It surely has to be the triathlon guys because they can run, bike and swim a far distance. But wait what about the weight lifters? Today, worlds best weight lifter Lasha Talakhadze back squatted 310kg for 3 reps in his pre-training.
But then again if Lasha would try to run 5k, he would barely make it through. But then again the triathlete would not even be able to back squat 150kg for one rep.
So who is fittest? This was a question that the founder of CrossFit, Greg Glassman wanted to answer.
He came up with 4 models to determine who is the fittest (I did a podcast about all 4 here.) and simply put it is about work capacity in many different physical tests in different time domains. Ie.
Lift something heavy of the ground once (1 rep max), Run 1600m, then mix both: 4 rounds 400m run max rep of 80% of 1rm etc.
You line up many tests and the person who is best adapted on average is by empirical data the most fittest on earth. And this is what CrossFit does in the CrossFit Games.
It would be amazing to see all the Gold Medalists in the Olympics then participate in the CrossFit Games and see who would get the farthest because that would let us know, who is the fittest amongst the olympians too. =)
Have a great week!
Rickard