Boxers- The most finely tuned athletes...

its horses for courses! tour de france must be pretty hard too!

 

Believe it or not weightlifters have to be right up there with sprinters.

 

I think it may have been true during the 15 round era, but part of that may also have been due to boxing's popularity. Hagler, Duran and Sal Sanchez were certainly precision intruments in and of themselves. (I suspect that Sanchez felt a kinship with the high performance sports cars he loved so much, an infatuation which eventually cost him his life.)

 

I think boxers r one of the most conditioned athletes. They r expected to fight for 45 minutes and at the same time take punches to the face and body. When it comes to being finely tuned I think this is a matter of perspective; different sports require different strengths and it doesn't make since to compare a sprinter to a marathon runner as each athlete has different kinesthetic requirements, this goes for any other sports. Simply put strength is a skill.

 

I would have to say wrestlers.

 

Not really. Those guys are strong, very technique oriented guys with a gift and good doctors. Sure, they must be fit but a lot of it is primping and preening so they look good in a singlet, not necessarily the result of training for their chosen event.

800/1500 meter champions can outrun 99% of professional athletes over 100 meters but also do a world class 10,000 well. Look at Alan Webb, or earlier Ovett or Coe or the many North and Eastern Africans of the past 20 years. Those guys are the fittest of the fit.

 

Football. Marshall Faulk once said that if you play one pro football game, you'll never be completely healthy again in your life. The average life expectency of a pro football player is something like 56. Guys have had limbs amputated, many former players joints are permanately disfigured, the brain injuries are horrific. Boxing is tough. However, if you're a defensive fighter you can cut down on injuries, if you suffer an injury, you decide when you come back. In pro football, for most positions, you can't avoid injuries. Many players who suffer concussions or serious damage to nerves and limbs are pressured to play the next week.

 

Heres a good page compiled by ESPN:

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

 

............I agree. As a runner (a distance runner, as I have no real speed) I turn my nose up at sprinters. They're not real runners, and don't have the total fitness of runners that do the 5,000 or 10,000 meters. For that, you need both speed and endurance. All a sprinter needs is speed. Endurance doesn't really enter into it for them.

 

I still say boxers rank at the very highest levels of fitness. Outside of that, you can point to the great decathletes, Sebrle, O'Brien, Dvorak, Thompson, et. al... those cats combined great speed, leaping ability, strength... truly amazing athletes.

 

Boxing and hockey according to the survey conducted by ESPN. Works for me, as those are my two favourite sports. I knew both were up there but I am surprised they're one and two.

 

I would say Olympic sprinters

 

That would be cockeiest/aragent athletes. Wide Recivers would also be up there.