From Ronaldo to Hamilton, sport’s elite defy their age

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Cristiano Ronaldo was 40 last month and is top scorer in Saudi soccer’s top flight. Lewis Hamilton hit the same age in January after an eighth Formula One title. LeBron James, also recently 40, is the first NBA player to score 50,000 combined points.

They are big name examples of the growing multitude of modern sportspeople performing at remarkable levels at an age when in yesteryear they would probably be long retired. Experts attribute the growing longevity in elite sport to a host of steadily-evolving conditions: from improved diet and mental wellbeing to better recovery and training facilities.

“A whole constellation of factors … it’s like pouring gasoline,” Canadian performance nutritionist Dr Marc Bubbs, author of “Peak” about science in sport, told Reuters of the additional factors fuelling top performance.

In his field – nutrition – athletes are far more thoughtful about what they eat, some hiring chefs to prepare tailored meals, others like Hamilton embracing high-fibre, plant-based diets. “They should be getting injured more, but they aren’t,” added Bubbs of the improved health for older competitors.

In Europe’s top five soccer leagues, the number of over-35 players topped 100 for the first time in 2020 and has been there for all but one of the following years, according to database Transfermarkt. By contrast, in 1980, there were only 12 men of that age playing in those elite leagues. In tennis, the trio of Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer famously dominated their sport into ages that would previously have been considered prime.

Still at it aged 37, Djokovic attests to the advances in nutritionary science after switching to a gluten-free diet mid-career. “Suddenly there was an X factor, a change in my diet that allowed my body to perform the way it was meant to,” he wrote in his book “Serve to Win”. The ATP men’s singles top 100 currently has more than 10 over-30s, with five of them over-35 whereas back in 1995 there were six over-30s.

In women’s tennis too, 19 of the top 100 WTA singles rankings are 30-plus, with the oldest, Tatjana Maria and Laura Siegemund, both 37. Back in 2001, there had been only four 30-plus players in the top 100, according to the WTA website.

Money has been a major factor too, with ever greater riches incentivising athletes to keep pushing their bodies, plus enormous extra investment into sport. Take the NBA in the U.S. where teams are splurging ever-bigger sums on latest equipment to attract the best players and enable them to perform at their best and recover fast.

Cleveland Cavaliers plan to have a new training facility by 2027 as part of a $3.5 billion building plan.

The Detroit Pistons spent $90 million on their performance facility including a rehabilitation unit: a far cry from the gritty 1980s and 1990s when the so-called “Bad Boy” Pistons were running roughshod in more basic conditions.