What sports are the hardest to achieve the highest level?

I can speak for figure skating as far as actually reaching the highest level in competition:

They have a regional system where the top 2 or 3 move on.

At the final level of qualifying for Nationals the top 2 from each Section move on to Nationals.

Theoretically, you can be the 3rd best skater in the country (or even the world) and NOT go to Nationals.

It's a stupid system because they leave some great skaters out.

My daughter was in that system.

It's also cut throat- people (adults) sabotaging the skates of young girls.

Someone once loosened the screws that hold the blades to the skate on my daughter's skates when she left her skate bag unattended for about 10 minutes- AT HER OWN RINK.

It turned out to be the jealous mother of another skater who wasn't good enough to compete in the competition we were taking my daughter to the next day.

I was told that was common!

Gymnastics . Only sport that I can not do. I like to recruit them for long jump and pole vault.

Mtn Climbing

You have to have a gym memership to do gymnastics. Most countries dont even have a gymstics gym

Baseball -- and I don't think its close.

Ackley wrote:

Baseball -- and I don't think its close.

That is a joke, right?

MLB umpire.

Definitely cricket.

Chess

Hopscotch

Marathon on a track

NFL quarterback

How many Michael Jordans and Kobe Bryants are there out there?

For physical sports its ultrarunning and for activites its chess

Middle Distance and Sprinting Running

Cycling

Cross Country (nordic) Skiing

Gymnastics

Free Solo (no ropes, no protection) Big Wall Climbing

Powerlifting

Lydiard Cerutty wrote:

Chess

Norwegian on asthma medication is world champion ;-)

I am sure it is football (soccer), because a lot of kids run, but talented runners so often turn to teamsports, but the amount of kids in the world playing football and never think of anything else is beyond belief (especially if you are american I guess).

Definitely agree with you about wrestling. You get guys in the UFC who picked up MMA in high school or college. Unless you dedicate your life to wrestling from an early age, you probably will never have success at the highest level.

I disagree with running though, that's based mostly on genetics and you can be 'pretty good' in highschool and still go to the olympics (think Clayton Murphy or Drew Windle).

Forgot to give my answer. My answer would probably be gymnastics or tennis. Both sports have kids being professionally trained straight out of the womb, it's hard to compete with that.

phxrunner17 wrote:

Ackley wrote:

Baseball -- and I don't think its close.

That is a joke, right?

Ackley is correct. One has to begin hitting a baseball at age five in T-Ball or coach pitch. I'd say ballet/point may be harder since (mostly) girls start at age three. We're not considering ballet/point a sport. No one shows up at seventeen and starts hitting 85 mph high school pitching without playing Little League Baseball. No one shows up at seventeen to dance schools to dance ballet/point well at seventeen without starting at age three.