Like for example, obviously I’m a sports fan, but through all of sports the one thing I love watching more than anything is great baseball pitchers. Watching how much movement they can put on a ball is just fun to watch.
Ice hockey is rather impressive to me. I’m a very very minimal fan (as in, I will watch 30 seconds of a game if it’s on a TV I am walking past). I have been to a few NHL games, including the Winter Classic with my dad. It takes a lot of coordination, teamwork, and skill to successfully play.
I guess Fosbury Flop situations, when someone develops a technique that’s so different from the norm and so effective that it becomes the new standard basically overnight.
Ozzyman Reviews did a video about a cricket player who pretty much won the game single handed. By the end, the guy could barley walk. No idea what his name is but it was one of the most impressive things I’ve even seen.
I admire dedication. When they “give it all” or “burn for it”.
For example i was a huge fan of the martial artist Rhonda Rousey in her good time. She always looked soo angry when fighting.
I have a pretty high respect for nearly all professional athletes to be honest. The aspect I respect the most is mainly how much technical competence and practice are needed to perform at professional levels
… although it may be because I do play really difficult video games, some of which can be considered to be e-sports. A less niche example, when I played chess semi-seriously for a year I really learned just how strong the Grandmasters are. Maybe this view bled into my view of conventional sports too
3-player volleyball with your feet. Spike the ball by doing a backflip 8D
It is a fun game and great workout.
Not really. I acknowledge that most professional sports people must be highly skilled in what they do, but I just don’t really care for what they are skilled at. I can watch a skilled person repair a vintage hifi system for hours though, even though I myself am not proficient in that art either, so I guess it just depends on the type of skill for me.
Check out Mountain of Hell 2018: winning run by Kilian Bron (and then this run with the speedometer). And perhaps Valparaiso Cerro Abajo urban downhill. Both of these are those sports that take a fairly normal activity and turn it up to eleven. I don’t follow either of them, but watching the clips makes me sweat.
I like to watch football goal highlights. Like some of these people doing back flips and shit, kicking the ball while upside down in the air and scoring a goal lol.
I guess I am fan tho… I watched all ~90 minutes of Japan vs. Korea mostly because the Japanese team had >90% pass accuracy for the entire game.
Motorsports of all kinds are remarkable to me, most prominently the rally tours of the 80’s.
The fans and journalists were crazy, the engineers were crazy, the drivers were crazy too.
Something about watching those old hot-hatches flick around a hairpin while people jump in front of the car just sparks something deep inside my heart… it’s the Ultimate Extreme.
Bonus to alpine ski/snowboard. Those POVS are ridiculous.
I don’t give a fuck about more conventional sports. I find them to be primitive and have no idea how people get so swept up by them.
Came here to mention rally, Group B in particular. As well as things like the Isle of Man TT.
Everything about them is just a big middle finger to the bubblewrap mindset of today, whether that’s a good thing will depend on individual perspectives but it certainly makes it more raw and exciting as a spectator.
Its a difficult balance to have. No one wants to see anyone killed, but everyone wants to see risks being taken and the drivers wrestling with the machine beasts. Its incredible. But at some point it just gets too dangerous. Like with Group B. The Henri Toivonen interview before his crash is pretty chilling, he explains that the stages are so long, the cars so fast that its impossible to keep concentration for the whole time. Then he sadly proved himself to be correct.
As much as I love Group B, banning it was the correct thing to do. I will never say that the safety aspect has gone too far, but it has made things a bit… boring. I still watch F1, Rally, WEC and I think its awesome. But its different than what it was. Like it wasn’t too long ago when F1 cars looked nervous going on a straight. I vividly remember Mika Häkkinen bombing down the Hockenheimring and the car just wouldn’t keep in a straight line. These days the cars look like they are on rails. I’m gonna stop myself before I start ranting about this years cars.
Motorsports can also be enjoyed by most anyone from their home, with sim games. The g-forces are obviously not there, but the inputs are remarkably accurate to life. It’s fascinating seeing drivers brake and turn at exactly the same points on track where I did in the game.
Personally I’m partial to mods of 60s-70s cars for Assetto Corsa. It’s lots of unabashed fun with the wobbly suspension.
Ding ding! Guess what I gre up on? Racing games!
Yeah, I’ve played lots of classic NFS back in the day, but since its physics was always pretty outlandish, the sports aspect of racing didn’t quite click for me. It’s only relatively recently-ish that I picked up Gran Turismo on PS Vita and proper simulators on the desktop, which is when I learned about the racelines, setups and whatnot — and started understanding what drivers are doing and started following F1.
Curiously, there’s a simple pen-and-paper game called Racetrack, which simulates the physics of racing better than NFS.
I love watching wingsuit povs.
I really respect the athleticism and showmanship of pro-wrestling. Also the job culture sounds 100% cancerous so I deeply admire people who were able to foster actual positive relationships in it. Can’t make myself watch it though.
NASCAR is boring as hell but the drivers have got to be the wiliest kniving little shitlords so it will never not be entertaining to read about their looneytoon antics
Sports are kind of interesting playgrounds for statistics. I respect that about them. Moneyball is a movie (and book) about how an economist used statistics to change the way baseball teams recruit players. I didn’t expect to like it as much as I did. Although it could have gone into more detail about the nerdy stuff.
Sports analytics have changed every sport. I distinctly remember that season, the average sports fan didn’t know back then what was going on behind the scenes but that streak was fun as hell to watch even if you weren’t and A’s fan. My buddy was a die hard As fan and he was distraught at the trades before the season started.
I loved baseball as a kid, I wasn’t good, but I loved playing and I loved watching. when I hit my late teens is when I finally found my strength in hitting. But I stopped watching when the strikes in the 90s happened and I didn’t follow again for 20 years.
Dont let others ruin something you love. that’s a hardlife lesson, because I’ve gotten back into it and realized how much I truly did love the game itself and hate that I didn’t keep watching or trying at it. Just the feel of the glove, the grass, the smell of the dirt.
And what’s truly great about baseball even though it’s been played since the late 1800’s by hundreds of thousands of people over 100 games per team a year. It seems like every year there is still something that’s never been done before in its history.
Not really, no
To be honest, no.
I can’t even watch the sports I’ve played myself. Watching sport has never given me that feeling you’re describing
What have you played?
Roller derby and running. Football, cricket and tennis when I was a kid
Mad props on the roller derby. I found that anything that comes between my feet and the ground is a no go for me.
Never was a runner but back in my 20s I got into tennis for awhile.
I learned to skate as a teenager, and would break in to the local high school on weekends to skate in the quadrangle. I’d line up the old wooden seats and jump them, and jump down flights of stairs… I was crazy…
Then I basically stopped skating for many years until I took up roller derby, and the old skating skills came in useful. I couldn’t do half the stuff I used to be able to do, but it still gave me a big grounding for derby
Basketball. Honestly i tried playing it back when i was a teen and wow, throwing that ball is hard, let alone aiming it.
