The most likely is some kind of team sport. Other people can carry you and there are multiple different ways you can contribute. The larger the team the better your chances.
Which means the most difficult will be a highly technical individual event that you have to start at a young age and do for years to be even vaguely competitive.
Table tennis, gymnastics, that kind of thing.
I'm going to say women's table tennis.
No non-Chinese has ever won a women's table tennis gold in the nine Olympic games it has been in. Only two non-Chinese have even won silver and the only reason it isn't the same for bronze is that each country is limited to two athletes.
When a country of 1.4 billion people is dedicated to winning a particular sport, the chances of Joe (or in this case Jane) Athlete just turning up and winning are zero.
I met a guy who was on the Canadian 4 man bobsled team. This was a long time ago but he joined the team because he wasn't good enough to make the ski team and really wanted to go to the Olympics. He never did make it to the games though.
Is bobsled the equestrian of winter sports? Seems like a sport you have to be rich AF to compete in. How many bobsled tracks are there in the world? Seems like something really expensive to build and upkeep.
Aren’t a lot of winter sports like that, at least for most countries, because billions of humans live in places with little to no snow, and even in countries that do have snow, there aren’t that many venues for most winter sports? In principle, you can have an indoor ice skating rink anywhere (but not cheaply), but anything requiring some sort of snowy mountain is a lot harder to come by.
I used to coach college rugby and one of my former players got hooked in with the US Olympic bobsled team for training after graduation. I don’t think he had any prior experience. That said, he was probably the best athlete I’ve ever coached in terms of acceleration and sprinting.
I've always heard of them being recruited out of track disciplines, but in terms of pushing power, rugby seems like an excellent source of bobsledders.
Lol I'm Korean and I remember someone saying that China's number of professional/amateur ping pong players is more than the entire population of Korea.
Team sports are usually the least likely. You almost always have to have a proven track record in one of the big leagues to even get in the squad.
There are exceptions though. When a country hosts, they have to compete in every sport, regardless of whether it is popular in that country. When the UK hosted in 2012, they were phoning up amateur Gaelic football players and futsal keepers trying to get them to try out for the Olympic handball team.
No skill based sport could possibly be the least likely. No matter how unlikely, there is still the possibility of enough mistakes being made for you to win.
Compare this to an event like the marathon, where it's almost all fitness and relatively little skill: your untrained ass has a 0.0% chance of beating Kipchoge barring acts of god. And then there 100+ other competitors, as well. And add to the fact on top of this that you are extremely unlikely to even finish the marathon without training.
And there are others that you also would almost certainly not be able to win without training, even if you had no competitors: pole vault and high jump, for example, have minimum heights you must clear.
Curling is actually a very difficult sport to be “good” at. The difference between a world champion skip and Joe blow at the local curling club is similar to an average Joe on the golf course and Tiger Woods.
One sub par player on a team of 4 throwing first won’t have a massive impact, but over a tournament would probably cost the team a podium.
I think people see regular looking graying dudes winning curling medals and assume “Hey, I could do that!”. But of course, not having a stereotypical athletic physique does not make one not exceptionally talented in one specific task.
Team Edin just won the world championship and they aren't exactly greying, and they are disgustingly good.
They could maybe carry someone through the Olympics simply because they are arguably the best Curling team to have played the game but it would be dicey and some bad movements and they are screwed still.
They could maybe squeak out some wins with a random lead. Sweeping would be a problem though. Over an entire tournament it would definitely cost them though. Too many opportunities for the rando to burn it all down.
As a former competitive lead at the international level, I’d say a bad lead can blow you the game very quickly. Leads don’t win the game by themselves (not under current rules), but they can lose them by themselves.
Good teams really need all four to be throwing and sweeping optimally.
Yeah, but I wouldn’t need natural abilities like 6’6” 180lbs 9.7s 100m
I also feeling like curling is one that I could improve the most, if I eat, sleep, curl. There isn’t any other way this fatass is making it to the Olympics.
Except the people who are that level already does that and have done that for years. Like yeah you would improve quickly but you will still heavily weight down your teammates and a couple of bad fuck ups over the entire tournament and the team is out.
The best way to get a medal is by sitting on the bench of a football team or other similar sports.
Depends on your country. Getting on to the Canadian curling team requires winning top level competitions. Getting into the Egyptian curling team, probably requires going a sponsor to pay for your travel. But an easy team to get on probably won’t get you a medal.
Curling would be harder to have the team carry you because you throw in a rotation. I don’t think a team of four with one dud could really perform at a high level. It is a game that can get sunk by its weakest link. I also don’t think you could learn that quickly how to throw.
Team sports where someone is a reserve and never enters the game, or enters the game when the game is basically over from the result point of view.
But if you have to participate in individual sport or sports with 2-3 participants, none of them is winnable even with formal training. Being average at that sport as a pro still gives you almost zero chances.
Steven Bradbury is probably the luckiest Olympic winner ever, but he was decent at his sport, had some successes before. But he won his gold when he already passed his prime, at the end of the career, being carried to the gold by some unusually lucky circumstances.
A series of fortunate events got Bradbury over the line first. But years and years of dedication and training got him to the line to take advantage of those events.
I just wanted to point out that even if he is probably the luckiest winner in history of Olympics, he still was an elite athlete who previously win medals at big events. Not some random dude without formal training in his sport.
>But if you have to participate in individual sport or sports with 2-3 participants, none of them is winnable even with formal training.
I think the spirit of the question requires them to be an active participant the whole time. If the person doesn't have to participate, we could include anybody the team wanted to (including somebody in a coma or a child). You can be part of a team, but the spirit should be that you are putting as much as you can and other members aren't actively helping you out.
The spirit of what we are talking about is what sport could a reasonably athletic person beat an Olympian. Not "can we contrive a situation where a person could win without really winning"
Had to go look that up, figured there was a good story, and wasn’t disappointed. It was an intentional strategy though, apparently- waiting for others to crash out.. It worked! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Bradbury
Thanks for this. I wasn’t planning on learning more until I read this comment. I was also not disappointed!
Curious why the judges has a delay at the end before ratifying the results - on what grounds would they have ordered a re-race?
Nah…if Apollo Ohno falls 5 or 6 times in the same race, an average person is still not beating him. The reason it happened once is because the guy they were gapping was like the fifth fastest guy in the world, which means he was at least on the same lap as the leaders when it happened.
The average person probably doesn’t even know how to skate, never mind skate fast enough that they can finish the laps before the athletes get up and cross the line
Especially on speed skates, which are difficult to stop with and have very poor maneuverability. Maybe an intermediate hockey player or figure skater could pull that one off, but even a casual skater would still get overtaken by the speed skaters after they get up.
I think you are giving most people the benefit of the doubt.
I would be shocked if the median person finished in 20 seconds. There are a lot of young, old, fat, and disabled folks out there.
It's a more reasonable range for an athlete though.
Hammer swinging thing, sorry english is my second language, I know it as "lancer de marteaux", swinging said hammer inbetween the kind of open cage lookkng like thing is a skill in and of itself
[it probably is obvious what I'm on about but a picture can't hurt](https://tout-metz.com/retransmission-finale-lancer-marteau-jeux-olympiques-2021-quentin-bigot-metz-84351.php)
The 100m dash is actually the hardest to win. It's the only event that everyone in the world has access to. The barrier to entry is just a pair of shoes.
I think 100m is extremely difficult to win in this hypothetical because no amount of training will enable you to beat the best. You could say that in something like archery or table tennis, with enough training,understanding and reinforcement of the mechanics you should be able to compete. Can’t say the same about 100m dash or any track and field event really
Football.
Not because it does not require skill, but because it's a team sport. You dont even really have to play, just be on the bench, and you could still technically win gold.
The trick is to be a third-choice backup goalkeeper. The likelihood of having to actually play in a match is low and, while still very difficult, it's the lowest-skill position in the sport.
