The Team Athletics site

I came across the Team Athletics site when the author left a comment on the blog. As always I go through the comments, delete all the trash (the ones that are lightly veiled adds) and usually reply to the authors of the valid comments. In this case the situation was more interesting since Afam (the author of the comment and of Team Athletics) left me the address of his site.

I visited Team Athletics and decided that I would present it in my blog since the whole idea behind Afam's site is the "rethinking" that has spurred the creation of the present blog. The author proposes several team versions of athletics competitions.  As of this writing there are six proposals but there may be more of those in the future. Some of those, like the hurdles relay or the elimination race, resonate strongly with the ideas presented here over the years.

As always I will voice my pessimism concerning the possible adoption of such events. World Athletics is not known for their will to innovate. However the proposals in Team Athletics could very well find their way in local, friendly, competitions adding this touch of camaraderie to our, par excellence, individual discipline.

So, if you wish to have a look at some fresh ideas for our sport just go visit Team Athletics.

On compressing morbidity (or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Live with Ageing)

Yes, I know. I am plagiarising the title of Dr. Strangelove. The point is that I find it one of the best titles of a movie ever.

In my "gerontology" post I had addressed the question of what is happening when athletes get really old (by "really" I mean 80 and beyond). I did argue there that, despite the pessimistic conclusions of some scientists, things do not start really deteriorating before 80 or so.

In this post I am going to revisit the question of the ageing athlete. It somehow complements the two recent posts of mine, "On Ageing" and "On Dying". The motivation for this is a recent article by Lazarus and Harridge on the declining performances of master athletes. Although the article is quite interesting they are off on the wrong foot by using the usual arbitrary, based on time, argument. They show the dependence of the 100 m master world records on age (for men) and conclude, rather arbitrarily, on an accelerated increase around the eighth decade. They could have moved their arrow to the left or the right by a decade and present the same argument.

I have repeatedly argued in this blog that the only reliable arguments are the ones based on the velocity. So what does the velocity dependence on age tell us? The graphic below shows that a rapid decline arrives at around 90 years of age. And, to tell the truth, I am not quite sure that this is not an effect of the population of master athletes the size of which shrinks with age.  

It could be argued that the straight-line fit I present here could have been based on a different set of points, showing a performance dip occuring at earlier or later ages. This is indeed true and this would support the argument that the reports of the performance dip are greatly exaggerated.

The gist of Lazarus and Harridge argument is summarised in the graphic below.

The authors introduce what they call the "set point" theory. It is based on the hypothesis that a given threshold of physical activity is needed in order to age optimally. 

At the set point, physical activity is sufficient and health is optimised. The decrement in physiological function that occurs through the decades is governed by the inherent ageing process. Health is maintained, but at a lower physical activity level. This intertwined relationship between health and the amount of physical activity necessary to counter inactivity applies throughout the "healthspan" and morbidity is compressed. The green shaded area reflects the spread of the set points in the general population. Below the set point the negative and unpredictable effects of inactivity on physiological systems may not be perceived in the early ages, but as age progresses the added decremental effect of the inherent ageing process on an increasingly compromised physiology will result in one or more systems showing clinical disease with extended morbidity. Individuals who engage in exercise above the set point level do also counter the effects of inactivity while they age. Master athletes represent a group that are probably exercising at maximal levels. The decrement in the performance curve as age advances is due to the inherent ageing and should not be perceived as a disease process. However, according to the authors, this over-the-set-point exercise is unlikely to lead to an increase of the lifespan. The main beneficial effect on health is the maximal reduction of morbidity. 

To put it in a nutshell, do exercise if you wish to stay healthy while ageing. And if you are competition-minded do not hesitate to train, even vigorously. The effects can only be positive.

On dying

Having recently published a post on ageing, it seems fit to tackle the question of dying. As I have already explained I am interested in the question of the maximal life span having provided estimates thereof based simply on the evolution of athletic performances. By a simple analysis of the existing data I reached the conclusion that there is a maximal lifespan of 125 years. This number is in agreement with the one provided by G. West (author of the monumental work "Scale") who obtained his estimate from physics-based considerations. 

Two recent works devoted to estimates of the maximal human lifespan attracted my attention and I would like to report on them here. 

The first paper, a work of the Singapore-based biotech company Gero, looked at human resilience, i.e. how well the organism bounces back from something that puts stress on it.  They found that an 80-year-old requirεs three times longer to recover from stresses when compared to a 40-year-old. The resilience keeps decreasing with age and disappears completely at some age between 120 and 150. They obtained this estimate by studying various indicators as a function of age and plotted the inverse of variance obtained. They remarked that by extrapolating there is an age where this quantity goes to 0. This means that the variability increases indefinitely, leading to an arbitrarily long recovery time, signaling thus the demise of the individual.

The authors concluded that their work explains why "even the most effective prevention and treatment of age-related diseases could only improve the average but not the maximal lifespan". Their work shows that the recovery rate is an important signature of ageing and this could guide the development of strategies aiming at slowing the process and lead to a higher quality of life across the lifespan.  

