Before the curtain falls: a jaunt into gerontology

When I wrote the article on age factors my friend P. Motis (an excellent decathlete, when we were young, and one of the first greek athletes to high-jump in the Fosbury style) complained (jokingly) that my article which quantified the decline of older athletes was depressing. Well, today I am going to go one step further: what happens to athletes when they get really old. (I am aware that the notion of "old" is a relative one. Here I will be using it in its wider acceptance, i.e. referring to persons of at least 65 years of age).

This post of mine was inspired by the recent IAAF guide to sports nutrition published in the International Journal of Sports Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism. I started reading an article on the nutrition for master athletes and was sent to an article by H. Tanaka and D. Seals where they discuss the decline of performance with age. They present several curves showing the dependence of running time (for 10 km and the Marathon) on age. 

Unfortunately the running time is not a good indicator over such large spans (although it is the main thing of interest to the athlete). If one must make a rigorous analysis one must refer to the energetic cost of the activity and when one deals with running the mean velocity is a good representation thereof. Thus I have taken the men master's records over 1500 m, computed the mean velocity and plotted it as a function of age.

The dip, Tanaka and Seals are talking about, is definitely there. Ageing champions manage to contain the damages of age up till roughly 75 years but then things start going south. How do Tanaka and Seals explain this? In their analysis (presented in a review which appeared in the Journal of Applied Physiology in 2003, volume 93, pages 2152-2162) they argue that this sharp decline should be attributed to a reduction in maximal oxygen consumption, what physiologist call the maximal aerobic capacity (VO2max) and which is intimately related to the energetic cost of the exercise. They present an interesting graphic of the dependence of the VO2max on age: 

The apparent greater rate of decline for endurance-trained women compared to the sedentary ones is somewhat misleading. Once one computes the percentages of decline for the two populations the rates become comparable, just as the maximal heart rates observed. 

Tanaka and Seals formulate the hypothesis that the greater absolute rate of decline in VO2max in endurance-trained adults is mediated by the greater decline in maximal stroke volume and, therefore, the maximal cardiac output.

But there is another effect contributing to the sharp decline of performances, the reduction in the exercise velocity at the lactate threshold. (The lactate threshold is defined as the exercise intensity at which blood lactate concentrations increase significantly above the baseline). However it seems that the reduction in the lactate threshold is more pronounced for middle-aged athletes and is not the main cause of the nosedive in performances after 80.

One interesting conclusion of these findings is that if one wishes to maintain an as high as possible VO2max one should devote oneself to higher-intensity aerobic exercises. They have the accrued benefit of maintaining a high lactate threshold.

I am aware that this statement is at odds with the current recommendations which advocate participation in low-intensity aerobic activities for ageing persons. However I think that it is the best strategy in order to compress morbidity, in the words of J.F. Fries (you can find his seminal 1980 article on he subject in The  New England Journal of Medicine, volume 303, pages 130-135). The objective is to extend the adult vigour far into a life span (which appears to be more or less fixed) and compress the period of senescence as near as possible to the end of life. Vigorous exercise is essential in maintaining general health and quality of life.

Having presented the bad news for endurance-based disciplines I asked myself whether the sharp decline observed for middle- and long-distance running was present in all athletics events. I remembered my post on a model on the dependence of the performance on age where I was able to fit the data on the record of men's high-jump as a function of age. The model did not go beyond 70 since the physiological data available did not extend beyond this age. However the world record was available up to the age of 100 and did not show any substantial dip. I decided thus to look up the world records for men's long jump, in the master category. They are represented in the graphic below.

The straight line corresponds to a fit over the ages 40 to 90. It is amazing that all records appear to lie on the line. (The explanation for the one point clearly above the line for 35-year old athletes is that it is due to the 8.50 m performance of Carl Lewis and Larry Myrricks). It is really impressive that only at 95 do we see a dip and, moreover, the 95-100 line is roughly parallel to the 40-90 one and not plummeting like the velocity one. So most probably, and given that nothing similar is observed in high jump, the decrease in performance is probably due to the fact that it is difficult to find athletes in this age bracket. What is the possible explanation of this? The two jumps are essentially based on anaerobic processes and strength and it is my feeling that for these two physiological factors the decline is regular without any significant sudden drop. (Unfortunately most physiological studies stop at 80 and thus I could not find any data in order to support this statement).

I know, those are not very good news, but, at least, one has up to 80 before seeing any noticeable decline. What happens after that, well, if one is lucky to reach that age in good health able to participate in masters' competitions one should be content with this, and not care much about the dip in performances. 