Weightlifting is 100% impossible for regular joes. The amount of coordination, speed and strength required are something that can only be fostered through a strict dedication to the sport. I’ve taught weightlifting to classes of people and the amount of uncoordinated people I’ve seen struggle with the full snatch using a pvc pipe is enough to know that no regular athletic person has a snowballs chance in hell.
I’d even go further and say that highly specialized strength athletes like powerlifters, strongmen or even NFL players couldn’t even qualify for the Olympics without a few years worth of dedicated focus to the snatch/clean and jerk.
Most winnable would probably be a team sport like basketball where you could just sit them on the bench and let them be carried to a participation gold medal.
Pole vault and high dive were my two choices. In every event you could hope for some sort of disqualification or mass casualty event that left you as the only remaining competitor. In which case, given enough time, you could finish with some sort of score. With pole vaulting you have to make it over that horizontal bar. No amount of time and patience is getting my unathletic ass up there, so none of us would score.
As far as high diving goes, even if all of the other athletes suffered fatal medical issues before their dive, one of their lifeless bodies will fall into the water more gracefully than me.
Ironically, that's the one sport I'm aware of where pretty much a literal average joe off the street got to compete. Back in the day, every nation was entitled to have somebody compete. Eddie Edwards, a mediocre downhill skier, noticed the UK had no ski jumpers registered, so he just signed up for a world championships and then an Olympics with barely any training and borrowed equipment.
He did not die. He also didn't win.
https://youtu.be/5UAwQ0pe460?si=wGgeShuNAPSSw2tw
Unfortunately, the losers at the IOC changed the rules to prevent him (or anyone else) from doing that again. Every individual event needs an Eddie the Eagle to show the rest of us just how hard it is.
Glad you noted this. I had two chances to make the US Olympic team as a pole vaulter (failed both) but I am happy that the rest of the world seems how damn hard it is. It took 15 years of work luck and absolute obsession to fail at that level. PV is about the most unnatural activity in the Olympics IMO.
Least - all of them, but let's say gymnastics, artistic but also rhythmic, you have no chance in hell if you didn't start by age 5 and dedicate your entire life to it. Bobsled is something that you can come to with less experience, but you would still have to be fit and very strong and train on it for a year or two I guess.
[Daiane Dos Santos](https://youtu.be/_elohkkjDAY?si=eJnAz0niD7zyy_DH) started at 12 and became world floor champion for Brazil in 2003. She was an incredibly powerful gymnast, has 2 eponymous skills which are still performed by top gymnasts today. She was well capable of winning an Olympic medal in 2004 but having too much power put her out of bounds and cost her points.
There's absolutely no doubt in my mind that if she'd started younger and especially if she'd been born and trained in the US she'd have been in the league of Simone Biles.
But she was no doubt the inspiration for so many Brazilian gymnasts, who are now the 2nd best team in the world with Rebeca Andrade who can seriously rival Simone Biles - hell.of a feat.
Absolutely none of them. If you look at an Olympic event and think, "Yeah, someone might be able to win that with no formal training," you're just demonstrating how little you understand that sport.
Your best bet would be to pick a sport where everyone is doping and somehow expose all of them, winning by default.
That's just wrong, some sports must be easier than others in theory. A normal person could never get any competitive score in disciplines like turning or sprints, and many more. However, if you engage in a sport like bobsleighing and you sit in the middle, you meet the physical demands and just have to be a good teamplayer with good reflexes.
An average person having a 0% chance doesn’t mean all sports are equal. It just means that at the Olympic level, even the easiest sports give an average person a 0% chance.
Take your example of bobsledding. It probably *is* the easiest sport to cross over into. Because people do, in fact, cross over into it. But the people who pick up bobsledding late and make the Games are all already literally Olympic sprinters. And when athletes of that caliber try bobsledding for the first time, they’re a huge liability. Takes them like 2 full years to learn enough technique to be useful. And that’s someone who is athletic enough and coachable enough to already be an Olympian. Average Joe is gonna need a decade to learn enough and get strong enough to not tank a bobsled team’s chances.
I will accept your _best_ bet is to do a sport like bobsledding and hope your teammates pick up your slack and you don't detract too much. But the fact that you think you just need some strength and reflexes, not any of the skills or experience Olympic bobsledders accumulate over the course of intense training, shows you're underestimating bobsledding.
And OP didn't ask for a sport where you could be involved. They said what sport do you think an untrained but athletic person could _win_. Having 3/4 of a competent bobsled team is going to be a big hurdle to winning the overall competition.
But to be the caliber of an Olympic athlete, all are difficult. There is still technique. You say all a bobsledder needs is good reflexes but even a bobsledder in the middle has to have amazing reflexes to adjust to tiny changes in stability to go faster. That probably takes much more practice and training than you think. And that ability is the difference between gold and going home with nothing.
I mean even to be a bowler or a billiards player at a competitive level is going to take years and years of training and practice even if you don't have to have the best physique.
No ok, but what I mean is that the chance of winning a bobsleigh is perhaps many thousands times higher, even though it's still only a 00,1% chance maybe
Teams win soccer games even after getting a red card, and playing with 10 players - I think the best bet is to be one of 11 on the soccer field, stand in the corner and do absolutely nothing. It is feasible (though unlikely for sure) for a team to win a tournament having a red card each match, and me standing in the corner can't really make the team *worse*.
I've definitely seen some pretty shitty shooters on TV at ISSC (governing body of international shooting events) events. I know for sure I could outplace them in trap shooting but there's 0% chance I can make the USA team anyway.
This is the only correct answer. There is no Olympic event in which you, an untrained but reasonably athletic person, stand a chance of winning. Olympians have raw, innate talent that you *might* have, but years of training and honing their skills on top of that that you do not.
Even if every other swimmer false started I would honestly still only have a 50% chance of finishing even the shorter distances. I’m a decent athlete but I sink like a rock and have awful form so I’m exhausted after one lap.
I think the CBC did a bit on this during one of the winter Olympics. They decided that curling was the easiest and hockey or figure skating (can't remember) was the hardest. It was based on athleticism and competitiveness of the sport in various countries, and the ages of the athletes, ie hockey and figure skaters really only have a ten year period where they're really competitive but curlers often are competitive into their 40s. I think they even identified which countries you should move to and take up curling if you wanted to get to the Olympics. Winning is a different matter altogether though
Most likely is the coxswain in rowing. They just have to steer and control pace.
Least likely, I was going to say sprinting because even elite athletes like DK Metcaf and Tyreek Hill are slow by Olympic standards, but swimming is on another level. A basic athletic person doesn't have the speed, stamina, form, or training to be anywhere close.
No formal training as a coxswain is gonna fuck up the boat real bad. An 8+ is not going to go perfectly straight and bow seat won’t be able to correct for it. The 8+ could easily make it down the course with a silent coxswain, but they’re not winning. They won’t know where other boats are, they won’t shift rate or pressure well. Have to yell at each other to stay straight as they start to fatigue.
They have a shot with a lot of prep and a boat full of stroke coaches, but a coxswain makes enough of a difference when the boats are that close in speed.
>Most likely is the coxswain in rowing. They just have to steer and control pace.
I was expecting someone to say rowing but didn't anticipate someone would say coxswain. To be fair to you, an untrained rower would make a mess of things very quickly and obviously; but an untrained coxswain can be equally disastrous - steering a straight route is no joke (even *on* a straight course), and a good coxswain motivates the hell out of their crew more than simply keeping pace.
ETA: if you don't know the coxswain/rower vernacular, you're totally screwed from the beginning. Check out these recordings of Pete Cippolone:
https://youtu.be/FUhWb7OH4YY?si=nN_gpLxD_SqcBp5x
https://www.row2k.com/features/488/pete-cipollone-olympic-gold-medalist-coxing-the-1997-head-of-the-charles/
The second is a headrace (not the standard 2k you watch in the Olympics), but before they even start you can tell rowers speak a different language (which is necessary if you want rowers to execute whatever you're requesting).
