The Mariana Depths, I have been

What is the hardest universal sport on earth?

Although, Olympic swimmers have the most tedious workout program than any other sport hands down, I think the sport of swimming actually falls shy of one sport in degrees of difficulty. I mean, don't get me wrong, professional swimmers have to train at least 4 hours a day ( I know that Micheal does up to 6), swimming up to and over a 100 kilometers weekly. That's a round-trip from Los Angeles to Orange County.
Also, skipping practice is out of the question for swimmers. You take a couple days off, and it just suddenly becomes exponentially harder to recover the workout from those days. It's not the same with other sports. Take basketball for example; A NBA player gets injured, and as soon as he's recovered, he's back in the game. Do that to a swimmer in the middle of championship season, and he's gone

But what sport could possibly be any harder than swimming?


Figure Skating.
What!? It's not even a sport!
Oh yes it is. If you have to spend hours training and building some sort of physical aptitude, it's a sport. Golf, on the other hand, is a leisure thing; please don't tell me you get your exercise from golf. Yet, it's one of the most well payed sports on the planet, ironic.
Why? Well other than the physical abilities that are needed to do so well in this sport, it also requires a great amount of mental capacity. To be able to remember a 7 minute speech is one thing. To be able to remember, to be able to execute, to be able to endure 12 minutes of a routine is definitely another thing.
Although figure skating is an Olympic sport, it's one of the less universal sports out there. Logically, the harder the sport gets, the less people participate. Last time I checked there was only 2 heats of 10 swimmers in the mile race when there were 10 heats of 10 people in the 50m freestyle race in 2008. So using the same logic, it's easy to say that figure skating is one of the hardest sports on the planet.

still my hero though.

sheet music can be found here
Inochi no namae is my favorite by him though, be sure to check him out!