An interview with D. Mpontikoulis, the creator of the "Fokianos" Athens Athletics Museum

As the regular readers of this blog may recall I did not have a decent photo of a stone used in the stone-throw event, when I published the corresponding article. I discussed the matter with my friend K. Tsagkarakis and he told me that he had a solution. There were plenty of stones in the Athletics Museum of D. Mpontikoulis. 

Sir Sebastian inaugurating the museum

So, on my next visit to Athens I had the occasion to visit the museum and meet its curator, D. Mpontikoulis. I though about writing a short article on this visit but I decided that it was better to give the photo of the stones (you can find it in my article on greek-style throws) and write an extensive article based on an interview with D. Mpontikoulis. So, on another visit to Athens, I had the pleasure of a long discussion around a cup of coffee before visiting, again, the I. Fokianos National Athletics Museum. 

The Fokianos centre, where the museum is hosted

Situated in the heart of Athens just across the Panathenaic Stadium, the one that hosted the 1896 and 1906 Olympics, the museum is a treasure trove for all athletics fans.

A view of the museum with the collection of throwing stones

BG Mr. Mpontikoulis, can you tell us something about your athletic past?
DM When I was young I was a race walker. I started in the local club of my hometown Larissa, and, having success as a junior, I got a transfer to Panathinaikos. I participated to major competitions under the colours of Panathinaikos during 11 years. 

A portrait of the museum curator D. Mpontikoulis

I obtained four greek champion titles over 20 km and 7-8 silver or bronze medals. I put an end to my competition activities in 1971 at 33 years of age. I have always been in love with athletics and when I stopped competing I asked myself what would be the next stage. There was an abundance of judges and administrators, while for coaching I was not a specialist. My studies have been in cinema, theatre and painting and my professional career was in video journalism for the greek television. Thanks to my job I could establish contacts with ex-champions and I got the idea to devote myself to the history of athletics, something nobody else was taking care of. I started in fact in 1965 and continue till this day, since at 82 years of age I am in good health and can pursue this enterprise.

Another view of the museum

I knew where to ask. If someone unknown had decided to start working on the history of athletics he would have faced great difficulties. Not myself. Many ex-athletes known to me continued as judges, as administrators, as coaches. I started asking around and I managed to collect 4500 biographies from 1870 till today. I have also a collection of 70000 photos. The oldest one is of I. Fokianos who gave the name to the museum. (We'll come back to him later on). 

The photo of I. Fokianos

The photo was taken in Athens but developed in Paris, since there were no photo labs in Greece at that time. Given the fact that Fokianos looks very young the photo may be from 1860, 1865 or 1870 at the latest. The photo collection starts from this one and goes on till today since I am taking photos at all the national (panhellenic) championships of all specialities, as well as of the national team. I have 400 different kinds of diplomas (and of course many of a given kind). I have published an album of the diplomas. I have 5500-6000 medals. I have in my possession the first medal in the history of greek athletics, from 1859, from the Zappas Olympics, which were held also in 1870, 1875 and 1888. That's the origin of modern greek athletics.

A small part of the medals collection of the museum

BG How did you manage to find all these medals?
DM Asking around. When you have spent 55 years in this business you end up finding things.  I got the idea of creating a museum when I was hospitalised. I was injured by a car when competing in the Balkan Games. Throughout my almost 20 years career I was training twice per week. One time I was doing 10 km and the other 20-25 km. I was training on the road and never had any problem and I was hit by a car during the Balkan Games under the protection of the traffic controlling police. The car had a breakdown, entered the opposite lane and hit me. Fortunately that was at the beginning of the race and I could react promptly rolling over the hood of the car and avoiding more serious injuries. While in the hospital I was telling myself that this was the end of it. I was 27 years old and the injuries turned out to be not very serious so I could go back to training and competition from the next year, obtaining two more national champion titles. In 1971 I obtained a third place in the greek championships, at 33 years of age, and decided to call it quits. That's when I started occupying myself with the history of athletics.

The blog's author together with D. Mpontikoulis

Being a cameraman at the greek television I was often filming competitions and had access to the archives of old competitions which I copied. I started collecting films (kilometres of them). After 1971, with more time at my disposal, I started collecting photos, diplomas, medals, stamps and books. I have books written by athletics lovers, like the ones of our friend K. Tsagkarakis. Kostas has a unique record: he has run and finished 41 classical Marathons, something no-one else has done in Greece. There are also books written by champions. These are not necessarily books on athletics, but rather in the specialty of each. There is for instance the 1904 book of A. Papamarkos who wrote on the hot springs of Greece, after having visited them all himself, despite the difficulties of the time.