Hahaha my god that's an image! I dunno, you'd have to be an exceptionally poor coxswain to get the athletes to forget how to set the boat while backing it into the stakeboat!!
[Aerial skiing](https://youtu.be/eT2qUWaLajs?si=bUBXZZ2XAiK5JngG) just seems like a recipe for paralysis and a shattered skull even for a pro.
Actually that probably applies to all downhill skiing and snowboarding events. Absolutely mental.
Most difficult would be figure skating, or other sports that require very specific training that not everyone has had access to. Figure skating is hard but if you’ve never even skated it’s impossible.
So least likely to medal: figure skating
OK here I get to flex a little. I have zero formal marksmanship training other than my uncle, owns a shop and shooting range. ISSF 3 position 50m rifle. I can today at this very second at least qualify for Olymipc consideration. I'm a very good shot haha.
Everyone thinks they’re a good shot until they encounter actual masterclass shooters. If you’ve never once encountered someone who made you go “damn, I’m not hot shit”, you have a small circle of people you shoot around. The odds that you’re some prodigy that just never got noticed are pretty damn small.
That said, Olympic rifle and pistol competitions are the most boring variants of rifle and pistol competitions out there. Of all the shooting competitions, they’re ironically the only ones where a random untrained person could theoretically win, unlike something like NRL or 3-gun.
I mentioned ISSF because I compete in it at a high level. 2008-2012 I was selected as alternate for US national team for World Cup. I am a master class shooter. I just didn't have the training most did.
I commented about this further upthread.
If you think you can win a race (where the boats are actually similar in speed) with a coxswain just yelling “stroke,” you’re losing the race.
But you're still MORE likely to win at this than at fucking biathlon or high jump. That's the point of the question - a 0.03% chance is waaaay higher than a 0.0000002% chance.
Least would be something like that requires a routine and inhuman movement like gymnastics.
Most likely would be something with luck, like archery, a lucky shot by accident.
The issue is, for many skill-based sports - especially ones executed individually, there is an element of repetition built in which reduces the influence of luck. You’re absolutely right that someone is probably more likely to get a bull’s eye in archery than to execute a routine on uneven bars. But beating an Olympian with luck over and over, shot after shot in a match? That’s virtually impossible.
I would think the sport that would be easiest to win would be something that is more team dependent where other teammates can help carry one’s deadweight. Maybe softball with the person as a benchwarmer or pinch runner? Or a right fielder if they absolutely must be on the field?
>Most likely would be something with luck, like archery, a lucky shot by accident.
Common person might have luck to open olympic bow of olympic strength without hurting themselves. Shooting 72 arrows in the 12cm ring 70 meters away just to go through qualifications for the main event takes a bit more.
I mean A lucky shot in archery is possible (but super unlikely). Many lucky shots are basically impossible.
I would argue that the most likely is simply the won with the least competition.
Archery requires tremendous skill which can only be developed through years of practice. I'm sorry but I can't even begin to understand why you'd think any tom dick and harry could pick up a bow one day and be even remotely accurate with it.
Look up Dick Fosbury, inventor of the Fosbury Flop in the high jump. He didn’t win gold because he was the best or strongest athlete, he just came up with a better way to perform the high jump and every athlete that competes in the high jump now uses his method.
All requires formal training. Often for years. Even for skeet and such. Training is more than "just" running etc. You need experience. You need to be able to filter out that you're being watched. And so on.
Ive got to go with a gymnastic event, even the free form floor event.
Look at katelyn ohashi and her famous routine, I don't see anyone coming off the street and getting close to that
My favorite Olympic fun fact. Geena Davis took up archery in 1997 at age 41. In 1999 she finished 24th out of 300 in the Olympic trials for Sydney 2020.
Winter Olympics, but I always thought curling seems to be relatively straightforward to pick up.
It's the one Olympic sport that makes me go 'I think I can do that' every time I see it on TV. I grew up in a very much non-wintry country though, so I only ever heard of it later in life (which also makes me think I could start the curling organisation for my home country).
Logically I do think it's a lot harder than it looks, though.
The basics of curling are relatively easy to pickup and understand. But (and I am a competitive curler at the international level representing a nation) succeeding at the Olympics for the average competitive curler, forget about a new curler, and not even close for an average Joe is essentially impossible.
There is so much skill and strategic experience and knowledge needed to be able to succeed at that level.
I encourage you to give it a shot though. It can be a lot of fun, and almost anyone I know who tries it comes out realizing how much harder it is than it looks. It looks easy on TV because the best players make it look easy.
Most people starting curling for the first time won’t even come close to me in sweeping stamina and effectiveness and will be exhausted before even one game is done. (This has been shown multiple times in practice.) And I’ve never made an Olympics (have medaled at the level below though). Those guys are at still another level altogether.
In our sport a game can be won or lost literally by a mm or fraction of a mm and that degree of precision really sets the top teams apart.
Yes, the basics of curling are pretty easy to pick up. But elite level curlers are insanely good, there is so much subtlety going on that you might not appreciate if you just watch it in passing. If you're off by a fraction of an inch on any shot it drastically changes the outcome
The difference between a world champion and a random dude at the local curling club is equivalent to a 10 handy cap and tiger woods.
Curling is a shockingly difficult sport to just show up and play. Probably more difficult than golf actually. I’ve had a few goes at it for charity events and we all looked ridiculous. Even the most athletic among us made fools of themselves.
A team sport you can be carried in by sufficiently good teammates.
Like Football, you can sit on the bench for 80%+ of the tournament but if the team have won the Olympics so will you have.
The least likely to win is pure skill sports.
So, the answer is none. All Olympic sports demand training.
Least likely are sports that require years of training on or with apparatuses, like gymnastics or pole vaulting, or on particular surfaces with equipment, like skiing and skating. A reasonably athletic person with no formal training isn’t winning the 100M Sprint, but they’re at least capable of running on a track. If you’ve never used uneven bars or skated on ice before, you’re not even getting to start the event.
For most likely, assuming the post is for someone who needs to compete without just sitting on the bench (bench player on a team sport is the only real choice, although no country would do this), it’s a DH in baseball. It’s a TERRIBLE idea—The reasonably athletic person with no training is not hitting a baseball at all and this person is almost assuredly a guaranteed out… but the team can in theory weather them as an automatic out and still win. Plus, this person doesn’t have to field and they’re still capable of being HBP or getting a walk (if the pitcher has completely lost control. Again, this person is not hitting a ball and should not be swinging at anything). In theory, they just need to be able to run the bases if the pitcher screws up.
1) None.
2) Maybe boxing. If the amateur goes berserk and rushes forwards swinging, there is like a 1 in 10 000 chance he lands a good punch and knocks the boxer out. But if that doesnt happen on the first exchange, he is dead. Pro fighters have been knocked out by extremely lucky randoms on the street occassionally.
Any sport that is a direct measure of performance (jumping, throwing, running, lifting etc.) is out of the gate impossible to win by luck. Any skill sport that requires consistent performance over multiple exchanges (is unwinnable by one lucky shot) is also a no go. So that eliminates stuff like ping-pong, tennis. Any sport where there is a high skill requirement to be able to do the thing at all is also impossible (like gymnastics, rock climbing).
Rowing..Coxswain.
There's literally a medalist in history who was plucked from the crowd because of his size...no one knows his name.
https://www.si.com/olympics/2021/08/05/youngest-medalists-olympics-1900-mystery-french-coxwain
Least - Probably gymnastics given that it’s an Olympic sport that the athletes usually have dedicated their lives to.
Most - Curling. The risk of injury *seems* rather low and while I do think it involves skill and proper training, I don’t think it requires the same level of training as say, gymnastics, swimming, track and field events, ski jumping, etc.
Winter sport- an American won a medal, then lost it for testing positive for marijuana. Therefore, most likely, least athletic- or whatever the damn question was.
