Is Skateboarding the Most Difficult Sport?

I’ve had many an argument over where skateboarding ranks in comparison with other sports. Of course it’s tough to compare, because every sport is different with different objectives. What sport take the most strength? Agility? Nerve? Endurance? Well, someone over as ESPN took a scientific approach to it. Granted, it’s ESPN, there were only two judges, and one of them is a pro baseball and football player, so you couldn’t exactly expect great results for skateboarding.

If you’re unhappy with the #37 ranking, take their poll and give your own opinion.

I don’t necessarily think skateboarding is superior to sports in all ways. In some ways, yes, but ultimately what matters is whether it is superior in a fun way for you, and you don’t need anyone else to tell you that. But here are the ways in which I believe skateboarding is “more” of whatever than other sports:

1. Complexity - There are more variables in skateboarding than any other sport, or in other words, you can do more different kinds of stuff. In football there are a limited number of plays you can run. Baseball today is more or less the same game today that it was 30 years ago when skateboarding was just starting. In order to find more variables in other sports you really have to start digging, but in skateboarding new tricks in new places are being done all the time. We’ve got new videos coming out every month, and when’s the last time you watched a video and thought “There’s nothing new in this video.” Heck, 90% of what I saw in Cheese and Crackers was brand new stuff I had never seen and most of which I hadn’t ever considered possible. It was the equivalent of somebody in football breaking half of the existing NFL records in one game–mind blowing. But in skateboarding “mind blowing” is the norm, such that we’re almost used to it and expect to have our minds blown.

2. Skill - Look at Daewon, Rodney Mullen, Colin McKay, or Danny Way. I’m sorry, I know it’s not easy to be a good athelete when it comes to basketball, football, or baseball, but if you take strength out of the equation you can’t tell me it’s harder to learn how to hit a baseball right than it is to do a heelflip lipslide on the mega ramp or a switch 360 flip to fakie manual to fakie 360 flip out. I don’t expect a baseball player to agree, but those of you who skate know it’s true.

3. Intestinal fortitude - Is there anything in baseball or basketball that requires guts? Boxing, maybe. Football, sure, maybe a bit. But is there anything in any other major sport that compares to the feeling you get when you’re looking at doing a new rail or large set of stairs? Your legs wobble, you ride up 50 times, and you just can’t bring yourself to do it. When you finally do, you either make it, make it far enough to break the fear and try it again, or get broke off so bad you can’t skate for two months. And sometimes you don’t have what it takes to even try and you go home and cry yourself to sleep. Seriously, what other sport requires the level of guts that skateboarding does? Ok, I’m not talking about ledge tricks or flatground, I’m talking about rails, stairs, and other such stuff, but you get the idea.

Skateboarding uber alles!