32 is the new 22?

[Truzzcat]

I am a bit of a sports junky and on top of that very interested in working out as well as pharmacology. The last year or two in our sport has been seen very much as a youth movement and then final X happened. We had a 35, 33, 31 and 30 year old make the team. looking at last years world championships we had a 30 year old Uguev putting on the best performance of his career, Gadzhimagomedov made his first world finals at 30 years old and Sadulaev at 30 is seemingly better than ever. Outside of wrestling looking to our close friend mma, 35 was the age where it was pretty much universally understood you were done. This year we had a 35 and 37 year old win belts as enormous underdogs and there is also another reigning champion who is 37 and one who is 36, makachev is 34. For any Tennis fans Novak is still one of the very best in the world at 39 and now Messi and Ronaldo are putting up each of their best world cups statistically at 39 and 41 respectively. What this thread is really supposed to accomplish I am not entirely sure but I thought it was very interesting and wondered what you guys think could be contributing factors here or if its just a coincidence and will not be a trend.

 

Lewis Hamilton also won his first Grand Prix in over 2 years at age 41 and his first not under Mercedes.

[LJB]

First and foremost…

Hamilton won a world championship with McLaren before he ever went to Mercedes…

as to the rest…

money… science… nutrition… pharmaceuticals…

the order could be argued…

Edited July 5 by LJB

[Sulyvahn]

MMA isn't run like a pure sport, so it doesn't surprise me "champions" are older. In these popularity incentivized systems, it takes time to build up the brand and reputation for the match makers to give you the path. So they'll always be artificially old. If MMA had normal tournaments and standard meritocratic structures, we'd see much younger success

I don't think early to mid 30s are old for upper weight wrestlers, not back then or today. Big Bruce medaled at the olympics at 36 in the 90s and peaked from 31-35, Medved won gold at 35 in the 70s. Roschillin won gold at the Olympics at 40 in 1972. 

Djokovich has declined though and is generally a big under dog when the top 2 payers are in form. Tennis players were retiring at unusually young ages in the 80s-2000s, but that wasn't the case in the 70s and before. Laver, Rosewall, Connors all had long careers. 

Part of that is World Cup inflation, they expanded the amount of teams and added an extra game. So these players have had more chances to stat pad against garbage squads. Messi is having a great world cup, Ronaldo from my understanding did not have a good one at all and was a burden on his team. 

I do think there is a general trend for longer careers (a multitude of reasons), but maybe it is also a cyclical rebound form the stunted length of the previous era, a revision to lengths before that.