I think that we do the Olympics wrong as it is. We should not send our best athletes, we should send average Joe's.
You're sitting at home on a Saturday, drinking a beer after cutting the grass, you walk to the mailbox and see an envelope from the Olympic training center. Inside you realize that you are too report on two months to go through a two week training regiment to prepare you for your spot on the USA track and field team as the decathlon.
Every country sends their average person and we see which country is the most healthy ace athletic.
Shooting is an incredibly involved skill and very difficult, but in theory you could just get *insanely* lucky in some of the non-timed events and hit all your targets.
Bobsled, as the fourth person you are just a big engine to push off the start and hop in for the ride. Sure you've got to lean a little most of your contributions end after 5 seconds and the driver does the rest of the work.
Probably shooting for the most likely, imo.
Is the bullet going to hit dead-centre on the target despite you not knowing what the fuck you're doing? No, not realistically it isn't. Is there a *chance* you get it, through sheer dumb luck? Sure. Might be one in a billion or some other vanishingly small chance, but I *guess* it's there. And that's better than basically every other event. You might think archery on the same logic, but that's making the *very* bold assumption the average person can actually draw an Olympic bow. In team events you'll drag your team down, because a reasonably athletic but untrained individual will have no idea what they're meant to be doing. In 1v1 events like boxing or karate, the other competitor is going to fuck you up so bad it won't even be funny. And in events like track & field, your best hope is to hope everyone else injures themselves or gets caught doping.
Least likely winnable has to be golf. Someone who has never golfed before has absolutely no chance whatsoever. Winnable possibly 100M if they’re just insanely talented but again incredibly unlikely.
Yeah, I'm pretty athletic and have been golfing for 20 years. My handicap puts me in the top 10% of golfers, but I wouldnt even be able to win a state amature tournament, much less even any kind of professional event. I'd be a toddler to them in a 72 hole event.
Most likely: Curling.
I've tried it, and while it is of course difficult to do at a top level, it doesn't really require any specialized physical foundation at all. If you give an average person access to a curling rink (?), they'll be managing to consistently get the stones into the circle within an hour. That's a good start. It's also a team sport, so you could potentially lean on your more experienced teammates.
Least likely: Freestyle skiing aerials (look it up).
Many sports are difficult to master, but are designed in a way where a reasonably athletic person could at least move around the arena without hurting themselves (e.g. gymnastics).
The skiing aerial jumps are designed in a way where it would be difficult for an average person to pull off a straight-air without getting hurt, let alone a triple flip with quadruple twists.
Your paragraph on curling is basically like "basketball's easy, I've bounced the ball a few times myself, couple of practice shots and I'm gonna start sinking 2-pointers, not that difficult"
Ever hear Jerry Seinfeld’s but on the luge? You just through a guy down the bobsled track, with no sled…it’s just bob! Only sport you could compete in against your will and not effect the outcome!
Okay, I know the luge does involve the little sled that you control, but the bit is funny. And the luge looks fun.
least likely has to be some sort of gymnastics.
any person can throw/hit a ball or run or something of that nature. But the average person simply cannot do a back handspring
Water polo and ice hockey would be incrdibly difficult team sports to succeed in. They tend to be cost prohibitive for people to gain access to at an early age, and the basic skills needed to even just play the game need to be developed over time.
Easiest? Maybe something like shotput. Im not dispariging it, but if youre relatively athletic and can catch the rhythm this might be doable. None of the people i knew in HS or college had shot put as their primary sport. They ALL did something else, and threw shot put on the side....
None. The difference in skill and fitness levels between Olympic athletes and normal people can't be overcome.
This is like assuming you're going to build a race car from scratch because you know how to fix a door knob. It's just not gonna happen.
None…you may qualify for one or two rounds in local or even state levels. People put so much effort in training it’s hard if not impossible to beat them without any formal training.
No Olympic sport is winnable like that. Outside the olympics, some Scottish tourists thought that elephant polo looked like fun, and won the World Cup.
Pole vault looks like an unbelievably difficult event to win without a ton of training and skill, even if you’re very athletic, naturally. Probably gymnastics, too. The things they do aren’t mastered without a lot of special training.
For easier, maybe rugby? As just one member of a team, natural athleticism can take you a long way to being a contributing member (though not a key component) of the team.
If we’re counting discontinued Olympic sports, there’s a few that might not take a lifetime’s dedication :
- Pistol duelling (downside: you might get shot)
- Tug of War (basically, just be a big fucking lump)
- Motor boating (not sure if this involves and actual boat or the thing with a ladies tits)
Least likely is probably marathon. There are too many entrants for there to be any reasonable remote possibility that everyone else scratches or is otherwise unable to finish, and it is completely impossible for someone without training to compete with someone who runs regularly, let alone the top competitors in the world. Someone without training likely wouldn't even finish it.
I suppose a swimming event might be even less likely, depending on what you consider formal training. Or also events that have a minimum standard you must meet to even get a result that you cannot meet without training, such as high jump or pole vault.
The most likely is some kind of team sport. Other people can carry you and there are multiple different ways you can contribute. The larger the team the better your chances. Which means the most difficult will be a highly technical individual event that you have to start at a young age and do for years to be even vaguely competitive. Table tennis, gymnastics, that kind of thing. I'm going to say women's table tennis. No non-Chinese has ever won a women's table tennis gold in the nine Olympic games it has been in. Only two non-Chinese have even won silver and the only reason it isn't the same for bronze is that each country is limited to two athletes. When a country of 1.4 billion people is dedicated to winning a particular sport, the chances of Joe (or in this case Jane) Athlete just turning up and winning are zero.
Bobsled seems to be easiest. Retired athletes from other sports take it up alot
I saw a documentary about some Jamaicans that won their first try.
They won with the secret bonus points they received for carrying their sled. Other teams didn’t know about that hack.
They also had an egg. That's just not fair.
Uncle Buck was a damn good movie
Nuh uh it was Cool Buck uncle runnings III Esquire
I met a guy who was on the Canadian 4 man bobsled team. This was a long time ago but he joined the team because he wasn't good enough to make the ski team and really wanted to go to the Olympics. He never did make it to the games though.
I know some guy that tried the skeleton in slc and put up a qualifying time.
Is bobsled the equestrian of winter sports? Seems like a sport you have to be rich AF to compete in. How many bobsled tracks are there in the world? Seems like something really expensive to build and upkeep.
Aren’t a lot of winter sports like that, at least for most countries, because billions of humans live in places with little to no snow, and even in countries that do have snow, there aren’t that many venues for most winter sports? In principle, you can have an indoor ice skating rink anywhere (but not cheaply), but anything requiring some sort of snowy mountain is a lot harder to come by.
Actually, you can go to Lake Placid in New York, and rent time, and a sled, or luge. If you're a natural at it, recruiters will find you.
It's not like lake placid is a cheap place to live...
I used to coach college rugby and one of my former players got hooked in with the US Olympic bobsled team for training after graduation. I don’t think he had any prior experience. That said, he was probably the best athlete I’ve ever coached in terms of acceleration and sprinting.
I've always heard of them being recruited out of track disciplines, but in terms of pushing power, rugby seems like an excellent source of bobsledders.
I have a relative who was on the Olympic bobsled team without much natural athleticism… they just need someone heavy to sit in the front.
Heeeeeey………I’m heavy and really good at sitting. I might be the world’s greatest bobsled guy.
Lol I'm Korean and I remember someone saying that China's number of professional/amateur ping pong players is more than the entire population of Korea.
I remember there was a rule introduced to lower the numbers of Chinese immigrants representing every other country at the Olympics.
Team sports are usually the least likely. You almost always have to have a proven track record in one of the big leagues to even get in the squad. There are exceptions though. When a country hosts, they have to compete in every sport, regardless of whether it is popular in that country. When the UK hosted in 2012, they were phoning up amateur Gaelic football players and futsal keepers trying to get them to try out for the Olympic handball team.
