Inside the brutal and unexpected toll that sport takes on elite athletes

Imagine your career in football being cut short because a stray dog shattered your knee cap.

Or how about your toes overlapping from years of jumping in basketball action?

After Cristiano Ronaldo shared a photo revealing his battered and bruised feet - perhaps a small sacrifice for £214million per year - it got us thinking.

What are the most brutal examples we can find of sport taking a toll on its mortal participants?

From bulging ankles to veiny legs and uniquely arranged toes, Mail Sport has got you covered with the rough end of the spectrum.

Fans were stunned for all the wrong reasons last week when they saw Ronaldo's feet.

The 39-year-old was cooling off and recovering after scoring the only goal in Al-Nassr's 1-0 win over Al-Ahli in the Saudi Pro League two days prior.

He posted a picture of himself in a pair of Erakulis trousers, designed to speed up recovery after games, at the £700-per-night St Regis hotel in Saudi Arabia, and in plain sight were his swollen feet.

It's safe to say that his battle-hardened trotters, looking weathered from all their goalscoring action, caused a stir on the internet.

'Twenty-two years of pro footy man look at his feet.. he wakes up with crazy pain everyday for sure,' one fan wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

'Look at his feet man, imagine the pain everyday,' another said.

One chimed in with wisdom. 'The price footballers pay that we don’t get to see.'

Another wrote: 'This [is] one of the silent battles players have to go through imagine the pain.'

It's all very understandable, considering that Ronaldo's feet have been through the proverbial wars for the last 22 years.

He has amassed a jaw-dropping 1,248 appearances for club and country, getting those feet kicked, trod on, studded, and scraped,