View: Top athletes are lengthening their ‘peak’ play as they grow old(er) by mastering their bodies
Novak Djokovic may have lost an epic Wimbledon final to Carlos Alcaraz. But it did, all things grassed and dusted, an epic performance of a 36-year-old against a 20-year-old. As we all know, just doing the maths doesn’t do justice to the epic battle that was on display.
But beyond Djokovic, a larger chronological, cellular game may be at play. Historically, world-class sportspersons tend to peak in their mid-late 20s. There is no getting around the fact that the body, in the words of Jeff Bercovici, author of the 2018 book, Play On: The New Science of Elite Performance at Any Age, ‘gets worse at rejuvenating and repairing itself’ and gets weaker.
The latter is why endurance athletes, like Kenyan long-distance runner Eliud Kipchoge, have later-career peaks than sportspersons who require to generate a lot of power, like footballers, badminton players, sprinters and tennis players. The 38-year-old Kipchoge set a world record for men last year at the 2022 Berlin marathon, clocking in at 2 hours 1 minute 9 seconds. But there is a trend now of even power sports having athletes, if not peak, then at least maintain a level of performance that was not imaginable before.
Part of the reason for this is desire. Wanting to maintain a certain stratospheric standard has pushed sportspersons to push themselves to keep their bodies as battle-worthy as their younger selves, or younger opponents. Bercovici points out two mechanisms in which this is being done:
Coaches and athletes understanding that athletes who are highly fit but accumulating a lot of fatigue are going to perform worse and sustain more injuries. Read more on economictimes.indiatimes.com
