Wednesday, February 12, 2014

How Likely You Will Die Doing an Olympic Sport

I saw this on Facebook today. I think this pretty much sums it up, especially since I can't make a complete lap around a frozen pond without breaking my elbow.

Olympians are ridiculously awesome and courageous.

And total freaks of nature.

14. Curling
Death Chance: Very Low
It’s basically bowling on ice. Don’t slip and crack your head and you should be okay. The biggest risk to your health might be getting an ultimate wedgie after telling someone you’re a curler.
Saving Grace: If you did crack your head open, the risk of infection would be low since the curling sheet is clean from being frequently and vigorously swept.

13. Cross Country Skiing
Death Chance: Very Low
It’s a flat course. There’s nothing to fall off of. Your biggest risk is probably your heart exploding from all the exercise.
Saving Grace: You’d probably start vomiting from exhaustion before having an actual heart attack. Woo-hoo!

12. Figure Skating
Death Chance: Low
If you try to do any jump, you’d fall down. Hard. And tights and bedazzled blouses don’t provide a lot of protection.

Saving Grace: You’d probably just break an ankle or a kneecap or some ribs or your skull or all of them. You probably wouldn’t die, though. Which is a relief, because it would be pretty humiliating to die while dressed like a swan.

11. Speed Skating
Death Chance: Low
It’s similar to cross country skiing, except now you’re going a lot faster, you’re attached to two giant razor blades and there’s no soft snow to cushion your fall.
Saving Grace: You have to be a special kind of uncoordinated to fall in a way that causes you to slice yourself with your own skates. You’re not that uncoordinated. Right?

10. Short Track Speed Skating
Death Chance: Low
There’s a lot more contact in short track speed skating. When you inevitably fall, there’s three other skaters nearby who could easily skate over your wrist or neck. Blood! BLOOD! BLOOD EVERYWHERE!
Saving Grace: Short track speed skaters are miniature. Their blades may not have enough force behind them to cut through your fatty flesh.

9. Biathlon
Death Chance: Moderate
An Olympic sport with guns involved. Sounds risky. You’d want to make sure that the safety on your gun is always on. When your skis get tangled and you fall down, you don’t want to take a gun blast to the face.
Saving Grace: When you need to be helped from the course due to exhaustion or heart attack, you can fire a few shots into the air to alert rescuers.

8. Bobsled
Death Chance: Moderate
You’re careening down an icy shoot at a high rate of speed and the vehicle’s roll bar is your head.
Saving Grace: Unlike most insane Olympic sports, the shell of the vehicle provides you with protection. In luge and skeleton and ski jumping and downhill skiing, the protective vehicle is your ribcage. And how deadly can bobsled really be? No Jamaicans have perished. Yet.

7. Ice Hockey
Death Chance: Moderate
Slapshot to the face, skate to the neck, getting destroyed by a bone-crushing check. The dangers are numerous. You may not die, but you would be removed from the ice on a stretcher.
Saving Grace: You’d likely skate too slow to be involved in much of the action, thereby avoiding most face slapshots, neck skates and checks.

6. Snowboarding
Death Chance: Moderate
Snowboarding is a dangerous sport. And the chances your body would be broken, gallons of Mountain Dew spilling out onto the snow, are very high.
Saving Grace: All of the (medical) marijuana in your system could heal you.

5. Alpine Skiing
Death Chance: Likely
People die all the time just skiing on family vacations. What chance do you have on a downhill course designed for the greatest skiers in the world? Your spandex uniform would serve as nothing more than a bag to keep your crushed innards contained for the coroner.
Saving Grace: Maybe you’d snap a femur early on in the run before you pick up the kind of speed that would send you cartwheeling down the course to certain death.

4. Freestyle Skiing
Death Chance: Likely
So it’s downhill skiing, but with some ramps thrown in to make sure you hit the ground harder. Ski poles sure do work well for human meat shish kabobs!
Saving Grace: The ramps maybe would slow down your out-of-control descent?

3. Luge
Death Chance: Likely
You’re sliding down an icy hill at 85 mph. You will die.
Saving Grace: It’s hard to see laying on your back. So at least you wouldn’t see your death coming. That’s sort of comforting.

2. Skeleton
Death Chance: Likely
You’re sliding down an icy hill headfirst at 85 mph. You will die.
Saving Grace: None, idiot. It’s actually called Skeleton. They’re pretty up front about the inevitable outcome of the sport. If there is any saving grace, perhaps it is that your death will be quick.

1. Ski Jumping
Death Chance: Certain
You’re flying high in the air at a high speed. That might not seem like certain death if you had a parachute on your back. But you don’t have parachute. All you have is skis. And what good are they? At best, they’re going to impale you on impact.
Saving Grace: You’re up high enough that you might get a glimpse of heaven before dying.

No comments:

Post a Comment