Probably the least fit Olympians would be the officials, IMHO.
Air rifle seems like the most obvious answer. So long as you don’t have palsy you should be able to do it. Heck the woman who got the gold has only been shooting for 5 years.
Winner!
But then the Brits would win all the time forever
That’s a “Not the Nine O’Clock News” sketch from the early 80’s
You may have to know a little about Brit pub culture and professional darts from that era to fully appreciate it.
Nice touch is the way the competitors are actually throwing darts in the background.
That guy playing the scorekeeper, I feel like I’ve seen him before. Deja Vu.
Blatant aside alert!
That one scene caused a complete reform of televised darts. It caused them to realise that they had a real image problem. It’s also an object lesson in the power of comedy.
Inbee Park, who won the gold in women’s golf, doesn’t look to be very fit. That said, looks can be deceiving. But I don’t think that being fit, however you define it, is a necessity for golf.
Assuming they have to walk, it’s just over 4 miles for the men. However, you can’t be so unfit that fatigue plays a factor in later holes.
Ryan Lochte might be mentally unfit.
So, it turns out that there is an authoritative answer to the OP’s question, and the least fit Olympians are to be found in the 100-meter dash and the 50-meter freestyle swim.
Every nation, no matter how small, can send two athletes to the Olympics, without those athletes actually having to achieve a qualifying time or score in their event. And it turns out that most countries in that situation send their athletes to one of the two events I mentioned, primarily because they require the least investment in training.
The slowest time in the Men’s 100 Meter Dash in the 2012 London Olympics was by Timi Garstang of the Marshall Islands at 12.81. For the women it was Tahmina Kohistani of Afghanistan at 14.42. Both times are extremely slow for top runners, but still probably significantly ahead of many athletes in archery and the shooting sports, as well as many/most heavy weightlifters, field athletes, wrestlers, etc.
In other words, I still don’t think they’re the least fit. In swimming, they are probably equally fit, but simply haven’t had enough training in swimming technique to be fast. Their time in the pool isn’t a measure of their fitness level. The slowest woman (from Lesotho) swam the 50M in 42.35 seconds, compared to the gold medal winner who finished in 24.05. That is far and away the worst outlier. But I’m not sure it says much about her fitness level.
But the original question was Say I am physically out-of-shape, but I want to be an Olympian. What should I go for? The answer to that is you should go for citizenship in a small nation.
Ding. Ding. Winner. Citizenship in the Marshall Islands it is.
Course Yardage does not include the yards walking from Green to the Next tee which is often not Trivial on newer courses.
And Pro-Golfers seldom walk in a straight line from Tee to Green.
I think a fitbit would record well over a 5 mile walk for a 7200 yd course.
That is until they add poker as an event. Hey, they show Texas Hold’em on ESPN, it must be a sport…
RickJay has already addressed this, but I would just add: have you ever slid sideways on ice, sweeping a rock with a broom, while avoiding touching that rock or any other rocks, for about 100 feet?
And then throwing a rock that weighs around 44 pounds, without slipping on the ice, while giving it just the right weight and turn to have it go over 100 feet and end precisely where the skip has called for?
Physical fitness is crucial for high-level curling.
Yeah, it helps to be fit, and at the Olympic level you need every advantage you can get, but curlers aren’t in the same league as marathoners or swimmers, fitness-wise.
However, I’m probably the fittest I’ve been in ten years. We’ll see if my game improves once the season starts again this fall.
I walk about 3.5 miles in a round of golf when playing with a cart. Of course, I go in a straight line from tee to green much less than the pros.
Don’t laugh, but the mission of the World Bridge Federation includes getting accepted into the Olympics.
OK, fight my ignorance here. I understand that the coxswains usually train with the rowers so are usually fit, but is there any reason why the cox could not be somebody who is just naturally small and thin but completely out of shape? Not trying to be insulting, but is there a part of their job that requires physical strength or agility?
I know people in this thread have already argued that even the heavyweight weightlifters are fit, but when I saw this thread title, this is the first thing that came to mind: when we were kids, my grandmother got my brother a subscription to Sports Illustrated for Kids. The cover story of one issue was on some Olympic weightlifter, and it seemed bizarre to me. He was some big fat guy! It didn’t make sense. I thought if you were a really strong person, i.e., an Olympic weightlifter, you looked like a bodybuilder, like Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime. I thought “this guy’s not strong, he’s fat!”