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RIGOROUS TRAINING REGIMES pay off for Olympic athletes by giving them 2.8 years more on the earth than other mere mortals.
The two studies published by the British Medical Journal found that the world’s best athletes are also the healthiest.
The first study looked at 15,174 Olympic athletes, from nine country, including the United States, Germany, Nordic countries, Russia, United Kingdom, France, Italy, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, who won medals in the Olympic Games held in 1896-2010.
The second study looked at 9,889 deceased sporting heroes who had participated in at least one Olympic Games between 1896 and 1936.
The papers found that athletes who played high or moderate intensity sports have no survival advantage over those who played low intensity activities. So, those who play golf can enjoy a longer lifespan along with those who run or play soccer.
It also showed the colour of the medals won do not matter with Olympians enjoying the same survival advantage over non-Olympians.
The studies were not carried out to find out why athletes lived longer, but researchers put it down to genetic and lifestyle factors and the wealth and status that comes with sporting success.
A longer life could be in everyone’s grasp, as the paper pointed out the “overall health advantage to being fit.”
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So being physically fit and paying attention to things like nutrition and general health can help you live longer?? Who knew?
To be honest I’d have expected more than a 2.8 year difference between an Olympic athlete and Joe Public
The fact that’s it’s only 2.8 years would lead me to conclude that this study was inconclusive at best. If sports didn’t exist then the potential athletes would live longer than the average person – purely because the average includes unhealthy people. It has possibly nothing to do with the actual exercise, and more to do with statistical sample bias.
This. Changes. Everything
But how much of that 2.8 years was spent in the gym wishing they were down the juicer?
Common sense really -exercise =health …not exactly earth shattering news….hope Steve Redgrave has a good pension he will be around for a long time with all the Olympics he has been part off
That’s interesting and, actually, I don’t think it’s as intuitively obvious as other people here seem to think. Yes, of course Olympic athletes are insanely fit and that’s generally good for your health, but top-level sports people also push themselves incredibly hard: they can end up with long-term injuries; some sports, such as gymnastics or those requiring a weigh-in, can encourage unhealthy eating patterns and that’s even before you get into drugs.
I would be interested in: a) knowing how Olympic athletes compare to people who are extremely fit although not quite elite level, since those people probably gain much of the benefits of exercise/diet (although not of wealth/status) without some of the disadvantages mentioned above; b) seeing a break-down of the data by country/era to see whether the benefits that accrue from the increased wealth earned by being an Olympian vary across time and space – for example, it would make sense to me if, say, a modern East African athlete gained more relative to his/her compatriots compared to someone from a well-off Western country; and c) seeing how drugs play into all this. It wouldn’t surprise me if cycling bucked the trend.
Anyway, I think I’ll buck the trend of the other commenters here and say that this is well worth a study.
Is this possibly linked to their strong genetics & DNA! Surely the ones that rise to the top have pretty strong genes to have actually succeeded in the first place and therefore it’s nothing to do with their lifestyle at all??
So the drugs do work
Serves them right for interfering with nature’s plan for us to have a good time.
As Homer would say, DOH!
My Grandmother had 9 kids and lived till 93, she had a 3 storey house and climbed those stairs for 70 years!
70 years??!!! Should have got her a stair lift
Hmmmm….Flo Jo….
have your say