I disagree. Injuries are so ubiquitous in the NFL that you cannot discount that aspect of retirement. The average career is 4 seasons almost entirely because of wear and tear on the body.
As for Jerry Rice, I could use the same logic to say that boxers are competitive into their late 40s; look at George Foreman. The exception demonstrates the norm.
Having said that, I think women’s gymnastics probably has the shortest window. Adult bodies are at a distinct disadvantage, so the career window closes not long after puberty. (Not true for the men, though, which seems a bit odd to me.)
The problem I’m having is that no one has yet defined ‘competitive performance’ or 'age time windows '.
Is a person cosidered competitive if they are still competing, even if they aren’t winning? If a person wins a medal at 12 and then continues to compete, but never wins anything until they retire at 52, have they been comptitive for 40 years? If a person started playing at age 12 but never registered as a blip, then at age 52 wins an olympic medal, has that person been competititve for 40 years?
And what do you need to win to be considered competitive. I’m sure many USPGA winners in their 60s could still win at small, rural golf clubs. Does that mean they are still competitive? What about winning in master’s divisions?
Very tricky question to answer without defining what you mean. Perhaps we should start by asking who is the oldest person ever to win a world-class competition in any sport.
I think Billiards has to be right at the top of the list. Loree Jon Jones won the U.S. Open at age 14, and there have been players that were still competitive in their 70’s and 80’s. Bob Marshall won the Australian billiard Championship at age 76.
That’s a 62 year spread between ages for two champions. That’s pretty hard to beat.
But was Jones winnning anything 10 years later? And had Marshall won anything 40 years earlier? And if not, does that count as an age time window?
Must be something in the water in Australia. There was some geriatric bloke won an ultramarathon there as well. The thing is he’d never won anything before, so I’d be reticent to say that ultramarathon running is a long term sport. The stress is just to high for continued performance even if you can still start at 65.
Yes, Jones is still winning, and she must be close to 40 now. Actually, I think she may have recently retired because of her family commitments - not because she can’t play.
There are plenty of players who had very long careers. Take Willie Mosconi, for example. He was a child prodigy. He played the world champion (Ralph Greenleaf) credibly when he was SEVEN years old. He won his first world championship when he was 28 years old, and then won FOURTEEN more of them. In 1954, when he was 41 years old, he set the world record continuous ball run of 526 balls. Unfortunately, he suffered a stroke a few years later that ended his competitive career, but at that time he was still getting better and he was well into his 40’s. Given that there are tons of competitive professional players that still play well in their 60’s and 70’s, if Mosconi hadn’t had that stroke he may have been winning pool championships for 70 years.
Willie Hoppe is another child prodigy who remained competitive for many decades. He turned pro at age 14, and didn’t retire as a pro player until he was 65.
Grady Matthews was a child prodigy, and he’s still active on the pro tour at age 60. Buddy Hall won the national 9-ball championship at 53, represented the USA in the world championships at 56, and he’s still playing today.
But really, any sport that doesn’t require strength, flexibility, and endurance probably qualifies. Consider air racing and aerobatics - because of the large amount of money required, these are often sports for older men and women. Chuck Yeager and Bob Hoover were still actively flying warbirds into their late 70’s, and Yeager was working as an active test pilot until 1997, when he was 74. Hoover was flying air shows superbly in his late 70’s.
My goodness. Where to start fighting the ignorance evident in that statement?
If you wear skates out onto a skating rink, expect to be thoroughly reviled. Your blades would chew up the pebbling in a hurry, and everyone, but everyone, will hate you for it.
Curling is actually rather strenuous. If you don’t believe me, try playing lead or second for 8 ends. Sweeping is very hard work, especially if you’re going to sweep well enough to be competitive. Mind you, the more accurately you can throw, the less your sweepers have to work.
That said, top curlers remain competitive for a long time. Probably roughly similar to golf. You don’t see very many guys over 40 or so on the front end of rinks in the Briar, though, which probably says something. The third and skip might be getting on, but the lead and second are almost always younger guys.
Oh, and unlike chess, curling is an Olympic sport.
