What sport has the toughest athletes

[DSNY FN]

I race motorcycles and that is a tough sport to I ride a 2000 CBR 600F4 on road courses and it is just you the bike and a dead cow covering your body and speeds that reach up to 180 miles an hour the bike makes 118 HP at the wheel and weighs less than 350 pounds you do the math on that one better power to weight ratio than anything with 4 wheels. It still doens't campare to hockey to me though.

 

[missypie]

Another vote for gymnasts! Of course, gymnasts' moms have to figure in there somewhere, too...I can hardly breathe when my DD is on the beam. I don't know how the parents of elite gymnasts can watch. Can you imagine being Kerry Strugg's parents, knowing she was vaulting with an inured ankle?

 

[Jolie C]

Out of the four choices on the poll, HOCKEY has the toughest athletes. I would have used a smilie to accentuate my post, but there isn't one of a bleeding, toothless, jaw wired shut smilie.

 

[DSNY FN]

Good one JolieC I agree we need a black eyed smiley or a toothless smiley on here to represent a hockey players face.

 

[gymnasticsmom68]

Cheerleading albeit tough work and figureskating are 3 minutes in length with some jusmps and tosses are probably not as strenuos as what some of the football and hockey players go through

Speaking as a gymnast's Mom, you have no idea how many times they do those jumps and bar routines and floor routines and beam routines to practice for that 'little while' that they are competing. You don't see the bloody hands and the twisted ankles and the bruises from landing on the beam. You don't see that for a reason. Gymnastics is supposed to look beautiful and flawless, and it takes hours and hours and hours a WEEK to prepare for those 'few minutes' that you see. There's a saying in the gymnastics world. "If gymnastics were easy, they'd call it hockey'.

"You turn like a girl, you jump like a girl, you swing like a girl, you tumble 6 feet over a four inch beam, like a girl"

 

[DSNY FN]

Hey no offense to the sport but when you practice 7 days a week about 4 or more hours a day to play at a high level of hockey and the injuries they play through like broken wrists and jaws and ankles and so on that is tough. Not to mention the stitches etc you will get during a game and come back out to play Kerri Strugg or whatever her name was the girl that sprained her ankle inthe Olympics good for her she is to be commended not alot of people would do that. Look at Joe Thorton from the Bruins his rib injury should have had him out of the lineup for 5 or 6 weeks he missed 2 games and came back not many other sports would do that.

 

[WDWAurora]

WOW I can't believe I missed that comment about cheerleading routines only lasting 3 minutes. HOW WRONG! The competition routines do, yes, but during football games, they go solid, usually with no breaks, even for halftime. We used to rarely get breaks for the bathroom, and then we had one minute to the fieldhouse, one minute inside, and one minute back...I don't really think anyone should insult any of the other sports, but discuss strengths of the athletes, the purpose of this thread. I'm not sure which sport the person who posted that comment was "pulling" for, but I will not stoop to that level. I will say that cheerleaders work hard for entire games, as well as 4 hr practices every day except Sunday when there isn't a game on that day. Sometimes more if there's a competition.

 

[Gette88]

Yes, and I've seen many cheerleaders compete with broken fingers, bloody noses, knocked out teeth. I've seen girls fall on there heads during practice before a competition, go on the floor, compete, then go straight to the ER. Like I said earlier all athletes should be commended on their hard work not compared to others. No sport is worth playing if it's a piece of cake.

 

[DSNY FN]

I agree no matter what sport you are playing you are competeing. Big difference between the US and Canada though regarding cheerleading up here it is done as an extra curricular activity and it doesn't start here till highschool unlike in the US. Up here most of the girls are girls that no longer do gymnastics and want to use the skills from that for something none of them do it as a possible career. They do it for fun and only practice after school for about half an hour or so until they get to the University level then they do more practicing and even then it is not like the US schools etc. So IMHO from a perspective in Canada not the US I don't see cheerleading as a tough thing sorry for the confusion I should have clarified that earlier. By the sounds of it cheerleaders and gymnists plaay with more injuries than Baseball and basketball players do and they don't get paid or not nearly as well as either of those 2 types of athletes hehehe.