Yahoo! Sports Blogger Names Triathlon Second-Hardest Olympic Sport

Yahoo! Sports Blogger "Fourth Place Medal" ranked the Olympic sports by what he believes would be the most difficult.

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Yahoo! Sports Blogger “Fourth Place Medal” ranked the Olympic sports by what he believes would be the most difficult. Equestrian topped the list, with triathlon coming in second.

Read part of the blog post below:

There are 32 Olympic sports. Both you and I won’t be competing in any of them during this month’s Summer Olympics. But what if we could? Which events would it be possible to finish? In which would it be impossible?

Fourth-Place Medal took a look at the list of events in London and ranked all 32. Our criteria was simple: How hard would it be to get through a single competition? Could you survive a 200 IM next to Michael Phelps? Is playing against LeBron James harder than Aleksandar Sapic, the Serbian water polo star? Theoretical success (or lack of it) is not taken into account. We’re only looking at whether you could make it through.

Notes: (1) If there are numerous events in a certain sport (like swimming and track), assume we’re choosing one of medium difficulty and not the marathon. (2) In the eyes of the IOC, swimming, diving, water polo and synchronized swimming are all the same sport: Aquatics. We’re not going by the IOC list, which is why we list 32 sports, not the 26 official ones recognized at the Olympics.

1. Equestrian — Can you ride a horse? Me neither.

2. Triathlon — A mile swim in the open water, followed by a 25-mile bike ride and a six-mile run. No snark, that’s a lot of activity.

3. Water polo — They dunk you without warning and throw elbows like Bill Laimbeer. What goes on underwater stays underwater until it becomes a massive hematoma 48 hours later.

Read more: Sports.yahoo.com

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