How about someone who was World Champion continuously for 26 years in a true sport (i.e. one which involves real athletic prowess as well as hand-eye coordination?
The sport: Tennis, aka Real Tennis(UK), Court Tennis(US), Royal Tennis (Australia), and jeu de paume (France), the forerunner (dating back to the 12th century) of the modern game that most people today call “Tennis”.
The player: Pierre Etchebaster, a Basque who was born in 1893, became a renowned pelota player, played his first game of jeu de paume in 1922, and was World Champion from 1928 through 1954, before retiring in 1955 at age 62.
My sports law professor told me boxing is one of the shortest-careered sports (the well known guys being the exceptions). Supposedly it’s problematic because litigation can last longer than the boxer’s whole career.
Jockeys can have a pretty long interval of success. Willie Shoemaker won the Kentucky Derby when he was 54. Many jockeys ride into their 50’s and some into their 60’s.
The oldest olympic champion in history was in the running deer shoot, a competition no longer included. Nordic gentleman, I believe, somewhere in his 80’s at the win
Despite the name, real deer weren’t used. But in the 1900 games, there was a pigeon shooting contest that did use live pigeons, but I believe that is the only time animals were deliberately killed for an Olympic event.
I’m sure some horses in the equestrian events have died of injuries or had to be euthanized.
Sumo wrestlers tend to retire pretty quickly. They get recruited as soon as they finish middle school, reach the pro ranks (juryo and above) in their early 20’s, and generally retire (or start doing poorly enough that they drop back down out of the pro ranks) in their late 20’s. Basically, being that heavy and continually slamming into people equally heavy makes your knees, back and ankles very vulnerable to injury.
Occasional stars with exceptional talent and even more exceptional family connections (coughtakanohanacough) manage to ascend to the pros in their teens, while some who are built more like linebackers than hippos (Chiyonofuji or Terao) manage to stay competitive well into their mid-30’s. For the most part, though, even the champions at Yokozuna level are all retired by 30.
For females, I think figure skating… they have to train while young, and then once puberty hits and they get all fat in the hips, they get screwed to some extent.
Even longer! Paul Newman, who turns 79 in about a week, came in fifth in a sports car race in 2003, and according to this site “He is the oldest driver to win a major sanctioned race, having won in 1995 at the age of 70.”
Also Sam Stone, although I think the world of Bob Hoover (not so much Chuck Yeager, he’s a major PITA), flying airshows isn’t the same as participating in aerobatics competitions. But I don’t happen to know how old aerbatic competitors have gotten.
For team sports which require running and strenuous athletic activity, I think cricket must rank up there with the sport with the longest age span. Hasan Raza played Test cricket for Pakistan at the age of 14 (OK, that’s how old they think he was…a bit of doubt still exists), and Wilfred Rhodes played his last Test for England at age 52, so a 38-year span for International play. I myself have played cricket with other guys from age 11 to 70…the 70-year-old was captain of our side and still could bowl long spells.
Curling has been mentioned a number of times, so let me add some observations. If by competitive you mean still playing and winning major tournaments, then my observation is that players seem to decline rapidly once they hit around 45. They start to get competitive in their early 20s, so there is at most a 25 year span. Maybe most similar to baseball.
By the way, they certainly don’t wear skates, but not sneakers either. They actually wear two different shoes, one a sliding shoe that is something like a bowling shoe and the other sticks to the ice. The skip (who stands at the far end and directs the play of his team) wears a rubber on his sliding shoe that he takes off when it is his turn to throw.
For the shortest, I would nominate gymnastics. Women especially seem to stop being competitive at age 16. I wonder whether that would change if there were some kind of pro career possible.
I just read about a woman in her forties who was still competing in gymnastics. Depends upon what you mean by competitive performance.
For co-ed two person matches, there are competitions that do not award medals, but professional matches occur–although not sanctioned–from age less than ten to into the hundreds. But I left my almanac at home and I can’t remember what the sport is called.
Fencing isn’t too bad for long careers. There are top fencers in the US who are 14 or 15, but last year’s US Division I National Champion in men’s epee was over 50. You can find fencers who are over 80 and still competing – they don’t move very fast, but they have perfect technique and they’re very, very sneaky.