A 57 year old high school teacher won? My first thought is that Survivor isn’t primarily a contest of physical excellence.
Without having seen the show this would have been my conclusion too. As a fairly regular gym goer I would expect me to be within touching distance of your average Ranger/Seal in physical fitness. I think I could train my way to Ranger level of fitness. I don’t think I could train my body to Olympic level. Even reaching standard pro athlete levels of fitness would be a major struggle.
There was a show called Eco-Challenge on Discovery/USA Network that was a mutli-day rough country race.
The Ranger-type teams (US and similar groups from other countries) did quite well in general. But certain groups of highly trained and prepared atheletes could beat them. The latter groups were not Olympic-caliber in general. Just very, very well trained to the specific task.
I don’t think long distance Olympic runners, for example, would do well without significant training. But given enough prep would likely have finished well.
So, in order: Well trained for the task athletes, generic Rangers, then generic Olympians.
Most soldiers with some exceptions are average young men conditioned to very high levels of physical fitness. Top level pro athletes are freaks of nature.
Watch some sports live, and by live I mean at the stadium. TV does not do justice to how almost superhumanly fast most gameplay is. When you see it live, its almost scary.
One of my sons successfully completed the Ranger training course seven years ago. Here’s what I can tell you about him. He was 25 years old. He lifted weights three times a week and still looked like the wrestler he had been in high school. He ran 3 to 5 miles 3 or 4 times per week. He also did whatever physical training is required of lieutenants in the US Army.
There was no aspect of his fitness in which he would favorably compare to an elite athlete.
Based on talking to him at length and reading quite a bit about Ranger training, the main factor in passing the course is mental discipline. Everyone who starts Ranger training has had to demonstrate that they are physically capable of the individual physical tests. The difference between those who pass and those who fail seems to be mental.
Elite soldiers are chosen far more on their mental attributes than their physical ones. Granted, you have to be in good shape to succeed at the selection/training courses for these units, but that’s not what they’re looking for.
They’re looking for those guys who will keep going, no matter what. Cold, no sleep, injuries, wounds, etc… they want that guy who will keep going and accomplish the mission regardless.
So I suspect that we’re really comparing apples and oranges here; while you have to be extremely fit to be in an eliite unit, it isn’t anywhere close to an elite athlete level of fitness. Similarly, to be an elite athlete takes a degree of mental toughness, stubbornness and determination, it’s not really in the same league as that required to be in an elite military unit.
No, it’s not. But the* challenges *can be. Once was actually running and she lost.
Winning challenges will help you win, but so will the social game. Many of the challenges are races, running or swimming, many are athletic- Some of the challenges are puzzles, some are simply endurance contests, and Crowley had endurance.
I remember the first time I ever went to a Major League ballgame. My Dad took me. We had very good seats above the third base dugout.
The starting pitcher wound up and threw the first pitch, and my Dad went “Jesus.”
He threw another pitch and my Dad went “JESUS.”
He threw a third and my Dad said “How can anyone hit that?”
I wasn’t saying anything because, frankly, I was flabbergasted. The ball was a blur. I did not know a person could throw an object that fast. Id’ seen hundred of games on TV but TV did not tell you the truth. Television truly did it no justice at all.
And that’s just throwing a ball.
I don’t know… I think TV does a fine job of representing the sport. What it doesn’t do is give you the full experience- sound, etc… and the camera angles are kind of a compromise.
I mean, I’ve sat 4 seats over from the middle of home plate and 3 rows back. You can actually see the motion of the pitches there. It’s wild how much some of those move- on the order of feet, not inches. But they’re not faster or slower looking than on TV. Pro basketball and hockey are fast, but not more so than TV- the main thing with those two is that you typically have pro cameramen who are practiced at keeping up with the game, so you don’t have to be quite so aware when watching televised sports.
Televised football is probably the closest; if you’re sitting far enough away, there’s not so much difference anyway.
I played big time ball against the pros, including one who just got elected to the Hall of Fame. I was a catcher, so I saw them from inches away. Still, if you can’t see the difference trom 30 ft away you must be blind. Pro athletes are super-human.
