Michael Phelps.... Deserving of the hype?

[Kevin]

I'm not sure I understand this any more than I understand Eppie's point. If you are making the distinction that athletes are people who do track-type sports (races, throws, etc...) and there is some other class of people who compete in games (Golf, Football, etc...) then the point is obvious, since Tiger is not an athlete.

On the other hand, if you're lumping all the sports together, then what kind of criteria are you using? Tiger can't jump in a pool and beat world records, and Phelps can't pick up the clubs and win the Masters. They just can't do what each other can do, and neither would be competitive in some third sport, like sprinting or what have you. Maybe if you had some kind of mega-thon, where every known sport was tested?

So, unless certain sports are just automatically "more athletic" than others, I don't get it. If it's about "competitor", then fine, but then all of a sudden you're competing with Gary Kasparov and SlayerS_`BoxeR` and who knows who else. That category goes far wider than just sports.

-Jester

My distinction between athletic sport and athletic skill competition isn't as clearly defined as I would like. But I mostly break it down this way.

An athletic competition requires you to be highly physically active. Something that is going to get your heart rate to a high sustained level or a shorter very very high burst level (like the track and swimming sprints) OR it requires a great feet of strength. Of course things like weightlifting and shot put and discus are going to get you a big heart rate spike as well. It requires doing something that causes stress to the muscles. It also requires the competitor to have control of physical movements, or physical skill. Swimming fast requires skill in hand angle entry, stroke technique, etc. Strength and physical endurance for motion, same with track, etc.

For me for it to be a sport another person has to be able to have a direct effect on your outcome. This is why I actually considering swimming, track and field, ski jumping etc, to be athletic competitions. While your result is directly effected by others (winning or losing) and while most people in those events will perform better against other competition, you could have 10 people running by themselves on 10 different tracks and have them race because the clock is the final arbiter. This is not the case in football, rugby, hockey, baseball, etc, where another competitor is directly affecting your performance. Yes, drafting and such happens in swimming and track, but Bolt could run a 9.69 with no one else on the track or 9 other people on that 10 lane track.

Golf is certainly a competition, but again the direct effect of the other competitors is less impactful than in something like fencing or wrestling or basketball. But it's in the same level as track and swimming for sure. It requires physical skill, swinging a club at a ball like that is very difficult, it requires very good coordination. However, it fails what I call the athletic check. Strength does matter some, but there are professional baseball players and football players who are clearly much stronger, can run faster, etc but it doesn't really help them in golf, and Michael Jordan played skins games against Tiger Woods and beat him occasionally. There were professional players in the major sports who finished high in PGA tournaments in the past, but their superior strength didn't really translate to longer drives.

Golf is very borderline for me. It is definitely a physical skill competition, so it's clearly distinguished from chess and such that is purely a mental skill competition. But ther have been world class golfers who weren't "in shape" by most peoples standard. Baseball is also very low on the athletic scale in my mind. There are some positions that don't require much athletic ability (especially in the American League, where a DH may play several games in a row where they never have to do more than jog around the bases because they hit a home run or such a deep double that they could jog). But yet baseball still take very good physical skills. Some say that hitting a baseball thrown by a major league pitcher is the hardest thing to do in sports, it takes skill, I don't dispute that at all. Just like I don't dispute the physical skill required for golf.

So, yes some things are more athletic than others. Some things require you to expend more energy than others. I think that is what it comes down. How much energy to do you need expend either in a very short burst or over a sustained time. Golf doesn't require nearly the energy of swimming. Tiger Woods is certainly an athlete in my mind (John Daily was not), but he doesn't play an athletic game.

Michael Phelps is an amazing athlete but I don't consider swimming a pure sport, it's an athletic competition. LeBron James and Kobe Bryant are amazing athlete who competes in a highly athletic sport. Barry Bonds (I picked a name that most people would know from baseball) was a very good athlete who competed in only a moderately athletic sport. The more muscles you have to use the more athletic the event, the more energy you have put out with those muscles the more athletic the event. So yes if you really wanted me to break it down I could probably create a formula that would rank how athletic a 100m dash was compared to the 400m hurdles (off the top of my head I won't say, the 100 bursts a ton of energy, the 400 is lower output for a longer time).

So golf and baseball are lower than swimming and basketball as far as athletic ability goes. Baseball my require more physical skill/coordination than swimming though but I tend to seperate those.

This is why I rate champion Ironman triathletes so highly. There are 3 different physical skill sets involved and massive endurance. I think that takes more than a 100m dash does, but again when you get down to the physiology of it you are are using different muscle fibers for those events. And that is why multiple events impress me more. Someone who can run the 100, 200 and 400 at world class levels is certianly more impressive than someone who can only do one event at the level.