I’m guessing the marathon runners. They all look like running toothpicks. On the other hand, the male gymnasts have bulging sculpted muscles which indicates very little subcutaneous fat. The swimmers seem to be a cross between the marathoners and the gymnasts. In short, I don’t really know.
What do you think?
All I would guess is that it’s going to be a male athlete instead of a female one unless what little I know about anatomy is wrong.
Ares, maybe, but definitely not Dionysus.
When I was competing with the guys that are diving for the US in Athens I was about 6%. That’s probably about where those guys are now. Prandi may be a little lower, he’s pretty skinny. And if that 14 year old Finchum kid had made the team he would have been about 3% seems like.
I find that kinda hard to believe. Pro bodybuilders are around 3% during a contest, and…well, let’s just say they have no subcutaneous fat at all, and subcutaneous fat is really the only thing that stops you from looking completely disgusting.
Here’s a picture of Thomas Finchum on the 10m.
He’s 5’3" and 93lbs…BMI of 16.5…he’s a skinny little kid
I don’t know which ones have the least on an actual BF scale, but I know which ones LOOK the worst, and it would have to be the long distance runners. YIKES, talk about “dead man walking” :eek:
Yeah, no lie, but he’s at least 5%. Any less than that, and striations start becoming visible. It’s just not right.
USCDiver (or anyone else who knows), why do divers have to have low bodyfat? Why couldn’t an average schmo of 15-20% bodyfat compete equally?
Of the summer Olympic sports and taken as group, runners have the least body fat. Nothing else puts such a premium on minimizing nonperformance weight and is so stressing cardiovascularly. There is a reason volleyball players run for conditioning, and runners play volleyball for fun. Even non-elite male runners shoot for below 6% body fat. I can’t imagine there is an elite runner that is more than 3-4%. (FYI, 2% of your weight should be internal, protect-the-organs-from-damage, fat, which is what ultrafilter is referring to.)
However, all the Olympic athletes are in absolutely great shape. Michael Phelps spends something like 7 hours a day in the pool, and yet he lifts weights and runs, etc. I have friends who work for USA Swimming, and they tell me that he ate 6500 calories in one meal with them. There isn’t an ounce of spare fat on him, and I’m sure he is in the 3-4% range, also. And so must be about every other Olympic male swimmer, and just about every other male athlete.
There are two reasons divers are fit. One is that they must work out hard too, to not get injured and perform their manuevers. The other is that diving is a “presentation” sport - looking good doing it is almost as important as doing it. A smooth, flowing diver with what gymnasts call “long lines”, will outscore a mechanical diver, or a diver with, uh, “thick[?] lines”. (Bodybuilding would be another presentation sport. If extremely low body fat were intrinsically linked to extreme muscle development, then someone would have mentioned the weightlifters in this thread.)
Now as far as best looking, I vote for beach volleyball and swimmers. I hope my wife also votes for swimmers, 'cause I’m too tall and rangy to ever resemble a gymnast. Of course, for all I know, all the archers and rowers are totally hot. We never get to see them.
Cyclists are pretty damn close. They like to emphasize power-to-weight ratio and cardiovascular fitness (and pain, but that’s another story – to quote the New Yorker, “Suffering is to cyclists what poll data are to politicians; they rely on it to tell them how well they are doing their job.”). Lance Armstrong’s body fat at the start of the Tour de France is typically 4-5%, and the majority of the other pro riders probably have similar percentages.
I forget to add something about the danger of generalities. Back when Herschel Walker was the next big thing, he had his body fat measured in a dunk tank. Supposedly, it was either the lowest ever measured, or the second lowest. I don’t recall the value, but it may actually have been less than 2%. The other guy that low? I think it was a ballet dancer.
QUOTE=theR]Cyclists are pretty damn close. They like to emphasize power-to-weight ratio and cardiovascular fitness (and pain, but that’s another story – to quote the New Yorker, “Suffering is to cyclists what poll data are to politicians; they rely on it to tell them how well they are doing their job.”). Lance Armstrong’s body fat at the start of the Tour de France is typically 4-5%, and the majority of the other pro riders probably have similar percentages.
[/QUOTE]
You’re right, bicyclist are also in great shape. I once asked a US triathlon coach why runners tended to have higher VO2 max measurements than cyclists. I thought that maybe it was because cyclist can’t help but go down hill sometimes. (Runners too, but running downhill fast is hard work.) He said it was more because you are closer to horizontal on a bike, which is easier on the heart. You are still working your butt off, and burning calories at a mad rate and if weight wasn’t an issue, serious bicycling would be a much more affordable sport.
I have to think that for Olympic level athletes, body fat must actually help in order for the men to exceed 10%.
As an aside, a member of the first US cycling team to compete in the Tour de France just ran the Pikes Peak Marathon. (You run up the mountain, then you run down.) He said the PPM was harder. Of course, now he is a 46 year old Joe Schmoe, then he was a 20 something Joe Stud.
This is totally unrelated to body fat…
But for the record, after watching the olypics this year, Male Swimmers have the hottest bods EVER! I’ve got to get me one of those!!! 
Wouldn’t a swimmer want a bit of body fat for buoyancy?
No, really, I’m asking a serious question!
My ex had very, very little body fat and would practically sink like a rock in a pool. So she hated swimming because she had to work so hard not to drown.
So, wouldn’t a swimmer want enough fat to keep him/her all floaty?
Only if treading water becomes an Olympic event. For swimming at the kind of speeds these guys & gals are doing, the extra inertia & drag of the fat would exceed what tiny gain they’d get from extra buoyancy.
So, how ya… oh crap, I’ve admitted I’m married, and well, I’m a bit skinnier than any Olympic caliper swimming. Damn.
My vote goes to triathalon - there used to be a fella on my floor that competed in the ironman - he was at 3%. (He was measured at the sports med centre at my University).
