What separates a truly great athlete from the pack? Some say it's endurance -- the ability to get out on the field and play no matter what happens, which breeds a true champion. Here are some grueling, and downright gnarly, examples of athletes who took insanely painful hits yet kept on coming. Measure yourself against these bad-asses and see if you've got what it takes to play through the pain.
Ronnie Lott
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You're going to see quite a few football stories on this list, especially when you have massive men slamming into each other at breakneck speed; injuries are just par for the course. But few were as grisly as
Ronnie Lott's broken finger from a game against the Cowboys in 1985. Lott charged into Timmy Newsome and the pair went down hard, shattering his pinky finger so badly that bone fragments were visible on the field. The very next week, the unstoppable safety was back on the field, his mangled hand simply taped up for play. After the season ended, Lott was given the choice of a painful surgery that would take bone from his wrist or a simple amputation of the top of the finger. He chose the amputation because it meant he could get back to football faster.
Terry Butcher
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Scrapes and cuts aren't unusual in soccer, where you can't use your hands to deflect a ball coming your way. However, during a 1990 World Cup qualifying match against Sweden, one of England's most vital defenders
Terry Butcher suffered a ghastly cut to his head in the first few minutes. He stepped to the sidelines to let the team's doctor quickly stitch it up and was back on the pitch soon after. But a large number of high balls could only be repelled by Butcher's head, swiftly re-opening the wound and causing gobs of blood to gush over his face and jersey. It wasn't life-threatening, but by the end of the game Butcher looked like his namesake and England held Sweden to a 0-0 tie.
Chris Simms
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Bones are a body's best friend, protecting delicate internal organs from serious harm. But, when you're getting sacked with the force of an NFL defender, bones sometimes just don't cut it. In 2006, Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback
Chris Simms took a nasty hit from the Panthers' defensive line in the second quarter and actually left the game for a few minutes because of the pain. He came back in the fourth quarter to lead his team to a score advantage, but that would turn out to be a bad idea -- the impact had ruptured his spleen. He was rushed to a hospital just in time, but lost five pints of blood during surgery and nearly died.
Shun Fujimoto
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The Olympic Games are the biggest show on Earth for many athletes, so it's no surprise competitive adrenaline kicks into overdrive. One of the most insane on-field injuries in Olympic history occurred in 1976, when Japanese men's gymnast
Shun Fujimoto tripped during opening floor exercises, landing awkwardly. He had shattered his right kneecap, but Japan -- which had dominated men's gymnastics in the last two Games -- needed him to perform, so even with his crippling injury Fujimoto went on to compete in the pommel horse and rings, the latter of which he finished with a twisting double somersault, landing on his feet. Japan took the gold once more, in no small part due to his perseverance. (Photo Credit:
Quora.com)
Jack Youngblood
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If you're on the football field, you need your legs to be working, and Los Angeles Rams defensive end
Jack Youngblood's broken leg wouldn't stop that. Widely regarded as one of the toughest players of the 1970s, Youngblood became a legend during the 1979 playoffs, which he took the field for in every game with a fractured left fibula. It didn't slow him down much, as the Rams went all the way to the Super Bowl that year. Youngblood would go on to play in the 1980 Pro Bowl before taking some time off to get it fixed.
Niki Lauda
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If you're a Formula 1 driver and you crash, you're probably not going to get back on the track anytime soon. That is, unless you're
Niki Lauda. The Ferrari driver had qualms about the state of the course for the 1976 German Grand Prix, and those worries came true when his car swerved off the track and rebounded into oncoming vehicles. Lauda was trapped inside his blazing vehicle and suffered brutal facial burns as well as internal injuries. Six weeks later, despite not passing mental health clearance, he was back behind the wheel at the Italian Grand Prix, his face covered in blood-soaked bandages. Lauda amazingly placed fourth in that race and continued driving until 1985.
Kerri Strug
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Gymnastics might seem like a bunch of flippity-doo, but the women who compete at the Olympic level are human dynamos, capable of exploding off of a jump with incredible force. In 1996, American gymnast
Kerri Strug was the team's linchpin for the Games, but during her first run at the vault things went wrong. When she landed, she heard something snap in her foot and lost all sensation in her leg. Coach Bela Karolyi told her to just get through one more run, which she landed for a 9.712, and the U.S. team won their first Olympic championships. After the medal ceremony, she was rushed to the hospital where doctors found two torn ligaments in her ankle -- it was a miracle she could even walk, let alone pull off a leap of that difficulty.
Curt Schilling
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Before he was a failed video game producer and Twitter crank, Curt Schilling was one of the gutsiest pitchers the Red Sox has ever seen. He made the team's name literal during the 2005 American League championships, when the Sox faced off against lifetime rivals the New York Yankees. Schilling had been fighting off an ankle injury for some time, but the team needed him on the mound. So before the sixth game, the pitcher had emergency surgery to sew a tendon back in place in his foot. The result:
Schilling played in a blood-soaked sock, and even though he was battered and bruised he only let one run through in seven glorious innings, taking the Sox to the World Series where they'd beat the Cardinals and dispel the curse.
Tiger Woods
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Yes, Tiger has pissed away most of his legacy in the intervening years, but few doubted the insane guts taken by
Woods winning the 2008 U.S. Open on a broken leg. Two months before the tournament started, Tiger got surgery on the leg to fix an ACL tear. Unfortunately for him, he worked too hard in rehab and ended up fracturing his leg bone in two places. Instead of pulling out, Woods grit his teeth and took to the course, tying Rocco Mediate and forcing an 18-hole playoff, which he would go on to win.
Bert Trautmann
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The Brits take their soccer very seriously, and during the 1956 FA cup final proved it. Manchester City goalie
Bert Trautmann braced himself for impact when Birmingham drove at his goal, but the collision with striker Peter Murphy took both men down to the pitch. Trautmann fell to his knees and gripped his head for a moment, then shook it off and resumed his spot in the goal, playing out the entire game (which Manchester City took, 3-1). Only after he left the field, the true nature of his injury came to the fore: Trautmann had broken three vertebrae in his neck in the impact. He was named FWA Footballer of the Year that season.
Photos courtesy of Getty Images