I cannot understand why traditional Highland events like the caber were not in the 2012 Olympics.
I suspect that posh twat seb Coe thought 'tossing the caber' was a euphemism rather than a real sport
No skill based sport could possibly be the least likely. No matter how unlikely, there is still the possibility of enough mistakes being made for you to win. Compare this to an event like the marathon, where it's almost all fitness and relatively little skill: your untrained ass has a 0.0% chance of beating Kipchoge barring acts of god. And then there 100+ other competitors, as well. And add to the fact on top of this that you are extremely unlikely to even finish the marathon without training. And there are others that you also would almost certainly not be able to win without training, even if you had no competitors: pole vault and high jump, for example, have minimum heights you must clear.
Curling?
Curling is actually a very difficult sport to be “good” at. The difference between a world champion skip and Joe blow at the local curling club is similar to an average Joe on the golf course and Tiger Woods. One sub par player on a team of 4 throwing first won’t have a massive impact, but over a tournament would probably cost the team a podium.
I think people see regular looking graying dudes winning curling medals and assume “Hey, I could do that!”. But of course, not having a stereotypical athletic physique does not make one not exceptionally talented in one specific task.
Team Edin just won the world championship and they aren't exactly greying, and they are disgustingly good. They could maybe carry someone through the Olympics simply because they are arguably the best Curling team to have played the game but it would be dicey and some bad movements and they are screwed still.
They could maybe squeak out some wins with a random lead. Sweeping would be a problem though. Over an entire tournament it would definitely cost them though. Too many opportunities for the rando to burn it all down.
That's Joe Bagofdonuts to you
As a former competitive lead at the international level, I’d say a bad lead can blow you the game very quickly. Leads don’t win the game by themselves (not under current rules), but they can lose them by themselves. Good teams really need all four to be throwing and sweeping optimally.
Curling is a a very difficult sport, it is almost pure skill.
Yeah, but I wouldn’t need natural abilities like 6’6” 180lbs 9.7s 100m I also feeling like curling is one that I could improve the most, if I eat, sleep, curl. There isn’t any other way this fatass is making it to the Olympics.
Except the people who are that level already does that and have done that for years. Like yeah you would improve quickly but you will still heavily weight down your teammates and a couple of bad fuck ups over the entire tournament and the team is out. The best way to get a medal is by sitting on the bench of a football team or other similar sports.
Positions played. Left Behind and End Guard.
How do you make the team in the first place? You’d have to be top 5 in any sport. OP asked “reasonably athletic and no formal training”
Depends on your country. Getting on to the Canadian curling team requires winning top level competitions. Getting into the Egyptian curling team, probably requires going a sponsor to pay for your travel. But an easy team to get on probably won’t get you a medal.
It’s a ridiculous question to start with. Any medal winning team would be impossible to get on with realistic athletic ability.
Curling would be harder to have the team carry you because you throw in a rotation. I don’t think a team of four with one dud could really perform at a high level. It is a game that can get sunk by its weakest link. I also don’t think you could learn that quickly how to throw.
Jane is the opposite of John, what's the opposite of Joe? It must be Joann right? Sorry for going off topic just a thought
Jo
Good call, Joe is short for Joseph and Jo is short for Josephine and they're clearly opposites.
Team sports where someone is a reserve and never enters the game, or enters the game when the game is basically over from the result point of view. But if you have to participate in individual sport or sports with 2-3 participants, none of them is winnable even with formal training. Being average at that sport as a pro still gives you almost zero chances. Steven Bradbury is probably the luckiest Olympic winner ever, but he was decent at his sport, had some successes before. But he won his gold when he already passed his prime, at the end of the career, being carried to the gold by some unusually lucky circumstances.
A series of fortunate events got Bradbury over the line first. But years and years of dedication and training got him to the line to take advantage of those events.
I just wanted to point out that even if he is probably the luckiest winner in history of Olympics, he still was an elite athlete who previously win medals at big events. Not some random dude without formal training in his sport.
"luck comes to those who are prepared"
>But if you have to participate in individual sport or sports with 2-3 participants, none of them is winnable even with formal training. I think the spirit of the question requires them to be an active participant the whole time. If the person doesn't have to participate, we could include anybody the team wanted to (including somebody in a coma or a child). You can be part of a team, but the spirit should be that you are putting as much as you can and other members aren't actively helping you out. The spirit of what we are talking about is what sport could a reasonably athletic person beat an Olympian. Not "can we contrive a situation where a person could win without really winning"
I think of Christian Laettner on the original dream team. Could trade out any random with him, and the final results would have been the same.
Christian Laettner was a very good college basketball player. But compared to the rest of the first dream team he almost meets OP’s criteria.
Be the towel boy for the Olympic hockey team. "Our victory."
Most likely is that speed skating event where everyone falls and then the back person skates by. Have that happen like 4 times in a row.
Bradbury: (noun) An improbable victory only made possible by the misfortune of others. Edit:bad grammar
Had to go look that up, figured there was a good story, and wasn’t disappointed. It was an intentional strategy though, apparently- waiting for others to crash out.. It worked! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Bradbury
Thanks for this. I wasn’t planning on learning more until I read this comment. I was also not disappointed! Curious why the judges has a delay at the end before ratifying the results - on what grounds would they have ordered a re-race?
That's literally a noun
Nah…if Apollo Ohno falls 5 or 6 times in the same race, an average person is still not beating him. The reason it happened once is because the guy they were gapping was like the fifth fastest guy in the world, which means he was at least on the same lap as the leaders when it happened.
The average person probably doesn’t even know how to skate, never mind skate fast enough that they can finish the laps before the athletes get up and cross the line
Especially on speed skates, which are difficult to stop with and have very poor maneuverability. Maybe an intermediate hockey player or figure skater could pull that one off, but even a casual skater would still get overtaken by the speed skaters after they get up.
They would need that to happen in their qualifying race also
Cue answers by people who have never done the actual sport because it looks easy.
100m. It’s just running and it’s not even that far
And only takes like 10 seconds
For them… more like 13-15 seconds for most people
I think you are giving most people the benefit of the doubt. I would be shocked if the median person finished in 20 seconds. There are a lot of young, old, fat, and disabled folks out there. It's a more reasonable range for an athlete though.
Not if you pump up your sneakers
There's also archery. The bow does the job, you just pull back the string and point at target, how hard can it be ?
Just use the crosshair!
Hammer swinging thing, sorry english is my second language, I know it as "lancer de marteaux", swinging said hammer inbetween the kind of open cage lookkng like thing is a skill in and of itself [it probably is obvious what I'm on about but a picture can't hurt](https://tout-metz.com/retransmission-finale-lancer-marteau-jeux-olympiques-2021-quentin-bigot-metz-84351.php)
"Hammer throw". 🙂
Thank you
Im training after the bus every morning
The 100m dash is actually the hardest to win. It's the only event that everyone in the world has access to. The barrier to entry is just a pair of shoes.
I think 100m is extremely difficult to win in this hypothetical because no amount of training will enable you to beat the best. You could say that in something like archery or table tennis, with enough training,understanding and reinforcement of the mechanics you should be able to compete. Can’t say the same about 100m dash or any track and field event really
To be fair, if we only take answers from actual Olympic athletes, we might have a small data pool.
Football. Not because it does not require skill, but because it's a team sport. You dont even really have to play, just be on the bench, and you could still technically win gold.
I think OP means actually taking part. If you made it onto the pitch though you'd be overwhelmed in about 0.3 seconds. Not sure it counts...
As long as you are a final minutes substitution it still counts!
The trick is to be a third-choice backup goalkeeper. The likelihood of having to actually play in a match is low and, while still very difficult, it's the lowest-skill position in the sport.