The second paper is a work led by a team of the Harvard Medical School. Their study, which was not limited to humans, investigated the modulation of lifespan of model organisms by genetic, dietary and pharmacological interventions. In the case of humans the mortality rate grows exponentially with age, as shown in the figures below. The authors posit that a natural soft bound on the maximal achievable lifespan does exist and is situated around 138 years. They do point out that this is higher than other estimates reported in the literature, which, the authors claim, were biased due to their choice of data based on the oldest cohort of the population. Still, I find a little bit ridiculous the precision announced: 138 rather than, say, 135-140.

Reading the critiques formulated in that paper led me to look up the existing literature. A first study of mortality, from a physics perspective, gives some interesting insights. The figure below presents the death rate in the US at the beginning and the middle of the past century. While the overall mortality did decrease substantially over the years from birth to roughly an age of 30, there was no major gain of life expectancy for ages beyond this.

It is even more interesting to examine the data from France, spanning almost two centuries.  Extrapolating from the available data using Gompertz' law one finds that the death rate lines converge at an age of 120. 

Perusing the literature I came upon a paper by Dong et al. that has been severely criticised. The main critique was that the authors have splitted their dataset arbitrarily into two groups and claimed that the maximum age of death had reached a plateau which they estimated at 115. Since there is one documented case of an individual living up to an age of 122 the maximum human lifespan cannot be smaller than this. A typical value advanced is 125. 

Since this is an athletics blog it is interesting to present in detail one of the rebuttals of Dong's work based on an athletics argument, showing that one can reach wrong conclusions by arbitrarily splitting the datasets. In the figure below are presented the results for the three medalists in men's long jump for the Olympics and the World Championships.  

By partitioning the data into two groups, before and after 1991, one can reach the conclusion that there was an improvement in performance up to 1991 and deterioration thereafter. However when one analyses the data as a whole, one finds a statistically significant increase in the winning long jump distances over time.

So, after all, what is the limit of the human lifespan? As far as I am concerned, I stand by my estimate of 125. It is reached by a very simple, sports-based argument, and to me this is enough. 

And if you wonder whether simple arguments may suffice in this domain, let me remind you that the Jewish birthday wish, since time immemorial, is 
or ‘may you live till 120’.

The attire of women athletes (bonus track of "the long and arduous road of women to the Olympics")

My attention was attracted to the question of women athlete's attire because of two incidents preceding the Tokyo Olympics. First came the sanction of the norwegian beach handball team. They were fined because they chose to wear short instead of bikini bottoms during the European championships.

Apparently the rules of the International Handball Federation make the wear of bikini bottoms mandatory and they even fix the dimensions (side width of a maximum of 10 cm). Meanwhile men can wear shorts, the only proviso being that they be not too baggy. 

But, wait! Things are getting worse. O. Breen (a double paralympic world champion) , participating at the UK championships was told by an official that her sprint briefs were "too short and inappropriate". Breen was left speechless. Later on she pointed out that a similar remark "for a girl with low confidence or low self esteem, may make them feel rubbish". And she questioned whether a male competitor would be similarly criticised. 

So women can be rebuked for wearing too little (Breen) of too much (the norwegian team) clothing. 

The question of the sports clothing of women is not a new one. And of course it goes hand in hand with the sartorial restrictions imposed by "society" on women. So, the female participants of the 1900 Paris Olympics had to wear a long skirt (and, some say, also a corset). The photo below is of the tennis silver medalist H. Provost. I just hope that she did not have to compete wearing her hat. 

The women's athletics dress code evolved very slowly, from the Vassar Field Days to the post war Olympics. 

And it is only the superb grace of W. Rudolph that make her figure look  perfect by today's standards. 

In fact the true revolution of the women's sports outfit had to wait till the 80s. I believe that the one who brought upon the revolution was the one and only F. Griffith-Joyner. 

She was the first to present herself in competition with a makeup worthy of a movie star. And her nails were like a magnet for the cameramen. 

I guess that she invented everything that is worn today, and then some. 

By the end of the century a two-piece suit was the rule for most women athletes.

I have the impression that today most athletes do favour it

But of course there exist many more trends, equally interesting with leg and arm sleeves (the latter worn by male athletes also).

Women's sports attire has evolved over the years becoming something comfortable allowing the body to perform efficiently. However, what is most important is that women can now wear what they wish. There are a few false notes, like the ones that spurred this article. There are also restrictions due to religion, which, although understandable, are hindering an optimal performance.

But the important message is that women should be free to wear what they wish in sports competitions, and any restrictive rules should be equally applied to both men and women just taking into account the anatomical differences between the two sexes.

(In the ancient Olympics the men competed nude, with perhaps just a kynodesme while in the Herean games the girls wore their hair free down their back and a tunic hanging almost as low as the knees covering only the left shoulder and breast).