Winter Olympics: How older age affects performance

By Professor Hans Degens, Professor of Muscle Physiology at Manchester Metropolitan University Institute of Sport.

A world record has been broken during the 2022 Winter Olympics after the German speed skater Claudia Pechstein became the oldest woman to compete at a Winter Olympics. To make this even more remarkable, she is the second athlete and only woman to compete in eight Winter Games.

Against the backdrop of her ongoing court battle against a two-year competition ban from 2009 due to allegations of doping, at the age of 49, she will compete today in the Winter Olympics in the 5,000-metre sprint against athletes who are half her age.

Older age is often cited as a limiting factor in athletes in all sports, and indeed there are a number of physiological changes that underlie the age-related decrease in athletic performance.

In many Winter Olympic sports, particularly skiing and skating, athletes will need to achieve high velocity – which includes quick movements and quick changes of direction – for prolonged periods.

Our research has discovered three main contributors to the reduction of velocity in older athletes. These are a lower maximum strength of lower limb muscles, a slower rate by which force is generated and then transmitted by tendons, and a reduction in elastic energy storage and recovery in tendons.

Muscle mass and deterioration

When studying runners, we found that a loss of muscle mass and the muscles contracting slower are the main factors slowing down old sprinters.

This finding could also be applied to Winter Olympic athletes, such as speed skaters, who also rely on muscles developing significant forces and contracting at a high velocity.

Fortunately, even in old age muscles have an enormous ability to increase their strength and even speed of muscle shortening through highly specific training that, in a way, reverses the age-related decline of the body.

Updated training methods

Our research has also shown that even older athletes who exercise every day may need to adjust their training programmes to improve balance, muscle mass, bone strength or cardiovascular function.

While exercise is good for health, specialisation in master athletics may come at the expense of underdevelopment of some organ systems. For example, master endurance runners are rewarded by a very lean physique (low body fat) and cardiovascular health, but they often have low muscle and bone strength, and balance. Throwers, meanwhile, are typically strong with good bone health, but leanness and the cardiovascular system are more of a problem.

A specialisation in athletics may come at the expense of an underdevelopment of some organ systems. For example, older endurance athletes are rewarded by a very lean physique (low body fat) and cardiovascular health, but they often have low muscle and bone strength, as well as poor balance, while throwers are typically strong with good bone health, but leanness and the cardiovascular system are more of a problem.

It is perhaps somewhat surprising that endurance athletes usually have a similar muscle size and strength as non-athletic people of the same age, but their muscle health in terms of metabolism is better.

On the other hand, the muscle size and strength of older sprinters and older people involved in regular strength training are very good for their age and can be similar to those in much younger non-athletic people. This illustrates that the type of exercise affects the way the body adapts, even in older age.

The effect on bones

The lower limb bones are exposed to forces up to four times body mass during walking, and even higher forces are experienced by bones during jumping, as they absorb impacts and effects of gravity.

These forces squeeze, bend and twist our bones. The tibia (shin bone), for example, becomes about a millimetre shorter when the heel strikes the ground during running. These stresses and strains on the bone stimulate bone growth, which means regular exercise is an excellent means to delay, or even reverse, osteoporosis - a health condition that weakens bones, making them fragile and more likely to break.

It appears that is not so much how often you expose the bones to such high forces, but rather the magnitude of the stresses and strains on the bone that are important for bone adaptation.

And this may be the explanation for the observation that bone strength of older endurance runners is similar to non-athletic people of the same age, while that of older sprinters or power athletes, where the bones are far less frequently exposed to yet higher stresses and strains, is much greater than those of the endurance runners.

It is this ever-increasing understanding of the effect of ageing on athletes’ bodies that leads to enhanced training programmes and better management of any injuries or pain that can help them compete at a high level even in older age.

As this research continues, it is likely that future Winter Olympic Games will see more records broken for the oldest athletes who compete in a range of sports and disciplines.