After some animated banter around the office, and having laughed off the usual suggestions that the fittest of the fit play the sport you play, an expansive web search noted that cross-country skiers are the world’s fittest athletes.
The problem is, not many Australians bother with cross-country skiing given the abundance of sun and dirt, so in the proud interests of parochialism, which group of Australian athletes would be the fittest?
A broad range of athletes emerge from our domestic competitions, from AFL, rugby league, rugby union, football, tennis, basketball, motorsport, squash, and Olympic endeavours.
Consider our triathletes, cyclists, ironmen, swimmers, rowers, boxers, gymnasts, motor racers, and even those walkers who we cheer for vigorously every two years or so at the Commonwealth Games or Olympics.
I’ve previously pretty strongly argued that Formula 1 drivers are right at the peak. Nowadays, I’m sad to say that Formula One is no longer at absolute peak of demand, with drivers nowadays forced to race in more of an endurance style to preserve tyres, rather than flat chat.
Who remembers Grand Prixs of old when drivers had to be dragged, covered in sweat, from their cars? The current crop look like after a quick pop of an oversized champagne bottle that they’d be good to go again. Perhaps that plays to increasing fitness, but certainly, Formula One has changed.
A key aspect to elite sport in general is an ability to maintain peak performance even after hours or even days of punishment, be it weeks of the Tour de France, playing in a Grand Slam for 11 hours (Wimbledon’s legendary Isner vs Mahut match), or being belted in tackles for 80 minutes and then going to extra time.
A common fitness factor tested across the board is ‘VO2 max’ or millilitres of oxygen per kilogram of bodyweight per minute.
This is universally recognised as the maximum capacity of an individual’s body to transport and use oxygen during exercise, reflecting physical fitness.
Cyclists regularly top the charts – indeed, Cadel Evans famously had the highest test result the AIS had ever seen, superior even to Lance Armstrong’s VO2 max result.
Wikipedia suggests fitness refers to key areas of cardiovascular efficiency, muscle-to-fat ratio, strength, agility and flexibility.
However, any one of these aspects without the others does not represent physical fitness: a dedicated marathon runner is likely to be comparatively weak, but a powerful wrestler is unlikely to have significant endurance.
Boxing is a curious mix of both, while elite AFL midfielders are said to run the equivalent of a half-marathon every game.
Many agree that cyclists are probably the fittest set of athletes, and face mental challenges across days and weeks of torture unlike many other sports. Boxing is compared to cycling in terms of the sheer will required to respond to the demands being asked and to just not give in – and even though it’s just minutes of a round compared to thousands of kilometres, the same battle is being waged.
The fittest and perhaps physiologically freakiest ever cyclists come down to three men: Eddie Merckx, Miguel Indurain and Greg Lemond. As The Roar‘s cycling expert Lee Rodgers told me, there’s all kinds of claims about Indurain’s heartrate and lung capacity, while Merckx was an “absolute monster”.
Tyler Hamilton’s biography talks about being one of the fittest athletes in the world, but protecting himself by taking only small strides when walking down the street to food markets – much to the chagrin of his wife at the time.
Boiling it all down – there’s legendary stories and arguments on all sides.
But who are Australia’s fittest set of athletes, and why?
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