G. Papavasileiou, the flying steeplechaser

BG Where did you find all these books?
DM Take for instance Papamarkos. I knew his specialty and so I wondered if he had written anything on the subject. Asking around I found it. That's how I built my collection. And after 55 years there are very few missing items. Concerning the biographies of the athletes only very few are missing, barely a dozen. Either they emigrated, or died in the various wars, or retired to their native places without any further contact with athletics. I recently learned about somebody who was decorated at the Panionian games of 1904, held in Smyrna, Hadjimichael. This honour implied that he was an exceptional athlete, sprinter and hurdler. I learned that he had studied hydraulics in Denmark. One day I fell upon an old book on the Marathon lake. I purchased it (at an exorbitant price) and I found inside the hierarchy of those who had worked in order to bring the water from the Marathon lake to Athens. And lo and behold there was the photo of Hadjimichael inside. He was around 40 at that time. I had his photo as a 20 years old and he had not changed at all. Knowing where he had worked I tried to find more on him, but without success.

Steeplechasing, the heroic times

BG But sometimes miracles happen. (I refer here to a personal experience. Click here if you are interested).
DM These last years I am devoting myself to the spiritual heritage of the museum. I also travel a lot. I have photographed all the ancient stadia around the Mediterranean all the way to Spain and even in Trabzon. There I visited the stadium where the Myriad of Xenophon was trained (now a garden). Not only stadia, of course, but also gymnasia, palaestrae and hippodromes. The best hippodrome is the one in Tunga in Tunisia. The turning points were materialised by sculpted stone, not wood as in most other places.

BG How did you manage to discover all this?
DM It's a question of organisation. It is known that around the Mediterranean there were 4000 greek villages and cities. Most of them had gymnasia and palaestrae. The majority are today in Turkey and Italy, in particular in Sicily. Archaeology books furnish information. Consulates also help since they do have information on antiquities for tourism reasons. I have now spotted two new stadia in Turkey and Sicily and I will visit them in summer.

That's how I managed to collect all this. It took effort and devotion. I speak only a smatter of french and english but I manage. I have good maps.

BG I have heard from Kostas that previously the museum was in a different place occupying a greater surface.
DM This is true. Previously it extended over 600 square meters but now it hardly surpasses 200 sq. m. Why did I choose to come here. There is a part of the facilities that is unfinished since 1926. Up till 1926 the gymnasium was a wooden construction. 

A photo of the first gymnastics academy of Fokianos

It was then demolished and the new facilities were built. At that time there was no demand for something larger. So a part of what was planned got never built. The Fokianos Gymnasium became the first physical education academy of Greece. The first teachers, "the teachers of the teachers", were educated here. The facilities are under the direction of the Ministry of Education, for traditional reasons, together with the shooting range of Kaisariani. (All other sports installation belong to the Ministry of Sports). 

This is the place where Ioannis Fokianos was teaching. It is now time to talk about this exceptional man. He was born in 1845 and died in May 1896, just after the Athens Olympics. He was very seriously ill during the Olympiad. (Suffering from diabetes he sustained a wound and did not recover). I. Chrysafis, in his book, states that the Olympic Committee ignored Fokianos and did not give him a award. I don't believe this. When he wrote this in 1935 Chrysafis was already old and had probably forgotten many things. I think that it had more to do with the fact that Fokianos was dying at the time. Many people who contributed to the development of sports were awarded at that time. How could they ignore the number one? The awards were gilded medals. There is one in the museum. Its story is interesting. During the Athens Games the foreign VIPs were lodging at the Grande Bretagne hotel. Whenever they fancied some tourism they took a horse-drawn carriage accompanied by some local aristocrat who could speak foreign languages. One of those guides was Vamvakas, the father of the sprinter N. Vamvakas (who shined before the second WW). After having accompanied one of the VIPs, Vamvakas understood that the person was wishing to visit the Sounion temple and did not hesitate to take him there. Upon returning the foreign VIP asked whether there was something to pay for this excursion. Vamvakas replied that the excursion was a simple proof of greek hospitality and the foreign VIP offered him his commemorative medal. 

The 1896 commemorative olympic medal

N. Vamvakas died young and I did not meet him. But his wife was alive, a french lady, Renée. She knew me from athletics and she gave me the mementos they had, including the medal, and told me that I had to do something with the medal. So I decided, in a special ceremony with the people from the ministries, to award the medal, posthumously, to I. Fokianos.

Now, about Fokianos. He had studied physics and mathematics but he was convinced that without physical education young people were too soft. He met with great resistance. The common lore was that now that Greece was liberated from the Othman rule there was no need for training and strength. Fokianos was of the opposite point of view. He believed that a well trained man was better at his every day occupation. Only a certain class of society was caring about target shooting, and this because of its practical use (on live target). Fokianos started from zero. He created the first physical education academy. The first students were following a 45 days' course. He managed to introduce gymnastics in high schools. People did not care about gymnastics. But Fokianos persisted. He devoted his life to that. His brother died from a fall from the fixed bar. Still he continued. He never married. 

