Most exhausting kinds of sports?

Basketball is extremely tiring if it's played between evenly talented teams.

 

I recall the announcers mention during one of the Winter Olympics that the best conditioned athletes are cross country skiers.

For Summer Games, the synchronized swimmers are in insane physical condition. Imagine lifting your body up out of the water without touchng bottom. Oh, and you only get to breathe once every bouple minutes.

 

I read an article about this a while back, it was specifically about which sports are the most physically demanding (in terms of "normal" sports if you will, i.e. not the Sahara marathon thing and such), I'm sure Cross Country Skiing came out on top.

 

I would probably have to go with, triathlon athletes. That's brutal stuff they go through.

 

Officially, the correct answer is distance running / distance cycling (tied for first), followed distance swimming, followed by cross-country skiing, followed by boxing, followed by rowing, followed by water polo.

 

Wow, I was gonna suggest boxing. Nice to know I was pretty close.

 

I'd say tennis because the matches literally can go on forever. I've had 3.5 hour long matches, and by the end, I was about to drop I was so tired. And in tennis, you only get a break every odd game, so if you are stuck in a wicked long deuce, you're stuck.

 

distance running / distance cycling (tied for first), followed distance swimming

So...triathlons FTL.

 

I play adult baseball, and even though the sport in general is not that tiring, catching takes it out of you.
So does getting hit by baseballs in the arms and shoulders

 

I'll disagree in regards to ice hockey and its line changes. If you think that you get "a good rest" between line changes you're sadly mistaken. In ice hockey you go out and pretty much sprint with every fiber of your body on the ice for 0.5-1.5 minutes, depending on how good a player you are. Then you get maybe one-three minutes rest and you're at it again. Scott Niedermyer for example plays 2-minute shifts, rests for 30-60 seconds and then goes out to do the same again. It's pretty insane if you ask me. Although in regards to Soccer, I have to say that seeing a guy like Roberto Carlos run up and down a field for 90 minutes is pretty astounding.