My brother and I had a conversation yesterday about sports, specifically which is the hardest sport. I immediately said ice hockey. Matt said water polo.
We realized that both are difficult in their own way. We had some other contenders: Rugby, Tennis, Boxing, MMA.
I still think there is no comparison to ice hockey.
I’ve never played ice hockey, but I’ve played roller hockey and I’ve skated on ice.
The technical proficiency required in hockey is tremendous. Imagine trying to skate on razor blades while five other players are looking to take your head off.
And on top of that, while you’re skating and handling a small rubber disk with a stick, you also need to know how to fight.
Fighting is almost always involved in hockey.
It’s technically prohibited, and penalties are enforced, but when the gloves drop officials let it happen.
Ice hockey is basically rugby on ice with a boxing match every now and then.
And if you think skating while being head hunted is hard, try swimming. There’s a reason we don’t have fins. We aren’t meant for the water.
Water polo is basically rugby in water.
Matt and I realized that our definition of difficult sports revolved around rugby. I think this is because the idea of rugby is scary.
I believe rugby was the first difficult sport and all other difficult sports derived from rugby. I have nothing to back this up. I just like to imagine it this way.
Bleacher Report ranked the toughest sports. They ranked each sport based on their difficulty in 6 categories: endurance, speed, strength, agility, skill, physicality.
According to Bleacher Report, ice hockey is the 5th hardest sport. Rugby, boxing, and Aussie rules rugby, also known as footy by Australians, place 4th, 3rd, and 2nd respectively. The distinction made between rugby and footy was interesting. Besides rugby there were three other rugby related sports in the top ten: Gaelic football, hurling, and footy placing 10th, 7th, and 2nd. American football, which I always thought came from rugby, was also included placing 6th. It seems the only sports having nothing to do with rugby on this list are gymnastics, basketball, and boxing which placed 9th, 8th, and 3rd respectively.
What’s the hardest sport?
Water polo.
Aka rugby in water.
It seems the hardest sports are just different forms of rugby.