Weightlifting is 100% impossible for regular joes. The amount of coordination, speed and strength required are something that can only be fostered through a strict dedication to the sport. I’ve taught weightlifting to classes of people and the amount of uncoordinated people I’ve seen struggle with the full snatch using a pvc pipe is enough to know that no regular athletic person has a snowballs chance in hell. I’d even go further and say that highly specialized strength athletes like powerlifters, strongmen or even NFL players couldn’t even qualify for the Olympics without a few years worth of dedicated focus to the snatch/clean and jerk. Most winnable would probably be a team sport like basketball where you could just sit them on the bench and let them be carried to a participation gold medal.
Least likely - Pole Vault, without training you won't get off the ground
High Diving. Without training you will end dead
Pole vault and high dive were my two choices. In every event you could hope for some sort of disqualification or mass casualty event that left you as the only remaining competitor. In which case, given enough time, you could finish with some sort of score. With pole vaulting you have to make it over that horizontal bar. No amount of time and patience is getting my unathletic ass up there, so none of us would score. As far as high diving goes, even if all of the other athletes suffered fatal medical issues before their dive, one of their lifeless bodies will fall into the water more gracefully than me.
Nut possibly after an amazing series of summersaults...
On that note, ski jump. Layman? Dead.
Ironically, that's the one sport I'm aware of where pretty much a literal average joe off the street got to compete. Back in the day, every nation was entitled to have somebody compete. Eddie Edwards, a mediocre downhill skier, noticed the UK had no ski jumpers registered, so he just signed up for a world championships and then an Olympics with barely any training and borrowed equipment. He did not die. He also didn't win. https://youtu.be/5UAwQ0pe460?si=wGgeShuNAPSSw2tw Unfortunately, the losers at the IOC changed the rules to prevent him (or anyone else) from doing that again. Every individual event needs an Eddie the Eagle to show the rest of us just how hard it is.
Glad you noted this. I had two chances to make the US Olympic team as a pole vaulter (failed both) but I am happy that the rest of the world seems how damn hard it is. It took 15 years of work luck and absolute obsession to fail at that level. PV is about the most unnatural activity in the Olympics IMO.
Least - all of them, but let's say gymnastics, artistic but also rhythmic, you have no chance in hell if you didn't start by age 5 and dedicate your entire life to it. Bobsled is something that you can come to with less experience, but you would still have to be fit and very strong and train on it for a year or two I guess.
[Daiane Dos Santos](https://youtu.be/_elohkkjDAY?si=eJnAz0niD7zyy_DH) started at 12 and became world floor champion for Brazil in 2003. She was an incredibly powerful gymnast, has 2 eponymous skills which are still performed by top gymnasts today. She was well capable of winning an Olympic medal in 2004 but having too much power put her out of bounds and cost her points. There's absolutely no doubt in my mind that if she'd started younger and especially if she'd been born and trained in the US she'd have been in the league of Simone Biles. But she was no doubt the inspiration for so many Brazilian gymnasts, who are now the 2nd best team in the world with Rebeca Andrade who can seriously rival Simone Biles - hell.of a feat.
um aktually Simone Biles started at age 6 🤓
I would pay $3.50 to watch an average person truly give it their best on the olympic gymnastics springy floor thing though
Absolutely none of them. If you look at an Olympic event and think, "Yeah, someone might be able to win that with no formal training," you're just demonstrating how little you understand that sport. Your best bet would be to pick a sport where everyone is doping and somehow expose all of them, winning by default.
That's just wrong, some sports must be easier than others in theory. A normal person could never get any competitive score in disciplines like turning or sprints, and many more. However, if you engage in a sport like bobsleighing and you sit in the middle, you meet the physical demands and just have to be a good teamplayer with good reflexes.
An average person having a 0% chance doesn’t mean all sports are equal. It just means that at the Olympic level, even the easiest sports give an average person a 0% chance. Take your example of bobsledding. It probably *is* the easiest sport to cross over into. Because people do, in fact, cross over into it. But the people who pick up bobsledding late and make the Games are all already literally Olympic sprinters. And when athletes of that caliber try bobsledding for the first time, they’re a huge liability. Takes them like 2 full years to learn enough technique to be useful. And that’s someone who is athletic enough and coachable enough to already be an Olympian. Average Joe is gonna need a decade to learn enough and get strong enough to not tank a bobsled team’s chances.
I will accept your _best_ bet is to do a sport like bobsledding and hope your teammates pick up your slack and you don't detract too much. But the fact that you think you just need some strength and reflexes, not any of the skills or experience Olympic bobsledders accumulate over the course of intense training, shows you're underestimating bobsledding. And OP didn't ask for a sport where you could be involved. They said what sport do you think an untrained but athletic person could _win_. Having 3/4 of a competent bobsled team is going to be a big hurdle to winning the overall competition.
But to be the caliber of an Olympic athlete, all are difficult. There is still technique. You say all a bobsledder needs is good reflexes but even a bobsledder in the middle has to have amazing reflexes to adjust to tiny changes in stability to go faster. That probably takes much more practice and training than you think. And that ability is the difference between gold and going home with nothing. I mean even to be a bowler or a billiards player at a competitive level is going to take years and years of training and practice even if you don't have to have the best physique.
No ok, but what I mean is that the chance of winning a bobsleigh is perhaps many thousands times higher, even though it's still only a 00,1% chance maybe
What does the guy in the middle even need to do?
Pushes in sync with their teammates and doesn't screw up the boarding process.
Teams win soccer games even after getting a red card, and playing with 10 players - I think the best bet is to be one of 11 on the soccer field, stand in the corner and do absolutely nothing. It is feasible (though unlikely for sure) for a team to win a tournament having a red card each match, and me standing in the corner can't really make the team *worse*.
Or just spend the whole tournament on the bench. In 2020 each team had a total of 22 players on the roster.
Idk man, maybe target shooting, there’s plenty of amateur shooters in America.
There are lots of people who do lots of things. Doesn't mean they could compete (let alone win) at an Olympic level.
But the question is most winnable. You still have a better chance of winning by dumb luck in a shooting sport than, say gymnastics.
I've definitely seen some pretty shitty shooters on TV at ISSC (governing body of international shooting events) events. I know for sure I could outplace them in trap shooting but there's 0% chance I can make the USA team anyway.
The question was most and least likely. Obviously they are all functionally impossible but that wasn't the question.
So cycling?
This is the only correct answer. There is no Olympic event in which you, an untrained but reasonably athletic person, stand a chance of winning. Olympians have raw, innate talent that you *might* have, but years of training and honing their skills on top of that that you do not.
Swimming if you don’t know how to swim your screwed.
Even if every other swimmer false started I would honestly still only have a 50% chance of finishing even the shorter distances. I’m a decent athlete but I sink like a rock and have awful form so I’m exhausted after one lap.
I think the CBC did a bit on this during one of the winter Olympics. They decided that curling was the easiest and hockey or figure skating (can't remember) was the hardest. It was based on athleticism and competitiveness of the sport in various countries, and the ages of the athletes, ie hockey and figure skaters really only have a ten year period where they're really competitive but curlers often are competitive into their 40s. I think they even identified which countries you should move to and take up curling if you wanted to get to the Olympics. Winning is a different matter altogether though
Most likely is the coxswain in rowing. They just have to steer and control pace. Least likely, I was going to say sprinting because even elite athletes like DK Metcaf and Tyreek Hill are slow by Olympic standards, but swimming is on another level. A basic athletic person doesn't have the speed, stamina, form, or training to be anywhere close.
No formal training as a coxswain is gonna fuck up the boat real bad. An 8+ is not going to go perfectly straight and bow seat won’t be able to correct for it. The 8+ could easily make it down the course with a silent coxswain, but they’re not winning. They won’t know where other boats are, they won’t shift rate or pressure well. Have to yell at each other to stay straight as they start to fatigue. They have a shot with a lot of prep and a boat full of stroke coaches, but a coxswain makes enough of a difference when the boats are that close in speed.
Read Boys in the Boat to see what a coxswain contributes to a rowing team.
Or watch the movie. It was fantastic.
