I did ponder this for a while and from the possible answers I've got, I believe the best one is that rich people tend to love sports that you can win at without having to compete against anyone.
I think there are two kinds of sports, ones that require you to compete against somebody else to win and ones that allow you to win by simply pushing your limits. You can't win a game of soccer by playing alone, this is the nature of the sport, but you can win a 10k run by simply beating your previous best.
This being said, if you lack the talent or previously acquired skills to be good at a direct competition sport, your best bet for winning, as per above definition, is to pick up an endurance sport.
As weight lifting goes, I know plenty of rich people that do that. Yet they don't tend to do it until they get huge, they do it to be a bit more in shape. Basically, they set their own rule for what winning means and they are crushing it.
> but you can win a 10k run by simply beating your previous best.
I've never heard somebody refer to this as "winning". Beating a PR, sure, but not winning. At least in the triathlon scene, that I'm most familiar with, in order to "win" you have to beat other people.
Yup! But beating some people isn't what people calling winning. Sometimes I've heard people say they won their age bracket, but even that's always qualified by the scope of their winning and still suggesting that they were at the top of the reduced scope.
Although historically golf was a very popular sport among wealthier people. Which is or can be competitive. Apparently golf has declined a lot as a sport to the point where a fair number of golf courses have closed. And the people who bought houses on those courses are suing.
More anecdotally while I’m sure there are people in tech who golf, it’s pretty much invisible from my perspective—may still see it in sales here and there-/and fun runs (or yoga) are what you see as active conference activities. I could name tons of people who run among my tech contacts. I couldn’t name one who I know golfs.
I think golf is a sport where you can compete against yourself. Anecdotally, my 2 friends that play golf are middle lower class, by no means wealthy.
Obviously, any sport can be played against opponents, but some don't have to. And I believe most wealthy people have to compete against human opponents most of the time and are inclined to pick "easier" to win sports when it comes to doing it for fun.
I think there are two kinds of sports, ones that require you to compete against somebody else to win and ones that allow you to win by simply pushing your limits. You can't win a game of soccer by playing alone, this is the nature of the sport, but you can win a 10k run by simply beating your previous best.
This being said, if you lack the talent or previously acquired skills to be good at a direct competition sport, your best bet for winning, as per above definition, is to pick up an endurance sport.
As weight lifting goes, I know plenty of rich people that do that. Yet they don't tend to do it until they get huge, they do it to be a bit more in shape. Basically, they set their own rule for what winning means and they are crushing it.