What's the hardest sport to medal at?

[ZG002]

Pretty disrespectful thing to be saying really, She will regret it after the games.

As far as I can see each of the events have enough people competing at the highest level of that sport it's going to be pretty dam hard to win any of the medals. It's not like some of the events have 3 people rocking up for qualifying.

 

[oddjob62]

Not to mention how you avoid breaking your neck while learnkng how to vault.

They have special halls for practicing. There are pits full of foam so you can practice over and over again until you are at least getting upright before you try on a the proper aparatus

 

[Caseh]

I'd say the rest of the world think Track Cycling is the hardest to medal at. Other than that I'd say it's road cycling or gymnastics.

 

[Ice213]

All of them will be in some way hard to medal in. However, I think things like the heptathlon/decathlon are surely the most demanding. I mean look at what Jess Ennis had to do the other day, 4 events one day and 3 the next day. Add the fact that there are no easy events, every event in there has to be treated as a medal event that you have to go out and win (no jogging or slowing down) since it's all additional points on the tally. You literally have to be physically good at everything athletics wise to win a hep/decathlon.

Despite me saying all that, I will say again that EVERY event is going to be difficult to medal in in it's own way, and putting down another sport, or blatantly coming out in the media and saying that you're sports the hardest, is really not a good thing to do.

 

[Purdy]

Sailing

 

[Moothead2]

Do you mean gold or any of the three? If gold and if you're not Bolt, the 100m. Kinda sounds like an excuse for 'only' getting Bronze in my opinion.

 

[robfosters]

Sailing

This. each race looks phenomenally tough and they need to do 10 to sort the medals.

 

[ShaolinDreams]

Decathlon... Ultimate Olympian

Daley Thompson's Decathlon (C64), do you understand the pain i went through waggling that joystick

 

[HangTime]

Are you talking about the hardest medal to win right now, or over all time?

Because if's the latter, then there's no such thing. It would be a statistical freak for the top band of competitors in a sport to always be impossible to break into.

I was talking primarily the former, i.e. you get 'unlucky' in that you are competing at a time when there are exceptional talents around, but perhaps with a dashing of the latter (maybe not all time but lets say over more than just one Olympic cycle). There may be a suggestion from some quarters that some sports are indeed more likely to have slight discrepencies in terms of the 'spread of the field' due to barriers to entry and such like, e.g. lets say one nation has some sort of long term advantage (lets say "magic wheels" but could be anything, maybe some sort of special doping programme that hasn't been leaked to other nations yet). Due to limitations on the number of atheletes they can enter in a given event this means that a select band of competitors are better than 'the rest'.

That said, the second paragraph I wrote does pretty much echo your point in that over the longer term I don't believe these factors have a big impact.

Even if it's the former, how do you judge the ability of people in a sport where there's no absolute metric (nearly all team sports)?

Possibly I've missed the angle you are coming from, but my take is you don't actually need to formally judge/assess the ability of people per se against any metric, the point is that at a given point in time some sports may have different 'spreads' in terms of the ability of rival opponents (whether they be teams or individuals). To use a football analogy, to finish in the top 2 of La Liga this season will be extremely hard for any teams other than Barca and Real Madrid. Whereas there are probably more realistic contenders for a top2 finish in the SPL. Maybe a crap analogy as there are more barriers in football but I think what people are trying to say is that the variation/spread in quality within the field in any sport is not completely random every time the event is held, different sports have different numbers of genuine contenders.

 

[drunkenmaster]

It depends what you mean really, swimming and the 100/200m are hard to win gold in purely because they are so purely based on ultimate speed(the vast majority of the medals) that you get one genetic freak and bam... the sport is dominated for 8 years.

Can you imagine being a great swimmer but having Phelps up against you? While in Tennis you have someone like Murray, not the best player in the world but has beaten Federer, Nadal. Yes he hasn't had a great time of winning competitions against them but ultimately its a sport not down to being the biggest genetic freak of your generation.

In that sense the swimming is very hard to get multiple medals in unless you are that once in a generation guy. I think the lower end medals goes the same, cycling, some are the same but others races there are a lot more tactics and skill to winning than pure speed.

I'll always enjoy sports that are more skill/technique than happening to be born a genetic freak who is perfect beyond all others at a particular purely physical event.

Who knows, in terms of olympics and career's, if you're the best swimmer in the world you'll win more olympic golds and various other competitions than in any other sport. Other sports even if you aren't the best ever physically you still have a good chance to win things in a sport.

 

[G-MAN2004]

Probably the equestrian disciplines, unless daddy has a truck load of cash to get rid of

Using money from 'mummy' and 'daddy' or whatever else I hear. Ugh, I hate it. Screams pure jealousy.

 

[craarc]

tug of war is hard it was in the 1900 olympics GB actually had 2 gold 2 silver 1 bronze in olympic history

 

[Russinating]

Using money from 'mummy' and 'daddy' or whatever else I hear. Ugh, I hate it. Screams pure jealousy.

How is the jealousy part even relevant?