Basketball

obama basketball injury
You know, basketball is so popular that we forget how painful it can be. Last year basketball won the overall category with a whopping 2,560,000 injuries reported. And they came in 3rd in the injury rate category with 1.85% of participants getting bruised and battered.
The majority of the injuries sustained were, obviously, ankle sprains. There were 258,348 of those, more than any other sport. Basketball also dominated finger and knee injuries, with 198,413 and 175,505 respectively. Oh, and of course the sport was tops in face and cheek injuries with 190,167. (Even the Basketball Player-in-Chief isn’t immune from face injuries.)

Cycling

bike crash injury
After motorsports, cycling is probably the sport in which you’re most likely to get killed. Racing is dangerous. Mountain biking is dangerous. Just riding around block is dangerous. That’s why there were 2.49 million cycling injuries reported last year, the second highest total. And the injury rate was 1.29%—not staggering, but the 5th overall and just a half percentage point behind skateboarding at #2.

Lacrosse

lacrosse injury
Unfortunately there aren’t enough registered lacrosse players out there to know exactly what percentage of them can expect to sustain injuries. But we do know there were about 96,000 of them reported last year, 10th most among all sports. And if you’ve ever watched lacross, you know it’s a gritty game…and sometimes downright violent.

Skateboarding

skateboarding injury
Hardly shocking, is it? The whole point of skateboarding is to do stuff that’s dangerous until you master it. And while the official sanctioned competitions wear lots of protective gear, the kids thrashing on the street usually do not—which is why there were 676,000 boarding injuries reported last year, for 1.86% of the participants. That’s the second-highest injury rate of any sport.


Horseback Riding

Falling-off-horse injury
Like lacrosse, we don’t have enough data on horseback riding participation to know what percentage of riders get injured. But since horses are kind of expensive and difficult to care for, we’re going to assume the vast majority of people don’t ride no horses. And that makes the 316,000 injuries reported last year pretty astounding. We’re talking 3x the number of injuries as in hockey, but there’s no way there are as many horseback riders.
So just say no to horses, kids. Your parents (and their checkbooks) will thank you.