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When the end of Olympics montages come, and you better believe they are being worked on already, they will be full of smiling faces, happy tears and gleaming medals.
Our understanding of the Games is like this. All upside, the moments of glory which vindicate years of training and patriotically buying scratch cards. What we tend to overlook is the horror of actually taking part in many of these sports.
For your enjoyment (and certainly not theirs) here are the 10 most painful sports at the summer Games.
10. Marathon swimming
Most standard swimming pools are 25m and 40 lengths seems a reasonable workout for those who use them regularly. A whole kilometre! Probably over about 20-30 minutes depending on age, experience and ability to perform a stroke which isn’t doggy paddle. The Olympics asks its athletes to do 10 times that length and the winners do it in under two hours. An enormously taxing endeavour and, if in the Seine, may require therapy to recover from all of the terrible things you’ve seen, smelt and unfortunately probably tasted.
9. Marathon
“Never again,” says everyone ever after completing their first marathon. So imagine doing the whole thing at a pace most normal people could not reach over 100m. Lungs, legs and feet may just about return to normal by Christmas.
8. Rugby sevens
Easy to become desensitised about the horror of taking hits from extremely strong people at speed. Then there’s the challenge of getting about a standard-sized rugby pitch with fewer than half the standard-sized number of team-mates. Looks utterly exhausting.
7. Taekwondo
A sport mainly made up of the sorts of flying kicks otherwise seen only in grainy videos of footballers fighting en masse in south America. Some protective padding is worn around the torso but that is not going to help when you get kicked in the chin, as happens with disturbing regularity. Does at least seem to be over quite quickly.
6. 3000m steeplechase
A vile endeavour, designed to punish its participants. Length dictates that you’re forced to run at a fair old lick throughout, then the final lap starts and everybody suddenly switches to Noah Lyles pace. And which dunderhead left these massive fences and a water trap out on the track. What is this, Aintree?
5. Road cycling
Into the category of sports which are fine until they absolutely definitely are not, i.e. when you fall off onto unforgiving asphalt. Especially brutal at this Olympics, not least for the American Taylor Knibb who fell off her bike four times in the rain with her mechanic adding a sympathy fall for good measure. Track cycling is not as bad because if you dismount at speed you just kind of slide down the slope. What do you mean horrifying friction burns?
4. BMX racing
As above, except you are willingly adding stunt jumps Evel Knievel would blanche at to the equation. You would imagine skateboarding might be similar, but most of their falls are from less serious heights and seem to be laughed off. These things roll off you when you’re a child. Not sure how the 51-year-old bloke does it.
3. Water polo
Has repeatedly been identified as the most physically taxing sport at the Olympics as you need to tread water for about an hour. That would be hard enough, then you add in the fact that your opponents are all terrifyingly bulky specimens from the former Yugoslavia who intend to contravene all of the classic swimming pool no-nos simultaneously. Pushing? Yes. Ducking? Absolutely. Petting? Certainly. A nightmare.
2. Triathlon
Take the worst swimming conditions of your life, move them outdoors and add several dozen opponents basically fighting you. Run, sopping, onto a bicycle for some reason. Being pedalling and try to forget about rash you will develop between your still-wet thighs. Do that for roughly the length of the marathon, then add a brisk 10k run to top off the worst day of your life. Vomiting at the finish is traditional for a reason.
1. Boxing
Ever been punched in the head? Not great, is it? Even with the pads and glove the entire object of the game is to hurt your opponent. Pain is more or less guaranteed, and it’s of the most visceral kind, impossible to know exactly when it will occur and extremely tough to recover from. No contest, unanimous decision.
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