D. Mpontikoulis with a bamboo pole 
(that was the first time I saw a bamboo pole close up)

There are no medals of Fokianos. I would have liked to offer to Pres. Coe or other Olympians who have visited the museum a medal. There was a plan to make a 
bust but it did not advance for lack of money. But I have a hope since I personally know many artists.

Here ends the Marathon-long interview with D. Mpontikoulis. It was a great privilege for me to have this discussion with the creator of this superb Athletics Museum. 
And an advice to all of you, athletics fans. If you visit Athens do  include a visit to the museum in your plans. It is a unique experience.

Is the sordid treatment of pregnant athletes over?

I remember watching the video of A. Montaño participating in the 2014 US athletics championships and finishing her 800 m race in an amazing 2:32.13 while 8-months pregnant.

Montaño running while 8-months pregnant

(And she did it again in 2017 while 5-months pregnant, running in 2:21.40).
At the time I was thinking (quite naïvely, I admit) that she did it just to show that it can be done. Well, the story is quite different. When Montaño told Nike she was pregnant, they told her they would pause her sponsorship contract and stop paying her. 

and again when 5-months pregnant

And, of course, A. Montaño (a world bronze medalist) was not the only elite female runner who had had problems with her sponsor because she decided to become a mother. World vice-champion, K. Goucher recently decided to break her nondisclosure agreement with Nike in order to make a public statement concerning the treatment the company reserved to future moms. But although both Montaño and Goucher are great champions they pale when compared to multiple World and Olympic champion A. Felix. One would have thought that Felix would have been pampered by Nike. Nothing is farthest from the truth. 

A. Felix and her new-born daughter

When A. Felix decided to have a baby she knew that she was taking a risk. Felix gave birth having to undergo an emergency C-section at 32 weeks because of severe pre-eclampsia and then Nike pressured her to return to training as soon as possible while deciding to pay her 70 percent less than before. And the funny thing is that A. Felix had decided to join Nike because of their initiative called the Girl Effect that promoted adolescent girls as the key to improving societies around the globe. Of course Nike keeps pretending they are promoting gender equality and claiming to elevate female athletes. 

In order to fully grasp the problem one must understand that the economics of athletics are different form those of other professional sports where athletes receive a salary. In athletics the athletes' income comes almost exclusively from sponsorship deals inked with apparel companies. Of course, the absolute best athletes supplement this income with prize money from winning races, but most must contend themselves with the sponsoring money which just allows them to earn a decent living: they do not get rich but the get to do what they love.

After the New York Times published the results of their investigation with interviews of several champion moms, Nike could no more ignore the chorus of critics and keep pretending that all was fine. In an official statement they acknowledged that "as is common practice in our industry, our agreements do include performance-based payment reductions. Historically, a few female athletes had performance-based reductions applied.” In a memo addressed to Nike employees, A. Montagne, a company vice president, referred to Ms Montano and Ms Felix and wrote that she was “saddened” to hear of Ms Felix’s experience with the company. Ms Montagne wrote that Nike realised last year that performance obligations had a disproportionate effect on female athletes who became pregnant and that the company began creating an official maternity policy. But, she wrote, the company had not informed its sponsored athletes of that effort. (Does anybody have trouble believing this? Well, I do).

K. Goucher and her son

All is well that ends well? Not so fast! The N.Y. Times report that a 2019 track and field Nike sponsorship contract still includes a clause that says Nike can cut sponsorship pay when athletes don’t meet their performance goals “for any reason.”

Moreover, when asked if Nike would be awarding back pay to female athletes who had been penalised in the past, the spokesperson did not respond.

Of course Nike is not the only villain in this story. The same policy prevails in most apparel companies. And, in fact, following the Nike debacle several brands came forward to announce new contractual guarantees for women who have children while being supported by their sponsorships.

But wait, there's more (although this is a US-specific thing). The american elite athletes receive health insurance from the U.S. Olympic Committee and U.S.A. Track & Field. But that insurance can vanish if women don’t place in the top tier of the nation’s most competitive races. In fact K. Goucher and A. Montaño both lost their health insurance because they were unable to compete at that level while having their children. US indoor champion P. Wright had some very apt remarks concerning athletics and motherhood. She  dubbed pregnancy "the kiss of death" for an athlete's career and went on to point out that “some people think women are racing pregnant for themselves. It sometimes is, but it’s also because there’s a baby to feed”.