Maybe, like art or music, you really need to be ecudated to fully apprceiate it. Athletics is like that
As a bunch of posts have said, men* who get to the Olympics have ‘many sigma’ athletic talent, and no group of generally highly fit young men of even pretty outstanding athletic talent are going to be competitive in contests which tap similar abilities to the Olympians’ actual event. But no Olympic event focuses on what’s probably the most relevant purely physical ability of Ranger and/or spec forces: multi-day endurance under water discipline and less than enough food or sleep. So an Olympian in general will outclass Ranger/spec force men in any contest at all resembling the Olympian’s event, but it’s very believable if real events have shown the best (or maybe even typical) teams of Ranger/spec forces competitive with Olympians in multi-day endurance under stress.
Although by same token, it wouldn’t be a surprise if groups of Rangers/spec forces, especially only typical ones, were beaten by groups of generally physically capable men who specially intensely trained and prepared for multi-day endurance contests with limited water, food and/or sleep. That’s all the military men are either, but they also have to study and train in all kinds of war and field craft.
*let’s just assume men not to get sidetracked.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=H9rWav14kfEFyi these are highlights of a Ranger compition.
You might be surprised at how the training for many Olympic sports goes far beyond practicing sport specific activities. Take, for example, skiing, for which training is absolutely not “to the exclusion of all other things”:
Lindsey Vonn,
Canadian Women’s Alpine Ski Team
US Women’s Nordic Ski Team
I didn’t watch the whole thing but what I saw are supplemental exercises geared to the specific stresses inherent to skiing.
Of course they are geared to skiing. Even shooting hoops in basketball or playing catch with a baseball is geared to skiing. My point was that they are not skiing specific. For example, part of the Ranger’s competition includes hand-over-hand monkey bars, which is one of the non-sport specific exercises that the ski teams practice. Much of the Ranger’s competition includes movement over broken terrain, which is practiced in various exercises by skiers. The above exercises can all be found in a Canadian Men’s Alpine Ski Team vid, where when it comes to the broken terrain exercises, they apply just as well to rugby as they do to skiing.
Note that the activities presented in this vid are variously working on balance and flexibility, coordination, quickness, accuracy and precision, and reaction time. These are things needed in harrier/cross-country running, yet they are being used by World Cup alpine skiers. It’s no coincidence that scree running is used when training for both these sports, but is not a part of either sport. I suspect that if one were to give Olympic skiers a few months heads up, they would do very well in the Ranger competition, for the basic athleticism is already highly honed to a world class level in an Olympic skier.
When the OP first posited the question, I briefly thought of the modern Olympic pentathlon because it includes cross-country running, swimming, and other military things (shooting, stabbing at each other with small swords, and sitting on horses while the horses jump over chevaux de frise), all in a single long day. Fortunately, that thought quickly flew away when I recalled what harrier/cross-country has deteriorated into in the modern Olympic pentathlon, for the cross-country courses lack cross-country terrain, and now resemble a sanitized run through a line-and-stanchion que at an airport. Oh, for the days when Olympic harrier/cross-country was something closer to what the Ranger competition is today.
Q: Does this assume that the Rangers had:
Vic Hadfield,
Adam Graves
Harry Howell
Bryan Hextall
Ed Giacomin
Henrik Lundqvist
Mike Richter
Brad Park
Jean Ratelle
Bill Cook
Andy Bathgate
Frank Boucher
Rod Gilbert
Brian Leetch
… and Mark Messier?
And the Greeks had:
…Ice? 
Important to point out that General Patton competed in the 1912 Olympics’ first modern pentathlon
You can’t complain Rangers vs Olympians.
Rangers work in groups, Olympians are mostly singles.
You’d have to compare Rangers vs Olympic Hockey, volleyball etc.
Athleticism is just one component of being a Ranger or Seal. You also have to work in a team, be able to be tactically responsive and change mission as necessary.
Also, Rangers get explosives and guns…cool. Unless beach volleyball requires the players to clear mines before the game, I think Rangers are in a class by themselves.