Who gets injured the most, sprinters or distance guys?

I did some research on this, and the results are conflicting:

"The injury rate per 1,000 hours of training was 2.5 in long-distance/marathon runners and 5.6 to 5.8 in sprinters and middle-distance runners."

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Injuries in runners - PubMed

Sixty runners belonging to two clubs were followed for 1 year with regard to training and injury. There were 55 injuries in 39 athletes. The injury rate per 1,000 hours of training was 2.5 in long-distance/marathon runners an...

Link:pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3578639/

vs.

"Middle and long-distance runners had the highest injury incidence rate (2.38), followed by jumpers (1.62), and sprinters (1.34)."

injepijournal.biomedcentral.com

Athlete availability and incidence of overuse injuries over an athletics season in a cohort of elite Swedish athletics athletes - a prospective study - Injury Epidemiology

Background Athletics is a sport with a high incidence of injury, where most injuries are caused by overuse. Research on injury incidence and the occurrence of overuse injuries during a season in athletics is scarce. An athlet...

Link:injepijournal.biomedcentral.com/articl...

I once heard that in high school, female cross country runners had more injuries than any other sport. Something about their hip geometry causing a lot of knee injuries.

I think middle distance/long sprinting is by far the largest injury risk.

-Heavy emphasis on minimal race weight despite very taxing work load

-Sprinting, and at a high volume

-Relatively high running/training volume

-The events in themselves carry a large injury risk

If you take a good look, 800m and 400m pros usually spend half or more of their careers benched.

The results are conflicting for sprinters vs. long distance runners, but they both agree that middle-distance guys get injured the most. Ouch!

At any track meet it does seem like 3/4 of the sprint team at least is injured by the time the 4x4 rolls around.

The injury rate is much higher during competition than practice, and sprinters do get injured more often than distance guys. But the downside is that distance guys take longer to recover from their injuries:

Seems almost impossible to train hard for sprinting without eventually straining a hammy.

Seems almost impossible to train hard for sprinting without eventually straining a hammy.

It’s not an end of the world injury but it takes forever to heal and is very easily reaggravated

I read a reports about 10 years ago, American Academy Sports Medicine. It stated sprinters.

Think about it. Distance gals and guys get a sore Achilles, some come on here and ask if it is okay to train through. Sprinters and explosive movement athletes suffer ruptured Achilles, severe hamstring muscle tears and sports hernia from powerlifting.

Often, distance runners claim to be injured but can somehow ride a bike or get on gym equipment for 90 to 120 minutes.

The data suggests the opposite:

"Overall, however, a U-shaped pattern between the running distance and the time-loss injury proportion seemed to exist, in which sprinting athletes and ultra-marathon runners had the highest proportions of time-loss injuries."

Most high level distance runners I knew were almost never hurt. But they had great form, biomechanics, etc

On the other hand, multiple sub 11 teammates of mine (high school) were more prone to being hurt. Especially those closer to 10.6, 10.7, 10.8. They generate just much more power - obviously basically no stress fractures, but pulled hamstrings were somewhat common when the weather was cooler than 90* or so (2 or 3 per year). No distance runner runs that fast to really he worried about it.

This is a joke about them not wanting to do it, right?

400m runners probably get injured the least. Unlike the 100, you're usually not going fast enough to pull a hamstring, and unlike the 800, you're not trying to add a significant amount of mileage to that intensity.