AUSTRALIANS are a bleary-eyed lot at the moment with many late nights spent watching our athletes at the Paris Olympic Games.
But for all the physical skill and prowess on display, a new study has looked into just how dangerous some of these sports actually are.
The results were compiled by comparing the number of athletes competing in each sport to the number of injuries to determine the risk factor.
According to Olympic injury data compiled since the 2008 Games in Beijing, BMX is far and away the most dangerous sport, even among the elite, with a 34.3% injury rate.
This percentage climbed even higher during the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio De Janeiro, with 37.5% of riders coming away a little worse for wear, even those with shiny new medals around their necks.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, next in the list was taekwondo with a 29.9% injury rate, followed by football, cycling and boxing.
At the other end of the scale, canoe slalom was found to be the safest of all sports, with only a 1.2% injury rate, followed by canoeing, shooting, rowing, archery, swimming, and believe it or not, equestrian.
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