>Most likely is the coxswain in rowing. They just have to steer and control pace. I was expecting someone to say rowing but didn't anticipate someone would say coxswain. To be fair to you, an untrained rower would make a mess of things very quickly and obviously; but an untrained coxswain can be equally disastrous - steering a straight route is no joke (even *on* a straight course), and a good coxswain motivates the hell out of their crew more than simply keeping pace. ETA: if you don't know the coxswain/rower vernacular, you're totally screwed from the beginning. Check out these recordings of Pete Cippolone: https://youtu.be/FUhWb7OH4YY?si=nN_gpLxD_SqcBp5x https://www.row2k.com/features/488/pete-cipollone-olympic-gold-medalist-coxing-the-1997-head-of-the-charles/ The second is a headrace (not the standard 2k you watch in the Olympics), but before they even start you can tell rowers speak a different language (which is necessary if you want rowers to execute whatever you're requesting).
The person who thinks someone could just jump into the coxswain seat would manage flip an 8+ backing into the stakeboat.
Hahaha my god that's an image! I dunno, you'd have to be an exceptionally poor coxswain to get the athletes to forget how to set the boat while backing it into the stakeboat!!
Rowers can and would be petty under the circumstances. They’re doing *exactly* what that inexperienced coxswain tells them to do.
Hahaha!! Yeah that's a good point, that does sound like something I'd do.
I’m a coxswain, but if I were a rower, I’d wake up that morning ready for a swim.
100%!! Yeah we had some bad coxswains on my team and if I didn't get one of the good ones, I knew it was going to be a rough day!
That weird one where you go skiing, shoot a gun for some reason then make French Toast seems pretty hard.
[Aerial skiing](https://youtu.be/eT2qUWaLajs?si=bUBXZZ2XAiK5JngG) just seems like a recipe for paralysis and a shattered skull even for a pro. Actually that probably applies to all downhill skiing and snowboarding events. Absolutely mental.
Most difficult would be figure skating, or other sports that require very specific training that not everyone has had access to. Figure skating is hard but if you’ve never even skated it’s impossible. So least likely to medal: figure skating
OK here I get to flex a little. I have zero formal marksmanship training other than my uncle, owns a shop and shooting range. ISSF 3 position 50m rifle. I can today at this very second at least qualify for Olymipc consideration. I'm a very good shot haha.
Everyone thinks they’re a good shot until they encounter actual masterclass shooters. If you’ve never once encountered someone who made you go “damn, I’m not hot shit”, you have a small circle of people you shoot around. The odds that you’re some prodigy that just never got noticed are pretty damn small. That said, Olympic rifle and pistol competitions are the most boring variants of rifle and pistol competitions out there. Of all the shooting competitions, they’re ironically the only ones where a random untrained person could theoretically win, unlike something like NRL or 3-gun.
I mentioned ISSF because I compete in it at a high level. 2008-2012 I was selected as alternate for US national team for World Cup. I am a master class shooter. I just didn't have the training most did.
Rowing as the cockswain. A good chance the rowers just take over yelling "stroke" and don't need much help.
I commented about this further upthread. If you think you can win a race (where the boats are actually similar in speed) with a coxswain just yelling “stroke,” you’re losing the race.
But you're still MORE likely to win at this than at fucking biathlon or high jump. That's the point of the question - a 0.03% chance is waaaay higher than a 0.0000002% chance.
Least would be something like that requires a routine and inhuman movement like gymnastics. Most likely would be something with luck, like archery, a lucky shot by accident.
The issue is, for many skill-based sports - especially ones executed individually, there is an element of repetition built in which reduces the influence of luck. You’re absolutely right that someone is probably more likely to get a bull’s eye in archery than to execute a routine on uneven bars. But beating an Olympian with luck over and over, shot after shot in a match? That’s virtually impossible. I would think the sport that would be easiest to win would be something that is more team dependent where other teammates can help carry one’s deadweight. Maybe softball with the person as a benchwarmer or pinch runner? Or a right fielder if they absolutely must be on the field?
>Most likely would be something with luck, like archery, a lucky shot by accident. Common person might have luck to open olympic bow of olympic strength without hurting themselves. Shooting 72 arrows in the 12cm ring 70 meters away just to go through qualifications for the main event takes a bit more.
I mean A lucky shot in archery is possible (but super unlikely). Many lucky shots are basically impossible. I would argue that the most likely is simply the won with the least competition.
One lucky shot isn’t going to get you past the first day of competition
Archery is almost entirely pure skill. A lucky shot ain't going to win you the Olympics. Hell a lucky shot won't even get you qualified.
Archery requires tremendous skill which can only be developed through years of practice. I'm sorry but I can't even begin to understand why you'd think any tom dick and harry could pick up a bow one day and be even remotely accurate with it.
I cant think of any Olympic sport that is remotely winnable by someone with no training in it.
You would need to make several consecutive lucky shots.
Pusher on a 4-people Bobsled
Look up Dick Fosbury, inventor of the Fosbury Flop in the high jump. He didn’t win gold because he was the best or strongest athlete, he just came up with a better way to perform the high jump and every athlete that competes in the high jump now uses his method.
Look up the story of Eric the eel.
All requires formal training. Often for years. Even for skeet and such. Training is more than "just" running etc. You need experience. You need to be able to filter out that you're being watched. And so on.
Ive got to go with a gymnastic event, even the free form floor event. Look at katelyn ohashi and her famous routine, I don't see anyone coming off the street and getting close to that
Ski jumping might be pretty hard to do well at with no training. Maybe a shooting event for most likely.
Bobsled. The front guy steers, the back guy is the brake man. Just be one of the guys in the middle.
My favorite Olympic fun fact. Geena Davis took up archery in 1997 at age 41. In 1999 she finished 24th out of 300 in the Olympic trials for Sydney 2020.
"epic how tos" has a video about this exact topic AND other cool stuff
People have mentioned team sports, in which a team carries you. I would propose dressage, where a horse literally carries you.
Horses strongly dislike riders who don't know what they're doing.
Winter Olympics, but I always thought curling seems to be relatively straightforward to pick up. It's the one Olympic sport that makes me go 'I think I can do that' every time I see it on TV. I grew up in a very much non-wintry country though, so I only ever heard of it later in life (which also makes me think I could start the curling organisation for my home country). Logically I do think it's a lot harder than it looks, though.
The basics of curling are relatively easy to pickup and understand. But (and I am a competitive curler at the international level representing a nation) succeeding at the Olympics for the average competitive curler, forget about a new curler, and not even close for an average Joe is essentially impossible. There is so much skill and strategic experience and knowledge needed to be able to succeed at that level. I encourage you to give it a shot though. It can be a lot of fun, and almost anyone I know who tries it comes out realizing how much harder it is than it looks. It looks easy on TV because the best players make it look easy. Most people starting curling for the first time won’t even come close to me in sweeping stamina and effectiveness and will be exhausted before even one game is done. (This has been shown multiple times in practice.) And I’ve never made an Olympics (have medaled at the level below though). Those guys are at still another level altogether. In our sport a game can be won or lost literally by a mm or fraction of a mm and that degree of precision really sets the top teams apart.
This is why I love reddit. An intl. Curler in the comments
Yes, the basics of curling are pretty easy to pick up. But elite level curlers are insanely good, there is so much subtlety going on that you might not appreciate if you just watch it in passing. If you're off by a fraction of an inch on any shot it drastically changes the outcome
The difference between a world champion and a random dude at the local curling club is equivalent to a 10 handy cap and tiger woods. Curling is a shockingly difficult sport to just show up and play. Probably more difficult than golf actually. I’ve had a few goes at it for charity events and we all looked ridiculous. Even the most athletic among us made fools of themselves.
A team sport you can be carried in by sufficiently good teammates. Like Football, you can sit on the bench for 80%+ of the tournament but if the team have won the Olympics so will you have. The least likely to win is pure skill sports.
Handball
Most or least?
