Bad Wigins wrote:
An olympic gold medalist presumably enjoys a reasonably secure life economically and a high level of health care, unless they foolishly squander it somehow. So you can't assume that they get there from their athleticism, they are only reaching typical upper-class ages.
World elite leaders have even greater longevity. Queen Elizabeth, Mandela, Mugabe, Ramses II, Fidel, Carter, Bush, are just a few who made it past 90.
My view of athletic elites is they burned the metabolic candle at both ends in their teens and 20's and should have fewer stem cells remaining afterward, causing them to age faster. Once they get to 70 or 75 they are like rotting zombies animated by the pure hate they acquired decades before. They last a few more years that way.
Hmmm...so burning the metabolic candle at both ends for 20 years, reduced stem cells, pumping themselves silly with every illegal black market PED they could get their hands on (according to you), and yet maybe 1 in 100 Olympic medalists are dying of cancer or stroke or heart disease in their middle age?? And back in the 60's and such the chances of even the best health care prolonging your life much once you had been diagnosed with any type of cancer was pretty abysmal.
Politicians and world leaders are not a good example as they tend to reach their positions when they are already middle-aged, not their early twenties as with athetes. Despite this, they do often die earlyish, for example in the UK john Smith, labour leader, died 65. Charles Kennedy, Lib Dem leader, died 55. Health care for royalty is on a different planet to health care for middle-class athletes, and in any case, royal lines are the result of selection (what a surprise that Harry didn't get engaged to a fat Glaswegian chip shop worker smoking 40 a day).
Maybe my original post title was over the top, but the point is that looking at Olympic medalists, there is no reason to believe whatsoever that intense running shortens lifespan. A simple study looking at the lifespans of Olympic finalists through history would be more scientific than any of the junk science studies concluding that excess running does increase mortality risks. At a minimum, I'd expect that a proper analysis would reveal that Olympic medalists had a much lower mortality rate in middle-age than the average person over the last 100 years.
One more - London 1948 :
100m Harrison Dillard - living age 96
200m Mel Patton - died aged 89
400m Arthur Wint - died age 72
800m Mal Whitfield - died aged 91
1500m Henry Eriksson - died aged 79
5000m Gaston Reiff - died age 71
10000m Emil Zatopek - died aged 78
110mH William Porter - died aged 73
400mH Roy Cochran - died aged 62
3000mSC Tore Sjostrand - died aged 89
(the Marathon winner died in a car accident in his 60's).