re: What sport is easiest to excel in?

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What sport is easiest to excel in?

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Depends on what you mean by excel.

Running is very easy. Everyone (essentially) can do it. However, there’s probably no more competitive event in the world than the men’s 100 meter dash at the Olympics because running fast is such a fundamental and coveted athletic skill in so many sports and games, and talent is easy to spot and relatively easy and cheap to develop. Basically the entire world is your competition if you want to be the world’s fastest man.

That’s why I always favored Usain Bolt over Michael Phelps in the best Olympian debates years ago when those two were winning a bunch of gold medals. Phelps may have had more diverse skills, but a hell of a lot more people test out and develop their running talent than their butterfly swimming talent.

If everyone in the world had devoted their lives to sprinting or swimming, I think you be likely to find another Phelps than Bolt.