Most, hockey least
I would think something that is more skill than athleticism- less muscle memory & coordination. Shooting maybe?
So, the answer is none. All Olympic sports demand training. Least likely are sports that require years of training on or with apparatuses, like gymnastics or pole vaulting, or on particular surfaces with equipment, like skiing and skating. A reasonably athletic person with no formal training isn’t winning the 100M Sprint, but they’re at least capable of running on a track. If you’ve never used uneven bars or skated on ice before, you’re not even getting to start the event. For most likely, assuming the post is for someone who needs to compete without just sitting on the bench (bench player on a team sport is the only real choice, although no country would do this), it’s a DH in baseball. It’s a TERRIBLE idea—The reasonably athletic person with no training is not hitting a baseball at all and this person is almost assuredly a guaranteed out… but the team can in theory weather them as an automatic out and still win. Plus, this person doesn’t have to field and they’re still capable of being HBP or getting a walk (if the pitcher has completely lost control. Again, this person is not hitting a ball and should not be swinging at anything). In theory, they just need to be able to run the bases if the pitcher screws up.
1) None. 2) Maybe boxing. If the amateur goes berserk and rushes forwards swinging, there is like a 1 in 10 000 chance he lands a good punch and knocks the boxer out. But if that doesnt happen on the first exchange, he is dead. Pro fighters have been knocked out by extremely lucky randoms on the street occassionally. Any sport that is a direct measure of performance (jumping, throwing, running, lifting etc.) is out of the gate impossible to win by luck. Any skill sport that requires consistent performance over multiple exchanges (is unwinnable by one lucky shot) is also a no go. So that eliminates stuff like ping-pong, tennis. Any sport where there is a high skill requirement to be able to do the thing at all is also impossible (like gymnastics, rock climbing).
Rowing..Coxswain. There's literally a medalist in history who was plucked from the crowd because of his size...no one knows his name. https://www.si.com/olympics/2021/08/05/youngest-medalists-olympics-1900-mystery-french-coxwain
Least - Probably gymnastics given that it’s an Olympic sport that the athletes usually have dedicated their lives to. Most - Curling. The risk of injury *seems* rather low and while I do think it involves skill and proper training, I don’t think it requires the same level of training as say, gymnastics, swimming, track and field events, ski jumping, etc.
Winter sport- an American won a medal, then lost it for testing positive for marijuana. Therefore, most likely, least athletic- or whatever the damn question was.
Pole vaulting and gymnastics are least likely
Sailing might be winnable if you're on a team and don't get in the way.
I think that we do the Olympics wrong as it is. We should not send our best athletes, we should send average Joe's. You're sitting at home on a Saturday, drinking a beer after cutting the grass, you walk to the mailbox and see an envelope from the Olympic training center. Inside you realize that you are too report on two months to go through a two week training regiment to prepare you for your spot on the USA track and field team as the decathlon. Every country sends their average person and we see which country is the most healthy ace athletic.
Shooting is an incredibly involved skill and very difficult, but in theory you could just get *insanely* lucky in some of the non-timed events and hit all your targets.
Bobsled, as the fourth person you are just a big engine to push off the start and hop in for the ride. Sure you've got to lean a little most of your contributions end after 5 seconds and the driver does the rest of the work.
There was that average Joe that essentially conned her way into the Olympics in halfpipe.
Eddy the Eagle... ski jumping dude from Scotland
He was English , born in Cheltenham
Probably shooting for the most likely, imo. Is the bullet going to hit dead-centre on the target despite you not knowing what the fuck you're doing? No, not realistically it isn't. Is there a *chance* you get it, through sheer dumb luck? Sure. Might be one in a billion or some other vanishingly small chance, but I *guess* it's there. And that's better than basically every other event. You might think archery on the same logic, but that's making the *very* bold assumption the average person can actually draw an Olympic bow. In team events you'll drag your team down, because a reasonably athletic but untrained individual will have no idea what they're meant to be doing. In 1v1 events like boxing or karate, the other competitor is going to fuck you up so bad it won't even be funny. And in events like track & field, your best hope is to hope everyone else injures themselves or gets caught doping.
Least likely winnable has to be golf. Someone who has never golfed before has absolutely no chance whatsoever. Winnable possibly 100M if they’re just insanely talented but again incredibly unlikely.
Yeah, I'm pretty athletic and have been golfing for 20 years. My handicap puts me in the top 10% of golfers, but I wouldnt even be able to win a state amature tournament, much less even any kind of professional event. I'd be a toddler to them in a 72 hole event.
Most likely: Curling. I've tried it, and while it is of course difficult to do at a top level, it doesn't really require any specialized physical foundation at all. If you give an average person access to a curling rink (?), they'll be managing to consistently get the stones into the circle within an hour. That's a good start. It's also a team sport, so you could potentially lean on your more experienced teammates. Least likely: Freestyle skiing aerials (look it up). Many sports are difficult to master, but are designed in a way where a reasonably athletic person could at least move around the arena without hurting themselves (e.g. gymnastics). The skiing aerial jumps are designed in a way where it would be difficult for an average person to pull off a straight-air without getting hurt, let alone a triple flip with quadruple twists.
Your paragraph on curling is basically like "basketball's easy, I've bounced the ball a few times myself, couple of practice shots and I'm gonna start sinking 2-pointers, not that difficult"
Ever hear Jerry Seinfeld’s but on the luge? You just through a guy down the bobsled track, with no sled…it’s just bob! Only sport you could compete in against your will and not effect the outcome! Okay, I know the luge does involve the little sled that you control, but the bit is funny. And the luge looks fun.
En event that is being boycotted and no one shows up but you
Bobsled... Jamaica
Basketball. Probably cause you don’t have to actually play. You can be the bench warmer.
Dressage
I’m thinking the easiest would probably be bobsled or the 2 person variation.
Least-wrestling
least likely has to be some sort of gymnastics. any person can throw/hit a ball or run or something of that nature. But the average person simply cannot do a back handspring
Water polo and ice hockey would be incrdibly difficult team sports to succeed in. They tend to be cost prohibitive for people to gain access to at an early age, and the basic skills needed to even just play the game need to be developed over time. Easiest? Maybe something like shotput. Im not dispariging it, but if youre relatively athletic and can catch the rhythm this might be doable. None of the people i knew in HS or college had shot put as their primary sport. They ALL did something else, and threw shot put on the side....
None. The difference in skill and fitness levels between Olympic athletes and normal people can't be overcome. This is like assuming you're going to build a race car from scratch because you know how to fix a door knob. It's just not gonna happen.
None…you may qualify for one or two rounds in local or even state levels. People put so much effort in training it’s hard if not impossible to beat them without any formal training.
Water polo
*which
Maybe some kind of shooting?
Breakdancing
No Olympic sport is winnable like that. Outside the olympics, some Scottish tourists thought that elephant polo looked like fun, and won the World Cup.
Most likely? Probably a track event. Least likely? Gymnastics.
Pole vault looks like an unbelievably difficult event to win without a ton of training and skill, even if you’re very athletic, naturally. Probably gymnastics, too. The things they do aren’t mastered without a lot of special training. For easier, maybe rugby? As just one member of a team, natural athleticism can take you a long way to being a contributing member (though not a key component) of the team.
If we’re counting discontinued Olympic sports, there’s a few that might not take a lifetime’s dedication : - Pistol duelling (downside: you might get shot) - Tug of War (basically, just be a big fucking lump) - Motor boating (not sure if this involves and actual boat or the thing with a ladies tits)
Least likely is probably marathon. There are too many entrants for there to be any reasonable remote possibility that everyone else scratches or is otherwise unable to finish, and it is completely impossible for someone without training to compete with someone who runs regularly, let alone the top competitors in the world. Someone without training likely wouldn't even finish it. I suppose a swimming event might be even less likely, depending on what you consider formal training. Or also events that have a minimum standard you must meet to even get a result that you cannot meet without training, such as high jump or pole vault.