Are Distance Runners the Best Athletes on Earth?

tyuoble wrote:

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/sportSkills

This list seems to have weighted the aspects of the toughness of sports in an ineffective way. Many of the racquet sports like tennis, racquetball, and badminton are heavily overrated. Endurance sports like swimming and running are underrated. I was involved with a lot of sports when I was younger, including all of those I've mentioned so far along with baseball (heavily overrated on the list), soccer, and cycling. Of those, swimming is definitely the most brutal and includes plenty of skill components (diving, turns, streamline, and stroke are all integral) while also being extremely physically demanding. That said, however, I agree with the sentiment that mountain climbers are the best athletes. Their skill and coordination matches that of the highest end sports of those aspects (incredible balance and focus). Their strength is unmatched as they must hoist their body weight vertically for massive distances, sometimes lifting themselves on pockets that require them to do so with their fingers alone. The endurance component is also huge, with many climbing fears on par with or greater than ultramarathons and iron man competitions. I find it comical that sprints are rated ahead of distance and middle distance is rated behind distance. Flip that and you're onto something. Are distance runners the most athletic? Nope, but they are high up there on the toughness scale.

"I ain't an athlete, lady. I'm a ballplayer"

-John Kruk, notably overweight professional baseball player and apparent super tough athlete

Great 400m Hurdles are absolute beasts. The training Moses and Aki-Bua did was insane even by today's standards; combining training styles of 110m Hurdles, 400m flat, and the mile. Brandon Johnson went from a 48-mid 400mHurdle to a 1:43-high 800m runner, and helped run a WR in the medley relay. You don't run those kind of times without doing some brutal combination of speed and endurance work for years.

Elite 400m Hurdlers are the mentally strongest out there. Those guys are rocks. Probably closer to boulders. Felix Sanchez was able to mentally survive going from 4 years undefeated to 8 years losing literally everything, and at the end of it win Olympic gold at 35yrs old. Let's see a distance runner do that.

Boxing

Good point. Now that I think about it, there is no way a top xc ski sprinter could hang with the Eaton's of the world in a 100, 400 or jump competition. I think that they would be explosive enough to throw though. XC skiers are untouchable at any sport that requires total body strength, speed and endurance and lasts more than 3 minutes. They would be awesome football players if the field was a mile long!