I’m sure most people will say defeat, crashing, whatever, but really the worst feeling in sport is 200m sprint intervals on foot. If you haven’t tried it, do – you’ll see what I mean 🙂

The genuine and rational feeling that you’re going to die imminently… Or snapping your chain sprinting and smacking your nuts off the stem.

Nah the worst feeling is the solid fart when the gels go right through you.

Cramp.

Solid nut bike interface 😥
or
feeling of tearing muscles or breaking bone

Nah, with injuries you have to stop doing sport altogether for sometimes months. That’s the worst thing.

Hill reps on a singlespeed. Or fasted intervals. Or going for the sprint finish for some mid pack place and not getting it.

Actually no, it’s the first scratch on your new bike!

I quite enjoy sprint sessions.

Knowing you can’t finish. Thats truely devastating.

Flatting in the middle of a brilliant bit of trail.

5m above your last solid runner with disco legs and what you thought was the crux turning out not to be.

running onto the elbow of a bradford northern forward, and waking up 10 minutes later in a spinning changing room.

Dumbly took a wrong turn in my first 24 hour race at Sleepless in the Saddle (not solo) and crossed the tape, which was on the floor in the dark, for about 10metres before realising my mistake and beginning to turn back….not enough for the guy who passed me and spent the next 2 laps insulting me in the most vitriolic way possible as well as loudly pointing me out to everybody in the race, spectating, marshalling and anybody else that was nearby that I was a “cheating c**nt” and then trying to get me disqualified.

My mum and dad were there watching me too! Thanks man, whoever you were. It felt really great.

5m above your last solid runner with disco legs and what you thought was the crux turning out not to be.

The first part of my first answer relates to that feeling but with a 2 added to the start of the number of metres.

In sport?

Losing.

Actually no, it’s the first scratch on your new bike!

This. Remember leaning my new 456 outside the bike shop for it’s first ride. As I walked away the noise of it slipping and leaving a great big 8inch deep scratch. Still hurts to think about it and it was almost 5 years ago.

Getting trounced by someone older/fatter than you. Hmmmm, actually, it’s this that also spurs me on to do better

Realizing your no longer the quickest on the pitch and never will be again.

Being on the wrong end of cheating

Edited – it’s jogger’s nipple.
Definitely.

Looking down when youre on the lip, seeing the wave sucking dry over the lava because youve not been keeping your eye on thetide and realising that its new fin and board time.
And then realising you have a few hundred metres walk over the lava barefoot carrying your gear and being pushed around by the surf.
I love Fuerte.

CFH + hilldodger’s answers

Or going for the sprint finish for some mid pack place and not getting it.

Not as bad as blowing away a load of knackered people when you are totally fresh, but about 20s too late as you belatedly realise that the fact the three E/1/2s cruised past on the last corner means that was actually the last lap…

Or taking a wrong exit on a roundabout during the TT and still coming very close to the E/1/2s on their fancy bikes, and not having a working computer so you don’t even know how close you would’ve been…

+1 cramp..

I quite like intervals.
Worse feeling?
6 miles into a 10 mile race and getting runner’s trots.

the final time I sprained my ankle – knowing it was the last time I’d play “proper” footy

… repeated about 20 years later – last walkabout 5-a-side

Going for an audacious side step at training (after the whistle had gone, but you decide to go for the gap anyway) and hearing and feeling a large pop in the knee as the remnants of your cruciate ligament blows up.

Proper bonking resulting in shaky tunnel vision, the need to sit down and eat something sugarly. But you have nothing. And you are a long way from base. Grass doesn’t work.

Followed about an hour later with double cramp in both inner quads.

Then it rained a lot and got windy.

That was character building. Whenever I am in pain on a ride now, i just think about that one.

Sprint training on the beach in January when you find out after the pyramids its sets of dune sprints.

Cricket – getting set to crack a duff ball to the boundary, missing it and getting bowled.

You’re in Norway paddling with your mates, but you’re out of practice and they’re not. You’re in a new boat. The rapids are quite continuous. You miss the eddy, you’re now at the front. You’re crashing through waves, trying to spot the next eddy, trying to slow down. The boat’s unstable you capsize, you roll again, but you’re still at the front of the group; don’t know where to go. Over another wave but there’s a big stopper behind it, you get pumelled a bit bt eventually roll again, but you’re tired. No letup in the rapids. You can’t pull it together, then next time you capsize your roll fails on every attempt. You get a couple of breaths of air and pull the deck. You’re swimming in glacial melt water high in the Norwegian plateau in a cag, shorts and neoprene shoes. You try to swim to the bank but get disorientated. The next stopper pummels you down onto the river bed, you bash your back on the rocks on the river bed. Your shoes get sucked off by the current and you’re now barefoot. You try to put your feet up in front of you as the current takes you on. They take the impact of the next rock and one of your little bones breaks in your foot. But you don’t notice as you’re freezing cold and trying to get a breathe of air. You’ve been in the water many minutes now, swum almost 3km. Nearly the full length of the section. You scrabble to cling onto a rock at the side of the river, but the current takes you away, dislocating your finger as it goes. You try to reach the side but don’t make it. The rest of the group are round about you screaming, you grab the loop on the nearest boat and kick for the river bank. But you’re into another stopper and the kayak you’re grabbing capsizes wrenching your hand. You try again but the grab loop is too small to get your hand in. You’re tired and cold and have little strength. You remember the crux of this river is right by the get out. 4 big holes one after the other. Your legs are battered to shit. You try to get to the side but again get dragged back in. You’re only 100m from the hard rapid and you know you won’t get through it alive. Someone else come along with the back of their boat “grab it, grab it” c’mon.
But you’ve got no strength left, you’re full of water and can taste only river. You manage to gasp to them that you’re too ****. You can’t do it. You know you can’t hold on to that loop any more and you know the last rapid is coming right up. Why did you go to Norway after a year without paddling…. why did you take a new boat you hadn’t used before… why did you try to mix with the big dogs when you’re just an office boy…

Being told that – for health reasons no less – sport is potentially really quite bad for you.

Lemonysam +1 but substitue stumped for bowled 🙁

…….getting old.

False summits

I quite like intervals.

Then you aren’t going hard enough 😉

Side/back kick in the ribs is normally a low point for me!

ok, Mumm 30 Worlds, Hamble 1999… 30knt squall in the second to last race, we’re coming for an inside gibe and reach to finish and it went pear shaped, sheet caught round a winch, I got splatted in the face by the boom and went overboard in the drink with 40 other boats bearing down on the mark and I’ve lost my front teeth…

That dear fellows was the worst. 😯

Some of you guys do seriously hardcore sh!t. 😯

A poor performance or loosing at a goal race

Getting an injury that puts you out, especially at the height of fitness

Quitting

After being helped from the pitch having being two footed playing football, trying to stand 20 minutes later to feel and hear your tib and fib crunch and give way under your weight. That, my friends, was a shit feeling.
<rose tinted specs> could have turned pro but for injury <rose tinted specs>