Tom Watson didn t make it. It doesn t look like Lance Armstrong will either. Last week, Watson lost his bid to become the oldest British Open champion while Armstrong, currently clinging precariously to third place, will most likely fall short as he attempts to win an eighth Tour de France. But at the age of 59, Watson, and the 37-year-old Armstrong are showing that the skills which made them great when they were young haven t faded away with the years. The two elderly citizen stars are great examples that age is not a barrier to competing at the highest levels. The evidence is overwhelming elsewhere. Dara Torres won three Olympic silvers as a 41-year-old swimmer mom in last summer s Beijing Olympics. The English footballer Sir Stanley Matthews was a vegetarian teetotaler who kept fit enough to play at the top level until he was 50, the oldest player ever to play in England s top football division. He played his final competitive game at the age of 55, for Hibernians in Malta. Cameroonian Roger Milla, named one of the 125 greatest living football players, achieved international stardom at 38 years old by scoring four goals at the 1990 World Cup, then at 42 played in the next World Cup, scoring against Russia which set a record as the oldest goalscorer in a World Cup tournament. Tennis s Martina Navratilova was 49 when she called it a day, and not before 48 did NFL quarterback George Blanda decide the time had come. Older athletes cannot realistically hope to perform near the level at which they were able to perform in their mid-20s. Staying fit and maintaining endurance is a challenge as big as the opposition. The oldies lose distance because of loss of muscle. They lose flexibility in their shoulders and spine. They can t rotate as well as they used to and can t generate the same head of speed. While many older athletes find that they can continue to perform tough workouts well into their 40s, they cannot do them as often. But many athletes do seemingly go on forever. There s no magic to longevity in sports. It s simply a matter of taking care of your body when you re young and adapting your training and lifestyle in appropriate ways as you get older. To be a great old athlete you probably had to have been a great young athlete. All were at one point extraordinarily good, so they have skills; the challenge is how to keep going. Believe it or not, there are actually advantages to getting older, even for athletes. One of these advantages is accumulated knowledge of one's own body, particularly as it reacts to various types of training. In other words, the more experience you have in training for a particular sport, the better able you become (supposing you pay attention) to determine which exercises, drills, workouts and training patterns work well for you and which ones are less effective, or downright counterproductive. So you have to design a training program that minimizes the less useful training and maximizes the stuff that gives you the greatest performance bang for the training buck. If older athletes go through a program of daily stretching only those muscles that have become short and tight, if they allow themselves more time to recover between their most demanding training sessions, if they eat the right foods and know when to eat them, and treat themselves to an extra half hour or hour of sleep each night, they ll look, feel and perform like they were 10 years younger. It used to be that 30 was old for an athlete. That s changed. Now, professional athletes routinely peak in their late 30s and remain competitive even into their 40s. At the age of 45, George Foreman made history as the oldest heavyweight boxer to win the title. England s goalkeeper Peter Shilton finished playing 1005 league games at the age of 47. Ice hockey legend Gordie Howe, then 46, stuck around long enough to play alongside his two teenage sons. Things leave us as we get older. Endurance goes and fatigue sets in. There are limits to what the body can do and take. But the successes of comparative geezers like Watson and Armstrong (try at Armstrong s age to bicycle 3,500 km of mountain terrain in 23 days) is inspirational, not just for the pros but amateurs alike. It challenges notions of an age limit to successful competition and gives all of us who are past our prime a reason to be active. If you are 55 and trying to be 25, you can t. If you re 55 and trying to be a fit 55-year-old, you can.
