What competitive sport do you compete in… and how old are you? I am interested in what sports different age groups compete, and can still be competitive.
If I could limit this to sports which require considerable physical activity please… so, no darts, 10-pin bowling, golf, lawn bowls, beer-drinking etc. I am also interested to know how many people compete successfully at local or national level in these sports, and at what ages. You don’t have to be brilliantly successful, but you must be doing more than just making up the numbers.
I myself am 43 and race a single handed sailboat (dinghy), competing at club, local and occasionally (and not too successfully) national level.
How about you lot?
Thanks in advance for any input. I hereby declare my first IMHO thread … open.
My main endeavour in competitive sport is basketball. I love the game, it is physical at the same time as it’s cerebral. After that, I play Rugby, Rugby League, Golf, Tennis and I swim a bit (once beat Thorpie in an inner tube race).
You want to rule out darts, 10-pin bowling, lawn bowling and then tell us you compete in sailboat?
Well, up until a couple years ago, I still liked playing soccer, and then I destroyed my last knee. I still have competitive jones and satisfy them with poker and chess.
I’m 24 and just started playing ice hockey recently.
I also downhill ski a lot in the winter. I’m not sure if it’s really competitive with anyone except trying to do better than myself.
I started running a lot recently too. Once I get better at it I hope to enter some easy races (mostly up-mountain trail running! :eek: ). So far I’m just competing against my own record times.
37, and I’ve been racing bicycles competitively for about 13 years, mostly road (cat 2) but some mountain biking too. To put a number to it, my personal best for a 40 Km time trial is 54’02", which is not great for a cat 2 racer, but still a pretty damn hard effort.
Golf? No way. I’ll give you that it’s not bad exercise if you walk the course and carry your own clubs, but it’s at a leisurely pace. I always thought golf should be a timed sport, with some sort of formula giving weight to number of minutes vs. number of strokes.
And don’t get me started about professional golf. I thought it was hypocritical for them to make a case about Casey Martin using a cart, saying it was an unfair advantage over those who had to walk. Didn’t they notice that no one carries their own clubs? Get rid of the caddies, and then you can kick Casey out of his cart.
Getting a little off topic, the most surprising sport I ever watched was badminton at the Atlanta olympics. That was a hell of a lot of fun. If people watched it, they would be hooked.
Yeah, i agree… there are a lot of misconceptions around. I think there are some things it’s hard to imagine. I think, I hope, I can sort of imagine what running, golf and darts at a competitive level are like… because I have run, putted and thrown, as have most people. I am not sure how anyone who has not sailed small boats can really imagine that though.
It’s sports with a large physical aspect to them that I was thinking of though… running is fine, but have you seen darts players?
I compete at a local/regional level (in competitions sanctioned by our statewide organization), my coach is nationally ranked.
I also play on an Ultimate Frisbee team, that’s basically just recreational though. I don’t see myself wandering into the competitive leagues any time soon.
It’s what I do and it’s a great sport. Definitely an extremely physical one as well. You can learn at any age. I actually started when I was in college and rowed for the University of Texas. But I was an older college attendee and over thirty. (I was older than the coaches, one of whom was my younger brother)
Now I row for the Austin Rowing Club and am on the Competetive Women’s Team. We travel to races all the time. (in fact, we’re going to a race in Oklahoma City this weekend) I’m 37 and the members of the crew range from 22 to 54. (BTW, if there are any lurkers out there in Austin who wanna learn how to row, come on down to the ARC, we’ve got classes running all summer and I’ll even be teaching a few.)
At the end of August, we’re going to Us Rowing Master’s Nationals (in Oakridge, Tenn this year). This is a nationwide regatta with rowers of all age-groups. The masters races have a handicap by age and you get people who are still competing up into their 80’s.
As far a successes go…I’ve won medaled at regional races with the occasional gold. This is the first year I’ve attended the National regatta so I don’t know how we’ll do yet. It’ll be tough because you get former Olympians going to this race. But we’ll do our best (and I’ll keep trying to lose these eight pounds so I can make weight).
BTW, Trunk, you’re wrong if you think riding isn’t strenuous. Have you ever been on a horse? I was taken riding and jumping lessons for a while last year. Now, I’m in excellent shape and pretty strong and it kicked my ass. It takes a fair amount of muscle and skill to correctly ride and jump a horse.
Softball as well. Being on a team that celebrated breaking a 23 game losing streak by immediately starting a 19 game losing streak, I don’t know if we’re what you’d call competetive.
Screw you! I’m a dart player! I’ll not have you discriminate against me! They made “Bridge” an olympic sport, fer-crimmany-sake!
Multi-time area champion, in both singles and team play, by the way.
I’ll be competing in go-karts in the fall. But you probably don’t consider that “strenuous” enough.
Not good enough for ya? How about Desert Racing, Hare Scrambles and Grand Prix Racing? (Off-road motorcycles! Kinda like motocross on a 40 mile loop! Makes sailing seem positively wussy!) Actually, I don’t do this anymore. But I did a while ago, and took some trophys in Nationals. I’ve been thinking about getting back into it, as an excuse to buy a new bike. The nice thing is that old farts can race in the Veteren, Senior or Super-Senior class and still do well.
I’ll ski circles around you too, but haven’t done it competitivly since college.
A 40 year old rec league softball player here. I’d say I’m still competitive - I play shortstop and batted .800 last season. I also hit more home runs last season than in the prior 5 seasons combined (it’s gotta be the bat!). I would play other competitive sports but my “free” time is pretty much spent coaching my kids’ teams in baseball, softball and basketball.
Co-ed slo-pitch. Don’t laugh - I tell you, there are some people in my league who can play some goddamn softball.
My team, the Free Agents (the name was my idea) have qualified for provincials two years running. We still need a decent shortstop though. We’re loaded with pitchers but have nobody to play the 6. We’re going to get murdered at provincials without better infield defense. God, I’m worrying already.
