involved with those sports. A lot of great things can be accomplished in each, but you have to question whether or not it was all skill, or some skill and some luck, or in some instances, all luck.

I'm not taking anything away from the difficulty of what was mentioned, but I am suggesting that they may not seem as difficult when you consider that nearly anyone in the world could do what was said. Anyone. Not just any person, however, can break 4 minutes in the mile.

The mile. Breaking 4 minutes in the mile involves no luck whatsoever. It's you versus time. Time won't trip and stumble right before the finish. Additionally, the wind will not always blow at your back when running a mile (on the track anyway). It's you versus yourself and time. There is no luck with that. You either do it or you don't. Can an individual who has hit a hole in one say that they are among the greatest golfers in the world? Certainly not. Can an individual who broke 4 minues in the mile claim that they are among the worlds elite in running? I would say so.

Ask a person who just hit a hole-in-one if it was difficult for them to do? They'll tell you no it wasn't and that all they did was swing the club and the ball went in. Lucky swing I guess. The same can be said for a tennis player and a baseball player. Breaking 4 minutes in the mile requires you to put your body through hell. It comes easy to no one...no matter what their ability is.[/quote]

Amen, Ears2yoo. Sorry I didn't read your reply first. You elaborated much better than I was willing to. Great points and references. I couldn't agree more.

The last post should have been a quote. Sorry again Ears2yoo.

I'm failing to see why a 4:00 mile in particular is supposed to be so hard, when running a sub-4 mile is not even one of the 10 hardest things to do in track and field. After all, hundreds and hundreds of people have done it, whereas you could set a performance standard in every other track and field event where, say, only 10 people had reached that level. For instance, it is harder to run a sub 44 400m than it is to run a sub-4 mile. It is harder to break 1:44 for 800m than it is to run a sub 4-minute mile. It is harder to break 7:30 for 3000m than it is to run a sub-4 mile. By your standards, no luck is involved in any of these performances, either, so I think it is absurd to stick with calling a sub-4 mile one of the 10 hardest things to do in all sports.

"Now how many guys will break par on a championship golf course? (I really don't know, but nationally, I would guess it to be somewhere between 500 and 1000)."

.....When talking about how many guys hit a major leauge pitch and shoot par for golf in the US vs how many guys run sub 4 in the mile...Is the disparity becuase running sub 4 is harder or is it because so few people participate in our sport and thus we have less people trying? So, is running sub for the most difficult?

Sub 4 performer wrote:

The last post should have been a quote. Sorry again Ears2yoo.

Not a problem.