How much does a hockey player run in average and compared to other sports?
It is said that a hockey midfielder would run 9 km per game in average, defenders would run between 6 to 7 and goalies would reach the 2 km mark on average per game. Football however, seems to be the team sport where players run the most: a central midfielder can easily run 13 kilometers per matchdue to the fact that central midfielders are fully involved in both the attacking and defensive efforts of the team. Attackers run less average distance than central midfielders, averaging closer to 9/10km per game.
Hockey seems to be the most closely comparable sport to football, due to the fact that positions on the pitch and the tactics employed are very similar. Additionally we have to take under consideration that the time played in hockey is 20, actually 30, minutes less than in football. Football is the team sport where players run the higher average distance during a match.
In other sports:
A tennis player might play for 5 hours straight but the average distance covered in the sport, is very low compared to hockey. In the longest tennis match ever played, between John Isner and Nicholas Mahut at the 2010 Wimbledon championships, which lasted 11 hours 5 minutes, it is estimated that the two players covered around 9.6km each.
It is a common myth that basketball players run up to 8km in a standard game, but NBA stats from the 2012 season show that the highest average distance run per game was 4.3km by Luol Deng of the Chicago Bulls.
American Football is the most interesting of all the sports regarding the average distance run during a typical game. The stat shown in the image at the top of 1.9km is for a typical wide reciever.
