Life in the fast lane not always best option

A Different View with Dave O’Connell

When your reaction levels bring you from nought to sixty in about three-quarters of an hour, you seek vindication for your poor fitness levels wherever you can find it – hence the desperate grasping at a new study just released in the US.

Fittingly, it follows on from the recent Rio Olympics where more records were smashed than you’d get at a drunken party in a Greek music store.

But for all of the glory, there is also a downside – or to rework the old analogy: “Run fast, die young.”

The American academic journal, Ageing, studied the life span of medallists from a bygone era – and found that those who finished first also died first . . . on average by four and a half years.

Of course, they could still reflect on their death beds on the scale of their achievement when they climbed to the highest step on the podium – but those who finished behind them then now had the small consolation of at least surviving long enough to wave them off on their final journey.

The findings are based on analysis of the longevity of athletes in the earliest modern Olympics between 1896 and 1936.

What tells its own story is the fact that they chose that time span because they believe that before doping significantly distorted athletic records.

The scientists analysed the performances and life spans of 1,055 athletes from 41 countries and they included only those who survived to the age of 50, thus weeding out those who died in combat in the world wars.

They found that those at greatest risk were the athletes who peaked early and achieved the best results – because they died 4.7 years earlier than their fellow Olympians who peaked later and achieved below-average personal bests.

So they may not have been the quickest on the big day but they also lived life at a pace which kept them in the race a little bit longer.

The serious part of this is that there is a price to be paid for everything – and that includes success.

The great Kerry teams of the seventies and eighties were famously focused on their football above all else; a team of bachelors, as they were called in the language of the day, there was no time for anything other than attaining a level of fitness and skill never before seen on the GAA pitch.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.